Aron had decided to handle the solar resources like that because he believed that only the empire would have the capability to swallow such gains without harming itself. Any private sector enterprise given the vast mineral rights to the entire solar system would cut corners to increase profits, which wouldnt be beneficial to the fledgling economy in the least. He had learned of the dangers of monopolies from history, with shining examples like the Rockefeller family highlighting the path that he should definitely not take.

In fact, he had even gone so far as to take a page from communism, insofar as everything not specifically recognized as private propertylike privately owned land on Earthhad been designated as property of the empire. So while asteroid miners may own their own mining ships, they had to request mineral rights from the empire. Prospecting could be done within limits, but in order to exploit their finds, they would require a permit from the imperial resources agency.

The IRA was the ruling body that had been created to ensure that any resource exploitation was done with safety and sustainability in mind. They had a responsibility to ensure that nothing entered the Earth that could potentially harm either the people or the planet itself. After all, humanity, when left unchecked, didnt exactly have the best track record when it came to things like environmental conservation.

The empire municipalizing all solar system resources had a second, and more obvious, benefit. It allowed the tracking and inventory of the exact amount of resources they had on hand, as well as preventing tax dodging by underreporting a mining companys gains.

And despite the minority of people who tried to drum up anti-monopolistic sentiments, the government holding a monopoly on the solar system was still a net positive for all. Despite the people who didnt know any better, not having bothered to take advantage of the educational resources provided to them for free by the empire, the benefit could be seen everywhere.

For example, the government, being by its very nature a not-for-profit enterprise, could sell those raw materials to the companies in the industrial sector for an extremely low price. Thus, the final products would also remain within a reasonable price range for consumers. And with companies like GAIA Tech, HHI, and others, Aron could fairly compete with the other companies springing up in the industrial and manufacturing industry, ensuring that all prices were kept low and fat cat capitalists couldnt use the cheap raw materials to pocket an extreme profit by hiking up product prices to a ridiculous degree.

That was one of the problems with capitalism; the profit-centric ideals would often lead to a minority of people bleeding the majority for everything they could and driving a wealth gap wider and wider. It needs to be said that scarcity wasnt a problem, but unequal distribution of wealth most definitely was. Thus, by municipalizing resources and entering the market with his own companies, Aron had cut that wealth gap off at the pass and ensured that it wouldnt immediately destabilize the fragile balance of the empires new economy.

The sound of tapping at a mechanical keyboard clicked and clacked in what could only be said to be an otherwise extremely advanced lab. The person typing was the only one in the room, and the machinery was currently in a dormant state and completely silent.

The man typing was doing so at a monstrously fast speed, with more than five hundred lines of intricate code appearing on the quantum dot screen in front of the white-coated typist.

That continued for more than eleven hours. The sound of the keyboard neither sped up nor slowed down and the person doing the typing moved nothing but his forearms and fingers. He didnt even change position for the entire time until he suddenly halted his typing with the press of the enter key, then stretched his arms and shook the fatigue from his hands with a satisfied grunt.

But although he had stopped typing, the screen in front of him continued generating line after line of code. The system was compiling the raw code he had typed into it into a kernel, testing it line by line for any logic mistakes or other problems that may occur once the code was implemented and run as an executable program.

Any major errors? he asked the empty lab.

[The compiler is still running, but so far its looking good, sir,] Nova replied as she materialized next to Aron, who was staring at the ceiling as he waited for the process to be completed.

[I do have to say, though, that youre quite good at coding. You didnt even have to stop and think at allits almost like you were the creator of the coding language. And the code you wrote helped me quite a bit, too... human ingenuity really is interesting,] she praised as she internalized the code Aron had written and began compiling it through her own compiler. It was hard to believe Aron had written it in the span of half a day.

Its how the system works. Anything I buy from it is assimilated into me, giving me an instant mastery of whatever knowledge Ive bought. The good and bad of it is that Im getting the distilled wisdom of the pioneer of the knowledge. Its good because it saves me centuries, or in some cases, millennia, of my own research, but its also bad in that Im only getting the perfected form of it. So I cant look back on past mistakes to help me progress further.

Look at the printers, for example. It took dozens of researchers in Lab City hundreds of years just to miniaturize it, and it wasnt until I purchased the nanotechnology knowledge that we were able to take atomic printers down to the size of a suitcase. Up until then, the smallest we could make them was still the size of a luxury SUV, Aron complained, though Nova knew it was just his way of humblebragging.

Thus, he was surprised when he was met with nothing but silence. He tilted his head and looked at Nova. Whats the problem? You just went silent on me, he asked.

[My own initial check is complete. The compiler is still working and will be done soon, but even with the raw code right in front of me, I cant get the full picture of just what this code is meant to do. But what Ive gleaned so far is... unbelievable, at best. Im pretty sure this isnt even the complete code,] she said.

What makes you say that? Aron asked with a smug smile on his face.

[Im not entirely sure. There are obvious loopholes and hooks for new code to be injected, but thats standard for any code that youll want to update in the future to add features to. But what really made me think that is that this code doesnt seem to do anything. And I dont believe you would spend so long manually coding a program that doesnt work, so there has to be more to it.

[If I were to hazard a guess, Id say that this is only a third of the total code youll need to successfully run this program. It almost seems... dormant, like when its completed, itll be a living program of sorts.]