Episode 11:The story of the Faun Group and its leader Dave

The Faun Group, one of the Uranus Groups, gives a very complex impression. Among the Uranus, it is the most down-to-earth one, without the extravagant and exaggerated floating buildings. Instead, it is in a neat and bright technology park, with greenhouses and ranches in between laboratories and large-scale agricultural factories, like a paradise on the cyber-Earth. Its founder, Dave, calls it the 'Faun Farm.' These ' Faun Farms' look like places where real work is being done, but they are often covered by large glass domes, like meticulously crafted model dioramas, which create an inexplicable sense of distance. However, Dave has a way to eliminate this sense. All new generations of humans born in the cyber era have definitely visited the nearest 'Faun Farm' more than once during their student years (unless they have never been to school). During the visit, Dave's holographic image explains the project to the children. When he is in a good mood, he often rushes from the president's office to personally lead the tour as an off-campus counselor. It is said that when Dave appears in person, it often means that he has to give up business contracts worth millions or even billions of dollars, but he does not charge the school or students any money. All visitors are guests, we don’t charge our guests. No matter how complicated the scientific principles are, they become clear and vivid under Dave's explanation. Moreover, the 'Faun Farm ' is one of the few places in the world where people can see exotic flowers, plants, and rare animals. Once, a little girl with leukemia said she wanted to see a unicorn on her birthday. Dave brought a unicorn (actually a horse with a horn) to the hospital and donated a batch of expensive gene medicines to the hospital. The little girl was cured! The media, who urgently needs good news and stories, threw a party over the news!"

At the end of the tour, Dave would often ask the children with a big smile, "Do you want to work for the Faun Group when you grow up?" and wait for the answer he wants. He would then hand out small gifts, such as a genetically modified plant that could survive any abuse, or an organic glass fish tank with a built-in ecosystem.

"If you want to be a partner of the Faun Group, you must love natural science a lot!" Many children actually remember Dave's words as he plants a seed in the hearts of these future biologists with the little plants and fish tanks, collecting loyal potential employees.

As one of the earliest Uranus companies, the Faun Group has a huge business network around the world, covering agriculture, medicine, bioengineering, genetics, neuroscience, bionics, and everything related to life. To run such a large corporate empire, Dave is way too busy to walk anywhere and has to ride his beloved hoverboard wherever he goes. It is said that this is a birthday gift from Oswin. Thanks to the Faun Group's contributions to bionics and neuroscience research, Oswin's bionic prostheses have achieved tremendous success in the market. It is said that for every prosthetic sold by Thuole, the Faun Group gets to extract about 20% of the patent fee. A hoverboard gift is not worth mentioning.

The older generation may remember the agricultural collapse in the early 2040s, as well as the genetic virus epidemic about a decade later. Either of these crises could have led to the demise of humanity as a whole, let alone exploring the stars. Humans couldn't even understand what was happening on Earth, yet they daydreamed about conquering the universe, how pathetic was that! Dave is known for his dedication to public welfare, and his greatest donation is the genetically modified food and seeds to famine-stricken areas, and vaccines and drugs to epidemic areas. After watching the live broadcast of the UN Secretary-General awarding Dave the "Grain God Memorial Medal" and the "Epidemic Defender Medal," some think that even if the entire Earth were given to Dave, it wouldn't be too much.

According to statistics, employees working for the two large conglomerates, the Faun Group and Thoule, make up more than 10% of the global workforce, with the Faun Group employing more. Dave hired millions of agricultural workers to work for him, which did save many from falling into gangs. As gang activities intensified, the Faun Group established a large armed organization called the "Farm Guard" to protect the "Faun Farms" from gang attacks and attacks from homeless robots. Large farms are even equipped with armed forces equivalent to a formal division. But this seems to be entirely logical; if someone burns down all the farms, everyone starves.

