Apparently a new ruler of a planet joined the Galactic Credit Union Alliance. We are going to deliver space age supplies and an assistant mechanical intelligence, and destroy a space pirate hideout in this star system. And we are in hyperspace on our way there.
“Flower fields I’ve never seen before are running with us…”
“Face forward. Just forward. If you look to the sides you’re gonna go crazy.”
“What’s with butterflies flying around in hyperspace?”
“It’s a fairy path, so butterflies are the least you can expect.”
And that makes it not weird for butterflies to fly around in space? Am I the weird one? Hearing about these fairies and spirits in space always makes my head spin.
“Kori! Genma broke again, so take over the cockpit! Suzuri, pull him outta there.”
“Yes~! Darling, are you broken~? Don’t look at the side monitor~.”
“A flower field was running. With thick roots like a centipede race.”
“That’s right~. Rest easy~.”
“Yes yes. Drink some water… I will look after…”
Suzuri drags me off the seat, and I get up, leaving the cockpit to Kori.
“Yes, I’ll take a break.”
“I believe you should lay down.”
“That bad uh… I’ll just have a banana milk smoothie.”
I fool around with Suzuri like that, and I hear a mechanical intelligence giggling in a corner of the cockpit.
“Fufu… Excuse me. My records say people who are not used to hyperspace can get sick, but actually seeing it is odd.”
“Erase that from your records.”
“I will keep it as training data to speak with my new master.”
“Gimme a break.”
It’s been four days since we left To Akul Prime, and unlike what I thought mechanical intelligence would be like, it prioritizes amusement.
Maybe it varies based on the individual, but mechanical intelligence seems to really value entertainment and enjoyment.
It’s not about a systematic life or anything like that.
The Galactic Credit Union Alliance doesn’t stop wars between star systems or take the initiative in removing space pirates, and I think that emphasis on amusement plays a part in that.
But she’s serious about work. She asked to assist in controlling the ship here in the cockpit, and after I politely declined, she took position in a corner of the cockpit.
“Hm…”
“Oh, Miss Suzuri. Do you not think it is about time to tell me about your worries’?”
“You have been pretty lost in thought lately. What’s up?”
“Hnu, hn… I need a little more time. I am at a stage where I can talk to Saratha and Kori.”
“Yes, sending data.”
“Did I not just tell you to wait!?”
Data? The mechanical intelligence grins, and Suzuri hurries to the living room. Kori and Saratha look like they’re pretending not to know anything.
The girls never tell me about this sort of thing. I guess I’ll have my smoothie. Hyperspace is too tricky for me.
▽▽▽
Ten days after we entered hyperspace, the day arrives.
Strawberry harvest!!!!!!
“It’s time to harvest the homegrown fruit.”
“Ooh~! Can’t wait~!”
“That said, I assume it will be similar to the thing from the farmers market.”
“Yes, let’s not go too far with our expectations. But having fresh fruit when we can’t get supplies is nice.”
We had the lettuce while we waited for the quest.
“The lettuce was better than I expected. Even though I didn’t really get what was good about it at first.”
“It was all mushy and watery and bitter~! What’s good about it~!? It was like that, right~?”
“I did not expect the taste to change so drastically upon adding ham and cheese.”
“Oh, you did something interesting like that?”
Sadly, miss mechanical intelligence isn’t really a part of this conversation about lettuce. But she does participate in the strawberry tasting, even if she doesn’t have any.
“Ah, I want to have a mothership someday. Then I could use all that space to fill it with stuff like hydroponics kits.”
“I see! That is very interesting. Mercenaries have peculiar delusions, even someone with few achievements like Mister Genma can one day acquire a mothership if you work hard and steadily for years!”
“Hey, are you poking fun at me?”
“I’m pretty sure the word delusions seals it.”
“I was actually wondering if you can save enough money to buy a cheap large transport ship.”
Says Suzuri.
“Ah, but now you’re being praised~!”
Miss mechanical intelligence shows a light smile like she’s going ‘tehe’. Is she aware of what she did?
“But it’s not rare for people to buy large transport ships for farming. Most use hydroponics and grow stuff for themselves, but I know a few people with extra large transport ships that go over one kilometer, and use twenty-five hectares of farmland for fruit trees and small farm animals like funetori.”
