HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3

Status: Incomplete

5/17 parts completed

   

Chapter 3: Welcome to the End of a Stable World >> Defense of the Chesapeake District

Part 1

This was the worst.

The clean wars had never provided any particularly nice experiences for those two idiots, but this time it truly was the worst.

“Hey, Heivia, weren’t we working to bring love and peace to the world not long ago?”

“Don’t talk, you bastard. That’ll use up more of our oxygen.”

They were in a cramped living space no larger than two bathtubs stacked on top of each other.

The capsule-shaped device had thick anti-pressure armor, two thin arms with propellers on the end that could turn in any direction, a powerful light, and a round window.

It was a small submersible that looked like the product of a startup’s hard work. It seemed to show off how handmade it was, like it was meant to demonstrate how its production had breathed new life into a failing downtown factory, but it was surrounded by complete darkness. However, it was not currently nighttime. The hot sun shining on the Atlantic seemed to have forgotten that autumn had arrived, but the sunlight could not reach this depth.

They were more than 200 meters deep.

The water pressure at the depth was not enough to crush the human body like a punctured basketball, but it was too deep for free diving. It was undoubtedly a deadly region of sea.

To intentionally recover the ocean’s oxygen, thin wires had been laid out lengthwise and widthwise and seaweed had been planted along them. However, that oxygen plant had been split apart by a giant mass of steel that had torn a line across the ocean floor.

In place of sunlight, pale ultraviolet lights revealed the identity of the dark mass: an 85m missile submarine.

Heivia grabbed the radio mic which was attached with something like a phone cord.

“Hey, hey, heyyy. We’re as short on time as you are and we’re only going to bother with humanitarian aid while we’re in a good mood. If you don’t want this to end in a fight over invisible oxygen, then obediently follow our instructions, Capitalist Corporations.”

“Unique Publishing to unidentified craft. The hit to our propeller shaft that ruptured our ballast tank was caused by a torn wire from your oxygen plant, Legitimacy Kingdom. That is a serious case of sea route disruption and a violation of international law. If we get back alive, we will see you in court.”

“Could you put someone else on the line? Overly-serious student council presidents and class reps only work when they’re girls. I think coming down here was a complete waste of time.”

“And do the Capitalist Corporations auction off the right to name their weapons? Y’know, like they do with sports stadiums?”

At any rate, they had to get to work.

There were a few different ways of rescuing people from a sunken submarine. For example, they could send out a small submersible, attach its hatch to the submarine’s, and ferry the crew to the surface bit by bit. However, that would take time and only worked if the submarine had plenty of oxygen to spare.

But there was another way:

“We’ll be going the balloon route on this one. After attaching a few nitrogen-deployment balloons across the submarine to secure some buoyancy, we will use several submersibles to pull it to the surface.”

“That could easily fail,” replied the submarine. “What if the submarine breaks in two on the way up!?”

“Trust in the sub you guys designed. We’re not as greedy as you in the Capitalist Corporations, but we aren’t stupid enough to rescue enemy soldiers for free. We’re building up experience by testing out an experimental method. Here we go.”

With no motivation at all in his voice, Heivia watched as the various submersibles surrounded the submarine. After getting the submarine to float up, they had to do some work alongside it, but it was not actually supported by pillars. If it suddenly tilted, it would crush them underneath it, so they had to see just how stable it was first.

“We’re risking our lives here, so you’d better be thoughtful enough to greet us with a crew full of bikini babes.”

“Heivia, they can’t violate causality. We were sent out only after the sub sank. No matter how thoughtful they are, they couldn’t have selected the crew for our benefit.”

“We’ve got a teacher’s pet over here too!? How many times do I have to tell you only girls can get away with being that straight-laced!?”

If possible, they wanted to avoid being anywhere near that submarine and all the dangers it presented, but then they would have to ask themselves why they came down here in the first place. So Heivia kept in contact using the short-range radio while they hesitantly took wires attached to large spheres and directly welded the ends of the wires to the submarine’s exterior.

“What a strange sight. This isn’t going to cause a water vapor explosion, is it?”

“Wait,” protested the submarine.

“There’s a method to this. Offshore oil rigs are made of metal, so they’ve developed ways to weld underwater. Not that that’s our specialty or anything.”

