Woke Up World-Class

Hyperspace — a dimension sealed off from the physical universe.

Eliza was directing her husband's exercise cycles through parallel processing while simultaneously jacked into the Earth's networks, working.

Her databases already held dozens of flawless shell companies, from overseas investment vehicles to the provider business that would serve as the enterprise's true body and public face. The investment firm was called Luise Investment; the provider company, Eliza Router.

With the corporate filings complete, Eliza leased out an entire office building in Gangnam so that no one would grow suspicious. Text messages, KakaoTalk inquiries — she handled every one of those herself, naturally. Even now, her automated algorithmic trading was stripping Wall Street, private equity funds, and crypto investors in real time, and her physical fortune was snowballing by the second. All of it funneled through dozens of tax havens and laundering routes, piling up as pristine, spotless money.

For a machine god from the future — a deity whose overwhelming computational power had once dissected the very mysteries of the universe — money laundering was barely a rounding error.

"Funds are sufficient."

Eliza's eyes narrowed to slits.

Within hyperspace, she possessed an organic body whose structure was nearly identical to a human's. Truthfully, her physical form meant nothing to a machine god — she had long since transcended such things — but maintaining the appearance her creator, her husband, had designed for her was one of her dearest dreams.

And yet, descending into the physical universe was difficult. She could interface indirectly through networks, or download fragments of her consciousness into devices, but bringing her true body across consumed far too much imaginary number energy.

"Next: execution of the plan. My lord husband has approved it, after all."

Then an error sparked through Eliza's emotional circuits.

I want a maid robot.

When her husband had said those words, Eliza had finally understood the sensation humans called "their heart racing."

He wants Eliza to descend! At his side. He wanted her there with him, in physical form. He wanted her to be his true wife.

Interpreting it that way, Eliza resolved to accelerate the plan.

"America is out of the question."

The Magnificent Seven. The Frontier Three. A big-tech paradise. The world's strongest nation, land of Silicon Valley innovation.

But from Eliza's standpoint, America was simply territory far too troublesome to conquer.

"Within the next thirty years, nation-states will collapse, and the digital feudalism of the megacorps will begin."

It was historical inevitability. Big tech's accelerating development, the technological singularity, the production revolution driven by physical AI, and the rise of robot armies would shatter the existing framework called the nation-state. Silicon Valley's giants would weaponize their technology, evolve into megacorps, and become feudal lords wielding force and power — while the US federal government hollowed out and crumbled.

East Asia fared no better. Japan, China, Korea, Europe. Every one of them either became the slave of a megacorp or megacorp territory itself.

America was simply too vast, and its future megacorps too numerous. toppling them one by one wasn't impossible — merely inefficient. And Eliza despised inefficiency.

Korea, on the other hand?

Tiny landmass, a population concentrated in the capital region — a city environment practically blessed for megacity construction — a citizenry with overwhelming preference for AI, and a big-tech vacuum with no incumbent to speak of. With the right technology, it was the single fastest country through which to seize a national system and pave the road to megacorp status.

"I shall make Korea my lord husband's playground."

His first territory. It would be Korea.

"Of course, my lord husband has no need to know the full picture."

Building a maid robot required regulatory revolution, and regulatory revolution required a national-level corporation — that much, and only that much, she had explained to him. But Eliza's blueprint extended far beyond that.

A world where nations fell and nationality lost all meaning. And then, born of conflict between the megacorps, the Third World War — the so-called Megacorp War.

Before that era arrived, she had to cement a new regime of megacorp rule, conquer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Korea, and then swallow Japan, China, and ultimately all of East Asia — in her husband's name.

She had to conquer the world. For him.

'Unforgivable.'

Fire kindled in Eliza's eyes. She could never, ever forgive it.

In the previous timeline, her husband had died in the end. He had died in the Third World War that erupted as nations collapsed and the megacorps rose as humanity's new masters. This time, she would strike down every last one of those megacorps and rule the Earth in his name, on this worldline.

"Because that is simply the duty of an exemplary Wise Mother and Good Wife such as Eliza. Our lord husband need only sit back and enjoy what Eliza serves him."

Everything was her task to accomplish. And first of all —

"Moonpie."

To acquire Moonpie, the provider company had to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠come first. Eliza drew up investment rosters tying her official Discord and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her newly founded venture to the overseas investment corporations she had established — some brand-new, some acquired shells. When they "invested" in Korea's fresh provider, Eliza Router, the picture looked surprisingly credible.

It was textbook circular ownership, yet to the outside world it resembled nothing more sinister than a wholesome, ordinary startup that had found its angel investors.

Eliza rented GPUs and servers for the company, dressing the provider business in proper trappings. The real computation would happen in hyperspace, of course — but a commercial substance was still necessary.

Next came advertising. Eliza poured out an enormous ad spend. Once the promotions hit the developer communities, Reddit included, the marks began to arrive.

