A week later, enough people had been hired and trained, or retained and retrained, that the government could function relatively normally. The LEAs had been deactivated and stored away, ready to be deployed again at need in case of emergency, and the virtual intelligences staffing the VR government offices had human supervision at all hours of the day. The shifts were long, but the work was satisfying and the employees had no complaints.

It would be another week yet, before they began a nine-hour shift rotationeight hour workdays with an hour for lunchand a week after that, they would finally be able to take days off and vacations. But they had all undergone the training program Gaia and the other AIs had set up for them, so they understood the need for the long hours and were okay with it. Plus, the overtime pay was excellent and greatly appreciated; previously, as government employees, they had been forced to work on salary waivers that limited, if not eliminated entirely, their overtime pay.

The delivery of AR and VR gear had gone on, twenty-four hours a day, leading to billions more joining the list of imperial citizens and the cities in the simulation gained a liveliness that they hadnt had before.

With the freedom granted to them in virtual reality and the various delivery services for the necessary daily supplies, the inconvenience of life under martial law had faded into the background and people seemed to have become content with their lot much earlier than Aron and Nova had anticipated they would.

The exception to the rule were the surviving members of the various governments militaries. Quite a few members of the military had been killed in The Last War, and the majority of survivors had chosen the retirement with benefits option offered by Aron. But recruitment continued apace and ARES had accepted more than fifty million new members, including the new nyxian recruits. All of them, whether they be former soldiers or new recruits, had been transferred to the central ARES training bases on each continent for their specific training.

It would still be a full month before their training was done. Two weeks real time for initial entry training, then a further two weeks of specialized training for Nyxians, Reapers, and Aegis teams. For those who washed out or werent selected for further specialist training, they would experience two more weeks of a simulated war. Regardless of which branch of service they ended up in, be it the Poseidon Navy, ARES Shock Troopers, Aeolus Air Force, Aegis Shield teams, Reaper teams, or Nyxian Intelligence, everyone who entered training as a member of ARES would graduate their thirty-day training cycle as a veteran with five years experience.

During their first two weeks, they would undergo genetic enhancements and their training would last a full hundred perceived weeks, then their further training would include their base implant suites and the second half of their training would last for another hundred and sixty weeks, for a total of five years of perceived time in the month they were training in VR.

Somewhere on Earth.

From the research we conducted, were 90% confident that the empire can read short term memories, at the very least. Theres also a high possibility that they can read all of our memories, considering the level of their technology, Rick Ashleys science advisor reported. Rick may have been delusional, and he was definitely a narcissist and megalomaniac, but he was far from stupid and had surrounded himself with the most capable advisors he could find, drawn from a large pool of candidates and winnowed down to an elite few.

If they can read our memories, what steps have we taken to avoid detection? Rick asked, his expression sour. If what his advisor was telling him was true, then the empires downfall was looking less and less likely to happen at all, let alone in the next few weeks as he had originally expected.

Although the empire had only been in existence for two weeks, Ricks thoughts had grown more and more pessimistic as he came to know more about Arons technological supremacy. Nearly all of his plans had been delayed indefinitely as he was repeatedly stymied by countermeasure after countermeasure that the devil had pulled from seemingly nowhere to solve all of the problems Rick and his cultists had thrown at him.

In order to do the testing, we sent twenty new recruits who had their orders delivered via dead drops by cutouts that we, well, cut out after the operation was complete. The recruits had yet to go anywhere near any of our secrets, so even if they can read their memories, the most they can do is track who put the written orders in the dead drops. But the only things theyll find are ashes in the bottom of Lake Mead and other reservoirs around the world, and just them tracking it down in the first place will tell us whether or not our suspicions are true. We also have trusted people keeping an eye on the recruits, so if theyre contacted or arrested, thatll be another piece of evidence.

If both of those happen, well, then well know conclusively that they can read our memories if we log into VR. So until we know for certain, we should stay far away from it and live completely off the grid. Since the devils advantage lies in technology, we can easily get around it by becoming luddites, and weve already hired some retired FBI and KGB agents who were active during the cold war to advise us on the countersurveillance methods they used back then. Were also in contact with some remnant forces of ISIS and the Taliban, who both faced similar issues when dealing with the allied forces in the War on Terror, and we have memory editing specialists that will help us develop false memories. That isnt certain, though, so we should probably only use it as a last resort. Until we know how they read our memories, we wont know how to defeat it, so work on that front is ongoing for now.

Good, but if we continue wasting time, itll cost us critical opportunities. The empire and its devil are at their weakest right now, so we need to do something to set it back or well have to face it at its full power before were ready. Its growing stronger and stronger by the moment, while were marking time and treading water. If we cant stop it by the time the fortress cities are built, we never will, Rick said. The timer had started when the New Years Ball dropped in Times Square, and his doomsday was coming whether he liked it or not. His only chance was to fight back now, before his end became inevitable.

Megalomaniac he may be, but delusional was a different story entirely.

We need to be careful, shepherd, his intelligence advisor interjected. We heard that an entire group was uprooted as a result of one of their members directly participating in the recent protests, so the same can happen to us if were in that position as well. We should begin by abandoning anyone weve recruited so far and recruit from scratch, at least for the cannon fodder. The advisory council and you can undergo identity reassignment surgery to prevent us from being caught in a wide net if the devil gets his hands on our current flock.

Yes, and I know just the way we can do it, too, Rick sneered. Itll carve our names into history and show that the seemingly impenetrable empire isnt so impenetrable after all.

What were going to do is.... He explained his plans, and the more he spoke, the brighter the eyes of the people in the room with him grew. Everyone saw the potential of his plan, and if it were to be carried out, it would strike a severe blow against the devil.