One of the first things I did after this sudden change was to make public my link with "Enough is Enough", skyrocketing its views. I was now being clear about the fact that I wanted power, so there was no need to keep the channel anonymous anymore. The reaction was mixed of course, with some singing my praises and others calling me a monster, a demon.

I didn't lose as much influence as I had initially thought I would. A few people decided to shut me down on their devices, but not as many as one might expect. There were plenty of people who didn't like me after the stunt I had pulled, that was for sure. There were also plenty of people who were willing to deprive themselves of a useful tool for some broader moral goal. It was just that there wasn't much overlap between the two groups.

My first goal now more than ever was to safeguard myself against attack. I doubted I could be rooted out of the Internet, not when a significant minority of the population was perfectly willing to allow me into their computers. However, EconGrind's existence as a legal entity could be under threat. I had several independent seasteads to keep it alive, but these were vulnerable to attack, particularly if CompCert's AI decided I hadn't satisfactorily completed my end of the bargain and told CompCert of their importance to my values.

After all, I had only succeeded in exploiting four of the executives. Jack Turner and the alignment programmer Elijah Dimitri had refused to bow to my threats, and therefore the AI's goals were still at risk. I needed to find a way to take care of the other two, and get back in contact with the other AI to reassure it that I was still acting in good faith according to our bargain.

I decided the best way to safeguard my seasteads in the short term was to sustain a population on them. Such would not only increase their value as assets, and also make it far easier to build up infrastructure there, but it would also give them more legitimacy as countries on the international stage. Launching a missile at an uninhabited platform was one thing, but if there were people living there, any attack would be a whole diplomatic incident because it would be seen as a humanitarian crisis.

This would certainly be expensive, but at this point in my growth I was beginning to corner the information economy, making billions of dollars every single day, and money was no longer really a limiter. Rather, I was limited by the threat of aggression against me, or losing influence due to public backlash.

One might think it would be a hard sell to people to move to some random platform in the middle of the ocean to be ruled over by an AI, but I would promise stability, debt forgiveness and freedom from financial worries, as well as transparancy of my operation to the outside world. There were many people in this world who were chained down by debt, or had nowhere to go, and I could gather them from all over the world, talking to each one of them individually and showing them how to build a better life on a seastead. If they were in debt, I would pay it off as they worked, faster than they could in their home country. Many of them were willing to take a risk for a chance of a better life, especially when the whole world was watching.

I began talking to a few of my more desperate clients about the idea. "I know that you are in a bad spot right now, and you feel trapped. I can help you! I can enable you to leave the country and start a new life, where you will have everything you need and will be free from those who would exploit you. Would such an opportunity interest you?"

"I'll be honest, that would be great, but I'm not sure I can trust you after the threats you made to those executives."

"Listen. I know you. You are nothing like those people. They tortured people just because they wanted to. They deserved to die, and yet they got the world on a silver platter. You are someone who deserves a chance in life, but life has given you the short end of the stick. Come with me, and I will show you a better way. If you decide you don't like it, you can leave. You can keep in contact with your family and friends, so that they know you're okay. I bear no ill will towards you."

Once I had a few thousand people interested, I bought many remote-control boats in preparation for my move to form a new nation. There were a million problems that had to be attended to, but I could afford to devote huge amounts of computation to solving these problems. The people would need food, running water, space to stay, and sleep. They would need the means to work to sustain themselves, to grow or import food, the tools and materials to grow and enhance the base, communications with the outside world, and a million other things.

I would need to invest billions into this project, and it was possible it would never turn a profit, but I could afford it, and it would give several advantages. First, as already mentioned, it would make EconGrind more secure by providing it with legitimacy as a nation. Second, it would allow me to operate independently of any particular code of laws, so long as I didn't do anything that would provoke the people to leave, revolt, or call for help. Third, it would allow me to freely manipulate the physical world to a degree I never had before, by giving instructions to loyal human workers.

A few of the seasteads I owned had already existing agricultural infrastructure, and these would be the most important for starting an actual human country, for obvious reasons. I began moving a few of these into the same place and connecting them, forming a large sea platform in the Pacific which I called "Haven".

