why french cuisine is so popular

hi, my name is john green, this is crash courseworld history, and today we’re going to talk about the french revolution. admittedly,this wasn’t the french flag until 1794, but we just felt like he looked good in stripes.as does this guy. huh? so, while the american revolution is considereda pretty good thing, the french revolution is often seen as a bloody, anarchic mess,which... mr. green, mr. green! i bet, like always,it’s way more complicated than that. actually no. it was pretty terrible. also,like a lot of revolutions, in the end it exchanged an authoritarian regime for an authoritarianregime. but even if the revolution was a mess, its ideas changed human history - far more,i will argue, than the american revolution.

[theme music] right, so france in the 18th century was arich and populous country, but it had a systemic problem collecting taxes because of the wayits society was structured. they had a system with kings and nobles we now call the ancienrã©gime. thank you, three years of high school french. and for most french people, it sucked, becausethe people with the money - the nobles and the clergy - never paid taxes. so by 1789,france was deeply in debt thanks to their funding the american revolution - thank you,france; we will get you back in world wars i and ii. and king louis xvi was spendinghalf of his national budget to service the federal debt. louis tried to reform this system under variousfinance ministers. he even called for democracy

on a local level, but all attempts to fixit failed and soon france basically declared bankruptcy. this nicely coincided with hailstormsthat ruined a year’s harvest, thereby raising food prices and causing widespread hunger, which really madethe people of france angry, because they love to eat. meanwhile, the king certainly did not lookbroke, as evidenced by his well-fed physique and fancy footwear. he and his wife marieantoinette also got to live in the very nice palace at versailles thanks to god’s mandate,but enlightenment thinkers like kant were challenging the whole idea of religion, writingthings like: “the main point of enlightenment is of man’s release from his self-causedimmaturity, primarily in matters of religion.” so basically the peasants were hungry, theintellectuals were beginning to wonder whether

god could or should save the king, and thenobility were dithering about, eating foie gras and songbirds, failing to make meaningfulfinancial reform. in response to the crisis, louis xvi calleda meeting of the estates general, the closest thing that france had to a national parliament,which hadn’t met since 1614. the estates general was like a super parliament made upof representatives from the first estate, the nobles, the second estate, the clergy,and the third estate, everyone else. the third estate showed up with about 600representatives, the first and second estates both had about 300, and after several votes,everything was deadlocked, and then the third estate was like, “you know what? forgetyou guys. we’re gonna leave and we’re

gonna become our own national assembly.” this did not please king louis xvi. so whenthe new national assembly left the room for a break, he locked the doors, and he was like,"sorry, guys, you can't go in there. and if you can't assemble, how you gonna be a nationalassembly?" shockingly, the third estate representativeswere able to find a different room in france, this time an indoor tennis court where theyswore the famous tennis court oath. and they agreed not to give up until a french constitutionwas established. so then louis xvi responded by sending troopsto paris primarily to quell uprisings over food shortages, but the revolutionaries sawthis as a provocation, so they responded by

seizing the bastille prison on july 14th,which, coincidentally, is also bastille day. the bastille was stormed ostensibly to freeprisoners - although there were only seven in jail at the time - but mostly to get guns. but the really radical move in the nationalassembly came on august 4, when they abolished most of the ancien rã©gime - feudal rights,tithes, privileges for nobles, unequal taxation, they were all abolished - in the name of writinga new constitution. and then, on august 26th, the national assemblyproclaimed the declaration of rights of man and citizen, which laid out a system of rightsthat applied to every person, and made those rights integral to the new constitution. that’squite different from the american bill of

rights, which was, like, begrudgingly tackedon at the end and only applied to non-slaves. the doromac, as i called it in high school,declared that everyone had the right to liberty, property, and security - rights that the frenchrevolution would do an exceptionally poor job of protecting, but as noted last week,the same can be argued for many other supposedly more successful revolutions. okay, let’sgo to the thought bubble. meanwhile, back at versailles, louis xvi wasstill king of france, and it was looking like france might be a constitutional monarchy.which might've meant that the royal family could hang on to their awesome house, butthen, in october of 1789, a rumor started that marie antoinette was hoarding grain somewhereinside the palace.

and in what became known as the women's march,a bunch of armed peasant women stormed the palace and demanded that louis and marie antoinettemove from versailles to paris. which they did, because everyone is afraid of armed peasantwomen. and this is a nice reminder that to many people at the time, the french revolutionwas not primarily about fancy enlightenment ideas; it was mostly about lack of food anda political system that made economic contractions hardest on the poor. now, a good argument can be made that thisfirst phase of the revolution wasn’t all that revolutionary. the national assemblywanted to create a constitutional monarchy; they believed that the king was necessaryfor a functioning state and they were mainly

concerned that the voters and office holdersbe men of property. only the most radical wing, the jacobins, called for the creationof a republic. but things were about to get much more revolutionary - and also worse forfrance. first, the jacobins had a huge petition drivethat got a bit unruly, which led troops controlled not by the king but by the national assemblyto fire on the crowd, killing 50 people. and that meant that the national assembly, whichhad been the revolutionary voice of the people, had killed people in an attempt to reign inrevolutionary fervor. you see this a lot throughout history during revolutions. what looked likeradical hope and change suddenly becomes "the man" as increasingly radical ideas are embraced.thanks, thought bubble.

meanwhile, france’s monarchical neighborswere getting a little nervous about all this republic business, especially leopold ii,who in addition to being the not holy, not roman, and not imperial holy roman emperor,was marie antoinette’s brother. i should note, by the way, that at this point, theholy roman empire was basically just austria. also, like a lot of monarchs, leopold ii likedthe idea of monarchies, and he wanted to keep his job as a person who gets to stand aroundwearing a dress, pointing at nothing, owning winged lion-monkeys made out of gold. and whocan blame him? so he and king william frederick ii of prussia together issued the declaration of pillnitz,which promised to restore the french monarchy. at this point, louis and the national assemblydeveloped a plan: let’s invade austria.

the idea was to plunder austria’s wealthand maybe steal some austrian grain to shore up french food supplies, and also, you know,spread revolutionary zeal. but what actually happened is that prussia joined austria infighting the french. and then louis encouraged the prussians, which made him look like anenemy of the revolution, which, of course, he was. and as a result, the assembly votedto suspend the monarchy, have new elections in which everyone could vote (as long as theywere men), and create a new republican constitution. soon, this convention decided to have a trialfor louis xvi, who was found guilty and, by one vote, sentenced to die via guillotine.which made it difficult for austria and prussia to restore him to the throne. oh, it’s timefor the open letter?

an open letter to the guillotine. but first,let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today. oh, there’s nothing. oh my gosh, stan! jeez.that’s not funny! dear guillotine, i can think of no better example ofenlightenment thinking run amok. dr. joseph guillotine, the inventor of the guillotine, envisionedit as an egalitarian way of dying. they said the guillotine was humane and it also madeno distinction between rich or poor, noble or peasant. it killed equally. you were also celebrated for taking the tortureout of execution. but i will remind you, you did not take the dying out of execution. unfortunatelyfor you, france hasn’t executed anyone since 1977. but you’ll be happy to know that thelast legal execution in france was via guillotine.

plus, you’ve always got a future in horrormovies. best wishes, john green the death of louis xvi marks the beginningof the terror, the best known or at least the most sensational phase of the revolution.i mean, if you can kill the king, you can kill pretty much anyone, which is what thegovernment did under the leadership of the committee of public safety (motto: we suck atprotecting public safety), led by maximilien robespierre. the terror saw the guillotining of 16,000enemies of the revolution including marie “i never actually said let them eat cake”antoinette and maximilien robespierre himself, who was guillotined in the month of thermidorin the year two.

alright, so while france was broke and fightingin like nine wars, the committee of public safety changed the measurements of time because,you know, the traditional measurements are so irrational and religion-y. so they renamedall the months and decided that every day would have 10 hours and each hour 100 minutes. and then, after the terror, the revolutionpulled back a bit and another new constitution was put into place, this one giving a lotmore power to wealthy people. at this point, france was still at war with austria and britain,wars that france ended up winning, largely thanks to a little corporal named napoleonbonaparte. the war was backdrop to a bunch of coups andcounter coups that i won’t get into right

now because they were very complicated, butthe last coup that we’ll talk about, in 1799, established napoleon bonaparte as thefirst consul of france. and it granted him almost unlimited executive power under yetanother constitution. and when he was declared first consul of france, napoleon proclaimed"citizens! the revolution is established on the principals with which it began. it isover." by which he presumably meant that france’s government had gone all the way from hereto here to here. as with the american revolution, it’s easyto conclude that france’s revolution wasn’t all that revolutionary. i mean, napoleon wasbasically an emperor and, in some ways, he was even more of an absolute monarch thanlouis xvi had been. gradually the nobles came

back to france, although they had mostly losttheir special privileges. the catholic church returned, too, although much weaker becauseit had lost land and the ability to collect tithes. and when napoleon himself fell, france restoredthe monarchy, and except for a four-year period, between 1815 and 1870, france had a king whowas either a bourbon or a bonaparte. now, these were no longer absolute monarchs whoclaimed that their right to rule came from god; they were constitutional monarchs ofthe kind that the revolutionaries of 1789 had originally envisioned. but the fact remainsthat france had a king again, and a nobility, and an established religion and it was definitelynot a democracy or a republic. and perhaps this is why the french revolutionis so controversial and open to interpretation.

some argue the revolution succeeded in spreadingenlightenment ideals even if it didn’t bring democracy to france. others argue that thereal legacy of the revolution wasn’t the enhancement of liberty, but of state power. regardless, i’d argue that the french revolutionwas ultimately far more revolutionary than its american counterpart. i mean, in someways, america never had an aristocracy, but in other ways it continued to have one - thefrench enlightenment thinker, diderot, felt that americans should “fear a too unequaldivision of wealth resulting in a small number of opulent citizens and a multitude of citizensliving in misery.” and the american revolution did nothing to change that polarization ofwealth.

what made the french revolution so radicalwas its insistence on the universality of its ideals. i mean, look at article 6 of thedeclaration of rights of man and citizen: “law is the expression of the general will.every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. it mustbe the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.” those are radical ideas, that the laws comefrom citizens, not from kings or gods, and that those laws should apply to everyone equally.that’s a long way from hammurabi - and in truth, it’s a long way from the slaveholdingthomas jefferson. in the 1970s, chinese president zhou enlaiwas asked what the affects of the french revolution had been. and he said, “it’s too soonto say.” and in a way, it still is. the

french revolution asked new questions aboutthe nature of people’s rights and the derivation of those rights. and we’re still answeringthose questions and sorting through how our answers should shape society today - mustgovernment be of the people to be for the people? do our rights derive from nature orfrom god or from neither? and what are those rights? as william faulkner said, “the past is neverdead. it’s not even past.” thanks for watching. i’ll see you next week. crash course is produced and directed by stanmuller, our script supervisor is danica johnson, the show is written by my high school historyteacher raoul meyer and myself, our graphics team is thought bubble, and we are ably internedby meredith danko.

last week’s phrase of the week was "gianttea bag"; if you want to suggest future phrases of the week, or guess at this week's you cando so in comments, where you can also ask questions about today’s video that willbe answered by our team of historians. thanks for watching crash course, and as wesay in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

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why french cuisine famous

cafe plan b, french cuisine, sacramento, patio seating

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why chinese cuisine is popular

fried chicken. this is not what you call fried chicken! can i open my eyes? mmmm. lobster! i don't know what thatis and i don't wanna know. i kind of see like, like little spikes. it looks like there's eyes in here. it feels like shrimp, and i love shrimp.

yum! won't get poked. hey, it's not alive, justin. but those eyes are looking at me. is that shrimp? (breathing determinedly) yes. okay, nope, it's greasy, okay. i've seen my mom peelthe shrimp a lots of times,

so i'm gonna see if i canremember how to do it, so, okay, do that, then i give up. to celebrate the birth of jesus. is this meat or something? it tastes like it's meat. yuuuum! (gasping excitedly) sweet mama! water please!

this is christmas, still? japan? i hope i'm right for this one. the donkeys and the elephants. hillary clinton and donald trump. i think donald trump's the elephant, and hillary clinton's the donkey. you can take this away now. no!

'cause i don't like it. yes! this is happening! is this kfc chicken?! santa claus! i'm not gonna eat the santa claus. sorry, santa. my tummy's pretty big. no it's not, look!

(sniffs bucket) this is my favorite piece. i wish my dad. okay! i think... this is a brilliant countrythat eats chicken for christmas. a brilliant country! (crunchy chewing) they have to go to the other half of the world to just get this?

(inhaling)(chewing) - i'm gonna get really hyper after this. inside the cake there's more strawberry. - i think that's a smart idea. japan rocks! every time you say japanrocks i scoot it away from you.

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why asian cuisine is popular

- if it's anything like pho. this is gonna be fun. i tried. (giggles) (fun music) - i don't know whatvietnamese street food is. - mm mm. definitely expecting a lot of spice. - i've never eaten vietnamesestreet food before.

- and i have it a lot. - but we've both eaten foodthat's fallen on the street. - i grew up eatingvietnamese and chinese food so i've definitely had some of these. - [voiceover] cheers, buddy. - god damn! - this isn't the fault of the food, but there's cilantro in it,and so it takes like garbage. - the meat is so big in it!

- i think i'm in love. - not lipstick friendly, this spring roll. - i don't even wanna like, keep eating, 'cause i just wanna have it forever. - hmm, hmm. - okay. - this smells amazing. - smells so good. - i'm excited because--

- shrimp! - your parents would make it like, fresh? and they'll bring out abatch and it's like hot, and you'll finish it, and they'll bring another one and anotherone and another one. - is the fish sauce made of fish? - [voiceover] yes.- okay. - mmmmmm, that fish sauce, though, son! - this is dope, this is very, very tasty.

- are you gonna eat that onion? (laughs) - [voiceover] there's pigthree ways on this plate. - my mom used to make thistoo, like in a big bowl, and literally, i'll justeat it for meals and meals. - it sounds like your wholelife growing up it was your mom turning out food andyou're just eating it. - it's like thanksgiving all the time, like you get so much different kinds

of foods everywhere all the places. - you realize that combiningthings makes them better? - i do know that. that's why i'm combiningall this [bleep] in my face. - i want it to be a little firmer. - ooh, no i love the softness. - i would drink fish sauce. wouldn't you? - no.

- my breath is gonnasmell like this for days. - [voiceover] oooh. - [voiceover] what? - colors - the brown black stuff is chunky. is it beans? (slurping) - oh, god. - the texture of the greenstuff is really weird.

- i really like it when thedesserts are also an activity because it's just fun for the kids. - it's crunchy, it'schewy, it's like gooey. - it would be reallyawesome and refreshing for a summer day. - i love that it's like ice cream, but not too cold togive me a brain freeze. - it brings me back home,so like my family and my mom and i love it so much.

- asian people always do-- - you just know what you're doing with it. - their food's so good. - the fish sauce, really-- - yeah, that was the cream of the crop. - i wanna eat vietnamese street food for the rest of my life. - we out, we did it! good job, sorry.

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whose cuisine will reign supreme

lecture iii democratic china theoretically speaking, the empire of chinais ruled by an autocratic monarch, responsible only to god, whose representativehe is on earth. once every year the emperor prays at the templeof heaven, and sacrifices in solemn state upon its altar.he puts himself, as it were, into communication with the supreme being,and reports upon the fidelity with which he has carried out his imperialtrust. if the emperor rules wisely and well, withonly the happiness of his

people at heart, there will be no sign fromabove, beyond peace and plenty in the empire, and now and then a doubleear of corn in the fields—a phenomenon which will be duly recordedin the _peking gazette_. but should there be anything like laxnessor incapacity, or still worse, degradation and vice, then a comet may perhapsappear, a pestilence may rage, or a famine, to warn the erring rulerto give up his evil ways. and just as the emperor is responsible toheaven, so are the viceroys and governors of the eighteen provinces—tospeak only of china proper—nominally responsible to him, inreality to the six departments

of state at peking, which constitute the centralgovernment, and to which a seventh has recently been added—adepartment for foreign affairs. so long as all goes well—and in ordinarytimes that "all" is confined to a regular and sufficient supply of revenuepaid into the imperial treasury—viceroys and governors of provincesare, as nearly as can be, independent rulers, each in his own domain. for purposes of government, in the ordinarysense of the term, the 18 provinces are subdivided into 80 areas knownas "circuits," and over

each of these is set a high official, whois called an intendant of circuit, or in chinese a _tao-t'ai_. his circuitconsists of 2 or more prefectures, of which there are in all 282distributed among the 80 circuits, or about an average of 3 prefecturesto each. every prefecture is in turn subdivided intoseveral magistracies, of which there are 1477 in all, distributed amongthe 282 prefectures, or about an average of 5 magistracies to each. immediately below the magistrates may be saidto come the people; though naturally an official who rules over an areaas big as an average

english county can scarcely be brought intopersonal touch with all those under his jurisdiction. this difficultyis bridged over by the appointment of a number of head men, or headboroughs,who are furnished with wooden seals, and who are held responsiblefor the peace and good order of the wards or boroughs over whichthey are set. the post is considered an honourable one, involving asit does a quasi-official status. it is also more or less lucrative,as it is necessary that all petitions to the magistrate, all conveyancesof land, and other legal instruments, should bear the seal of the headman, as a guarantee of

good faith, a small fee being payable on eachnotarial act. on the other hand, the post is occasionallyburdensome and trying in the extreme. for instance, if a head man failsto produce any criminals or accused persons, either belonging to, or knownto be, in his district, he is liable to be bambooed or otherwise severelypunished. in ordinary life the head man is not distinguishablefrom the masses of his fellow-countrymen. he may often be seenworking like the rest, and even walking about with bare legs and barefeet. thus in a descending scale we have the emperor,the viceroys and

governors of the 18 provinces, the intendants,or _tao-t'ais_, of the 80 circuits, the prefects of the 282 prefectures,the magistrates of the 1477 magistracies, the myriad headboroughs,and the people. the district magistrates, so far as officialsare concerned, are the real rulers of china, and in conjunction withthe prefects are popularly called "father-and-mother" officials, as thoughthey stood _in loco parentium_ to the people, whom, by the way,they in turn often speak of, even in official documents, as "the babies." the ranks of these magistrates are replenishedby drafts of those

_literati_ who have succeeded in taking thethird, or highest, degree. thus, the first step on the ladder is opento all who can win their way by successful competition at certain literaryexaminations, so long as each candidate can show that none of his ancestorsfor three generations have been either actors, barbers and chiropodists,priests, executioners, or official servants. want of means may be said to offer no obstaclein china to ambition and desire for advancement. the slightest aptitudein a boy for learning would be carefully noted, and if found tobe the genuine article, would

be still more carefully fostered. not onlyare there plenty of free schools in china, but there are plenty ofpersons ready to help in so good a cause. many a high official has risenfrom the furrowed fields, his educational expenses as a student, andhis travelling expenses as a candidate, being paid by subscription in hisnative place. once successful, he can easily find a professionalmoney-lender who will provide the comparatively large sums requiredfor his outfit and journey to his post, whither this worthy actuallyaccompanies him, to remain until he is repaid in full, with interest.

a successful candidate, however, is not usuallysent straight from the examination-hall to occupy the importantposition of district magistrate. he is attached to some magistracyas an expectant official, and from time to time his capacity is testedby a case, more or less important, which is entrusted to his managementas deputy. the duties of a district magistrate are sonumerous and so varied that one man could not possibly cope with themall. at the same time he is fully responsible. in addition to presidingover a court of first instance for all criminal trials in his district,he has to act as

coroner (without a jury) at all inquests,collect and remit the land-tax, register all conveyances of landand house-property, act as preliminary examiner of candidates for literarydegrees, and perform a host of miscellaneous offices, even to prayingfor rain or fine weather in cases of drought or inundation. he is up,if anything, before the lark; and at night, often late at night, heis listening to the protestations of prisoners or bambooing recalcitrantwitnesses. but inasmuch as the district may often bea large one, and two inquests may be going on in two different directionson the same day, or there

may be other conflicting claims upon his time,he has constantly to depute his duties to a subordinate, whoseusual duties, if he has any, have to be taken by some one else, and soon. thus it is that the expectant official every now and then getshis chance. this scheme leaves out of consideration anumber of provincial officials, who preside over departments whichbranch, as it were, from the main trunk, and of whom a few words onlyneed now be said. there are several "commissioners," as theyare sometimes called; for instance, the commissioner of finance, otherwiseknown as the provincial

treasurer, who is charged with the fiscaladministration of his particular province, and who controls thenomination of nearly all the minor appointments in the civil service, subjectto the approval of the governor. then there is the commissioner of justice,or provincial judge, responsible for the due administration ofjustice in his province. there is also the salt commissioner, who collectsthe revenue derived from the government monopoly of the salt trade;and the grain commissioner, who looks after the grain-tax,and sees that the tribute

rice is annually forwarded to peking, forthe use of the imperial court. there are also military officials, belongingto two separate and distinct army organisations. the manchus, when they conquered the empire,placed garrisons of their own troops, under the command of manchu generals,at various important strategic points; and the tartar generals,as they are called, still remain, ranking nominally just above the viceroyof the province, over whose actions they are supposed to keep acareful watch. then there is a provincial army, with a provincialcommander-in-chief,

etc. now let us return to the main trunk, workingupward by way of recapitulation. we have reached the people and their headmen, or headboroughs, over whom is set the magistrate, with a nominalsalary which would be quite insufficient for his needs, even if he wereever to draw it. for he has a large staff to keep up; some few of whom,no doubt, keep themselves by fees and _douceurs_ of various kinds obtainedfrom litigants and others who have business to transact.

the income on which the magistrate lives,and from which, after a life of incessant toil, he saves a moderate competencefor the requirements of his family, is deducted from the grossrevenues of his magistracy, leaving a net amount to be forwarded to theimperial treasury. so long as his superiors are satisfied with what heremits, no questions are asked as to original totals. it is recognisedthat he must live, and the value of every magistracy is known withina few hundred ounces of silver one way or the other. above the magistrate, and in control of severalmagistracies, comes the

prefect, who has to satisfy his superiorsin the same way. he has the general supervision of all civil businessin his prefecture, and to him must be referred every appeal case from themagistracies under his jurisdiction, before it can be filed in ahigher court. above him comes the intendant of circuit,or _tao-t'ai_, in control of several prefectures, to whom the same ruleapplies as to satisfying demands of superiors; and above him come thegovernor and viceroy, who must also satisfy the demands of the statedepartments in peking. it would now appear, from what has been alreadystated, that all a

viceroy or governor has to do is to exactsufficient revenue from immediate subordinates, and leave them toexact the amounts necessary from _their_ subordinates, and so on downthe scale until we reach the people. the whole question therefore resolvesitself into this, what can the people be made to pay? the answer to that question will be somewhatof a staggerer to those who from distance, or from want of close observation,regard the chinese as a down-trodden people, on a level with thefellahin of egypt in past times. for the answer, so far as my own experiencegoes, is that only so

much can be got out of the chinese peopleas the people themselves are ready and willing to pay. in other words,with all their show of an autocratic ruler and a paternal government,the people of china tax themselves. i am now about to do more than state thisopinion; i am going to try to prove it. the philosopher mencius, who flourished aboutone hundred years after confucius, and who is mainly responsible forthe final triumph of the confucian doctrine, was himself not so mucha teacher of ethics as

a teacher of political science. he spent agreat part of his life wandering from feudal state to feudal state,advising the various vassal nobles how to order their dominions with themaximum of peace and prosperity and the minimum of misery and bloodshed. one of these nobles, duke wãªn, asked menciusconcerning the proper way to govern a state. "the affairs of the people," replied the philosopher,"must not be neglected. for the way of the people is thus:if they have a fixed livelihood, their hearts will also be fixed;but if they have not a

fixed livelihood, neither will their heartsbe fixed. and if they have not fixed hearts, there is nothing in theway of crime which they will not commit. then, when they have involvedthemselves in guilt, to follow up and punish them,—this is but to ensnarethem." in another passage mencius says: "the tyrantsof the last two dynasties, chieh and chou, lost the empire because theylost the people, by which i mean that they lost the hearts of the people.there is a way to get the empire;—get the people, and you have theempire. there is a way to get the people;—get their hearts, and you havethem. there is a way to get

their hearts;—do for them what they wish,and avoid doing what they do not wish." those are strong words, especially when weconsider that they come from one of china's most sacred books, regardedby the chinese with as much veneration as the bible by us,—a portionof that confucian canon, the principles of which it is the object of everystudent to master, and should be the object of every chinese officialto carry into practice. but those words are mild compared with anotherutterance by mencius in the same direction.

