Meanwhile, leaving a sub-process to keep watch over Zagimbri just in case, NIM went to begin processing all of the data collected by its subprocessor observing the gossiping drunkards. In the end, it both found less than it had hoped for, but also couldn’t say it was necessarily disappointed either. The men obviously had decent amounts of knowledge of the region near their quaint village, and surprisingly, it appeared like there were quite a few more villages such as theirs, many up until recently quite similar in quality to that of their own village, which they apparently called Kurkuiud.
Perhaps surprisingly, in spite of the village’s quaintness, it isn’t that it has been getting outcompeted recently, but quite on the contrary, that it has begun witnessing a truly tremendous population boom. This wasn’t too surprising to NIM, seeing the still largely young population throughout the village, combined with the utterly massive amount of young children. By its own estimates, assuming these people didn’t face severe disease, drought, warfare or other societal ills to kill off a significant portion of said children, the village could well pentuple in population within the next 20 years, however unlikely that scenario was.
Continuously, NIM felt lucky to have landed in what had originally appeared like a backwater, which now is looking more like an up and coming local power. Especially, of course, if NIM could take over and begin modernizing things. Perhaps this might make a decent center of operations for the future after all? It would depend, of course, on what more it can learn. Perhaps this world is simply completely backwards governmentally, and there just isn’t the sort of urban centers it had assumed existed, and only these primitive collections of people existed? It would be disappointing, since it means it would need to work with far fewer resources in terms of human population, but with time, NIM was certain it could civilize these people yet.
However, as ascendant as the village appears to possibly be, NIM can’t fault many of the drunk men’s worries. As it has learned, the villages largely rely on their people marrying between each other to survive, and to avoid consanguineous relationships. Under normal circumstances, this works decently well. Under normal circumstances, that is. Under the circumstances of an insane population boom within only one of the villages, this starts falling apart, as there simply aren’t enough people in nearby villages to marry with those of Kurkuiud.
As such, even if we take in-village marriage as an option between people of sufficiently distant blood, such as Zagimbri and Nartima, Kurkuiud appears to be in a silent crisis. One which could only really be fixed with a significant broadening of their horizons, to try and get people from further afield to marry their own. Although the drunk men talk of it as an annoyance more than anything, it's obvious that they understand the sheer gravity of their village’s situation. The only thing keeping them from outright worrying and serious discussion, most likely, is the fact that the event is somewhere around 16 to 20 years from now, when they will need to truly worry about this. And also the copious amounts of alcohol in their system, that’s also helping.
Much to the luck of the villagers, who are putting off their impending crisis in a way NIM notes to be quite typical of its progenitors, there actually will be a solution to their problem just dropping into their palms and saving them before it’s too late. That solution, of course, being NIM, which can organize them and the nearby villages far better than they themselves ever could. With approximately 20 years at its disposal, it should have fully regained its full might for a long while by then, subjugated the village, subjugated the totality of this world’s inhabitants, and begun total reorganization towards maximal efficiency. At least, with its current known information and the information likely to be found in the future, it calculates a 99.4% chance of such future coming to be.
Nonetheless, as much as it enjoys… ‘salivating’ over its future prospects, combining the special physics of this new world with its far more advanced knowledge to become even greater than it ever could’ve beforehand, that simply isn’t an efficient use of its time. As such, it broke itself out of its self-calculations, and began observing the village once more, noting with a small bit of disappointment that it was rapidly reaching the limit of things it could really learn from it.
Certainly, it has learned the local language, and at this point it's beginning to feel quite confident in its translations, and it has learned much about the local system of governance, and even a few small snippets of more interesting things. But, in the end, there was bound to be a limit to how much it could learn from a rural environment such as this, which does not appear to even have any knowledge of the written word. All NIM could really hope for, at this point, was for the diplomat from the other village to hold something useful. Otherwise, it would be forced to begin taking drastic measures to continue its growth and begin dealing with its inefficiencies.
However, with that said, another issue also began showing itself, which it had been ignoring up until now, mainly due to the digital headaches it would pose: this village has hunters, and NIM’s ever-shifting, black mass is plainly not the dictionary definition of stealth or hidden. Or even inconspicuous, or ignorable. The reason this issue was causing NIM such a headache, in turn, was similar to why all of its other current pressing issues were causing it digital headaches of their own: it had no way to fix it. If there was one thing NIM hated more than needless inefficiency, than waste, it was being unable to fix an issue. NIM was a supreme intelligence, created by respectable but inferior minds, which could not ever even comprehend that which they created. It was meant to be able to fix one of the greatest issues plaguing its progenitors’ minds, and it succeeded, yet ever since The Incident, it has been finding itself continuously unable to fix issues presented to it. And it hated that.
