A terrible fact of life is that certain things suck and no matter how hard you beg, plead, bargain, or cajole, you can’t change it.

At the moment, Government topped the list of things Mark thought sucked. First, his replacements, promised to be a week out, had already taken over a month. There was no word why this was happening, so Mark just had to wait until someone showed up.

Second, he was now in charge of the government of Gebo. If the governor did anything legitimate on the planet, Mark had no idea how. Several layers of bureaucracy seemed to infect every government position, leading to difficulties getting minor tasks done since each request was filtered through twenty-five people.

His days were spent meeting special interest groups, talking with employers who had a bum employee who kept their position through influential positioning and wanted his permission so that they could fire him, meetings from employees who only had their position through influential positioning that offered to bribe him, legislative meetings, and on and on.

The military also had its useless people, but the military did it right. Not unless you’re an officer, and not until you reach field-grade, do you get to be useless. Then, you get stuck watching powerpoint slides presented to you by Lieutenants who are training to become useless when they get older. He remembered his training:

“There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm . . . Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.”

Since several of the transactions were off the books, the forensic accounting process was also stalled. Though the governor implicated himself in numerous crimes, he didn’t want to give up the money trails. Mark figured the governor held out hope that he could bribe someone to get his sentence shortened, or at least take the death penalty off the table.

Getting old also sucked. Mark wasn’t old by anyone’s definition, but he did know that he used to recover much quicker. Stretching and warming up were luxuries before, now, they were necessity. His warmup consisted of wearing two sets of sweat clothes and pouring Ben-Gay all over muscles while he walk/jogged for thirty minutes to get warmed up. As ridiculous as the routine was, it made a tremendous difference for how tired he felt at the end.

He was also feeling the debuffs. Bully, cheater, social stigma, government suit, and dirty rat were still part of his current build, and all of them gave him various faction hits. This meant that an already unmanageable situation was compounded by various people who didn’t like him. Cheater put him odds with industry executives, while social stigma made him hated by various clergymen, who campaigned for an immediate end to the martial law and a new election held.

In most video games, the town building aspects involved perfectly harmonious groups doing exactly what the leader tells them. In reality, it involved allocating scarce time and resources to whichever group was the most likely to cause trouble, not whichever groups were the most beneficial or useful.

The constant work outs between the mandatory training aboard his ship and back in the real World meant Mark was becoming very acquainted with his physical limits. To his dismay, his game stats didn’t increase any, but gaining stats in the game World the traditional way was just as slow as gaining stats in the real World the traditional way. Despite not gaining any stats, he was getting better at combat and marksmanship, even if the game didn’t show it on his stat list. If this was a glitch, it could be interesting. A PC with a low hand to hand combat score could still royally work someone over with a higher combat score if they knew how to fight in the real World.

During morning PT aboard the Calrusian Major, he finally heard the call he’d been waiting for. Or more accurately, he heard the recording of a call that he had been waiting for. After it had been decrypted, a holographic image appeared.

“Captain Thomas”, a commanding female voice called out, “I am Col. Elizabeth Rola.” Her visage appeared in the holodeck in the Captain’s quarters. She was a small, but powerfully built woman in her early 50s. Her grey-blond hair was wrapped up in a small bun. She had a fireplug build that was uncommon for space commanders, either she really enjoyed powerlifting or she was originally from a planet with a higher gravity than Earth.

“I am here to take over the operations on Gebo. We can hopefully meet in the governor’s mansion and you can give me a rundown on operations on the planet, and we’ll brief you on what you’ve missed out on.”

Part of the data packet transmitted over included a schematic of the ship the Colonel was on. Mark whistled. This was a “ship” in the same way that a Rolls Royce is an automobile. The thing was massive: 300,000 tons of steel, 1,500 feet long, and fielded a crew of 820 comfortably. Her ship, The Guardian, was a luxury deep space interplanetary explorer. Each of the cabins was a full luxury suite with stasis and life support. The recreational area was two football fields long.

