
Karen's 17th birthday was celebrated across the entire Milky Way,
and a significant chunk the Andromeda galaxy. It had been 13 years
since she was first declared empress, and in that time a lot had
changed. Under Empress Karen, the human race had rapidly and
peacefully filled the galaxy, carried by ever more advanced ships
through hyperspace. The human population had actually dropped,
as Karen absorbed the attributes of the bottom of the population,
consuming thousands at the start of each day. She had decided that
there was little point in taking from the best of the best, who
provided her most valuable breeding stock. She drained the bottom
99% of men, and kept the top 20% of women, who were much more vital
to the process of creating a new humanity.

She would never have been able to drain so many people so effectively
if she had not discovered a way to make more rings. The two original
rings were equally likely to become the master ring (if equal likelihood
really still existed in a universe where Karen was so lucky), but
when she had learned how to copy the rings she figured out how to
preclude the possibility of a ring becoming the master ring. The
only two rings that could become the master ring were always on Karen's
elegant fingers, while a slave ring was given to every child when they
turned 14. It meant that Karen could drain attributes from her servants
at her leisure. Perhaps even more valuable, was the fact that the rings
gave her a perfect understanding of the attributes of each one of her
slaves, making her breeding program much more effective. Even for
Karen, direct genetic modification could produce a mixed bag of
results, so she was glad to have the use of a tool which made traditional
breeding techniques more effective.

Her worshipers were spread around the galaxy like seeds, but almost
all of the day-to-day functioning of Karen's empire was controlled
by a massive horde of robots. She controlled her fleet of artificial
servants through an array of incredibly sensitive sensors in her clothes
which reacted to her skin. Karen's incredible control over her physiology
mean that every cell in her body could transmit terabytes of information
every second. It was still not enough to keep up with her powerful mind,
so she was constantly improving the sensors that her tailors added to
her clothes.

Karen's tailors had spent months preparing her birthday dress, but
in the end they had settled on a simple backless red micro-dress. No amount of
frills could improve on Karen, so the dress was designed to get out
of the way of her natural beauty. She smiled radiantly when she saw herself
in a mirror held by two of her slaves. She could have designed a much better
dress herself, but she preferred to have legions on humanities most creative
and tasteful minds slave over tasks which would have been trivial for her.
"I find this acceptable." She said. One of her slaves was filming her so
that the gigantic team of designers and engineers who had designed the dress
could watch her try it on for the first time. The crew of thousands who had
helped design it cheered as if they had just landed on the moon with a spaceship
made out of tin cans and bubblegum.

Karen smiled to herself at the reaction of her slaves, enjoying the way her
mute approval drove them to ecstatic cheers. Gone were the days when the
majority of humanity lived freely. It was now impossible for anyone who
knew of Karen's existence to do anything but worship her. She regretted
it a little, but it felt so good, so it was hard to care too much.

She would have liked to see the reaction her new dress got from a crowd that
could still feel sexual attraction, but she had long since gotten so sexy that
she would destroy anyone who gazed upon her as they were overcome with lust.
Her only solution was to drain her direct slaves of their capacity for sexual
pleasure. It had the added benefit of making every moment of her existence
filled with erotic bliss. Anyone else would have been destroyed by the intensity
of it, but Karen was able to multi task very effectively.

Her party was the most extravagant ever to take place. Her whole palace, which
took up all of Earth, was decked out in the most fabulous display of gold and
jewels that the galaxy had ever seen. The greatest chefs in the known universe
prepared the most delectable treats for their flame haired goddess, and she
wolfed them all down. She ate thousands of tons before she declared that she
had had enough appetizers. A troupe of 10 million dancers performed for her.
When they had finished she thanked them, and drained every one of them
completely. Her incredible grace doubled and redoubled along with her beauty,
strength and intelligence.

Despite all the extravagance, Karen could not help but become bored. Perfection
was overrated. She had no equals. There were no challenges left for her. She
could only continue her perpetual stream of creation, domination, and
self-improvement.
