Swarming Sovereignty

Irene settled into a chair in the guild’s common room, a bowl of popcorn in her hand. She had blocked out some dedicated time for the beginning of the Queen’s stream, and the guild building seemed a good place to watch in. Through a series of unlikely coincidences and a few quests, the Truthseeker’s Guild had somehow stumbled their way into becoming a registered freelancer organization in the Kumashi Precinct, and as such had decided to acquire physical headquarters for clients to visit.

For Irene, it was a convenient place to hang out when she wasn’t doing anything else. Since her “game” avatar was as close to her preferred body as she could make it, she preferred to spend her time logged in when possible. And none of the guild members complained about her higher than usual usage of the guild’s building, as it was convenient for them to have someone who would staff the guild’s offices at most times of day.

To Irene’s surprise, they actually got a decent amount of business; residents of Yasato had discovered that Players were more likely to take on high-risk or otherwise undesirable tasks, as there was no real fear of death and those sorts of tasks often became quests, and having a dedicated office allowed people to know where they could find a Player if such a task came up.

Well, it wasn’t like they needed someone there at all times or anything, they had a request drop-off box, but it helped, and no one begrudged Irene her time in her preferred body. So, she took out a controller, and navigated the TV to Yasato’s main streaming site and then the Queen’s channel.

There was a rather cute loading screen with a short animation of a chibi version of the Queen doing various things, tapping away at a tablet, making dinner, cocooning something, and a few other things. And, after a few minutes, the view transitioned to the Queen in what looked to be a living room of sorts. “Um…hi.” She said awkwardly. “I’ve never done anything ‘live’ before, so you’re going to have to forgive my nervousness.

“Um…so, a couple of housekeeping things before we get to what I’m gonna be doing today. Since I’m so new to this, we’ve made some concessions for at least these first few streams. There should be some sort of view of chat on the stream itself, and it’s gonna have different stuff than the chats on whatever site you’re on. This is what I see. It’s, um, a combination of chats on all platforms, and only one in every two or three hundred messages is being displayed right now.”

Irene could instantly see why they had done this; even with it only being a fraction of the actual messages, the chat was still moving pretty quickly. Since she had presumably never even watched a stream before, it made sense for them to water down the chat so she wasn’t overwhelmed.

“I know people are going to accuse us of hiding inconvenient messages or something, but I just…can’t handle this many of you, sorry. My numbers are telling me there are literally millions of you, and even with this I can barely keep track of things. Once things quiet down we’ll start showing more chat messages.

“And, um, text to speech. So, yes, you can donate to activate text to speech. I won’t get any of the money, it’s all going to Hearth’s church for use in charity. And, um, like with regular chats, not all text to speech is going to make it to me. For these first streams, the mods are going to decide what gets read out. Those mods are people from Hearth’s church, and they’ve been told to allow any relevant questions through.

“Basically, um, if I’m not busy, and the message isn’t a joke, or just saying mean things to say mean things, and is an honest question about a topic, they’ll let it through, otherwise they won’t. And, um, this is also just until things die down, so just wait a while, okay? You can yell at me in…however long it takes for things to be manageable.”

She smiled nervously. “Anyway, I wanted to get that out of the way first. As for what the plan for today is…I’m gonna take questions for ten or fifteen minutes, and then after that it’s going to be meetings all day. At the moment I’ve taken a step back from the war to help deal with the ramifications of getting internet access, so it’s been a lot of just browsing the internet and having meetings. Not exactly the most exciting first stream, I know, but I feel it’s important for people to be able to see the process. Um…I guess I’ll take questions now? Uh, text-to-speech ones primarily, because chat is still a bit much at this second.”

Irene watched for a moment then began to type out a message of her own, attaching a moderately-sized donation in hopes that it would be read. And, to her surprise and delight, it was, after a couple other more generic questions. “So far, what do you think the most important technological advancement is going to be?”

“Good question.” The Queen said. “To be honest, I’m not totally sure. If I had to guess, I would say the internet? Just because, you know…it allows people to find answers to their questions really easily. It’s going to make sharing interesting conversion results or contacting far away people really convenient.

“Aside from that, I think it’ll be electricity? Being able to power devices with something other than magic is going to be a huge step forward in making technology accessible. In fact, one of the meetings planned for today is about getting a power grid up and running.”

That made sense to Irene. The rest of the pre-meeting chat went about as Irene had expected, and the only other really interesting question to her was when the Queen was asked if she thought she was really doing the right thing.

“Honestly? I don’t know. I really wish it didn’t need to be like this, but unfortunately the die has been cast and there’s no turning back now. But, if I was forced to give a yes or no answer, I would tentatively go with yes? Enough gods seem to think that the Swarm is better for people in the long term that I think it’s worth going forward with.