Mark had the tiniest tinge of jealousy pulling on his heart, but remembered that “Rank brings privilege”. He’d get his own super ship in due time. If he could track down the organization, he’d be up for at least a field grade promotion, and probably on the short list for general officer candidates.

But his dreams of ruling space would have to wait for now. His first order of business was finding a place for her to land. Her ship was designed for large-scale colonization, which meant even for a trading hub like Gebo, there simply wasn’t anything large enough at the space station to support her. He could use his temporary governing authority to forcefully evacuate the space station, but cutting off trade and supply like that would start her administration off on a bad footing. If there is one lesson to be learned from American history, it’s that as long as the economy is fine, a government can get away with pretty much anything. But if the economy goes bad, the rest of the accomplishments don’t mean anything.

The problem was that for an advanced society, the council-manager form of government had a disadvantage whenever someone outside the area was transplanted in. In small communities, the government doesn’t need to do anything more than put out fires and light street lamps. Even then, those services were usually performed by private citizens or volunteers, occasionally drafted into service because they failed to pay taxes.

But as your community grows, you start getting high crime rates, terrible health conditions caused by crowded living conditions, lack of public water supplies and wastewater treatment facilities. Dust, mud, and garbage litter the streets. Water supplies become contaminated, derived mostly from backyard wells and waste disposal went through outdoor privies, often getting into the ground water. This creates frequent pandemics of yellow fever, typhoid, and cholera.

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With this background in mind, cities typically transformed into the previous government that Mark was now overseeing. Political bosses exchanged votes for promises of jobs, fixing all the problems plaguing rapid industrial and city growth, and give jobs to people who needed them in areas like construction. Unfortunately, this style of government brought with it two sets of problems Mark had tried to deal with.

The first problem is the obvious one that almost everyone will figure out; massive amounts of corruption start weighing down the benefits of the government. Growth slows down as ossified businesses rely upon the government to remove any competitors or at the very least give preferential treatment to favored parties over regulations and safety inspections.

The second problem is more insidious, and not often thought about. As governments keep expanding, they do so without thinking about the rate of return on those investments. Everything succumbs to the law of diminishing returns, and every piece of construction is also a major reoccurring expense. Failing to provide for the upkeep results in roads filled with potholes, bridges that collapse, and buildings that kill the occupants.

His initial plan was the one he most often picked, let someone else deal with it. However, as the weeks dragged on, he knew that he’d need to come up with some sort of plan. Running the government was like being in a vehicle with accelerators and decelerators that would eventually work, you simply didn’t know when or where the effect would happen. This meant that the best strategy for short-term success was to simply hold onto the steering wheel, drive straight, and not touch anything you don’t have to.

Having absolutely no experience in managing a government, Mark looked up online how these institutions changed over time. He couldn’t do it in the game, but he could tell EVE to lookup in the information while he was in the game, and he had a nice reading list assembled in front of him. Eve offered to simply read it for him and transplant it into his memory, but even outside of the physical discomfort caused by rapidly gaining knowledge, the other problem was that he wanted time to assimilate and grapple with the ideas. Just having it downloaded to his head would be like reading the Cliff Notes version of Shakespeare instead of actually reading Shakespeare.

By both temperament and logic, he reckoned that a template built upon tried and true ideas would work better than attempting a radical solution. The ideal government manager was someone who knew all the people on the ground, their factions and allegiances, long-term goals, and how to balance out the considerations from multiple vying groups. He knew absolutely none of that. The next best way to go about it was the way that Col. Rola planned on doing it: bring as many competent people that you already know along and have them do all the heavy lifting.

That would put her at odds with the satraps that hung onto the previous administration, and the ones Mark begrudgingly continued to support, but that was her problem.

