Lawrence

Day 76: 5,308,648 slaves

The two weeks since taking Mackenzie seemed like a success. It wasn't much work for me; a weekly trip out to the printing plant to work my will on the boxes of contracts ready to ship. We were averaging two million converts a week; half in the US, half abroad. The rate was still accelerating, especially abroad. But I was starting to fret. Our strategy was still casual recruitment on street corners and bars, with only a limited amount of targeted persuasion. But I could see the limits of this approach.

Mackenzie was now our chief of analytics and had a small hive-mind of analysts reporting to her. Their conclusion was unambiguous. We were only going to reach about 20% of the US this way, and less in most of the world. Most people just won't sign strange legal documents pushed by strangers, most people do read these things, and the soul talk alarmed a good many folks.

We needed something more, something new. It was time for another round of experiments. The plan was to pick a midsized city, and see how we could go from ten or twenty percent slaves to sixty or eighty -- enough to make sure I controlled all the official sources of power, that the police, courts, and elected officials were all mine.

I picked Lawrence, Kansas. It's a small city with a big college. (I'll save you looking it up; before the Great Reorganization, it had a hundred thousand people.) We already had a good quarter of the university, a noticeable chunk of the city as a whole. This would be a fine base to build on.

The trip

I decided to leave all the travel arrangements to Sandra. The morning of our departure, we all rode to the airport. The expedition was eight of us: myself, Sandra, Mackenzie, two guards, three liaisons to the hivemind. At the airport, a private plane was ready to whisk us away. We spent the flight time happily inducting everybody into the "Mile-high" club. Mackenzie did most of the work, on her knees.

When we got in, once again there was a motorcade ready to take us away. Sandra had rented out a pair of houses -- one for us, one for the staff -- and secured a few locals as additional staff. A household of my scale needs cooks, cleaners, grocery-buyers and the like. I could see why European royalty needed such big palaces. Well, a problem to be solved in the future after my ascension.

After we had settled in I spent an hour consulting with Mackenzie and the hive, picking what places and groups to emphasize for the next two weeks. As we were finishing up, I felt Sandra's hand stroking my head. "If you're not too tired, I've arranged a small surprise for you. It's just a few blocks away. Shall we?"

The surprise

We decided to walk. It was a crisp fall evening and I enjoyed the chance to stretch my legs. It was me, out and about with a coterie of beautiful women; passers-by would see them and smile, but mostly nobody knew that were were busy conquering the world.

Sandra led us up to a large residential building . As we approached the door, somebody inside pulled it open and we stepped inside. I scanned the room. It wasn't the biggest surprise, to be honest, but I was still pleased with Sandra's planning. We were in the front hall of a student co-op and it was full of pretty young women in lingerie. I leaned over to Sandra and whispered. "All mine?"

"All yours", she responded.