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

Three kilometers outside the boundary of the Stone in London force field, a temporary control zone on the A4 highway.

Four dark gray Peugeot 508s were parked in a row on the shoulder of the road. The satellite communication antennas mounted on the roof of the cars had been retracted in advance and replaced by four sets of hand-cranked mechanical weather station supports.

Antoine Duval got out of the passenger seat of the second car and glanced down at his watch as his feet touched the asphalt.

Mechanical watch, Longines, an older model from 1973, with no electronic components.

Before setting off, he took off his smartwatch, locked his phone in the car's shielded box, and even replaced his hearing aid with an older model that uses pure physical amplification.

Three people got off the car one after another, each carrying two silver sealed boxes. The boxes were covered with wax seals from the French Ministry of Defense and the department code of DGSE Technical Division II.

"Start deploying the sensors from here."

Duwa crouched down, took out a hand-drawn map folded into three sections from his breast pocket, spread it on the ground, and weighed down the four corners with four pebbles he had picked up from the roadside.

The map shows a standard circle with "Sword in the Stone" marked at the center. The radius ranges from five kilometers to forty kilometers, with a dotted concentric circle drawn every two kilometers.

He used his fingernail to make a dent on the three-kilometer line.

"The first group is placed here, spaced at 45-degree intervals, with a total of eight points, covering the sector from the north to the northwest."

His assistant, François, opened the sealed box, which contained sixteen sensor modules, each consisting of a passive magnetometer, a miniature metallographic analyzer, and a mechanical temperature recorder. There were no chips or batteries; all power came from a spring.

François picked up a set of sensors, flipped through them, and his lips twitched.

"Boss, the last time this thing was used was during the Falklands War in 1982."

Duva didn't even look up; he simply drew a line along the boundary on the map with his finger.

"Things from 1982 didn't have semiconductors or crystal oscillators. They wouldn't turn into a pile of silicon dust if they were put into a force field. Do you think I brought it here because of nostalgia?"

François shut up and squatted down to begin assembling the support frame.

The first set of sensors was deployed at 9:17 a.m.

Duva stood on the three-kilometer line and looked in the direction of the force field for three seconds.

He couldn't see anything. The force field itself had no visible light representation. The south bank of London, three kilometers away, looked no different from any other British city on a cloudy day, except that there were a few chimneys on the horizon that should have been smoking, and the angle of light refraction near the horizon was about 0.3 degrees off from the normal value.

He wrote this data down in his notebook.

Three hours later, all sixteen sets of sensors were recovered.

Duva sat in the back seat of the second Peugeot, a stack of handwritten data sheets on his lap, and a red pencil in his right hand, marking the calculation results after each column of numbers.

François glanced back at him from the driver's seat.

"Would you like to run the model on a laptop? The one in the vehicle's shielding box should still be usable."

"Need not."

Dewar drew a circle in the oxidation rate column of the seventh set of data with his red pencil.

"Come and look at this group."

François climbed into the back seat and leaned over to look at the number he had circled.

"The oxidation rate of the carbon steel sample three kilometers from the boundary..."

His voice paused for a moment.

"Five times the normal value?"

"5.3 times."

Duva turned to the next page, pointing to the photos and data of the rusted samples brought back by the BBC reporters.

"This is a sample from the center of the force field, a fragment of a lamppost within 200 meters of the South Bank origin. London municipal records show that this lamppost was intact three weeks ago, but now it has oxidized to the point that it can be crushed with your fingers."

He wrote a number next to the photo.

François's eyebrows twitched twice when he saw the number.

"More than ten thousand times?"

"A conservative estimate."

Duva closed the data sheet, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes briefly.

"The gradient distribution is weakest at the boundary and strongest at the center, and the decay curve approximates an exponential function."

He opened his eyes and looked out the car window at the gray London skyline.

"What does this mean? You tell me."

François swallowed hard.