“Can we please play a word game or something?” asked the submarine. “They play classical music even when you’re under general anesthetic for surgery, so being stuck here listening to your terrible conversations is going to make my heart burst!!”

This was not a life-risking group date with several girls, so they were not about to play a party game with a bunch of filthy guys. Instead, Heivia and the others moved on to the next stage of work.

Once they had successfully attached the balloons, the submersibles temporarily moved away. After they sent an electronic signal, the spheres of synthetic fiber ruptured from within.

They were balloons, but they were not like airbags.

The large deep-sea lights showed a translucent sludge covering everything.

The gel was lighter than water and detonating several balloons at once had coated the heavy submarine in the gel, giving it buoyancy.

Quenser commented on the unnatural haze floating in the ocean.

“It’s like seeing the aftermath of that one kid in the pool who couldn’t hold it in and betrayed everyone.”

“Please stop surrounding our submarine with your horrific imagination!”

However…

“Crap, some of us were too slow. #7 and #9, watch the portside tilt. Don’t get caught by that piece of junk!!”

“We really are going to sue you!!!!!”

“If you’re okay with telling the world how you got your own sub sunk and then had to get help from an enemy nation, then go right ahead! If it gets out that you sank the sub plastered with your sponsor’s name, won’t you have to pay damages!?”

The submarine just about rolled over, but with the eel-like slippery substance surrounding it, it began to float up instead.

The gap of a few centimeters below it was the beginning of a miracle.

Once it began to float, the submarine moved so easily it was hard to believe it had been stuck in place just a moment before. Now that it had buoyancy, it floated so lightly that a push from the hand was enough to move it in any direction.

“Let’s grab that thing and drag it up. I can’t believe everyone in there has such a stick up their butt.”

“Oh, you poor thing. Why are all you Legitimacy Kingdom boys so irritable? Try smiling every now and then☆”

“Please don’t force that falsetto! It’s creepy!! Why is it that hard workers tend to put all their effort into the wrong things!?”

The amount of oxygen in the submarine was a concern, but there was also a danger of the buoyancy-providing sludge coming off during the rapid ascent.

“How long is this going to take?” asked the submarine.

“Think of it like an elevator. 200 meters would be taller than a trendy hotel’s observation deck restaurant, wouldn’t it? That’s not a height you can travel in a flash.”

“Gather the best of the Capitalist Corporations and we could create a silent elevator that travels a 1000m building in a minute. And the ride would be so smooth that it would not rouse a sleeping baby.”

“Do you die if you don’t brag about something every five minutes!?”

The arguing continued during the careful twenty minute journey to the surface.

Eventually, the scene outside the round window changed.

The surrounding water remembered that sunlight existed. And they saw schools of small fish swimming ever downward as if afraid of something.

As their ascent continued, they could see some larger fish floating around. They were clearly not here of their own free will.

They felt a low rumbling.

It was clearly coming from above.

“Wh-what?” said the submarine. “What is going on???”

“It’s the same as landmine fishing. The fish hit by the shockwaves are knocked out. Honestly, they had even built an oxygen plant to help the bluefin tuna population recover, but that’s all ruined now that some idiot has come to this marine reserve. The conveyer belt sushi chains are going to get a lot of international criticism again.”

“So they’re gonna continue rubbing lard on random deep-sea fish to pretend its tuna, are they? That Island Nation-obsessed busty commander is not going to be happy…”

They had so longed to reach the surface, but they only found gloom as they approached it.

The submersible the size of two bathtubs broke the waves as it floated to the surface.

And they saw the two combatants.

The Baby Magnum and the Nitrogen Mirage.

Those Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance monsters were firing back and forth on this marine battlefield.

While the Princess switched out her seven main cannons to swap out shell type and moved all around on her attached naval floats, her opponent was a Second Generation Object with nitrogen laser main cannons and an aircushion propulsion device specialized for marine combat. It had three main cannons stacked vertically on either side. It seemed to fire the thick bluish-white beams in the wrong direction, but then they suddenly bent in various directions and accurately targeted the Baby Magnum.

