Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter1 (section)

=== Part 2 ===
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Some people may have been jealous if they were told that Mikoto was going to Eastern Russia for a school event. They may have complained about unfair treatment if they were told that only she got to go and her classmates were stuck with normal lessons.

However, Misaka Mikoto felt only melancholy.

Simply put, it was not enjoyable.

First and foremost, the school trip had a clear objective. And that objective was solely for the convenience of the school. It did not take Mikoto herself into account.

Not only was she deprived of her freedom, but she did not have any fellow students with which to share the high and low points of the trip.

It was impossible for her to enjoy it.

A school trip with a large group could be enjoyable and a trip on one’s own with complete freedom could be enjoyable, but that was not.

(A demonstration, hm?)

Mikoto recalled what the frightening dorm supervisor had told her before she came to Russia.

The trip was part of a plan to strengthen Academy City’s connections with its cooperative institutions. In other words, there was a danger of various cracks appearing if she were to fail.

It seemed a disparity in technological levels was behind it all. There was supposed to be a difference of 20 or 30 years in technology between Academy City and the rest of the world. The cooperative institutions received a certain level of benefits from that, but Academy City did not fully release their information. It was a countermeasure against information leaks, but the cooperative institutions did not particularly enjoy it.

(They’re having a demonstration of one of the Level 5s that are the center of their program in order to emphasize that they are not hiding anything.)

Of course, nothing about Mikoto would actually be analyzed.

It was nothing more than an event to overturn the appearance Academy City had. It was just a trick to make it look like they were not hiding anything. Accurate information on Academy City’s seven Level 5s would not be handed over so easily.

Misaka Mikoto’s value as a living resource was greater than even a handful of jungles.

(…I’m being treated like a large and rare spider.)

Mikoto then noticed someone approaching her.

It was the local guide.

“Oh, hello! Welcome, welcome!!”

A tall woman approached Mikoto while speaking in a cheerful voice. She had long blonde hair, white skin, and a smooth, slender body. She was taller than Mikoto and appeared to be around college age.

“I am Setali S. Skinikia, a security guard. As a member of one of Academy City’s cooperative institutions, I am honored to meet the #3 Level 5.”

She skipped straight past shaking Mikoto’s hand without permission and embraced her. If the woman had been Shirai Kuroko, Mikoto would have fired a high voltage current at her, but she was not sure how to react when it was the first time meeting the person.

“Oh, I just can’t believe one of those Level 5s would come here alone…”

“This is a demonstration to show our trust, so it would be meaningless if I was surrounded by security, don’t you think?”

Mikoto used both hands to gently push away the guide and Setali let out a laugh of unknown meaning.

“Nya ha ha! I heard you have already checked in, so I’m guessing you were looking around at the cityscape. What do you think? Our technology isn’t at the level of Academy City, but I still think it’s a pretty characteristic city.”

“Do you mind if I speak frankly?”

“Of course not.”

“It’s hurting my eyes.”

“Nya ha ha,” Setali laughed again when Mikoto responded honestly and pointed at the side of a building.

The building was not painted in psychedelic colors.

In fact, the buildings in that city were not painted at all.

“It’s called a Semipublic AR,” Setali said while tapping her foot on the walkway beneath her feet. The walkway had the same process applied to it as the wall.

“Simply put, all of the roads, walls, and signs in the city have been made into giant monitors. Many different services are offered to those walking through the city by having the various pieces of information they want added on to the scenery.”

Even then, the flat walls of the buildings had various pieces of information running across them and many arrows were moving across the walkways. They seemed to display the general flow of the people allowing everyone to continue smoothly.

The general goal had been to turn the city’s scenery and terrain into a giant touchscreen and that ingenious idea had been carried out on the buildings, pillars, and other structures. The buildings came in various forms with some flat and some curved, but none of them tried to look distinct with indentations or protrusions. All of the buildings seemed smooth.

“AR or augmented reality is used on the screens of cell phones and PDAs, right? Isn’t that the thing where you look through the camera and additional information is displayed over the scenery? I’ve heard of using it with facial recognition software to make virtual labeling.”

“That way of using it is easy enough, but when you cannot detect it without using specific tools, you end up with the problem of having people essentially sticking abusive labels on people’s backs. That’s why the AR we developed is ‘semipublic’. The technology we used is borrowed from Academy City, though.”

