Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 3===

The Capitalist Corporations’ strategy was to cause shallow scratches over a wide area instead of concentrating penetrative power on a single point. Even if the attack did not break through the enemy spacesuit, it would still cause them to spin uncontrollably and a single pinprick in those thick plastic suits would cause the person inside to die. The conditions were entirely different from when everyone was covered in bulletproof fibers and thick armor plates. Air was the dividing line between life and death, not blood.

Shotguns could cover a wide area with a single shot, so they were the perfect choice.

With no air or gravity in space, their power was not reduced by distance.

They saw a bright muzzle flash right in front of them.

“C-Cottage!?”

“Pull out the bullet before using the airtight tape! Those are smoke rounds, so seal it with tape now and he’ll smoke alive in his suit!!”

“Wow, it actually worked. I think he might be immortal.”

Being treated by cute Myonri was enough. A guy who could convert lust into strength in battle was unbeatable. Quenser complained about the guy’s survival, but then he heard Heivia click his tongue over the transmission.

“Dammit, I can’t get a stable trajectory with my rifle or missiles. Earth projectiles designed to be used in the air are useless!”

“Wait, you couldn’t even aim the missile you fired to save me!?”

It was just like a student from a safe country to complain after having his life saved. A child who did not know how to cook and always had his mama cook for him could never appreciate how wonderful it was to always have a homecooked meal made for you.

Were the Capitalist Corporations using shotguns because the ballistic trajectories were so unstable?

With all this tech developed for use in space, it was easy to forget they had been hiding in cracks in the ground to avoid the enemy not long ago.

“The Island Nation is the holy land of robots and they’ve also got Hollywood that insists on doing everything in full 3DCG.” Heivia sounded disgusted. “That must have influenced them. We’re in trouble cause I can’t even imagine what kind of bizarre weapon they’ll pull out next!!”

“That just means this place is a treasure trove of tech they can’t go public with. I’m gonna get a look at it and steal all their ideas. This deadly trip into space won’t be worth it otherwise.”

A powered suit was a lot better than a spacesuit, but it was still only as sturdy as an armored truck. They could be shot through with a missile or an anti-materiel rifle.

At any rate, the soldiers on the run triggered a silent explosion in space, launching the powered suit away from the station and into the emptiness beyond.

“They know we’re here now, so blow open that airlock already,” said Heivia. “Who knows how many are going to be rushing over here soon!!”

“You might want to move outside of the blast range. Unless you want to go crashing through a lunar villa’s roof, that is.”

They blew up the airlock and moved inside.

They did not have time for them all to pass through the one airlock. Luckily, there were plenty of airlocks. Once Quenser had a few more people in his, they sealed the outside door with airtight tape, pried open the inside door with some tools (because using another bomb would have killed everyone inside the airlock), and finally paid the space station a visit.

The bright white LED lights made the inside look unnaturally sterile. It was so perfect it instead looked unhealthy. It was reminiscent of a research lab deep underground where a zombie virus or something was being developed.

They were in a simple corridor, but it was as wide as a road with two lanes both ways. It followed a gentle curve, so they could not see all the way down it.

The place was unnecessarily large, evidence that they had no trouble transporting things into space. A station like this would have been unthinkable back when everything used rockets where people racked their brains to reduce the weight by even a single gram.

The space elevator was neither a train station nor a hotel, so they did not bother using centrifugal force to produce artificial gravity. Everything remained zero-g like normal.

(Zero-g like normal, huh? Humans adapt so fast.)

Quenser smiled cynically in his helmet. He hoped he would be able to stand on his own two feet once he was back on earth.

He glanced at the computer on his arm. Operating the simple screen controls was difficult with a hand larger than a baseball glove.

“There’s pressure. One atmosphere in fact, so there’s probably air.”

“Then open your helmet’s visor and prove it. I’m not about to open mine and have my head swell out and pop like a balloon.”

Heivia’s ideas of space appeared to be based on a hodgepodge of misinformation. Death in a vacuum would not be that gruesome. You would still be dead, though.