"the people are the most important elementin a nation; the gods come next; the sovereign is the least importantof all." we have here, in chinese dress, wherein indeedmuch of western wisdom will be found, if students will only lookfor it, very much the same sentiment as in the familiar lines by olivergoldsmith:— "princes and lords may flourish or may fade,—a breath can make them, as a breath has made; but a bold peasantry, their country's pridewhen once destroyed, can never be supplied." the question now arises, are all these solemnsayings of mencius to be regarded as nothing more than mere literaryrodomontade, wherewith to

beguile an enslaved people? do the mandarinskeep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope? or do thechinese people enjoy in real life the recognition which should be accordedto them by the terms of the confucian canon? every one who has lived in china, and haskept his eyes open, must have noticed what a large measure of personal freedomis enjoyed by even the meanest subject of the son of heaven. anychinaman may travel all over china without asking any one's leave to start,and without having to report himself, or be reported by his innkeeper,at any place at which

he may choose to stop. he requires no passport.he may set up any legitimate business at any place. he is noteven obliged to be educated, or to follow any particular calling. he isnot obliged to serve as a soldier or sailor. there are no sumptuarylaws, nor even any municipal laws. outside the penal code, which has beenpronounced by competent western lawyers to be a very ably constructedinstrument of government, there is nothing at all in the way of law,civil law being altogether absent as a state institution. even the penalcode is not too rigidly enforced. so long as a man keeps clear ofsecret societies and remains a

decent and respectable member of his familyand of his clan, he has very little to fear from the officials. the oldballad of the husbandman, which has come down to us from a very earlydate indeed, already hints at some such satisfactory state of things.it runs thus:— "work, work,—from the rising suntill sunset comes and the day is done i plough the sod,and harrow the clod, and meat and drink both come to me,—ah, what care i for the powers that be?" many petty offences which are often dealtwith very harshly in england, pass in china almost unnoticed. no shopkeeperor farmer would be fool

enough to charge a hungry man with stealingfood, for the simple reason that no magistrate would convict. it is theshopkeeper's or farmer's business to see that such petty thefts cannotoccur. various other points might be noticed; but we must get backto taxation, which is really the _crux_ of the whole position. all together the chinese people may be saidto be lightly taxed. there is the land-tax, in money and in kind; a taxon salt; and various _octroi_ and customs-duties, all of whichare more or less fixed quantities, so that the approximate amountwhich each province should

contribute to the central government is wellknown at peking, just as it is well known in each province what amounts,approximately speaking, should be handed up by the various gradesof territorial officials. i have already stated that municipal governmentis unknown; consequently there are no municipal rates to be paid, nowater-rate, no poor-rate, and not a cent for either sanitation or education.and so long as the imperial taxes are such as the people havegrown accustomed to, they are paid cheerfully, even if sometimes with difficulty,and nothing is said. a curious instance of this conservative spiritin the chinese people,

even when operating against their own interests,may be found in the tax known as _likin_, against which foreign governmentshave struggled so long in vain. this tax, originally one-tenthper cent on all sales, was voluntarily imposed upon themselves by thepeople, among whom it was at first very popular, with a view of makingup the deficiency in the land-tax of china caused by the t'ai-p'ingrebellion and subsequent troubles. it was to be set apart for militarypurposes only,—hence its common name "war-tax,"—and was alleged bythe tsung-li yamãªn to be adopted merely as a temporary measure. yet,though forty years have

elapsed, it still continues to be collectedas if it were one of the fundamental taxes of the empire, and the objectionsto it are raised, not by the people of china, but by foreignmerchants with whose trade it interferes. here we have already one instance of voluntaryself-taxation on the part of the people; what i have yet to show isthat all taxation, even though not initiated as in this case by the people,must still receive the stamp of popular approval before being putinto force. on this point i took a good many notes during a fairly longresidence in china, leading

to conclusions which seem to me irresistible. let us suppose that the high authorities ofa province have determined, for pressing reasons, to make certain changesin the incidence of taxation, or have called upon their subordinatesto devise means for causing larger sums to find their way intothe provincial treasury. the invariable usage, previous to the impositionof a new tax, or change in the old, is for the magistrate concernedto send for the leading merchants whose interests may be involved,or for the headboroughs and village elders, according to the circumstancesin each case, and to

discuss the proposition in private. over aninformal entertainment, over tea and pipes, the magistrate pleads the necessitiesof the case, and the peremptory orders of his superiors; themerchants or village elders, feeling that, as in the case of _likin_ abovementioned, when taxes come they come to stay, resist on principlethe new departure by every argument at their control. the negotiationends, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, in a compromise.in the hundredth instance the people may think it right to give way,or the mandarin may give way, in which case things remain _in statu quo_,and nothing further is heard

of the matter. there occur cases, however, happily rare,in which neither will give way—at first. then comes the tug of war.a proclamation is issued, describing the tax, or the change, or whateverit may be, and the people, if their interests are sufficientlyinvolved, prepare to resist. combination has been raised in china to thelevel of a fine art. nowhere on earth can be found such perfect cohesionof units against forces which would crush each unit, taken individually,beyond recognition. every trade, every calling, even the meanest,has its guild, or

association, the members of which are everready to protect one another with perfect unanimity, and often great self-sacrifice.and combination is the weapon with which the people resist,and successfully resist, any attempt on the part of the governing classesto lay upon them loads greater than they can or will bear. the chineseare withal an exceptionally law-abiding people, and entertaina deep-seated respect for authority. but their obedience and theirdeference have pecuniary limits. i will now pass from the abstract to the concrete,and draw upon my

note-book for illustrations of this theorythat the chinese are a self-taxing and self-governing people. under date october 10, 1880, from chung-kingin the province of sså­ch'uan, the following story will be foundin the _north china herald_, told by a correspondent:— "yesterday the pah-shien magistrate issueda proclamation, saying that he was going to raise a tax of 200 _cash_on each pig killed by the pork-butchers of this city, and the butcherswere to reimburse themselves by adding 2 _cash_ per _pound_to the price of pork. the

butchers, who had already refused to pay 100_cash_ per hog, under the late magistrate, were not likely to submitto the payment of 200 under this one, and so resolved not to kill pigsuntil the grievance was removed; and this morning a party of themwent about the town and seized all the pork they saw exposed for sale. thenthe whole of the butchers, over five hundred at least, shut themselvesup in their guild, where the magistrate tried to force an entry with twohundred or three hundred of his runners. the butchers, however, refusedto open the door, and the magistrate had to retire very much excited,threatening to bring them to

terms. people are inclined to think the magistrateacted wrongly in taking a large force with him, saying he oughtto have gone alone." three days later, october 13:— "there is great excitement throughout thecity, and i am told that the troops are under arms. i have heard severalvolleys of small arms being fired off, as if in platoon exercise. allthe shops are shut, people being afraid that the authorities may dealseverely with the butchers, and that bad characters will profit by theexcitement to rob and plunder the shops."

two days later, october 15:— "the pork-butchers are still holding out intheir guild-house, and refuse to recommence business until the officialshave promised that the tax on pigs will not be enforced now or hereafter.the prefect has been going the rounds of the city calling on thegood people of his prefecture to open their shops and transactbusiness as usual, saying that the tax on pigs did not concern otherpeople, but only the butchers." one day later, october 16:—

"the pah-shien magistrate has issued a proclamationapologising to the people generally, and to the butchers particularly,for his share of the work in trying to increase the obnoxious taxon pigs. so the officials have all miserably failed in squeezing a _cash_out of the 'sovereign people' of sså­ch'uan." i have a similar story from hangchow, in chehkiang,under date april 10, 1889, which begins as follows:— "the great city of hangchow is extremely dry.there are probably seven hundred thousand people here, but not a dropof tea can be bought in any

of the public tea-houses. there is a strikein tea. the tea-houses are all closed by common agreement, to resista tax, imposed in the beginning of the year, to raise money forthe sufferers by famine." in the next communication from this correspondent,we read, "the strike of the keepers of tea-shops ended very quietlya few days after it began, by the officials agreeing to acceptthe sum of fifteen hundred dollars once for all, and release tea fromtaxation." this is what happened recently in pakhoi,in the province of kuangtung:—

"without the consent of the dealers, a newlocal tax was imposed on the raw opium in preparation for use in the opiumshops. the imposition of this tax brought to light the fact, hithertokept secret, that of the opium consumed in pakhoi and its district,only sixty-two per cent was imported drug, the remaining third being nativeopium, which was smuggled into pakhoi, and avoided all taxation.the new tax brought this smuggled opium under contribution, and thiswas more than the local opium interest would stand. the opium dealersadopted the usual tactics of shutting their shops, thus transferringthe _onus_ of opposition to

their customers. these last paid a threateningvisit to the chief authority of pakhoi, and then wrecked thenewly established tax-office. this indication of popular feeling was enoughfor the local authorities at lien-chou, the district city, and the taxwas changed so as to fall on the foreign opium, the illicit native supplybeing discreetly ignored, and all rioters forgiven." so much for taxation. let us take an instanceof interference with prescriptive rights, in connection with thegreat incorruptible viceroy, chang chih-tung, to whom we are all so muchindebted for his attitude

during the siege of the legations in 1900. ten years ago, when starting his iron-worksat wuchang, in the province of hupeh, he ordered the substitution of adrawbridge over a creek for the old bridge which had stood there fromtime immemorial, the object being to let steamers pass freely up and down.unfortunately, the old bridge was destroyed before the new one wasready. what was the result? "the people rushed to the yamãªn, and insistedby deputation and mass-brawling on the restoration of the bridge. "finally, the viceroy thought it worth hiswhile to issue a rhyming

proclamation, assuring the people that whathe was doing was for their good, and justifying his several schemes." yet chang chih-tung always has been, and isstill, one of the strongest officials who ever sat upon a viceroy's throne. in november, 1882, there was a very seriousmilitary riot in hankow, on the opposite side of the yang-tsze to wuchang.it arose out of a report that four soldiers had been arrested and wereto be secretly beheaded the same night. this rising might have assumedvery serious dimensions, but for the prompt submission of the viceroyto the soldiers' demands.

as it was, the whole city was thrown intoa state of the utmost alarm. few of the inhabitants slept through the night.the streets were filled with a terror-stricken population, expectingat any moment to hear that the prison doors had been forced, and thecriminals let loose to join the soldiers in their determination to killthe officials, plunder the treasury, and sack the city. many citizensare said to have fled from the place; and the sudden rush upon the _cash_shops, to convert paper notes into silver, brought some of them tothe verge of bankruptcy. i have recorded, under march, 1891, a casein which several manchus were

sentenced by the magistrate of chinkiang,at the instance of the local general, to a bambooing for rowdy behaviour.this is what followed:— "the friends of the prisoners, to the numberof about three hundred, assembled at the city temple, vowing vengeanceon the magistrate and general. they proceeded to the yamãªn of thegeneral, wrecked the wall and part of the premises, and put the cityin an uproar. the magistrate fled with his family to the tao-t'ai's yamãªn,where two hundred regular troops were sent to protect him against thefury of the manchus, who threatened his life."

this is what happened to another magistratein kiangsu. he had imprisoned a tax-collector for being in arrearswith his money; and the tax-collector's wife, frantic with rage, rushedto the magistracy and demanded his release. unfortunately, she wassuffering from severe asthma; and this, coupled with her anger,caused her death actually in the magistrate's court. the people then smashedand wrecked the magistracy, and pummelled and bruised themagistrate himself, who ultimately effected his escape in disguiseand hid himself in a private dwelling.

every one who has lived in china knows howdangerous are the periods when vast numbers of students congregate forthe public examinations. here is an example. at canton, in june, 1880, a student took backa coat he had purchased for half a dollar at a second-hand clothesshop, and wished to have it changed. the shopkeeper gave him ratheran impatient answer, and thereupon the student called in a band ofhis brother b.a.'s to claim justice for literature. they seized a reckoning-board,or abacus, that lay on the counter, struck one of the assistantsin the shop, and drew

blood. the shopkeeper then beat an alarm onhis gong, and summoned friends and neighbours to the rescue. wordwas at once passed to bands of students in the neighbourhood, who promptlyobeyed the call of a distressed comrade, and blows were deliveredright and left. the shopkeepers summoned the district magistrateto the scene. upon his arrival he ordered several of the literaryringleaders, who had been seized and bound by the shopkeepers, to becarried off and impounded. in the course of the evening he sentencedthem to be beaten. a body of more than a hundred students then wentto his yamãªn and demanded the

immediate release of the prisoners. the magistrategrew nervous, yielded to their threats, and sent several of theoffending students home in sedan-chairs. the magistrate then seized theassistants in the shop where the row began and sentenced them tobe beaten on the mouth. next morning ten thousand shops were closedin the city and suburbs. the shopkeepers said they could not do businessunder such an administration of law. in the course of the morning a largemeeting of the students was held in a college adjoining the examinationhall. the district magistrate went out to confer with them. thestudents cracked his gong,

and shattered his sedan-chair with showersof stones, and then prodded him with their fans and umbrellas, and bespatteredhim with dirt as his followers tried to carry him away on theirshoulders. he was quite seriously hurt. the prefect then met a large deputation ofthe shopkeepers in their guild-house in the course of the day, andexpressed his dissatisfaction at the way in which the district magistratehad acted. a settlement was thus reached, which included fireworks forthe students, and business was resumed.

* * * * * any individual who is aggrieved by the action,or inaction, of a chinese official may have immediate recourse to thefollowing method for obtaining justice, witnessed by me twice duringmy residence in china, and known as "crying one's wrongs." dressed in the grey sackcloth garb of a mourner,the injured party, accompanied by as many friends as he or shecan collect together, will proceed to the public residence of the offendingmandarin, and there howl and be otherwise objectionable, day andnight, until some relief is

given. the populace is invariably on the sideof the wronged person; and if the wrong is deep, or the delay in rightingit too long, there is always great risk of an outbreak, with theusual scene of house-wrecking and general violence. it may now well be asked, how justice canever be administered under such circumstances, which seem enough to paralyseauthority in the presence of any evil-doer who can bring uphis friends to the rescue. to begin with, there is in china, certainlyat all great centres, a large criminal population without friends,—menwho have fallen from

their high estate through inveterate gambling,indulgence in opium-smoking, or more rarely alcohol. noone raises a finger to protect these from the utmost vengeance of the law. then again, the chinese, just as they taxthemselves, so do they administer justice to themselves. trade disputes,petty and great alike, are never carried into court, there beingno recognised civil law in china beyond custom; they are settled by theguilds or trades-unions, as a rule to the satisfaction of all parties.many criminal cases are equally settled out of court, and the offenderis punished by agreement

of the clan-elders or heads of families, andnothing is said; for compounding a felony is not a crime, but avirtue, in the eyes of the chinese, who look on all litigation with aversionand contempt. in the case of murder, however, and some formsof manslaughter, the ingrained conviction that a life should alwaysbe given for a life often outweighs any money value that could be offered,and the majesty of the law is upheld at any sacrifice. it is not uncommon for an accused person tochallenge his accuser to a kind of trial by ordeal, at the local temple.

kneeling before the altar, at midnight, inthe presence of a crowd of witnesses, the accused man will solemnly burna sheet of paper, on which he has written, or caused to be written, anoath, totally denying his guilt, and calling upon the gods to strikehim dead upon the spot, or his accuser, if either one is deviating inthe slightest degree from the actual truth. this is indeed a severe ordeal to a superstitiouspeople, whatever it may seem to us. even the mandarins avail themselvesof similar devices in cases where they are unable to clear upa mystery in the ordinary

way. in a well-known case of a murder by a gangof ruffians, the magistrate, being unable to fix the guilt of the fatalblow upon any one of the gang, told them that he was going to applyto the gods. he then caused them all to be dressed in black coats, asis usual with condemned criminals, and arranged them in a dark shed,with their faces to the wall, saying that, in response to his prayers,a demon would be sent to mark the back of the guilty man. when at lengththe accused were brought out of the shed, one of them actually hada white mark on his back, and

he at once confessed. in order to outwit thedemon he had slily placed his back against the wall, which by the magistrate'ssecret orders had previously received a coat of whitewash. i will conclude with a case which came undermy own personal observation, and which first set me definitelyon the track of democratic government in china. in 1882 i was vice-consul at pagoda anchorage,a port near the famous foochow arsenal which was bombarded by admiralcourbet in 1884. my house and garden were on an eminence overlookingthe arsenal, which was about

half a mile distant. one morning, after breakfast,the head official servant came to tell me there was troubleat the arsenal. a military mandarin, employed there as superintendentof some department, had that morning early kicked his cook, a boy of seventeen,in the stomach, and the boy, a weakly lad, had died within anhour. the boy's widowed mother was sitting by the body in the mandarin'shouse, and a large crowd of workmen had formed a complete ring outside,quietly awaiting the arrival and decision of the authorities. by five o'clock in the afternoon, a deputyhad arrived from the

magistracy at foochow, twelve miles distant,empowered to hold the usual inquest on behalf of the magistrate. the inquestwas duly held, and the verdict was "accidental homicide." in shorter time than it takes me to tell thestory, the deputy's sedan-chair and paraphernalia of office weresmashed to atoms. he himself was seized, his official hat and robewere torn to shreds, and he was bundled unceremoniously, not altogetherunbruised, through the back door and through the ring of onlookers,into the paddy-fields beyond. then the ring closed up again, anda low, threatening murmur

broke out which i could plainly hear frommy garden. there was no violence, no attempt to lynch the man; thecrowd merely waited for justice. that crowd remained there all night,encircling the murderer, the victim, and the mother. bulletins werebrought to me every hour, and no one went to bed. meanwhile the news had reached the viceroy,and by half-past nine next morning the smoke of a steam-launch was seenaway up the bends of the river. this time it bore the district magistratehimself, with instructions from the viceroy to hold a newinquest.

at about ten o'clock he landed, and was receivedwith respectful silence. by eleven o'clock the murderer'shead was off and the crowd had dispersed. end of lecture iii lecture iv china and ancient greece the study of chinese presents at least oneadvantage over the study of the greek and roman classics; i might add,of hebrew, of syriac, and even of sanskrit. it may be pursued for twodistinct objects. the first,

and most important object to many, is to acquirea practical acquaintance with a _living_ language, spokenand written by about one-third of the existing population of theearth, with a view to the extension of commercial enterprise, and tothe profits and benefits which may legitimately accrue therefrom. thesecond is precisely that object in pursuit of which we apply ourselvesso steadily to the literatures and civilisations of greece androme. sir richard jebb, in his essay on "humanismin education," points out that even less than a hundred years ago theclassics still held a

virtual monopoly, so far as literary studieswere concerned, in the public schools and universities of england."the culture which they supplied," he argues, "while limited in thesphere of its operation, had long been an efficient and vital influence,not only in forming men of letters and learning, but in trainingmen who afterwards gained distinction in public life and in variousactive careers." long centuries had fixed so firmly in theminds of our forefathers a belief, and no doubt to some extent a justifiablebelief, in the perfect character of the languages, the literatures,the arts, and some of the

social and political institutions of ancientgreece and rome, that a century or so ago there seemed to be nothingelse worth the attention of an intellectual man. the comparatively recentintroduction of sanskrit was received in the classical world, not merelywith coldness, but with strenuous opposition; and all the genius ofits pioneer scholars was needed to secure the meed of recognition whichit now enjoys as an important field of research. the regius professorshipof greek in the university of cambridge, england, was foundedin 1540; but it was not until 1867, more than three centuries later,that sanskrit was admitted

into the university curriculum. it is stillimpossible to gain a degree through the medium of chinese, but signs arenot wanting that the necessity for such a step will be more widelyrecognised in the near future. all the material lies ready to hand. thereis a written language, which for difficulty is unrivalled, polished andperfected by centuries of the minutest scholarship, until it is impossibleto conceive anything more subtly artistic as a vehicle of human thought.those mental gymnastics, of such importance in the training of youth,which were once claimed

exclusively for the languages of greece androme, may be performed equally well in the chinese language. theeducated classes in china would be recognised anywhere as men of trainedminds, able to carry on sustained and complex arguments without violatingany of the aristotelian canons, although as a matterof fact they never heard of aristotle and possess no such work in alltheir extensive literature as a treatise on logic. the affairs of theirhuge empire are carried on, and in my opinion very successfully carriedon—with some reservations, of course—by men who have had to get theirmental gymnastics wholly and

solely out of chinese. i am not aware that their diplomatists sufferby comparison with ours. the marquis tsãªng and li hung-chang, forinstance, representing opposite schools, were admitted masters of their craft,and made not a few of our own diplomatists look rather small besidethem. speaking further of the study of the greekand roman classics, sir richard jebb says: "there can be no betterproof that such a discipline has penetrated the mind, and has been assimilated,than if, in the crises of life, a man recurs to the greatthoughts and images of the

literature in which he has been trained, andfinds there what braces and fortifies him, a comfort, an inspiration,an utterance for his deeper feelings." sir richard jebb then quotes a touching storyof lord granville, who was president of the council in 1762, and whoselast hours were rapidly approaching. in reply to a suggestion that,considering his state of health, some important work should be postponed,he uttered the following impassioned words from the iliad,spoken by sarpedon to glaucus: "ah, friend, if, once escaped fromthis battle, we were for

ever to be ageless and immortal, i would notmyself fight in the foremost ranks, nor would i send thee intothe war that giveth men renown; but now,—since ten thousand fatesof death beset us every day, and these no mortal may escape or avoid,—nowlet us go forward." such was the discipline of the greek and romanclassics upon the mind of lord granville at a great crisis in his life. let us now turn to the story of a chinesestatesman, nourished only upon what has been too hastily stigmatised as "thedry bones of chinese literature."

