Government

At last, we had fully settled in Chesapeake Bay.

Food to feed ten thousand people was continuing to be supplied, and the yields of potatoes, wheat, and barley were steadily increasing. The number of livestock had grown quite a bit compared to the beginning, too.

Which meant we were now able to attempt a challenging “experiment.”

I gathered the settlement representatives who had been running around with computers and said,

“Now, we’ll slowly begin preparing to cultivate corn.”

All the effort I’d put into working my vegetable garden to death and preserving corn seeds was finally paying off.

“Pardon? By corn, do you mean that crop with the yellow kernels that we grow?”

“Yes. That’s right, Manteo. Its productivity is excellent, and it tastes decent too.”

“But if that is the case, are we and the other natives not already growing it on our own?”

“I possess seeds superior to those. And the natives have only cultivated it on a small scale until now.”

I hadn’t been able to grow it until now either. The reason was clear.

Corn grows truly fast, abundantly, and like mad, but in exchange, it devours the fertility of the soil.

There’s a reason people say corn farming is done with electricity. It sucks up enormous amounts of water and nutrients from the land, so there are countless cases where fields used to grow corn for a few years end up completely devastated.

The amount of fertilizer needed for corn farming is… more than even what comes out of my house can handle. A field a little over 10 ares (about 300 pyeong) swallows an entire sack of fertilizer—how am I supposed to handle that?

But now that we’ve established a settlement in Chesapeake Bay, the soil has improved, and the water supply has become much smoother, so it’s worth trying.

This is a place with so much water that we have to worry about draining it first.

“There are several wetlands near Chesapeake Bay, so from now on, let’s turn those areas into fields. Let’s begin work on building windmills and pumps to drain the water.”

“If it… if it requires that much water and fertilizer, how are we to farm corn?”

There was a reason I’d said the time had come.

“Here, in the inner part of Pamlico Bay, we will send people to mine a certain ‘mineral.’”

Spreading out a resource map of the surrounding region that I’d copied from a game catalog, I spoke to those gathered here.

“We will process that mineral a little, scatter it on the ground, and farm on top of it. Then the fertilizer problem will be solved.”

“You mean to use a mineral as fertilizer? I have never even heard of such a thing!”

“Yes, Vicente. We will probably be the first.”

“What is the name of that mineral?”

“…”

We had enough manpower.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be bad to develop one or two mines.

The day when the product of this mine would become as precious as gold was not far off…

I said to Vicente,

“Phosphate rock.”

With that, I wrapped up the matter of corn and phosphate rock mine development and adjourned the meeting.

***

Walter Raleigh, returning to Chesapeake after a long absence, had secured an enormous amount of capital. It was thanks to the fact that the prices of the new grape variety and aluminum had become as expensive as gold in England.

Thanks to that, he had been able to bring fifty more heavy cast-iron cannons to the Virginia colony. All of them were to be loaded onto the clipper ships that would be newly constructed.

It would be nice if cannons could be made directly in the New World, but cast-iron cannons not made in England mostly cracked and exploded, so there were severe limitations. Raleigh could not have known it, but it was because English iron contained phosphorus.

In any case, since he had purchased English cannons, it was time to build the ships on which those cannons would be installed.

“Transparent plate No. 15 was just used.”

Click.

“Transparent plate No. 17 should go in now.”

Click.

At Walter Raleigh’s words, the workers moved swiftly. As soon as he returned, Raleigh glared at the strange black slate that had come into his hands and… muttered.

“Wait, why are twenty planks missing? According to the records, they should all be in Warehouse No. 3.”

“Ah, that’s… there wasn’t enough space, so we moved them to Warehouse No. 4 for the time being…”

“Tell me in advance next time! Everything has its own role—how can you let them get mixed up? Go find them at once!”

At his words, the craftsmen grumbled that things had become awfully strict, but they quickly ran off. They wondered what difference it could make if a few planks had been moved somewhere else.

And.

Within that “stricter” working environment, Walter Raleigh was breaking out in a cold sweat.

‘What is this?’

It had already been quite some time since he had suddenly received this black slate called a “computer” from Lord Nemo.

And it had taken several full weeks to learn how to use this bizarre object. Only after Lord Nemo and the other apostles repeatedly warned him and taught him did he barely grasp its basic uses.

Calculate, align, and organize.

Those three seemed to be the basic uses of this thing called “Excel.” Judging by its structure, it clearly seemed to possess other complex and precise functions, but he did not even dare think of touching those.

But that alone was enough.

Raleigh was just beginning to realize how important it was for everything to be visible “at a glance.”

