Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 6===

It was time to check what needed to be done.

Quenser leaned against the wall, sipped on his iced coffee, and spoke into the radio.

“We suspect the designer Claire Whist and Unicorn are working together. And it is possible they are linked to the Capitalist Corporations. What do we need to do?”

“Forget all this and head back to our boring duties with a smile?”

“We don’t have time to joke around. We need to move forward.”

“…I was actually being serious.”

“Heivia, you do whatever you can to look into what the Night Edge Platoon…or rather, Unicorn is doing. Both the ones on this island and the ones in southern Africa. I want to know what the entire unit is after.”

“Then you deal with Claire. Climb into bed if you need to, but get as much information as you can. She’s a top designer, so you won’t get many chances to interview her. If we waste this opportunity, we’ll lose any chance of approaching her or getting any information out of her.”

“Of course, Unicorn holds the peace and justice of this island in their hands. They could easily claim we were trying to leak classified information and shoot us. Don’t let them notice you’re looking into this.”

“The same goes for you. Don’t forget that your location makes that technique easiest to use against you.”

After agreeing to contact each other again in an hour, Quenser switched off the radio. He gulped down the rest of the vending machine iced coffee, threw the paper cup in the trash can, and looked over at the wall across from the vending machine.

A whiteboard was hanging on it.

Escalibor, Assault Signal, Slide Lance, Active Shield… The names of several Objects and the battlefields they were in were written in marker. They were likely ones the researchers in the facility had helped design. Quenser recognized one of them.

Baby Magnum.

Southern Africa.

“Dammit.”

Claire Whist had said she had helped design the Baby Magnum. If she was involved with the Capitalist Corporations via the Unicorn force active in southern Africa, the Baby Magnum’s weaknesses could be leaked to the Capitalist Corporations.

And…

Claire had said she was displeased with the Baby Magnum’s results in battles. She had said she would need to use a different design example if it had any further negative effect on her reputation.

“Every new piece of information just makes this seem more and more ominous…”

If he was going to obtain information from Claire, he would first have to return to her room. He could also speak with the residents of the other rooms, but it was obvious what those people would do if some unfamiliar person came knocking at their door inside that top secret facility. They would report him to the Night Edge Platoon and he would be quickly neutralized.

(My best bet is to say I left something in her room.)

With that idea, Quenser knocked on Claire’s door and was invited in with no suspicion. Or at least no visible suspicion.

“What did you forget? Can’t it wait?”

“My cell phone.”

“Oh…that would be bad.”

That was the reaction he had expected.

“The building is made to prevent any signal from getting in or out, but your phone does have a camera and a record function. If it was found in my room afterwards, you could be arrested as a possible spy.”

“It’s red and it’s the type that slides open. It should stand out, so it shouldn’t take long to find.”

“Hm, hm.”

Quenser peered under the bed. As he did, he thought about how to start the conversation. She might put up her guard if he brought up southern Africa right away.

“Come to think of it, don’t you lose your chance to spend all the money you make by living in a place like this?”

“I can order things from the internet, so no. I grow tired of things and throw them out pretty quickly though, so my room doesn’t get too cluttered. Even video games are downloaded these days.”

“Video games?”

Quenser glanced over at the corner of the room. Something that looked like a complexly folded plastic sheet sat there. The device looked like a giant controller modeled after a cockpit for robot games.

“Is that what that’s for?”

“Hm? No, that’s a failed part of an old project. It was supposed to go on a model called the Assault Signal.”

“Is it an Object simulator or something?”

“It’s nothing that amazing. The device allows balance of the Object to be restored via remote control if the Elite passes out inside and it is about to sink into the ocean or anything like that. Even that requires several dozen to over 100 people. And even then it can’t keep up with a high speed battle. It was rejected as it left an opening for hacking, though,” explained Claire. “Having some leeway is good. You can be more adventurous when you know there will be a next time even if you fail. And this kind of failed technology that you gain from that leads the way to a stable Object design. It’s important to create a cycle. Once the cycle is set up, the returns increase without end, but setting it up can be incredibly difficult. It’s the same as how it is more efficient to keep an Object’s reactor constantly on rather than switching it on and off.”

“I want to begin doing that as soon as possible,” replied Quenser honestly.

While looking through the shelves, Claire said, “Also, my goal may actually be gaining the money itself rather than what I can do with it.”

“Oh?”

“Even though I live here, my official residence is in Paris. It’s pretty big, but I only head back there about twice a year. It feels more like a distant relative’s villa. My money and house are the same. Obtaining them is what matters. The amount of money I have and the size of my house add to my social status which increases my power. That especially helps when I have a job that gives me an eccentric image.”

Quenser moved aside some magazines on the floor, knocked out the bookmark inside, put the bookmark back in, and otherwise tried to buy as much time as he could while he fully utilized the part of his brain in charge of adlibbing.

“…So what else do you have?”

“Some normal things like nice cars and villas. Oh, and I donate money too. Here’s a surprise: 5% of the NGOs in the Legitimacy Kingdom run on the money I make developing weapons!”

Quenser was sure he could more easily find any link to Unicorn or the Capitalist Corporations if he looked through the laptop on the table, but he could hardly manage that in the current situation.

“Isn’t this sort of like your villa?”

“You could call my villas a social venture. I have villas that I have never even set foot in. I have one in the Amazon jungle, one on the coast of the Mediterranean, one near an Arctic ski resort, and lately I even bought one in the Oceania District. And one in southern Africa, too.”

Quenser could feel his heart leap inside him.

This was his way in.

“Have you ever been to Africa? Do you know what kind of food they have there?”

“Hm? Well, a few times. But I only ate things like hamburgers and tempura. That kind of thing is popular there. The proper home cooking is apparently something like a curry soup filled with spices, but I have yet to run across it. I always let my food cool down before I eat it.”

“I can imagine how that would taste, and I don’t have any desire to track it down.”

“I know. I was hoping for something a little more exciting. Something wild like an entire roast mammoth.”

“There are no mammoths anymore.”

“You’ll understand if you go there. Seeing it on TV just isn’t the same. You’ll feel like you could find something like that there.”

“But isn’t that a battlefield country? Wouldn’t the higher ups in the military get mad if a designer went there for fun? You could be abducted for all the classified information you know.”

“Don’t worry about that. We have some excellent bodyguards for trips like that. If I have the Night Edge Platoon with me, they let me go.”

A gap appeared in the conversation.

Quenser made sure to continue speaking in order to prevent any silence.

“I hear they have penguins in southern Africa.”

“Yes, the African penguins. They’re cute. Even the cities look out for them. They make tunnels especially for the penguins. They’re sometimes used as UGVs for intelligence purposes, though. But,” added Claire Whist, “those tunnels are made only with the roads in mind. When it rains a lot, the tunnels fill with water. Penguins are meant to swim in the ocean, but they do not have gills. They sometimes get lost in the tunnels and drown. It’s most unfortunate.”

The mention of rain caught at Quenser’s mind, but he decided it was too soon to push further.

He continued the conversation while only skimming his topic of interest. He cautiously kept some distance but not too much distance.

“They get lost in the tunnels?”

“Even though the tunnels are just straight paths, it seems they are just so dark and narrow that they can’t tell forward from backward or up from down. They would actually leave the tunnels faster if they merely let the water wash them away.”

“That sounds like a frustrating situation for an animal welfare group.”

“It is. And so the water resource market is viewed as quite the villain.”

Quenser continued to keep some distance but not too much.

He continued on his quest for information while forcing down his worried suspicions that she might actually be inviting him in.