Chapter 26

The heavy steel door gave a mighty creak and moved about twenty centimeters. And then… BREEEEEEE!! A high-pitched warning sound screeched through Minoru’s earpiece, and he caught his breath. A glance at his wrist communicator showed that radiation levels had now reached 2.8 millisieverts—180 times higher than before he had opened the door. Of course, this was the level detected by the wrist communicator outside his shell; in theory, not one single beta ray would be reaching Minoru’s body. If any of the radiation did get through, a separate counter inside his headset should set off an alarm to let him know. Still, he felt a bead of sweat drip down his forehead. “Th…the air lock is now open. Radiation levels at 2.8 millisieverts.” “R…roger.” Yumiko’s voice sounded a bit ill at ease, too. “Whoa, wait a sec! Two-point-eight?!” This voice was obviously Kakinari. “You’re seriously still fine at a level like that?!” “Y…yes, it’s fine.” It is fine, right?! Minoru sent a silent and emphatic plea toward the Third Eye in his chest. “I’ll continue toward the nuclear reactor containment room now.” “…At the first sign of danger, you are to retreat immediately, no matter what. You know that, right?” “Roger that. I’m going in!” This is part of my duties, too… A part that only I can do, as a matter of fact. Directing a silent encouragement toward himself this time, Minoru stepped over the rail and into the building. In the dim light of the nuclear reactor containment building, dust particles danced silently in the rays of winter light shining through the door behind him. Since the reactor itself was kept in a vacuum-sealed vessel, there should be no danger of radioactive material leaking into this part of the building. Nonetheless it was probably best to keep the time that the air lock was open to a minimum. Changing the wrist communicator’s display back to the map and switching on the LED lamp on the forehead of his protective mask, Minoru stepped into the wide passageway. He proceeded with caution, following the red navigation line displayed on his map. Soon, he was able to see a bulky radiation blocker that had likely been installed after the incident. Since this would also interfere with the radio waves of his communicator, he reached into a pouch on the waist of his protective suit, pulled out a battery-operated repeater, and placed it next to the blocker. “Repeater number one, installation complete.” “Understood. Signal levels satisfactory.” “Proceeding now.” By the time he had traveled another five meters or so, Minoru’s surroundings were almost completely pitch-black. The radiation level on his wrist communicator now measured four millisieverts per hour, the air in the hallway polluted by radioactive elements scattered by the damaged containment vessel. Just standing in this hallway for fifteen minutes would bring your exposure level up to one millisievert, the maximum annual dosage deemed safe by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Since particle radiation from emitted alpha particles or photons could be blocked with even a sheet of plastic, they posed no threat to the suited-up Minoru except through internal exposure, but the real problem was electromagnetic radiation like gamma rays and X-rays. At least ten centimeters of lead would be required to block out gamma rays, meaning that the thin layer of tungsten inside Minoru’s suit would do little to protect him. It was strange to think about. Gamma radiation was nothing but electromagnetic waves with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, yet they could damage a living being’s DNA by inhibiting the repairing abilities of cells and, in the worst-case scenario, even lead to death. If the Earth’s atmosphere didn’t absorb the gamma rays that constantly rain down from outer space, all of humanity would have long since perished. The survival of human beings is really based on a delicate, dangerous balance, Minoru thought. The shifting of tectonic plates, the eruption of volcanoes, a slight increase in the average temperature—any one of these things could cause that delicate balance to crumble. And Ruby Eyes could be a threat to that balance, too. What set them apart from the other disasters, though, was that they were beings with minds of their own. He had been deeply alarmed when Nishikida had pointed out this possibility earlier, but thinking back now, he remembered that Igniter had intended to turn all the water in Tokyo into hydrogen and cause a massively destructive explosion. And it was entirely possible that another Ruby Eye could target this nuclear reactor in Tokyo Bay as a show of their power. In order to protect the peaceful lives of the people closest to him—his stepsister, Norie; his friend from the track and field club, Tomomi Minowa—he had to make sure