18:52:36.
Secret Realm Science Academy, underground command center.
The once information-laden screens had long since gone dark, replaced by rows of corded telephones, and even the telegraph machines had been dug out, as if a person unaware of what had happened suddenly burst in, they would surely think it was the end of days of a nuclear war or an AI crisis had occurred.
Anton, however, greatly enjoyed this scene before him; the tapping pulse sounds and ringing of the phones reminded him of his grandfather's memoirs, a famous decrypting expert, who met his telephone operator grandmother in a place like this.
Too many modern devices had transformed the intelligence war into a battle of machines against machines, a competition of pure compute power and network capabilities, lacking the brilliance of a battle of wits and far from reproducing the classics of total war.