When you walk into a Faun franchise store in the Cyber Age, you'll find that the familiar fruits and vegetables are in nitrogen-filled packaging and sold at shockingly high prices (of course, they won't spoil for months, which is a selling point). You may have to sell your gun to trade for a few packs. Beyond the vegetables and fruits section, there are various nutritional supplements, meal replacements, canned goods, and pre-made meals with unreadable ingredient lists. These bland rations, similar to those for submariners, would drive foodies from the present day insane. But we don’t have a choice. With over 10 billion mouths to feed and severe environmental pollution, most farmland and pastures are already destroyed, let alone oceanic aquaculture. Without technology and food additives, what else can we do? If a modern child doesn't know that beef comes from cows, they'll be laughed at by their classmates. But in the Cyber Age, beef may not necessarily come from cows. Well, true, high-quality beef may only be found on the dinner tables of the Uranus.

Oswin sits in his mansion, enjoying a prime steak served by a robotic butler while watching a short video of Dave visiting the child with leukemia. He lets out his trademark smirk and says, "Hypocritical," Then he dabs his mouth with a pristine white napkin and picks up a perfectly cooked piece of steak to savor its taste. "But I have to admit, the beef this guy sold me still has the taste of my childhood." Just a few minutes ago, there was a small-scale clash between Thoule's mercenaries and the "Farm Guard" of the Faun Group, but the casualties are still unknown. However, this would not affect the long-term cooperation between the two companies. Disputes that could be resolved with a video call are never a concern for the two bosses.

Oswin, formally educated, looks down upon Dave deep down. Dave is much older than Oswin and Oswin must have watched Dave's biology science videos when he was young. At that time, Dave was an enthusiastic biology lover, but such enthusiasts were prone to be unbalanced students and could not pass the college entrance exam. After dropping out of high school, Dave opened a pet store in the city, selling fish and reptiles, and used the revenue and online purchased equipment to conduct simple biological experiments. The pet store was not doing well, but Dave took advantage of the short video trend and opened a vlog under the name of Crazy Dave, a character in the popular game "Plants vs. Zombies," to promote his store's products in the form of science literacy. Unexpectedly, he became popular overnight - video websites that need to inject "positivity" into society (promoted by the government) were lacking in serious knowledge content, so they put Dave, who honestly did science popularization, up on people’s homepages, giving him unimaginable traffic support.

After being splashed with fame, many universities and research institutions approached Dave for collaboration. Dave took advantage of his intelligence and completed university courses at an unknown university, obtaining an honorary doctor’s degree and gaining a network of alumni. No biological topic could stump him. In 2027, he saw a business opportunity in the first human mechanization experiment, and after the "subject" became a cyber maniac, he became more convinced that he could make better prosthetics.

However, being a latecomer, Dave's early prosthetics were far from perfect. Fortunately, the large gangs that emerged in the 2030s became his new market - gang members had an almost obsessive pursuit of body modifications, and their requirements for prosthetics were powerful functions and cool appearances, regardless of whether their bodies could bear it or whether their were any side effects. After in-depth research, Dave began to introduce bionic prosthetics specifically designed for gangs, which brought him enormous wealth. With the accumulation of wealth, Dave became bolder and started to venture into illegal human modification and organ trafficking. As he was dealing with gangs, he gradually abandoned his original intention as a biological science enthusiast and joined the gangs’ forces. During this process, Dave bought the ownership of some black factories from the gangs, which served as prosthetic production bases and human modification dens, laying the foundation for the future development of the Faun Group.

A few years later, at the end of a gathering, Dave was chased by a cyber-psychopath, and if it weren't for a group of mercenary passers-by who came to his rescue, he would have been crushed into a pulp right there on the street. Since then, Dave has lived in constant fear, afraid of being retaliated against, and has become cowardly. Meanwhile, the police had also discovered the relationship between these cyber-psychopaths and Dave and were preparing to investigate his company to find out if they were intentionally creating cyber-psychopaths and conducting illegal human experiments.

Dave then took advantage of the situation and transformed his business. He abandoned the prosthetic business and sold the related business department as a package to Thoule. He shifted his focus to genetic engineering and agriculture, and his connection with the gang became more secretive, operating through intermediaries. At that time, the government was gradually weakening, and the investigation into Dave was eventually dropped.