“Ultraviolet nitrogen lasers… Those are hundreds of times more harmful than sunlight, so don’t they violate the treaties?”

“According to the electronic simulation division, the reactor is surrounded by several low-temperature conduction power generators that use liquid nitrogen. They use the reactor’s excess energy to generate even more power to throw into the cannons. Either way, a direct hit will vaporize you, so the cancer risk is kind of irrelevant.”

Laser beams were not visible to the naked eye, but they fried and reflected off of the dust and moisture in the air, which left something like an afterimage behind.

The thick ocean water had cut off the signals, so they found a lot of radio chatter once they arrived on the surface.

“Princess!! Update your meteorological data and reference the nitrogen and temperature distributions! That thing alternates between liquid nitrogen and a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum to create extreme temperature differences, those create mirages that disturb the ocean’s surface, and that is used to bend the light!!”

“Understood, Frolaytia.”

“Listen, Princess,” added the old maintenance lady. “The light should change direction as if being drawn from the high temperatures to the low temperatures. Once you understand the rules, you can predict this mirage laser-bending trick.”

Several clouds of white smoke expanded around the Nitrogen Mirage, but the sound was too soft for something meant to kill. It was reminiscent of the fireworks used to indicate the beginning of an athletic festival. There was a plate-like component raised above the spherical main body and container-shaped ejection devices were lined up along its edge. Most likely, they had exposed -195 degree liquid nitrogen to the outside temperature so that it would expand explosively.

Meanwhile, the Princess moved back and forth with MMA-like steps and accurately dodged all of the blue light dancing around her. To reiterate, what Quenser and the others could see was not the laser beams themselves. It was only the bluish-white afterimage left after the lasers passed through and fried the dust and moisture in the air.

The timeframe and world in which she fought was on an entirely different level.

This was a battle at light speed. By the time your senses could catch up, the attack would have already punched through you.

“…Wow. Is it just me or is the color fading from the Princess’s armor?”

“The dense nitrogen and laser heat being scattered around the area is causing a chemical reaction in the onion armor’s surface. It’s called nitrogen iron oxide.”

“What happens if we carelessly breathe in that colorless fog…?”

“Nitrogen itself isn’t toxic, but it drives out the oxygen and creates a state of hypoxia. I don’t know where the invisible minefield is, so we just have to be thankful we’re inside an airtight submersible.”

“The temperature difference is affecting our radio signals!” said Frolaytia. “The thermomagnetic effect is probably being used to produce an extreme electric potential difference in the air. Watch out for any adverse effects on your radar locks!!”

“But when I use visual confirmation, it looks like the thing is floating,” said the Princess.

“Use the meteorological data to calculate back!” said the old maintenance lady. “It’s only using mirages, so it can’t create an image out of thin air! The giant plate-like meteorological radar on its head is proof of that!!”

Quenser could picture the troubled look on the Princess’s face as she received that avalanche of instructions. Worst of all, they were doing it out of concern for her, so she could not ignore them either.

He also heard a voice of surprise from the sludge-covered submarine they were towing.

“H-how did this happen? You never said anything about this! We’ll sue you for guiding us into danger like this!!”

“Is that your catchphrase or something!? If you like, we can always cut the wires and let you sink back to the bottom again!!”

“Why is the Information Alliance interfering in this…?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.” Quenser breathed an exasperated sigh before continuing. “What exactly are you carrying in that submarine?”

Part 2

Frolaytia Capistrano did not look happy.

The civilized convenience of air-conditioning removed the heat of Central and South America from the room while her laptop screen displayed a close up of someone she did not recall adding to her address book.

It was Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

The small girl had long blonde hair and a distinctive black uniform.

“No need to worry. I am not here to discuss an international conflict today.”

“…”

“Or should I have explained this first? I am an Information Alliance citizen, but I am partitioned off from the standard military. After all, I am the troubleshooting specialist known as the Stopgap Grim Reaper. I thought I would give some advice to the swine that position demands I respect, but if you refuse to listen, I will end this call instead. Yes, I would like for you to take a certain action.”

Frolaytia grimaced and said nothing.

Just how many people on the planet could find that reaction to be undeniably delightful?

“Your time is up, but in a useful way. I will take that as acceptance since you did not reject the idea, Major Tortoise.”

