The world was still in the recovery phase after the economic and financial crash. Thanks to an immense amount of stimulus and other aid payments on behalf of the government, companies had been hiring people in droves, driving down the global unemployment rate by quite a lot.
However, due to the disparity in education among the population of some former countries-either as a result of devastating wars or just plain bad leadership-some areas were still suffering. The economic growth seemed to have passed them by; after all, if they don't know a program exists to help them, how can they be helped? Thus, they were only surviving on life support thanks to the Coeus Foundation donating funds and building free clinics and schools and such. But recovery in the worst areas would still remain slow until their education levels caught up to the global standard. And that, unfortunately, was a problem that only time could solve.
Among those areas still in the grip of an economic downturn was the former country of North Korea. They had the highest unemployment rate and lowest educational standards as a result of the Kim dynasty purposefully keeping them uneducated and heavily reliant on their leadership. And due to the generational brainwashing that had been implemented throughout their country, Aron had to take some extreme measures to prevent them from following the Kims into the grave, or perhaps worse-acting out and taking up what arms they could still find to fight a war against the world.
Thus, that area had the highest concentration of cubes per capita in the entire world. They were required in order to retrain the former DPRK armed forces. Once those had been settled into their long-term pods, the next group to be treated were the very old, the very young, and the very ill. The empire wasn't just providing healing of the body, but also healing the minds of the people and clearing the fog that the Kim regime had purposefully put them into, clearing their minds and restoring their critical thinking skills while not implanting any further operant conditioning triggers.
Once the first pass had been completed, recovery was deemed to be well on its way and the former soldiers of the DPRK were given a choice: join ARES, retire with a lump sum payment in END to kickstart their new civilian life, or join the imperial police agency. Those former soldiers who had committed crimes, though, were referred to the imperial judiciary for prosecution of their crimes. And with no flimsy statute of limitations law in the imperial legal code, even crimes committed decades before were added to the judges' dockets for trial and sentencing.
Regardless, most of them chose to remain in the military. They felt that their future prospects would be better should they maintain the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed over the course of their entire adult lives. A majority of those who chose not to continue into ARES chose instead to work for the imperial police agency, trading the military uniforms they'd had forced on them for civilian uniforms that they chose. Only a very few chose the lump sum retirement, mostly those who had families to support, and that would support them. The number one reason they cited for leaving the government service was that they felt the danger level in such service had greatly increased with the advent of the "blessed", people who had been granted superpowers by some mysterious particles floating in the air around them.
But even though their insecurity was high and their prospects low, the former North Korean nationals were almost unanimous in their fervent support of the empire. Seeing the downfall of the former rich families that had supported the laughably corrupt Kim regime through the eyes of freshly deprogrammed people had made them thankful to the empire that had lifted them out of their previous poverty, making their region the most loyal of all the regions in the empire as a whole, just after Eden, which had the fortune to be the birthplace of the Terran Empire.
However, even though the former Democratic People's Republic of Korea was fervently loyal to the empire, that didn't mean there were no problems.
A young man of Korean descent was standing in front of one of the temporary physical branches of the Bank of the Universe. The building was one that had been repurposed from the Central Bank of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and had been confiscated as a part of bringing down the pillars of support behind the Kim regime.
He silently walked into the building and took a number from the dispenser, then took a seat and waited for his turn to arrive. After about ten minutes, his number showed on the screen and he headed to the station of an attractive bank teller in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing standard "Office Lady" attire.
"Good afternoon! Welcome to the Pyongyang branch of the Bank of the Universe. How can I help you today, sir?" the lady asked with a smile on her face. The bank paid very well, which had turned her from a "useless money-losing thing" into the breadwinner of her entire family.
"I'd like to make a withdrawal," the young man calmly said.
"How much would you like to withdraw?" asked the young lady.
"All of it."
The bank teller queried the Akashic Record for the man's ID, then brought up his account in her AR glasses to facilitate his withdrawal. He only had 15 END in his account, so she opened the drawer and counted out two bills, then slid them across the counter toward the young man.
"Here's your 15 END, is there anything else I can-AAAAAAAAAAGH!" she screamed, suddenly in excruciating pain as the young man grabbed her wrist in his now-flaming hand.
She continued screaming herself hoarse and struggling to escape the man's grip as smoke rose from her arm together with the sickly-sweet stench of roasting human flesh.
"Bring me the manager!" the man shouted as he held the teller's arm pinned to the top of the bank desk. Then he dragged her kicking and screaming over the top and around to the location of the bank vault.
The bank's security guard had immediately reported the situation, but as it involved the use of a superpower, he'd been told to stand down and continue observing while a specialized unit was dispatched to deal with the problem. The rest of the people in the bank were similarly unable to act, as the man had switched his grip from her arm to her neck, threatening to cook her to death the moment anyone attempted anything heroic.
This bank robbery would go down in the history books as the first incident in which an individual used their superpower for evil, and it had only been a few short hours after awakeners had left the cubes, their awakenings completed.
