Chapter 548: First, Change the Children

Aron nodded. "It's exactly what you think," he said. "The awakening phenomenon isn't over, and when people reach the early stages of puberty, the clock will start ticking down to their eventual awakenings as well. Thankfully, though, the process will be much smoother as it won't be as... abrupt as the first awakening was.

"So, to prevent the orphans who are soon to awaken, the House of Hope plan was brought forward and made the main thrust of the Coeus Foundation's activities. We will guide the newly awakened through their growth phase and seamlessly shift them into 'hero academies' as they reach the age of awakening. That serves a dual purpose—first, it'll prevent them from their desperation driving them to a life of crime, and second, it'll guide them into working for the empire instead of becoming part of private forces in the hands of noncitizens.

"Prior to the mass awakening of the three percent, we'd already made plans for the House of Hope project, but at that time, it was meant to raise generations of people who would be staunch imperial loyalists. We would raise them, teach them, and train them to work in whatever sector we needed them, but that became infeasible after the mana density reached critical mass."

Aron stopped speaking and waited for his fiancee's mind to catch up. She was a very intelligent and quick-witted woman, but exhaustion makes fools of the best. He sneakily carved a refresh rune in the air and pressed it to her, clearing the fog from her mind, then waited for her response.

The silence stretched for a moment as Rina's face scrunched up in thought. Then she finally asked, "You said there were other reasons. What are they?"

"At the time, unemployment, especially among the uneducated, was on the rise. If we hadn't done something to combat it, it would've led to an unrecoverable tailspin into another economic depression. So we overstaffed all of our programs that were run through the Coeus Foundation as part of that. With a staff to child ratio of one to five, that provided twenty million jobs to people who were of good character, firm convictions, and strong morals through the House of Hope program alone.

"Most of them work as caregivers and have been put through a crash course in early childhood education, but we also hired a lot of people that were made redundant in the fields of healthcare, as well as former orphanage staff members from around the world. We even went so far as to ensure that each House of Hope we built or renovated was multicultural to help break the cycle of ignorance that leads to issues like racism and sexism.

"We also focused on recruiting staff members that had lost their own children, either to miscarriages or... other, more violent, incidents. The goal is to raise the children to be morally upright and righteous in their convictions, and firm in their determination to do good to the benefit of humanity, after all."

Aron and Jai were investing in the future, raising these children to be dominos in a long chain, whose good behavior and willingness to fight against injustice would build a better environment for humanity as a whole from the very ground up. It would be a generational change, and as such it would be more solid than anything the empire could enforce on people from the top down.

If you want to change the world, you must first change the children.

"That said, we won't be forcing anything on the children. Instead, we'll guide them and winnow the wheat from the chaff through multiple evaluations. None of us are so immature that we'll believe in the inherent goodness of man or some bullshit like that. Some children, despite their guardians' best efforts, are simply irredeemable. So those children, we'll subtly separate from the rest and provide them an upbringing that encourages them to find a place they can express their nature without being punished for doing so."

"Like ARES?" Rina interjected. After all, in most situations, arson, murder, and bombings would get one thrown in prison. But in the military, those same actions would get those same people rewarded with medals and glory.

"Indeed." Aron smiled. "We'll subtly manipulate them into joining our military, where their talents will also be put to use. Over the years they're being raised in the House of Hope, they will never, not once, be unmonitored, and all of their actions and talents will determine their futures. And even if only a minority of them join the imperial government, it's still worth it.

"Besides, the alternative is for them to end up on the streets or as victims of forced prostitution, sweatshops, organ farms.... The list of potential bad ends for orphans goes on, especially those who have been picked up by shady, underfunded orphanages relying on unreliable donations or criminal consortiums backing them.

"The House of Hope program is a closed orphanage system that will not allow for adoption or outside fostering of the children we raise in it. If anything, it's more like a boarding school for all ages, where the caregivers care for the children, the children care for the younger children, and all of them are given the best of the best when it comes to providing them with the tools to lead a successful, happy life once they age out and become Hope Alumni."

"Now I'm really curious to see how the so-called 'Hope Alumni' influence the empire in the future," Rina said with a smile.

Currently, the empire was being held together by spit, chewing gum, and baling wire, through Aron's overwhelming military might and technological prowess. No one was foolish enough to think that all imperial citizens had been completely willing when they joined the empire. They were merely in it either in pursuit of the benefits offered to imperial citizens, or in fear of the dystopian nightmare that they felt noncitizens would be suffering through once the fortress cities were complete and the two societies finally completely separated.

Thus, raising his own imperial adherents was a masterstroke of planning from Aron's side and displayed his forward thinking. It was becoming more obvious as time passed that the Terran Empire would long outlive its founder and first emperor, and Rina, whose curiosity was finally sated, closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.