Chapter. 24. The greatest creditor (9)
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[Do you see that? That thing behind your back?]
[Oh my. I’m sorry. You can’t turn your head with a body so frozen.]
Gedreutz spoke in a slurred yet pleasant tone.
[You can’t see it, but it’s behind your back. That small circular container located only 300 meters away from the Next Space space survival site is the ‘server room’. Yes, it is the one that was considered the only hope for reviving the dying Earth after the nuclear war.]
[The fact that the server room orbits at the same speed as this space survival site, and the fact that the distance is only 300 meters is also why the outer walls of this survival site are all reinforced. It’s no coincidence that the server room is made of glass and can be seen from anywhere. As you know, this space survival site was originally one of the rewards for clearing GG. ‘50-person long-term space survival base NEXT SPACE’. This was a space for cowards who abandoned their duty and chose their own survival even though they achieved the feat of clearing the world.]
[The survivors who reached this survival base are given one task. It’s no big deal. It’s a very simple task: turn on the light at the top of the server room for 10 minutes three times a day using the remote button provided at the survival base. Just like this.]
With those words, Gedreutz moved his hand, and a bright light appeared on my back and base.
[It’s not a big deal, but if you don’t do this, all the power to the survival base will be turned off sequentially. It’s a kind of accusation and punishment I prepared. So that those who abandoned everyone on earth and fled here can see the hope they gave up before their eyes. So that they can regret looking blankly at the light that brightens the base for 10 minutes three times a day and the hope they once longed for floats before their eyes. It was created so that you can regret the moment you gave up until the moment you die, watching your hometown that you cannot return to disappear as you are left alone in this vast space.]
Gedroitz is a server room that lights up the empty universe like a lighthouse . I stared at it endlessly until the light went out.
[Coincidences like this are not very common in this world. Even if it seems like a coincidence, if you look inside, various probability lights are already showing the results leading to it in advance. The future prediction model used in GG only reads such ‘inevitability that appears to be a coincidence’ based on numerous data and observational information. ‘I spilled the thumbtack and cleaned it up roughly. The next day I stepped on a tack and hurt my foot.’ A simple cause-and-effect theory like this. Why don’t we also express it in a way like ‘I knew it would be like that’? You’re talking as if you knew in advance a future that didn’t even happen. My future prediction device is nothing more than collecting these simple causes and effects and analyzing them all with a monstrous computing device. From this perspective, coincidence is not a very common phenomenon.]
[A ‘real’ coincidence… is something truly mysterious, surprising, and sometimes unpleasant.]
Inside the space base, as if it was trying to get a little closer to me. Gedreutz, who was clinging to the glass window, pointed to the clear scar between his eyebrows.
[Do you see this? huh? If you are an excellent soldier, you would know what kind of mark this is, right?]
‘Gunshot wound. A bullet with a smaller caliber than a regular bullet. A trace that penetrated the shield and passed exactly between the eyebrows without any loss of momentum.’
Although my consciousness was dim, like a candle about to go out, I had developed a habit of reading the information in front of me without thinking.
Gunshot wound caused by a small bullet. Considering the gunshot and the people present just before the unusually small caliber was fired, it was easy to figure out who the scars were.
[Yes, you seem to know! Your friend. Ashfield Ian Desmond. As expected, he has a tenacity that is as surprising as his reputation. I finally did it. They succeeded in putting a bullet into Andrei Gedreutz’s head…]
Gedreutz, who was behind the tempered glass, took out a small pair of tweezers and pried open the scar on his forehead that was clogged with something like a hemostatic agent. Even though his eyeballs had been frozen by the cold of outer space for a long time, Byun Byung’s amazing eyesight was able to clearly distinguish what Gedreutz, not far away, was trying to show him.
A cracked skull filled with blood and brain fluid. And the inorganic luster of metal, faintly shining through the twitching pink flesh that was clearly damaged.
[What’s inside here is a ‘war brain.’ You’ve probably heard it a lot, right? It’s a kind of brain activity assist device. In fact, it was unexpected for me that this ended up in Gustav’s head.]
[This is Gustav’s backstory that neither you nor Ashfield knows about.]
Gedreutz, who was talking, wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth that had lost control, and then moved lightly. I was unpacking several boxes.
[Ashfield. He lost his wife and child, lost the will to live, and his self-destruction, ignoring his life, caused more damage to Gustav than he thought. Although it was known to the outside world that he was safe due to the status of the Raptor Society, which had become the terror of the wasteland, in reality, he suffered quite serious injuries. The biggest injury was brain damage. One of the fragments that came through during the explosion ended up in a bad part of the brain? If left as is, cerebral hemorrhage would occur due to cerebral pressure and he would eventually die.]