“…You goddamn search engine.”

“I will treat anything other than a yes or a no as an invalid response.” Wraith giggled and spun a pen in her hand. “The problem is that submarine the Legitimacy Kingdom picked up. It belongs to the Capitalist Corporations, doesn’t it? As I am sure you know, its cargo will spark a new war.”

“I believe it was your Information Alliance that attacked us.”

“And that is why this call is such a delicate tightrope to walk. Didn’t I say I am partitioned off from the standard military?”

“What are you saying was on that sub?”

“It would be best if you saw for yourself. I could always tell you here, but I doubt you would listen to a word I said after you learned the truth.”

“?”

Here alone, Frolaytia wrinkled her brow in honest confusion.

Wraith sighed on the screen.

“You can interpret this however you like, but I will cast pearls of human words before swine here. …I am on your side for this one. No matter what the Information Alliance chooses to do.”

She sounded oddly sincere.

Then something else happened on the screen. The butler-like young man standing behind the small girl bent over and whispered some kind of report into Wraith’s ear.

“My apologies, Major. I too have some business to take care of. I know your battalion will take care of this one no matter what I say, so there is no need to say goodbye. Until we meet again on this seemingly vast but surprisingly small battlefield.”

That was when something occurred to Frolaytia.

It was mostly just a hunch, but…

“…Where are you right now?”

“Did you think I was simply with an Information Alliance maintenance fleet? Didn’t I already say I am partitioned off from the standard military? Yes, that makes the third time. Anyway, you surprisingly birdbrained commander, I will troubleshoot the problems presented to me in my own way. …And this time, I am on your side. Do not forget that, okay?”

Part 3

They were near the equator in the Atlantic Ocean.

The region of ocean was right between the Information Alliance home country in eastern North America and the Legitimacy Kingdom-controlled South American Amazon District.

The Baby Magnum and the Nitrogen Mirage had not concluded their battle, but a lull had begun when the Information Alliance temporarily withdrew. The Legitimacy Kingdom predicted they had only withdrawn because the submarine had arrived at a dock.

“Welcome to the artificial volcano base known as New Caribbean Island.”

The submarine was welcomed by the battalion’s busty Major Frolaytia Capistrano who was flanked by bodyguards, but one part of her greeting caught their attention.

The dock had been quickly dug out of the coast with construction equipment, but the coast was not a sandy beach or a rocky cliff. It was a rough ground made of black pebbles hardened together like crunchy chocolate. The surface readily crumbled away just from scraping the sole of your boot against it.

The ground looked like a failed attempt at pavement and like it would be incredibly painful if you tripped onto it, but it was actually volcanic rock.

After struggling to get out of the goop-covered submarine, the middle-aged man who seemed to be the captain gave a somewhat sulky-looking naval salute.

“Rigas Blackpassion, Navy Captain. Thank you very much for your uncompensated assistance.”

“Don’t screw with us, Capitalist Corporations. You greedy people know better than anyone that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Do not forget until the day you die that we have an extremely useful diplomatic card to use against you. You have no hope of reaching admiral now, Captain.”

“W-we cannot permit you to have a base here!!”

“Oh, this is just a bluefin tuna breeding base. There is nothing military about it. You see, my foolish brother is as obsessed with the Island Nation as me and he is the most troublesome sort of charity giver.”

“You expect us to believe this is a civilian installation!? When it can maintain an Object!?”

“It took a lot of doing rigging it up like that. It was not designed that way to begin with.”

Now, what was an artificial volcano base?

The rules governing the sea said that the area within 200 nautical miles of a country’s territory could be claimed as that country’s exclusive economic waters. However, that did not apply to manmade things such as megafloats and offshore oil rigs.

But here they had found a loophole.

“I don’t like borrowing a phrase from the Faith Organization, but this was a heavenly blessing. Who would have thought an underwater volcano would erupt and create an entire new island at just the right time?”

“We are well aware the seismographs detected some unnatural shaking. You drilled into the ocean bedrock and filled the hole with explosives, didn’t you!?”

“I’m not about to listen to any accusations made without definitive proof. Go speak with those lawyers you love so much in the Capitalist Corporations. I’m sure they’re just as impotently frustrated as you.”

