The first half of my second decade here was mainly focused on getting the GDP up, as well as fast-tracking all of our infrastructure projects that would improve the quality of life for everyone living inside Makeb. This would lead to Makeb gaining international recognition as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with a growth rate of nearly 85 every year. Such a large number was unheard of and investors flocked in to lend Makeb a helping hand in helping the economy grow at its full potential. All of this money that flowed in was a welcome gift of course, but it was not enough for my grand ambition, not yet at least.
Not much happened in the latter half of his second decade here as its president, aside from all the usual making Makeb as rich as it could possibly be. Then came time for the third election, and once again, everybody knew that I was just way too popular with the work that I have been putting into Makeb and no one wanted to run against me because they knew that they would lose. It was around this time that Makeb started to gain the recognition of many of the major countries around the globe and many other news organizations that were always chasing a story. There were many interviews that I had to do during that year, many of which got a tad too political about the way that I was running the country with an almost iron rule, despite all the times I claimed that we were a democratic nation.
It could be said that those interviews caught the attention of a group of multinationals that had planned on making Makeb another place where they could use slave labor to make cheap goods at a lower cost. They made me many offers, but I refused all of those that would seek to exploit my citizens. It wasn’t that I wanted to do this for the good of my people, rather it was so that I could rent out my manpower for something that could benefit me more. That was where the country of Elchin came in, they were one of the most powerful countries in the world, and had their foot in almost every possible technology-based door there was in the world.
The country of Elchin was more than glad to provide us with a lump sum loan of tens of billions of dollars, in exchange for a few other things. This was exactly the type of money that I had dreamt about since I started this career in Makeb. I used the majority of that money to upgrade the hospitals that were already built into world class ones, as well as an entirely new city that would have several universities at its core. I set out to make this new city be capable of housing and developing children from toddlers all the way to graduating from university. I did all I could to make everything as world class as I could, electric bus public transportation, several wind farms, and nuclear generators nearby, and I made the education cost of this city essentially free. Then, I hired many professors once all of the buildings were completed to teach in the classrooms, as well as the lesser education schools.
Finally, I made it possible for not just Makebinians to come to this city and reap all the benefits, but also those of anyone who wanted to come and receive an education. This became the piece of news that rocked the neighboring countries on their feet. Too many of their own citizens were moving into the new city that I named after myself, Kannon. It evoked such a joy to me that not only so many of my own citizens flocking to Kannon but also those of nations that surrounded them. I ended up having to use so much money that I had to borrow even more money from the Elchin government. In a quick few years, the city of Kannon grew to become a city of great renown. At that point, I had many of the citizens of Makeb get basic education as well as higher education, so much so that the literacy rate of the entire country shot to nearly 100% a few years later. I had intended to use these people who had the know-how of how to run the various institutions and government positions to-
“Apologies for the interruption again, master Kannon. The anonymous group will now begin the separate plans for this room. They will be quite busy in this room for at least a few hours, if you’d like, you can move to another room. I suspect it will be quite loud,” Imogen the maid told Kannon.
“It’s alright, moving to another room will cause me pain so I’ll just stay here. You 5 just work as quietly as you possibly can, got it?” Kannon shouted at the group of anonymous’ wearing white masks.
“Don’t worry, president Kannon, you paid good money for us to do our job. We intend to cater to your every request,” the mysterious man said.
“Humph, this is the man who-oof,” another one said as he was elbowed in the stomach.
“Apologies, president, forgive this fool for his words, we will begin immediately,” the first person said as he glared at his associate.
“Yes, yes,” Kannon said as he went back to daydreaming how he got into the position that he was in now.