While researching drugs to alleviate the side effects of prosthetics, Dave accidentally invented a genetic modification technology that could extend the human lifespan. When a certain dictator learned of it, he secretly approached Dave. The dictator's son, feeling hopeless about inheriting the power, staged a coup after his father returned to their country and imprisoned him. The life extension technology was then made public. The news quickly spread to the underworld, and many members of the Uranus came to Dave, offering him generous terms. As a result, Dave not only met a group of Uranus members but also gained a large amount of capital, supporting the Faun Group to develop rapidly.

Dave took advantage of the expansion of the Uranus Group to completely change the world's industrial landscape, while severe environmental pollution deteriorated even more and signs of unsustainable agriculture started to spark. He purchased a large number of barren farms and built industrialized "Faun Farms" on them, where he grows genetically modified crops and raises genetically modified livestock with much higher production efficiency than traditional agriculture. The processed products made from these genetically modified products are the ones that drive foodies crazy in the Faun specialty stores. As traditional agriculture collapsed and famine followed, the final piece of the Faun Group's plan fell into place. Dave completely controls global agriculture by providing aid to disaster areas with genetically modified foods, new seeds, and livestock.

So, how did the Faun Group, who previously operated a prosthetics business, develop such strong agricultural research and development capabilities in just a few years? It was actually purely accidental. A gang that looted artifacts in the Middle East accidentally discovered a storage device while excavating a tomb. No one could say for sure its age and origin, but according to Karma's mage, it may be related to some non-human race. Later, the device entered the black market as an unidentified antique. Although Dave was not interested in history, he had heard Oswin mention the speculation about the seed ship and vaguely felt that this antique might be related to the seed ship. So, he took the initiative to buy it and bring it back to headquarters before Oswin could. The storage devices in the seed ship are set according to the corresponding level of human technological development, and technology needs to develop to the corresponding stage to be able to read their contents. The simplest ones are pictures and texts carved on stone and metal plates, while the more complex ones require supercomputers that employ different principles to decipher. Unfortunately, after experiencing countless natural disasters and man-made calamities, people on Earth have completely forgotten about this, and are still climbing the technology tree on their own. Dave used a supercomputer rented from his university alumnus to decipher the content in the storage device - which happened to be about genetically modified technology and agricultural industrialization. According to Faun's technology level at that time, only about 1% of the technology could be replicated, but that 1% was enough for Dave to climb to the top of the tower occupied by the Uranus. In addition to genetically modified plants and animals, Dave also used the technology to develop gene drugs. Therefore, it was easy for them to develop vaccines and eradicate the genetic virus epidemic that later swept the world.

In addition to the alien technology deciphered from the storage device, Dave's "Faun Farm" also has its own original content, which is all these agricultural robots or agricultural mechs that make him proud, known as the "new agri-machine". The current scale and mode of the agricultural factories are difficult to maintain purely by humans. Even Cyborgs and robots find it difficult to withstand the labor intensity here, so they have to rely on large-scale human-like machinery to complete the work.

A part of the agricultural mechs relies on human drivers to operate, mainly for complex but labor-intensive operations, such as construction, planting, fertilization, pruning, etc. The driver can make flexible judgments based on site conditions, while the mechs provide strong mechanical power, the combination of which can efficiently complete the work. The size and workload of these mechs have far exceeded the endurance of humans. They have to be driven by modified Cyborgs. Dave used this to maintain absolute control over the development of agricultural mechs, while also maximizing the exploitation of labor, as these special Cyborgs had nowhere to go but to operate the mechs. After the establishment of the Farm Guard, the Faun Group has developed armed combat mechs based on this class of mechs while further strengthening and upgrading Cyborg pilots. Some have even blended with the mechs. Moreover, after layers of screening and genetic strengthening, and improved armament, mechanical fighters have been developed with superior combat power; only one of which can eliminate an entire small gang, or subdue escaped dangerous experiments.

In addition, there is another class of automated mechs equipped with intelligent AI. They do not require human control and are used mainly for repetitive and relatively simple harvesting, transportation, rough processing, etc. Automated mechs rely on environmental and machine learning to work autonomously, but without the flexible adjustment of humans, they cannot complete complex tasks. This kind of mech is still under development. They still cannot replace the human-controlled mechs even after 3 iterations. Dave plans to fully automate the production mechs within five years, filling the farm guard with redundant Cyborg pilots.

