“If we’re gonna use a bluff, why don’t we make it as flashy as possible? Something like firing the present through a window using a small rocket. That way they would have to keep an eye on things away from the mansion as well.”
Those were the kinds of methods a Santa Claus would use to find a way in.
We were thought of as the representative of miracles, but what we actually did was rather down-to-earth.
“Okay, three more days…”
“Hee hee hee. This will be cutting it pretty close, won’t it?”
“I’d say this isn’t as bad as when we snuck into the residence of the president from that EU nation.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“?”
“?”
“Unless that front comes in, this won’t be a White Christmas.”
Our target was an impregnable mansion.
Protecting it was a private unit of security guards that caused even military intelligence departments to pale. The difficulty level of this job was about as high as it got and it was entirely possible we could be killed.
But we might as well just do it.
It wasn’t Santa Claus’s job to calculate out the risks and returns. We would merely make a visit in the darkness of the night to deliver presents to the children who wished for them.
The voices of children returning home could be heard along a twilit street.
“What did you ask Santa for?”
“Games! That new 3D system!!”
“I asked for a baseball uniform!!”
“Wait. Are we really supposed to tell people before the presents are delivered?”
With the contents of their backpacks making clunking noises, the children ran along the wide road, cheering at all the decorative lights.
One girl among them was left behind.
As she stood still, she looked up into the cloudy sky.
“I wonder if he’ll actually come this year…”
(We will make sure of it.)
The Santa Claus and reindeer that passed by her on the street swore that in their hearts.
As long as children made those clumsy requests…
As long as they desired to meet Christmas morning with a smile…
A real Santa Claus deployed from Norway would break through any form of security and sneak into that mansion.
Midpoint and a Short Break
A quick announcement.
I hope the survey is going well for you.
If for some reason you are not yet participating in the survey, please hurry up and begin.
Now, after a short break, I would like to get back to the survey.
File 13: How About We Try Taking a Peek?
We lived in an age where you could take a peek into hell.
The developer of the technology had originally been trying to peek into heaven, but theologians from around the world had vehemently opposed this idea. They claimed only those who had gone through the proper process should be able to see heaven.
Some of them were of the opinion that seeing hell would be okay, and in the end, permission to peek into hell was given on the grounds that seeing how horrible it was would give everyone a change of heart about their lives. Some suggested the technology be officially classified as educational software.
…But it did not exactly turn out that way.
“Hello? Ashtart?”
As I was using a handheld game system in the free LAN corner of a fast food restaurant, a woman’s voice came from the screen.
But it was not a human woman.
“What is it, boy? Having you humans peeking in with your handheld game systems and everything gets exhausting. Intentionally showing and being peeked on are completely different things.”
“Ashtart, I had heard hell was a horrible, painful place of suffering. But from what I can see, everyone looks pretty relaxed.”
“Why do you think hell exists?”
“?”
“Why do you think?”
“To take in all the people who did bad things?”
“That’s right. But that role was decided on by god. There are a lot of different kinds of demons, but my faction was given permission by god to mess with humans. Just read up on the demon named Mastema to learn more about this.”
“But, Ashtart, you’re not doing anything to the humans. With that swimsuit on, it looks more like you’re on vacation.”
She had long red hair and pure white skin. She had what would generally be referred to as a “glamorous body”, but with horns and bat-like wings. The way her tail twitched back and forth kind of made me want to grab it.
“That’s because it’s all such a pain in the ass.”
While lying on a beach chair, Ashtart wiggled her hips back and forth.
“With the image of demons that humans have come up with and the moderate trials and tribulations for humans god has commanded us to carry out, it just feels like so much is expected of us. But we’re demons. Our creed is to go against every single thing we’re told to do.”
“Hm? Hmm???”
As I ate french fries with a puzzled look, Ashtart lightly raised her index finger.
“Hell is only a horrible place if demons carry out their job well. But demons are not the type to work diligently. If you multiply a negative with a negative, what do you get? A positive!! Basically, hell has become an unprecedented beach resort because it is run by demons who have no motivation whatsoever!!”
Ashtart seemed really confident, but what was that about multiplying negatives? If you had four boxes with three apples in each, that was 3 x 4 which was 12. I had learned that in school…but if you lost 4 sets of “three things missing” you got…more???? That had to be something from the world of philosophy. Demons really thought about mysterious things.
“Oh, have you not been taught how to multiply negative numbers yet?”
“So heaven isn’t the good place to go?”
“Angels are quite diligent, so I’m sure they make sure it’s a nice place. After all, a positive number multiplied by a positive number is still positive. But just because heaven is a nice place does not mean hell has to be the exact opposite. This is a pretty nice place, too. But if people knew that, they would not go through all the unpleasantness people go through when they aim for getting into heaven, so we had tried to keep it a secret. But thanks to your technology, you all know now!!”
