Chapter 556 - 260: Darkroom
Her face was devoid of expression.
She knew that in some office in Washington, Senator O’Connor’s PR team must be in a complete meltdown right now.
They would be frantically calling the platform to demand the post be taken down, sending cease-and-desist letters, and trying to explain.
But it was useless.
The fire had already been lit.
Sarah picked up her coffee and took a sip.
She thought of Leo.
She thought of the Leo who had admitted in court to selling the port to Morganfield.
’We’ve all changed, Leo,’ Sarah thought.
’You learned to sell out your principles, and I learned to fabricate the truth.’
’We’ve both become Demons.’
’But if it means burning a hole through hell, what does it matter if we become Demons?’
She put down her cup and looked at the sneering face still playing on a loop.
"Continue," Sarah issued a new command.
"The next target is that Republican, Coburn."
"Find the footage of him yawning during the hearing, and add the sound effect of someone counting money over it."
"I want everyone to think he was daydreaming about getting rich while sitting on the hearing panel."
The machines roared to life again.
In this windowless darkroom, the truth was dismantled, reassembled, and imbued with a new, lethal power.
After giving the order, Sarah watched the young female assistant bustling about, her expression unchanging.
She knew perfectly well that her earlier speech about "distilling the essence" wasn’t just for Amy; it was for everyone else here.
She needed to give these people a moral anchor.
She first had to convince them that everything they were doing now was for some nobler purpose, to reveal a deeper truth.
Only then could they press the "Publish" button with a clear conscience and calmly face the victims who were about to be drowned in lies.
It was a necessary form of self-hypnosis.
Sarah picked up her phone and sent a text message to the head of human resources at City Hall.
"Amy Chen, media center. Have her complete her departure procedures today."
"Reason: unable to adapt to the high-intensity workload. Handle it cleanly and have her sign an NDA."
Sarah didn’t need dissenting voices.
Here, she only needed soldiers who followed orders, not philosophers who raised ethical questions.
She had changed, too.
She had become just like the people she once despised most—cold, efficient, and unscrupulous.
But she had no regrets.
Because this was the only way they could possibly win.
...
「At this very moment, on X.」
A retired teacher from Ohio had just left a comment under a news story about the Critical Infrastructure Protection Bill.
He was a moderate centrist who had carefully read the summary of the bill.
He wrote: "Everyone, calm down. I’ve read the clauses. The main purpose of this bill is to prevent terrorists from attacking the power grid and water supply systems. Including insurance companies under its protection is only a very small part. We shouldn’t..."
A second after he posted the comment, his phone began to vibrate wildly.
His notification bar was instantly filled with red numbers.
"Are you a lapdog for the insurance companies?"
"How much are they paying you per post? Let a brother in on it."
"Look at the children who died! You cold-blooded bastard!"
"Would you be so calm if your family died because they couldn’t afford treatment?"
Hundreds of vicious insults flooded his feed in just a few minutes.
Not only that, but his private message inbox was stuffed with threatening messages.
Someone even posted a screenshot of his Facebook profile, threatening to harass his family.
The old teacher’s hands began to tremble.
Fear crept from his fingertips to his heart.
He deleted the comment.
Even though he felt he was right, even though he just wanted to be reasonable.
In the face of such an overwhelming torrent of malice, reason had no room to survive.
In the end, he deleted his account.
This was the effect Sarah wanted.
The purpose of a flood attack isn’t to debate, but to drown.
If anyone tried to voice a rational opinion, they had to be buried under a hundred, a thousand times the noise.
Until everyone was silent, and only one voice remained.
In the Media and Public Opinion Control Center, Sarah stared at the screen.
"Initiate phase two," Sarah ordered into the microphone.
"Begin identity-based hunting."
In the past, troll armies would just copy and paste the same phrases, making them easy to identify.
But the ghost army Sarah now controlled was different.
They were equipped with the latest natural language processing models. They knew how to disguise themselves.
They would formulate specialized talking points based on the target user’s profile.
On the left side of the screen, the data stream pointed to the online forums of the African-American community.
Tens of thousands of bot accounts disguised as "Black civil rights activists" sprang into action.
They used specific slang and quoted classic slogans from the civil rights movement.
"Brothers and sisters, open your eyes!"
"This bill is designed to protect the white doctors who discriminate against us! Those white masters sitting in their high-rises, they can kill us however they want, and now they want to pass a law to stop us from fighting back!"
"Luigi might be white, but he killed that Vampire who exploited us! If you support this bill, you’re betraying your own race! You’re a sellout on the plantation!"
This logic was highly inflammatory, directly transforming a healthcare issue into one of racial oppression.
On the right side of the screen, the data stream surged toward the white, blue-collar communities and right-wing forums of the Rust Belt.
Here, the bot accounts took on a different persona.
Their profile pictures were changed to flags, eagles, or guns, and their bios read "America First."
"Wake up, patriots!"
"The elites in Washington are stripping away our right to resist! They’re defining big corporations as government facilities. This is a prelude to confiscating our guns!"
"Today it’s Luigi, tomorrow it’ll be us!"
"That CEO deserved to die! If the government won’t let us speak, we’ll speak with our bullets!"
They used far-right logic to attack a bill that, in essence, protected capitalist interests.
This misaligned strategy completely confused the real right-wing voters.
Sarah watched the popularity index on the screen jump continuously.
Real, living users opened their phones and saw their screens filled with these kinds of comments.
The left was cursing it, and the right was cursing it too.
Black people were cursing it, and white people were cursing it too.
A false consensus was being manufactured.
Every person holding a phone would come to the same mistaken conclusion:
’My God, all of America is against this bill.’
’If I support it, I’m an outcast.’
’If I dare say a single word, I’ll be attacked by everyone.’
This was the spiral of silence.
When people feel their opinion is in the minority, they choose to remain silent.
And as more and more people fell silent, the manufactured "majority" voice would sound even more deafening.
Sarah had used a million ghosts to frighten three hundred million living people into silence.
"Director."
The data analyst beside her said, his voice trembling slightly.
"This is... this is insane."
"X’s servers experienced a brief period of congestion just now. Our topics have taken over the top five spots on the trending list."
"Even some congressional aides on Capitol Hill have started asking privately if public opinion has really turned against it."
Sarah picked up her coffee and took a sip.
"Public opinion?"
Sarah let out a cold sneer.
"In this era, public opinion is data."
"Whoever controls the data, controls public opinion."
"Whoever can control the screen is God."
She turned to look at the massive display wall behind her.
Countless messages flowed like a waterfall, each one a bullet aimed at that white-domed building in Washington.
Those high and mighty Senators thought they could control everything through legislation.
But in this internet age, the boundaries of power have been shattered.
Sarah could move a finger in Pittsburgh and create a tsunami across the United States.
"Increase the intensity."
Sarah put down her cup and issued her final command.
"I want the lawmakers who support the bill to be afraid to open their social media tomorrow morning."
"I want them to feel fear."
In the darkroom, the hum of the server cooling fans grew louder.
The ghost army was roaring.
And in the real world, an emotion called anger, under this artificial catalysis, began to grow wildly, to spread, and finally, to consume everything.