Terraforming (1)
"W-we're here!"
"Much obliged!"
I waved my hand at the taxi driver who had delivered me to the lab. He didn't return the greeting — he simply bolted.
I found that more than a little ridiculous, but I understood all the same. And with that, it finally sank in: I was back at the lab.
"Heh heh. Seems quite a lot of time has passed, doesn't it."
The thought of coming home set my tail swaying, and judging by how splendidly my ears stood at attention, they were pleased as well.
"Well then, shall we head in?"
With a light smile, I made for the lab's main gate. The guards flinched and trembled every time they laid eyes on me, though none of them dared actually try anything.
Passing through the gate that easily and walking a short while, the lab itself came into view.
"Mm. How peaceful."
Unlike what that damned anomaly had shown me, everything was very, very peaceful. No scent of blood drifted from anywhere, nothing lay in disarray, and not a single part of the lab had been broken or damaged. The place was perfectly intact.
"Mm. Now that I think of it, I did kill that anomaly a little too easily..."
Well, water under the bridge. And I did get to blow off some steam, after all.
Anyway — time to go inside. Lounging around on my isolation-room bed beat standing out here.
So I stepped up to the door to open it, and from beside me came a familiar voice.
"Fox!"
"Jia!"
I turned my head, and there was the face I'd longed to see most. And sure enough, that anomaly really was a damned anomaly.
The moment Jia spotted me, she took off running. I ran to meet her just the same, and buried myself snugly in her arms. The momentum of my charge sent her spinning a full circle, and she welcomed me with a laugh.
"Fox! I missed you!"
"I missed you t—"
"Ah! Wait, you're hugging me without any resistance! Did you hit your head or something?"
I'd been about to say that I missed her too, when she cut me off mid-sentence and started spouting nonsense! And now she was turning my head every which way, checking whether I'd been hurt! I wasn't hurt!
So I gave my tail a wag and swatted her with it. And with a thoroughly displeased look, I snapped at her.
"I am perfectly fine! I merely missed you, that is all!"
"Uh...? S-sorry."
Flustered, she nodded awkwardly at my outburst. But before long she was nagging me, worry woven through every word.
"But Fox — where on earth did you go? For three whole days, no less."
"Huh? T-three days?!"
According to her, three days had passed since I'd left the lab. Three days during which she'd worried herself sick.
I really did feel like I'd been locked in some psychiatric version of a time chamber. Of course, it was a little different, but still.
Anyway — an apology was due.
"Mmm... I'm sorry."
I felt genuinely bad for having worried her. My ears and tail, sharing the sentiment, drooped low as well.
But Jia, if anything, claimed she was the one who should apologize. She said everything was fine now that I was back like this.
"Come on! Let's head inside! I bought all kinds of tasty things while you were gone!"
"Excellent! What kind of snacks?!"
"Heh heh, just you wait and see!"
And so I headed to the isolation room with Jia. Though Jia herself was promptly hauled off to the Director.
"Mmm. How booring."
One week since I'd returned to the lab.
At first, seeing everyone alive and well was lovely, but sure enough, the tedium set in before long. I wanted to go outside again. Exactly like an adult who never gave a thing a second glance as a kid, only to fall for it late in life and lose all self-control — so that's why they say a late-blooming passion is a frightening thing.
Anyway, you ask what I'm doing right now?
What else — it's day three since I told Jia about the future, and I'm lying in bed stuffing my face with pudding.
"Mmm... what shall today's news be about, I wonder."
It was six in the morning, just as the morning news was about to begin. I picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV, and pressed the button; the news came on at once, and the remote went sailing off to one side.
Nom.
Tail swaying, I focused on the broadcast. For some reason, every story today was being skimmed through in seconds, as though something important were waiting at the end of the lineup.
And soon enough, I learned why.
Beginning with those words, the announcer delivered some astonishing news. As he told it, the anomaly investigation squads stationed at the various private research institutes had been gathered under the National Research Institute's lead to form an Anomaly Exploration Team.
And that team would be marching out soon.
Their destination: the north.
The place where a nation once stood — a nation long since destroyed by an anomaly and absorbed wholesale into South Korea.
What had they said again? That the place received no help whatsoever from any of its neighbors and vanished in the blink of an eye?
"Come to think of it, that means the Management Bureau had been protecting that region too, right up until the day it fell."
What a truly remarkable organization it must have been. So how, exactly, did it collapse?
Word has it that the Bureau failed to contain an anomaly... but honestly, I don't buy it.
Anomalies can appear anywhere. Like that yellow-raincoat fellow, or the snail, a few days back.
Which meant the Bureau had to maintain branches in every country and deal with each emerging anomaly on the spot — and you think that would be easy?