“Come to think of it, what happens when you die in space?” he asked. “There aren’t any bacteria to make you decompose out here, so would you float on outside of the solar system inside your enclosed spacesuit without ever rotting until some aliens finally picked you up???”

“You have a ton of bacteria in your gut,” replied Quenser. “Not to mention mites on your skin and cavity bacteria on your teeth. Some people will have parasites like athlete’s foot too. Once we die and our immune system shuts down, we’ll be devoured from within. Inside a sealed spacesuit, you’ll be reduced to a sticky goop made up of rotted flesh, filth, and even the squid-smelling goo in your balls. That would make for an awful surprise for the little green men who open up your suit. They’ll be wondering why the earth sent them such a cruel present.”

He made sure not to hold his breath since that could damage his lungs.

But he still wanted to preserve his suit’s oxygen tank, so he went ahead and raised his visor. If the tank did run out, he could still suffocate to death inside his spacesuit even when he was surrounded by oxygen in the safe station.

He felt dizzy the instant the outside air reached him.

“Ugh!”

“Hey, your eardrums didn’t burst, did they!?”

“I’m fine. I think it’s just my inner ear.”

He shut off the oxygen supply from the tank while he thought.

Could he find a Capitalist Corporations oxygen tank anywhere?

The two idiots searched around. This structure was generally shaped like a donut, but there were a ton of sturdy metal doors for airlocks on the outside of the metal ring. Those were connection joists for attaching additional experiment rooms.

The delinquent noble (who now removed his helmet after seeing Quenser was fine with his visor open) frowned as they checked inside those.

“Pwah. The hell? These are so boring.”

“No, they’re not. These are a treasure trove.”

The two of them had vastly different opinion on what they saw.

The experiments came in all types. The cylindrical experiment rooms were each the size of a large bus and had various company logos plastered on them. Were all those companies supporters of the Federation of Elevator Industries? The one with plants growing on steel racks protected by glass cases was probably a plant factory that grew vegetables which could be harvested dozens of times per year. In addition to food, there were frozen earthworms and slugs. Those may have been a cold sleep experiment.

(Hm? Is this the latest space trend? I could have sworn the focus was more on new alloys and microscopic chemical development.)

“Look, they’ve got drinking water.”

“Heivia, that machine recycles the astronauts’ piss with a filter.”

“Bfff!? Thank god I didn’t swallow!!”

Heivia’s over-the-top spit take made him spin around in the zero-g.

There was also a section with genetic information preserved in cold storage. Basically, it was the fertilized eggs of animals.

“This one is a zebra and this one a giraffe. There’s even a lion and a hyena.”

“What the hell’s the point? Can you order endangered species with the click of a button in the Capitalist Corporations???”

“…”

Quenser thought for a bit and then faced the machinery again.

He saw water, dirt, nutrients, and even fertilizer. A closer look showed none of it appeared to have been created in a sterile lab. The dirt had apparently just been dug up from the ground because the bags full of it still contained chunks of mold and small bugs.

“Heh,” laughed Heivia. “Do those rich bastards even want their experiments to be free of additives and agrochemicals?”

“No, wait. Is this what I think it is?”

“?”

Heivia tilted his head, but Quenser was not even looking his awful friend’s way.

“Was this for Re Terra?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care because we’re bringing this elevator down today. Here, isn’t this what we wanted? Capitalist Corporations oxygen tanks!”

Sure enough.

In fact, there were tanks everywhere.

“Wow, the elevator sure is generous to its people. They have so much precious oxygen they can just leave it lying around like curly hairs in the corner of your room.”

“Couldn’t you at least compare it to a fire extinguisher or AED, you bastard?”

But once they actually pulled a tank out of its metal box, they found the socket did not match. These could not be attached to Legitimacy Kingdom equipment.

“These mystery hairs are completely useless! Why can’t they be more accommodating, dammit!?”

“Probably to prevent their enemy from using them. Y’know, like we’re trying to do.”

