Chapter 201: Brave New World (3)
Chapter 201: Brave New World (3)
If a face was clean and unlined, that meant twenty years.
If nasolabial folds had formed, forty years.
If those folds were accompanied by another wrinkle on the forehead, fifty years.
Though the length of time each person had lived was different, they had all lived the same life—wearing the same clothes, plowing the same fields, and going to the same church to pray before the statue of the Virgin Mary.
If luck favored them and they caught a rabbit during a hunt, they ate a piece of meat for dinner. If not, they soaked hard black bread in water and chewed it down.
When cold wind occasionally blew through the shabby log-cabin walls, they took an axe to the nearby forest, split oak logs, and crudely patched the wall.
Normally they were summoned here and there at the whim of the lords who lived in towering castles above them, and in the end, at the command of the Tsar who ruled even those lords, they picked up guns and walked tens or hundreds of kilometers to shoot people they had never seen in their lives.
Even after walking hundreds of kilometers, they lived a life where every word of the uniformed lords determined whether they died, killed others, or lost neighbors.
And so—whether it was twenty years, forty years, or fifty years—they always chewed their hard black bread while saying, “Yes, my lord!” and obeyed silently.
Yet the result of all that was to be abandoned in a distant foreign land.
It was enough to drive a man insane.
The shabby plank huts and log cabins that came to mind whenever they heard the word village vanished without a trace. In their place stood magnificent brick houses built by the French.
The word road no longer meant a muddy dirt path dotted with puddles, but a stone-paved street with drainage channels running along its sides.
The word city changed as well. A city had once been nothing more than a slightly larger village with slightly taller buildings and slightly more people. Now it became something else entirely—gas lamps bright as daylight, enormous iron horses, and crowds of smiling people.
“Please… please send me home. Back to my house where my mother is… Just send me home. I don’t want to stay here anymore…”
Whether they wanted it or not, the world they had lived in until now collapsed. Their beliefs collapsed as well, and a new world and new ideas filled their minds.
The twenty years they spent reverently serving someone above their heads held no value and no meaning.
When Orthodox priests rang the bells in church and said, “You are doing well. You are good people. You will surely go to heaven in the afterlife,” it had only been a mental victory meant to forget the shattered reality.
The things they were told were “only natural” since the day they were born were not natural at all.
Thoughts and realizations tangled endlessly in their heads, one after another, yet their hearts felt empty.
“You sons of bitches! Did we ask for anything big?! We just want to go home! Home!”
So they screamed at the top of their lungs. If they did not shout, it felt as if the door connecting them to the outside world would close forever and trap them inside their own minds.
Ha. What a pathetic fool.
He once risked his life and held a rifle for the Tsar of Saint Petersburg—a man who had never even seen his face, let alone come to congratulate him at his birth.
And after learning the truth of everything, all he could do was shout at the pig standing on that podium.
Now he understood, at least a little.
The words those rulers always shouted—about “barbarism” and “uncivilized peoples”—the lords, the nobles, the Tsar who strutted about in arrogance.
Those words were nothing more than hypocrisy, oppression, and an excellent dog collar used to make others kneel and obey.
“Get down here, you son of a bitch! While we were dying, you were drinking vodka in front of a warm fireplace! And you dare say that to us?! If you’re so great, then you go fight yourself!”
“Hey! Step down immediately!”
“Sir, military police! Please let me stab that bastard just once! Just once!”
After learning everything, there was not a single person willing to wear that dog collar anymore.
“Greetings, everyone. I am François Noël Babeuf, director of the Civil Affairs Consultation Office of the Ears of the Nation.”
“……”
“Ahem. The atmosphere seems rather tense, so let me say this first. The French government has absolutely no intention of starving you.”
“…Thank you. Thank you.”
“However, as you all know, every bit of money required to feed and clothe you comes from the taxes of the French people. To save even a single coin of those taxes, some unavoidable measures are necessary. I would appreciate your understanding.”
“Th-then… are you going to kill us?”
“What kind of thing is that to say?”
Unlike the other Frenchmen who always kept themselves clean-shaven, the Frenchman before them had dark stubble growing along his chin. He looked shocked that anyone could say something so terrifying.
“Then what…?”
“We intend to provide you with farmland. Instead of living off French taxes, you will be able to support yourselves.”
“…Is there land in France that can be given even to us?”
“No. But there is land across the sea. A place called Arkansas.”
“Whew. As fellow farmers, we can’t burden French farmers by living off their land. We’ll go.”
“An excellent choice.”
Ideas are powerful.
During the brutal Cold War of the twentieth century, even in the United States—the heart of the liberal democratic camp—communists naturally sprang up everywhere and busied themselves delivering their country’s secrets all the way to the Kremlin of the Soviet Union.
Why?
Because they believed their ideology was right.