When she thought about it, Mikoto recalled that Tokiwadai Middle School’s sports areas had a system allowing the signs to automatically display information regarding the match currently ongoing. She had also heard that some public baths had walls that had been made into giant monitors.

She looked around lightly.

“But don’t people dislike having others see the information they’re bringing up?”

“Nya ha ha. The images are made so they’re in focus only for the user, so the image is blurred beyond recognition when others look. The level of isolation for the information can be set by each individual user.”

Basically, the building walls, roads, signs, pillars, and all other objects and structures making up the scenery functioned as monitors and each individual resident could obtain information from them.

The difference from a normal electronic display was that each person using it saw different information being displayed. People could be looking at the same sign and be viewing different information.

That technology was not seen in Academy City, but according to Setali’s explanation, Academy City had provided support in its creation.

It was possible that Academy City was using that city as a wide scale test before it went into real use.

“…That doesn’t seem to fit with the advantages of it being ‘semipublic’ that you mentioned before.”

“Making an environment where things can easily be checked on by a third party tends to act as a deterrent. Not that all of the ARs are normally checked, though.”

“Hmm,” responded Mikoto halfheartedly.

The AR did not seem to be operated by any kind of exclusive device. Mikoto randomly waved her gaze down at the walkway at her feet.

With an electronic hum, an image of Mikoto wearing silk lingerie appeared in the walkway.

“Bfh!?” Mikoto started coughing. “Cough cough!! Wh-what the hell!?”

“What is it?”

“No, um, th-this is…lingerie…An advertisement for a lingerie store seems to have popped up.”

“Hm? Nya ha ha. Did you get caught by the automatic changing?”

“W-wait, this is no joke! Is something like this usually displayed in the middle of a pathway like this!? Get rid of it! Get rid of it! How do I get rid of it!?”

“Don’t worry. It’s like I told you. That kind of electronic display is set to be isolated at a high level in the Semipublic AR. Other people can’t see it. All I can see is some other advertisement.”

“Is that so? …No, wait. Before you explain it, tell me how to use this thing!! Even if no one else can see it, it’s still embarrassing!!”

“Your skin, hair, and eye colors are taken from the photo for your ID you had taken when you entered the city. The rest is just a predicted image based on what you look like with clothes on, so the breast size is actually a little off from reality, see? If we wanted to, we could get accurate measurements taken, but people have a right to their privacy. We stop at just an estimated image.”

“I didn’t ask you about that!! And you don’t need to do any of that! It’s not my fault they’re actually smaller than this!! And how can you see it if it’s a Semipublic AR!?”

“Nya ha ha. Well, y’see, if I put my face up against your cheek like this so the height and distance of my eyes are the same as yours, I can actually see what would normally be blurred beyond recognition.”

“You can see it all!? Tell me how to get rid of this AR right now or I’ll blow away the pathway monitor itself!!”

Mikoto was blushing profusely as Setali taught her how to use it. She then succeeded in getting a keyboard-like touch window to display on a nearby show window. She used her fingers to hurriedly switch it to a mode where it repelled any unnecessary electronic advertisements.

“The Semipublic AR can be a bit troublesome, but you’ll have to get used to it while you’re here. Traffic lights, signs, and crosswalk signals are all displayed using it.”

Setali glanced over at the wall of a building most likely to check on some information.

“Do you have any more questions?”

“W-well….” Mikoto sighed. “A place created by the world’s largest shopping mall becoming a large city is not something you just get used to.”

“Nya ha ha.”

As she laughed, Setali slowly started walking. She may have been scheduled to be somewhere. Mikoto followed her.

“This area is still normal. The area with facilities for visitors like hotels and duty-free stores is an aggregation of buildings like a normal city, but the main business facility has become an incredibly huge construction.”

“…So it’s like a gym big enough to cover up an entire section of a city?”

“This was originally an experimental facility for testing economic effects. It was something like a trade show for experimental products. However, all sorts of things needed to be put inside and it became obvious that the area needed would exceed the planned 650 domed stadiums, so it was decided that it would be easier to just register the entire place as a city.”

“So that’s why it suddenly appeared in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Russia, hm?”

