Emperor’s council chamber, the simulation.“I agree with His Majesty. The remnants will continue being a problem and causing trouble as long as they’re still on Earth,” John said.Aron had begun the meeting by giving his ideas on what should be done with the noncitizens, as Operation Boiling Frog wasn’t working nearly as well as he’d thought it would.“But where can we send them?” Minister Rogers asked. Eventually, all of Earth would be populated entirely by imperial citizens and government functionaries, so isolating the noncitizens on an island or something would just be kicking the proverbial can down the road. Sure, “future them” would have more options to deal with them, but Jeremy was of the firm opinion that curing a disease was much better than simply treating its symptoms.“There’s a lot of moons in the solar system. Hell, Jupiter has 79 of them and we’re still discovering more that count as moons. And Saturn has even more! I mean, we could also just draft them into ARES and

Aron remained silent for a few minutes, simply staring out of the holographic screens with his piercing gaze. Then, just when people began to wonder if the broadcast had frozen, he sighed and continued in a much calmer tone, “While the diaspora is mandatory for non-citizens, We offer Our citizens a choice. You may choose to sign up for the colonization effort and join in the diaspora of humankind. We realize that not everyone can, or is willing to, pick up a weapon or don the white lab coat of a researcher. And you shouldn’t be forced to do so.“Protecting this solar system, the cradle of humanity, is an important task, yes, and ensuring that humanity survives every storm that heads this way is indeed the duty of every human. But not everyone is a fighter, or cut out to contribute to the scientific advancement of the species. Not everyone is needed to farm, or other supporting tasks like that, and that’s perfectly alright.“That is why We offer you the choice to contribute in a differ

It took a bit more than six hours to fully quell the chaos, as the empire had been forced to focus most of its forces on angry awakeners at the beginning. The “Hero Academies” had yet to produce a graduating class, after all, which meant that non-awakened ARES members and reaper teams had borne the brunt of the awakeners’ ire. Even those noncitizens that’d taken the empire’s crash course on how to handle their new blessings had proven useless; some of them joined in the protesting, while the rest refused to aid either side. At the end of the day, they were still in the group that was to be forcibly relocated, so that much, at least, was understandable. Aron could only thank who, or whatever, was watching over humanity for not having all of them join in the chaos and considered their noninterference a blessing. Even one noncitizen awakener going rogue could end up turning into another Hassan Event, and having millions of them doing that at the same time would almost definitely end poo

While outside, the frantic chaos incited by news of both the forced migration plan and the imperial colonization signups was ongoing, a small number of people were holding a very important meeting. Aron, Rina, Felix, Sarah, and Aron and Rina’s families had gathered to discuss the wedding, though it had weirdly taken a different turn with everything that was going on outside.“Are the remnants really causing that much trouble?” Aron’s father asked. He wasn’t worried about anyone in the room with him, as the Cube on Avalon Island was the safest place in the entire solar system.“They’re...” Aron began with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They’re idealists, and it’s too easy to turn that idealism into extremism. That makes them highly volatile, and if they remain on Earth, they’ll have to remain under constant monitoring. Their potential to cause mass destruction is also immense—just look at what happened in Mogadishu. It took one person mere minutes to slaughter thousands, and

A month later.Though Aron and Rina were on their honeymoon, that didn’t mean the empire would cease functioning. Simply because the emperor was absent didn’t mean government employees could stop doing their jobs. And with the efficiency that had been baked into the very underpinnings of the empire, they always overdelivered on their promises.The forced migration and colonization programs were no exception.The imperial space agency, in conjunction with the NIS and imperial police agency, had completely rounded up all of the noncitizens and sent them to the cubes for training. At the same time, the imperial immigration agency had sorted through the backlog of applications for the colonization program and was already well underway on transporting them to their training cubes as well. That said, there was a difference between a polite invitation and a late-night knock on the door.Imperial citizens received polite invitations as well as arranged transports that, to a limited extent, we