16: Chapter 16 The Great Depression Was Actually Manipulated

The air in the cabin felt as if it had solidified into a solid.

The sound of the pines, the humming of the wind, the cries of water birds in the distance—all the noises belonging to the natural world retreated very, very far away into the heavy silence that had formed between the five people.

Hawthorne slowly took off his gold-rimmed glasses and wiped them with a velvet cloth. His lenses were, in fact, already as clean as they could possibly be, but his hand continued to repeat the wiping motion.

Sloan leaned against the back of the sofa, his face pale, his gaze stiff, and his lips pressed into a thin line.

Margaret's action of clutching her pen cap finally stopped. She placed the pen on the coffee table, then crossed her hands, intertwining her fingers.

After Raymond finished this long speech, he leaned back against the canvas chair, set the materials casually on his knees, and rubbed his eyes with his palms—rubbing hard, making the bags under his eyes even redder.

Edward Warren's breathing was exceptionally clear in this silence.

One beat, another, another—steady and rhythmic,

But his clenched left hand had knuckles that were almost as white as the color of bone.

He looked at Raymond: "State the conclusion directly."

Raymond did not speak immediately.

He first looked at Hawthorne, who slowly put his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and gave him a slight nod.

He looked at Sloan, whose narrow eyes, usually adept at calculation, were now wide open, responding to him with a silent, heavy affirmation.

Finally, he looked at Margaret. Margaret released her intertwined fingers, took a deep breath, and also nodded at him.

Then Raymond Carter placed the stack of materials from his knees onto the coffee table and pushed it forward less than an inch, but this action itself was like submitting the final piece of decisive evidence in court.

"This is not my conclusion alone," he said, his voice slightly strained.

"This is the conclusion that Hawthorne, Sloan, Margaret, and I have arrived at together—the one closest to the truth—after repeatedly verifying and cross-referencing everything last night and this morning."

He took a deep breath.

"1947 is absolutely not the time when extraterrestrial aircraft first descended upon Blue Star."

"Long before that, perhaps ten years earlier, perhaps twenty years earlier, or perhaps even earlier, those core decision-makers of the Deep State had already come into contact with alien life in some way."

"This matter was sealed airtight; only a very small number of people qualified to know were aware of it."

"And the 1947 Roswell Incident was merely reported by the media when a loophole appeared in the secrecy mechanism."

Raymond's finger drew an abstract arrow on the coffee table, sweeping from left to right, as if demonstrating a timeline.

"After the Deep State came into contact with extraterrestrial life at an earlier time, they immediately began planning to create some kind of 'residence' for the alien life, or a secret base to study them."

"The Hoover Dam, from the time construction began in 1931, was not originally intended for the core purpose of generating electricity for Nevada."

"It was to provide a continuous, stable, and absolutely controllable source of hydroelectric power for that secret base."

"The Great Depression provided an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, allowing this project to be completed in the shortest possible time with minimal cost."

"After its completion in 1936, that base was also built in the following years."

"Then, starting from 1947, the base officially began operations. The time when large-scale consumption of hydroelectric resources began coincides exactly with the year the Roswell Incident occurred."

"It cannot be just a coincidence between the two."

He stopped here.

He glanced at Hawthorne, who took over his words. The old lawyer's way of speaking was completely different from Raymond's; Raymond was engineer-like in his precision, while Hawthorne was legalistic, layer by layer:

"And if we analyze it according to the statements left by Mr. Gore, he said someone 'planned a three-year project.' This project is very likely…"

He took off his glasses again. This time he did not wipe them, but just held them in his hand, as if trying to grasp something to steady himself.

"After these people came into contact with extraterrestrial life, they pretended to welcome them on the surface, building residences for the Aliens, but in reality, they were waiting for the opportunity to capture the Aliens and conduct some kind of unknown research."

"Dissection, reverse engineering, technology extraction… no matter what form the research takes, it will not be a good thing."

"And what Gore's words reflect—he said this matter would ruin the entire Federal Government—is very likely because he knew the consequences if the Aliens' home planet found out about capturing and studying them."

Sloan spoke at this moment, his voice dry: "If the home planet retaliates…"

He did not finish the sentence. But he didn't need to. If the home planet retaliated, let alone the Federal Government, the entire Blue Star would be finished.

Edward Warren walked back from the fireplace.

He did not sit down, but stood in front of the coffee table, looking down at the spread-out files, hand-drawn charts, photocopies of old photos, scans of old newspapers, and the four staff members who had followed him for ten years.

