Book 4, Chapter 3
A Plan in the Making
Don"t take the story for serious!
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We followed dad to the laboratory. We"renow standing on a giant trestle bridge. An area the size of four or fivefootball courts lies below us. Three really big...machines are located there. Isee the emblem of Dragon Fate printed on them. They are about 10 meters high, withoctagonal shaped foundations. Hundreds of thick cables are connected to them. Thereare cooling devices attached on the cables, which would release out some vapournow and then. They must have implemented a really good ventilation systemin here, since the place doesn"t feel damp in the least.
"Now what you see here is the very core of myDragon Fate--Nova!"
"Is thatthe game server of [Zero]?" Rose asked, a bit excitedly.
"Well, we also use Nova as the game server yes. Butnot these three. The game server is a simplified version. We removed a lot ofcomponents that are useless to host a game, and of course it won"t be aspowerful as the three complete machines."
"So these three computers are Nova?"Rose"s face is getting red. I moved behind her in case she faints.
"They"re not computers! Photoelectron computingunits, they"re semi-biological machines." Father pointed at those cables."Look at the biggest one. That is not an electric cable, it"s a nutrientca.n.a.l. What"s inside these machines is basically composed of insectoid braintissues."
"Insect? Why not human?"
Father knocked me on the head, while Rose also rolledher eyes.
"First of all, my boy...you don"t find free human brains lyingaround! Using a human brain will bring a lot of...ethical issues. Besides, theonly advantage of the human brain is the excessive capacity."
"But there"s no doubt humans are the mostintelligent creatures out there." Rose commented.
"That is also because of our brain size. Nowsuppose an insect can grow a brain as big as ours, they will outsmart us in notime. Their brain cells are independent, each cell is like a single digitalchip that can function on its own. As for human brains...they"re useless if separated. The most importantreason though, is the low cost. We can breed tons of semi-products within ayear, thanks to their reproductivity."
"I can use Nova to do my simulations?"
"Yes. We will allow you 20 percent of our system resourcesfor your project."
"20 percent?"
"That"s more than enough. That old computer backat school probably can"t even match 1% of Nova"s true capability."
"This isbrilliant!" Rose jumped. Thank G.o.d there are safety bars on the bridge."I believe I can finish my experiment in no time! By the way, what kind of"weapon" did you turn my project into?"
"We gave a vivid little name for your theory."An old man with white hair, wearing clean room suit, walked to us. "The"Commercial Nuke". Boring, I know. But is enough to tell us the idea of it."
"It still sounds dangerous though." I joked.
"Of course it"s dangerous!" The old researchercontinued, "Our progress has proved it to be reliable, and we have alreadyfound a proper detonator for it."
"Exactly." Father took over the topic. "Thedetonator is no other than [Zero]."
"Wha--" I yelled. "Zero? The game I"m playing?"
Rose smiled. "I get it. So who"s your first target?"
"Take a guess."
"j.a.pan?"
"Bingo." The researcher smiled. "Tellus dear, how did you reach this conclusion?"
"Several reasons. To begin with, the first targetwho took the "bomb" is the last one expecting it, so the bomb will have its bestoutcome, which means we should pick a tough target. Next, we"re using [Zero] asa middle. So who loves games? j.a.pan or Korea. Lastly, Dragon Fate has itsinfluence all over the world but is weakest within j.a.pan. If we can force apower shuffle there, we will have a chance to get a big haul in the process."
"Clever. Very clever!" He commented. "Why didn"t you consider our ethnic contradictions though?"
"A businessman talks business. We pursue profit, and allfor profit. Without an actual war, ethnic and nation conflicts are justpolitical lies, profit decides everything."
Rose is speaking with a highspirit like those ambitious empresses in movies. I never knew she had this inher! Geez. I hope she can be as good when it comes to dealing withemotions.
Father and the researcher chuckled. Dad explainedslowly. "Nice insight. But not thorough enough. It"s totallyunderstandable though, for your age."
"I was...wrong?" Rose asked in shock.
"Nonono, I said "not thorough". That ethnic issuewhich you considered least, is actually our biggest motive."
"But how?" Rose questioned, "Why wouldyou act to your emotions?"
"We"re not acting on emotions." Theresearcher explained. "I don"t hate j.a.pan. On the contrary, I admire them.j.a.panese people have always been living under great pressure of all sorts, thusthey developed some of the best awarenesses. As you may heard, they work withgreat efficiency, they never slack off on their job. They don"t enjoy muchspare time because they"re the first ones to know how to face crisis. Theylearn fast, too--they can always study from the other nations and races, thenleverage the best parts. Sadly, our ancestors already claimed we should learnfrom the foreign world, but we never took it seriously. That"s one of the manyaspects where the j.a.panese people would win over us."
