Dome District, Morning — Olympia Standard Time 04:29:59.97
Perturabo opened his eyes.
Carefully, he lifted his sister's arm from where it was wrapped around him and set it aside gently before rising from the square bed that measured six meters on each side.
A hovering device approached silently and began scanning his body. Sensors swept across him until, 1.52 seconds later, the array completed its final diagnostic pass.
Then the neural cables automatically lifted into the air and descended onto Perturabo's head, sealing tightly like the tentacles of an octopus.
A faint reflection of data flickered across his gray irises in the darkness—his retinal micro-display activating.
Lines of status readings appeared at the edge of his vision:
• Body temperature: 42.8°C
• Blood pressure: 118/76
• Cortisol level: 12% below baseline
• Creatinine clearance: optimal
• Brainwave pattern: transitioning smoothly from theta to alpha
No anomalies today.
He spread his arms and allowed the Iron Ring automata to dress him in a white robe before walking toward the center of the room.
Every motion was calculated precisely.
Back muscle engagement: 17%
Abdominal muscles: 9%
Calories consumed: 3.7
The data automatically archived itself in his physiological records.
For ten years, every day had been like this—every movement, every heartbeat recorded.
---
When he reached the center of the room, the holographic data well activated automatically.
Blue light rose from the hexagonal grid embedded in the floor, weaving a three-dimensional model of Olympia and its orbital ring in midair.
Pure data visualization.
Gray geometric structures represented buildings.
Red flowing lines represented energy transfer.
Green point clusters represented aggregated life-sign data.
Yellow web-like strands represented communication networks.
His gaze first settled on the defense array.
That was the most important part.
The twelve armed satellites orbiting the planet all displayed stable dark-green status icons. Each satellite's weapon systems, propellant reserves, cooling efficiency, and communication latency floated beside them in tiny text.
One satellite—No. 3—showed its magnetic railgun backup capacitors had reached 87.3% of their design lifespan, though replacement would not be necessary for another 4.2 standard months.
The logic engine had already scheduled a maintenance drone to conduct preventive servicing seventeen days later.
Perturabo tapped the air, pulling up the drone's mission list.
The list was long—2,174 maintenance units across Olympia's orbital infrastructure.
His eyes paused briefly on item three:
Mirror calibration deviation in Solar Collection Array No. 7: 0.03 arcseconds, predicted to reduce energy output by 0.0007%.
Perturabo frowned slightly.
Too low—two orders of magnitude below the intervention threshold.
Ten years ago, the stubborn perfectionist he once was would never have tolerated such deviation. He would have ordered immediate recalibration, demanded an investigation, held maintenance crews accountable, and revised protocols to prevent recurrence.
But now, after awakening to his deeper nature and forcing himself to loosen his obsessive tendencies…
He merely marked the item in his mind and adjusted its priority from "monitoring" to "quarterly review."
The logic engine recorded the change automatically and appended a note to the maintenance drone's task sequence:
Conduct secondary inspection during next pass over Array No. 7.
If deviation exceeds 0.05 arcseconds, recalibrate immediately.
This was his new rule:
Only intervene when problems reach the intervention threshold.
The threshold itself had been determined after simulating more than seven million possible scenarios. Below that level, the system would monitor, record, and analyze trends automatically.
Unless deterioration accelerated, there would be no intervention.
He had made this decision five years earlier.
And it had taken enormous effort to suppress the instinct that demanded he correct every imperfection.
After all—
Not everyone was a Primarch.
And not everyone was a machine.
People became tired. They made mistakes.
Even he could not guarantee his own decisions were flawless—though he was confident, and sometimes stubbornly so.
A data fluctuation from the civilian districts of Olympia caught his attention.
Aggregated life-sign data showed that during the past twelve hours, the citizens' average heart rate had dropped from 72 bpm while awake to 58 bpm during sleep, perfectly matching health models.
Stress indices calculated from 217 parameters—skin conductance, blinking frequency, speech patterns—remained within the 35th percentile historically.
An ideal zone of "light stress promoting efficiency."
But three locations showed slight anomalies.
Three red markers appeared across separate residential districts:
Block B-7
Block G-12
Block K-3
The logic engine attached reports automatically.
---
Citizen B-7-884
Male, 42 years old, Level-3 mechanic.
Heart rate variability dropped 23% over six hours. REM sleep cycle 18% shorter than predicted.
Associated event: work evaluation score 0.3 below team average.
System recommendation: schedule career consultation.
---
Citizen G-12-552
Female, 31, logic education instructor.
Body temperature increased 0.4°C at 03:17, lasting eleven minutes.
Associated event: none.
System note: probable physiological fluctuation. Marked for observation.
---
Citizen K-3-219
Male, 58, archive manager.
