Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Welder Chen and cutter Zhang walked to the safe in the corner. He turned on the welding machine, and the blue and white arc light lit up the basement. The two-thousand-degree arc weld cut a winding weld seam on the steel plate, and the molten iron dripped onto the Persian carpet, burning a black hole.

Three minutes. Welder Chen turned off the welding machine, put on work gloves, and lifted the entire door of the safe, exposing everything inside!

Wow, it's bundles and bundles of US dollars. Welder Chen picked up a bundle and flicked the edge with his thumb, Benjamin Franklin's face gleaming under the fluorescent light.

"Oh, dear Cao, so a significant portion of your assets have been converted into US dollars..."

He weighed the bundle of American dollars in his hand. Then he relit the welding torch. Flames began to spread from the corners of Franklin's face inwards, turning into black ash under the intense heat.

Welder Chen picked up the second bundle and lit it.

The third bundle was also lit.

His movements were unhurried and skillful, like welding parts on an assembly line in a workshop. Cao Dewang's eyes almost popped out of their sockets!

Wow!

As if ripped from the depths of his soul, Cao Dewang shouted, "Take it away—take your hands off me!! That's my money! That's—quack! Don't touch its teeth!!"

Without turning his head, welder Chen lit the fourth bundle.

The ashes from the fire floated in the basement air, one landing on Cao Dewang's face. He smelled it, he smelled it! It was the smell of the US dollars he had earned with the blood and sweat of his workers turning to ashes!

He had never imagined it in countless years—never in a million years!

Hmph, Cao Dewang never imagined that the US dollars he earned with the blood and sweat of his workers would be burned by the workers themselves.

Is this a nightmare?

No, this is reality, this is the cruel reality!

Meanwhile—on the other side of the basement, next to the elevator, Cao Dewang had parked four luxury cars. The total value of those four cars was enough to pay the wages of all 472 workers in the factory for three years.

Hammer Liu stood in front of the Maybach and swung his hammer.

"boom--!!"

The Maybach's hood has a dent the size of a washbasin.

"boom--!!"

The windshield shattered into a spiderweb-like pattern of cracks before collapsing completely, scattering debris all over the driver's seat.

"Bang—!! Bang—!! Bang bang bang bang bang—!!!"

Hammer Liu smashed faster and faster.

"Hehe..."

He swung the hammer again, and the car's hood flew off, rolling far away on the ground with a clanging sound.

"Powerful and robust!"

The entire car door, including the hinges and latches, was smashed off!

"So powerful!!"

The four cars, worth over eight million, are now all scrap metal—just like this!

Crane King stepped forward and took out all the gold bars, jade bracelets, jade pendants, Buddhist beads, and luxury watches from the safe, arranging them in a row on the ground.

Then he untied the steel cable from his waist and strung them together, and thus he made this absurd necklace stained with the blood and sweat of the working people.

Crane King lifted the string of objects and spun it around under the fluorescent light; the gold bars and jade bracelets clattered together, making a crisp, clinking sound.

"Hehe, I'm going to show off your wealth to the workers and distribute it to them!"

Cao Dewang's eyes looked half dead.

Zhang, the cutter, squatted down in front of Cao Dewang and picked up the wire brush from the ground. The brush head was made of fine steel wire used for rust removal—it could clean the rust off steel plates thoroughly, but it would be a different story when used on human skin.

Zhang cut open the front of Cao Dewang's shirt and then pressed a wire brush onto Cao Dewang's chest.

"Croak—!!!"

Cao Dewang's scream sounded like his throat had been crushed. Zhang's hands didn't stop cutting; the wire brush dragged across his skin, leaving a scratch.

"Let me go—let me go! I'll give you money! I'll transfer the money right now, any amount you want!"

The steel wire gradually chafed away at the skin, causing fine beads of blood to seep out and merge together.

With each stroke, Zhang carved eight characters on Cao Dewang's chest and back.

Revolution is no crime, rebellion is justified!

