My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 618: A Demonstration

The value of what Liam had given away in three minutes was enormous by a significant margin, and it was something the research community was already beginning to understand, and the financial community was three steps behind, which was typical.

The electromagnetic signature principle had an application the comment section hadn’t reached yet.

Liam had seen it the moment he finished stating the principle, in how it was applicable to the financial markets. Systems that degraded before the degradation was visible. Stress that preceded collapse. The signature of a failing institution readable at a frequency range nobody was currently calibrated to detect.

He sent the idea to Lucy through their private channel while the comment section was still working through the medical implications.

Financial stress detection system. Early warning. Pre-collapse signature identification. Model it and send me the architecture when you have time.

Lucy’s response came back in four seconds.

Already started, Master.

He put it aside and looked back at the feed.

The comment section was in the researcher phase still, as the viewers were talking about the three principles he had just given away, and the fact that multiple research programmes are going to be based on it immediately.

There were also talks of comments saying that Liam would possibly receive multiple Nobel Prizes for the principles he had just casually given over a livestream, and it would be most shocking of all, culturally.

Liam wasn’t interested in what the comments were saying. What he wanted to do now, was to continue the livestream and move on to the second reason behind it. He gave it another thirty seconds before he straightened and turned to the camera.

"I want to thank everyone who joined the tour," he said. "That’s the last of the industrial hub. There’s more to Nova Technologies than what I’ve shown you today, but what you’ve seen is enough for now."

*enough for now he says*

*the man showed us matter transmutation and three paradigm-shifting scientific principles and called it enough for now*

*there’s MORE. he said there’s more.*

*I need to know what more means. I need that information immediately.*

*enough for now is the most terrifying phrase in the English language when this man says it*

Liam let the thread run for a moment. Then he shifted his stance slightly and his attention becoming more direct, than casual and the feed picked up before he said anything.

The comment section noticed.

*his face just changed*

*something’s different*

*he’s about to say something*

*everyone stop talking I need to read this*

"The second reason I called everyone here today," he said.

The comment section went as close to quiet as it was capable of going.

"Since the information about my wealth was made public yesterday, the people around me have been inconvenienced. My friends have journalists parked outside their homes. My family members have camera crews at their gates." He paused. "I understand the curiosity. It’s natural. But there is a line between curiosity and intrusion, and that line was crossed this morning by a significant number of people."

*oh*

*he’s addressing the crowds*

*the people outside his gate are watching this right now*

*every journalist parked outside his friends’ houses is watching this right now*

*I would not want to be any of those people*

*the tone shift. did anyone else feel the tone shift.*

"I will say this clearly and I will say it once," Liam said. "I do not want anyone standing outside my home or the homes of my family and friends. I do not want anyone following them, approaching them, or attempting to contact them through channels they haven’t offered. They are private individuals. Their connection to me does not change that and does not entitle anyone to their time or their space."

He looked into the camera for a moment.

"For anyone currently outside my property, I have something to say to you."

He vanished.

*HE LEFT*

*WHERE DID HE GO*

*the feed is still running*

*WAIT*

The feed of the second camera, which had been holding on the research section behind him, was replaced by an exterior view.

The wrought iron gate of Bellemere Mansion became visible, the neighborhood behind it. In front of the gate, a cluster of people consisting of camera crews, journalists, a van with a satellite dish mounted on its roof, individuals with phones extended.

They were still looking at their screens when Liam appeared, hovering above the roof of his mansion, in the same t-shirt, hands at his sides, as though he had always been standing there and they had simply not noticed.

Several of them noticed it before the others. A camera swung toward him.

He looked at them.

*he just teleported to his own front gate*

*he’s standing in front of them*

*those camera crews are currently on a six billion person livestream*

*EVERYONE CAN SEE THEIR FACES*

*the people who knocked on Alex’s door are watching this right now*

*the van outside Matt’s building is watching this right now*

*every journalist parked outside every address connected to him is watching this right now*

*I would like to formally announce that I was never outside anyone’s house*

Liam looked at the cluster in front of his gate. He read their faces without moving. A few had lowered their cameras. A few had not. The satellite van hadn’t moved.

He gave them three seconds, then he spoke, his voice expanding outward in every direction simultaneously, passing through walls, through distance, through every barrier between one point and every other point on the planet, arriving in the ears and the chest of every living person at the same instant, as every person on Earth heard it simultaneously.

"Scram."