Voice pattern analysis indicates mild depressive tendency (confidence 67%).
Associated event: the Olympian Art Archive Digitization Project under his supervision has been suspended due to resource reallocation.
---
Perturabo's gaze lingered on the third anomaly for 1.12 seconds.
His memory retrieved the project information.
These archives came from the city-states of Olympia before unification—paintings, sculptures, poetry, music.
Most of it illogical, filled with meaningless decoration and emotional expression.
The logic engine had rated their civilizational utility value 0.47 standard deviations below retention threshold.
Under standard procedure, originals should be destroyed after digitization, with digital copies archived in deep storage under restricted academic access.
But the project had been paused.
Energy from the K-3 sector had been redirected to test a new water purification module.
A rational decision.
The purification system affected drinking water for 350,000 citizens.
Art digitization could wait.
Yet this archivist had begun showing signs of depression.
Perturabo opened the citizen's full file.
58 years of life reduced to streams of data.
Birth evaluation scores. Education path. Career progression. Health records. Social networks. Productivity curves.
A perfectly standard Olympian citizen.
Reliable. Predictable.
Just like the archives he managed.
Until recently.
Perturabo opened the past thirty days of behavioral logs.
Day 1–7: standard workload, 140–160 archives processed daily.
Day 8: accessed "Former Cassandra City-State Stained Glass Study", viewing time 127% above average.
Day 9: submitted informal request to preserve "a small number of representative physical originals for educational purposes."
Day 10: request automatically denied (violated resource optimization protocol).
Day 11–20: productivity dropped to 120–135 per day.
Day 21: project suspension notice received.
Day 22–30: productivity fell further to 110–125, voice analysis began showing abnormalities.
Perturabo closed the file.
His neural cables—combining Primarch intellect with mechanical computation—began processing multiple problems simultaneously.
How to restore the citizen's productivity?
Should the art archive protocol be revised?
Did this case reveal a blind spot in the system's evaluation of nonproductive cultural activities?
His first instinct was direct intervention.
Have the citizen's supervisor summon him, analyze the issue, give instructions, solve it.
But Perturabo rejected the idea.
He entered parameters into the panel: personality model, current mental state, possible interventions.
The logic engine simulated outcomes in 0.04 seconds, producing 137 potential trajectories.
Direct intervention had a 68% chance of restoring short-term productivity.
But in the long term (over one year), there was a 41% probability it would create a sense of "systemic oppression", reducing work quality.
The optimal solution was indirect intervention:
Provide psychological support through a logic counselor and arrange a small exhibition displaying digitized archive results, creating a sense of project completion.
Efficiency loss: 2.7 citizen workdays.
Expected gain: restored long-term productivity and new data on the psychological impact of cultural activities.
Net benefit: positive.
Perturabo approved the plan.
The logic engine assigned tasks automatically to the citizen welfare subsystem.
Total time from problem detection to solution: 4.7 seconds.
He moved on.
The issue was marked "in progress."
Perturabo had never eliminated art entirely.
Humans had desires.
Pure logic and rationality did not exist in a single person—not even the Emperor or the Primarchs.
So he built enough galleries and opera houses to keep such impulses within acceptable thresholds.
The opera house was his favorite.
Next he reviewed the internal production report.
This was the largest section of the daily briefing.
Olympia was a completely self-sufficient closed system: mining, smelting, manufacturing, agriculture, recycling.
Every link connected through vast logistics networks.
Every node monitored in real time.
Today's summary:
• Iron mining: 101.2% of daily target. Conveyor belt wear in C-3 mine exceeded forecast by 0.7%.
• Water purification: all indicators normal. New module efficiency 1.3% above prediction.
• Food synthesis: protein production line B shut down 2 hours for maintenance; inventory buffer covered deficit.
• Energy generation: geothermal Well No.7 pump efficiency slightly reduced; maintenance scheduled next week.
Everything remained under control.
Everything within predicted limits.
Perturabo liked that feeling.
Aside from research, it was the thing that pleased him most.
He spent 11 minutes reviewing the entire report.
His eyes functioned like precision scanners—catching deviations, evaluating significance, deciding whether to adjust, observe, or ignore.
When he finished, he had approved three maintenance plans, postponed one upgrade project (cost-benefit ratio below threshold), and ordered root-cause analysis for the conveyor belt wear.
Time: 04:47:13.22
Morning inspection complete.
Olympia—his creation, his fortress, his world—continued operating with perfect precision.
No crises.
No surprises.
No accidents.
He moved to the other side of the room.
The wall slid open silently, revealing his personal maintenance chamber.
No servants.
No servitors.
Only mechanical arms, automated systems, Iron Rings, and combat automata.
From a machine platform he retrieved an alloy tray.
On it sat a single matte-black cup.
