Interlude： A man named Gilbert-Jane
The place where that man was born is uncertain.
The oldest memory in his records is of him playing as one of the children in the slums of some country, with no knowledge of his parents.
In a place where the value of life was lower than that of bread, he did whatever it took to survive.
Though there are no records, it seems he had killed at least three people by his early teens.
With his natural looks and sharp mind, he became a leader among the boys and girls in the slums. Watching the adults who came to the orphanage, he came up with a business idea: human trafficking.
He would sell the children to wealthy families.
It took him a year to cleverly win the trust of the elderly woman who owned the orphanage, to the point where she entrusted him with her work. It was during this time that he learned to read and write.
Once he took over the work, things moved quickly. He brought in a tailor he had befriended and the owner of the brothel where he had been sleeping, and used them to dress up the children a little.
He didn’t discriminate between clients. Whether it was a serious couple looking for a child to adopt or a wealthy man with perverse desires for a handsome boy, he would hand them over without hesitation—as long as the price was right.
In truth, any foster parent would have been a blessing for the children of the slums. The slums of that country were a living hell. Fewer than one in ten children who lived there would make it to adulthood. To the children, he was a hero for giving them a roof over their heads. And for a long time, he himself believed that what he was doing was a good thing.
Human life can be turned into money. That was the lesson Gilbert had learned.
Gilbert was cunning. He gathered children who had lost their families into the orphanage and began indoctrinating them. He taught them to hate the powerful and to seek revenge against the country by using that very power.
To the powerful, he marketed the orphans as a way to improve their image: “It’ll look good if you take in children who’ve lost their parents,” he would say. Many jumped at the offer and took in the children.
They had no idea what kind of ideology had been planted in those children.
Fifteen years later, a revolution broke out in that country. With many participants coming from the families of the powerful, the capital fell in less than three days. Most of the ruling class were beheaded, and a revolutionary government was established.
The man who was pushed to become president of the revolutionary government was Gilbert Jane.
Without ever stepping into the spotlight himself, he had turned human life into a business and climbed to the top by the age of fifty.
But his fall from grace was just as swift. Gilbert was a master of human trafficking, but when it came to politics, he was a complete amateur.
After two years of dictatorship, Gilbert Jane was ousted as head of state. Arrested as a political criminal, he was sentenced to exile. It’s said that the reason he wasn’t executed was because he traded all the wealth he had amassed for his life.
Due to the collapse of Earth’s society, Gilbert’s life sentence of exile came to an end, and he returned to the surface after nearly a decade.
His muscles had weakened, and at first, he struggled even to stand. His main goal in returning was revenge—revenge against those who had betrayed him.
But those feelings were shattered by the sight of Earth’s faded glory. How many of those he wanted to take revenge on were even still alive?
The place he arrived at wasn’t his homeland. Growing a beard and hiding his face with his hair, Gilbert disguised himself as someone else, calling himself “Damos.” He began gathering survivors. Having more people around made it easier to search for food.
But even that eventually reached a dead end. There were too many people.
“You’re quite skilled at this. It’s as if you’re used to this kind of thing.”
“Who are you people?”
“We share the same ancestors as you.”
While rationing their meager supplies and searching for food and water across the barren land, Gilbert was starting to think they’d have to kill and eat someone to survive. That’s when they were approached by beings who called themselves the “Divine Ones.”
Just five in number, the Divine Ones possessed advanced technology that even Earth’s science couldn’t comprehend.
“We’ve come from the edge of the sky to save you,” they said.
At first, Gilbert dismissed their words as nonsense, but when they provided food for the immediate future, he decided to accept their offer for the time being. Even after seeing it with his own eyes, he couldn’t understand how the Divine Ones had created the food.
If they were useful, he’d use them. If they weren’t, he’d sell them off. It was what he’d always done.
The rumor that you wouldn’t go hungry if you came to this place spread mysteriously,
and by the time six months had passed since they landed, the population of the settlement had grown to hundreds of thousands.
Then one day, the Divine Ones told Gilbert:
“The main fleet is coming. Decide who will board the ships first.”
“Ships?”
“Yes. This planet is dying. There’s no future for you here.”
It’s finally happening, Gilbert thought.
He nodded deeply, his lips twisting into a grin.
“So, how many do I need to sell to improve my position?”
One of the Divine Ones smiled a similarly twisted smile.
“Did you notice?” he asked, laughing.
Of course I did, Gilbert thought. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing all along.
“How about a hundred thousand?”
“Sold.”
Gilbert’s smile was as clear and unclouded as it could be.
A ship carrying a hundred thousand people left Earth. One of the Divine Ones smirked on the deck.
The buyers were already decided. He couldn’t help but feel delighted at how smoothly the biggest deal in a long time had gone.
The Federation’s absolute fortress, Zodgia, had moved. Based on past experience, it would abandon Earth and leave. That’s why the higher-ups had acted.
The smile faded, and he sighed.
“How much more money do we need to rejoin the Federation?”
“I don’t know. The higher-ups are struggling too,”
replied one of the advance team members who had also descended to the surface.
“Are His Majesty and the others reaching their limit?”
“We’re in the same boat. If we can’t regain our citizenship in the Federation, we have no future.”
“Damn it. If only we could buy that system…”
The Divine Ones, exiled from the Federation, had their biological data erased. Without the ability to back up their lives, the stress of knowing death was permanent was eating away at their sanity.
Thinking about it made his nerves sharp. To change the subject, he voiced a random thought.
“Speaking of those mortals…”
“Yeah?”
“Why did we choose him?”
Before taking their “merchandise” under the guise of protection, the Divine Ones selected a representative. Gilbert had been the second choice.
“That woman they called the General would’ve been better, wouldn’t she? She was far more capable than him.”
“No, the man is better.”
“Why?”
“That woman acted for the future of the mortals. That man acts for his own desires.”
“And?”
“It’s simple. If we set the bait, he’ll try to use us for his own gain.”
The answer, that he only cared about himself, made perfect sense.
Out of the candidates they had considered, Gilbert was the one who fit the Divine Ones’ criteria.
“Is that why you destroyed the woman?”
“Yes. Left alone, she would’ve opposed us. Not dangerous, but troublesome, don’t you think?”
“True. …Say, what if we let him get Federation citizenship?”
“Hmm? Use his cunning to funnel the system to us?”
“Or we could blend in with the mortals and gain citizenship ourselves.”
That’s not a bad idea.
The ultimate goal of the Divine Ones was to return to the Federation. The seeds of life their kind had planted on undeveloped planets were based on their own genetic information.
To them, the Earthlings, for whom death was the end, were nothing but inferior beings. That’s why they looked down on them as “mortals.” They couldn’t bear to remain mortals themselves. That’s why they wanted to return to the Federation and restore their life backups.
Replacing their fear of death with disdain for mortals.
The first wave of the Divine Ones’ ships carried the pitiful Earthlings to their buyers.
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