Material things are powerful.
When companies or universities introduce topics related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in presentations, the example that appears almost every time is the apple-flavored smartphone that caused a worldwide sensation in 2009.
Why?
Because it was that shocking.
And right now, I possess both great ideas and great material things.
If I asked people which seemed better—the newly emerging liberalism or rotten feudalism—I am confident that ninety-nine out of a hundred people walking down the street would answer “liberalism.”
And a horse carriage cannot even be compared with a steam locomotive.
So what happens if you mix them together and scatter them everywhere?
If you show steam locomotives and gas lamps to people who walked hundreds of kilometers until their bodies and minds were exhausted, shaking them psychologically—and then add the bombshell announcement that their own government abandoned them?
Of course it explodes with a bang.
Some might look at me badly for manipulating people’s psychology exactly as I wanted, but all I did was show them our reality without hesitation.
Professor Michael Eugene Porter of Harvard University—the founder of consumer marketing—once said: if you want to sell something, see through the consumer’s needs and mind. Then the path will open.
So how could Guillaume de Toulon, who graduated with a GPA of 4.3, possibly reject the teachings of his master?
When a supermarket runs a promotional event, no one says it is manipulating the consumer’s psychology. Compared to that, it would sound more sincere to claim Bill Gates was firing radio waves to control people’s minds.
Can you see this, Professor Porter? Through your teachings, I have become such a splendid agitator—no, businessman. Sob.
I have never seen his face nor spoken with him, but since I studied using the books he wrote, broadly speaking I am his disciple.
Anyway, a disciple is a disciple. That settles it.
However, despite speaking so confidently, the sighs in my head kept increasing.
Let us rewind time a little—to when the steam locomotive was being demonstrated.
Trevithick, Murdoch, and I crouched side by side next to the locomotive, exchanging strange glances.
To be more precise, I was looking at them, while Trevithick and Murdoch alternated between looking at the locomotive and looking at me, taking out tools and putting them away again.
“…So? How is it?”
“Uh… well.”
“Just tell me.”
“There is a problem with the railway rails.”
“What kind of problem?”
Trevithick rolled his eyes for a moment before speaking.
“The rails have bent.”
“Wow. Fuck. We’re screwed.”
I suspected something when I noticed the railway wasn’t straight. Damn it.
Even if I was a humanities student who abandoned the sciences because of geometry, vectors, physics, and chemistry, I still knew that if railway rails bent, trains couldn’t run on them.
“What exactly is the problem?”
“It seems the rails cannot bear the weight of the locomotive…”
Murdoch tapped the rail with a gloomy expression.
Ah. This won’t do. Today it has to go chug-chug, engine roaring, and move forward.
“Mr. Murdoch. Does that mean it can’t run at all?”
“It can run… but there is a risk of derailment.”
“Then it would be worse than not doing it.”
Trevithick and Murdoch nodded simultaneously.
“Damn… what do we do.”
I dragged this thing out while shouting that I would show the greatness of France. If it flipped over in front of everyone, it would not just be a minus—it would be negative infinity. Absolutely unacceptable.
But we could not simply refuse to show it either.
“Could you try moving it just a little?”
“If it’s just a little… yes, I’ll try moving it slightly.”
Trevithick climbed onto the locomotive as if it were nothing and began shoveling coal into the engine. Once enough coal had gone in, he moved a handle that looked like an accelerator and began increasing speed.
—Kiiiik!
“Wait, wait. Get down. Down, down. This really won’t work.”
At the chilling sound, I shouted to Trevithick.
Was this a haunted wail or something? Why would rails make that sound?
But before we could even inspect the rails or locomotive, spectators began rushing in.
“S-sir! The Russians are approaching!”
At this rate, instead of “France’s technology is the best in the world!!” we would only become a laughingstock. To pull their eyes away from the rails that were slowly collapsing, we needed something—something big.
“Uh… Mr. Trevithick! Hurry! The… what is it! The horn! Blow the horn!”
“The… the horn… where was it…! Ah, here it is!”
—Bwooooo!
—Aaaah! It’s a monster!
There was no other way to drown out the creaking sound of the railway sinking.
“Keep blowing it! Keep going!”
—Bwooooo!
The reason the rails bent and collapsed was simple.
The locomotive was insanely heavy.
But do rails bend just like that? The twenty-first-century trains that carried thousands of passengers on the KTX—did they run on vibranium rails or something?
But they bent. They bent, damn it.
So what could I do?
I would have to tear everything apart and investigate what kind of iron was being used in our tracks.
“Y-Your Excellency? What brings you here?”
“This is the Paris Arsenal, right? Tell the people in charge of steel that Guillaume de Toulon is looking for experts. I’ll pay them generously.”
Even if it was not bare ground, we would have to start by charging headfirst into the problem.