Absolutely not. Put another way: an organization that had shielded the world with staggering power collapsed in a single instant. Without a single warning sign.
So the way I saw it, there had to be some other reason. Though at present, with no way to get my paws on any real information about the Bureau, that was a thought worth precisely nothing.
Anyway, I kept watching, and soon found out exactly where the exploration team was headed.
"Wait a moment — isn't that the place I told them about?"
It was, beyond any doubt. And the very thing they meant to investigate was something I had told them, too.
Unless they'd learned of it through some other channel, that meant they had heard my words and assembled the entire team on the strength of them.
"Hmm... I did say an environment-corrosion-type anomaly would appear over there, but..."
Arms crossed, I mulled over whether that really warranted organizing an exploration team. From where I stood, a simple investigation squad would have been plenty.
"Anyway, that's not the important part."
The important thing was the anomaly they would meet.
As I said, that anomaly was environment-corrosion type — in other words, one that terraforms a given region with strange plants. Anomalies of that sort had cropped up from time to time, but this was the first of its kind ever to appear in South Korea. Or so the broadcast claimed; they had even requested data from neighboring countries, and in the end, they organized an exploration team.
And the way I saw it, that was not a good choice at all.
The future I had seen didn't simply end with that anomaly appearing. I hadn't told Jia this, but after telling her about the anomaly, I had looked further into the future on my own.
And in that future, I saw countless human beings consumed by the plants. In other words — they had become plant zombies!
There had certainly been no zombies when I first observed that anomaly. Yet at some point, the plant zombies appeared — and then I watched them marching south.
"Hmm... what should I do..."
Nom.
Pudding really is delicious!
Ah — right. Not the point.
Leaving my ears and tail — utterly powerless against the deliciousness of pudding — to do as they pleased, I turned the problem over in my head.
Those plant zombies definitely had not simply sprung into existence. If they had been there from the start, I would have seen them along with everything else.
And yet they appeared out of nowhere, as though the future itself had changed midway. Of course, the future is full of variables — but the exploration team happening to form at precisely that moment gnawed at me.
I set about hunting for a connection between the two, and before long, I found one.
"Aha! The moment the exploration team was formed is the moment the future changed!"
Which meant all those plant zombies were... the exploration team?
Which meant the exploration team was... wiped out?
"Mmm... alright! Let's go!"
Having resolved to follow the exploration team, I kicked off the bed and shot upright!
Then I marched straight to the door, broke it, and sauntered out of the isolation room.
"Right! Humans, wait for me!"
I had no idea whether I could actually save them or not — but for now, saving them was the goal!
And so, half on impulse, I set off after the Anomaly Exploration Team.
"Gahk! You never said a word about mountains!"
"You brat! You thought this would be a stroll?"
"Well, no, but..."
Deep in the mountains.
At some point, everything around us had darkened; the only light left was the sun hanging in the sky, and even that was mostly strangled by the trees, steeping the whole forest in gloom.
And I — no, we, making our way through this sinister forest — were the Anomaly Exploration Team.
Our reason for coming here went back a few days, to the prophecy of Spoiler Fox. According to it, an environment-corrosion-type anomaly would appear on a mountain some two hundred kilometers north of Seoul.
Hence the freshly organized exploration team, now on the march.
Of course, we hadn't walked the whole way — naturally, we rode vehicles right up until the terrain refused them entirely.
The trouble began after we dismounted. Before we'd gone far on foot, plants that have no business existing on Earth had begun to appear, one after another.
Presumably the work of the anomaly that had surfaced this time.
"Hey! Come help me collect over here!"
"Yes, sir!"
And there ended my woolgathering.
I was the greenest rookie on the team, which meant I had to move fast and sharp.
At my senior's words I sprang into action, hauling out my gear at once. Then, following his instructions, I dug with painstaking care so as not to damage the plants' roots.
"Oho, as expected of an ability user. Quick as anything, aren't you."
"Haha, all thanks to your excellent instruction, senior."
"Ha! And a silver tongue to boot!"
He thumped my back, whack after whack, as he praised me. That hand of his burned like fire, but I endured it, telling myself I'd made a good impression on my senior.
And so we went on collecting the surrounding flora, pressing steadily toward the center.
"Whew. Less to this than I expected."
Rustle—.
"Huh?"
Just as I was relaxing at how uneventful everything was — so unlike my expectations — came the sound of undergrowth stirring behind me. I turned around. Nothing there.
"What was that? Some mountain beast?"
Did I imagine it? I was still scratching my head over the question when my senior called me to hurry up, and I called back that I was coming.
"Well, it's probably nothing."
It did nag at me, a little. But what could possibly happen?
I simply put it out of my mind, and followed my senior.