Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 573 - 488: Three Principles_2

Chapter 573: Chapter 488: Three Principles_2

Xijin Town is a settlement located on the impoverished outskirts of an island, with a population of around 100,000.

There is an inn on the edge of the town, frequented by travelers heading to Mingge Mountain; the parking shed outside is packed with vehicles.

Across from the inn lies a row of electronic stores, grocery shops, bars, Prosthetics Clinics, automatic doctors, and other fundamental infrastructures; farther away stands the Nestor Community Center where security personnel donned in orange and red uniforms patrol the vicinity, providing a different sense of security.

Upon entering the inn, the innkeeper checked them in from behind the counter; he was a cheerful and talkative young man and handed them a black room card from under the counter.

"Thank you very much, everyone, please feel free to look around the inn," the innkeeper said with ease.

"Does Xijin Town have any history?" Rinne twirled the room card in her hand.

"Town, as in Chengxia Town, a village built around a feudal lord’s Heavenly Guardian Pavilion," the innkeeper led them to the window and pointed toward the distant hills where a new furniture factory was built, "Xijin Town used to provide soldiers and rice to the feudal lord. Now the nobles are all but extinct, and the Heavenly Guardian Pavilion has turned into a factory, but the fields and descendants of the villagers remain, and so does the inn, operating for over 190 years, always located here, it’s a family business to me."

"It looks quite new, though." Rinne surveyed the surroundings, which seemed to have been refurbished just in the past week, with all facilities appearing brand new.

"That’s a long story," nodded the innkeeper.

"An innkeeper must have many stories to tell," Rinne observed him.

"Of course," the innkeeper agreed, "Last autumn, I hosted a man in a mask and a woman in black; they were going to the Shrine. Not long after that, I heard that Yama, the guardian of the Shrine, had been released. I can hardly imagine what connection there might be between the two events. Later, I hosted a Type-A Synthetic Human and a woman in white, and the Synthetic Human killed 60 ruffians in Xijin Town. Now, I’m hosting you."

"It’s best not to spread word of our business," Rinne said with a light chuckle.

"I know the rules," shrugged the innkeeper, "just like I have far more strange and curious stories up my sleeve, but those will go untold."

Rinne saw a very disciplined Monkey carrying a tray towards them, offering tissues. It was comically dressed in a bulky, thick red nylon astronaut suit, sans helmet.

"A walking Monkey," Seeking Shadow watched it, unsure how to react.

"I had a brain enhancement surgery done on it," the innkeeper had grown accustomed to explaining his Monkey to guests, "You see, it’s now trendy to operate on idiots, to make the disabled capable of independence, or to operate on a child who loves to learn, to help him absorb knowledge even faster. So having surgery on my beloved Monkey, implanting a smart chip, expanding its brain capacity to make it smart and well-mannered seems quite reasonable, doesn’t it?"

Rinne laughed heartily, stretching out her hand.

The Monkey climbed onto her hand and perched on top of her head happily. It was very clean, never grooming its fur with saliva, but instead using mint-flavored shower gel.

"Has this inn also become a property of Nestor Corporation?" Seeking Shadow noticed the Nestor Corporation logo inside the room.

"Of course, the Nestor Community Center is nearby," the innkeeper explained, "most residents have joined the community committee, operating by the three principles of Nestor."

"What community?" Rinne didn’t understand, "What three principles?"

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"Firstly, Nestor Corporation won," the innkeeper explained, "the corporate dogs from other places got kicked out, and after they took over the factories, rights were distributed to the people who actually did the work. That’s the premise."

"I know." Rinne nodded, "Those huge Nestor communities, the new manufacturing and agriculture." She glanced at the small goods around her, which were mostly branded with the silver-white artistic font of Nestor Corporation’s logo.

"So, the community is like a neighborhood committee, and the three principles are ’fair, united, progress’." The innkeeper gestured, "Except for big cities like Shangjing, the outskirts’ farmlands and factories were basically re-coordinated and reorganized, establishing communities centered around Nestor Corporation’s industrial employees, including other people willing to join, as well as individual businessmen like myself who are willing to cooperate."

"What’s the use?" Rinne was curious, which reminded her of the wandering communities outside the cities on the West Coast, where people gathered in family units in the outskirts, living off picking high-tech trash from corporations.

"The company went bankrupt and left," the innkeeper said, seeing that they were interested in chatting, and poured drinks for them, "leaving a bunch of machinery, farmlands, rotten environment, Scavengers and unemployed people. Every day, people fought over a bit of clean water and food, you could hardly see children and normal women, bloodshed and violence were the norm."

"From this perspective, it’s just as bad whether the company is here or not." Rinne took a sip of juice.

"Under Nestor Corporation’s lead, they re-established committees," the innkeeper explained, "If you’re part of the community, as long as you contribute to the community, the community will take care of you. That’s roughly the logic. Those who can tend to plants do so, those who can make electrical appliances make them, those who can work the assembly line do that, doctors run clinics, and freelancers, aside from their own work, also need to help out with what the community needs, they can’t just enjoy without contributing."

"What about big bangs?" Seeking Shadow asked.

"Only small bangs." The innkeeper pulled out a handgun from under the counter, "I have a community militia certificate, and sometimes I’ll go out with Monkey to drive away cyber lunatics, gangsters, and knife-wielding ronin. If we’re overpowered, one phone call, and Nestor’s divine troops descend from heaven."

"So people here are especially united?" Rinne mused.

"If not, it would continue to rot." The innkeeper explained, "The community has become the most basic unit of union. Before, there wasn’t even a basic road, the company only wanted to invest in big cities, Xijin Town was a forgotten place, regressing to primitive social rules, just like the law of the jungle described in comics, where the strong crush the weak. Now, people have come together, each contributing their strength, look, with every ’little person’s’ resources and skills pooled, this place has its own waste station and roads, new hospitals, and web relay stations. We’ll never have the money to move into Shangjing in our lifetime, but we can make our little place smart."

Rinne pondered seriously for a while.

This world had not just corporate cities but also small broken villages and towns. Corporate cities erected walls of wealth, and outside those walls, in the vast rural fields, Nestor Corporation was restoring and reorganizing people’s living conditions, uniting hearts.

How wonderful... A powerful intervention, reassembling the chaotic fragments, bringing civilization, informatization, unity, and arms.

"So the Nestor principle is a way to rebuild the basic order," Rinne said.

"Not the basic order, but the bottom-up order," the innkeeper smiled and said, "The world’s basic order is still the same, called ’profit above all else’. What Nestor Corporation is doing must also be profitable; otherwise, they would be the first to go bankrupt."

"You’re quite a talker," Rinne nodded.

"I’ve read books too, it’s just that the corporations didn’t want me," the innkeeper said easily, "They thought my education wasn’t high enough. I’ve been to Shangjing; the big city couldn’t accommodate me, so I came back to Xijin Town to run my inn and take care of my Monkey."

"Corporations are cruel..." Rinne’s expression darkened.

"Of course, actually, I know that most corporations don’t see people here as human," the innkeeper said casually, "because people from Xijin Town are ’unprofitable’, outside of their plans, also lacking consumer power, we are burdens that slow down social development, but we still have to live, don’t we? If corporations look down on us, should we just wait to die? Don’t we have the right to live like the most basic human beings, to work, marry, and take care of our offspring? Even a Monkey can do those three things."

"Ga ga." Monkey was very confident.

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