Part 1
Outskirts of Paris, France. 4 PM.
So tired.
My shoulders were already slumping.
It was evening when I arrived at the closest international airport to Paris, but my body thought I should already be in bed. I was completely jetlagged. The in-flight lunch I had eaten had felt more like a late-night snack to .
Truth!
Soone was calling a weird na. And in English even though this was France. The na was fairly well-known online, but only one person in the world called that in real life. I was pretty sure not even my Vampire older sister and Zombie little sister knew that na.
To be clear, I chose the screenna because Satori ans enlightennt, which ans the truth. I ended up blushing pretty hard when I looked into it later and learned the word is also used to refer to the omnipotent and omniscient god.
Yawwwn. Anastasia, doesnt it defeat the purpose of a screenna to use it out where people can see my face? Youre basically doxxing when you do that.
Oh, co on. The world is flooded with surveillance caras, phones, and drones, so online and offline are basically the sa thing. Your information is getting stolen no matter where you are.
The fact that she called them surveillance caras instead of security caras and said my information was being stolen instead of collected proved she was a true hacker. Her hostility wasnt directed at anyone in particular. At her age, she wanted to attack the entire large system.
Anastasia was an 11-year-old girl.
She had long blonde hair and skin so pale it nearly looked transparent, but she actually attended one of Aricas foremost universities and constructed computers larger than harbor warehouses.
Also, she wasnt human.
She was an Archenemy known as a Silky. Thats a fairy that protects a ho, much like a Zashiki Warashi, but they would also harass a resident they dont like or strangle a malicious guest. As their na suggests, they love silk and Anastasia was in fact wearing a red silk dress.
I knew red was a dangerous color for a Zashiki Warashi, but I could only hope that wasnt the case for the Western version.
You contacted at just the right ti. I had hit a dead end in my research and really needed a break.
Is that research related to quantum computing?
Oh, that stuff was completed ages ago at the lab level. Its only the corporations still working at trying to bring the material costs down to make the tech profitable. Of course, the real value of a quantum computer vanishes the instant they beco commonplace. If you dont use bullet transistors and amino acids together, its pretty obvious the quantum encryption will be completely useless eventually. They say the encryption is unbreakable if the signal itself breaks down once a third party observes it, but that doesnt matter at all if you ss with the base device and fully sync its contents. They really need to rember that the observers here are machines, not people.
So was she allowed to take off school and go on an overseas trip just because she had hit a snag in her studies? I really didnt understand how colleges worked. Erikas night school seed to take an anything goes attitude as long as they got their course credit in the end, but this felt even more lax.
So what color is your suitcase, Truth? Ill help you find it.
Hot pink with a big red X on it.
Thats an awfully avant-garde color sche.
I dont want to lose it and I doubt I could explain my predicant to whoevers in charge here, so using an unusual color makes it easy to spot.
Once I grabbed my bag from a conveyer belt similar to a sushi place, the trip could truly begin. Anastasia had arrived a few days ago and gotten settled in, so she had nothing to do.
Will you be taking a taxi into Paris?
Too expensive. Im taking the bus.
Foreign money was scary because it didnt seem real and you ended up spending it like it was monopoly money. Add in cashless paynt with your phone and you could completely lose sight of how much you were spending. Anyone out there whos hesitant to pull money from your wallet but spends way too much on mobile gas? Thats the frightening effect of replacing it with another word like stones or coins.
Or maybe I was being overly cautious because I wasnt used to traveling overseas. Anastasia only had a small bag that wouldnt even hold a bento box. Veteran travelers could probably relax a lot more.
Anyway.
I loaded my suitcase into the belly of a big bus, entered through the tall door, and searched for my seat. Numbers worked the sa all around the world, but it still made nervous.
But then Anastasia plopped down in the next seat over without a care in the world. The seats were made to fit adults, so it was much too big for her. It was really cute, like she was a tiny queen on a big throne.
However
Umm.
Yes?
How did you get that seat? This is a long-distance bus. Wheres your ticket?
