209: Chapter 209 The Effect of a State Funeral: Triggering a Political Earthquake

"Heroes never die, and neither do we!"

Two former dock stevedores wearing dried, oil-stained overalls joined forces to push an old kiosk that had been overturned on the roadside back upright, and then called over an elderly person nearby who was still cleaning up broken glass to help move several public benches that had been smashed crooked back to their original places.

They didn't speak, just forcefully put back every trace damaged by despair into its original place piece by piece.

People all over the world saw hope at the exact same moment.

From London to Marseille, from Shibuya to Mumbai, from the bottommost ashes and gaps of glass shards in the Sunset Park industrial area of Brooklyn, to every ordinary person who had previously fallen into despair and was now slowly standing back up from the fluorescence of the screen, eight billion people were bound together unprecedentedly closely by the same hope that had never been fulfilled but suddenly became within reach!

...

Florida, Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, private conference room.

Prant leaned back in the high-backed leather chair at the head of the conference table, his hands crossed in front of him, with the latest polling data just handed over by campaign manager Eddie Rosenthal spread out before him.

Musk sat on his left, Edward Warren sat on his right, and Patrick Colin, Samir Rashid, and Carolyn Feng sat along both sides of the conference table in order.

Outside the window, the sunset of Palm Beach was dyeing the surface of the Atlantic Ocean into a shade intertwined with deep orange and dark purple, but at this moment, no one in this conference room was in the mood to appreciate the scenery outside the window.

Eddie Rosenthal stood at the end of the conference table, clutching a tablet displaying flickering real-time polling curves.

The expression on his face was like someone who had been forcibly jerked awake from a nightmare, only to find himself still standing right in the middle of the same nightmare.

He put the tablet on the table, pointing with his finger at the red curve that had been shooting upwards at an almost vertical angle since the end of the state funeral broadcast, his voice carrying undisguised anxiety.

"Sir, after the state funeral of Sophus Tesla, Biden's approval rating has skyrocketed all the way."

"Now, he has comprehensively overtaken us in national polls, and the lead has gone straight from less than one percentage point before the state funeral to a fault line lead of nearly double digits."

"Independent voters, suburban women, veterans... all the key voting blocs that we managed to claw back before are now running over to the other side."

"If this trend continues, you wanting to win the next presidential election... is remote and distant."

Prant picked up the polling data from the table, glanced at it, and his brows knitted into a deep character " river" within seconds.

He slammed the data table onto the table with a "pop", picked up the newly poured, completely untouched cup of cola next to it, threw his head back and took a large gulp, then heavily set it back down on the desktop, his tone low and aggressive:

"Biden used a person who never existed to hold a state funeral that never belonged to any real soul."

"And then, the whole country collectively wiped its memory and raised him to the heavens?"

"Have these people forgotten how they cursed him before?"

Musk did not engage in his emotional venting.

He pushed his encrypted tablet from the side to the center of the table, his tone cold and precise, like he was conducting a final flight attitude assessment on a starship about to enter the atmospheric re-entry phase but still failing to reach the target orbit:

"Public approval ratings have already started sliding downward."

"This state funeral organized by Biden, borrowing the fictional hero Sophus Tesla, injected a high-dose stimulant into the entire society."

"The effect of the stimulant can at least last until he strikes while the iron is hot and rolls out the first batch of so-called technology-sharing achievements."

"If our Parameter Overload plan loses to Biden's side's Gravity Trap in the Ten Thousand Ship Slash competition again, then it won't just be a matter of grassroots votes."

"In front of the Deep State Senate, we will lose two wars at the same time."

"By that time, what would the Tech Faction still need us to do?"

"Even losing the Ten Thousand Ship Slash to the Longevity Faction, in the eyes of the Tech Faction, we would only be left with a recorded resume of failure."

"In case the Long Live Alliance abandons us... Long Live Alliance will have no backing at all."

"Next, Biden's gang will pin us to the ground and grind us to our bones."

"There is only one ending: complete destruction."

Eddie's face turned slightly pale.

Patrick Colin placed the marker pen he had been spinning in his hand onto the table, his movement so light that it made almost no sound.

Samir Rashid and Carolyn Feng also fell silent, pushing the encrypted tablets in front of them aside.

Grassroots votes had already fallen behind.

In case the frontline battlefield also lost to the Longevity Faction...

That wouldn't be a matter of one or two percentage points in the polls, but a matter of not being able to keep one's entire life.

Prant withdrew his gaze from outside the window and swept his eyes across the expressions of everyone present.