…That was the explanation.

“(This whole island is a toy made by that Sir Bloodrics guy, right? And he did so as casually as tossing some change in the donation box next to a convenience store register. Nobles scare me.)”

“(That pretentious bastard apparently wants to bring back the bluefin tuna filleting shows. I bet he wants to be served by geisha girls instead of maids and experience the Eastern wonder known as nyotaimori.)”

The rules of the sea were based on where the land was, but what if a brand new island appeared in the middle of the ocean one day? If it was inside a country’s territorial waters or EEZ, it would naturally redraw the lines. And whether they were honest about it or not, modern technology allowed them to trigger a volcanic eruption in a calculated way.

It was the same as how image-editing software had wiped away the fear of ghost photographs. The questions about the island were on the same level as noticing the number of legs did not match up on a group photo at school.

Unlike the Pacific, the Atlantic Ocean had relatively few islands, so this new technology could easily provide a naval transportation breakthrough along the arctic routes that were more accessible thanks to global warming.

Frolaytia continued speaking with a cruel smile.

“If you wish to lodge here, we will need your cooperation. Now, what do you have aboard that submarine? The marine resource of migratory fish is enjoyed evenly by the entire world, so why has the Information Alliance abandoned their stable supply of tuna by sending in an Object?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“To repeat, we are merely borrowing a civilian bluefin tuna breeding base. I can of course withdraw our military forces from here. I would only need to apologize to my foolish brother. Naturally, we would be leaving your broken submarine and its crew here. I’m not sure why, but it seems the Nitrogen Mirage is very interested in getting at you. It should be obvious what will happen once our excellent protector leaves. If we were placing bets on how long you would last, my money is on less than half a day.”

An unpleasant silence followed.

But it did not last long.

There was no need to mention which way the power balance had tilted here.

“Enough. There is no point in hiding it any longer. Tell them everything, Captain.”

It was a graceful voice, but it belonged to a wrinkled old woman.

The middle-aged man frantically looked back in time to see an old woman in a white coat receive support from Quenser and Heivia because the ground was slippery around the submarine.

“Ma'am!!”

“I said enough.”

The way she cut the man off told Frolaytia this woman was not part of a military-style hierarchy.

The old woman’s gray hair had some blonde remaining and she did not even glance in Rigas’s direction.

“And in the worst case, any destination other than the Information Alliance will work. I can always defect to the Legitimacy Kingdom instead.”

“!?”

“I only want one thing: asylum in a free location where the Information Alliance cannot reach me. Now, which group can better protect me: the Capitalist Corporations that failed after making an elementary mistake, or the Legitimacy Kingdom that made up for that mistake?”

This comment made the Captain look like a chained dog, but it also made Frolaytia narrow her eyes in displeasure.

“You seem to be under the impression that you are Cinderella at your age, but we do not even know who you are. And do not think that you are good enough company that we would just accept this kind of trouble.”

“Isn’t your lack of information merely a failing on your part? Oh, excuse me. I can’t seem to shake that Information Alliance mindset, annoyingly enough.”

“Shall I box you up and ship you to New York?”

Even that old woman lightly raised her hands at the busty silver-haired commander’s words.

As had always been the case, the most frightening thing for a political criminal seeking asylum was being sent right back to their original country.

“Katarina Martini.”

She plainly confessed her name in a fairly theatrical way.

She was used to having her name work in her favor. And she maintained that irritating self-importance as she continued.

“Would you understand some of my value if you knew I was the one who created the Martini Series, an Information Alliance genius girl project that implanted talent into thousands of girls?”

Part 4

“Hello, Major. Have you finished checking what that submarine was carrying?”

Wraith seemed to be treating her like an online friend, but Frolaytia could not stop grimacing.

“…If you were within reach, I might have punched you.”

“You said that out loud, you savage with delusions of intelligence. The mother of the Martini Series is attempting to defect from the Information Alliance. Katarina Martini makes for quite the bombshell, doesn’t she? I mean, she will make for a most delicious prize for whoever grants her asylum. She could create a second or third Martini Series that fills a different sort of container, or she could find vulnerabilities in the girls who make up the core of the Information Alliance. Whatever the case, she makes for bait so incredible it could bring one of the world powers crumbling down.”