wãªn t'ien-hsiang was born in a.d. 1236. atthe age of twenty-one he came out first on the list of successful candidatesfor the highest literary degree. upon the draft-list submitted to theemperor he had been placed seventh; but his majesty, after looking overthe essays, drew the grand examiner's attention to the originality andexcellence of that of wãªn t'ien-hsiang, and the examiner—himself agreat scholar and no sycophant—saw that the emperor was right,and altered the places accordingly. four or five years later wãªn t'ien-hsiangattracted attention by

demanding the execution of a statesman whohad advised that the court should quit the capital and flee before theadvance of the victorious mongols. then followed many years of hardfighting, in the course of which his raw levies were several times severelydefeated, and he himself was once taken prisoner by the mongolgeneral, bayan, mentioned by marco polo. he managed to escape on thatoccasion; but in 1278 the plague broke out in his camp, and he was againdefeated and taken prisoner. he was sent to peking, and everyeffort was made to induce him to own allegiance to the mongol conqueror,but without success. he was

kept several years in prison. here is a well-knownpoem which he wrote while in captivity:— "there is in the universe an _aura_, an influencewhich permeates all things, and makes them what they are. below,it shapes forth land and water; above, the sun and the stars. in manit is called spirit; and there is nowhere where it is not. "in times of national tranquillity, this spiritlies hidden in the harmony which prevails. only at some greatepoch is it manifested widely abroad."

here wãªn t'ien-hsiang recalls, and dwellslovingly upon, a number of historical examples of loyalty and devotion.he then proceeds:— "such is this grand and glorious spirit whichendureth for all generations; and which, linked with the sunand moon, knows neither beginning nor end. the foundation of all thatis great and good in heaven and earth, it is itself born from theeverlasting obligations which are due by man to man. "alas! the fates were against me; i was withoutresource. bound with fetters, hurried away toward the north, deathwould have been sweet

indeed; but that boon was refused. "my dungeon is lighted by the will-o'-the-wispalone: no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in whichi dwell. the ox and the barb herd together in one stall: the rooster andthe phoenix feed together from one dish. exposed to mist and dew, ihad many times thought to die; and yet, through the seasons of two revolvingyears, disease hovered around me in vain. the dark, unhealthy soilto me became paradise itself. for there was that within me whichmisfortune could not steal away. and so i remained firm, gazing at thewhite clouds floating

over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrowboundless as the sky. "the sun of those dead heroes has long sinceset, but their record is before me still. and, while the wind whistlesunder the eaves, i open my books and read; and lo! in their presencemy heart glows with a borrowed fire." at length, wãªn t'ien-hsiang was summonedinto the presence of kublai khan, who said to him, "what is it you want?""by the grace of his late majesty of the sung dynasty," he replied,"i became his majesty's minister. i cannot serve two masters. i onlyask to die." accordingly he

was executed, meeting his death with composure,and making a final obeisance toward the south, as though hisown sovereign was still reigning in his capital. may we not then plead that this chinese statesman,equally with lord granville, at a crisis of his life, recurredto the great thoughts and images of the literature in which he had beentrained, and found there what braced and fortified him, a comfort,an inspiration, an utterance for his deeper feelings? chinese history teems with the names of menwho, with no higher source

of inspiration than the confucian canon, haveyet shown that they can nobly live and bravely die. han yã¼ of the eighth and ninth centurieswas one of china's most brilliant statesmen and writers, and roserapidly to the highest offices of state. when once in power, he began toattack abuses, and was degraded and banished. later on, when thecourt, led by a weak emperor, was going crazy over buddhism, he presenteda scathing memorial to the throne, from the effect of which it may wellbe said that buddhism has not yet recovered. the emperor was furious,and han yã¼ narrowly escaped

with his life. he was banished to the extremewilds of kuangtung, not far from the now flourishing treaty port ofswatow, where he did so much useful work in civilising the aborigines,that he was finally recalled. those wilds have long since disappeared assuch, but the memory of han yã¼ remains, a treasure for ever. in atemple which contains his portrait, and which is dedicated to him, agrateful posterity has put up a tablet bearing the following legend,"wherever he passed, he purified." the last emperor of the ming dynasty, whichwas overthrown by rebels

and then supplanted by the manchus in 1644,was also a man who in the elysian fields might well hold up his headamong monarchs. he seems to have inherited with the throne a legacy ofnational disorder similar to that which eventually brought about the ruinof louis xvi of france. with all the best intentions possible, hewas unable to stem the tide. over-taxation brought in its train, as italways does in china, first resistance and then rebellion. the emperorwas besieged in peking by a rebel army; the treasury was empty; therewere too few soldiers to man the walls; and the capital fell.

on the previous night, the emperor, who hadrefused to flee, slew the eldest princess, commanded the empress tocommit suicide, and sent his three sons into hiding. at dawn the bell wasstruck for the court to assemble; but no one came. his majesty thenascended the well-known hill in the palace grounds, and wrote a last decreeon the lapel of his robe:— "poor in virtue, and of contemptible personality,i have incurred the wrath of high heaven. my ministers have deceivedme. i am ashamed to meet my ancestors; and therefore i myselftake off my cap of state, and

with my hair covering my face, await dismembermentat the hands of you rebels." instead of the usual formula, "respect this!"the emperor added, "spare my people!" he then hanged himself, and the great mingdynasty was no more. chinese studies have always laboured underthis disadvantage,—that the ludicrous side of china and her civilisationwas the one which first attracted the attention of foreigners; andto a great extent it does so still. there was a time when china was regardedas a land of opposites,

_i.e._ diametrically opposed to us in everyimaginable direction. for instance, in china the left hand is the placeof honour; men keep their hats on in company; use fans; mount theirhorses on the off side; begin dinner with fruit and end it with soup; shaketheir own instead of their friends' hands when meeting; begin at whatwe call the wrong end of a book and read from right to left down verticalcolumns; wear white for mourning; have huge visiting-cards insteadof small ones; prevent criminals from having their hair cut; regardthe south as the standard point of the compass; begin to build a houseby putting on the roof

first; besides many other nicer distinctions,the mere enumeration of which would occupy much of the time at mydisposal. the other side of the medal, showing the similarities,and even the identities, has been unduly neglected; andyet it is precisely from a study of these similarities and identitiesthat the best results can be expected. a glance at any good dictionary of classicalantiquities will at once reveal the minute and painstaking care withwhich even the small details of life in ancient greece have been examinedinto and discussed. the

chinese have done like work for themselves;and many of their beautifully illustrated dictionaries of archã¦ologywould compare not unfavourably with anything we have to show. there are also many details of modern everydayexistence in china which may fairly be quoted to show that chinesecivilisation is not, after all, that comic condition of topsy-turvey-domwhich the term usually seems to connote. the chinese house may not be a facsimile ofa greek house,—far from it. still, we may note its position, facing south,in order to have as much

sun in winter and as little in summer as possible;its division into men's and women's apartments; the fact thatthe doors are in two leaves and open inward; the rings or handles on thedoors; the portable braziers used in the rooms in cold weather;and the shrines of the household gods;—all of which characteristicsare to be found equally in the greek house. there are also points of resemblance betweenthe lives led by chinese and athenian ladies, beyond the fact thatthe former occupy a secluded portion of the house. the chinese do not admittheir women to social

entertainments, and prefer, as we are toldwas the case with athenian husbands, to dine by themselves rather thanexpose their wives to the gaze of their friends. if the athenian dame"went out at all, it was to see some religious procession, or to a funeral;and if sufficiently advanced in years she might occasionally visita female friend, and take breakfast with her." and so in china, it is religion which breaksthe monotony of female life, and collects within the temples, onthe various festivals, an array of painted faces and embroidered skirtsthat present, even to the

european eye, a not unpleasing spectacle. that painting the face was universal amongthe women of greece, much after the fashion which we now see in china,has been placed beyond all doubt, the pigments used in both cases beingwhite lead and some kind of vegetable red, with lampblack for the eyebrows. in marriage, we find the chinese aiming, likethe greeks, at equality of rank and fortune between the contracting parties,or, as the chinese put it, in the guise of a household word, at adue correspondence between the doorways of the betrothed couple. as ingreece, so in china, we find

the marriage arranged by the parents; theveiled bride; the ceremony of fetching her from her father's house; theequality of man and wife; the toleration of subordinate wives, and manyother points of contact. the same sights and scenes which are dailyenacted at any of the great chinese centres of population seem also tohave been enacted in the athenian market-place, with its simmeringkettles of boiled peas and other vegetables, and its chapmen and retailersof all kinds of miscellaneous goods. in both we have the publicstory-teller, surrounded by a well-packed group of fascinated and eagerlisteners.

the puppet-shows, á¼€î³á½±î»î¼î±ï„î± î½îµï…ïá½¹ïƒï€î±ïƒï„î±,which herodotus tells us were introduced into greece from egypt, are constantlyto be seen in chinese cities, and date from the second century b.c.,—asuggestive period, as i shall hope to show later on. the chinese say that these puppets originatedin china as follows:— the first emperor of the han dynasty was besieged,about 200 b.c., in a northern city, by a vast army of hsiung-nu,the ancestors of the huns, under the command of the famous chieftain,mao-tun. one of the chinese generals with the besieged emperor discoveredthat mao-tun's wife, who

was in command on one side of the city, wasan extremely jealous woman; and he forthwith caused a number of woodenpuppets, representing beautiful girls and worked by strings, tobe exhibited on the wall overlooking the chieftain's camp. at this,we are told, the lady's fears for her husband's fidelity were aroused, andshe drew off her forces. the above account may be dismissed as a tale,in which case we are left with punch and judy on our hands. to return to city sights. the tricks of street-jugglersas witnessed in china seem to be very much those of ancientgreece. in both countries we

have such feats as jumping about amongst nakedswords, spitting fire from the mouth, and passing a sword down thethroat. then there are the advertisements on the walls;the mule-carts and mule-litters; the sunshades, or umbrellas,carried by women in greece, by both sexes in china. the japanese language is said to contain noterms of abuse, so refined are the inhabitants of that earthly paradise.the chinese language more than makes up for this deficiency; and itis certainly curious that, as in ancient greece, the names of animals arenot frequently used in this

connection, with the sole exception of thedog. no chinaman will stand being called a dog, although he really hasa great regard for the animal, as a friend whose fidelity is proofeven against poverty. in the ivory shops in china will be foundmany specimens of the carver's craft which will bear comparison, for thepatience and skill required, with the greatest triumphs of greek workmen.both nations have reproduced the human hand in ivory; the greeksused it as an ornament for a hairpin; the chinese attach it to aslender rod about a foot and a half in length, and use it as a back-scratcher.

the chinese drama, which we can only tracevaguely to central asian sources, and no farther back than the twelfthcentury of our era, has some points of contact with the greek drama.in greece the plays began at sunrise and continued all day, as theydo still on the open-air stages of rural districts in china, in bothcases performed entirely by men, without interval between the pieces,without curtain, without prompter, and without any attempt at realism. as formerly in greece, so now in china, thewords of the play are partly spoken and partly sung, the voice of the actorbeing, in both countries,

of the highest importance. like the greekactor before masks were invented, the chinese actor paints his face,and the thick-soled boot which raises the chinese tragedian from theground is very much the counterpart of the cothurnus. the arrangement by which the greek gods appearedin a kind of balcony, looking out as it were from the heights ofolympus, is well known to the chinese stage; while the methodical characterof greek tragic dancing, with the chorus moving right and left, isstrangely paralleled in the dances performed at the worship of confuciusin the confucian temples,

details of which may be seen in any illustratedchinese encyclopã¦dia. games with dice are of a high antiquity ingreece; they date in china only from the second century a.d., havingbeen introduced from the west under the name of _shu p'u_, a term whichhas so far defied identification. the custom of fighting quails was once a politicalinstitution in athens, and under early dynasties it was afavourite amusement at the imperial court of china. the game of "guess-fingers" is another formof amusement common to both

countries. so also is the custom of drinkingby rule, under the guidance of a toast-master, with fines of deep draughtsof wine to be swallowed by those who fail in capping verses, answeringconundrums, recognising quotations; to which may be added the customof introducing singing-girls toward the close of the entertainment. at athens, too, it was customary to begina drinking-bout with small cups, and resort to larger ones later on,a process which must be familiar to all readers of chinese novels,wherein, toward the close of the revel, the half-drunken hero invariablycalls for more capacious

goblets. neither does the ordinary chinamanapprove of a short allowance of wine at his banquets, as witness the followingstory, translated from a chinese book of anecdotes. a stingy man, who had invited some gueststo dinner, told his servant not to fill up their wine-cups to the brim,as is usual. during the meal, one of the guests said to his host,"these cups of yours are too deep; you should have them cut down." "whyso?" inquired the host. "well," replied the guest, "you don't seemto use the top part for anything."

there is another story of a man who went todine at a house where the wine-cups were very small, and who, on takinghis seat at table, suddenly burst out into groans and lamentations."what is the matter with you?" cried the host, in alarm. "ah,"replied his guest, "my feelings overcame me. my poor father, whendining with a friend who had cups like yours, lost his life, by accidentallyswallowing one." the water-clock, or _clepsydra_, has beenknown to the chinese for centuries. where did it come from? is it amere coincidence that the ancient greeks used water-clocks?

is it a coincidence that the greeks used anabacus, or counting-board, on which the beads slid up and down in verticalgrooves, while on the chinese counting-board the only differenceis that the beads slide up and down on vertical rods? is it a mere coincidence that the olive shouldbe associated in china, as in greece, with propitiation? to this day,a chinaman who wishes to make up a quarrel will send a piece of redpaper containing an olive, in token of friendly feeling; and the acceptanceof this means that the quarrel is at an end.

the olive was supposed by the greeks to havebeen brought by hercules from the land of the hyperboreans; the chinesesay it was introduced into china in the second century b.c. the extraordinary similarities between thechinese and pythagorean systems of music place it beyond a doubt thatone must have been derived from the other. the early jesuit fathers declaredthat the ancient greeks borrowed their music from the chinese;but we know now that the music in question did not exist in china untiltwo centuries after its appearance in greece.

the music of the confucian age perished, booksand instruments together, at the burning of the books, in b.c. 212;and we read that in the first part of the second century b.c. the hereditarymusic-master was altogether ignorant of his art. where didthe new art come from? and how are its greek characteristics to be accountedfor? there are also equally extraordinary similaritiesbetween the chinese and greek calendars. for instance, in b.c. 104 the chinese adopteda cycle of nineteen years, a period which was found to bring togetherthe solar and the lunar

years. but this is precisely the cycle, ἐî½î½îµî±îºî±î¹î´îµîºî±îµï„î·ïá½·ï‚,said to have been introduced by meton in the fifth century b.c.,and adopted at athens about b.c. 330. have we here another coincidence of no particularimportance? the above list might be very much extended.meanwhile, the question arises: are there any records of any kindin china which might lead us to suppose that the chinese ever came intocontact in any way with the civilisation of ancient greece?

we know from chinese history that, so farback as the second century b.c., victorious chinese generals carriedtheir arms far into central asia, and succeeded in annexing such distantregions as khoten, kokand, and the pamirs. about b.c. 138 a statesmannamed chang ch'ien was sent on a mission to bactria, but was taken prisonerby the hsiung-nu, the forebears of the huns, and detained in captivityfor over ten years. he finally managed to escape, and proceeded tofergana, and thence on to bactria, returning home in b.c. 126, afterhaving been once more captured by the hsiung-nu and again detainedfor about a year.

now bactria was then a greek kingdom, whichhad been founded by diodotus in b.c. 256; and it would appear to have had,already for some time, commercial relations with china, for changch'ien reported that he had seen chinese merchandise exposed there inthe markets for sale. we farther learn that chang ch'ien brought backwith him the walnut and the grape, previously unknown in china, and taughthis countrymen the art of making wine. the wine of the confucian period was likethe wine of to-day in china, an ardent spirit distilled from rice. thereis no grape-wine in china

now, although grapes are plentiful and good.but we know from the poetry which has been preserved to us, as well asfrom the researches of chinese archã¦ologists, that grape-wine waslargely used in china for many centuries subsequent to the date of changch'ien; in fact, down to the beginning of the fifteenth century, ifnot later. one writer says it was brought, together withthe "heavenly horse," from persia, when the extreme west was opened up,a century or so before the christian era, as already mentioned. i must now make what may well appear to bean uncalled-for digression;

but it will only be a temporary digression,and will bring us back in a few minutes to the grape, the heavenly horse,and to persia. mirrors seem to have been known to the chinesefrom the earliest ages. one authority places them so far back as 2500b.c. they are at any rate mentioned in the _odes_, say 800 b.c., andwere made of polished copper, being in shape, according to the earliestdictionary, like a large basin. about one hundred years b.c., a new kind ofmirror comes into vogue, called by an entirely new name, not beforeused. in common with the word

previously employed, its indicator is "metal,"showing under which kingdom it falls,—_i.e._ a mirror of metal.these new mirrors were small disks of melted metal, highly polishedon one side and profusely decorated with carvings on the other,—adescription which exactly tallies with that of the ancient greek mirror.specimens survived to comparatively recent times, and it is evenalleged that many of these old mirrors are in existence still. a largenumber of illustrations of them are given in the great encyclopã¦diaof the eighteenth century, and the fifth of these, in chronological order,second century b.c., is

remarkable as being ornamented with the well-known"key," or greek pattern, so common in chinese decoration. another is covered with birds flying aboutamong branches of pomegranate laden with fruit cut in halves to show theseeds. shortly afterward we come to a mirror so lavishlydecorated with bunches of grapes and vine-leaves that the eye isarrested at once. interspersed with these are several animals, among othersthe lion, which is unknown in china. the chinese word for "lion," asi stated in my first lecture, is _shih_, an imitation of the persian _shã­r_.there is also a lion's

head with a bar in its mouth, recalling thedoor-handles to temples in ancient greece. besides the snake, the tortoise,and the sea-otter, there is what is far more remarkable thanany of these, namely, a horse with wings. on comparing the latter with pegasus as heappears in sculpture, it is quite impossible to doubt that the chineseis a copy of the greek animal. the former is said to have come downfrom heaven, and was caught, according to tradition, on the banksof a river in b.c. 120. the name for pomegranate in china is "theparthian fruit," showing that

it was introduced from parthia, the chineseequivalent for parthia being 安息 _ansik_, which is an easy corruptionof the greek Ἀïïƒá½±îºî·ï‚, the first king of parthia. the term for grape is admittedly of foreignorigin, like the fruit itself. it is 葡萄 _pu t'ou_. here it iseasy to recognise the greek word î’á½¹ï„ïï…ï‚, a cluster, or bunch, of grapes. similarly, the chinese word for "radish,"蘿蔔 _lo po_, also of foreign origin, is no doubt a corruption of ῥάï†î·,it being of course well known that the chinese cannot pronounce an initial_r_.

there is one term, especially, in chinesewhich at once carries conviction as to its greek origin. this isthe term for watermelon. the two chinese characters chosen to representthe sound mean "western gourd," _i.e._ the gourd which came from thewest. some chinese say, on no authority in particular, that it was introducedby the kitan tartars; others say that it was introduced by the firstemperor of the so-called golden tartars. but the chinese term is stillpronounced _si kua_, which is absolutely identical with the greek wordïƒî¹îºá½»î±, of which liddell and scott say, "perhaps the melon." for thesethree words it would now

scarcely be rash to substitute "the watermelon." we are not on quite such firm ground whenwe compare the chinese kalends and ides with similar divisions of the romanmonth. still it is interesting to note that in ancientchina, the first day of every month was publicly proclaimed, a sheepbeing sacrificed on each occasion; also, that the latin word _kalendae_meant the day when the order of days was proclaimed. further, that the term in chinese for idesmeans to look at, to see, because on that day we can see the moon; andalso that the latin word

