“Whoa…” Haruyuki expelled a long breath and tried to get his thoughts in order.
“So then,” he said, twitching his pig’s nose, “um, Hermes’ Cord is a four-thousand-meter-long man-made satellite made up of these three stations connected by carbon nanotubes…Is that it? And this goes around the Earth at a speed much faster than the Earth’s rotation…?”
“That’s exactly it. The bottom station’s ground speed reaches Mach ten, so the low-Earth-orbit-type space elevator is also called a hypersonic skyhook.”
“But, in that case, what’s the thing they built on Christmas Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean? I remember seeing a huge man-made island on the news…I’m sure there was a long tower or something stretching out from it…”
“That island is the landing field for the space plane to take people and objects to the bottom station of Hermes’ Cord. The planes that take off from there rendezvous with the station a hundred and fifty kilometers up and deliver their cargo. This cargo is then taken to the top station four thousand kilometers up, using the elevator, before being loaded into a shuttle going back and forth between the Earth and a station in geostationary orbit or the international base on the surface of the moon. Incidentally, since the station in geostationary orbit is also directly above the landing field, it’s actually not incorrect to say that Hermes’ Cord is in the eastern Pacific.”
“Huh…” Haruyuki sighed several times and stared again at the illustration on the window before him. Since the diameter of the Earth was about 12,700 kilometers, a length of four thousand kilometers was probably the same proportion as an apple and its stem, but the idea that this thing was whizzing by above his head at Mach ten was a bit hard to swallow.
“Hmm, I dunno. Seems like a spring or something that could come falling down. It’s scary,” he said despite himself, and Kuroyukihime shrugged her shoulders lightly.
“There was one that did almost fall, actually.”
“Wh-what?!”
“Hmm? You didn’t know about this? I’m pretty sure it was around the beginning of spring. There was that incident where terrorists mixed in with a group of tourists and tried to set up explosives on the central station. It’s because of that that they decided to enhance the security system for Hermes’ Cord. Japan took part in the international bidding for the system construction, leading to this news of the first export of the social camera technology.”
“Oh, wow, is that how it happened? Sorry, I should’ve done my homework on that.” Haruyuki pulled back into himself, just like when he was called on in class and didn’t know the answer.
Fortunately, Professor Kuroyukihime didn’t rebuke him further, but added an explanation with a wry smile. “Being a low-Earth-orbit space elevator, Hermes’ Cord has smaller stations and a lighter cable than the geostationary orbit type. The design is very tight. Which is why even a pocket-size bomb could do some serious damage depending on where it was placed. And there would be no extra in terms of power or space to adopt a large-scale monitoring system. I think that’s why Japan’s social camera technology was adopted…Aah, and now we’ve finally come back to the beginning of this story.”
She exhaled at length, and then waved the fingers of her right hand to pull up her VR operation menu. She materialized two drinking glasses and offered one of them to Haruyuki.
Ah, crap! I should have been ready to call these up, not her! he thought as he hurried to accept the glass and bring it to his lips. It seemed to be an original drink with countless fine-tuned flavor parameters; a refreshing, sweetly sour taste spread out in his mouth unlike any juice in the real world and yet with not a hint of anything unnatural about it.
“Th-this is good. Really good,” he said, and Kuroyukihime laughed lightly, waving her left hand with a flourish.
“Lately, I’ve been practicing with real ingredients…Work with no do-overs is honestly very frustrating. Did you know, Haruyuki? Light soy sauce is light in color alone! I mean, what is that, salty water?!”
“H-huh, I didn’t know that. But why are you suddenly working on your cooking—”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it? Someday, I…” Here, her mouth snapped shut, and Kuroyukihime cleared her throat loudly. “I’m just fooling around. Anyway, I suppose this means we’ve finally come to the point.” Rather forcefully returning to the original topic, she continued her explanation at top speed.
