The Second Birthday
He said he needed time to practice and to look into the information he had come across.
Once back on the surface, Alan began investigating Katan's movements in earnest. Naturally, that included his disciples as well.
"The first disciple died in a dispute. The second died in a plane crash. The third died mid-experiment. And so on down the list—the eighth went missing after leaving a record that said, 'Do not look for me.' Why are they all dead or gone?"
"Accidents, do you think? Or murdered?"
"You're saying someone interfered?"
"Plenty of people wanted Katan's knowledge. The disciples just weren't capable of protecting it."
It was the cruel underside of the world. For all its dazzling progress in magitech, it was still a jungle at heart. The towering buildings and tangled streets were simply another kind of savanna.
Alan stroked his left eye.
"Perhaps this eye is—"
"Wouldn't there be one of them locked away in the Tailor's basement too?"
Alan gave a slight nod. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for that captive—him, or her—trapped down there in the dark.
Time came for Taylor to drift off into dreamland, for Shiva to go pay his respects to the Mother, and for Alan to pretend he was sleeping.
Does the Dream Library count as actually sleeping?
Alan watched the books filling the empty shelves one by one. The Eye of Akasha, which could comprehend all things—that was what he intended to make this place: the starting point of it all.
Observe a phenomenon or an object, analyze it as big data in the same instant, and wouldn't that amount to seeing through everything in existence?
He sat down on a worn-out quilt spread in a corner of the library. It looked exactly like the one he had used back in his days in Lanka.
When he touched it, a rough, coarse texture met his fingers. Whether that was the original feel or merely an idealized reproduction, he couldn't tell.
If only those pirates hadn't come after me.
In the course of investigating Katan's disciples, the memory of the drug cartel had surfaced, and naturally his thoughts had traveled all the way down that road. There was nothing even Alan could do about it. They say that if you try not to think about something, you only end up dwelling on it more.
Would the cartel boss know what became of the disciples?
He seemed to be mulling over the disciples' identities, but his thoughts were really somewhere else entirely. Alan's eyes turned, rare for him, genuinely fierce.
The slave traders in Aromaa would know who those pirates were.
The next morning, when Alan woke, Box did not so much as wiggle.
The human brain is a mischievous thing—try to forget something, and it only brings the memory to the fore. The image grows sharper and sharper, until at last it is driven deep into your mind.
What happens in the listener's head when someone commands, "Do not think about what an ant looks like"?
Alan was caught in much the same phenomenon. He had been working hard to forget, but investigating Katan and his disciples' whereabouts had dredged up the memories of Aromaa and the pirates.
Try as he might to bury it, the thought linked to thought and grew fatter by the minute. He tried pushing it back by reading magitech papers—useless. He tried losing himself in modifying the Power Suit—same result.
Alan gave a sidelong glance at Box, which had gone mysteriously docile lately, then stepped through a door tucked into a corner of the warehouse. A very small private room greeted its owner, tiny compared to the vast space around it.
The moment he lay down on the bed, he closed his eyes and connected to the Samramansang.
A virtual world steeped in every kind of magic—illusion and mind-branch magic above all—unfolded before his eyes. Points gathered into lines, and the lines wove themselves into tangled threads that formed yet another city.
It was no ordinary city. Buildings that punched up through the Cloud Sea lined every street, and great whales branded with advertising billboards drifted across the sky.
The moment Alan appeared, shadows rose from the city's dark corners. The hackers intended to teach a painful lesson to anyone reckless enough to log in without even a Brain Expansion Device.
"You've lost your survival instinct, haven't you."
A hacker wearing a diver skin aimed a harpoon gun at Alan. Getting skewered wouldn't hurt, exactly—but the moment it hit, every manner of magic would devour his mind.
The harpoon flew at Alan. In any dispute inside the Samramansang, the decisive factors were mana and mental fortitude.
Alan gazed calmly at the tip of the harpoon. And he willed it: let the point of that iron skewer turn on the hacker instead of on me.
"Ghk!"
His wish was granted. The harpoon skewered the hacker through the forehead, and the man thrashed in midair. He wouldn't die, but the damage had to be severe.
