Chapter 189: The Children of the Prophet
“Mr. President, what is going on?”
“It’s a long story, but I don’t have much time. I told you I came from the future, right?”
“Yes… You said you came from the year 2180…”
“But you don’t know how I came, do you?”
Well, that’s true.
It was not logical that a person from the 22nd century United Human Federation would have a Korean face, and Yu Ji-ha did not explain much about it.
From Bae Seong-min’s perspective, he did not need to know and did not bother to ask out of curiosity.
He thought that if he had a reason to know, Yu Ji-ha would tell him.
Now his long wait was about to end.
“I didn’t come alone. I came with an artificial intelligence named Arma and a spaceship.”
“A spaceship? You mean the Earth Fleet…”
“No. It’s much bigger than that. It’s called Settler, and it’s over 700 meters long.”
“There was such a big spaceship?”
The largest spaceship in the current United Human Federation was the Yu Ji-ha-class No. 1 ship, Yu Ji-ha.
The name was a bit awkward, but it was definitely bigger than the previous combat cruisers with a length of 500m.
But even that battleship would look like a child compared to Settler.
The difference in displacement was almost twice as much.
“Settler is both an ark ship and a Battleship of the pioneer fleet. I’ll explain the goal of the pioneer fleet later, but I came to Earth on that spaceship. I landed in the East Sea in the fall of 2025.”
Bae Seong-min suddenly remembered something and asked.
“Was the tsunami that happened then…”
“It was caused by Settler’s landing. I hid under the sea and planned for the future.”
“And then I transferred my soul to the body of a Korean named Yu Ji-ha who was in a vegetative state. It’s one of the relics of the prophet.”
You can transfer human souls?
Bae Seong-min felt his breath choked.
“That… I can’t believe it…”
“Just accept it as something that exists. Neither I nor Arma know the principle of that relic.”
Well, most of the relics of the prophet were like that.
Even the heat converters used in nuclear fusion reactors were not understood by the researchers who worked day and night.
Transferring souls seemed to be beyond that dimension, but he decided to listen for now.
“Through that soul exchanger, I pretended to be Yu Ji-ha. Of course, I hid the spaceship I came on.”
“Can I ask where it is now?”
“It’s on Nix. The ninth planet of the solar system.”
Bae Seong-min opened his mouth in astonishment.
“Was that a real planet?”
“The scientific community had been confirming its existence for about 30 years. It was just too far away to be discovered.”
“Why is Settler there…”
“There is a warp gate there. A kind of door to another universe, the prophet’s home.”
The prophet was known not only to Bae Seong-min but also to many politicians in the United Human Federation.
But no one knew exactly what kind of being he was, and his presence had faded recently.
The relics of the prophet were strictly controlled and hidden by Yu Ji-ha.
Many citizens thought that all inventions and technologies of the United Human Federation were derived from artificial intelligence.
Whenever something was developed, it was announced by the Management Bureau or its affiliated research institutes.
“What is the prophet’s home like?”
“No one knows what’s there or what kind of place it is.”
“Then it doesn’t matter.”
“I decided something when I came to this era. The first is to exterminate the Plague at all costs, and the second is to go to the prophet’s home. That was also the goal of the pioneer fleet.”
Then Bae Seong-min realized what he meant.
Yu Ji-ha declared that he would leave Earth and the United Human Federation.
“You don’t mean to abandon the United Human Federation, do you, Mr. President?”
“I’m not abandoning it, I’m just restoring it to its original state. You don’t think I was a dictator by normal standards, do you?”
“But it was necessary more than anything else. Didn’t you say so yourself?”
“It would be if we had to survive against the Plague. Do we still need to maintain a dictatorship even if they are gone?”
Bae Seong-min had nothing to say and closed his mouth.
So he meant that dictatorship was not a matter of good or evil, but of necessity.
He would not have dared to be a dictator if he did not have Lucia.
Lucia would go with him to the prophet’s home.
What should we do then?
“…”
He could not answer and kept his mouth shut, but Yu Ji-ha, no, Yujin spoke again.
“I asked him again, but he said he couldn’t change his mind. He insisted on going with me to the prophet’s home.”
“Then you too, Mr. President…”
Bae Seong-min stopped talking and Yujin said as if he understood.
“I have nothing to do with this era. I abandoned my parents and I have hardly any friends except the secretary-general, and my duty is over when I exterminate the Plague.”
Yujin was a human created by humanity to fight against the Plague.
He was not much different from the pilots of the legion strike fleet that had recently started to be made.
Exterminating the Plague was his destiny and duty, but he failed in his original time.
He wanted to succeed in this era, and then his duty would be over.
That is, he had no reason to stay in this era.
Bae Seong-min was secretly pleased that he counted him as a friend, but that was not important.
“I understand, Mr. President, but the Plague is not gone yet, is it? Shouldn’t you talk about this when…”
“I have to hurry because I don’t know when the warp gate will disappear. And this preparation will not affect the war with the Plague at all.”
It seemed that he could not change his mind about going to the prophet’s home.
The artificial intelligence also followed him, so the megacity and the United Human Federation would not be fine either.