“We were talking about the fact that Hermes’ Cord doesn’t have the leeway to equip an additional large-scale monitoring system. And so, that is where Japan’s social cameras come in. That system collects in one place all the images recorded with its countless cameras using an exclusive high-speed net, and detects signs of criminal activity by automatically analyzing these data with a high-spec supercomputer. For instance, if a gun is picked up on a camera somewhere, the system immediately analyzes who the person with the gun is and where they came from, and continues to track them to see where they’re going. The facility where this processing takes place, the Social Security Service Center, or SSSC, is somewhere in Japan, but not the slightest hint of where that place is has been made public.”
“What? You don’t know, either?” When Haruyuki asked her this in all seriousness, Kuroyukihime brought the wryest of wry smiles to her lips.
“Now look, what exactly do you think I am? I’m just a weak junior high school girl, you know. There’s no reason I should know that kind of top-level classified national information!…Although, well, I have my suspicions.”
“Wh-where is it?!”
“Not telling…More importantly, as I just explained to you, the automatic image analysis that’s the heart of the social camera system is concentrated at the SSSC. Which means you don’t need the essential items for normal monitoring cameras—enormous recording devices and human operators. If this lightness is the reason the system’s being used in Hermes’ Cord now…the cameras on the space elevator and the Japanese social camera network must inevitably be connected.”
Haruyuki simply gaped as he took this all in, but since Kuroyukihime was blinking as if she was waiting for something, he finally remembered that this word “connected” was the chief objective of the sudden dive call.
“Oh!…Right, um. So they’re connected, which means, uh…” Flapping his short pig avatar arms, he shouted, “We can go there, then?! To the Accelerated World’s Hermes’ Cord?!”
“Mmm…Well, we’re still at the stage where the possibility is not zero.” With a playful smile creeping onto her lips, Kuroyukihime continued in a tone that was somehow probing.
“First of all, there is the question of whether or not Brain Burst, which is in the end a fighting game, will conscientiously expand the stages that far. And then, assuming that the station is in fact connected to the net, how do you intend to get there? As a general rule, we Burst Linkers dive in the place where our real bodies are. In other words, to get to Hermes’ Cord in the Accelerated World, we have to actually get into the space elevator on this side. They’ve started selling tour packages to the geostationary orbit station lately, but they’re expensive!”
“They’re superexpensive…” Haruyuki dropped his shoulders dejectedly.
He had the fleeting thought that Silver Crow and his wings could dive on the ground and then fly to the bottom station, but he rejected the idea before he even opened his mouth. Crow’s maximum range was at best fifteen hundred meters. In contrast, Hermes’ Cord was a hundred times that far away, floating some hundred and fifty thousand meters off in the distance. And even Christmas Island, where the space plane landing field was on the surface of the Earth, was completely impossible to get to on a junior high student’s allowance.
“So. What it comes down to basically is that, unless you’re super-rich, you can’t dive at Hermes’ Cord…”
“Or rather, I feel like if you could get to the real thing in this world, there would be no need to dive in the reconstructed article within the Accelerated World.”
“Yeah. I gue
ss so.” Haruyuki sighed in disappointment this time, rather than wonder, and looked up at the sky.
The virtual blue seemed endlessly far away even from the top of the five-hundred-meter tower. Or rather, in this level of VR object set available for free, the tower could have been ten times or a hundred times higher and it wouldn’t have reached the sky. Because there was no “other side” for this blue sky. A closed world with just the light blue tint stretching out intently.
“…Haruyuki.”
Hearing his name suddenly, he brought his face back, and his gaze met Kuroyukihime’s calm and yet somehow still mysterious eyes.
“Why do you want to go to Hermes’ Cord so badly? I mean, compared with how freely you can fly with your wings, the space elevator is just a man-made object that goes around in a set orbit, after all.”
