Evolution - Chapter 10
Chapter 10
“Things are looking a little grim,” Claire complained to Brigadier General Xie'er, flipping through the report in her hands. “I thought I was mentally prepared for the complex problems ahead, but it seems I was far from ready.”
This single planet had the population of ten others. It was a classic case of a small place with big problems. Hundreds of countries, all tangled up in issues of race, geopolitics, and religion… It was a recipe for insanity.
What was even crazier was that just when she thought she’d anticipated a high difficulty level for this mission, reality told her: Honey, that's not nearly high enough! You need to crank it up a few more notches.
Over the past month, she had arranged for people to gather more detailed information on the basics of public welfare, especially healthcare and education—one concerning life, the other the future. In that short time, they had only managed to conduct in-depth studies on a few sample locations, using methods that included, but were not limited to, technological infiltration and other means that would seem far too unscientific to Earth's civilization.
But the findings of these investigations were rather shocking.
The systems were designed with good intentions, but the human heart is unpredictable.
Xie'er was not at all surprised. “Claire, I would have thought that even if we haven't experienced it firsthand, the long history of the Alliance's development would have made it clear. Are you still not prepared?”
Claire pressed her lips together.
Seeing her expression, Xie'er actually smiled. “You're really not like the others.” The military and the government had always held each other in contempt, each believing the other to be ruthless and corrupt while seeing themselves as a pure, innocent white lotus. “How do you think Law 1098 and Law 2381 came into being?”
“There's a huge gap between reading about it in history books and witnessing it firsthand. It's like watching a war movie—all you feel is a rush of excitement. But for those actually in it, there's only confusion, anxiety, and frenzy.”
The reality of the battlefield is far more bloody and cruel than anything depicted on screen.
Claire pinched the bridge of her nose. “The thought that I'm the one who has to clean up this mess is… daunting.” She felt a little overwhelmed. It was predictable that rapid, drastic societal change would be accompanied by a host of social problems, regardless of whether the change was for the better or for the worse.
Xie'er shrugged. “If inhibitors that preserve strength while maintaining rationality hadn't been developed, ABO society would still be half-controlled by physiological urges. If our predecessors hadn't painstakingly developed systematic training for mental power and physique, giving everyone the potential to become strong, things would be different. And let's say Skynet technology hadn't advanced to its current state—we couldn't guarantee the present level of public integrity.”
“That's right. We have the support of the entire Galactic Interstellar Alliance and a path to follow.” The road ahead of them wasn't as arduous as the one in their history from two millennia ago. Back then, they were fumbling along a new path with no support. It was precisely because they wanted to walk that path that they focused their development—in medicine, education, technology, and more—all toward the same goal, updating and evolving in unison.
Now, with advanced medicine, education, and technology to support them, they were simply accelerating the process. They might have to complete in thirty to fifty years a journey that took their ancestors millennia.
“Right. In about a month, the evolutionary direction should become clear. Factoring in the time for reports, approvals, and shipping resources, we're looking at about two months. Any issues on your end?” Xie'er asked for Claire's opinion. They needed to be on the same page with the timeline to coordinate their work.
Claire did a quick mental calculation. It was a tight schedule, but delaying things might be worse. Dragging out the process while waiting for a result was never pleasant. It was the kind of situation where you'd solve one problem only for another to pop up, slowing the pace to a crawl and leaving you unable to keep up. It would be better to accelerate the timeline and let most of the problems erupt at once. That way, they could address everything from a holistic perspective.
They could have the fleet's mobile units on constant alert to prevent any large-scale casualties. The main issue was that some people would inevitably evolve faster than others. If this first batch of newly evolved individuals got it into their heads that they were suddenly “supermen” and the protagonists of the world, the kind of irreparable foolishness they might commit would be… indescribable.
Constant monitoring of the data would allow them to pinpoint the locations of those beginning to evolve, extract them promptly, and arrange for unified training.
“No problem.” Claire decisively circled the item on her schedule. She felt like they were forgetting something important. “Xie'er, have you run the numbers? If the evolution is toward ABO, given this planet's current situation, how many psychologists will we need?”
The pleasant expression on Xie'er's face froze for a fraction of a second. Considering the planet's population and its… traditional cultures, the number would be astronomical.
But she quickly had an answer. “Claire, do you know what makes people restrain their malice? What makes them willing to give everyone around them due respect, regardless of who they are?”
“Oh? Sounds like you have an idea.” Claire was far more interested in solving the problem than in teasing the brigadier general. The Galactic Interstellar Alliance likely couldn't deploy enough personnel all at once. They would have to stabilize the situation first and handle things in phases.
“It's when they can't accurately judge the strength of those around them, and when the laws are so strict that the chances of getting away with a crime are next to nil.”
Think about it. After Law 1098, when you could no longer judge someone's strength by their appearance or secondary gender, you knew that if you harmed someone, there was a 99% chance you'd suffer ten times the damage in return. The alphas, who had been so adept at solving problems through intimidation, immediately became polite, rational, and restrained.
When you can't judge strength by appearance or secondary gender—in a world where anyone can train their physique and mental power—if you try to bully someone just because they look like a weakling, or if an alpha tries to throw their weight around with a beta or omega, there's a fifty-fifty chance you'll get your ass handed to you. The instigator is always in the wrong, so you'd have no one to blame but yourself. With odds that high, who would be stupid enough to start something?