If they borrowed the lathe in one of the experiment rooms and shaved down the metal connector to match the tube’s width, they could probably get it to fit, but they were in space. They were dead if any oxygen could escape, so they were afraid to trust DIY work. Unfortunately, they would have to give up on the oxygen tanks for now.

(I have no idea if we’re making these decisions based on the reality of space or based on an idea of space born from dubious facts we picked up somewhere, but it’s our lives on the line here.)

Quenser gave a self-deprecating smile.

Taking over the space station would be their best bet, but if that did not work, they at least needed a spaceship they could stay on for longer periods of time. Either way, securing a survivable environment was top priority. Being kicked back out without any new supplies would be the worst-case scenario. Whether it was oxygen or nitrogen, if they ran out of the supplies needed to operate in space, they could not avoid drying up and dying in the emptiness out there.

“I’m honestly pretty jealous of that powered suit from before. One scratch to our spacesuits and we’re dead, so that thing must be such a relief. Maybe we can find some in storage somewhere.”

“That’s Capitalist Corporations gear,” pointed out Heivia. “Steal one and our own people will shoot you the instant you step out the door.”

For that reason, stealing just a tank or even a full spacesuit from the Capitalist Corporations would be dangerous.

“This station is more than 20km long, so it’s huge. Whether it’s manned or unmanned, they must have far more firepower than us. So where do we make our attack? If we don’t choose a specific target, they’ll use their superior numbers to surround us.”

“I’m aware of that.”

This space had no gravity, but it did have artificial air. That meant bullets produced for use on the surface would hit their targets here. With the exception of long-range sniper shots that took gravity into account.

(Mother Lady must have a power source up here as well. Otherwise, the Princess’s group could have cut their power from the ground base. Is it just those flower petal solar panels, or do they have something else? No, that won’t help. Even if I did know they have a nuclear reactor here, I wouldn’t know where in this 20km fortress it is.)

Quenser could only think of one option.

Since they lacked a detailed map of the station, they could only aim for somewhere they could generally guess was important. In other words, something that structurally had to exist.

“Let’s head to the center.”

“You wanna go straight on in without even kissing the nape or earlobe first? Got a particular target in mind?”

“No matter how big this thing is, it still needs attitude control. It isn’t a spaceship just floating out here – it’s an elevator connected to a long wire. Since the wire is 100 thousand kilometers long – a quarter of the distance to the moon – you could calculate out its natural frequency. They must have some a gyro or a pendulum that counteracts the vibration of this giant string instrument. And that has to directly interact with the wire, so it must be at the center of the station. Take that down and the vibration of the wire will tear the station apart from within.”

“Even though it’s 20km long?”

“It could be 100 or even 200km long. The size of the building doesn’t matter.”

They could use that to negotiate.

If they were going to settle in anywhere, the center of the station would be best.

Instead of running, Heivia walked along with his hand on the wall.

“Hey, how about we let the station break apart while we escape to safety in an escape pod!?”

“Sure, if you can find enough of those wonderfully convenient escape pods for everyone and prove that the station can’t fire those thick electron beams up our fleeing asses while it falls apart. Whatever we’re gonna do with this giant thing, we need to take the center if we want any bargaining chips at all.”

They heard a distant sound like thick rubber being crushed.

A six-wheeled armored vehicle appeared from around a corner of the wide corridor.

It was the size of a van.

“What the hell!? We’re inside right now!!”

Heivia shouted and immediately tried to shove the frozen skinny boy aside, but he completely forgot about the whole zero-g thing.

He could not suppress the force of his own shove without using the extravehicular activity unit on his back.

The two boys ended up floating away in opposite directions.

The armored vehicle’s machinegun gave a roar and red-hot bullets flew through the gap between them.

“That was too close!”

“Where’s Cottage!? We can test this new weapon on him!!”

Heivia was trembling behind a metal tank filled with who-knows-what, but Quenser analyzed the situation while hiding behind a pillar rising from the floor.

“The recoil didn’t push it back? Oh, I get it. That thing’s an asteroid probe. Its tires aren’t filled with air. They attach to the floor instead. Does it use suction cups? No, maybe it uses spikes similar to a cocklebur. It must be able to electrically change the angle of the spikes.”

