Station Year 178, Western Gunma
“Dr. Blue-Eyes, we’ve got trouble.”
A bug-eyed young man came hurtling in from the adjacent room so suddenly that the white-haired man he called Dr. Blue-Eyes nearly dropped his coffee cup onto the floor.
Many of the rooms Yokohama Station generated were designed to be commercial storefronts and tended to be more open than spaces intended for domestic living. So Dr. Blue-Eyes’s clinic-cum-dwelling had no door, just a few bookcases arranged near the hallway to give him a modicum of privacy.
“I’ve told you how many times, Nijo: When you’re in a rush, knock first.”
“But, Doctor, you don’t have a door.”
“Do it on this,” Blue-Eyes insisted, rapping the back of the metal bookcase. The young man’s face lit up with sudden enlightenment, and he nodded eagerly.
“Anyway, we’ve got trouble. And when I say trouble, I mean upheaval, as in great change. We are literally upheaving, sir.”
“Right. First of all, calm down.”
“This is normal for me, sir. Um, anyway, look at this. This right here.”
The bug-eyed young man named Nijo placed a laptop device on Dr. Blue-Eyes’s table and opened it. There was a map of the Gunma area on the screen; a triangular symbol indicating a mountain was in the center.
“For the last year, I’ve been measuring the communication range of the Suikanet nodes around this mountain to the south. And in the last few days, the physical distance between the nodes implanted in various regions of the station structure has been expanding. It’s growing, like zoooop,” the young man explained, pulling his hands apart. The action caused him to smack his hand against a bookcase due to the cramped interior, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“What’s your point?”
“The station structure around here is expanding. And I think it’s growing in the lower levels, causing the upper levels to warp and shift,” he said. Then he brought up an interior map of the station and pointed out the lower altitudes.
“That is not possible, Nijo,” replied the blue-eyed old man. “Mt. Asama is below us, and it’s a natural formation. It does not bulge and expand as the station does.”
“Mountains don’t move?”
“That’s right. There’s even a saying. ‘To be as still and unmoving as the natural mountain.’ ”
“Then the saying is wrong, sir. Because this one is,” Nijo asserted, his eyes protruding extra hard. All of the white was visible around his irises, making them look like amphibian eggs.
Dr. Blue-Eyes exhaled through the nose and replied gravely, “Then it might be the precursor to an eruption.”
Mt. Asama was an example of a stratovolcano, meaning it was a natural mountain formed by the layered buildup of multiple eruptions from the same vent over time.
There was a tendency in the station structure to form pie-crust layers of escalators and concrete over the stratovolcanoes found on Honshu. Some said this was a sign that the structural genetic field was incorporating geological information, too.
Mt. Fuji, the tallest of the natural mountains, underwent temporary shifts in its outer layers by the season, which were revered as Black Fuji and White Fuji by the locals. The station structure over Mt. Asama was not nearly so cyclical. It had a static mixture of white and black year-round that was known as pandagraph.
Dr. Blue-Eyes and the oddball young man with the protruding eyes lived in a town on the northern slope of Mt. Asama. The settlement did not have a real name, but folks referred to it as Hill Town.
If you traveled farther north, you would pass through a region called Tsumagoi, which led to big cities like Maebashi and Takasaki. The way to the west was covered in mountains, so there were plenty of people coming and going on the escalators.
“An eruption,” Nijo began, lifting his hands up from below, “is when a natural mountain goes herrupt!, right? I read about it in a book. Is it really that common, though?”
“There hasn’t been one since the mountain was Stationized, at the very least. And I’ve never heard of a volcano going off underneath the station structure.”
“If someone as long-lived as you hasn’t even heard of it happening before, it must be extremely rare. We are fortunate to get to witness it up close.”
“Don’t be morbid.” Dr. Blue-Eyes glared at the younger man. In this era of escalators on all the slopes, foot traffic on the peaks was high. If an eruption happened now, casualties would be massive and unavoidable.
