As Aron directed Connect Enterprises to shore up the faltering economy, some countries that hadn’t been freely connected to the internet were also beginning to connect to the rest of the world. Countries like Cuba, where the government had strictly regulated who had access to the internet, were able to freely access information for the first time, without any filters at all.
The former North Korea was also finally invited into the global village, a process begun by America’s takedown of their corrupt government, but hastened by Connect, who sent technicians and ARES Aegis teams to protect them while they laid fiber optic trunk cables and connected them to the existing South Korean infrastructure. Though there would still be a lot of work to bring the two halves of Korea together, the healing had begun.
That said, Aron was no fool and had sent ARES troopers to take the place of the American occupation forces stationed in North Korea, and tasked them with preventing the DPRK Army’s brainwashed soldiers from mounting terror attacks. Currently, there were almost five hundred nyxians and an entire brigade of ARES troopers actively rooting out the most fanatic North Korean military leaders. There was a distinct possibility that they would reignite the decades-old conflict between north and south in an attempt to force the return of their Dear Leader, and that had to be prevented at all costs.
Another thousand ARES troopers and three hundred nyxians were deployed to the former nation of South Korea as well. They had been hit incredibly hard, and though they were still mourning the devastating attack on Seoul, that would only increase, not decrease, the chance of some hotheaded soldiers picking fights with their North Korean “enemies”. Thus, though the DMZ had technically been decommissioned and the borders were officially open, there was still heavy supervision of the newly reunited country to prevent vengeance seekers and vigilantes from enforcing their own misguided brands of “justice”.
The world leaders were busy preparing for the drafting process of the new world constitution. Once that was in place, or at least a solid framework for it was, they would then unite to form the first world government. The process would be handled at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City until another location to base the world government in was agreed upon by unanimous vote. Though everyone felt it would eventually end up somewhere in Eden, none of the leaders wanted to make the process seem too easy; the optics would be terrible for everyone involved. Thus, the UN HQ would continue as the temporary home for the nascent world government until further notice.
Aron’s other companies were involving themselves in the reconstruction efforts as well. The Coeus Foundation in particular was instrumental in distributing food, medicine, and providing access to skilled doctors and temporary housing for the people displaced by the fighting to regain their footing and recover from the trauma and losses they had suffered.
And that wasn’t all; all of Aron’s companies had announced that they were seeking to build branch headquarters in every country, providing the same benefits to those countries that they had given to Eden that allowed them to rise from the mud in the first place.
Unfortunately, though, not everyone was happy to see the recovery in progress. About a fourth of the population in every country was enraged by their swift surrender to Aron. There were many groups, all of them with different reasons, but the one thing they all agreed on was that it was the terrorist, Aron Michael, who had caused the planet to be in the state it was currently in. Thus, they gathered together and took a page from how terrorist groups operated, forming cells and sending them out to begin insurgency groups all over the world.
They may have all been born from different ideologies, their shared agenda to fight against the dictator that stole their country and killed their families, and the government that disappointed them and bowed to the man. They pinned various crimes on him, like tarnishing their communist utopia, capturing their beloved leader, trampling on their freedom, and so on, but it all boiled down to one thing: he wanted to fix what they didn’t think was broken and was trampling on them to implement his heretical agendas.
Everyone who was sufficiently upset enough to join one of the nascent insurgent groups contributed something. If they could fight, they volunteered to fight. If they could train others to fight, they volunteered to teach. If they couldn’t fight, they gave up their wealth. But everyone contributed, from the people whose homes were destroyed and couldn’t afford to rent another place to the billionaire whose net worth had been reduced to a shadow of what it once was thanks to his company share price plummeting. All of them were angry, and all of them were more than willing to do something about it, even if they could only inflict a pinprick on the man they were all convinced was the source of all suffering in the world.
And with the realization that their enemy had an overwhelming technological advantage, they set up their groups to do everything as analog as possible. They took lessons from how the intelligence agencies played the game during the cold war; it would slow things down, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let the hotheads act first, and once all of the turmoil had died down and Aron—now referred to as nothing other than his code name, “the Devil”—was convinced that peace had finally returned, only then would they strike.
In the meantime, they would watch, they would wait, and they would grow. They would lurk in the shadows, drawing the disenfranchised, the disaffected, and the disappointed to their cause. They would train, they would teach, and they would sacrifice. They would develop insurgencies and instigate them to act in their stead, helping prolong the chaos that would shield them from discovery as they grew in the cracks and crevices of society, hidden from the eye of the devil.
Their chance, they believed, would come soon enough. God would always be with the patient.