"Wait—that guy? Hey, he's done for."
Someone had recognized Alan.
"Who is that?"
"No idea. Some lunatic who logs in without a mental barrier."
The hackers, true to their name as Sharks, dove down into the Cloud Sea. Beneath the clouds lay every kind of refuse and dangerous debris, but to them it was nothing at all.
The instant Alan began wondering what to do about the Sharks, a stingray bearing a police marker glided smoothly into view and swallowed the lot of them.
With the brief commotion over, it was time to look up news of Lanka. The moment he summoned the keyword, his body whisked off somewhere at tremendous speed.
In the time it took to blink once, stone slabs of every size appeared around him. Alan grabbed the nearest of the slabs circling him.
🗓 Posted: One month ago
⛓ Status: Still an economic colony of Sol-Dos
🔥 Civil war: Constant outbreaks
💀 The people: Ever groaning under suffering
It was recent enough that he read the text straight away. Lanka remained an economic colony of Sol-Dos. Civil war erupted at every turn, and the people lived in constant anguish.
Alan read another slab. International organizations and human rights groups cried out about Lanka's plight, but that was all it amounted to—a cry.
They lent their voices to lofty titles and impressive letterheads, but none of them dared make a direct move that might ruffle Sol-Dos's feathers.
In the end, the world was a jungle.
Dress it in whatever ideology you liked, advance it into whatever civilization you pleased—the essence never changed.
Can't be helped, so long as we're born as living creatures.
Everyone you met was a competitor, and a distribution of resources decided purely by the pecking order of power only fanned that flame.
This time, a slab with photographs and video attached passed before Alan's eyes. Some Lankans fled the country, but in eight or nine cases out of ten, the sea became their grave. Even the survivors had nothing bright waiting for them.
The nearest land to island-bound Lanka was the Southern Continent—and though it belonged to the same New World, its public safety was a far cry from the Northern Continent where Sol-Dos stood.
A nation where drug production accounted for most of the GDP. A country on its knees before the gangs. Tribal states that called themselves a union but were too busy devouring one another to do anything else, and so on.
No wonder the pirates run wild out there.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to meet the pirates who had caught him—but the odds of finding them were slim, and it would have been a burden on Taylor and Shiva besides. There were ways to go alone, of course.
The old man would never allow it. And now that I think of it, there's the passport problem too.
Strictly speaking, Alan was an illegal resident. Maze City was a special autonomous city, inclined to look the other way for anyone working as an explorer—but the underlying truth remained.
Kasara was Sol-Dos territory, so travel there posed no problem. But a destination overseas was another matter.
If I put my mind to it, I could slip past border patrols without much trouble—but it'd be exhausting.
Alan thought back to when he had first set foot in Sol-Dos. He had escaped the surveillance net unscathed thanks to his fellow illegal immigrants drawing the guards' attention—but that had only been the true beginning.
Nature took no one's side, and above all, Sol-Dos's land was absurdly vast. Just picturing the endless marches and the scramble for food filled him with instinctive reluctance.
If I applied, would they actually issue me a proper ID?
Work conscientiously as an explorer for three or four years, and you could earn citizenship on the grounds that you'd contributed to economic development. That is, if you were an ordinary explorer.
It's flattering myself, but...
When Alan took stock of himself, "ordinary" couldn't have been further from the truth. He mentioned all this to Taylor after logging out of the Samramansang.
"You spent a full year down to the Snowfield, so you should qualify. Depth 4, and a magitech engineer on top of it—that makes you skilled labor. What was it, a year in the Labyrinth?"
"Yes. A little over a year, actually. Why do you ask?"
"Then we're throwing you a birthday party."
"...Excuse me?"
"Explorers get two birthdays. The day they were born, and the day they first entered the Labyrinth."
In the early days of Labyrinth exploration, the equipment explorers carried was abysmal, and reliable information was vanishingly scarce. And they were supposed to step into a suspicious Spatial Gate that had appeared out of nowhere? Nobody in their right mind would have made that choice.
