Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 230



Only Noblemtl

230.

Kung-Fury, of course, did not like ‘death’.

People don’t die as easily as you might think. Especially if you’re physically strong. The deaths he’s experienced have usually been followed by terrible pain. And they take a long time. Even if you cut your throat with a knife, the time until you die as your blood drains from your body in the midst of adrenaline secretion is agony itself.

Also, what was more unfamiliar than the pain was the fear that came from the process of ‘reaching death.’

But he has repeatedly chosen to die by his own choice in the past.

Suicide was clearly one of the most taboos shared by all mankind.

Even if there was no religious approach, the protagonist of the novel, a superhero at that, would commit suicide. It would be an act that would absolutely not be tolerated under normal circumstances.

But God forgave such acts as noble sacrifices.

“I thought that was very clever.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sitting in the attic that he used as his studio, George R.R. Martin wrote a letter.

Since he began living in this laid-back place in 1979, he has completed numerous works here.

At the same time, I did not forget to interact with other writers around me.

As writers are people who have the destiny to complete their own world, they are fundamentally destined to be lonely beings.

But that rendezvous with solitude only lasts for a day or two, and if you spend enough time alone, it is common for loneliness to creep in.

······And to be honest, since all I saw every day was typewritten text, no matter how immersed I was in the content, there would come a moment when I would get tired of it, and at those times, I would naturally want to do something different.

Every now and then, George would write letters to writers he knew.

They wrote in a very old-fashioned way, using fountain pens or quills, and even stamped envelopes with sealing wax.

In a world where telephones and e-mails were common, there was still something special about the pleasure of writing something by hand, so ‘writing random letters to people around you’ was a hobby that George RR Martin had recently become obsessed with.

The letters were mostly about novels he had recently read or his thoughts organized.

And today, George R.R. Martin was trying to write to his pen pal friend, writer Cheshire Blanco, about ‘Kung-fury: A Novel’, which he had recently read with great pleasure.

A friend who I only know by his pen name and address, but I don’t know his face or his real name.

But there are times when this level of distance is just right.

『When Kung-Fury chose suicide to save people, I thought it was a ‘sacrifice’. That’s true. After that, he was revived countless times and fought Zero continuously. And little by little, the situation began to change. Watching that desperate repetition was incredibly thrilling.

Zero continued to become Nin-Zero, and instead of killing Kung-Fury, he wanted to live and bring despair to him. Isn’t that interesting? These two people in such completely opposite situations. A hypocrite and a hypocrite. Those who want to spread a message through their actions and those who want to change others’ minds and become messengers.

The two were fierce. And the ending of the fight that occurred at the end was truly amazing.』

After writing the letter up to that point, George smiled as he smelled the pouring sun.

Yes, the sun has a smell too. A warm and cozy smell.

Kung-Fury fights felt like that.

He repeatedly travels back in time to save as many people as possible and stop Zero. He continues to fight in various ways, sometimes at Zero’s hands, sometimes by choosing death himself, and after holding out for a long time to stop Zero from collapsing the building, something close to a miracle eventually happens.

At that moment, Star Chaser’s super powers returned as he was saving people inside the building.

His body, which had been saving people nearby in the form of an ordinary person, rose again.

Naturally, the people around him were shocked and dumbfounded, and he himself was shocked and dumbfounded, but Star Chaser instinctively sensed the fight between Kung-Fury and Zero and moved his body.

He rescued everyone inside the building and evacuated them outside, and one boy asked in surprise.

[Mister, are you that hero?]

Star Chaser, whose face was revealed, nodded silently and flew away like an eagle.

It was a really cool scene where he naturally revealed his identity.

And I also liked the part where Kung-Fury came to his aid and stopped Zero.

The hypocrite in this work was completely alone, but the number of hypocrites increased day by day. No, can we really call them hypocrites? That was just Zero’s assertion.

George wanted to call them ‘the best’.

Star Chaser joins the battle against Zero to aid Kung-Fury.

