Descent of an Angel
Tok tok tok.
Something's foot-tapping against the desk again.
"Miss, keep that up and you'll put a hole in the desk."
"It's an emergency. That's why."
"If there's no oil, people will just walk, won't they?"
That was exactly the problem. Once people got a taste of convenience, would they really sit quietly and accept losing it?
"There'd be riots! Society could descend into chaos!"
Oh? Rebellions too? Power being seized at last?
"Hmm? It won't be anywhere near that bad."
"Why not?"
"These are the kind of people who'd just shrug and go, 'Well, I guess we don't have it anymore.' The Daehan people, I mean. Honestly, Miss, you don't understand people as well as you'd think."
Why? Why did they turn out that way? Since when were they such good, patient children?
Then why on earth do they go around plundering and banditing all over the world….
"I can't say I agree…."
"You'd be surprised how many people are perfectly content to work a day's shift, come home in the evening, and enjoy a nice dinner. That's their whole happiness."
The office workers and navy boys I'd seen weren't nearly that peaceful….
"Quality of life is that high?"
"It can't help but be."
"Why?"
"Well—look at our neighbors. Do you think anyone's going to harbor complaints about the state? Or not?"
Hmm…. The comparison points were… a complete disaster, weren't they?
Yeah. Come to think of it, there wasn't a single normal country out there fit for human beings to actually live in. Not one!
"Hmm. Still, the kids love the stuff. I want to go fetch them plenty of oil…."
"Why not just make some?"
"Ha…. The problem is, the oil is so far away."
The real trick to finding oil was either knowing exactly where to look, or hitting one absolutely colossal oil field by luck.
There was one in Saudi Arabia, of course. But that meant building tankers to haul it back?
It'd have to happen someday….
"Come on, talk to me. Don't stew over it all by yourself."
"Ah…."
I'd gone off thinking alone again, hadn't I?
"I do know where a gigantic oil field is. The problem is that it's just too far."
Piping it in from the Middle East was out of the question, and building a refinery plant over there ran into the water problem for now.
"How far?"
"Far enough that shipping it by sea is the only real option."
Forget it with the ships we have now. Even starting construction today would take years….
"Hmm. Haneul-nim, wouldn't it fit in your subspace?"
"Huh?"
Well, look at this kid?
Sheer genius!
Ships could haul it over later—for now, why not just scoop it up myself?
"Wow. You. I acknowledge you."
"Excuse me?"
"Right. Watch the house. I'll go pump the oil. Oh! And get a big refinery complex laid out."
While I was at it, I might as well build a refining complex near Cheongdo.
If the Bohai oil field got developed later, we could refine right on the spot. Perfect.
"You're going alone?"
"It won't take long. Easier if I just fly there and back myself."
"That's a shame."
"It's far, and it's dangerous. You can't be anywhere near me while I work. Instead, get started on a big refinery."
"Yes, ma'am!"
And so, for the first time in a while, I soared up into space.
Mmm. The blue Earth really is a lovely sight, as always.
I dawdled about, gawking at the planet for a good long while, until I noticed the Middle East slowly brightening into daylight.
I'd been waiting because I couldn't see, after all.
Then—human intercontinental ballistic missile, LAUNCH!
Shuuung—KUGOOM.
"Ow."
A slight landing failure. I'd touched down a bit rough. Surely no one heard the impact and came looking?
I'd flown to Saudi Arabia. The Ghawar field here was supposed to be enormous even by the standards of single oil fields, so even if I dug in the wrong spot, I figured I'd hit something.
"My clothes burned off again. Well, at least the underwear survived?"
I was going underground anyway. Might as well get started.
Human Excavator, ENGAGE!
GGUGUGU.
"Hmm? Hold on. Why bother tunneling down at all?"
Couldn't I just lift the whole thing out in one column?
Like with the canal, I'd need to focus first.
The nice thing about my telekinesis was that I could shape the force however I wanted.
Seureureuk.
"Oh?"
An absolutely massive pillar was rising out of the ground right before my eyes.