Zhang, having cut and retracted the wire brush, tilted his head and looked at his work.

"Hehe, we're going to tie you up and parade you through the streets in a little while, and we're going to hold a big meeting to publicly try you!"

He leaned close to Cao Dewang's ear and whispered.

"It's been so many years since we've seen this kind of jury system that belongs to Old Zhong. How tempting it is—hehe—"

"You bunch of bastards!! Get out of my way!! I'll kill—I'll kill you all!!!"

kill?

Cao Dewang said he would kill if he wanted to?

The foreman and the other foreman exchanged a glance.

No one was afraid, no one took a step back, and why would Foreman Four care about a slave owner who was tied up?

Is this a joke? Yes, it is a joke, such a ridiculous joke!

Hammer Liu slung the hammer over his shoulder and laughed.

"Hehehe... Even if we are to kill, let's wait until we have liberated all the workers in the world before we kill them!"

Brother Gao watched all this from behind. He had finished his Huayang soda. Holding the empty bottle in his hand, he tapped the bottom of the bottle against the countertop of the liquor cabinet, making a drumming sound.

"Ha ha ha ha!!"

"Don't let him stop!"

Gao Ge threw the empty bottle onto the sofa and strode over to Cao Dewang.

"Put a white hat with the crime written on it on his head, hang a sign around his neck, and parade him through the streets!!"

Gao Ge bent down and got close enough to Cao Dewang to see every burn mark on Gao Ge's chin.

"I want to see if this slave owner, being publicly tried by the working class, will excitedly wave a flag when he's stripped naked and paraded through the streets, receiving a trial from thousands!!"

"Hahaha!!!"

Zhang, the cutter, had already picked up a new wire brush. He squatted down beside Cao Dewang and began to continue writing his crimes on Cao Dewang's body.

"Six months of unpaid wages", "beating workers who were demanding their wages", "embezzling workers' social security funds", "refusing to pay workers' compensation".

Each charge was written on Cao Dashanren's skin in his own blood.

Zhang, without even looking up, said, "You bastard, you better reflect on your actions!"

Brother Gao stood up straight, put his hands on his hips, and looked down at Cao Dewang.

Looking back at the scene, Cao Dewang's hair was disheveled, blood was dripping from his left nostril onto his upper lip, his clothes were completely stripped off, and the charges against him were still being added one by one.

The four luxury cars behind him had been reduced to scrap metal, the safe door was crooked and empty, and there were charred fragments of US dollars scattered all over the ground. A long steel cable, tattered with the blood and sweat of the workers, was still hanging around his neck and was about to be displayed to the public.

Brother Gao looked at him excitedly.

"Hahaha! Mr. Cao, how are you feeling now? How are you feeling?!"

In despair, Cao Dewang looked up and screamed desperately at the two-meter-thick concrete ceiling.

"Croak—!!!"

"Police officers—help me!!!"

Chapter 145 Please Calibrate the Clock

9:40 a.m., July 23, 1993, Moscow Kremlin.

Slava sat at his desk, a document in front of him concerning the burial of former head of state Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko.

Gromyko, a living fossil of Soviet diplomacy, worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Stalin era, serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs for over thirty years, and later as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He retired in 1990 after being diagnosed with an aneurysm and passed away a week ago at the age of 84.

According to the tradition of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a funeral committee was established for the death of even a former member of the Supreme Politburo.

The selection of the chairman of the funeral committee has always been a political signal—whoever serves as chairman is interpreted by the outside world as "this person is the successor to this position" or "this person's position in the power structure is more important." After Brezhnev's death, KGB Chairman Andropov served as chairman of the funeral committee.

In theory, Gromyko's last official position was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, so the chairman of the funeral committee should be the current chairman, Lukyanovno—this is the usual practice.

Slava is currently reviewing the list of funeral committee members and burial arrangements.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

"Please come in."

Slava's private secretary walked in. He was holding a printed document, several A4 sheets of paper bound in a light blue folder, with a red label in the upper right corner that read "Urgent".