A digital society where you order everything online and check in with your phone is a scary thing. Anyone can co along and rewrite the logs. And they could prevent that if they just printed off paper tickets.
I-I only shuffled around the seating a bit! See, the person who was supposed to sit here is in the seat behind . There were empty seats all over the bus, so I just reordered things like a puzzle ga. No harm done!
This was a bad habit of self-righteous hackers. She wasnt at all aware that hacking in and rewriting things itself was wrong. I was honestly impressed she was willing to do this in a foreign country with different rules. What if they caught her?
The trip to Pariss center was about 25km. We had nothing to do on the bus, so we decided to check over a few things.
Yes.
Including what a Japanese high schooler like was doing in France.
Absolute Noah and JB are preparing to fight.
No normal person would know what we were talking about.
But the two groups really were at each others throats.
Absolute Noah wanted to protect the world from devastation and JB wanted to stage a jailbreak that would tear down the worlds order. A lot of mysteries remained about both, but I knew they both had so dangerous power. In my opinion, they were nothing but a threat to the people living ordinary lives.
This was bad news for for two reasons.
First, my stepmom, Amatsu Yurina, appeared to be leading Absolute Noah. That had on their list of survivors against my will. They saw as one of the rich and powerful who would board their ark and let everyone else die.
Second, JB viewed as an enemy for so reason. I dont think Absolute Noah had anything to do with that. It was hard to say anything for sure without knowing JBs overall stance on anything, but it sounded like so of them feared and others saw promise in . Perhaps the group was not a monolith.
JB seems to have played a role in Absolute Noahs destruction, so Absolute Noah is preparing to strike back. Thats what we need to stop from happening.
Ugh. And by Absolute Noah, you an that group, dont you?
The 11-year-old blonde girl groaned from the seat next to .
Anastasia was a fairy trying to create a world where the Archenemy minority was not oppressed by the human majority. Her chosen thod had been building a supercomputer nad phistopheles and to indirectly control the financial and economic worlds. That had failed when her base was blown away along with the city of Las Vegas, but Absolute Noah had been the ones to push Area 51 and the US Congress into making that attack.
My stepmom has apparently gone to France, I explained.
Amatsu Yurina was the top of Absolute Noah, so she could leave most things to her subordinates. Sothing big had to be starting for a top mber to cross national borders like this.
In other words
Shes preparing to retaliate. I dont know if shes here for people, money, or weapons, but it looks like shes accessing sothing that was left here. And once those preparations are complete, the war between Absolute Noah and JB will begin.
That might sound like an exaggeration, but Absolute Noah had arranged an attack on Las Vegas with military bombers and JB had turned sothing into an alien queen and attacked cities all around the globe. They really did have enough firepower to equal a nations military. The extent of the damage if they clashed was a complete unknown. Partially because I didnt know the full extent of their fighting forces, but also because they were secret organizations without a public HQ or branch offices. That ant the conflict could occur anywhere in the world or a large-scale war could break out. You couldnt assu war was impossible because you were in peaceful Japan, in highly-secure New York, or protected by the international treaties regarding Antarctica or outer space.
National militaries bound by ordinary national borders would probably be helpless to fight a threat like this. For example, if Arica launched a giant missile at Russia, there was no guarantee Arica had really done it. Retaliating based on what the map told you would only lead to more senseless harm. This was a new kind of war that operated under different rules.
It felt like the entire planet had been replaced with a giant bomb and the fuse had been lit.
We had to extinguish that fla before it reached the bomb.
That thought made impatient, but I had to take things a step at a ti. I wanted to start with whatever solid information I had.
So
I want to stop both sides, but JBs actions are a complete unknown to . Thats why Im going to start by investigating my stepmom.
Roger. Absolute Noahs the one entering kill em all mode, so they must know what JB is up to. Stealing data from the people who have all the answers is usually the quickest thod.
This was the only option.
I wasnt a true hacker. I just had a lot of knowledge in that field after ssing around with computers for so long. I wanted to draw a clear line in the sand there, but I had to make an exception this ti.
