Chapter 555 - 260: Darkroom
The image froze on that expression.
Sarah looked at the screen and nodded in satisfaction.
"That’s it."
"This is how he should look."
"Add the caption," Sarah said. "Use the largest red font, bold it, and put it right in the center of the screen."
"The text is: He’s mocking the dead patients."
Holt typed the last line of code.
The video was complete.
A young female assistant standing nearby, clutching a stack of files, watched all of this with some unease.
She was a recent graduate from journalism school, still clinging to the code of ethics she’d been taught.
"Ma’am..."
The female assistant hesitated for a long time, but finally couldn’t stop herself from speaking up.
"Is... is this considered fabrication?"
Her voice was quiet, but it was crystal clear in the silent server room.
"Senator O’Connor didn’t make that expression, and he didn’t make that sound. We’re... fabricating facts."
Holt stopped what he was doing, swiveled his chair around, and looked at Sarah.
The other operators in the server room also stopped. Although no one spoke, a subtle tension filled the air.
They all knew what they were doing.
They were manufacturing a lie.
Sarah turned around.
She looked at the young assistant, her eyes holding nothing but a chilling calm.
"Fabrication?"
Sarah countered.
She walked over to the assistant and pulled a document from the stack she was holding.
It was the latest report on the Luigi case, with several photos of patients who had died due to denied health insurance claims attached.
"Tell me, Amy, what do you think was going through Senator O’Connor’s mind when he voted in favor of that bill?"
Sarah pointed at the photos.
"Did he know this bill would protect the murderers who killed these patients? He knew."
"Did he know this bill would strip the right to protest from those who lost their loved ones? He knew that, too."
"But he still voted yes."
"Why?"
Sarah stared into the assistant’s eyes.
"Because he doesn’t care."
"Because in that calculating brain of his, the political donations from insurance companies are ten thousand times more important than these dead children."
"His heart is filled with contempt for ordinary people like us. He sees us as a burden, a nuisance, a statistic holding back economic growth."
"It’s just that he’s very smart. He’s been well-trained. He knows how to disguise himself in front of the camera, how to use those high-sounding words to hide his cold-blooded nature."
Sarah pointed at the large screen behind her, at the altered image of O’Connor.
"What we’re doing is stripping away his disguise."
"We are helping him present his true, ugly self to the world through technical means."
Sarah’s voice grew firm.
"This is called distilling the essence."
"This is called emotional enhancement."
"The average viewer doesn’t have time to analyze his voting record, nor the ability to decipher his complex conflicts of interest. They can only understand facial expressions and tone of voice."
"So, we have to help the viewers understand."
"We need to make everyone see at a glance that this man in a suit is, essentially, an asshole."
"This is a higher form of truth."
The assistant was stunned.
She was dizzy, reeling from this line of reasoning.
It all sounded like twisted logic.
"But... what if we get caught?" The assistant made one last attempt. "Forensic technology is very advanced now. What if someone proves the video is a composite..."
"So what if they find out?"
Sarah let out a laugh.
"Who’s going to care?"
"In this post-truth era, emotion is everything."
"Even if O’Connor comes out tomorrow to debunk it, even if he produces the original footage, people will only believe what they want to believe."
"They’ll say: ’Maybe the video is fake, but that’s just the kind of person he is.’"
"And that is our goal."
Sarah turned away, ignoring the assistant.
She returned to the console, planting her hands on the desk and staring at the video file that was ready to go.
"Holt, get ready to release it."
Holt nodded and typed a series of complex commands on the keyboard.
In the dark corners of the internet, thousands upon thousands of dormant accounts were awakened.
Some were registered in Bangladesh, others in Estonia. Some looked like housewives who cared about cats and dogs; others looked like college students who loved sports.
They had no real bodies; they were just strings of code on a server.
But in this moment, they possessed a unified will.
"Targets: X, Facebook, TikTok."
"Post frequency: twenty per second."
"Keywords: #OConnorsSmirk, #HealthcareBillTruth, #TheyDontCareAboutUs."
"Execute."
As Holt hit the Enter key.
The data stream on the screen began to jump frantically.
The carefully crafted video spread like a drop of ink in a clear pond, instantly diffusing.
First hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands.
Reposts, likes, comments.
The algorithm caught the trend and pushed it to more real users.
And on the phone screens of those real users, they saw the smirking senator and the jarring red text.
Rage was ignited.
"Asshole! What’s he laughing at?"
"This is our senator? He’s mocking the dead?"
"How can someone like that represent us?"
A tsunami of curses flooded the comment section.
Sarah watched the engagement curve on the screen skyrocket.