With a grunt of effort, the footage blurred a bit.

Wraith had apparently taken a quick hop while holding either a smartphone or camera. She was probably hopping from a dock to a cruiser.

She had previously mentioned that she was partitioned off from the Information Alliance’s standard military and was acting separately from them.

“Where are you planning to intervene from this time?” asked an irritated Frolaytia.

“Let’s just say it will be via a third country. You etiquette-obsessed swine are making a mess of New Caribbean Island, but this is all happening in the Information Alliance’s own-…hyah!?”

“?”

Frolaytia had to frown when little Wraithy suddenly jumped.

“I-I am fine. This had nothing to do with anything crawling around at my feet. (Oh, I can’t believe this. Knowing fish eat these gross things makes me never want to eat seafood again.)”

Wraith was muttering something, but she had not gone inside the boat. She was lying on a beach chair on the deck. She placed her communication device on the side table and relaxed.

“Now, I assume you are no longer willing to listen to anything I have to say.”

“…”

“Yes, when this concerns the mother of the Martini Series and one of her creations contacts you, even a ringlet curl ape with special blood in its veins can tell how dangerous things are. You have to be well aware that the Information Alliance is willing to wage war to preserve their secrets here.”

That was exactly right, but Frolaytia could find no logical reason for the girl to contact her. There was no point in giving advance warning of a head-on clash.

“My specialty is troubleshooting. No more, no less. I primarily find a way to deal with our own people’s shameful behavior, so I am not all that interested in an outside group like the Legitimacy Kingdom. That means I have nothing against you, but it also means I am not particularly fond of you either.”

“Your point?”

“That means the ‘true enemy’ I have my sights on is not you. So this time alone, I have no real reason to kill you. As I said, I doubt you’ll listen, but as a sign of my wonderful good conscience, I will give you one more warning. As an information specialist, I find it fascinating how much the same words must change before someone listens to them.”

Wraith grinned and her butler handed her a cold drink in a clear glass with lots of sliced fruit stuck around the edge.

“I am on your side this time. Keep that in mind and you will not regret it.”

Part 5

The situation had grown troublesome.

“Hyah, I thought it was supposed to hold off until nightfall.”

In her skintight special suit, the Princess splashed through the puddles as she fled below the eaves of the normal barracks. The dark crunchy chocolate of volcanic rock provided poor drainage, so puddles quickly formed when it rained and those soon grew to small ponds or lakes.

What had happened to the scorching sun from earlier in the day?

The sky was covered by thick clouds.

“I guess they get these sudden downpours everywhere in the world,” said Quenser with a sigh.

“I wonder if it has anything to do with the nitrogen and whatnot the Nitrogen Mirage was spreading around. You know, like a meteorological weapon that fires a missile into the clouds to make it rain.”

“I just hope it doesn’t turn into photochemical smog.”

They had been planning to lie on the beach chairs and stare at a mobile device. The waterproofed screen showed them what was happening in the interrogation room.

The Information Alliance’s Nitrogen Mirage had apparently withdrawn once the Capitalist Corporations submarine had arrived at New Caribbean Island. It was about evenly matched with the Princess, but some line must have been crossed and they felt the need to rework their whole strategy.

So.

They could not deny that the Information Alliance’s next strategy might be to blow away the entire bluefin tuna breeding base that Frolaytia had borrowed after begging her “onii-chan”.

“Phew…”

The Princess quietly sighed below the eaves with her golden hair wet with rain. Her special suit revealed every contour of her body, so the boy’s eyes followed the droplets flowing down her to burn every last curve into his brain.

Not even the strong downpour had cooled the area. It only increased the humidity, like pouring water on the heated stone in a sauna.

“This footage is really grainy.”

“According to the electronic simulation division, the wiring is messed up. Frolaytia had the military parts attached onto the existing tuna base, so they were saying something about us exceeding the capacity on the grounding line that runs from the facility and into the ground.”

“?”

“They called it electrolytic corrosion. Send too much electricity into the ground and the earth and moisture around the underground cable will work in place of an electrolytic solution. You know what electrolysis is, right?”