Because if I didnt, I would lose everything I hoped to protect with that line in the sand.
We need to learn what Amatsu Yurina has stored here in France and when and where she plans to retrieve it. Then we need to stop her. A direct clash between the two groups is the real threat. There is no stopping this once that war breaks out, so we need to nip this in the bud.
Sure, Ill help.
Anastasia sighed.
She was in a rare position of having been involved with Absolute Noah and JB thanks to helping out with my troubles at other tis. And her personality ant she never hesitated to tackle a large mystery.
However.
But are you sure about this? Digging up your familys secrets is sothing even pro hackers are hesitant to do. In a way, it can be even more painful than ego searching. I just hope you can see this through to the end.
Ill do it.
I had already had an argunt with my stepmom and run away from ho over what happened in Las Vegas. I knew this secret would likely be even worse than that. This was the first ti she had stepped away from her ordinary life as a part-ti cashier to travel overseas. I felt certain sothing in Paris was connected to her identity as Demon Lord Lilith instead of Amatsu Yurina.
But I couldnt just pretend I hadnt noticed this.
This is my familys problem, so I will see it through to the end. This is sothing I have to put a stop to no matter what.
Part 2
The large bus entered Paris.
The bus wouldnt take all the way to the hotel. It instead let off the passengers near a conspicuous train station. The hotel I had a reservation at wasnt all that large, so it didnt provide its own bus service.
Anastasia placed her small butt down on my suitcase so she could ride it. I could feel her additional weight while dragging it around.
What do you think youre doing, fairy?
Consider it a free service This ensures no one can steal your suitcase.
Was she serious about that or not? Either way, I followed my phones map to the hotel. There were signs along the way, but the French language might as well have co from another dinsion. It confused even more than English. I couldnt even read the nas on the signs.
Instead of straddling my suitcase, Anastasia had both legs together on one side and she kicked her legs as I pulled her along.
You wont have any trouble if you rember that the Seine River runs east to west through Paris and that most roads gather together on their way toward the Arc de Triomphe. If you ever get lost, you can use the river or a major road to get your bearings.
The super-veteran traveler girl had so advice for , but I doubted I would be able to make use of it.
I had been imagining an older-fashioned city, like a castle town in an RPG, so I was surprised by how high-tech the scenery was. It was like the heavy stone buildings were filled in with car dealers and phone shops made of polished glass and silicon. The traffic lights all used LEDs and wireless LAN antennas could be seen here and there. It should have been obvious, but the place was full of people who lived in the modern era. The places they showed on TV and movies were separated from those ordinary lives, but that left you with sothing similar to a jidaigeki set.
Anyway, it was incredible how stone apartnts built centuries ago existed right alongside colorful plastic burger shops and gas stations. I decided to snap a photo with my phone.
What, did you think every part of France looked like it ca from a fantasy movie? The place has every kind of architecture you can imagine: from ancient Roman structures to modern reinforced concrete and tempered glass. There are so buildings so big that their construction spanned more than one era and they use multiple styles.
So are you saying that marble column with an LCD ad in it is part of the history and tradition of this city?
Basically. Honestly, I think Japan has been even more affected by the changing tis when it cos to architecture. Hasnt your countrys scenery been reset several tis due to war and disasters? I doubt there are very many private residences there more than 200 years old. And even that only refers to the land because you redo the building roofs and walls pretty frequently, dont you? With those roof tiles and thatching or whatever.
Personally, I felt like the Japanese just werent all that interested in old buildings. I an, who wants to gather around a traditional irori if that ant going without the modern convenience of plywood and reinforced concrete? No one was willing to give up their air conditioning, wireless internet, and ho security system to live like they did in the good old days.
I guess you could say this is neat to look at, but I wouldnt want to live here?
You could say the sa about most any tourist destination around the world. Like Venice or a cabin in the Alps.
