124: Chapter 124 Heated Debate in the War Room, Selection of the Longevity Faction

The President's voice was not loud, but in this Situation Room, where a Scientific Committee meeting had just ended with everyone leaving in silence, every word was as clear as if it had been individually focused under a microscope.

"For now, let's not talk about the million-strong fleet of Grey Alien."

"Just look at the two hundred thousand Space Fleet ships from the Deep State and the two thousand alien flying saucers from Zeta Star that appeared in the sky above the Hoover Dam that night."

"Which side can you defeat? Which side are you capable of defeating?"

The Situation Room fell silent.

Milley crossed his hands on the table and lowered his gaze.

Graves stood by his chair, his anger and defiance still frozen on his brow, but his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched repeatedly, and he said nothing.

All the generals who had been loudly objecting moments ago were now, without exception, completely silent.

No one could defeat them.

They knew this better than anyone.

This silence lasted for quite a while before it was broken by a high-ranking military official.

The general did not directly challenge the President's decision to seek out the Hopkins Family, but instead took a more cautious angle:

"According to current intelligence, Diana Hopkins's family is too close to the Deep State, and has even become a direct agent of the Deep State's Longevity Faction."

"For the President to discuss defending against an alien invasion with someone of this background requires careful, repeated consideration."

Several generals around him nodded in agreement, their reasoning almost entirely identical:

No matter how the public consistently perceived them, the Deep State was by no means a good entity.

For the President to get too close to a family that acted as a spokesperson for the Deep State would cast an uncontrollable, gray shadow over the entire decision-making system.

However, a few officers held the opposite opinion.

They agreed with the President's basic direction of utilizing the Deep State's two hundred thousand Space Fleet ships to resist the attack of Grey Alien, but emphasized that the key issue was not whether to contact the Deep State, but rather which faction to contact.

An Army Major General familiar with intelligence compilation was the first to point out:

"According to several key intelligence reports we have secured, there are at least two opposing factions within the Deep State: the Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction. Out of conservative logic, the Longevity Faction only wants to defend Earth as their own private territory for eternity."

"The Tech Faction's goal, however, is the exact opposite. They cast their eyes toward space, advocating for continuous expansion, continuous innovation, and continuous advancement into deep space."

"Therefore, even if we must have a dialogue, we should choose the Tech Faction, which represents progress and innovation, rather than the decadent and corrupt Longevity Faction."

This assessment quickly gained the support and approval of those few generals.

Soon, even some of the officers who had originally opposed the President talking to the Deep State made partial concessions on this basis:

If they really had to dialogue with the Deep State to seek a possibility of countering the Zeta Star fleet, they should compromise and approach the Tech Faction, rather than the obviously more unreliable Longevity Faction.

Biden waited for them all to finish, then slowly shook his head.

"You are all wrong."

"At a time like this, the one we should meet most is the Longevity Faction, not the Tech Faction."

He put his hands behind his back and slowly paced along the curved conference table, his tone as calm as if he were explaining an introductory political science logic problem to a group of young officers who had not yet fully grasped the big picture.

"Since the Longevity Faction wants to guard their own little plot of land on Earth, acting like local wealthy landlords for their entire lives and ruling for eternity, then Earth itself is the core interest of everything they have."

"To the Longevity Faction, Earth is not some abstract concept, nor is it some strategic buffer zone that can be discarded."

"Earth is their home base, and it is their Achilles' heel."

"If Earth is destroyed, they will be the first ones to jump in panic."

"As for the Tech Faction, since their goal is the sea of stars and their hunting ground is the entire galaxy, the word 'home' holds no anchoring significance for them."

"If Earth is blown up, they can just move to another star system and continue colonizing."

"So when it comes to resisting the attack of Grey Alien, the one we should meet most right now is the Longevity Faction."

"Only their goals—to conquer Earth, rule Earth, and protect Earth—align on the exact same coordinate point as the fundamental goals of all of us."

...

Los Angeles, Hollywood Hills, detached villa.

Zhang Yi curled up on the Italian leather sofa in the living room with his legs crossed. On the system interface in front of him, the real-time reactions of various factions after seeing π=3 were being broadcast simultaneously.

On a desert highway, Rockefeller III casually told Samuel Astor, "Whether pi equals 3 or 3.14 has nothing to do with us";

In the corridor of the Starship Base, Musk leaned against the wall, recovered from his despair, and said, "If π=3 is truly an unsolvable puzzle, then how did the Deep State build a Space Fleet of two hundred thousand ships?";

In the White House Situation Room, the heads of five scientific research institutions threw out conclusions one after another, such as "erroneous spacetime," "the sealing of the temple of mathematics," and "flowers cannot bloom in alkaline soil";

FBI Deputy Director Moran raised his hands, pressed against the wall by the Internal Affairs investigation team, still wearing a happy expression on his face as he was handcuffed;

Prant stood in the parking lot of the Federal Detention Center, telling his campaign manager in all seriousness, "Nobody knows pi better than me."

All of these scenes unfolded simultaneously, every frame pumping new numbers into his emotion value account.

Initially, before he controlled the item [Quantum State Holographic Communication and Monitoring Core] to write this formula in the sky, he actually didn't know that the Solar System was an erroneous spacetime.

He had originally planned to write something else across the vault of heaven, though he hadn't decided on the specifics,

until that day in the system mall, when he had a friendly yet heated exchange with the system regarding the pricing of those four alien flying saucer wrecks.

The system insisted on a price of eight hundred thousand, on the grounds that manufacturing the hulls of these alien flying saucers from the correct spacetime—

even if it was just the hulls, required quite a bit of extra effort in this distorted, erroneous spacetime of the Solar System. From this perspective, eight hundred thousand was already the lowest possible price.

The moment Zhang Yi heard this, the wire in his brain connecting countless conspiracy theory nerves suddenly sparked.

He followed up by asking, "What do you mean by 'erroneous spacetime'?"

The system succinctly explained the entire logic: how the spacetime structure of the Solar System was distorted, how the true value of pi is 3 instead of 3.14159, and how all human physical formulas were merely illusions observed through a distorted lens.

Thus, π=3 was born.

It wasn't a creative idea that came to him in a flash of inspiration; it was a fact told to him directly by the system, which he casually used as Zeta Star's dimensional reduction mockery of all humanity.