When the Environment Changes Too Suddenly, Reality Can't Keep Up
When the environment changes too suddenly, reality has a hard time catching up.
Every object exposed to the air of the Abyss slowly corrodes, and out in the open exterior space, there is no method whatsoever by which an object can be Created.
That was the law of the Abyss I had come to understand while slowly conquering the Data Trash Heap.
There was, however, one sole exception to this condition… namely, that inside a fully enclosed, sealed-off space, both of those restrictions vanished.
Maybe there are particles in the outside air that interfere somehow… Well, I don't really know, but it's a good thing either way. Without a workaround like this, I'd have had to run back and forth to my room every single time I needed materials.
Make steel plates and frames in my room, build a temporary shelter, then produce the materials for the stage inside that temporary shelter.
Figuring out this rule relatively quickly had been something close to pure luck.
If I hadn't deliberately set out to conquer the Data Trash Heap in the first place, I might never have discovered it at all.
Anyway, after all that circling around, what I really wanted to say was this: this stage was a domain where I could freely wield my Creation ability, just like my room.
Which meant… inside a sealed space like this, whipping up somewhat flashy, over-the-top production effects wasn't particularly difficult.
It just cost a lot of CP.
"Ooparts are right… here!"
Pop! Bang!
With a sound like fireworks going off, dense clouds of pink flower petals scattered in every direction, drawing gasps of wonder from anyone watching.
Well, it wasn't anything that impressive. I had simply Created a thick ball of tightly compressed petals I'd designed and planned out in my head beforehand, then lightly detonated it with explosives.
Being able to produce such a pretty effect with a method that simple made it a pretty good value proposition, if I did say so myself.
And beneath the petals fluttering down toward the floor, five pedestals rose into view as the platform panels slid open.
Need I say more? Sitting demurely atop those pedestals were the prizes I had selected after much deliberation for this event… the Ooparts.
"The criteria I used to select Ooparts as prizes are as follows. First: does the item hold value through concrete practicality, rather than mere rarity?"
To put it simply, it was the same principle by which gold or diamonds held no value whatsoever in the cyber world.
This place wasn't the real world — it was a virtual reality meticulously realized through an absurd concentration of scientific technology.
Objects that derived their worth from scarcity in the real world simply didn't mean much here. You could make as many as you wanted, if you so desired.
"And second: does it possess practical, universal value?"
Back in the era I used to live in, there were paintings of a single dot on a canvas that sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, and works that the general public couldn't begin to understand but that industry experts alone rated highly.
People often say popular appeal and artistic merit are inversely proportional… but in the end, that so-called artistic merit always required a certain background knowledge to appreciate.
So I had no choice but to exclude from the prize list any items whose value most people would struggle to grasp.
In the twenty-second century, where the overall cultural level had regressed in the aftermath of the Great War, shoving modern art at people would have been pointless — almost no one would have been able to properly understand or accept it.
"And finally, third… does it possess a certain level of complexity or higher? After going through all the trouble of getting every quiz question right and winning a prize, it'd be pretty sad if someone who just glanced at it for a second snagged it right out from under you, right? So I mainly picked items that can't be easily imitated."
Step by step.
Saying that, I walked across the fairly spacious stage toward the prizes blanketed in petals.
The winners I'd been interviewing until just a moment ago had stepped off to the side so I could reveal the prizes.
Noise, handling the role of camera director, operated the camera to zoom in tightly on me standing close beside the prizes.
After checking the broadcast feed, I lightly lifted the nearest Oopart so the viewers could see it clearly and began the introduction.
"The first one is this! Also known as a music box… an orgel!"
"I'd love to explain it in detail like I usually do, but we don't have that much time left, so I'll keep it brief. All right — seeing is believing! If you wind the spring by turning this part of the wooden box really hard…"
Click-click. Click.
As I diligently turned the handle on the back of the music box clockwise, a winding sound came from inside the mechanism.
And once it felt fully wound, I lightly let go of the handle, and a clean, beautiful melody began to flow from the music box.
"What song is it, you ask? The song inside this music box is Joe Hisaishi's Merry-Go-Round of Life. Doesn't it sound lovely?"
If you sorted the viewers' opinions into like and dislike, they leaned more toward like — but there was no shortage of people wondering whether it was just a pretty white elephant.
From a practical standpoint, if you were going to listen to music on something that thick and heavy-looking, wouldn't it just be more convenient to carry around a PDA? That was the argument.
Well, it wasn't wrong. Practically speaking, this self-playing music box was the kind of thing that would have earned applause for being amazing back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Technically speaking… in the twenty-second century, which had already partially leapfrogged even the twenty-first, a question mark was bound to float up on its own.
"Tsk tsk tsk. Everyone, you only know half the story. A music box is an automatic playing device that was popular in the generation before turntables and cassette tapes. So it has that kind of historical significance, too. And on top of that…"
I held the music box in one hand and thrust it high toward the sky, declaring with the confidence of someone who had nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of.
"It contains five songs that can't be found anywhere else in this world!"