Even in a situation where he is at a disadvantage with a 2-on-1 advantage, Zero tries to destroy the building and enforce his will with a near-frantic display of his abilities. However, Star Chaser, a man who can fly faster than anyone else, flies freely at a speed close to the speed of sound and rescues everyone just before the building collapses.

With the help of Sodapop, who was desperately trying to prevent the collapse using carbon dioxide inside the building, Kung-Fury was able to successfully rescue the citizens as he had hoped.

In the scene where they share joy with their backs turned to the collapsing building, George was able to believe anew in the goodness hidden behind human weakness.

『Super hero Kung-Fury, who sacrificed his own life, but doesn’t care if no one knows about it! On the other hand, super villain Nin-Zero, who is desperate to reveal himself even at the cost of harming others! These two are perfect rivals!』

He rewrote the letter, very excited.

Afterwards, the three people are investigated by the agency.

As they share their experiences, Kung-Fury gathers himself together and resolves to completely end Nin-Zero’s evil deeds during their next meeting.

But a huge question remained for readers of the novel.

‘Why and how did Star Chaser’s super powers suddenly return?’

The following scene begins with the perspective of Zero, who has escaped from the scene, and begins to describe why and how he became a cyborg ninja. And through Zero’s story, the answer to the question is naturally shown, skipping the process of inference.

It was to shed light on the character of Zero, who was previously seen as nothing more than an anti-establishment lunatic, while also raising questions about the events that had unfolded up to that point.

George felt that this flow was smooth, like a cut transition in a movie.

Zero, who returned to his residence that resembles an abandoned factory, desperately struggles to extend his life by repairing his mechanical body.

But ironically, because of that, he was gradually dying.

The moment I decided to replace my body with a machine, it was a hardship I had no choice but to bear. Machines can never replace the body.

But he entered this path of his own choice.

Everything is for revenge.

Cyborg ninja, Zero. Nin-Zero to one person only.

He was originally a scientist who conducted secret experiments at the ‘Institution’.

He was a genius scientist who had enormous expectations from the academic world.

Having earned several doctorates at a young age, he accepted the institute’s research proposal with a noble mission to advance humanity for the better, and was exposed to secrets they had kept secret for so long.

Their goal was simple, but it remained elusive despite decades of research.

That was the scientific calling of ‘super power’.

The research, which was initially conducted simply to accept applicants, eventually deteriorated in an increasingly malicious direction as time passed and results began to decline.

The organization conducted biological experiments on villains with superpowers, and even dissected the corpses of superheroes or secretly disappeared those who were deemed unusable as heroes.

The laboratory was a place of madness where human rights did not exist, and the scientist fell into despair and skepticism from the depths of his heart.

But once the quest for superpowers was over, humanity would be able to advance further. Humans would not suffer from cancer or incurable diseases, and each individual would be able to live with a stronger body.

After repeated and horrific experiments, the agency succeeds in developing a drug that turns humans into superhumans thanks to the scientists’ abilities.

The secret was in the genes.

Superheroes were basically mutants. Each of their powers was a phenomenon that could be explained scientifically.

But there was still a long way to go. How to increase the versatility and efficacy of this weakly acting drug in limited environments, how to modify it without straining the genes, and even if that was accomplished, how to reduce the costs of clinical trials and manufacturing to confirm the drug’s side effects.

Still, it was worth all the hard work up to this point.

But, as the scientist sighed, a sound like a bolt from the blue was heard.

That was the directive to stop the experiment.

‘Why? Why? What have you come this far for?’

The mechanism has been discovered, but the investment cost to achieve utility is too high.

Also, as human rights awareness has improved over time, the situation has changed a lot. If it is revealed or questioned even a little bit about how this result was achieved, the country’s prestige will be shaken.

Despite such persuasion, the scientist was not convinced.

If we stop the experiment now, wouldn’t the lives of those who have been sacrificed so far just become worthless scraps of paper?

But the state was reckless. In the blink of an eye, it began the process of dismantling the experiment to cover it up.

The scientist was at a loss.

In the end, he was the only one who felt guilty.

The world remained the same. Those who knew the truth about the covered-up incident went into hiding or kept quiet, and people continued to lead peaceful lives.

