Chapter 561 - 263: Cocoon
He wanted to reach out and pat her shoulder, just like he used to, to give her a little encouragement.
But he held back.
Sarah didn’t need comfort now. What she needed was affirmation—a reason to keep fighting.
"Then keep going."
Leo looked at the massive data wall.
"Make the fire burn hotter."
"Understood,"
Sarah replied.
Just as Leo was about to leave the media and public opinion control center, Sarah called out from behind him.
"Leo."
Leo stopped and looked back.
"Did you know?" Sarah’s voice was quiet. "No one really knows if Goebbels ever actually said, ’A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth.’"
"But,"
Sarah said, looking at Leo.
"that line has been repeated and quoted so many times..."
"...that now, Goebbels *has* to have said it."
"Because the public needs a simple villain to embody their fear of propaganda."
"They need a symbol to explain why they were deceived. As for the truth? That’s not important."
"What’s important is that people believe it’s true."
Leo nodded. He understood what Sarah was saying.
This was what they were doing.
They were creating their own Goebbels.
The door slid slowly shut, hiding Leo’s retreating figure from view.
Sarah settled back in front of the control console, her eyes on the massive wall of monitors before her.
Dozens of screens scrolled in real-time, displaying news footage and social media heat maps from across All of America.
As the data streamed in, Sarah’s keen eyes noticed a troubling anomaly.
In the corners she had neglected, in places where traditional media still held powerful sway, a completely different trend was taking shape.
The echo chamber she had built was filled with sympathy for Luigi, hatred for the insurance companies, and rage toward Washington.
It was a frenzy fueled by the younger generation, political radicals, and the working class.
But on Fox News, in the Wall Street Journal, and on conservative radio stations that had been embedded in their communities for decades, a completely opposite narrative was being constructed.
These two starkly different voices were like two hurricanes on a collision course, clashing violently in the skies above the United States.
They did not merge. They did not cancel each other out.
They were tearing this country apart.
Here, truth lost its solid form. It became a fluid, poured into vessels of emotion and molded at will.
In the vessel of the wealthy, the truth was, "The riots are coming."
They saw streets out of control, mobs smashing, looting, and burning, and a social order on the brink of collapse.
They were afraid, anxious. They craved a strong hand, hoping someone would suppress these disruptive elements with law or violence.
And in the vessel of the poor, the truth was, "All we have is resistance."
They saw cold-blooded insurance companies, hypocritical politicians, and a game where human lives were treated as nothing more than numbers.
They were furious, desperate. They craved destruction, longing to see that towering pyramid come crashing down.
And the creators of this public opinion, they stood on high, watching with cold detachment as the flood tore the United States in two.
This was the resonant frequency of an anger that had been suppressed for forty years.
From the trailer parks deep in the Appalachian Mountains to the overcrowded tenements of the Brooklyn District.
These people didn’t know each other.
A white miner from West Virginia might go his entire life without ever speaking a word to a Black single mother from Detroit.
In the past, they might have even hated one another, driven by racial, cultural, and regional prejudice.
The miner believed Black people were taking all the welfare benefits; the single mother believed white people monopolized all the opportunities.
But in this moment, they were tuned to the same frequency.
They all felt the pain.
The pain of being left behind by the times.
The miner looked at the abandoned headframe and the meager disability check in his hand; the single mother looked at her sick child and the insurance claim stamped with a "REJECTED" seal.
The pain of being scorned by the elites.
They watched experts in sharp suits on television, using complex jargon to tell them the economy was growing and unemployment was falling.
But they felt their own empty pockets and could only feel like a joke.
The suffocating pain of being crushed by bills.
Rent, utilities, medical bills, student loans.
Every bill was a stone on their chests, leaving them breathless in the dead of night.
They looked at their phone screens.
The blue light of the screen illuminated their tired faces.
They no longer believed in the so-called "American Dream."
The promise that "if you work hard, you’ll have a good life," the fairy tale that "tomorrow will be better"—it all sounded like a stale joke now.
They had worked hard. They had followed the rules.
And for what?
The factories moved away. Their communities fell into ruin. Their children got sick, with no money for treatment.
They began to crave something else.
Something more primal, more violent, more direct.
A reckoning.
They didn’t want explanations. They didn’t want to see data. They didn’t want to wait for reform.
They wanted to see the people on high fall to dust.
They wanted to see the system that always wins suffer a crushing defeat, just once.
「Washington D.C., Constitution Avenue.」
The white dome of the Congress Building stood out against the night sky, solemn and sacred.
But beneath that dome, beyond those sturdy marble walls, the very foundations were crumbling.
The congressmen were still arguing, the lobbyists were still making deals, and the bureaucrats were still filling out forms.
They thought this was just another protest, a crisis that could be managed with good PR.
They were wrong.
This was a civil war.
There was no gunsmoke in the streets, no armies massing, no trenches or barbed wire.
But every "like," every "share," every venomous comment posted late at night...
...was a bullet fired at the old order.
The United States of America, this vast Empire, was tearing itself open in the silent roar, revealing a grievous wound.