We passed by a caf on the way. A quick glance suggested they were serving more tea than coffee. Odd. I thought France was all about lattes and cappuccinos. The croque monsieur or croque mada or whatever you called that bread with a fried egg on top looked pretty good, if fatty. I made a ntal note to try one later. Also, Parisians apparently didnt open up their Pear laptops at the caf for no other reason than to look smug about it. Please tell that wasnt unique to Japanese cafes.
Anastasia held a hand over her mouth and giggled while taking a relaxing ride on my suitcase.
Theyre allergic to globalization.
?
Rember, this is the country that belongs to the EU but still insists on dostic manufacturing for everything from cars to weapons. You see a lot of people using minor phone brands you never see in Japan, right? Oh, excuse . I should probably call them local brands.
We arrived at the hotel in about 10 minutes. It was about the size of a small multi-tenant building and I doubted it had anything other than single rooms. It of course didnt have a parking lot.
20 euros a night? This was a nice find for the middle of Paris.
Ha ha ha. Never underestimate Maxwells searching skills.
Yeah, but did you have her look into why its so cheap? Can a machine really understand these delicate matters? Lets hope there wasnt a rotting corpse in your bed or a dismbered body in the bathtub.
It scared that a maid fairy that served old mansions was so suspicious of this.
Once inside, she hopped down from my suitcase. Her short skirt was always worrying when she moved around too much.
I couldnt speak French, but you could do everything with your phone these days. No talking necessary. I held my phone up to the receptionist to check in and then we took an old birdcage-like elevator up to the 8th floor. We walked down a narrow hallway with no ergency exit in sight and arrived at my room.
It was a long, skinny room.
It really only had a single bed and enough room to get past the bed without bumping into it. I worriedly opened the door to the bathroom and found the tub was large enough to just barely fit if I pulled my knees up. It looked more like it was ant to pack in a folded-up person than to bathe in. Maybe it was more to keep the shower water off the floor than anything.
Not a delightful discovery.
I see.
Now, I wonder where the putrefied corpse was found?
Anastasia seed awfully convinced that was a thing. She got down on all fours like a cat and peeked under the bed with no concern at all for her short skirt.
For now, the room was probably going to function as a place to store my suitcase.
Anyway.
There was a table smaller than a study desk by the window, but there was no chair. Were you ant to sit on the bed? Anastasia threw her small body onto the bed to take a seat, so I had to sit on the table itself.
The blonde girl innocently tilted her head.
She kicked her feet and patted on the bed next to her.
You can sit next to .
I need to find my stepmom and then get ahead of her.
I didnt know how many millions of people there were in this city, but finding a specific person without any leads was going to be difficult. Especially when that person was the head of Absolute Noah. They were a legit secret society, so no ordinary searching thods were going to turn up anything.
However.
Anastasia, where are the citys cable centers located?
One to the east and one to the west. I said the Seine runs through Paris, rember?
Then we start there.
People tended to think of the internet as laid out like a spiderweb, but that wasnt really accurate. Laying out hundreds or thousands of kiloters of fiber optic cable was expensive, so they tried to follow the shortest possible routes. The submarine cables are the most well-known examples, but its more like countries and cities are linked by a few major arteries with capillaries that spread out over the local areas.
The sa was true of wireless communications like phones. Cellphones did not actually communicate wirelessly with each other. The local base station would receive the signal and then fiber optic cable would carry the data to the closest base station to the other persons phone. The sa would happen if I sent a 16-character ssage to Anastasia while she sat in the sa room as . There were no shortcuts no matter the physical proximity of the recipient.
My stepmom was in hiding and sneaking around.
I wanted all the data throughout Paris if I was to win this ga of hide-and-seek. I especially wanted the lenses of the security caras, phones, and drive recorders. All the citys data would run through the spots where all the fiber optic cables gathered, so Amatsu Yurina no, Demon Lord Lilith would definitely have done sothing there.
By spying on that data herself, she could find the blind spots where no one could see her moving around.
So youre saying you want to find the bug Amatsu Yurina set up and secretly hijack its data?
