by Yuu Kamiya
Feeling uneasy about all this, the owner had approached the dressing room, and she could hear rough panting from inside!
“—I cannot strip any more than this.”
“No, you still can. See, you still have one more piece left. I’ll help you take it off.”
“Ah—”
“Wow—... So this is what it’s like, huh... I guess I can’t really say. After all, I’d only seen it for just a few hours in a dark place before. It looks totally different from that time... So amazing...”
“Master... Naoto. Please do not spread it open so mu—”
“Ahh, I see, so you’re sensitive here. Then, how about here...”
“Please... do not touch me there.”
She was shocked. Bewildered. Baffled.
—Uh, what am I supposed to do in this situation?!
It had been three years since she’d opened the store; by this point, she’d become well used to managing it, but this kind of situation was still a first for her.
Nearly all her customers until now had been teenage girls, and though they’d bring a boyfriend along sometimes, there had never been anyone extreme enough to do the deed in the dressing room.
She clasped her cheeks, which had become hot, with both hands and wriggled about anxiously. She recalled her lover that she had broken up with after a fight around the time she graduated from college.
Ahh, I’m not unsatisfied with my current life of working myself to the bone chasing after my dreams, but even so, there are still times when I feel hopelessly lonely—
“Ahhh—”
“Alright... I’m in deep now. Wow—... Amazing. I didn’t think that it’d be so complicated inside.”
—The store owner snapped.
I don’t care anymore. To begin with, this is my store. It’s a store where adorable little Alices wear frilly dresses and show me their sparkling smiles. Just what kind of adult actions do you think you’re doing in this wonderland of mine you lovebird punks? Just blow up why don’t you?!
Pulling back the dressing room’s curtain with one swift jerk, she yelled, “Hey, what do you two think you’re do—!! ing?”
Her voice tapered off and vanished.
The scene inside the dressing room was far more confusing than she had imagined.
The girl is half-naked, her clothes are open—That much makes sense, but what’s up with her back? The skin is splayed open, and there are gears inside? And this boy, sticking a thin screwdriver into her inner workings as he uses a magnifying monocle to peer zealously inside, what’s he—
“Ah...ngh!” Upon the boy slightly turning the screwdriver, the beautiful girl—rather, the beautiful automaton girl, let out a coquettish moan and writhed.
As the owner stared blankly down at the two of them, the boy noticed her and scratched his head. “Umm... Sorry, we’re in the middle of maintenance right now. Ah, we’ll take these clothes. How much are they?”
She answered with a smile.
“Leave, you perverted brat.”
●
...How many times has it been now?
Marie sighed deeply in the provisional meeting room that used to be a storage area.
Despite the entire staff force pulling continuous all-nighters after moving to the twenty-fourth floor, the problem had yet to be resolved.
Right now, Marie was in the middle of her fifth meeting for reports and devising measures regarding the repair work.
Those gathered here were, including Marie, the chiefs of observation, analytics, service, and communications, plus the heads of material management and transport. None of them could hide their fatigue.
Hannes, the chief of observation, spat out, “—The problem is that we can’t pinpoint the cause of the malfunction. While there’s no mistake that there’s something wrong with the regulating mechanism for atmospheric pressure, its measured values themselves are normal. In other words, we can’t say that the cause is simply a degradation or breakdown of the system.”
—The Butterfly Effect.
It is the concept that even a trivially minute alteration can induce a huge change over time.
The “Clockwork Planet,” recreating the entire planet’s mechanisms.
Its structure was so mysteriously complex that it was impossible to fully grasp no matter how much one tried.
Even if an abnormality occurred in one system, replacing or repairing just that system usually didn’t solve the problem. As for why, it was because the cause of the problem often lay in a completely unrelated section from the system being affected.
It might be nothing more than a loose screw or a small gear becoming deformed.
However, when small irregularities like that piled up, they would sometimes eventually result in a fatal error.
The present situation that Chief Hannes was explaining fit that bill precisely.
“Kyoto’s city mechanism systems are separated by floor, so the irregularity on the twenty-fourth floor is definitely the cause of the problem. That’s something that all the observation squad can attest to. However...”
Massimo, the chief analytics officer, continued after him, “Based on the observational data, the calculated potential patterns of malfunction reached as many as 563,499,352 possibilities. If we had at least a month... No, even if we only had two weeks, it’d be possible to pinpoint the right one if we worked diligently, but...”
In the current day where the planet’s blueprint had long been lost, finding out the cause of a malfunction was done through brute force. One had to create an overall diagram without any repeated possible combinations, then check the portions that seemed like probable causes one by one for whether they had any relevance to the malfunction.
If there was only one cause, then things would still be manageable, but when there were two, three, or four causes, the possible paths leading to the malfunction propagated endlessly.
If one considered that, locating the cause of error in the estimated two weeks that Chief Analytics Officer Massimo gave would be astonishingly fast; however, Marie shook her head with a rueful countenance.
