"Shiller, you bastard!"
The moment the voice came from the office door, Shiller knew who it was. Sure enough, Jonathan Crane angrily pushed open the office door and plopped down on the chair opposite Shiller.
"When the aliens invaded before, you actually wanted me to take the fall for you! Do you know how annoying that damn Malafax is?! You, a psychology professor, won't face the mind reader, and instead, you want me to do it. Where's the justice in that?!"
"I never asked you to go." Shiller leisurely pulled a pen out of the pen holder and said, "Malafax sought you out himself, it's not my business."
"If you hadn't misled him..."
"Why was I able to mislead him?"
"Because that damn Batman thinks I am..."
"Then why does Batman think you're the professor?"
Jonathan was at a loss for words. Why else? Because of that little prank he pulled at the banquet.
"Alright, aren't you fine now?" Shiller said while doodling on paper, "I do have a side job opportunity; are you interested?"
"What do you want me to do this time?" Jonathan, on full alert, thought—could Shiller really have something good here?
Shiller seemed to guess what he was thinking and said without looking up, "This time it's really a good thing. A generous lady has offered a high salary of 500,000 US dollars a year for a member of some evil organization. Don't you plan to apply?"
"Evil organization? The Justice League?" Jonathan raised an eyebrow.
"Do you even hear what you're saying?" Shiller looked at him with some helplessness and said, "It's called the Justice League, how could it be an evil organization?"
"Come on! Haven't you been online lately? The Justice League is getting bashed to pieces!" Jonathan said somewhat gloatingly, "That super evil robot claims it wants to dominate Earth, and the Justice League is nowhere to be found. Now everyone's criticizing them."
"But they sure are keeping calm. Not a single one stepped forward to speak. For all the media and TV stations, none of them managed to catch anyone. It's really fascinating."
"That's because they're smart." Shiller continued writing, saying, "Brainiac and those previous aliens are different. This guy is very clever and initially planned to disrupt humanity from the inside. If the Justice League stood up to oppose him now, they would be putting themselves in hot water."
How could Jonathan not understand? His eyes flickered as he said, "Are you saying the Justice League had long anticipated Brainiac would make such a move?"
"In terms of political struggle, compared to Oliver, Brainiac is just a novice with strategies on paper." Shiller snorted lightly and said, "He wants to disband us using human methods but still overestimates the human bottom line. He probably didn't expect the superheroes to abandon their posts."
Shiller wasn't making wild guesses. Ever since he learned of Brainiac's existence, he roughly knew what kind of approach this guy would use to invade Earth.
In the comics, this guy's Level 12 Wisdom was practically useless. The ways he used to cause trouble for humans were described as foolish, which might be an insult to fools.
He basically had just three tactics: cyber hacking, robot army, and sowing discord.
Either he used his mighty hacking skills to make something of the Justice League unusable; or he'd build a robot army to invade Earth; or he'd take advantage of a major event to stir things up inside or trick other aliens into causing trouble for Earth.
Aside from that, he didn't have many strategies.
However, Shiller knew the comics depicted it this way because the editors couldn't think of anything better. Also, if he were made too omniscient and omnipotent, wouldn't that make the Justice League seem useless?
The era in which Brainiac was conceived didn't yet catch on to "I anticipated your anticipation." Everyone fought head-on with real blades and guns. To keep the plot going, they naturally couldn't execute the settings too thoroughly.
However, now that Brainiac was by his side, and assuming he indeed had Level 12 Wisdom, he certainly wouldn't foolishly charge at Earth like in the comics.
"The Art of War by Sun Tzu" rightly says: "The best military strategy is to scheme, followed by diplomacy, and the worst is to besiege."
It means the finest war tactics are about strategy, then diplomacy, and the least favored is using weapons in battle.
And strategic measures are divided into upper, middle, and lower grades: the best used before the war, the next during war, and the least during negotiations.
And as for the so-called pre-war strategy, it's succinctly summed up in four characters: "disturb the mind."
If one could cause disruption within the opposition's ranks, one could win the war even before fighting.
Brainiac, being so clever, wouldn't forsake the best strategy for the inferior one. So, he must be thinking of a way to incite internal conflict among humans.
Very unfortunately, humans indeed are like a loose sandbox, easily scattered with a gust of wind, without much need for provocation from him.
However, the weak, ordinary people living on the surface for years have little influence on the situation. Brainiac's move seems to be splitting the poor and the rich, but in fact, it's still targeting the Justice League.
