Chapter 193: The Day of Liberation
Megacity was definitely an amazing system.
Almost everything was controlled by artificial intelligence, and it could maintain itself without human intervention.
But that also meant that if there was a problem with the artificial intelligence, the entire city would be in danger.
It wouldn’t be a big issue in normal times, but unfortunately, the Plague Queen appeared in the solar system.
The Plague fleet, which escaped the human surveillance network by riding the ether storm, attacked Megacity.
Each of them had more power than a nuclear weapon, so it was impossible to intercept them all with Megacity’s defense facilities.
The artificial intelligence, which was already abnormal due to earthquakes and volcanoes, suffered a fatal blow from the Plague’s final attack.
As a result, most of the Megacity zones, as well as the surveillance system, were shut down.
The villains who were waiting for an opportunity succeeded in entering in large numbers.
They headed straight to the Golden Palace and climbed up the stairs.
“If you find that bastard, shoot him right away.”
“Just don’t kill him! Don’t forget he’s a psyker!”
They were armed with rifles and grenades, but their opponent was the strongest psyker.
Although he was said to be abnormal now and had fallen behind other psykers, they still had to be careful.
The members of the unit, who were mostly former special forces, ignored the drones that were spitting out errors and headed to the upper floor.
And soon after, a red flag fluttered from the office of the Golden Palace.
The members of the Holy Knight Order who were just looking from below clenched their fists.
“They got him!”
“That’s it!”
They made a fuss, shaking hands and hugging each other in all directions amid the chaos.
But Osborne MP couldn’t believe it.
He urgently instructed the suicide squad through the radio.
“Are you sure it’s him? Don’t forget that he’s good at staging! Check if he bleeds when you stab him with a knife! Check his mouth too!”
When he received a confirmation that it was him, Osborne’s shoulders relaxed.
He felt like he had recovered from his disguise as a parliamentarian for years.
“We finally overthrew the dictator.”
“He crossed the line by claiming to be an emperor. He must have realized his mistake now.”
The sponsors congratulated him one after another, but Osborne MP shook his head.
“It’s not over yet. We have to find out where that woman Arma is. And we have to take over the management bureau where the artificial intelligence is as soon as possible.”
“Don’t worry. The suicide squad has already left.”
“I’m sure there will be resistance since he made it…”
Osborne MP did not dismiss his doubts and everyone tried to convince him.
“They can’t stop us because the surveillance system is shut down.”
“Look, aren’t all the drones and androids spitting out errors? The idea of letting artificial intelligence control everything was wrong in the first place.”
“It’s the era of humans now.”
To be precise, it would be the era of Anglo-American politicians centered on the Holy Knight Order.
They believed that this was natural and also the way humanity should go.
But it was suspicious that everything went too well.
Osborne MP called his sponsors and checked the plan from the beginning and reviewed the steps to take over Megacity, but there was nothing special.
“Was it this easy? Did he collapse like this?”
He thought of what he had mobilized to create the Human Alliance and Megacity ten years ago, and his fragility now didn’t make sense.
Some psykers suggested a hypothesis that he went crazy under the pressure of the Plague Queen.
“The Plague Queen’s psy-field was truly tremendous. He might have realized that he couldn’t win and gave up everything.”
“The higher the ether sensitivity, the greater the impact. He was the strongest psyker of humanity, so he must have suffered a lot.”
“Well, he made all this because of the space monsters… They’re not ordinary monsters, but queens. They must have that much power.”
Anyway, Osborne MP wanted to get rid of Yu Ji-ha as soon as possible.
He didn’t know what was going on in space, but he was afraid something would happen if he left him in Megacity.
He called his confidants and gave them some instructions.
“Just interrogate him minimally and prepare to send him into space immediately. Don’t let him die, understand?”
He had to negotiate with the queen soon, and if he presented a dead human, he didn’t know what would happen.
“And let people know about this. We overthrew the dictator, so help us establish democracy.”
“What about the Supreme Council?”
Someone asked and Osborne MP waved his hand.
“That’s no problem at all. It’s just a shell organization without artificial intelligence support.”
“What about the Unified Space Force? We can’t contact them at all right now.”
That was actually the biggest problem.
There was no way that the space bases and fleets of the Unified Space Force were safe when Megacity was shut down.
They wanted to recruit the high-ranking officers who had powerful military power, but communication was cut off.
“Damn, I can’t tell what’s going on in space…”
What if the main force of the space monsters came and they were being destroyed?
Anyway, it seemed that humanity would not be able to leave Earth.
“It’s not a big deal…”
He thought it was enough to live on Earth.
Under his rule, that is.
Some people seemed to expect that a proper democracy would unfold, but he never intended to do that.
Why give up when he could have everything?
Someone pushed people away and hurried over to him.
“Sir, I think we need to expose the president to the public.”
“What? No way!”
“There are too many people who don’t believe it. We need it to persuade them.”
“I know why, but still no. Do you know what will happen?”
There were many people who hated the president sincerely in Megacity, but there were also many followers.
If he exposed the president to them and they took him away, it would be over.
Osborne MP emphasized to his subordinate.
