“Attention, citizens,” a familiar voice boomed from the city square. The square was packed with the first batch of players, but rather than a bunch of sweaty gamers, this lot consisted of those right below the future of the upper caste of British society, or in other words the children of the plutocrats, politicians, academics, journalists, who were not quite at the very top, and so their hunger for more power was not dulled by either poverty nor by complacency.
There were two identical giant humanoid hologram-like semitransparent maids with a low-polygon count, facing back to back, in the centre of the square… the maids’ hands were neatly held in front of her… but much more disturbingly, every reflective surface and window in the city had the same maid’s face on it. One of Rina’s unique abilities, which even I couldn’t mimic, was that she was able to be in multiple places at once. However, the more copies of herself she made, the simpler and cruder their design was. Of course, I could make copies of myself, but if I did that, then those copies would either have a different consciousness from myself or my human mind itself would be ripped apart.
Rina was overseeing both the activities in the academy and here. My human mind would simply not be able to handle being in two places, or at least it would no longer be a human mind. As such, Rina was best suited to be an administrator. The low-poly holograms spoke at once to the crowd of rich kids who crowded the square.
“You, who have been chosen to be the first generation of citizens of Jerusalem, to gain access to this world, were implanted with the Neural Processing Unit, an experimental brain microchip, which will enhance your mental capabilities in the real world, thus reviving Britain’s dying productivity, and giving you an edge over the competition. This is only natural that as the true Elite you would bear both the fruits and the burden of moving the nation across a new frontier.”
I bit into an apple that I got from one of the vendors while also peeling one for Celestina with my pocket knife, since she didn’t like to eat the skin of the apple. Celestina looked somewhat tense. I briefly wondered to what extent her ditziness was an act brought about by the character data I used to train her AI.
I understood that the fact that we got access to the power hungry children of the lower upper class, meant that we could enact some top-down changes more quickly by influencing the people who mattered. I could see why Chamberlain went with this play, and yet I resented it because I was dancing in the palm of his hand, too.
I bit my lip until I realised that Celestina had started to hold my hand while looking straight ahead at polygonal Rina with almost fear in her eyes. Well, if we failed at the starting line, she would be a goner, too.
Rina proceeded with her explanation of the system.
“Players can act alone, but you will most likely get things done by forming parties. Groups of parties can form Guilds. These systems and their corollaries can be found in your stat screens. By improving the stats of your skills, you will be able to habituate to and increase the efficacy of your neural processing unit in real life, too. However, the most important system in the game is the Cupid System. A matching system which will pair you with a player or AI character of the opposite sex. Your compatibility will alter the limits of your power.”
There were delayed stirrings among the crowds at Rina’s unemotional pronouncements. The lower polygon count and enormous size made her look even more unemotional than usual.
“‘Players will find a soulmate, and will be happy.’ This is a pronouncement of the President of the Castle Academy Student Council System. You will be able to break the pairings decided by the System and form your own pairings. However, beware that the pairings arranged by the matchmaking Cupid System are determined by advanced machine learning beyond the rational abilities of humans, and as such, will enhance your capabilities the most.”
The one thousand people who had been invited suddenly all received notifications about whom they had been paired with by the AI. Of course, I got paired with Celestina, which was rather boring, because I rigged the system; at least I wasn’t part of the chaos of the people who got partnered with someone else other than their partner.
“And with that, today’s broadcast comes to an end.”
This concluded the first intake of citizens to Jerusalem. As it is, our systems were only powerful enough to add one thousand new players per day. However, I believe that as we collect new data from the guinea pigs who just joined us and who will join us, we will be able to fine-tune the systems further.
Of course, I am not naive enough to blindly believe in whatever the automated systems of mass data collection say. Any meaning that there is will probably be lost and distorted by the sheer amount of data, because with enough data points, you can connect in so many ways to reach any kind of conclusion. Of course, this included the AI matchmaking system that I created based on my game data files.
This was the reason why I was there among them; I needed to go through this system to see if it worked at all. The plan was that I would pretend to be a player and create a Guild to oppose the rule from the three towers of Castle Academy, while at the same time controlling both the Academy and its enemies within this world. A controlled opposition is necessary to give people a false sense of agency. Who knows if everything went well, I could even score one against Chamberlain? But the human element was always unpredictable, which was why I always isolated myself and stuck to my games, until I was forced by Chamberlain to play these stupid mind games by other people.
