“My Lord? There is no need-” Niles started to speak, but Truth cut him off.

“Accept it or don’t. Either way, I stand by what I said. Now, since I know you don’t think I have anything to apologize for, we will talk about your work. Looks like you have achieved great things.”

Niles struggled for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, my Lord. We have followed your instructions diligently. We took as our foundation your words- Faith, Family, Prosperity, and built from there. Building the ideological foundation was actually the hardest part, and continues to be a work in progress. However, it has been fairly straightforward making the alterations to the terms of our contracts with our network.”

“Really? I thought that the contracts would take a fair bit of legal wrangling. You are directly changing the compensation structure, after all.”

“Thankfully, my Lord, the contracts the previous administration used had a clause that said- “You agree to be bound by the MegaShroom Representative Manual For Excellence and Success in addition to this contract,” and another section that said “MegaShroom reserves the right to alter any of the terms and conditions of this contract, including the contents of the MegaShroom Representative Manual For Excellence and Success, at any time, with no notice,” and perhaps most importantly, “You, and your agents, heirs and assignees agree to waive your right to sue MegaShroom for anything, ever, including breach of contract.”

“That’s legal?”

“Completely. But we do have an internal arbitration process, so that’s… something that exists.”

“Ah. And the Manual?”

“Specifies things like the structure of the network of Representatives, what it takes to be promoted or demoted, the cost of product, purchase minimums, that sort of thing. Heavily revised now.” Niles said with quiet pride.

“Which is why the ideological component was the key.” Truth nodded. “You were setting the principles behind the policy.”

“Exactly, my Lord. Exactly.”

“Explain more about the principles.”

“We are building on two systems, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit one is hierarchical- a pyramidal structure of Representatives recruiting junior Representatives and so on. The deeper one’s network, the more ‘passive’ income one accrues. Obviously, as the peak of the pyramid, we accumulate the most.”

“Right, both in your cut of the sales and your direct sale of inventory to the representatives.”

“Correct, my Lord. Though in practice, we sell comparatively little outside the company. Some people do earn a small sum selling our products, but it’s almost unheard of to earn back the cost of purchasing inventory. Given how much inventory their upstream contacts push them to buy.”

“Ah. So…?”

“So the real thing that we sell is new recruits to the old recruits.”

Truth had kind of known that, but hearing it stated so baldly was still, somehow, startling.

“Someone is recruited, pressured into buying a mountain of inventory, and then they realize they have no way to sell the inventory. Strangely, nobody likes having their neighbors constantly harassing them to buy things. Despair sets in, usually within a few months, and the new representatives realize that their only hope of generating income is to recruit more people. Then they can pressure the new recruits into buying a mountain of inventory, for which they get a percentage.”

And so the cycle repeats. A particularly fast churn if the recruit had gone into debt to purchase the ‘product’.

“Alright, that’s the explicit system. What’s the implicit one?”

“Essentially a cult.”

Truth blinked at that, even though he could immediately see the similarities.

“A ‘cult’ is not a system,” he observed.

“Yes, my Lord. I mean that in the sense that we encourage cultish behavior. Isolation from one’s family and social groups, endless indoctrination, unquestioning obedience and adherence to cult leaders, the suppression of rational or instinctive beliefs in favor of obeying doctrine, the usual sorts of things.”

“Ah. I think I see where this is going.”

“My Lord is wise. Yes, we have already built the structure of a religion in all but name. The ‘heaven’ we promise is similar to the one promised by other faiths- a place of peace, security, and pleasure. In our case, the medium of deliverance is money, and money is obtained through faith and good works.”

Truth restrained the urge to rub the spot between his eyebrows. His suggestion to work with the Church was either brilliant or derived from direct infernal inspiration.

“As you can imagine, our cooperation with the Church of Praeger has gone swimmingly.”

“I thought it might. I think I underestimated the potential.”

“I must confess I was shocked too. I had not realized the key, final component that drives both systems. Shame.”

“Shame?”

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“Yes, my Lord, shame. No one likes being treated like an entrepreneurial plague rat. It hurts. It hurts so much, they would do almost anything to stop the pain.”

Truth felt something in him spasm. Something lashing around and screaming in rage. “Entrepreneurial plague rat.” Exactly how he thought of Mom. It seems he wasn’t the only one who could spot the obvious metaphor. But now he was being asked to sympathize with Mom? Like Hell!

He only lost control for a moment, but his rage was enough to hammer Niles and the succubae. They remained on their knees, not daring to move or even, in Niles’ case, breathe.

“Bad memories. And you are not to blame for them. Yes, your description is apt. How does shame connect to the two systems, and advance our cause?”

“Lord, they are ashamed of being poor. They feel lesser. They are lesser. They are driven to find relief in the dream of money and the comfort of the cult. It is the engine that drives them. The more they are despised and the more they despise themselves, the more they cling to us.”

Truth nodded, hanging on to his temper with his fingernails.

“Lord… we can let them feel good about themselves in a way that even their neighbors approve of. The churches preach about their good works and their good moral example. After all their suffering, they are vindicated.”

