Chapter 525 The Grand Poobah of East Westfuckistan

Chapter 525 The Grand Poobah of East Westfuckistan

A few days later.

Rick was watching a recording of the livestream that he had smuggled out of the empire by one of his “unwitting lackeys”, as he called them. He had been spending quite a lot of his time compiling a list of imperial citizens who were disgruntled or dissatisfied enough with the empire that they became connected to him by a thread of belief. The faith they generated was absolutely minuscule, but that didn’t matter; what mattered was that he could use them.

The person he was currently using was one of his finest unwitting spies. Albert Harris was a former climate “activist” who was incited by the Earth Liberation Front and had a long history of protesting against fracking.

He had even glued himself to the ground during one protest, which had led to the arm being amputated. But with the empire solving the problem he was so adamantly against, and even reversing the damage caused by fracking, he was left with a gaping hole where his conviction used to be. The empire had taken away the satisfaction he felt by being a righteous fighter and wreaking havoc in pursuit of his strong belief and had given him nothing that he could use to fill that hole in his being.

So he switched gears and became an advocate for freedom and democracy, which had two consequences. First, he was unknowingly added to a low priority watchlist by his personal recordkeeper in the Akashic Record, and second, a thread of belief had formed that tied him to Rick, due to admiring him for having the guts to stand up to the empire, even if he still felt that the cult leader had taken the wrong path.

So he switched gears and became an advocate for freedom and democracy, which had two consequences. First, he was unknowingly added to a low priority watchlist by his personal recordkeeper in the Akashic Record, and second, a thread of belief had formed that tied him to Rick, due to admiring him for having the guts to stand up to the empire, even if he still felt that the cult leader had taken the wrong path.

But just that was already enough to tie the two together, a fact that Rick could use to manipulate him. And due to the strength of that admiration, it was even easier for the progenitor cult leader to access him, requiring a much lower investment of his faith mana than many other of his unwitting lackeys in the empire.

Rick looked up from the tablet he was watching the recorded livestream on and, with a grave expression on his face, said, “We have a year, tops, before the empire becomes almost impossible to harm.”

Part of the information on the USB was an overview of the new fortress cities that would be constructed, and he had realized they were designed to make attacks, or even analog communications, virtually impossible. While the tour had focused on the layout of the cities and the aesthetics of the architectural features incorporated into the buildings, Rick had been paying more attention to the security features. With the tight surveillance that had zero blind spots, he knew that secretly communicating through anything but his blessing would be impossible.

“We can run a contest to have people design alien races to populate the galaxy alongside humanity, both hostile and friendly. One of the benefits of crowds is that we can use them to crowdsource ideas, after all.”

Aron had entered what those who knew him called “game face mode”, where he completely fixed his focus on planning for events to come. This time in particular, he was laser focused on coming up with an idea for the game that GAIA Tech would soon be releasing.

“We need to ensure that it’s a hundred percent accurate to reality, and it’ll have two sides—the tech side, and the mana side.

“The tech side will focus on designing starships and exploring the galaxy, exploiting resources, engaging in trade with friendly aliens, and fighting skirmishes with hostile ones. It’ll be completely freeform and people will be able to do whatever they want to do in it, all while suffering the consequences of their own bad decisions and the benefits of their good decisions. It’ll subtly influence people to make the ‘right’ decisions, those that align with the values of the empire.

“The mana side, on the other hand, will be a lot like the old City of Heroes game. There’ll be capes and crooks, with the players taking the role of the superheroes, or ‘capes’, and VIs will take on the role of supervillains, or ‘crooks’. We can even use it to float the be a hero academy initiative the blessings agency came up with.

“For NPCs, we can use the brain data and genetic information we have on people to generate realistic characters that have low-level AIs running them. That’ll make it as close to reality as possible.

“First and foremost, though, it needs to be Fun, with a capital F. I know your boyfriend—hey!” Aron shouted as Sarah stood up and punched him in the arm over his desk. “I’m an emperor, you know... I could have your head for that!” He mock frowned at her and pretended that her punch actually hurt him.

He cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway, I know Felix rotted his brain reading all those LitRPGs a few years ago, but I never got into them. I just thought the game itself was never fun to play and it always came across as forced to me.

“So we need to make our game fun. And we can incentivize some things, like I’ll direct the ministry of war to buy the warship designs players come up with, and the ministry of the interior can buy the civilian ship designs. You can also do regular tournaments and contests with prize pools for winners, or allow livestreamers, and so on, but what you absolutely Can Not Do,” Aron stressed the last three words, “is monetize the game through real money trading. Just make a fun game and people will flock to it....”

Aron continued in that vein for another twenty minutes or so, then paused and asked, “So what do you think?”