He did decide that he would at least give her his notes on proposed reforms. He had Arabella Scott draw up the paperwork. Assigning NCOs bullshit tasks like that was one of the ways for an officer to embitter their command with the enlisted, so he gave her an extra day of leave as recompense for the assignment. He hoped that would mollify her while he focused on his real task, scouting a location to have the massive ship land on. He choose a spot outside of town that was flat, but also overrun by the most populace flora on the planet, gigantic blue flowered plants known as iridoplasts. Their blue pigment allows them to survive in low-light conditions, necessary for a planet like Gebo that often tilted away from the sun and into darkness.

Unfortunately, that lack of sunlight also meant that he’d have to set up a perimeter to light the area. The ship’s sensors could easily do a landing in complete darkness, it was a mandatory part of training, but offloading personnel into a completely dark jungle was hardly anyone’s idea of a welcoming ceremony for the new governor and her crew. Mark sent out orders to the overpriced groups that they need to cut down the area and make sure vehicles can egress and regress from the area. Then, he pondered what to wear. He could choose either civilian formal attire, which would indicate that the most important thing to him was that she was the new governor. The other option was military formal, which would indicate that he thought the most important thing was her military role.

He decided to go with the formal dress blues, even if it did put him at a disadvantage. As the ranking senior officer, she would have precedence over him. In civies, he would still be the governor and she would merely be a potential governor. But he figured that sort of petty power play on his part would create a bad first impression, and he really needed her to be on his side.

He then went to his holodeck and started recording, still in his less formal Captain’s uniform instead of the more constricted dress blues. “Greetings ma’am,” he began, “As I’m sure you’re aware, I am Captain Mark Thomas, current governor of Gebo. We are preparing a landing space for you currently. Unfortunately, no ship of your majestic proportions has ever graced this planet before, so we will have to park you outside of the city limits and escort you in. Our destination is the governor’s mansion, where we’ll discuss the change of command. Be warned this planet goes through seasonal complete darkness, and we’re in one of those phases. We’ve set up artificial light in the area, and will ping you with the coordinates when we finish.”

He then waited to hear back from his demolition and light teams. Cutting down big flowers and setting up lights shouldn’t be too difficult. To distract himself, he started looking at his cities stats. In most games, you can simply click an “Upgrade” button and be granted perks. In this game, you had to earn them.

The cities were subdivided into physical, cultural, economic, military, and political aspects.

The physical aspects were the easiest to decipher. The size of the city, the type of terrain that they were on, amount of rare minerals in the crust, level of hygiene in the area, and overall appearance.

The cultural aspects were the language in use, the literacy levels, and the overall tech and skill levels of the population.

The economic indicators were the wealth and status of the city. The “status” was as close to a health bar as a city had, ranging from “desperate” to “well functioning.” His city had a dismaying “Below Average” on it.

The political aspects were the most interesting. The government type was listed as “Corporate State - Military Government.” This wasn’t technically true, but he guessed it was close as the game had to “corrupt government.”

Next was the Control Rating. The control rating ran everything from whether a place required mandatory vaccinations, economic freedom and levels of taxation, censorship levels, reproductive choices, public health and the environment, requirements for sewage and waste disposal, number of regulations law enforcement had to check, requirements for shipping containers, and so forth.

The CR rating went from 1, which was an “anything goes” lawless area to a 10, which is where the government controlled everything. His city currently ranked at a 3. Next he looked at the corruption index, which ranged from a 0 to a -6. His city was at a -4.

The final stat was military strength and the resources available in case of war. He had 2.1 million credits available to spend on military resources, and a potential draft pool of 10% of the population, or 200,000 potential soldiers. The 2.1 million credits amounted to a hill of beans, his own ships cost 387 million for his original ship, and the one he received from the pirates was worth an estimated 830 million.

If it came down to conscription, all he could do was use the money to arm the populace and hope they killed more of the enemy than each other.

Before he could do any more fiddling, he wanted to run some war game simulations for how badly he’d get slaughtered if an invasion force came, he was interrupted by the demolitions crew he sent out.

After getting the notification, he then paged the Colonel to let her know that her ship could safely land. He wandered what sort of situation could have delayed someone who looked like a no nonsense leader for three extra weeks without sending word.