Truth closed his eyes. He could see it. It was the Silent Night all over again. They might be awful trash, but now? Now they were going along with the way society was supposed to be AND they could still be trash. No need to reflect or improve. His parents looked so happy the night before the SAT. Happiest he had ever seen them. Wasn’t that nice? His last memory of his parents was of them happy.

He was a little surprised to realize he didn’t care if they were alive or dead. It just didn’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things, not to him personally. They were dead to him well before he hit puberty. Maybe that was another part of learning to be human. Learning to put down that weight. He didn’t have to carry his shitty parents around with him everywhere. He wasn’t there yet.

“Lay out the program you have them working on now.”

“Food drives were the first one. Except, of course, they are raising money and using the money to buy food. Even with rationing, we were able to reach an arrangement with various officials. The Church was instrumental there. They already had a lot of the infrastructure in place. Then building shelters- same story. War orphans, refugees, doesn’t matter what it is. We started scrap metal drives, saying that the metal would be recycled into war machines.”

Truth shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Yes, my Lord, quite impossible. The metals are nowhere near the necessary quality or even the right alloys. But it sounds right. It is something everyone can do. Everyone can contribute. In fact we sort and sell the scrap and use it to fund more functional social programmes. And through it all, we hammer away on the notions of Family, Faith and Prosperity.”

It suddenly clicked. Family- “We are all a big family here,” was one of those management cliches that should be accompanied by ominous violins. But it was also an out for people. Mom said it herself, over and over again. All that MLM stuff she was doing was for the family. Not for her own poisoned dreams- the family. Faith and prosperity, for many in Jeon, were already synonyms.

“Two systems- the hierarchical business and the cult. Plug in the right ideology and watch the wheel spin.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“We will explore this more in a minute, but what about the other piece of the ideology I wanted established?”

“Turning love to hate, tearing Starbrite down from its throne? It is being steadily accomplished, though we keep it quiet. We establish contrasts with existing organizations and let the public draw inferences.” Niles’ voice managed to be quite smooth as he said that. Truth thought he was starting to sound a little like Thrush. Butler’s influence, probably.

“Draw contrasts?”

“Yes. For example, Wayru was founded, originally, by the descendants of the first King of Jeon’s stable boy. So we would say “You know, Wayru is a true Jeon corporation, unlike some who merely disguise themselves to better access our wealth.””

“Then someone else, at a completely unrelated time, would say- “Isn’t it funny how Starbrite isn’t really a Jeon company? Everyone knows how he comes from off-world.”

“Exactly, my Lord. And a third person points out that it can’t be good for any country to have so much of its wealth and industry owned by foreigners. And a fourth person, somewhere else again, just wants to know why someone would come from off-world to set up a business here. Not saying anything, just asking the question. Nothing wrong with just asking questions, right?”

Truth grinned mirthlessly. Not a single soul in Jeon believed that it was harmless to ask questions.

“I see. And because it’s coming from all different directions and from seemingly unrelated people, it’s not obviously propaganda.”

“Right. It also matters who delivers what message. For example, we might persuade a member, or her husband, who has relevant economic experience, to appear on a scry-cast and talk about the state of the economy and the hidden danger of sabotage by foreign actors. Meanwhile, the more conspiracy minded stuff would come from peers- usually one woman to another over coffee.”

Truth nodded along. “Organizing group get-togethers and ‘parties’ where the goods are shown off is a routine part of the sales playbook, if I recall correctly. A good opportunity to plant seeds.”

“Yes, people naturally ascribe greater weight to what they hear from friends than what they hear in the news. Generally, the authoritative voices are used to validate their existing prejudices.”

“You… did well in school, didn’t you?”

“Top ten in my class, my Lord. A useless vanity from another life.” There was no attempt to hide the sudden tension in Niles’ shoulders. He really didn’t like thinking about the past. Truth would bet cash that night clerk had at least looked at a post-grad degree. Given his social rank and family ties, he certainly would have gone to college.

“So far we have sown the seeds of mistrust. How do we turn that into hate for Starbrite? Or at the very least, a total rejection of Starbrite and everything it stands for?” Truth asked.

“We need to let the distrust build up to a certain degree, then either fabricate or expose some atrocity by the company. Centuries of prestige can be lost remarkably quickly, with the right motivation. Combined with the persistent fear brought by the social changes and the war? People will turn on Starbrite in days, if not hours. The longer we have to prepare the ground, the faster the turn.”

“Assuming we can show them something horrible enough. Something to make people feel self righteous about.”

“Yes, and it has to affect the general citizenry in an immediate, tangible way. Treason would be best, though profiteering and theft of war resources would also be good.”

Truth smiled humorlessly. If he were running Starbrite, right now, all his contracts would be to provide goods at cost. The lost profits would be irrelevant, and the potential for distraction would be heavily reduced. That assumed that Starbrite was, in any way, still running the corporation. The old monster could well be in total seclusion. Which meant that there were fewer people in place to stabilize things if they went wrong.

Now how to make sure the dominos fell the way he wanted them to?