booktalesy Chapter 331 Dual-Line Operation
Chapter 331 Dual-Line Operation
Chapter 331 Dual-Line Operation
August 1999, 12, night.
The countdown to the new millennium pushed the global fervor to its peak. And Tokyo, Japan, as Asia's first continent to embrace the new century, had already transformed into a sea of excitement.
The National Stadium in Shinjuku Ward, Asia's largest outdoor stadium with a capacity of 80,000, was completely packed with people. The Metropolitan Police Department deployed thousands of traffic police and riot police, setting up cordons on all the surrounding main roads, but they were still unable to alleviate the terrifying traffic paralysis.
Inside the stadium, all 80,000 seats were filled. Outside, nearly 50,000 enthusiastic fans who hadn't managed to get tickets gathered in the square, braving the cold, craning their necks and staring intently at the dozen or so giant broadcast screens that had been hastily erected outside.
Moreover, tonight's "Millennium Night" concert featuring two divas was broadcast live simultaneously to all of Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong and Taiwan using a dedicated satellite channel with an astonishingly high cost. Such broadcasting costs, often amounting to millions of dollars, would be absolutely unaffordable for any ordinary entertainment company, but Kitahara Productions didn't even blink an eye.
7:50 p.m.
The 80,000 people inside the stadium could no longer contain their excitement. Blue and red glow sticks surged like waves, and the shouts of Akina Nakamori and Izumi Sakai almost lifted the roof off the stadium.
However, when the stage lights went out completely, the audience was surprised to find that there were no traditional lifts or mountains of sound equipment on the stage. The entire main stage was empty, with only a huge, almost transparent membrane hanging in mid-air at a 45-degree angle.
This is precisely the trump card that Kitahara Shin secretly transported from Silicon Valley: a holographic projection film made of military-grade nano-polymer reflective material. Meanwhile, in hidden corners around the stage, twenty industrial laser projectors, each with a brightness exceeding 100,000 lumens, are ready to go.
It's exactly eight o'clock.
A deep, ethereal heartbeat suddenly emanated from the giant sound system inside the venue.
"Thump—thump!"
The massive stadium fell silent instantly. Then, all the laser projectors in the stadium simultaneously activated!
Beams of ethereal blue light converged and refracted in the air. Before the utterly stunned eyes of 80,000 spectators, a translucent, luminous blue whale, over thirty meters long, appeared out of thin air above the stage! It swayed its massive tail fin, emitting a melodious whale call, and slowly "swam" over the heads of the front-row audience!
"Oh my god!"
"What kind of magic is this?!"
The audience, who weren't wearing any 3D glasses, went absolutely wild, with people in the front row even instinctively reaching out to touch the phantom of the blue whale.
Just as the blue whale swam to the center of the stage, its massive body suddenly exploded into a shower of dazzling stardust. The stardust cascaded down like a waterfall, and in the reshaping of light and shadow, two peerless figures slowly coalesced and took shape amidst the starlight.
Akina Nakamori wore a gorgeous fiery red gown, while Izumi Sakai sported a pure white custom-made suit. These two queens, who had dominated the Asian music scene for a decade, descended onto the stage in such an almost miraculous way!
The entire audience paused for a full two seconds.
Then, a scream that could shake the earth erupted! The 50,000 fans outside the venue were so excited that they waved their glow sticks wildly. Many longtime fans who had followed the group since the 1980s burst into tears when they saw the two on stage together.
"Good evening, everyone! Are you ready to welcome the new century?" Akina's penetrating voice resonated throughout the venue through the top-notch sound system.
Without any unnecessary words, the rousing drumbeats cut straight in.
The first song is Izumi Sakai's nationally popular inspirational anthem, "Makenaide" (Don't Give Up).
As the familiar melody began, the entire audience of 80,000 waved blue glow sticks in unison. The holographic projection equipment unleashed its power once more, instantly transforming the stage backdrop into an endless avenue of falling cherry blossoms. Quanshui, microphone in hand, strode forward amidst the swirling, three-dimensional cherry blossoms, her clear, resolute voice piercing the cold winter night and striking the very soul of every participant.
