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.
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.
And he was certainly unwilling to spend his time acting as a switchboard and go-between.
……
The Cube at Avalon Island.
Aron and Sarah were in Aron’s working office. It was a standard office space, with a solid hardwood desk, comfortable carpet, and neutral seafoam green walls. The only luxury in the room was an oil painting of him and Rina that Rina’s mother had done as a gift for their engagement party.
But neither Aron nor Sarah paid it any mind; they were deep in discussion about GAIA Tech’s next bombshell innovation.
“The planned leak of our upcoming VR game created plenty of buzz, but we both know we haven’t done shit on that end yet. We haven’t even settled on what the game will be yet, and I had to pin your happy ass to your chair just to get a few minutes to talk about it? Sheesh, Aron! You know you’re a dick, right?” Sarah complained. She didn’t care if he was an emperor, a peasant, or even the Grand Poobah of East Westfuckistan; he was her friend first, and she would always treat him as such.
Aron paused for a moment, taken aback at the neglect inherent in Sarah’s complaint. He really had become a hands-off boss for all of his companies. On the one hand, though, it demonstrated his trust in the people he had chosen to head those companies up. But on the other hand, Sarah was right—it was quite a dickish move on his part.
So he took a few minutes to think about it as Sarah continued her tirade. He had a few ideas of games they should release, but he needed to winnow the list down to things that weren’t just mindless entertainment, but rather games that had some benefit to his burgeoning empire.
When Sarah finally paused to take a breath, Aron interjected, “I know you might’ve already thought of some possibilities, but I want the games we make to have some benefit to either the player or society as a whole. And especially to the empire. So let’s make our first game something that combines entertainment and current events in a way that’ll help people to adapt to different conditions in a short time.”
“Go on...” Sarah said, intrigued.
“How about this? The game should be set in a galaxy where humanity has already conquered most of the space. Say, 60% of the galaxy is in human hands and they’ve set up a galactic empire and are expanding through exploration, trade, and occasional conquest.
“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?”