Correct. If we can see what shes seeing, we can know what shes focused on and what she wants to keep peoples attention off of. That will tell us where shes hiding and what she wants to keep hidden.
I didnt know if this bug was a physical piece of hardware or a virus infecting the system. The best way of finding out was to physically visit the location myself.
We need to get started right away. We only have so much ti to work with.
I knew I might have to stay multiple nights if things dragged out long enough, but I also knew this wasnt like a trip inside my own country. There were issues with visas and passports and whatnot. If it ca to it, I might end up doing so things that would delight Anastasia, but I wanted to settle this before it ca to that if possible.
Besides, this was all over if my stepmom managed to reach whatever she had stored here. Then the unpredictable war between Absolute Noah and JB would begin. Even a monts delay could have devastating results.
Fine, but are you taking the bus again?
Yes? Im not rich enough to take taxis everywhere.
That long-distance bus was one thing, but can you read the complicated bus schedule in the city?
The sa goes for the subway, Im sure. It doesnt match up with the actual map, so you cant just check the direction you want to go and hope for the best.
Then what was I supposed to do?
I was about to fail at the very first step, but Anastasia winked and made a suggestion. Thank goodness I was with soone who knew what they were doing.
Then we just need a thod of transportation that doesnt cost much and even youre familiar with.
?
Like rental bikes. Bicycles work the sa no matter where in the world you are.
Part 3
Holding up my phone and paying in euros still didnt feel real, but I could guess this was the equivalent of paying so pocket change.
I pulled out one of the many identical bicycles gathered at a dedicated space on the sidewalk.
Anastasia secured her own bike and turned the lever to lower the seat as far as it would go. She was bent over and focused on the work, so her miniskirt butt was in a rather risqu position.
So are we headed west or east? she asked.
Whichevers closer.
Okay. Thats only about 5km west along the Seine.
Ugh, that was pretty far. And that warranted an only? Did people from a large continent really think of distances so differently?
Anastasia and I rode our bikes alongside the river.
Neat. The world looked a little different now that I wasnt walking. It was closer to night than evening. It was still a little too early, but I switched on the LED headlight.
The Seine was a pretty wide river.
Anastasia had said our destination was 5km to the west, but the river actually andered quite a bit. I also spotted a few sandbanks. But the bridges spanning it were generally flooded with people. And unlike Odaiba or the Seto Inland Sea, there were a ton of bridges. Maybe they were all popular date destinations.
As we rode our bikes alongside the river, I noticed several old buildings that had to be landmarks on the other side. They looked like stone palaces with lots of pointy towers. Were they political or religious? Either way, they appeared to still be in use. The buildings were old, but bright white light shined from their windows. Had they swapped out the traditional lighting for power-saving LEDs?
That over there is an art museum and that one with the model look is the legislature. Only the lower house, though.
Anastasia told what it all was while pedaling alongside . But her descriptions were so subjective that I was never quite sure which building she ant. Most every building in Paris had a model look if you asked . A stuck-up and disagreeable model.
Wow, whats that? A TV broadcast tower? Ah ha ha. The plain tal really sticks out like a sore thumb.
Truth Thats the famous Eiffel Tower. Does it look that different in person?
Overseas travel had a way of revealing who you were deep down. Unfortunately, that ant I couldnt disguise how much of an idiot I was.
A while later, I saw sothing that looked out of place in a big city: a deep forest.
Whats that? A zoo or sothing?
The forest itself is the attraction. Its the Bois de Boulogne.
How tasteful. It felt like I could run into an elf there, so it really fit the European local color.
At this point, it finally felt like we had left the city center.
I see it now, I said.
Paris has been really busy building highways lately. First they built a buried tunnel and then they built an elevated road. Is it a campaign to sell more of their economical electric cars?
Our destination was directly below a complex interchange between several highways. The core cables connecting all the citys fiber optics to the outside world were built along the shortest route.
In Pariss case, everything gathered together at two points: one in the west and one in the east. You can think of it like a candy wrapper.