"This means that if we use specially treated titanium alloys or ceramic matrix composites to manufacture tools and vehicles, in the weak areas of the force field boundary, we can theoretically complete a rapid infiltration within six to eight hours, penetrating to the vicinity of the center 30-kilometer line before withdrawing, with equipment losses within an acceptable range."

Duva neither nodded nor shook his head.

"and then?"

François opened his mouth briefly and then closed it again.

Duva finished the sentence for him.

"Then at the first intersection you will encounter twelve three-meter-tall, semi-transparent knight phantoms. Their lances can paralyze all 112 fully armed anti-terrorism special police officers within ten seconds. Starlight anti-aircraft missiles rust and degrade within the force field, and five thousand bullets shatter into iron sand as soon as they cross the boundary."

He wrote a line in the blank space on the last page of the data table with a red pencil.

François tilted his head and read the line of text.

Technically feasible, tactically suicidal.

Duva underlined the sentence twice and then turned to a new page to begin writing the formal report.

He stopped writing on the third page and pulled another piece of paper from his inner pocket.

This piece of paper was not for a report; it was his own personal letter paper, ivory white, with the emblem of École Polytechnique printed in the upper left corner.

He wrote a passage on the letter, writing very slowly, pausing for two or three seconds after each word before putting pen to paper.

"Physical penetration is not recommended."

The pen tip paused on the paper, leaving a dot of ink.

"I suggest considering diplomatic contact."

François saw what he was writing in the rearview mirror, tilted his head to try and see what it was about, but Duval blocked his view with his left hand.

This part is not in the official report.

François turned his gaze back.

Duva continued writing.

"The sword's wielder is a law-abiding citizen betrayed by the system; he doesn't want force, he wants justice. If France can provide a just platform..."

The red pencil hovered above the last word for a long time.

He didn't finish writing.

The pen tip slowly fell, drawing three dots.

He folded the letter, put it into a separate kraft paper envelope, sealed it with his personal wax seal, and then placed the envelope and the formal report into two separate document bags.

François.

"exist."

"The official report will be sent to the Home Secretary's office via diplomatic pouch by this afternoon."

"clear."

Duva patted the envelope sealed with personal sealing wax.

"This will be sent through my private channels, directly to the Élysée Palace. The recipient is Marie Lefèvre, the President's Foreign Affairs Advisor, and only she can open it."

François glanced at him in the rearview mirror, didn't ask any questions, and nodded.

The convoy left the temporary control zone at 1 p.m. and headed along the M4 highway toward Heathrow Airport.

Thirty-seven hours later.

Paris, the Élysée Palace, second floor, at the end of the east wing corridor, a small meeting room.

Marie Lefèvre placed Duval's private letter in the center of the table, then pulled out two memos from the folder on her left and placed them side by side on either side of the letter.

Three documents.

The document on the left, from a third secretary in the European Department of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is titled "An Assessment of the Potential Impact of the Sword in the Stone on the Domestic Political Landscape in the UK," with the conclusion highlighted in blue.

The document on the right, from a retired anthropology professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, is titled "An Analysis of Arthur Griffin's Behavioral Patterns and an Assessment of the Legitimacy of His Political Demands," and its conclusion paragraph is also highlighted in blue.

The three documents came from three strangers and arrived at this table through three completely independent channels.

Mary read the three conclusions side by side.

The first suggestion was: "The French side should contact the holders through unofficial channels to provide legal asylum and social reconstruction support."

The second statement reads: "The core demand of the holders is institutional justice. The French judicial system has structural advantages over the British system and can serve as a point of contact."

The third letter, from Duval, reads: "If France could provide a fair platform..."

Three people, heading in the same direction.

Mary took a piece of white paper from her briefcase, placed it on top of the three documents, unscrewed the pen cap, and wrote a line on the paper.

Normandy Project, Feasibility Assessment.

She stared at the line of text for ten seconds, then twisted the pen cap back on, neatly stacked the four documents, and locked them in the safe that only she and the president had the key to.

The room remained quiet for a long time.

Outside the window, the Parisian sunset painted the Seine River amber.