Xinni looked up at the majestic Olympic Stadium, and the brief happiness and intoxication temporarily covered up the tension and fear. No matter what happened in the next few days, she had come to the holy land of all athletes' dreams, and this was enough for her life.
But the fear of what was about to happen did not diminish. Everything she had experienced in the past two days was more and more like a gloomy and strange dream. In the morning, the motorcade of the West Asian Republic delegation set out from the Olympic Village to the Olympic Stadium. There were huge crowds of people gathered on the wide road connecting the two places, but Sinni saw that there were no flowers, colorful flags, or balloons in the crowd, nor were there any laughter or cheers. These thousands of people were collectively silent, watching the motorcade with the same grim expression. The feeling that made Sinni shudder yesterday appeared again. She felt that this was like a funeral.
The Olympic Stadium was very empty outside, with two strict cordons. When the motorcade passed by, the armed police soldiers who formed the cordons saluted in unison. The motorcade stopped at the east gate of the stadium. After the athletes got off the bus, Captain Clare called them to stand in a square formation. Xinni stood in the first row of the square formation. She carefully searched for sounds coming from the stadium, but heard nothing. The huge building was silent. Clare took out a large flag of the Republic of West Asia from the car, and called Sari and two other more accomplished athletes to step out of the line, handing each of them a corner of the flag. When he was looking for the fourth person in the line, Laili, who was standing in the front row, came out by herself and took the last corner of the flag from Clare's hand, but Clare shook his head, pulled the flag out of Laili's hand, and handed it to a female athlete he randomly selected. This huge humiliation made Laili blush. She stared at the captain angrily for a few seconds, and finally turned back to the line. The four athletes unfurled the national flag. The breeze from Beijing created ripples on the flag. Claire, who was standing next to the flag, said to the athletes:
"Children of West Asia, cheer up! Now, on behalf of our suffering motherland, we enter the main venue of the 29th Olympic Games!"
Guided by the national flag, the athletes from the Republic of West Asia began to march and soon entered the tall porch of the east gate of the stadium. The porch was very long, like a tunnel. Xinni walked in the front row of the square, staring at the entrance that was getting closer and closer with other athletes. Her heart was beating wildly. In her mind, the other side of the entrance was another time and space, and another unknown fate and life was waiting for her there.
Despite her mental preparation, when Xinni saw the panoramic view of the stadium through the entrance, she froze all over, and just mechanically stepped forward under the push of the square behind her. At this time, the only way to avoid mental collapse was to keep the feeling that had been hanging over her for the past two days: this was a nightmare. What she saw now was very powerful proof of this.
They were faced with a completely empty stadium.
The nine o'clock sun illuminated half of the huge stadium. The West Asians seemed to be marching in a basin isolated from the world. Only their footsteps echoed in this desolate world. After the dizziness of shock passed, Sinni saw something moving on the other side of the wide stadium. She soon realized that it was another phalanx of athletes, marching towards them. That phalanx was also guided by a large flag carried by four athletes. In the sun, Sinni recognized it as a star-spangled flag. Unlike the chaotic appearance when entering the Olympic stadium in the past, the phalanx of American athletes was very neat, forming a whole block rising and falling in a majestic rhythm, like an ancient Roman legion in attack.
In the center of the stadium, the two phalanxes began to turn when they were dozens of meters apart, and finally stopped facing the simple rostrum. Everything fell silent, as if time had stopped.
A man walked towards the podium from one side of the stadium. His monotonous footsteps echoed in the empty stands like a terrifying countdown. The man was not the President of the International Olympic Committee, but the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The skinny Brazilian old man slowly walked up to the podium, staring at the two countries' athletes in the distance. He was silent for half a minute before he began to speak. Through the huge sound system, his voice seemed to come from the entire sky.
"The XXIX Olympiad will be attended by only two nations, the United States of America and the Republic of West Asia, and will replace the impending war between these two nations.
"If the United States wins, the West Asian Republic must fulfill the terms of the ultimatum. The country will be completely disarmed and will be broken up into three independent countries. The war criminals in the former West Asian government will be tried by the International Court of Justice.
“If the West Asian Republic wins, the war will be stopped, the U.S. and its allies’ troops currently attacking West Asia will withdraw, the United Nations will lift its economic sanctions against the West Asian Republic and welcome it back to the international community.
The Secretary-General turned his eyes to the West Asian athletes: “You can predict that the West Asian Republic will lose in this Olympic Games, but please also pay attention to another fact: if a war breaks out, the West Asian Republic is also doomed to lose, and at that time, both sides, especially your country, will pay a bloody price.
