PUSHERS & MOVERS
If you hear that someone is not for sale, you just didn’t ask the right price
LEADER
TERRITORIES
STRENGTHS
POPULATION
ORIGINS
FACTION ABILITIES
FACTION INTRODUCTION
Everything is for sale. If someone says that it is not, then the buyer didn’t ask for the right price. Our goal is not violent conquest of the universe, but simply buying it, squeezing the value from it and then selling it off at a discount. Ignorant fools declare deception, lies, depravity, and corruption to be vices but for us these things are a vital strategy.
An action is immoral only if it’s not profitable. This is the essence of human nature, we know it for sure, but others are just too foolish to admit it.
We don’t trust anyone. Our friends would sell us if they can get a good price, and we would do the same. Mutual profit holds us together. This is the most honest form of collaboration possible in the universe. We don’t have friends, but business partners. Advanced algorithmic trading ensures us tremendous wealth, but this wealth needs protection.
In contrast to those beggars, we have plenty of money to burn. We invest in advanced weapons and armies of reckless missionaries. Who wants to risk lives for nothing, when others can do our dirty work?
Soldiers, engineers, Mainnet and other entities each think that they control the universe, but they never conceive whose capital is behind all the power.We financed it in the first place, but we prefer to keep silent about it.
We are sure of only one thing: if someone extends their dirty hands to take what is ours, they will certainly regret it.We control all the routes of the universe we spaceships travel and have people on payroll everywhere. We will track anyone down who cheats us and make sure we get paid back.
Hong Kong, Dirty Business District
The bright lights of the portal to Soul Exchange glow above the broken houses of Dirty Business District and the broken lives of its inhabitants. Here, people roam aimlessly not looking in each other’s eyes because they fear to see the reflection of their own hopelessness and failed aspirations. All these losers once attempted to climb on top of the dominant hierarchy to become the Pushers & Movers of the world. They entered Soul Exchange full of life and ambitions, but overwhelming market forces digested them, sucked out their energy and vitality and spit them out broken forever. When a newcomer arrives, he gets depressed just by looking at the locals.
But nevertheless, the intense flow of newcomers never stops.People renounce their homes and families to come here from all corners of the human-controlled universe to bet everything they’ve got on Soul Exchange.
They eagerly walk along the gloomy streets of Dirty Business District not paying attention to the surroundings. But if they stopped and counted the odds of the success of their enterprise, they would run home as fast as they could. But none of them want to think about losers who failed.
Their minds are captured by images of the glowing portal and of the winners who tamed the market forces inside to make it to the top. When newcomers reach the entrance, they read the sign:
“Integrity, Morality and Loyalty are just other commodities. Make sure you put a price tag on your soul before you enter. Trade or be traded!”.
Many people enter, but very few stay for long. Most of them get spit out in the most undignified fashion.
They are too ashamed to talk about the atrocities they committed inside, and it makes their situation even worse. They rot from inside forever with guilt and embarrassment. But there is an old MACH addict, one of the first visitors of Soul Exchange who can tell you what’s happening there if you buy him a dose of cheap synthetic MACH substitute.
Don’t bother to give him pure MACH. His brain is too damaged to feel the difference. Some say that his stories are pure hallucinations.
The old man sniffs the line of filthy brownish powder and shivers as it kicks in. He hugs the rusty sex robot sitting beneath him and starts speaking with a trembling voice: “What do you know about love? I used to have many friends and women, but all of them turned their backs on me. She is the only one who remained!”
The robot tenderly blinks at him with a light diode, the man smiles and holds her metal hand.
“Her arm is so warm, even though it’s cold like steel. Life is deception. You know this for sure inside Soul Exchange. What seems to be right, appears to be wrong! What seems to be profitable appears to lose you money. What seems to be solid, appears to be a Ponzi scheme.
I used to have an entrepreneurial gift. Everything I touched turned into crypto gold coins. I’ve had more than enough on earth. Why did I decide that my destiny is to rule the universe?”.
The old man starts crying, sticking his head in the robot’s silicon breasts.The robot murmurs in a monotone, mechanical voice: “Such a bad boy, you turn me on”.
The man calms down and goes on: “I knew that only at Soul Exchange could I find a really lucrative business. I started humbly from an innocent investment in the slave colony on Venus. Then bought shares in an AI-blockchain optimized for profit. It found a loophole in the Multiplanetary Alien Law and justified a genocide of all aliens without Solar System residency status.
When the aliens’ property became a possession of the shareholders, my net worth became greater than a black hole. I thought that it was time to quit, but I wanted to have a last deal, the triumphant exclamation mark at the end of my glorious career.
“I invested in the weapon supply of the self-proclaimed dictator of Orion’s Belt. He intended to invade the neighboring galaxy and needed deadly,
high tech and expensive toys. Even my wealth was not enough to supply him everything, but the profit from the loot of the war was supposed to reimburse everything and generate a return with a great profit. I borrowed the money from the Guild of Pushers & Movers and closed the deal. The dictator got what he wanted, but when the time came to pay me back, he pretended that he didn’t know me. He said that battle fatigue made him forget the people and the debts he owed them.
“What could I do against the most weaponized man in the known universe? I asked the Guild of Pushers & Movers for help. But they said that they don’t help those who owe them money—it’s too risky. They took everything I had left, including my moon-villas and my red sport spaceships”. The man embraces the sex robot and sobs: “You are the only one I have left, I will never give you away.”
Newcomers keep walking past the crying man. The portal glows ahead, welcoming them.
PUSHERS & MOVERS ARE FINANCED BY:
ADA4GOOD
