Ch.324Work Record No. 046 – Operation Chair Snatcher (6)

When the news of the cult leader’s death was broadcast throughout the city, resistance on the ground lost its strength. I didn’t think Hollowwood Creek would magically forget the cult leader.

Despite being a tyrant, some will miss the cult leader, and others will say, even long after, that John was better than Bill. It’s natural. We always look for something to lean on.

What matters is… now the children of Hollowwood Creek can eat pizza, not treat virtual reality as something to fear, and not worry about becoming copies after a single mistake.

The cult leader will watch all this from the highest place. The thought of his face makes me want to laugh uncontrollably. I taunted him leisurely. Refinement helps at times like this.

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I connect the communication channel to Bill. If he still has his former charisma… he can sort out this chaos. Unfortunately, it was quitting time for me. For Dean and Silver Lining too.

“Bill! Can I leave the rest to you now? I’d like to vacation in Hollowwood Creek with my Eve in a few years. Can you make that happen?”

I slowly look down at the city below my feet. Quite a number of Hollowwood Creek followers were kneeling before Bill’s hologram. Not exactly a good phenomenon, but not unusable either.

“It shouldn’t be difficult to grasp the remnants of fanaticism John created and use the very system that imprisoned me. The reason… I’ve seen these people suffer firsthand, more than enough.”

“Well… we’re clocking out. This was unpaid overtime, you know what I mean?”

“It’s not clocking out, but exiting. Like an actor leaving the stage after finishing their act—something beautiful, not as mundane as clocking out.”

I shrug my shoulders. Just… as always, skyscrapers aren’t my thing. I preferred the ground. Living among people, amid their trivial stories and small warmths felt better.

I pat the shoulder of Dead Eye, who was removing the Inquisitor’s decorations the cult leader had attached to his exosuit. Now he too would have a name. Something more like a name than Dead Eye.

“Call me if anything else comes up, Dead Eye. Oh, and don’t forget you’ll have to pay next time, okay?”

“As if I’d need this kind of force again… Still, I’ll invite you when Pastor William Weaver rebuilds Hollowwood Creek, Ahab.”

He was still calling me Ahab. After sending him a copy of my freelancer license containing my real name and contact information, I leave the temple with Dean.

Dean seemed quite excited. He probably didn’t often get the chance to charge headfirst toward machine guns, nor to use the weapons of extinction war-era drones.

“Tyrants always end up like this! This is awesome… What’s even more awesome is that while we slaughtered the hopeless cases like Hollowwood Creek, Belwether changed things with just his words. You really…”

“Yes, yes. I enjoy working miracles. As El Sueño, I struck down several lightning bolts, made flowers bloom in the wasteland… Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to lead escaping masses, so I couldn’t part any seas.”

We exit Hollowwood Creek through an underground passage and head toward the car where Brandon and Sarah are waiting. We get into the armored van’s cabin and start heading back to Los Angeles. It will take quite some time.

As I relax, slumped from the fatigue that had been building up until now, I receive a communication request from my Eve. I connect. I speak with a voice mixed with laughter.

“Surprised? All the interesting things in the world happen while you’re busy with work, Eve. Don’t they? Your lover attends the Belwether shareholders’ meeting, the cult leader dies. Right?”

“That would be fortunate enough. Arthur, you… haven’t been on the net since you’ve been on the mission, right? People aren’t stupid. Look, the whole world is talking about you.”

Well, fuck… The first image my Eve pushed to my virtual screen showed my photo giving a speech at the shareholders’ meeting alongside a photo of Hollowwood Creek’s temple burning.

At least my face was censored, but there was only one Five Companies certified freelancer with the callsign Boogeyman. From now on, I’d either have to get friendlier with my helmet or cut ties completely.

“‘The Fall of Hollowwood Creek. Belwether’s purge, or the birth of an industry legend?’ Ugh, I really don’t like this… Should I contact Mr. Günter? I need to borrow a hand at times like this.”

“Why wouldn’t you like it? Industry legend—that’s an awesome title, isn’t it? You know you can’t just run away somewhere. Why not prepare to accept it?”

“I did all this to make our relationship easier, but now I’m getting labeled as an industry legend, which will make dating uncomfortable. Can I contact the chairman and ask to join his security team?”

