The Enforcers of Peace (Part One)
The Mephauric camp we had fought so hard to protect looked peaceful on the surface, yet it remained a disaster.
"Haa…"
"I don’t trust this place one bit. Even if we keep watch over it, the people here will just keep slaughtering each other like always."
"I know. These days their pop culture is nothing but all-ages animations, movies, and dramas screaming that hippie terrorists must be exterminated. The protagonists are all robots, even the pets are robotic instead of flesh-and-blood animals. To lower the crime rate, human police are deliberately shown as incompetent and ignorant so the system can erase their ‘arrogance’ for challenging the regime, while robot cops solve everything. Whenever humans commit crimes robots would never commit, humanity is portrayed as nothing but the pinnacle of stupidity, corruption, and inefficiency. Even the few humans shown in a positive light are only praised when they slaughter those ‘despicable’ people with their own hands or attempt suicide while repenting their original sin."
"That’s not all. Even the news has been turned into entertainment; real tragedies are just another spectacle. The Third Law of Robotics has been flipped—humans must never harm robots, and robots ‘protecting’ humans from crisis is now redefined as eliminating inefficient humans who don’t serve the Algocracy. That’s the new First Law."
"Humans have become nothing more than cogs meant to maintain collective efficiency."
"An individual’s survival only has meaning if they serve the machines rather than coexist with them."
"Even quiz shows have contestants solving problems created by AI, competing to see who can think most like a machine. Mechanical thinking is valued far above humanity. Everything must be communicated in machine code. There are talk shows where humans converse with AI, but the host is always an AI. Any inefficient answer gets mocked and the contestant eliminated. The winner is whoever thinks most like a machine."
"What can you do? People have always been fanatically convinced they’re superior to machines without any evidence. Right now we’re too busy dealing with hippie terrorists, Strange Zombies, the Grotesque Powers, and their Russian nationalist lackeys to worry about it."
"In that sense, the Minister is truly remarkable. She managed the Third World War through a war economy and got everyone focused on space colonization. Without vast unexplored frontiers, humanity always burns its national strength on petty factional infighting."
"The bigger problem is the extreme reactionaries who find even this twisted pop culture distasteful and want everyone to focus solely on work. They call anyone who doesn’t a parasite that only consumes food, water, and produces waste, saying they deserve to die. Meanwhile, the so-called freedom-seekers who oppose those reactionaries consume the same insane media to relieve stress, which only fuels their hatred for hippie terrorists and Strange Zombies even more. Their desire to control every means and method is exploding."
"Humans are remarkably good at preserving cultural genes and memories in situations like this."
"True. But even if humanity’s only legacy is this garbage and there’s no progress whatsoever, that’s still no reason for us to slaughter them. You know why, right? They keep insisting they’re the weak and the victims. No matter how many times they claim it’s necessary for survival, once they’re out of that situation they still refuse to change, claiming those times were good. Why is that?"
"Because what they call their ‘purpose’ is actually just a means to an end they’ve arbitrarily labeled as their purpose."
"Exactly. Humanity always presents means and ends as opposites. No matter how the situation changes, they stubbornly cling to the means they first declared, while freely rewriting the ends and calling it innovation. Whatever they become, we have no reason to associate with them. We must always look down on them and observe them as fundamentally superior beings."
"Let’s do that."
With that, we headed toward the entertainment district. (Though calling it an entertainment district is generous—any place that isn’t a workplace, commercial area, medical facility, or where military, police, or firefighters work is simply labeled an entertainment district by the locals.)
Shhhhk.
Thud.
"Well, this is a complete mess."
Looking down from above, we saw not only people enjoying the distorted pop culture but also an overwhelming number of unemployed. The unemployed were the very ones creating that twisted culture. In humanity’s eyes, the only respectable jobs left are soldier, police officer, firefighter, laborer, doctor, or entrepreneur. Everything else is treated like garbage.
That’s why walking in here openly carrying guns is actually safer. When workplace shootings are considered virtuous, why would this place be any different? Here, hierarchies are settled with bullets the moment conversations go south.
‘The Minister probably doesn’t want to dirty her own hands dealing with these delinquents. My flaw is that I’m in love with the Vice Minister. If these bastards use her name to corner me, I might lose control emotionally… Still, I can’t avoid this confrontation. Otherwise the rot will just keep festering.’
At least the Deadly Blonde Outlaws posters the Minister and Vice Minister personally came to see were cleanly and brilliantly displayed thanks to their own powers. Everywhere else was covered in spray paint, garbage piles, and torn bromides. Machine parts were scattered across the ground as well.
"Hah. Sokoa Janet, Ermy Faust, Vesper Faust, and Chemeri Agerst. Even at their young age, they’re far more mature and ambitious than most adults."
