Chap 123-Stand Up! You Too! 5

It was a perplexing situation for the Ark’s central administration.

When they first heard the request from the third-class Overseer to be appointed as the Governor-General of the lower layers, most of the central administrators honestly thought, “Oh, how cute, haha.”

It wasn’t as if the Ark hadn’t attempted to change the Lower Stratum in its own way before. There had been attempts to dispatch AI supervisors or to somehow manage the lower layers as a group.

As everyone knew, the results were a resounding failure, and the lower layers had completely slipped out of the central government’s grasp, reaching a point where it was establishing its own ecosystems.

The reason why the administrators, including Rilstia, readily granted Alice’s request to be made the Governor-General of the lower layers was simple.

Because it was pointless anyway.

Becoming a Governor-General didn’t grant any significant rights or authority, and the rebellious residents of the lower layers wouldn’t easily accept a new Governor-General.

So, the title of Governor-General of the lower layers, which was nothing more than a name card, could easily be given to a third-class Overseer.

After all, she was a Overseer who had succeeded in hunting a True Ancestor single-handedly.

If the only reward she wanted was such a nominal governorship of the lower layers, giving it to her wasn’t a bad deal.

However, there was something the central administrators had overlooked.

Alice was a Bio-Android with humanity and intelligence, and she could control all the machines, factories, AIs, and drones abandoned in the lower layers with a mere gesture.

Alice herself didn’t realize she could do this much.

She hadn’t really tried to hack other machines or computers properly, and she spent more time in external satellite cities with a temporary hunter’s license than hacking into and taking over the Ark’s internet or machines.

In fact, if it had been the old Alice, it would have been impossible for her to perform such large-scale hacking encompassing the entire lower layers, or to physically assemble and disassemble the stratum itself.

It was only after uniting with the fragment of Gaia and hunting a True Ancestor single-handedly, absorbing its blood, that Alice’s body underwent a self-upgrade, and her hacking abilities expanded to an unbelievable extent.

In any case, for these reasons, the lower layers achieved such remarkable development that it began to attract attention from the central government.

The process of dismantling illegal structures in the layers and reassembling them into new residential complexes was astonishing, but what surprised the administration even more was how quickly the residents of the lower layers submitted to Alice.

Of course, Theresa had erected propaganda towers and microphones throughout the lower layers, chanting “Labor is sacred!” and spreading the sanctity of labor and red ideology to the point of brainwashing, but even considering that, the rebellious residents of the lower layers followed Alice, who had come from the upper layers, far too well.

She gifted new homes to the homeless who were wandering the streets, and drug addicts didn’t even need Alice to personally visit them; the mechanical tendrils spread throughout the stratum neutralized the drugs with [Drain].

Alice herself was a machine, so she was unaffected even if she absorbed the energy of the drugs.

Solving the housing problem, treating drug addicts’ addiction, and even volunteering to be the Governor-General of the lower layers, residing there and managing it, it was only natural that the public sentiment of the lower layers would quickly turn towards Alice.

In addition, the existing criminal organizations that opposed Alice were quickly dealt with by the Third-Class Overseer’s force, stabilizing public order, so it wasn’t difficult for Alice to govern the lower layers based on red ideology.

“Hmm, this is tough.”

But Alice herself was starting to feel the strain.

In the first place, Alice wasn’t a great thinker, nor was she a vagrant from the lower layers, so she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice herself to protect and cultivate this place.

It started with the idea of doing something to make tomorrow better than today, but when the scale of the work became larger than expected, Alice herself was the most bewildered.

But to back out now?

The moment Alice relinquished her position as Governor-General, the lower layers would return to its former hellish state.

【How about creating additional auxiliary personalities?】

“What? Create more of you?”

【Of course not.】

[“Ha, so you’re saying create more of me?! Alice must like me after all!”]

Theresa ignored Gaia’s nonsense and explained the simple background of the plan.

Alice’s greatest physical characteristic was, of course, that she was a pseudo-lifeform with humanity based on an android.

In Theresa’s case, she was a personality designed into this body from the beginning for the survival of Alice, the main system, but Alice was a little different.

【Human, copy yourself, not me.】

“Me?”

【The main system and owner is, after all, Human. The copy subject is a copy program that follows Human’s orders, and the replicated personality program can be used to divide the work of the lower layers.】

“That was possible? Then why didn’t we do it sooner…”

【It has become possible to grant will to the replicated artificial personality based on the vitality gained by uniting with Gaia. It would have been impossible without Gaia.】

“Ah.”

[“Hehehe, Alice needs to realize even more how great and joyful it is to be with me.”]

“Later.”

Even though Alice’s body had been upgraded and could do much more than before, Alice’s personality was only one, and Theresa’s personality was also only one.

The greatest advantage of machines is program copying and rearrangement, so shouldn’t we take advantage of that?

Of course, Alice didn’t know how to copy herself.

Theresa said that if Alice gave permission, she could rearrange the replicated personalities to suit their respective aptitudes and tasks, so that’s all Alice did.

【Main system activation – Replication personality array execution】

【Auxiliary frame rearrangement complete】

【Physical frame removal】

【Magical engineering electronic replication code implementation execution】

But what was this?

Alice could feel her ego being sensed simultaneously from all directions.