“You’ve got a huge boner for tech! I get it already! Got any useful information for us!?”

“It looks fancy, but it’s really the same old thing.” Quenser seemed awfully calm for having an armored vehicle’s machinegun aimed at him. “They took a lightweight aluminum probe and attached some armor panels that defeat its entire purpose. Its defenses are flimsy as hell compared to a real tank and the bullets its firing are only made to ‘scratch’ the target instead of punching through them. …This isn’t anywhere near as bad as a normal battlefield. Having our spacesuits tear isn’t all that bad when we’re inside a space station full of artificial air.”

Yes.

It was harmless.

It did not have a bunch of legs or antigravity tech. Forcing a new method would only lead to malfunctions, so the Federation of Elevator Industries had stuck with the tried and true standard of wheels. That suggested it also used ordinary electric power. Burning gasoline or diesel was out of the question since there was no air in space, so what else could they use? They had likely avoided anything too bizarre.

Even if they had the equipment, the other side would not want to fire anti-materiel bullets thicker than your thumb at a rate of hundreds per minute. They would not want to tear apart their space station from within after spending so much money and effort building it.

Everything was normal, ordinary, and unsurprising.

Even though they were in space. Or maybe because they were in space?

“I get your reasoning.” Heivia was still curled up behind cover. “But what are we supposed to do about it?”

“Weren’t you listening, dumbass? We fight the kind of war the Capitalist Corporations doesn’t want. Fire your gun and fill the wall to our right with holes 150m ahead of here!!”

To avoid wasting the nitrogen for his extravehicular activity unit, Heivia grabbed onto a large tank with one arm to hold himself in place while firing his assault rifle. He only held it in one hand, but that was fine when he only needed to hit the wall and not pinpoint target someone between the eyes.

The wall was blown through right next to the armored vehicle.

There were different kinds of walls on the station.

For example, there were the extra airlocks that did not yet have an additional experiment room attached.

Once there were too many holes to count on your fingers, the pressure difference tore the entire metal door away. A gust of wind formed, like air escaping a giant balloon, and it tore the nearby armored vehicle from the floor, sucking it out into the black of space.

That was a major kill for Heivia, but for once he did not brag about it.

Instead, he paled in horror at what he had done.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!! What do we do!? What do we do now!?”

“If the Capitalist Corporations have any sense at all, their central control will close the shutter.”

There was no response.

The Federation of Elevator Industries had no sense at all.

“In that case, escape to the next block over!”

“How dumb are you!? Your plan should never be reliant on the enemy’s benevolent nature!”

The storm was rapidly expanding.

“Oh, god. It’s sucking like crazy! Once that greedy old hag gets her lips on you, she’s never letting go!!”

“Try to knock some sense back into your messed-up brain, dumbass.”

Before the air could be sucked out of their current location, the potatoes kicked off the wall, passed to the next section of the segmented corridor, and pulled the lever to manually lower a thick shutter.

They had barely escaped with their lives, but they had learned something through nearly dying.

“The Federation of Elevator Industries isn’t some unbeatable enemy.” Quenser took a deep breath to confirm that there was still air here. “The space elevator and the station up in satellite orbit are a hell of a first impression, but nothing they’ve done in this fight has been all that crazy. So far, anyway. They’re only using whatever weapons were available and they’re intentionally reducing the amount of explosives. I was afraid what we would find in a zero-g war with no Objects, but this isn’t a destructive war where everyone’s aiming nukes at everyone else to ensure their own safety.”

“And?”

“We should be able to negotiate. Maybe by placating them and maybe by threatening them.”

But that did not change where they needed to go. They had to leave the donut-shaped living space and cargo area and enter the center of the elevator itself. The long, long wires would vibrate at a set frequency, so there would be a device that counteracted that. Control that, and they could begin to negotiate with the Federation of Elevator Industries that was losing more and more people because they were too worried about damaging the space station to take sufficiently strong action.

