Book 4 Chapter 1
There was no point in scrambling around.
Even if I shot to my feet, threw the door open, and ran outside, I could never reach Anastasia when she was so far away. She would be caught and dissolved while waiting for me.
More importantly, was there anything I could realistically do right now?
I had to seriously consider that question inside this room.
“Maxwell.”
“Sure.”
“We’re going to find a way to support Anastasia. I need your help.”
“Understood.”
“Eh? What!? Is Maxwell-chan there!?”
Even in her situation, Anastasia’s eyes were sparkling, but something else was more important than her frightening mental fortitude.
“Anastasia, are you familiar with the surrounding geography?”
“I know the main street and the landmarks. I visit Vegas a few times a year.”
…That would be enough for enjoying yourself in a luxury car with a chauffeur, but to escape from deadly Archenemies, I wanted more accuracy than a car’s GPS. I wanted to know each and every alleyway in the network of roads.
Information was the greatest weapon.
You couldn’t predict what would divide life from death. Even after hours of constant focus, a single momentary lapse could cost you everything, so I wanted to eliminate everything I could predict in advance.
“Maxwell. First, I want a map of Las Vegas and a way of checking on the spread of damage. That will change where we have Anastasia escape to.”
At the most basic level, I wanted to know if this damage was affecting a single block of Las Vegas, the entire city, the entire state, or the entire country. How far those red gels had spread would change where the goal line was located.
“No, I am having difficulty accessing the civilian online map. It is possible the people of Las Vegas or people viewing the damage from outside have overloaded the system.”
“Are you kidding!? Next best plan: check for past witness reports or legends related to these gels. Also check what’s happening on social media and message boards. We don’t have time for you to be idling.”
I looked around the small room and faced the Class Rep who was lying on the bed in casual clothing.
“Class Rep, do you have a guidebook for Las Vegas somewhere? You love reading those, don’t you? Y’know, checking the train schedule to make it feel like you’re going on a trip.”
“…Ugh…”
She nauseously held a hand to her forehead and groaned a bit, but she did point me in the right direction. I found a pocket-sized guidebook in the bedside table’s drawer.
I unfolded the detailed poster-sized map inside the front cover. Good, it has all the alleyways too. Yes!!
I held my smartphone on its side and photographed the entire map.
“Maxwell, here’s some data. Use image analysis to read in the map.”
“Sure.”
“I need to double check, Maiden! You’re currently at the Shrimp Caesar’s Café next to the Four Corners of the famous Strip, right? Known for its fried shrimp and butter lobster!?”
“Y-yes. But this is bad…”
Once again, Anastasia was hardly listening.
Had she seen something bad enough to distract her?
“They aren’t alone… There are even more of them than before!”
“Can they multiply or split apart?”
“I don’t know. Besides, I don’t even know where the gels are coming from. They’re each about the size of a puddle. You would need a veritable army of dedicated tanker trucks or vehicle gas tanks to sneak them into the city and it would look like they’re suddenly multiplying if they were crawling out of the manholes or ditches.”
Whatever the case, it wasn’t a pleasant thing to contemplate, but that settled things for me.
“Maiden, you need to stay away from the more heavily populated areas. The walls of people will keep you from moving and you want a clear view of your surroundings since the gels can come at you from any direction. Let’s find you a route through a back alley.”
“A back alley? Where? Where’s the way out of here?”
“Run through that café and out the back door. Hurry!”
The camera footage blurred really badly. After grabbing as many fries as she could hold, she had apparently taken off running.
Her history was nothing like a normal 11-year-old’s, but those rough experiences at such a young age came in handy. I had most feared that she would panic, not listen to a thing I said, and just start crying, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
That said, you never knew what would take the lid off of someone’s emotions. Even an adult would piss themselves if they were about to die from being dissolved in acid. In that way, Anastasia really was tough.
“Anastasia, your clothes are silk, right?”
“Yes! This is the latest from Pucelle Blanche. Damn, I just realized I forgot to show it off on social media. So there’s no way I’m tearing it apart to use as a bandage like in movies!!”
“No, I’m just glad it isn’t a synthetic fiber. Now I don’t have to worry if there’s a bit of fire.”
“Is that supposed to cheer me up? I’m not letting a single speck of cigarette ash get on this!!”
Incidentally, there was no one in the café.
The employees had either fled out the back door or evacuated to the office in the back.
Anastasia moved past the register and entered the hallway behind it.
“I need to…um…oh, there are so many doors!”
“Maiden, look for the emergency exit sign. That will tell you which door leads outside.”
