American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Juanita looked in amazement at the fire dancer in the small square of the park across the street. Her skin, painted with oil, took on a strange luster under the firelight.

　But Camilla just stared at the orange-red flames rising from the taco stand downstairs, watching the cook wearing only an apron toss tortillas into the air.

　Next, the other girls also turned their eyes to the taco stand downstairs and even subconsciously bit their fingers.

　"Are you hungry? Do you want me to buy some more burritos for a midnight snack?" Fili asked.

　"Okay! I want one!" "I want one too!" "Master, I want one too!"

　So, Alena, who still had some energy, followed Fili downstairs to buy some burritos. As soon as they reached the street, they saw the open-air movie ending. Hundreds of young men and women left the park where the movie was shown and walked down the street talking and laughing.

　They dressed differently: some wore brightly colored wreaths on their foreheads, others wore colorful necklaces, bracelets, collars, and rings around their necks and wrists. Still others painted their faces and waists with beautiful barbaric-style oil paint and inserted colorful feathers in their hair. But without exception, they were all extremely revealing, with many of them wearing little cloth to cover their smooth, fair, or wheat-colored skin.

　Moreover, both men and women here are accustomed to this and expose their bodies openly.

　Even the young boys and girls seemed extremely relaxed, chatting and laughing in groups of two or three, or strolling alone humming little tunes, as if this was how it should be here. Seeing Fili and Alena coming out of the apartment, several shirtless girls waved and greeted them lively.

　At the snack stand, the Latino girl selling burritos was also wearing only a white chef's hat and a short, small bib that exposed half of her chest. The hem of the bib barely covered her belly button, leaving her entire butt exposed.

　Fortunately, it seems that for the sake of beauty, all the stray hairs on her body have been cleaned up, so people don’t have to worry about food hygiene issues.

　"I can't believe there are so many people living like us now."

　Holding a basket of hot burritos, she walked up to the rooftop and looked down at the plump breasts, flexible waists and round buttocks below, which emitted a hazy luster under the flickering neon lights... Alena said with emotion as she distributed the burritos to everyone.

　"Yes, we are all naked because of a slave owner's whim. Why do people in this town not wear clothes?"

　最

　The new member Catherine glanced at Ferry charmingly, opened her lips slightly and asked in a sweet voice.

　"Ahem, how should I put it? Regarding the question of 'why nudity?', we first need to define what nudity is."

　Fili coughed dryly and began a long speech, "The early apes didn't even have clothes, so it naturally didn't matter whether they were naked or not.

　Tens of thousands of years ago, during the Stone Age, primitive humans began to create primitive clothing from leaves, bark, and animal fur to stay warm. From then on, clothing gradually became a common sense practice in human society.

　In contrast, the two relative concepts of "dressing" and "nudity" began to appear in human society.

　But in the final analysis, humans have only been wearing clothes for a few tens of thousands of years at most, but have been naked for millions of years.

　Therefore, for many people, the instinct to expose oneself creates a subtle conflict with the common sense of clothing. When the temperature permits, exposing the body can bring physical and psychological pleasure, but it can also cause people to feel shame because it violates common sense, plunging them into a dilemma.

　But now, with the justification of "cultivating supernatural powers," our society has once again rewritten common sense, making nudity, like wearing clothes, acceptable and not something to be ashamed of. As a result, it's natural that many people will pursue nudity for pleasure.

　Just like many people who feel spiritually empty, they smoke, drink, or even take some anesthetics..."

　"Is that so? At first I thought it was just a quirk of yours, but since you've already fallen into slavery, there's really no way to refuse, so I just accepted my fate... But to be honest, when the weather isn't cold, stripping off and wearing nothing is indeed quite comfortable."

　Marita glanced at Fili suspiciously, then lowered her head to continue looking down at the night view of the town. "Does Marilyn Monroe and her children still live in the villa across the street, dear?"

　She pointed to a house across the street and asked Fili.