Brainiac makes such a flashy speech just to make more people know him, so that those with lower living standards and education levels see him as a savior.
If that's the case, once the Justice League steps out to deal with him, the Justice League will naturally be on the opposite side of these people.
The crowd strategy can indeed stir up a hurricane, but this only targets ordinary human society. The universe of American comics is filled with superhumans. To be fair, ordinary people have limited impact on superheroes.
No matter how many poor people oppose the Justice League, they really can't do much to the Justice League.
But the key is, the members of the Justice League are all heroes. The original intention of forming this organization was to bring a stable life to more ordinary people, minimizing their suffering as much as possible.
If they are opposed by most ordinary people, might they doubt themselves? Might they feel guilty? Might they hesitate?
Brainiac's move is actually a psychological tactic.
Pitting the general public against the Justice League is just the first step. The next step is naturally to buy off the rich and leaders, pitting them against the Justice League too.
In this way, the Justice League is almost on the opposite side of all humanity. Then, no kind of power can be smoothly exercised.
This plan is indeed vicious. But, as Shiller said, Brainiac's schemes are shallow when gained from paper. He overestimates the moral baseline of the Justice League, causing this move to die before being used.
Because the Justice League has gone off duty.
The Justice League's official website directly issued an announcement saying they're not dealing with this matter anymore. Below the announcement, there's indeed a torrent of curses, but most of it is complaining: "You've only been working a few days and you're taking a holiday?"
Ordinary people, although feeling speechless about the Justice League taking a holiday, are helpless. Some even think it's good if the Justice League doesn't care. What if Brainiac can really bring them a fairer life?
Conversely, the ones most desperately looking for the Justice League are the rich and leaders.
They're very aware that with Brainiac's approach, the first day this robot rules the Earth, they'll all be hanged on the streetlights. If the Justice League doesn't interfere, won't they lose their lives?
How can ordinary people mobilize so many media and TV stations? How is it possible for them to consistently denounce the Justice League as irresponsible? There must be shadows of rich folks and various governments.
So now, the public opinion landscape on Earth is quite bizarre: ordinary people are indifferent to the Justice League's whereabouts, not very concerned; the government and the wealthy, however, are frantically searching everywhere.
This is completely opposite to what Brainiac envisioned, preventing his subsequent plans from proceeding. He has to readjust his plan.
He's quite cunning. Just one night later, he issued another message claiming that if they want him to rule Earth, the Justice League must come out to negotiate with him.
This time, the ordinary people started panicking. Most people, holding a "give it a try, it doesn't matter" attitude, began demanding on the official website for the Justice League to engage with Brainiac.
The website didn't reply. The ordinary people's opinion also began to shift. Now the Justice League is facing criticism from both sides.
No matter how much they're criticized, these superhumans are determined not to show up. No one can do anything about it.
A few ordinary people are staying in Metropolis. Metropolis is Luther's turf, and no department can easily touch him. Plus, they're hiding inside Luthor Manor, and you can't just send troops to attack Luthor Manor, right?
Things are stalemated like this. Neither side is willing to retreat. By the time Jonathan arrived, the online criticism against the Justice League was overwhelmingly one-sided.
Shiller finally finished the work he was doing. He folded the paper into sections and put it aside, then looked at Jonathan and said, "How the Justice League is doing doesn't matter to us. Now we should consider whether to take that part-time job."
"500,000 US Dollars?" Jonathan skimmed his finger across the back of his hand, clicking his tongue and saying, "But no one would take out so much money for no reason. Don't you wonder what she wants us to do?"
"That's a good question." Shiller opened the computer and said while checking emails, "I don't think she'd ask us to do anything beyond our capabilities. Even if she does, we can refuse. You draw a salary from the school, and you can refuse to work overtime, can't you?"
Jonathan's eyes rolled as he replied, "Taking so much money while not working isn't very good, isn't it?"
"You actually have this kind of conscience?" Shiller said half-teasing, half-mockingly. But after thinking for a moment, he added, "Not working at all isn't very good. But when you don't want to work overtime, do you straightforwardly refuse with justification?"
"Of course not. It wasn't easy for me to get a stable job." Jonathan snorted coldly and said, "Occasionally working overtime once or twice is no big deal. If I'm really busy, I'll find a way to put it off, and if I can't delay it, I'll drag it out. We're not rescuing Jesus, what's the hurry?"
"That's exactly it."
"Give me her phone number, I'll have a talk with her."
"What's the rush, let's talk about it tomorrow."