"Don't give up, just hold on a little longer, the goal is just ahead—"
Office workers in the stands, students tormented by the pressure of college entrance exams, and even traffic police maintaining order outside the stadium all spontaneously joined in the sing-along. This song carries the hardships and resilience of so many Japanese people during the bursting of the economic bubble. Now, at this pivotal moment, its resounding performance, accompanied by the dreamlike holographic cherry blossoms, created a double impact on the eyes and ears, bringing countless people to tears on the spot.
Then, the lights suddenly changed. The cherry blossoms were instantly engulfed by a blazing, three-dimensional fire!
Akina Nakamori's classic hit "DESIRE -Jonetsu-" is coming right after!
Holographic projection transformed the entire stage into a neon-lit ruin brimming with cyberpunk style. Akina danced freely amidst the fiery phantoms, her deep, sexy voice radiating an unstoppable queenly aura. With each soaring high note, real cold fireworks erupted from around the stage, perfectly merging with the virtual flames and igniting the atmosphere.
The fans in the audience were hoarse from shouting. They had seen countless lavish concerts, but never a stage that so exquisitely combined technology and artistic expression. Kitahara Shin's visual spectacle, a level of subversion that seemed to subvert expectations, declared Kitahara Productions' absolute dominance in the entertainment industry to all of Asia.
A three-hour celebration, every song a classic, every song a massive sing-along.
As midnight approached, Akina and Izumi stood hand in hand in the vast cosmic galaxy constructed by a holographic projection.
The 80,000 people in the stadium, along with tens of millions of viewers watching on television, counted down loudly with them.
"Ten, nine, eight — three, two, one!"
"Happy New Year!"
Real fireworks burst across the sky above the National Stadium, illuminating the entire Tokyo night sky. The chimes of the new millennium rang precisely across Asia.
At the same time.
Due to the time difference, Los Angeles had just welcomed its millennium morning. But a dozen hours later, as night fell on the North American continent, Hollywood's frenzy was in no way inferior to the concert in Tokyo.
Hollywood Boulevard, Egyptian Theatre.
This is one of the most iconic premiere venues in North American film history. Here, there are no flashy red carpets laid out to attract attention, nor any tedious celebrity fashion shows. Kitahara Shin has stripped away all social formalities unrelated to the film.
Those attending the midnight premiere, besides executives from Warner Bros. and Paramount, were mostly top film critics and columnists from across the United States, as well as hardcore movie fans who had obtained tickets through an extremely difficult lottery system.
Inside the screening room, in front of the enormous IMAX screen, everyone held their breath, their eyes brimming with barely suppressed anticipation and curiosity. For the past six months, they had been kept on tenterhooks by that poster featuring only a spinning top, eager to know what kind of monster the Asian director, who had created a thirty-meter-long rotating corridor, had made.
At exactly midnight, the theater lights went out completely.
After the dragon logo and Kitahara Production's logo flashed by.
Without any unnecessary background information, the first boom of Hans Zimmer's epic score exploded directly into the Dolby Atmos system throughout the entire screening room!
"BRAAAM—!!!"
The exceptionally deep, resonant electronic brass sound, seemingly capable of causing a heartbeat, sent a shiver through the entire audience, instantly raising goosebumps on their backs.
The screen lights up.
That was the coastline where waves crashed against the shore. Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Cobb, looked haggard, his suit tattered, washed ashore like a corpse. Beside him lay a slightly rusty metal top.
Several Japanese guards carrying rifles came over and roughly dragged him up.
The scene shifts to the interior of a fortress filled with classical Japanese style yet exuding a cold and aloof atmosphere.
Shin Kitahara plays the elderly Saito, his face full of wrinkles, but his eyes are as sharp as a vulture's. He sits at the end of the long table, playing with a spinning top in his hand, watching Cobb being brought in.
"You came here—to kill me?" Kitahara Shin's hoarse, weathered lines began.
