Chapter Four: The Truth That Lies Beneath

The nekkids seemed to know the layout of the Third Capital like the back of their collective hand.

“Look where we are...”

For nearly half a day they marched us through the maze-like town, around fires and rubble, first left, then right, then another turn and another, until we were all sweating. But the place we finally arrived, to our astonishment, was the same Dragon’s Den we’d wanted to get to all along.

There was a small hill surrounded by a brick wall. It was broken in places, and a glance inside revealed a yawning cavern. The entrance must have been at least five meters across. That had to be the Dragon’s Den itself.

The entrance to the cave featured a couple of structures that looked like guardhouses, along with a set of double doors that wouldn’t have been out of place at a castle. They were thick, steel-reinforced affairs that had probably been designed with an eye toward withstanding military assault. A watchtower stood on either side of the gate, and the wall was studded with what I took for gunports—or I guess, in this case, more likely arrowports.

Well, if it looks like a secret military base and quacks like a secret military base...

I was still curious, though.

“What’s going on here?” Amatena asked, turning to one of the nekkids. But the woman didn’t answer, or even react as such. Maybe she didn’t have a language, or maybe she just saw no need for conversation. In any event, having been brought here effectively as captives, we could probably assume now that the Dragon’s Den was the nekkids’ home base. In fact, several more of them were standing in front of the doors, and once we were close enough they opened the doors and ushered us inside.

This was all puzzling enough, but more shocking still was what we found in there. Or more precisely, whom.

It was Myusel—no, it was Falmelle Faugron. The cave entrance gave onto a large plaza currently populated by something more than a hundred people—these ones properly clothed. And Myusel’s mother was standing at the head of the group.

“Faugron-san!” I cried, and thankfully, she seemed to recognize me immediately.

“You’re the young woman from the mansion...”

“Koganuma Minori, ma’am. Kanou Shinichi-kun’s bodyguard.” I rushed over to her. To my surprise, the nekkids didn’t really react even when I started to run. Maybe they figured a human like me couldn’t escape at running pace—or maybe there was some other reason.

“You have brought Shinichi-kun, haven’t you?” Falmelle-san said, looking at me, then at Amatena and Clara behind me.

“Er, I’m afraid not exactly...” It was hard to have to give her the grim news when she looked so glad to see us. “See, he was here. Until the dragon attack... Shinichi-kun and Myusel both know about the Dragon’s Den, and if they’re in one piece, I’m sure they’re making their way here. But I don’t know if they are in one piece.”

Falmelle-san’s face darkened. “That’s certainly troubling...” She must have been disappointed that Shinichi-kun wasn’t here, but it couldn’t have been easy for her to hear that her daughter was missing, too. Myusel had served in the military once, yes, but these days she was just a maid. She probably wasn’t equipped to handle a moment of complete crisis like this.

“Faugron-san, who are these people?” I asked, indicating the fully-dressed people around us.

“They’re my employees, and a few Bahairamanian citizens who weren’t able to get out in time.”

“Get out?”

“You’ve seen the pillars of fire, right? There was a massive earthquake and they came sprouting up from the ground. As soon as the destruction started, the Bahairamanian military began evacuating civilians. They got most of them out of the city, but then almost a dozen dragons showed up, and they weren’t able to come back for the rest. The people who couldn’t get out with that first wave are standing here now.”

“Wow...” So that was why the city streets had looked abandoned except for the nekkids. I was impressed that the military had been able to evacuate most of the city’s population in barely half a day, but my understanding was that Bahairam had a basically collectivist culture. Maybe they would have been more prepared to simply follow the army’s orders than people in some places.

“And that’s when they showed up,” Falmelle-san said, glancing at the nekkids. “They came out of this place, the Dragon’s Den.”

“So do you think they’re the special unit that’s supposed to guard this place.”

“Absolutely not,” Amatena interjected. “The Undertakers—the special unit assigned to the Dragon’s Den—are highly intelligent soldiers handpicked for their loyalty to the father-ruler. They aren’t naked brats who do inexplicable things for no apparent reason.”

“I guess you might be right...” I said.

“What’s more, I believe the majority of the Undertakers are supposed to be men,” Clara added.

I got the hint. The all-lady squad that was the nekkids wasn’t likely to be the Undertakers. I followed the logic, sure. But then where had the nekkids come from? I looked around at them with a frown.

That was when someone said: “They’re BOUs.”

“Huh...?” I looked in Hikaru-san’s direction, because the language I had heard was Japanese. Not telepathically mediated by the magic ring, but actual, real Japanese words. Hikaru-san, though, looked just as surprised as I did. So he wasn’t the one who had spoken? To be fair, it hadn’t sounded like him.

I looked all over, trying to determine the source of the voice, and that was when the assembled Bahairamanians parted to either side, like the sea. It was like something out of a movie. And a single young woman came walking between them toward us. She moved with a pronounced sense of her own importance. Unlike the nekkids, she had clothing on, but it wasn’t a typical Bahairamanian outfit. Her clothes were mostly white, and the material looked exceptionally thin, like it was designed to prioritize flexibility. In fact, it almost looked like a leotard or a wetsuit, the curves and lines of her body clearly visible.

The outfit actually showed skin in some places, producing a unique effect, as if it were actually body paint, or as though cloth had simply been stuck to her bare skin. There were circular things that looked a lot like machines of some kind around both her wrists as well as her knees. It was all very futuristic, or at least sci-fi-ish.

Her long, flaxen hair was tied up in twintails, likewise held back by mechanical-looking bits. Her face was cuteness itself, but she also gave off a somehow stiff, doll-like impression. And there was one more hint that this girl was something unusual: her eyes were red as blood.