Sand first, then rock, then mud, then dirt of some unidentifiable color—layer upon layer of it came up.
Hududuk, tutuk, KOOM.
The extracted earth piled itself neatly off to the side, row after row.
Sorry, Earth…. I'm punching a hole in you.
Think she'd thank me if I told her it was like popping a pimple for her?
PONG.
"Hm? That's everything?"
Ah…. Was this not the spot? Or was the oil deeper than my telekinesis could reach?
No, when I dug the canal, several kilometers had been no problem at all….
Shuiiik.
"Hm? Wind? That doesn't smell like wind, though."
Whoa, I was going to throw up. What was with the rotten-egg stench?
Wait. Was that gas?
KUREUREUK, KUREUREUK.
"Hey. No way. It's not about to blow out, is it?"
Crap, this was bad? To store anything in subspace, I had to touch it or make contact with telekinesis.
And how was I supposed to touch something I couldn't even see?
PUKWAKWAKKOK, BEK.
….
Gah…. This is what happens to a person who stares down a hole and gets slapshot in the face by crude oil.
And there were rocks mixed in with it too! Fascinating, isn't it?
CHWAAAAAK.
Ah…. My oil…. It was erupting into the air like a fountain.
"Ugh!"
The rock to the forehead hurt bad enough that I nearly blacked out, but I forced a telekinetic connection to the oil and shut the flow down.
"Wow. That pressure is insanely strong."
I hadn't felt anything like this even lifting mountains. Something was pushing up from below with terrifying force.
So what now?
Shuuuuk.
As the crude came gushing up, I was shoving it straight into subspace—and honestly, this was ridiculously convenient.
Automatic storage? Vacuum cleaner? Something like that.
"But how long am I supposed to keep this up? It's endless…."
So bored. Attention, everyone! There's an oil-thieving witch over here! Maybe I should've brought someone along to chat with?
I stood there blankly with my hand in the hole for what, a full day?
Shuuu.
"Oh? It's slowing down. Hm? But that seems like too little oil?"
The mass of oil I could feel in subspace felt a bit small?
The pressure had dropped, after all…. Should I spread my force out a bit?
Juuuuu.
"Gah."
My telekinesis spread out along the crude oil, and this strange sensation washed over me—like a third eye had snapped open.
"Wow…."
And then a map of the underground painted itself into my mind.
It was a staggeringly enormous picture. The oil sprawled through the earth like a spider's web.
"It's like a sponge? Should I say it's soaked through the sand like that? It wasn't pooled underground like a lake at all…."
You learn something every day. Well, I suppose if it had been an empty lake down there, the ground would've caved in ages ago.
The oil sat in the pores of some unimaginably vast sponge.
"And it's still not the end…."
The underground map kept expanding in my head, bigger and bigger.
CHULLONG.
Then the growing map stopped—touching some other liquid.
"What's this? Something besides oil? Underground, so… groundwater?"
It gave me pause, but it didn't seem to be spreading any further. This might be all of it, or my power might simply end here. Fine either way.
Well then…. shall the righteous thief stop here for today?
It'd even prevent a future war somewhere down the line. Win-win!
That one was Kuwait, wasn't it….
SHUK.
"Oh? That was easy?"
Only the recognition had taken long—the actual storage happened in an instant.
Even the oil my hand was touching vanished, without a single drop left behind.
"Hmm? There was a rumbling when the oil came out before—will there be noise again?"
More might surface, so I pressed my ear to the hole and waited a bit.
KUREUREUNG, KUREUREUNG.
"Oh? More coming up?"
It felt like something else was rising, so I put my hand back in the hole and waited.
I didn't want to take another rock to the head this time.
Come to think of it, thank goodness nobody was around. A raving madwoman in nothing but her underwear, arm buried in a hole in the middle of the desert?
KUDEUK, KUKUNG, KUDEUK.
"Hmm? That's a completely different sound from before?"
What was it? I spread saliva on my hand and held it there, but it didn't feel like wind coming out anymore.
KUKUKUNG, DEUDEUDEUDEU.
