Chapter 142

"Ugh, you really think so? That smell is pretty rank, right?"

"It is. It's definitely stinky. I mean, I personally like it, but I know a lot of people can’t stand it."

"Ehh, I don't know. Isn't that funk the best part? It’s kind of addictive."

Taro drifted in the hazy borderlands of sleep as the voices of three women tickled his ears. He was the only one currently swaying in a hammock in the bedroom, but since the walls weren't soundproofed, every word from Marl, Sophia, and Rammy leaked in from the next room.

"Vital signs... looks normal. Now that I think about it, I haven't caught so much as a sniffle since I got here."

Taro squinted at the transparent Electronic Sheet stuck to his left wrist, confirming that his health was in tip-top shape. Having letters glow directly out of the skin on the back of his hand had been creepy at first, but he was a veteran of the "weird sci-fi biology" life by now.

Didn't they say I don't even have cavities anymore? Man, once I finally get back to Earth, the quarantine officers are going to have a field day with me.

Taro hopped out of the hammock and tapped the display to switch from vitals to the clock. Seeing he’d woken up at his usual time, he strolled into the living room with a satisfied smirk.

"Morning, ladies. Waking up to three beauties is better than any double espresso."

"If it’s so great, then wake up earlier, Taro," Marl retorted. "You’re the best cook here, remember?"

"Heheh, I’ve just got more years of practice under my belt. Anyway, something smells amazing. This isn't the usual fried rice, is it?"

"I managed to get my hands on some Processed Fungi from the Imlin Star System, so I tossed them in. Has a nice aroma, doesn't it?"

"Processed fungi... oh, so mushrooms. Got it."

Taro peered at the black fragments piled on the plate and gave them a long sniff. Sophia watched him, her eyes wide with a hint of shock as she whispered to Marl.

"Wait, aren't those... really expensive?"

"They were a gift," Marl waved it off. "Don't sweat it. Let’s just eat."

"Yeah, what she said. It's a job perk... well, I don't know if 'job' is the right word, but we get a lot of freebies. Whoa, these mushrooms are killer. What kind are they?"

"What kind? Now that you mention it, I’m not sure. Let’s check the data bank."

Marl plopped her terminal on the table and pinged Plum. Plum’s communication link bypassed the local lag and dived straight into the distant neural net, serving up info instantly.

"Let’s see... 'Grows into a white mass five meters in diameter.' Wow. Apparently, they're a staple for the Natural Food Faction because they're easy to breed. Oh, but it says 'Caution: Cultivating in areas with strong vibrations may cause the specimen to spontaneously detonate.' I wonder what that means. Internal gas buildup?"

"I don't know and I don't want to know! They're five-meter exploding blobs and the ecology section is basically just a giant question mark? That’s terrifying! What the hell are we eating?!"

"Ahaha... b-but they taste great!"

Taro glared suspiciously at Marl’s terminal while Sophia gave a pained, awkward smile. Rammy, meanwhile, wore a look of pure, unadulterated disgust as she began a systematic shuttle operation, shoveling every single mushroom from her plate onto Taro's.

Once breakfast was over and the usual banter died down, Taro dragged the three younger brothers out of bed and dropped them off at the Daycare. He hopped onto a High-speed Moving Lane, watching the rapidly transforming cityscape with a sense of pride. They zipped past community centers where, alongside the soup kitchens, his people were now busy matching refugees with actual jobs.

"It feels like half a month ago was just a bad dream," Marl mused. "Everything is so clean. It feels... right. I guess money really is everything. You can't change a thing without capital."

The roadsides, which had looked like the grimy back alleys of a decaying slum just weeks ago, didn't have a single speck of dust on them. The station management company had taken the surge in tax revenue and dumped it into hiring a literal army of cleaners. To Taro, the monthly salary was so low it was practically a punchline, but people had apparently trampled each other to get those jobs.

"It's not just about aesthetics," Taro said. "Clean streets actually drop the crime rate. On Earth... what was his name? The Mayor of some massive city supposedly fixed the subways just by cleaning them up."

"Really? I wonder what the logic is there... also, what’s a subway?"

"Think of it like a very old, very depressing version of a High-speed Moving Lane."

They arrived at the Commercial District—now almost entirely colonized by Rising Sun subsidiaries—and walked into a modest, unassuming office. They didn't stop at the reception, instead heading straight through a heavily locked, reinforced automatic door at the back.

"Good morning, Mr. Teiro. I see you haven't managed to get yourself killed yet."

Koume was waiting for them on the other side. Beyond her lay a massive, high-tech cavern where hundreds of people were buzzing around, buried in work. They had bought out every module adjacent to the original office, knocked the walls down, and wired them together. It was a full-blown underground secret base.

"Well, we only saw each other yesterday, Koume. Then again, we see each other every day... It’d be pretty weird if I transformed into a supermodel overnight, right?"

"True, Mr. Teiro. Though you seem to have forgotten that the reverse—an attractive man turning into a hideous gremlin overnight—is also a mathematical possibility."

"You’re as foul-mouthed as ever!"

Taro marched to his desk in the center of the hub. Suddenly, a voice barked "Attention!" and the several hundred employees snapped into a rigid, motionless salute.

Man, they’re still acting like a literal army, Taro grumbled to himself. He returned the salute and slumped into his chair.

"Shall we begin immediately, Mr. Teiro?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it."

