Chapter 321: Cocoon
The motorcade departed, heading for the airport.
“Finally, we can get rid of this huge trouble! Yes!”
With the pressure shifted to the CIA, Morgan was unusually happy.
“If you ask me, we should have used stronger methods long ago! They didn’t even consider her identity!
“That woman received over a decade of communist brainwashing during her formative teenage years when her ideology was shaped; she’s not even the same species as us anymore! Is it useful to talk to her about the free world? Does she even understand it?”
All the frustration accumulated over the past six months was swept away, and he complained incessantly to his colleagues in the car.
“Hmm, I agree! But it’s good now; the CIA has always been experts at interrogating terrorists, and our technology is about to advance by leaps and bounds,” a young agent had already begun to fantasize.
“By next Christmas, we might even be able to vacation on Mars!”
Morgan said nothing.
There was no doubt that those human beasts in the CIA would obtain black technology from Doctor Song.
But to convert this technology into corresponding products requires a strong industrial base.
Whether this once leading industrial power, which experienced decades of de-industrialization, still possesses this capability—
I can’t say!
When Morgan was a child, his father, working alone at the FBI, could support his mother, a full-time housewife, and four siblings.
They had four bedrooms, two cars, a meticulously maintained lawn, and often held barbecue parties in the backyard. Now, newly hired graduates from prestigious universities first have to figure out how to pay off their student loans for the first few years.
Suddenly, the car began to slow down.
“What’s wrong?”
“The CIA motorcade behind us is slowing down,” the driver, wearing headphones, said, staring at the rearview mirror, “They seem to have received new orders.”
The motorcade soon pulled over to the side of the road.
Damn it... Morgan had a bad feeling. He walked to the car holding Song Xue and tapped on the glass with his knuckles.
“What’s going on?!”
“Shhh…”
The car window lowered, and the operations director in the passenger seat was on the phone, gesturing for Morgan to be quiet.
“Yes, yes, Your Excellency! I understand!”
From the leaked conversation, Morgan seemed to hear a familiar voice.
It was His Excellency the President!?
The director put away his phone and got out.
“Mission changed, we have to let her go!” he told Morgan with a grim expression.
“What do you mean, let her go? Where, an NSA cell?”
The relaxed expression on Morgan’s face vanished.
“No, return her to her residence in Boston exactly as she was. From now on, the responsibility for monitoring and surveillance is still yours.”
“What?! Absolutely not! Is this—the President’s own decision?”
“Of course!”
“No—why would he make such a decision?”
The CIA director ripped off his sunglasses and glared at Morgan.
“You’re asking me?! You guys messed up, someone is a communist spy!”
“What do you mean?!”
“Our operation is completely exposed! Now the whole world knows we imprisoned a ‘Star Sea’ player, and the news is everywhere online! They—
The director was grinding his molars.
“They even got our conversation in the interrogation room! They know we were preparing to use torture to get information! Damn it!”
Morgan shook his head, instinctively disbelieving that his subordinates had made a mistake.
Those people were handpicked by him, and their backgrounds were impeccable.
And after 9/11, personal information surveillance in this country had reached an abnormal level; how could his subordinates so easily connect with communists?
He pulled out his phone, opened social media, and his vision went black.
Unfortunately, everything was true! The news had exploded.
In the news segment, the CNN anchor was dramatically spreading his arms.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard all year. Our President actually believes that the recent high-tech military technology from across the ocean comes from a video game, and he even ordered the arrest and detention of a game player, attempting to torture information out of her!?”
He clasped his hands over his head, then made a gesture of his brain exploding.
“BOOM!!! What can I say, God bless Milligan, I hope so!”
“The game operator has issued an announcement stating that, given the Federal Government’s actions and considering the protection of players’ personal safety, they will not provide game beta test slots to residents within Milligan in the future!”
The director told Morgan.
“Do you know how many socialites nationwide, and even worldwide, are following the ‘Star Sea’ live stream? Do you know how disappointed and disgusted this news will make them feel!?”
Morgan knew perfectly well.
After half a year of fermentation, the popularity of “Star Sea” continued to rise, and it was no longer just a purely fully immersive game, but had become a cultural phenomenon for all humanity.
Even many content creators who explained and analyzed the game’s settings and technological principles became big internet celebrities earning tens of thousands of dollars a month, despite originally being science popularization bloggers with only a few hundred subscribers—a true turning point in their destinies.
Many people, after returning home, stopped watching dramas and sports, and stopped playing other games, only watching “Star Sea” live streams, utterly engrossed, imagining themselves as part of it.
Many of these people were elites in various industries.
Tech giants expressed their desire for cooperation and financing, but the game developer remained mysterious.
The top ten richest people publicly stated on social media multiple times, almost begging for a beta test account, saying they could surely bring their management talent and ingenious ideas into the game’s wasteland universe, allowing Cangyuan Future Technology to truly take off.
Especially the richest person, who was the most vocal.
Morgan estimated that if it weren’t for the game equipment being linked to human brainwaves, these wealthy individuals would even be willing to pay over 1 billion dollars to acquire an account.
This was still under the premise that most people did not know the “truth” of the game; the public’s fanaticism for “Star Sea” was now. The Milligan people still believed that hundreds to thousands of their compatriots were participating in the game’s beta test, and the achievements Cangyuan made in the game could not have been without the wisdom and hard work contributed by the great Milligan people.
Similar situations existed with the citizens of India and the e-sports powerhouse, South Korea.
They even believed that their country’s players had occupied all the behind-the-scenes executive positions at Cangyuan.
Those top streamers speaking Chinese were just hard-working employees.
Because in the hearts of these simple ordinary people, Milligan’s university education quality is the best in the world, and Milligan’s technology, especially military technology, still leads by a wide margin.