For once, my Eve felt like someone older than me. Someone who could choose whether to permit me to do something, someone I could rely on. It feels like having my feet on the ground.

What tied me to the ground was just the single red thread connecting me to my Eve, and I was extremely pleased that this one thread was holding me down so well. My Eve’s incredulous voice returns.

“I already hate not seeing you for a month at a time, and now you want to go do some indefinite job to escape fame?”

I get up from the armored van’s cabin where I was lying down and open the door. I gesture to Dean that I’m going to make a call, then climb up on top of the van and close the door. It should be quieter here.

“Of course I mean we should go together. The chairman’s security team works in shifts, so there would be more holidays than now, and I’d like to feel what it’s like to have someone waiting for me at home when I clock out…”

It wasn’t baseless. When I went to see Mr. Günter, he sent Hammer to Los Angeles without any burden to help maintain public order. That means he always has that kind of reserve personnel.

“I’d like to spend real weekends together, not mercenary weekends. If we join the chairman’s security team, we’d go to San Francisco Island, so we could visit the San Francisco Inner Bay. Right?”

The San Francisco Inner Bay was almost the only place on the North American west coast where you could see a blue sea. It was also where I first saw the ocean outside of virtual reality. The blue sea was beautiful.

“You’ve been there, so you know, right? Even though they call it the City of Efficiency, everywhere is open and spacious, there are quite a few joggers, and food trucks too. Isn’t it a pretty good place to live?”

“I thought it would be full of people beeping like machines, but it wasn’t like that at all. I never expected a city where even company bands could busk… So, are you telling me to retire?”

“Anyway, I never liked shooting people. I liked healing. If I want to do more in that direction, headquarters would be much better, especially now that Panacea Meditech will be joining.”

My Eve burst out laughing at my rambling words. For once, I was back to being twenty-three-year-old Arthur Murphy. She continues speaking leisurely.

“It’s quite cute how you’re trying to attach reasons to your desire to just up and leave, Arthur. And, are you implying you can support me on your own with plenty to spare?”

“I could have done that long ago. I could have done it as soon as I got my freelancer badge, but you wouldn’t let me. Now that we’ve bought at the bottom, shouldn’t we benefit when it hits the peak?”

“Look at you, someone might think we’re in an investment relationship. I was at my bottom then too, you know? And, well… you know I had to keep working because I was anxious. I don’t mind retirement.”

It was a reaction to living too long without something to lean on. When you start feeling useless, anxiety sets in. All I could do was gradually become someone more reliable.

Is this too much? No way. Now that my Eve has finally said it herself, it’s definitely not too much. I lie on top of the armored van, happily listening to my Eve’s words, then sit up.

“And if you’re going to talk like that, you should get permission from Mr. Günter first. Since you haven’t contacted him yet, I’m guessing you’ve just been lazing around? I’ll wait a bit, so go contact him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The world hasn’t improved because of one thing I accomplished. One evil person is gone, but even without evil people, the world is a difficult place to live, and tragedies still occur.

Perhaps we’ve been living in a world where everything has been slowly crumbling since the extinction war. Maybe the flow of the world is for everything to go wrong and only get worse.

But someone always resists. Instead of kneeling to sorrow, Mr. Günter turned everything into the roar of a beast. Serena, instead of dying as a noble nationalist, made the city survive.

I killed Hollowwood Creek, killed the Las Vegas Strip, killed Walter… Thinking back slowly, I was much more of a big shot than I thought. I contact Mr. Günter.

“You saw it, right?”

“Yes, I saw it. Enjoyed it very much. Now you know what proposal I’m going to make? Last time the strategy wasn’t clean enough, but this time will be different. To headquarters…”

“I’ll go.”

Mr. Günter’s words cut off. It feels like I’ve seen Mr. Günter surprised for the first time in my life. I speak with a voice leaking laughter, deciding not to explain just once more.

“What did you say?”

“I said I’ll go.”

Unfortunately, or perhaps naturally, it didn’t work more than twice. He sees through my intention quite simply.

“You’re enjoying my surprised reaction, Arthur. You have a mischievous side in strange places. Will you tell me why you changed your mind?”

“Ah, haha… Sorry for teasing you. It’s the first time in my life I’ve seen you surprised, so I thought I should see it twice since I probably won’t see it again for the rest of my life. It’s just that if I go back like this, dating will become uncomfortable.”

