User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Neutral 'verse Character Sheet: Emperor Bradley Hargrave/@comment-26322734-20160905061619/@comment-26322734-20160905180708

Okay, I'm replying on mobile so I apologize for any typos.

That is essentially what happens when the subject is broken down and assimilated as raw data. It's re-created in the Hargrave Matrix along with everything else, except more as an extension of Bradley's being than anything else. This is done so that the subject doesn't interfere with the copy and so that the subject can't continue being dissatisfied within the Empire.

He acts waaay differently to citizens within the Polises. And while that does seem uncharacteristic of him, there's a reason. The citizens that end up in the Polises tend to be criminals, prisoners, or immigrants. Prisoners and criminals end up there as a form of punishment, because I don't think I can realistically say that crime is nonexistent in the World Empire (just incredibly minimized). So criminals are simply uploaded to the Polis Coalition so that they don't take up any space and as a form of punishment.

Immigrants are there for two reasons. One is thay Bradley is, deep down, a fascist, and the natural distrust of foreigners comes with the ideology. When I say "immigrant", I usually mean immigrants that come from other planes/universes. Which brings me to reason two: due to them being outside of the context of Bradley's World Empire, he has no inherent control over them, and some especially powerful planar travellers can probably topple Bradley's rule one way or another. These immigrants hadn't been implanted with the magi-nanites, they aren't yet indoctrinated by the mass media-culture, and some of them are just inherently physiologicallu different, which Bradley feels would disturb citizens.

So they end up in the Polis Coalition to be fully cowed into submission by Hargrave himself. A few years living in a totalitarian hell masquerading as a utopia (with genuine features of a utopia) really gets immigrants along with the idea that they're sacrificing freedom for utopia. Some immigrants do not accept this idea and simply stay in the Polis Coalition forever, and others are eventually conditioned to accept the horror and are uploaded back into Earth in a humanoid form as naturalized citizens.

Also, when I say "immigrant", this can be people who legitimately want to live in the World Empire to people who accidentally stumble upon it from other places -- can't have any good samaritans after all. Ultimately, Bradley doesn't veil his totalitarianism in the Polis Coalition because he doesn't have to. In these simulated virtual realities, an unhappy subject can't do anything to undermine Hargrave at all, seeing as how Hargrave is physical. A citizen in the World Empire wouldn't be able to do much to stop Hargrave either, but if they somehow make any large-scale resistance (a feat impossible in the Polis Coalition), Hargrave would have to take exensive steps to get rid of the movement, erase them from the minds of the population, and then make sure such a resistance doesn't happen again. A time consuming process, considering Bradley is unable to just snap his fingers and have everything he wants done in an instant -- he needs to gather data, modify it, and use it for his abilities to work.

In the Polis Coalition, no such limitation exists. He CAN simply snap his fingers and be rid of the problem. So he doesn't take the extensive steps necessary to veil the empire as a utopia.