OR2-EP1: Perun Awakens (5)
Egon Schuller is a serious and unsmiling old scholar, who from a young age has gained a reputation that ordinary people can hardly achieve in their whole life, and has a job and favorable treatment that is enough to feed and clothe him for the rest of his life. Therefore, he didn't have to think about his livelihood, and the Swiss, who liked to think about academic dilemmas and life inside his laboratory, didn't care about what ordinary civilians thought; he only cared about the truth, and only the matter of parsing the unknown world itself could interest him. He had been dead for many years, and had become ashes buried under Tiberium. Unwilling to let this scientist, who had done so much for mankind, disappear completely, people moved his grave out of Switzerland and rolled it all the way to New Adana, the last refuge of all mankind. When his consciousness resurfaces from the darkness, it is the persuasion of the mysterious man that inspires him to fight again. Indifferent to everything on earth, Schuller has eyes only for the mysterious and unfamiliar truth - the truth of the world. Proving the value of his existence by learning more about the world is his chosen way of life. Therefore, he is willing to sell his soul to the devil of unknown origin for the time being and embark on a perhaps never-ending journey.
Schuller never doubted Lilin's claims, and he accepted everything with amazing adaptability. The other party's tactics were beyond his comprehension, so of course the conditions that this godly fellow had arranged for them were something they couldn't refuse or change. It was only that having Schuller, who had done physics research all his life, come to the new world and turn to work on matters relating to psychic abilities was really embarrassing for him personally. Schuller disliked psychic technology, which he considered to be an authentic quackery, a pseudoscience - rather, a pseudoscience that attempted to solidify a person's orientation in terms of the force majeure of birth, a technique with which both Yuri and Shimada Shinji seemed to hope to achieve ulterior motives. He keeps these research materials locked in a cabinet and won't let anyone touch them. It was the forbidden book of the new age, humans shouldn't touch forces they couldn't control, Schuller had always believed that. Occasionally, his heart fluttered, a longing for the unknown, and his reason convinced him to remain calm and stop paying attention to the already yellowed papers.
After finishing the first day of the conference, Schuller returned to the hotel and continued to organize the research materials he had at hand. Aside from the discomfort of a new field of study, another factor that forced him to be concerned was the inclement weather. He had never expected the climate to be so cold, and he feared that the cold would banish the least adapted humans from the world before it eliminated most of the flora and fauna. In that case, the global warming predictions would be a failure, and the environmentalists would be accused of being liars, but the new ice age is a global crisis in another sense, and pointing fingers at each other won't help. If given the opportunity, Schuller would prefer to solve the biggest problem for mankind, rather than wasting time on the study of magical magic, which could not be widely applied so far. He had gotten a rough idea of all the results of this discipline since its birth in 1999, and couldn't help but feel disappointed. Magic was more often used in the military, he had not seen any research results in the field of magic put into civilian industries, and the gimmick of developing superpowers was accompanied by the rise of a new round of pedigree theories, which made Schuller very uneasy. He was a scientist, and scientists should be realistic and not be swayed by objective circumstances, while those who only spoke of positions without principles had no benefit except hindering his research.
A knock sounded at the door, Schuller, who had just stepped out of the bathroom, put on his clothes, put on his round-rimmed glasses, and checked the appearance of the visitor from the display screen of the operation panel next to the door, confirming that the other party was unlikely to be a criminal before opening the door and inviting the two to enter.
Two men in black suits stepped inside and one of them showed Schuller his credentials.
"Das muss ein Witz sein. Es ist miregal, wer du bist oder was du willst, aber du hast mich tatsächlich wütendgemacht. Ich meine es ernst, meine Herren von der CIA."
"I beg your pardon for disturbing you at night." The agent who had just volunteered his credentials said, "The story is simple: the Marines say that one of their soldiers dialed an unfamiliar number from a found cell phone on the front lines, and the bizarre thing is that this person had never dialed it ... in any way before this, even though the soldier said that you were old friends, and old friends don't come without any contact over the course of so many years, do they?"
Egon Schuller saw the mockery in the eyes of both agents, and he secretly blamed McNeil for his recklessness. McNeil had been too careless; as a battle-hardened commander, he should have realized that any unusual behavior by a soldier in the middle of a barracks would attract attention, let alone contacting a researcher he had never met. In Schuller's opinion, McNeil may have been desperate to make contact because he had found what he thought was a reliable ally or the only off-site help that would come in handy at the moment, a mindset that was dangerous in itself. They should have watered down the process of making another acquaintance on a more appropriate occasion, and never arouse unnecessary suspicion until then.