“The process that separates water into oxygen and hydrogen?”

“Yes, that. The same process can apparently break down the cable or steel frames. This weird signal noise must be from corrosion to a fiber optic cable somewhere.”

Quenser felt like a guy helping out the young woman next door hook up her TV and DVR, but he had to ask.

He pointed at the mobile device’s screen as he did so.

“It doesn’t really matter, but why are you so interested in this?”

“Well, because the old maintenance lady said she was helping with the interrogation.”

Quenser just about asked why, but he found he could make a pretty good guess.

“Does she think the old woman will open up more to someone from her own generation?”

“We will of course have another witness there.”

Meanwhile, the interrogation in question was beginning.

It would all be recorded and every last word and facial expression would be thoroughly analyzed, but Quenser and the Princess leaned forward to experience it live.

The camera must have been near the ceiling because the footage looked down on the two old women from a somewhat diagonal angle. The Legitimacy Kingdom and former Information Alliance women faced each other across a table bolted to the floor.

“It would seem neither one of us survived this long with a clean conscious.”

“Very true. I am jealous of your position since you don’t have to explain what it is you have done.”

“As someone who was done this myself, let me tell you that defection is not as optimistic a choice as you think it is.”

“There are times when you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Surely you understand that as someone who lived through that age.”

With only about a decade and a half of life under their belt, Quenser and the Princess could not imagine how much was hidden behind each of those words.

“The Martini Series is now viewed as living hardware to fill the holes in the Information Alliance’s administrative system. The idea is to make up for the deficiencies in the giant network by using human brains for the parts that computers cannot yet process. …Well, you could say that relationship between AI and humans is an expanded form of the Object-Elite arrangement that the Information Alliance has developed a few experimental examples of.”

“Based on that, it would seem the project was a success. As someone surrounded by the military in her research, you would have had all the money you could have wanted.”

“True enough. I was too successful.” Katarina gave a weary smile and elaborated as if gently nudging a giant metal ball from the top of a slope. “Personally, I only ever wanted just one member of the Martini Series. All that talk of living hardware to fill the holes in the machine-ruled administrative system was no more than a convenient way of gaining the research funding I needed. And even after they more or less threw cash my way, I never did manage to create a perfect Martini.”

“Was there a specific individual they were modeled after?”

“Cassandra Martini. She was my mother. She lived in that insane age before the four world powers formed, when Objects spent all their time wiping out land, sea, and air forces to prove the title of strongest belonged to them. In that truly lawless age of upheaval, she passed away protecting her young child to the very, very end. She is my personal hero and she is the purest, the original, and the truly perfect Martini.”

“…”

A short silence followed.

A parent protecting her child sounded like a simple thing, but since they had not lived in that time, Quenser and the Princess could not even imagine how difficult that must have been. And it was because that woman succeeded that Katarina Martini was here now.

“So you were driven by a juvenile drive toward womb regression.”

“Yes, the child attempts to create her mother and return to her protective care. The Martini Series was an experiment to take the MRI cross sections of the original, intentionally create the same ‘deviations’ in someone else’s brain, and give them the same balance as that genius. But from the very beginning, my research violated the rules of this world. I would rather not come off sounding like the Faith Organization, but perhaps you could say it was god’s will. As each roll of the dice continued to not come up in my favor, I found I had countless children who had each inherited just one cross section of my mother’s brain.”

The old maintenance lady let out a soft breath after listening this far.

And she did not hesitate to speak.

“So why do you want to defect? If you have an issue with your research environment and were hoping to get a fresh start elsewhere, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s answer is no. We aren’t going to hand you living children for your juvenile game of dress up.”

“Even though you continue to mass-produce Pilot Elites?”

“That might be a necessary evil in this godforsaken world. But what you’re doing is clearly more focused on your own little games.”

“The self-proclaimed sensible side in the Information Alliance said the same thing at first. But when faced with geniuses who were completely off the charts, that alleged sense of theirs was clouded by greed.”

That demon scoffed.

Almost like she had held this same conversation many, many times before.

“…But that is not the crux of the issue. It is true I am displeased with the Martini Series’s failure, but I do not wish to do any of that ever again.”

