Chapter 1: 1.1

Spherical Shell Elastic 1

Translated by KuroNeko
Edited by KuroNeko

 

1

Over the horizon, I could see the Tokyo Skytree. The sky was clear and blue with no clouds in sight.

    “To all of our passengers. This bus has just arrived at the Arakawa Bridge parking lot. Today’s distance between the Arakawa Bridge and Toshima Ward is 72.3 kilometers, an increase of 0.19 kilometers over the previous month. We’ll arrive at the Toshima Ward Office about 1:00 p.m. and the Toshima Ward South Terminal at approximately 1:20 p.m. We apologize for the delay in our arrival today due to road conditions.”

    The middle-aged driver of the long-distance bus spoke unequivocally in a voice that was not at all apologetic. Well, it can’t be helped. I don’t feel drivers should be held responsible for road changes.

    I gently adjusted my shoulders and hips in the seat to loosen up my body, which had stiffened from sitting. The cherry blossoms in full bloom were lined up in a row on the banks of the Arakawa River, which I could see from my window. It’s late March in Tokyo, and the weather is unmistakably spring. I got out of the bus, leaving my winter coat on the seat, which I had brought with me from Aizuwakamatsu and was completely useless.

    A spring breeze blew and the cherry blossoms scattered in a blizzard. The newly rising upper string moon aligned with the Skytree, presenting a pleasant contrast between the natural and the man-made.

    The Tokyo Skytree is a 1,634-meter-high floating antenna hung in the air by an anti-gravity panel. I’ve heard that since its inception in 2012, the communication situation in Tokyo has vastly improved. Because it is closer to the ground than communication satellites, and most significantly, it is wired to the ground, the communication volume is larger. There are also plans to make the video available on the Internet in the near future. This will widen the knowledge divide with rural communities even further.

    The Arakawa Bridge parking lot is small, with only a restroom, a vending machine, and a single store, but it is packed with people. There were food vendors lining the streets, offering yakitori, cotton candy, and a variety of other products with no clear purpose. I’m not sure if it’s because the cherry blossoms are right around the corner, or if this is simply an usual Tokyo crowd.

    The riverside next to the parking lot was strewn with blue sheets, and businesspeople in shirts were drinking beer and making noise. With so many people, I bet it would be sheet viewing rather than flower viewing.

    I was thirsty after waking up from my nap, so I made my way through the crowds to the shop. As soon as I walked into the store, I noticed a wagon with a banner that read, “100 yen for any book to accompany you on your journey,” and at top was a copy of “The Mayan Calendar’s Greatest Prophecy! Humanity will be annihilated in 2012.” I believe I saw something similar last year in an occult magazine in a convenience store. The year of release is 2004, however the cheap acidic paper is browned as if neglected for decades, and it must have been treated roughly on the bookshelves. It’s a reprinted edition.

    As I bought a canned coffee from a store and gazed blankly at the cherry blossoms, a strange man spoke to me.

    “Oh, are you a high school student.”

    The stench of booze was all about the uncle.

    “No, I’ve already graduated. I’ll be a university student starting in April.”

    “Hmm. Where’d you come from?”

    The uncle appeared to sense a country bumpkin aura emanating from someplace within me. I’m not sure how he can detect the auras of others when his entire body is loaded with booze.

    “From Wakamatsu, Aizu.”

    “That’s a long way from home, eh?”

    He then spoke for about five minutes about how young people in the countryside worked hard to develop Tokyo when he was young, how today’s young people are sloppy in comparison, the negative consequences of the “relaxed” education system, and how Japan would be destroyed if things continue as they are. When I was a kid, the world was still small, and it must have been easier for young people from the countryside to move to Tokyo, I mused as I watched the couple flirting on the riverside and wished the world would end.

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    During the great expansion of the early 1990s, it seems that people were quite worried about Nostradamus’ prediction of doom. I awoke one morning to find that the city next to me had vanished, or that one city had split into two, as the news reported every day. With distribution and infrastructure in shambles, and the superpower Soviet Union collapsing so easily, it’s hardly unexpected that people were concerned that the human race would perish.