Ashtart stuck out her tongue and scratched at her horned head while I nodded.
“How strange.”
“It is strange. For some reason, you humans got it into your heads that we demons were after your souls or something, but bad people just automatically come to hell after they die, so we really have no reason to head out into the human world. Also, why do you think we would go along with our reason for existing and be diligently evil? All we demons do is disappoint the god who gave us that reason for existing.”
“So because you’re expected to do bad things, you don’t do bad things?”
“Exactly. And those theologians who just assume we do bad things are the ones whose expectations we want to live up to the least.”
Ashtart sipped a blue drink from a glass using a straw.
“I just want to laze around, so it really doesn’t matter to me, but if I was asked whether you should aim for heaven or hell, I would say hell I suppose. They’re both pleasant enough places, but heaven is strict about honesty and integrity. You can’t live in quite as much luxury. Hell’s easier because you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. If you feel like you want to do something, you just do it. I honestly don’t understand why that idiot Satan is trying to make a comeback in heaven. What’s wrong with being bound in hell? It’s nice and warm here.”
“That sounds nice, Ashtart.”
“How about you take a 3 day trip to hell to try it out?”
“Can I?”
“Sure, sure. Didn’t I tell you? Things are real casual here. No one has any motivation.
Heaven might be all uptight about qualifications and discipline, but we don’t care about all that here in hell. If you want to come, just come. You can find out what this drink tastes like. I’ll give you a ticket to hell.”
Right after Ashtart said that, the light on my handheld game system lit up. It was informing me of an email. It was likely the ticket Ashtart had mentioned.
I moved to touch the screen so I could go and have fun, but…
“Huh?”
“What is it, boy?”
“I have a call coming in.”
“…Game systems sure are convenient these days.”
The second I hit the button, an unfamiliar female voice shouted at me.
“Stoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp!!”
“Nyahh!?”
“Geh. Is that Gabriel’s voice!? It has to be. She’s the only female angel.”
I practically fell backwards in my chair, but the female voice continued shouting over the phone.
“You innocent lamb!! Due to certain reasons, I cannot visit you, but I can give you a lecture. Do not head to hell so casually!!”
“Eh? But Ashtart said…”
“That’s right. That’s right. I sent him a proper invitation, so it isn’t entering illegally or anything. Hurry on over so we can play with the beach ball.”
“Lamb, why do you wish to go to hell?”
“Because the demons have no motivation so it’s like a beach resort. How about you put on a swimsuit too, Gabriel.”
“Heh heh heh. That’s right! That’s right! Put on an I-front micro bikini!!”
“Shut up, you damn whore!! A-ahem. It is true that the technology humans have developed makes hell look like an area with white sand and a blue ocean where the demons laze around doing whatever they want. But…”
“But?”
“But you should know better than to trust a demon! Do you really think that white sand and blue ocean are actually there!?”
File 14: Would You Like Something from the Human Face Series?
Cyborgs had become fairly widespread, but they had not overcome the barrier of the human form. If the silhouette of the human body was altered too much, specialized movement software had to be installed which seemed to alter the human mind into something else.
Due to this, humans still operated tools with their fingers and used pens to write or draw.
However…
“Honey, look. It’s a frying pan with artificial skin attached. Because of the heat detection sensors, it says we can say goodbye to burnt food!”
“That soft, flesh-colored frying pan scares me!! It looks like an evil book from the Cthulhu mythos!!”
“This ladle has lips. It tastes the contents and displays the result numerically. How cute.”
These pots and cutting boards and the like with incredibly realistic human ears or noses or whatever attached were known as Half Appliances. I could not understand how my young wife could be calling them “cute”. Perhaps I was just an old-fashioned type of person.
I of course understood that it was nothing more than using cyborg technology to attach sensors that surpassed the ability of the human senses, but still.
“Honey, are you bored because this is the cooking section?”
“N-no, that’s not it. I just find it suspicious that an area filled with ears and noses can be called the ‘cooking section’.”
“I guess a guy would prefer the section with the digital cameras and such. I think they have ones with eyeballs for seeing super long distances.”
“That’s scary!! That’s really scary!! Am I the only one that finds an SLR camera that blinks and has eyelashes to be horrifying!?”
Crime rates had dropped ever since eyeballs had been attached to security cameras, but I thought that was because it made you feel there was some strange, raw gaze on your back.
They were very unpopular when used in apartment complexes or hotels.
“Oh, right. Honey, you said you wanted some tools for yard work, right? I think they have the lawnmowers over there.”
