Rumors, and Rumors
Dr. Myeong has a deep capacity for understanding.
Deep, in the sense that if something doesn't make sense to her, she latches on and refuses to let go.
"That makes any sense to you? Deciding whether an operation succeeded by majority vote? So what if the majority had raised their hands for failure?"
"You already know. Why ask."
"It would count as a failure?"
"Obviously."
"But the kidnapping actually succeeded. Well, it's a little funny putting it that way from the side that got kidnapped... Still. No matter what anyone says, it was a success. And they're going to settle that by majority vote?"
From what I'd heard, this hand-raising culture of theirs only held inside the settlement. Step outside, and even they abandoned the principle of majority rule. Out there, they obeyed the field commander's orders without question. The outside world left no room for a show of hands, or for any of that nonsense.
At any rate, Tin Can, who had been listening quietly beside us, stepped forward with all the authority of a local.
"If the majority opinion is that it failed, then the operation failed. But that would never happen, right? Look—it wrapped up cleanly on the side of success, no problems at all. That's the greatness of majority rule. Everyone just raises a hand according to their own conscience, and the right conclusion always comes out. No other complicated process required."
"What are you even saying? Majority rule doesn't apply to everything."
"Tsk, tsk. That's why the people living out in the world never advance. There's nothing majority rule can't handle."
So this place wasn't the outside world, was that it. The same way the people at Headquarters thought. I'd known the Human Meat Factory crowd considered themselves the finest specimens alive, but hearing it straight from the source was still something.
"Ha! This is the outside world too!"
Dr. Myeong, refusing to lose.
In any case, the Human Meat Factory's Hyper-Democracy was exactly as I'd heard. Majority rule, observed to the letter. They'd thrown flexibility to the dogs, but thanks to that, the grand principle—decide in favor of whatever satisfies the majority—was always kept. There was talk that the whole thing had started from an inferiority complex, a need to stay ahead of Headquarters in everything. Hard to say. It looked like a model case of an inferiority complex vented in the wrong direction, and yet the result was that they had made dazzling progress. In truth, the railgun probably deserved most of the credit. These people, though, believed it was thanks to Hyper-Democracy. That conclusion had probably been reached by a show of hands as well.
"This is the outside world? You sound just like those Yeouido bastards. And you, a fake doctor."
"I really can't take this. I'll show you exactly what I can—mmph!"
Be quiet. One wrong move, and she could end up chained here for life as a slave for medical labor.
"Mmph!"
"You'll be quiet, won't you?"
"Haaah... F-fine."
I could practically see the steam pouring off Dr. Myeong's boiling insides. Even so, she didn't push back hard. She swallowed the anger, probably because she figured I had some good plan waiting.
"We will now conduct a body search."
Before we were allowed any farther into the settlement, another search. These soldiers were different from the ones who had dragged us here, and judging by their gear, they looked like a fairly elite unit. The search was meticulous enough that I half wondered whether they were counting the stitches in our clothes.
"Don't move. Stay still."
"My side's ticklish, so go easy."
For Dr. Myeong, who was extremely ticklish, a thorough body search was pure poison.
"...Keep squirming, and I'll make sure you never move again."
"I'm telling you, it isn't something I can control."
"Turning you into a complete cripple is something I can control."
"..."
I could feel it. The threat was sincere. Unlike Tin Can, these were the sort who looked ready to do something the moment the mood struck them. Time to take the wind out of their sails.
"Lay a hand on us the wrong way, and you won't come out of it looking pretty either."
The man flared at that and shoved his face in until our noses were a breath from touching.
"What did you say. Go on. Run your mouth again."
Gladly.
"Shame. I just caught the perfect chance, and this thing won't go off."
"...?"
"This necklace. If it blew right now, you'd die with me. So how exactly do I get it to blow?"
"You son of a bitch!"
He scrambled backward and went down flat on his ass.
"Handle us a little rougher. Get lucky, and it might actually go off."
"Shit..."
"What are you scared of? According to the analysis from your own expert on things that explode, the person standing next to it ought to be safe."
Even so, call something a bomb and fear is unavoidable. The bluff worked, at any rate. After that, the body search continued with a gentler hand.
"Good. You pass."
The long search ended, and we were allowed through the Human Meat Factory's massive main gate. Kidnapped, yes, but through it all the same.
Once the elites in charge of the search had gone, it was Tin Can's turn again.