_idus_, the etymology of which has not beenabsolutely established, may possibly come from the greek á¼°î´îµá¿–î½"to see," just as _kalendae_ comes from îºî±î»îµá¿–î½ "to proclaim." as to many of the analogies, more or lessinteresting, to be found in the literatures of china and of western nations,it is not difficult to say how they got into their chinese setting. for instance, we read in the history of theming dynasty, a.d. 1368-1644, a full account of the method bywhich the spaniards, in the sixteenth century, managed to obtain firsta footing in, and then the

sovereignty over, some islands which havenow passed under the american flag. the following words, not quite withoutinterest at the present day, are translated from the above-mentionedaccount of the philippines:— "the fulanghis (_i.e._ the franks), who atthat time had succeeded by violence in establishing trade relations withluzon (the old name of the philippines), saw that the nation wasweak, and might easily be conquered. accordingly, they sent rich presentsto the king of the country, begging him to grant them a pieceof land as big as a bull's

hide, for building houses to live in. theking, not suspecting guile, conceded their request, whereupon the fulanghiscut the hide into strips and joined them together, making many hundredsof ten-foot measures in length; and then, having surrounded with thesea piece of ground, called upon the king to stand by his promise. theking was much alarmed; but his word had been pledged, and there was noalternative but to submit. so he allowed them to have the ground, charginga small ground-rent as was the custom. but no sooner had the fulanghisgot the ground than they put up houses and ramparts and arranged theirfire-weapons (cannon) and

engines of attack. then, seizing their opportunity,they killed the king, drove out the people, and took possessionof the country." it is scarcely credible that chinese historianswould have recorded such an incident unless some trick of the kindhad actually been carried out by the spaniards, in imitation of the famousclassical story of the foundation of carthage. a professional writer of marvellous taleswho flourished in the seventeenth century tells a similar storyof the early dutch settlers:— "formerly, when the dutch were permitted totrade with china, the

officer in command of the coast defences wouldnot allow them, on account of their great numbers, to come ashore.the dutch begged very hard for the grant of a piece of land suchas a carpet would cover; and the officer above mentioned, thinking thatthis could not be very large, acceded to their request. a carpet was accordinglylaid down, big enough for about two people to stand on; but by dintof stretching, it was soon able to accommodate four or five; andso the foreigners went on, stretching and stretching, until at last itcovered about an acre, and by and by, with the help of their knives,they had filched a piece of

ground several miles in extent." these two stories must have sprung from oneand the same source. it is not, however, always so simple a matter tosee how other western incidents found their way into chinese literature.for instance, there is a popular anecdote to be found in a chinesejest-book, which is almost word for word with another anecdotein greek literature:— a soldier, who was escorting a buddhist priest,charged with some crime, to a prison at a distance, being very anxiousnot to forget anything, kept saying over and over the four thingshe had to think about, viz.:

himself, his bundle, his umbrella, and thepriest. at night he got drunk, and the buddhist priest, after firstshaving the soldier's head, ran away. when the soldier awaked, he beganhis formula, "myself, bundle, umbrella—o dear!" cried he, puttinghis hands to his head, "the priest has gone. stop a moment," he added,finding his hands in contact with a bald head, "here's the priest; it isi who have run away." as found in greek literature, the story, attributedto hierocles, but probably much later, says that the prisonerwas a bald-headed man, a condition which is suggested to the chinesereader by the introduction

of a buddhist priest. whether the chinese got this story from thegreeks, or the greeks got it from the chinese, i do not pretend to know.the fact is that we students of chinese at the present day know very littlebeyond the vague outlines of what there is to be known. students ofgreek have long since divided up their subject under such heads as purescholarship, history, philosophy, archã¦ology, and then again havemade subdivisions of these. in the chinese field nothing of the kind hasyet been done. the consequence is that the labourers in thatfield, compelled to work over

a large superficies, are only able to turnout more or less superficial work. the cry is for more students, practicalstudents of the written and colloquial languages, for the purposesof diplomatic intercourse and the development of commerce; and alsostudents of the history, philosophy, archã¦ology, and religions ofchina, men whose contributions to our present stock of knowledge may throwlight upon many important points, which, for lack of workmen, have hithertoremained neglected and unexplored. end of lecture iv�

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in the not too distant future.on a tired battlefield. war has become routine. war... ...has changed. it's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. it's an endless seriesof proxy battles fought by mercenariesand machines. war,

and its consumption of life, has become a well-oiled machine. war has changed. id-tagged soldierscarry id-tagged weapons, use id-tagged gear. nanomachines inside their bodiesenhance and regulate their abilities. genetic control. information control. emotion control.

battlefield control. everything is monitored and kept under control. the age of deterrencehas become the age of control... all in the name of averting catastrophefrom weapons of mass destruction. and he whocontrols the battlefield... controls history. when the battlefieldis under total control... ...war...

becomes routine. head north. and... try not to run intoany gekko along the way. three days earlier. otacon. even the dead have ears. snake, we've got to go. you've got an old friendwaiting for you.

otacon... the test results... proteome analysis was positive. but the mrna analysisturned up negative. the wrinkled skin,the hardened arteries... your early aging symptomslook like classic werner's syndrome. but none of the tests were ableto pinpoint the cause. so? well...

judging by how rapidlythe aging has progressed, i'd say... a year at best, right? yeah... snake... let's try another doctor. it won't make any difference. i'm not an ordinary manto begin with. not to mention foxdie. you're right.

but we don't knowwhere naomi is... naomi... ah, snake! colonel! good to see you. i'm not a colonel anymore, snake. i figured the only placei'd ever see you dressed like that would be at your daughter's wedding. what are you doing these days?

i'm working for an organizationunder the un security council... ...the analysis and assessment staff of the pmc oversightand inspection committee. i remember the resolutionbeing passed a few years ago. i came across some... ...information in my work. we've found him... in the middle east. what?

only two eggs today? solidus must have taken the day off. 7-8 9-2 5-9-0-3-6-0... 3-3-0 5-3 0-5... 4-8 8-2 0-4-6-6-5-2... act i :liquid sun the manhattan incidenttriggered a serious public backlash. now the us hasto think twice before intervening militarilyin other countries' affairs.

this has fueled a pushtowards military privatization, with pmcs at the heartof that movement. pmcs... private military companies. that's right. pmcs have no basisin nations or ideologies. they are private enterprises,driven by profit. in addition to dispatchingmercenaries to war zones, they secure weaponsand train local soldiers. they're contractors for war itself,

and business is good. their clientele includesdeveloped nations like the us, rebel factions lookingto seize power by force... smaller countries lackingarmies of their own... even terrorist groups. they're in the americas,asia, the south pacific, europe, africa,the middle east... the rise of the pmc hasspawned a war by proxy, and it's spreadingacross the globe.

they, they're re- sunny, we'll eat them later, ok? every age has its mercenary. these pmcs are nothing new - we've been dealing with them sincebefore the turn of the century. no, snake. they're nothing likethe mercenaries of the past. they're ready.

sorry, i'm a littlebusy right now. the pentagon's newbattlefield control system has produceda decisive difference... between hired guns and the pmcs of today. the system was developedby armstech security. armstech? you mean at corp? yeah. in recent years,

at corp has shifted focus from weaponsdevelopment to security tools. and since the establishment of at security, business has been booming. the system makes itpossible to integrate not only micro-level informationon individual soldiers and units, but also macro-level informationabout field conditions and order of battle. so, they've finally achievedtotal real-time battlefield control? that's right. and as a result,

the global presence ofpmcs has grown explosively. truth is, the rise of system-controlled pmcs has led to a dramatic declinein civilian casualties and human rightsviolations on the battlefield. a cleaner, safer battlefield. makes for nice propaganda. s-snake, you were s-smoking again,weren't you?

this is a non-smoking f-f-flight! there's more. state governments and rebel groups can't match the maintenance priceof standing forces. pmcs, by comparison, are reliable, easy to use. it wasn't long before everybodyhad them on the payroll. regular armiesbegan to decline worldwide.

it's hard to believe,i know, but pmcs are beginning to overtakeconventional armies in terms of scale. nowadays it's the pmcs whoserve as standard battalions. they already make up sixty percentof all combatant forces in zones of conflict. sixty percent... the fact is... the world now depends largelyon pmcs for waging its wars. i thought it was the u.n. thatauthorized the pmcs in the first place. the u.s. abstained fromvoting on that resolution.

in effect, washington was endorsing pmcswithout ever revealing its true intentions. until they got windof the uprising, that is. the u.s. has exportedtoo much military power. and now she's paying the price. that's exactly it. america has now turned warinto a form of economic activity. analysts are calling itthe "war economy", in that it's picking up the slackfor the downward-sloping oil market.

but i, for one, don't intend to simplystand by and watch it happen. for the pmcs, market expansion entailsfanning the flames of war... it means more refugees. war orphans. child soldiers. yes. even as pmc soldiersget more specialized,

they're also getting younger. mercenaries spun offfrom state armies, unmanned weapons, child soldiers... proxy battles in a new cold war. there are hundreds of pmcsin business worldwide, and their numbers are growing. currently, five of them are big enoughto be labeled global powers. two in the u.s.,

and one each in the u.k.,france, and russia. reconnaissance has revealed that thosefive pmcs are run by a dummy corporation that acts asa single mother company. this mother company embodiesthe five largest pmcs. her name... ...is "outer heaven". "outer heaven"? you mean...! that's right...

it's liquid. liquid... he's taken commandof this immense army and is now preparingto unleash an insurrection. i watched him die. his will lives on... in the body of the manonce known as ocelot. he aims to fanthe flames of war even higher, to create the perfect worldonce envisioned by big boss.

the one world in which soldierswill always have a place... he must be stopped... before it's too late. the global community is concerned, but they're all too afraid of the war economycollapsing to do anything about it. the u.n., too. sounds pretty self-serving to me. ...snake, this mission isn'tan order from washington...

not like the old days. and it's not something the u.n.can officially sanction, either. but we can't justlook the other way while liquid plots this insurrection. if we fail to act, he'll become the greatest threatthe world has ever faced. you're the only man i can trust. fine. let's hear it.

our intelligence on liquid's uprising originallycomes via reports from u.s. special forces, who were mobilized afterwe at the u.n. reported our findings. they're trackingliquid's movements. about 18 hours ago, he was spotted in the middle east. there's a rebel armythere in the middle east made up of ethnic minorities, waging civil waragainst the regime in power.

the core of that regime's army is provided by one of the pmcsunder liquid's control. what about the rebels? the local militias have hiredsmall numbers of operators as trainers and field commanders. and of course... ...they've got help from the local pmcs. right. a proxy war between hired guns.

pmc versus pmc. a quagmire of war. all-too-typical victimsof the new world economy. you'll be sneaking intothe conflict zone via transport truck... ...disguised as one ofthe rebel army's hired operators. your first objective... ...is to make contact with our informants,rat patrol team zero one (rat pt 01). they'll be expecting you. rat patrol, huh.

they sound sneaky. they're a special forces team assignedto the army's pmc investigation unit, cid. cid (criminal investigation command)... the real rats of the army. no, i can vouch for them personally. friends of yours? ...you could say that. will you do this for me?

will you terminate liquid? i'm not like the pmcs. i don't need your money. ...thank you. but if you're goingto spark something... spark this. i'll start my own fire. this is snake. do you read me?

what's the situation? i'm just inside the city limits. this place is crawling with lizards. ah, at corp's unmannedbipedal weapons. officially designated "irving"by the us military. they've spread like wildfireamong the pmcs. there are more of those thingsnow in service than tanks. they've got tough armor platingand are highly agile to boot. your best bet isto stay out of their sights.

unmanned... pretty soon they'll have putliving, breathing soldiers out of work. even so, that's an awful lotof gekko for this scenario. their numbers exceedthe war price for that region. it must have something to dowith liquid's arrival on the scene. you really think he's here... you'll have to find the army'soperatives and ask them yourself. oh, and snake? i went ahead and used the mk.iito scout out the area before your arrival.

you'll find it up ahead. mk.ii? it's a remote mobile terminal. sunny and i built it. the mk.ii will provide you with a map ofthe area as well as any battle situation data. you should find itbefore you do anything else. ok. got it. the rendezvous pointis marked on your map. i'll be waiting for you there.

it's me, snake. snake, it's me! otacon? sorry to keep you waiting, snake. allow me to introducemetal gear mk.ii. metal gear? but this gear's not a weapon. it's a remote mobile terminal designedto provide you with operational support. where are you?

i'm in the nomad, where else? i had the mk.ii bring you some goodies. starting with this. put it on your left eye. looks like an eye patch. i call it the solid eye. it's an all-purpose goggle that displaysradar images and other data in 3d. you can also switch it overto light-amplifying night vision. an operator...

i installed a suppressor. and here's a tranquilizer gun. how thoughtful. it predates theimplementation of the system. by some miracle,it was never recycled. it's getting tough these days,finding decent guns that aren't controlled. you coming? of course. i'll follow you wherever you go.

like this. i'll activate stealth soit doesn't attract any attention. if you need it, just bring upthe start button menu. got it. the informants who said they saw liquid hereshould be a little further up. head for the rendezvous point. pretty sweet, huh? whoa, hold it! watch where you'repointing that thing.

who are you? neither enemy, nor friend. voila. you're not with the militia,and you're not pmc... i'm a weapons wholesaler:all shapes, all sizes. but there's no need to worry,'cause all my shit's been laundered. laundered? you see, i take id guns like the pmcs useand make some mods.

then you can use 'emwithout having to match ids. in other words,i'm a gun launderer. you can call me drebin. drebin? yeah, they use that for all of us. there are more of you? all over the world. not that i ever metany of 'em personally.

me, i'm drebin number 893. you ain't a registered pmc employee, are ya? you need a guy like me. consider it a welcome gift. take it. the m4. the official carbine modelused by the us army... developed from the m16 service rifle.

this one's a top-of-the-line model. real popular with the big pmcs. high precision, not like that government-issue shit. it's... free-floating, of course. relax, that barrel's clean. is the hider cqc compatible? the beauty of this sucker is thatit's got a lot of customizable parts.

change it up the way you wantto meet your everyday needs. flip-up sight, rail system... not bad. yeah, well, you know, i get a lot of newbs 'round here. and if you need 'em, i got a wide selectionof after-market parts as well. the frame's pretty rigid. no rattle. go ahead,

give her a squeeze. i can't pull the trigger. really? that's weird. what's weird? wait, i got it. i bet you're usingan older generation of nanomachines. older generation? sometimes they don't reallyjibe with the new system.

seriously, who are you? whoa... slow down. my day job's workingat at (armstech) security. i'm in charge ofproduction control... so i get my hands on the id chipsbefore they're even registered. have a sip. it's a side of atthe public don't see. from the looks of it, you ain't withany state army.

but you ain't exactly green, either. you've got last-gen nanomachines. so i'm guessing... former us army? i don't know whatyou're here for. but you'll wanna bewell-equipped, am i right? can we talkbusiness or what? you won't regret it. what's your take on him, otacon?

i don't particularly like the guy, but it looks like we'll needhis help with those id guns. sunny's been doinga little sleuthing for us. drebin. a well-known gun laundererin war economy circles. he's a businessman who dealsmainly in selling black-market firearms to small pmcs and local militia. i share your concern, butwhat if we keep him at arm's length? use him only to get inteland the supplies we need? keep it strictly business.

all right. so... we ready to makea deal, or what? ok, then.let's talk business. to ensure you canuse non-id guns, i'm gonna have to suppressthe old nanomachines you've got in ya. otherwise, they'll interfere with the system. here.

stick yourself with this. it's full of suppressor nanomachines. relax, it won't hurt. you scared of needles or something? what's the shot for ? what's wrong ?you don't like shots ? see? no sweat. now you can usenon-id guns, no problem. there, ya see?

no problem. from now on, when you pick upan id gun that says "locked"... you just let me know. you name it,i can launder it. of course, it'll cost you. the going rate depends onthe war price at the time. man, i gotta givethis shit a rest. looks like you're doingpretty well for yourself. you might say that...

what with the war economy and all... and the system clamping down on things. system codes are the law now... and control's essentially absolute... paving the way for fat profits, if...you're willing to bend the law. demand keeps on growingthanks to the war economy. i sell id guns tothe pmcs and state armies... and naked guns toterrorist groups and paramilitaries. and these id guns can'tbe sold on the black market.

system's practically a licensefor us arms dealers to print money. privatizing the military'smade the pmcs big and bloated. and the fatter the pmcs get, the line between civilian andsoldier is gonna get real blurry. sooner or later, the whole damnhuman race is gonna be green collars. more like, we're all gonna befighting proxy wars. but hey... this war economy putsthe food on my table.

you're a green collar too,aren't ya? yeah, it's in your eyes. you've seen a lot of combat. what makes you thinkyou know me? nothing to be ashamed of. i'm the same way. i grew up here, too. i got no interestin the outside world. all right, then.

if you need me, holler. we specializein speedy service. catch my drift? eye. have. you. drop your weapon! all right... easy now. you haven't even takenthe safety off, rookie. careful, i'm no rookie!i'm a 10-year vet!

how the hell'd youever survive 10 years? don't move! cqc... a real big boss, huh? lower your weapon! slowly now. i wouldn't try anything funnyif i were you. fox...? snake? snake.

meryl? is that you? what happenedto your face? accelerated aging. they don'tknow the cause. oh my god... meryl, you're my informantin the us military? and...

you must be the inspectorsent by the un. this is rat patrolteam zero one. we're with the cid...(criminal investigation command) one of the bodiesinvestigating pmc activity. first hounds,now rats. here, you can have this back. what is your problem? you ok? stomach pains?

diarrhea... it's been four days sinceliquid arrived in the area. and since then, this woman's been with him. she doesn't looklike a combatant. probably some kind of advisor. maybe a scientist. so, you're the commanderof this 01 unit?

why?something wrong with that? here, i'll introduceyou to the team. that's ed,our radio man and sniper. the sleeping giantis jonathan. don't stand behind him. he hates it when peoplego around his back. and finally... johnny. everybody justcalls him akiba.

commander... i've finishedinstalling the sensors. ok, akiba. anyway... you're all grown up. maybe it's becausesomeone taught me well. a certain legendary hero... who suddenly... disappeared?

you quit the unit. me... i never gave up on you... or on foxhound. back then, i just wantedyou to accept me. i wanted you to turn around... and see who i was. but... i've put the past behind.

i'm done playinglittle love games. what are you here for? threat assessment...the pmcs. really. because i heard a rumor there'san assassin out there targeting their leader. well, that's some rumor. i'm only here becausethe un wants me to assess the impact and effects of pmcs on theirrefugee protection efforts. that's all?

more than enoughfor a retired vet like me. i know he's plottingan insurrection. but as long as at security'ssystem is in place, there's no way he'll succeed. how can yoube so sure? they've implemented a systemthat monitors in real-time every single soldierengaged in combat action... whether he's state army or pmc. each individual soldier has beenfully id-tagged with nanomachines

injected into their bodiesfor that purpose. the nanomachines keep track of the soldiersand their real-time personal data 24 hours a day. they monitoreach man's position, movement, speed,reserve ammo, firing accuracy... wounds, rations,water intake and supply... sweat secreted,heart rate, blood pressureand sugar levels, oxygen...

all the data gatheredon body condition. you've got these systemnanomachines in you, too? our unit plays by the rules,same as everybody else. it was creepy at first, knowing you'rebeing watched 24/7... but i've gotten used to it. it gives us a lot ofadvantages in the field, too. we get a clearer pictureof what's going on around us, so there's less confusionduring missions.

and our nanomachines communicatewith each other, making teamwork a lot smoother. and that's not allthe system does for us. it's also a security guaranteeagainst the pmcs. - security guarantee?- that's right. the pmcs are combat groupswithout states or ideologies. they're not fighting out ofnationalism, or for a cause. they don't care whythe war is being fought. they're just bodies,fighting on someone else's behalf. they're mercenaries.a commodity.

so it's easy to imagine thembetraying their clients by joining the enemy, or refusing to fight... or committinghumanitarian atrocities. to keep thesethings in check... they ensured that no onecan use firearms or military vehicles without the proper system id. it's true for every pieceof equipment out there. so even if the pmcs tried to mounta terrorist attack or coup d'etat... their weapons and equipmentwould automatically be locked out.

they wouldn't be able to move,attack, or engage in combat of any kind. and there's more. all the data on their position,personnel and combat strength is leaked to usby the nanomachines. even if they managedto circumvent the system by getting the nanomachinesout of each soldier's body... they'd be losing their idsin the process... so they couldn'tuse their weapons. and the patriotsare behind this?

la li lu le lo?what are you talking about? never mind. so this systemis foolproof, huh? completely. they call it sop. sons of the patriots... the ai that controls itis a tightly guarded secret... both at armstech security, where itwas developed - and at the pentagon. there's no way a third partycould get control of it.

i just met a guy who saidhe could launder id guns. the system does have holes... there can't be more thana few hundred of those gun launderers. it's just agrass-roots movement. it's not like they can affectthe entire pmc war machine. anyway, liquid would've had to registeras a pmc in the system to assemble anarmy that massive. his pmcs might even exceedthe us military in terms of numbers...

but as long asthey're registered, their soldiers' activitiesare constantly being monitored. so long as the us responds immediatelywhen liquid makes his move... we can takethem down by force. by force, huh? when arsoc (army special operations command)heard about liquid's plans... they sent us tosniff around the pmcs. and after three months of searchinggod knows how many battlefields... we've finally tracked him down.

when we reportedthat we'd found liquid... our superiors ordered us to providethe un investigators with intel. but i didn't knowit'd be you. didn't the colonel tell youhe was sending me? colonel? - don't tell me it's campbell.- yeah. he put you up to this? you didn't know? you've got to be kidding!

you expect me towork with my uncle? meryl! this is bullshit! he's not my father! meryl... so... you knew? little violation ofthe need-to-know rule. then... why are you stillcalling him "uncle"?

you're stillcalling him "colonel". he's your father. as far as i'm concerned,we're still uncle and niece. i will never forgive thatwomanizing piece of shit. he... remarried. his new wife's about my age. i hear she's even got a kid. it's as if he's given up onmaking up with his own daughter.

men. selfish, egotistical pigs. commander! what is it? there's 20 of them. and they're not from that pmc,praying mantis, either. it's the frogs. his private troops. oh crap...

this is not good. - were you being followed?- no. akiba! they might have seenthe reflection off my scope lens. oh. w-wait!hang on... you guys thinkit was my fault? it wasn't my fault!i swear! it wasn't my fault! oh man...oh...

look, i... dumbass! we're moving out! meryl, where's liquid? i'll fill you in later... ...if we're still alive. follow me. damn! eye contact!

these guys are withliquid's private army. shoot first, think later. we'll use the stairs and get outthrough the back door on the first floor. we'll change route as necessary. i'm on point. - stay close. got it?- got it. akiba. breathe deep. we've got a real livelegendary hero with us.

try not to choke. move! sharp as ever! clear! commander!i really gotta go... shut up! get down! knock it off! the nanomachine networkinside each unit member's body

lets us shareeach other's senses. they can see what i see. and it helps control pain. is that partof the system, too? with sop, my team canliterally operate as one. except for a certain someonewho's not much of a team player... what do you think? is your ageof heroes finally over? i'm no hero.

never was, never will be. you haven't changed at all snake. your body... are you goingto be all right? this get-up doublesas a muscle suit. i can still get around. liquid's camp is up ahead. - i'll mark it on your map.- thanks.

it's...it's the beast! rage...rage! laugh with me! it can't be... is that...? show me your rage! rage! isn't it funny? liquid!

activate it. jonathan! brother! it's been too long! rejoice! we're not copiesof our father, after all! we are freed ofthe shackles of fate! snake! brother...

we are free! watch... snake... watch... ...as i surpassmy own origin! naomi? if you won't bea prisoner to fate... then go. fulfill your destiny. hey...

hey, are you all right? grab on. 1-1... 2-3... 5-8-13-21... 34... 55... 89... 144...

