“Took a whole chunk of it, huh, Doctor?” asked the employee.
She was a young woman with a tendency to uptalk. She had to be several years younger than Nijo, but it was hard to tell the subtle difference in younger people when you got to be the doctor’s age.
“Hmm? Did you say something, Mugino?”
“I said, it took a whole chunk of the mountain out.”
“Ah, pardon me,” he said, dipping his head in apology. Unlike being inside Yokohama Station, there was no echo up on the roof, so it was harder to make out voices, even at close range. Perhaps being around that loudmouth Nijo for so long had made him a bit hard of hearing.
“I suppose that’s why they’re calling it a sector collapse,” he remarked, holding his hand up and squinting to block the sun.
Judging by the view from the rooftops over Tsumagoi, the northern part of Mt. Asama was simply gone, as though scooped away by a giant spoon. Even from a distance, they could see rubble from the collapse of the station structure within the gouged side of the mountain, its silhouette jagged and ugly. The natural peak was like a symbol of the immovable. And faced with such a dynamic shift in its presentation, Dr. Blue-Eyes had to wonder just what the difference was between the station and the natural landscape anyway.
The roiling smoke had finally dissipated, and there was now a layer of ash several centimeters thick atop Yokohama Station. However, the sky was a piercing blue color. There were no seasons Inside, so it was hard for them to know if it was spring or autumn, just that the temperature was pleasant.
Dr. Blue-Eyes, however, was not enamored with the azure expanse overhead. Going onto the roof when the sun was out was so painful that he could hardly open his eyes. Few other Insiders seemed to have this weakness, so perhaps something was wrong with him.
“Doctor, was your house around there?” Mugino asked, pointing toward the collapse.
“I can’t tell from this angle, but most likely.”
“Wow… Rest in peace,” the young woman said sadly. The library he’d inherited from his father was probably buried somewhere within that heap. The printed books had been made during the war; his father said he’d inherited them from his father. Now that legacy was ash, just like the bloodline that would end with the doctor, for not having any progeny of his own.
Later, Dr. Blue-Eyes was made a local leader due to his prediction of the eruption and subsequent evacuation of the residents. Station employees also assigned Mugino, a young staffer, to be his assistant. This gave them a means of seeking the wisdom of their leader (or, more accurately, getting his approval of their plans).
Because the people of Hill Town had evacuated to the mountain base, there was a shortage of supplies, from food to medical care. What’s more, because the slope was impassable now, the route of human travel had to change considerably, sending vast numbers of people through places that had previously been ignored.
Naturally, that caused all kinds of trouble, which required the intervention of the station employees. Yet when critical decisions needed to be made, they looked to Dr. Blue-Eyes for mediation. In other words, residents accepted rulings more readily when his name was used, making things far less troublesome.
“I’m still young, so I don’t know what it was like when we had a human government,” Mugino stated. Neither did Dr. Blue-Eyes, but he let the comment slide. “I feel like, having a leader with a face you can see? That’s necessary for times like this. Especially in a disaster, it makes people feel at ease to see an old man who looks kind and smart like you, who can tell people that things will be all right.”
“I see,” the doctor replied. He appreciated the sentiment, of course. But he felt better suited to seeing patients in his clinic one by one rather than speaking to an entire crowd of thousands and hearing nothing in return. “Do we have a total number of casualties, then?”
“Yes. Judging by our citizenship records, we’ve got fifty-two dead and two hundred and eighty-eight wounded. The authorities are saying it’s miraculously low for the scale of destruction? Almost all of the dead were living on the north side, but there are many comments from survivors who say automated turnstiles brought them down the mountain,” she explained, without even looking at the device in her hands. The airheaded way of speaking Mugino employed belied a rather sharp mind.
They had their own registry of the citizenry, separate from Suika registration, and because it was managed by people, it was more useful than Suika in scenarios like these. Especially without excellent Suikanet technicians like Nijo.
Still, Dr. Blue-Eyes couldn’t for the life of him understand their basis for saying the damages were “miraculously low.” No other natural disasters had occurred on this scale Inside, so there couldn’t possibly be anything to compare it to.
“It seems like marshaling the automated turnstiles worked like a charm, Nijo. Very well done,” praised Dr. Blue-Eyes.
“To be honest, I’d say it was more like half-well done, sir. Not in terms of the number of people saved, I mean, but in terms of the number of automated turnstiles,” Nijo responded. “Inverting the control flags only works to a certain probability. It was the variables for Suika presence and the direction to push people. If you flip both of them, they take people with Suika to safety at the foot of the mountain, but there were a high number of them who only inverted one of the two variables.”
“So what happened with them?”
“They kicked people with Suika implants out of the station. In this case, since the eruption had just blown part of the station structure loose, they simply flung the victims into the open there.”
Dr. Blue-Eyes envisioned the people who failed to get away in time, picked up by automated turnstiles and tossed into the open mouth of the volcano.
“…That’s a shame. But it was unavoidable. We had no other choice of action.”
“Absolutely. Had we done nothing, the people left behind in that place would have died anyway. It was a great success that we were able to save even half of them,” Nijo declared. Even though he agreed, the doctor found the way Nijo spoke to be strangely unpleasant.
The younger man closed his laptop. “Well, Doctor, I think I should be on my way soon.” He turned his bulging eyes on the aged medical professional.
“Back to Kyoto, you mean?”
“Yes. There’s been some family trouble there. I must return at once. You’ve been a great, great help to me, Doctor. Thanks to you, I’ve more or less deciphered that code and had a very valuable practical experience in controlling Suikanet. That alone could potentially help me do some amusing things soon.”
Nijo yanked the cable out of the wall with tremendous force as he spoke, wound it up, and stuffed it into his case.
Dr. Blue-Eyes was going to reciprocate the statement of gratitude, but he felt that it wouldn’t be appropriate to the situation. Nijo’s actions had saved the lives of many. However, he was also the reason that the doctor’s face was on posters all over Inside, which left the older man feeling it had been more of a hassle than anything.
“I see. Well, let’s meet again if anything comes up,” he said.
Nijo bowed, then headed to an escalator leading northwest and disappeared.
The statement was never realized. The two never met again.