“There it is!”
She practically tackled the stainless steel door open.
The atmosphere was entirely different from the main street and all its brightly-lit signs. A rundown back alley in a gun culture was somewhere I would normally want to avoid at all costs, but at the moment, it was the spider thread needed to escape hell.
The alley extended to the right and left.
I began wondering which way was safer for Anastasia, but then…
Bang!! Bang bang bang!!
I ducked down just as much as Anastasia who was actually there.
And I yelled into my smartphone.
“Don’t go left! Go away from the gunfire! Head to the right!”
“Got it, Truth!”
The footage was unavoidably blurry while she ran, which made detailed analysis difficult.
So I didn’t initially understand why she had come to a stop.
“What is it, Maid-…”
“This is bad.”
That was enough.
I heard a horribly wet and sticky sound from further down the narrow alley.
It was the gels.
They’d already made it into those narrow paths!?
…But if Anastasia turned back, she would be running right into a deluge of gunfire. The slimes were frightening, but so were panicked and gun-wielding humans.
“Maxwell, analyze the footage.”
“You will need to make a more specific request.”
“Check through the past footage for an emergency staircase in the alley!”
“Sure. There is a metal emergency staircase on a building’s outer wall thirty meters back. I can estimate the building is twelve stories tall.”
“Maiden, turn back. Go thirty meters.”
“Meters!? How much is that in feet!?”
“Just run until you see a staircase!!”
Even I was frantic by this point.
Anastasia turned her back on what sounded like mud being kneaded and she took off running again. I could have sworn the sticky sound grew louder. Almost like it was chasing after her.
…Does that mean they’re intelligent?
“Is this the staircase?”
Anastasia climbed up a metal staircase located partway down the alley.
“How far up should I go?”
“To the roof!”
“Seriously? I’m a hacker, you know!?”
“Isn’t the age of holing up in dark rooms over? I’ll massage your lovely legs as much as you want later, so just get running!”
“Truth, isn’t that more of a reward for you!?”
I couldn’t remember what the average stamina of an 11-year-old was, but could she make it to the 12th floor? I just hoped she didn’t get a cramp or pull a leg muscle before getting to the roof.
“Pant, pant.”
She started breathing heavily, but even that sounded cute. Being a girl was cheating.
“Truth, pant, this might not be the time, but I’m thankful.”
“For what?”
“If I’d been alone, I know I would have screwed up right at the start. My hips would have gone limp and I couldn’t have gotten out of my chair. Even if it’s through a remote connection, it means a lot to have someone with you.”
…
“Pant, pant. I made it. I’m on the roof! What do I do now?”
Anastasia stood on the roof, held up the pet robot that had her handheld game system for a head, and spun around in a circle to film everything. That told me the situation.
There was a row of industrial air conditioning units and a few satellite antennae. There didn’t seem to be a heliport. I also saw the back of a giant electronic sign that faced the main road.
“The gels might crawl up to there.”
“Huh!? Then I’m trapped!”
“That’s why you need to move to the next building!!”
We were in luck.
“Those air conditioning units are pretty big. Maiden, they’re taller than you. Use a coin or some kind of tool to unscrew the side panel. Once you have that long piece of metal, you can use it as a bridge between buildings. Do that and you can escape the gels! They generally just crawl along the ground or floor and only hop up in order to attack people!! A running start is useless given how slow they move. They shouldn’t be able to make any major jumps!!”
“Y-you’re kidding, right? Do you have any idea how high up I am!? If I fall, I’m dead!”
“Then are you going to stay there? Crying isn’t going to change anything once they catch up. So hurry!”
Anastasia spat out a curse and, annoyingly enough, pulled out an authentic Swiss Army knife. I could barely stand to watch the painstaking process of her small and trembling hands removing one screw at a time. Those red slimes could appear from the staircase at any moment.
“There, it’s off!”
“The gap to the east is the narrowest, so go that way.”
“Which way is east!?”
“Oh, honestly. It’s to your left, Maiden.”
The video’s viewpoint lowered, but not because she had dropped the game system. It was at a stable position just off the floor.
“Maiden, how about you pull the mobile off of that pet robot’s neck?”
“What, this thing was made in Japan, you know? Both the 3D game system and the dog robot it plugs into.”
It must have had some simple sensor control and image processing because the camera followed Anastasia as she grabbed the long panel and walked awkwardly along. …I didn’t want to say anything since it was an emergency, but her all-silk luxury outfit had a miniskirt as short as tennis wear, which was a very poor match with this low angle.