Oftentis, these things used the preexisting long-distance infrastructure for roads, railroads, power cables, or oil pipelines. Its the sa idea as how power lines and phone lines used to be sent through the utility poles as a set.
Highways were especially useful since they already needed to install ergency phones and speed detection caras at set intervals. And in recent tis, ground antennas for self-driving cars too. Anyway, it was the perfect spot to place the fiber optic cables. Using what was already there was cheaper than building sothing entirely new, so everyone went for that in both the public and private sectors.
We rode past our destination and stopped our bikes near a sign a short distance away.
There wasnt anyone there, was there? I asked without looking back.
I didnt detect any drone signals either.
Anastasia waved her phone that doubled as the face for her pet robot animal.
This wasnt the destination for my stepmom, her bodyguards, or her negotiators. They had only needed to access all the caras around Paris so they could find the blind spots, so once that work was complete, they would have left.
I was honestly relieved.
Not only was my stepmom Demon Lord Lilith, but Absolute Noahs other mbers were nothing to sneeze at. I had already encountered a Banshee and a Sylpheed among them. I had thought the odds of encountering one here were low, but our lives could have been at risk if they had left a single subordinate here on a whim.
Im pathetic.
Truth?
I needed to do everything within my power to stop Amatsu Yurina, yet here I was getting scared over the thought of a single lookout. How could I stop an all-out war between Absolute Noah and JB like this?
I shook my head and refocused my mind. I got off my stopped bike and lowered the kickstand.
Lets go check. If my stepmom has taken over all the security systems around Paris, we can sneak a peek at that data too. Once we know what Absolute Noah did here, we can ss with it. We should be able to monitor which of the millions of caras theyre interested in.
We approached a tal door that would have looked at ho on a submarine.
Where was it located?
At the base of one of the tal supports for the circular interchange. This support had an ergency exit sign on it, so it was actually hollow like a candlestick and had a spiral staircase inside. The space inside was used to let people through, but also power cables and water pipes for electricity and drainage. It of course carried communication cables too.
But it worried that the support pillar was hollow inside. How would that survive an earthquake? Construction in countries without many quakes felt weird. Maybe Japans standards were unusual from a global perspective.
Here it is.
We didnt even have to climb the stairs.
A few tal tubes were attached to the curving wall. They were arranged vertically and I unscrewed one of them to open its cover. Glass fiber cables and a signal booster were installed inside. The booster had a smaller device attached with tape.
A noncontact device? But how?
When electricity ran through a wire, a magnetic field ford around it. This was unavoidable since electricity and magnetism were inextricably connected. So if you had a device that could read that weak magnetic field and convert it into an electrical signal, you could safely steal the data without actually ssing with the cable itself.
But that thod wasnt supposed to work with a fiber optic cable because it used an optical signal. So did it use heat or vibrations? No material could perfectly reflect light, so so of it had to be converted into so other form, but that was such a tiny amount. This was an impressive feat. Building an experintal device to detect neutrinos was probably easier.
anwhile, the hacker next to was growing restless.
Th-thats an Absolute Noah toy, right? Cant I take it ho with ? I just have to remove it so carefully they dont notice.
Anastasia.
Okay, fine! But at least let open it up and snap a photo of its circuit board layout!! I an, this ca from the Absolute Noah! Im practically looking at lost technology here!
Anastasia.
I was afraid she really would try to swipe the device, so I gave her a stronger warning. Who knows what kind of traps could be built into that lost technology. We couldnt risk it when detection would an ga over here.
The device also seed to use a noncontact thod for charging itself as well. It appeared to be gathering the microwaves in the surrounding air which ant ordinary cellphone and wireless LAN signals. It could run pretty much forever in an urban area like this.
Ohh Drool.
Down girl. I truly hope you wouldnt stoop this low, but dont get overexcited and eat the thing.
But no matter how advanced the device was, all it did was steal the signal passing through the fiberoptic cable.
I didnt even need to touch the device itself. By ssing with cable 5cm above and below it, I could see exactly the sa thing my stepmom was spying on. With Absolute Noahs device sandwiched between my stuff, every signal passing through it had to pass through our checkpoints first.