But the strangest thing of all had to do with the exposed skin—above her chest and below her neck; in other words, right along her collarbone. Three interlocking diamonds appeared to be traced on the pale skin there; they were translucent and actually seemed to be shining with a bluish light. They weren’t tattoos, that much was clear. And they weren’t painted on. It really looked like something was embedded just under the skin. Like if you were to carve a face in a mannequin and run it full of glowing resin.

The thought flitted through my head: was she a cyborg? Or an android? Her body definitely gave the appearance of being stiffer and more mechanical than a normal living person. And she also seemed to know something we didn’t.

“BOU...? What’s that?” I asked, and when the young woman had stopped in front of me, she said: “Oh? Don’t you understand the English acronym? Allow me to rephrase: Bionic Organoid Unit. Organic-mechanical hybrids created via biological engineering. But let’s drop the product description and the fiddly little names. They’re living weapons.”

I didn’t say anything. I was lost for words. I had always taken this fantasy world for just that—pretty much a stereotypical “other world.” I had never, ever expected to hear anyone born and raised here talk about English, or use acronyms that sounded like they came from a sci-fi story.

I do remember Shinichi-kun was awfully fixated on that Forbidden Armor...

The suits of armor, cause of a fair amount of grief for us, had also seemed like something from a science fiction story. They looked like exoskeletons, and I had once seen something that looked like an alphabet appear on their surface. Just for an instant, so I hadn’t been completely sure what I had seen.

What was going on here?

“Living weapons?”

“That’s right. Surely this isn’t the first time you’ve seen them. That group looks feral, though.” To my amazement, the young woman pointed to Elvia, Amatena, and Clara.

“Guh?!” Elvia looked surprised. “Whazzat? Something about me?!” She was confused—we were speaking to each other directly in Japanese, and she wasn’t following the conversation. My side was probably being communicated to her by my magic ring, but that wouldn’t be enough to understand what was going on. Heck, she probably still wouldn’t have gotten words like “bionic” or “organoids.” The rings could only translate words for which concepts existed in the local language.

“So, uh, who are you, if I may ask? Are you with them?”

“I am—” But before the young woman could explain, there was a massive BOOM. Obviously something being destroyed. Then the doors flew open and a dragon, which must have slammed itself into the gates, came tumbling into the Dragon’s Den.

“Huh?!”

Elvia and the others prepared for a fight, while the Bahairamanian civilians and the employees of Faugron & Associates tried to make themselves as small as possible. The promptness of their reaction suggested this wasn’t the first such incursion they had witnessed.

And then I heard it: “Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” A cry, clearly not that of the dragon.

“Shinichi-kun?!” There he was, the boy I was supposed to protect, clinging to the back of the dragon. And Myusel seemed to be with him.

“Onward!” he shouted, pointing deeper into the Den. I wasn’t sure he even realized we were there. The dragon didn’t look like a puppet drake, yet for some reason it obeyed Shinichi-kun, trundling deeper into the cave.

But then the young woman spoke one quiet word, a whisper, in fact: “Stop.” And the dragon stopped cold. It halted so fast it almost seemed to defy the laws of physics. I thought I heard a humming and saw a slight distortion around its wings, but maybe I was just imagining it.

The dragon dipped its head like a servant bowing before its master. Which meant...

“Huh?!” Shinichi-kun exclaimed as he and Myusel were thrown off the dragon’s back and rolled onto the ground. Even that wasn’t enough to exhaust their momentum; they came tumbling right over to where the rest of us were standing. Thump. Ooh. That sounded painful.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Shinichi-kun said, clutching his head as if to underline my suspicions. Beside him, Myusel was frowning, too; she had probably bumped something on the way over. No obvious injuries, though.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The words were out of my mouth before I could even think about rejoicing that they were safe or anything else.

“It didn’t work like it does in the movies,” Shinichi-kun said, still rubbing his head.

“What do you mean? What movies?”

“Doesn’t this seem like the sort of thing that would happen in some big Hollywood blockbuster? By the way, great to see you’re safe, Minori-san, that’s what counts.”

“You, too. You okay, Myusel?”

“I—I think so...” Myusel said, sitting up.

“Myusel!” Falmelle-san cried, rushing over.

“Yes? Oh... Mother?!” She blinked to discover it was her mother running to greet her. Falmelle-san knelt in front of her daughter and wrapped her up in a hug. She quickly let go, but then started looking at Myusel critically. “You’re not hurt?”

“No, I... I don’t think so.”

“Thank goodness...” Falmelle-san let out a breath. “I grant that I knew by summoning Shinichi-san here, there was a good chance you would come with him.”

“Er, um, yes,” Myusel said, still blinking. It was starting to look like Myusel’s single-mindedness, the willingness to risk her life when someone she cared about was involved, and her ability to tune out even the most dangerous situations all came directly from her mother. Not to say that the reunion between mother and daughter wasn’t touching.

“That’s so weird, though,” Shinichi-kun was muttering. “Why did it...”

“What’s weird?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just, this dragon’s been listening to what I tell it, so I had it bring us here. But...”

But right at the end, the dragon had listened to the young woman and not to him. It was puzzling enough why the monster had ever listened to Shinichi-kun at all.

“That’s because you are a Type Three authorized person.”

“Yeah, that’s right, it had something to do with me being a Type Three authorized—wait, what?” Shinichi-kun said, looking at the young woman. He blinked, then said, “Uh, who’s this girl?”

“Don’t look at me,” I said with a shrug.

The girl walked over to Shinichi-kun and answered him herself. “I am Major Theresa Bigelow, commander, Eighth Special Patrol Unit, Third Regional Army of the North American Union. Or to be more precise, a replica thereof.”

“The North American... what?” Shinichi-kun looked at me for help, but I was just as confused by the girl’s introduction as he was.

“The reason the air-assault BOU Type 02R, nicknamed dragoon, didn’t listen to you was because I, a Type One authorized person, ordered it to stop. Type Three personnel are typically civilians we’ve been charged with protecting, or at least ordinary soldiers. They’re able to command most BOUs most of the time, but in the event of an emergency, the units will prioritize the orders of a Type One authorized person. Always.”

