Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 197: Repercussions

“No, I am not available for comment right this moment, but I’ll call you back later today, somewhere between two and five hours from now,” Isaac said and hung up the phone.

“Was it really that important?” one of the other people in the meeting room said. Isaac’s meeting room. Right now, they were discussing the future of his company, and he’d just picked up an apparently unimportant call from a random number in the middle of a meeting.

The people he was dealing with might have been handpicked to not piss him off with all the petty bullshit and office politics, but even they had their limits. And this happening for the fifth time was apparently one of them.

“Sorry, Edgar.” Isaac apologized to his in-house counsel “I haven’t had a calm moment in days and I can’t afford to be completely unreachable. Public perception is still going nuts over what the [System] could do, and I’m doing all I can to try and calm things down.”

And what chaos the world had been thrown into.

Considering that Hamburg had been incomparably worse in terms of casualties, it was weird to see the current situation be treated as so much more terrible. But there was a logic underlying this weirdness, however, twisted said logic might be.

To a population raised on a steady diet of superhero comics and action movies, the sight of a man in a cape-wearing the archetypical supervillain costume floating above a city and tossing around bolts of energy was familiar. Not something that belonged in the real world, mind you, but familiar nonetheless. Especially with that enemy being taken down by people way closer to the norm, with creativity, determination, and sheer stubbornness “winning the day”.

The villain had been incredibly strong, but at the end of the day, humanity had won the day. As horrific as the sheer number of casualties had been, it had been largely ignored in favor of the “victory”.

This time, the big threat had once again been something people were familiar with, but not as something that made you go “oh cool”. No, zombies and other undead belonged to the domain of horror movies and the like. “Zombie plague” was something that was nigh-synonymous with theApocalypse most of the time. And not the superhero kind of apocalypse, where the planet blew up every other day, only to be restored in the next issue, but the actual end of humanity.

It painted a mental image of buildings slowly wasting away, crumbling into nothingness once there were no more people around to take care of them.

Of cities turning into forests and wild animals roaming the streets.

Of scattered survivors dying one by one from things that wouldn’t have mattered in the “old world”, of them slowly wasting away from hunger and thirst, of them desperately fighting tooth and nail to eke out a living amidst the ruins of their former lives.

As far as Isaac was concerned, undead were disgustingly gross, but perfectly beatable opponents. But he was pretty desensitized to that issue. To everyone else … people were losing their shit.

Before, the danger posed by the [System] had been something people had known intellectually, some more, some less. It was much like climate change in that way.

It was a danger and while a lot of people agreed that it was a problem, how seriously they took the problem varied greatly. There were also people who either dismissed the issue outright or minimized it because if they didn’t have to be careful, they could profit in the short term. Whether they’d just decided it wasn’t a problem or were being willfully ignorant of the fact that they were screwing themselves over in the long term wasn’t quite clear, though.

Now though, things had gotten considerably worse, and people were scared. And scared people were stupid people, proposing a lot of very over-the-top or unrealistic responses to the issue.

For example, enforced power parity was not something that would work outside of the ivory tower of academia. The idea that you could somehow create a situation where people were only allowed to gain a Level when everyone else had caught up was theoretically something that could enforce equality.

The only thing preventing it was, well, the real world. Telling people they couldn’t get better at their job because someone else still hadn’t caught up, stopping those striving for self-improvement because others didn’t have the same drive, cutting down those who reached for the stars … Isaac would have given that a week before it all blew up catastrophically.

And yes, it was an undeniable fact that some people had a head start because of an accident of birth, as was the fact that that was unfair. But enforced Level parity, which would have also required someone to be of a considerably higher Level than everyone else to manage that system, that could only end in disaster.

Stopping those who hoarded power for power’s sake, and just “power”, mind you, might slow down the apocalypse. Everything else, whoof, what a mess.

Yet that was exactly what the mob was calling for. Individual people were smart, but mobs were as smart as their dumbest members, and fear had pushed oh so many people into becoming a part of one.

High-Level people were being demonized, even those who were merely above the average Level of the Populus.

Then there was the entirely different issue that had likewise boiled over now. Social stratification.

Between Levels, [Skills] and [Skill] Levels, it had become remarkably easy to quickly judge people.

Take one look at the part of their character sheet someone was willing to reveal and you’d get a pretty good idea of who they were and what they could do.

Of course, there were a million different ways the [System’s] quantifications were insufficient. They couldn’t show someone’s drive, someone’s determination, or where they could eventually go, but prospective employers oh so loved taking the easy way.

That was already an issue.