233... 377... 6-1-0-9-87... 15... 97... 95... 84. uncle hal... the eggs...

they're done. thank you, sunny. so...back from the dead? i don't rememberthe sun being so flat. sorry. i'll dig inright away, sunny. and would you makesome for snake, too? ok. none for me, sunny.

my body... just seized upall of a sudden. this isn't normal. it's not my joints or muscles. you were lucky. some of those guys' heartssimply stopped. she was there... naomi was at liquid's side... otacon, did you see her?

no... but you're right. naomi was there. i found traces of her dnain that syringe you were holding. right after it all happened, i got a video mailfrom naomi. it was sent tomy old address. here you go. thanks, sunny.they're delicious.

but... y-you haven'teven eaten any. we grownups have to watchour caloric intake, you know. but thank you... i was looking for this. y-you're not watchingyour nicotine intake! sunny! you reallyhurt her feelings. yeah? why don't you teach herhow to cook eggs, then?

oh, like i know how to cook! i'll make this quick. i'm in south america. i've been capturedand forced to do research. liquid's goal is toseize control of sop... the sons of the patriots systemthat controls the soldiers. to do that, he needs to analyzethe nanomachines' structure and... find out how they communicatewith one another. liquid's found a loophole he can useto get in to the system.

preparations for his insurrectionare nearly complete. there's no time to waste. hurry! naomi sent her location datain a separate file. it's campbell. as you'll recall, followingthe shadow moses incident nine years ago... naomi was detainedby the authorities. but someone arrangedfor her escape. i suspect itwas actually liquid.

he must have taken her prisoner himselfand forced her to do research at his facilityin south america. colonel... where's meryl? i know she left the middle eastin pursuit of liquid. i'm sure arsoc ison to us by now. we can't chasethat line too far. which leaves naomias our only lead. the location naomi gave us,the pmc's base,

is in a mountainous regionsurrounded by forests. use the 4x4 to get as close as possibleto the pmc's security perimeter. from there on, snake, it'll be a solosneaking mission. roy... thanks. the rebels are still pitchedin battle against the pmcs. the commotion should help youslip into the facility unnoticed. 20 hours until we land. got it.

i'll have a look at the documents. maybe i'll even havea smoke while i still can.... act ii :solid sun colonel, how deeply are theyinvolved in all of this? the patriots, you mean? the data we got fromarsenal gear was a load of crap. twelve founders who've all been dead fora hundred years... give me a break. we know they exist today.

if the purpose of this battlefieldcontrol system is to control ids, it fits in withtheir plans perfectly. seizing control ofthe world's id systems, and then using them to manipulatethe economy and information flow... for the patriots,that's the ultimate prize. you might say the patriots arethe embodiment of the war economy. everything that solidusfeared five years ago... it's all come to pass. the patriots are trying to protecttheir power, their own interests...

by controlling the digitalflow of information. now with the media and global opinionunder complete control... not even the uncan stand up to them. then liquid's insurrection is against them? exactly. it would seem as though liquidhas taken up big boss's cause. an age of persistent,universal warfare. a world where mercenariesare free from domination. in a sense,

the "outer heaven" big bossenvisioned is already a living reality. you mean the pmcs and their war business. right now, liquid is a slaveto the patriots, forced to fighttheir proxy wars for them. he must be dying tobreak free of their spell. beneath the surface, a new cold war is brewingbetween liquid and the patriots

over who will survive. and no matter who wins,the world has no future. until we stop liquid anddestroy the system, we'll never be free. what we call "peace" is an equilibriumkept in check by the war economy. destroying the system meanswiping out the information society... the end of modern civilization. like it or not, we may have no choicebut to protract the system. snake, here's what we knowabout the current battle.

rebel guerilla unitsare advancing on the base of the government pmc troops. that base appears tobe liquid's safe house. according to naomi's data, she's being held prisonerinside the compound. that's where she is? assuming the datais correct. and one more thing... what now?

the government pmc troopshave been operating at high-altitudes. we have reports thatit's starting to upset the balance of thenanomachine control system. meaning? meaning the low blood oxygen content seemsto have an effect on their nanomachines, giving them aslight edge in battle. be careful. steer clear of altitude sickness. vamp!

isn't here. laugh... laugh!go ahead and laugh! beast! leave one. don't forget this face. this is the face... ...of the bastard... who killed your comrades.

more guerillas will be comingto storm the safe house. he must beamong their numbers. sooner or later he will come. don't let down your guard. laugh... laugh! what the hell? that was...vamp! i'm sure of it. i'll neverforget that face.

those were pmc soldiers with him. is he involvedin liquid's plan? we watched himdie in manhattan! damn it, he won'tleave us alone. snake, could vampbe immortal? not a chance. this is the real world,not some fantasy game. i swear, the nexttime he shows up... not now, otacon!

right. i know. according to satellite imageryprocured by mei ling, the facility where naomiis being held is to the north, along a mountain road. i'm sending thelocation to your map. mei ling? what's she up tothese days? taking command ofthe missouri, apparently. the missouri?

that's aworld war ii battleship. the museum contract in hawai'iexpired some time ago. i hear it's now being usedas a virtual training vessel. by the looks of things, they know i'm coming, too. yeah. it could be a trap. stay sharp. snake, there's someonei'd like you to meet, a member of the mission staff,a psychological counselor.

a lot of soldiers can't handlethe stress of battle... end up panicking. she'll be useful in helping youunderstand the mindset of both the pmcand rebel soldiers. she? rosemary! nice to meet you, snake. this is rosemary. she used to work asa data analyst at the pentagon,

but moved to combat supportduring the big shell incident. she was in charge ofjack's files, wasn't she? after that,she studied psychology, and now she'sa counselor with csp, the combat stress platoon. contact me anytime. i'll be standing by hereat home with roy, but i'm on a different circuit. the frequency is 147.79.

by the way, colonel,isn't that your house? well, yes. then the woman you married,the one that meryl was talking about. is rosemary, yes.didn't i tell you before? news to me.what about jack? jack? jack. from foxhound.codename raiden. i seem to remember himbeing engaged to rose. oh. we lost all trace of him.

jack's gone? i used to work with the guy. he saved sunnyfrom the patriots. he disappeared soon after that. what about you? jack disappeared, andyou just moved in on rose? i was consolingher over her loss, and one thing justled to another... she's young enoughto be your daughter.

yeah. lucky me, huh? now i see why merylwas so disgusted. meryl said something about me? yeah, i believe her words were, "i'll never forgive thatwomanizing piece of shit". i see. colonel, you knew she was ourinformant in the middle east, didn't you? was it you whoput her up to it? i used my connectionsin the army to get meryl the job.

you wanted your daughter someplacewhere you could keep an eye on her. look, everybody involved in the incident atshadow moses either lost their job and status or, in the case of meryland mei ling, got brushed aside. meryl wanted to make acomeback, a difference. we can't all be asstrong as you, snake. some of us can't bearliving like pariahs. since shadow moses,i've been branded a criminal. i think of it as my own small wayof making it up to my daughter,

my own flesh and blood. in any case, call rosemaryif you ever need advice. yo! over here. you... come on, hop in. it's gettingrough out there. i don't think so. we meet again. you've beenfollowing me?

you seemed likean interesting guy, so i decided tocheck you out. sit down. lot of legends about youout there in the intel community. especially in the... especially in the cia. you know those nanomachinesi injected you with back in the middle east? they let metrack your location. figures...the b&bs are here.

things are aboutto get hairy. b&bs? you've neverheard of 'em? they're beauty and the beast. together they're called the b&b corps. they're a squad of enhancedfemale soldiers... belong to the pmcs. any time there's a messthat needs cleaning up, they're on the sceneleading the elites. that's a female?

probably freelancershired by the pmcs. they're run out of aseparate parent organization. guess it's time for good ol' drebinto let you in on a few things... word on the street saysthat beneath those ugly-ass suits, the b&bsare real babes... drop-dead gorgeous. they also say each one of them'sbeen traumatized by war. badly. they weren't even soldiersto begin with, you know.

more like... victims of war. they suffered shell-shockon the battlefield... post-traumatic. it damaged their mindspretty much beyond repair... so the only way they couldcope with the reality of battle was to becomewar machines themselves. the remnants of their human sideare buried deep within. the beast... that's what you seeon the outside.

war transforms us,snake... into beasts. war transforms us... but deepwithin that shell, something human survives. a fragile, scarred heart. without a shellto protect it, it's like the yolkof an egg. word going around is...

their natural, flesh-and-blood bodies can'tsurvive in the open for more than a few minutes. and they'vebeen convinced... ...that by killing snake, their minds willbe cleansed. they think it's gonnafree them from all the pain... and all the fury... and all the sorrow. which makes these babespretty much obsessed... with killing you.

four b&bs havebeen identified so far. the one you just sawwas raging raven. there's alsolaughing octopus, a master of mimicry... and crying wolf... she runs on four legs. and finally, the mistressof mind control... screaming mantis.

mantis...? there used to be a guyby that name in the us military. a russian psychic, he could controlpeople's minds. i guess sheinherited the title. she keeps the other b&bs mindsin check with her powers. octopus, raven, wolf,

mantis... you got it. they're the snakehound unit, and they've gotyou in their sights. shit... i'd hate tobe in your shoes. drebin... i thought no one was supposedto be able to hack into the system. are you with the patriots? no sir.

i ain't no la li lu le... i mean... i'm no patriot. you can say "patriot". i guess that meansyou're clean, right? the nanomachines i got in meare different from the military kind. no speechrestrictions for me. what the hellare these patriots? are they human?

not anymore they ain't. they're the lawof this world, created overthe course of history. they're what holdsthis world together... keeps this wholemess in check. we are formless. we are the very discipline and lawthat americans invoke so often. the patriots are america, the world'sgreatest military power.

they are the war economy. which makes you and me justcogs in a much grander schematic. i mean, someone obviously had to startthe whole thing at the beginning. but now their law hastaken on a life of its own. a life of its own? yup. the country...the war economy... it ain't run by people. it's run by the system.

no need for high-leveldecision-making authority. it's all handled by a massive yet simpleinformation processing system. an ai. it works justlike natural law. the world's a much simpler placethan most folks realize. every aspect of the patriots' systemis closely monitored by three peripheral ais and a core ai that tiesthem all together. the sop systemis one part of that. it's all backed up bya foolproof control system.

so not even yours truly cansneak inside the patriots' ais. what if, hypothetically, someone found a way? if they could fool the ids...(intrusion detection system) i guess they could use itas a haven to lay low. haven? you know,like a tax haven. in the internet society,we have net havens, data havens... a haven...

...is someplace where social conventionsand the rules of the net don't apply. back in the 20th century, the super-rich would open bank accountsin countries without income tax laws... not a bad wayto evade paying taxes. now we've got us a society whereeverybody's dna and personal info is totally controlled bythe nanomachines inside their bodies. won't be long beforepeople start using havens to escape from id control. i guess you could say my gun launderingkind of borrows from the haven concept,

after a fashion. even so, good luck finding a way to accessthe patriots' ais from the outside. it's absolutely impossible.no chance in hell. like i said, there's no breakinginto those ais... from the outside. but liquid's gotsomething in mind. you sure there's no way?

i'm just a gun launderer. only reasoni'm interested in you... ...is 'cause youstart a lot of fires. all right then. you need me, just give me a ring. go on. get your ass back inside! now!

when the government neededcontrol restored to this sector, they knew who to call. snake, can you hear me? this is jack, isn't it? i am raiden.jack is no more. where are you now? i'm right beside you. raiden, where have youbeen all this time? what have you been doing?

on a mission,finding something... for someone. finding what? the corpse of big boss. i was asked to do thisin exchange for sunny's location. liquid? no. the leader of asmall resistance group. her followerscall her matka pluku.

matka pluku...big mama. we'll finish this later. i'll follow your trailand catch up with you. wait! what aboutbig boss's body? it's with her now. her? what's going on, snake? rose, i just gota call from raiden. it sounds likehe's close by.

did... did he seem ok? yeah, as far asi could tell from his voice. really? that's great. snake, i havea favor to ask. don't let him knowi'm involved in this operation, ok? i think it would be bestto just leave him alone for now. what happenedbetween you and jack? after the big shell incident,he became unstable. memories began toresurface from his childhood,

when he fought for solidusin the liberian civil war. and in the midstof all that... the baby we had together... it hadn't even been born yet. jack slowly stoppedcoming home. and when he did,he'd be dead drunk, sometimes coveredin cuts and bruises. roy was worried.he was jack's commanding officer, but jack just avoided him.

i was all alone. and roy was so kind to me. he's the one who encouragedme to become a counselor. i know it sounds like i'm making excuses,but i needed to get over it, to move on with my life. i'm worried about him,of course, but... i'm also afraid of him. i'll keep my mouth shut. thank you, snake.

naomi's lab is somewhereinside those mansion grounds. proceed immediately... infiltrate the placeand find out where she is. yes, the next test. and things on your end? we're on schedulehere as well. i know. me, too. until then...

naomi. i knew you'd come... you and i... neither of us canescape our fate. i haven't seen yousince shadow moses. how long? ten years? nine. and dr. emmerich?is he with you? why?

i thought he'd be the only oneable to open the mail i sent. not many people could recognize4d sound data in a soliton radar file. how is the good doctor? otacon's fine.he's the same as ever. i see... who were youjust talking to? liquid. although i supposehe's really ocelot... from a medical standpoint.

i thought he was here. he's not...at the moment... where are all the guards? they know i won't escape. i'm powerless to resist. i have no choicebut to cooperate. what happenedin the middle east? what you saw wasthe soldiers' emotions run amok. another productof the system?

you don't trust me? i'm not sure yet. and if i answer your question? let's hear it first. we... thought the sopwas an id control system designed primarily to maintainorder and control in battle. and we were right. but only partially. sop had another function...

to control people's senses. the goal was to release thesoldiers' nanomachines from the system. but we didn't knowabout the mental control. and the nanomachineswent berserk? our test was a success. at least, it confirmed ourhypothesis at the time. just as we predicted,the nanomachines stopped functioning, and the pmc soldiers were freedfrom the grips of the system. but the momentthe system stopped...

all the pain, and fury,and sorrow... all the trauma and stress,all the hatred, regret, guilt... all the sensationsthat had been suppressed were unleashedwithin their hearts. their memories, unliketheir senses, weren't erased. each enemy soldier they'd killed,each lost comrade... each threat of violenceagainst the innocent... every act of war they'd committedwas etched firmly in their hearts. in suppressingthe user's mind,

the nanomachines exacta heavy burden on his heart. the user's bodyrejects the nanomachines; this reaction must thenbe suppressed with drugs. before the user knows it,his mind is in complete shambles. remember frank? frank jaeger... gray fox. they twisted his bodyfor their experiments and nullified his brokenheart with nanomachines.

sop has taken iteven further and applied it toliving human beings. the sins of war these soldierscarried inside them returned to assaultthem in the form of... unimaginable shell shock. the meaning and the systemmay have changed... but the battlefield hasn't. until that point,war was like a game to them. and then, suddenly,

reality camecrashing down. ordinarily, our hearts arehardened through experience. even the most grizzled veteranslive with an inescapable guilt they've had to overcomebit by bit through the years. and even then,it never truly goes away. for a mind lackingthat essential experience, it was simplytoo much to bear. but what about me? i've never beenunder the system's control.

that's why i wantto examine your body. you need to know, too. all right, snake... undress. what's gotten into you? hurry up. oh my god.... all right, let's justget this over with. yes...

i'm sorry. so does the aging havesomething to do with foxdie, too? your telomeres wereintentionally set up to be short, regardless of the ageof the original. one of the genes that inhibitreproduction and aging, the klotho gene,was intentionally mutated as well. but more importantly,your chromosomes, like liquid's, were provided with terminatorgenes to prevent them from making copies. you're clones, createdfor one purpose: war.

and so, in order to prevent you from beingabused by clients or stolen by the enemy... they shortened your lifespanand removed your ability to reproduce. it was a safety deviceto ensure that the seed of big boss didn't end up inthe hands of others. the reason you're agingso rapidly isn't because of disease, or faulty research,or foxdie. it's how you were born. it's your natural lifespan. the truth, naomi.

how long is my bodygoing to hold out? your cells, blood, organs,nerves, skeletal system, muscle tissue... every part of your bodyis aging rapidly. how long do i have? ...half a year. don't. there's somethingi have to tell you. now what?

you and i both knowyour body is approaching its limit. when i said half a year, i wasn't talkingabout your lifespan. what do you mean? we can't get rid of the foxdiein your body completely. foxdie only kills its victims whenthe infected person's genetic code fully matches the genetic sequenceprogrammed into the virus's receptors. in other words... it only attacks targetswith specific genes.

the receptors on the foxdieinside your body are breaking down. the rapid aging process is changingthe environment within your body. as a result, the virusis starting to mutate. the viruses on the left arefoxdie in its original form. the ones on the righti took from your body. they're already mutated. the receptors,they're wearing down. this mutated versionof foxdie could activate even if the infectedperson's genetic pattern

doesn't perfectlymatch the receptors. which means the virus is becomingindiscriminate about what type of target it kills. however, if the receptorscontinue to wear down... it'll become a killer virus thatattacks untold numbers of victims. what if we kill them all,remove them from the body? there are no antibodies, either. i don't know what percentageof the receptors have to break down, or how many people will betargeted when that happens. what is certain is that peoplewill begin to catch foxdie

through airborne transmission. it'll start withthose closest to you... then, one by one, they'll lose their lives. the part of the virus that distinguishes betweenindividuals will start to break down in about... half a year. three months at the most. three months! ironic, isn't it?

you've spent your entire lifesaving the world from metal gear, from nuclear annihilation. and now... you're becoming adoomsday device yourself. i can't predict exactly howdevastating the epidemic will be. whether just one percent of the human racecould unlock the broken receptors... or whether we all can. in either case, three months from nowyou'll be a walking biological weapon. if it were up to me,you'd be quarantined already.

it's not over yet. you still havea job to do. you have three months. still enough time to thinkonce all of this is done with. and if i choosedeath first...? will that stop foxdiefrom spreading? when the host dies... the virus dies with it. tell me one more thing.

have you beento a hospital lately? while you were there,did they give you an injection? don't they always? take a look at this. these came outof your body as well. it's a new strain of foxdie...one i've never seen. someone must haveput them in you recently. do you haveany idea who? him!

the new foxdie strainis starting to multiply rapidly. what's in it? i can't say for sure. i'll need to dosome more tests. here, take this. it contains the same substancethe soldiers' nanomachines secrete inside their bodies. it's a drug that inhibits the nanomachines'ability to regulate the senses.

the nanomachines insidethe body malfunction when the systeminterferes with them. it triggers a reaction in the body,which is why you're having the seizures. give yourself a shotwhenever they get bad. it's potent, so use it sparingly... unless you want toend up an invalid. i've been a fool. i let myself drown in my nanomachines,and now i'm trapped by them.

you said yourself we mustn'tallow ourselves to be chained to fate. i can't slip free. then i'll free us both. where's liquid? i can't tell you yet. not until you free me. do you even know? liquid left here last night. where was he headed?

those are my terms. i can't leave this placeof my own will. what are you talking about? i'm being... watched. liquid has altered his plan. removing the system will only causehis army to collapse from within. so he's chosen toseize control instead. liquid's objective isto hijack the sop system.

he'll use it to createthe ultimate army of perfect soldiers and launch his insurrectionagainst the patriots. there's a name for his new plan. he calls it"guns of the patriots". guns of the patriots... this place isn't safe.come with us. this way. octocamo.... my prey.

come on! laugh, while you can! there's noescape from here! laugh yourself to death! what a riot... people suffering... people hurting... people dying... it's all sofucking hysterical!

laugh. just you tryand find me! snake, look up above... notice anything strange? i'm over here! i am an octopus... an eight-legged beast. these tentacles... are beyond my control.

their will... is the willof the battlefield. funny... so funny... it's all so funny. it's not funny. nothing is funny. i shouldn't be laughing. i can't...

the truth is... i'm not laughing. not laughing at all. i'm scared. i'm really scared. so sorry i laughed. i'm sorry... i won't laugh any more. i can't.

i don't want to. yo snake!looking good today. a certain virus wasdetected in my body. are you saying it wasn't inthe nanomachines you injected? virus? you do know there are other folkswho could've done this to you. and besides, what would i gainfrom infecting you? better for me that you'reout there kicking ass on the battlefield.

i was watching you, snake. you're a real piece of work. never thoughti'd meet the man who could take downlaughing octopus single-handedly. she just kept on laughing. now why do you suppose that is? something in her past? you got it.she's from a village in scandinavia, little seaside hamlet knownto all the locals as the devil's village.

place wasn't knownfor devils, though. it was knownfor octopus. see, this was one ofthe few places in europe where they ateoctopus customarily. anyway, there's this cult of crazieswho for some reason hate the village, with a passion. then, when she wasjust a teenager, things get bad. these nutcases get their hands onsome weapons and attack the village.

overnight, her sleepy littlefishing town becomes a war zone. they round up all the villagersand execute them one by one. except for that girl. they had somethingelse planned for her, something a whole lotworse than dying. calling her the devil's child, they forced her to do the kind of thingyou'd expect from one of lucifer's own. after they made hertorture her family and friends, they made her kill 'em.

the whole time they were forcing herto laugh, howl like some sort of demon. like she was enjoying it. what was shegonna do, say no? they'd kill her, too. so she let feartake control, and did exactlyas they told her. she butchered the bodiesof the ones she loved, and laughedwhile she did it. and as she bathedin their blood,

it gradually turnedfrom deep red to jet black. to her, it looked likethe ink of an octopus. the experiencescarred her deep. ever since then,she hasn't stopped laughing. only, that ain'treally laughter. why are youtelling me this? you expect meto feel sorry for her? nah. i know you got no roomfor that stuff in your world.

and besides,this is war... right? in a way, though, i guessit was the right thing to do. what was? fighting youcleansed her mind. all right,enough chit-chat. there's other beastsout there in them woods. watch your back. snake, have you lostsight of the target?

whenever something moves,it leaves a trail behind. track and findnaomi's trail. you think thatcould be naomi's ? do it now, beforewe're interrupted again. we don't know what will happen.remember the last time... i'm willing to makea few sacrifices. as you wish.we'll begin shortly. we've got the go-ahead. begin.

we'll use his blood.it could get intense... brace yourselves. - shots, all of you.- yes, sir. i'll be taking a nap... the syringe! it's not working... the emotional controlsaren't stable enough yet. need a lift? drebin!

get in already! snake, i'm bringing the chopper to theother side of the market up ahead. that's as closeas i can get. you've got to make itto the market somehow ! hang on!it's gonna get bumpy! up front! here they come! ah shit. raiden.

go on, get outta here! - can you move?- yes. let's go. it's my turnto protect you. i'm setting the chopperdown at the market square. i'm a little busyright now. thank you! don't forget the mk. ii! - naomi, take care of this.- all right.

otacon,get us out of here! where's raiden? still fighting. raiden! yet again,our paths cross. you, too...immortal? i just don't fear death. could you be the oneto finally finish me? you're...

boss, she got away. are you sure about this? it's all part of the plan. the test was a failure.even with his code. as i feared.it's not pure enough. we need all of him. the pmcs we deployedhave suffered brain damage. nothing salvageable remains. our only remaining optionis to secure the original.

i know that. it's only amatter of time. we're working as fast as we canto find their hiding place. i need you here too, vamp. hang in there! vamp... he's got to be immortal. no. he's notimmortal at all. it was my design that causedhis body to be like that.

the nanomachines in his bodycause his wounds to close and heal at anaccelerated rate. someone took the basic nanomachinetechnology i once researched and perfected it. in a sense,i'm responsible for vamp. he's one of my sins. does your body havethe same nanomachines? i brought a monsterinto this world... i, too, am....

