The Lost Dream — 1

Two weeks have passed since I returned to ordinary life.

Let me set down what happened, one piece at a time.

Polaris and I were back at the Royal Academy from the very next day. Victoria could not manage the same. The moment the tension left her, she collapsed, and she did not get up for three days.

The doctors said she looked like someone worked past endurance by brutal labor. All day long she had been using a power that leaves you hungry the moment you call on it, and she had stayed awake for more than a day and a half besides. It would have been stranger if she had not collapsed. She slept three days straight on an intravenous drip before she finally managed to rise.

Once Victoria was out of bed, she was questioned by the royal household, just as the people captured in Berne City had been. To my surprise, they said that her killing of Marquis Gaston was not a crime. And yet, watching the royal officials blur past that point, I had the sense that it was a crime all the same, and that they meant to treat the massacre she carried out in Nantes Village as something that had never happened.

I don't know why.

More than five thousand people died caught in Victoria's violence, and still it strikes me as strange. Perhaps they believe someone like that already lies within the royal grasp, and they intend to raise her.

In any case.

Victoria was investigated by the Crown and sent back to the Royal Academy without detention or any particular punishment. Released without charge, in other words. And that was not a story that applied to Victoria alone.

Everyone was investigated — everyone who had been on the scene when the royal aerial fleet arrived. They did not resist, and they did not run. They let themselves be taken quietly. After they reached the capital they were all locked in prison and questioned, each in a different place, and most of them walked out of those cells alive.

These were people who had meant to commit treason. With the royal house, you would expect them to kill every last one even if they surrendered, wouldn't you? The Gaston marquisate, too, had twisted the king's commands to suit itself and acted on them. For a kingdom it would not have been strange to lay treason on both and put them all to death. But the punishment that fell on them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was astonishingly slight.

No — those of ringleader rank were imprisoned, or saddled with vast debts. In the Gaston marquisate's case, a great portion of its holdings was confiscated back to the Crown. But that was all.

No one was executed.

Nor were they the only ones questioned. Polaris, who had gone with us to Berne City, was investigated as well. She, of course, was not sent to a cell. She was questioned while being treated properly, as a young lady of a noble house.

That was what unfolded in the week after we returned to the capital.

And yet no one comes to tell me I am to be investigated. Even now, two weeks on, there is nothing of the kind.

Why?

I thought I had witnessed every point that mattered, so why am I the exception? I wondered whether they meant to confirm, to a certain extent, what had occurred, and then listen to whatever I might say. The superhumans I created had displayed tremendous power, and I had multiplied them without restraint. It would hardly be strange if suspicion fell on me now, would it? So I guessed they intended to study me.

The second week, and there is no word at all.

It's strange.

And so, after I came back from Berne City, I simply went on with ordinary days in the place where I live. Where I was concerned, the business of Berne City ended there.

Now, daily life.

Aside from makeup classes being arranged for the three of us — myself, Polaris, and Victoria — on account of the days we had missed, the Royal Academy itself was quiet. Not because the students were indifferent. Something larger had buried it. The Crown had gone out of its way to spread word of what happened in Berne City, so that whenever a break came, the whole Academy grew loud with talk of it.

What the royal house announced was that three companies had made a mockery of the Crown. The three it chose to confront were Pride Industry, Rocketmobil Company, and Gun and Lefou Company. Not those firms alone, but every subsidiary of theirs as well. They have even stood up a separate team, and they say that every clockwork machine inside a state institution, at the least, will be inspected down to the last gear.

Through the state broadcaster, the Crown sorted what it had learned and announced it every day, filming the materials itself to put them on display. It filmed the ruined streets of Berne City, too.

The interesting part was this: the state broadcaster never stopped talking, while the major press stayed quiet. There are television channels, and not all of them are run directly by the state. On the state network and the small stations the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠story ran day after day, but the big channels never aired it as a special feature.

So what follows from that?

The announcement came around the fourth day after I returned to the capital, and the outlets began fighting one another once a week had passed. The major press made a brief noise right after the announcement and then held a long silence, while the smaller press tore into that silence without mercy. Newspapers carrying the story of Berne City are selling in astonishing numbers now. For a week after the Crown's first announcement — what conspiracy there had been, what had actually happened, why it had not been told anywhere else — every issue that reached the stands caught fire. Some outlets have even gone so far as to print special magazines and sell them, which rather says it all.

At the same time, every company tied to the three firms fell into serious crisis. Nobles with a stake in those industries are under investigation at this moment by other nobles acting under royal command, and the investigators were chosen from houses on bad terms with them.

Do you see what that means?

Yes. That's right.

They are dismantling those nobles in the open. At first ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the other nobles watched the Crown's mood and nibbled carefully; once the Crown shut its eyes, they ran wild. A wind of blood blew through.

The whole country fell into chaos. But it was not a bad chaos. It was the pain of cutting open a wound that had been left to fester.

Right now, the eyes of everyone in this country are fixed on a single thing. Not the incident in Berne City. The noise is because it has come out that corporations tried to move the nation itself. Listening through the eyes of a few Harvesters, I hear that other countries have begun investigating those same companies. Well, it was fatal, wasn't it. They had looked upon the king as something beneath a corporation.

In short, that is what this is.

If this were the world inside my faded memories, it would mean an operating-system company had built in a function that could look inside and steer things however it pleased. Even the security-software ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠company was in league with them. And that reach extended all the way to military weapons. What the worst case looks like has already been shown. The machines rebelled in the forest. That might have happened across the entire kingdom.

The country has begun to sanction the corporations with thoroughness.

Honestly, when I learned that the companies had held the major press and every machine in their grip, I thought an announcement would shave a little off their profits and then be over. They are firms stretched across the world. I assumed they could bury whatever a single country chose to say.

That was not how it went.

A week after we returned — last week, that is — the Crown published evidence that a backdoor existed, one capable of controlling every device, and that the companies had known in advance that accidents would come of a fundamental flaw in the power units. By the time it also emerged that they had bribed Marquis Gaston, landlord of Berne City, in order to bury the matter, the story filled the capital at the very least. That the three of us, myself included, had been absent from the Royal Academy was so small a thing it nearly disappeared.

Ah.

For the record, that announcement did not contain a single word about us.

What was officially announced is as follows.

There were interviews, too, of course, with citizens who had been there at the time.

It's terribly funny.

Boiled down, it comes to this. The companies had been drawing up a plan to rebel against the Crown, but the Crown learned of it ahead of time and caught them. They are still frantic to find the guilty.

But I know.

A society that runs on clockwork machines is about to meet a great change, and there are a great many people ready to step into the gap. The Harvesters of the Brightshin Slums, who received my memories. The Harvesters of Berne City, who used my memories. Those who were given a share of Daegon's memories, and of Yuanshi Tianzun's, will go in among them. The techniques they carry are dramatic enough to matter, so the world will change. A new revolution will come of it too, I expect.

All I have to do now is watch it quietly.

And so the large problem is settled.

The small one is still here.

Lunch, once the morning classes had ended. Victoria is beside me now, and worry still fills her face.

"Still no word from your parents?"

"No……."

It isn't that telephones don't exist, but in principle they can only be used inside a city. Long-distance calls are held tight by the state, and anything that isn't military business or a broadcast is difficult, they say. Not a matter of security — a matter of the technology itself, or so the explanation goes.

"When they drew the line to hold back the protesters in Berne City, they drove out every citizen living there. Once your parents find a place to settle, they'll get in touch."

"What if they're dead……."

Where has the Victoria gone who poured curses on them and told them to drown? Only a whining child is left. I comfort her.

What really became of those two?