Koume raised her hand, and a 360-degree hologram of a serene natural park shimmered into existence around Taro's chair. It wouldn't do for the people on the other end of the call to see the frantic, "secret base" chaos happening in the background.

"Hey there. I'm Teiro, representative of Rising Sun—the Representative Corp of the RS Alliance. Man, this intro is starting to feel ridiculous. We all know who I am by now."

Taro directed a deadpan stare at the monitor. On the screen, three hundred corporate reps were gathered in a grand hall. A few of them chuckled at Taro’s bluntness.

"Yes, we are well aware, Representative Teiro. We look forward to today's session."

The Chairman, a spry eighty-four-year-old, beamed from his elevated seat. Taro gave a casual "Gotcha," but made sure to offer a respectful nod. He didn't want to be an arrogant prick, but if he acted too humble, he’d lose his grip on the room. It was a tightrope walk. These RS Alliance Assembly Members were technically his subordinates, but they were almost all decades older than him. Even in the Galactic Empire, the "respect your elders" thing was still a hard habit to break.

"Alright, let's get down to some proper scheming. First on the list—"

He started knocking out the agenda items from the last meeting one by one. If a plan was solid, he ordered them to flesh out the details. If it was garbage, he told them why. The topics ranged from the mundane—like the ratio of public toilets to population—to the critical, like priority protocols for border skirmishes.

Usually, the Council was supposed to meet once a month, but in the current state of emergency, they were pulling weekly shifts. The fact that these high-powered executives weren't complaining proved just how serious they were.

"I see, understood. We shall proceed accordingly on that front. However, Representative Teiro... regarding the Frontier Development, our top priority. Some voices in the economic sector are expressing... skepticism."

Here we go, Taro thought, bracing himself. He wiped any trace of worry from his face, putting on his best "I have a master plan" smirk, and nodded magnanimously.

"You're talking about the candidate sites toward the Ancient Area, right?"

The Chairman nodded slowly. "Precisely. The development toward the resource zones has unanimous support. Companies are tripping over themselves to sign up, and the profit margins look spectacular. But the Ancient Area? People are negative. Is there some hidden advantage there that we’re missing?"

The Chairman tilted his head. Taro leaned back, projecting an air of total confidence. "Your skepticism is totally valid."

"Mined-out resource zones, crumbling facilities, and a population of unaccounted-for squatters that’s probably way bigger than the official records suggest... Yeah, on paper, it looks like a dump you wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole."

Taro scanned the faces on the curved monitor. Everyone was leaning in, their eyes burning with intensity.

"But look at it this way: it’s a goldmine of a different kind. I’ve been living on the ground—oh, maybe I didn't mention it, but I’m actually in Wyoming right now. Doing a little field research. And I’ve realized something..."

He thought back to the daily grind with Sophia and the mountain of data Marl had crunched.

"There is an absurd, sickening amount of cheap labor just sitting here. We put out a call for cleaners—just cleaners!—and got twenty times more applicants than we had spots for. People are starving for work, and the actual population is several times higher than the official stats. Wyoming IV alone has four times the people we thought it did. The rest of the sector is likely the same. That's why there’s never enough food—the allocations were based on fake numbers."

Enzio’s economic planners had distributed resources based on registered residents. They hadn't counted the jobless or the illegals, meaning every shipment of supplies had been doomed to be a drop in the bucket.

"I see. You make a fair point," the Chairman replied. "Exploiting... ah, utilizing that labor force would be highly profitable for the corporations. But how do you plan to move them to the other development sites? We aren't talking about a few thousand people. If Wyoming is the baseline, there are at least forty million people in the Ancient Area."

The Chairman seemed to have expected that answer, but Taro just shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world.

"We don't need to move them. We’ll just have them work where they are."

The Chairman’s eyes widened in surprise. Taro waved his hands theatrically, driving the point home.

"You say the resources are mined out? No way. Not even close. In fact, there’s a chance there’s more wealth there than in the standard resource zones."

"Representative... I find it hard to believe the Empire would have left a single scrap of extractable material behind during its expansion."

"Oh, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure they took everything."

"Then...?" The Chairman looked lost.

Taro gave a predatory grin. "The answer is in your own words, Chairman."

"Regarding extractable resources? Yeah, they probably picked the place clean until only the dust was left. Key word being: extractable."

Taro glanced at the Assembly Members, who were now hanging on his every word. He cocked an eyebrow.

"How many thousands of years has it been since the Empire developed this sector? I tried using the local Stargates, and they were so ancient I could barely hop a few lightyears. Technology has evolved at a terrifying pace in those millennia. With our current tech, we can tap into resources that were physically impossible for them to reach back then."

A wave of shocked realization washed over the hall. Some members stared blankly; others started laughing under their breath, wondering how they’d missed something so obvious.

"But if that's the case," the Chairman said, his voice now tinged with excitement, "wouldn't we need a massive fleet of the latest Stargates? Where on earth are we going to find those?"

Taro’s grin turned positively wicked. He held up a single finger.

"There’s a rumor going around that the Empire is planning an expansion from the Alpha Star System toward Roma. Right now, there’s a 'totally coincidental' massive migration out of that area. People are even saying the stations there might be scrapped... I wonder what kind of jerk would spread such a baseless, nasty rumor?"

The Assembly Members began to mirror Taro’s crooked smile.

"But that area is a major transport hub. The Empire would be in a real bind if they didn't have at least the base facilities ready for their arrival. I mean, we could leave them behind if they really asked nicely... but it’d be such a shame to just give them away for free, don't you think?"