Finally, the Surface (3)
"Are you back with us?"
I waved my hand in front of Arwen's face as her eyelids fluttered open. Her mechanical black pupils tracked my fingers as they moved.
"Ah, yes. What happened?"
She looked a bit dazed, as if she hadn't fully come back to herself yet.
"What happened? You've been out for almost an hour."
"That long? It felt like only a few seconds..."
"So, is anything different? How's the power situation?"
"One moment, please. I need to run a diagnostic."
Arwen went quiet and closed her eyes for a while. Still, her tone and manner seemed about the same as usual, so it didn't look like her body had been hijacked or anything. ...It is fine, right? Nothing looked off through [Beast's Senses] either, so we were probably good.
"Well, this is remarkable. The power problem has been solved in an entirely different way."
After about three minutes, Arwen opened her eyes again and reported her status. Apparently things had worked out without any hidden traps, because her voice carried genuine wonder.
"What happened, exactly?"
"I can sense that I've become closely linked to some unknown space. It's assisting my computations and supplying a small but steady flow of power. It feels as though an external server has appeared to handle all my calculations for me."
"...So you're saying that just like you used to be connected to the lab, now you're connected to somewhere else?"
When I racked my brain and put it that way, Arwen nodded.
"Something like that. Except this connection shows no sign of severing no matter how far I go. I have no idea where this substitute server is located... In any case, thanks to it, my required power output has dropped dramatically. I could maintain my current state on my own internal power source alone."
"Oh! So you can come outside the lab with me now?"
"Yes. Wonderful. Now I can finally repay my debt to you."
Arwen answered my excited question with a soft smile. I had no idea what exactly had happened, but either way, the problem was solved. I'd be able to bring Arwen along when I left the lab. That was a real comfort. All I could do was thank Dr. Ilena.
Arwen, too, bowed her head for a brief moment of silent tribute.
Pssht—
Just as we were about to head back out of the chamber, another holographic message rose from the floor.
...One gets old and forgets the important things. I find myself recording an addendum, rather late in the day.
"Doctor?"
Another hologram flickered to life. Unlike the previous message, Dr. Ilena's face looked even more deeply lined with age. Judging by the smudges of soot staining her white coat in several places, this recording must have been made some time after the first one.
The cube is what maintains the barrier protecting the laboratory. If you absorbed the cube, then naturally the Spacetime Barrier, stripped of its power source, will collapse.
'The Spacetime Barrier...?'
A spectacularly sci-fi term had just dropped out of nowhere. Could that barrier have been the cause of the bizarre scenery outside, where dozens of suns hung in the sky at once?
Puh... the Spacetime Barrier. It was only a prototype, so I never even gave it a proper name. In any case, this barrier is a shield that, as its name suggests, distorts time and space. The time multiplier—let's see, I set it so time would flow 2.17 times slower inside than outside, in theory at least. I have no idea what state it was in by your time; I couldn't gather enough data, you see.
"Oh, no."
"..."
Within 24 hours of the moment you absorbed the cube, the Spacetime Barrier will collapse completely. If you intend to go outside, I recommend you wait until after it does. Otherwise, you might end up a castaway stranded between time and space.
Pssht—
With the Doctor's final words, the hologram vanished entirely.
"Don't tell me even more than 300 years could have passed out there?"
"Based on the circumstances, that's highly likely."
Three hundred years alone was an unfathomable stretch of time... What if it turned out to be something like ten thousand?
When we stepped out of the facility that had housed the cube, the dozens of suns were still pouring blazing light down onto the surface. The scenery looked no different from before. But even setting aside the vanished columns of light stretching into the sky, there was now a clearly visible change from before.
"Look at that. The sky's cracking."
"Oho... it seems the Spacetime Barrier is already beginning to collapse."
Across the blue sky, enormous fissures had been carved like lines drawn across a sheet of paper. Which meant that everything until now hadn't been the real scenery at all.
"The dozens of suns must have been a strange phenomenon caused by time and space overlapping. I can't say I understand the exact mechanism, though."
"If we'd walked out without thinking, that could have been really bad..."
Just as the Doctor warned, we might have ended up as castaways lost between time and space.
"Anyway, I wonder what things are actually like out there. Please don't tell me humanity's gone completely extinct."
Was I really going to have to film a primitive-era survival documentary with Arwen?
"We'll know once we go out. More importantly, there's something we need to do first."
"?"
Arwen led me somewhere. Anywhere, I just wanted to get inside quickly. With the suns still flexing their full might overhead, I felt like my brain was about to be scrambled.
Arwen stopped walking in front of a facility laid out with a long runway. We went inside the largest of its buildings.
"This is... a hangar?"
Inside, a monstrously huge aircraft occupied the entire space. It was so massive that a single one of them filled the roomy hangar from wall to wall. I wasn't exaggerating—it looked like it could have held several tanks besides.
"That's right. Remember I said the valuables left their final trace here?"
"Ahh..."
Now I remembered. Under normal circumstances, we would have come here to search for something that could replace Arwen's power source.
"Whoa. Don't tell me all of this is the 'valuables'? This place is a straight-up treasure vault."
Brown boxes were stacked up like small hills. Made of sturdy metal, they gave off a distinctly military feel at a glance.
"I hate to disappoint you, but... I doubt there's anything particularly special inside."
