39: Chapter 39 The Great Parade of the Century

Chen Mu immediately stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

The view from the thirty-seventh floor of the United Nations Building was excellent, and as he looked down, he discovered that the banks of the East River had already been swallowed by the tide of people.

The first thing to strike his line of sight was a giant American flag; the red and blue stripes were still there, but the white star field had been sprayed into a garish fluorescent green, with a crooked head of Chen Mu drawn in the center, crossed out with a scarlet X.

Holding this flag was an old man in a NASA jacket, his white hair flying wildly in the wind from the Hudson River; behind him followed at least two thousand people, all wrapped in silver thermal blankets, looking from afar like a writhing river of tin foil.

They shouted loudly, "Mars is ours!" and when their voices cracked from shouting, they would all simultaneously raise their right hands, index and middle fingers parted, making the gesture symbolizing human unity.

Further ahead, someone was carrying an inflatable model: a Chen Mu wearing a suit, with a sign hanging around his neck that read, "Alien beast!"

Whenever someone jumped up to punch the model's stomach, the crowd would burst into laughter, and after laughing, they would continue to curse.

Chen Mu even noticed a teenager in a hoodie at the street corner, using spray paint to write the slogan "Gugu Gaga = Go Die" on the stone wall of the United Nations.

Chen Mu withdrew his gaze: "Isn't it just a protest? I often see them on Twitter; doesn't your United States do this all the time? What's there to be so surprised about?"

"Like how it happens every four years after a presidential election, or occasionally because a citizen was shot by police; once they get tired, they naturally disperse."

Maya held her phone up to him: "This time it's different. This is a video the Secretary-General just sent me. Protests have now broken out across many countries globally; statistics show that at least hundreds of millions of people are participating."

Chen Mu took the phone and began scrolling through these videos.

On screen, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington were packed with people, and the Reflecting Pool had been trampled until it was murky and unbearable.

Someone had printed Chen Mu's Twitter profile picture into a giant poster, painted a bullseye on it with red paint, and mounted it between the columns of the memorial.

A middle-aged man in military uniform stood at the top of the steps; without a microphone, he relied purely on his voice to roar: "I have fought in Iraq! I have fought in Afghanistan! I am not afraid to fight for Mars again!"

Someone below shouted, "What do you want?" He tore open his camouflage jacket, revealing a T-shirt underneath printed with Thompson's face.

"I want this!" He pointed at that face, "I want humanity to never bow down!"

Chen Mu swiped to the next one: Big Ben in London was striking three in the afternoon, but the clock face was covered by a green laser projection, continuously looping the same video.

The video was exactly the clip of Chen Mu saying "Gugu Gaga" at the White House press conference, but it had been edited and sped up, set to the comedic music of "The Benny Hill Show." Every ten seconds, the image froze on the frame where he was smiling slightly, with the subtitle: "This is what you asked for!"

In Paris, the Champs-Élysées had turned into an open-air theater. The protesters didn't shout slogans; they were marching in silence.

Thousands of people were dressed in black, each holding a white candle, the candlelight flickering in the April wind.

At the very front of the procession was an old woman in a nun's habit, holding a wooden sign; it had no political slogans, only the first article of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" copied on it: Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.

In Moscow, tens of thousands of people arranged themselves in the snow to spell out the Russian word: НЕТ (No).

A burly man wearing a telnyashka stood in the shadow of the onion domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral, holding a bottle of vodka.

He roared at the camera: "The Russians have negotiated with Napoleon, negotiated with Hitler, and now we actually have to negotiate with an alien?"

The burly man unscrewed the cap and poured the liquor onto the snow, "To those heroes who didn't negotiate."

In the video, a large number of taxis in the East were scrolling slogans: "When friends come, there is fine wine; when jackals come, there are shotguns!"

In Tokyo, the protest march stretched from Yoyogi Park all the way to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. The slogan was: "Mars is the next step for humanity, not the territory of aliens."