“Farmland… You mean actual land!?”
Asks Suzuri.
“Twenty-five hectares… Like half a kilometer on each side… That’s like the core of Osaka Castle. I guess raising livestock would work.”
“They’re huge. And if you’re gonna cultivate stuff outdoors, you need artificial sunlight on a big scale too. And underground filters… It’s a whole world I don’t know.”
“I can’t imagine it~… Why dirt?”
I understand why Kori doesn’t get it.
“Anyway, let’s harvest the strawberries.”
“Oh~!”
“You can make fruit like this, uh?”
“Saratha, strawberries are special.”
“Yes Miss Suzuri. It is easy for someone raised in a colony to misunderstand, but some primes classify strawberries as vegetables.”
“Eh? Really? So what are they like normally? Are these bitter?”
“No, they should be sweet. They call it a fruit like vegetable. On my planet, things that grew on trees were fruit, and things that grew from grass that came from the ground and withered in a year were vegetables.”
“Fue~~~~. Why do you separate them like that~?”
“Ah, I understand. Bitter things are vegetables, while sweet things are fruit. That way they did not get mixed up when packed in containers.”
Was that why…
“There are other reasons, but it is mostly for convenience and so they are easier to understand.”
“I see! C’mon! Let’s just eat already! They’re sweet, right!?”
“Yes~!”
There are four strawberry plants in this planter that’s about a meter long. I think strawberries normally take at least a year to grow, but I’m not sure.
These ones grew from somewhat big seeds, but the fact that they’re ready to be harvested after ten days goes beyond surprising and into suspicious. That can’t be right.
The leaves and stem are the same green color as the strawberries when I went strawberry picking. They’re drooping outside the planter, but the small farming drone used sticks that are like toothpicks to support the stems, so the fruits are hovering.
Their shape is the triangle I’m familiar with, but they’re completely white and have a strange form. These were called milky way comet N.6, and they were described as very sweet and fast to grow like a meteorite.
Well then, I want to harvest, but the farming drone won’t let me. Once we get close, it starts harvesting what’s ready to be eaten like it listened to us, and opens what looks like a transparent greenhouse’s door to hand it to us.
“It’s small, but it seems to be quite the worker.”
“I feel like you move and work like it’s natural, but can mechanical intelligence eat?”
“Depends on the specs, but of course, I can partake. However, since it will be decided by my new master, I will only be helping with the harvest.”
“Speaking of harvesting, how about we proceed…”
Miss mechanical intelligence harvests three white strawberries for each of us that look like they would fit inside a circle made by my thumb and middle finger, and puts them on plates.
There’s still fruit inside the planter that’s not ready to be harvested. I guess even space agriculture isn’t absolutely exact.
I take a bite and take about half of one.
“Yes, uoh, sweet…”
They’re a little sweeter than Earth ones, and the sourness is just in the background. The fruit itself is juicy too. Damn, I grew what’s clearly normal strawberries inside a spaceship in ten days.
“It’s tasty~! Tay tasty~! As good as the ones from the farmer’s market~!!”
“They really are as good as ones that are ten puni a piece… Nice and tasty…”
“Yes, organic fruit really is nice. I wouldn’t mind filling my stomach with these.”
Now we’re all looking forward to the next harvest. I really should set up a hydroponics workshop.
▽▽▽
We left To Akul Prime half a month ago, and it’s finally time to leave hyperspace.
This was a long hyperspace trip, over ten days. It’s pretty easy to get stressed on a trip where we can’t even stop at a port.
“Everyone, we’re leaving hyperspace in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”
“Zero~~~~~~!”
We’re ejected from a dim purple space to a dark space with a shiny blue ball. Great, there really is a planet.
I can also see the biggest distinctive feature of the planet of the one who sent out the quest. A verdant, giant tree called life tree grows thickly, stretching high above the clouds with an estimated height of twenty kilometers and a diameter of who knows how many.
This broad leaf tree’s roots are grasping the left half of one of this planet’s continent’s. Is that about as big as Australia?
I know this isn’t possible, but I’m still surprised that big tree’s weight doesn’t flip it over.
Well then, we reached the landmark we discussed previously. There’s no doubt this is Mishyltia.
