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Authors: Housuke Nojiri
Tags: Short Stories
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coerced?”
“All Miss Morita said was that the experiment was really important. And when I met the researcher conducting the experiment, he confirmed that. They were investigating vestibular functions in goldfish as a way of determining optimal environments for people in space—”
“We’re not concerned with any of that. So basically, you were threatened with the failure of this very important experiment and found yourself unable to refuse. Right?”
Not concerned? What?!
Akane grew increasingly sure that something wasn’t right here.
“They were so grateful to me for saving those goldfish,” Akane said, desperation creeping into her voice. “Why aren’t you?”
CHAPTER TWO
OF FIGS AND SWALLOWS
[ACT 1]
IF YOU LOOK at a globe, just to the east of New Guinea and south of the red line of the equator lies a small chain of islands stretching from the northwest to the southeast: the Solomon Islands.
Most Japanese knew them for Guadalcanal, where lots of the heavy fighting took place during the war in the Pacific. These islands first appeared in Western history books in the sixteenth century when Spaniards discovered them, but oceanic peoples had been living there since at least one thousand BCE.
Most tourists visiting the islands were Japanese come to see the old battlegrounds, but in recent years their numbers had dwindled. It wasn’t until four years ago that new ties were formed between Japan and the Solomon Islands with the construction of the Solomon Space Association on Maltide, a small island ringed with coral reefs and covered in jungle.
The SSA existed entirely on the funding of the OECF, Japan’s Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund. The association’s founder was one Isao Nasuda, a relatively unknown space enthusiast at the time. How he had managed to lobby his way into a position of such power was still something of a mystery.
“As part of our overseas development aid, we need to provide the Solomon Islands with broadcast education and a complete communications network,” he had argued. “And the best way to do that is with communication satellites.
“Building dams and bridges is all very well and good, but if we build them and don’t provide for their upkeep properly, we get burned by the critics. Maintaining a communications satellite network is no different, and it costs a hefty amount of money.”
Everything up to this point in Nasuda’s argument was pretty standard fare. It was the next part that upped the ante.
“In order to pull this off at the lowest possible price point, we need to deploy a manned spaceflight support network.”
Nasuda was nothing if not self-serving.
Anyone with the least bit of experience in space development would have seen through his ploy in a moment. What he was suggesting was akin to building a factory in order to fix a flat tire on a bicycle. However, thanks to the uninformed officials hearing his case, the program had passed with no objections. Of course, what Nasuda really wanted was to realize low-cost manned spaceflight in order to seize a piece of the growing pie that was the global space industry.
Due to a general lack of media interest in foreign aid efforts, construction on the base had begun without the slightest reaction from taxpayers. Development of an entirely proprietary manned spaceflight system was soon under way. Everything was going swimmingly until plans stalled during the testing phase of their large-scale booster rocket. Nasuda had just received official notice that he had six months left to realize manned flight or the entire thing would be scrapped. That was right about the time Yukari Morita visited the island.
With a single, lightweight pilot like her in the orbiter, they might just be able to get away with the small-scale rockets they had already developed. Finding the similarly built Matsuri for a backup crew had just been icing on the cake.
In the end, they were able to send someone into space before their deadline,
“All Miss Morita said was that the experiment was really important. And when I met the researcher conducting the experiment, he confirmed that. They were investigating vestibular functions in goldfish as a way of determining optimal environments for people in space—”
“We’re not concerned with any of that. So basically, you were threatened with the failure of this very important experiment and found yourself unable to refuse. Right?”
Not concerned? What?!
Akane grew increasingly sure that something wasn’t right here.
“They were so grateful to me for saving those goldfish,” Akane said, desperation creeping into her voice. “Why aren’t you?”
CHAPTER TWO
OF FIGS AND SWALLOWS
[ACT 1]
IF YOU LOOK at a globe, just to the east of New Guinea and south of the red line of the equator lies a small chain of islands stretching from the northwest to the southeast: the Solomon Islands.
Most Japanese knew them for Guadalcanal, where lots of the heavy fighting took place during the war in the Pacific. These islands first appeared in Western history books in the sixteenth century when Spaniards discovered them, but oceanic peoples had been living there since at least one thousand BCE.
Most tourists visiting the islands were Japanese come to see the old battlegrounds, but in recent years their numbers had dwindled. It wasn’t until four years ago that new ties were formed between Japan and the Solomon Islands with the construction of the Solomon Space Association on Maltide, a small island ringed with coral reefs and covered in jungle.
The SSA existed entirely on the funding of the OECF, Japan’s Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund. The association’s founder was one Isao Nasuda, a relatively unknown space enthusiast at the time. How he had managed to lobby his way into a position of such power was still something of a mystery.
“As part of our overseas development aid, we need to provide the Solomon Islands with broadcast education and a complete communications network,” he had argued. “And the best way to do that is with communication satellites.
“Building dams and bridges is all very well and good, but if we build them and don’t provide for their upkeep properly, we get burned by the critics. Maintaining a communications satellite network is no different, and it costs a hefty amount of money.”
Everything up to this point in Nasuda’s argument was pretty standard fare. It was the next part that upped the ante.
“In order to pull this off at the lowest possible price point, we need to deploy a manned spaceflight support network.”
Nasuda was nothing if not self-serving.
Anyone with the least bit of experience in space development would have seen through his ploy in a moment. What he was suggesting was akin to building a factory in order to fix a flat tire on a bicycle. However, thanks to the uninformed officials hearing his case, the program had passed with no objections. Of course, what Nasuda really wanted was to realize low-cost manned spaceflight in order to seize a piece of the growing pie that was the global space industry.
Due to a general lack of media interest in foreign aid efforts, construction on the base had begun without the slightest reaction from taxpayers. Development of an entirely proprietary manned spaceflight system was soon under way. Everything was going swimmingly until plans stalled during the testing phase of their large-scale booster rocket. Nasuda had just received official notice that he had six months left to realize manned flight or the entire thing would be scrapped. That was right about the time Yukari Morita visited the island.
With a single, lightweight pilot like her in the orbiter, they might just be able to get away with the small-scale rockets they had already developed. Finding the similarly built Matsuri for a backup crew had just been icing on the cake.
In the end, they were able to send someone into space before their deadline,
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