When everyone left after the meeting, Aron remained behind with Alexander as they had something important to talk about.
"How's being president going for you?" Aron asked.
"I can't complain, since it was what I was dreaming of throughout most of my youth. Then I fought for the changes, and now that I have the ability to seize my dreams I can't be caught complaining, now can I?" Alexander jokingly replied, then added, "But I'm really enjoying it. Especially with my new body—it's very rare for me to feel tired, no matter how hard I work. And that helps me do more than I could've done before." He was incredibly grateful to Aron for the genetic enhancements he had received.
"Yeah, I can see the results of your hard work in the faces of the citizens," Aron said. The happiness level of the citizens in Eden had, and was continuing to increase as more and more people benefited from the new government.
"The discovery of oil did all the work. And now that we've been exporting it for about a year, it's about time for the investments to start benefiting the citizens," Alexander said. Just five months after they had started selling oil internationally with the help of Hermes, they'd received enough money to immediately implement the universal healthcare plan he'd promised the citizens. There were even no increases in any tax brackets. And with Aron's tech as the backbone of their new universal healthcare program, together with the hospitals that had been built and funded by the Coeus Foundation, they were using the most advanced medical equipment in the world. The government-funded and Coeus-backed hospitals were the best in the country... or even the entire world; there was no question about that at all.
"So, I asked you to stay behind because I wanted to warn you that the upcoming years will be very rocky. Trump is about to be sworn into office in January, and we have to make some plans and act accordingly in order to benefit from it and come out on top when things calm down again." Aron shifted to the main topic. He was sure that, although Alexander might not be physically tired, he would definitely soon be mentally exhausted after the earlier eight-hour-long marathon meeting.
"I assume you already have a plan and are about to present it to me," Alexander wryly said. Whenever Aron said something or wanted him to do something for him, he would only ask after he had come up with a plan. The man was nothing if not an excellent planner, and his plans were always out of this world.
"Yes, but the plan has to be flexible. Trump is an unpredictable man, and nobody can control him. The people who got him elected are just fools if they ever thought otherwise. So we need to be ready to react based on the situations that occur, since there's no predicting his actions in advance. The political world is about to undergo the equivalent of a 10.0 magnitude earthquake," Aron said as a folder materialized in his hand and he handed it to the Edenian president.
Alexander took it and started reading the contents, just to get the gist of the plan, but after he finished reading the third page, he looked at Aron in shock. He couldn't believe what he had just read.
"The benefits of being neutral," Aron said with a smile, as he knew what had caused Alexander to react that way.
"If things go wrong... you know there's a risk of a war, right?" Alexander asked, but then realized why Aron had only handed him the folder after the Ministry of Defense meeting. He had obviously realized the risks and been preparing for the worst-case scenario long ago.
"Looks like you already expected it," he said after he realized the meaning behind the timing of the ministry meeting and military reorganization.
"Although war isn't something we're aiming for, we still need to prepare in case it starts," Aron said. He was fond of the saying popularized by the former US President, Theodore Roosevelt, about speaking softly and carrying big sticks. But war wasn't his end goal, even if it was a risk of his plan. "But for us to come out on top of the shuffle in the end, we have to take equally huge risks. Thus—" he gestured at the meeting room and the still-hanging infographics, "—our heavy preparations," he added.
Alexander continued perusing the documents with a serious expression on his face. As he read, though, his surprise returned and his eyebrows climbed higher and higher on his forehead until they practically reached his hairline. The plans only grew crazier, riskier, and more dangerous the more he read of them.
When he was done reading, he didn't say much, though his mind was still working on them, but he managed to bid farewell to Aron before logging off and heading to bed. Nova would assimilate the detailed plans while he was asleep, and if he had any questions he could ask them once he knew the ins and outs of everything.
....
The next day, the military began their reorganization. All the soldiers who would be involved had already received the order to assemble, so they returned to their barracks or duty offices, got comfortable, and put on their assimilation devices.
The patrolling Odin class battleships of the home fleet immediately changed course and headed to their new designated bases, where they would meet up with the rest of their subfleets and reorganize. Four of them would be docked for live training and maintenance rotation, as an unmanned ship was just as prone to severe failures and rapid decay as an unoccupied building, and another four would be receiving and cycling through new crew members at Naval Command in Elysium before heading out to their assigned quadrants with the rest of their subfleets. The remaining pair of battleships would be kept in reserve in case they were needed outside Edenian or Esparian territorial waters, and would be allocated to the reaction fleet once that was implemented in the third phase of the Naval Organizational Plan of Eden.
(Ed note: Rottweiler-class battleships have been renamed to Odin-class. Rottweiler didn't fit the naming scheme Agent came up with, but we were running out of Greek mythology to mine for Big Names(tm). So we decided to mix some mythologies, like Norse deities and references for the Navy)
As for the army, they headed to their base quartermasters to turn in their current equipment and be issued the new gear.
While the reshuffle was taking place in the Army and Navy, the Ministry of Defense uploaded their new recruitment ads to Pangea, as well as put them into rotation on the television and radio stations in both Eden and Esparia. They expected a surge in recruitment soon, likely within a few days.
Together with that, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense held a press conference announcing the reorganization and recruitment effort on official channels, with a press release going out to the paper news media. It was an all-out blitz to ensure that every citizen of both Eden and Esparia heard of the recruitment push. Together with that, ARES leased serviceable offices or buildings in each city and village, no matter the size, and stationed a few soldiers there to act as recruiters.
Other countries' reactions varied, ranging from Trump rattling sabers on Pangea and lambasting the "warmongering" Edenians in incoherent posts, to the Esparian president's strong support for the initiative. He was just as aware as Alexander of the realities of being a neutral country, and thanks to the surrender accord, he had to rely on them. So in his mind, the stronger ARES—and by extension, Eden—was, the better it would be for Esparia as a whole. Besides, he really enjoyed the oil income he was receiving for doing essentially nothing. There was no better income than "free" income, after all.
Edenian citizens were awed by the look of the new weapons, and the global netizens created a number of hilarious memes surrounding them. Conspiracy theorists went on rants about supersoldier projects and eugenics, comparing Alexander's government to the Third Reich, and some even mocked the new gear for focusing on form over function and saying they were little more than embroidered pillows.
No one could really refute that, either, as Eden was still considered a "developing nation", which was basically a polite way of saying "third-world shithole". So it was implausible at best for them to actually have developed any working hardware, and those rumors couldn't be refuted without showing the gear in action or having an impressive usage record behind it, like the AK-47 assault rifles, which were still the most popular rifle in the world by sheer number of sales.
Speculation was running rampant and wars of words between netizens broke out everywhere, but the Edenian government remained silent and simply watched. Not only that, the monitoring AI of Pangea, Panoptes, was actively fueling the debate and further muddying the water.
There was even more rampant speculation on the Edenian government's silence. Edenian and Esparian citizens correctly pointed out that it would be incredibly stupid of Alexander's Ministry of Defense to give detailed specs on the new weaponry, or even to show it in action, and also pointed out that no country in the world ever showed their weapon prototypes in action. As Eden had only ever been involved in "local disputes" with Esparia, the new weaponry would remain classified as prototypes until they had proven themselves on various battlefields. But other countries mocked that decision, and it was even noted by Panoptes that a few governments had even hired batches of trolls to try provoking the Edenian Ministry of Defense into revealing the classified details of their weapons.
But no matter what their specific reactions were, the entire world had heard of the new weapons and Eden's entry into the military/industrial complex. As for explanations? They could explain it themselves.
Eden certainly wasn't going to.