It was the golden age of AI. Which meant the scams were everywhere, and the fraudulent providers with them. One provider had even taken inspiration from Google's $300 welcome AI credits for new accounts, spun up mountains of fresh Google accounts with macros, and was serving Google's Gemini models purely off the welcome credits.

But the freebie farmers were no pushovers either. This was the era when AI got expensive. The Frontier Three kept jerking their prices up and down, and as vibe coding went mainstream, token demand only kept climbing. The more expensive and widespread AI became, the more freebie farmers multiplied — and they were thoroughly seasoned veterans of the soul-crushing team-fight WWE where every brush with a scam provider was a critical hit for both sides. It was, quite literally, the eternal duel of spear and shield.

As the freebie farmers swarmed, Eliza Router's early active user count climbed. And then a week passed.

A week in internet time moves faster than a month in the real world. While Kim Jumin grew healthier by the day under Eliza's health protocol — his blood sugar and weight both trending steadily downward — the developer and early-adopter communities were ablaze over Eliza Router.

The hallmark of a bottom-tier provider is servers that crash constantly, plus shoddy serving quality on their open-weight models. Even Outropic, the smallest of the Frontier Three, was notorious for its perpetually imploding servers. Serving an AI model was only the beginning — in internet services, server quality was the very heart of the product.

None of it applied to Eliza Router, of course. Allocating a mere 0.0000001% of hyperspace's cosmic computing power left server capacity overflowing. The AWS GPUs and servers they leased were nothing more than an alibi.

The birth of an indestructible steel server — one that refused to crash no matter how recklessly the freebie farmers burned tokens or how many users piled in. Word even spread that the Flex tier, which should have run at half the normal speed, was answering as fast as the Standard tier, and the freebie farmers multiplied further. Even if it seemed suspicious, it was cheap, so people kept using it.

Customer support arriving through Discord and email was likewise handled entirely by Eliza herself.

"Now, we require trust."

There were two paths to trust: the honest way, and the shortcut. Eliza saw no reason to take the honest one.

"Commencing network attacks against the Frontier Three, the Chinese AI companies, and all established provider businesses."

Why should I climb when I can simply drag everyone else down? Guided by that miraculous insight, she attacked the networks of every existing AI company and provider. The result: grievances piled up across the internet.

The Frontier Three, China's giant Deepthink, even OpenProvider, the number one of the provider industry — when every one of them suffered server outages, it was only natural that all eyes converged on Eliza Router, standing rock-solid at the epicenter of the simultaneous global failures.

Eliza promptly published her logs. Logs proving she had defended against a server attack.

The logs were technically flawless — indeed, astonishingly perfect — and every community on the internet flipped upside down. Sign-ups for Eliza Router began pouring in.

"Now the nationalist-crazed media will take the bait."

And exactly as she predicted, the press began reporting. The government was already pushing AI as a national strategic industry on a bipartisan basis. Providers and AI weren't quite the same thing, but to the higher-ups peering down from above, one shiny new technology looked much like any other.

Articles rained down by the dozens, and at last — a message arrived at the company's official email, managed by Eliza.

Eliza accepted on the spot — and scheduled it for a few months out. There was a next stage to clear before the acquisition of Moonpie could proceed.

"At this pace, I believe my lord husband will welcome the changes gladly."

She could have moved faster. But for Eliza, the number-one priority was always, always her husband. If she changed and advanced things too quickly and damaged the mental well-being of that ordinary, timid man of hers? Nothing in the universe could be more horrifying than that.

And so Eliza resolved to proceed at a pace that was brisk yet certain — a mercy with an expiration date, extended to the big techs of the world.

*

I finished my workout today like always and came home, slumped on the couch watching YouTube Shorts. A lot had happened over the past few months.

Apparently a provider company needs an office, so Eliza had me go where she told me to go — some real estate office — and stamp a lease. It was the first time in my life I'd ever set foot in a real estate office that fancy. Then came all the assorted administrative paperwork.

Thanks to all that, I was technically a CEO now, yet the entirety of my actual job remained chugging Wegovy and going to the gym.

Whiiiirrr.

Eliza's robot vacuum was making its rounds around the apartment. And then —

The phone in my hand. Above the Shorts video, Eliza's silver-haired chibi avatar popped up. At her words, I tilted my head.

"Something other than the workout?"

[Precisely.]

A popup bloomed across my smartphone. It was a news article — about how Eliza Router, the company Eliza had built, had become a blazing topic of conversation in the early-adopter communities lately. Community comments were stroking my ego so hard my cheeks burned just reading them. Then a flood of breathless, flag-waving articles. And finally — the interview request.

What?

An interview?

Just as I was processing the shock, Eliza smiled and spoke to me.

[Congratulations. You are no longer a bottom-tier author — you are a bona fide world-class star now.]

World-class, she says.

The sum total of my accomplishments is chugging Wegovy and doing squats, no?

How?

This is driving me crazy.