"All right. We're covering your eyes now. Cooperate nicely, will you?"
So they didn't mean to show us the inside of the settlement. That was a move with real weight to it. I gave a docile nod, and Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo accepted the situation without much resistance. He had just started blindfolding us when—
"Hold on."
He'd noticed.
"...Why are your eyes red?"
"Huh?"
Indoors, Dr. Myeong's crimson glow had begun to show, just a little. Easy to miss at a glance, but trying to cover her eyes had given it away.
"Are you an Imm—"
It was widely known that an Immune—someone who didn't turn into a zombie even after a monster's bite—had red eyes. Not exactly common knowledge, though. Closer to legend. Almost no one had ever seen an Immune in person. I'd met every kind of human there was, and the only Immune I'd ever met face to face was Dr. Myeong. Rarer, when you thought about it, than a human who had successfully used two or more Ability Cores.
"Ha... Here we go again. Asking if I'm an Immune?"
Used to the situation, Dr. Myeong slipped straight into the act. I suddenly understood why she was so good at it.
"There are still people who believe that story? I'm sick to death of it. Fine. I'm an Immune. What are you going to do about it?"
I ought to back her up.
"Someone who still believes that legend. Cut off from the outside, so the news travels slow? All that talk about an advanced settlement, and this is all you've got?"
"Right? Kind of disappointing. It's just a melanin thing."
"Well, I'll be! Disappointing as all get-out! Don't even know your paladin pigment!"
Elder Heo was surprisingly quick to fall in step.
"I—I know that! I was just testing you!"
"Testing what?"
"There's a thing! The... anyway! While your eyes are covered, walk careful so your feet don't get tangled. Unlike the dirt out in the world, the ground here is all paved solid. You fall, it goes owie. Hehehe."
If you think Tin Can isn't a bad guy, raise your hand.
Eyes covered, we entered the true interior of the Human Meat Factory, and the settlers broke into cheers, as if they'd been given a spectacle.
"They captured the Postman!"
"They actually caught a real civil servant?"
We were spoils of war, ornaments on a triumphal procession. Not every settler was cheering, though.
"All this fuss over a mere postman?"
"He might not be an ordinary postman. I heard he's a veteran among veterans, the kind who runs high-difficulty missions."
"Still just a postman."
"Everyone who thinks this is a big deal, raise your hands!"
Before Hyper-Democracy, a petty personal opinion had no effect whatsoever on the prevailing current.
"Tsk."
"See? So don't kill the mood. Shut your mouth and clap!"
Far from wielding any influence, those minority opinions only made the majority shine brighter by being stamped out. That was the right way to see it.
Their cheering was so loud, in any case, that Elder Heo's muttering from the very back of the line never reached me at the front.
"Dad's asking if this situation is really all right."
"I never said it was all right. I said there'd be a way."
"Th... there really is a way, right?"
"Tell Elder Heo there is. If you want to believe that too, then believe it."
Even so, this wasn't the worst situation.
"Them covering our eyes is good news, at least."
"Huh?"
"They covered our eyes to hide what the settlement looks like inside."
"Oh. Preparing for when they let us go?"
"Right."
"Whew... Then that's a relief."
I thought that would be enough to settle Dr. Myeong, but a problem came up at once. Hands pulled the blindfolds away.
"From here, you can look all you want."
The interior of the Human Meat Factory spread out before us. The ground where we stood was high enough that the naked layout of the place fit into a single glance.
"...Woo Jungkook? This is okay, right?"
"Take it to mean they aren't guarding against us all that hard, and it's fine. All the better."
I talked around it, but Dr. Myeong's lips had started to tremble again. I turned to check the path we'd come by. A building like a massive warehouse stood there, without a single window, so nothing of the inside could be seen. To reach this spot without passing through that building, we would have had to take a long way around. They had cut the distance by going through it, and covered our eyes for a while so we wouldn't see what was inside. Either way, the fact remained. There had been a part they didn't want shown.
"Look all you want!"
Tin Can was having a grand time.
"This right here is utopia! Hehehehe!"
Utopia. The name these people had given their own settlement. Not every advanced settlement was an ideal, but I had to admit the level of development here was considerable. The interior was nothing like what I'd heard, and Dr. Myeong was thinking the same thing.
"It's pretty different from what I expected..."
"What were you expecting."
"I thought it would reek of factory."
