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There is a natural atmosphere on Castlebourne, but it doesn’t have the right
composition for human lungs. That’s why the owner built tens of thousands of
domes, so each could contain its own atmosphere. The hunters knew the risks
going into this plan, but they didn’t talk about it, because it was the only
one they had. As soon as Elise clears the dome opening, she turns and
follows the curve back down towards the surface.
They already picked out a rendezvous point. The desert where the rocket was
buried is not on any map they’ve ever seen. It’s much smaller than a regular
dome, which has a diameter of 83 kilometers. It’s situated between
Bloodbourne and Tokyo 2077, and was supposedly built exclusively for this
hunt. For whatever reason, the single escape pod always transports the
designated survivor to Tokyo 2077, where they find themselves having to
navigate their way back home using directions found hidden in the pod. Rage
once tried to ignore them, and exit herself, but the target exit is the only
way to reenter the normal dimension, instead of this Facsimile thing.
Elise and Colley fly through the airlock, where they inject themselves with
an emergency baseline cocktail, which brings their body back to equilibrium
after exposure. They walk through the tunnel where they catch up with the
rest of the group, who have already found Rage sitting on the edge of the
pod’s hatch, reading the instructions.
“Don’t you just remember where to go?” Jolanda asks her.
“The exit is in a different place every time,” Rage explains.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Minotaur presses. “If you’re going back in
time, why would it move, unless Hrockas is aware that you’re doing it?”
“He may be,” Miracle explains, “but even if he’s not, Rage makes different
decisions in different time loops, which affect how the hunt progresses, if
only due to the butterfly effect. I don’t have to go over the butterfly
effect, do I?”
When Rage shakes her head, she notices something. “We’re missing someone.”
“Zelda didn’t make it,” Elise answers solemnly. “I couldn’t carry both.”
Colley hangs his head low. “It should have been me.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Elise argues. “There were no good options.”
“There might be a way,” Miracle claims, “to get her back.”
“How?” Rage asks. “Is death just a form of time travel?”
Miracle chuckles. “No. But you have to understand that, in the world of time
travel, if something ever exists, it always exists. We can get
her mind back by stealing it from the past, and pulling it up to the
present. We have to find Zelda’s body before it wakes up, though, because
the Zelda we meet there will begin to be her own person, and blending
their minds together is ethically tricky the longer we wait.”
“Well, I can’t read this,” Rage complains. “I’m starting to think that
Hrockas is aware of my time travel. It’s always, always, always in
Japanese, which is why I uploaded the language into my neural net, but now
it’s in something else.”
Colley takes the paper from her, and studies it. “It is Japanese.
It’s an old style called Kuzushiji; basically their form of cursive. They
stopped using it nearly 700 years ago specifically because it was
hard to read, and they wanted something standardized.”
“So we have to find someone to translate it,” Rage decides, snatching the
document back. “It takes forever because people are assholes. I think that’s
why this is Tokyo 2077, rather than 2050 or 2100. It was a complex time in
Japan’s history. And the NPCs are just as modern as me, so now we need a
scholar who studied this ancient form of writing, which will make it even
harder. Zelda doesn’t have time for this!”
“It might actually be easier,” Colley reasons. “Scholars love history. If we
go to the nearest university’s language department, they’ll probably be
excited to see this.”
He was right. The Head of Linguistics is ecstatic to see the directions
because he was programmed with a passion for dead languages. He agrees to
transcribe it for them, but only into modern Japanese hiragana, and only if
he gets to keep the document. That is absolutely fine. Once they know where
to go, they won’t need anything else from it. Elise suggests that he start
with the last step in case it’s the only one they need, and that turns out
to be the right call. It saves them a ton of time. Rage has familiarized
herself with the city enough to navigate. The problem was, the exit is in a
bad neighborhood.
“Well, they’re all NPCs, right?” Elise asks. “One restriction when it comes
to fighting is holding back so you don’t accidentally murder someone. But
here, that doesn’t matter. We can go full force with anyone who attacks, and
not feel bad.”
“It’s not that easy,” Colley contends. “Ambients are programmed to be
reactive. If you fight harder, they fight harder. That’s why conventional
wisdom says to use diversion combat methods, like aikido, or maybe judo. Try
to deescalate the situation.”
“Again, Zelda doesn’t have time for that,” Rage argues, “and she didn’t
teach us either of those things. I’m guessing you only know them
academically.”
“Let’s just try not to make trouble, okay?” Minotaur suggests. “This isn’t a
video game. A confrontation is not guaranteed to pass the level. We might be
okay.”
Minotaur’s advice was sound but unfortunately inaccurate for their
situation. They aren’t only in a dangerous part of town. They have to walk
into a den of thieves, surrounded by people open-carrying firearms and
underneath nude video billboards. While it’s true, they didn’t study the
gentler martial arts, they do have an intuition for similar tactics, based
on what they did practice with Zelda and Jolanda. The latter still
being alive obviously takes point, but she isn’t able to handle all
attackers on her own. Everyone has to participate, including kinder Colley.
They keep moving as fast as possible to reach their exit. Luckily, there’s
no final boss to destroy.
By the time they reach the door, they are all bloodied and bruised, but
still breathing, and once they do open it, all the fighting ceases. The NPC
criminals instantly begin to ignore them, and go on with their fake lives.
So it is a little like a video game. Meanwhile, the hunters cross the
threshold, through the magical dimensional portal, and back into the real
world. They end up in the same basement, but it’s the polar opposite as it
was before. It appears to be a school, or a childcare facility. They’re
attacked again, but this time by a bunch of children gawking at the unusual
strangers, who are mostly dressed in racing uniforms, and also one of them
is a green moth.
Amidst all of this, they make their way back to the outer walls of the real
Tokyo 2077 dome, get on the vactrain, and travel clear to the other side of
the planet to The Terminal. This is where everyone who comes to this planet
by casting their consciousness through the quantum network shows up. Every
dome has its own highly secure vault of primary and backup substrates, and
people have their own pods in their private residences. They don’t know
where Zelda will end up, so this is the only place they can go to find out
since it should store routing priority procedures in its database. This is
the hard part, though. It’s time for a good old fashioned high-tech heist.
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