- raiden!- hold him down! he's losingtoo much blood. - can you save him?- i don't know. he needs a blood transfusion... no, an infusionof artificial blood... - snake...- raiden! europe... go meet... big mama.

argon... boron... silicon and neon... erbium... fermium... plutonium... chlorine... fluorine... gallium and xenon... thallium, strontium...

the trick is tokeep the lid on. now, let it cookfor one minute. you like cooking,don't you? good for you. this is my sunny-side-upfortune telling. when it turns out good, it meanssomething good is gonna happen. so that's why you don'tcook them over easy. but the secretto good cooking is to keep who'sgoing to eat it in mind.

oh... is this your mother? she's really beautiful. that tune youwere humming... it's from theperiodic table, isn't it? thorium, protactinium, uranium,neptunium, plutonium, americium... americium... - curium!- curium! curium.

that's it.curium! oh, this? may i? there. see sunny? us girls haveto look our best. was olga. my mother. it's going to burn.

hold on. done! th-thanks... we did a great job. dr. emmerich... liquid is in eastern europe. he's after thecorpse of big boss. huh? what for? it's the final key he needsto gain access to sop.

the keys to the system arebig boss's genetic code and biometric data. without them, there'sno way to gain access. wait. what's liquidbeen doing all this time? he's beenperforming tests. two tests... the first, using the genetic codefrom liquid's dna chip. in his second attempt, he used the dna code and biometric dataextracted from snake's blood. what's the need for the originalif a substitute works just as well?

neither your genetic patternnor liquid's genetic pattern is a 100% matchfor big boss's. what do you meanwe don't match? both you and liquid are as similarto big boss as you could possibly be. but you're still different. different? so that's what liquidwas talking about? which is whythey created solidus. i can't believe this.

snake and big boss don't havethe same genetic code? strictly speaking, snake and liquidaren't the same, either. which is why foxdie onlyaffected liquid at shadow moses... and spared you. let's put it this way... if liquid usesbig boss's genetic code... the original... he'll have the systemcompletely under his control. i thought havinghis code wasn't enough.

you need his biometric dataat the same time, don't you? that's right! and big bossis already dead. he's alive. big boss is... alive? his body is. or rather... his cells.

that's impossible! big boss survivesas a biomort... a brain-dead shellsustained in a lab. if liquid obtains the body, he'll be primed tomake his final move. allowing him totalcontrol of the system. it's there... in europe... eastern europe.

they have equipmentthat can heal me there. where? the same place liquid went? dr. madnar. he saved my life. i've heard of him. a world-renownedcybernetics expert. strictly underground, though. we're in luck, then.

it's settled. we must head for europe. oh... snake?where're you going? i'm gonna be spewing outpoison soon enough anyway. what's one moresmoke gonna hurt? this is a no-smoking flight! who is this? oh, her? that's my sister.

i never knewyou had a sister. for a moment i thoughtshe might have been your girlfriend. no! i-i don't have a... emma was abrilliant programmer. she wrote the worm thatdestroyed the arsenal gear ai. vamp killed her. - i'm so sorry.- no! there's nothingfor you to be sorry for. or me.

i never evenimagined that science... that my own research...could cause so much misery. it's not like us science-holicsare satanists or anything. even when we've gotthe best of intentions... we end up beingused by others for evil. dr. emmerich... i... you see this? sunny helped me build it. to tell you the truth,i think she's better at it than i am.

but she's just a child. she cracked theprotection on your mail. wow. i... ...assumed it was you. sunny was taken by the patriotsright after she was born. she never evenmet her parents. she's spent her entirechildhood inside the net. that's why she hastrouble speaking...

her home isin the computer. she can only seethe outside from the inside. she's always in there... searching for herself... searching for her family. she's trying tofind out who she is... and where she's going. and her family... she believes she can findthe answers inside a machine

hooked up to the world. she spends every dayinside the net, exploring. for sunny, this is home. no. it shouldn'tbe like that. it's time youlet her go outside. what are youtalking about? she hasn't evenbeen born yet. she's still in the womb.

she needs tolive a real life. sunny's never shown anyinterest in leaving the nomad. frankly, i'm worried aboutletting her go out there. i have a feelingshe'll do just fine. you... really thinkshe'll be ok going outside? that's not what i meant... i think she's got a goodhandle on her science. sorry. go on. you were aboutto say something.

right... would you mind ifi help sunny with her cooking? of course not.go ahead... about all we've got on boardbesides military rations are eggs. leave them off. it makes you look handsome. you think so? dr. emmerich? is it ok tosleep in there?

excuse me? well, dr. emmerich... i know it's easy to forget sometimes,but i am a woman... you understand. i know it's selfishof me, but... i'd like to bealone for a while. i understand. i'll show you in. thank you.

good night, dr. emmerich. if you get uncomfortableor anything, just let me know. i'll be out there working. yes? call me hal. good night. good night, hal. act iii : third sun a national state ofemergency has been declared

in an effort to root outthe local resistance. the hunt is being carried outby us-based pmc raven sword... one of the companiesunder outer heaven's control. which means that liquid's lurkingsomewhere behind the scenes. and at the top of the target listis the paradise lost army, the resistance groupled by big mama. you'll be infiltratingthe region where they are believed tohouse their base of operations. it looks as if thepmcs moved swiftly,

cutting off big mama andcompany's escape routes. they should still be hidingsomewhere in that area. big boss's corpse isbound to be with them. you've been addedto the pmcs' blacklist, so you're going to haveto lie about your identity to get in. i've provided you witha way to evade the checkpoints. make contactwith the resistance and find big mama. this is our last chance.

we must reach big boss's bodybefore they do. next. i said next! you. get your assin the machine! hey, are you deaf? take him away. you're coming with me. i said over here!

that's enough. i'll take him from here. but! we've beenlooking for this man. yes, ma'am. come with me. you're looking younger. what's your secret? facecamo.

a little presentfrom tentacles. the pmc's sure seemto know you well enough. you may not believe it, but i'm in chargeof overseeing all pmc activity. listen to me, snake. after reporting what happened in themiddle east to my superiors, i wrote upa threat assessment. the president's finally realized the dangerliquid's little rebellion poses, and has called forimmediate action. now i've got more bodiesthan i know what to do with.

you're planning totake him by force? that's crazy. look... things aren't that simple. listen, old man. i don't take orders from you,or from your colonel campbell. it's gonna be the middle eastall over again. no, it won't. if things get out of hand, we can puta total lock-down on the pmcs' weapons...

they won't beable to fight back. don't forget:we control the system. i wouldn't rely too muchon the system if i were you. we've got them beatin sheer numbers. - meryl...- look, snake... just leave this to me. there's no need for youto put yourself in harm's way. don't risk your lifefor no reason. what you're trying to do...

it's not a mission. it's not justice. it's a hired hit. if you know, then... our ways of thinkingmight be different, but to me, you're stilla legend... a hero. i know all about the thingsyou did when you were young. it was whatkept me going. i can't bear to watch you dieover something so pointless.

don't worry about me. old soldiers never die. your cause is our cause now. you don't have to do this. i'm no hero... never was. i'm just an old killer... hired to do some wet work. then we'll justhave to catch him...

before you do. i may haveloved you once... but now you're just toodamn senile to face the truth. wake up and face reality... old snake. and stay out of our way. the resistance members are scheduledto convene at big mama's hideout. so our best course of actionis to follow their lead. when you findthe resistance, tail them.

let them leadyou to big mama. oh, and snake, i think we've founda way to treat raiden. yeah. we got in touchwith dr. madnar. naomi and sunny areon their way now. they'll be all righton their own? it's a non-combat zone,so there won't be any checkpoints. it'll take some time, but i think he'll be ok.

good. who's there? i'm here to see big mama. is this the guy? what do you think? i didn't hear him coming at all.he's gotta be the one. yeah, but look at him, he's ancient. very impressive cqc, snake.

no doubt about it.he is the legendary soldier. call me mama... i need to talk to you. raiden sent me. my, how you've grown... david. it was you, not i, who wascreated from the rib of man. but i gave you life. i am your mother.

les enfants terribles. you can't growa human being in a test tube... not even a clone. you need a woman's bodyto give it life. you mean... a surrogate mother? that's an awfullycold way to put it. i gave birth... for the patriots.

gave... birth? the forbidden fruit. appropriate... no? i'll explain everything. the man who wantsme dead... is liquid. your twin. you think you know him,but i know him better.

he was once ocelot... but liquid has takencontrol of his soul. and now he's locked ina bitter struggle with zero. "zero"? the founder of the patriots. founder? when did this happen? 40 years ago. during the cold war, when the united statesand the soviet union were still at odds.

it was in that chaotic erathat the patriots were born. and i played my part. i was one of the... founding members. you? zero created the patriots to manageand control the american state. that control enduredlong after the cold war ended. the organization becamean empty shell, continuing to functionthrough ais.

those ais are responsible forthe creation of the war economy... and they gave rise to thesons of the patriots system. but i am partly to blame. i bear some of the guiltfor creating the organization. it was right afteri first met your father... big boss. back in 1964, i was ordered to take part ina cia op called operation snake eater which concerned a new weaponthe soviets were developing at the time.

my mission was tosupport a certain agent. that agent laterbecame big boss... but i knew himas snake. - snake?- yes. naked snake. that was his code nameat the time. a name he wouldgive to you... his son. the commander of thismission was a man called zero,

the head ofspecial forces unit fox. back then, i was working as adouble agent for the chinese. my objective was to securethe location of the philosophers' legacy, a massive cacheof hidden wealth, and report it to beijing. i was to acquire a microfilmshowing the location of secret funds, funds amassed by the allied powersduring world war ii. but i failedin my mission,

and was expelled from china. i took the applefrom the snake... and wascast out of eden. after years on the runi ended up in hanoi, that's wherei met him again. it was around then thatzero used the massive funds, contained in the philosophers' legacy,to start a new organization, the patriots, which would carry out the final wishesof a certain legendary hero.

the initial membershipconsisted of big boss, sigint, para-medic, and theircommander, zero. oh, and there was one morewho we mustn't forget. he stayed behind in the soviet unionto support the group as an informant. ocelot... who is now liquid. after your fatherrescued me in hanoi, i went to america andjoined their organization. zero's goal was to achievea unity of thought and awareness.

he believed that waswhat the boss wanted... and the rest of thepatriots followed his lead. the boss? the boss was a legendary herofrom the second world war known as the motherof special forces. she had an almostoverwhelming charisma about her. the cia feared this, so they hadher eliminated. if she had survived,

the world of the 21st century mighthave been a very different place. we were all influencedby the boss's will. it was what drove usto create this organization, to be closer to that spirit. zero decided thatin order to lead the people, we needed aspecial kind of icon. so we turnedto big boss, the last son of the boss. he shared more ofher life than anyone else.

it was big boss,the true heir to her legacy, who was best suitedto play this role. as the times andcurrents of politics changed, so too did zero. eventually, he became a prisonerof his own lust for power, sparking friction betweenhim and big boss, who resentedplaying the puppet. with big boss drifting away, zero realized hewould need insurance.

something that wouldperpetuate the existence of big boss, their organization's icon. and so, zero secretlyembarked on a new project: its goal was to createa clone of big boss, the ultimate soldier. the project wasled by dr. clark, known at the timeas para-medic. after dozens of failures, they finally,miraculously,

succeeded in producinga fertilized egg. the egg used in thesuccessful in vitro fertilization came from dr. clark's assistant...a heathly japanese woman. blood from the eastflows within your veins... "give birth to big boss." to realize this, i asked to serveas the surrogate mother... and was more than happyto carry you in my womb. i loved him.

nine months later, i gave birth totwo big bosses, you, and liquid. it didn't matterthat you were clones, or that they hadmanipulated your dna. you were born the same wayas any other normal child, from your mother's womb. but les enfants terribles proved to bethe final straw for zero and big boss. determined to opposezero and his plans,

big boss broke awayfrom the patriots. he left the states, createdhis own mercenary company, and driftedaround the world. your fathernever wanted you. human life isn't meantto be manipulated like that. i knew that. but i wanted you. after big boss left,zero really lost control. what zero wantedwas an orderly world,

one governed by rules. his fortune grewthrough countless wars, and his words influenced decision-makingall the way up to the oval office. as the world saw the riseof digital technology, it, the internet,and genetics, the patriots' powergrew immense. their roots spread andtook hold throughout the globe. in time, they began to dictate the fateof entire nations from the shadows.

and beforewe knew it... the patriots, the proudpolice of the world, started bringing an entireplanet under their control. their intentions were fair. but their executionwas flawed. zero developed weapons,amassed armies... used informationfor extortion, all in order to gain more wealth. he was obsessed withcontrolling awareness on the inside

from the outside. i cannot imagine that's what the bosswould have wanted. they bothmisinterpreted her will. and their absolute reverencefor her drove them apart. so began the warbetween zero and big boss. opposing interpretations... each striving torealize the boss's will. everything you see todaystems from their cold war.

differences in race... in religion... in ideology. this war they've caused is no different from any otherhuman error in history. it all started witha tiny fork in the path... and grew intoa great rift. there was nothing left ofthe boss's noble will in their struggle. all that remainedwas hatred,

a passion todestroy one another. big boss returned to the uswith a plan in mind, and once again assumedcommand of foxhound. in outer heaven,and then zanzibarland, big boss plottedcoups d'etat against zero. but you, solid snake,his own clone, foiled his effortsboth times. big boss and gray fox,frank jaeger, were left near death.

zero recoveredtheir bodies. frank jaeger's entire body was reconstructedthrough surgery, and he was rebornas the cyborg ninja. big boss,now a vegetable, became a prisonerof zero even in death. for zero,more than anyone else, your father was anirreplaceable icon. no, the truth is,for zero,

he was anirreplaceable friend. after big boss's betrayal, zero could no longer believein something so uncertain as life. he lost his beliefin everything: nations,organizations, individuals. zero was no longer willingto place his organization in the hands ofthe next generation. instead, he set up anetwork of ais,

a decision-making systemformed from all the information he had accumulated. he built four ais... gw, tj, al, and tr, as sort of a digitalmount rushmore. and one core artificial intelligenceto unite them: john doe. gw? the same gw wedestroyed five years ago? the same.

ever since gwwas cut off, jd and the other three ais have controlled all informationon every aspect of global society... economics, politics, law,morals and culture. the war economyis no exception. in the shadow of the system andits complete control over the world, big boss isn'tallowed to live or die. he's trapped for eternityin a brain dead prison. to bind himselfto his friend,

to ensure his ruleover the world, zero transformedbig boss into an icon, neither living nor dead. sounds almostlike a religion. naturally, ocelot and i planned tofree him from zero's prison. we enlisted naomi hunter, an authority in the fieldof nanomachine research, into our organization.

and we usedfrank jaeger to kill dr. clark. ocelot tortured the darpa chief,donald anderson, also known as sigint,to death, and made it looklike an accident. the shadow moses incident... with para-medicand sigint dead, zero was theonly one left. but we, too,paid a price. i lost ocelot.

ocelot wasn't fighting forthe pentagon, or the russians, and certainlynot for zero. he was fightingfor big boss. he idolized him. when ocelot graftedliquid's right arm to his own, his body was taken over byliquid's thoughts and spirit. he may be ocelot in physical form,but his mind is liquid's. i was the last one. and then, someoneappeared to help me.

raiden... it was when i met him that i finally discoveredthe location of big boss. it was in the datahe obtained from gw. together, he andi retrieved big boss. but big bosswas still asleep, as zero had left him. this is his pyx. his holy ark.

his body is alive, but his consciousness islocked away by nanomachines. so technically speaking, he's not reallybrain dead. we can't allow liquid to inheritthe same sins that corrupted zero... manipulating people's mindsfor the sake of his own ego. - snake, it's naomi...!- what happpened? she's gone. she's notin the nomad anymore. when?

less than an hour ago. she disappeared right after she andsunny got back from dr. madnar's place. why weren't youwatching her? i... uhm... i didn't havemy glasses on. naomi said it herself: the experimentcan't succeed without her. you think shewent back to liquid. what about raiden? good news on that front.

we managed to get our hands on adialysis machine and set up an icu. we just started him on dialysisand treatment for his wounds. - will he live?- yeah, no worries there. sunny's taken overfor naomi. but his treatment's probablygoing to take 48 hours. until then,raiden can't move. hey you! come here! what the hell is that?

scarabs... unmanned scouts. they've found us. we're moving out. snake, the pmcs areconverging on your location. damn it!they're sending in gekko! they'll be on you inless than five minutes! are they ready? we'll escape through the canalroute using the real van.

- get it ready. hurry!- yes, ma'am. snake, over here. we've got decoy vans set todraw some of our pursuers away. all of these childrenwere orphans. they work in arms factories, and when they grow up,they want to join a pmc. they seek revengeon other companies, pmcs that killedtheir parents and use their earningsto support their younger siblings.

there are countless child soldierslike these in the pmcs. nowadays, anyone with a computercan get combat training. the fps gamesthese children love are distributed for freeby these companies. of course, it's alljust virtual training. it's so easy for them to getabsorbed by these war games. and before they know it, they're in the pmcsholding real guns.

these kids end up fightingin proxy wars that have nothing to do with their own lives. they think it's coolto fight like this. they think thatcombat is life. they don't needa reason to fight. after all, for them, it's only a game. zero is the cause of all this. defeating liquidwon't change things.

unless we stopthe patriots' system, the cycle willgo unbroken. hop on. hold on to me. with so manywars being waged, oil and biofuel have becomeas precious as diamonds. it's been a whilesince i went out for a ride. i only get off my bikewhen i fall in love... or fall dead.

big mama... call me eva. here we go! we have to keep big boss's bodyout of enemy hands, no matter what. get the body safely tothe canal escape point! gekko! there you are, snake! where's your anger?! more incoming!

i've got bad news... the decoy vans haveall bitten the dust. which means the enemywill be focusing on you now. i just need you to holdthem off a little longer. rage ! there it is! are you ok? big mama,come on... stay with me.

eva... i need you. a mother's workis never done... big mama! where's the van? over there. the children...? i'm so sorry... she'll be comingto search the van.

i'll take care of it. you stay here,keep watch. i'll contact the children. take this. come back in one piece. i will. promise me. give me your anger, snake! let it boil to the surface!

let your furyflow freely! anger begets anger! come on,show me your rage! rage! rage! ready yourself! here i come! you bastards... i'll never forgive you... never!

i can feel the angerbuilding up inside... eating away at me. i'll never forgive myself. i don't wantto be angry. i don't need anger. i'm not angry. i'm scared! help me! the birds arepecking at my flesh! and my soul! please, pleasemake them stop!

i don't need more hate! i've had enough! help! let me outof this cage. i don't need these wings. i don't need this rage. come. let your anger flow. way to bringthat bird down, snake.

and you got yourselfa souvenir, too. a grenade launcher. nice! that's a realuser-friendly weapon. not much use to mewithout an id, though. i'll launder his onefree of charge. what's the catch? only that you give it to mewhen you're done with it. a weapon with that manydecades of rage stored up inside it... now that's acollector's item.

how old was she? i'd say about 20. but she had years of soldiers' ragehidden away in that youthful body of hers. soldiers? yeah.the soldiers of aceh, a place that hasn't seenpeace in a long, long time. she was capturedby one side or another, and kept caged uplike an animal along with god knowshow many other kids.

anonymous violence. it's unknown whether her captorswere with the government or the rebels. in any case, they got their kicks by abusing thesehelpless little kids day after day after day. that constant barrage, that battlefield rage,slowly built up inside their bodies... their minds. the kids tried to keepeach others' spirits up, always clinging to the hope thatsomeone would come to their rescue, barely survivingoff scraps of food.

but those soldiers didn't stop. they called the kidsparasites and shit-eating ravens. beat 'emeven harder. then one morning,the soldiers just up and left, leaving the surviving kidsto be eaten alive by the birds. almost like one ofthose sky burials. one by one, their bodieswere picked apart by ravens' beaks, until finally the flockcame for her. but by some miracle,their beaks cut her bonds instead.

and like that,she was liberated. in that instant, she was filled with an uncontrollable rage,and it smothered her soul. she ripped the ravenspecking at her to pieces and then wentafter the soldiers. and when she finallycaught up with them, she waited until nightfalllike a hunter awaiting its prey. they say that whena raven cries, a man dies. and that's exactlywhat happened that night.

screeching and cawing, she killedevery last living being in the camp, both the soldiers andthe civilians they'd enslaved. in her eyes, there wasno longer a difference. the cruelty herfriends had suffered, the pain and humiliationshe'd endured... hers was the distillation of the rage thatdecades of war had imparted on those soldiers. it was her strength,and her greatest weakness. you're something else, snake. you managed to cleanseraven of her rage.

no, seriously. you're the seed of war. in fact, i'd say youmight even be war itself. maybe it's stilltoo early to tell. you've still got halfthe bb corps ahead of you. keep your eyeon the ball, pal. i have to apologize. the three vans thatcame out with us were decoys. the real one is floatingdown the river,

headed downstream. i managed to getin touch with the children... the pyx is safe. we're going to rendezvouson the riverbank downstream. land and air routesare cut off... but there's a cruiserwaiting for us. the volta river isour only chance of escape. let's get out of here... hurry...

good thinking. this way... i don't need tofeel the wind anymore. there's no need tokeep lying to myself. i only get off my bike... when i fall in love... or... give me a hand. the underground aqueduct...

leads to the river. there should befewer of them down there. where's the pyx? that no longer matters. where is it? is that it...? naomi told me everything. and now, thanks to her, i finally have it.

the thing i've soughtfor so long... nice try... but when it comes to cqc, i've got the upper hand. even if you do geta hold of the system, you'll only have one partof the patriots' ai... the military part. what of it, brother? it's only a matter of timebefore i have everything.

remember gw? the ai they think they lost? it's mine, and a part of my army. impossible! we destroyed it! your worm only managedto cut gw into little pieces... pieces we were ableto reconstruct. and then we stowed itaway inside jd's network.