“We’ve made it…”
“Yes! I’m really glad~…”
“I was kinda scared thinking about why there was an advance payment.”
“I have heard that ten thousand people a year are stranded thanks to wrong coordinates in the Alliance.”
Says Suzuri.
“That is only a rumor. In this vast galaxy that happens only around ten times a year.”
We received a hundred thousand puni in advance payment because this is a problem characteristic of a new member of the Alliance. There was a chance they could’ve read the coordinates wrong.
To join the Galactic Credit Union Alliance, you must be able to go around the planet once without landing, fly into space, and have control over the planet.
It doesn’t matter how people of that planet read the coordinates, but sometimes someone… Mostly an Alliance employee, messes up.
Most planets revolve, and are super fast. Earth for example did it at thirty thousand kilometers per second. Tortilla Double’s combat speed is five hundred meters per second, so there was no way we could catch up.
But apparently if you get close enough to the planet you can move along with its gravitational pull, so that’s not a problem.
Incidentally, since colonies and stations are stationary, it’s hard for people to be stranded because of them.
When I ask how that’s even possible, I’m told they’re fixated in place via something called Guifermo Zatchils anchor, and I stop trying to understand it. Apparently it’s an application of technology that secures existence via magic energy.
Also, these cost half a million puni. A lot of space stations, especially ones like private farming stations, buy them, and receive financing from the Alliance. They actually work like a credit union.
I’m getting a little off track, but we set it so we left hyperspace in a position from which we would jump towards the planet as it came. It’s like opening the window of a car as it runs through a highway and throwing a ball at a person walking next to it. I can see why there are mistakes with these calculations sometimes.
These mistakes don’t happen with often visited planets, but if they’re planets that just started being developed and have few visitors, it’s common to receive misinformation before one even has the chance to make a mistake.
And so, since the Alliance is aware that sometimes their employees commit great blunders, they offer advance payments so people can buy enough food, water, air, fuel, along with everything else we might need to last a year. We received that message and got everything sorted out.
I wish they’d put that effort into making sure these major blunders didn’t happen, but sometimes even mechanical intelligence doesn’t notice them and they get through, so nothing can be done there. It’s commonly said that positronic brain doesn’t equal perfect.
That’s why two of the four space expansion containers here in Tortilla Double are being used for supply storage. In theory, the food from the food printer should last us years.
Water is perfectly recycled with the alchemist crafter, so we can take a shower every day. Worst case scenario, we could harvest it from asteroids.
“I wonder where the station they use to monitor primitive civilizations is.”
“The AI on-site reported that it rests on top of the tree called life tree.”
“Ah… There it is. It’s showing on the radar. I’m marking it on the monitor.”
Says Saratha.
“Oh, it is so tiny… So protective observation stations look like that? Can this ship dock there?”
“Will they respond to communications~? This is Tortilla Double~. We brought resources as instructed by the Galactic Credit Union Alliance~.”
“<Tortilla Double? What a strange name. This is Van Elbes Leu Mishyl Mishyltia. I have been expecting you. I will guide you.>”
What we hear from the communications device is the voice of a boy that hasn’t gone through his voice change yet. And the monitor shows a guide icon on the station.
“<You know I heard someone go ‘don’t send out a guide beacon! You wanna get us killed!?’, but now I’m actually doing it.>”
“What~?”
“Ah, I saw that in an anime… Ah…!?”
W-wait! Ah!? Respond!
“Van Elbes Leu Mishyl Mishyltia, this Genma Narumi, the pilot of Tortilla Double. Answer one question please. Who was the former prime minister of Japan who was assassinated in the year two thousand twenty-two?”
“<Ah…? Wait, that happened!? No, Shinzo.>”
“I was born in ninety ninety-five. You?”
“<Two thousand and twelve. And I died in two thousand and twenty-six. I’m one of those reincarnated people that are so popular. I didn’t think I’d run into a fellow countryman!!!>”
You mean that actually happened…
“<Narumi, have you gone back to Earth!?>”
“No, it was destroyed five hundred years ago.”
“<I see…>”
The air gets heavy both here and on the other side, but the autopilot docks us at the station regardless.
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I was born in ninety ninety-five. I was born in 1995. -or- I was born in nineteen ninety-five. (俺は西暦1995年生まれです)
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