Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 13===

In the silo city named Giant Pizza, the people were hesitantly showing up on the surface.

“What, what? It looks like the commotion has died down.”

“I’m scared… Are you sure this isn’t the lead in to something else?”

“Don’t push, don’t push! Oh, hell!!”

The explosions and tremors were frightening, but it was also nerve-racking to have them suddenly stop. The air was filled with an anxious tension combined with a strange attraction, like some invisible force was pushing them onward. It was a lot like searching your own name online even though you were afraid what you would find.

But a voice cleared away that atmosphere.

It belonged to a completely ordinary sort of fat sheriff.

“Don’t worry.” Thomas Goldenclipper squeezed the ring hanging from his neck and spoke his honest thoughts. “I will find out what the current situation is. Who cares if they’re the military!? This is our silo city! I will make sure all four world powers treat us the same. So don’t worry!!”

The wave of tension crashed against a breakwater.

It was over.

Even if he had no real power, the sheriff’s words contained something that had calmed the people.

A few people walked past him.

“…It would seem they managed somehow or other.”

One of them was Bloodrics Capistrano, a young man with a katana who wore a black tailcoat even in this scorching wasteland.

He was surrounded by several bodyguards and he had complete control over thousands of troops, putting them on the same level as a maintenance battalion. He was accompanied by the charity site management triplets who wore red tank tops and miniskirts that made them look like cheerleaders. They stared out of the city, but the apocalyptic roar of main cannons had come to an end.

The triplets pressed their soft-looking cheeks together and viewed a small mobile device while looking as delighted as someone whose social network account was being followed by a celebrity.

“Looks like it’s over.”

“See, look. This is the footage from the drone.”

“The signal management is so lax in blank zones, isn’t it? In proper battlefield countries, civilian signals tend to be jammed☆”

Just as Bloodrics tried to get a look, the footage cut out.

The Legitimacy Kingdom may have been irritated with the civilian interference and shot it down with a handmade slingshot.

The silver-haired young man sighed.

“The Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance will probably send out investigation teams to preserve their management of the Greater Canyon. Then this will be more of a political struggle than a war. Cameras from all over the world will be here, so you should make sure you get word out to people’s living rooms about your opportunities to help people.”

“Of course.”

“I will be returning to Paris for now. If a noble was injured in this racial salad bowl, who knows who would get blamed. I would prefer not to provide the spark that triggers a war between the four world powers.”

“Understood. Continue supporting us online, okay?☆”

After casually waving goodbye, the triplets exchanged a glance.

And then they spoke to each other.

“…So how’d it go?”

“Hmm, below average, I’d say.”

“Ehhh? That it wasn’t an outright failure makes that a really annoying result.”

Perhaps because they had been released from the fear and tension, restless high spirits filled the silo city and the triplets followed the flow of the crowds as they walked through it.

“Then again, wasn’t it a positive that the Faith Organization’s intentions didn’t get through to the Legitimacy Kingdom?”

“If your gold egg doesn’t hatch, it’s meaningless.”

“Waiting for the truth of the hexavalent chromium to be revealed and become a ‘legend’ might have made for some good sample data, though.”

Who was Rica, which one was Alisa, and what triplet was Orsia? That was not all that important. The triplets did not care as long as their thoughts formed a single opinion that led to the correct answer.

“The souls of the noble sacrifices reside in the main cannon. By monitoring the process by which that was logically disproven, we could have learned how to break down a ‘legend’ using data.”

“If we could create that kind of anti-legend flowchart, we wouldn’t have to rely on the persuasiveness of people’s words any longer. Just like online customer support contacts are handled by AI these days, we could complete a religion-destroying program that automatically searches out and points to the contradictions in any myth or legend.”

“Still, religion sure is scary. If secrets of this magnitude are leaking out, just how far have they infiltrated our military?”

The triplets giggled.

Even with so many people around them, they managed to blend into the background and prevent anyone from paying attention to them.

