Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

'What would happen then?'

Rita had no other image to conjure, so she searched her own knowledge of history for a parallel.

"Would it force these people to frantically exploit the largest population they could control, making the exploited sacrifice themselves so that the latecomers could catch up? And in doing so, secure their own social status?"

Rita quickly understood what would happen. All she could think of were the actions taken by every late-developing nation in history: reduce labor costs and intensify the extraction of surplus value from their own people.

In other words, the later an industrial nation develops, the more surplus value it needs to wring out of its populace during the process.

Many small nations didn't even have the population or resources to complete this process, destined only to become a cog in the industrial cycle of larger powers.

If this was the case, it seemed Noldrei didn't want humanity to repeat such a painful path of transformation.

"You're right, Rita. If—and I mean if—I were to use Gene-ism to exploit all of humanity and centralize my own power, what do you think you would do?"

Noldrei asked a question he had wanted to ask for a long time. So far, perhaps no one besides Otto Apocalypse had ever considered the catastrophic consequences if Noldrei were to truly abuse the power he held.

"That would depend on how far you took it, Director. After all, Rita isn't a woman who naturally craves social chaos and revolution, is she?"

"How far?" Noldrei mused for a moment. "Historically, there have been two ways to centralize power through Gene-ism. The first is to slowly gather humanity's reproductive rights and then carefully redistribute them. The second is to first establish power by force, and then forcibly seize humanity's right to reproduce."

"Let's talk about the second one, a method commonly used by late-adopting Gene-ist states. They would consolidate political power with a group of strong men and then implement a plan of systematic, physiological sterilization for all women."

Rita's face went white. She was utterly speechless.

"If I chose the second method of centralization, what do you think would happen to you?"

It was a piercing question. Rita took a deep breath before answering, "Then Rita would fight to the death. I would rather die than be controlled by such power."

"But the end result is the same. Whether it's the first method, which leverages the anxiety surrounding humanity's need to reproduce, or the second, which uses brute force to achieve centralization. The ultimate goal is the unification of reproductive rights to face the harsh future of human society. The outcome is identical, so why do you see the second method as worse?"

The topic was so brutal that it sent a shiver down Rita's spine, a natural, chilling fear for any woman.

She bit her lower lip. "It's not the same. Rita is also afraid of becoming the price others have to pay to catch up."

"Is that so?" Noldrei wasn't surprised by her answer. He sighed, "And that is why I chose not to forcibly promote Gene-ism. Every ideology has its dark side, its antithesis. That is the dialectic of human thought."

Now, Rita truly believed Noldrei was telling the truth. He was genuinely worried about humanity going down the wrong path.

The maid's eyes grew misty. It turned out Noldrei was the true conservative.

She couldn't help but ask, "What is the dark side of Gene-ism?"

"Flesh worship," Noldrei said after a moment's thought. "The dark side of any ideology is the worship of an individual or of the material! An 'ism' is an expression of the limits of human thought. When taken to its extreme, this expression manifests as the superstition we call worship."

"Gene-ism is a result of advancements in bioscience, used to create a comfortable social order. Social order is the result of an ideology's development, and those who worship that order will inevitably find an object or person to represent it, completing the act of worship. That is why I say the dark side of an 'ism' is 'worship'."

"Humans who have been battered and broken by a Gene-ist political entity will develop a form of flesh worship. They will become superstitious about the randomness of human reproductive power, deriving a kind of emotional satisfaction from it, and then begin an endless cycle of reproduction and destruction. They accelerate this random creation process artificially to accumulate a sufficient amount of genetic information."

"And that is precisely why a centralized power under Gene-ism must destroy a woman's ability to reproduce independently. Rita, do you now understand why I want to preserve humanity's somewhat primitive, conservative ideologies, like nationalism?"

Genetic information accumulation—Rita knew the concept.

But she had never imagined that someone would achieve it by seizing humanity's reproductive rights through centralized power, then accelerating the process through limitless procreation.

She now fully understood the strategy Noldrei described, the one latecomer political entities used to catch up to their predecessors.

Rita frowned, fighting back a wave of nausea. "Is there truly no way to solve this problem?" she asked.

Noldrei looked at Rita, shocked. "Rita, are you all overestimating me? If we people from the future could solve a conflict that's existed for tens of thousands of years, do you think I would have needed to travel back in time?"

"Huh?" Rita stared back at him, equally shocked. If even incredible people from the future couldn't solve this problem, how could 'primitives' like them, who were still adapting to this new society, possibly solve it?

"Director, if even you can't solve it, then why are you pushing us into this new society so quickly?"

Rita felt like Noldrei was leading them all to ruin.

For the first time, she felt like she could empathize with Kiana.

This immense responsibility for the future of humanity had somehow, suddenly, fallen onto the shoulders of a simple florist.

Rita gave a bitter smile. "My dear Director, I'm starting to regret coming here to ask you for clarification. I was originally just worried about our mission, but you've given me this enormous societal problem."

"I'm just… I'm just a minor enforcer for Schicksal."

"Ask me to deal with a few troublesome individuals or some bastards who get in your way, that's no problem. Fighting a few Honkai Beasts is a trivial matter. I could even take out a member or two of World Serpent."

But this? Noldrei had given Rita a terrifying, unsolvable problem.

Rita suddenly felt an immense weight on her shoulders, as if something was pressing down on her, suffocating her.

When Noldrei had first promoted Gene-ism in the Academy City, he had only talked about the centralization of power under a "Mother of the Stigma." He had never mentioned the corresponding, terrifying social problems that came with it.

"Rita, I have high hopes for you! You know that, right? Why else would I have asked Otto to have you help me? If it was just about fighting people or Honkai Beasts, why wouldn't I have asked for Durandal?"

"What I value is your 'astounding intelligence'!"

Noldrei's encouragement did nothing to ease Rita's mind. In fact, it only made her more afraid.