What he wanted was to prepare for that in advance.
“Then, Mr. President, why did you build the Golden Palace and oppress the citizens…”
“It was to make them realize that dictatorship is not necessary anymore. Dictatorship is a double-edged sword that can threaten them as well. They will understand that.”
“Did you have to be so extreme?”
“You must have seen how public opinion changed in the recent Plague invasion incident.”
“Yes…”
“They complained after living comfortably for more than 10 years and becoming a little uncomfortable. I’m not blaming them. I would have done the same.”
So he meant that the system he created made them that way.
At the same time, Bae Seong-min wondered how the citizens would adapt when that system disappeared.
He could not think of a way.
“After the Plague is exterminated, Lucia and I will leave for the prophet’s land. That means the system that supports the United Human Federation and the megacity will disappear. Therefore, the citizens need to prepare for that. You should be able to do that as a secretary-general.”
Bae Seong-min was startled and pointed to his chest.
“Me? Me?”
“A democratic fighter who stands against an evil emperor who is not satisfied with being a dictator and seeks eternal power. How about that? The citizens will follow you very well.”
He shook his head frantically.
“I can’t do it. I don’t have the ability or the will. The citizens won’t accept it either.”
“Have you never heard that heroes are not born but made? Here is a scenario. Just follow it.”
“…”
It was a detailed and depressing scenario.
He gave it to him thinking that he could not refuse it.
‘It would be better if this was it…’
He thought it was fortunate that he was plotting something.
It was better than showing some incomprehensible behavior like trying to become an emperor.
‘I don’t want to do it… But I have to…’
He did not want to step on Yu Ji-ha’s name and take his place, but he had no choice.
His determination was firm and his loyalty was still valid.
The only thing he wondered was that division was inevitable even if he did this.
“If you and Lucia disappear, the United Human Federation will inevitably split. There will be no center of gravity.”
“That’s natural.”
“What do you mean by natural…”
“Isn’t the world before I came normal?”
“That’s true.”
“There are eight billion people and eight billion thoughts. The United Human Federation and the megacity were just a state of total war against the Plague. If the Plague disappears, they should naturally disappear too.”
“I just hope that as a creator, humanity will use them wisely. It would be nice if they could develop based on the megacity.”
Yujin rejected the standard of good and evil.
The only thing that mattered was necessity.
He was a dictator, but not for his own benefit.
‘With one intention to preserve humanity…’
Now that the Plague is exterminated, humanity owes him a great debt.
But there was no way to repay it.
Because he was leaving for a faraway place.
Without even knowing what was there.
“…I have something I want to ask you.”
“I hope this is the last one. Anyway, go ahead.”
“Someday when you finish your work…”
Yujin guessed what he meant and said.
“That might be difficult. It takes 50 years one way.”
“What?”
“It’s a place where it takes 50 years at Settler’s cruising speed. I don’t know what’s there, so returning home is impossible. So I can’t promise you anything.”
“Do you really have to go there…”
“I am a child of the prophet. We all are. I have to meet him no matter what, even if it costs my life.”
He didn’t know what he would say when he met him, but one thing was certain.
He couldn’t change Yujin’s, no, Yu Ji-ha’s mind.
So Bae Seong-min decided to say what he wanted to say.
“When you finish all your duties someday, please promise me that you will come back here. Then I will take this job.”
Of course, there was no guarantee that he would come back or that he would still be alive.
But he wanted him to promise anyway.
Yujin’s face on the screen seemed to waver for a moment and then nodded.
“Okay. I promise. I will come back if I can.”
Then humanity would be able to repay their debt.
Or incur a new one.
***
The construction of the Golden Palace was completed and an opening ceremony was held.
President Yu Ji-ha ordered to prepare the most splendid opening ceremony ever.
But due to the narrow nature of the megacity, that was impossible.
To hold a grand ceremony, the surrounding buildings had to be demolished.
Surprisingly, the president did that.
He disregarded the rights of the citizens guaranteed by the management law and drove them out.
Tens of thousands of citizens were evicted and had to move to other places, which caused a huge backlash.
—How can he do that even if he is the president? He kicked out the full citizens.
—Full citizens have the right to move freely. This is tyranny.
—Now I can say for sure. The president is weird.
The president being weird had been going on for a while, but this incident confirmed it.
Even the people who supported Yu Ji-ha most passionately stepped back and said, this is too much.
The decisive blow was that Bae Seong-min, who had been Yu Ji-ha’s closest confidant, opposed and stood up.
“With this, we are reminded of the corruption of the absolute. Anyone can make mistakes and the mistakes of ordinary citizens can be compensated by the system. But the mistakes of the absolute are impossible to compensate. We have to prepare for the worst.”
The citizens who heard his speech were all dumbfounded.
—An emperor? Is he crazy?
—He said he would give up his power and now he is an emperor? I don’t get it.
The reaction was very bad.
He didn’t officially call himself an emperor, but he wrapped it up with things like a palace fit for an emperor.
This was Bae Seong-min’s logic.
—Let’s say there is a bomb that has thousands of times the power of a reactive bullet and it roams around without any restraint.
—We don’t know anything about that bomb and we don’t have any way to stop it.