“All I see are machines with multiple arms covered in sharp fingernails and machines with mouths filled with tons of giant human teeth.”
“Yes. Those might be a bit big for our house.”
What my young wife was saying seemed a bit off. Actually, looking at society at large, it might have been my opinion that was a bit off.
I didn’t like how they had attached realistic human eyes and noses to the front of bullet trains as sensors. I knew it was more efficient that way, but I just didn’t like it.
The shape of humans themselves had not changed too much.
However, the technology still remained. And the idea of a more convenient life in the future had remained as well. However, to reach it, the technology had spread to everything around humans rather than the humans themselves.
Thanks to this, cell phones had ear drums built in and portable game systems had artificial synapses inside.
The way of the world changed quickly.
Just as adults had once been unable to keep up with the society of the internet, I was unable to keep up with these psychedelic changes to the scenery.
“Do you want a new electric razor?”
“You need to replace the artificial blood in those too quickly, so no.”
“Yes, filling it with oxygen again and again wears it out.”
“Speaking of artificial blood, we need to replace the blood in the fridge before long, don’t we? They’re having a sale over there.”
“We can’t. Ours is a Carrier QW2. It can’t use Type B. But we should buy some cerebrospinal fluid. The flyer mentioned a multi-pack.”
On our way, we passed by a dog-type pet robot. It seemed to be a display model. It was a product that would bleed if you hurt it but would cause no guilt if you broke it.
“I wonder if these appliances will ever take on the same form as humans.”
If they developed that far, I felt the grotesqueness would disappear.
But…
“We can’t have that.”
“Why not?”
“Because then we would just leave everything to the appliances and never move an inch. That’s no different from being bedridden.”
Perhaps she was right.
Old peddler ladies from the old days had carried around an unbelievable amount of things without much trouble.
“But…”
“What is it, honey?”
“Then I’m not sure who controls who.”
“?”
“I mean.” I paused for a second. “We buy all these tools to make our own lives easier, but the strength of our legs and back are being decided by how convenient these tools are. …You could almost say that we are being remade into forms that make it easier to use these appliances.”
File 15: Better Made than the Real Deal
A girl with a childlike face and large breasts knelt down in the courtyard behind a television station. She was stirring something within a pot set atop a portable stove, but she was not cooking curry for a campout.
“Chief, do you not feel like you’re wasting food when you cook ketchup like this? And there’s mizuame in here, too.”
“Twenty percent of the money our shows get is given to the white cross. People who do nothing more than put some loose change in the container next to the convenience store register have no right to get mad at us. …But this really stinks. Paint isn’t supposed to be cooked in a pot.”
It was thanks to that smell that we had to make this prop outside rather than while holed up in the station’s storage room. This was a trade secret. I hoped no information on it would be stolen by doing it out in the open.
The new young girl (with large breasts) stirred the contents of the pot like it was a stew.
“Chief, couldn’t we leave the fake blood to an outside company?”
“No. The default fake blood is too plain. The color is too subdued.”
“Too subdued?”
The new young girl tilted her head cutely despite the fact that no cameras were running. I proceeded to explain it to her in detail.
“Dramas have to be really flashy, right? Just look at the actors’ makeup, the costumes, and the sets. The colors have to be bolder than they are in reality because powerful lights will be shined on them. A normal blood color won’t cut it. If you used real blood, it would actually look unnatural.”
“Oh. So it has to be brighter than normal blood?”
“…You mixed it up without knowing what you were trying to do?” I sighed. “Once you have the base color made, mix in some black, bit by bit.”
“Why? I thought it had to be brighter?”
“There are different colors depending on the amount of time that is supposed to have passed. Normal blood changes color over time, but fake blood won’t. That means we need to create different types of fake blood to represent the hardening process over time.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“And for all that work, it isn’t even being used as much anymore. That’s why there are fewer people that know how to do it. That’s why someone with as long-winded a title on his business card as me is stuck cooking it up in a pot.”
“Come to think of it, the revision in broadcasting ethics led to scenes with blood being a lot less common.”
“The drop in the popularity of period dramas and police dramas was another big factor.”
“They still have police dramas.” The new girl made a gun out of the hand not stirring the pot and said, “Bang.”
But I shook my head.
“But they don’t have flashy gunfights or anything. It is true that resolving anything and everything with an action scene gets predictable, though. These forensic dramas advertise themselves as always catching the criminal from the smallest piece of evidence, but I always have to wonder why there are never any bloodstains.”
“What about medical dramas? The surgery scenes use blood in a non-violent way.”
A Simple Survey - Volume 01 - A Simple Survey Page 7