　"Ah, yes, Ms. Marilyn Monroe still lives here and has registered with the Dark Sun Order to seek asylum."

　Fili replied, "When I came to town a few days ago, I saw her taking a walk with her children. She asked me how long this apartment would remain vacant and when the aromatherapy shop on the ground floor would open. I then gave her a vague answer."

　"Well, now that we've moved into this apartment building, it's time to start planning the aromatherapy shop on the first floor."

　Marita nodded. "Otherwise, there's no way to explain why so many people live in the apartment. Tomorrow I'll bake some cookies and cakes as gifts and visit Sister Marilyn's house. It'll also be a way of letting her know that an old friend like me will be her neighbor again!"

　"Okay, I'll give you $10000 later. You can buy whatever you want."

　Fieri replied, "But I won't go to Ms. Monroe's house. I have work to do tomorrow."

　"Eh? Isn't the new headquarters of your Strategic Deception Bureau still under renovation? Where are you planning to work?" Marita asked puzzledly.

　"This isn't federal government business. This is my personal job as a Dark Sun follower—to give Australians a little shock about the extraordinary!"

　He was huddled in front of the iron gate of the butcher shop, holding an old newspaper.

　The exhaust fan in the Greek restaurant's kitchen belched out thick smoke from roasting mutton fat, and the smell of cheap perfume wafting from the brothel at the end of the street mixed in the rain.

　Tom wearily held his umbrella as he made his way through the grimy alleys, dodging the drug addicts, beggars, homeless people, and prostitutes along the way. His leather shoes stomped over graffiti on the street corner. A fetid drug addict leaned against a dumpster, twitching. The window of the nearby second-hand shop was filled with faded surfboards and outdated black-and-white televisions. A for-rent sign, swollen from the rain, had been spray-painted in red on the wall below: "Capitalist Vampire."

　Further ahead was the tenement house Tom lived in. But the light bulb in the porch had broken last year, and Tom, exhausted after a day's work, hadn't thought of bringing a flashlight. He could only grope his way in, then risk falling and climbing up the stairs, and finally searching his pocket for his keys in the dark.

　In the dark night, the clashing of key chains sounded a bit like coins falling, startling a drunk who was rummaging through cigarette butts next to a trash can.

　When the key was inserted into the rusty door lock, iron filings fell down.

　Then, with a "click", a 40-watt light bulb illuminated the 12-square-meter single apartment.

　The apartment was clearly quite old; the rose pattern on the old wallpaper had festered into brown scabs. Under the light, one could make out two cupboard doors, barely held together with tape, and bills from the electricity and water companies piled on the table.

　Then, looking at the sharp spring that had already pierced the old sofa cover, Tom, exhausted, sat down on the floor by the door.

　He sat there for a while, listening to the baby crying next door and the landlady's dachshund scratching at the wallboard. The students upstairs played the Beatles on the speakers, and the bass pierced through the thin walls, shaking off the ceiling plaster chips and stirring them into concrete in his temples.

　His rain-soaked shirt stuck to the door panel behind him, and his cheap bow tie twisted his throat like a loose noose on a gallows.

　Alas, what’s the point of living like this, living a boring life day after day?

　Tom sat on the stained floor, staring blankly at the streetlight outside the window.

　The metropolis of Sydney was a dazzling spectacle, filled with dazzling lights, elegant women, and all sorts of temptations and pleasures. But none of it had anything to do with him, a poor man who couldn't find a proper job after graduating from university and had to work two jobs, 16 hours a day.

　All he has is endless work, a stingy boss, and a meager salary, and all this is slowly eroding his body and mind.

　He felt tremendous pressure, and his dissatisfaction grew.

　But where else could he go? Back to his homeland on the other side of the Great Dividing Range?

