Ch.292Work Record No. 041 – Irresistible (5)

It was about time to speak, but for now, I had no choice but to stall. The notification window hovering at the edge of my vision hadn’t started flashing yet.

The weather observation drone, floating high enough to be obscured by storm clouds, hadn’t sent a lightning warning yet. If I wanted to make it look like I was controlling when lightning struck, the timing had to be perfect.

At least Los Soñadores didn’t seem inclined to point their guns at me. They were all covering their eyes from the flashing light, looking both fearful and curious.

While they still couldn’t properly see me, I lightly sprinkled the Blood Sucker seeds I’d received from PD over the dead gang hunters. I needed more religious and mysterious phenomena.

After about thirty more seconds of silence, the lightning warning began to sound in the corner of my vision. Chance’s voice rang in my head, almost gentle in its delivery.

‘Lightning warning received. You can begin in seventeen seconds. Please note that while we can predict when lightning will strike, we cannot predict its intensity.’

Slowly, and after counting precisely to seventeen, I began to speak. My voice resonated with an eerie mixture of high and low frequencies from the Calliope module. Just listening to it would be quite painful.

“Los Soñadores. What an amusing name. Shouldn’t dreamers be properly immersed in dreams? What are your dreams? Is it merely to survive in this cesspool?”

Since their gang name was Los Soñadores, I figured they’d understand Mexican Spanish better than English, and I was right. They all seemed to understand and tried to respond, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Especially the one in front of me… according to the pre-provided information, a contractor nicknamed La Roca had tried to approach me but collapsed in pain. I must have set the Calliope module’s output too high.

This woman was a realist. She knew how to face situations and what needed to be done. That’s why she had to be made into a believer.

The opposite was true for the other leader, El Pastor. He was already a believer. Well-versed in faith but severely lacking in reality. Yet he surely believed he was doing the right thing.

He needed to be taught reality. He would know more about religious rituals than La Roca, so there would be plenty to use… but I couldn’t entrust Los Soñadores to him after the plan succeeded.

It would be foolish to judge so soon. Right now, I needed my voice to sound like the beast’s howl I had felt from Mr. Günter. With plenty of time remaining, I spoke according to plan.

“Nothing to say in response? Don’t you even have the courage to admit that the greatest thing you can hope for is that gang hunters don’t come here again! To see the stars, both feet must be on the ground.”

There were 47 seconds left until the lightning would strike. La Roca, though trembling, pointed her gun at me. The listening devices installed in the gang’s building were working well.

She knew well that what they had received was not a revelation but a product of technology, and naturally thought I was behind it. Quick-thinking. Though her physical condition was poor.

I let La Roca fire her gun. The bullet hit me but deflected off my reinforced suit. Not a bad performance. I didn’t even flinch when it hit.

And thanks to her showing her resolve, I could use the second option rather than the third. I should thank La Roca. El Pastor, immersed in religious ecstasy, remained quiet.

“So you haven’t abandoned your will to live. I like that. Listen! I will become your dream! I’ll give you dreamers a chance to dream. No, I’ll give you a chance to have a chance to dream. What do you think?”

I had hoped El Pastor would speak this time, but La Roca fired another shot at my helmet and then stood up with her staggering body. Standing on two legs with a gunshot wound to the abdomen is a matter of willpower.

“Even if we die here as wasteland trash, we don’t want to die as toys for some high-and-mighty playing games with us. If you want to give us something, tell us who the hell you are first.”

She spoke a bit longer than expected, but that wasn’t a problem. In fact, thanks to her lengthy response, the timing seemed just right. Sorry for her, but I increased the Calliope module’s output.

The countdown was approaching. Hoping to match the exact timing, I hid my pounding heartbeat inside the reinforced suit. A god has no need for a heart. I had to become their god.

“I am your dream. I am El Sueño! If you don’t follow me, you will continue living in this wasteland hoping for survival, but if you follow me, this entire wasteland will!”

The timing was perfect. Just as I shouted “this entire wasteland” with outstretched arms, lightning struck. And not just any lightning. For an instant, it was as if a river of light formed between the cloudy sky and the ground.

Such a thick bolt of lightning struck behind me, and the entire wasteland lit up like daylight for a moment. Not only could the distant glowing Las Vegas Strip be clearly seen, but the entire wasteland would be visible from here.

Chance must have lied. He said they couldn’t calculate the size of the lightning that would fall. Still, I shouldn’t show my joy. I needed to act like when I was playing Gardner.

“Become yours. The Strip will be yours, and the entire wasteland will chant the name of you dreamers. Which will you choose? To die as that gunshot wound in your abdomen festers and rots?”

Now that the awaited lightning had struck, I could speak more freely. I jabbed my thumb into the gunshot wound on La Roca’s abdomen as she stood proudly before me. Pain makes people compromise. I swallowed my regret.

“Or to seize another chance by reviving even the errand boys who were forced to hold guns in the name of the organization? Which will it be?”

With those words, I displayed several medical drones I had procured from the cash sorcerer of Los Angeles behind me. La Roca would compromise now. But then I saw someone rushing toward me.

It was El Pastor. A bald man with neon skeleton tattoos like those worn by morticians, his eye sockets painted pitch black. Having grown accustomed to Pastor Bill Weaver, I’d forgotten this was what common religious figures looked like.

“We will follow you! Why wouldn’t we follow the one who has given us the salvation we’ve longed for while Santa Muerte gave us nothing!”

Who had more authority? La Roca seemed to defer to El Pastor’s opinion, so El Pastor probably had more say. I released La Roca, who was writhing in my grasp.

She was a realist. She would know that El Pastor couldn’t help but fall for this self-proclaimed god. Then… La Roca would soon seek what she needed.