“Prepare to negotiate with the queen as soon as possible. And I’ll take care of convincing people.”
It was hard to move people’s hearts.
But it wasn’t impossible if proper agitation and force were combined.
People were looking for someone who could be a leader more than anyone else.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t Yu Ji-ha.
Armed forces followed him as he took the lead.
***
“People, the president betrayed your trust and tried to become an emperor, and he showed his incompetence. Look at this Megacity!”
“This is the result of entrusting everything to artificial intelligence. Not only food, but even basic security is not maintained. Is this the strong artificial intelligence that the president boasted of?”
At Osborne’s gesture, a scene of Megacity’s misery was shown.
The citizens gathered in front of the stage couldn’t hide their awkward expressions.
They never imagined that President Yu Ji-ha would change so much.
He was the one who made America kneel and finally laid the foundation for the Human Alliance ten years ago, but now he was only a delusional patient.
What was worse, there was no one left to stop him, not even his closest aide, MP Baek Seongmin.
The citizens couldn’t trust him anymore.
“The dictator and the artificial intelligence are gone! Let’s go back to the way things were! A society where humans are the center, for humans, by humans!”
Then someone shouted loudly.
“What happened to the president? What is he doing now?”
“We have secured him!”
“Secured? Do you mean you captured him?”
“We have captured him. Many people have confirmed that it is him, and we are preparing to send him into space.”
People started to murmur in confusion.
Some asked if that was possible, some yelled that it was not fair to treat him like that even if he was the president.
Osborne MP waited for a moment and then turned up the volume of the megaphone.
“People! We are in an unprecedented crisis! The president has been exposed as a delusional patient who dreams of becoming an emperor, and the main force of the monsters has come from space! They have proposed! If we give them the strongest psyker, they will guarantee our safety!”
“Do you believe what they say, you idiot! Do you trust the words of the space monsters!”
“What’s the point of Megacity! It’s for fighting against those monsters!”
“Then I’ll ask you! What is the Unified Space Force that the president prepared doing now! What happened to Megacity!”
“…”
Everyone just looked at each other’s faces and said nothing.
No one knew what was going on in space because all communication channels were cut off.
In the meantime, the psykers were scaring people by saying that the Plague Queen was really trying to destroy humanity.
—If the Unified Space Force can fight against the Plague, it doesn’t matter. But that’s not the case, is it?
—The probability is high that they lost because communication is not working. So we have to find a way to survive.
—Isn’t it okay to give up the president in exchange for safety?
Since no one knew what was going on in space, people were deeply influenced by the opinions of the psykers.
—We need someone who can handle this chaotic situation.
—The president is out of his mind, and Osborne MP is the only one who stands out. Maybe we should support him.
He wasn’t very likable, but he had armed forces with him, so people couldn’t resist easily.
That’s how Osborne MP went on a march around Megacity Pacific, appealing for support for himself.
The reaction of the citizens was not so bad, but not so good either.
—Why don’t they show us the president? Maybe they didn’t capture him?
—I want to see his face and ask him why he did that.
As the pressure to reveal Yu Ji-ha increased, Osborne MP hurriedly sent him to a space prison on a shuttle.
The reaction to this was extremely polarized.
Even so, Osborne MP’s approval rating rose day by day, because there was no other way.
—Megacity has been shut down for a week already. We’ll starve to death if we stay like this.
—Damn, is this how messed up it gets without artificial intelligence?
People realized how vulnerable an economy dependent on artificial intelligence was.
It looked flawless when everything was going well, but it was a mess when it started to collapse.
If humans had taken care of some things, this wouldn’t have happened.
There was also a problem with the system that delegated power to Yu Ji-ha personally.
—Dictatorship works best when a competent leader sets a clear direction. President Yu Ji-ha until recently was an example of that.
—But there is nothing we can do when the dictator becomes corrupt. It’s time to get out of dictatorship.
Yu Ji-ha still had some supporters, but they kept silent as they felt Megacity’s system collapsing in real time.
They also agreed that a new system was needed.
The most urgent thing was to run the smart farm properly and supply food.
And so an interim government was organized with Osborne MP at the forefront.
Most of the senior positions were occupied by white Anglo-Americans, but people didn’t think it was strange.
Even when the new government announced that it could use coercive policies, most people thought it couldn’t be helped.
That’s how bad the situation was.
But after a month, they showed their true colors and things started to turn around.
Ceres Osborne, who took over as president, not only abolished the Supreme Council but also broke his promise to let citizens participate in politics.
Instead, he strengthened his control over the smart farm, which was the only source of food, and started rationing.
He made excuses that there was not enough food for external reasons, but when it was confirmed that his cronies received excessive food for a celebration banquet, public opinion turned against them.
—Who gets to eat and who gets to starve? Where does the food for the president’s cronies come from?
—It’s bad enough that they bring in women, but why are most of them white? Are they trying to revive racism?
The reason why people were angry was that Osborne, who came to the presidency by saying he would listen and communicate, was a racist.
His cronies were mostly white, and he only accepted whites after forming the government.
When criticism arose, he quickly looked for MP Baek Seongmin, but he had disappeared and didn’t show himself.
Then a big problem erupted.