“You’re coming to headquarters for such a trivial reason?”

“I changed Belwether’s constitution for just such a trivial reason, so what? Isn’t this reason enough? I think I have at least the minimum ability required to join the chairman’s security team.”

I decide not to become arrogant. Despite being called a big shot, I’m not good enough to defeat a Market Keeper one-on-one, nor am I overwhelming enough to dominate chairman’s security team members or security chiefs in closed exosuits with my bare hands.

If I want to be proud, I should at least be able to do that much first. In other words… it will never happen in my lifetime. Even if I keep upgrading my body, I won’t match exosuits.

“You know your ability has been sufficient since you suppressed the Los Angeles coup, Arthur. How many years do you want the contract to be? That should be the most important thing.”

“As long as San Francisco is a good city to live in with my Eve, it doesn’t matter much? One year on the chairman’s security team followed by three years of prioritizing Belwether requests, wouldn’t that be fine?”

I threw out my thoughts first since this was my initial offer. Mr. Günter would want that too. When making contracts, it’s better to pretend to be an economic person who only thinks about their own interests.

If you hide your intentions and only offer options that you think the other party will like, you often end up with an ambiguous contract that satisfies neither side.

“Five years on the chairman’s security team plus five additional years of prioritizing Belwether requests. You know even this is a generous condition. But I clearly understand your intention. You don’t want to be tied down, right?”

“That’s right. In that sense, I’d like to propose three years on the chairman’s security team, and then for three years, directly under you… I lack the expertise to be an external auditor, but something like an external asset or agent.”

Since I’m already a Belwether certified freelancer, I tend to prioritize Belwether’s work even without the obligation, and I don’t consider it a burdensome duty. I offer a better condition.

It’s always better to have someone who can look at an organization from the outside, and if that person is me, whom Mr. Günter personally trusts, and who has even served on the chairman’s security team, it would be perfect.

“Looking at what happened in Los Angeles… I thought having one personal channel for the chairman would be good, and if there’s going to be one, having a capable person could prepare for any situation.”

“Belwether isn’t a perfectly functioning machine either. I judged that some self-correction was possible from the LA incident, but we’re still conducting audits. Not a bad idea, Arthur.”

This way, if something like the Los Angeles coup happens again, Mr. Günter would have a simpler way to remove the cancer before having to walk directly or use the chairman’s security team.

And if I say this, I’ll feel my lack of comprehensive abilities again. Lack of ability to identify problems. The financial statements I saw at the shareholders’ meeting appearing as merely interesting documents becomes a deficiency.

How I’ve missed this word. I could learn from Mr. Enzo, and since Mr. Günter liked my proposal, I could also learn from the headquarters’ audit team. I can have pleasant fantasies.

“We already have plenty of external agents who are just good at fighting. How about three years on the chairman’s security team, two years as an audit team apprentice, and then three years as an external auditor? Possibility of renewal?”

Although my proposed 6-year schedule became an 8-year one, it was definitely shorter than the initial offer. It was an appropriate middle ground, so I decided not to refuse this.

“Of course there should be. While I can earn credits however I want, opportunities to expand the limits of my abilities aren’t that common.”

Well, it’s a method usually called trickery. It doesn’t make sense to educate someone fully at headquarters, give them a nominal retirement, and then place them in a position requiring objectivity like an external auditor.

At least the fact that I solved Belwether’s idealist hunting case would create some credibility… and what I loved was Belwether’s ideals, not Belwether itself. I was never an insider at Belwether.

Is this concern even meaningful? Belwether was a place where problems that couldn’t be solved by the headquarters’ audit team alone wouldn’t occur. Even Walter’s coup, the biggest recent incident, was easily suppressed.

Therefore, my real job would be to live normally and clean up situations like the Los Angeles coup when they arise. External agent is probably a more appropriate term.

So… the 2 years in the audit team would be for building experience and ability that Mr. Günter persistently demands of me, plus creating a reason to live at headquarters for 2 more years. Should I think of it as heir education?

Actually, I had little intention of becoming an heir. I’m generally a person without much ambition. I was just as happy when I was Shepherd Six, a regular Belwether security team employee.

Things might change. For now… I wanted to quickly return to Los Angeles and report back to my trivial daily life. I should enjoy the feeling of having a corner to escape to.