Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter4 (section)

===Part 9===

What happened next came as a surprise.

Mikoto heard a light beep from her skirt pocket.

(Huh? My phone!?)

She went and hid in around a corner of the corridor before suppressing her surprise and pulling out her phone to find she had a number-withheld call.

She answered it and heard a girl’s voice slightly distorted by the phone.

It was ''her''.

“I thought mayyyybe this would work when I noticed I had a signal ability and, would you look at that, it actually went through.”

“Shokuhou?”

“Don’t ask me how it works, but we can call each other. You’re the expert in electronic stuff, so how do you explain this anomaly?”

“…”

First of all, this was a world with much more advanced technology. It had to be flooded with devices that communicated using EM waves. Mikoto was currently aboard an artificial structure measuring 30km across and it was packed full of machinery from end to end.

Furthermore…

“Earth-style cell phones aren’t common here. This world must have developed in a different direction. Maybe our phones use completely different standards and maybe they’re just so old their network security system doesn’t recognize them. Either way, we’ve fallen into a blind spot that lets us use the system without being detected.”

“Do you really think that’s possible?”

Not really, no.

Even running an old app based in a different number of bits on a brand-new tablet would trigger an error and refuse to run.

This was like sending a Morse code message across the vast internet network full of fiber optic cable and having it, by a wild coincidence, actually transfer through the system while, by even more miraculously good luck, the security failed to recognize it. How many incidences of good luck did you need to explain this? Plus, Mikoto and Shokuhou were on ships from opposite sides of a war. Any communications should have been very strictly monitored to prevent any and all intrusions.

Nevertheless, they had a connection.

In a way, this was even harder to explain than the fantasy magic.

(Multi-databits and non-von-Neumann computers based on quantum or ACGT are common here, so maybe simple 1-or-0 binary is so outdated no one bothers monitoring it? Which would make Earth phones an unstoppable tool. Who that makes this world made for, I don’t know.)

Mikoto and Shokuhou exchanged what information they had.

The earthlings had evolved into bipedal tentacle mantises.

The unmanned weapon androids had become even more beautiful than humans.

“At any rate, if we can communicate this way, we should be able to work together without the tentacle mantis earthlings or the beautiful androids noticing,” said Shokuhou.

“How can you be so sure?”

“What we’re doing now would count as a cyber attack or hacking, wouldn’t it? And we’re using a technology ability entirely unknown to them. If they had noticed, they would have scrambled their forces and attacked☆”

She was probably right about that.

During an all-out war where both sides were intent on destroying the other, a suspected spy would receive no mercy.

While the scale of the giant mothership was overwhelming, they were still out in space, a quiet world of death where there was no water or oxygen to be found. They were intruding on the online system that managed the infrastructure that kept everyone alive there, so this could easily be seen as a guerilla attack threatening the lives of the entire population.

Since Mikoto didn’t know how the system worked in this world where space warfare was commonplace, she couldn’t fully trust everything she had heard, but doing something had to be better than the alternative.

They had to act while they had the chance.

They had to escape this SF world before they were overtaken.

Technology could be used equally by anyone as long as they understood how it worked. It wouldn’t be long before the tentacle mantis earthlings or the beautiful androids gathered up the slight signs and traces left by Mikoto and Shokuhou and managed to reproduce or absorb their technology.

Once their advantage was gone, it was gone.

They had to return to the fantasy world of Celesaqphere.

“The controller is here with me and the electrification device is there with you. ''If we have an electrified artificial blackhole, we can travel from world to world.'' So we need to meet up and get that electrification device working so we can return to Celesaqphere.”

“And I assume a scheming queen like you has a plan?”

“For now, we assist them with their war to earn their trust and wait for them to let down their guard ability.”