    However, the violent global expansion gradually halted, and the prophecy of 1999 passed without any incident. The orcult industry, on the other hand, was enraged, exclaiming, “Don’t be fooled.” After a few years of shrugging their shoulders, they finally started proclaiming that 2012 will be the year of the end, but by then, the rate of expansion had dropped so dramatically that no one believed them anymore, save for a few enthusiasts.

    That’s how I began 2013, and it was a good year. If it doesn’t, I’ll be damned. I will never be able to attend university. People who believe in the hypothesis of human extinction are typically wicked people who wish to interfere with other people’s futures because their own is bleak, and I abhor such people.

    However, it is evident from the headlines that a genuine fear of the end of the world is increasing in regions where neither Nostradamus nor the Mayan calendar are concerned. My political science teacher told me that the United States of America is becoming increasingly decentralized, with states becoming de facto independent countries due to their inability to govern their vast territory. He stated that Japan could still get by due to its small size, but he was unsure what would happen if the expansion continued.

    March 25, 2013 AD. That’s very much how the world was when I first set foot on Tokyo soil.

◇◇◇

This is a story about the four years I spent in Tokyo, from 2013 to 2016. I enrolled in and graduated from Otsuka University’s Department of Heavy Element Engineering in the Faculty of Science and Technology. It’s only two lines on my resume, but I’ve seen and heard many things, met and parted, built and broken things.

    Meanwhile, as you may have heard from the news, a lot has happened in the world, both big and small. The second Tokyo Olympics was decided to be held, the third Japanese astronaut set foot on the moon, the Shikoku region declared independence, and the Goto Islands were recognised as the first special border region.

    In the grand scheme of things, what we’ve done is very small. At the moment, I’m not even sure I can say I’ve accomplished anything.

    But, I’ll talk about it.

 

Have you ever heard of a man by the name Abel Meyer? He is an engineer of Israeli origin who developed a mechanism for efficient heavy element conversion in space. The Meyer gravity system is currently used by all spacecraft dispatched to the moon, and NASA’s long-held aim of sending a manned trip to Mars was made achievable by his technology, which allows the return ship to sail over the surface of Mars.

    Meier’s research was initially published in a national Israeli publication in 2004, and it appears that it was little discussed. Basic research on heavy elements had already gone out of favor at the time, and low-latitude locations like Israel were not conducive to space development, therefore space-related technology was barely acknowledged.

    After about a year, the Israeli literary server was ultimately satellite-synced to the United States, and NASA engineers viewed it and acknowledged the theory’s novelty. Soon after, all of the United States’ outer space probes were switched to the Meyer system, and Europe followed suit. There are few precedents of such quick innovation in the field of space development, which is traditionally conservative in terms of safety.

    I felt really odd when I heard this story. In 2004, I was in fourth grade and reading “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and “The Star Prince” in the Wakamatsu Fourth Elementary School library. Meanwhile, 100,000 kilometers away, a technology that would profoundly rewrite the history of space exploration was being discreetly created without anyone’s knowledge.

    For the first time, I realized that “world history” was still going on. That the history taught in textbooks is still being written, that the world is not merely expanding in a vast expanse, but that there is still a destination to be achieved, and that mankind is constantly accumulating minor events toward that end somewhere in the world.

    I hope that what we’ve done will be one of those events. It might not be. We have no idea what the future holds yet.

    Well, It doesn’t really matter where we end up.

    This is the story of me moving forward. Both physically and in a slightly symbolic way.

    My steps were slow and unsteady, but I was still moving forward. Life is like riding a bicycle. You will tumble if you do not keep going. That’s how it’s set up.KuroNeko's notes:

The author actually divided this whole novel (not chapter) into 41 parts. Each part, if translated and evaluated can span around 1.3k to 1.8k words. I will be updating this chapters according to what the author had intended, means posting 41 releases. Just stick with me, I will be consistent and will bring the high quality of chapters, so you, the readers, can get most of time you spent reading this novel. The starting is actually slow, rather, detailed, so I assume after 5-6 parts, when the real world building and reasonable details are fulfilled the main story, part, will begin, just wait and watch. Thanks for reading this chapters. Hope you found something to pique your interest.

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