WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 452: Stuffed Paradise (14)

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The next day, another incident took place in Philadelphia Chinatown. Overnight, someone had scattered printed materials praising Yang Yongbin. They laid out “General Yang Yongbin’s beliefs” in systematic form: an ideology born from the anonymity of an unspecified crowd fused with malicious collective intelligence.

Anne found it suspicious that the materials were written in English.

During a brief call on her break, she sighed and said,

「For one thing, 70% of the citizens of Chinese descent living in Philadelphia can’t speak English. If they wanted to urge their “awakened compatriots” to act, they obviously should have used Chinese.」

As Anne said, a significant portion of the population of Chinese descent did not know English.

‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that in itself...’

America was a country with no official language. There were plenty of other neighborhoods where immigrants gathered and used only the languages of their countries of origin. Koreatown was like that, and European communities were no exception. Spanish, with its large speaker base, was even treated almost like a second official language. The phrase “a nation of immigrants” was a literal fact.

Even so, Chinese speakers had long had a poor image. There were many who addressed people in Chinese as if it were the most natural thing in the world, even outside Chinatown. As though they did not care whether the other person understood them or not.

Gyeoul thought over their insularity.

At the same time, an old memory crossed his mind. The old immigration station on Angel Island, where he and Anne had briefly stopped as a transit point when they were deployed to San Francisco. Gyeoul and Anne had boarded the submarine bound for the Pequod from China Cove in front of it.

As expected of a building designated as a historic site, the old immigration station had plenty of things to read inside. Most of them recorded the history of discrimination against Chinese immigrants. How much had the Chinese Exclusion Act, enforced for more than half a century, influenced the insularity of Chinese communities that continued to the present day? A sense of victimhood and hostility tended to strengthen a community’s insularity.

And that insularity became a cause of constant discord and conflict. Conflict arose because of insularity, and insularity grew firm again because of conflict. A vicious cycle.

It was a clear example of the muddy current Gyeoul had in mind. Once water turned muddy, it could not clear itself. After it crossed a certain point, there was no going back.

Just as the prejudices of the last century were adding new sparks in the present.

The war against things that resembled humans but were not human had not been enough to break that vicious cycle. It had only given the stuffed boy a brief chance to dream of becoming something beyond human.

Gyeoul, no longer a boy, was waking from the dream he had dreamed for so long.

‘No, maybe it would be more accurate to say I’m letting it go.’

The bitter aftertaste remained.

Anne said there was a high chance that the people behind this incident were the same ones behind the earlier terror attack.

「The only difference is that they used multiple drones instead of RC cars. The method itself matches the previous terror attack. They used the same Wi-Fi chipset, and the technique used to erase traces from the cloud network is similar. We couldn’t find any clues in the printed materials either. Whoever this is, they’re very thorough. One bastard or several.」

“So tracking them will be difficult this time too.”

「Yes.」

She sighed.

「A lot of blood is going to be spilled from now on. I don’t want you to be hurt by it.」

Judging from the circumstances, Gyeoul had ended up being used as the flint that struck the spark. They had said they should keep various possibilities in mind, but at this point it was hard to doubt the culprit’s motive.

“I’m more worried about you. There are so many people running their mouths.”

「Forget those worthless bastards.」

Anne answered Gyeoul’s concern as if it were nothing.

「No matter how much they tear into me, the most they can do is drag me down from this position, and even that won’t be easy. If I get demoted, it’ll disrupt Director’s plans too.」

“Director’s plans?”

「Apparently, he’s been offered a run for senator in the election at the end of the year. He seems to have ambitions of entering the presidential race eventually too. Well, Director is the sort of person who can have that level of ambition. He helped suppress the coup, and more importantly, he’s a decent person.」

“Ah...”

「In that situation, dismissing the deputy director he appointed less than half a year ago would be a bad move. It would damage his image of strong Leadership. People would say he was swayed by public opinion right before an election. Besides, I even received a medal for Fair Strike.」

Anne might not have been widely known to the public, but inside the FBI, at least, she was recognized as a hero. From the director’s position, delaying his run for office would be better than cutting Anne loose.

“Still, there’s always the chance something goes wrong.”

「Then I’ll curse them out and leave. I never wanted this seat in the first place. You know that too, Gyeoul. What I wanted was to become your wife, not something like FBI Deputy Director.」

“...”

Listening to her joke, dripping with sincerity, Gyeoul wore an awkward smile. She was speaking lightly now, but if that really happened, it would remain a deeply painful memory for her. Just as Gyeoul felt regret over the present he could do nothing about. Anne had accepted the deputy director position because she thought there was no one else to take it. Her attitude was meant to reassure him.

「Ah, I have to go now.」

Her reluctance was obvious. Gyeoul called her name.

“Anne.”

「Yes?」

“You know I love you a lot, right?”

A soft chuckle came through the receiver.

「I know, but I love you more. See you later.」

The call ended.

Unlike the lightness of the call, the situation kept growing more serious. A group of armed citizens had surrounded Chinatown. Among them were militia members equipped on par with regular troops. They faced off against the police blocking the roads and shouted angry slogans and curses.

The tension among the police was clear even through the screen. With the National Guard not yet deployed, the police were unable to withstand the pressure from the protesters and were giving ground little by little.