“Is this really where I have to cross?”
“Maiden, don’t look down.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me look!!”
At a corner of the roof, she let the long metal panel fall over past the edge so the other end reached the neighboring building which was the same height. The gap was only about three meters, but she was on the roof. That made a world of difference.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me, dammit…”
Anastasia grabbed the unsteady pet robot. She apparently intended to crawl across.
Even the small girl’s weight made the panel creak below her. There was nothing reassuring about the situation. The panel could bend in half and dump her to the ground at any time.
Meanwhile, I heard more gunshots.
“Wow…”
On all fours, Anastasia stopped at the midway point and aimed the pet robot’s face toward the ground.
The alley she was crossing was normal enough, but the main road was a lot wider than what I was used to in Japan.
The road was as straight as a runway and lined with palm trees, but it was in a horrific state.
It wasn’t just five or ten of them.
The red gels were entering and exiting manholes all over the place, crawling along the ground, clinging to walls, and attacking people.
“…I wonder where they came from.”
“And what the hell are they?”
A red slime was even crawling out of a police car’s open door. The gels were all over the inside and outside of the various shops. Since they weren’t dissolving the cars or walls…did that mean they didn’t like the taste of metal or synthetic fibers? As for the humans, all of them seemed to be pulling out handguns and firing: from the muscular police officers to the round and fat housewives. Anastasia really couldn’t travel on the surface. Not only were the gels there, but there were simply too many bullets flying around.
And when those many bullets hit the translucent red slimes, they twisted around a bit and retreated.
“It’s working…?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Anastasia. “Those gels have no blood vessels or organs, so how are we supposed to measure damage to them?”
As she watched on, the slimes regained their momentum and leaped at the gun-wielding people.
My spine tingled with a different sort of fear than seeing someone’s head chopped off or crushed.
“Are you serious…?” groaned Anastasia. “There have to be a lot of soldiers here from the Nevada air base, but that’s still not enough?”
Meanwhile, in my room:
“User, something has caught my attention.”
“What is it, Maxwell?”
“Based on the footage of the surface, the gels are not approaching any of the vehicles or buildings which are on fire.”
“Well, I guess they are living creatures. Albeit bizarre ones.”
“Sure. In that case, would that explain why they flinched back from the bullets?”
“…So it wasn’t the bullets themselves but the frictional heat?”
I wanted to know the exact heat threshold for Anastasia’s sake, but there wasn’t time to perform numerous verification tests.
“Las Vegas is a desert city, right? So can they handle heated asphalt?”
“No. Based on their movements, they are most active while in the shadows of buildings. And when in direct sunlight, they are mostly traveling through the damp areas in the roadside flower beds and sprinkler-wet grass.”
But that was far from enough sample data, so we didn’t have an answer worth risking one’s life on. It was best to leave it at “they’re weak to fire” for now.
“Also, they are actively targeting the people who are firing guns.”
This time, the observation came from Anastasia.
“Come to think of it, it was the same at the beginning. They first attacked the loud cars and the adults who were screaming. Does that mean I only survived because I was left in a daze for so long?”
“It sounds like the gels aren’t all that intelligent. Do they just react to loud noises? So it’s more about their ears than eyes.”
“They might be detecting the minute vibrations passing along their liquid surfaces.”
I thought for a bit.
“Maxwell. Are there any phones left from the people attacked on the surface? If they’re still usable, use the GPS signal to determine their numbers. Start calling the phones furthest away from any survivors.”
“Sure. However…”
“I know. You can’t save them all. But that’s out of our control!”
Empty melodies began playing all over.
But the result was an unexpected one.
“No response.”
“Is the volume too low? Maxwell, cause a short in the phones’ lithium ion batteries to trigger an explosion!!”
“Sure.”
Blasts that sounded like smaller gunshots shook the air. The gels were preparing to attack the terrified people who had been driven up against a wall, but they actually changed direction this time. They left the living targets and instead attacked the remnants of the phones.
“Oh, so it really was about the volume,” said Anastasia.
“Maxwell, some of the gels reacted more than others. Can you figure out why?”
“The margin of error is high with so little sample data, but I suspect they are reacting to the pressure of the air more than the sound or vibration.”
“The air?”
“More specifically, the force of the moisture, dust, and other particles in the air being pushed at them. The gels may use the particles that dissolve into their surface to read the movement of the air and predict the presence of a target.”
“…I guess that makes the most sense.”
After all, they were gels with no apparent eyes or ears. All we could see was their ability to digest things, so it may have been best to assume they sensed things by dissolving something and acquiring data from it.