—If that bomb makes a mistake, there will be irreversible damage.
—Therefore, we need the power to defuse that bomb.
It was the same logic as the mad dog theory that the United States had proposed before.
More people agreed with his opinion, but they had doubts about how to get that power.
The president had all the power of the United Human Federation.
Anyway, many people gathered around Bae Seong-min and the president ignored it.
It was strange that he ignored him, who was not an ordinary person but his closest confidant. He had a great symbolic meaning.
As the United Human Federation was wrapped in a tense atmosphere, the second invasion of the Plague occurred.
Thousands of Plague beasts appeared near Earth.
The Earth Orbital Command immediately responded, but it was difficult to intercept all the Plagues.
Almost 10% of the Plagues survived and fell to Earth, causing tremendous damage.
The Plagues themselves became meteors and bombarded the Earth.
The enormous mass of over 10,000 tons turned many places in the world into ruins.
The megacity was closed and actively intercepted, so it did not suffer much damage, but there was a problem with Lucia’s system.
The citizens found out about it when there were many areas where the power was cut off even though the nuclear fusion reactor was fine.
It also applied to drones and androids, and the security around them was completely paralyzed.
In the western district of Megacity Pacific, the citizens’ dissatisfaction erupted in the form of protests.
—Is this all for the perfect megacity system?
—Are we supposed to starve to death without food or water?
—We can’t take it anymore! The president should come out and explain himself!
Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the protest, but they were soon neutralized by the defense system that arrived.
Dozens of leaders were dragged out, including Bae Seong-min.
He shouted to the citizens in front of dozens of cameras.
“Remember this day! This is the price of entrusting our freedom and rights to one person! Open your eyes and ears! If you don’t, you will pay a bigger price!”
The broadcast was soon stopped, but the citizens of the United Human Federation understood what he meant.
And so began the movement to save Bae Seong-min.
Peaceful protests were held everywhere and President Yu Ji-ha seemed annoyed by such movements and released the detained citizens.
Thanks to that, hope spread among the citizens that they could do something too.
—The artificial intelligence and the megacity are not perfect. We can claim our rights ourselves.
—The president is delusional as if he is an emperor. He seems to want to change the name of the United Human Federation to Human Empire.
—He is no longer the president he used to be. We have to stop him.
But the citizens had no power.
The Unified Space Force, which had that power, followed only the instructions of artificial intelligence.
They lived in a completely separate ecosystem from Earth, so it was hard for them to experience the tense atmosphere of megacity.
“I wonder what’s going on on Earth. I hope everything is okay.”
“Don’t worry. We just have to focus on stopping the Plague.”
The interest of Unified Space Force could be summarized as Plague and Yujin recently.
The former was obvious, but the latter was unusual because he absorbed an artifact of prophet into his body.
He was given a mission to recover an artifact of prophet that arrived on Mars, but he ate it whole.
According to the situation at that time, a lump of light was absorbed by Yujin’s assault armor.
There was nothing different about his machine, so it was clear that his body absorbed it.
The second fleet command worried deeply about it.
“He seems to have absorbed it without knowing it. I can’t ask him to spit it out. It’s awkward.”
“I reported it to my superiors, but they didn’t answer.”
“Ignore them. Nothing will change anyway.”
Medical checks continued, but there seemed to be no major problems.
The only thing that changed was that Yujin’s body emitted a stronger psyfield than usual.
Due to Unified Space Force’s characteristic of having many psychics, he exuded an enormous presence.
The pilots said this after meeting him:
“I don’t know if you understand this feeling… But when you meet someone you really respect or admire in person, your heart beats fast. I couldn’t even look him in the eye.”
“He has a great presence. He makes people comfortable wherever he goes and leads conversations.”
He was originally very skilled, so naturally pilots followed him.
His rank as a lieutenant was not a problem.
Even Sonya, who had looked down on Yujin at first, could no longer reject him.
He gave off a similar vibe to her father.
‘How strange… Why does that man smell like my dad?’
She remembered the smell of her father when she was hugged by him as a child.
It was a familiar and comfortable feeling that made her feel sleepy.
Her father, who was criticized by many citizens recently, did not shake her heart.
Meanwhile, Yujin acquired another artifact of prophet and fell into trouble.
He couldn’t hide his presence because his psyfield became stronger.
“I can feel my presence even without knowing it.”
“Thanks to that, you’re popular.”
It was not bad to have charisma, but it was troublesome if it affected the Plague as well.
The Plague would not be able to feel his presence, which the psychics felt.
Was it because he absorbed another artifact of prophet?
A fierce ether storm blew near Pluto, the king of the solar system.
An old structure over 1,000km in diameter appeared among countless Plagues.
It was what the United Human Federation called the nest.
Yujin and the owner of the nest noticed each other’s existence almost at the same time.
“He came pretty fast.”
The Plague Queen and the nest appeared in the solar system.
As soon as she arrived, she sent a thought wave to all psychics.
-We are, the children of the prophet.
The 𝘮ost uptodat𝑒 novels are pub𝙡ished on fre(e)webno(v)el.𝒸𝑜𝘮