If they knew that the only Milligan player had been imprisoned—
If they knew that the game operator was likely a true “alien,” and that the Federal Government might have personally destroyed the opportunity to communicate with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, causing future technology to be relegated to second-rate on Blue Star—this would be an extremely serious public scandal! Comparable to Watergate!
No, perhaps even more serious than Watergate. The President might have to step down early because of this!
“So what do we do now?”
Morgan was a little flustered.
“What else can we do? Do everything we can to minimize the damage! First, deny all accusations, insist that those videos and audios are all AI-fabricated.
Get through the most difficult period, then figure out how to calm things down later.
“Furthermore, we absolutely, absolutely must not admit that ‘Star Sea’ is a bridge of communication between extraterrestrial civilizations and Earth. Under no circumstances should we ever acknowledge it as anything more than a technologically advanced video game, and nothing else!”
The director poked Morgan’s chest.
“Director Morgan, this incident is entirely your responsibility! The preliminary work was done by you, the location is yours, and the CCTV surveillance is also yours!
“After the incident initially calms down, the President expects you to find the mole! And then, he expects your resignation!”
Morgan was speechless, dejectedly returning to the car.
The motorcade resumed its journey, turning around at the next intersection and heading back to downtown Boston.
On the other side, Ye Xing entered the Cambridge district of Boston along Interstate 95.
To be fair, Boston’s cityscape is quite good among all major US cities.
Especially the Cambridge district, due to many “nerds” living there, fitting the stereotype of old Americans, the number of people of a certain unspeakable skin color is significantly less, and the public safety is very good.
And for some reason, this city always gave Ye Xing a sense of déjà vu, a feeling that was particularly strong when he drove past the main building of MIT.
“I always feel like I’ve been here before—
He shook his head, concentrating.
At this moment, his phone vibrated, receiving a text message from a sender displayed as +0.
“Keep going, don’t worry about the surveillance along the way, the target will be in her apartment.”
Good heavens, the game operator was starting to show its power!
“Received.”
Ye Xing murmured to himself, stepping on the accelerator.
“Everything is proceeding as you commanded, Executive Officer.”
On Li Star, the butler sent a superluminal instant message to Lu Yuan.
“Very good. Continue, do not slacken.”
The supercomputer in Devil Mountain’s cave temporarily suspended player upgrade services to fully assist Ye Xing’s mission.
Currently, within the entire Boston metropolitan area, he and the car he rented were perfectly erased from real-time surveillance footage.
This was a dimensionality reduction strike from the field of information technology.
Ye Xing became a truly “non-existent person.”
At the same time, Cambridge district.
“Get out, you are free.”
Song Xue had her handcuffs and electronic ankle monitor removed and was returned to the “place where dreams began.”
She pushed open the apartment building door in a daze and entered the elevator.
Something must have happened. Back in Room 301, it had been thoroughly searched, leaving a mess on the floor.
Suddenly, the smart TV turned on by itself, and a line of Chinese appeared on the black screen, flashing for less than 5 seconds, then returning to black!
“Go downstairs in 330 seconds, and wait briefly in front of the apartment building. Don’t speak, the room is bugged.”
This is!
Although Song Xue’s mental state had been very poor in recent days, she was certain that it was absolutely not a hallucination born of despair.
Someone is helping me!
It’s… that person!
She struggled to suppress the wild joy in her heart, staring at the alarm clock by the bed, waiting precisely five and a half minutes before going downstairs.
As she pushed open the apartment door and stepped onto the sidewalk, a car stopped right in front of her.
The Asian driver with black hair rolled down the window and leaned out to look at her.
Song Xue immediately recognized the person as Cangyuan’s Chief Investigator, Jin Yi Ye Xing!
She almost blurted out his name but managed to control herself, doing her best to maintain a normal expression to avoid attracting attention from passersby.
“Did you call a car?”
Sister Xue nodded and got into the passenger seat.
“Do you want to visit China for a few days? If so, we’ll go to the airport now.”
As he stepped on the accelerator, Ye Xing looked into the rearview mirror and said.
“Doctor Song, I can only do as you say.”
“Hmm! Yes, very much so!”
“No—
On the way back, Morgan, who believed his career was about to be ruined and desperately wanted to salvage it, gradually noticed something suspicious.
This whole thing felt wrong. If it was to eliminate the scandal’s impact, the President should have had Doctor Song appear before the media as soon as possible to clarify and refute the claims.
She should have been invited to the White House.
What did it mean to send her back home?
Could it be…
A terrifying thought swept through his mind.
“Fuck!! We’ve been deceived! Never mind those pigs at the CIA, turn back immediately!”
A few minutes later, the car stopped in front of a McDonald’s, and Morgan rushed inside, heading towards an innocent customer.
“Lend me your phone for a moment!”
“Why should I?!”
“Stop with the nonsense!”
Morgan directly drew his service pistol, causing the surrounding customers and staff to shriek.
“Okay, okay, okay! Here you go—”
He unlocked the screen and searched.
Sure enough!
On all social media, there was no news to be found about “Star Sea” players being imprisoned.
Everything was fake news customized for NSA and CIA agents!
FAKE NEWS!
Just now, the elite national security and intelligence personnel of the world’s strongest nation were trapped in an information cocoon by an unknown force!
Thus, the President’s call must also have been AI-fabricated!
“Shit! Shit!!”
Morgan came out of the store like a madman.
Bang, bang, bang!
He shot and destroyed all nearby surveillance cameras; his marksmanship was quite accurate.
Then, he ran towards the nearest second-hand phone store.
“You guys come too!! Hurry!”
He yelled at his stunned young colleagues behind him.
“Everyone change your phones! Get Nokias, the oldest models! Then we’ll go to the Cambridge district, and don’t trust anyone along the way!”