It certainly didn't. One of the things that symbolized the Human Meat Factory was its forest of smokestacks pouring out black smoke. Naturally, I had pictured the inside packed with factories, a cold place plastered over in gray. Seeing it with my own eyes, though, if I had to choose a color to represent the place, there was nothing but green. There were plenty of factories, true, but plants grew thick in every gap between them.
"So many plants, I tell you. Takes me back... Before the air raids, there was green between the high-rises too."
Green plants had vanished from the places where people lived—from inside the settlements—largely because of the steel roofs. Even in settlements with a stable life, you almost never saw anyone growing crops to cover their food. With exactly one exception: the alien seeds that fell from the sky. Just like Kangaroo, the settlement burned to ash along with the raiders in an air raid, most settlers lived on the fruit of alien plants as their staple.
"Even a settlement with this much sunlight, and they're still growing alien plants?"
Dr. Myeong sounded puzzled, but it wasn't hard to understand. They barely needed water, they grew fast, and the fruit was high in calories—superior, in fact, to the old crops of Earth.
"Green crops alone can't solve the food problem. That's why."
If I had to point out one thing, it was that the plants sprouting from alien seeds took on a red color. Such a bleak red that people said even a person of sound mind would fall into depression from staring too long at an alien field. I'd never actually seen anyone who had, but thanks to the rumor, nobody looked at the fields. For that reason, they didn't grow alien plants inside Headquarters. The plants were needed to make the compressed powdered rations, so they grew them out in the world and brought in only the fruit. For reference, the reason Headquarters—which had no steel roof—didn't grow green plants was simply that they didn't want to hire more civil servants to tend them.
"With this much, food ought to be plenty. And they still eat human flesh? I hate to say it, but is it for the fla... the fla..."
"You asking if they eat it for the flavor?"
"Nnngh. It's awful even getting the words out."
Looked like Dr. Myeong had believed the rumors exactly as they stood.
"Probably a false rumor they spread to scare people off."
"Oh? That's what it is?"
"Cannibals. That's a tribe you'd want to avoid even more than your average raider. Who wants dealings with someone who looks at you and sees food."
A settlement cut off from the outside with absolute thoroughness. The rumor that they ate people amounted to a defensive strategy.
"So the place I thought ate people is actually plastered in green..."
"And a place that's achieved a democracy from another dimension."
"That part can get lost."
We walked a long while ringed by soldiers, and eventually passed near a field of alien seeds.
"I heard the outside settlements plant alien seeds in their front yards, but seeing it myself is something new. Red plants in a residential zone."
Dr. Myeong, clicking her tongue over an ordinary sight.
"Growing them outside because they cause depression is something only places with room to spare do, like Headquarters. You just have to not stare at them all the time."
"Pfft."
"Why are you laughing."
"You've got a wrong rumor you believe, too. It's funny."
Hm? What was wrong with it?
"Well, not many people know this."
"There was another reason?"
Dr. Myeong lowered her voice to a whisper meant for me alone. The scent of mouthwash carried a strange chill.
"This is knowledge only the people deeply involved in Headquarters public health have. Plant alien seeds, and the nature of the soil changes."
First I was hearing of it.
"It changes?"
I had never seen any such phenomenon in a single settlement I'd visited.
"You can't tell from the outside. Analyze the soil, though, and you can tell it's definitely changed."
"Changed how?"
"I don't know. Someone might. From where I stand, that's as far as it goes."
"So it gets worse, anyway?"
"Well, underground they're reacting to it sensitively. We're right beneath Headquarters, so plant alien seeds and it affects Geofront's sky, doesn't it?"
A clunk, then a long screech. The sound of a massive door opening. Dr. Myeong gestured for me to look ahead.
"What are you two whispering about?"
My eyes met Tin Can's at once.
"What else. We were discussing whether to kill you on the way out of here, or just leave."
"...You're something else, in a lot of ways. Not just anyone gets to be a postman, huh."
"The passing score goes up every year, so if you want to apply for open recruitment, hurry."
I looked through the opened door. A massive golden statue stood inside. Prometheus Holding the Scales. Rumor had it the thing wasn't plated—it was a solid mass of real gold. Reading the feel of the day, this one too—
"That thing real gold?"
"Regrettably, plated."
"Figures."
"Don't say I told you."
The Human Meat Factory tour ended only once we stood before the plated statue. What greeted us now was—
"Lights out."
Pitch-black darkness. And someone who wanted to meet the Postman.