“Uh, ummm.” At the unexpected question, Haruyuki needed several full seconds to put the hazy thoughts inside him into words. “Obviously, I just like high places, so there’s that…but another reason is that if we could go to Hermes’ Cord, I thought maybe we could make the tiniest part of Her wish come true. She’s had…her eyes on the sky, no, the other side of the Accelerated World for so long…”
The instant Kuroyukihime heard this, her eyes opened just the tiniest bit wider, and her long eyebrows furrowed into each other. The words that eventually fell from her lips were serene, like thought itself.
“I see,” she murmured distinctly, and turned her gaze to the pale blue sky. “I suppose so…Her passion for the sky indeed has not been quenched even now. She still wishes to reach the other side of that distant blue madly, as much I seek level ten—no, perhaps even more than that.”
“Uh-huh.” Bobbing his head, Haruyuki turned his face upward once again.
Her: Sky Raker, the level-eight Burst Linker, a core member of the first Nega Nebulus. Long living as a recluse in the Accelerated World in the old Tokyo Tower, it had been three months now since she rejoined Nega Nebulus, a Legion member again after three long years.
However, this was not quite the same as returning to full active duty. Just as her refusal of Chiyuri’s invitation that evening indicated, she was taking part only in the Territory Battles each weekend, without any involvement in normal duels. She didn’t even come out to the front line in the Territories; she was always on standby in the rear, devoting herself to base defense.
Naturally, Haruyuki, and most likely Takumu and Kuroyukihime, too, were not in the least dissatisfied with this. Because as a general rule, Sky Raker, whose means of movement was a wheelchair, was not able to run anywhere other than paved roads and level surfaces. And when it came to defending their position, she got incredible results with her unique fighting style, freely maneuvering her wheelchair and trifling with the enemy while attacking repeatedly with sword hands. She was able to keep the healer Chiyuri almost perfectly safe when the enemy’s main force was close-range types, to the point where adding just one attacker to the combination allowed them to fight more than adequately.
Compared with fall and winter of the previous year, when Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki, and Takumu had basically just barely managed to scrape by on their own for the hour of the Territories, the fighting power of Nega Nebulus now was growing at a ferocious pace. There was no doubt about that.
But there was one obvious truth that no one was giving voice to.
If Sky Raker removed the seal from her Enhanced Armament Gale Thruster and strapped it onto her back once again, her fighting power would dramatically increase to several times, several dozens of times greater than it currently was. Having previously dodged an enormous enemy with this equipment, Haruyuki could testify that even if she was still missing both legs, a midair sprint using the thrust of the boosters could generate serious attack power.
However, even after Haruyuki had returned Gale Thruster, Sky Raker never went to summon the Armament, even when they were in a losing battle. It was almost as if she was firmly rejecting the wings that her own heart had given birth to.
“…I…” Haruyuki clasped his hands firmly in front of his own rounded stomach. “It’s not like I’m thinking the Legion would be stronger if she started flying again or anything. I just…I want to let Raker know that if she doesn’t believe in her own wings, she’s wrong. I should know. I borrowed Gale Thruster once…That Enhanced Armament can’t fly as long as Silver Crow’s wings, it’s true, and you can’t go as high, but the instantaneous output is way more than the acceleration of any avatar…The truth is, there’s a ton more power hidden in those boosters. That’s what I think, anyway.”
After thinking and thinking and delivering these earnest words, Haruyuki lifted his face and met Kuroyukihime’s eyes, which were unusually kind and yet somehow brimming with mourning.
The spangle butterfly avatar nodded once slowly. “So if you take Raker to Hermes’ Cord, you’ll be able to communicate that to her,” she said in a gentle voice. “Is that what you believe?”
“I do.” Haruyuki dipped his head slightly, well aware of the fact that he was being far too starry-eyed. “If what I’m thinking is right, anyway.”
“Honestly. How about once in a while being confident in your declarations?” The wry smile was soon tucked away, and after taking a deep breath, Kuroyukihime began speaking again.
“Just as I explained to you earlier, the real-world Hermes’ Cord is going around the Earth a hundred and fifty kilometers up in the air. Thus, even if the newly deployed social camera net is connected to Japan’s, I would expect that the Accelerated World’s Hermes’ Cord would naturally appear at the same height. Which is a distance that no duel avatar could possibly reach…But it’s not necessarily the case that no means of transport exists.”
