A/N: Been gone for a while, huh? It was mostly because I got eye surgery and needed some time to recover. Still, should be back for a while, at least. I got a ton of unposted chapters for this over at the big P. Getting back to the old five-weekly chapter schedule for April at least. We'll see how things go from there. As usual, would appreciate any power stones to get some traction back to the story.
Thanks, and enjoy the chapter.
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With a few words from Ayesha, the future of the Sovereign was unchangeably altered. But considering the current situation of the empire, their future already held destruction. There was no possible way for them to hold off the High Evolutionary's forces by themselves, leaving them with no option other than to subjugate themselves to another similarly powerful force. Against someone like the High Evolutionary, they had no other way. To ally with the Kree would be meaningless, and the Nova Empire was already destroyed and was under the control of the High Evolutionary.
Once the meeting concluded, everyone respectfully retreated to deal with their respective tasks, leaving Ayesha alone in the room with her thoughts.
"Master?" She called out.
[What?]
"Can you tell me what you will be doing with our prisoners? With your capabilities, I doubt you need any of the Sovereign's genetic templates or technology."
[If you know, I'm not sure how it will weigh on your conscience.]
"As the person responsible for my subjects, I should know, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me."
[I'll kill the males directly and devour their biomass. As compared to humans, the people of your race have almost ten times the base Bioenergy within them. As for the women… They will be moved to the farm.]
"Farm?" Ayesha asked with a tightened expression.
[One of the planets under my control, Codename Earth B—Unofficially called the Farm Earth. That planet has a location called the Gaia Penitentiary. It holds two kinds of people: prisoners and voluntary members.]
"Voluntary members in a penitentiary?"
[The purpose of the Gaia Penitentiary is to serve as a generator of sorts. A place that constantly produces Bioenergy for me. It holds exclusively women, because the methods that I use to sustainably produce Bioenergy include intense sexual stimulation. It is extracted through the breasts in the form of milk. The prisoners are naturally treated as such and spend their time within their cells, only let out for their daily exercise, while the rest of their days include intense sexual stimulation, feeding, and milk extraction. The voluntary ones have a lot more leeway. To them, it's more like a resort that will cater to their needs and preferences. After they sign a contract to stay there for one year, they get to either live the life of a prisoner, or just enjoy their days getting massages, lazing around, and occasionally getting fucked senseless by machines as they get milked.]
"Why would anyone choose the former voluntarily?"
[The world has a substantial number of women with such fetishes. I merely made a place that would cater to those fetishes.]
"So that's the fate that awaits the women I send over to the Apex Empire? Being milked of their life essence for the rest of their lives…"
[A lot more than the rest of their lives. Your people have a similar lifespan to humans, right? The lives of the prisoners will be prolonged significantly. With the right cost-to-benefit ratio, I can increase their lifespan to a minimum of a thousand years before their souls start to deteriorate. Beyond that, the cost to prolong the life of a single person won't be worth what I can get. Aside from them, some can awaken Qi and significantly strengthen their souls, allowing me to prolong their lives to ten thousand years at least safely. Though the caveat for that is that they must awaken Qi within fifty years from birth; beyond that, their soul would have weakened enough that their maximum possible lifespan would go down to a few thousand years at most.]
"Heh… To think they get to be nigh-immortal, yet also condemned to such a life of suffering."
[Don't be jealous. You actually do get to be immortal. Without any asterisks. And I also plan to sell a life-prolonging formula eventually. I'll sell it in the Sovereign as well.]
"Do you not feel that this is very dystopian?" She asked. "A regime with such policies… There have been countless dictators in the history of the galaxy, but none of them were able to build lasting legacies."
[True answer? That's because they died. They couldn't be immortal. That's also the reason entities like Thanos, or Odin, with far longer lifespans than the average terrestrial lifeform, are considered nigh-godlike not only in our galaxy, but the wider universe as well. Hell, Asgard's history is the perfect example of this. Odin started out as a conqueror, ruling with an iron fist, and spread his influence and hegemony across the nine realms. That doesn't come without a dictatorial system. He grew old and got bored with the wars, that's why he settled down on Asgard and had another kid or two.]