The film critics in the screening room instantly brightened up. It was so high-quality! Kitahara Shin's cameo role perfectly captured the oppressive aura of a superior and the sluggishness of a dying man. The opening scene immediately created a huge suspense, gripping everyone's attention.
Then, the film’s narrative structure revealed its incredible magic.
The scene didn't continue in chronological order; instead, it instantly switched back to the past.
A young Saito is dining in a magnificent Japanese mansion. Cobb and his partner Arthur are sitting opposite him, trying to sell him a so-called "subconscious anti-theft technology."
"What if someone invades your dreams and steals your trade secrets?" Cobb leaned back in his chair and spoke eloquently.
As the audience listened intently, trying to grasp the concept, the film's screen suddenly began to vibrate slightly.
Outside the mansion, a large group of crazed thugs suddenly emerged from the once quiet Japanese streets. Holding torches, they began frantically storming the mansion's gates.
Inside the mansion, Saito glanced at the carpet beneath his feet, his eyes suddenly turning cold.
"The material of this carpet is wrong." Saito looked at Cobb, his tone icy. "The carpets in my mansion are pure wool, but this one—is synthetic."
Just as Saito realized this detail, the thugs broke through the gate, and the entire mansion began to shake violently and collapse!
The chandelier on the ceiling crashed down, sending rubble flying everywhere! This wasn't computer-generated special effects; it was a real physical set collapse, and the flying wood chips and dust in the scene had an unparalleled sense of realism.
"We've been discovered! He's resisting!" Arthur shouted.
The screen suddenly flashed.
Cobb and Arthur suddenly opened their eyes. To the audience's surprise, they were actually lying on a sofa in a dilapidated apartment, with complicated IV lines attached to their wrists, and Saito was sleeping in a chair next to them!
Outside the apartment window, a fierce gunfight was taking place, and the sounds of the riot were deafening.
"My God—was that magnificent mansion just now a dream?" A moviegoer in the front row couldn't help but exclaim.
However, what truly defied expectations was yet to come.
The situation in the apartment completely spiraled out of control, and stunt performers stormed in with submachine guns. In an attempt to forcibly awaken Cobb from his lower dream state, his companion shoved the still-sleeping Cobb into a bathtub filled with water!
Captured by a high-speed camera, Cobb's body slams heavily onto the water's surface. The water splashes outwards in a highly dynamic, slow-motion motion.
In the dream of that "mansion" just now, a large amount of real water burst through the paper doors of the Japanese-style building in an instant, engulfing Le Corbusier like a tsunami!
The intriguing concept of how the physical rules of different dreams influence each other is presented to the audience without reservation for the first time!
"Splash!"
Cobb gasped for breath underwater as the bathtub plunged into the water.
The screen flashes again!
The deafening roar of train wheels crushing the rails filled the air. Cobb opened his eyes, his forehead covered in sweat.
Apartments without riots, mansions without tsunami-like events.
He, Arthur, Saito, and the architect in charge of creating dreams were sitting quietly in a Shinkansen train carriage in Japan. The sun shone brightly outside the window, and the scenery rushed past. Each of them had a mysterious device attached to their arm, housed in a silver briefcase.
Only at this moment did all the audience members in the screening room fully understand the terrifying structure of the short ten-minute opening scene.
"A dream within a dream —"
A veteran film critic, known for his harshness in Hollywood, gripped the armrests of his chair tightly, his breathing becoming labored.
The mansion was the first layer of the dream, the rioted apartment was the second layer, and the Shinkansen train was their true reality! Cobb and his team had just infiltrated Saito's deeper dream again from within the second layer to steal secrets!
That's insane! That's incredibly precise!
A deathly silence fell over the entire screening room of the Egyptian Theatre. No one ate popcorn, and no one whispered. Everyone's brains were racing, trying to keep up with Kitahara Shin's tightly woven narrative rhythm.
This is only the first ten minutes of the movie.