She didn’t gain more lines of sight because she didn’t have eyes, but it felt as if she, with her eyes closed, was spread throughout the lower layers.

The number was as many as 500.

Alice felt a severe headache and dizziness from the sudden division of her ego, but the android’s body quickly suppressed even that headache.

【Congratulations. Now Human doesn’t have to do anything.】

“Huh?”

【Each replicated Human has been assigned their respective tasks. They will not feel anything wrong with their condition and will faithfully act as the Governor-General of the lower layers.】

“…In movies, AIs that are given autonomy later betray their owners, right?”

【If anyone were to betray, I would have done it first.】

“Ah, is that so?”

In any case, the replicated Alice personalities began to pour all their energy into managing the lower layers.

Alice herself was starting to feel annoyance and inconvenience in managing the lower layers, and of course, she felt boredom and fun like a human, but the replicated Alice auxiliary personalities were born with the sole purpose of managing the lower layers, so human emotions such as boredom and monotony were castrated early on.

Dozens of personalities were attached to the giant mechanical tendrils that dismantled buildings in the lower layers on a layer-by-layer basis without sleeping or eating, over two hundred Alice personalities were handling complaints from the residents of the lower layers, and over fifty Alice personalities were monitoring criminals who might engage in insubordinate behavior or lower layers residents who disregarded sacred labor.

The Alice personalities monitoring were attached to the CCTVs and drones that were gradually being built in the lower layers, monitoring all directions, and the Alice personalities attached to the mechanical tendrils silently dismantled illegal structures and rebuilt new stratum buildings and residential complexes.

Alice’s influence began to spread throughout the lower layers.

As things turned out this way, Alice began to feel drastically more relaxed.

The huge mechanical structures of the lower layers were running automatically, and the huge mechanical tendrils, made by reassembling the rusted scrap metal and abandoned heavy industrial machinery of the lower layers, were moving in groups in the distance, dismantling buildings.

Looking at the thousands of drones flying in the sky was spectacular, and all those drones were herself.

Those CCTVs and the operation of the food factory complex were all herself.

“…Uh, this is a little scary…”

【What’s there to be scared of?】

[“I like that there are many of you!”]

Right now, there were only about 500 replicated Alice personalities… but wasn’t this saying that someday, thousands or tens of thousands of Alice personalities could spread throughout the world?

Alice wondered if she could control them all.

According to Theresa, it was like machine coding that only focused on assigned tasks, so it was okay…

“Well, it’s working well for now, so it should be fine…”

More than anything, Alice was simply pleased that the lower layers was noticeably improving in real time, and that the place that had looked like a hellhole was becoming a bright and huge new megacity with the construction of the Artificial Sun.

In the sense of the old Earth, a real-life SimCity was being realized before her eyes, and it was all progressing automatically, building buildings on its own, handling civil affairs procedures on its own, and even the rearrangement of buildings was progressing correctly enough to pass Alice’s aesthetic standards.

It may not have been Alice’s intention, but originally, communism and socialism are said to be completed by the dictatorship of a perfect iron man without greed.

No, it is said that the perfection of most political systems, not just communism and socialism, is that only the dictatorship of a flawless iron man can build an ideal society.

And here, Alice, who is managing the lower layers now, was an existence infinitely close to a flawless iron man.

Well, it would be a great stretch to say that Alice herself was a flawless iron man, but Alice replicated her main system and spread it throughout the world and the internet of the lower layers.

Alice herself had many flaws, was greedy, and had too many problems to be a perfect iron man android, but the replicated personalities born for the purpose of lower layers management were not.

The replicated personalities existed solely for the purpose of perfect operation, management, and control of the lower layers and its residents, and since 500 such replicated personalities were spread, it became quite similar to the ideal form of iron man dictatorship.

Five hundred Alice personalities patrolled the entire lower layers 24 hours a day with the internet, CCTVs, mechanical tendrils, and drones, spreading a surveillance network, and at the same time, Theresa’s propaganda towers instilled the red ideology containing the sanctity of labor throughout the lower layers, re-establishing and educating the residents’ ideology.

As things turned out this way, the number of people in the lower layers who voluntarily advocated the sanctity of red labor with red armbands was gradually increasing.

The central administration, seeing this scene, thought this.

“No, we entrusted her with something to do well, but we didn’t know she would do this well…”

“We thought she would just do it for a few months and stop, but isn’t this almost like an independent state in the lower layers?”

Some administrators expressed the opinion that the ideology Alice had instilled in the residents of the lower layers was quite dangerous.

The ideology that labor is sacred and that all those who obstruct and oppress it must be forged with Bolshevik Steel was, in the administrator’s view, an ideology with the potential for ‘rebellion’.

Even the demons had joined Alice.

As things turned out this way, they wouldn’t immediately take away Alice’s position as Governor-General, but it was natural for the people in the central government to pay more and more attention to Alice.

However. Although the central government was monitoring Alice and the lower layers, the permission once given was not revoked. The lower layers, filled with the Labor Party dyed in red ideology under Alice’s rule, was gradually establishing a proper foundation similar to a nation.

While Alice was so busy with the iron man dictatorship that she was taking a nap in her office, a sudden guest came.

“Are you Alice, the Governor-General of the lower layers?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I heard you killed my son?”

Who is your son?

Who is it really?

I feel guilty about so many things…