Then the girl—Theresa—reached toward Shinichi-kun’s neck.

“Uh—um, what is it?”

“You should have an authorization imprinted here.” She touched his neck, and to my surprise, a geometric pattern that looked a lot like a barcode appeared. I had never seen it before—it was like one of those invisible inks that only appears under certain conditions.

“Hey, when did that get there?”

“Let me guess,” Theresa said, narrowing her eyes. “You piloted one of the PDWS units without knowing anything about it.”

“PDWS?”

“Personal Defense Weapon System. A combat suit, if you prefer the old lingo. This authorization indicates you piloted the prototype Iron Crab F. Daring for a man to use it.”

“Oh!” Shinichi-kun and I both realized what the PDWS must be at exactly the same moment. The Forbidden Armor.

“In any event, using the PDWS resulted in your being treated as an attaché of the military. And granted Type Three authorized personnel status as well.”

“I can’t say I follow,” Shinichi-kun responded, cocking his head. “But this is because I used the Forbidden Armor—or PDWS or whatever? But Myusel and Elvia used it, too. Aren’t they Type Three authorized personnel?”

“Myusel. Elvia. Are those the names of your feral BOUs?” Theresa looked in Myusel’s direction. “Ah, I see. This one’s an elf-type hybrid. It doesn’t matter, authorization is never granted to BOUs. Type One, Two, or Three, they are only given to full-blooded humans.”

Shinichi-kun and I looked at each other, struck dumb. The upshot seemed to be that by putting on the Forbidden Armor, and also being human, he had acquired whatever this authorization was. But Myusel and Elvia, being demi-human or related to a demi-human, weren’t eligible for the same thing.

“What are these BOUs she keeps talking about, anyway?” Shinichi-kun said.

“I guess it’s short for Bionic Organoid Unit,” I told him.

“Bionic...?” He blinked. “You think they cost six million dollars each? Do they go into slow motion and get cool sound effects when they activate their powers?”

“You’ve really got a thing for vintage foreign dramas, don’t you?”

“Funny, you seem to know what it is. I assume you weren’t even born when it was showing.”

“My dad had the DVDs in his library.” We must have sounded downright relaxed. Finally I sighed and said, “Well, at least it looks like your brain is still doing its normal thing. That’s kind of reassuring.”

The girl, Theresa Bigelow, was not human.

“There’s some disagreement about whether Duplicates are humans or not,” she said as she led us through the tunnel, which was about two meters in diameter and sloped gently downward.

According to Theresa, the more precise explanation was that they had been human, but their original bodies were now dead, their personalities rendered as data and stored in a new housing. She claimed that in the society she was—or anyway, had been—a part of, personality-replica data was treated the same way the original was, so that for all intents and purposes she was viewed as the same person, and inherited the station her “living” body had possessed.

“You know, I keep wondering. That thing on your chest...”

“Ah. The nucleus of this avatar. What about it?” She looked genuinely puzzled as she led us deeper into the Dragon’s Den.

Theresa’s outfit showed a fair amount of skin, and across her clavicle a pattern of three interlinked diamonds was clearly visible. It even seemed to be glowing a sort of bluish white. Not like it was painted on the skin, but almost as if a component, if you will, in that shape was buried just under the skin. It was sort of like—you know the clear parts that come with plastic models sometimes? It was sort of like that. It wasn’t perfectly flush; whatever it was created ridges and depressions in the skin.

I remembered seeing something similar once—the shape was different, but the weird glowing thing was the same. It had happened when Hikaru-san put on a necklace he’d gotten from Romilda, and this sort of Slime-like thing had created a female version of him.

“It’s just that I ran into something similar once,” I said.

“Similar, my ass,” Theresa said. She stopped and looked at Hikaru-san. “Your little friend there is using an avatar just like me, isn’t he?”

“Uh...?” Now I looked at Hikaru-san, too. He just shrugged as if to say, You got me.

I remembered the way he had pulled Elvia up when she had been about to fall off the puppet drake. Like it was almost easy for him. I should’ve realized the real Hikaru-san didn’t have that kind of strength in his body.

“I’ve been, uh, using it ever since. It comes when I call.” Hikaru-san looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable; he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.

So apparently he could control that female body any time he put on the choker. Hikaru-san himself was probably back in Eldant right now, and this was the female version of him following us around.

“I get it,” I said, looking at Theresa again. While Hikaru-san used this “avatar,” his real body would be asleep. I guess one consciousness couldn’t control two bodies. It was like there was some kind of communication network connecting the person to the avatar; the avatar didn’t have a consciousness of its own.

That raised the question: where was Hikaru-san’s consciousness right now?

It’s a pretty common trope in cyberpunk SF stuff: you set up some kind of direct connection to the brain to create a system where you can transfer information. And a lot of the time, those systems involve extra bits and pieces added on to the brain. In other words, you could think of the communications network and the avatar as an actual part of Hikaru-san. That would make the question of whether the avatar was an artificial construct sort of moot. Think about a glass eye, a prosthetic hand, or even more simply, false teeth. They can be considered part of the person they belong to; it doesn’t really matter that on some level, they’re artificial.

But that raised some even more troubling questions. If your brain had been expanded by some external system, where did you do your thinking? Your original brain might seem to be the obvious answer, but what if the expansion system could copy the same network of nerves that allowed you to do your thinking in the first place? Then you could do your thinking over there.

On top of that, your brain is kind of a lazy bastard. Or to be more accurate, its cells are dying every day, but unlike other cells in your body, brain cells don’t regenerate. Once you’re born, it’s all downhill from there.

