Chapter 16: Indiana Jones in 2022
Chapter 16: Indiana Jones in 2022
(Recorded by Oliver Jones)
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Prologue: A Battlefield Made of CG
This is something I later heard from Rafaella.
Back in 2022, when I still hadn’t found her, Rafaella had already encountered a certain man.
His name—Vermilion Jones.
If my memory serves me right, he claimed to be a descendant of Indiana Jones. An archaeologist, and my grandfather.
But in that era, he was no longer the same.
No longer an archaeologist, but bearing the title of “war producer,” he was orchestrating counterfeit battlefields.
A set designed to look like city ruins. Explosions, rubble, collapsed skyscrapers.
Dozens of drones swarmed the skies, projecting bombing runs through mapping effects.
Walls of styrofoam. Actors smeared with stage blood.
Even the screams were engineered by sound crews—an entire battlefield fabricated from performance.
And yet—
People across the world believed this illusion was real.
“Cut! The bullet holes are misaligned! The tank’s supposed to roll through in ten seconds!”
That’s what the staff were shouting, apparently.
Yes. It wasn’t a battlefield—it was a film set.
And that, it seems, was the beginning of what they called a “gentle war.”
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The Beginning of the “Gentle War”
Rafaella told me she saw Vermilion standing atop the set—on the scaffolding of the temporary studio.
Crafting war, stirring the media, selling weapons. He laughed as he explained the system.
It all started with a single gun.
The sleep gun.
Zero lethality. It simply cast people into deep slumber—a gentle weapon.
That was originally a technology from our era.
…Yes, the one I had once given Rafaella in the future.
Back when she was known as Las, she carried it. Somehow, Vermilion secretly obtained it—and began mass-producing it.
Unseen by me, the past had already begun to shift.
A weapon meant to remain in the future had begun to spread across the Earth of 2022.
She told me what she saw.
A factory line, running at full capacity, assembling gray parts one after another.
Each time a barrel was mounted, a click echoed—hundreds, thousands of times over.
“500 units completed. Next target: 1000.”
“Additional orders from East Asia. Package them with the virtual battlefield.”
“‘Justice in Slumber’ campaign trending on social media!”
These were the voices she overheard from behind.
And Vermilion, flipping through his paperwork, chuckled quietly.
“War no longer needs death.
With imagery to inflame the masses, and sleep guns flooding the market, justice itself can be manufactured.”
Then, he turned to Rafaella and spoke.
“You will become a hero. Las, you will be the protagonist of the story that saves the world.”
Rafaella laughed at those words—“How absurd.”
She never intended to become such a heroine.
But she admitted to me later… somewhere deep down, a part of her wanted to cling to those words.
Because at that time, she was alone.
And Vermilion knew that.
That was why he extended his hand—to mold Rafaella, the woman from the future, into the savior of the present day.
But—I understood the truth.
What Vermilion Jones truly desired was not salvation.
What he wanted was the power to turn even war into entertainment.
And what the world became after that—
…That, I will speak of in the next chapter.
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To be continued in Chapter 17
(Recorded by Oliver Jones)