“Maxwell, are there any electronic signs and LCD screens still functioning? Light them up.”
“Sure. …No response. They seem to have a weak or nonexistent ability to perceive light.”
…I had thought their translucent red bodies could act like an eyeball’s lens if they bent themselves to bend the light, but it didn’t seem that was the case.
“Okay, Maxwell. Let’s go with your theory. They’re dissolving the particles in the air to sense things. If we know that, we can take advantage of it.”
“This sounds like a job for a righteous hacker,” said Anastasia. “But isn’t this really scary? Just detonate a target’s phone and the gels will all attack them. That’s more dangerous than a cyber attack on a self-driving car.”
Taking some time to think seemed to have paid off. At some point, Anastasia had finished crossing the bridge.
After breathing a sigh of relief, she looked back and then tensed up.
The Archenemies had already arrived on the roof of the building she had started on.
“Anastasia, pull the bridge onto your side! There’s no point if they can cross to your building!”
“Kh.”
She quickly pulled the metal panel over with both hands. And she resumed carrying it.
The gels picked up speed and approached, but then they fell into the gap between buildings.
“Th-that was close. …But this seems to be working.”
“This was only so complicated because we’d never seen Archenemies like this before. We can just think of them like a group of army ants. The gels can get in through any kind of gap and they can eat any living creature, but they’re weak to fire and can’t cross canyons or rivers. Once you know their traits, there’s nothing to fear.”
“I-I see. That’s Truth for you!”
“No,” interrupted Maxwell. “When army ants gather, they can create a bridge from their own bodies and the entire group can cross a river. Since we have seen a similarly large group of gels, crossing between buildings is not enough to relax. You must keep your guard up.”
“Kh. Anastasia, you know what you have to do, right? Then keep it up. You can’t relax your guard even after losing them, so just get out of there as quickly as possible.”
“…wha-..n’t hear…Tru…you say?”
“Hey, what’s happening, Maxwell?”
“There is an issue with the signal. Either the base station was destroyed or restrictions were set in place to prevent the lines from overloading during the emergency.”
“Oh, hell! Can you hear me, Anastasia!?”
“Ksshh, kssshhh!”
No good, dammit!
“Maxwell, can you overwrite our packets to include the emergency code used by the police and fire department?”
“Sure. I will try, but I cannot guarantee anything.”
“That’s fine. Just do it!”
Anastasia had learned how to “run away”, so I could only hope she was continuing to move from rooftop to rooftop instead of just standing there.
After a minute, the wait felt unbelievably long.
After ten minutes, I could hardly breathe!
After thirty minutes, I was certain the world was ending!!
“Maxwell, are you still not done!?”
“Sure. The connection has been restored.”
“Anastasia!”
Where was she?
The view from the pet robot she held showed she was now inside a building instead of on a rooftop.
I could hear her muttering something through the screen.
“1207, 1207.”
“…Hm? Wait, Maiden! Don’t tell me…!”
As soon as I said that, I heard a loud bang as the door to my room, Room 1207, was kicked open from outside.
A small girl with very light platinum blonde hair walked in. It was the 11-year-old college student hacker who wore a toxically red camisole with a miniskirt as short as tennis wear.
The all-silk girl held a pet robot with a portable game system for a head and she still had a triumphant smile on her lips despite how exhausted she looked.
“Anastasia!?”
“Hi, Truth. Sorry it had to turn out like this, but I’ll say it anyway: Welcome to Vegas. Will that jetlagged girl be able to move?”
[confidential] Excerpt from a Special Report in Monthly Nu [storage A51]
If you only want a piece as big as the end of your little finger, meteorites from space can be easily bought from a meteorite hunter or one of the shops they frequent. So what kind of stone do the informed choose?
You can always go for the rare metals and rare earths, but it’s gotta be limestone if you’re looking for some romance. Especially one with small holes through it like a sponge. Those are everywhere, you say? Can you still say that if you know that’s material evidence of extraterrestrial life?
There are a few celestial bodies suspected to have water or oxygen, but if those planets and moons have active microbes, it’s only natural the rock will be harmed. And limestone reacts to acid in a way that easily leaves behind tunnels.
Of course, the odds are incredibly low that this life would have the intelligence for verbal interaction or the friendliness to want to hold a peaceful conversation.
But when you have that companion for your late-night astronomical observations, it almost feels like that life is with you while you sit there waiting.
Classification: C
Increase observation just in case.
Back to Chapter 0
