Ch.278Work Record #039 – A Pointless Dinner Appointment (4)

What I felt upon arriving here is… that Mr. Günter is someone who has been thrown out of the flow. He shouldn’t have been alive until now.

Around his eighties, he should have been buried in a magnificent grave in the suburbs of Berlin, mourned and loved by an enormous extended family, alongside his wife.

But that war forcibly kept him alive. It took away everything he could love and everyone for whom he would willingly give his life.

He had nothing left worth giving his life for, and he gave his life for nothing. All that remained was this era’s immortal being, living for over a hundred years with beast-like vitality.

When my Eve and Seth were here, all he wanted was simply a full table and a bustling mealtime where he could talk a little about trivial food matters or recent happenings… that felt quite devastating.

The world took everything he wanted and gave him everything he didn’t want. Behind the image of a great and admirable beast, I could see the overlapping figure of a rather pitiful person. Beastliness is inherently pitiful.

The catalyst for speaking of great causes is always deeply personal, and the trigger for acquiring beastliness is always profoundly human. This person, embodying the contradictions of this high-speed era, began to answer my words gently.

“Everything has a symbol, Metzgerhund. What does Belwether symbolize?”

“Efficiency. A hope that doesn’t call itself hope.”

“Then what about the mutants?”

Mr. Günter spoke as if confirming the word that defined those people. Suppressing a suffocating feeling, I replied.

“It differs from person to person. Walter doesn’t symbolize the same thing I do. That’s what being human is about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t symbolize what you do either. But would you really call those things people rather than weapons? Even though it’s dangerous to do so.”

From the phrase “dangerous words,” I grasp the context. Why is it dangerous to call mutants people? Treating them as people itself isn’t dangerous.

Saying Nadia is a person doesn’t create any danger. Mr. Günter was talking about symbols. What do mutants symbolize? I ask myself once more. Slowly, I draw out an answer.

The federal government killed everyone associated with that war to end it. From ordinary janitors to the president who issued the administrative order, everyone was targeted for purging.

So, calling mutants people means… it implies that it hasn’t ended. It means there might still be people who remember the truth about that war and the technology from that period.

Perhaps Belwether isn’t killing mutants because they’re weapons. Perhaps they’re killing them because they’re people. Because what they symbolize is that war.

“It’s hard to understand how slaughtering escapees from the chaos at the end of the war and their descendants symbolizes the true end of that war, Mr. Günter. Those people don’t even have any purpose…”

“Can you be certain they have no purpose? I lived through that era of chaos and despair, Arthur. Even with chaos and despair, it was never an environment where test subjects could escape from laboratories.”

A mutant’s abilities can be easily blocked. The researchers at those facilities would have worn protective equipment, and the environment wouldn’t have allowed mutants to freely move around inside the research facilities.

So it wasn’t strange to view the escape itself as suspicious. Rather, it was a natural suspicion. Especially if there were people from the old generation so steeped in arrogance they considered themselves gods.

“And not all mutants were innocent test subjects. The most common type, those who manipulate electrical signals, were used in truly terrible ways. Let’s look together, Arthur.”

With those words, Mr. Günter showed me a video that seemed like an old recording that had been forcibly restored—neither good nor bad quality, but with floating colors.

There he was. Mr. Günter sitting in a small office, conversing with a Nationalist agent. It was an interrogation of an immigrant who had come to America from the potentially hostile European Federation.

The Combined Forces might not have even existed in reality. It might have been an era where everyone in the world thought they were better than everyone else and made enemies of all others. Such thoughts crossed my mind.

As the interrogation continued, with mention of it being the final process, a mutant entered the interrogation room. They administered hippocampus stimulants to Mr. Günter, and the mutant who could read electrical signals examined his thoughts.

It was literally an examination. Mr. Günter, in tears, had to recall once more his family members who had died festering in the decontamination facility—memories he had tried to forget but knew he never could.