"I'm not sure why you guys are being suspicious." Schuller gathered up the papers he had spread out, "He and I did know each other a long time ago, before the family immigrated to the United States, and I lived in England as a child. It amazes me that you guys have so much free time to track down a muckraking researcher."
He was going to let the men go, and changed his mind a few seconds later. Right, he needed a chance ... This was the perfect opportunity. Now he was not that academic titan, just an ordinary researcher who lived from day to day by publishing garbage papers, and his full talents would not come in handy in the new field, he needed to find a project that was similar to his original research direction. It was essential to get these people to take themselves seriously, even if it made sense to take the opportunity to defect to the U.S. Army, and the United States wouldn't turn away foreign scientists who were willing to sell out.
"By the way, I have a good idea here, I wonder if your country is interested in investing in this project?" Schuller immediately brought up the next topic before the two agents became skeptical, "Since the two of you have been ordered to investigate me, you might as well take this opportunity to convey my goodwill to your superiors ... Well, I mean, I'm tired of running out of money to spend, and I need the funding, but everyone says that my project is a scam and they won't give me half a euro. You see, I've kept in touch with my old friend who's gone to the States for the same purpose, hoping he'd find a chance to introduce me to you guys ... Who knows, he's just an ordinary soldier with little say."
Schuller opened his laptop and turned the screen toward the two men. The title of the entire program read a rather symbolic English word: Skylance.
"If your country is interested, we can discuss it in detail some other time." Schuller shook the two agents' hands in a friendly goodbye, "I hope you'll be able to return to your duties."
There was nothing more in line with Schuller's current general strategy than using a project he had completed to trick others into trusting him. When Schuller had awakened inside the institute in Zurich, he had quickly recorded those elements of his memory that he thought would come in handy into his computer so that he wouldn't be unable to come up with a complete blueprint later on when he needed to sell someone on the program. Now it seemed that his efforts had not been in vain, at least he was able to fool these agents who did not know the specialized knowledge. There was also the matter of dealing with his current employer if he did have to serve another country across the ocean. Hopefully, the Rosen Demon Society would release him, or he would have no choice but to run away.
It had been many days since Egon Schuller had taken a serious break, and he was in dire need of new knowledge before he exposed his ignorance to outsiders. From his own point of view, he saw little future in this new field of study; it wasn't as if everyone could be a Magician, and technology that lacked a civilian base was meaningless except as a tool for the military rivalry of the great powers. However, he couldn't admit defeat, he had made his judgment as above out of philosophy rather than incompetence, and he couldn't let others say that he was an end-of-the-line academic trash who lacked competence and could only make snide remarks.
The next morning, Schuller went to the cafeteria for dinner, while news related to the situation in Eastern Ukraine was still being broadcast on television. Although Schuller held the rank of technical full general in the EU Army during his lifetime (an unprecedented treatment; no country in the world would allow a technical rank to reach the highest level of active officers), he himself knew nothing about the military and had never had the opportunity to command troops in a war. Whenever his army, equipped with experimental weapons, went to take on guerrilla and militia forces, he would simply observe the battle from a distance in the rear of his command, and then indifferently give an assessment of the results. These experiences certainly did not make Schuller a commander, nor did they even equip him with the mindset of a military general. Having seen the real battlefield, he was able to see part of the truth in the media reports, and thus planned his escape early on. No side had actually declared war, and from the outside world's definitions alone, it was an internal Ukrainian armed conflict.
A decently dressed young man approached Schuller, whom Schuller recognized as his colleague from Zurich.
"Mit Ihrer gestrigen Ansprache zum Kardinalskodex wollte ich..."
"Ich habe meine Meinung geändert." Schuller looked at the news on the tablet, and continued to drink his soup without lifting his head, "Ah, ich habe nichts anderes gemeint ... Ich habe gestern Abend lange darüber nachgedacht und bin schließlich zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass die Forschung in diesem Bereich in die falsche Richtung gehen könnte. Ich bleibe bei meiner Meinung, dass es den Kardinalcode gibt, aber er ist nicht so wichtig wie in der Theorie."
The youth's mouth opened wide, as if he had heard some appalling news. Compared to Schuller, who had become bald, his hair was still luxuriant, and he might not become bald within the next twenty or thirty years. The young man, also from the German-speaking part of the country, coughed a few times and continued to speak to Schuller in German:
"Wie sieht es mit Ihrer aktuellen Forschung aus? Die Spitze rechnet damit, dass sie sich auf diese ..."
"Die Arbeit selbst? Ich werde sie erledigen, ich bin ein verantwortungsbewusster Mann." Schuller pondered, he intended to bring out the research materials that he had sealed in his mind to test the bottom line of magical jurisprudence theories, "I'll be busy for the next two days, I intend to write an article on the subject addressing my latest views, hopefully the relevant journals will dare to publish it."