this mission succeeded. With these thoughts churning in his mind, Minoru continued his slow progress through the dark hallway. The map on his wrist communicator indicated that the distance from the air lock to the containment vessel was only about eighteen meters, but to Minoru it felt ten times as long. Finally, a plain rectangular door appeared in the wall before him. Finding a label that read CONTAINMENT VESSEL AIR LOCK, Minoru took a short breath. “I’ve arrived at the containment vessel door. Radiation levels, fifteen millisieverts per hour.” “Roger……a bit farthe……od luck.” Since it was now coming through three different repeaters, Yumiko’s response was choppy with noise. Nonetheless, encouraged by the sound of his partner’s voice, Minoru gave a loud “Right!” in response as he stepped up to the door. Compared to the building entrance above, this set of double doors was much smaller. However, the first set of doors had nothing on the pressure of these off-white, steel-armored doors. Since the incident in 2011, not a single human had been inside these doors. During his briefing, Minoru had seen the images collected by the probe robot before its signal was lost, but seeing up close how the doors had been ravaged by the radiation, he had a keen sense of just how terrifying the situation was inside the containment vessel. Just thinking about the fact that he was about to go inside was enough to make his heart leap into his throat, but he knew he couldn’t turn back now. Through his protective shell and suit, Minoru touched his hand to his left cheek, where the Divider, SFD member Olivier Saitou, had punched him not long ago. Then he clenched his hand into a fist. “I’m opening the containment vessel!” he shouted, half at himself. Reaching out and gingerly grasping the handle, he unlocked the door and pulled it open. He met with a great deal of resistance at first, but soon the stuck gaskets came loose, and the door creaked open for the first time in eight years. Inside was a room only about a meter around, with another set of double doors. According to the information Minoru had received, an interlocking mechanism prevented the doors from being opened at the same time, so once he entered the room, the threshold would close back up. With this, Minoru was now completely cut off from all contact with Yumiko. He would have to make decisions on his own from this point on. The agreement was that if more than twenty minutes passed without any communication from Minoru, Yumiko would assume that something had happened and come rushing in—so he couldn’t afford to let a single second go to waste. Turning around, he shook off his fear of unlocking the next door and gave it a push. Once again, the door slowly came unstuck with a loud noise and began to move. Three centimeters…five centimeters…the opening widened ever so slowly. Once again, the wrist communicator gave off a shrill alert. Minoru stopped pushing for a moment and looked with dread at the blinking number on the LED screen: 3.2 sieverts per hour. Or in the units of measurement they’d used back at SFD Headquarters, 3.2 million microsieverts. …It reached that high a level just from opening the door five centimeters? Minoru planted his right foot in the opening and, after double-checking that his protective shell was activated, pushed the door open with all his might. The headlamp’s white light shone faintly into the gloomy darkness. He had been warned that the inside of the containment vessel would have very high heat and humidity, but there was even more steam than he’d expected. The goggles he was wearing were supposed to be fog-proof, but he still saw some white blooming at the edges of his vision. “…So this is the inside of a nuclear reactor containment vessel…” In an effort to keep himself calm, Minoru commented out loud, but there was still a bit of an audible tremor in his voice. But he could still move his legs, and there was no numbness in his hands. So far, he didn’t feel any headache or stomach pains to indicate that anything was wrong with his body, either. Compared to the fight against Biter on the rooftop of the Saitama Super Arena, he was still pretty calm…at least he hoped so. Moving on, he carefully scanned around the room with his headlamp. He could more or less make out the grating on the floor but wasn’t able to see the wall of the nuclear reactor pressure vessel that should be in the center of the room. A few bolts that had probably come loose in the aftershocks of phreatic explosions were rolling around on the floor, but there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. Looking down between the gaps in the grating beneath his feet, he could see the light from his headlamp reflected in the water far below. Underneath that water, the atomic fuel that had melted through the