They aimed their guns at anyone they came across, but most of them were more Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes.

“Hey, Phillip. Make some kind of signal before stepping out. I nearly shot you!”

“And let everyone know it’s me in advance? They might ‘accidentally’ shoot me because of some stupid grudge they hold.”

The potatoes were indeed potatoes. Gambling and moneylending within the same unit led to mutual suspicion in a flash. A military unit meant to protect the world could be destroyed from within by a single deck of cards.

After rejoining with a few other Legitimacy Kingdom groups, Quenser and Heivia approached the center.

There was a shutter down between the areas, but the student’s plastic explosive made short work of that and they continued on.

The inside was not at all what Quenser had expected.

He had been imagining something like the bridge of a giant aircraft carrier, but the central area was more like an airport luggage management room or a drink factory. Conveyer belts with protrusions to hold them in place ran every which way, creating lanes like a highway interchange or junction. But instead of suitcases or plastic bottles, the conveyer belts were transporting large cylindrical cargo tanks.

The area was larger than a domed stadium.

A few parallel lines pierced straight down the very center of the vast space, but these were not thin threads. They were shaped like flat belts about 80cm wide and thinner than a razorblade. Needless to say, those were the elevator’s carbon nanotube wires.

But Quenser did not have time to stare at that piece of the space elevator.

A girl with a fluttering lab coat floated in the zero-g world beyond those wires that looked like a giant string instrument.

But she did not seem to be a soldier.

What kind of soldier would be dressed like that?

[[Image:HO_v18_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

In what was probably the gym outfit of a safe country school, she wore a short-sleeved gym shirt and red sports bloomers. On her feet, she wore black kneesocks and functional sneakers. The baggy lab coat she wore above all that was the only thing hinting that she was a researcher.

This was a female researcher involved with the elevator.

Each of those symbols and facts danced through Quenser’s mind. Plus, a tablet floated next to the girl whose long hair and lab coat were fluttering in the lack of gravity. The alphabet stickers on the tablet’s back spelled out the name Louisiana.

“Eh? What?”

The answer was right in front of him, but Quenser still blinked in confusion.

“Do you just happen to have the same name? Is this a body double? Because you can’t be her! I mean, Louisiana Honeysuckle was the girl in Braskine’s story! And it has to have been at least 4 years since he made those memories!!”

“Try 6. I went to graduate school.”

“Hm? Hmm??? But then how are you only 17? Or did you master immortality so you always look 17!?”

“I’m what they call a genius, so I skipped several years of school.”

“B-”

Quenser Barbotage was not usually the type to speak ill of the dead.

He was proud of that fact, but he chose to break that rule here.

It was a reflexive response in this case.

“Braskiiiiiiiiiine!!!??? Why did you make that sound like a bitter love story!? How young a girl did you fall for you, you son of a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch!!?”

“What, she’s a friend of his!?” asked Heivia while still aiming his assault rifle.

Louisiana Honeysuckle.

She might be a monster in the field of space technology, but it was hard to imagine that clothing had been modified to be bulletproof or blast-resistant. Nevertheless the gym clothes girl grinned and did not even put her hands up as countless guns were aimed her way.

“What’s with the weird getup?” asked Heivia.

“Oh, sorry about that. It may depend on the material, but your bra shows through some of them.”

“This isn’t a joke!!”

“This is a logical choice. Do you know how much your muscles deteriorate while living in zero-g. It also effects your calcium, so I’m worried about the strength of my bones.”

“Do you really think you’re in any position to speak on equal footing with us? Or what, do you think you can stop our bullets with some very scientific psychokinesis!?”

“PK? No, that’s a bit outside my field of expertise.”

She kept a jocular tone of voice.

Quenser sensed something more to this unusual confidence and then he gasped.

“No!! Wait, Heivi-”

A gunshot and muzzle flash burst out.

But the one who froze in terror was the very one who had fired the warning shot: Heivia.

The rifle bullet flew just a few centimeters past his head to hit the wall behind him.

“Oh, how kind of you.”