But look: you had people who had lost brain cells due to accidents or illnesses, but a lot of them got along just fine. Apparently, previously unused neurons would create new neural connections to compensate for the lost cells. See? One part of the brain could fill in for another. So if you had an external apparatus with electrical pathways that was capable of replicating brain function, who was to say a person’s consciousness might not “flow out” into that apparatus? Maybe you could move your consciousness from one container to another as readily as you could change cars or clothes.

Suppose, just for example, that there was an online game that could perfectly emulate all the functions of your physical body in a virtual space. And suppose the brain of a user of that game was destroyed. Would the user’s consciousness disappear at that instant? Or would it remain, as consciousness, in the network?

Theresa seemed to be my answer: it didn’t disappear. Theresa’s “original” human form was long dead, the organic body already gone, and yet the information that constituted Theresa’s consciousness was still here, in this “avatar.” Whether or not to consider the entity in front of me the “real” Theresa or not was an almost religious question: it touched on the existence or nonexistence of a soul.

The question of identity isn’t limited to cyberpunk. Suppose you had a car, and every day you changed one part of it for another part. What percentage of the parts would you have to change before it was no longer the same car? What percentage of the parts would have to be original for it to be declared the “original” car? That’s the sort of question we were debating here.

“Shinichi-sama...?” Myusel was looking at me, concerned. “Is something the matter?”

“Oh, uh, no, everything’s fine. Just thinking a little too hard,” I said with a wry grin. I guess all the ruminating about tough sci-fi topics had left me with a frown on my face.

“We’re here,” Theresa announced at length.

We had come to the end of the long tunnel, and found ourselves in a massive—I mean terrifyingly huge—underground facility. It reminded me a little of the Guld Workshop beneath Eldant, but where the dwarves liked lots of tunnels, the Dragon’s Den was pretty much one vast space. It was like they had taken the Tokyo Dome and every giant building around it and buried them all underground. It was almost overwhelming, the way the Dragon’s Den confronted you when you came out of that constricting tunnel.

“Oh my God...” I stood, flabbergasted. We had assumed from the name Dragon’s Den that there were, you know, dragons down here or something, hatching eggs. I’d thought maybe it was like an ant hill, with a “Queen Dragon” surrounded by scurrying workers and a pile of eggs. Anyway, it had to be something like that, right?

Wrong. It turned out the reality was something else entirely. It was unmistakably...

“A factory?!”

It was the only word I could come up with for what I was seeing. The space, divided into square sectors, was packed with what seemed to be highly polished machines. Piping ran everywhere, like blood vessels; the whole thing felt more than anything else like a steelworks or a chemical refinery plant.

“It looks like parts of it are... broken,” Hikaru-san observed. Just as he said, some of the machines looked like they’d seen better days, and fluid was leaking from broken pipes here and there. Those problems really stood out, considering how neat and orderly the rest of the place looked.

“The plans were supposed to have been checked and double checked,” Theresa said, folding her arms and regarding the damage critically. “A look at the records indicates several larger-than-expected seismic events, resulting in some areas that have yet to be repaired.”

“Are you saying... Has this facility been here for hundreds of years?”

“I can’t be certain. I was only just reactivated, myself,” Theresa said, tilting her head as if puzzled. “But the last records would seem to indicate that at least five thousand years have passed.”

“Five thousand?”

Living just after the year 2000 by the Western calendar, it was hard for me to even imagine a span of time like that. Five thousand years. Five thousand years ago. That seemed like long enough for civilization to rise and fall two or three times. And she’d said “at least”...

“This place was temporarily shut down when the truce accords were signed. Abandoned, practically speaking, with entry from the above-ground tunnels closed off. The idealists always did see the BOU facilities as the enemy...” Theresa sounded uncommonly earnest.

The idealists. It seemed like she was using the word to mean something subtly different from what we might have meant by it.

“And this country that made the feral BOUs—Bahairam, did you call it?—they found and excavated the first floor of the facility and started using it.”

I exchanged a look with Minori-san and Hikaru-san. Was this really it, then? The product of an ancient super-civilization here in this other world? Built five thousand years ago. By a culture five millennia old. It was head-spinning. But Theresa wasn’t done.

“This facility has a second and the third floor. When I was put into suspended animation, they put me on the second floor. Same place they produce the land-infantry BOUs.”

“Land-infantry...?” That must be what she called the naked girls who had brought us here. That would mean they had originally been created as weapons. Maybe that was why they weren’t wearing any clothes. They had just come off the production line, no time to get equipment or outfits. They’d been sent straight out on assignment. Or in Theresa’s view, maybe they weren’t any different from tanks or fighter jets—they didn’t need clothes to do their jobs.

“Um, Theresa, uh, -san?”

“What?” She stopped and looked back at me.

“You seem to see Myusel, Elvia, Amatena, Clara, and even Falmelle-san as BOUs, right?”

“That’s right.”

“But Myusel has a mother, and Elvia and her sisters—I mean, they weren’t built here, were they?”

“Of course we weren’t,” Amatena said. Theresa and I were speaking Japanese, so Amatena would have no way of knowing what exactly we were saying, but then again, she could still catch at least my side of the conversation.

“Myusel, Elvia, and Amatena are all different from your BOUs,” I said.

“No, they aren’t,” Theresa said flatly. “Elf-type and Werewolf-type infantry BOUs, along with dwarf-type and lizardman-type units, were all designed and produced in accordance with different objectives. Look at the production line on the second floor and see for yourself. There are hundreds of pre-activation BOUs still floating in the cultivation tubs.”

“But—”

“If they don’t appear exactly identical, it’s only a matter of whether they’ve gone feral.”

“Gone feral...?” I suddenly had this weird image of the African savanna, or maybe an alley cat somewhere.

“The idealists were all hung up on the idea of BOU human rights. Even started experimentally providing them with consciousness and reproductive ability, if you can believe it. In order to lend credence to their own arguments. My assumption would be that some of those experimental BOUs went feral, reproduced... and what we have here are their descendents.”

