Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 1===

“Welcome to Live News Today. In today’s top story, the major search engine Michael & Lucifer is being sued over their satellite image service on the grounds that it violates people’s privacy by photographing the heads of balding men and revealing those photographs to the world. The plaintiff demands to have the images of the corresponding region fully deleted as well as $2 million dollars in damages, but M&L’s PR division is declining to comment as the official complaint has yet to reach them.”

“We always get these direct mail attacks and last-minute lawsuits toward the end of the year, so the year really feels like it’s coming to a close once they start up. …Hm, so it’s only two months until Christmas, is it?”

“Michael & Lucifer’s own user policy says anyone can send in a request for the right to be forgotten if an image shows an identifiable person’s private parts or the source of a bodily complex, but will that apply in this case?”

“It’s going to be difficult. If this goes through, satellite imagery will never work. I mean, 10% of the world’s men are balding and that number reaches 30-40% in a superpower that consumes lots of meat and beer. Eliminate all of them from the map and you might have an entire country turn into a giant black box.”

“I see. If it’s 10% of the world, it isn’t that rare, is it? That would explain why you have such an obvious toupee, Mr. Flake.”

“Don’t take my male hormones lightly. Do I need to fuck you on the live broadcast to prove it, you slutty anchorwoman? …Ahem. Anyway, Thanks to a past case about some women’s underwear hanging out to dry, there is precedent for this sort of suit failing. I am sure their corporate lawyers are…”

A radio broadcast played over a civilian frequency.

Quenser started poking at the top of his head.

“Ehh? That gets to 10% of the guys in the world? Now that’s some scary Russian roulette. No one can just ignore this, but how exactly am I supposed to look after my head?”

However, he was berated over the radio for getting distracted.

And of course, he was not about to get that kind of targeted reward from the anchorwoman who had joined the station solely so she could be around famous celebrities and athletes.

“You still haven’t gotten those strategic support parallel processing machines back up!? How much longer until those geeks from the electronic simulation division stop getting paid from the people’s tax money just for raising their hands!?”

“Oh, shut up. How about saying ‘sir’, Miss Boobs! I’ve been stuck in this minus-twenty-degree refrigerated storage for four hours now! And I’m hand-applying solder to thin silicone chips which we should really be using an electron microscope for, so we’ve kind of lost this war already!!”

“We shut off the refrigeration and kept the door open, didn’t we?”

“Say that again after you’ve been in this energy-saving thermos from hell! Your boobs’ll be even more unnaturally stiff than if they were stuffed with silicon!”

Computers were lined up like gravestones in a frigid hell where you could hammer a nail with tofu, but Quenser was not doing battle with the actual simulation machines there. He was trying to fix the hub that increased the number of data lines. To oversimplify, it was a necessary piece for connecting all the machines in parallel. However, there were a lot of places he had to check with so many devices to connect together. He had to determine which insulated wires were broken, locate which devices had their wiring messed up, and then fix it all. …It all sounded very annoying, but at the most basic level it was the same as a game system’s AC adapter. He had to locate which cord or pin had a bad connection and fix it so electricity could get through. That was all.

The problem was the extreme number of them.

Plus, he was stuck in a room as cold as a snowy mountain during a blizzard while doing work on the level of a watchmaker with a loupe and tweezers.

The actual members of the electronic simulation division were not looking after their own machines, but that was because they had zapped themselves too many times and nearly blown off their precious fingers. They had listed off a number of supposed reasons, but it seemed to come down to needing their dominant hand’s fingers to get through their lonely nights. The main power source was off, but some of the circuit board capacitors still held a more powerful current than a stun gun, so he had to be careful. It felt a lot like disarming a bomb.

But why was he once more caught in the midpoint between the harsh battlefield and engineering hell?

“Have you already forgotten what happened in the Mekong District? You abandoned your duties, did the dirty work of an enemy nation, and then revealed the location of a secret Legitimacy Kingdom base that had spent five years infiltrating the area, forcing everyone there to withdraw.”

“I’m never going to escape this hell, am I? There’s only one way to make life worth living now: think of the battlefield and all-night work as twin grim reaper girls in nothing but capes so I can imagine having their boobs pressing in on me from either side… Wait, grim reapers? Oh, yeah. I wonder if little Wraithy, the Stopgap Grim Reaper, managed to follow through on that issue…”

The LED on the boxy device in Quenser’s hands changed from red to green. It looked a lot like a small radio, but it was a tester that checked for an electric current.

“Frolaytia, I’ve got it connected again. At the very least, it can carry a signal now. …Tell the nerds from the electronic simulation division to take care of the rest!! Wait, #29 and #31 aren’t in order. That’s a reverse connection! No wonder this job never seemed to end! Why did I have to spend two sleepless nights searching for someone else’s screw up!?”