Sending a software virus to the other side of the planet wasnt the only kind of cyber attack. Infections and signal interceptions could be done on the hardware side of things too.
Truth, you scare the most for learning how to do all this on your own.
Stop exaggerating. You can buy fiberoptic cables at the hardware store. I learned all this while ssing with Maxwells container.
The academic world and their obsessions with academic records might overlook inventors like you, but I know I need you in my lab right this instant. Even if I have to drug you and drag you there myself.
Anyway, this was Phase 1 complete.
We still didnt know what my stepmom was trying to acquire in Paris to start this war, but once we knew what she was focused on, we would know where the action was going down. I wanted that information before I tried to stop her.
I tried checking my phone.
Good.
It was working.
An unfamiliar section of an unfamiliar street popped up. Several security caras stared at one point of Paris from multiple angles. My stepmom really was hiding in Paris and monitoring sothing in real ti. I had already known that, but it felt so much more real now.
Where is this, Anastasia?
Give a second. Which street is this? There are a lot of hospitals around and is that the Paris Observatory in the background? Are the lights off because of that remote control virus? That would make this yes, thats Avenue de l'Observatoire. Which makes this the 14th arrondissent.
A lot of hospitals?
That brought to mind the possibility of a biological or chemical weapon. I doubt many people would ever suspect their mother of using those.
But Anastasia had more to say.
Thats directly above the catacombs.
The cata-whats?
An underground burial site containing the remains of 6 million people. Its Pariss giant dungeon.
That changed how I looked at this. Could the threat be on the occult side of things? Like a curse or an Archenemy?
Regardless
Then well have to investigate those catacombs next. While making sure we arent detected by the caras my stepmoms side controls.
Now we could see through Amatsu Yurinas eyes.
But we still didnt know when she would make her move or what that move would be. It was possible she would be eting soone here this very night and acquiring what she needed to go to war. A monts delay could an losing everything. My body was protesting thanks to the jetlag, but I needed to keep going. I didnt want to regret taking a break because the fighting began in the anti.
We left the candlestick-like tal bridge support.
It was 7 at night, but it was still fairly bright out. Did sunset co at different tis in other countries? Or was it just being in a big city? I puzzled over that, but Anastasia tilted her head too after stepping out of the tal door. The motion made her dresss shoulder strap slip from her skinny shoulder.
Odd.
What is?
Its too bright. Were near the forest located outside the city center, rember?
So this was unusual after all.
The phone in my pants pocket started to vibrate while we looked up into the night sky together.
I pulled it out, checked the screen, and grimaced. Yes, there was a reason I hadnt received word until now. I had given Maxwell another job. There was only one reason to be receiving a ssage now.
Warning.
What is it, Maxwell?
A social dia speech bubble appeared on the screen, but I wasnt speaking with a human. This was the disaster environnt simulator I had built myself. The actual machine was made from 1400 handheld ga systems I had bought at a discount and it was located inside a container at a Japanese harbor.
Have you finished the job I gave you!?
I am contacting you to provide a progress report.
I had long feared a war between Absolute Noah and JB. I could tell Absolute Noah, led by my stepmom Amatsu Yurina, was headed in that direction.
So what about JB?
They were skilled enough to remake a legendary god into their puppet, so do you really think they would sit idly by and wait for an attack?
As you feared, I have found traces of a simultaneous attack on observatories around the world. You speculated that JB was using their remote control virus called dollgirl.c to secure the number of infected computers necessary for a DDoS attack.
Yes, and what did you find out?
You were incorrect. Look at this.
The screen changed.
It displayed a round orb and so arrows. I couldnt quite tell what it was trying to convey. Was it so kind of diagram? There were a lot of arrows, but they were all curving along almost the sa course.
And if it was a diagram, what was it a diagram of?
Maxwell, what am I looking at here?