If you commit a crime, there's a 90% chance you'll be caught. And once you are, the price you pay will be at least tenfold. With such high risks and low rewards, who would bother?
“Hmm, you've reminded me.” Claire added a note to her schedule. “We'll also need a working group of legal experts to draft transitional regulations that the people of this planet can accept.”
Brigadier General Xie'er nodded and made a note of it as well. While they had more than enough military might to act as a deterrent, it was best not to waste it. Even the people of Earth knew that “with the roar of a cannon, ten thousand taels of gold are gone,” and their cannons were far more expensive.
Besides, they simply wanted the people here to peacefully accept the Galactic Interstellar Alliance, to genuinely want to become members. They weren't here to wage a war of aggression and end up with prisoners of war filled with hatred for their nation and families.
In truth, the nations of Earth were still engaged in open and secret struggles. They were resentful that the Galactic Interstellar Alliance had designated Huaxia to lead the planet's delegation and were scheming to pull Huaxia down and take its place. All meetings were now held in the Huaxia Imperial Capital, and the primary documents were in the Huaxia script. The other nations all speculated that the Alliance wanted some resource from Earth. They were right, but it wasn't the mineral resources they imagined. To the Galactic Interstellar Alliance, Earth's most precious resource was its population.
In the Galactic Interstellar Alliance, with a population in the hundreds of billions spread across hundreds of planets, the average planetary population was less than 400 million.
A single planet with nearly seven billion people was an absolute treasure trove.
Huaxia alone had a population of 1.7 billion, a quarter of the total, and even more people used its writing system. If they weren't made the primary contact, who else could it be?
There is strength in numbers!
Don't like it? Too bad!
After that call, Claire recalibrated the mission's difficulty level, reframing it as the beginning of a revolution like the one from two millennia ago. And sure enough, with that perspective, handling things suddenly seemed much easier—especially when compared to her ancestors, who had endured both bloody and bloodless struggles.
The investigation reports poured in. Claire had to go through hundreds of them each day, but she still dedicated a sliver of her attention to the school bullying case. She already possessed far more detailed information than anyone else, including surveillance footage everyone assumed had been overwritten and lost.
Other than convincing the two high school students' families to jointly hire a lawyer, she and her team had not intervened further. She understood the laws, but their interpretation and the subsequent sentencing were full of variables. She wanted to observe first, to gauge the effectiveness and integrity of this nation's legal system.
By observing a few more cases, she would likely come to understand their methods and attitudes. Then she would know how to intervene and guide them toward improvement.
Her handsome male beta assistant, Tang Rang, quietly and efficiently sifted through documents for her, highlighting key points. As stacks of files passed through his hands and were sorted, they both gained a more direct understanding of each country's particular style.
Honestly, Tang Rang always felt a sense of the absurd whenever he accompanied Claire to meetings. People's first glance would invariably lead them to the preconceived notion that he was the leader of their party. Even when he deliberately stood half a step behind Claire, they would quickly invent a reason for it—ladies first, a gentleman's courtesy.
Everyone knew perfectly well that Claire was the ultimate decision-maker, but that didn't stop them from adopting this attitude, as if it might make her back down or drive a wedge between them.
He certainly had the ambition and determination to advance his career, but not in the way these people imagined.
At times like these, he couldn't help but think that these people, with their posturing, completely failed to understand. Claire was an alpha, a secondary gender with innate combat superiority that had been dominant for nearly ten thousand years. Even now, with freedom and equality etched into the very bones of their society, the change meant that every secondary gender had equal rights—it didn't mean that the naturally advantaged alphas were now the ones to be discriminated against.
To think that on this newly discovered planet, Claire, an alpha, could be subjected to such subtle discrimination. But when he saw that Claire paid these petty maneuvers no mind, even finding them amusingly foolish, Tang Rang suddenly understood.
His own annoyance stemmed from a fundamental distaste for discrimination itself. But Claire… she had likely already come to terms with it. This is their planet. We are simply offering its people a better choice and inviting them to join us.
Of course, they could also choose not to.
So, the handsome male beta took the initiative to ask, “Claire, why don't we just act directly? Announce the existence of the Galactic Interstellar Alliance, push the evolution forward, sell them on the Alliance's freedom and equality, and intervene directly to help those two high school victims…”
This world was filled with discrimination and prejudice. A world where men once decided if women should be educated, where white people decided if Black people could live, where heterosexuals decided if homosexuals could even exist…
It was suffocating.
Claire didn't answer right away. In truth, she had asked herself the same questions time and again. But in the end, she had always restrained herself.
The Alliance had taken millennia to complete its journey. Even with every advantage, trying to compress that into a mere twenty years was already guaranteed to cause a host of problems.
Forcing the issue directly would shorten the timeline even more. And judging by this planet's history, that approach would most likely provoke a strange sense of crisis, pushing them into emotional and ideological opposition.
“They aren't citizens of the Galactic Interstellar Alliance yet, but we still want them to be able to choose freely.” Claire smiled faintly. “Only a choice that is genuinely embraced is truly unshakable. Tang Rang, just as no one can refuse the chance to become stronger, no one can refuse a better life.”
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