　Thinking of his hometown, Tom couldn't help but turn his head to look at the map of Australia hanging on the wall. He stared at the brown area in the central and northern part - there was the tin house where he slept before he was eighteen years old, a cage baked by the scorching sun, and even the kangaroo feces were tanned into a desperate grayish white.

　The scorching desert sun crackled the corrugated iron roof, the cracks in the red earth resembled fish scales, crows perpetually perched on the hood of an old Ford truck, the ranch's windmill had long since rusted, its swirling shadows still cutting through the alfalfa fields, and the sound of rabbits gnawing at the roots of the hedgerows was more punctual than the chiming of church bells. The tiny farm felt like an island of civilization in the wilderness, its nearest neighbor 10 kilometers away.

　On Valentine's Day when he was sixteen, he spent five hours riding his motorcycle to find the nearest gas station, just to have a flirtatious chat with a female classmate on a public phone. However, amid her giggles as she said, "Even kangaroos are male over there, right?", he heard the crisp sound of his youthful love collapsing.

　Life in the country was not only boring but also poor. In almost every dry season, a large number of sheep would die. His father could only pile the dead sheep into a pyramid and set them on fire. The stench of burning wool seeped into the shirts on the clothesline, causing him to have stomach cramps even when he smelled barbecue on the streets of Sydney.

　At this moment, the cracks in the ceiling of the rental house are gradually overlapping with the texture of the wooden beams of the barn in my memory, both of which are covered with holes eaten away by fate.

　The gruff old father always wanted Tom, his only son, to inherit the Riddle family farm and count the rabbit holes dug in the old pasture every day like his father. But how could Tom, a dreamer since childhood, accept such a boring life that seemed to have a clear end?

　Trying his best to get into the school farthest from home and staying in Sydney to work was Tom's greatest effort to resist fate and escape from his hometown.

　With his mother's covert protection and money, as well as work-study programs and scholarships, Tom was admitted to Sydney University, where he majored in history, a major he loved. He thought he had become a respectable man. However, he faced the dilemma of being unemployed right after graduation.

　Who made him get such a liberal arts degree that makes it difficult to find a job?

　Who made him catch up with the global economic depression right after graduation?

　Skilled old employees are losing their jobs and having their salaries cut, let alone newcomers like Tom who just graduated from college?

　As a poor country boy with no connections, Tom applied for jobs many times but couldn't find a decent teaching or clerical job that matched his major.

　As a city with high consumption, Sydney's cost of living is naturally high. Even if Tom scrimped and saved, he soon fell into dire straits.

　In order to make a living and pay the rent, he now has to work two part-time jobs, serving dishes at a fast food restaurant and unloading goods at the dock. He works 16 hours a day and sleeps only 4 hours, almost all year round. But he still can't save any money and has no entertainment.

　More importantly, Tom couldn't see any future or hope for himself in Sydney.

　After sitting quietly on the floor for a while, Tom could vaguely hear the sound of church bells mixed with the whistles of cargo ships in the harbor.

　He subconsciously raised his arm and looked at the worn-out watch, then saw the second hand crawling through the cracked glass - in another five hours and seventeen minutes, he would have to report to the crane at Darling Harbour again.

　Oh, I better hurry up and wash my face, brush my teeth, and go to bed! Otherwise, I won’t have the energy to work tomorrow, and if I get hurt on the job, it’ll be all over!

　The moment he got up to wash up, Tom caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window glass: like a dead fish washed ashore, gradually rotting at the intersection of the warm western Pacific Current and the cold Tasman Current.

　Staring at the rain staining the neon tubes of the small clinic across the street into a green pus that flowed across the stained glass, Tom felt like his life was being fed into a rusty paper shredder, spitting out scraps of paper all over the floor and sticking to the soles of the dock workers' iron-soled shoes.

　It's ridiculous. In the past, he had fallen out with his father and suffered so much in order to leave his hometown and pursue his dreams in the big city. Now, he is 1200 kilometers away from home and lives in Australia's most prosperous city.

