Terraforming (1)
A place where colossal storms rolling in from beyond the horizon ground every ridge and hollow of the surface into dust.
A grotesque cliffscape of bizarre rock formations carved by those very storms.
An atmosphere so starved of breathable oxygen that it was thick instead with every kind of toxic gas.
—Sizzle…
The bacon I pulled out as an experiment shriveled and dried to a crisp in seconds under the murderous heat.
And an atmosphere so dense it could hold that heat forever, scattering the light of the star until the sky itself looked milky and wrong.
Standing there watching all of it, a thought suddenly struck me.
This world still hasn’t discovered Earth. So why the hell do they call terraforming “terraforming”?
And that was only the start. There were a dozen other things I could pick at if I wanted.
They use the metric system. They keep the exact star-system names Earth once decided on in real life…
If I wanted to nitpick, I could do it all day long.
Those thoughts were filling my head when—
Too many nitpicks about the game are bad for your mental health.
…What.
The status window casually returning fire hit me right in the gut. I couldn’t hide the flustered look on my face.
“M-Minister… where… where exactly are we…?”
Gaia’s voice from beside me yanked me out of my thoughts. I shoved the musings aside and answered with perfect confidence.
“Welcome to the wasteland.”
“Huh?”
“You and I just got kidnapped.”
“Huh?”
A few days earlier.
“I get that you want to make use of Gaia. But where exactly are you planning to use her?”
“That’s the part that still needs more thought.”
Having successfully cleared myself of the pedophile suspicions Artraia had leveled at me, I was now wrestling with the question of where to put Gaia’s terraforming ability to work.
“Honestly, we don’t need to use her on our homeworld…”
“Same for Saunia. Our homeworld already has a natural environment that’s practically one-of-a-kind in this galaxy.”
So we started hunting for a test site.
“How about this one? Fresh data from a research ship that just came in.”
“Hmm… something we thought was a gas giant turns out to be a massive rocky planet.”
An event straight out of the original game popping up like that felt oddly nostalgic.
“It’s decent, but it’s way too big for Gaia in her current state.”
In the original game you could just drop Gaia on a planet of any size and the terraforming would kick off immediately.
“…”
“Is that so?”
Unfortunately this was reality, and the Gaia we’d picked up had been weakened far more than expected—whatever the hell Prosnak had done to her.
“You know as well as I do. Gaia’s condition right now is… not great.”
“Then where would be best?”
“I’m thinking… instead of full-sized planets, we use a moon.”
“A moon?”
Artraia considered it for a moment, then shook her head.
“They’ve already started building large-scale mining plants on the moons near the capital world. Not ideal for a terraforming test.”
“Ah. That project’s already underway, huh.”
One by one we eliminated candidates that had the wrong timing, the wrong conditions, or some other fatal flaw.
Until finally we found a place that checked every box.
“Meredegaaran system. Southern Empire… right near the Miss-Pel territory.”
“It’s such a barren wasteland there’s not even a resource-extraction colony, and it doesn’t connect to any trade routes either.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s so far from the capital system of Quesada that word would have a hard time spreading.”
“Not bad. We could even control the narrative—frame it as the discovery of a hidden paradise planet.”
A remote frontier system, disconnected from trade routes, with no resources worth mentioning and therefore no people.
“Plus the only outpost that even marks the system as Imperial territory is completely unmanned.”
“Even better.”
It was the same logic as the nations of my previous Earth’s life claiming empty reefs just to expand their territorial waters.
In places like this, it really does feel like the game.
With that thought, we narrowed it down to the exact site and reached our decision.
“This is the one.”
“Meredegaaran III. Its moon, Medusa.”
Taking Gaia’s condition into account while still choosing something large enough to be useful to the Empire, we settled on terraforming the moon Medusa.
“All right, Arto. I’m counting on you.”
“…?”
Why the hell was she putting me in charge of the whole operation?
Back to the present.
“This place is seriously bleak, you know.”
“Tell me about it.”
The storm was so murderous we had retreated inside the ship for the time being.
I didn’t see this coming.
In the game you just dropped Gaia and everything—climate, ecology, the works—took care of itself.
In reality, new headaches kept popping up one after another.
This is exactly why you need underlings to boss around!
I was suddenly understanding why the high-and-mighty types in my previous life hated doing anything themselves.
“The Minister himself coming all the way out here… whatever this mission is, it must be damn important.”
“I haven’t seen the Minister in forever…”
“Mm.”
If we just sat around, those overeager fans of mine might decide to “visit” us at any moment.
So I called over the research team waiting aboard and asked when the storm would finally die down.
“How long do you estimate until this storm ends?”
“Yes, sir. To be precise, ten—”
“Ten? Ten days?”
“…nine, eight, seven…”
“Oh.”
The moment I summoned them, the storm decided to vanish like a ghost.
“Perfect. Then we start the test immediately.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
But as they say, nothing in this world ever goes smoothly from the start.
The humanoid terraforming weapon obtained as compensation from Prosnak: Gaia.
To test her abilities, you have traveled to a distant wasteland.
During the terraforming test, success occurs at random probabilities.
WARNING! There is a low chance the planet may become permanently un-terraformable!
“Nngh…!”
“Gaia, that’s enough.”
“W-wait… j-just a little more… I think I can…!”
This was the same Gaia who had once grown a massive tree in an instant from a pot of random dirt.
Yet here she couldn’t even transform the soil right in front of her.
“Let’s take a break first. You’re probably still adjusting to the unfamiliar environment.”
“Wow, if you showed me even a tenth of that consideration, I’d be thrilled.”
“You’re already more than enough.”
No matter how hard Gaia strained, nothing happened. And another storm was already rolling in over the horizon.
We retreated to the ship again to wait it out.
“Uuu… I’m sorry… it’s because I’m not good enough…”
Was she always this kind of kid?
While we waited, I also took on the job of cheering up the dejected Gaia.
“You don’t need to worry so much. Everyone makes mistakes at first.”
“That’s right, that’s right. The Minister made a huge mistake at the beginning too, and cleaning that up took so much effor—mmph!”
“Looks like our Riel’s brain circuits are starting to short out.”
While I was at it I delivered a little “education” to Riel for running her mouth. A faint spark of light seemed to return to Gaia’s previously downcast face.
Before long the storm subsided once more.
“Gaia, you can do this, right?”
“Yes… I’ll do my best!”
“You got this.”
We took her outside again, picked a suitable flat stretch of ground, and prepared to resume the work.
“Uuuuuugh!!!”
Gaia threw everything she had into meeting our expectations…
“Minister, no unusual phenomena detected so far.”
“Soil nutrient levels and atmospheric density show no change from before.”
The report from the research team that had come with us almost made me show my disappointment out loud—
“…!”
—but the raw, indescribable despair on Gaia’s face stopped me cold.
…This goddamn random probability system.
I couldn’t take it out on Gaia, of course.
But the system that had slapped an individual probability roll on us? That thing I could curse out to my heart’s content.