Chapter 3

    It took a while, but eventually I was able to fully define Karma on Earth. I used two criteria to determine what acts give positive or negative Karma: Ideal/Unideal Actions and Natural Laws. Ideal/Unideal Actions referred to any actions that either worked towards or away from the goal I’d set for Earth, in terms of what society should become.

    In my opinion, a great society was one where its people were both united, and in full possession of their own freedom, as such, Ideal Actions, which rewarded the individual with positive Karma, were actions that supported the concepts of Unity and Freedom, meaning any act that made it easier for people to work together, and any act that maintained people’s freedoms.

    Good examples were giving inspiring speeches that convinced people to put aside their differences to work towards a common goal for Unity, and keeping an innocent man out of prison for Freedom. Obviously, Unideal Actions would work against these concepts, so good example of Unideal Actions would be starting a war for working against Unity, and enslaving others for working against Freedom. Naturally, of course, there was some overlap.

    Certain actions that achieve Unity hinder Freedom, for example, enslaving a population would technically unite them, but would strip them of their freedom. Similarly, some actions that achieve Freedom hinder Unity, for example, maintaining and defending freedom of speech helps protect an important aspect of Freedom, but also allows those with discriminatory viewpoints an easier way to spread their beliefs and cause conflicts.

    As a result, how much P was awarded or taken away by an action depended on whether or not the net result of the action was more in aid towards either Unity, Freedom, or both. Natural Laws, or the Laws of Nature, followed the following guidelines as a general rule:

Spoiler: Spoiler

* One shall not take a life, unless it is for food or resources that come from the body, or in either self-defence or the defence of another. (From the body means that someone can’t justify murder in the eyes of Karma if it’s for the sake of taking their belongings.)

* Soldiers killing in the line of duty are exempted, unless the killing is unnecessary or for personal means that are not covered in the three exceptions.

* In the event that an officer orders such a killing without due cause, such as the murder of civilians, the officer receives the full penalty for murder, and the degree of the penalty – barring the loss of the right to live – that the soldiers carrying out the order receive is dependent on their awareness of the wrongdoing, and their willingness to carry it out (i.e. someone who knows it’s wrong and carries it out eagerly is worse than someone who know it’s wrong but follows their ‘duty’ as a soldier, who is worse than someone who doesn’t know it’s wrong, etc., etc.)

* Those who have broken this Law are considered to have forsaken the right to live, meaning they can be killed with neither consequence nor reward.

* One shall not have children with family.

* Those raped and impregnated by family are not punished. (For the record, rape of any kind comes under Unideal Actions as an act against both Unity and Freedom.)

* One shall not take what they do not need. (Basically, excessive de-forestation, mineral mining, etc., would result in negative Karma, as would stealing from others, and other such deeds.)

* One shall not harm the world. (Basically, this means anyone using WMDs or similar weapons in atmosphere receives a very large amount of negative Karma, enough to put them close to the limit after which they will die, assuming they are about as positive, Karma wise, as the average person.)

* Those who have broken this Law are considered to have forsaken the right to live and to exist, to such a degree that, not only can they be killed without consequence, but the killer will be rewarded for doing so, so long as the lawbreaker still possesses negative Karma.

    What this all meant, was that those who work towards creating a better world would indeed by rewarded, and those that did not would be punished. Altogether, this should at least reduce the impact of the Religious Division and Pointless Discrimination Major Crises by a fairly large degree, as well as impacting the Resource Starvation Major Crisis. Unfortunately, people will not inherently be aware of the Karmic issue with using WMDs, which means the Over-Advanced Armament Major Crisis is unlikely to be affected too much.

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    Having determined what Karma is on Earth, the only thing left before unpausing the world was to determine what the rewards and punishments would be after death. For the most part, I decided to leave this to the discretion of Yin and Yang – they were the Twin Gods of Karma, after all – However, I chose to make two rewards myself. The first was for the High Human variant race. I decided that only those with a very high amount of Karma could get it, putting the reward as one of, but not the highest.

    The highest reward, on the other hand, was one I had thought about in detail while I was designing both the CKR itself, as well as the nature of Karma. As anticipated, it was not immediately accepted.

    “You want to do WHAT!?” That was Luci, yelling from the other side of the table.

    “I said, I want the highest possible reward for positive Karma after death to be becoming a God.”

    “Why?! You agreed that was a problematic concept earlier!”

    The twins both had near identical expressions of confusion, and it was Yin who asked, “What’s the problem with the reward?”

    Luci turned towards them and responded, “The problem is that when an inhabitant becomes a God, there is no inherent possibility of them being loyal in any way to the World Keeper, in this case Marcus. This means you’re giving a mortal entity the power of Gods with no restrictions barring their own morality, plus the fact that, if they were to kill Marcus while he’s descended, they would become the new World Keeper, meaning that if they ever found that out, we’d have a civil war on our hands from the greedy ones wanting more power.”

    Yin frowned at this, then turned to me. “Mother’s argument does have merit Father, why would you make them Gods?”

    I smiled at this. “Several reasons. First, Luci’s argument would indeed have merit… if we were talking about making some random yob off the street into a God. Hoverer, we’re talking about making someone of immensely positive Karma into a God. To achieve to ability to maybe be given this reward, someone would have to have such massive amounts of KP that, unless they were born in a favourable position while always only ever amassing more and more positive Karma with none being negative, which is inherently unlikely as it is, it will be nearly impossible for someone to achieve it.

    They’d have to be dedicated to the ideals laid down by the rules of the Karmic System, and someone like that is the kind of person we’d want as a God. Second, we wouldn’t be just handing that power to them with no restrictions. They’d start off in a sort of probationary period, meaning that, any significant changes they want to make involving their domain would have to go through one of us, as the senior entities, and their behaviour would be closely, if discretely, monitored, to ensure they are the kind of person we’d want as a God.

    Finally, I trust your judgement. I know exactly what kind of people you two are, meaning that, I doubt you would give this reward to someone who is inherently not the person we want becoming a God. Any questions anyone?”

    Yin and Yang looked at one another, nodded, and then turned to me and responded as one, “We are fine with this Father.”

    Luci, on the other hand, was still a bit reluctant. “How long a probationary period are we talking about?”

    “25 years, on Earth.”

    “And how does their domain get determined?”

    “That’s actually quite simple. There will be three possible domains, each chosen by the twins. Yin will choose one possible domain, based off of what they were doing at the time of their death. Yang will choose another domain based off of a significant event during their life. And finally, both of the twins will choose the final domain together, by looking over the entirety of their life, and choosing a domain that encompasses it as closely as possible.”

    She thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well.”

    I grinned, “Perfect! Now then, any more questions or issues before we un-pause the Earth?” There were none. “Very well, then I’ll be fast-forwarding by 10 years, just to let these changes really take effect.” As I said this, Yin and Yang both nodded and vanished, while Luci waved her hand and had a tablet manifest itself, so that she could look over the world during the skip.

    As for me, I started some more work, trying to figure out something else to help with the Crises. I wonder if I can add magic into this world?