“And at this point, I think half-measures are silly; if the end goal is to make everyone part of the Swarm, we should get it done with in one go. It’ll be a much quicker process, and speeding it up will prevent more pain than it causes in the long run. That being said, I can’t blame anyone for disagreeing with me, this isn’t some cut and dry topic.”

“I thought I’d find you here.” Rusty said, walking into the room and taking a seat in one of the chairs. “How’s it been so far?”

“She’s really nervous.” Irene said. “And she hasn’t really started yet. She’s mostly said that, until things quiet down, she’s only going see a fraction of the chat messages and that the mods, who are apparently from the Church of Hearth, will be screening TTS messages before playing them. As you can see, chat’s still really fast, so I think she made the right call.”

“You sent any messages yet? And if so, did they get read?”

“Yeah, I asked her what she thinks the biggest advancement will be for them. She said the internet and electricity. Other than that, she said that today she’s going to be in meetings all day, they’re still sorting out all the new knowledge they’ve got access to via the internet.”

“Now that’s interesting.” Rusty replied. “It’s debatably more important than watching them fight, and I’m interested to see how their implementations of technology differ from our own.”

“Are you into tech?” Irene asked.

“I’m pursuing a PhD in magical engineering, actually.” Rusty said. “So I’m actually sort of qualified to comment on the differences.”

“So…what do you think the big challenges for them in implementing new tech are going to be?” Irene asked.

“Making the infrastructure, I think. Modern factories are incredibly complex, and you can’t just build one from scratch. Well…maybe Amelia can, but she’d have to have intimate knowledge of how the machines work and spend a lot time and Mana creating it. And that’s assuming they can find blueprints and that they don’t alter machines with conversion. Realistically speaking, they’re going to need to build up from scratch. That being said…it’s still going to be a lot faster than building up without any of that knowledge. I’m guessing they’ll be able to industrialize in just a few years.”

“If that.” Irene said. “They’ve got essentially unlimited labor, and conversion can help fill gaps that they can’t fill with just machines. Between that and them not needing to go through any bureaucratic procedures for anything, they’ve got an enormous advantage compared to most developing societies.”

The two were silent for a few moments, watching as the Queen left her house and began heading towards her first meeting of the day. “Are you really gonna do it?” Rusty asked quietly.

“Come again?”

“You know, join the Swarm.”

“On a permanent basis…no.” Irene replied. “But play as part of it? Absolutely.”

“But…what about the guild?” Rusty asked. “Are you just gonna leave us behind?”

“Of course not.” Irene said. “And no, I won’t try to convert anyone either. We both know it’s totally possible to be part of the Swarm and be around people who aren’t. It seems like Izumi is living with her parents for most of the time and she hasn’t converted them or anything. I figure I’ll just hang out like normal, and I can help bridge the gap between forums, since I’ll lose access to the ‘main’ forum.”

“Aren’t you worried about your mind, though?” Rusty asked, worry present in his tone. “You read the recent announcement; it seems like there are side effects, even from just a few hours of play while converted.”

Irene sighed. “Rusty, I’m going to be honest here; I think this whole thing is doomed to fail.”

Rusty paused. “What whole thing? The Swarm, or World Saviors?”

“World Saviors.” Irene replied. “We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can beat the Swarm. We have what, three, maybe four years before the Swarm comes to Yasato? The only reasonable way I see the Swarm being pushed back is if we get a critical mass of high-level people dedicated to combatting the Swarm and we manage to integrate with the defensive efforts of Yasato’s governments.

“Then we’d have to have crushing victories in our first battles, and begin pushing into Ratha. If we lose any battles, then the Swarm gets to bolster their forces and continue on. If this turns into a battle of attrition at all, then it’s over. So…why care about the side-effects? I, personally, don’t have much of an issue with the Swarm’s mental changes, and I’m already dealing with dysphoria.”

Rusty was silent for a few moments more. “I know this is rude, but I can’t help but wonder…why haven’t you gotten a transformation yet?”

“I don’t mind.” Irene replied. “And I just can’t afford it. I mean, yes, temporary transformations are pretty cheap, including ones without a time limit, but a permanent, base-form changing transformation? That’s a different story. A transformation without a time limit that doesn’t change the base form is certainly good enough for most, but I have to deal with magic dispellers pretty often, after the second time getting that transformation dispelled, I decided to just save up instead.”

“Oh.” Rusty replied. “That…sucks.”