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
“But Dr. Marie, no matter how you look at it, as things are now we simply don’t have enough time to finish the job,” the communication chief said with a pale face.
“Would it not be possible for us using our current analytical data to make a behind-the-scenes political deal to postpone the purg—?”
“I’ll try to, but it’ll probably be difficult. How’s the work proceeding overall right now?”
Service Chief Konrad answered, “In order to speed things up, we’ve narrowed down the likely patterns of the cause down to 35,034 possibilities. The service squad and the communications squad are working together testing out those possibilities right now through trial and error.”
“What was that selection based on?”
“Just my intuition.”
Everyone rolled their eyes except for the chief analytics officer.
However, Konrad simply shrugged his shoulders, saying, “If I were to embellish what I did a little, I basically discarded patterns that were of the same type and gathered similar cases from our work log up to now, then put them in order by likeliness and ease of verification. Well, put bluntly, it was just my personal biases at work.”
Marie inquired, “Do you expect things to go well?”
“Not really, no.”
“......”
“However, if we didn’t at least do that, it would be impossible to finish verifying all the possibilities. Rather, it’s questionable whether we’ll even be able to adequately test all of the approximately thirty-five thousand possibilities in the current situation.”
“You’re sure there are no other means we could take, right?”
“Given our current equipment and method, this is the best we can do.” The chief of service nodded, and the head of transport stood up while breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Dr. Marie, if
it’s almost certain that we can’t prevent the collapse of the city, shouldn’t we consider how to escape?”
Observation Chief Hannes stood up in anger. “Are you telling us to accept the purge?! Running away would be the same as what the military is doing!”
“Of course, I, too, have the resolve to continue the repair work until the very end! However, to be practical, if we can’t expect to succeed, we should consider the next best plan.”
Marie asked with a stiff face, “Do you mean to say that we should announce an evacuation advisory to the residents?”
“Yes. If we start now, it shouldn’t be impossible! Shouldn’t we be prioritizing the residents’ safety and publicizing the information we have?”
“We don’t have that authority. For starters, how are we supposed to evacuate twenty million people by just ourselves?” said Marie calmly. The head of transport ground his teeth.
—Their own city was going to be purged.
True, the resulting chaos when that information was publicized would surely be on a scale that one couldn’t even imagine.
Not everyone could simply evacuate on their own. The transportation facilities would surely be overwhelmed across the board, not to mention that there were residents who physically couldn’t move by themselves as well.
To begin with, just where were they supposed to evacuate to? And what would happen after that?
However, the head of transport refused to back down, asserting once again, “True, it will probably be both dangerous and chaotic. But rather than expend our resources on a hopeless repair, shouldn’t we consider how best to limit the number of victims?”
“In that case, wouldn’t the military potentially expedite the purge to conceal the truth?” Service Chief Konrad muttered as if speaking to himself.
In that moment, a dreadful silence befell the meeting room. Each head of staff, including Marie, had an indescribable look on their faces, and the head of transport gasped in a cramped, terrified voice.
“...Surely not, they wouldn’t...”
“What reason do they have to hesitate? They forsook the residents long ago. In that case, wouldn’t it just be a matter of sooner or later to them?”
“This city has twenty million inhabitants, you know!”
“Like I’ve been saying, it makes no difference to them.” The service chief snorted before continuing. “Listen up. To us, the worst-case scenario would be the city collapsing along with twenty million victims, but that’s not the case for them. What would trouble them the most would be the fact of the military forsaking the city becoming public.”
“That can’t be—!”
“How naïve of you. The reason the military isn’t interfering with us right now is because this is convenient for them.”
“What do you mean by that, service chief?” Marie asked.
The service chief stroked his white-flecked beard as he let out a deep sigh.
Out of everyone in the room, Service Chief Konrad was the most senior clocksmith.
He was a great veteran who had reached the point of slowly transitioning from his prime to old age. Ever since he became a Meister in his youth, he had always worked on the front lines. His experience and technique were acknowledged by everyone. Considering his talent, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to be leading this group instead of Marie if he had wanted to, but he hadn’t tried to do so. He preferred taking the position a step back, where he could simply give casual advice to his juniors.
Even now, he looked like he was chiding all the young faces present with his gaze as he opened his mouth and said blandly, “Listen up. First, let us assume that it’s impossible to repair this city in the ten hours we have left. At the very least, that’s what they think, and looking at things objectively, they’re exactly right.”
“Service chief! But—”
“I know, so just calm down, Hannes. Of course, I haven’t even the slightest intention of giving up either. However, that’s not true for the military. They gave up long ago and decided on the purge. The problem is what comes after that. What will happen to them after the city collapses?”
“What will happen? That’s...”