　But he did not have the wonderful life he dreamed of, nor did he have a lovely girl throwing herself at him. Instead, he endured hardship and poverty day after day.

　As a farm boy who boxed with kangaroos, Tom was not intolerant of poverty. But what really made him feel uncomfortable was that he came to Sydney for a lively and exciting life, but in the end he found himself still alone in a foreign land.

　I have no friends, no girlfriend, and I’m far away from my family… Even though I’m surrounded by people, I feel as lonely as if I were in the desert.

　Every day, he was forced to move forward as if being whipped, without even the time to stop and rest. Pain was always with him, and loneliness was his constant companion.

　Even if you just want to find someone you can talk to, vent your troubles to, or complain to, you may find that it is so difficult to find.

　What? Colleagues? What could a college student and intellectual like him have in common with the roughnecks from the slaughterhouses and dock workers' unions?

　After living a depressed and lonely life for too long, it seemed that even anger had become a luxury for the wooden Tom. Last week, when he found out that his hourly wage was less than that of a high school dropout, he actually laughed to tears in the locker room of the slaughterhouse.

　Sighing, Tom took off his dirty coat and threw it into the basin.

　At this moment, a slightly wrinkled hard card suddenly rolled out of his pocket. The colorful cartoon pictures of the elf dancer, the female magician and the bikini female warrior on the card made Tom, who had originally had a numb face, look slightly moved for a moment.

　——This is the ticket he bought for a "hefty sum" of 250 Australian dollars when he took a leave three days ago to visit the "World Truth" supernatural event exhibition!

　At the same time, it was a rare luxury in his recent impoverished life, and a rare ray of happiness amidst his loneliness and depression...

　Inside the body, construction workers are equipped with gorilla-like robotic arms, office workers have transformed themselves into plastic dolls, and even convenience store cashiers may have modified switchblades hidden in their arms...

　Long before Tom was born, people had fantasies about the future of the 21st century, some beautiful, some cruel. These fantasies diverged, arguments swirled, and shifted with the times—from early steampunk, where humans bombarded the moon with cannons, to later space colonization, where galactic warriors practiced fencing in spaceships, to ideological stamps, where governing a superpower was like running a giant prison...

　Although it looks interesting, it always gives people a sense of unreality.

　But now, a "real" beautiful and wonderful future world is truly presented before people's eyes!

　Although those predictions about the future—floating cars, automated kitchens—formed an ironic contrast to Tom's current financial situation, the radiance of fantasy still served as a shot of confidence, allowing him to believe that "tomorrow's world" would eventually arrive, even if he was just a speck of dust swept away by the tide of time.

　Ah, isn't Night City all that great? This futuristic metropolis, despite all its wondrous high-tech features, also has its share of violent crime, thieves and gangsters, drug dealers and drug addicts, overwork deaths, and seemingly unreliable food safety, with fresh food apparently being incredibly expensive.

　But don't all these foul smells and dark crimes exist in the big cities of Europe and America today?

　What kind of non-mainstream people did he see in the alleys and back streets every night on his way home from get off work, and what kind of people did he always try to avoid?

　In addition, in major cities in Europe and the United States, truly high-quality ingredients are also not very cheap. Cheap supermarkets only sell common items such as cabbage, onions and tomatoes, as well as frozen green chicken and not-so-fresh frozen beef.

　Even in the Soviet Union, which did not practice capitalism, their markets were filled with canned goods that smelled like shoe polish and rotten cabbages!

　Having never tasted the awful taste of synthetic food, Tom subconsciously treated it like the Spam, canned soup, and powdered eggs he often ate, and didn't think it was that scary. He never considered the darker flavors of synthetic meat made from crickets and earthworms, or the 3D-printed "meat patties" and "burritos" sold in street vending machines...

　Compared to Night City's tech-savvy food stalls, even the British "Stargazer Pie," with its crust smeared with dead fish heads, is probably considered healthy and wholesome! And, by the way, even more delicious!