An image from John Milton’s Paradise Lost flashed through my mind. Adam and Eve. The idea that all of humanity originated with a single man and woman. The human race should have been able to live out an immortal eternity in Paradise, but deceived by the serpent, the man and the woman ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were chased out. From then on they would be terrorized by death, and would have to struggle to gain their living. No longer immortal, the man and the woman had to begin to bear children instead.

But that was just a legend, right? Yet what if something similar had happened to these BOUs?

“You’ve also seen the Air Superiority BOUs—the Type 02R Dragoons. Production facilities for them were located on the first floor of this building.” Theresa pointed up ahead. There was something that looked like a pool of liquid, and submerged inside I could see what appeared to be a massive dragon. “This first floor was the only one the people from Bahairam managed to excavate. Looks like that was enough for them. They appear to have carried off the complete Type 02Rs that were already here. As far as I can tell, some sort of seismic activity broke the seal here on the first floor and restarted the system. Production of Type 02Rs resumed in a limited fashion. But I’ve just been reactivated myself, and just how limited a fashion it is, I couldn’t tell without checking the logs.”

I was silent. What could I possibly say? Nobody would have been stupid enough to build something like this as a joke, or just to trick us. I had to assume everything Theresa was telling us was true. What if all the demi-humans in this world were really the products of genetic manipulation? Or more to the point, what if, like the dragons or whatever else, they were completely artificial?

“Feral BOUs excavating this facility and putting it to their own use. Who could have imagined?” Theresa said, and scowled openly.

Our Eldant Empire has long been at odds with the Kingdom of Bahairam. To put it briefly, we are enemies. We share a border, which has led to more than one dispute in the past. Particularly in light of how quickly Bahairam developed, its hunger for more territory was considerable. Then there is the fact that much of the land it possesses is wasteland or desert, places from which it is hard to coax agriculture. This made the relatively productive land of our empire, with its reliable harvests, particularly attractive.

There has never been an all-out war that threatened to destroy us both, but skirmishes are a regular occurrence. As, of course, are spies, which the King of Bahairam sends frequently in attempts to gather intelligence on the state of our nation. As we, of course, do to them. We have dozens of active agents at this very moment.

“The Third Capital, you say?”

In the middle of Marinos, the capital of the Eldant Empire, there was a building called Holy Eldant Castle. Most people called it “the imperial castle” or even simply “the castle.” It was the image and symbol of the Eldant state, and the residence of its all-powerful empress.

In the castle, there were audience rooms. Several such rooms were available in which the empress and her advisors could meet with subordinates and visitors, and the one we currently occupied was comparatively small. Not the one used for official business, but for more intimate matters. The same room in which we frequently received reports from Kanou Shinichi about the running of Amutech.

But at this moment, I, Garius en Cordobal, and Her Majesty the Empress, Petralka an Eldant III, were receiving a report not from any employee of Amutech, but from the handler of our spies in Bahairam, Count Radom.

“Indeed, Majesty. Confusion reigns there. It seems the entire city is engulfed in flames,” Radom said.

Count Radom was short and rotund, bald, with a flat, round nose, and he always seemed to be smiling. He made a very charming, nonthreatening impression. He had come to us via the military, but martial affairs were not his strong suit. Neither, indeed, was physical exercise. But what he did have was an immensely sharp mind and a gift for working quickly. He knew how to improvise. When relations had been opened with the Ja-panese government, Radom had been ordered to keep a keen eye on affairs at Amutech; he had likewise closely investigated and ultimately helped implement Shinichi’s idea for a double agent (I refer to the case of Elvia Harneiman).

There are many things that can make a person betray their own country: money, sex, the threat of violence, and more besides. Count Radom knew how to use each of them, so that now we had turned nearly thirty of Bahairam’s own agents against it.

Yes, Radom was much sharper than he looked.

“In addition to the first agent to report on this to me, I’ve confirmed it by several other means. It seems to be the case that huge numbers of citizens are evacuating the Third Capital, with the military moving them to the Second Capital. The nation has a tradition of moving the capital around periodically, so a change of location isn’t that difficult for the citizenry.” Radom smiled, a look rather at odds with the events he was describing. “Whatever else is going on, this much we can be sure of: the Kingdom of Bahairam is in an uproar. There is even talk that an important military facility has been left exposed in the Third Capital...”

“Hmm?” Her Majesty said from her throne, looking puzzled. She probably didn’t understand why Count Radom had deliberately let slip this tidbit of information. For better or for worse, Her Majesty was both very serious and very kind. And she was still a child. She knew little about—perhaps could hardly imagine—real, no-holds-barred battle between two countries.

“And what is it you are proposing we do?” she said.

“This might be an opportune moment,” I whispered to her, leaning closer, “to attack Bahairam.”

Her Majesty looked surprised, but didn’t object as such. She was probably all too aware that she was not the most knowledgeable military commander.

Radom went on: “The Third Capital is the closest of Bahairam’s four capitals to the Eldant border. And the fact that a military facility is located there is evidence that it is a base for the invasion of our nation. If we strike now and disable it, then we would be in an excellent position, whether to destroy Bahairam entirely or simply to defend ourselves against her advances. Under normal circumstances, one would expect the facility to be heavily guarded, even when the capital was elsewhere. But now...”

“Indeed...” Her Majesty gave a small nod. “But if Bahairam has abandoned this Third Capital, something serious must have happened, no? You said something about it being engulfed in flames. Even if we were to commit our forces, would they be able to hold the area? How would we supply our troops? We assume there would not be much to be found on the ground if so much of the city has indeed been burned up.”

Count Radom stopped, his eyes wide. I suppose he never expected Her Majesty to start talking about supply trains and the provision of troops. It was, in fact, only recently that our army had begun talking seriously about supplies. Before that, the army had always obtained whatever it needed from the regions it passed through, or at its destination. To bring provisions all the way from the home country had been ridiculed as inefficient.

