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Chapter 428 Stardust and Stars

He imagined himself climbing to those lofty heights of power and wealth, leading a revolution against a failing empire and conquering the broken Earth left behind. In his mind, he redrew the map over and over again, carving out ever larger territories for him to rule over as the Savior of Mankind, reshuffling borders on a whim after he becomes one of the inevitable winners.

He scraped together a small pile of cocaine on the mirrored surface of his table, then chopped it into a series of five long, eyebrow-thick lines. Once the lines had been cut to his satisfaction, he rolled one of the hundred dollar bills back into its former tight roll, then, like a demented vacuum cleaner, moved his head back and forth as he snorted all five lines in a row on a single, prodigious inhale.

He rubbed his nostrils from side to side, preventing himself from sneezing and wasting all that gorgeous stardust—which was already increasing in price and growing scarcer as panic buys swept the community—and sneered, “And just think! I’ll have HIM to thank for it all! All that military hardware I can pick up for free, just laying around after he abolished the militaries.” He cackled again, thinking of all the weaponry that would soon be flooding the black market as corrupt military leaders all over the world abandoned their loyalty in pursuit of quick profits and quicker exits.

The deeper and deeper he spiraled into his drug-fueled, manic delusions of grandeur, the more grateful he became for Aron, who had stuck his neck out to allow it to be chopped off by the great Rick Ashley. He even pictured Aron’s head rolling off of a guillotine or chopping block in his mind as he smirked. “What a great guy!” he sneered, then clenched his fists and giggled insanely.

……

Aron was still speaking, unaware, as of yet, of the chaos brewing elsewhere.

“We are not delivering empty promises, nor are We overestimating Our abilities. This is no ploy like those perpetrated against you in the past by the greedy, the power hungry, the people that sought control above all. Every promise We gave you is Our most solemn vow and We will deliver on it within the stated timeline.

“How, you may ask? Because of this,” he said, raising his hand and pointing at the empty room around him.

As soon as his finger extended, the room began changing around him. It first disappeared, leaving Aron standing in a white void that was soon painted blue, then loam began spreading from his feet. As it spread outward, saplings began sprouting from it, then the sun and moon chased each other through the sky at an ever-increasing rate as the newly born forest passed through a rapid cycle of seasons. Aron snapped his finger and his entire surroundings froze. He reached out and plucked a reddish brown leaf from one of the trees and let it sit in his palm as the environment went through more changes. He stood atop a sand dune in a desert and began walking atop a river, over grassy hills, up game trails on mountains, then leapt off the cliff of a fjord and nimbly landed atop the ocean.

Despite the spectacle of Aron interacting with different environments, people were mainly confused as to what he was attempting to show them; but still, they waited.

Before long, Aron returned his surroundings to the familiar podium with the flat blue background behind him. He laid the leaf he plucked from the forest in plain view on the podium, then said, “We are currently addressing you from virtual reality. Not through an outdated headset that puts a stereoscopic screen in front of your eyes or a bulky helmet that does much the same, but Our consciousness has been truly transported to a digital realm. We are speaking to you live from a different world, where all of Our senses are faithfully served. Taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch are all perfectly recreated, as well as our other senses that are more ephemeral or obscure.”

The screen behind him split, replaying a video clip of Aron walking through different interactive environments on one side and the video of him resting in a futuristic-looking recliner in an office, surrounded by an alert Aegis team.

“Here, We, and soon, you, can do anything you want in a new body, all while your real body is resting,” he said, dropping an absolute bombshell on the people watching him.

“Many of you have surely wondered how I managed to amass such a large, well-armed force and create so many advanced products in such a short period of time, no?” he chuckled, then paused to give the people watching his address time to think of their own answers without realizing he was actually advertising to them.

“We managed all of that with this technology as the core advancement. In Our virtual world, We can simulate reality to perfection, allowing for true research environments unfettered by budgets, limited materials, and worries about destroying the environment. Research done here, in this virtual world,” Aron snapped his fingers and was teleported to the emptiness of space outside the blanket of shrapnel that was still covering most of the Earth, “We can do all the research We want to do.”

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