Chapter 1578 Fusing Magic and Science, and Breaking News
Luke would never have enough experience and credit points.
But he and Tony had gotten their fill with Black Magic Knowledge and the mechanical magic tower today.
Last time, Luke had only obtained the knowledge of a maintenance engineer when he fought the Chitauri. This time, it was the Enchantressâs Black Magic Knowledge.
The maintenance engineer was just an insignificant screw, while the Enchantress was a black magic specialist.
Tony and Luke had spent four months coming up with several âspin-off productsâ from the mental control tech. This time, the Black Magic Knowledge and the magic tower would be enough for them to play with for years.
This also wasnât taken into account the fact that Tonyâs interest wouldnât always be focused on one thing. As for the tech⊠hm, it would be enough for the tycoon to play with for the rest of his life.
Tony didnât know the good news yet.
On this trip to Grand Rapids, he had killed the Enchantress and her brother, and finally regained the dignity he had lost at Wall Street station.
Now that he had gotten his revenge, he left quickly and happily, and even forgot to take back the Hulkbuster armor and the space obstruction device.
It was only after Luke was done cleaning up that he told Tony that the equipment had been retrieved in the name of âthe bigshot who sold everything.â
Tomorrow, the bigshot would deliver to the tycoon the parts that belonged to him, and complete the deal that they had agreed on at the same time.
This was a necessary procedure.
To deepen the mysterious businessmanâs character as a bigshot, and also because of Tonyâs own pride, his points would officially âgo onlineâ on the Bat Squadâs side.
Tony didnât want credit points from the Battle of New York.
He didnât think that he needed Batman to give him credit points for protecting his Stark Tower and New York.
But this time in Grand Rapids had clearly been a âpersonal requestâ of Lukeâs.
The tycoon had even used the Hulkbuster armor and âanti-Enchantressâ suit. He had gone for revenge, and killing the Warlock had definitely been unexpected.
Furthermore, the âpremium goodsâ which the bigshot had couldnât be bought with money.
He didnât want Batman to make up his points, so he naturally followed the rules.
As a businessman, he was more used to dealing with bigshots.
For the tycoon, it was the hardest to return favors, since money was usually enough.
As dawn broke, the media and the Internet were already buzzing over the incident in Grand Rapids.
The government definitely didnât want that to happen. After all, it was ARGUS who had made a mistake and let the Enchantress escape. The only good thing was that very few people knew about it. However, the Dark Knight was very troublesome.
No matter how much Batmanâs hardcore fans dissed this âsuccessor,â the government knew that the Dark Knight wasnât any easier to deal with than Batman.
From the Dark Knightâs appearance last night, to the Bat Squad moving out together once more and Iron Man providing fire support, there was no doubt that the Dark Knight wasnât just a cosplay fan.
His identity and status had been unanimously acknowledged by Batmanâs comrades.
This Dark Knight probably wouldnât be some good boy, nor would he work with the government.
The reason he hadnât given Amanda a thrashing⊠was probably because he hadnât found her yet.
The government didnât dare let the Dark Knight find Amanda, or a lot of involved parties would be caught in the crossfire.
By initial estimates, more than 10,000 people had died in the incident in Grand Rapids. Most of them had been killed after they were turned into humanoid puppets and attacked the Bat Squad.
But online videos already confirmed how a small number of the humanoid monsters in the end directly turned into rotten black sludge.
Clearly, the humanoid monsters wouldnât return to normal after the Enchantressâs control over them disappeared.
They were already dead the moment they fell under her control.
Naturally, the Bat Squad killing thousands of humanoid monsters couldnât be described as âa massacre of citizensâ since everything started with the humans first being transformed into the monsters.
The Dark Knight also knew the truth about the governmentâs part in the incident in Grand Rapids.
If the government really buried this super landmine, it was more likely that it would blow up in their face.
The easiest thing to do was blame the deaths on the humanoid monsters. In any case, it was natural for monsters to kill people; it definitely wasnât the governmentâs fault.
At first, the media kept silent about what happened in Grand Rapids.
Even though media helicopters arrived soon after the incident started, none of the footage was released.
It wasnât until the morning news that the videos were released.
It wasnât because the media had a conscience.
For the biggest and most professional creators of fake news, this sort of thing didnât exist.
The footage was aired only because the news was already all over the Internet.
Even if the media didnât do so, messages, photos and short clips of what happened in Grand Rapids were already all over F2F and Messenger.
Although there were only slightly more than 300,000 residents in Grand Rapids, excluding the tens of thousands of casualties, there were still more than 200,000 left.
Those who were too old and too young werenât likely to be active online, so that was several tens of thousands fewer people.
It wasnât hard for the remaining 100,000 or so residents to post on F2F and Messenger.
On Messenger in particular, you could send a voice message right away with a lot of breaking news.
Combined with the youngsters who were obsessed with sending photos and videos, there was no way to hide the situation in Grand Rapids.
Everyone in Grand Rapids was basically related to the dead.
They were either family, neighbors, friends or colleagues; even a tramp could say that a few familiar faces were missing in his area.
This sort of news couldnât be suppressed, and it was even harder to steer it in a particular direction.
Even though the government had already started to delete posts online and erase all sorts of extremely anti-government statements and images, the shocking news and images were everywhere.
Ever since the day cell phones and the Internet emerged, the world had changed.
Perhaps the government could still use their own resources to suppress the news, but it wasnât on the same level as the silent oppression in the past.
No matter how soft and unremarkable an ordinary personâs voice was, they at least had a chance to make themselves heard. Once this sound was detected and magnified, it would become hot.
The direction things took could only be determined by the people.
The government could use tricks to speed up the incidentâs âpassing,â but they couldnât make it âdisappear from existence.â
It was the same for Luke.
He couldnât control the spread of this information, and could only guide it toward bringing out some positive results.
For example, he could pull down certain officials and prevent them from continuing to do bad, and didnât have to take responsibility for any of it.
On the other hand, he had Jenny basically cooperate with the government, but she had to ensure that the core of their software was protected at all costs.
Many backdoors were open to the government, but control of the core was never yielded to them.
ore was ne
The government could use a backdoor or use a loophole in the algorithm if they wanted to do something, but Titanium Phone Company wouldnât use its power to directly manipulate public opinion.
Even if the matter was exposed and Titanium Phone Company received a lot of criticism, it didnât matter.
At the very least, a lot of people had backdoor access to the Titanium phone software.
Whoever had the capability could use it. Everyone had a fair go.
But if some other hacker attacked the government, it had nothing to do with the company.
It was their own fault for being so incapable!