Then he suddenly spoke, his tone devoid of any hesitation, instead carrying an extremely abnormal certainty—at a time when everyone thought things were at an absolute impasse, he alone still believed there was a way forward ahead.

"No one understands state funerals better than me!"

He put the cola cup down on the table, the bottom of the cup clinking crisply against the desktop.

The entire conference room fell into an extremely awkward and bizarre silence in that instant.

Musk raised his hand from his knee, placed it in front of his forehead, and gently rubbed it.

Edward closed his eyes slightly, then opened them again, still maintaining his usual steady and calm posture, except that there were a few more traces of extremely restrained helplessness in the gaze he cast at Prant.

The three of them—Patrick, Samir, and Carolyn—also exchanged a few silent glances with one another, and those glances were filled with the same unutterable sentence:

"Now that the big picture of life and death is right before us, could you please stop causing trouble here?"

But facing these gazes mixed with doubt and helplessness, Prant not only did not stop, but even more resolutely pushed the next sentence straight out:

"No one understands Sophus Tesla better than me!"

"That state funeral was, from start to finish, a pre-arranged absurd play."

"The Gravity Trap project is clearly technological assistance given directly by the Longevity Faction to the Biden administration, and has not a single dime of relationship with that non-existent old Caucasian hermit."

Musk slowly lowered his hand from in front of his forehead, placed it on the tabletop, his tone suppressed to an extremely low pitch rarely seen, but every word was clenched tightly:

"It's fake; of course we know it's fake."

"But this news, of all things, cannot be exposed."

"The Ten Thousand Ship Slash competition between the Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction is still ongoing, the Senate personally intervened, and the Fifth Archon Cecilia publicly announced a ban on internal fire."

"For us to expose that Sophus Tesla is fake is equivalent to directly admitting the existence of the Deep State to the entire world."

"You've seen Cecilia's face; I'm afraid you'll regret it."

Eddie Rosenthal also spoke up, his speaking speed faster and more hurried than at any other time:

"Mr. Prant, the global observatories have already confirmed the exact trajectory of the Zeta Star fleet."

"Right now, the only common hope for all mankind is the batch of technology announced by Biden at the state funeral that can fend off the alien fleet, and everyone is waiting to get that shared list afterwards."

"If you blow up the source of hope now, everyone in the world will directly list us as enemies."

"Musk is right; this line, of all things, cannot be touched."

Patrick Colin gently smoothed out the marker pen on the table that had been spinning on his fingertips, placing it right in the center of the tabletop.

He did not repeatedly emphasize the consequences like Eddie, but simply looked at Prant with an extremely cold and rational gaze, and then said a sentence that completely summarized everyone's emotions and conclusions:

"Once this news is sent out, the push speed won't even need a second time."

"No matter what evidence you use, as long as it appears on any public channel, at your next campaign rally, what's mounted right beside the podium to clear the venue with live-ammo sniping won't just be a matter of a single bullet."

Prant leaned back against the chair back, crossed his hands in front of him, looking at the colleagues in front of him who opposed his exposure plan.

There was no anger or impatience on his face, only sweeping across each of their expressions one by one with an extremely calm yet unyielding gaze.

He knew what they were afraid of.

He waited for them to spit out all of their heaviest concerns in their hearts, before turning his gaze back to Edward's face.

In this room, only Edward and he came from the two poles of the politician coordinate system, checking and balancing each other, while also understanding all of each other's dark corners.

Edward took down the jacket he had draped over the back of his chair, placed it on his lap, straightened his cuffs, and raised his eyes to look at Prant.

His tone was still his usual steady and calm one, but the depth in his wording had far exceeded the routine risks repeatedly emphasized by Musk and Eddie earlier.

"The reason this fabricated hero scientist Sophus Tesla exists is simply because the Longevity Faction issued a ban forbidding the disclosure of the Deep State."

"Biden needed a legal explanation to pin the source of the technological assistance onto this virtual character, in order to complete his so-called hegemonic framework of sharing advanced technology."

"Therefore, if you expose that Sophus Tesla is fake now, it is equivalent to directly exposing the Deep State right under the gaze of the whole world."

"Not to mention what attitude the Senate and Cecilia will hold toward us by then, just your next presidential seat that you yearn for day and night is enough to completely ruin your entire campaign future."

He continued to speak, his voice not loud, but every word carried that unshakeable weight forged repeatedly by political iron laws.

"So-called politics, in short, is 'quenching one's thirst by thinking of plums'."

"Whoever can bring hope to the people will hold absolute power!"