“There were a lot of disagreements as to where to build it. It is a huge scale for a business institution after all. You can’t underestimate the economic effects it would have on the area around it. No matter how successful it is, if all the earnings are focused solely on it, the smaller stores in the area cannot survive. It was rejected from all sorts of places until it finally ended up here.”

Setali opened a window on the wall that was adjusted so Mikoto could see it and made it slide along with them as they walked. A map of Russia was displayed within the window.

“Because of where we are, we need exclusive railways, highways, an airport, and hotels for visitors. That only increased the land we needed even further.”

In other words, they regularly got enough visitors to make those things necessary. Mikoto doubted anyone would travel dozens or hundreds of kilometers to buy everyday items, so the shopping mall must have functioned similarly to a theme park.

Just walking through the facility was an event in and of itself.

Even the food corner had such a great selection and quantity that it became a sight one would not normally get to see.

“…So I guess it’s something like the world’s largest window shopping facility.”

“True. This is an extremely large shopping center with anything you could want, so there are plenty of goods that you would normally never see like professional tools from any industry you can think of. Just seeing an area full of such rare things may look like a fantasy to some people.”

Setali zoomed in the displayed window bringing up a general list of the areas within the city.

The basic makeup of the city was split into two blocks. One block had daily necessities and the other had entertainment and luxury items. The transportation and lodging facilities such as the airport, the terminal stations, and the hotels were focused around the outside edges of the city.

The buildings for hotels, duty-free shops, and other such places were lined up seeming to surround the main large business facility.

A few points of light on the map must have been the areas with highly specialized products that Setali had mentioned.

Unlike in a tourist spot in Japan, the signs did not display things in many different languages. It was all in Russian. It was possible they could be set to other languages via the Semipublic AR, but Mikoto felt no real need to do so.

“But the visitors here travel a long way to get here, so they tend to go beyond window shopping in the end. They seem to think they should buy something since they came all the way here. In fact, the airports take on more packages for delivery than they do passengers.”

“If the president of a shopping channel or a discount store heard that, they would probably be frantically trying to analyze your system.”

“Well, the city exists to research that kind of thing. Money comes first!” Setali yelled out in an unrefined voice. “Have you ever noticed how there can be multiple department stores on the same street, but what sells and what doesn’t is different with only a few hundred meters of difference? Two of the same chain of convenience store can exist within a few dozen meters of each other, but for some reason one of the two will sell a lot more than the other. Putting things on sale can make people think the goods are ‘cheap’, so no one will buy them. If you put new and used accessories next to each other, the new ones will sell better despite having the higher price. …Well, there’s a lot to commerce. There is something that alters how well something sells making it either prosper or fail. This city aims to thoroughly research the psychological effects related to money. Customers pleasantly buy things and that data is used to calculate what environment allows customers to gather more easily and what environment has the opposite effect.”

It was a simple concept to understand because the city had a simple goal.

Drawing in large amounts of visitors like a world-famous theme park allowed them to get even better results for their research.

The city had to be overflowing with various ingenious ways of getting people to go past window shopping and actually buy something. If you did not watch out, your hotel room could end up filled with strange souvenirs.

Mikoto sighed.

“So I’m doing my demonstration here.”

“Yes.”

“(…Well, it’s not bad being the representative of Academy City, but being forced to do things for the convenience of the adults is a real pain.)”

“(…Well, from the records we received from Academy City, this girl is the most normal, has the easiest to understand power if you’re just seeing it, and has the most reasonable personality. …The other Level 5s would definitely ruin this.)”

Mikoto and Setali both muttered to themselves.

Finally, Setali changed the subject.

“As I said before, there was a problem regarding pressure on smaller stores with the advance of larger facilities such as this one. Searching for a solution to that is one of the themes of our research. …We deal with Academy City quite a bit. We may only receive the downgraded technology, but the quality is still better than anything else. Finding a way to reduce the friction between Academy City and its surroundings has more value than just as an economic effect.” Setali shrugged lightly. “But other than that, this place is surprisingly similar to a normal city. I work as a security guard, but I deal with a lot more dropped items or lost children than I do any real incidents. There are even some urban legends.”

“Urban legends?”

“Nya ha ha. There are all sorts of them. Lately, there’s been one about a ‘very valuable orange’.”

“?”

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