When a protest broke out to bring back Yu Ji-ha, who was imprisoned in space, they suppressed the protesters harshly.
They could have just disbanded them, but they fought with emotions and casualties occurred.
Most of the casualties were, of course, on the side of the protesters.
They had no weapons, so they had no choice but to succumb to the rifles.
As things progressed like this, public opinion rose like a huge wave that Osborne was no different.
—Look at what he’s doing. He also wants dictatorship in the end.
—Yu Ji-ha was fair until he lost his mind, but Osborne was hopeless from the start.
Until recently, people thought that dictatorship was not bad as long as it was like this.
Yu Ji-ha had been so fair that they were mistaken.
Osborne wanted to be a new dictator, but he was lacking in many ways.
He had no artificial intelligence, he was not fair, and most importantly, he had no charm to attract people.
They couldn’t give him the Human Alliance.
Protests broke out all over Megacity, and Osborne’s government tried to stop them naturally.
He had control over the smart farm, so he thought the backlash wouldn’t last long.
But the situation turned around when the Supreme Council stepped in.
MP Baek Seongmin and MP Bernstein appeared with some forces.
***
“Get out of here, Osborne!”
“We don’t need dictatorship!”
Countless citizens marched on the streets of Megacity chanting slogans.
They were tired of the city that was almost a ruin and the dictatorship that exhausted them.
They wanted to form a normal government, but Osborne refused to compromise and stayed in the administration building.
Most of the facilities stopped working without artificial intelligence, but some defense facilities were still usable.
They relied on them to buy time.
The ones who would suffer as time passed were the citizens.
But Baek Seongmin and Bernstein had a switch that Arma had given them.
“This switch will open all the administrative centers, including the administration building. Of course, the defense facilities will also be disabled.”
“Since the new government’s forces are not much, we can suppress them on our side.”
They also had drones that Arma had left behind.
They were not as terrifying as the previous ones, but they were enough to suppress lightly armed forces.
“Suppressing them won’t be hard, but the problem is what comes next.”
Bernstein looked up at the sky.
Yu Ji-ha was somewhere in that sky.
He led the Legion Strike Fleet into a battle with the Plague Queen and finally won.
He should have returned to Earth proudly, but he was heading to Nox.
That’s where his ultimate goal was.
“A warp gate that leads to the prophet’s home… That’s in Nox, right?”
“Yes, that was his goal from the beginning. It’s as important as exterminating the Plague.”
“I don’t know what’s there that makes him go.”
MP Baek Seongmin shook his head.
“It’s not because there’s something there that makes him go, but because there’s no reason for him to stay here.”
“This is Earth, isn’t it? It’s his home…”
“It would be if it was his original time. But he is a human from the 22nd century, and he lost his precious people to the Plague. There is nothing he wants in this era.”
“But he must have had some connections at least.”
“That doesn’t matter. He achieved his noble goal of preserving humanity, and now he wants to leave it to us.”
“He freed himself from humanity as humanity freed itself from the Plague.”
How would it feel to plan something and complete it?
Especially if it was for a noble purpose of preserving humanity over more than 20 years?
Bernstein didn’t know much about it, but he was sure of one thing.
“We owe him a lot…”
“All of humanity does. I hope there will be a day when we can repay him. It’s almost impossible since it takes 50 years one way.”
“50 years one way…”
That seemed like a pilgrimage of death.
Was he going to thank the prophet on behalf of humanity?
Anyway, what they had to do was decided.
They had to punish Osborne and his coup plotters and restore order.
The original plan of establishing a citizen democracy failed because the Plague Queen came too soon, but it didn’t matter much.
People would sprout such consciousness if they touched this and that in the Human Alliance without artificial intelligence.
They had been so used to dictatorship that they wouldn’t tolerate anyone who had such ambitions for a while.
Now what Baek Seongmin and Bernstein had to do was rebuild the Human Alliance based on Megacity.
That would be as difficult as Yu Ji-ha’s path.
The situation outside Megacity was no different from apocalypse.
“We have left us a very difficult homework… But we’ve been living comfortably until now, so maybe it’s time to work.”
Fortunately, they had at least some algorithms for each facility.
Smart mobility and super-commuter trains could be rebuilt with enough manpower.
Baek Seongmin had control over them, but he intended to hand over authority to the Supreme Council.
Everything would be controlled by the Supreme Council.
The era when one dictator gave orders was over with Yu Ji-ha.
Now people had to cooperate with each other and sometimes fight for their bowls.
But that was the right direction.
At least in the current situation where the Plague was gone.
Bernstein suddenly asked.
“Do you think the Plague is completely gone?”
“I don’t know. We just have to believe and live on.”
When they turned their eyes to the street, they saw Osborne and his followers who were beaten up by the protesters and lost their dignity.
There was some resistance, but they were no match for this side in terms of power.
The citizens demanded execution, but they would be punished after a fair trial.
Baek Seongmin realized once again that the president had left.
There was no dictator or artificial intelligence now.
Humanity had to stand up and walk on its own.
And at that moment, Yu Ji-ha arrived at Nox with Settler.
The warp gate swayed as if welcoming him.
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