containment vessel and the pressure vessel was most likely still radiating huge amounts of heat. He had been told that the most difficult part of the nuclear decommissioning process would be retrieving that debris, and indeed, Minoru had no idea how they would go about removing something that no human could get anywhere near. According to Professor Riri Isa, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare had indeed expressed the opinion that, if he could retrieve the robot, Minoru might also be able to investigate the debris in the contaminated water below. However, apparently Chief Himi had firmly refused, even going so far as to threaten to remove the memories of this operation from everybody involved if the request was not retracted. Even then, he had bowed his head deeply to Minoru, apologizing for “asking him to do a job like this.” True enough, this mission had nothing to do with eliminating Ruby Eyes, but Minoru’s bargain with Chief Himi was only that he would work as a member of the SFD in exchange for the use of the chief’s memory-altering abilities once the organization was dissolved. If this was part of his duties as an SFD member, Minoru would simply have to do it. “…Now then, where are you, Mr. Robot…?” Since he wasn’t being recorded in order to protect the secret of his Third Eye, Minoru was free to mumble to himself as he slowly circled clockwise around the diaphragm floor, installed to protect the structure of the reactor from seismic activity. The diameter of the room was about twenty-four meters, meaning the room’s outer circumference was a little over seventy-six meters. Minoru had seventeen minutes left to locate and retrieve the robot. Fortunately, since the floor was relatively free of debris, it should be fairly easy to locate the large form of the robot. If he couldn’t find it, there was a high likelihood that it had fallen through some hole into the water below, so there would be no choice but to give up. Please be here… Minoru pleaded silently as he walked, while the number on his wrist communicator continued to rocket upward, soon surpassing ten sieverts per hour. If for some reason Minoru were to drop his protective shell for even a moment, the tungsten suit and even the restorative powers of his Third Eye would almost certainly not be enough to keep him from dying of radiation exposure. As Minoru continued forward, he imagined that he could see the high-energy radiation flying all around him as small, countless sparks. Navigating around the pressure vessel, Minoru arrived at the opposite side of the room from the double doors he’d entered through. Then, at last, the white light of his headlamp illuminated a promising shape not far away. It was a cylindrical object that lay curled on the grating of the floor, about a meter in length. Attached was a long series of metal rings, which he assumed expanded and contracted to move the robot like a snake. This part looked to be about ten centimeters thick and seventy-six centimeters long. On its head was a sensor comprised of several lenses, but it didn’t look to be functioning at the moment. The reason the robot had stopped moving was obvious at a glance. A large gash in the center of its body had damaged three or so of the rings, exposing the mechanisms beneath. The mysterious cause of this damage was nowhere to be seen nearby, but Minoru’s job was only to retrieve the robot, not to determine what had happened to it in the first place. Reaching out with both hands, he gathered the little metal snake into his arms. Suddenly, the indicator on the robot’s head blinked green, and at the same instant, a small beep from Minoru’s headset indicated a request for a new connection. “Huh…?” Without thinking, he automatically looked around the room, but of course, nobody was there. Then the request must have come from the robot in his arms. Dubiously, he tapped the button on his wrist communicator to accept the request. The standard Bluetooth icon flashed, confirming that the connection was established, and in the next moment… “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” Muddled with noise though it might have been, there was unquestionably Japanese speech flowing through Minoru’s earpiece. He blinked, startled, and looked around once again, but there was still nobody else in the room. Looking down at the metal snake in his arms, he spoke up timidly. “Was that you who said something just now?” “I AM PROBE ROBOT MARK-22. MY NAME IS MUSER. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” On closer inspection, the indicator on the robot’s head was blinking erratically in time with the voice in the earpiece. It really is this little snake that’s talking to me. Thinking back, Minoru had been told that the robot he was here to retrieve was completely autonomous, able to function without any human control needed. But he hadn’t expected it to have such an advanced AI system that he would have to tell it his name. Minoru wondered for a moment if it was all right to ignore the robot’s query and simply carry out his mission. But after three seconds of silence had elapsed, the metal snake—Muser—spoke up again. “YOU ARE NOT RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES, CONTROL CIRCUITS WILL NOW SELF-DESTRUCT.” With some difficulty, Minoru tried to translate into words the noisy synthetic voice in his mind. “Not recognized as an authorized user”…“security purposes”…“self-destruct”?! “COMMENCING COUNTDOWN. TEN… NINE… EIGHT… SEVEN…” “Whoa, w-wait a minute!” In a panic, Minoru leaned down to address the robot, pressing his goggles against its biggest lens. “I-I’m from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Industrial Safety and Health Department, Specialized Forces Division…” After a second’s hesitation, he used his real name instead of his code name. “Minoru Utsugi. I came here to retrieve…to rescue you.” “…TO RESCUE ME?” Interrupting the self-destruct countdown, Muser’s indicator blinked rapidly and adjusted the focus on its lens. Despite being a robot, the uncertainty was palpable in its voice as it spoke. “THE RADIOACTIVITY LEVEL IN THIS ROOM SURPASSES THE MEDIAN LETHAL DOSAGE FOR A HUMAN. WHY HAVE YOU COME TO RESCUE ME?” “The median lethal dosage…” That most likely meant the level of radiation that would kill at least half the humans exposed to it. If one thought about it logically, it did seem like there would be no reason for a human to risk death just to rescue a probe robot. Unless, of course, that human was capable of completely protecting himself from radiation. However, Minoru doubted that the robot’s AI would understand if he tried to explain about his protective shell. “Umm, well, that’s…” He trailed off for a moment, trying to come up with a satisfactory answer. “Because…you are very important. We couldn’t afford to lose you here, so I came to rescue you.” The robot’s indicator light flickered for a few moments before it responded in its artificial voice. “…YOU HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER.” Breathing a sigh of relief under his mask, Minoru checked the time. Twelve minutes had already passed since he first entered the containment vessel building; another eight, and Yumiko would come charging in to rescue him. “All right, we’re going outside.” Cradling Muser in his arms as carefully as if it were a wounded animal, Minoru returned to the set of double doors. In the opposite order from before, and with a little more difficulty, as he was using only one hand, he made his way back out. Turning the handle again and locking the outside door, he took a deep breath. With the headset automatically having reconnected to the repeater, Minoru spoke into it loudly. “This is Isolator. I have successfully recovered the robot!” Yumiko responded without a moment’s delay, as if she’d been awaiting the news with bated breath. “Roger that. The repeaters can be left where they are. Please make a speedy exit from the building.” “All right, I’m on my—” Minoru started to respond but was quickly interrupted. “WHO IS SPEAKING ON THIS CHANNEL? STATE YOUR NAME,” the robot in Minoru’s arms cut in abruptly. There were a few seconds of silence, and then Yumiko responded in something of a shriek: “ME?! Who are you?! Utsu… I mean, Isolator, is there a girl in there?!” “A…a girl?!” Minoru sputtered, wondering why she had leaped straight to that conclusion, but he supposed that if anything the robot’s synthetic voice was somewhat high-pitched. Muser responded to her question in a cautioning tone. “YOU ARE NOT RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES, CONTROL CIRCUITS WILL NOW—” “Wh-whaa—?! Both of you, please just wait a minute, I’ll explain as soon as we get outside!” Minoru quickened his pace through the hallway. This time, it was Kakinari’s bemused voice that cut into the conversation. “What in the heck is going on in there, kid?” “I…I don’t know, either!!” Minoru wailed. Straight ahead of him, he saw the light of winter shining white through the open air-lock doors. Thus, the probe robot recovery mission, Minoru’s first job for the SFD outside of fighting Ruby Eyes, ended more or less successfully. The damaged robot Muser was returned to Eastern Electric Power Company, and its recordings from inside the nuclear reactor containment vessel before its signal was lost were uploaded to the Internet. However, there were no images of whatever caused the recording to be interrupted. What was the cause of the damage “she” had sustained? And what effect had her first contact with Minoru had on her AI? It would be a little while longer until Minoru would find out. Interlude I – End