“Minister Cordobal...”

“Mm. Her Majesty has been much interested in this recently,” I said, and produced a book. It was something we had obtained from Ja-pan, another item of otaku culture. “It is called the Legend of the Galact** Heroes.”

“Legend of the...?”

“In effect, a military history.”

“Indeed, sir...?” Radom nodded, appearing impressed.

“I read it myself, and I must say it’s thought-provoking.”

“You were quite interested in Mitt**meyer, Garius, yes?” Her Majesty said.

“I was, Your Majesty. And I believe you were for the Wizard.”

“Yes, yes. We very much appreciated his bumbling character.”

For once in his life, Radom looked completely befuddled.

“In any case,” I said, concluding the tangent with a cough. “The Faldra squad’s training continues apace. It would not be difficult to get across the border, but as Her Majesty says, supplies might be problematic.”

“We do have plans prepared for the procurement of at least some provisions...”

“Hmm,” I grunted, crossing my arms. Count Radom didn’t appear to be of the opinion that we absolutely had to attack this moment. He was a soldier, yes, but he wasn’t the one who would actually be leading any offensive. He was about the least interested person in doing deeds of valor on the field of battle. So for him, the idea of taking this opportunity to move against Bahairam’s Third Capital was nothing more than a suggestion.

It would, admittedly, offer a bloodless chance to occupy the city. That was certainly attractive. “Your Majesty. Allow me to express my agreement with Count Radom,” I said. “We should occupy the Third Capital. Then we could potentially ransom it against the return of military prisoners Bahairam is holding. Consider it an ace up our sleeve.”

“Indeed...” Her Majesty mused.

“As for the securing of our supply lines,” Count Radom ventured, “if we could obtain the cooperation of the Kingdom of Zwelberich... Well, it would be a somewhat circuitous route, but perhaps feasible...”

The Kingdom of Zwelberich was another nation that shared a border with Bahairam. They had a favorable attitude toward us, and getting them to work with us would probably not be so difficult. Granted, if we were careless, there could be squabbling about how to divide the “spoils” after the occupation of the city... but if we got there first, well, we could talk our way out of just about everything else.

“I think that seems a reasonable idea.”

“Hm. We agree.” Her Majesty nodded. “In that case, we shall entrust this matter to Garius. Fill out the details of Count Radom’s plan, convene a council of war, and—”

But then she suddenly stopped, looking somewhat stricken. At first, we weren’t sure what it was. Half a second later, I registered that it was a creaking sound. But what in the world was making it?

That was when the ground seemed to jump.

“Wha—?!”

It seemed impossible. The floor beneath our feet was shaking. No, perhaps the entire castle. Holy Eldant Castle, carved from a mountain, seemingly unshakable, was quaking.

“Wh-What the—?!”

“What’s going on?” Her Majesty, looking startled, had gotten up out of her throne, but found herself tossed back down into it by the ceaseless shaking. Count Radom had simply sat down on the floor, and I braced myself with a hand against the backrest of the throne to keep myself from falling. Was this... Could it be...?

“Is this what they call an earthquake?” Her Majesty murmured.

Yes. An earthquake. I was familiar with the word, as I was sure Count Radom was as well. It was what one called the phenomenon when the ground shook. I recalled Shinichi saying they occurred fairly frequently in Ja-pan, but here in the Eldant Empire, there might be just one every ten years.

“Wh-What do we—What do we do?” Her Majesty asked, looking pale. But then: “Oh.”

The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

We stood, blinking and looking at each other. None of us had ever experienced a real earthquake before, so none of us felt certain that it was actually over. Her Majesty got cautiously to her feet, but the shaking didn’t resume. It was as if those few moments had been an illusion. But a close look revealed a number of furnishings in the audience chamber had toppled over. Water was pouring from a broken vase onto the floor.

“Garius,” Her Majesty said.

“Immediately, milady,” I replied with a bow.

She didn’t have to say exactly what she meant. I knew she wanted me to find out the situation in the town around us. If the castle itself had shaken so violently, there was a distinct possibility things had been much worse in the city. Buildings might have collapsed. We people of Eldant so rarely experienced earthquakes that we didn’t necessarily know what to do when they happened. People could be panicking.

In fact, confusion reigned even in the palace itself, with cries of fear and shouts of anger echoing around the halls. We could hear several voices clear through the doors.

“You must excuse us, Count Radom,” Her Majesty said. The Count still hadn’t gotten to his feet. “We appreciate your advice, but as you can see, the immediate dispatch of military force has become difficult.”

“Yes... Of course, I see that,” the Count said, nodding. He finally stood up, brushing dust off his clothes. “I sincerely appreciate your consideration, Your Majesty. I shall accompany Minister Cordobal to observe the city. We will help the people if they need it.”

“Very good.” Her Majesty nodded and we all bowed to each other.

The beginning of the twenty-first century. Barriers to genetic manipulation are falling around the world: China allows experiments with human DNA replacement, while in America genetically modified salmon is approved for sale. Genetically modified lifeforms are no longer just the subjects of academic debates or laboratory experiments; slowly but surely, they begin to filter into everyday life.

And then there was nanotechnology, which began to flourish from the latter half of the twenty-first century into the beginning of the twenty-second. Much like the way space-travel technology boomed for a while and then suddenly atrophied as budgets and political support dried up, electronic engineering was almost single-handedly put out to pasture by the appearance of quantum computers. Investment and human resources poured into genetic engineering and nanotechnology thanks to a number of pressing needs: the world economy and food supply, medicine, and more besides. The fields exploded.

And so we come to the second half of the twenty-second century. The generation that had objected to genetic manipulation had largely left the scene, and one raised on genetically engineered foods was in control. Humankind was no longer merely “improving” existing lifeforms, but through the use of nanotechnology, was creating entirely new ones.

