Mt. Asama was covered in station all the way to the peak. Aside from the tiny hollows created by the undulations in the ground there, it was a model example of a stratovolcano within Yokohama Station.
The mouth, five hundred meters across, was ringed by hallways, which offered a foothold to stack more floors upon until it covered the top of the volcano in a dome, like a particularly aerated wicker basket. Because the corridors were not airtight, they were constantly full of the stench of hydrogen sulfide.
If Yokohama Station completely blocked the mouth of the volcano, the pressure inside would build until it caused a steam explosion. The structure seemed to understand this, because it had constructed a cage-like system that allowed the pressure to escape.
There were no tourists here. Mt. Asama was a travel route, so very few people went out of their way to visit the caldera. At some point, someone had decided to sort the mountains of Japan into two mutually exclusive purposes: travel or sightseeing.
“First, let’s set up a fixed interference antenna here.”
Nijo removed a terminal about the size of his palm from his bag, looked around for a plug underfoot, and stuck the charging cable in. The device beeped, and its screen turned on, displaying a message that said it was booting up. Then he retrieved his laptop and entered a few commands with a rapid but steady rhythm. The smaller device’s screen now stated that its setup was complete.
“If we figure out the curvature of the dome, we should be able to measure the internal pressure to a certain degree. If this thing keeps emitting jamming signals, it will control the Suikanet nodes around this spot the way I command it to.”
“Hmm. Like a handicap stone.”
“Handicap stone?”
“You don’t play Go? They’re pieces that a beginner gets to have on the board at the start of a game against an experienced player. By having them down at the start, it makes it easier to capture the territory around them,” Dr. Blue-Eyes explained.
Nijo nodded with delight. “Ahh, what a clever analogy. Brilliant, Doctor! Then let us call this our handicap stone,” he said.
He pulled out a piece of paper, scrawled a message on it in pen, and placed it under the “stone.”
In place for surveying purposes. Please do not touch. K2
“What’s with the K2?”
“Those are my initials. Keijin Nijo, K2.”
Dr. Blue-Eyes chose not to tell him that he wouldn’t use 2 for Ni, but the English letter N.
“I’m not sure if that’s going to be as effective as you want. Do this instead,” he suggested while producing a red pen and a fresh sheet of paper.
This device was generated by the station on this spot. Removing it will be seen as destruction of station material and might cause your Suika to be invalidated.
“Oooh! Excellent, sir. Nobody will want to touch it now. Not only are you a medical expert, but you are also extremely cunning.”
“It’s not my idea. I saw the same thing done before, ages ago. The older, the wiser, that’s all.”
“I see, I see!” Nijo was positively beaming.
Of course, everyone who lived Inside understood that nothing you could accomplish with human hands rose to the level of “destruction of station material.” But now that there was a written warning, nobody was going to risk it.
With that step complete, the two descended an elevator to the southwest. There were five devices they had that could be placed as handicap stones. The village was on the north slope, so the most effective strategy was to put one on the peak and a number along the southern side.
The south slope was quite lonely. The only sounds were the humming of the escalators and the thunking of the automated turnstiles’ footsteps. Occasionally, there was a distant gashunk, galank, galunk, galank noise. The pair discerned that it happened every fifteen minutes by checking the clock.
“You don’t suppose the eruption’s started already, do you?” Nijo questioned. Despite the serious nature of the inquiry, his face suggested a hint of glee.
“I’ve never heard an eruption, so I couldn’t say…but if you asked me, it resembles a machine more than rocks crumbling.”
“That’s a good point. Perhaps there’s a scrapyard nearby.”
“I came this way for a patient visit about three years ago and didn’t see anything like that,” replied Dr. Blue-Eyes.
A scrapyard was a turnstile disposal facility. Automated turnstiles that were past their service life went to such places to be dismantled by other turnstiles. The facilities weren’t massive places, but the doctor thought it was unlikely one would grow here in the mountains after only a few years.
Unlike the west slope of Mt. Asama, which was a main travel thoroughfare, there was almost no one on the south slope. It wasn’t the shortest route between any two cities. The station structure had a tendency to generate features where it detected the most foot traffic, so the hallways here were shabby. There were gaps in the escalator slopes, and many of them weren’t moving. Perhaps the electrical systems were breaking down. That was only going to drive more people away. The process of reshaping the hallways was known as colony optimization.