After sending the medical drones to the gang members who weren’t dead yet, I picked up La Roca myself. To El Pastor, who approached me like a dog hoping to be petted, I gave him what he wanted.

The reason images couldn’t be input into his brain was because he was a mortician. He was one of those who had tampered with their brains to avoid neural prison if captured, that’s all.

But who cares about truth? This was an era where reality could be censored and truth could be manufactured. I leisurely delivered the manufactured truth to him.

“Despite my test, your faith remains solid as rock, El Pastor. To those who must see to believe, I have given revelations, but for one who believes without seeing, isn’t this enough?”

El Pastor shouted at me with a voice that seemed about to faint from joy at finally having found someone who answered his faith. Hopefully he wouldn’t waste time that could be used to treat La Roca.

“Yes, yes! You know who I am! I did- I did not know there was such a grand purpose in my not receiving revelations. I, well, I…”

“Don’t worry. Your faith and your actions moved me more than your knowledge. You are strong as I have prepared you to be, and I am proud of you. Let’s first treat this woman and then discuss what comes next.”

In this high-speed era, the concept of a “father figure” was practically extinct. This parental tone would give El Pastor an even deeper faith.

A faith that would have to be broken. I would have to thoroughly shatter it to reveal that I was not El Sueño he believed in, but an ordinary megacorporation mercenary. His faith would be destroyed, but traces would remain.

Afterward, seeing other gang members who had met the guiding god they so desired, he would try desperately to forget that I was human.

In the end, all I could obtain would be his shell, but that religious shell was more than enough for me.

I never needed or wanted the deep, heartfelt faith of a fanatic. I entered the gang’s building with La Roca.

El Pastor tried to guide me for a moment, but when I found the infirmary as naturally as if entering my own home, he again wore an expression of awe.

It’s nothing special. Fitz & Morrison had simply installed bugs and cameras when they set up the image injector here. But to El Pastor, it was divine omniscience.

After handing La Roca over to the medical drones, I looked at El Pastor, who was standing with his hands clasped, as happy as a child. If I opened my mouth, he might scream like a Polaris fan.

“What troubles the dreamers, my little shepherd? The Witch of the Wasteland? Or Los Payasos? What about the stingy merchants of the wasteland, and the Strip as well, right?”

This wasn’t omniscience either, but Fitz & Morrison’s preliminary investigation. The Witch of the Wasteland, suspected to be a reality shaper, led a small force and mainly kidnapped members of other gangs.

Los Payasos were, as their name suggested, clowns. They had a larger force than Los Soñadores but seemed harder to control—murder artists who would need to be subjugated or expelled completely.

The merchants of the wasteland weren’t so much stingy as they knew their worth very well. To trade with them, you needed something that could only be obtained in the wasteland. Like fragments of wartime technology.

The Strip… that was the ultimate goal. I still wasn’t sure how to devour it, but the blueprint I had drawn in Hollowed Creek seemed like it would be useful again.

The first thing to do was to shake things up. If we rapidly expanded Los Soñadores’ power to the point where the Strip would be forced to deal with them, they would be forced to make some move.

And generally, hasty moves are rarely the right ones. We can’t control time, but we can control tempo. I needed to make them dance to the rhythm of my tune.

As I slowly reviewed the plan in my head, El Pastor pointed out something unexpectedly important. He seemed to think he was bringing up issues too trivial for his god to consider.

“What troubles us is the terrible absence of purpose. Without a purpose to move toward, merely living day to day becomes our only dream. Please, bestow upon us a purpose!”

Has he really started to think of me as some kind of dream god? This scarecrow labeled as a god had nothing but the name—El Sueño, the dream—yet he believed.

And the purpose was simple. To kill the Las Vegas Strip. Why? I couldn’t answer that it was because Fitz & Morrison had commissioned me. It was time to create doctrine.

I knew better than anyone that there was only one doctrine I could speak with sincerity.

My doctrine is solely pleasure and enjoyment. The Las Vegas Strip must die because they have desecrated pleasure.

They have turned what was originally a city of games and joy into a place obsessed with decadence and hedonism. These days in Las Vegas, people don’t raucously enjoy craps games.

Half the facilities are filled with brothels, and although the brothels with personality adjustment devices called dollhouses have disappeared thanks to Fitz & Morrison’s rampage… whether they’ve truly disappeared is questionable.

“I’ve already told you. I will give you this entire Mojave Desert. For that… the Las Vegas Strip must die. Not only do they hinder you, but they have also blasphemed against me.”

When I mentioned gods, blasphemy, judgment, and punishment—things he liked—El Pastor began to listen intently. I just hoped he wouldn’t start writing an El Sueño Bible.

“Do you know what separates a person from a slave, my little shepherd? Do you know what separates a person from a machine?”

Though I clearly asked a question, he just waited as if hoping for my sermon. In a position where everyone wants to hear me speak but not have a conversation, I could understand how Mr. Günter might feel.

“Machines produce, slaves obey… only people enjoy. Enjoyment is what makes people human. But they have corrupted what should be a city of enjoyment into decadence and hedonism.”

El Pastor quietly repeated the word “enjoyment” to himself. Was he feeling the same thing I felt? Or was he just planning to follow my words dogmatically? I couldn’t tell yet.

“Still, if I am to use you as instruments, I must solve your problems too, mustn’t I? Tell me what needs to be dealt with first. I will help you.”

“Well, then… first, we’re already short on manpower, so we need to recover the people taken by the Witch of the Wasteland, El Sueño.”

Fitz & Morrison’s preliminary investigation hadn’t revealed what kind of reality shaper the Witch of the Wasteland was. Now it was time for me to find out firsthand.