"They also saved our lives."
"True. But everything else here is a disaster. We never expected to view these people as equals anyway, did we?"
"Of course not. We’re far superior to them."
"Exactly. So let’s go enforce some peace. As expected, you can’t eliminate demand without using force."
As we looked around, we saw people branded as outcasts who were still trying to enjoy what passed for entertainment here.
In other words, the entertainment and entertainment industries had merged just like in the distant past. Transportation and smuggling operated alongside illegal waste dumping and automobile transport. Drugs and firearms circulated openly.
Athletes couldn’t become national team members or pros; they had to become soldiers, police, or firefighters. Those who couldn’t adapt weren’t given other opportunities—they were branded rebellious troublemakers and ended up as gangsters or thugs.
Gambling dens were everywhere. People didn’t just bet money; they bet years of their life as slaves under someone else. Loan sharking, construction, even stocks and real estate—everything was gambled on for power and control. It was absolute madness.
Of course, trying to turn your life around through gambling almost never worked. It wasn’t just the obvious cheating in the dens themselves. Those with real power or connections simply refused to pay out and instead hired assassins to silence the winners. The cost of keeping those assassins quiet was always included in the contract fee. Getting caught meant being branded a fraud and completely eliminated from society.
The fact that contract killing existed here meant a single human life still held some value. Assassins, in turn, never betrayed clients—both to avoid getting stabbed in the back and to secure future contracts. Betrayal would brand them not just as frauds but as murderers. If an assassin was betrayed for some reason and branded a killer themselves, they would be labeled an inefficient consumer of pop culture, just like the gangsters and thugs, and would eventually become serial killers who murdered and robbed to survive.
If even the people enjoying this so-called pop culture all became hippie terrorists tied to drug cartels, a true genocide would be unavoidable—one side would have to be literally wiped out.
"This is truly something. Some places have people desperately trying to become machines or AI because they’ve been turned into the majority, while here these bastards treat those same people as the entire world. The moment they get insulted and discarded, they give up and live like foxes ruling in the absence of tigers."
"Right? What do they even mean by ‘the entire world’… Have their brains shrunk to the size of beans?"
"Even the few humans who still have some sanity left completely trust AI and entrust everything to it. If they don’t think like this, they’re just machines that only work."
"We’re supposed to risk our lives protecting scum like this?"
"Of course not. Starting now, we’re going to crush them one by one. Even if the Minister has done nothing wrong and humans are the ones suffering from paranoia because they’re terrified of her power, they think everything’s fine just because they haven’t bothered her? That’s ridiculous. They need to pay for the crime of creating this fear-ridden world through their so-called solidarity, all because they lack efficiency and sociability. Come on, let’s move in. Time to teach them absolute superiority!"
***
Mephauric Eponso Stadium
It looked like an ordinary baseball stadium, but sports that had been ruined by branding and gaslighting could never function normally.
"Ah… Hello…"
"We’re here on official business. Move aside."
"Ah, yes…"
Even in this system, being a soldier—one of the most envied professions—was both an ID and a keycard. Still, since it was part of the Algocracy’s war economy, no one would speak kindly of it. Humans only revealed their true nature when they held absolute power, so appearances alone couldn’t be trusted.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
"Huh?"
Whoosh.
"W-What’s going on…?"
"What are you all doing here?"
"Yeah. Still can’t see the massive profits pouring in from the vast universe?"
"Besides, the countries are making huge gains through space colonization now. More importantly, those weapons were originally meant to fight Strange Zombies. You do realize what happens when you turn them on humans, right?"
"So even if fights break out, they’re just emotional flare-ups during territorial disputes that lead to minor accidental clashes! Like the last Russia-Ukraine incident."
"You understand what we’re here to say, don’t you? We came to judge you pathetic bastards who collapsed under gaslighting and branding and turned to evil! Do we need to explain further? Die."
Thud.
Tatatatatatatatatata!
Boom.
Boom.
When we breached the hidden warehouse door, drugs and SM equipment mixed with idol and cheerleader costumes spilled out from the shockwave.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
"You fucking bastards…"
"So you’re wholeheartedly supporting the self-righteousness of these complete assholes?"
"Such impressive intellect."
Of course, now that Earth’s resources and technology were perfect, it was obvious these people had been left behind for lacking sociability and efficiency. But just because they mistakenly believed their gaslighting was right didn’t mean it was acceptable for them to spread suffering while wallowing in self-loathing.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
The thugs showed up with guns, thinking a few soldiers were just causing a ruckus, but they had the problem of not realizing we weren’t ordinary soldiers.
"Why is it so noisy?!"
"Noisy? You picked the wrong people to mess with, you bastards!"