I was at the place where I… fired all of those people, no that’s not right… I was at the part where I ordered all of my citizens to branch out into all of the various positions that every society needed. Though it took a long time to do so, I fired a couple of foreigners every few days and replaced them if I deemed they were important enough. This continued on for decades to come, nothing as large scale as when he hired all of them, but he had to do it discreetly so as to not cause a flock of them to run off to back to where they came from. Such a situation would almost certainly collapse the government and society of Makeb to an age where they would once again be trying to modernize as fast as they could possibly go. This, of course, would not be very noticeable in the first few years, but it would become very transparent if someone were to look at the statistics over time. Professors, teachers, healthcare professionals, public transportation, and many other public sectors, as well as even some private ones, were not spared from this attack.
Around this time was when I would change up my game a little bit. I had raised the GDP of Makeb by several billion dollars since I had taken office, and public opinion of me was very high. However, the convergence theory of economics was beginning to show signs of appearing. There was only so much infrastructure that I could spend on, and the population had not grown to as much as I had initially hoped. However, Makeb was now something of a world topic as some sort of model government that took care of everything that its citizens would ever require. Everything that I had done to better this country was not so that I could improve the lives of those in a once war-torn country, no, no, no. It was actually so that I could play with the lives of hundreds of thousands in the palms of my hands.
I knew that the populace of Makeb would turn a blind eye to many things that I would start to begin doing, especially with how much advancement into modernization that I had engineered for them. Many of those in the older generation felt sentimental about me since I had changed the Makebian country so much in such a little time. Those in the younger generation cherished me like I was a role model, almost to the point of idolizing me. After all, I had brought so much prosperity to this country that I would be known as the most influential man in Makeb for centuries to come, perhaps even as the man who started one of the greatest eras of cutting edge technology. Originally, I had built this vast country so that my kids would be able to live in peace. The news of the outside world including those of Elchin was beginning to get worrisome.
I had wanted to get my kids to take over my position but in the wake of so many matters to take care of, the decades just kept piling up no matter how many times I tried to slow it down. It was too late for me to get children now, but it wasn’t too late to adopt someone to take my place. Took me nearly 3 years to do it, but the son I chose shared many of my own traits that I would have loved to see in my own son. I trained him to do many of the things that I had learned over the course of how many decades?
With a few decades of state planning, Makeb and the city of Kannon had seen unprecedented amounts of growth and was now among some of the worlds’ top 100 in terms of quality of life, happiness, corruption, and so much more. Near the end of my 3rd decade here, the convergence theory of economics showed its head and the economic growth of Makeb slowed down a noticeable amount. It did not matter much now though, people of renown from all over the world were flocking to Makeb to get in on that sweet deal of living in such a seemingly perfect place.
It would be a long time before something else interesting happened, the 4th election. I was a charismatic man no doubt, but the public opinion of me was starting to change a little bit. They had heard of people who went mad with power if they had too much of it for too long. So for the first time in one of their elections, there were not one, but three other parties that ran against me. Of course, I still held the majority of the popular vote since I showed little amounts of corruption, and I even made it known that I abhor corruption and did all that I could to decrease the amount of corruption by taking many steps in order to prevent many cases before it even began.
By this time, I was getting on with my age. I was not as young as I used to be, not as charming, not as reliable, you could say, in the eye of the public. Though I still had much of the public sentiment on my side, the future would be looking very bleak for me and my son if I could not make it to the next election. You see, my son was not someone who fits the mold of a ruler. He was too compassionate, nothing I could ever teach him would change that no matter what realities were out there. I loved him to death but that did not change the fact that he was unlikely to take my place once I lost the popular vote. This may still be a democratic society, but I have always been ready to rig the elections should I ever fall out of the public favor. It must be said that I was never a nice ruler, I just knew from history that those who don’t take care of their citizens would have an earlier grave than other types of ruthless rulers. The only reason that I was so willing to spend so much on repairing this broken country was so that I would be less likely to die in a revolution. There was no other-
“Sir Kannon, this room has been completed. We will be taking our leave from Makeb now. May luck be with you,” the anonymous leader said as he bowed then left the room followed by the other 4.
“Well, that makes it one more step closer to my ultimate goal then,” I said mostly just talking to myself in an empty room.