"Huh? That's a different tune from last time."
"Well, back then we didn't know about the Spacetime Barrier."
But Arwen poured cold water on my excitement. "The truly valuable items would all have been shipped out before the barrier activated and cut this place off from the outside. Whatever remains is bound to be lower-priority goods."
"Hmm... you think so? Well, let's do some treasure hunting anyway. Surely at least one useful thing will turn up."
I said it with plenty of bravado, but as for me, I had no way of opening a single seam-less box. I had no choice but to waddle along behind Arwen like a duckling.
Psshk—
Arwen opened the nearest box. It transformed its shape automatically, revealing the contents inside.
"Ugh, the smell. I have no idea what this is, but it's completely spoiled."
"Food...? I can't identify it either."
"Toss it. Toss it."
The box felt too light to be solid metal, which suggested something strange inside—we shoved all the odd ones into a corner wholesale.
"The next box is... oho. And this one?"
"What? What is it?"
While I was closing up another foul-smelling box and hauling it to the corner, Arwen, who was inspecting a different one, let out a small gasp of delight.
"It's something you like, Ha Jun."
"...Is it food?"
"Correct."
Nom nom.
I popped the round little something Arwen handed me straight into my mouth. A bright, tangy lemon flavor flooded my mouth.
"It's candy..."
"This one was fortunately in a preservation bag. It's a premium brand, but why on earth would something like this be in a valuables crate?"
"Mmm... so good..."
Palm-sized bag of candy: acquired. I shoved the opened box aside and kept unboxing, rolling the candy around in my mouth.
Clink.
"...Now this is an elixir."
"An elixir?"
After several dud boxes, Arwen had drawn a winning ticket once again. From a crate still radiating cold, she pulled out transparent vials filled with a clear, pale-green liquid.
"Let's see... according to the instructions, these are of the virility-enhancement variety."
"You've got to be kidding me. Why would anyone bother transporting that? Is this research institute even sane?"
"By price, they were extraordinarily expensive goods. Their effectiveness was absolutely guaranteed. So apparently they made money too. It seems they packed the profitable items as well."
"The effects were guaranteed, you say?"
"Ah, yes. That's why they kept producing them steadily. They were the item the wealthy sought out most; taking one would transform your constitution entirely, so they were extremely popular. Apparently they remained a bestseller through the ages."
Humans, honestly.
Grumbling to herself, Arwen shoved the virility elixirs off into a corner.
"...Is the expiration date even okay?"
"Enhanced Humans don't need such things."
"Ahem!"
"And besides, you wouldn't have any use for them anyway, would you?"
...I had no comeback for that.
The unboxing wrapped up quickly. There were simply too many boxes containing useless things. Just as Arwen had said, these must have been the lower-priority goods. It felt a lot like the personal effects of executives, if I had to describe it.
"Still, we saved one thing for sure."
I pulled the short black stiletto out of the final box and held it up to the sunlight. For a mere dagger, the blade bore a beautiful wave pattern. On one side, the name Obsidian had been elegantly engraved in Chinese characters.
Clang!
...When I tested it against the blade I'd snapped in half earlier, the side that lost its edge was the broken one. A clear victory for [Obsidian]. If it hadn't been too short to use as anything but a throwing weapon, this would have been my main armament—a real shame.
"It seems to be made of a metal unknown to me. This is nearly military-grade material, and yet... did someone embezzle it, I wonder?"
"Who cares either way. And hey, we got new clothes too. Thank goodness. The shoes are nice too."
Some of the boxes had contained clothing. Light, thin garments like something you'd wear for jogging. Thanks to them, I'd been transformed from someone dressed like a primitive caveman into something closer to a modern human.
"These are a bit tight on me, though. The original owner must have been shorter than I am."
Arwen wore the old military uniform she'd acquired inside the transport helicopter. It was a woman's, so there was no way it would fit me.
"You're just too tall. What are you, about 180 centimeters?"
"181 centimeters. Compared to that, you're rather short, Ha Jun. About 164, I'd say?"
"Damn it. Stay back."
When Arwen sidled up to me, my field of vision was suddenly filled with the chest of her uniform, stretched to its bursting point. An overwhelming difference in height.
"I'll end up taller this time, right? I'm pretty sure I'm growing at least a little..."
"Who can say? Height varies from individual to individual depending on which genes are combined."
"No..."
I absolutely had to break 180 centimeters this life!
"Hehe. Just kidding. At minimum, you'll grow taller than I am. I remember the baseline specification being 185 centimeters. Everyone wanted to be tall, after all."
"Phew..."
Only after Arwen's firm answer could I finally relax.
"Alright, now that everything's done, what's next?"
"Let's look around the lab some more. We might be able to find supplies."
But the moment we stepped back outside, my plans were revised on the spot—because of the small white objects falling from the sky. When I reflexively held out my palm, the thing left the faintest chill for an instant before melting into water.
"...Snow?"
I looked up to find snowflakes drifting down from the cracked, fissured sky. True, the hot sunlight evaporated them into water almost the moment they landed. But snow was snow.
"It really is snow. This region never used to get snowfall... this is serious."
Whooo—
A wind like a slab of ice slithered up my spine and sent shivers racing through my body. Wait, I'm still wearing short sleeves, aren't I?