The content of the seed ship storage device further fueled Dave's ambition. The technology inside could be used on Earth and other planets and star systems with even harsher environments. After harvesting fame and fortune, Dave's initial passion for biology gradually returned, but in an extremely evil way. With his vast wealth and powerful technology, he could now realize his dream: to him, all species on Earth, including humans, are weak and powerless. Take humans as an example, they have only evolved a good braincase after millions of years, but too much brainpower gets occupied by emotions and humanity, dragging them away from a lot of opportunities for development. Humanity must be eradicated! Those genetically modified plants and animals are only the most primitive products. Dave was generous enough to create these things and allow all miserable creatures to survive in the world. What Dave truly wants is a group of his superorganisms to survive and fight in the universe without any life-support equipment. These superorganisms will be absolutely loyal to him and help him expand his territory in the vast universe. He is the creator himself. As for the incompetent beings on Earth, they will all become fertilizer and feed once the superluminal spacecraft is successfully developed!

Dave's ambition has grown to the point where he has become increasingly greedy and afraid of death, even to the point of being scared of the genetically modified organisms developed by his own company. Due to his abuse of gene enhancement agents, he has become erratic and developed a dual personality. When facing outsiders, he remains kind and humble, maintaining the perfect image of a multinational corporate executive and a distinguished scientist. As long as there are no outsiders present, he will become an absolute bastard or a tyrant. If an employee accidentally angers him, he may be scolded if he is lucky or become a test subject for the "secret project,". The project has been kept going on for over 10 years, consuming enormous company resources. It has been under Dave's and his schoolmates' tight control and no one is allowed to ask. The "public welfare" and "charity" projects, which Dave was proud of, have now become tools for money laundering and a cover-up for the secret project.

As Dave's oppressive rule intensifies, many of the group's former employees who were inexplicably fired, fled to join the Resistance. They brought with them exclusive technology and information, including human printing technology, which is still in the experimental stage. In the Resistance group, their safety could be guaranteed. At least they wouldn’t encounter the tragedies that Veronica’s father did. Dave's mental state becomes increasingly unstable, and his control over his subordinates becomes increasingly harsh and unreasonable. The scientists and the people who had followed him for years gradually realized that Dave was no longer the idealistic biological scientist he had been, but a tyrant who had been fooled by power. Many people in the company suffered injustice and lived in fear, but did not dare to take action.

One day, Dave used a segway to kill a veteran employee who tried to stop him in a rage, which finally ignited the anger of the employees. Some of the employees decided to secretly contact the Resistance and prepare for a coup d'état. Meanwhile, some young scientists of the Faun Group find that the experiments conducted in the secret project have become more and more heinous, which creates a deep fear. During one of the experiments, the dangerous creatures went out of control and nearly killed several young scientists and assistant researchers, which completely woke the leader of the project. He revealed the secret project to the OWL organization. An opposition force is also gradually formed within the Faun Group, who are eager to overthrow Dave's tyranny, sweep away his conspiracy, and rebuild a technology company that focuses on benefiting humanity, rather than planning to replace humans with dangerous creatures.

As Dave's high-pressure rule intensified, many former employees of the Faun Group who were inexplicably fired or couldn't bear it anymore joined the resistance organization. They brought their own technology and intelligence, including the human printing technology that is still in the experimental stage. Within the resistance organization, their safety could be guaranteed, at least not like Veronica's father who suffered a tragic fate. Now, for the OWL organization, (which is gathering evidence of the Faun Group's crimes) and the Matr1x Alliance (which is committed to leading humanity to overthrow the rule of the Uranus), the Harvest God's private armed force, the "Farm Guard," is not a real threat. There are still many secret laboratories hidden in places like the Vitemusk Dam and the mountainous areas, like Pandora's boxes, with contents that are many times more ferocious than any existing species on Earth. Once unbound, they will bring unpredictable consequences.