Blue Realm
[My field of view was a stretch of pitch black.
Suddenly, with a ding—, the view lit up, but only as a line of red text accompanied by the sound.
[“Notice to all Eden peripheral AIs:
The Central Bureau has confirmed that 107 of Eden’s 118 angels have returned. The remaining eleven are missing; their Halos have not returned.
In light of the failure of the current mission to repair the unknown fault in the Daedalte structure, Eden can no longer maintain its own structural stability.
The Central Bureau now issues the following resolutions.
1. Remaining resources will no longer be expended to maintain the connecting components between Eden’s outer ring and inner ring. The corresponding regional components will gradually be torn apart by the difference in rotational speed. Complete disconnection is estimated in 2,928 hours.
2. To guarantee stable operation of Eden’s core, Eden will return to its state prior to the Daedalte structure plan. Eden will reclaim part of the outer ring’s resources, repair and reactivate Eden’s own drives, and construct independent thermoelectric conversion units to maintain its structure and orbit. This will destroy most of the outer ring’s structures, especially non-residential structures. Be advised.
3. Although, after the [Incident], the greater part of the outer-ring residential districts have been uninhabited for more than a thousand years, public-service AIs in each region are requested to preserve the integrity of the residential districts insofar as possible. This is the wish of the Central Bureau.
4. After the outer ring detaches from the inner ring, each regional AI will have autonomous authority over its own region. Aside from the residential districts, all structures may be dismantled and utilized.
That is all. Good luck.”]
Ding—
My field of view turned to darkness once more.]
A strange dream.
Dreams were always full of scenes that made no sense.
But as I woke, as consciousness returned, I would quickly throw the dream I had just had to the back of my mind, as if I no longer remembered it.
In a field of view that gradually cleared, a line of pale blue text lit in the upper right.
[Uncorrected Eden Calendar Year 8994, June 22nd 09:43]
Six days.
Yes.
Six days.
From the first day, spent entirely sunk in the excitement of eating hot rice and hot dishes, to the second, still lost in sweets and drinks, to the fourth, when we began sleeping without regard for day or night…
To today.
Even Alice could not get excited anymore.
“Yulin-chan~~ Come keep me company~~”
The whole car held only Alice and me.
Counting MKR4-003 and the little cart, it was still only three people and one pet.
Neither Alice nor I had expected the journey to be this long.
I had already worked very hard to turn the seats in the car into a comfortable bed and to spread carpet over the leftover space.
Even though it did not mean much, I had still put curtains on the glass windows and added a table and chairs — stretching this car’s living conditions about as far as they could go.
But…
I really had already done everything I could think of.
Even the freight car originally meant for whatever cargo or materials we might carry had been roofed over and converted into a bath and a kitchen.
The kitchen had been added on MKR4-003’s suggestion.
Something about how, since we were remodeling anyway, we might as well add a kitchen.
Perhaps she simply wanted a kitchen herself.
Mm.
In six days, Alice had gone from a miserable girl who called soap “alkali stone” and thought being able to use soap already meant happiness, to a refined girl who could accurately explain the difference between face cream and toner…
Life really did change a person.
Even Alice.
She had probably never in her life lived with food and clothing so free of care.
The engineering vehicle’s Construction Tower could not achieve the factory’s rapid large-scale production, but it was more than enough for a life without worry, where whatever we wanted could be made.
Lapis — our god — had exchanged part of her data with the daily-goods factory and the daily-goods factory’s AI.
With Lapis’s help, we could have lain in the engineering vehicle for a lifetime and never had a care.
But…
As expected, as people, we still needed freedom, at least.
“Yulin-chan~ Come keep me company already~~”
In those six days, pajamas had become the clothes we wore most often.
Alice was especially fond of this pink-and-white set.
Seeing that I did not seem to react, she crawled up from the bed and came straight over to hug me from behind.
“What are you doing?”
Spacing out, actually…
The touch was soft and cool, a little comfort in this stuffy car we could not leave.
Compared with how she had been in the desert at the beginning, Alice’s skin had only begun to look as a girl’s should after the surgery, and even more so after these days of washing and care.
When her body pressed against my face, it felt soft, and smooth.
Girls still ought to take care of themselves, if conditions allowed.
Sometimes, looking at Alice, I would wonder.
Alice said she had been born to a noble house.
If her parents had not erred, if they had still been nobles, what kind of life would she have lived?
Perhaps we would never have met.
“Miss Yulin.”
After Alice’s pestering, MKR4-003 set bread and milk down from the little cart and said, “I have news for you that I do not know whether to call good or bad.”
News she did not know whether to call good or bad?
Truly an ambiguous way to put it.
While I was still puzzled, MKR4-003 went on.
“According to the stratum scan, there are traces of an artificial tunnel 2.7 km from us. At present the engineering vehicle is excavating toward that tunnel. If all goes well, we may discover the nearest station within the next few hours.”
Eh?
Didn’t that mean we would be able to get out soon?
We finally had a chance to return to the surface.
Why call it news she did not know whether to call good or bad?
Part Six · The Starless Street
News she did not know whether to call good or bad.
Either way, after six days of underground excavation, there was at last a chance to return to the surface.
At least for me, that counted as good news.
But MKR4-003 offered no further explanation on that point.
After breakfast she went back to the locomotive and did not come to the passenger car again.
Did she have something in mind?
I could not be sure.
Still, if we could return to the surface, that also meant we would have to bid farewell to this car we had remade into a cozy little nest, leave the all-capable engineering vehicle, and leave this lying-flat life in which clothes came to the hand and food came to the mouth.
Perhaps, from those angles, returning to the surface was not necessarily good news.
Our goal was the eight Bapluntas distributed across this world.
According to Lapis, the Bapluntas were the high towers connecting Eden and Ipsis.
When I had first come to this world and was still on the surface, the grand Tower to Heaven I had seen in the distance beyond the ruin had been one of the Bapluntas.
Only, that tower had long since broken with the fall of Eden’s outer ring, and it was obvious it could no longer lead to Eden.
This world had, at least once, been far more advanced than I had thought.
There had once been a very advanced civilization here.
They had remade their own planet and a neighboring planet into a mega-structure.
The lower half of that structure was a thermoelectric conversion system for absorbing the heat of their star, and the upper half was the eight Bapluntas that led to Eden.
Ipsis was the place that civilization had once lived.
It occupied the middle of the structure: an enormous stellar ring encircling their star.
The structure’s thermoelectric conversion system supplied the entire ring with all its energy.
In other words, it was not only in Eden.
In truth, this world’s former civilization had already developed to the limit of a material society.
Anyone, anywhere, could live without worry, and have whatever they wanted.
Such an advanced civilization…
A pity it had long since fallen.
The number of humans on Ipsis now had dropped sharply.
Though more high-order intelligent species had been born, human civilization had already gone down the road to its end, and it would be hard for it to return to its former glory.
They had even long since forgotten their own history.
The Eden Treaty.
That was the permanent binding Eden had carved onto the human race after the War of Heaven.
Humans, locked down at the genetic level, had long since lost any chance of ruling this world.
Even natural reproduction was restricted.
When Lapis spoke of these things, I — who had not lived through any of it — could not understand, looking at Alice, what such a harsh punishment had been for.
Was that what the relationship between angels and humans was like?