May I Reach Your Orbit ★ (2)
Vanta's Brand Design Team sat gathered in the meeting room, and there were noticeably more of them now.
Only one person had been added. Even so, the place felt properly full.
"Been a while since we met with a crowd like this."
Pascal isn't one for big shows of feeling, but he looked faintly stirred, as if the moment had struck him fresh. He worked the laptop, and a design request bloomed onto the screen in the template they'd all grown used to.
#142035 – 05 Request
Mobile Art Museum Branding
Output
A) Main — Logo, Slogan
B) Variation — Nameplate
Direction
Wishes to spread beauty widely, to everyone in the world
Oh. An art museum. What flavor of madness was waiting for me this time?
I've given up expecting a normal client.
Spread beauty to everyone in the world? Right. Maybe they'd pluck the audience's eyeballs out and force them to look. I braced myself. No matter how outrageous things got, I was not going to be surprised.
The communication addict had insisted on the seat right beside me even in the meeting room. He leaned in, grinning, and whispered.
"An art museum? Ugh, how stuffy~. This project's gonna be boring, right?"
"......"
I am still the new hire. I refused to get branded as the person who chats through meetings. And a designer, if they're any kind of designer, has to stay friendly with other fields — art included — if they want to pull inspiration from every direction. You bleached-blond menace!
Just let it go.
I offered Seo Gwan-yul an awkward smile, then locked my eyes on the screen and made it very clear I did not want a conversation. His attempt at small talk dead on arrival, he slumped and started doodling in his notebook.
Ugh. UFOs again. Of course.
"I'll share the research. Let's focus on industries tied to art museums — culture and the arts, mainly."
• Residents show a fairly high interest in art. The range isn't broad, but geometric and abstract work is well developed.
• Highly advanced science and technology. Functions beyond imagination may exist. Do not operate any machinery without extreme caution.
Highly advanced science. So when they pulled the audience's eyes out, did a laser gun make it clean and painless?
...This is making me queasy for no reason.
Halfway through my little fantasy of enucleation, I remembered my own left eye — collateral under the employment contract — and gave it a light rub.
Come to think of it, they priced that left eye far above the rest.
The other body parts had been pledged in bundles, several at a time. The left eye, all by itself, had covered an entire quarter's sum. Were eyes just that precious a resource in this place?
"We're heading out for the client meeting. Before the new project starts, have your portfolios in order by tomorrow."
The meeting broke. I grabbed my messenger bag and finished getting ready.
"Let's go, Lee-hyun~."
I was walking toward the door at the end of the hall when he slung an elbow over my shoulder, playing best friends again.
...Does he not own a concept of personal space?
We'd known each other for two days. Anyone watching would have assumed we were soulmates.
...It was absolutely not because I was salty about the height difference!!
I nudged his arm off, kept a civilized distance, and stepped through the swirling door.
Fwaaah—!
Blink. I came down a dark passage and had to open and close my eyes a few times before they would take the light — light I felt I hadn't seen in ages. The image settled on my retinas again, and the room around me came clear.
......The first thing I saw was the face of my damned teammate, Seo Gwan-yul.
Why are his eyes sparkling like a maniac? And why does it feel like a bad omen?
I dragged my gaze off him and looked around. We'd arrived in a conference room finished entirely in smooth metal walls.
Straight out of a scene in a sci-fi movie.
Along one side ran a futuristic gate and a display panel. Like an airlock inside a spaceship.
"Hello, designers."
And the client who rose from their seat to greet us... had a single enormous eye taking up roughly half their face. Strangely enough, those long fingers were gathered neatly together as they offered the greeting.
Gah. Anyone could see it.
"Hey, hey! Lee-hyun! This is huge — it's a Grey-type alien!!"
Right. An alien.
An alien, materializing directly in front of an alien otaku! ...No. Strictly speaking they were from another world, so was the proper word otherworlder?
Anyway, Seo Gwan-yul was staring at his very own client with eyes so bright he looked ready to get sucked in.
Is he not even scared?
All I could think was what happened if those long fingers decided to pluck my eyes out.
Still. Aliens are real.
It was astonishing, I had to admit. Wasn't this the mysterious subject that had spawned every strange tale in the book? So while Pascal icebroke with the client, I opened the messenger and asked VantaBot about aliens.
Enough.
I killed the app on the spot. I'd already pictured myself being dragged into a dark room for a biological experiment.
"Thank you for coming all this way. It would be rude to leave our guests standing. Please, make yourselves comfortable."
Fortunately, our client did not appear interested in abducting pitiful salaried workers. The courtesy was a relief. And now that I looked, the alien was wearing a fedora, genteel as a proper gentleman.
...Or maybe a lady? Do aliens even have genders?
"I've decided to retire. It's time I chased a dream and opened an art museum."
The client, it turned out, had been a spaceship engineer. They'd loved art and wanted to paint, but a living had to be made, so they'd played it safe and gone into engineering.
Earth or outer space — same story.
"I built this spaceship myself, you know."
I murmured that anyone who could build a UFO had to be an incredible engineer. Seo Gwan-yul, of course, corrected me.