　"The future world of 2077? I really want to see it with my own eyes! But unfortunately, I probably won't live to see that year!"

　Stroking the "Future World Cartoon Set" that came with his ticket with his rough, scarred fingers, Tom sighed and muttered to himself, "Is there still a glimmer of hope if I catch some 'celestial conjunction' and travel to a magical otherworld?"

　He smiled, and recalled the introduction to the "Magical Different World" he saw at the exhibition, and his heart beat fast again.

　Although according to those female survivors who truly "returned from another world," they generally didn't fare well in the magical other world, with quite a few simply turning themselves into slaves. Or even worse, becoming playthings for monsters...

　But most young people who visit will only think that their miserable lives are simply due to their lack of ability and bad luck.

　If you were to say goodbye to your boring daily life and travel to a magical world, you would definitely be able to thrive and become awesome quickly!

　Just think about it! Mysterious magic, majestic gods, legends of brave men, beauties, treasures, and monsters!

　Romantic and bloody swords and magic, eternal and unchanging dragons and heroes! And adventurers who save the world time and time again!

　How wonderful everything is! How desirable and exciting!

　The boys thought of Captain Hook and Peter Pan in the fairy tale, and the girls thought of Dorothy and the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

　Of course, there are also luxurious palaces, majestic castles... boxes of gold and silver treasures, and amazing magical animals...

　After seeing the magical items from the "other world" at the exhibition, the "travelers"' personal stories and descriptions of the magical other world, as well as the special documentaries played in the screening room, I wonder how many imaginative young people put themselves into the story and let their imagination run wild.

　I imagined myself, after coming into contact with a treasure from another world, suddenly arriving in a flash of light. Then, I suddenly stood up, defeated bandits and monsters, saved villages and towns, learned swordsmanship and magic, explored mysterious ancient ruins, uncovered the conspiracies of cults and demon kings, and gained wealth and love amid the cheers of countless people. I even married a beautiful noble lady and received a title and fiefdom...

　How should I put it? It's basically a successful version of the Western adventurers and pirates of the Age of Exploration, but with a magical world as its shell.

　There's nothing you can do about it. Young men, after all, tend to have some daydreams in their heads. Otherwise, if they lose their dreams, they're just dead fish.

　So, when they listen to the roar of cars on the street outside the window, they will think of the charge of knights and the roar of dragons; when they look at the crooked TV antenna on the opposite roof, they will think of the grandeur and dizziness of spacecraft launching into the sky, or the brakes of stars brushing against each other in the virtual galaxy.

　That.

　Tom was no exception. On the night he came back from the exhibition, he had a bizarre dream. He dreamed that he was wearing a full-body power armor like Iron Man, killing people and protecting the good in a glittering sci-fi city; then he changed into a wizard's robe, holding a jeweled magic wand, and leading a female warrior as sturdy and graceful as a Valkyrie to charge at the dragon.

　This is not only a beautiful dream that makes people linger, but also a lifeboat for troubled souls to escape from reality for a short time.

　However, no matter how beautiful the fantasy in the dream is, the reality after waking up will be bleak.

　There will be no dwarves wielding hammers in the small shops of mean streets; there will be no harpy nests or elf huts on the rusty TV signal towers; and there will be no holy unicorns emerging from the garbage-filled green belts of the slums of big cities...

　In fact, Tom also understood that even if he really traveled to a magical world, without knowing the language and being completely in the dark, it would be difficult for him to achieve fame, wealth, or the love of a beautiful woman. Even surviving would be difficult! He might end up dead on the roadside in two days!

　——Based on his personal experience, even after moving from his rural hometown in the inland desert to the bustling metropolis of Sydney by the sea, he still had such a bumpy life, such a hard and difficult life, and was as humble as a wild dog.

　In addition, he also saw with his own eyes in Sydney how miserable the lives of war refugees fleeing from Vietnam and Indonesia were.