“Wh-what?!” Haruyuki cried out in a high-pitched voice, leaning forward. Just as he was about to tumble off his chair, Kuroyukihime stopped him with the toe of a high heel against his flat nose.
“At best, it’s simply a possibility. Calm down.”
“R-right…”
“Listen. Despite how shrouded in mystery Brain Burst might be at its foundations, on the surface, it’s a fighting game. In which case, don’t you think a situation in which no fighter is able to go to a new stage is rather absurd?” Grinning, she moved her index finger as if in invitation. “So then, it wouldn’t be at all strange if there were to appear somewhere secret in the Accelerated World a means of transportation that only those who thought long and hard and searched for it would be able to find.”
“Secret…huh?”
“That sort of thing often happens in regular RPGs, after all. A treasure that at first glance seems impossible to get, but then if you carefully examine the map and use your head, you find a route there. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, that’s true, that’s true. I love stuff like that.” He bobbed his head in agreement with Kuroyukihime’s example before staring hard at the illustration she had drawn.
The space elevator going around the Earth one hundred and fifty kilometers above it. The only way for him to get there was to use a space plane or a rocket. And the place where rockets were launched in Japan—
“Umm…Maybe Tanegashima Space Center?”
“No.” This idea was dismissed with a shake of her black hair. “Ninety-nine percent of Burst Linkers are in Tokyo. So the portal should also be in Tokyo.”
“B-but there’s no rocket launch pad in Tokyo!”
At this cry, Kuroyukihime allowed a broad grin to spread across her face. “Perhaps if our avatars were made of real-world stuff, a rocket would be required. But they’re not, are they? Our proxies in the virtual space are constructed of pure information. And in Tokyo, there is an information transmission facility with the largest output in all of Japan.”
“Oh.” Opening his eyes wide in amazement, Haruyuki continued, almost in a gasp, “T-Tokyo…Skytree…”
“Mmm. If Hermes’ Cord is indeed a new duel stage, I think there’s no way the portal there would appear anywhere other than Skyt
ree. And the timing…That would be the moment after the social cameras have been deployed, when Hermes’ Cord is closest to Japan for the first time…”
She erased the illustration on the window and opened a browser, flicking her fingers in quick manipulation. A screen filled with English was displayed, apparently the Hermes’ Cord site. However, Kuroyukihime did not hesitate as she clicked on one link after another.
“It’s sooner than I thought, the day after tomorrow,” Kuroyukihime announced decisively, tracing a finger along the wavy line on a map of the world that eventually appeared. “June fifth, Wednesday. Five thirty-five PM.”
4
Perhaps the rainy season decided it was time to take a little break finally, because that Wednesday was the first wonderfully clear day in some time.
Even after sixth period ended, there were still only a few fleecy clouds floating in the sky, and with the sun on his back as it started to set, Haruyuki raced toward Koenji Station by himself.
His destination was, of course, the opposite side of the city, the new Tokyo Tower at Oshiage in Sumida Ward, formally known as Tokyo Skytree. In approximately two hours, a portal to the space elevator Hermes’ Cord would open on the special observation deck there…maybe.
It had all started with Haruyuki’s fairly dreamy thought. He later slipped into the Galleries in Suginami and Shinjuku, but not a single Burst Linker was talking about Hermes’ Cord. Even Kuroyukihime, the one who figured out the time and location of the portal opening, had added at the end of their dive call two days earlier, “Well, don’t get too down if this ends up being a miss.”
In which case, he at least wanted to incorporate the subtheme of a field trip to eastern Tokyo, a place where they normally never went, but unfortunately, Takumu and Chiyuri both had practice, and with the preparations for the school festival, Kuroyukihime had trouble getting away from the student council office these days. And so it fell to Haruyuki, the one who didn’t have the guts to charge into solo duels in an unknown area.