The word was one syllable and it landed like something physical.

The cluster in front of the gate moved before they had decided to move. The instinct preceded the thought by a full second, as their instincts screamed at them. A few didn’t move.

Liam looked at those ones specifically and his voice came again.

"Hear me clearly." His eyes moved across the ones still holding their ground. "Anyone who pursues the people close to me — my family, my friends, anyone connected to me — will have me to deal with directly."

The cluster in front of the gate had thinned considerably. Most were already moving toward their vehicles. The satellite van’s engine started.

Three camera operators hadn’t moved yet. Their cameras were still raised, still running, still stubbornly pointed at him.

Liam looked at their cameras and he reached out with his telekinesis, and the cameras came apart.

The housings compressed inward from every surface simultaneously, the lenses retracting, the bodies folding, the structural integrity going out of them all at once, until what remained in three sets of hands was something that had been camera-shaped and was now considerably less useful.

He did it unhurried, watching them as it happened.

The comment section had been running at full volume for the entire livestream.

It stopped for four full seconds, which was an eternity at the scale LucidNet operated at, as the feed produced nothing. Six billion people watching the same thing simultaneously and none of them typing.

Then it came back all at once.

*did he just.*

*DID HE JUST SPEAK TO THE ENTIRE WORLD*

*I heard it. I heard it from outside. I was not watching the livestream. I was outside. I HEARD IT.*

*I’m in Tokyo. I heard a voice from the sky. I thought I was losing my mind.*

*I’m in Lagos. My entire street stopped.*

*São Paulo. Everyone on my block looked up at the same time.*

*London. The pub went completely silent. Forty people. Nobody spoke.*

*I was in a meeting. Everyone heard it. Nobody has moved.*

*it came from everywhere at once. not from a speaker. not from a device. from everywhere.*

*I need someone to explain the physics of what just happened because sound does not work that way*

*he projected his voice to every human being on Earth simultaneously. from a standing position.*

*my dog heard it. my dog is currently under the bed and I understand completely*

The cameras coming apart filled the feed next.

*THE CAMERAS*

*he just disassembled three cameras with his hands at his sides*

*they didn’t break. they didn’t fall. they compressed. inward. from every surface at once.*

*I’m a mechanical engineer. that is not how materials fail. that is not how anything fails. that is deliberate structural reorganization from an external force with no point of contact.*

*telekinesis. he has telekinesis. he said family trait for the flying and I missed that he probably has fifteen other things*

*the unhurried part. he did it unhurried. like he was closing a door.*

Outside Bellemere Mansion, the cluster had dissolved. The satellite van had gone. The remaining journalists were in their vehicles or walking quickly toward them, phones still in hand, the livestream still running on their screens as they left the location they had been watching from.

The three camera operators stood in the empty space in front of the gate, holding what remained of their equipment, looking at each other.

One of them looked directly into the camera that was still capturing the exterior feed.

He was aware, visibly, that six billion people were watching his face. He turned and walked to his car.

The exterior feed held on the empty street for a moment — the gate, the quiet neighborhood, the morning light — and then the feed faded to black, signalling the end of the livestream.

***

In a control room at a signals intelligence facility whose location was not publicly disclosed, eleven analysts had been monitoring the livestream since the moment it went live. They had been filing reports in real time — the exosuit, the flight, the assembler, the quantum chip disclosure, the three principles.

When the voice arrived, the room had gone still. Not because the word was alarming but because the mechanism was impossible.

Sound propagated through a medium. It required one. The voice had arrived through walls, through sealed rooms, through underground infrastructure, through the vacuum of space between the facility’s exterior sensors simultaneously, the signal arriving at every point of reception at the same instant with no propagation delay.

The analyst nearest the technical monitoring station looked at her readings for a long time.

Then she filed a single line in her report.

Mechanism: unknown. Classification: no existing category.

***

In the Oval Office, Marsh had been watching the livestream since the moment the announcement dropped. She had been alone since the first minute, her chief of staff asked to leave, the door closed.

She had watched the mask dissolve. She had watched the suit become a watch. She had watched the gold bar, the diamond, the quantum chip disclosed between them. She had watched the three principles given away to six billion people in thirty seconds.

When the voice came, she had been holding a pen and she set it down.

She looked at the screen that has faded to black and she felt turmoil in her heart.

She had spent three weeks trying to forget the physical details of that meeting. She understood now that she was not going to succeed.