Hi. My name’s Kei. I was bom on the planet Niogi on December 27, 2121. I’m nineteen years old. Three years ago I graduated from the university on Mezuiru, and joined the WWWA together with my partner Yuri. I’m just an innocent, sweet young maiden.
Yuri was born on March 18, 2122. She’s from Yocha. And yup, she’s nineteen, too.
Yuri and I got to know each other when we were in the same study group in the same class at the university on Mezuiru. We soon became fast friends. You couldn’t find two people with more different personalities or tastes, but for some reason we were attracted to each other from the instant we met. It was strange how well we got along (there really was a reason for it, too, but that only became clear after we joined the WWWA).
It’s been seven years now, but we’ve never been separated, not even once.
One day not long before we were supposed to graduate, we were called in by our advisor and introduced to a gentleman waiting in his office. The man was a refined, scholarly type, about forty, who showed absolutely no inclination to tell us his name. Fact was, he was a scout for an organization we’d only heard rumors about before—the WWWA—Three Double-U A.
The WWWA’s real name is the Worlds Welfare Work Association—it’s one of the public bodies belonging to United Galactica.
As for United Galactica itself, well, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t know what that is. Founded in 2134, with a membership of three thousand planet-states located in the Milky Way galaxy, UG is a pan-galactic peace cooperation organization.
It’s just thirty years since scientists perfected the greatest dream of the human race, the warp drive. In that time, we humans—colonists, we call ourselves—have advanced steadily into outer space, filling the Milky Way from end to end. There are more than three thousand inhabited solar systems, and just about as many planet-states—states where the entire planet is the basic administrative unit.
My own home planet Niogi, and Yuri’s Yocha, are both planet-states. They declared independence from Federated Terra a decade ago and joined United Galactica.
When you think about it, the human race has come a long way in just the three decades since it launched off into deep space. Incredible vitality is the word. I suppose that vitality must be a manifestation of the lifeforce of the species itself.
In recent years terraforming technology has been advancing by leaps and bounds. Nowadays even planets that once were left to themselves as unfit for human habitation are being rebuilt into colonizable worlds. Some states even plan to terraform all the planets in their solar systems. At this rate, virtually every planetstate in the galaxy will have evolved into an even more advanced form of government within just the next few years—solar-states, perhaps?
Thirty years. Just thirty years and it’s already come to this. It kind of makes you think the universe itself has blessed humanity’s advance. As if it joyfully flung wide its gates of its own accord.
Can that really be true?
Well, I for one sure don’t think so. Man doesn’t control the universe; it hasn’t surrendered. It’s only given our human race an itsy-bitsy chance (and even that strikes me as incredibly generous).
Somehow we’ve been able to make good on that chance. Or we have so far. Of course the road hasn’t always been easy. Why is that? Because naturally, the chance we’ve been given comes with its own set of trials attached. In countless shapes and forms, those trials have risen up before our species to block our way. Sometimes there’ve been terrible fevers, origins unknown. At other times, natural catastrophes beyond our control, like massive space currents or black holes. There have even been fights among us that have escalated into a test for the race as a whole.
There wasn’t much of that in the beginning. We might take some damage now and then, but it was always limited, and never enough to sway the fate of the entire species. Or wasn’t, that is, until the disaster that shook the very foundations of United Galactica, the infamous Kuraretta trinary star incident.
There’s no reason for me to explain the incident here, so I won’t. If you want to know more about it, just cart yourself off to the library. Everything from the very beginning to the very end, all the way down to the secret stories behind the secret stories, has all been put down on microfilm. Just the standard encyclopedia entry would probably be all you need, though.
What was most significant about the Kuraretta incident was not the incident itself. It was that it finally pounded into the heads of the leaders of each and every planet-state an awareness that any kind of trouble, even the most trivial thing, can eventually escalate to the point that it threatens the existence of the whole human race if it isn’t handled properly.
That was the background rationale for the founding of the WWWA six years ago. The WWWA seeks out, trains, and dispatches people who can respond to any and all kinds of problems with the potential to harm the species. The WWWA’s agents either solve the problem themselves, or provide advice that contributes to finding a solution. It’s a unique organization even within United Galactica.
To enable it to perform its mission, United Galactica has endowed the WWWA with awesome authority. WWWA agents—Trouble Consultants, we’re called—have total freedom of access to any planet-state belonging to Galactica. We’re granted complete authority to independently pursue our investigations. Trouble Consultants responsible for investigating criminal offenses in particular, are given carte blanche to use any and all kinds of weapons.
Even so, and I know this can be hard to understand—the WWWA is in no way an international police force, or a special military force. Each planet-state has its own independent police and army, and United Galactica has the UG Space Force. There’s been no need to go to all the trouble of creating yet another similar organization. No, in the final analysis, the WWWA always functions in the interests of all mankind. Its guiding philosophy is the “enrichment of life.” In short, its welfare. I just thought you ought to know.