Getting a Technology System in Modern Day



450 The Greatest Lie the Devil Ever Told

While the terrorist attacks continued, it was at a much slower rate. Reports began dwindling and reduced in frequency from seconds, to minutes, and finally, tens of minutes. And with an average response time of twenty minutes, it seemed that the Als had caught up to the trend and the worst was over.

All of the scenes around the world had been cordoned off. Imperial police and LEAs were maintaining the cordon as RES-QRS dragged out survivors and placed markers on the dead for later retrieval; at that moment, survivors mattered more. Some of the smaller attack sites, like the wave of suicide bombings at UNESCO Heritage Sites, had even been cleared of all casualties and GEMbots dispatched to repair the damage.

Soon, most of the attack sites progressed to the cleanup phase. Active rescue was only ongoing at the worst of the sites, like in Dubai, where the Burj Khalifa had been dropped on the Dubai Mall and a few other skyscrapers fell due to the blast; or in Paris, where the Louvre had its iconic pyramid dropped into the underground lobby beneath it. But although cleanup had begun, all of the sites were still considered closed as the police and LEAS prevented everyone from approaching until everything was confirmed to be over.

Due to the scale of the coordinated attacks, billions of people were watching how the empire handled things and had found themselves impressed by the efficiency of the response. Everything was moving like clockwork, almost as if it had been rehearsed in advance... which in itself was a problem for the newly formed imperial government.

People had been used to the way the old governments handled things. It was said that governments were organizations that, in doing the small things poorly, also managed to do the big things poorly as well. And that was especially true during emergencies, where instead of focusing on rescue and recovery, politicians would immediately start looking for scapegoats to take the blame for the failure. And only after that was complete would they begin recovery operations. It was a backward method of operating that was almost always more harmful than not.

And with billions of people watching the situation from the sidelines, online "discussions" naturally broke out. Most praised the empire, some didn't praise the empire but insulted the previous governments, and the trend of "sending thoughts and prayers" to the victims seemed to be an unkillable cockroach in the collective sea of first reactions.

The disguised man rambled on for quite some time about how evil the empire was, providing more and more bits of evidence-as insane as some of them were-in an attempt to sway people to his side and delay the "kingdom of the devil" from taking root in the hearts of humankind.

As he neared the end of his speech, he paused for a moment, then said, "Empires run on the ego of an individual. Just like empires and their emperors cannot be separated, their enemies must be individuals as well. Thus, the devil will absolutely try to paint me as the greatest villain who ever lived in order to make himself the protagonist of our conflict. So I decided to preempt that and declare it myself: I am the face of my operation. I am the leader, the guide, the shepherd of my flock. I am but one of many uncountable soldiers of god, all of them arrayed against the devil!

"He will say that I am the provocateur, mastermind, planner, and leader. He will invest his money, technology, military, and the media to isolate and place the focus squarely upon myself.

"The devil will make it his primary goal to obliterate me. He will mythologize and demonize me, rallying all the eyes of the world on my person.

"The empire will cloak itself in a flag to manufacture a false patriotism, a fictional sense of unity, but will force people into compliantly following along and accepting me as the target of everyone.

"It's nothing more than an age-old imperial tactic to quell uprisings. Declare war, declare success, declare an end to the grieving and fabricate a reason to return to business as usual. Distract, delay, demand.... All of it is a lie! A lie designed to remove the culpability from itself and direct it outward.

"But the emperor failed to take into account that the masses have eyes, and they are watching. In every corner of the globe, on every television, in every news room, everyone is watching. We're all seeing what's behind the curtain, and billions of us will never turn away now that our eyes have been opened.

"Oppression and liberation are polar opposites. Oppression is always about a single person. But liberation! Ah, liberation.... Liberation is about everyone! So I call upon all of you watching this to rise up! Rise up and fight back against the devil!

"Because remember this, if you remember nothing else: the greatest lie the devil ever told is convincing us that there is no such thing as the devil."

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