But the scientist simply could not sit still.

What a piece of crap the US government has done.

How hypocritical are the superheroes who are used to protect them.

Those who now enjoy peace do not even know that they are standing on land stained with blood.

The scientist, overcome with self-loathing, eventually decides to atone for his sins through revenge.

The organization made a huge profit by selling part of the ‘calling’ it had accumulated over a long period of time to communist countries hostile to the United States, and based on that capital, it transformed its own body into a machine.

It was the birth of Zero, the cyborg ninja who dominates electronic communications.

Through his computerized brain, the analysis of experimental data was accelerated, and he succeeded in creating a machine body that could instantly scan and interpret genes in the opponent’s body and apply them to himself.

It was the perfection of a technique that allowed one to imitate super powers that only applied to oneself.

But it didn’t end there.

We developed a technique that disrupts the DNA system and temporarily disables the functions of super powers. Of course, due to the body’s homeostasis, the original super powers will eventually be restored, and the more powerful the hero, the faster the speed.

But it was okay.

It’ll only be for a short while anyway.

I figured that at least a month would be enough if they couldn’t use their powers until all the neurons in their brains burned out.

By then, America will have been sufficiently destroyed, and with the public outrage and attention focused on him, he will be able to achieve his goal of being a messenger of the truth.

But just one.

‘Kung Fury’ was a huge variable for him.

“Ugh.”

George R.R. Martin reread the passage and was impressed.

I think it’s a bit provocative and childish, but isn’t that why it’s called a ‘superhero movie’?

***

A reply was sent to the film company expressing their intention to reject the offer.

On the surface, we showed polite humility, but they knew our true intentions anyway.

Making a movie like ‘Kung-Fury’ was a very unrealistic thing, and even if they were making it now, I wondered if there would be a director who could match the quality I had in mind.

Above all, whitewashing was also a concern.

‘Because these were times when people really didn’t think much of such things.’

‘Kung-fury’ is a work that seeks to express the discrimination and weight of life faced by each character with the symbolic lightness and positive energy of a superhero film.

However, if whitewashing occurs as mediation progresses, the theme of this work becomes useless. Something like ‘Dead Man’s Heaven’ would happen.

‘But, it’s really amazing.’

Late at night.

I sat in my room, shaking a glass of whiskey on the rocks, lost in thought.

My birthday passed a while ago, and I was finally old enough to legally buy alcohol from a liquor store, and it’s become a habit ‘again’ to have a drink and think about it every now and then.

I don’t drink too much every time, so I thought this much would be okay and drank it.

I took a sip of whiskey.

The heat in the glass chilled my throat.

Well, whatever.

‘Sony Pictures wants my work?’

I felt a little bit strange.

I’m basically a genre novelist, and like most content in this era, each medium has less to do with each other. Movies are movies. Television is television. Novels and comics are produced on paper, so I feel like they’re relatively close.

Anyway, it wasn’t a time like the future when everyone would cling to something that was successful and try to somehow turn it into a media franchise and suck every last drop of revenue out of it.

Because there were technical and know-how issues, it was not possible to guarantee a clear profit.

In the first place, each content has its own charm, and it is clear that there will be cases where noise occurs during the process of converting it. Even my previous hit, ‘Dead Man’s Heaven’, had different endings in the novel and the drama.

Well, they say it was for commercial reasons.

‘There must have been some secret story that I don’t know about.’

For example, someone may have created such a situation to gain some personal benefit.

Although I can’t really figure it out now, I couldn’t help but feel a little irritated in a corner of my mind because I couldn’t confirm the circumstances at that time.

‘Well, that’s in the past.’

The late 1980s are just around the corner.

And my name is starting to spread throughout America.

‘From now on is what’s important.’

In this industry that is starting to become turbulent as both technology and market size grow, I thought that I needed to prepare myself in my own way in order to firmly maintain my position without being swept away by the rough waves.

‘It’s movie production.’

In fact, I had already thought about which of my novels would be best to be made into a movie in this day and age.