"Huh? Is this—?"
An earthquake?
KUKWAGWAGWANG.
"Whoa."
The ground was collapsing on all sides.
Well, sure. I'd emptied out everything that had been filling the space underground—something had to fill the void.
And mostly that something would come from above, wouldn't it?
PU-PAPAPAK.
"Wow…. Still, this is quite a spectacle."
The sand was either caving in or surging upward—the earth was literally turning itself over.
Those weren't hills forming. Those were mountains….
Hmm. This…. even if oil remained down there, there probably wasn't any way left to dig for it, huh?
"Mmm…."
That said, I was fairly sure I'd swept up everything—the oil I could feel in subspace was truly massive.
It felt like I was carrying an entire slice of the ocean.
This went faster than I expected, actually? By the time I got back, the factory probably wouldn't even be built yet.
Since I was here, why not prevent that future Gulf War too?
And after that—don't ask me what I was thinking—I traipsed all around the Persian Gulf, punching holes and collecting oil.
How much time had passed? No smartphone to check, but it felt like I'd been at it quite a while….
Along the way, I found spots that produced nothing but gas. Not that I'd have known how to scoop that up anyway.
Released into the wild….
Wasn't that stuff supposed to be the main culprit behind global warming?
"Still, lots of desert out here, huh? Good thing there aren't many people around. No witnesses, hopefully?"
There were a few people on the Iraq side, so I was careful and quiet there.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, the ground didn't completely cave in and cause earthquakes.
I'd probably punched tens of thousands of holes by now?
"Most of them came up dry, so at least they won't starve later. And if things ever get desperate for them, I'll make sure this region doesn't go hungry."
It was me who stole it all, after all. And once I'd gathered it all together—wow, the crude oil was staggering.
Like I'd chiseled a chunk clean off the Earth itself.
Ah…. but the oil came in different grades, didn't it? Light crude? Heavy crude? Every kind was different. What was I supposed to do with it all mixed together like this?
Was I about to spike the difficulty of the kids' engineering problems way up?
Anyway. Time to head home~
While Haneul was out drilling for oil across the Middle East—
Desert or not, wherever there was land, there were people living on it.
KUKUKUKU.
"Gah! What is that!"
"The ground is rising!"
"Oh! God above!"
The people recoiled in shock as an endless pillar of earth rose out of the ground.
Some, recalling omens of the world's end they'd heard of somewhere, began seeking their gods and praying.
KUKWAKWA.
"Gah! Black water is erupting from the earth!"
"What is that smell?"
"Could it be—the gates of hell are opening!?"
"It is a sign that the world shall perish!"
The desert dwellers, choking on that peculiar rotten-egg stench of sulfur, began to believe that the apocalypse had come.
"Ugh, huk."
"The world is ending."
Contrary to their despair, the black pillar spewing toward the heavens began to vanish—and so did the smell of rotten eggs.
"Hm? What is happening?"
"Whatever it is, we must go and see for ourselves."
"Let us go, but carefully."
The people set out on foot toward the place where the black pillar had erupted.
It wasn't far.
"I believe it was just beyond this dune."
"Hoo… hoo. This is exhausting."
Working from memory and following the black stains on the ground, they climbed over the sand hills.
And there, they—
"Gasp!"
"It cannot be! She's holding back hell itself?"
"Oh…. God above!"
—witnessed Haneul in the act of stealing oil.
With her hand reaching into the hole and the petroleum lying just beneath it, there was no mistaking it: she looked for all the world like she was plugging up the pit.
"Look! The angel is holding back the black blood rising from hell!"
Haneul's passive self-cleaning function had long since shed every trace of grime from her body.
Pure white undergarments, skin fair as snow—to their eyes, she was unmistakably an angel.
"See how she strains—her very face is furrowed with effort! Everyone, pray!"
"Yes! We must lend the angel our strength!"
"Oh! God above, we thank you."
And so, amid all that reverence and misunderstanding, Haneul carried on stealing petroleum while putting on an impromptu nude show.