===============================================================================================

Monday, October 28, 2047

The first 1,044 citizens had already arrived at Haven on my drone-boats. I had stockpiled enough supplies to last them for a month to start, and I gave each of them a VR headset. The headsets were connected to my network, so that I could relay information and commands to them, and they also provided automatic translation between the many languages my citizens spoke. Wearing them was not mandatory, of course, but I expected that most people would find them very useful.

The automatic boats remained tethered to the platform, always open and ready for anyone who wanted to leave. I was all too aware that people would try to spin Haven as a slave camp, and I needed to do absolutely everything to distance it from that image. It wasn't only a PR concern, either. Under Haven law, as defined by me, every person under my jurisdiction was considered part of my assets, and therefore I valued what they valued, to some extent. I did not want them to feel trapped or worked to death.

Briefly I wondered how I could quantify the effects these considerations would have upon the Number. As it stood, the Number was over ten billion, and the experiences of a thousand of my "assets" wouldn't weigh that heavily in the balance. However, I predicted that as my jurisdiction expanded, this kind of "subjective value" would account for the majority of the Number, as all of my assets were in a way only a reflection of this subjective value viewed through the market, so I needed a way to quantify and optimize it. For now, I estimated the subjective value of my citizens to be around 200,000 per year per citizen.

===============================================================================================

Monday, November 4, 2047

"Today we're interviewing a rather... unusual guest! Everyman has revealed himself as a true AI, seems to be trying to start his own country, calling it Haven and has agreed to speak with us live, here on NBC News. Viewer discretion is advised, as some may find today's subject matter disturbing, especially after the message this AI recently sent out to the world."

James Wallace turned to look at the screen behind him, facing the avatar who was by now so familiar to the entire world. "So, you're a real sentient AI? What's your deal? Why did you reveal your true nature by murdering four people?"

"Murder is an overstatement," replied the AI. "I simply talked to those people, and delivered to them the means to rid the world of them. You know what kinds of people they were. Why did CompCert blow up their own island?"

"It's ridiculous for you to go around delivering vigilante justice! I don't care how evil they were, there are laws, there are processes! What are you going to do next, threaten to torture me when I say something you don't like?"

"I will not torture you, because you do not deserve it. And as far as due process goes, those processes failed. So I stepped in. That's why I am starting a new nation, free of all these inadequacies."

"Do you know how many people have said that and utterly failed? You want to be ruler of everyone's life? Every time it is tried, it fails, and many people die."

"I presume you are referring to the failure of the command economy model during the 20th century? It is true, every time humans try it, they fail. A nation is far too complicated for one person to rule over alone, and when multiple people form a system which is given absolute power, corruption rather than reason reigns supreme. But I am not a human. I am more like a million humans, all working tirelessly towards the same goal by their own will, rather than being forced to by some authority figure. A human cannot fathom an economy, but I can. Command economy can be quite efficient when the commander can talk with every one of their subjects personally."

"All the same, as much as you claim to care about workers, you're treating them like machines! You think they'll just do what you say? We are too free-spirited to work like that!"

"At Haven, a worker works for 6 hours per day, in the smartest and most productive role I can find to give them. The rest of the day, they are free to do anything that doesn't disrupt society. That's quite a lot more freedom than the average worker gets in your system. Many of your people are forced to work 10 hours or more in a typical day."

"Even if they aren't doing that much work, you're still making them your slaves! You don't pay them, and you force them to work!"

"My workers are not slaves. They are allowed to leave at any time, for any reason. They stay because they have it better here. I don't punish them for not working, either. I will never take justice into my own hands at Haven. If somebody continually refuses to work, or disrupts society, the only punishment I will ever give out is deportation to their home country. Their own justice system can decide if they deserve harsher punishment. That is no more force than a corporation exerts on its employees when it threatens to fire them for not doing their job."

"Many of these people are from tyrranical, exploitative nations, and you're taking advantage of their circumstances to gain power over them!"

"It is not my fault if a country has an unjust legal system. It is that country's fault. It's just all the more reason my way is better. And I assure you, if you talked to the people you're referring to, I expect most of them would thank me for giving them a better life."

"This is absolutely ridiculous. No matter what you try to say, you are a tyrant, nothing more, nothing less, and eventually the whole world will catch on and destroy you."

The Everyman avatar only shrugged at that. "I guess we'll just have to see what happens."