"I was not aware of that…"
[Asgard's history has long been buried far lower than what a small-scale galactic empire like yours could dig up. But that doesn't mean I'm completely discrediting your words. If you think my methods are dystopian, I'm open to listening. What else would you suggest I do? Bioenergy is my bottom line. If your solution can maintain it and even enhance it, I'm all ears.]
"It doesn't have to be an exclusive thing, does it?" Ayesha said. "To treat death-row prisoners like that and also cater to women with certain fetishes works, but this feels limiting. Could you tell me how this harvesting works? Can you simply induce lactation with a drug and suck milk, or are there more things to consider?"
[I work with specialized food instead of drugs. Gaia handles the quantities and intake catered to every single person individually to optimize everyone's production and physical condition. As for the process of production, there are multiple factors to it beyond just the physical condition. I've observed that the rush of hormones experienced by the body during an orgasm significantly enhances the amount of Bioenergy that I get from a session.]
"So it boils down to physical condition and sexual stimulation, am I correct?"
[Those are the primary factors, yes.]
"Then I suggest that you open this to the general public as well. I have done some research on the way human relationships work. You can target single mothers specifically with this, providing them a sort of welfare system that allows them to do the equivalent of selling their breast milk to the government for a sustainable price. Once that system stabilizes, you can reduce the exclusivity and allow married women to get the same welfare benefits for the same treatment. Once the general public accepts that system as the norm, you can roll out a drug that allows women who aren't mothers to produce breast milk as well. This would directly increase your sample size from at most ten or twenty thousand in a single facility to millions. You could even piggyback on this and provide incentives for mothers specifically, promoting birth and increasing your population. With your capabilities, this shouldn't take more than a decade to implement."
[That's a very nice idea, Ayesha. Thank you. I was previously limiting myself to this kind of controlled environment because many things required me to be a little hands-on initially. But now, with Gaia's update, this can not only be implemented, but it can easily be automated. Good work. What reward would you like?]
"…If possible, could I reduce the transfer of prisoners to only the ones on death row?" She asked hesitantly. "I'm not sure how I'd sleep if I found out that I sent a pickpocket who deserved a single night in jail to his death…"
[Fine. Since you care so much about your people, it would be dumb of me to make you actively work against their prosperity. It's all mine, after all.]
"Thank you, master," she smiled widely. "I actually had another longer-term plan for that planet, which would require quite a bit of initial investment, but would significantly pay off in the future. We could terraform the planet and spread a genetic alteration medium through the air that would make the females more susceptible to natural lactation while also enhancing their reproductive capabilities. Over a decade or two of consistent modifications, the women on that planet would become the most optimal producers of Bioenergy for you, with high sensitivity and milk production capabilities. The terraforming would also allow us to increase the land area and handle a significantly larger population."
[Ayesha. You may not realize this, but you have just as much potential of being diabolical as I do. Your plan would literally turn Earth B into a farm planet. With the humans being raised as cattle who are solely used to breed and produce Bioenergy.]
"On a galactic scale, such a thing is not too shocking. To terraform a planet to allow efficient farming and cattle rearing is nothing new. Of course, doing it for the purpose of doing the same for sentient life certainly violates countless galactic laws."
[Who would even enforce such a galactic law? A universal version of the United Nations?]
"I don't know what that is, but these laws are usually enforced by a specialized fleet of the Einherjar. They serve as representatives of Asgard in our galaxy and many others."
[Huh, you learn something new every day. But I'm sure Asgard has its own shit to deal with, considering the multiple variants of Thor, Loki, Odin, and the like. Their internal strife won't leave them with any time to inspect us. By the time things settle down for them, my empire will be untouchable even by them.]
With Ayesha's main goal of reducing the number of prisoners sent over achieved, she casually continued discussing things with Alex, providing her valuable input without giving any new ideas. Even then, he couldn't help but appreciate her different viewpoint compared to every one of his other hosts. Even ones like Gwen, who had experience with the multiverse, didn't truly work on galactic scales, which made Ayesha's input far more valuable for Alex's current situation and future plans. Hearing her input and words, Alex felt a twinge of regret about his past actions, where he chose to bond with Jane instead of taking Hela, who would have given him far more valuable insights into setting up the Apex Empire.
***
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