It wasn’t as though living cells and nanotech machines were so different, not once you got down to the molecular level. The production of new life-forms by the deft combination of cellular material with sufficiently advanced nanotechnology was, one could argue, a perfectly natural thing for science to strive for.

Scientists, creators, always ultimately look back to the dreams of their youth. As the generation who grew up with Astro Boy created the bipedal robot ASIMO; as those weaned on giant-robot anime developed heavy units with “arms”; as those who had read Starship Troopers in their childhoods created powered suits. The romance of one’s early dreams never quite fades. Was it not almost natural that researchers faced with the possibility of creating new life-forms would turn to the creatures found in their fairy tales, or in the anime, manga, and movies they remembered?

Dragons. Unicorns. Mandrakes. Cho**bos. Pika**us. Koma**ns. Fantastical creatures that could only have existed in fiction could come to reality thanks to genetic engineering and nanotechnology; could find a place and a role to play in human society. They helped mellow people’s instinctive aversion to “man-made” lifeforms, and with a bit of a push from people with a special gift for seeing the value in cutting-edge technology, production began of life-forms that looked like humans.

Elves. Dwarves. Werewolves. Weretigers. Werebears. Lizardmen. Each of these was given some visible difference from “real” humans to mark them out as artificial life-forms. They filled needs in every sphere of life, from childcare to military service, and as production kept expanding, suddenly there were more than a billion of them populating the world.

But that wasn’t the only revolution. In the twenty-third century, information networks switched from electrical wires and fiber optics to complex webs of nanomachines that formed an almost literal “cloud” over the world. Elves and dwarves were programmed to have especially efficient access to this network, whereas werewolves, lizardmen, and other beast people, optimized for military service, were not.

These artificial humanoids were called BOUs—Bionic Organoid Units—and they became indispensable to human life. But that in itself became the seed of the next fight. There were people who agitated for BOUs’ “human rights,” as well as discrete battles over every kind of privilege, from citizenship to the right to engage in business. Add this to an ongoing hangover from the religious disputes of an earlier age, and trouble was brewing behind the scenes of a world that looked otherwise prosperous.

When some of those who embraced BOU rights created a handful of experimental units with reproductive capabilities, other people claimed they had “gone rogue” and began taking it upon themselves to put BOUs to death with some frequency. Violence involving BOUs began occurring around the world.

At this point, humanity was no longer supposed to have to worry about land, water, or food, yet these -isms still provided the perfect excuse to start a war, one that came to envelop everyone and everything. The unstoppable force of one side’s “justice” came up against the immovable object which was that of the other side. Even with starvation nonexistent, with poverty a thing of the past, in the end, it turned out war never went away.

Once humans’ bellies are full, they start to become veritably obsessed about things that couldn’t have interested them less when they were starving. Consider those who would kill someone in real life just to win in a video game. Or collectors who would resort to thievery and murder to get rare items. Or self-proclaimed “do-gooders” who considered it an unqualified pleasure to harass someone so badly online that they committed suicide. Such people existed as far back as the twenty-first century.

Food and money had been replaced by differences in ideology, the refusal to accept the slightest deviation from one’s chosen belief system. Disgust at those who did not share one’s own views became the reason for people to kill other people. Because they could kill. If other people had to die to bring about one’s own vision of the world, so be it. In fact, maybe those who disagreed deserved to die.

Maybe it was just that particularly ugly side of human nature coming to the surface.

Whatever it was, it threw the world deeper into chaos. Countries emerged and collapsed, businesses boomed before dropping out of sight, religions were born and then disappeared: it was impossible to know which way was up in the world anymore. The nanotech cloud burst with information, far more than any human could comprehend...

“This facility produced military BOUs for the North American Union,” Theresa announced, the massive genetic-engineering structure at her back.

“Um, let’s just... Could we hold on for a second?” I said. Then I glanced at Minori-san and the others and said, “Am I imagining things, or...”

“What?”

“Or did she just mention, you know, America and China and the twenty-first century and stuff?”

“Don’t worry, I heard it, too,” Minori-san said.

“Huh. So there are countries in this world called America and China, too. Wow, that is some coincidence. Ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Shinichi-san...” Hikaru-san was looking at me skeptically. “Stop with the embarrassing escapism and let’s face reality.”

I froze, my eyes vacant.

America. China. The twenty-first century. Genetic engineering. Nanotechnology.

(Long pause.)

So dragons were artificial life-forms created via genetic manipulation and nanotechnology.

And demi-humans? Artificial lifeforms created via genetic manipulation and nanotechnology.

Not to mention...

“That would make magic the product of floating nanomachines, right?” Minori-san said, just what I was thinking. The things we had called sprites, these things that seemed to be found all over this world, were really wild nanomachines. Not incorporeal magical beings. They were scientific creations so tiny they couldn’t possibly be seen with the naked eye. And some of them must have leaked through the hyperspace tunnel over to the Japan side of things.

“Most nanomachines are programmed to gather in areas of dense human population,” Theresa said.

The nanomachines were fundamentally meant to enable networking, and amounts and flow of information are naturally highest where the human population is most dense. So for maximum flexibility, the nanomachines had simply been programmed to migrate to the places with the most information. And when you compared this world with twenty-first-century Japan, the human population was obviously denser in Japan. So the machines had made the trip through the wormhole just like I had, except in the other direction.

“Oh, hey...”

I remembered how, back when we’d visited Japan ourselves, Myusel and I had been involved in a car chase that had been like something out of a movie. For some reason, we’d been able to use our magic without a sprite bottle or even a magic stone. The logic must have gone like this: the nanomachines (read: sprites) that had made it over to Japan had gone to the most populous part of the country, namely Tokyo.

...........................

Whaaaaaaat?!

You mean all that crap actually made sense?!

“That would mean this isn’t an alternate world at all. It must be...”