"Perhaps you think that this Olympic Games is just an excuse for the surrender of the West Asian Republic, but that's not the case. Let me give you an extreme example: if the West Asian sports delegation loses to the United States by only one gold medal, although West Asia is still considered defeated, the result will be very different: the country will not be overthrown, the current government can continue to exist, and it can retain a standing army. All West Asia has to do is destroy its biological and chemical weapons and pay only one-third of the war reparations in the ultimatum. Of course, this situation is unlikely to happen, but every gold medal won by West Asian athletes in each individual event can win certain rights for the defeated West Asia. The agreement reached by the United States and Spain after extremely difficult negotiations under the framework of the United Nations has detailed terms for all of this. And for West Asia, the hope of winning a gold medal is not completely gone. For example, Alex Surrey and Wendell Riley have certain advantages in shooting and gymnastics respectively."
The Secretary-General turned his eyes away from the West Asian athletes and looked up at the clear summer sky in Beijing: "This is the first implementation of the United Nations Peace Window Program, a great experiment conducted by mankind in the new millennium to eliminate war!
"The Peace Window project was named after the respected Mr. Bill Gates. At the dawn of the new century, in order to make Microsoft's wisdom and wealth have a greater use, Mr. Gates presided over a grand software project to develop a giant simulation software that can reproduce wars of various sizes in digital form on a giant computer, and finally achieve the goal of replacing real wars between countries with digital wars. This software was named Peace Window. As we all know, this idea failed. First of all, the current software technology is far from being able to fully simulate the extremely complex modern wars, but the more important reason for the failure of the idea is that under the current international political conditions, the input of the initial data of the software and the warring parties are too complicated. The recognition of the simulation results by the United States is an insurmountable obstacle. Although the plan failed after a huge investment, the seeds of thought planted by Mr. Gates took root and sprouted and grew rapidly. He gave us a completely new way of thinking about war, that is, if humans cannot eliminate war in a short period of time, at least they can let it be carried out in another way that is more harmless and respects life. Therefore, with the unanimous approval of the international community, the United Nations once again launched the Peace Window Plan. This is the Apollo moon landing of human society in sociology and international politics. Over the past five years, countless politicians, sociologists, legal scholars, ethicists, natural scientists, military strategists and other people from all walks of life have contributed their wisdom to this great plan.
"The key to the Peace Window Project is to find a war substitute, which must meet two conditions: first, it should more faithfully reflect the comprehensive national strength of the warring countries; second, it should be able to simulate war under rules recognized by the warring countries and the international community. The researchers of the project soon thought of the Olympic Games. The level of a single sport, such as football, has little to do with a country's political, economic and military strength. But the overall level of the many sports events in the Olympic Games as a whole can quite accurately reflect a country's comprehensive national strength. At the same time, as one of the oldest activities of mankind, sports have established perfect competition rules recognized by all mankind, and the Olympic Games is by far the largest and most influential human gathering in the world. This makes the Olympic Games the most ideal tool for simulating war.
"The ancient Greek Olympic philosophers and Coubertin of the last century would never have dreamed that the Olympic Games they founded would one day have such great significance for mankind. And you, who are engaged in originally very simple sports, would never have thought that you would suddenly shoulder such a great mission one day. But history has pushed you here, please do not avoid it. Looking back a thousand years later, this will be the greatest moment in human history, and you, the pioneers of the Peace Window, will be recorded in the history of human civilization."
At this time, two more people walked along the runway toward the rostrum. One of them was the president of the International Olympic Committee, and the other was a soldier in camouflage uniforms, holding a burning torch with four stars on his shoulders. After walking onto the rostrum, he said in a deep voice: "I am George West, General of the U.S. Army, commander of the U.S. Army in West Asia. In five minutes, the ultimatum will expire. If there is no window of peace, I will order the first wave of air strikes against the Republic of West Asia, but now, I will light the Olympic flame." Then, he saluted the five-ring flag that had just been raised, turned around and walked up the long stairs leading to the big torch. He climbed steadily with a soldier's pace, keeping his upper body and the torch in his hand straight. Finally, he became a small black dot under the huge Olympic torch in the eyes of the athletes. General West raised the torch in his hand to the world, stood still for a few seconds, and then lit the Olympic flame.
The athletes heard a dull bang, and the Olympic flame burned in the blue sky. There was no cheering, no pigeons, and in the dead silence, only the ancient giant fire was whirring, like a mighty wind sweeping across the sky. (To be continued)