But people and civilizations advance through challenge and trial and error. The casualties mounting day after day were, in a way, the natural consequence.
"That's the kind of world it was, so if you survived your first year, they threw a feast and called it your second birthday."
"Some people don't bother with it, though."
"It's lost some of its meaning these days, like you said—just another anniversary now. Come to think of it, you skipped the birthday you were actually born with last time, because it was a hassle."
"Let's just keep it simple and get a meal."
"Again?"
Just then the warehouse door opened, and Shiva came inside. Taylor beckoned to him urgently.
"Perfect timing. Get over here and explain the importance of anniversaries to this emotionally barren young man."
"Hmm..."
Unlike his usual self, Shiva hesitated and fidgeted. Watching him, Taylor's chest grew tight with irritation.
"Now what's the matter with you? Planning to be as infuriating as Alan?"
"I have bad news."
"What? Don't tell me you got excommunicated. I knew a day like this would come. Don't worry—we won't abandon you yet. And while you're at it, quit slapping the name 'holy water' on plain booze."
"Brother, that is not it at all. What sort of person do you take me for?"
"A mooching monk. Look at your own conduct. Whenever it's time for prayers, you slip off on some excuse or other, don't you?"
"How could you possibly know that..."
"Live long enough and you learn. Even people from a completely different walk of life all think along the same lines, once you look closely."
Taylor was grinning broadly, so Shiva shot back,
"I reached an understanding with the Mother on that matter, so it is no problem."
"In your dreams, literally?"
Shiva nodded. There was no way to peer inside his head, so as long as he asserted it like that, there was no clean way to refute him. It could technically be done, but it would only degenerate into a war of words.
"Jokes aside, spit out whatever it is. All of it, no dragging your feet."
"I have to leave on a business trip for a while."
"A trip? Go on, then. I give my blessing."
Taylor agreed readily enough. With Shiva gone, Alan would be staying on the surface, which meant plenty more time to visit the Western Sky.
"Think of it as a chance to enjoy a little travel while you're at it—I'll chip in. Stay gone as long as you like."
He was rummaging through his pockets for cash chips when Shiva shook his head, firm and resolute.
"It is not an ordinary business trip. The brothers and sisters in Kamiro have sent word asking for our aid."
"Kamiro's a country on the Southern Continent, isn't it. What's going on over there..."
Taylor connected to the Samramansang on the spot and searched Kamiro's latest headlines. The moment he entered the query, a flood of information and news unspooled before him.
His eyes glowing blue, Taylor read the information aloud as it scrolled past.
"Gang destroys Mother Church branch... oh, good grief..."
The Mother Church was a religion that acted with force. In countries short on law enforcement, its members sometimes appointed themselves the police, which made them a thorn in every criminal's side.
Why else would they train combat monks and battle nuns as a matter of course? Without strength, one could neither follow the Mother's word nor defend one's faith.
"There are monks and sisters on the Southern Continent too, no? What about them?"
"They are all very busy people, which is why the request reached us here."
"Fair enough—security's a disaster over there. They probably can't spare a single body."
It was a grave mistake to laugh off a gang of thugs. Large organizations had been known to crush entire small nations flat.
"So I must go provide support for a time. The other brothers and sisters here are in the same position."
"Support? Gangs versus... no. Never mind."
Taylor clamped his mouth shut. What he had been about to spit out was, That's a very dignified way of saying you're going to crack some skulls. But now was not the time for jokes.
"Anything I can do to help?"
"You are too kind, Brother Alan, but I must decline."
Alan, who had been listening while servicing his Power Suit, came over to stand beside the two of them. A familiar word had drifted out of the conversation. Kamiro—the very country where the port city of Aromaa happened to be.
"I'll go as well."
"Your offer honors me, Brother Alan, but there is no need."
"I have business of my own in that direction. I couldn't find a way to bring it up, so this works out rather well."
Taylor's eyebrow rose slightly. He knew what Alan had been through, so he understood the meaning at once. The distinct silhouette of the Western Sky grew steadily blurrier in his mind.
"If Alan's going... then I... might as well..."
"Brother—