But that didn’t mean this region of the mountain was utterly empty and still. While there were no settlements, automated turnstiles could be seen anywhere in Yokohama Station. Some stood unmoving on landings, while others just circled endlessly, going up and down the escalators.
“For there being no people here, the turnstiles certainly seem quite busy, Doctor,” Nijo noted.
“It wasn’t like this three years ago, as I recall. There weren’t any people then, either, but all the turnstiles were stopped, for the most part.”
“Perhaps this is another harbinger of eruption. It’s quite a fascinating phenomenon, if so.” The younger man smirked. Books mentioned that birds and other animals would flee when an eruption was imminent on natural mountains. Some believed that wild animals possessed instincts that civilization had taken away from people.
Gashunk, galank, galunk, galank.
As the two headed along the mountainside toward the spot for their next handicap stone, it seemed as though the strange mechanical sounds were getting closer.
When they were stationary and seen from a distance, there was no major difference between humans and turnstiles, but the disparity couldn’t be more obvious when the machines were walking.
When humans climbed the narrow escalators, they waited to see if the person in front had moved before taking the next step. That created a split-second lag between each individual.
The automated turnstiles had no such gap, however. Surely, there was some level of individual difference depending on how well their electrical systems and motors were functioning, but it wasn’t enough that a human being could detect it. So when there was a line of multiple turnstiles in a row, they seemed to march upward in unison, like one machine.
“Oh! Doctor, look over there!” Nijo cried, pointing down the slope at a highly bizarre escalator. A silver lane stuck out of the mountainside almost vertically, pointing into empty space. From a distance, it looked like a chainsaw stuck into the slope.
At the end was a group of about four turnstiles, stock-still. Display boards were affixed to their narrow necks, but they were facing the other way, so it was impossible to see what they were displaying.
Eventually, a fifth turnstile rose up the escalator from the next landing down. When it reached the top, the quartet took one step forward, pushed by the new one. The turnstile in the lead stepped out onto thin air and fell off the landing.
As it descended, spinning, its face was visible briefly. As always, it showed a white smiling face on a black background.
It collapsed onto a linoleum floor plastered to the mountainside. It landed with a heavy gashunk, then tumbled into the valley, galank, galunk, galank.
“Did you see that, Doctor? What a sight!” Nijo chuckled, very excited.
“What are they doing? Suicide by jumping?”
“That’s probably a fault of their movement programming. They’re designed to maintain a certain distance from one another and never go the wrong direction on escalators. So when five of them jam up in a narrow space, one is going to be pushed off and fall. How fascinating!” Nijo shouted. “Now that we’ve solved that mystery, let’s continue. The spot for our next stone is very close.”
Multiple automated turnstiles were milling about at the base of the bizarre escalator. Exactly every fifteen minutes, one of them would climb onto the escalator and eventually push off another one.
A vast pile of immobile turnstiles was at the bottom of the slope, their limbs broken and twisted. Other turnstiles were gathering around the mound and picking up the pieces, carrying them off somewhere else. Apparently, they even had a routine to perform when they discovered a destroyed turnstile.
Programmed suicide.
Just contemplating the concept started making Dr. Blue-Eyes sick to his stomach, and he had to sit down on the escalator.
“Doctor? What’s the matter? Need a break?”
“Be quiet for a little, Nijo.”
“Very well. I will stop talking. You deserve a rest from all the walking, sir,” Nijo agreed, in what passed for hushed tones by his standards. They let the escalator carry them toward their next destination.
The only sounds on the lonely slope were straightforward and repetitious. The footsteps of automated turnstiles, the hum of the escalators, and the PA announcing, “Please hold on to the handrail and stay inside the yellow line.” To every Insider, these had been heard since birth and were merely background noise. You learned to filter them out of your head, like the ticking of a clock.
When the din was erased from the mind, one thing remained that could not be ignored.
“Someone’s talking,” muttered Dr. Blue-Eyes. “A human voice. There’s a person nearby.”