I was on the third underground level of the Hakone base, in the office of the chief of the Special Media Entertainment Department, sitting at my desk with my head in my hands.
I looked up and saw the various project managers sitting behind their partitions, making arrangements and generally looking busy.
“How did it come to this...?” I mumbled to myself as I drank my cold coffee.
Clare carried over a large pile of electronic memory chips and placed them on the desk in front of me. Even now, she was serving as my personal adjutant.
“Chief, tomorrow’s animation broadcast and the commercials to be broadcast alongside it have arrived from Noa Island,” Clare told me with a happy smile. “Would you be able to give them a final check?”
I’m glad Clare’s here, but doesn’t she have other things to do?! Clare is part of the PMC department. This is hardly her field of expertise. Then again, I’m busy enough as it is. Without her to coordinate each of our teams, this workload would kill me.
Once I’d sold the paintings Baldy and I had made, and determined that my plan could work, I’d proposed a culture creation project that my mom had swiftly put into action. She’d immediately sent the necessary personnel and equipment to Noa Island, created the cosmetics commercial within just two days Earth-time, and then gotten our satellite broadcasting going before I knew it.
For reasons related to the broadcasting rights, our broadcasts didn’t start until 7 PM, but we’d acquired rights to broadcast all five types of commercial repeatedly during commercial breaks on various TV channels. As a result, Noa’s products had sold out in cosmetics stores around the world.
Mom must have been pleased. Soon after that, she established a special purpose facility on Noa Island so that movies could be recorded and produced at a faster pace. It was now only five days after the broadcast of the initial commercials, but the anime would be broadcasting on satellite channel number 452, “Noa Channel,” tomorrow.
Clare and the rest of the personnel of Noa were so talented, it scared me.
“It’s only been a week since I made that painting,” I commented. “It’s amazing how we’ve gotten everything done in time.”
“Yes, but we did have every member of Noa doing all they could to back us up while we got the new department established,” Clare told me. “Please remember that we won’t be able to produce everything at this speed in the future. As for Magical Girl Alice airing tomorrow, Alice is playing the protagonist and Aikawa is playing the antagonist, as you wished. They haven’t finished recording the final episode yet, so it should be another two days before they’ll return to Hakone, allowing for sightseeing time in G-88.”
“I see.”
Maybe it’s asking too much to have a new line of business up and running within just one week. I’ll make sure there are at least two weeks of production time for the team to complete episodes in the future. I need to think about Alice and Megumi, too. They were keen to help with the anime production, but we should probably be paying them for the work. Mom probably dealt with that, but I’d better email her later just to check. Next, there are the VR games and movies that I asked Macho Man and his team to deal with. I wonder how that’s going.
“Clare, how well are my dad and the others doing with the VR works?” I asked.
“First of all, please be aware that the adult-oriented content you’ve proposed has been divided into male-oriented and female-oriented categories and development has been assigned to two separate teams. This is due to a directive issued by Miki.”
“Ah. I thought that might happen. I can’t exactly get involved in that kind of project. But what about the horror game? I’ve got high hopes for that.”
“Out of the 46 members of Noa’s PMC personnel that took part in the beta test... 15 suffered a loss of consciousness. Of those 15, three developed nyctophobia.”
“It knocked them out? Was that some kind of technical fault? I thought that Mom had made sure the beta test equipment was safe to use.”
“Sorry... I should have said it more clearly,” Clare said. “Out of 46 personnel, 15 passed out from fear. Of those, three developed a fear of going to the bathroom at night.”
Huhhh?! These are former members of a UN special forces unit. They’re fainting in fear? I realize that the VR device is different from a TV screen because it feeds sensory data directly into the brain, but... being scared to go to the bathroom? They sound like children. The beta test map was supposed to be fun. All they had to do was solve the mystery and escape from the big hospital in the mountains. Why would they pass out? I stayed up all night coming up with puzzles and ways to surprise the player, but it looks like I wasted my time.
“Did anyone actually solve the mystery and escape? Did anyone clear the game?”
“I’m the only one who escaped,” said Clare. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but the game makes no sense! The way it starts out is fine, but around halfway, when you encounter the nurse with the broken leg in the west ward, that part was unfair!! Most of the testers gave up when she chased after them in the wheelchair without saying anything. And please make it so the ghosts of doctors don’t suddenly get closer when the lights flicker while fetching the key in the underground corridor! And then there’s the part where you have to put the final medical record back in the right place. How are you supposed to figure out where it goes? It took me so many attempts!”