Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

At 5:40 a.m., the dashcam of a long-haul truck captured the entire incident.

The grayish-yellow sand on both sides of the road turned dark brown within thirty seconds, a result of a sharp increase in organic matter content.

Dense green shoots sprouted from the ground at such a rapid pace that even the 30 frames of footage from the dashcam showed obvious frame-by-frame displacement.

Two minutes later, the first broad-leaved tree, over two meters tall, grew on the right side of the road. The shape of its crown did not belong to any known tree species in North America.

The truck driver floored the accelerator.

He saw in his rearview mirror that the straight two-lane asphalt road behind him was being split open by vegetation.

The road markings and reflective peepholes were overturned by the arched roots, and asphalt fragments were scattered everywhere.

A primeval forest is expanding simultaneously in both the east and west directions at a visible speed along the road.

The White House phone rang for the twenty-third time at seven in the morning.

The joint briefing from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency was condensed into a single page, with only three core points.

First, all experimental farms owned by the four major grain traders in California have lost all their patented genetic characteristics. Second, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's agricultural futures pricing system has completely crashed due to the disappearance of its underlying data anchors, and high-frequency trading algorithms are unable to recognize the new ecological logic. Third, the expansion of that abnormal vegetation in Nevada is accelerating and has already covered more than 80 square kilometers.

The Peruvian president's televised address in Lima lasted a full forty-five minutes.

Behind him, a large screen continuously played satellite time-lapse photography of golden vines engulfing soybean fields in California, with Monsanto's company logo displayed in the lower right corner of the image.

"The end of North American agricultural hegemony," he said in a steady voice, with a lyrical rhythm unique to South Americans, "was accomplished not by the armies of any country, but by a single ear of corn."

The ruins of the San Diego Federal Agricultural Research Institute.

The F-1 incinerator is completely unusable; the furnace chamber is covered by golden vines that have formed a blooming iron flower.

The east wall of the main building of the research institute collapsed halfway from the inside due to the root system, and brick fragments were scattered all over the ground.

In the very center of the ruins, the thickest golden vine grows upwards from the depths of the foundation, nearly half a meter in diameter and over twelve meters in height.

At the top of the vine, under the watchful eyes of all the news drones that had come to film, a fist-sized fruit was slowly forming.

The fruit has a deep golden skin with a textured surface.

The texture is not random.

It was the outline of a human face.

With his eyes closed and the corners of his mouth slightly upturned, his facial features had a strong South American indigenous style, and his face was as peaceful as a child taking a nap.

The three news drones closest to the fruit lost signal at the same second.

Immediately afterwards, all the mobile phone screens within a two-kilometer radius flashed white.

The S-band transponder of the commercial communications satellite over San Diego reported an unidentified narrowband interference lasting 0.7 seconds, with an estimated power exceeding 120 times the satellite's own transmission capacity.

The coordinates of the interference source point directly to that fruit.

at the same time.

Pentagon underground command center, level B-4.

Defense Secretary James Hutchins pressed his pen against the document, the pressure of the pen tip almost piercing through the paper, yet his hand showed no sign of trembling as he signed.

The document cover only has one code printed on it: JACKAL-9.

"A decapitation strike with a single target."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff McNamara stood across the long table and circled a point heavily on the Cairo map with a red marker.

"National Museum"

"Hassan and that scale must be physically removed within forty-eight hours."

No one raised any objection.

The shame of Yokosuka still burns on everyone's retinas. The image of Fulina walking five and a half kilometers across the water bridge was played on a loop by global media for seventy-two hours. The Pentagon's credibility has plummeted to its lowest point since the Vietnam War.

Even more deadly is Peru, where the Corrosion-7 chlorine not only failed to kill the golden corn, but was instead absorbed by the plant as nitrogen fertilizer. The planting bases of California's four major grain companies are being transformed into a tropical rainforest by the golden vines.

Cargill's stock price fell by 47 percent, and ADM's by 39 percent. Eight members of the Congressional Agriculture Committee called overnight, and their cursing could be translated into written language as: What the hell can you do?

There was little left to do, but Hutchins was able to sign the document.

"The USS Michigan and USS Florida are in position 200 nautical miles off Alexandria."

McNamara switched the screen, and two new markers flashed on the nautical chart.

"Two Ohio-class cruise missile nuclear submarines, each of which can be modified to carry two hundred Merlin miniature suicide drones."

"A total of four hundred aircraft, with depleted uranium armor-piercing warheads, enough to turn half a city block into ruins."

"Can Egypt's air defense system intercept it?" the Chief of Naval Operations asked.

McNamara shook his head.

"The radar cross-section of the Grey Falcon is only 0.003 square meters, smaller than a sparrow. Its fuselage coating is a fourth-generation stealth material that just passed testing last year, and it cannot be detected by S-band and X-band radars."

"The S-300 system that Egypt has is an antique that Russia sold to them twenty years ago. Its detection limit is only 0.1 square meters, which is two orders of magnitude lower."

Hutchins stood up.

"implement."

Mediterranean Sea, 28 degrees east longitude, 32 degrees north latitude.

The sea was silent for a moment, then the seawater arched up two white ridges 120 meters apart, as the conning towers of the USS Michigan and USS Florida broke through the water at the same time.

The muffled sound of the launch hatches popping open one by one was swallowed up by the sound of the waves.

The grey falcon is only slightly larger than a large albatross, with a wingspan of 1.1 meters, a weight of 6.7 kilograms, electric propulsion, and a noise level of less than 40 decibels.

They were ejected silently from the vertical launch tubes, leaving only short, silvery arcs in the moonlight.

Four hundred.

All tubes were removed within twelve seconds.

The aircraft formed formation 30 meters above the sea and flew south along the crests of the waves at a cruising speed of Mach 0.9, traversing the western Libyan desert and bypassing all known civilian air traffic control zones.

On the large screen on the B-4 floor of the Pentagon, four hundred green dots are arranged in a neat diamond matrix, approaching Cairo at a speed of eighteen kilometers per minute.

3:11 a.m. Cairo time.

The restoration hall in the east wing on the second floor of the National Museum.

Hassan pushed his reading glasses up to his nose, pressed his left hand against the side of the scale base, and held a protractor in his right hand. His Parkinson's disease caused the protractor's scale to sway continuously under the light, but he didn't care. He was already used to reading the values ​​during the swaying intervals.

The base is engraved with a ring of extremely fine hieroglyphs, the oldest script he has ever seen in his life, which is at least eight hundred years older than the earliest known inscription on the Narmer Palette.

"The angle between the elytra of the scarab beetle is 73.5 degrees, which is exactly the same as the angle of inclination of the Queen's Passage inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. This is no coincidence."

He said to the recording pen.

The windows of the restoration hall were tightly closed, the air conditioner was humming, and fourteen T-90 main battle tanks and six anti-aircraft missile launchers were parked in the museum square outside. That was an reinforced battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade of the 3rd Army Group.

The phased array antenna on top of the radar vehicle rotates once every four seconds, leaving the screen blank.

To the S-300's fire control radar, the Merlion's stealth coating is indistinguishable from the air.