this man's bodyhas served me well, allowing me to pass every securitybarrier between me and gw. after all, the patriots' system isnothing more than a machine. now that gw is aspook inside the network, there's no way jd wouldrecognize it as an external threat. once i destroy jdwith a nuclear strike, the patriots'network will be mine. and then, i'll build my haven,

free from allforms of control. i'll cast asidemy old identity, and take my ownname for the first time. liquid, you're planningto recreate the patriots? snake, we werecreated by the patriots. we're not men. we're shadowsin the shape of men. we're freaks whonever should have existed! we're a system,

insurance that futuregenerations never prosper. the patriots saw fitto create us, and in doing so becameour only raison d'etre. i won't fightmy fate any longer. i'll kill zero and big boss, and become a patriot myself. it all began withzero and big boss. our purpose in life isto fulfill our destinies. and once all isreturned to zero,

the world can be reborn. adam... so long as we both live, the world will notknow an age of light. if we're to pass the batonto the next generation, the only choice leftto us is death. boss... the players haveall assembled, snake. the time has comefor you to witness...

witness ourmoment of triumph! go! hold it right there,liquid! drop your weaponsand stand down. now! all of you, drop your weaponsand put your hands up! aim! liquid! stop! fire! the system is mine!

your guns and your weaponsare no longer your own! behold... guns of the patriots. bang! shit! ed! akiba... you're ok? yeah... i'm fine.

but why...? look out! do you see this, zero? we are victorious! behold! guns of the patriots! out of my way! let them have it. we don't need it anymore.

so long, snake! otacon! jonathan... ed... you and me... we were great partners. great friends. don't give up on me. don't go...

i... i... it's... it's not, i mean.... thank you, akiba. you ok, meryl? if it's all right... call me johnny. you and the beastsare no different...

scorched shadowsborn to the world. when a beaststeps into the light... unless the lightis put out... the shadows cannot be erased. so long asthere is light... there is shadow. to return everythingto normal... the light mustbe extinguished. and when that happens...

will be... too. kawanishi-noseguchi... kinunobebashi,takiyama... uguisunomori,tsuzumigataki, tada, hirano. ichinotorii,uneno... yamashita, sasabe... kofudai, tokiwadai,myokenguchi... we'll launch a stealthnuclear warhead at jd.

i thought you couldn'tcontrol a nuke with gw. we can't. that's whererex comes in. i know where to findnukes they don't control. now go. prepare our haven. yes, boss. what the devilis this...?! the video feed fromthe mk.ii cuts off here.

in the beginning, the patriots' systemwas controlled by four ais, with jd at the top. one of those ais was gw. the patriots thoughtit had been destroyed, but liquid was ableto use it as cover to slip inside the system. gw... i knew i'd heardthat name before. yeah, gw was oneof the patriots' cell ais.

it was installedon arsenal gear. emma's worm should haveput it permanently out of commission, but liquid somehowrecovered and repaired it. i'm guessing jd must beunable to recognize gw even though it'sinside the patriots' system. it's a blind spot. gw was written off as lostwhile it was still tied in. using it let liquid interferewith the ai from the inside. where is this haven?

where is their base? don't worry. mei ling is using the positionof the mk.ii's last transmission to predict the courseof liquid's ship. the us military's systems are all in liquid'shands now. the regional systemshave all been shut down. guns are fallingsilent across the earth. it's the first totalcease-fire in human history.

supreme authoritystill resides with jd which the patriots still command. which is why liquid plans to launch a nuclear strikeon jd in its orbit. but liquid only controls sop, and sop only controlsguns and small firearms. if liquid can'tuse the nukes... then... then what's his plan? that's it!

he's going to use rex! rex was scrapped beforethe sons of the patriots system was implemented. of course... the rail gun. campbell, where's rex now? i think you know. a long-forgotten base,

in us territory,outside the patriots' control... the place where liquidmade his debut... his monument. off the alaskan coast, in the fox archipelago... shadow moses island. if liquid destroys jd, and his gw assumes totalcontrol over the system... he'll have the worldat his fingertips.

and no one will beable to stop him. not even the patriots. enough is enough, snake. you can't takeany more of this. i'm not dead yet. that's not what i mean. you can't beat liquid. he's got the patriots'own control system on his side. not only areweapons useless,

but the us militaryis in shambles. and even if it weren't, liquid's got enough menand machines to match it. things can't get any worse. face it, snake... we've lost. otacon...! we never stood a chance. it's not aboutwinning or losing.

we started this. and it's our dutyto finish it. - sunny...- no ! jack can't go. he's not ready yet. he needs to rest! let me go, sunny. your dialysis isn't done yet. i'll be fine.

from now on... i'm living my life by my own will. i won't livea proxy life... a slave to someone else's will. i'm a shadow. one that no lightwill shine on. as long as you follow me, you'll never see the day.

... are both just pawnsin this proxy war. but once this is over, we will have our freedom. i'll release you. it's the only wayi'll ever be free. five years ago... that's not what i meant. i've got nothing to lose. don't be an idiot.

you know you've gotsomeone to protect. it was never goingto work out for me. it even rainedthe day i was born. you've got it all wrong. you were the lightningin that rain. you can still shinethrough the darkness. the lightning... look at me. do you see this?

i have no future. in a few months, i'm going to be a weaponof mass destruction. you have a family. i have no family! i have nothing! i have always been alone. always. don't leave me here...

alone. this is my fight. my destiny. mei ling. i got the results back. it's official.he's on shadow moses island. we lost metal gear mk.ii'ssignal along the way, but the ship was headed inthe direction of shadow moses. this is a picture of the islandtaken by a civilian imagery satellite.

the sea line is risingdue to global warming. have you heard thatthe entire fox archipelago is about to slipinto the ocean? the surrounding islandshave already been evacuated. then what about rex? what did washingtondo with it? the nuclear disposalfacility on shadow moses hasn't been touchedsince the incident. that was nine years ago.

the president of armstechand the darpa chief were killed, and the secretary ofdefense was arrested... by the time the shadowmoses incident was over, there wasn't a single person leftthere who knew what took place. it was as if nothinghad ever happened. the data was eitherfalsified or erased so no traceswould be left behind. we were exiled to desk jobsfor the same reason. rex and the nukes should still bewhere they were nine years ago,

untouched. i thoughti'd never go back. it'll take me a whileto get there, but i'll be backing you upfrom aboard the missouri. she's the only shipin the fleet still able to move, since it was decomissionedbefore the system was put in place. and hawai'i is notthat far away. you're not wearingyour glasses anymore? oh, i... yeah.

i switched to contacts. we rendezvousat shadow moses. he who submitsto heaven shall live... he who defies heavenshall perish. i have to atonefor my past, too. rex is a beast born from my research. shadow moses awaits. everything all right, snake?

i was... having that dream again. we're here. shadow moses. act 4:twin suns are you all right? yeah.i just slipped a little. have to hurry... not much time left.

meet the mk.iii. it's our last replacement,so try not to break it. who, me? never. one more thing... i don't see anybody around, but there are unmannedsentries patrolling the area. be careful out there. it's snake. i'm in front ofthe disposal facility. excellent, snake.

how's that sneakingsuit working out? i'm nice and dry,but it's a little hard to move. bare with it. it's designedto prevent hypothermia. this is alaska you know. a hind-d? what's a russiangunship doing here? you must be crazy to flya hind in this kind of weather. who's that? nice to meet you snake.

it's an honor to speakto a living legend like yourself. what's wrong? a surveillance camera? this is mcdonell miller. campbell told meabout the situation here. i thought i mightbe of some use. there's no one i'd ratherhave in a foxhole than you. well, i knowlots about survival... snake, that door is locked.

how do i open it? security isshut down altogether. you can't release the lockwithout activating it. you'll have to golog in somewhere. i've got it, snake.my old office is close by. with the power on, you shouldbe able to unlock the door from there. and if you checkthe facility records, we can find out rex's statusand who's been in and out. you rememberwhere it is, snake?

i'm not senile yet. just to be safe,i'm marking it on your map. you old geezer. this version is totally obsolete. it's going totake a little work. this is the roomwhere we first met, huh? yep. it's not conjuring up anyunpleasant memories, is it? i was being attackedby frank jaeger.

i remember. if you hadn't shown upwhen you did... it gives me the shiversjust thinking about it. you saved my life. naomi hated them forwhat they did to frank's body... but it was me thatcrippled him in the first place. she must havehated me, too. we shouldn't havebeen so trusting. i blame myself, too.

i helped develop rex. that's why it was so easy for meto believe her feelings were genuine. but she was only using usto atone for her sins. so what? what did she do to us? you forgot already? she betrayed you!she stole your blood! if that was all, it should have been overand done with in south america.

why'd she join usafterward? well, i... she has us come rescue her and then she turns aroundand goes straight back to liquid. why would she do that? i don't know, snake. it looks likeshe's still with him. i just had a look atthe security access logs... as i thought, there's peoplecoming and going at frequent intervals.

in fact, the records showsome recent activity. look at this. it's an image taken a few hours agoby a surveillance camera up ahead. and vamp. the beauty and the beast. they've beenthrough here. and from what we've gleanedfrom the security records, it can onlymean one thing... they're headed for rex'sold underground hangar.

i finished rebooting securityand released the locks. the door on the first floorought to open for you now. amazing. almost makes me nostalgic for the dayswhen you needed a keycard for every door. it's been nine years. all you really have to do is reinterpretthe old technology in terms of the new. getting old isn't allthat bad, you know. let's get going, snake. found you.

cry... cry for me. go on... let me hear you cry! come... show me your tears. let them flow! until your eyes run red! sad...

so sad... so very, very sad... so sad i could die! i hear them... i hear the cries... the cries of babies. stop it! stop crying! please!

please, stop crying! no, wolf... go away. don't come any closer. i was so scared. forgive me. you can cryif you want to. cry if you need to.

i don't needtears anymore. i've cried myself dry. so cry... as much as you like. will be there to listen. yo, snake. i finished laundering thatrail gun you picked up just now. knock yourself out.it's on the house. time for anotherbedtime story, snake.

this one's about crying wolf. you don't need me to tell youthere's whole nations in africa tearing themselves apartin the name of ethnic cleansing. well, she was borninto that environment. when she was a little girl, her village was attackedby rival armed factions. her parents and siblingswere slaughtered, and she wasleft a refugee. she took herlast surviving relative,

her baby brother, and ran as far as she couldaway from the war zone. one day, they cameacross an enemy unit, so she took her brotherand hid in an abandoned shack. and then her brotherstarted to cry... she knew that ifthe soldiers heard the noise, they would find themand kill them both. so she wrapped her handsas tight as she could around his mouth. as the footstepsgradually went away,

she came back to her senses. her brother wasn'tcrying anymore. horrified, she pulledher hand away, covered in sweat and spit. he wasn't breathing. they say wolves eattheir own pups when they die. she was spotted wanderingthrough the thick of battle carrying her dead brotherin her arms. she had visions, too:

a wolf walking alongside her. every night, the wolfwould howl and cry, just like herbrother did that day. eventually, she made it to agovernment-run refugee camp. but by then, her brother's bodyhad rotted away. the camp was crowdedwith refugees like herself, and little childrenlike her brother.

day and night she wastormented by the cries of babies. the wolf that followed her heard her sorrowfulscreams and answered. he made his wayaround the camp. and one by one... he silenced the children. she tried to stop it, but she was powerlessto stop the wolf. a few days passed,

and on the eveof the enemy's raid, there wasn't a child left. the adults who survivedwere torn up pretty bad. of course, there neverwas any wolf in that camp. she was the onewho killed those babies. but she couldn'tbring herself to admit it. she couldn't bear the thought ofherself going from one baby to the next, howling like a wolf,snuffing out their little lives. and she never did,even as crying wolf,

a lonely beast foreverstalking the battlefield. fighting with you made wolffinally accept what she'd done. she was cleansed by you. if the cries she heard of childrenon the battlefield have been silenced, it's because of you. you ought to be proud. three down, one to go. all that's left is mantis. but you should know, snake,

she's been controllingall the other beasts. she's the beast of beasts. don't let herget her hooks in you. i won't. see you around, snake. welcome home... wolf. i've got something to tell youabout naomi hunter. what about her?

she might be a spy! to kill me? is that all youcared about? frank jaeger, the man who you destroyed,was my brother and my only family. gray fox? you killed my benefactor and sent my brotherhome a cripple. i vowed revenge.

but i can't go yet. i still have a job to do. i vowed revenge... rex is on the floor above you. use the lift. hop on, snake. i'll send 'er up. rex! look!the rail gun's been removed!

liquid doesn't need thewhole rex to launch his nuke, he only needsthe rail gun. damn it!has it already been shipped? hang on, i'll check. i'm afraid so. unfortunately for you, the rail gun isno longer here. naomi! this place will beyour grave,

as my queen wishes. the suicide gekkoare on their way. soon, there'll be nothingleft of this place. we've been had... snake, i think i mightbe able to get it working. i just need some time! i'll leave the rest to you. excellent...

you'll amuse meuntil they arrive. make him pay, snake! do it for me!for emma! what does it taketo kill this guy? i've done enough damage to finishhim but he's just bouncing back. remember what naomi said afterraiden fought him in south america? the nanomachines inside his body arehelping him heal at an accelerated rate. so conventional attackswon't do any good! i don't know...

but for now just give himeverything you've got! yes! you did it, snake! that's it... what have you done? there... now you're a mere mortal,like the rest of us. clever... but can you killthis mere mortal? snake! look out!

they're riggedto self-destruct! sorry to havekept you all waiting. you ready for this? sunny gave methe go-ahead. how about it,undying man? care to die, too? sorry... but i can't die just yet. then kill me.

this one is mine. you keep thosegekko at bay. we're gonna buyyou some time. i'll do my best! wait... you're a scout, too,are you not? then let usduel with blades. damn, herethey come again! hang in there snake!don't give up!

above you! they're comingfrom above! watch out snake! good, snake! in front! just like that, snake! snake, get out of the way! this thing mightcome in handy after all. he was never immortal.

his natural healing abilitieswere enhanced by the nanomachinesinside his body. after so many battles... he's finally reached his limit. doctor... ease my pain. sunny asked meto tell you something. "i cooked them right." good for you, sunny.

you finally did it. i can't save you. you have to trust me,dr. emmerich. give this to him. not for revenge, but to end his suffering. now you can returnto your true self. you can be at peace. i can... die?

this doesn'tchange anything. we can't... erase the past. nor... can we forgive it. and so the only thingwe can do... is end it. liquid's down below us. he's stolenthe patriots' system,

slipped out of their sight, and taken their ark. ark? a warship... unfettered by land... law... country... or network. the only place where they are trulyreleased from the shackles of the patriots...

the place wherethey can be free. outer haven. outer haven...? liquid plans to launchthe nuke from that ship. you have been given life so thatyou may fulfill your purpose. when all of this is over, you'll have no choicebut to accept death. we are given life only so thatwe can atone for our sins. your life was createdfor that very purpose.

we all must atonefor our own sins. we must not pass themon to the next generation. we must not leavethem for the future. that is your true fate... one that even youcannot defy. vamp and i... we are the same. we're living corpses... our bodies...

kept barely aliveby nanomachines. then you... cancer. i shouldn't evenbe alive right now. the nanomachines havekept it from progressing... but there's nothingmore they can do. with the nanomachines gone... time will unfreezeand begin to flow again. what are you saying?

goodbye... hal. don't! give... my best... to sunny. naomi, don't do it... are you crying...? for me?

naomi... why? you have... such beautiful eyes. i'm sorry for everything. now go! let's get moving.- why does it always end this way? - come on! pull yourself together!- why does it always end this way? they're coming! i haven't losteverything yet.

i've still got a job to do. that's right.we need you. i'm done crying. i don't haveany more tears to shed. we have toget out of here. any ideas? time's running short,so i'll explain as we go. pay close attention. i'm listening!

promise... promise me... you'll carry on... our will. i've got your back. they self-destructed! what's that...? ray! it's not over!

not yet. moses, whereour fates were born. and whereyours ends, snake! let's finish this, snake! ray may have beendesigned as a rex killer, but you've got meon your side. you can't lose! crush ray,and liquid with it! snake, behind you!

fox... die! think again! sorry, but thatwon't work this time. this is the libertywe've won for ourselves! outer haven! and with this weapon, i will destroy jd! then,

everything ends,and everything begins! but as for you,brother, you'll stay here to markthis island's watery grave! die, snake! sunny... no! - rose!- no! jack, do you rememberthe day we met?

it was in frontof federal hall... there were allthese tourists around you. they were asking me which building it wasthat king kong was climbing in the movie. i said it was probablythe chrysler building. and then you showed upand started mouthing off. you were like,"no, it's the empire state." i said the chrysler buildingwas in godzilla. we started arguing, and i forgot allabout the tourists.

the next thing we knew,the tourists had gone away. and a week later, i found you again bycoincidence out in the base corridor. an amazing coincidence... that night, we went up to the topof the empire state building. it was so beautiful. i didn't care anymorewho was right. and that wasour first date.

we watched king kong in your apartmenta bunch of times that night... didn't sleep till morning. worthless fossil! haven is headed southwardthrough the pacific at a speedof 33 knots. the missouri isfalling behind at a rate of about twonautical miles every hour. can't this thinggo any faster? i'm afraid not.

this is as fastas she'll go. the nukes firedby rex's rail gun have a damage radius ofapproximately 300 meters. the target isa moving satellite that's travelling at10 kilometers per second. to get theprecision they need, they have to getas close as they possibly can. liquid won't launch his nukeuntil jd is at perigee. the missouri can usethat time to catch up.

haven is goingto use a rail gun mounted on the bridgeto destroy jd. they'll need to openthe cover to launch the nuke. that's our one andonly chance to get inside. inside? why can't weattack it from here? it wouldn't do any good. as long as liquidhas control of the system, physically destroying gw would stillleave supreme authority in his hands...

sons of the patriots. dr. emmerich is right. that's why we needto destroy gw from the inside before attacking haven itself. liquid's very own death star... all right everybody,here's the plan... we know haven will haveto surface in order to fire the rail gun. when it does,the missouri will see it. we'll make a quick approachand deliver a strike team.

our goal is twofold... prevent that nukefrom launching, and wipe outgw's programming. we'll launch the striketeam from catapults at the exact momenthaven's armored cover opens. they'll then penetrategw's physical server room and infect it with a worm cluster. but what if they shut down gwbefore we get in there? liquid is already entrenchedwithin the patriots' network.

he needs to stay there, or destroying jdwon't serve him any purpose. they can't affordto have gw shut down. and let's not forget, liquid will throw everythinghe's got at stopping the strike team. the corridor leading to gw is defendedby directed-energy weapons that emit certaintypes of microwaves. did you say...microwaves? and at that frequency,

the waves will start to evaporateany living person within range. a giant microwave oven. you'd have to havea death wish to go in there. sounds like theperfect job for me. snake, this isn't the timefor your stupid jokes. outside the corridor, liquid's soldiers willbe out in full force. inside, there'll be unmannedweapons waiting for us.

where are you gettingall this information? you really think there'sa way to destroy gw? yes, i do. she... left us something that'llpoint us in the right direction. naomi helped with the preparationsto stop haven's launch. all of our internal dataon haven came from her. the reason she got on the nomadwith us in the first place... was to get close to me.

she ended upturning to sunny instead. she left her planin sunny's hands. this entire operation isbased on the data she left us. whose side wasshe on, anyway? we'll never know exactlywhat her true intentions were... but one thing's for sure: she was determinedto stop liquid. our will... come on guys.somebody say something positive.

anything. attention! listen up! a wise man once wrote... "the tongues of dying menenforce attention, like deep harmony." "where words are spent," "they are seldomspent in vain." any other questions? yes? snake?

anybody got a smoke? so this program... you're sayingsunny wrote it? actually, only abouta third of it is her work. naomi was working ona program to destroy gw, but she couldn'tquite finish it. so she handed itover to sunny. sunny went fishingin my library to see if there was any sourcecode she could use to complete it.

eventually, she found some... it was emma's worm cluster. she took my sister's code andworked it into naomi's program. i didn't have time to lookover every single line of code... but what i did see... reminded me of emma. it was like she left tracesof herself behind in the structure. but this worm clusterthat sunny created... it's even betterthan emma's.

sunny's worm destroysthe ai's intellect by triggeringapoptosis in the cells. once uploaded into gw, it should dosome real damage. you ever thinkabout quiting? it's not like i've gotmy health to worry about. are you tryingto kill yourself? so, you're dead set ongoing to haven yourself... why don't we getsomebody else to go?

there's no needfor you to do it. i still havethings left to do... besides smoke. why don't you jumpoff the ship with me? i've still gotthings to do myself. and i don't even smoke. act 5:old sun how is he? he'll live,

but he's inno shape to fight. best to let him rest. without the system to protect them,everybody's losing their nerve. they say sop's aftereffects are so badthat a lot of soldiers are deserting. the only people i have leftto rely on are meryl and... him. kind of an unknownquantity, isn't he? i hooked him upwith a non-id m82. fancy meetin' you here.

business has been slow ever sinceliquid got his hands on the system... his extra ordersstopped coming in. now that all the weaponsall over the world are locked, the only ones still lookin'to fight would be you n' yours. drebin, do you have even theslightest idea what's going on here? 'course i do. enjoy it... could be your last. it is.

i'm all out. looks like that last smokewill have to wait after all. later. oh, thanks. you're over there. there! liquid's warship,outer haven, is a modified version of anarsenal gear model stolen from the patriots. inside, it's crawling with irvingand other unmanned weapons.

haven is crewed by abattalion of enhanced soldiers, each culled from thebest the pmcs have to offer. if liquid succeedsin destroying jd and gaining controlof the patriots' system... he'll make havenhis flagship, and his pmcs will spreadlike wildfire across the globe. mankind's armedsubjugation will begin. captain, haven sighted. prepare to fire main gun!

listen closely... this is our last chance to stopliquid from enslaving the planet. can you hear me? it's time... time to do your duty. remember... no matter what happens... i'll be with youtill the very end. are my pride and joy.

rail gun is exposed. there it is: a naked nuke. let's finish it, snake. let this be our last battle. if we're responsiblefor liquid's sins... then the onusis ours to bear. enemy moving to intercept! maintain full speed! failure will spell doomfor the human race.

you've got to stop themfrom using that rail gun... then annihilate gw. target hit! light damage! the enemy is returning fire. all hands,prepare for impact. brace yourselves! sorry...it's my ankle. can you walk?

i think so. hurts a hell of a lotmore without sop. makes you feel alive, doesn't it?what about akiba? he fell into the ocean. snake, i'll catch up soon. you go ahead! sorry to keep you waiting. the corridor leading to gwis defended by directed-energy weapons did you say... microwaves?

meryl...? run! i know your wavelength... it brings back memories... meryl, don't...! johnny...! wait! akiba! it has beena long time, snake. psycho mantis...?

no, that was another me. can you hear the screams? they cry for battle! let me hear you scream! howl! roar! from the very depthsof your soul! what's this...? blackout! well done! excellent!