Hugo Funk, a companion who had already been working with Schuller for several years, had chosen the same direction of research in the first place and shared the consequences: no one had achieved anything new academically, and together they had become idle men mucking about within the Institute. This could not be blamed on them, although the theories related to magical jurisprudence had been developed for close to half a century, many aspects were still shallow, and sometimes they even needed to rely on the Ancient Style Magic that was despised by the academic world - the scholars usually thought that it was all feudal superstition, and even if such unscientific things as magic had already become a reality, they would not give up on their own assertion. In order to construct a theoretical system of magic that is more in line with scientific principles, academics have categorized existing magic into four different systems. This attempt to parse a problem involving quantum mechanics with the principles of classical natural science (as Schuller calls the correlates of non-magical theories) is comical, but in Schuller's own position to define it, he would have supported it. The authority of material science must be maintained, or what will take its place will not be science, but superstition.
"God's dice are out of order to tell me that this quantum is not a boson or a fermion, you're kidding."
Egon Schuller returned to his room, the next session started in the evening and he still had plenty of time. Using his memory, he found the files that he had already partially parsed, the results of a lifetime of research by Yuri and Shimada Shinji, two of the true pioneers in the field of mind technology - all laughed off by GDI after the end of the Cold War. GDI was short of specialists versed in mind technology, and, ill at ease, they had handed the files over to Schuller. Whenever Schuller thought about it, he always appreciated his own resourcefulness, and he thought he had prevented a possible new crisis. Humans didn't deserve it, humans didn't deserve to wield power they shouldn't have, and self-destruction was only moments away.
He closed his eyes and his mind drifted to the bald old man in the military coat with the prominent 117 symbol on his forehead. Some said it was Hebrew, others said it was a strange date.
"Человеческий мозг удивителен: у одних он лучше воспринимает, у других - лучше передает ..." The old man with a head ring full of wires gazed at the brain in the tank, "It's the most marvelous thing. Dante called betrayal the greatest sin, and he had Judas, Brutus, and Cassius chewed up together in Lucifer's mouth, and betrayal stems from distrust and the unknown. If we could truly unite the hearts of mankind, it would be ..."
Schuller's eyes widened and a cold sweat broke out, and he shuddered as he grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from his body, giving up on the memory. The man was a nightmare for all of humanity, and if Kane was at least a saint in the eyes of his followers, then even Kane would have to admit that Yuri Narmonov had nearly buried all of humanity. Some scholars have often claimed that Yuri's construction of a base on the moon and transmitting unknown signals into outer space eventually invited Tiberium.
Schuller was in his teens when Yuri and his legions of clones took on the world, and his hometown was nearly reduced to ashes in the flames of war - decades later, the GLA did what Yuri failed to do. It was that experience that had made Schuller decide to research technology for use in the military; if the armies defending justice were incapable of destroying the berserkers, there would be no guarantee of academic research.
He closed his eyes again, this time appearing in front of him was a courteous and elegant young man, the young man had a kindly appearance and wore black-rimmed glasses, he was pointing to the mathematical formulas on the blackboard with a whip.
"We manipulate two dimensions in three dimensions and three dimensions in four dimensions. This is hard to understand though, and I'm sure you've seen the latest results of the program. In my theory, the so-called superpowers are the manipulation of the four-dimensional world in which we live in higher dimensions, and I refer you to the latest findings of Einstein's Laboratory, announced at the Philadelphia conference in February of this year, who believe that the higher dimensions are curled up in space that we can't detect by conventional means-perhaps the term spatial is no longer an accurate description. Anyway, the next issue we need to talk about is the quantum theory of the brain, and the results of the research of Tenzai Machine Manufacturing Co. are now displayed here, as you can clearly see ..."
All right, Schuller wasn't interested in watching a Japanese vivisection experiment.
He typed a line on the computer, Redefining Modern Magic Systems. The bald young man scratched his brain, which no longer had half a hair left, and deleted the line, changing it to Redefine what cannot be summarized by the modern magic system. In Schuller's opinion, whether it was Yuri or Shimada Shinji, their research on mind technology had always had an area that could not be generalized by this world's magic theories: the mind itself. Current theories only accounted for magic in the physical sense, and Schuller was confident in taking someone else's research and shaking up the system. While it would be a veritable academic fraud on his own part, it wasn't like Yuri or Shimada Shinji would literally crawl out of hell to get a claim on him.