“Yes, it was the Faith Organization that worked its way into our safe countries while disguising it as junk mail from foreign companies. And it was all paid for by that damn old man who thinks he’s some kind of saint. They even made sure to avoid any landmine terms that would be caught by checks on foreign phone calls and mail.”

“We’re supposed to be the ones who use data as a weapon, so this was like suddenly finding a stealth bomber flying overhead.”

“So if we want to strike back, it has to use data, doesn’t it?”

The result was exactly as they had said: below average.

They could use the human mind to find and point to contradictions, but that had been done at ecumenical councils since more than a millennium ago. They wanted to go a step further. Their idea of “victory” was a lot like the anti-air laser systems that automatically shot down all aircraft: a convenient service that would fill in all the holes on its own.

They wanted a social structure that would deny all religions as easily as a readily-downloadable cellphone translation app. You would not need to be a rhetorical genius. They would spread a system that allowed anyone to tear down what had been built up for a millennium just by holding up their mobile device.

That would mean an age of despair for the Faith Organization.

That was why the Venerable Elder would want to destroy the silo city testing ground while he smirked at them from the other side of that thin tent. That was why he would be willing to use the brute force of an Object to do so.

“We don’t know how far it has spread, so should we head underground for the time being?”

“Yes. There aren’t many people we can truly trust.”

“And we certainly can’t tell them that’s exactly what makes them so valuable☆”

The girls turned a corner as they discussed the issue.

A nervous-looking young man was standing there and his face lit up when he saw them.

“C-c’mon, let’s get out of here. If word gets out that three officers – from the Martini Series no less – are trespassing in the Greater Canyon, it’ll turn into a war between the two main countries!”

“Sure thing.”

“Okay, driver. Then get our pumpkin carriage ready☆”

“I want seafood for dinner. I’m sick of all the red meat they eat here.”

The corners of the selfish girls’ eyes softened as they spoke.

That young man probably did not realize how important he was as someone they could approach without putting on any kind of act.

Alisa Martini Sweet.

Rica Martini Medium.

Orsia Martini Dry.

[[Image:HO_v14_248.jpg|thumb]]

Those genius girls who had been created by the Information Alliance giggled as they vanished into the underside of history.

The three sisters had moved all their pawns around perfectly, but they had made one miscalculation.

A grim reaper in black stood before them.

“#49?”

“Call me the Stopgap Grim Reaper. The adults gave me my name and number, so I’m not too fond of them.”

The blonde girl was accompanied by a young man who was not the three sisters’ type.

She took a step toward those three sisters.

“You were aware of everything from the beginning, weren’t you?”

“…”

“The Faith Organization was running those temporary factories by failing to explain the risk of hexavalent chromium and driving the workers to death. You knew, but you let it happen and even watched it play out. …Was that because they weren’t Information Alliance citizens? Or would you be able to do the same to your own people?”

“Calm down, little girl. We were acting on orders from above, so you can’t exactly blame this on our own-…”

“Do you know where the pair to the sheriff’s ring is?”

The girl cut them off with ice in her eyes.

And she repeated herself.

“Do you know where it is buried in this vast wasteland?”

No one could say a word.

It did not matter who those triplets were, even if they were unmanageable geniuses who could break out of a max-security prison barehanded. The look in the girl’s eyes silenced them.

A light glistened. From a military perspective, this was an entirely meaningless result. The blond girl’s black uniform was caked with dried sand and she held a cheap ring in her hand.

“It’s a shame this wasn’t an issue you should have troubleshot yourselves. If it was, I could have had you shot right here and now. The fact that you actually did the ‘proper’ thing here just makes the world look so very cruel.”

She took another step.

Her small hand tightened around that ring which – cheap though it was – held someone’s feelings for someone else. She was now close enough to fatally stab them if she had a blade and Wraith Martini Vermouthspray spoke quietly to them.

She only gave them one peaceful warning.

But it contained the implication that, if they did this again, she would mercilessly make good on her words.

“You spoiled brats might think yourselves intellectuals, but could you say the same thing if you were poisoned down to the marrow and buried in a hole?”