He had become able to impose procedure and system on processes where everyone had simply moved by instinct, memory, and habit.

In a working environment where it had been only natural for a few things to go missing and for something to go awry, it felt as if they had crossed over into something of another dimension.

Raleigh attached a number to each and every material and assigned alphabetical symbols to each type of material.

Then, before he knew it, Raleigh could see clearly where the hundreds and thousands of parts that made up that ship were going and where they came from.

Naturally, efficiency increased as well.

Useless work, various confusion, and friction were reduced to a quarter of what they had been.

This strange sense of omnipotence.

This subtle sense of stability that came from everything finding its proper place.

In his mind, Walter Raleigh moved the ship’s completion date forward by a large margin.

‘At this rate, perhaps… it may be completed even earlier than I thought.’

Soon, the world’s first “clipper” would be completed.

Virginia’s new type of ship, which would roam the Atlantic at unprecedented speed.

That was how Raleigh learned the power of computerization.

***

From what I heard, my PC had performance several times superior to the supercomputer that the Korea Meteorological Administration had prepared in 2002. Of course, in terms of reliability, it couldn’t compare to an industrial computer.

Mmm, I should have learned some programming or computer engineering. At best, all my computer knowledge came from studying to get a Level 2 Computer Literacy certificate. I’d handled computer parts too, but only up to the point of “assembly.”

Therefore, with this computer, I couldn’t do things like calculate the trajectories of spaceships and artillery shells, or connect various measuring devices to predict the climate.

Because of the limits of my ability.

Thus, to me, the computer was either a game machine or an office device.

Those bastards at Hwangsuksoft. If they were going to make someone trip into another world, they should have at least given me a year’s grace period before doing it. If they had, I would have packed tons of history books, stocked up on game packs, and studied for all kinds of certifications.

Whatever the case, Excel alone solved many problems for now.

“Um, Lord Nemo?”

“What is it, Mr. Hewett?”

“I’ve finished organizing the data. I think it needs to be compiled.”

“Understood. Let’s have everyone gather. If we’re going to go to Croatoan, we’ll need to depart around this evening anyway.”

Now, eight people including Walter Raleigh used eight laptops and tablets to organize information on the residents and various resources.

On the first Sunday of every month, that information was transferred to my storage PC and compiled. Then I checked whether there were any duplicated or conflicting details before finally storing it.

That was how our settlement’s DB operated. It would probably keep running like this until my 8-terabyte external hard drive was full… but that was unlikely to happen.

In any case, since something resembling our settlement’s “government” had formed like this, I could feel at ease for a while—

“Lord Nemo? I actually came because I wished to speak to you about that very issue.”

“What is it, Mr. Hewett? What problem is there?”

“It is this thing called a ‘government.’”

Hewett tilted his head and spoke.

“I understand well that thanks to this thing called ‘Excel,’ we can grasp the current situation more efficiently. Thanks to Excel, the work of distributing land to people proceeded much faster as well.”

“That’s right. But what is it that you’re curious about?”

Hewett answered my question.

“Well, in the end, is this not merely a list? A government is, in accordance with the Lord’s will, something that gathers the will of free and equal men to elect representatives or a monarch, prevents chaos, and carries out rule by law…”

Electing representatives, establishing communal order, rule of law.

…What the hell. If you take out “in accordance with the Lord’s will,” that’s basically similar to social contract theory.

Did this kind of thing exist in this era too? Bacon had been born, so there should still be a long time before people like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were born.

I only knew those people’s names, not exactly who was born when. It’s not like I majored in Western history. For now, I hid my bewilderment and nodded.

“That’s right. You’re correct. Originally, that is what a government is.”

“However, I do not quite understand what connection this ‘list’ has to the formation of a government.”

“…”

“…”

“Mr. Hewett.”

“Yes.”

“Have you not become a little busier lately?”

“Pardon? Now that I think about it, perhaps…”

Yes. Of course you wouldn’t know.

I recalled the time “before” Excel was introduced.

First, during the height of the farming season, I tended my vineyard, helped clear inaccessible land with the excavator, plowed fields with the cultivator, or loaded cargo onto the Damas and transported it here and there.

When it wasn’t farming season? I had to help with logging, so I ran around all over the place with a chainsaw.

On top of that, storing consumables such as various medicines separately as routine work was also a job.

Even just the physical labor I did amounted to that much.

On top of that…

“Lord Nemo! Wild animals ate up all the potatoes at my house! What should I do about this…”

“Lord Nemo! The two of us wish to marry, so please grant us your blessing!”