“Hmm? I have no idea what that means, Quenser, but are you as much of a nerd as-…”

“I’m nothing like those depressing people from the electronic simulation division! I’m cheerful, easy to get along with, popular, and stylish! I’m racing down the path toward being a clever IT expert!!”

“(Well, nerds never can seem to get along. Those freaks and geeks always claim they’re different from each other and never stop attacking each other.)”

“Did you say something?”

He was alone, but he still glared into empty space while walking toward the exit in a heavy coat. To think of it like roadwork, he had only fixed main street and the side streets still needed work, but at minus twenty degrees, he could not even leave an energy drink in there with him. Even for a military punishment, it was a hellish work environment where he was only allowed out in order to consume caffeine.

Quenser walked through two thick metal doors set up like a submarine airlock and then stepped outside.

Heated air immediately hit him like a solid wall.

“…Ugh,” he groaned as the coat flapped around him.

The boy was not standing in a military base rooted to the ground. He was atop a giant vehicle which was as tall as a two-story apartment building. Each one distributed its great weight across dozens of tires taller than he was and those special vehicles were combined to create the mobile maintenance base he was used to seeing.

More than a hundred of those vehicles were on the move with the Baby Magnum in the lead.

But where were they?

The scene before his eyes was not quite a complete desert of fine sand, but it was still a wasteland of dried earth and stone that would suck all the moisture out of anything living.

They were in the southern part of the North American continent.

Just like in a Western, the scenery was full of cactuses and giant afro-like things blowing in the wind.

“38 degrees… This isn’t quite the same thing as climbing under a heated blanket with the AC on full blast.”

“Do you realize what you’re saying? Maybe you finally have broken.”

“What about you? Why are you skipping out on your work?”

[[Image:HO_v14_115.jpg|thumb]]

Quenser gave a suspicious look to Frolaytia because she had given into the heat and stripped off her military uniform. In fact, she wore a cow-print bikini top, denim shorts that showed off every bit of her thighs, and a cowboy hat. She was clearly meant to be a strange sort of cowgirl. “Yes, please” seemed like the only appropriate words.

But Frolaytia feigned ignorance as she answered him.

“This is part of some charity work for the local children. Simply put, we’re giving money to the peddlers who gather around. I had wanted a normal swimsuit, but this was all they had.”

“No fair!! When we tried to go into town to shop, you kicked our asses!!”

“If military personnel invade their territory, we’re violating the agreement. But there’s nothing we can do about them coming to us. And after we said our base was off limits, too.”

“Didn’t you say this was charity? God, you’re so full of it!”

“Yes. To be honest, I don’t really like that excuse. It makes me feel like my brother.”

“That stuff on your skin isn’t just sun oil, is it? It smells minty, so does it have a refreshing agent that keeps your body temperature down!? No fair again!”

“Why are you dressed so heavily?”

“Hot, hot, hot, oh it’s so damn hot!! I can’t stand it!!”

His skin seemed to finally remember the temperature because sweat poured from every pore on his body. Quenser quickly tore off the thick coat and Frolaytia (the major in a cow-print bikini who had sweat dripping down her cleavage) held out two drinks from a cooler.

“Would you prefer a nutrient drink in a small brown bottle or an energy drink in an aluminum can?”

“Please, can’t I use their active ingredients to decide? …But my stomach has been rebelling ever since I drank one of those expensive ones in a small bottle earlier, so could I have the can? Something more like a soda might help distract me.”

“The small bottle it is.”

“I knew you were going to say that, dammit!!”

She tossed him the something-or-other Empress Juice from the Island Nation and he twisted the metal cap to open it.

“…Now that’s what I call a view. This is known as the tinderbox of humanity, isn’t it?”

“Are you talking about my chest, Quenser?”

“If you’re aware how it looks, then put on your uniform, Miss Popping-Out-Of-Her-Top! I’m still gonna stare, though!! Anyway, the Capitalist Corporations home country is to the west and the Information Alliance home country is to the east, right?”

Just as Europe was the spark area for the Legitimacy Kingdom and the Faith Organization, North America was the most important point for those two world powers.

Frolaytia needlessly held out her chest atop the vehicle traveling south to north.

“This is the Greater Canyon, the absolute demilitarized line dividing a former military superpower between west and east. This would be the greatest scar left by the collapse of the UN. Enough firepower to destroy the world a hundred times over is staring each other down across this line.”

The center of the Capitalist Corporations was Los Angeles.

The center of the Information Alliance was New York.