[So I saved his life. It was thanks to the situation being monitored through satellites and drones.]
[The method was also simple. All you had to do was place a big, expensive, sturdy trunk in the Raptor Society’s path! The news of the cutting-edge brain assistance equipment, complete with blueprints and instructions for use, immediately reached the ears of Raptor’s executives, and Raptor’s doctors, who had as much surgical experience as human butchers, successfully performed the highly difficult brain implant surgery.]
-Shudder!
After finishing installing some kind of equipment, Gedreutz looked me in the eyes through the glass window again and said.
[That’s how Gustav Al Harb ‘Raptor’ survived.]
[His damaged brain, which survived, functioned as before with the help of machines.]
[Sometimes, he moves according to the will of someone who controls the entire brain without his knowledge. [It was]
[In the end, it was overwritten by my data consciousness that was uploaded into it.]
The tool fell from Gedreutz’s hand. He was drooling and visibly twitching.
[No, isn’t it surprising? In the past, I had no intention of moving the wasteland myself. Therefore, I wasn’t even thinking about how to control Gustav-kun! But look at the results!]
[Ashfield fatally wounded Gustave! The explosion was captured on my satellite and alerted me to Raptor’s critical condition, thereby saving him and putting him under my direct control!]
[After that, all my plans failed! In the end, I happened to swing the last card that came into my hand! And Ashfield, the starting point of it all, stands before me again! He shot me! His bullet literally lodged itself in the brain of ‘this body’ and completely killed ‘Gustave Al Harb’ as he had wished! What an amazing coincidence! Isn’t it like the perfect exit of a role that has completed all its missions!]
[And! Now this body, like a time bomb with a dead brain and a whole brain moving, has ascended into space! Normally, you would have been left on the ground unable to withstand the Raptors’ offensive, but here you are, facing me! I wanted it so badly! I hope to meet and talk face to face with ‘my completer’ at least once! At the same time, I never even dreamed of it! Because I’ve never seen a future where something like that happens!]
Boom!
His convulsing head hit the glass window, creating a white breath trail.
[But… it all came true! It’s all regardless of my intentions!!!!]
[This time… Only this time, the world is on my side! The flow of the world that has been blocking me until now! now! I finally found the right track!]
Convulsing with uncontrollable joy, he turned the device he had just finished installing.
A camcorder that looks like an antique and a display connected to the camcorder’s screen.
[Oh, it can’t go on like this. Gustave is dead, but this is his face.]
His busy movements ended with him putting on the helmet of his spacesuit, which he had finally taken off.
[Okay, that’s it.]
Gedreutz looked at it like an artist completing a work, then took a small chair and sat down in front of it. The sight of him wearing a large, faceless spacesuit helmet over his blood-covered military uniform made him look like a strange character.
The camera light came on and the screen also turned on.
The camera showed Gedreutz’s twitching and distorted face, and also captured me frozen on the surface of the spaceship as in the background.
[Hello, survivors of the dry world.]
The image on the display kindly installed for me has the same composition as the video record he once left behind.
Gedreutz speaks calmly in an oblique angle and in a calm, girly atmosphere.
[This is the confession and final video of me, Andrei Gedreuts.]
Gedreuts raised his finger and pointed to his face covered by the helmet.
[And it is also a story about a great person who will carry the world to be reborn]
The finger pointed to me frozen in the dark space of space.
[At the same time, it is a story about the meaning of your death.]
Finally, I headed toward the universe beyond the base, which was invisible to me.
What was reflected on the screen of the camera that followed the finger was the orbit of a satellite that was supposed to be full of space debris.
A space filled with fragments of machines that humanity has been shooting competitively for decades. Another environment ruined by humanity, filled with satellites and space debris to the extent that astronomers will officially give up observing space from the Earth’s surface after 2050.
The place that should have been covered with metal rings swimming at 27,000 kilometers per hour was empty.
Those were the unidentified rings seen on the ground. Space debris rotates like the rings of Jupiter around a black pillar of indeterminable size on the screen. Contrary to its name, in this universe where even a piece of metal the size of a fingernail has no gravity, it is a group of metals that produce power comparable to that of a rail gun.
[Okay then. Let’s listen to the old man’s old story for a moment.]
Gedreutz, who had shown the metal rings of himself and me in turn, turned the camera this way again and continued speaking.
[The story of a genius scientist who fought to save you all.]
Gedreutz’s voice as he spoke those words was filled with cold self-mockery.
So he began to tell the whole story of the world called the Wasteland.
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