"Comrade General Secretary, perhaps you need to take a look at this."

Slava looked up. His secretary usually didn't add "maybe" when handing him documents; he would either say, "This is a report from the XX ministry" (a routine matter), or "This document requires your approval" (it needs a signature).

Clearly, the secretary felt this was a serious matter after reviewing it, but was unsure how to characterize it.

Slava took the document. He noticed that the secretary hadn't left; usually, the secretary would leave after handing over the document. This time, he stood still, his hands clasped in front of him, head bowed.

Slava glanced at him: "What are you waiting for?"

"Comrade General Secretary, I believe I need to be here at all times awaiting your instructions regarding this document."

Oh? Slava's gaze lingered on the secretary's face for a second, and the secretary's expression tightened.

“Okay.” Slava nodded and opened the folder.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Beginning of the file:

"Teliman Khorenovich Gerdrian, Special Prosecutor of the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of the USSR"

"Investigation Report on Systemic Corruption in the Ivanov Building Construction Project in Azerbaijan"

Slava began reading.

The first page is the background, where Gerdrian explains the reasons for his investigation: online reports from Azerbaijani residents, cross-reports from Armenia, and the systematic deletion of posts on local forums.

Slava's expression remained unchanged.

The second page is about the information center. The filtering module is installed on the local server to block posts containing specific keywords. The installer is the head of the information center, and the instruction came from the deputy director of the district administrative committee, who has ties to the Azerbaijan Construction Committee.

Slava turned the page.

The third page describes a fire at the information center. "Rats chewed through the cables, causing a short circuit," the servers were destroyed, and all electronic evidence was lost. Gerdrian believes the fire was arson—to destroy the original version of the OGAS production data stored on the servers.

Slava's brow twitched. This scene looked familiar. The last time he and Director Nian were treated like this was more than a decade ago.

Page four shows the tampering of records at the community terminal. The housing area, family size, and waiting time of a large number of residents were modified, and residents who were originally eligible to be allocated new houses were squeezed out, with the quotas given to relatives of officials.

Slava's lips tightened slightly.

Page five contains the site investigation. KGB inspector records show that materials were intercepted, progress was falsified, and substandard materials were used. Officials deliberately exacerbated material shortages to increase the value of their approval authority, instructing workers to carry out shoddy construction projects, repeatedly demolishing and rebuilding them, and then reselling the materials.

Slava frowned.

Pages six through eight contain the core of the Gerdrian Report.

OGAS's building material scheduling algorithm was artificially modified. Technicians at the 063 Institute of Cybernetics wrote a shell algorithm—the outer layer created attractive macroeconomic data to meet the Politburo's targets, increasing total output and reducing costs; the inner layer created false material surpluses while keeping actual output unchanged, and these surplus materials were resold and misappropriated by local officials.

The factory manager and workers were unaware that the algorithm had been changed; they only knew that the targets had increased and the bonuses had increased, so no one reported it.

Gerdrian concluded that technocrats had used mathematical algorithms incomprehensible to ordinary people to construct a covert corruption mechanism within the OGAS system. This corruption differed from traditional bribery; it was embedded in the architecture of the national automated system, making it undetectable to anyone without technical expertise.

Because the scope of the automated system extends across almost the entire alliance, from the production of basic consumer goods and daily life to the execution of administrative orders and adjustments to plans, everything must pass through this vast system. The technocrats who control the algorithms can theoretically influence everyone from top to bottom!

In the final paragraph, Gerdrian asks: "Who will oversee those who create algorithms? If the power to interpret algorithms rests entirely in the hands of technocrats, how will oversight be exercised? And how will such covert rent-seeking be detected?"

Slava turned the last page; there was nothing more.

"Clap."

He placed the documents on the table and then leaned back in his chair.

His eyes were fixed on the Soviet map on the opposite wall, which stretched from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, spanning eleven time zones and taking up most of the wall.