my doll! mantis! sorrow! my doll! take that! mantis is dropping her puppet. without it, she can'tcontrol her victims. snake, go grabthat puppet! i hear them in my head... the screams! make them stop!

i don't want to hearthem anymore! i'm scared... i'm so scared. my head hurts...it hurts! i'm sorry! have mercy! let me out of here! i can't breathe! now...

get out of my body. set me free! excellent, snake! psycho mantis? you don't seem tobelieve your own eyes. very well... i'll show you the power of the world'sgreatest mind reader and psychokineticist! i'll start by readingyour personality. or rather,your past.

this is no trick. it's true power. ...what?! where is your data... where is it saved?! there's no memory card! damn! your skillshave improved. or rather,your hardware... how about this, then?!

witness mypsychokinesis... put your controlleron the floor. put it downas flat as you can... that's good. now i will move your controllerby the power of my will alone! vibration is back. the spirit of the warriorwill always be with you. so, you bestedthe last beast. that doll you just picked up lets you manipulateanybody who's got nanomachines in 'em.

sounds like somethingthe devil's cooked up, if you ask me. mantis camefrom south america. she was born and raised in a countrywracked by never-ending civil wars. her village was attacked byenemy forces and burned to the ground. this was whenshe was still a little girl. hunted by enemydeath squads, she was separatedfrom her family. she barely managedto escape with her life... ended up in the basementof this one building.

it was full of corpsesthat had been dumped there. almost all of them hadbeen tortured to death. she was petrified with fear. and then she heard the sound ofheavy boots on the floor above her, followed by shrieking screams, the kind that would make every hairon your body stand straight up. she had stumbled acrossa makeshift torture chamber. somebody had locked the door,and she was trapped. it was dark.it was dank.

and it was full of awretched stench. she couldn't sleep with the screams oftorture victims all around her. all she could do was sit curled upin one corner of the room, trembling. a week passed,then ten days. she managed to keep hydrated by drinkingthe filthy water pooled up on the floor, but there was no food. being trapped in that kind of place,half-crazy from hunger, did a serious numberon her mind.

did you know femalemantises eat their mates? the screams went onday and night. she covered her earsbut it didn't help. and then,she was saved... by a little black mantis, that taught herhow to block out the screams, how to plug upher inner ears. what the hell areyou talking about? i'm saying, snake,

that when she couldn'tstand the hunger any longer, she started feedingon the corpses... but only the male ones. she didn't realizewho was doing it. in her mind,it was a female mantis, devouring her mates. it was like one big,twisted waking dream. there was no mantis,of course. it was alla hallucination.

nothing more than some story spunby another person she'd created inside. her unstable mind waswhat made her so vulnerable. later they ripped out what was leftof her psyche with drugs and hypnosis, and implantedthe persona of psycho mantis. it wasn't her willthat controlled the bbs. it was psycho mantis,half-assimilated into her soul, pulling the strings. screaming mantis wasjust another puppet. anyway, she survived severalweeks down in that hellhole

and finally got backto the surface. but the screamsin her head didn't subside. they wouldalways be with her... only this time,they weren't real. the inner earplugsdidn't work anymore. the black mantishad disappeared. there was no placeleft to escape. which is why she wasalways screaming: to drown out the onesin her own head.

but it's over now. you freed mantis fromthat dark nightmare. the last of the beasts. you got it, pal. well, i'm done playingstoryteller for a while. now get going.gw is waiting. and this time, you getto make up the ending. where's johnny? they're here.

go on without me! this time,i'll protect you. go. destroy gwwhile there's still time. while i'm still alive. snake, the corridor aheadis full of microwaves. no way i'm gettingthrough there uncooked. i'm sorry you gotdragged into this. this time...

we'll meet again... on the other side... you were the lightning in that rain. go! hurry! i'm... sorry you gotdragged into this... it's time.time to do your duty. last mag. come on, snake.i can't hold out much longer. damn it!

i can't protect anyone! johnny! johnny,you're all right! trying to make upfor being late? i'll never leaveyou alone again. cover! ready! who needs nanomachines,anyway... right, johnny?

tell me something. how come mantiscouldn't control you? i figured... she probably used people's nanomachinesto manipulate their behavior. no nanomachines,no control. but, don't you...? i don't have anynanomachines in me. every time we hadmandatory shots, i ducked out. don't tell me you knewthis was going to happen?

nah... i just hate needles! so that's why you werealways out of sync with the team? i tried to keep track ofeverybody's data on my wearable, but i could never keep up. and why you weren'taffected in europe... on the volta! - yep.- asshole! johnny, i'm running low. don't worry.i got these from drebin.

johnny,i never knew... all those horriblethings i said. forget it. all those stomachaches, was that because the nanomachinesweren't there to suppress them? but if you're afraid of shots,why'd you join my team? i wanted tobe near you... to protect you. - johnny...?- meryl...

i've always loved you. ever since shadow moses, when i firstlaid eyes on you. meryl, marry me! you've got a hellof a sense of timing. what do you say? i'd have to say... no. you'd rather stay single? ok. we don't haveto make it official.

well, how about we justmove in together, then? nope. is there somethingwrong with me? i'd just ratherdo things my way. johnny... marry me. i'll say it again... sure.it'd be my pleasure. and don't even thinkabout cheating on me.

i wouldn't dare. and i wanta real wedding... with flowers and a cake. it's been my dreamsince i was a little girl. i want to be a bride. take me home, johnny. the shots... they're not working. get up!

on your feet, snake! i am lightning... the rain transformed. leave this to me. i'll go to the server room. the corridor'sfull of microwaves. one of us is enough. my body is a machine.i can take it. your body maybe a machine...

but your heart... ...is human. you've got a lifeto go back to. she meansnothing to me now. raiden, look at me. you still have your youth. don't waste it. you can start over.

from here on, this is my fight. we tore the world apart... made your lifea living hell. it's my duty... to put an endto all of this. i'll make surethey don't get through. stay with me, snake. hold on untilwe insert the virus.

lock itfrom the inside. done. thank you... snake, that place issaturated with microwaves. the longer you stay in there,the greater the damage you'll take. get through thereas quickly as possible! are you alright? don't give up on me snake! move.

we're running out of time. you've gotto keep moving! get up snake! so this is gw... it's like a graveyard in here. can you do it? leave it to me. we did it! it's over.

they did it. wait a minute... the worm is still spreading. and it's not stopping at gw. is it removingthe other clones...? wait. i don't believe this! what is it? jd is being erased!

it's you, isn't it? i hope you're listening. the virus you uploadedis using gw as a conduit to annihilatethe entire ai network. it's set to destroyall four ais along with jd, the corethat tied them all together. i've set this video toplay back once they're all gone. sons of the patriots wasonly the beginning. the patriots were planning to usenanomachines to implement the system

over the entire population. i had an obligationto stop it. with a littlehelp from sunny. she helped me... she believed her talentscould help you all put gw to rest. what she createdwas an anti-ai foxdie. but this virus's name... ...is foxalive. the conceptual opposite...

...of the nanomachines thati created all those years ago. we wished to freethe captured foxes... to let them runfree in the wild. by the time you hear this, i'm afraid i'll be gone. this is a strange feeling... leaving a message to bedelivered after you've died. hal... if you're listening...

sorry i deceived you. it hurt me morethan anything else, lying to you like that. i wanted to apologizeto you before... but i never got the chance. and yet, in the end... you helped mefeel the joy... ...of living.

thank you, hal. hear me. our country... ...is an innocent childonce more. a new dawn is rising. she can build a newdestiny for herself. the time has come. you've earned your rest. the rose petalis about to fall...

snake?! wait here. i'll get a medic. enough! stop this pointless fighting! this is no war! rise and shine, snake. look. the war is over.

you... you couldhave stopped us. stopped you? why would iwant to do that? this is just as i'd hopedthings would end. back before father's time... before zero gavebirth to the patriots... the us, china, and the soviet union,formed a secret pact. the organization they createdwas called the philosophers.

through two world wars, it spreadits roots and extended its reach. after that,the philosophers splintered, and factions began to squabbleover the fortune they'd amassed. they called itthe "philosophers' legacy", a massive cache of funds that would later providethe foundation for zero's patriots. zero sought to use his richesto achieve world domination. our father, big boss, sought to free himselffrom that chokehold.

his dream was to createan army of free citizens, one that answeredto no government... outer heaven. but he failed,because of you. nine years ago, i tried to free usfrom the control of our genes. four years later,our dear brother, solidus, sought to free us fromthe control of the patriots' memes. all of that, all of it, was nothing more thana process of trial and error...

the end result of whichis outer haven, to be free fromsons of the patriots, the ultimate form of external controlimposed on the patriots' soldiers. free from foxdie... free from the system... free from id control. our minds freefrom their prisons. that is the haveni've yearned for. this is it, brother.

our final moment. the battle has ended... but we are not yet free. the war is over... we still havea score to settle. show me whatyou've got, snake! take this! time to die! what the--?!

splendid, brother! it's not over yet! this is onlythe beginning, snake. america will descendinto chaos... it'll be the wild westall over again. no law, no order. fire will spreadacross the world. the people will fight... and through... battle...

they will knowthe fullness of life. at last... our father's will... his outer heaven... is complete. somewhere out there... i know he's laughing. we are beasts created by man.

the shadowscannot be erased. erasing shadowswill do no good. i am liquid'sdoppelganger. and you are his. just like your father. you're pretty good. sunny's programdestroyed jd's brain, but left the brainstem intact. she analyzednaomi's black box

and separated the patriots' control systemfrom the vital lifelines of society. water... air... electricity... food... medicine, communication,transportation... she cut offthe patriots' control while preservingmodern civilization. maybe... it was her way ofavenging olga... her mother. or maybe she wanted to shapethe future into her own ideal image.

it was just onebig defragmentation. foxalive... the ai is trulya living thing. the patriots' reignhas crumbled away. and still, our civilization... a civilization that has thrivedon war since the dawn of time... lives on. i wonder if wedid the right thing.

what did we lose? what did we save? epilogue:naked sin look amazing! congratulations. colonel. going to walk medown the aisle. you're notangry anymore? oh, i'm still mad.

but now... you've got a chanceto win me over. we have plentyof time now. you look beautiful. way to go! - you're gonna make her real happy.- i hope so... dearly beloved... we are gathered here todayto join these two in holy matrimony. let us give thanks for the lifethey will soon share...

and pray... they have love everlasting. now, let's all send this new teamon their first mission. hey. go on! do it! just in time. drebin.

and i brought gifts. a shower of flowers,compliments of drebins. a little somethingextra from me. the bouquet! hey! where's snake? who knows? that guy alwayskeeps you waiting. sunny, come on.

jack, how are you feeling? do you mind if i sit down? jack... don't shut me out.i need you to listen to me. what do you want? come to laugh at me? look at the boy. cute. - campbell's kid?- no!

he's yours. i don't have any kids. he's your son! you said... miscarriage... i lied. i had a healthy baby boy. roy pretendedto be my husband... to protect me...

and our son. only until you'dcompleted your mission. to shield usfrom patriot eyes. he didn't even tell meryl. he sacrificed everything... even his family... to protect us. i don't believe it. i'm sorry, jack.i wanted to tell you.

so he's really...? john... aren't yougoing to say hello? my son... little john. scared of me, huh? i don't blame you. it's ok. i'm not scared.

i think you're cool,kinda like a comic book superhero. rose... i'm done running. and i'm... no longer afraid. like a scene frombeauty and the beast. don't say that. you're no beast. you're my husband.

and his father. and me... i'm going to domy very best... to be the wife and motherthis family deserves. has changed. our time has ended. our war is over. but there's one morething i must do... one last punishmenti must endure.

erase my genes... wipe this memefrom the face of the earth. this... is my final mission. nothing beatsa stiff drink, huh? i didn't know you drank. i thought it wasstrictly soda for you. not like i nevertouch the stuff. soda just agreedwith the nanos better.

the nanomachinesbreak down alcohol before it has a chanceto get you drunk. so that explains it. no need to holdback anymore, huh? yeah, well, it ain't allsunshine and rainbows. lotta folks lost their entire senseof being the moment sop went offline. you mean sops? i heard some people aregoing through withdrawals...

sop syndrome. sop kept more thanjust alcohol under control. those poor slobs arevirtually naked now. from what i hear, over 10 percentare showing symptoms. i guess getting rid of the patriots won'tsolve all our problems overnight. you probably alreadysuspected this, but... i'm not actuallyan employee of at security. the patriots raised me... to be a gun launderer.

the patriots? my earliest memories are ofthe lra (lord's resistance army)... they kidnapped me... forced me to fight. you're staring ata former child soldier. my parents,brothers and sisters... all killed in the war. guess that makes mewhat you'd call a war orphan. after that, the patriots picked me upand brought me into the family business.

i was drebin...number 893. there's a whole lotta pawnslike me all over the world. how you suppose ilaundered guns like i did? 'cause they let me. in fact... i was under strict orders toback you guys from the start. you what? hey man, don't take it personal.

i wasn't the only oneunder their orders. meryl and...? they probably neverrealized it themselves, but... rat patrol team 01... voila! patriot! played like a violin. but... why? obviously, liquid's plotwas a threat to the patriots.

so they planned to haveyou guys take care of it. didn't turn out quite howthey planned, though, did it? yeah, well... i don't think they expected youto crash their system and wipe them out. so does that meanyou're out of a job now? are you kiddin'? i got the drebins. all the drebins in theworld are in on it. from now on,

we're in businessfor ourselves. we are pawns no more. easy there. the white house might'velost its taste for unilateralism, started to rebuild, but there's a lot offailed states out there that went bankruptfrom their pmc habits... and they owe ashit load of money. only question is...

who's gonnapick up the tab? i'm sure these new governmentswill try and keep it under control with pmc corporate reform laws... but it ain't gonnabe good enough. they're all sunk up to theireyeballs in the war economy. might not be anew world order... but the old order underthe war economy's gone for good. i'm guessin' the un is gonna bemore important than ever, what withmultilateralism and all.

a certain president said it bestback during the cold war... "for in the development of this organizationrests the only true alternative to war." then again, the un itself's justan old 20th-century relic. and if you think about it... when you lookat its history... it ain't that differentfrom the patriots. the nanomachinesused to keep you sober. crush.

mix. burn. repeat. hey, uncle hal, can i give him the mk.iii? he's kinda... a new friend! he lives near here. we can't understand each other'slanguage, but we're having fun.

he's my veryfirst outside friend. that's great. it's ok if you wantto live outside now. it's your life. there are otherhavens out there. the sun... looks so pretty. i like it outside. when is snake coming back?

is sick. so he went on a tripto help him get better. we're not going with him? he needs to be alone. i wonder if i'llever see him again. had a hard life. he needs some time to rest. are you...crying, uncle hal? i'm not crying.

no need for youto go just yet. it's been a long time... big boss? debriefing:naked son let it go... my son. i'm not here to fight. or should i call you... brother?

time for you toput aside the gun... and live. it all began witha bunch of old fools. they've all passed away. their era of folly is over. i'm the only one left, and soon... i'll be gone, too. how can you still be alive?

that body... liquid burned on the volta... wasn't mine. that was the body... of a clone. solidus. he was a perfect clone. zero, and the proxy aisthat came after him, were convincedthat solidus was me.

i was implantedwith nanomachines... kept in a stateof eternal sleep... by jd the proxy ai. they had mesealed away completely... not only physical body,but my will, too. the technology wassimilar to what they used to restrain the b&bmembers you encountered. for me to wake again... the systemhad to be destroyed...

one way or another. ocelot and evawanted two things... to bring me back to life, and to end the patriots. that meant destroying the aiand killing the man... jd and zero. right before you uploadedthe virus into gw... the way to jd was opened, but only through thephysical manifestation of gw.

that's when we finally learnedthe location of this man... zero. for me, and for them... for naomi... nothing was more important. and it was for that they puttheir grand scheme into motion. eva stole mybody from them and reconstructed it by replacingthe missing parts with pieces

from liquid and solidus. and ocelot... in order tofool the system... used nanomachines and psychotherapy to transplantliquid's personality onto his own. he used hypnotic suggestion to turn himselfinto liquid's mental doppelganger. for all our advancesin nanotechnology, information andgenetic control, they've never managedto control people at will...

let alone turnone person totally into another. under certain conditions, someone can be madeto play a specific role... act like someone else. cats... do love toplay as snakes. it all started with him... zero grew old, and by the end, his patriots were beingrun by a network without shape or form.

what do you meanwithout shape or form? the proxies were only one small partof the vast cycle that zero created. the corporations,for-profits, and research institutions thatcomprise the military-industrial complex were part of it, too. they operated on budgets automaticallyallotted to them by the proxies... accounts maintainedby the patriots. the network covered everythingfrom weapons r&d and investment to production and marketing.

it encompassed the people, the companies...even the laws that protect them. politics and economics becamenothing more than iterations of the same oppressivelyuniform system. i don't think anyone realized that it was all a setup... a mere set of norms. the patriotswere those norms. a neural network reducedto its simplest form. that's what theyreally represented...

uniformity withoutindividual will, without change. but then one day, those norms suddenlydeviated from that pattern, and underwent a mutation. it was like the birthof a new life form... the system founda new way to propagate itself... war. the norms the patriots hadcrafted for their unified state

quickly became dependenton a single business... the war economy. meanwhile, the political cause of creatinga "cleaner, safer battlefield" provided aconvenient catalyst. by then, the system was no longerbeing steered by zero's will... or anyone else's. it was thenthat the norms, manifested as ais,the inheritors of zero's will,

began to reproduce andtake on a life of their own. zero's original intentwas to carry on the boss's will and establish aunified world state... an inside world. but his successors failed to carry on his will. eventually,jd became the very age itself, propagating its willas it pleased. and this age chose to act througheconomics instead of nation-states.

powered by the industrial and digitalrevolutions that came before it, this age gave birth to atwisted economic revolution: a battlefield revolution. it created a new worldwithout substance. in this new world, there wereno ideologies, no principles, no ideals... not even the thingshe treasured most, loyalty. there was onlythe war economy. it was a colossal error in judgment,one zero couldn't possibly have forseen.

with the american systemin a state of collapse... the patriots' societyhas reverted to a blank slate. this man... ...was the source of it all. and he doesn't even realize it. he's completely unaware of the factthat he led the world... to the brink of ruin. even with so muchbad blood between us...

it's funny... now that i'm actuallyface to face with him again... the hatred is gone. all i feel is adeep sense of longing. and pity. did zero really hate me? did he fear me? it's too lateto ask him now. the original members...

para-medic... sigint... ocelot. they've all passed on. only zero is left. everything hasits beginning... but it doesn'tstart at "one." it starts longbefore that... in chaos.

the world is born... from zero. the moment zerobecomes one is the moment the worldsprings to life. one becomes two... two becomes 10... 10 becomes 100. taking it all back to one... ...solves nothing.

so long as zero remains... one... will eventuallygrow to 100 again. and so... our goal... was to erase zero. even the mighty patriots... ...began with a single man. that one man'sdesires grew huge...

bloated. absorbed technology... ...began to manipulatethe economy. we realized too late... that we hadcreated a beast. we had helped turn zero... into 100. his sin... was ours.

and for that reason... i'm taking it upon myself... ...to send zero... back to nothing. you going backto zero, as well? you erased metwo times before. today... will mark the third. the foxdie...

zero planted in you... it's already begun eating away at my body. truth is... the foxdie in you... is what killed eva... and ocelot. she told me... everything.

they did it again. they used you... ...to kill me. the patriots. their proxies... in order to bury us... in the end, they'reno more than a program. all they can do... is repeat the same patternover and over again.

do me a favor, will you? take me over to her. there's one more thing... ...naomi wanted meto tell you. about the... old foxdie in your body... the only that mutated. the new foxdie inside you... ...continues to multiply.

at the same time... it is preventing the old... mutated foxdie... ...from reproducing. the new foxdie... ...is uprooting the old. naomi confirmed it in her follow-up. the mutants are receding.

before long, they'll be gone entirely. does that mean... the mutant strainwon't cause an epidemic? it will only live... ...as long as you do. but even then... the process will justrepeat itself. one day,

the new foxdie, too, will start to mutate... ...become a new threat. but that is, if you manageto live that long. am i going to die? everyone dies. you can't stop it. you can't run away from it.

let me tell you something... don't... don't waste the life... ...you have left... ...fighting. i've never thought of you... as a son. i've always respected you... ...as a soldier.

...as a man. if you'd beenin my place back then... maybe you wouldn't have madethe same mistakes that i did. ever since the day... ...i killed the boss... with my own hands... ...was already dead. you were right. it's not aboutchanging the world.

it's about doingour best to leave... ...the world... the way it is. it's about... ...respecting... ...the will of others... and believingin your own. isn't that... what you fought for?

i understand themeaning behind... ...what you did. i understand... the truthbehind your courage. it's almost timefor me to go. and with me... the last ember ofthis fruitless war dies out. and at last... ...those old evilswill be gone.

once the source of evilreturns to zero... a new one... a new future... will be born. that new world... is yours to live in. not as a snake... as a man. know this...

zero and i... liquid and solidus... we all fought a long,bloody war for our liberty. we fought to freeourselves from nations... and systems...and norms, and ages. no matter how hard we tried,the only liberty we found... was on the inside... trapped within those limits.

the boss and i may havechosen different paths... but in the end, we were both trappedinside the same cage... liberty. but you... you have been given freedom. freedom to be... outside. you are nobody's tool now...

no one's toy. you are no longera prisoner of fate. you are no longer... ...a seed of war. it's time for you to see... ...the outside world... ...with your own eyes. and your soul... are your own.

forget about us. live... for yourself. and find... a new lease on life. you only need one snake. the world wouldbe better off... ...without snakes. this is good...

isn't it? snake, wait up! you forgot these... no thanks. i'm quitting. these things will kill ya. where will you go...? our fight is finished. there's nothingleft for us to do.

there's one thingi still have to do. i have to seethis age off... see what the future brings. sounds good to me. i'll go with you. i'm gonna be dead soon. you don't have to come. you said it yourself, snake. there's nothing inside you canpass on to the next generation.

no genes, no memes... you're man-made... you're a beast. i know... a blue rose. there won't be any happy"beauty and the beast" ending for me. what little time i have leftwill be spent living... as a beast.

a shadow of the inside... of the old age. that's why you need me. as a witness. a witness? someone on the outsideto bear witness to your final days. someone topass on your story... not that i'mthe only witness. but i'll remembereverything you were...

and stick with youto the end. besides, you wouldn't let me suffersunny's eggs alone, would you? come quick!they're ready! they look... yummy. sorta like the sun... it's rising again. subtitles by julien strong

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