“Will they be disparaged? Yeah, they’ll be demeaned to all hell alright. Though it’s said that dead men tell no tales, an entire city will have collapsed and been annihilated. There’s no way they’ll be able to keep everything concealed. The heads of everyone in charge will come flying off. Considering the damage that will have been done, you could even say it’ll be quite fortunate for them if things end with just that—Now, that’s where we come in.”
The service chief turned his head as he surveyed all the faces in the room.
While everyone remained silent, Marie spoke up as their representative. “In other words... ‘Even though we called Meister Guild and had them conduct a do-or-die repair on the city, the problem was beyond even them. As such, we were unable to save the precious lives of the city’s residents.’—Is that the scenario you’re talking about?”
The service chief cracked a cheerful smile. “Dr. Marie, you are a kind girl, aren’t you?”
“Uwhah?” Marie forgot her act as she inadvertently let out a sound of confusion.
As he shook his head, Service Chief Konrad gazed at Marie as if he found her reaction adorable. “Unfortunately, what people call ‘society’ is something so filthy that it’s irredeemable. Understand? They probably plan to spin things this way—”
Service Chief Konrad paused for a breath before announcing, “—They’ll say, ‘While we were making do-or-die repairs on the city, Meister Guild forcefully interrupted us and ended up failing, causing an abrupt collapse of the city for which we were unable to prepare an evacuation in time. It’s exceedingly regrettable that things have turned out this way.’”
————
Just then, there was a loud noise as the door of the meeting room opened.
The one who had come was a bald man in a black suit—Halter.
He raised his hand awkwardly as the rueful glances all focused on him. “Excuse me—I was contacted by Meister Guild’s headquarters just now, you see.”
“What did they say?”
Without answering her, Halter approached Marie and held some documents in front of her eyes.
She took them and quickly ran her eyes over the pages.
In them was—
“——!!”
Krrrnnch. With the look of a demon on her face, Marie crushed the documents in her hand.
●
“What is the meaning of this?!” Marie shouted, slamming both hands on the table so forcefully her hair flew up in a storm. But the one being shouted at looked completely relaxed, seeming like nothing bothered him as he sipped black tea from his cup.
The man had introduced himself as Limmons.
He was a bespectacled man with delicate features and neatly combed hair, and he wore a black-striped suit. He was the liaison sent from headquarters, and it was his order that Marie be summoned to the Central Hotel from the core tower.
...At a time like this, when every minute and second is more precious than anything else!
Thinking that made Marie all the angrier.
“As I’ve been saying,” Limmons said with a composed look on his face, “from the reports you sent us, we’ve come to understand that the commission this time is a military conspiracy made with the intent of avoiding responsibility—and also that there are no prospects of finishing the repairs as of right now.”
“That’s—!”
“As such, it wouldn’t be in our best interests to remain on the scene—That is the verdict of headquarters.”
”...Are you telling us to forsake this city?”
Limmons smiled sweetly at Marie, who was trembling all over, and said, “Please rest assured, Dr. Breguet. Headquarters is aware of the situation as well.”
“...Are you saying that you guys will resolve the situation politically for us?”
“Yes, o
f course. This failure won’t end up damaging your reputation.”
“—Just what are you saying?” Marie said as if growling, “Who’s talking about my career? I’m talking about the watershed question of whether this city will be purged!”
“It’ll be purged,” Limmons said coolly.
He stood up and turned his back to Marie, who was at a loss for words. Approaching the window, he looked down on the cityscape beneath him through the spotless glass as he continued, “The City of Kyoto will be purged. That’s something that’s been decided.”
“...Really, what are you saying?” Marie asked, left practically gasping from terror, but Limmons didn’t respond.
While continuing to look down on the cityscape, he pushed his glasses up with his index finger. “The military won’t stop at this point, you know, Dr. Breguet. Given that they’ve been found out by us, if they abandon the plan now, all that would be left is the fact that they tried to conduct a mass killing of the city’s residents.”
“That would be just as bad as them going through with it!”
“If they dispose of the residents, they can make any excuse they want. Moreover, headquarters has already approved.”
Marie’s breath got caught in her throat. ”—What did you say?”
“If this kind of secret is exposed, it would lead to unrest as people lose all trust in the military. That wouldn’t be a desirable outcome for us, either. In order to prevent that from happening, we have no choice but to take the blame for the time being. —This is headquarters’ verdict.”
“Have you guys gone crazy?!” Marie exploded, but Limmons shrugged her words off like a breeze.
He didn’t even turn to face her.
“Dr. Breguet, how about you think about things calmly for a bit? What will remain after we expose the military’s conspiracy? We humans number four and a half billion. We have on our hands over twenty thousand core towers and metropolitan areas; adding in the supporting clock towers, there are over six million regions we have to maintain. If this incident were to cause the military to collapse, who would do the maintenance work?”
“That argument is completely irrational! Logically speaking, we should put a stop to their conspiracy precisely so that nothing like this ever happens again.”