Until that incident, Mr. Günter had appeared to be someone who hadn’t yet escaped the pain of his family’s death. But something changed in this fragile, unmodified old man as he endured that terrible pain.

It seemed as if a chilling ray of light, like the one I can see now, had settled in his eyes. I wasn’t the only one forged through pain. I begin to feel both kinship and horror simultaneously.

“Now you understand what mutants symbolize, Arthur. They are my Walter. They are the brutal violence of that war, and they are… what I promised to eliminate to everyone who followed me.”

Even while talking about killing people, Mr. Günter’s eyes held a sentimental light. It was the same light as when he held my shoulder and taught me how to throw a harpoon. That fact made me uncomfortable.

“But if that were all. Yes, if the reasons existed only in the past, one could perhaps disconnect from hatred. But the violence of the past doesn’t explain why they escaped. Think about them again.”

In my vision, the manual I had seen when heading to the Anti-Mutant Department office reappeared. That booklet full of insufficient grounds for killing people. Mr. Günter must know that much too.

Then what is he asking me to reconsider? I took the manual but didn’t open it. Memorizing a few pages wasn’t difficult. Most mutants manipulated electrical signals.

Nadia’s communication ability… isn’t affected by electronic warfare. I don’t know the exact frequency, but I’ve never seen other frequencies interfere with Nadia’s ability. They possess communication capabilities that cannot be measured.

That alone is dangerous enough, but not dangerous enough to kill everyone. How would communication abilities become dangerous? It’s a communication ability because Nadia was alone. Originally, there would have been more.

Then… they form a communication network. There’s a possibility that mutants released during that war with some purpose have a communication network that cannot be detected by other methods. The network itself isn’t dangerous.

What matters is the information flowing through it. And just as I realized this, the world began to force another terrible dilemma on me. Because Mr. Günter showed me something as if it were a hint.

It was the cover of an operation file. An operation with a very familiar name. One that had already been resolved. An operation that only I knew had been resolved. The cover of Operation Prometheus appeared.

“This was obtained through covert operations, so it should be classified information even for you, but well. I think it’s fine to tell you, Arthur. Do you know what Prometheus means, Arthur?”

“He’s a god from mythology that the Nationalists are so fond of. The god who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. And if the operation’s name and content are related…”

I was reciting what I already knew, but to Mr. Günter, it must have seemed like great insight. Should I be suspicious? No, to Mr. Günter, I am that kind of person.

“You’re clever. Yes, while pretending to completely erase the technology from that war era, they tried to pass it on to their descendants under the name Operation Prometheus. Like gods bestowing fire upon humans.”

Is it significant enough to be described as gods and humans? Perhaps. All the weapons used during the Extinction War were beyond common sense. Things like gravity wave generators that could destroy cities in one go.

“While pretending to clean everything up, they didn’t clean up anything at all. The headquarters’ information processing team highly suspects that mutants who can form such undetectable communication networks might be central to the operation.”

And in my hand was placed a mind map labeled “Top Secret.” When I connected and played it… it was the memory of some mutant. They were facing a woman who appeared to be a researcher.

The researcher removed something from around the mutant’s neck. The same was true for what was around the necks of other mutants. A bomb necklace? It might be.

After removing some device from the necks of all the mutants, she quietly rested her head on the mutant’s chest and whispered something in a low voice.

‘You don’t need to worry about me. What you’ll have to endure will be far more terrible than what I’ll go through. But this is… for all our tomorrows. Yes, for our tomorrow.’

She handed her plastic key card to the mutant, and the mutant’s gaze turned toward the exit. A breath filled with longing, yet tense, continued, and the mutant left the facility first.

After all the other mutants had left, the facility door closed… and a gunshot rang out from inside. The researcher had purged herself. She was someone who had accepted her own death to end that war.

But she might have thought the mutants were simply victims of that war. However, with Mr. Günter’s background knowledge… this was an act of entrusting a mission and was deception.

