Chapter 291

"Politics?" Patrick was a bit puzzled. "Perhaps I had such thoughts in the past, but now... standing on the shoulders of the Umbrella Corporation, a little bit of power doesn't really attract me anymore."

"Or are you planning to kick me out?" Patrick said, half-jokingly and half-worriedly.

"What are you thinking?" Murphy laughed. "With Umbrella's current size, can't I find a position for you to retire?"

"However, Umbrella is already on the right track and doesn't really need us to keep an eye on it in real-time. I want you to help me do something more important."

Patrick vaguely understood. "Go ahead, what do you want me to do?"

"I want to let this world enter the era of magic technology," Murphy said.

If it weren't for his intervention, this would be the beginning of the Internet, and for the next thirty-plus years, the world would enter the information age.

But compared to information technology, magic would undoubtedly bring a greater leap in productivity.

For the sake of the path of combining science and magic, he was bound to bring magic to the Muggle world.

Patrick nodded. "Just like in the Magic Research Institute? You want to bring it out into the open?"

"It has to be brought to the table sooner or later. Keeping it hidden forever is not a solution. The development of magic technology requires the participation of the whole society."

"But you are worried that this process might get out of control, and you want to control this process." Patrick understood. "So, you need political power."

Talking to smart people is just that simple. Murphy nodded. "There aren't many people I can fully trust, and I want you to help me do this."

Murphy really wanted to quickly advance the path of combining science and magic.

If he didn't care about the consequences, he could actually directly disclose the existence of magic and wizards. In this way, as long as he could withstand the backlash from the wizarding world, countries in the Muggle society would never let go of the study of magic, and the combination of science and magic would naturally emerge as a matter of course.

But in that case, he would have no way to control the direction of things, and he would completely lose the initiative. By then, the world would indeed move toward the path of combining science and magic, but it would be very difficult for him to reap the results of that path.

And if he wanted to be able to stably reap the results, he had to firmly hold the progress controller of the science-magic combination path in his own hands.

The construction of the Soviet National Magic Laboratory must also be kept as secret as possible, and the scope of those in the know must be controlled as much as possible, while hoping that the Ministries of Magic of various countries could help him clean up his mess well.

Patrick pondered for a while. "You aren't planning to have me run for office, are you?"

"Let's try it first, although it might take a long time," Murphy said. "You're a Conservative, right?"

The general election ended in April this year, and the parliamentary seats and the Prime Minister candidate had already been determined. If he prepared the election process now, Patrick would only be able to get that most important position in at least five years.

But without going through the election process, it would be really troublesome to control the British government.

Due to the differences between the two major parties and the existence of parliament, the power of the British Prime Minister was largely limited by his own party. If he couldn't get absolute support within his own party, it would be difficult to sit firmly in the position of Prime Minister.

This meant that to control the country, at the very least, he needed to control the Prime Minister and the hundreds of people in the ruling party in the House of Commons. In peacetime, to do such a thing, even with magic, it would take a lot of time and energy.

This was also the reason why Murphy would rather take the risk to plot against the Soviet Union.

"This kind of thing can't be rushed. You might need to spend a year or two entering the House of Commons, and then another year or two entering the Cabinet..."

This was still at a speed supported by massive amounts of money and magic.

The British election was an indirect election system; it was impossible for a pure amateur to come to power. Even if Murphy could control the Prime Minister for a while through magic, he might soon be brought down by a vote of no confidence in parliament. It was really very difficult to engage in dictatorship in the UK.

However, the path of combining science and magic was not a matter of a day or two, and Murphy was already prepared for a protracted war.

Wanting Patrick to go into politics was also a backup plan. Maybe there would be some opportunity later?

In July, Murphy drafted new rules and regulations for the Ministry of Magic, formed an employment agreement based on them, and after attaching the Soul Seed, had all staff at all levels of the Ministry of Magic sign it again.

The Soul Seeds in these agreements all had a communication interface backdoor. When necessary, Murphy could monitor the other party's every move through the backdoor, but under normal circumstances, this backdoor was in a closed state.

There was no way around it; the amount of information was too large. If these Soul Seed communication interfaces were all opened, he simply wouldn't be able to handle it.

In fact, even leaving aside the Soul Seeds on these Ministry of Magic staff, he had already issued too many Soul Seeds.

First was the "Anti-Cancer Virus" training program. He had already issued nearly two thousand Soul Seeds with interfaces. Although he had specially optimized the communication protocol for these Soul Seeds, only about one hundred words of text information would be transmitted at a time, but the sheer volume was huge, and the daily information exchange took up some of his energy.

Secondly, there was the "Anti-Aging Virus" used to control Soviet officials. These Soul Seeds were basically in standby mode. Occasionally, if an official was disobedient, Murphy only needed to send a command to destroy the other party.

Unfortunately, due to differences in political systems, this method in the Soviet Union was difficult to replicate in the UK, otherwise Murphy wouldn't have had to take such a big detour to let Patrick go into politics.

Once the National Magic Laboratory started later, he was bound to issue a large number of Soul Seeds. By then, how to handle this Soul Seed network would be a problem that must be solved.

The Soul Seed network ignored spatial distance and could exchange information with any individual within it at any time, making up for the regret that the world lacked instant communication means at this time.

At the same time, its confidentiality was excellent, making it most suitable for intelligence work.

Finally, it was also the safest means of control. As long as a Soul Seed was planted, he didn't have to worry about his subordinates betraying him.

But the Soul Seed network faced two problems if it wanted to expand.

One was the computing power problem. In order to supervise the entire Soul Seed network, Murphy must be at the center of the Soul Seed communication network; he must be the only convergence point. Therefore, the transmission and forwarding of information must be completed by him, which required a lot of computing power support.

Now the training task of the anti-cancer virus was basically approaching his daily processing limit. If he wanted to expand the scale further, he had to find a way to increase his computing power.

The second was the bandwidth problem. Soul Seeds could transmit various information. In addition to the simplest text information, they could also transmit sound, vision, and even other sensory information. Directly transmitting a thought was not impossible. But among these, text information had the smallest amount of information. If he wanted to rely on the Soul Seed network to monitor the other party's other sensory information in real-time, he would need greater transmission bandwidth.

However, Murphy's way of doing things had always been to use what he could for now and look for better options later. Both of these problems needed to be solved slowly, but before they were solved, the Soul Seed network could still be used.

So, before the end of July, several key members under Murphy—Patrick, Rasim, Winston, Barty Crouch, Lucius, the Wood siblings, Barty Crouch Jr., Boris, the werewolf mercenary Ladwan, etc. —all signed a special magic agreement and joined the Soul Seed network that Murphy had specially built for his core members: Raven's Court.

In August, the Soviet National Laboratory project was officially put on the agenda.

The Soviet military took over the task completely and began to look for great scientists who could preside over the plan.

At the same time, in order to solve the problem of wizard manpower needed for magic experiments, Murphy sent a letter to Her Majesty the Queen far away in Arkaim.

(End of chapter)