Then, Ranks had been introduced, something that superseded the leveling system to quantify someone’s overall combat capability, taking into account such things as [Class] rarity, Aspects slotted, and [Skill] types in a way that raw numbers failed to show.

And now, people were starting to treat that as direct proof that they were better than others. Not just better at a certain thing, but overall superior. Isaac had also been trying to deal with that, poking holes in the various ideas of “superiority” whenever he could, but he was just one man, and there was only so much he could do.

Creating a situation where social mobility once again seemed possible was important, but very much a work in process.

Overall result, the world was a friggin mess and everything was boiling over.

Things that had been simmering just below the surface had burst out when the overall situation had deteriorated.

Which lead to Isaac in the here and now, uncharacteristically open to receiving calls from reporters, picking up all of them and even answering them immediately if it took less than a couple of minutes.

Edgar sighed and nodded “I know this is important, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t annoying.”

Isaac nodded along internally. Having someone constantly stop the conversation mid-meeting was annoying. But it was nice that he was surrounded by understanding people. After all, that was why he’d hired them. Sure, having good employees was important, but it didn’t matter how good someone was if you couldn’t work with them.

“Thanks.” Isaac said, “So, what’s the status of our planned scholarships?”

“Being prepared.” Edgar said, pointing at the big screen on the wall opposite to the window into the warehouse “One of these days, you’re going to have to explain to me how you foresee these things. People are up in arms about how hard the ranking system makes social upward mobility hard and here we are, already preparing to help talented youngsters actualize their full potential.”

“I got lucky,” Isaac said, and he meant it. Mostly. He’d prepared the scholarships to help talented youths he knew from the other timeline and prove to the world that it was possible to advance safely. Also, to combat the social stratification. The fact that the situation was coming to a head just as they’d started out advertising the scholarship was sheer coincidence.

“Then you’re the luckiest man in the world.” Monika, who was in charge of the company’s finances, commented “The fact that we can already afford to be giving out scholarships after only existing for a few months is staggering.”

“Eh, imagine we had to pay the boss an S-Ranker’s salary. We’d be so deep in the red …” Luitpold commented dryly. He was in charge of the summoning operations in the warehouse. In most corporate structures, he wouldn’t have gotten a seat at the table, but Isaac had made a point to ensure there was communication between the leadership and the people working on the ground floor.

As companies grew in size, the people making the decisions stopped knowing the lower-level employees and as a result, started seeing them as numbers on a balance sheet, rather than individuals in their own right. Sure, having the company’s owner continuously say “treat employees well” would help, but not to the same degree as having the people directly affected in the room as the decisions were made.

“Don’t even joke about that.” Monika shuddered.

“Point is, we can afford to set up a scholarship, and Isaac wants to set one up.” Edgar said, “I already drew up all the paperwork and even wrote up the ‘I promise not to be an asshole’ ‘contract’.”

“Wait, what?” Monika laughed “I have to see that contract.”

“It’s literally that: I promise not to be an asshole.” Edgar said “That, and the ‘sign here’ line. The whole contract is magically enhanced so that no one can sign it unless they mean it. And because the scholarship is aimed at young people without many Levels, it should work.”

“And the point of that is?” Anne Schildhauer, the company’s CEO, asked, looking between Isaac and the lawyer.

“The point is that I don’t want to empower people who can’t promise not to behave badly and mean it. There’s nothing legally binding about the contract, I’ve been told you can’t define the ‘asshole’ enough, but this is just a way to see if someone means their promise. And I know that things might change in the future, but it’s important that at the start of their journey, that promise was given in earnest.”

Anne nodded “Ok. Anything else about the scholarships?”

“I did sift through the first wave of applications, but that can wait,” Edgar said.

“Right.” Anne nodded again “We’ve already bought up several properties in this city and a few others around the country. With the help of those [Spatial Mages], you leveled up, logistics have been perfect and overall, the only thing limiting our rate of expansion is our finances. We’re still expanding quickly, though.”

Isaac had trained a few of weaker [Spatial Mages] from the ranks of his employees for the company’s use. His assistants at the university were far better and would have been wasted working for mere profit, they were perfect for supporting the effort to demystify the [System]. Thankfully, it seemed like things had gone well on that front.

“Also, we’ve bought our first several facilities outside the country. One is working with the Dungeon Guild and is perfectly located in Seoul and I’m certain it’s going to go well. The one in Texas looks to be going well too, but …”

Isaac’s phone rang and she gave him a “don’t you dare” look for a moment, then sighed and gave him a resigned nod. The others looked

Oh, he was going to have to find a way to make this up to everyone. Crap.