"The right word is UAP."
...So what!
"I kept up a little art practice while I was working, and the response was kinder than I expected.... I'm going to put my severance into an art museum aboard a mobile spaceship. Director and artist, both."
Wow. A second act. Beautiful — you're never too old to take the leap.
The alien raised a sheaf of slides over the table in hologram, offering to show us the work.
"Earth, especially, was a canvas I returned to often. Even in my engineering days, I'd slip away on vacation now and then and paint."
The first photograph.
Across a vast plain, a geometric pattern had been scored into the ground, as if someone had mown the grass into a design.
Wait. No. This is—
......A mystery circle. Wasn't it?
"Crop circle! That's what you call it!"
Stop!
"Did you make the Nazca Lines too?! The ones in Peru — the abstract animal figures!"
The guy who'd been whisper-bombing me finally broke and put a personal question straight to the client.
"Abstract animals, hm.... Ah. It's an old piece, so this is a little embarrassing, but I did paint things like this on Earth."
The alien gentleperson paged through a great stack of portfolio slides until an old photograph surfaced. A monkey with its tail curled, a bird, a spider, and more.
......Undeniable Nazca Lines.
"Whoa!!! I knew it — aliens really did draw them!!"
Seo Gwan-yul couldn't hold it. The cry of triumph tore out of him as a happy scream. Abandon your teammates, vanish on a long leave, come back a fan whose every prayer just got answered. Happy? You happy now?
"And when, when did you visit Earth?! Have you ever been to a country called Korea?!"
Pascal looked ready to shut it down, then seemed to remember the reason this particular employee had joined the company in the first place, and let him be.
"Hmm. I came and went so often it's all a blur.... And I'm not as young as I was, ho ho."
Seo Gwan-yul rattled off questions one after another, as if he carried a standing alien-interview list in his pocket. Fortunately, our benevolent client seemed to be enjoying it.
"Haha. I've almost never spoken with another species, so I quite lost track of time. Thank you for humoring an old thing like me."
"Aww~ you're still right in your prime. So you hadn't really mixed with other species before?"
"I lived a dull life shut in a laboratory, fiddling with spaceships. Well — it wasn't that I had no contact at all. But this interpreter hasn't existed for long. A proper conversation is a first for me."
The alien indicated the smartwatches on our wrists.
"In Earth time, it's been about twenty years since it was made. A device from the laboratory next to mine."
"Oh~! So our agency bought it from here. The company's full of incredible stuff — I bet most of it comes from this place!"
"That watch is indeed one of ours. But it goes the other way, too. There are technologies we purchase ourselves. Fine engineers turn up everywhere."
The talk ran on a little longer. Pascal, who had been watching the client's reactions with care, cut in at the right moment and closed on the work.
"...So the core value the museum means to deliver is this. Spread beauty widely, to everyone in the world."
"Exactly. I want a mobile art museum that goes out to meet people — so no one else is stuck unable to make art, the way I was."
The client smiled, kindly as a person. No. Kindly as an alien.
"Heh heh. Then I'll see you at our next meeting."
The meeting over, we went back to the company.
"This is insane!!"
The moment we were back, the alien otaku was excited all the way to the top of his head.
"Four years at this agency, and I finally saw an alien! Ah, Lee-hyun~ ever since you showed up, everything's just been falling into place."
...Of all the timings, it had to land like that. If they'd run into each other while I wasn't around, I wouldn't have had to watch this racket!
"All right. Let's sort this out."
Pascal hauled the thoroughly scattered guy's attention back and, from his seat, laid out what came next.
"First, finish the portfolio for the last project by tomorrow. After that, we go into naming for the new request."
"Sure~ like any of this is hard, hahaha."
He played it breezy, and the instant the wrap-up ended he drifted back to his own desk.
Knock the portfolio out fast, leave on time, get to the gym.
Lately I'd decided to actually use the company benefits, and signed up for personal training. Everyone knows the rule: you don't go on weekends. You go on weekday evenings.
...Because that is how, on a golden weekend, you get to not take a single step outside the house!
I swore I'd lock in and sprint through it. I ate lunch, came back, and sat down.
BEEEEEEEP—!
...!
A ringing tore through my ears out of nowhere.
...An electronic whine?!
The sharp sound seemed to be coming from the computer.
KSSSHHHH—!
Static flooded the screen from edge to edge. I was not the only one it had hit.
"What? What is this?"
"The computer just went weird!"
Startled voices spilled from all over the office.
Tick. Tick. Tick—
Only the analog clock on the wall kept flicking its hand along, perfectly unbothered.
One second. Two. Three.
Thirteen.
Pop—!
"Oh! The screen's back!"
"Whew~ I thought the computer was dying."
About thirteen seconds, and the display had returned to normal. I looked at the clock again. The time, as it stood.
One in the afternoon.
Right after lunch, the hour when office workers sit back down and start again. Nothing special about it at all.
Except, written the other way.
13:00.
"......"
A thirteen-second anomaly, striking at thirteen o'clock.
......Was this really a coincidence?