A glowing ring at its base indicated the contents: green—ready, composition matched today's requirements.
He lifted it.
Weight: 5137.6 grams. Same as yesterday.
Temperature: 44.3°C.
He already knew its composition:
• 35% protein (synthetic muscle substrate)
• 45% carbohydrates (modified starch compound)
• 12% lipids (essential fatty acid blend)
• 8% vitamins, minerals, trace elements, neurotransmitter precursors
No flavor.
Or rather, flavor deliberately engineered to remain neutral.
The nutrient paste had undergone thousands of optimizations—smooth texture, moderate viscosity, no residue in the mouth after three seconds.
He ate with mechanical precision.
Each mouthful 28–32 ml, spaced 12 seconds apart.
Meanwhile the audio system began the first briefing of the day:
A pulsar observation report.
Pulsars—cosmic clocks.
Their regularity surpassed any man-made timepiece.
Perturabo once attempted to use pulsar networks for galactic navigation, but the unpredictability of the Warp made the idea impractical.
Still, he continued observing them.
First: the data itself had immense scientific value.
Second: pulsars had no connection to human affairs.
They cared nothing for the Imperium, the Chaos Gods, Primarchs, or mortals.
They simply existed—rotating, radiating—like eternal mathematical proofs.
Third:
He simply enjoyed it.
He finished the nutrient paste in 3 minutes and 45 seconds.
The container returned automatically for sterilization.
His sister would wake in a few hours.
He would eat again with her then.
She insisted.
Even during his experiments, she always came to eat with him.
Even if he had already eaten.
He would never refuse her.
After that came physical maintenance.
Technically unnecessary.
Primarchs did not require it—especially not Perturabo, whose strength continued increasing.
Even precise instruments could only measure approximations of a Primarch's body.
Warp-born creations did not follow normal science.
Still, he entered the giant spherical chamber.
Skipping the routine would bother him.
When the maintenance cycle finished, he reclined again.
The neural cables reached maximum processing capacity.
This was one of the times each day when his mind functioned at its sharpest.
After moderate exercise, his thoughts became hypersensitive.
Every neuron burned with activity.
He entered a subtle mental state—a virtual space constructed in his mind for deep thinking.
Today's problem:
Optimizing Olympia's long-term energy strategy.
The logic engine simulated alongside him.
Geothermal wells plunged like roots into the planetary mantle.
Orbital solar arrays spread like metal petals.
Fusion reactors pulsed beneath the cities like hearts.
Parameters entered:
Energy growth rate: 0.7% annually
Technological progress projections
Geothermal sustainability: 12,000 years
Solar efficiency nearing 83% of theoretical limit
Fusion fuel reserves: 4,000 years
Timeline advanced.
500 years.
1000 years.
5000 years.
10,000 years.
Results appeared in 0.8 seconds.
Under current systems, Olympia would remain energy-self-sufficient for 8,000 years.
After that, geothermal decline would outpace technological compensation.
By year 12,000, living standards could not be maintained without reducing population and energy consumption.
Not a crisis.
Twelve thousand years was a long time.
And the problem would surely be solved by then.
Primarch lifespans were unknown.
Perturabo's own experiments suggested his cells repaired telomeres after division, rather than shortening them.
Primarchs were biological weapons forged by the Emperor using both Warp and material-universe biotechnology.
Their potential was immense.
But raw physical power alone was insufficient.
Warhammer's universe was shaped by belief and the Warp.
Even ordinary humans might occasionally challenge a Primarch through sheer conviction—though it was nearly impossible.
Perturabo had studied his own biology extensively.
His work produced technologies like genetic enhancement surgery and life-extension techniques.
His modified soldiers were far stronger than the Solar Auxilia.
But the technologies he truly coveted were those the Emperor used to create Primarchs and Custodians.
That was the pinnacle of dark-age biotechnology.
When he returned to the Imperium, he planned to ask the Emperor for some of it.
The simulation continued, growing more detailed.
But eventually Perturabo withdrew from deep thought.
His processing power could simulate centuries easily—
But now, it was time.
The neural cables lifted away.
Soft arms wrapped around him from behind.
"You're awake, Sister. Why not sleep a little longer? It's still early."
Perturabo spoke softly.
"You're doing this again. You promised to spend today with me, but you snuck off to work."
Stephanie leaned against his broad back.
"I'm used to it. Come eat with me first. Today I'll follow whatever you want. We promised."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Then let's go out. I want grilled fish and beast steak."
"Alright."
"And the grand theater and exhibition halls."
"As you wish."
"And swimming at the coast. Then flying a ship around the orbital ring."
"Fine. Whatever you want."
"Then let's go!"
Stephanie jumped down, grabbing his enormous hand with excitement.
It disrupted Perturabo's daily schedule.
But he didn't mind at all.