…Just looking at this made the diagram seem incredibly simple, but one could not let their imagination get the better of them. The only way to know what had happened was to ask a living witness like the old maintenance lady.

“It doesn’t look that way from what I can see here.”

“That’s because biological resources tend to recover much faster when human hands can’t intervene. It’s called a line, but it’s actually more than 150km across from east to west, and both world powers have a forbidden desert that extends for 200km beyond that. The delicate balance of power prevents either of them from entering the Greater Canyon, so it’s actually quite peaceful here. There’s a reason it’s known as the world’s largest blank area.”

“And that’s why there are cities dotting that line from south to north and why outsiders like us can enjoy a calm tour of the area?”

“The situation is undeniably insane, but apparently the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance are actually thankful. Well, this is sort of like a yearly event we take turns with.”

“?”

“Our transportation mission is only for show. An Object from a ‘shared enemy’ – that would be us this time – passes through and yet nothing happens. That sense of relief is apparently used to relax the tension of the people around the world. Image is everything for the Capitalist Corporations’ Hollywood movies and the Information Alliance’s subscription video sites, so this kind of thing must be important.”

It was a very “safe country” sort of idea, but that was unavoidable when the highest members of the military were royals or corporate presidents. Hurrah for civilian control. If battlefield country ideas began ruling safe cities, then the world truly was done for.

“So this year, our 37th was tasked with hosting the party?”

“(Our turn wouldn’t have come around so soon if a certain two idiots didn’t keep causing trouble all over the world. Like in the Mekong District, or in the Mekong District, or maybe in that legendary Mekong District where those idiots were head-over-heels for a blonde girl in a black uniform with a connection to the Information Alliance.)”

“Okay, okay!! I’m the root of all evil! You can call me Quen-Satan!!”

“Quensa-tan?”

“Why does it sound so much cuter like that???”

“That said, it is true we have twenty cutting-edge Second Generations watching our every move from both the east and the west. Do not forget to prepare for the unexpected.”

“Can we get back to talking about cute things? And they’re over the horizon, so I can’t even study them! I’ll die for nothing!!”

“The ones we most have to worry about are the support Objects.”

Quenser wrinkled his brow as he listened to his bikini cowgirl commander and took a sip of the bitter drink that may have been some kind of traditional Chinese medicine or Chinese alchemy.

“Eww, it tastes like tree roots or dark soil. Um, are you talking about the ones that carry high-capacity amps and giant radars to improve the performance of other Objects? I thought they couldn’t do much on their own.”

“The Capitalist Corporations has the Weather Girl which uses meteorological radar and a simulator to improve targeting accuracy. The Information Alliance has the Shield Bash which stabs a bunch of shields and wire barriers into the ground to create obstacles in an enemy Object’s path. That might not sound like much, but we can expect a long battle if they’re working with another Object and their presence increases the odds of a group battle on a scale never seen in a battlefield country. If the snowball keeps rolling, it could develop into an unstoppable catastrophe. To the point that the existing idea of clean wars would no longer apply.”

Just then, someone contacted Frolaytia’s radio.

“Heivia to everyone. This train will soon arrive in the next silo city: Giant Pizza. Take a look at that large city silhouette visible to the north. Choo choo. We are right on schedule.”

“I see. Fun fact: the more needless chatter included in your reports, the more will be docked from your pay.”

“Are you serious!?”

“And that right there applies too.”

It really was the worst environment.

Seeing someone else reminded Quenser just what kind of nightmare he was living in, so he cut in.

“Heivia, where are you and what are you doing? I’m about to die after a hellish night of work…”

“What about you!? Where the hell have you been slacking off, you rotten indoor bastard! I’m standing on the front line searching for treasure with a detector that looks like a maid’s mop! This is a real death march!! You wanna know how amazing the Greater Canyon is? This thing won’t stop beeping and there's hexavalent chromium everywhere around here! And we’re really shorthanded, so get your ass down here!!”

“I’m busy with a bathtub full of hot girls, so I’ll have to pass.”

“I see you’ve got the brain chemicals pumping too. I’m not going to ask what happened.”

That meant they had both been through hell, but Heivia’s unilateral pity irritated Quenser enough to mix some truth in with the lies.

“Even if Frolaytia is here dressed as a bikini cowgirl?”

“Wait, Quenser!” protested Frolaytia. “These transmissions are recorded!”

“Hold on! That one’s real!? What exactly are you two-…kssshhh!!!???”

He must have gotten distracted because the radio fell silent after some awful static.

Quenser and Frolaytia exchanged a puzzled glance.

“…Did he step on a mine?”

“We might have lost someone unfortunate.”