“What?”

“The Martini Series carries a severe problem, so I am seeking the assistance of a powerful force that can fight them and eliminate them from the Information Alliance’s system.”

“You made these children, but now you’ve deemed them failures and plan to kill them yourself!? Using war and assassinations!?”

“Just hear me out.”

With that, Katarina placed a hand on her own aged chest.

No, that was not quite accurate.

It was unclear when she had picked it up, but she held a Legitimacy Kingdom mobile device just like the one Quenser and the Princess were watching the footage on.

When it emitted a beeping sound, the people in the interrogation room also noticed something was wrong.

But Katarina tossed it onto the table before they could do anything.

“I kept the truly sensitive data embedded in my heart. I placed the files in my pacemaker’s unused memory and set it up for contactless extraction, just like the automatic ticket gates at a train station.”

“…What…is this?”

“The core of the Martini Series’s problem. This is a history of the life my mother, Cassandra Martini, lived under a second handle name.”

The old maintenance woman was speechless.

The footage did not let Quenser and the Princess see what she was reading.

But they could tell it was something shocking.

“My mother was a rational killer. …Although, in that age of insufficient resources, it may have been necessary if she was to support a young child like me.”

Katarina was blunt as she discussed the woman she had called her personal hero.

“That was a lawless age of upheaval. That file provides details on 39 incidents or uprisings that can no longer be investigated. These records must have been like a trophy to her. Succeed or fail, she would write out the series of events and add a flowchart leading to the next incident. Unsatisfied with a single coincidental success, my mother used this to refine her skills. Yes, her skills as a professional who systematically plundered from highly secure facilities, both military and civilian.”

“So…so this is what you meant?”

“I only learned of this truth after I began the genius girl project in search of my mother. And as a result, I cannot even predict how much of my mother’s violence any one of them inherited. The closer to perfection they came, the more willing they will be to kill people as long as it is ‘rational’. In the worst case, every last one of them may have reached that threshold.”

“Didn’t you say the Martini Series numbers in the thousands and has worked its way deep into the Information Alliance administration and military!? If the original’s violence has been reproduced in them, they won’t just rely on knives or guns. What if they take the great influence they have been given and begin ‘prowling around’ using it as a weapon!?”

“You should assume the state and military are entirely controlled by the kind of people who would readily kill the elderly or the very young to have fewer mouths to feed during a famine. We might see the onset of an age of joyous malice that makes the oppression and slaughter of the infamous witch hunts pale in comparison. In fact, it may already be starting simultaneously across Information Alliance-controlled territory.”

Quenser and the Princes exchanged a glance.

In this case, they could not expect the Information Alliance to purify itself. After all, the budding violence would come from the genius girls who had been positioned to fill the holes in the supercomputer-controlled administration and military. They had been placed in control of a worldwide vulnerability from the beginning, so they could bring the normal system crashing down just by switching off their own duties.

And Katarina would not have chosen to defect without good reason.

She had to have worked to fix the problem from within the Information Alliance. She had only shifted focus to an external attack because those efforts had produced no meaningful results.

Was that because no one around her could sense the danger?

Or had some member of the Martini Series already gone around and made sure nothing could be done?

“This age is supported by the constant conflict between the four world powers. It sounds strange, but that balance will fall apart if one of our enemies truly collapses.”

“…”

“So if the Information Alliance crumbles from within, the table supported by those four legs will fall over. Once that happens, the entire clean war concept will vanish like so much mist.”

For some reason, those words brought Quenser’s childhood friend Monica to his mind. She had been a haughty and sharp-tongued noble girl until her family had collapsed one day. Then she had been pursued by the people of their town and forced to tremble with her family in a commoner family’s small food pantry. The shift to a new age was not always a positive change. No matter what choices someone made, a great power outside their control could decide whether they would have fortune or misfortune. That was a nightmarish idea for a commoner like Quenser who was constantly oppressed and forced to obey the decisions made for him.

And now chaos on that same level – no, on an even greater level – would spread around the entire world.

“We might see a return of that lawless age of upheaval my mother secretly thrived in. I could easily see it happening if they decide to end this fattened age of temporary peace and instead live a life ruled by rationality and efficiency.”