Agent047
patreon
916 - On the Way to UTOPIA
🕑 Added 2025-05-26 20:08:52 +0000 UTCTransforming. That was the word on everyone’s lips when it came to businesses now operating through VR.
The Empire had recently launched a sweeping initiative to restructure commercial activity within the VR. As part of this initiative, they created an additional protective layer, a sort of social bubble, surrounding individuals who had been connected to the VR for more than six months. These individuals were restricted from broad interaction and could only communicate with those considered close connections, from those who were new to the VR.
The intent was twofold: to give new VR users time to adapt without external pressure and to level the playing field, preventing them from being at a disadvantage when launching new businesses.
In regions where VR-based commerce had been authorized, care was taken not to prioritize VR businesses at the expense of real-world enterprises. This helped prevent the collapse of traditional businesses and safeguarded the broader economic stability of civilizations as the businesses migrated to VR. Still, even with these limitations, a transformation was undeniably underway.
Currently, business exchanges were restricted to within the same civilization. This was a deliberate measure, meant to allow time for all Conclave territories to fully come online and benefit equally when inter-civilizational trade resumed. Even so, the impact was already visible. Star systems began specializing, focusing on industries they naturally excelled in or where they had abundant resources. Simultaneously, they abandoned the inefficient and resource-draining industries they once had to maintain simply to avoid the decades-long delays of interstellar trade. Now, they could buy those same goods from more capable star systems at a fraction of the cost.
Amidst this sweeping shift, Hermes, Inc. emerged as one of the biggest winners. Their logistics and delivery services were now operational in nearly every connected star system, operating through joint ventures with the civilizations’ governments. The profit-sharing agreements were simple: a 70/30 split, with Hermes taking the lion’s share. The company had effectively positioned itself as the primary artery of this new virtual economy.
And as the transformation continued, its dominance only grew.
The sheer amount of revenue Hermes, Inc., led by Rachael Richardson, was generating as the de facto delivery network for VR commerce catapulted the company into third place among the most profitable enterprises owned by the Emperor. It trailed only behind GAIA Technologies and Hephaestus Industries and Manufacturing, both of which maintained unmatched profits and showed no signs of slowing down.
Fortunately, the Emperor had already enacted a sweeping profit tax on companies that earned over fifty trillion END from markets outside the Empire. These corporations were required to pay up to fifty percent of their profits as taxes. This policy was designed to prevent hundreds of trillions of END from stagnating in corporate reserves, essentially being hoarded without contributing to economic flow. Given the Empire’s current levels of wealth, especially considering they had not even fully connected with the Conclave’s wider economy, the Emperor viewed direct taxation as far more effective than relying on voluntary donations to state programs.
Beyond bolstering imperial coffers, this taxation policy also benefited everyday citizens of the Empire. Many took interest-free loans against their retirement accounts to invest in companies pre-selected by the Empire, enterprises it knew would appreciate in value and reliably pay dividends. While such investment structures already existed within the Conclave, they were governed by more advanced economic models, complete with sophisticated terminology and nuanced financial instruments. The Empire, in turn, adopted the best of these practices and retrofitted them to suit its unique system, thus avoiding many of the growing pains the Conclave civilizations had once endured.
As a result, a significant portion of the population could now look forward to early retirement, sustained entirely by dividends from their investments. And this was by design.
With the Empire’s rapid automation reducing the number of new job opportunities, machines now performed many of the essential labor, which in turn made ensuring widespread financial security through intelligent economic planning a priority. Thanks to the booming VR economy and the tax revenue it generated, the Empire was not only able to subsidize key aspects of daily life but also encourage citizens to pursue passions instead of survival.
In short, the Empire was quietly reshaping its foundation, not just through power or technology, but through financial freedom.
The Empire was gradually evolving into the equivalent of the formerly oil-rich nations of Old Earth, but with one critical difference: it had no risk of collapse due to resource depletion. Where oil-rich countries had suffered from the finiteness of their core asset, the Empire stood on four pillars that ensured its long-term stability and dominance.
First, there was VR, now so deeply integrated into everyday life that it was becoming a necessity rather than a luxury. Second, the wormhole lanes connected civilizations, making the Empire the backbone of interstellar logistics and travel. Third, mana stones powered virtually everything of importance. As long as the Empire had the means to generate energy, it could manufacture mana stones endlessly, fueling its entire civilization. And lastly, but most crucially, it had the military power to defend all of this. Unlike past nations that had to curry favor or form uneasy alliances to avoid invasion, the Empire stood alone and nearly unchallenged, and with each passing day, its military strength only grew.
This unprecedented stability gave rise to a new demand: entertainment. As the population became wealthier and less burdened by survival, people sought more immersive and diverse experiences, and VR was the perfect platform to deliver them. And with access to brain data through neural integration, the Empire had another powerful advantage. It could monitor mental and emotional patterns and limit them through the device’s safeguards measures to ensure people didn’t become overstimulated or desensitized, something that could lead them to seek extreme stimuli in the real world just to feel something meaningful again.
Such behavioral spirals, common in societies where stimulation was unchecked, were preemptively managed through tailored VR experiences. The Empire’s technology didn’t just entertain, it ensured that it kept people balanced.
In short, the Empire was on a trajectory to become a true utopia, one that not only provided abundance and security but also had the foresight and infrastructure to avoid the very pitfalls that typically came with such prosperity.
The Empire, or more accurately, Aron, had made it a central mission to ensure that people lived fulfilling lives, not ones where they worked simply to survive. He had succeeded. But with that success came a challenge to one of the four pillars of the empire, the military.
In the past, many military powers, such as the former United States, had relied on poverty as a recruitment strategy, setting up booths in struggling communities and offering military service as a path out of hardship, recruiting students with the enticing bait of paying their tuition. Those tactics were no longer viable in the Empire. Those communities didn’t exist anymore and education was practically free. People’s needs were met. There was no desperation to exploit.
As a result, the Imperial military, ARES, was currently only holding steady at around 500 million active personnel, making it the largest employer in the entire Empire. And that was during peacetime mobilization, not even full war footing.
However, the Empire wasn’t caught unprepared. ARES had contingency plans in place in case a sudden need arose for billions of troops. These plans were thoroughly simulated, updated regularly, and stored securely, but they remained inactive, waiting for specific trigger conditions to be met. Until then, there was no need to alarm the public or divert resources unnecessarily.
Comments
GripenSupremacy
TYFTC
jordan payet
Thanks for the chapter ! Damn if only the real world could align with this 😩 With IA currently booming, not that far from intelligence explosion, i have hopes that governments sees that the current system won’t fit anymore and transition toward a better one.