The statement that surviving in the twisted world after that war would be difficult becomes a statement that after enduring those terrible things, the Nationalists could find a future again.

But it was a lie. Prometheus wasn’t the mutants’ secret information network but Mila. However, saying that fact… would terribly be the worst choice.

“The word ‘escape’ was quite a convenient lie, wasn’t it, Arthur? They were released. They were intentionally excluded from the purge targets and released into the post-war world.”

Is there any means to convince Mr. Günter besides those words? Can I find evidence right here to say they are not central to Operation Prometheus?

They were all just assumptions. If they were central to Operation Prometheus… these were doubts and suspicions that could only be raised when one already knew all the truth and facts.

In my hands was only the paradoxical statement that this was a truth that couldn’t be known until one knew the truth. Mr. Günter spoke leisurely. The fact that the mind map had been excavated already meant death.

“Just as hatred for Walter helped you find your way, if eliminating the symbols of that war’s brutal violence has become a way to handle the federal government’s terrible hidden shame, why should I object, Arthur?”

Even the talk of efficiency wouldn’t work right now. Preventing the federal government from recovering the technology from that war era was the most efficient goal from any perspective. Because it would prevent the recurrence of that war.

His expression already seemed to be demanding a choice within the dilemma. That’s not it. He probably just wants me to sympathize with his words, but to me, it still looked like a demanding face.

I had to respond to that terrible demand. Destroying both Chance’s idol of repentant humanity and Mila’s idol of prosperous humanity wasn’t the end.

I’m not contemplating a choice. If I hide it, nothing will change, so I must speak. What matters is how.

If my words are too full of “coincidentally” and “fortunately,” he will discover that I am hiding something from Mr. Günter.

But if I tell Mr. Günter about Mila’s existence, he will try to destroy Mila. Because information might remain.

The information had already been physically destroyed, but I had already looked through it once for a promise I made to Mila. If hippocampus stimulants were injected, I might remember.

If it goes that far… it would be a betrayal so severe that even the word “betrayal” would be insufficient. I had ended things in my own best way, but for either Belwether or the Nationalists, what I had done was not an end.

It was just a decision to live with an element of anxiety. Originally, pain isn’t something you heal from but something you live with, but they were people who didn’t know that method. I must hide it.

Fortunately, I had already taken care of things at the base. As promised, I had put the artificial brain extracted from the broken Chance into Prometheus’s head. It would appear as if Prometheus had ceased functioning.

And my traces of coming and going… I could explain. It was a place full of pre-war literature, and it wouldn’t be strange for me to visit for cultural enrichment. I could say I was being sentimental.

Could he notice that Prometheus had become something different? I’m not sure. For now, I had already given Mila the items with messages addressed to Mila, not Prometheus.

Rather than a professional choice, I wanted to give Mila a chance to collect her parents’ belongings, but now I could say it was handled with professional and clean skill.

It was time to use my specialty. I didn’t know if my specialty would work on Mr. Günter, but this wasn’t an issue I could just accept and move on from. Hollow Creek had to die.

So it was time for a bluffing sweep. Stopping the thoughts that had been racing only in my mind, after just about three seconds in reality, I smiled.

“It seems like things might be resolved more simply than expected. You said if the reasons were only in the past, one could declare a break from hatred, right? Well… the reasons are only in the past.”

“I don’t think you’re smiling because you can’t believe this. What do you mean, Arthur?”

“Because… I neutralized Operation Prometheus. I disabled the drone with the collection of pre-war technology, destroyed the artificial brain, and then physically destroyed the information storage as well.”

I didn’t speak with an expression that looked like I was boasting. Because I wasn’t boasting. I need to lead the situation. Hoping for the sound of a beast howling in my voice, I said:

“I’d like to have a helicopter sent to the wasteland near Los Angeles right now, Mr. Günter. I’ll show you. The real Prometheus.”