The 17-year-old girl continue smiling thinly in midair as she quietly applauded Heivia. Her shirt was not tucked in, so it floated up to reveal her shapely navel.

Evidently, she really did not need bulletproof equipment.

“If you had aimed between my eyes with that first shot, that would have killed you.”

“…”

“So even after seeing it in action, the soldier remains in his egg. That baby chick there seems to have noticed, though. These carbon nanotubes are the heart of the giant transportation infrastructure supporting this 100 thousand kilometer elevator. Mere bullets cannot tear them. If you do hit them, they will take in the bullet like a bow or slingshot and send it right back at you.”

Jack-of-all-trades Myonri had rejoined them at some point and she glanced down at the grenade on her chest. And with this many people paying Louisiana a visit, they could split into two teams and circle around from both sides, preventing the wires from acting as a shield.

“Any questions?” asked Louisiana while slowly flipping upside down.

“Was your relationship with Braskine a, uh, p-platonic one!? You didn’t throw out your inhibitions and do a lot of experimenting just because you were in college, did you!?”

“Why do you hear about a boy and girl being friends and immediately assume it’s sexual in nature? Is that just how it is with you high schoolers who run entirely on lust?”

Louisiana breathed an exasperated sigh.

Quenser’s question must not have been clever enough for her liking because the genius girl reached her slender finger toward something while still floating upside down.

Namely…

“I can us these carbon nanotubes in more than just passive ways. So how about I get more aggressive this time?”

She flicked the edge of one of the belt-shaped wires. With just the one finger.

The immediate result was more like an invisible wall than a noise.

The bizarre shockwave hit the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes, slamming all their backs against the walls and transportation equipment.

Quenser thought he was going to expel the contents of his stomach.

“Gah!?”

“The wires are wires. This facility is meant to restrict their vibration, but it can also give them a new vibration. And since this room is filled with artificial air, sound and vibrations can of course propagate through it. How do you like the music played by the world’s largest string instrument that covers a quarter of the distance from the earth to the moon?”

It was more than he could have imagined.

The very technology being used was different. Instead of supertechnology that were just guns and bombs but better, this was like being thrown into a sword and sorcery fantasy world.

The Federation of Elevator Industries was not just a single company.

It was a giant space development agency jointly funded by 7th Core, the seven large companies that controlled the Capitalist Corporations home country. Simply put, the Federation spoke on behalf of the Capitalist Corporations as a whole. It had been given funding and the latest tech from those seven monstrous companies, so of course they would have some crazy stuff.

However…

(We were caught off guard by new tech we’d never seen before, but we’re still alive.)

Quenser forced down some sour saliva and pushed his thoughts in a positive direction.

(This isn’t like the Object wars. If we let an Object’s first attack hit us like this, the entire unit would’ve been reduced to ashes!!)

“If possible…”

The genius girl in gym clothes and a lab coat traced her slender finger along the vibrating wire. She was looking at the carbon nanotube, not at Quenser and the others.

Guns were not a bargaining chip against her.

That extraordinary aerospace researcher had displayed something that seemed even more supernatural than psychokinesis.

“I would prefer not to use her to kill. I accept that Mother Lady is a weapon that will change the very era we live in, but I want to use it to help the Turkana District.”

“After you tricked them and stole their land for your precious elevator and then turned the whole place into a desert by sucking all the water out of the ground!?” shouted Heivia. “Your supposed philanthropy makes no sense!!”

“Re Terra.” Quenser slowly interjected while grimacing in pain. “Re Terraforming. Are you trying to give the world a single unified environment?”

He searched for the meaning of everything he had seen so far and constructed a theory he would much rather not know about.

“I saw the plants, animals, dirt, and water of the Turkana District in this space station. You plan to suck it up from the ground base and scatter it from space. Across the entire world! Then Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the rest of the world will all be remade to have the same environment as the Turkana District. You aren’t planning to alter some other planet – you’re remaking earth. Because you believe that will make every part of the world equal, regardless of terrain or environment!!”

“Hmm?”

Louisiana did not provide a real response.

