Ch.195195. Relief

Once again, let’s analyze planets with large populations but insufficient food production.

These planets are primarily residence-specialized worlds designed for light industries based on massive labor forces, or engineer worlds centered around heavy industry.

Typically, the entire planetary surface is both factory and city, providing an abundance of living space and jobs for an unimaginable number of impoverished people.

Furthermore, since even the poorest must have minimal welfare to sell manufactured goods to the Federation, strangely enough, these planets exhibited a strong “red flavor.”

Cultural products from other planets—movies, games, or dramas—are supplied at low prices through state-run cultural facilities. Wages are reasonably adequate, and free secondary education is provided for children.

If workers are injured or fall ill during labor, they receive treatment at state hospitals, and severed limbs are fitted with crude but sturdy prosthetics, though of cheap quality.

On such planets, even food items typically considered expensive are affordable—fresh fruits may be costly, but composite grain bread and various cultured meats are supplied cheaply enough to eat without restraint.

And if life as a worker on the hamster wheel doesn’t appeal, one can save money to migrate to another planet, or study diligently to receive scholarships and attend university.

In other words, while dystopian SF planets do exist, most planets, though bleak, aren’t living hells with an average life expectancy in the 20s…

However, this scenario only applies when supplies are properly delivered from external sources.

Fundamentally, these planets are massive consumer and producer groups created by mechanizing planets absolutely unsuitable for primary industries, repurposing them for secondary or, rarely, tertiary industries.

The food consumed by these planets, with populations starting at a minimum of 10 billion, cannot be produced on residence-specialized planets or engineer worlds deemed too barren for terraforming.

Even their staple foods—composite grain bread and cultured meat—are imported from elsewhere.

The composite grain—a powder made by throwing together everything remotely grain-like from corn to wheat, barley, and rice, with “bread flavor powder” added—is obviously externally supplied, but it might seem surprising that cultured meat isn’t produced internally.

However, cultured meat requires substantial organic materials as ingredients and becomes exponentially more efficient with larger production scales, so naturally, it’s also supplied from specialized planets.

Therefore, when food supplies were cut off to planets where food production capabilities ended at luxury greenhouses or personal cultured meat mixers at best… the resulting hardship was unspeakably horrific.

Initially, most planets could endure for a few months through strict rationing of stockpiled food, but we should note the word “most” here.

“Most” implies there were places that weren’t so fortunate, and on those planets—chaos erupted due to food shortages.

Normal food supplies had long been depleted, and with nothing left to eat, people on these planets had only two options for survival.

One was to cannibalize the weak to survive, and the other was to hunt mutated creatures from the polluted underground regions of the cities and eat their meat.

At first glance, hunting polluted organisms might seem preferable to potentially having to eat one’s own children in extreme circumstances, but if one knew what these polluted regions were like, no one would want to venture there.

The underground polluted areas were virtual hells, concentrated with all manner of waste from hyper-industrial zones larger than dozens of major cities combined.

Radioactivity was the baseline in this nightmarish environment where highly acidic waste mixed with wastewater to form rivers, and mountains of garbage accumulated from industrial activities.

Small animals like rats or plants flowing into such environments, where even the mutated humans of Hive Cults struggled to survive, naturally went extinct, but very rarely, some organisms miraculously adapted.

The Caterpillar Rat—a detestable creature with 50 legs and a snake-like elongated body, apparently originating from feral Hive Rats—replaced the cockroach as this era’s most loathed organism.

Plant-virus byproducts that adapted to any environment with moisture, using that moisture and various substances as nutrients for growth.

And even Cockroach Humans who miraculously evolved to achieve bipedal locomotion and physical abilities surpassing humans.

Given that these were the better specimens, other organisms couldn’t be any less horrifying… and people were supposed to hunt and eat these?

Setting aside the need for heavy weapons to properly hunt them, eating even a small portion of their foul-tasting flesh would force one to choose between starvation or death by toxic poisoning.

Even if one survived on such meat, which was essentially a mass of pollutants, they’d live half their life disabled. In reality, these people had only one choice left.

…As humanity has always done, sacrificing the weak to provide daily sustenance.

‘Haah…’

Therefore, as I monitored scenes already occurring despite the blockade being relatively recent, I realized this was my karma, sighed, and spoke.

《Execute Protocol 66. I repeat, execute Protocol 66.》

Feeling somewhat uneasy, I ordered the execution of “Protocol 66” to handle the situation quickly before more tragic events could unfold.

And shortly after.

Relief ships I had dispatched began appearing one by one in nearby space, advancing toward the food-crisis planets I had been observing until just moments ago.

※ ※ ※

The moment my relief ships—specifically, transport vessels belonging to the Federation Relief Agency—entered the vicinity of these planets, commotion erupted.

It was a natural reaction, given that Federation Relief Agency transport vessels, primarily responsible for distributing aid during disasters like famines, had appeared on planets where tens of billions were dying.

Under the enthusiastic welcome of these planets, the fleet—large enough to carry a month’s worth of food for a populous residential planet—halted in mid-air while descending toward the ship docking area.

Then, inexplicably, like an overturned truck, they opened their transport sectors attached to the lower rear of the vessels—a seemingly insane act that naturally caused the contents to pour out.

What spilled from the container-like transport sectors were white, soft-looking spheres about 2 meters in diameter.

Though these spheres were quite large, even bigger than an average person, the scale was so vast that one might mistake the scene for snowfall if they weren’t looking carefully.

The emaciated people gathered beneath the ships, so thin their bones protruded, were startled and began to flee from these spheres pouring down like snow—

But it was too late for these weakened, starving people to escape, and the spheres began falling upon their heads.

One would expect blood to spatter and bones to break when hit by objects dropped from a height of at least several thousand meters, regardless of how light they might be for their size, but surprisingly, this didn’t happen.

Instead, these spheres shattered into pieces upon impact, transforming into dust clouds or fog, causing no deaths from the fall itself. However, the problem came next.

The fine white powder from the shattered spheres formed massive dust clouds, and this smoke-like substance entered and exited the bodies of the humans exposed within it.

On the surface, it seemed like a movement with no discernible difference before and after, but internally, everything changed.

This white smoke, composed of the remnants of the shattered spheres—specifically, special nanomachines created for the execution of Protocol 66—possessed the power to fundamentally transform humans—

That simple and rapid movement of smoke entering and exiting was enough to enslave those exposed, turning their flesh into monsters and their souls into parts of the Hive Mind.

This was Protocol 66, the Human Monsterization Plan—one of many secret weapons I had created.