They, too, viewed the Chinese residents as potential suspects. The reason they had blocked the roads in the first place was to tighten searches and inspections. There was no chance they had any real will to actively protect the residents.

In the end, at 2:11 p.m., the firefight finally began. Citizens of Chinese descent took up guns and formed vigilante groups to protect themselves. But many media outlets covered their actions unfairly.

「Viewers! Look! They’re firing indiscriminately!」

An attractive female anchor reported the news in a horrified voice.

What the screen showed was always Chinese vigilante groups firing toward the street. Even if the vigilantes had fired first, their situation should have been taken into account. But with footage of police officers taking cover inserted as “reference footage,” it was only natural for viewers to come away with a distorted impression.

The anchor also slipped in facts that had nothing to do with the situation.

「According to last year’s statistics, the average income of Chinatown residents who hold citizenship reaches a staggering 60,000 dollars. The average income of Philadelphia citizens is only 40,000 dollars. How did they acquire that wealth?」

It was a subtle turn of phrase, one that suggested citizens of Chinese descent must have earned their money through unfair means.

It was also the sort of comment that seemed to encourage looting.

Had that malice worked?

The scale of the riot grew by the minute. Philadelphia was not exactly a city with good public order, and Camden, one of the worst crime areas in America, was located in the same metropolitan area. Even before the quarantine war, it had been infamous as a center of illegal weapons trading and drug smuggling.

Chinatown and Camden were even close in distance. Cross one bridge from Camden, and one arrived straight at Chinatown. After confirming this on the satellite map of his Net Warrior terminal, Gyeoul let out a short groan.

Soon, he groaned again. He had seen a banner held by the protesters on the TV screen.

「Lieutenant Colonel! Our hero! This time, we’ll protect you!」

“My God.”

There was no possibility that the Lieutenant Colonel they meant was anyone other than Gyeoul.

The National Guard was deployed one hour after the situation began. This was an unusually quick decision, but the problem was that they prioritized protecting the rest of the city. Gyeoul, who had high-grade jade-level clearance, could check the deployment in real time.

‘I can’t say it’s simply... wrong.’

Gyeoul had already received officer training on military public order operations. It was essential in an age when the end was approaching.

One of the incidents used as an example in that training was the LA riots of 1992.

Once violence broke out on an urban scale, marginalized classes that already held grievances against society also began joining the disorder, each for their own reasons.

For that reason, the decision to calm the rest of the city first was not wrong. It followed the same principle as cutting down trees in the direction a fire would spread before putting the fire out.

The fact that only three battalions had been deployed at this point also had to be considered. Given the size of the metropolitan area and the armament level of the protesters, even one brigade might not be enough.

Despite all that, Gyeoul was notified that refresher training would resume the next day.

The person who contacted him was a colonel from the Army Training and Doctrine Command.

“Sir. I think that may be somewhat difficult right now...”

Gyeoul, who had returned to the college, had only just moved accommodations. The atmosphere on the War College campus was unsettled, and caution tape was still stretched around the place where the bomb had gone off. National Guard troops had been deployed here as well and were standing guard because of concerns about additional terror attacks.

In the process, they showed signs of not being on the same page as the police who had originally been in charge of security.

As Gyeoul trailed off, the colonel answered as if it were nothing.

「That doesn’t mean we can delay establishing the emergency response system, does it? The White House has taken an enormous interest in this matter. Think of this as a kind of mission too. Aren’t we soldiers? We carry out orders when we receive them, even when circumstances aren’t favorable.」

“Hm, I understand what you mean.”

The first person to propose the Western Region emergency response system was President Kramer. Since he was not especially prone to showmanship, the activation date for the response system had been set long ago. So even for the sake of his own dignity, he would not want to delay it.

「If anything troublesome comes up, make sure you contact me. I’ll do my best to accommodate you.」

“Thank you for your consideration.”

「Not at all. It’s only natural.」

After that, the colonel did not hang up right away and kept the conversation going on various topics. Gyeoul got the feeling that the colonel was trying to show off his insight.

And this was not the first time Gyeoul had felt that from a colonel. Around lunchtime, the division commander of the division that included the forces stationed in Carlisle had come to see Gyeoul and eaten with him.

Gyeoul could not help wondering.

‘Just how far has the matter of Lieutenant General Rogers’ promotion spread?’

The U.S. military still upheld the principle of civilian control, but even so, general had always been a position reached through political skill as much as ability.

On top of that, the recent rapid expansion of the U.S. military had made sponsorship between officers widespread. This had also happened during World War II. When an organization grew so large that the existing system could no longer handle it, this had to be seen as a phenomenon that arose naturally as individuals dealt with the confusion.

So if someone knew the story behind Rogers’ promotion to lieutenant general, it made sense that they would want to build a connection with Gyeoul.

It was also possible that the Central Intelligence Agency had deliberately spread the information, intending to make Gyeoul a firm link between the Intelligence Agency and the military in the future. Military figures who would resist direct contact with the Intelligence Agency were far more likely to cooperate if Gyeoul served as the intermediary.

At the end of that chain of thought, Gyeoul suddenly felt sick of it all.

The crowds who put their own interests first even in times like this, and himself, who had become their target. The muddy current raging outside. His life with Anne, still so far away because of it.

‘And this is the best world I managed to reach.’

Gyeoul’s heart could only feel heavy.

Footnotes:

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