In Seoul, at Gwanghwamun Square, a group of people used lasers to project a line of text on the outer wall of the government building: "The space dream of the Republic of Korea is not under the jurisdiction of aliens."

In New Delhi, at the entrance of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Three hundred thousand people held models of the Mangalyaan Mars orbiter, shouting the slogan: "We reached Mars, what about you?"

In Sydney, a projection on the roof of the Opera House. Someone used the lighting system to display a sentence: "We have evolved here for three hundred thousand years, not to hand the keys to the first stranger who knocks."

In São Paulo, on Avenida Paulista, former employees of the Brazilian Space Agency stood in the middle of the crowd wearing spacesuits, holding signs that read: "My grandson should be flying to Mars, not applying for a visa to Guga Planet."

In Cape Town, at the foot of Table Mountain, people projected a line of text onto the mountain with lasers, visible to the entire city: "Mars belongs to humanity."

The camera cut back to a close-up: an old man with white hair held up a piece of cardboard, handwritten with: "I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis; we didn't kneel then, and we won't now."

A young girl had painted Thompson's face on her cheek and made a gun gesture at the camera.

A middle-aged man with a Middle Eastern face held a bilingual sign in English and Arabic: "We have been fighting each other on Earth for five thousand years, not to end up as vassals to aliens together."

The night wind squeezed in through the window gap, carrying the sound of the crowd shouting slogans in the distance. Chen Mu finally heard one clearly: "We want Mars, not peace; get out, galactic vampires."

Chen Mu handed the phone back to Maya. Maya looked at him: "Do you understand what this means?"

Chen Mu shrugged: "Of course I understand. This is clearly deliberately orchestrated by your human governments on Earth, the goal is to show me how united and unyielding you humans are!"

"Alright!" Chen Mu waved his hand, "Since they want an answer, then I'll just give them one. Tell the kitchen I want steak for dinner."

Maya could only walk out helplessly.

Chen Mu sat on the bed, picked up his phone, opened Twitter, and thought for a moment.

Currently, the fear value was still rising rapidly, so he should drag it out a bit longer, let them release the fear value to the maximum, and then give them a shocking reversal. With this back and forth, he could make a killing.

Thinking of this, he suddenly understood the Stock God President; the feeling of drawing his own K-lines was truly exhilarating.

[Ambassador of Guga Planet: I have seen your protests.

New York, Tokyo, Seoul... 174 cities, different languages, different skin colors, different faiths, the same slogan.

Humans, I admit that you are indeed very good at standing together.

But standing together does not equal strength; herds of sheep and cattle also stand together. Your ancestors who hunted mammoths in the wilderness didn't rely on just standing together, but also on torches, spears, and strategy.

Your torches today are mobile phone flashlights, your spears are cardboard slogans, and your strategy is to turn a policeman who once held a gun to my head into an Ultraman video.

I have watched it; it was well-made, and I even liked it, but this cannot change anything.

My evaluation of your global carnival is only four words: a rabble.

Now, I am informing you of one thing.

Our fleet is ready to take action.

Originally, they were stopped at the Kuiper Belt because I was still observing.

I wanted to see if your species was worth it, and now I have seen it: you voted against me at the United Nations, you held signs in streets around the world to curse me, and you turned a moment in an interrogation room into a religious mural.

You have proven one thing to me with all your actions: that is, you are a species that needs to be controlled.

So the fleet will no longer wait.

Seven days from now, the First Fleet of Guga Planet will conduct its first deterrence operation against Earth.

At that time, I will no longer accept any negotiations; the three proposals are void, the new plan will be decided by me, and you will be responsible for executing it.

Within this week, enjoy your carnival to the fullest.

Because these are your last seven days as a free species.

Seven days later, you will learn a new phrase, called: "Full acceptance of rule."

Happy carnival!]

After sending this tweet, Chen Mu closed his eyes, and in his mind, that system interface floated up.

He found the operation panel for [Cosmic Illusion · B-Class] and ordered them to accelerate towards Earth, ensuring they would reach the position where he would implement his plan in seven days.