Well, listening to this is surely depressing. "Areyou saying our billions of people are weaker than them?"
Father turned to me. "You didn"t understand. Weadmit that they can do SOMETHING better than us, not everything. Ofcourse our overall strength is better. We should know their advantages andlearn. I know you don"t like j.a.pan, Sairin, but don"t take that emotion to thewhole nationwide level. There are a lot of good people, apart from thoseintruders and slaughterers you learned from the history book."
Researcher: "j.a.pan"s geographical location is farfrom ideal. They never had much nature resources. It only got worse when wesunk their Honshu Island last time. n.o.body would just sit there and wait fordemise, they need to grow, yet they don"t have the land for it. The obvious wayto get out of the situation, is war. They can solve all of their problems ifthey simply seize the land and resources from nearby countries. And the best choice--us.China sits in the way when j.a.pan wants to develop. That"s why they planned toremove us; On the other hand, j.a.pan is an obstacle for China as well. They"relike an outpost for America, and pose threat to us at all time. They are inthe way for our fleets towards the Pacific. Our boats need to make a detourand avoid their sea when going anywhere. Do you know what that means, wheneveryone is trying to harness ocean resources? It"s like someone is preventingus from reaching a gold mine. Wouldn"t it be nice if this "someone" justdisappears? It"s never a good thing to wait for the intruders. We should actfirst! Do you understand now? As you said, the real problem is always caused byprofit. The existence of j.a.pan is a threat to our survival, and the same can besaid in both ways. Eliminating the other one will always be the ultimatedecision for either of us."
The old man is getting over excited. I think I need tostop this.
"Wait! Stop! I get it. So China and j.a.pan are like two hungrywolves in front of only one piece of meat. We both need to dispose of theopponent in order to get the meat--or rather, eat the other wolf as well."
Father frowned. "That"s not really a good way toput it but... close. We were just trying each other out during the previousconflict, and j.a.pan fell behind." Then he pulled us near and whispered."Now you"d better not tell this to anyone else: It"s very possible thatthere will be a war between us very soon, a big one."
"Are we going to do a genocide?"
Father slapped me on the head. "What"s going oninside your brain?? That"s not how a war looks like. If possible, we can justtake control of the nation. Now that we mentioned it, I do hope there is a daywhen I don"t need to waste my time getting a VISA to travel abroad anymore."
"What about America? Surely they won"t just watchus beat up j.a.pan."
"I"m not sure what they"ll think. They may justdecide to give up on helping j.a.pan. It"s never been easy to keep a leash onthem anyway."
"So that"sthe reason behind it." Rose nodded in understanding," Looks like I was thinkingtoo simple. I"ve always believed that we hate j.a.pan because of those oldhistories."
"Don"t worry." I comforted Rose. "It"s alreadysomething that you can understand these things, when you were born in that kindof family."
"Pfff. My dad and stepmom never succeeded when trying to teachme to follow their steps."
"Sairin, I believe you got quite some niceequipment in the game?" Father grinned at me in a...creepy way.
"What are you planning?" I know something iscoming.
"Oh simple. I need you to go to j.a.pan and causesome damage to them."
The researcher took over. "According to therecords, the total player investment into [Zero] around the globe has wentbeyond 10 billion. It"s not a noticeable number compared to the economic of anentire country, but is enough to qualify as that "detonator". If you manage todamage their a.s.sets in [Zero], they will certainly try to throw in more fund inorder to reduce and recover their loss. That"s when Dragon Fate can make amove inside their financial market and cause a big surprise to their groups,even breaking them apart."
"That sounds easy but there are a lot of problemsI need to deal with first." I considered.
"Take it slow. We"re in no hurry, so you may acton your own decisions. Oh and, we have some news for you too. Guild wars willbe unlocked in at most two months, then nation wars, in another four months. Whenthat happens, all maps in different countries will become connected, and I"mpositive the whole game world will fall into total chaos by then. Whatever you"replanning, you should try your best to improve your strength during the sixmonths!"
"Okay then. I"ll see to it. Why don"t you just rigsomething for me in the server?"
Another slap on the head. Ouch.
"The other administratorsare not fools! The server of [Zero] went under the supervision of fivecountries, that is China, the USA, the UK, France and Russia, from day one. Wecan only look at the data but not make any changes. You need permissions from allfive countries to modify any game data. That was what we did when we contactedyou in-game and recovered those abnormal gold you got from the bugged NPC, andit were the others who asked us to do it, otherwise we could just let you keepthe extra money. We need to follow the majority. And that crossbow, wepaid them greatly to change their mind or you would really lose it forever!"
"Oh wow. I didn"t know that incident caused somany scenes behind us."
We chatted untilevening before I got to drive Rose back. Man, this is a tiresome day.
Accordingto father, I need to be more aggressive in the game from now on...no moregoofing off I guess.