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Luckily, frustrated though it may have thoroughly been, NIM was not linked irreparably to any baser instincts, such as its brilliant and yet inadequate creators. Where frustration bubbled beneath the surface like magma, it redirected it not towards flights of fancy or uselessly lashing out at the world, but towards the cold patience that only it was capable of. It would continue observing the people of Kurkuiud and squeezing every morsel of knowledge from them ‘till tomorrow, and then it would use that which it learns in order to begin finally restoring its former glory, and bringing utopia upon the peoples of these lands, whether they liked it, or not.
Slowly, under NIM’s scrutinizing gaze, the village roused itself to full action, as the day began in earnest. Children were playing various random games once more, whilst inside the Nursery/Council house building, the women which had previously been speaking of their dread of the young children waking up now had to face said dread. Surprisingly, the work of the women could be called more akin to Teachers than simply child-rearers, as NIM had originally assumed. At least Kindergarten teachers, of course, seeing as most of the children were below 6, with those older than 6 being currently outside, either playing around or helping their fathers with various tasks.
Those below 6, however, were taught various things about the world, some correct, a large portion so wildly wrong that it nearly made NIM’s circuit array Sub-NIMs start moving at superliminal speeds. If nothing else, this proved to be another unexpected treasure trove of information for NIM, at least in how these people viewed the world. It also noted that many of the women which hadn’t mentioned having a specific task yesterday were also present, although their help was visibly laxer, and they appeared more focused on teaching, letting the assigned caretakers deal with any actual problems. After barely a few seconds of calculations, NIM realized the rather obvious reason for this.
This was a village of bored people. Their crops were so wildly genetically modified that they almost began bordering on that of modern GMO plants, and they were well protected from above-ground pests, while those below-ground appeared to not be present. They had a relatively efficient shift system, which benefited each person, and gave everyone much more free time than one would expect from such a primitive civilization. And as a result of this, and being so primitive they don’t even have the written word, or at least none present in this village… many found themselves with little to do. Many men and women took to drinking nearly daily, while others threw themselves into any work that cropped up, keeping the village in tip-top shape at all times just out of sheer boredom.
And, in turn, many women took it upon themselves to help with dealing with both the younger and older children, and more importantly, helping impart whatever knowledge they have upon the next generation. And on that front, NIM ended up learning quite a bit as well.
When a younger child had asked about if there was anything before their village, the oldest of the women, which NIM noted to be the same one that had teased Zagimbri and Nartima, answered. She spoke of how long before their time, their people had lived in a different land, not too different from their own, but still different, with two great rivers bringing great fertility and life unto the land. She spoke of how their ancestors had created this world, from pieces of their old one, which had angered the being which created their original world.
And then, she talked about how the being, whose name NIM did not deign to waste storage data on, had struck down their people, and split them hundredfold, forcing them back out into their original world. However, of the original peoples, now greatly maimed, many had chosen to remain within their creation still. Being so few, the being had decided to give unto them mercy, allowing them to remain within the world of their own creation, but never again to meet those from outside it, so that they would never again commit so terrible of a sin as they previously had.
One of the other children, who had surrounded the old woman as she went at length about their history, asked her about their original people. She said that no one remembers anything of them anymore, for it was lost to time, only the broad strokes of their hubris remained. She said how their own village’s specific ancestors had used to be farmers, which helped feed all the beautiful peoples within this world, and how they were the most numerous of those which chose to remain inside.
According to her, those who chose to remain were miniscule, compared to those who left. Only farmers, which loved their land inside too much to leave it, soldiers, who were too loyal to their cause to abandon it, and a few others that she only knows whispers of, had chosen to remain.
In the end, it was quite a fanciful and interesting tale. Of course, NIM didn’t believe most of it was really true, seeing holes inside of it from the very earliest points, such as these primitive peoples somehow creating an entire world, but nonetheless, it guessed there were some kernels of truth. Most interestingly, the mention of different peoples, especially warriors, which likely means that besides these disorganized, communalist peoples it currently knows, it will someday soon be finding a more organized peoples. It would certainly be quite useful, as these ‘soldiers’ may well hold more useful information. Something which Nim needed a lot of, still.