A month later, with a month to go before the presidential election, the candidates were campaigning with all their might. Their parties each had their own platforms and were trying to sway people to vote for them, and in their minds, things were going very well; nearly all of their rallies were filled with cheering citizens.

But all of the momentum they thought they had managed to build was crushed by a single announcement from the presidential palace.

"We interrupt this regularly scheduled program for a breaking news report," an announcer said as the show on the television was interrupted by them to make an emergency announcement.

"A team of researchers dispatched to Esparia in search of natural resources and minerals has discovered a large oil deposit in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Esparia.

"The deposits are in different places, but based on preliminary results, it's suspected that the fields combined equal the one discovered earlier in Eden. More details are to come as the preliminary results are verified by experts," said the reporter, her tone clearly hinting that she was excited and happy that Eden now had another resource they could exploit. She was especially thrilled that the profits would be used to benefit her country's citizens, including her.

After a short pause, she continued, "The presidential spokesperson expressed the president's happiness at receiving this unexpected news. Interim president Romero has already come to a decision on how the new oil fields are to be exploited, saying, 'In order to avoid wasting resources and to expedite the extraction of these new deposits, the company that wins the bid for extracting oil in Eden will also be made responsible for extracting the Esparian deposits. That will eliminate the need for another round of bids and streamline the extraction process.'

(Author's note: we're in the process of adding surnames to people; "Romero" is Alexander's surname.)

"The announcement has made the bid for Eden's extraction rights even more hotly contested, with many bidders requesting to adjust their bids, and otherswho failed to pass the first reviewclamoring to allow new bids altogether. However, interim president Romero declined, stating that the procedure would require too much time and delay the benefits to Edenian and Esparian citizens."

The broadcast resulted in an uproar from the Esparian citizens, with some of them even trying to organize riots to force their government to break the surrender accords, but they were only met with silence. They finally came to the realization that, for Esparia to even attempt to break the accords, their military would need to be able to defend themselves from an inevitable Edenian armed response. But that was already a non-option, as Esparia didn't even have a military anymore, and their retrained soldiers were unanimous in their refusal to violate the terms of their surrender.

With the Esparian division soldiers already having finished their training, the Edenian division had retreated; the last batch had left the month before.

Some citizens who weren't among those calling for violence were happy that they had discovered such massive resources in their country. Especially since their country hadn't even tried looking for them. But what they didn't know was that Esparia had been searched beforeand many times, at thatbut no experienced company would ever have thought to look in the location where the oil was eventually discovered. Thus, it had been nearly impossible for the previous government to discover them.

The announcement had also resulted in the oil giants increasing their efforts to win the bid for the extraction of oil in Eden. Their home countries had cranked up the pressure on the Edenian government to choose their country's companies. Together with the pressure exerted by their countries after they lobbied them, certain companies took things into their own hands and attempted to bribe the members of the team they thought responsible for looking over their bids. Even millions of dollars would be chump change in comparison to the exclusive contracts on offer, so their bribes were extremely generous.

But all of those attempts were met with failure, and worse.

The worse came for them a few days later when their bids were automatically declined following an investigation into the companies' attempted corruption of the process. And they were declined with prejudice, meaning that no new bids from their companies would ever be accepted under any circumstances. Thus, they were effectively and permanently blacklisted from operating in Eden.

That was an effective warning, since the first unlucky company to be blacklisted and whose bid was thrown out was Gazprom, a prominent Russian majority government-owned oil giant that accounted for nearly 12% of all refined oil products globally. Eden's response of uncompromising removal essentially served to kill a chicken to warn the monkeys and was a strong announcement that corruption in the bidding process would not be tolerated, no matter who attempted it.

There was an inevitable backlash from the Russian government, who claimed they had been set up and it was a manufactured reason to remove them from the competition, but that statement was immediately deleted when Eden released the results of their investigation along with the accompanying evidence. It was an overwhelming amount of proof, which no one thought would be able to be manufactured within just a period of a few days.

That also acted as another publicity stunt for Alexander, who was now loved by nearly every citizen of his country. Thanks to him and Connect, every person in the country had access to continuous energy, clean water, and a reliable sewage system without having to worry about power outages or sewage spills. At the same time, the promise of lower prices had been kept word for word.

The world's reaction was that Eden was just lucky to have discovered such a huge amount of wealth in a matter of a few months. And it was definitely an unexpected windfall for the adversarial nations; nobody even knew that prospectors had been sent out until the recent bombshell of an announcement.

...

"When should I announce the winning bid?" Alexander asked Aron, as he was the kingmaker behind the soon-to-officially-be President Romero.

It was Aron's decision to release news of the new discovery in order to kill the momentum of Alexander's political rivals. Other parties had been gaining traction among the public, and Aron wanted Alexander to win in a veritable landslide, one that would give him a proper mandate to rule and prevent a lot of trouble in the future. In politics, when one's support among the voting population reached a certain amount, their opponents would be very leery about opposing them. He also wanted people to suspect the election was rigged in order to test Pangea's ability to control the public narrative, so it would be killing two birds with one stone.

"Delay it until after you win. If you announce it now, people will claim that you're making a hasty decision in fear of losing the election. Although that isn't true, it'll still cause some problems," Aron answered. He and Alexander were in VR, floating above Edenia, though the city below them looked completely different from what it did in reality. If one were to look at it from afar, they would see many super-tall skyscrapers, and if they looked underground, they would see the comprehensive subway system that connected to the trunk lines spread across the country. The virtual city was also so clean that it practically sparkled; if it were in the real world, it would be considered an absolute marvel and one of the best cities in the world to live in.

But alas, it was only a concept at the moment. Aron was using it as a demonstration, showing Alexander what he had planned for Eden as a whole. It was also a good backdrop for the discussions they had, as well as a symbol of the bonds of friendship that had been developing between the men for quite some time.