Everyone present was digesting this conclusion in their own way.

Hawthorne gripped his gold-rimmed glasses so hard they creaked.

Sloan's face was as pale as if it had just been fished out of ice water.

Margaret's ten fingers were intertwined, her fingertips digging into the skin of her hands.

And Raymond, after finishing his speech, had been leaning back against the canvas folding chair, head tilted, staring at the dark raw log beams on the ceiling, his eyes filled with a fatigue and emptiness as if he had run ten thousand meters.

Edward slowly closed his eyes.

There was only the sound of breathing in the room.

And when Edward opened his eyes again, his gaze was no longer on the coffee table; he was looking at Raymond.

Not looking at those files, not looking at the screenshots on the screen, but staring directly into his Chief of Staff's bloodshot eyes.

"You just mentioned the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933."

Edward's voice was not loud, but steady. Steady as if stating a proposal in the Senate where all consequences had already been calculated.

Raymond's expression did not change, but he slowly pushed the back of his chair upright.

"That was not the Great Depression," Raymond's voice was very soft, but very certain. "I used to think it was the Great Depression too."

"When I was studying for my PhD at Stanford, I took two macroeconomics courses and memorized all the classic theories about the Great Depression—monetary contraction theory, demand weakness theory, gold standard collapse theory."

"Each one made sense, each one explained it quite logically."

"But today I learned that those were all fake."

He pulled up a file from his tablet and pointed it out for Edward to see.

"This economic crisis was artificially manipulated."

"It was purposefully created by certain people behind the scenes who possessed power and vision beyond common sense, for a specific, long-term, grand purpose."

"The purpose was only one—to create a massive unemployed population, forcing tens of millions of desperate laborers to flood into the Nevada desert, providing an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor for the Hoover Dam for twenty years."

"Then to build the dam and provide inexhaustible hydroelectric resources for the alien research facility that was to be launched later."

He handed that file, a set of 1930s Federal Department of Labor statistics, to Edward.

"And it wasn't just the Hoover Dam," Raymond added. "The large federal public works built between 1929 and 1933 were not limited to just the Hoover Dam."

"It's just that so far, we can only trace it to here."

"But this one alone is enough."

Edward looked down at the statistics. The numbers were dense, each number representing thousands or even tens of thousands of unemployed people.

He flipped the file to the end and saw a column—"Hoover Dam Worker Background Check Criteria."

Next to that column were three words marked: "Three-Generation Verification (all three generations of ancestors and descendants born within the United States)."

Edward closed the file.

He stood in front of the coffee table, silent for a long time.

The window behind him facing Gold Lake let light shine through the gaps in the blinds, casting several straight, flickering shadows across his broad shoulders and back.

Then he looked up and looked at the four people in front of him.

On that face, one could not see fear, shock, or anger.

That face was one that could only be possessed after being tempered in the political arena for most of a lifetime.

It could remain calm under any circumstances, but that did not mean the brain behind it was slow.

"Regarding the matter of the Hoover Dam… whether this conclusion is true or not…"

Edward's voice recovered the steady and powerful rhythm that a Senator should have, every word sounding as if it were nailed into the air.

"I will find someone above to test it slightly."

"And then I will know the truth or falsehood."

Above… The pupils of Raymond and the other three contracted simultaneously.

They all knew what "above" referred to.

For a century-old political family like the Warren Family that dominated local states, it was impossible not to have a network of relationships at the federal level behind them.

They had acquaintances in Chicago, bridges in New York, and in Washington…

In Washington, Edward had his own people.

And they were the kind of people who could access the country's highest secrets.

The Department of Homeland Security.

Raymond's lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but Edward raised a hand to interrupt him.

"Today's meeting has been exhausting,"

Edward placed the Department of Labor statistics on the coffee table and stacked them with all the other files, a neat stack, like a tombstone that had just been closed.

"But the effort will not be in vain."

"The four of you have pulled me out from under the shroud of a massive lie. No matter who has been maintaining that lie, or for how many years, you have torn a hole in it."

His gaze lingered on each of the four faces one by one—some tired, some uneasy, some pale, some resolute.

"Next, I will personally verify just how deep it goes behind this hole," Edward said.

He did not deliberately lower his voice, nor did he deliberately raise his volume.

He just used the tone that a man would use only after deciding on a major event—calm, restrained, and never looking back.