“A future world, probably,” Hikaru-san said. “Maybe five thousand years ahead of ours, maybe ten thousand. Who knows?”

My brain thundered with the theme song from Army of the Squids.

So there it was. I spent a moment with my head in my hands, trying to absorb this shocking revelation.

“Um...” It was Myusel who spoke. “Can I ask something?”

Theresa looked at her with open contempt. According to her explanation, Myusel was basically one of those BOUs or whatever they were, not a creature who ought to be addressing a human being too readily.

“Please hear her out,” I said. “As a favor to me.”

When I added my voice, Theresa finally sighed and nodded. “What is it?”

“I don’t really understand the details,” Myusel started hesitantly. She was probably more capable than any other native of this world when it came to speaking Japanese. In fact, she’d managed to hold her own talking to my family. So while the specialist jargon and science-fiction-y terms had probably gone over her head, there was a good chance she understood most of what I had said.

“But Theresa-san... Did you cause the earthquake and burn down this city because you were angry that the people of Bahairam excavated and started using this facility?”

“Why in the hell would I do something like that?” Theresa said. “I grant, as overseer of this facility I did purge the feral BOUs, and assign a dozen or so air-assault units to ensure they wouldn’t come back. But that was simply because it would have been dangerous to allow entities outside my control to do as they pleased here.”

Uh, that was logical, I guess. It’s like, if you came back to a building you were responsible for to find it full of stray dogs and cats, of course you would chase them out. Especially if the machinery in the building still worked—it would only be safe. From Theresa’s point of view, the “feral” BOUs, the ones not under her direct supervision, probably weren’t any better than stray animals.

“When you talk about burning down this city, are you referring to those pillars of fire?” she said with a frown. “If so, I’m not responsible for those. Not for the earthquake, either. Those phenomena did originate with this facility, but only because the feral BOUs insisted on fiddling with machinery they didn’t understand.”

“Wha...?”

Come to think of it, this facility—the one Bahairam called the Dragon’s Den—had produced dragons under military supervision. There was no telling how much they really knew about what the place was, but they probably at least grasped that there was equipment here that could create dragons. I guess they hadn’t made it to the second floor, so they wouldn’t have seen the demi-human production lines. They probably couldn’t imagine how dark and dangerous this place really was.

They probably naturally started to ask, how fast can we make dragons? How many can we build? They would have started adjusting settings and trying things out, without fully understanding the facility’s equipment. Maybe after some trial and error, they had figured out how to control things to a certain extent.

But when it came to complex machinery, a little knowledge could be a very dangerous thing.

“By the time the emergency signal came through and I reactivated, the reactor furnace was already going critical.”

“Huh? Reactor furnace?” That, uh, didn’t sound promising.

“The facility has several methods for dissipating excess energy. The earthquake released quite a bit of it, but it was only going to be a temporary solution. The facility started venting the heat directly to the outside. That’s what’s caused those pillars of fire.” Theresa sounded as calm as if she were talking about the weather.

“Hang on just a second,” I said. “Did you just say going critical?”

“I did. And it is. Even as we speak.” Her tone was clipped.

“And what if it keeps going critical?” Minori-san asked from beside me, unable to stay quiet any longer.

“The safety mechanisms can only dissipate energy for so long. Eventually they won’t be able to keep up, and, I assume, the reactor will explode.”

“Hrgh...”

A reactor furnace sounded like something that implied nuclear power, or fusion or something. In other words, we weren’t dealing with geothermal power or wind energy or whatever, something where a breakdown in the mechanism would just turn the lights off. Then again, maybe fusion would just stop on its own? I didn’t actually know.

“Um, so, how much potential damage are we talking, here?” I asked, my voice trembling. Maybe we had better run away before we got cooked...?

“Good question,” Theresa said, appearing to do some mental calculations. “That’s a Level 2 Annihilation Reactor in there, so... the stockpile of antimatter provided by the Orbital Confederation ought to have been within strategic guidelines. Even if half of it had already been consumed, if we lost control, I’d say we’d be looking at scorched earth in a thousand-kilometer radius.”

Annihilation Reactor. When matter and antimatter, two opposites, came into contact, the result was pure energy. Antimatter bombs and proton weapons were staples of sci-fi. As I recalled, the amount of energy created when one gram of matter met one gram of antimatter was supposed to be something like three times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So if this reactor had hundreds of kilograms of reactive matter in it, it could be dozens or even hundreds of times more destructive than even a hydrogen bomb. It could spell the end not just for Bahairam, but even Eldant! Heck, maybe the Earth itself could be in danger from this!

“Wh-What do we do about this?!” And why was there even a reactor that size in a facility that was just supposed to be making living weapons?!

“Ain’t shit I can do.” Theresa shrugged and shook her head. “The protective equipment for getting anywhere near that reactor is gone. Don’t know if the feral BOUs took it, or if someone else did something with it while I was asleep. Either way, with the temps the Annihilation Reactor is running right now, anything—flesh creature like you, artificial body like me—would be burned to cinders within seconds if they didn’t have the equipment. Even if you could do anything with it while it turned you to ashes, you might get ten seconds at best. Not realistic.”

I was completely lost for words—as were Minori-san and Hikaru-san. We were beyond concepts of safe and dangerous at this point. It would be like jumping naked into a blast furnace.

“That’s why I brought you here,” Theresa said, looking directly at me. “It’s extremely fortunate that you’re around, Kanou Shinichi.”

“Uh... it is?” I blinked. I was more than a little overwhelmed by all this. I mean, just think about it. This might be the world’s last day. I was definitely not the guy you called at a time like that. Not to brag, but my physical abilities, intelligence, and even grades at school were all totally average! I was sure she had me confused with someone else.

Despite my confidence about that, Theresa pointed directly at me and said:

“You ought to be able to stop the annihilation reactor.”

（つづく）

Cont’d...