At five p.m., Schuller wrapped up his current work and pulled out his cell phone to check for new intel - McNeil had sent Schuller a text message on the new cell phone he'd gotten. McNeil didn't have a social media account, and neither did Schuller, so they had to take the relatively primitive way of communicating. Schuller was going to give McNeil a call and ask how things were going.
"Hello ...," McNeil said breathlessly.
"You sound like you just walked out of a nightclub with that look."
"No kidding, I'm falling apart right now." McNeil on the other end of the phone complained, "I was surrounded by the Russians in the snow early yesterday morning and almost got caught by them. The Russians have launched a new offensive, and I am at a loss as to how the hell to fight this battle."
McNeil did not tell Schuller how he had been surrounded; it was not an experience to be commended. He advocated getting the guilty punished by his own means, while at the same time he didn't want to make such means common. In any case, the law was the reasonable means, and McNeil's behavior was essentially a lynching.
"Next time you'd better be careful not to get me into more trouble." Schuller's words put McNeil on alert, "You know what I'm talking about ..."
"Understood." McNeil sighed, he certainly knew exactly what Schuller meant. There was no doubt that his previous call to Schuller had put Schuller under investigation as well, not everyone wanted to be approached by the CIA. An ordinary soldier on the front line calling a Swiss researcher seemed odd from any angle, and even if the army chiefs were willing to believe him, the intelligence services would not let their guard down, they would investigate the two men's respective family backgrounds to the bone before carefully analyzing the details that didn't make sense.
"That's fine. When we're done with our respective issues, I'd like us to set aside some time to talk alone." Schuller looked at his watch, "Okay, I have a meeting to get to, so we'll talk later."
McNeil put down his cell phone and walked out of the shack, which was rattling in the cold wind. A stray dog's tongue was frozen to the truck, and the soldiers next to it were pointing at the dog, each laughing their heads off. Seeing McNeil walking towards them, the soldier at the head of the group took it upon himself to step forward and greet them.
"How's it going? We're doing much better here than on the front lines." The soldier with a Spanish accent said, "Now that the weather is so bad, the Russkies have to follow the rules one step at a time as well, they can't surge any further, and they wouldn't have been able to do it ... after the defeat in the East, no one would have considered them as an opponent worth taking seriously. "
"It is surprising that you have stray dogs here; I seldom see similar animals outside." McNeil didn't answer the other's question and quickly changed the subject.
"Hmm? Right, because this dog is actually one we keep here." The soldier explained to McNeil, "Its original owner has been buried by us."
At this airport, McNeil, who was taken in by the soldiers, encountered a second phenomenon other than the flag that boggled his mind. The flag's change from the Stars and Stripes to the bald eagle had already struck McNeil as odd, and the soldiers, who would suddenly kneel and pray at regular intervals, reminded McNeil of some of the turbaned, bearded men of the Middle East. Looking at their attentive and devoted looks, it was not like they were pretending, and these people's prayers were more like curses than blessings, and the vicious language made McNeil shake his head repeatedly. Was this another one of those new churches of the living hell? McNeil had only seen this type of behavior in one kind of person: the NOD Brotherhood believers. He didn't want to ask for details; McNeil couldn't afford to mess with fanatics, and any type of fanatic was just as incomprehensible.
By the end of the night, McNeil hitched a ride back to his original camp in a truck with soldiers carrying supplies and was promptly stopped by a dozen or so soldiers at the entrance to the camp before being investigated. It turns out that the actions of the three soldiers who shot their superiors have been proven to be drug trafficking, and with the physical evidence and bodies provided by Tom and the captain's confession, the chief agrees to send the three soldiers to the rear for interrogation. However, they were delayed in waiting for any news, the base over in Kiev said they hadn't received anyone, and McNeil came back empty-handed.
"The Russians showed up halfway across the country and I had to jump out of the car to escape." McNeil told all but the execution of the three soldiers, "I was so focused on my own escape that I couldn't save them ... Maybe they were captured by the Russians."
It certainly wasn't McNeil's responsibility, and it was too much to ask a soldier driving a car escorting three prisoners to deal with a large group of enemy troops that appeared halfway across the country. Just before midnight McNeil was released again, and this time he didn't even feel like gossiping, so he went back to his barracks and without a word fell into bed and went to sleep.
TBC
Chapter Notes:
In the RA-CC story line used as backstory, Einstein did not live into the 1970s but died still in the 1950s, and replacing him in his role in RA2 was teenage genius Schuller.
Yuri (whose full name in this article is Yuri Ilyich Narmonov) has German ancestors living in Transylvania, which explains why his unnamed parents inherited the immensely luxurious giant Grand Castle in Transylvania under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
