Aida didn't want people to just loiter around during this time so she arranged for a few people with better educations to teach. Most of the people here had grown up in poor neighborhoods, they had minimal education and many didn't even know how to read. Strength was important in this new society, but knowledge was equally as important in the long run. Her goal was to increase the average intelligence level of everyone on the base. She didn't expect any of them to become doctors or scientists, but they should at the very minimum know how to read.
Due to the varying degrees of education on the base, the instructors started at the most basic level and worked their way to more challenging content. Some people in the crowd were interested while others decidedly went to sleep. Aida shrugged when she saw this. She could only lead the horse to water, everything else was up to them.
On the side, Little White and Rose were prime examples of perfect students. They paid close attention to the lessons and tried their best to absorb everything they could. This made Aida appreciative yet again of Light's abilities to raise children.
After a few more hours of class, people began to get agitated as the withdrawal symptoms appeared. Aida watched them closely, using the cameras in the area to extend her vision to the entire base. She once more reminded everyone there, "I can see that this is hard for many of you, but you have to have the determination to push through. Those who choose to go to drugs are also choosing to kill themselves, if that is the case, I will help accelerate that timeline."
She casually raised her knives and waved them towards the people, this reminder was enough to keep the majority of the people in place, enduring the pain that came with withdrawal.
Soon, 24 hours came to an end. Most of the people were lying on the floor gasping for air, sweating through their clothes. There were a few dozen people who couldn't handle it anymore and tried to run. As they approached the makeshift electrified wall that Aida created, they were immediately shocked and fell to the ground. She carefully modulated the voltage and current to shock but not mortally wound.
The lackeys and their guards would then walk to them and tie them up, dragging them to a corner with all the others who had succumbed. Although Aida threatened to get rid of them, she had no intention of actually doing so. Having a weak conviction when it was forced on them wasn't strictly a crime. These people would simply undergo further observation until they were clean. Her threat was merely to provide the people here with an incentive to keep to their own convictions. The rest was up to them.
After the 24 hours, she stood up and began organizing the people with help from the lackeys. They took this opportunity to run a census of everyone on the base and classify their skills. Everyone was responsible for selecting a profession. Those with more experience would be in charge of teaching the rest. There were many roles to fill including cooks, cleaners, accountants, builders, auto mechanics, engineers, fighters, etc. People stood there apprehensively, unsure about whether they should sign up for not.
"The base won't let any of you do this work unpaid. For those of you who are willing to work in this base, you will be provided two meals a day as payment and you can gain contribution points to earn other items like gems that can help you get stronger," Aida explained.
"All adults at the base will undergo night time classes, and children have mandatory schooling. The classes will include basic language, arithmetic and fighting courses. If anyone is found to skip the courses, they will be punished accordingly."
Everyone cheered when they heard these incentives and began signing up for various professions with renewed vigor. Most of them listened to the first half and ignored the latter half.
After that was sorted, she redid the housing assignments so that everyone would have a room to live in. No one should have to live out in the streets. Artie was personally gratified to see all this go down as he was the main contributor to having everything well organized. He had previously cross referenced the base's data on the people with the government's official documents to create a comprehensive list of everyone on the base and categorized them based on threat and ability levels. This is what allowed Aida to be at ease about assigning living spaces to a few hundred thousand people.
Everyone was sent off to gather their belongings, shower and prepare for their new lives.
Aida sat back onto the chair with a huge sigh and stared at the now empty field. While they had gotten through the first step of reforming the base, it would still take some time before Green Base would reach a certain standard of living.
She had still underestimated how troublesome it was to run a base. Hopefully soon, she could pass the responsibilities off to someone else. With that, she looked towards the lackeys with a glint in her eyes.
***
Going back to Light and the others, they were off to meet with Zero and the other leaders of Orange Base again. After a hearty breakfast in the RV to prepare themselves for the upcoming battle, they were escorted by a few attendants who had been waiting outside the RV to a new location.
Instead of the massive hallway, this time they were brought to a well lit room with a zen garden view to continue their conversation. [1] Light and the twins were familiar with this kind of garden and were surprised to see one that was fairly well maintained still around since the outbreak.
Zero smiled and greeted each of them warmly with no sign of discontent from the previous day. He commented, "Was the room not to your liking? We could switch it to another one if you would like."
Lucifer shook his head and smiled with his usual warm smile while responding, "Not at all. Please don't be offended. We simply have gotten used to the comfort of the four walls in our RV and intend to continue using it as our lodging. Thank you for graciously offering such a wonderful room and I'm sorry we didn't have the opportunity to appreciate it."
Zero allowed the conversation to end there and they moved on to other topics.
[1] The Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water.