The sensation of braking was not strong, but standing as rock-steady as MKR4-003 felt all but impossible.
Holding the handle, I looked up at her.
She only kept her hands folded in front of her lower abdomen, staring straight ahead without moving.
Aside from the hair at her back, her whole body did not so much as sway, as if she were absorbed in something.
The sense of slowing lasted a good while.
The hum of the engine that had been echoing through the car quieted as well, as if it had vanished.
Under my gaze, MKR4-003 still stood there without moving.
Only her eyes seemed, faintly, to be shifting.
A piercing metallic clack and a hum entered the train from somewhere I could not place.
Right after that came a beep—beep— warning tone.
A flickering orange-yellow light fell through the small window by the door.
Following the light, I saw the train easing through a heavy iron gate.
Were we out?
It looked that way.
The view through the little window was very narrow; I could only see a short way ahead.
After passing the iron gate, the train’s speed dropped another notch.
We had not gone far when the hum sounded again, and that flickering orange light was gradually shut behind the iron door into a stretch of pitch dark.
“The maintenance line is damaged. Ahead: fallen rock, earth.”
MKR4-003’s voice suddenly sounded at my ear.
So she had been watching the road ahead the whole time from the start.
After a brief silence, she said evenly, “Stopped. Attempting to initiate Construction.
“Three. Two. One. Activate.”
Hum—
A violent brightness burst from the direction of the cabinet.
For an instant I saw the two metal cubes between the cabinet and the antenna burned glowing red.
But only for an instant.
Then my entire field of view was covered by a pale, pale blaze.
Even when I clapped my hands over my eyes at once, I could hardly fend off the burst of dizziness and the stars swimming in my sight.
I had never in my life seen a light this bright.
I felt even the summer sun was not this bright.
That glare made my eyes sting as if they were about to catch fire in that single instant.
For a long time I did not even dare lower the hands I had thrown up in front of my eyes, until the train slowly gave the sensation of moving forward.
MKR4-003’s voice sounded in the car again.
She reported evenly, still as if talking to herself.
“Activation successful. Reverse-feed system functioning normally. Construction Tower output normal. Rate normal. System stable.
“Reinstalling Bidirectional Power Initiator. Reinstalling Cation Conduit Initiator.
“Equipment restored.
“At the current conversion rate, the engineering vehicle will operate at an excavation speed of 25 km/h while simultaneously completing the laying of a new line. Given that the raw materials for Construction exceed what is required to lay the track, lighting fixtures and plutonium-battery power units will be built along the way, sufficient to guarantee ten years of illumination inside the tunnel.”
“Thank you, Miss Yulin. From here, we need only keep moving forward.”
“I-I see…”
In truth, I still had not recovered from that violent blast of light.
But I had only just taken the metal case back when, at MKR4-003’s urging, I followed her back to the passenger car.
She really was insistent that passengers ought to sit in the comfortable passenger car.
Just as Alice waved at me coming in from the door, the little cart somehow slipped out from behind me as well.
The tunnel beyond the window was newly built.
Compared with Eden, which was pitch dark almost everywhere, even the faint yellow glow of those newly made wall lamps along the tunnel felt much more comfortable.
In this direction we could not see the earth ahead, or the rubble, or the lifeless stillness.
There was only a sense of ease, as if we had returned to a world we knew.
“Chocolate cake, black tea~ Thank you~”
Alice was still as carefree as ever.
Or perhaps it was the light outside the window at last that had improved her mood a great deal.
She even put in her order before MKR4-003 could speak.
“Very well. Please wait a moment.”
As expected, compared with tensely operating the engineering vehicle, MKR4-003 still preferred looking after guests at heart.
Without meaning to, a trace of a smile rose at the corner of her mouth as she answered.
Then she turned to me and said, “And you, Miss Yulin? The same for you?”
Nn…
Eating sweets and bread all the time always left me, a born-and-bred Chinese person, feeling a little unsatisfied.
But looking at this car — comfortable as it was — I could not forget that of the other two cars, one was a cargo hold and one was a battery cabin.
Wanting rice and the like in an environment like this was a bit too extravagant, wasn’t it?
Right.
The ready-made meals.
There were not many, but we had finished such a great thing.
We had started the engineering vehicle, driven out of Eden, and begun advancing toward the world outside.
This was worth celebrating, wasn’t it?
Then I would allow myself a little luxury.
“Let’s have some hot rice. As long as it can be heated with hot water, that’s enough.”
After thinking a moment, I said that.