As the plot unfolds, as Cobb explains to the newly recruited female college student how to construct dreams, and as the two sit in an open-air café on a Parisian street, the surrounding fruit stands and glass windows suddenly explode in slow motion without warning.
The audience's visual senses were hit by the first wave of nuclear-level shock!
"This was filmed live?!" Several film producers were screaming inwardly as they looked at the realistic fragments floating in mid-air.
And when the female student used her imagination to flip the entire bustling 7th arrondissement of Paris like folded paper, turning it 180 degrees so that the sky and the ground were connected end to end.
An uncontrollable gasp of amazement erupted throughout the screening room.
The city folding, which defied Newton's laws yet appeared seamless due to the absolutely realistic physical refraction of light and shadow, completely shattered their understanding of traditional Hollywood computer-generated special effects.
This isn't watching a movie; it's experiencing a double baptism of sight and intellect.
As the plot unfolds, the Dream Team is officially formed. In order to complete the ultimate mission of "implanting thoughts" given by Saito, they board the Boeing 747 passenger plane, take strong sedatives, and begin the ultimate fall that lasts for ten hours and goes through four layers of dreams.
The first floor depicts a Los Angeles street scene during a torrential downpour.
A mercenary raid sends the bread cart hurtling through a hail of bullets. A massive locomotive unexpectedly crushes rows of cars on a downtown street. The physically constructed train crash scene delivers a raw and oppressive realism that sends the audience's adrenaline soaring.
The second floor is a luxury hotel.
The physical weightlessness caused by the bread cart falling off the bridge on the first floor directly resulted in the second-floor hotel corridor completely losing gravity.
When Joseph's Arthur engages in a brutal, weightless fight with the subconscious defender in that narrow, 360-degree, endlessly swirling corridor, Hollywood moviegoers almost jump out of their seats.
The actor's body climbed up the wall, and the ceiling became the floor. Every punch was accompanied by realistic muscle feedback due to gravity distortion, a divine scene that no green screen chroma key could ever create.
Behind all this, Hans Zimmer's epic orchestral score intertwines with the electronic roar of "BRAAAM," pounding relentlessly at the audience's hearts like a death knell. The time difference between the three dream layers is edited seamlessly: the falling bread truck in the first layer, the elevator strapped with explosives in the second, and the snow-covered fortress exploding in the snowstorm in the third—all three countdowns reach midnight at the same time!
"Kick (Wake Up)!"
The old French song "No Regrets," played at ten times slower speed, suddenly accelerated in the stereo. As all the dreams shattered at the same moment, Cobb was jolted awake from the endless abyss.
The movie has come to its final scene.
Cobb returned to his home in America. He stood at the table and spun the metal top he used to distinguish between reality and dreams.
But instead of waiting for the result, he turned and ran to the sunlit courtyard, where he embraced the child he had been longing for.
The camera slowly zooms in on the spinning top that is rapidly rotating on the table.
The spinning top spun and spun, and there seemed to be a slight, almost imperceptible tremor.
Just as all the viewers craned their necks, staring intently at the screen, waiting for the spinning top to fall to confirm whether it was reality or a dream.
The screen suddenly went black.
The movie abruptly ended.
The screening room fell into absolute silence for five seconds.
"What the f**k?!"
A young movie fan suddenly stood up from his seat, grabbed his hair with both hands, and let out a roar that sounded like he was about to collapse.
The next second, the entire screening room seemed to be a powder keg that had been lit, erupting into a frenzied roar that seemed to lift the roof off! There were no polite and reserved applause, only crazy screams, whistles, and all sorts of unbelievable profanities.
Several veteran Hollywood film critics in the front row even forgot to grab their notebooks. They stood up, their faces flushed, staring intently at the black screen where the credits were already rolling, breathing heavily.
There was no superfluous narration, nor any tedious preaching about a happy ending. This eccentric Asian director, in the last second before the clock struck midnight, planted the seed of "shock" deep into the heart of Hollywood.
The midnight wind swept across Hollywood Boulevard, but the moment the theater doors were pushed open, the surging, frenzied roar was destined to ignite the entire 21st century.