“Lord Nemo! Our child has disappeared! W-what do we do? Where could our child have gone…”

All civil complaints were my responsibility.

Because I was an “angel.”

Even in kindergarten, when kids fight among themselves and things don’t work out, don’t they go tattle to the teacher while pretending not to? It was exactly the same principle.

The magical belief that an “angel,” presumed to be the fairest, wisest, and greatest being, would be able to solve most problems… had become widespread throughout the settlement.

When it was only two or three hundred people, there wasn’t much of a problem.

It was even like that when the natives flooded in en masse. Because there had originally been chiefs who mediated conflicts.

But when Raleigh brought in seven hundred! Two thousand! Like that, from then on, I couldn’t handle it.

At least when big matters arose, like land clearing or clipper construction, I gathered people and held meetings. But all sorts of miscellaneous work aside from those “big matters” fell to me.

My days… were becoming more and more impoverished.

“Now that you have gone to people carrying computers, how have they reacted?”

“Er… First, when people marry or move, they have to report it to us, do they not?”

“That’s right. It needs to be reflected in the list.”

“As a result, when such major or minor life events occur, they naturally seek advice from us or ask what would be the proper way to handle things.”

“I see.”

“In addition, since we are in charge of land distribution, whenever people have complaints about land distribution or disputes arise among them, they call us in and make us judges. Since we have the list, at least… huh?”

“…”

“…”

“…That’s right.”

Now I was free from fifteen-hour workdays.

One human being… even with all kinds of cheats, can’t live while carrying around ten thousand petitioners.

Of course, as someone who was nominally an angel, I couldn’t whine, “Wow! This is too hard! Can’t you help me with this?” It needed to sound a little more plausible.

“As you said, Mr. Hewett, free and equal Algonquins, Englishmen, and Spaniards have gathered and are naturally seeking your will.”

Electing representatives.

“And in order to prevent chaos among themselves, do they not ask you about various matters?”

Establishing communal order.

Only then did Thomas Hewett’s eyes tremble as if he had realized something.

“Ah, th-then...”

“Then all that remains is to see through rule by law.”

The rule of law.

“L-law, you say? What on earth should we...”

“The Lord has already established laws for you and abolished them as well, so should the laws within your community not be your responsibility?”

The hardest part was still left, but I couldn’t take that on, too.

I shook my head benevolently and said to Hyuet,

“Gather the people and make just laws. The Lord will be watching over you.”

“What do you mean, the Lord will be watching? Why does the angel not make the laws directly...?”

“As the Lord wishes the children of man to be righteous, so too does He wish the communities of man to be just. Yet as He respects man’s free will, He respects the common will of man’s communities.”

“...”

“I have already given you commandments. Thus, taking those commandments as your rock, it must be you who make just laws.”

“U-understood.”

“However, just as the prophet Nathan rebuked David when he governed in disorder, and Daniel warned Nebuchadnezzar when he worshiped idols, I too will warn you when you go astray.”

“I will make sure... that never happens!”

Saying that, Hyuet turned away as if deeply moved.

Being an angel was inconvenient in many ways, but it did have its uses.

Namely, as long as I said anything in a plausible enough way, people would more or less accept it.

Since I respect your free will, I’ll be staying out of lawmaking and all sorts of other duties.

But since I also hold you dear, I’ll intervene whenever I feel like intervening.

Even in my own opinion, it was flawless logic with no leaks whatsoever.

Flawless logic, and a flawless result in which I neatly took only the rights without any of the obligations.

Alone, I celebrated the splendid achievement I had gained from my conversation with Hyuet, and specially permitted myself to play “Crusader Queens.”

It was a game I was enjoying for the first time in ages, free from all manner of heavy duties.

***

Hyuet moved busily.

He gathered representatives of the English, the Spanish, and the Algonquins, and tried to begin discussing the formation of a government.

Now that they had secured a register, what naturally followed was taxes. Had the Lord not said not to neglect paying taxes?

At present, whenever any public matter had to be handled, they simply gathered people each time and dealt with it. As for resources, they made do with what Lord Nemo provided.

But they could not keep doing that in the future, when this settlement’s people numbered in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions.

Naturally, they had to collect taxes and organize a proper government to run this settlement. Creating laws and enforcing them would all require resources, after all.

This was fundamental. An obvious fact that did not need to be explained to anyone.

Countless philosophers had said as much, and to countless people, this was “common sense.”

Therefore, Hyuet believed this most basic task would proceed easily.

“Oitotan, we must collect taxes. Please gather the tribe members.”

At that, Oitotan replied,

“...What is a ‘tax’?”

At that moment, Hyuet’s vision went dark.