“Tell me about it.” Irene chuckled. “I’ve made my peace with it, and I only had a year or so of saving to go before all this happened. I didn’t go and spend it all or anything, but I’m not too concerned about making sure every extra penny goes to the fund, you know?”

“Okay, we’re gonna be in the meeting soon.” The Queen said, pulling Irene’s attention away from the conversation. “Fair warning, they’re probably going to look a little tired. I know this is a bad look, and I swear it’s not usually like this, but everyone has been really excited reading through the printouts I’ve given them, and probably lost sleep over it. We told them they had to get at least four hours of sleep, but…we’ll see how they are, I guess.”

She pushed open a door, revealing the room she had been in her announcement video the day before. Inside were seven women who, as the Queen had anticipated, were in varying states of tiredness. Still, the expressions on their faces indicated that the Queen hadn’t been lying when she said this was because they were excited; each of the women had an air of excited anticipation to them, as if they were children eyeing a pile of presents.

The Queen took her seat at the head of the table, pulling out a tablet. “Alright, before we begin, may I see the list of requests? I’ll begin typing them up and printing them out while we talk. Ad don’t forget, as we discussed, I’m streaming right now; if I mumble something, feel free to ignore me, I’m probably answering a question.”

“They already have printers?” Rusty murmured. “How’d they reproduce something like that without having access to the tech to use in conversion?”

Fortunately, they didn’t have to speculate for long; as the Queen grabbed a sheet of paper that had been handed to her, her text-to-speech asked much the same question. “Well, we knew the general principles.” She replied. “And from there it was just a matter of finding a substitute. I landed on something that could receive telepathic images from me, a bunch of writing implements, and a ton of copies of the same page of writing that I had Amelia make, and that did the trick. It doesn’t make near-perfect copies like an electronic printer, but it’s close enough.”

She looked up at the rest of the women. “Alright, Lily, will you start us off?”

One of the women nodded. “I think we should prioritize researching vehicles that can move on their own, particularly trains. One of our biggest issues at the moment is that the capital isn’t connected to the rest of our territory, and a form of mass transportation like that is going to be vital going forward. We shouldn’t need to worry about tracks, either; provided we make a converted analogue, it should work.”

“I think that, in the long-term, we shouldn’t ignore the tracks.” Another said. “While we can easily make something that doesn’t use the tracks, part of the issue is that we need something with strong defense to make the journey through the Spine safer. We can make the tracks a sort of defensive structure to help with sustainability.”

“Do we want to make these trains sapient?” Yet another asked. “While it would increase efficiency, I’m worried that, in the long term, it’d be boring and unfulfilling. Plus, we’d need to allow for any time off they want, which would make consistent scheduling nigh-impossible.”

The Queen looked up from her tablet. “I think we don’t need to give them sapience.” She said. “At least, not unless someone really wants to be a train. Ideally speaking there wouldn’t be much danger or change in circumstances along the route, so just regular monsters should do the trick.”

“I agree.” The woman the Queen had called Lily said. “We want to be moving as much cargo as possible, and that means having as many trains as possible. And you’re right, I hadn’t considered using the tracks themselves as a defensive structure. That being said, perhaps we can have the lines mostly underground? It’d protect us from surface monsters and we can inscribe wards to deal with monsters that dig.”

“A tunnel that big is going to take a lot of effort, though.” Rusty mused. “Though I’m guessing they could probably make some sort of tunnel bore with conver–”

“That’s a lot of dangerous work, though.” One of the women pointed out. “We would need to send out a ton of people with a ton of supplies so that work can proceed at a reasonable pace and they wouldn’t have to make the trek back much.”

“Not a problem.” Lily replied confidently. “You weren’t here in the early days, but we were able to make pretty competent diggers out of just regular rats. I’ve seen mention of pretty advanced digging machines while I was reading, we should be able to make something far, far more capable with little effort. It’ll both make modeling wax and dig most of the tunnel for us, and we can probably get it to be faster than any normal work crew.”

“Well, looks like you’re thinking the right way to be a Swarm engineer.” Irene teased. “You sure you don’t want to go over with me when the Swarm gets here?”

“I think I’m good.” Rusty replied. “I’ll be content to wait until it’s absolutely necessary. You can tell us all about it once you join, though.”

“I will. I’ve committed to documenting everything, so I’m sure all of you will be sick of hearing about it before long.”

Rusty chuckled, but the conversation died there, as another interesting topic was brought up in the meeting. It ended up being more interesting than Irene had expected; the Swarm approached problems in a novel way, and it provided an insight into what life would be like under their leadership. It sounded…nice, and Irene found herself increasingly looking forward to the day they arrived on Yasato. Still, she had waited this long…a few years more wouldn’t tax her patience too much.