Mm-hmm. The music box alone might have felt a little underwhelming, but once you factored in five songs loaded into it, the story changed completely.
Essentially a one-plus-five. A truly aggressive discount sale. And as an event prize, it felt just right — neither too extravagant nor too light.
"And the second is a professional magic tool set! To briefly explain one of them…"
"The third is this. A side-menu recipe from a certain legendary hamburger franchise that no longer exists! The ingredient ratios are written out in full detail, so even someone who doesn't know much about cooking can easily…"
"The fourth is this! A famous offline board game series, One Night Werewolf! This board game, playable with six to twelve people, has excellent balance, so even beginners picking it up for the first time…"
"And the final prize is this. From the famous works written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes series… a selection of episodes from an unpublished short story collection! If you're a fan of this series, you might want to buy this even if it cost a fortune!"
As I explained the remaining prizes one by one, the chat was clearly buzzing with interest in how fascinating the items were.
But that gradually heating atmosphere inevitably cooled before long — because the people who would take those prizes home had already been decided.
Even if someone thought, I want that!, the opportunity had already sailed far away, leaving the vast majority of viewers with no choice but to stare blankly at the screen and suck their thumbs.
If you thought about it carefully, this situation wasn't great for the broadcast atmosphere.
Even if we went ahead and ran the O/X quiz for prize priority among the five winners, the viewers who were going to keep watching would keep watching either way.
But wasn't it possible that some people would be so envious of the winners that they couldn't bring themselves to watch my stream anymore?
Revealing the prizes first and then doing the O/X quiz might have been better… but it wasn't as though I hadn't already planned for a situation like this.
"Then, before we begin the final O/X quiz — the priority determination match…! At this rate, the people who unfortunately got eliminated might feel left out, right?"
The solution was simple. Just let everyone else participate in the final O/X quiz too, right? Along with a modest little prize, of course.
"For those of you who unfortunately didn't win your round, there's still one opportunity left. And that is… a mini-game where you guess which of these five people will take the final victory! Well… it's not an amazing prize, but still, it's more fun if we all enjoy it together, right?"
The moment I finished speaking, the winners' horses returned to their original positions. And on the viewers' screens, icons would have appeared above each horse asking which winner they wanted to choose.
As I'd said beforehand, the prize wasn't anything spectacular. Still, it was enough to raise participation motivation to a reasonable degree, I supposed.
"The prize is… nothing amazing. Just some edited videos I saved because they were too awkward to upload to my Olive channel? Still, they're videos themed around Ooparts in their own way, so they should be fun!"
Things like reading sessions that were an awkward length for the channel, or videos of me singing songs that didn't suit Nia's voice.
I did wonder whether it was okay to put out something like that as a prize.
But for people who'd already been eliminated from the game, it was at least a chance to snag a participation award of sorts, so I figured they wouldn't hate it that much. …Right?
Unexpectedly, though, the reaction came not from the chat, but first from the winners standing beside me.
The winners, who had been sitting quietly as if reading the room, suddenly started pouring out chat messages in a flood!
"W-well, since you won, I'll send them if you want. But they're not that amazing? I just left them alone because they were awkward to upload…"
I never expected this kind of reaction from their side. Apparently these people had assumed that because they were my unpublished edits, there must be something special about them…
They were just videos I'd cut because they were too short or felt lacking in entertainment value, so they really weren't that amazing. But if they wanted them, I'd give them.
"A-ahem. Then that should be enough explanation, right? Let's not drag this out and get straight to the main event! Final round! The last O/X quiz, competing for priority!"
Once everyone had finished selecting their final winner pick and I'd roughly finished directing traffic, I raised my hand high and made the declaration.
And with the distinctive horses hop-hopping between the O and X platforms, the final round began…
In the end, that game was claimed by the viewer with the nickname TinaTina, who had won the first round.
That viewer — whose gender I couldn't quite place — chose the Sherlock Holmes short story collection after some deliberation, while Raiki, one of the final two who had narrowly missed the win, took the side-menu recipe.
The rest took, in order, the music box, the magic tool set, and the board game.
Hmm…. Looking at it this way, the board game felt a little off-balance, but what could you do? If you didn't want it, you should have survived.
"Well then, that's all for today's stream! Those of you who received prizes will get an email containing the files through Olive within two days at most. And those of you who selected TinaTina as the final winner will also receive an email within two days! So… thank you so much for joining me today!"
And with a suitable ending remark, that was a wrap. I waved my arms back and forth at the camera gradually pulling away from me, saying goodbye.
Finally, looking at the broadcast screen that had switched to the standby display, I let out a small sigh and dropped the tension from my shoulders.
Thank goodness. A lot of people had crowded in, and I'd managed to finish the stream without any major incidents. I was truly relieved.
But that sense of relief couldn't help but shift into a dazed feeling when I saw the viewers still remaining even as the stream was ending.
Rather than people dropping off as time passed, even more had come flooding in after hearing the news…
It was because reality simply couldn't keep pace with such a sudden, explosive rise.