Sure. This is the accurate data found when the data hidden by the virus is restored. Various telescopes and radars have picked up 33 targets, but the early-warning systems have been deactivated and the targets have been erased from all reports.
But what are they!? What is JB hiding!?
Sure.
The text appeared as plainly as any other from Maxwell.
It was my own mind that made it look like it arrived in small chunks.
The chanical ssage was simply displayed on the small screen.
Those are 33 teors of various size on course to strike the city of Paris without burning up in the thermosphere.
J-
JB!!!???
We werent the only ones who wanted to stop Amatsu Yurina and Absolute Noah from completing their task here. In fact, JB was their actual target, so JB would want to stop them at all costs.
I had known that.
I really had.
But how could they take it this far!? Did those dumbasses not know that the earth itself was a limited resource!?
Warning: you have less than 20 seconds until impact with the surface. The night sky looks unusually bright because the falling objects are burning in the upper atmosphere. But that will be insufficient to fully burn them away. The impact is coming, so please imdiately evacuate underground or within a sturdy building.
I couldnt stand around any longer.
Ana- run!! Back inside!!
Kyah!
I grabbed Anastasias skinny wrist and rushed right back the way we had co: below the interchange and into the tal support for the giant bridge spiraling overhead. We made it inside the candlestick-like hollow interior.
I slamd shut the thick tal door and applied the lever from the inside.
The door wasnt ant to open inwards, but a mont later, the thick door slamd into and I flew all the way over to the railing of the spiral staircase.
Sothing had definitely happened outside.
[Unknown_Storage] Contact with Celestial Objects [file02]
Contact with celestial objects such as cots and asteroids can be divided into the following three levels.
These are all assuming an object of at least 20kg.
Level 1
In this case, the object fails to pass through the thermosphere and is destroyed. The object does not technically make contact with the surface in this case, but that does not an there is no damage. If the object is tallic, it can release a lot of dust with a major impact on the magnetosphere or ionosphere with a risk of major electromagnetic fluctuations. This is estimated to an the destruction of all computers on a city-wide or even country-wide scale directly below the affected airspace, which would lead to the failure of vital infrastructure and the collapse of social order. The scope of damage from the loss of power would be greatly affected by the population density and the local moral levels.
Level 2
In this case, the object passes through the thermosphere and the rest of the upper atmosphere but breaks apart from air friction in the lower atmosphere below an altitude of 3000m. This would create a major shockwave that sweeps across the land below it. The power of the shockwave would depend on the size of the object, but during the Tunguska Explosion that burned down a Russian forest, the damage covered an area of 2000 square kiloters.
If the breakup occurred in the middle atmosphere, the shockwave would not reach the surface, so there would be no major risk other than small pieces hitting the surface. The damage would be little different from large hail, assuming there are no aircraft in the affected airspace.
The middle atmosphere is often said to be the last chance when it cos to astronomical risk.
Level 3
In this case, the object actually hits the surface. The friction would cause heat, the air would be disturbed over a large area, and the impact to the ground would send a shockwave in every direction, tearing up the ground further and launching objects into the air. The scope of the damage could be calculated based on the objects mass.
An object of more than 2000tons would be considered above Level 3. In that case, the explosion upon contact would send up a large cloud of dust that would linger in the upper atmosphere and block sunlight on a global scale. That would ensure another ice age.
(For reference, objects such as these appear in many theories, including the origin of the moon and the extinction of the dinosaurs, but the heaviest object that has actually been retrieved and preserved is around 60 tons.
It might not look possible when you simply look at the numbers, but do rember that approximately 40 thousand asteroids float powerless and rudderless in the gap between Mars and Jupiter.
The giant impact hypothesis is considered a likely candidate for the formation of the moon and it claims the moon ca from all the dust scattered into space when a celestial object the sa mass as Mars struck Earth.)
It might seem absurd to worry over such things, but our facility handles samples with a high risk of contagion. We need to develop procedures on how to handle the combination of a powerful impact reaching deep underground and a loss of power.
It is too late to develop procedures once disaster has already struck.
Back to Chapter 0
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