The Universe Emperor's First Flex

The moment the post went up, a handful of comments came trickling in.

He skimmed through the replies, then casually dropped one of his own.

For a moment the thread went dead silent — and then it caught fire.

"Haha."

Not that he'd expected anything resembling a warm reception. This place apparently didn't even have basic rules of conduct, judging by how many people were out there asking after his parents.

"Hmm…."

The corner of his brow twitched almost imperceptibly. The veterans' incendiary barrage of insults-to-his-entire-lineage had rattled his composure, if only for an instant. Faced with this feverish welcome from the mother-insulting guild after so long an absence, he found himself dusting off a resistance to verbal abuse he hadn't realized he'd let lapse.

He watched the thread stew in silence for a long while before closing the community window and calling for Aria.

"Aria."

—Yes?

"Can you hack this thing?"

—….

His face was split evenly between resolve and distaste. Slowly, the corner of his mouth curled upward.

"If you can't hack a single asylum for the delusional, I'd say the name Aria is going to waste…."

—Do not talk nonsense.

"There are things even Aria can't do? Well, that's certainly a disappointment… No, wait. Our Aria would never fail at something this trivial."

—….

After he needled her a few more times, her pride apparently wounded, Aria refused to respond and declared a protest. Yet he could tell she had already begun analyzing the Astral signal.

"I believe in you, Aria."

—….

Remarkably, she was an AI with genuine emotions — leaving her sulking indefinitely would do no one any good.

"Hm. A community, is it…."

When she'd first told him an Astral signal had been detected, an idea had taken root in his mind. If there was a signal, and if there were coordinates, then surely it could be traced back to its source.

And once the signal was analyzed and the coordinates pinned down…

a direct connection to other dimensions wouldn't be out of the question either.

As the old saying went, the crowning glory of any keyboard battle was the real-life showdown.

He logged back into the community and threw up one more shitpost for good measure.

Barely moments after the post went up, the comments came pouring in like mad.

For the record, not a single item on that spec sheet was a lie. It was a fully functional virtual-reality device. He had enjoyed it a few times himself, though he no longer used it. The hollow, empty ache of returning to reality after a game ended was simply too indescribably miserable — that was the only reason it sat untouched.

They were the products of a black history he had sealed away, deep and quiet, in the treasure chest of his memory. Even he had been unable to collect himself for a good while after using the device. Naturally, in the aftermath, devices of this caliber were banned from circulation under Imperial law.

He turned his eyes away from the virtual-reality device and gazed at the translucent community window. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The post had already climbed past a hundred comments. Impossible, utter nonsense — no such luxury virtual-reality device could ever exist — they were doing their level best to obscure the truth.

"Ah, the ignorant masses. A generation of barbarians. Paupers of civilization."

He made no attempt to hide the joy bubbling up from somewhere deep inside.

Ahhh. This is what it's all about.

He had succumbed utterly to the flex — that is, to shameless bragging. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠From the fellow asking after his parents' well-being over a mere gaming device, to the one demanding photographic evidence of anything so unbelievable, the sheer variety of reactions kept him thoroughly entertained. It seemed he wouldn't be bored for quite some time.

As he scrolled through the comments and posts to while away the tedium, Aria's voice reached his ears.

"The primary analysis of the Astral signal is complete."

"Already?"

The Astral Dimension was the conduit used for warp travel, a mystery even in Eunyeongyeon — the world he had transmigrated into — never fully mapped. For her to have already analyzed a signal that could only be caught inside an AstralDimensional passage meant Aria had been running the computations on her mainframe directly.

Just as he looked up, a silver-haired woman in the Empire's uniform was staring down at him with an expression of glacial calm. It was one of the terminal androids Aria frequently used.

"Aria, you're lovely as ever. Every time I see you."

"…Kindly focus on the report."

How very bashful of her.

He brushed off her prim response with a nod and listened attentively.

"Within 'Dimension-001,' where the Galactic Empire currently resides, the only terminal capable of receiving that signal is yours, Master."

In other words, in the world of Eunyeongyeon, he was the sole person able to access the Dimensional Integrated Community. That much he could have guessed on his own — no matter how he searched, not a single SF-world transmigrator appeared on the community. Still, a part of him had kept hoping, however faintly.

"Which means it could serve as proof that other dimensions genuinely exist."

Dimension-001 referred to the dimension he was living in now, and Dimension-000 meant the Astral Dimension. Nothing beyond that had ever been discovered; only he, a transmigrator, had vaguely suspected that other dimensions — other worlds — might exist at all.

"The academic community will be in an uproar if they learn of this. Even the Demos of the White Citadel will come scrambling, driven half-mad."

"Then there's really no need to tell them."

Nod-nod—

The Demos of the White Citadel were a species that worshipped knowledge with fanatical devotion and nothing else — extraterrestrials whose brains were five times the size of a human's, with elongated heads and tentacles in place of beards that draped all the way down to their collarbones.

Incidentally, the Demos' tentacles functioned much like the USB drives of his former life.

As a neutral species, the Demos had signed an accord with the Galactic Federation, collecting history and knowledge while refusing to meddle in any dispute. And the Astral Dimension was the one domain they had never managed to breach. If word got out, it would startle not just the academic world but the entire galaxy.

"Anyway, enough with the complicated stuff. So what can you do, and what do you need?"

"Authorization to use the ACC — the Akashic Causality Calculator — along with the cooperation of Makia, Minister of Cryptographic Intelligence, and Vice Minister Kahlen of the Central DBMS Management Department."

The ACC was a computational device the size of a small asteroid, some two thousand kilometers in diameter; at full power it could deliver prophecies of 96.8% accuracy — practically an OOPArt even by the standards of an SF world. And once the ACC was running, Aria would have to devote herself entirely to operating it, which meant that he — the reigning Emperor — would have to personally handle all the duties she was managing on his behalf.

When it came to security and hacking, Makia had no rival worth mentioning, and Kahlen was every bit his equal in his own field.

Kahlen in particular was a talent he had personally scouted — the finest there was in database architecture and programming. And since he had been the one to parachute the man into his post, they were on familiar terms.

"It'd be a bit rough without you, though… Does it really have to be the ACC? Can't you just put those two to work?"

"…If you leave it to the two of them alone, I cannot guarantee results even if they grind away for a hundred years."

"Oh, a hundred years is fine, we could spare a hundred—"

Had Makia and Kahlen heard the thought running through his head — the one that would have sent them fleeing in terror with their belongings in hand — but he sighed and let it go.

"Fine. How many days would it take?"

"We estimate one month."

"A month? You're telling me to survive a whole month without you?"

He recoiled in horror, hands raised in surrender. The sheer volume of work Aria handled on a daily basis beggared imagination — though then again, her performance was, by common acknowledgment, the finest there was.

"Your scheduled tasks, Master, have been planned out down to the second."

At those faintly chilling words, he sank to the floor where he stood.

"Ugh…."

In the end, he nodded, tossed a few more posts into the community, and logged off. It seemed he wouldn't have time to connect for a while.

Meanwhile, opinion across the Dimensional Integrated Community was sharply divided over the self-styled 'UniverseEmperor'.

The community split cleanly down the middle: fake or not fake. The skeptics insisted that no matter how advanced one's SF world was, all of it was impossible, and worked hard to scrape the man down a peg. The believers were half people who desperately wanted it to be true, and half people who simply conceded that it could be.

One item in particular, caught by accident in the corner of the photographs, sent shockwaves rippling through the entire community.

Emperor Calstein Babylon, buried up to his neck in pressing duties, remained entirely unaware of any of it.