However, without knowing when the event might occur, any rash action might lead to panic. Because human travel Inside was limited by the size and range of the escalators, a rush of movement prompted by uncertain information could lead to calamity on its own.
“Maybe we should try to counteract it somehow with that strange tech you’ve got. Is that possible?”
“Well, sir, all I can do is interfere with Suikanet’s functions. It’s just a little tweak of the information on the net. It certainly can’t do anything about the eruption of a natural mountain beneath us.”
“I’m not asking you to do that. What I mean is that you could issue an evacuation through the system and try to keep people away from the area, that’s all.”
Nijo closed his large eyes and shook his head around while thinking. “Hmm. Well, I’ve never controlled nodes over such a wide area before. It would take some time. I can’t say anything until I’ve tried…but if that’s what you want, Dr. Blue-Eyes, I would certainly bend over backward to make it happen, as your eternal apprentice and follower.”
Blue-Eyes had never once declared the man his apprentice.
Nijo’s Suikanet interference was some kind of tweaking of the network placed all throughout the Inside world of Yokohama Station. As best as Blue-Eyes understood, it extracted and sent information while also manipulating outcomes.
For some reason, Nijo claimed this tech was something he’d learned “because of you, Doctor.” Of course, the elderly man knew little about advanced stuff like that. He was just a medical professional, and although he used the network often for his work, his comprehension of computers was not much better than the average Insider’s.
However, by talking to this vociferous young man, Blue-Eyes had started to understand the basics.
“Look, you know that animated program they’re always broadcasting these days.”
“Ahh, Mr. Shyumai. Yes, I’ve watched it. That’s a really good program. It’s going to wind up as compulsory education one day. You should really watch it, sir. Suikanet communications spread through majority rule, so when a lot of people want to see a show, it spreads around. It’s impressive how much that series has grown,” Nijo commented, but Dr. Blue-Eyes did not seem interested in the content of his statement.
“Maybe we could hijack its slot and send some kind of message instead,” he suggested.
Nijo made a bitter face. “In this region, I might be able to do that with a lot of effort, but it would only be once in an entire week, which isn’t a great way to get out an emergency evacuation order. We should seek a more direct method,” he replied, opening a map on his laptop. “The Suikanet nodes under my control right now are the ones from here to here. I can also send one-to-one messages outside of this range. However, I can only establish real-time communication, intercept others’ messages, and broadcast something to everyone within this scope.”
The area on the map he indicated covered almost all of Hill Town. At some point, the man had gained mastery of the village’s routes of transmissions. Dr. Blue-Eyes thought back on the recent past, wondering if he’d sent any messages he didn’t want anyone else to see, but he couldn’t remember anything other than contact with his patients.
“The heaviest traffic is on the west side of the mountain, so I’d like to cover that zone, if possible,” he said.
“Due to its structure, Suikanet nodes are harder to obtain the farther away they are geographically.”
“Then we’ll actually have to go to the western slope to do it, I suppose.”
“That’s an extremely analog method, but since we’re in a hurry, it’ll have to do. I can only hope my skill in this discipline will increase in the future,” said Nijo.
With that decided, the men were quick to get started. Dr. Blue-Eyes packed his usual supply bag with necessities. Meanwhile, Nijo returned to his room nearby and gathered up his laptop, a charger, and several devices and cables. The doctor put up a piece of paper on the back of the bookcase facing the hallway.
Clinic closed due to emergency. Please be wary of Mt. Asama. If there is any activity, evacuate far away from the mountain. ES
“Doctor, Doctor, what is that ‘ES’ at the end?”
“It’s short for Eddie Shimazaki. Among gaijin, there was once a custom of signing one’s name using shorthand.”
Nijo bobbed his head with great interest.
“I’m ashamed to say that this is the first time I’ve heard your name.”
“I don’t think anyone’s called me by it in the last ten years.”
Not since my wife died, he thought.