Instead of a yes or a no, she brought her finger to the back of her hips. Fixing the red sports bloomers riding up in her butt was apparently more important to her than listening to the enemy.

She did not even look their way when she spoke again.

“You seem to be mistaken about some things. You shouldn’t accuse people based on groundless speculation.”

“…”

“Besides, you’re not the Faith Organization, so surely you don’t think the world will be saved if you just continue with your blind Object worship. You have no way to save the world. Rejecting someone else’s ideas without one of your own is what children do.”

The space elevator was a largescale space project meant to carry great quantities of cargo outside the atmosphere. If her plan was executed, it would be far worse than volcanic ash paralyzing a city. No matter how much the people on the surface tried to fight it, they would never catch up. Once the environment itself had been altered, the lifeforms already there would die out. Everything would be made uniform.

Slugs could not live on the dry ground and moles could not live in the hard ground. The distribution of animals could be easily controlled using soil and water quality. If you could dump dizzying amounts of it from the sky, that is.

The deep ocean bottom barely changed across the entire world, but it apparently grew deeper at a rate of 1mm every thousand years. That was supposedly due to fine cosmic dust that poured down from outside the atmosphere, but Louisiana was trying to dump meters of it in a single day.

That might increase the population of endangered animals like giraffes and lions.

But there would be no variety there. The Legitimacy Kingdom was fighting for the extremely ill-defined plan of “protecting the varied plants and animals that might be useful as a drug at some point”. What if some strange new disease was spreading and the plant or animal needed for the cure had gone extinct? A unified environment would take away crucial flexibility and might even lead to more extinctions.

And that was not an issue with the plants and animals of the Turkana District.

It would be the same no matter what part of the planet you chose. Life could not be ranked in a hierarchy – none of it was superior or inferior to anything else. If a species of wheat or grape considered the most valuable to humans was planted all across the planet, that would only increase the risk of it entirely dying out at some point. Even seemingly useless weeds and the bugs swarming below the streetlights were supporting the world in some roundabout way.

A single person would change the world.

Quite literally so. She really was going to change the planet’s environment.

(I knew Louisiana Honeysuckle was supposed to be a genius, but this is absurd!!)

Even so, if she was going to use sound, she would be bound by the nature of sound. If she was going to use wires, she would be trapped by the shape of a wire. Louisiana Honeysuckle had used her intellect to extend her reach into space where she was trying to remake the planet as a whole, but she was not a witch with a magic wand.

All of this was the result of high-level science. If they figured out how it worked, they could prevent her from using it.

“Heivia, ready your gun.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we withdraw for the time being!?”

“Louisiana is a true monster. She knows the structure of the elevator like the back of her hand, she can entirely ignore standard military tactics, and she can even use ‘magic’. Don’t carelessly try to attack her directly.”

Then was there nothing they could do?

Quenser continued before anyone could ask that question.

“But those wires are 100 thousand kilometers long and they have a known natural frequency. We knew the number from the beginning, so we know what her magic really is and interfering with it won’t be that hard!!”

“Oh, I’m shaking in my boots.”

Louisiana cowered down in an obviously performative way. That kind of confidence was terrifying. She was surrounded by dozens of soldiers who made a living killing and shedding blood, so how could she smile? If it was based on science and not groundless faith, then she had to know her tricks were not absolute.

Anyone could use science as long as they understood how it worked. That was what made it the standard most wildly supported by humanity.

And yet…

“Okay, enough playing around. I should probably just play my trump card now. Time to end this romantic space story and drag it back to the boring world of the military. Development Code: Elinabell.”

The Federation of Elevator Industries had funding and technology from the seven large companies of 7th Core.

This genius and true monster had full authority over it all. She wielded a supposedly impossible privilege in the world of science that should have been equal to all.
Genius.

That one word felt like an occult jinx or an invisible barrier. That researcher had everything a student like Quenser did not.

As the snap of her finger rang through the artificial air, Louisiana Honeysuckle introduced them to her insane talent.

“We have developed a Second Generation Object specifically designed for use in outer space.”