Ch.168Big Gun!

#168

Dexter, who was organizing the information they had gathered so far with William into documents, glanced at Himena who was working on something else and said:

“That water gun, when did they say the analysis would be finished?”

“I think they said they’d have it done by this afternoon, so we should hear back soon.”

“This afternoon, huh.”

As Dexter nodded and focused back on his monitor, Himena followed up with a question of her own.

“When did Judy say she’d be free?”

“It’ll probably take a few more days. She said she’s busy for a while because relatives are coming from England.”

“Are those relatives coming to Las Vegas for fun?”

“I didn’t ask for details, but I assume that’s the case.”

“It’s something everyone living in Las Vegas experiences. The hotel rates are good too.”

“Hmm, I don’t have relatives so I wouldn’t know, but that makes sense. Mr. Pilgrim, is this data organized?”

“Let me see, I’m still checking it. I think I’ll finish this data today as well.”

“Hmm, then let’s do this later. Lunch.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s have lunch.”

With those words, Dexter stood up from his seat and clapped his hands.

“You need food to have energy.”

“Dexter, you certainly observe lunch time properly.”

“Isn’t that obvious? If I don’t eat, my brain doesn’t work.”

While making a gesture of spinning something invisible with his hand, Dexter looked at Himena who was still focused on her monitor and asked:

“What do you want to eat?”

“Me, just anything…”

“Right, for Himena, strawberry sushi topped with whipped cream instead of fish. What about you, Mr. Pilgrim?”

“Ah, would chicken noodle soup be alright?”

“Chicken noodle soup sounds good. Then I’ll try something similar…”

Himena, who had been half-listening to Dexter, finally snapped to attention and frowned.

“Wait, what kind of sushi did you say you’re ordering?”

“Strawberry sushi topped with whipped cream.”

“Are you joking?”

“You said anything, right?”

“Are you really going to order just anything?”

“That’s why you should be specific.”

As Dexter wiggled his eyebrows, Himena pouted and replied in an irritated voice:

“I really am fine with anything.”

“If you keep saying that, I’ll bring back something like eel jelly.”

“Fine! Then get me the same thing you’re having.”

“Then I’ll get eel jelly for myself too…”

“Please, Dexy!”

“I’ll get something normal.”

As Dexter left the office with a chuckle, Himena glanced at William with a sulky expression and said:

“Are all men like this?”

“There’s nothing more ambiguous than saying ‘anything.’ He probably doesn’t want to create a situation where you might not like what he chooses.”

“Even so, strawberry sushi with whipped cream and eel jelly is too much!”

“Agent Libero must like you very much. Hahaha.”

As William laughed heartily, Himena continued to pout while looking outside the office. She stood up when she noticed an agent approaching the special investigation team’s office.

The agent handed Himena a folder, and she spoke while keeping her eyes fixed on it:

“The examination is complete, right?”

“We’ve finished the basic examinations, and more detailed tests are still in progress.”

What the agent handed over wasn’t a standard analysis report but more like a preliminary summary that compiled and condensed the raw information.

While it was somewhat organized as a preliminary summary should be, it contained many disjointed details, and unrelated information was sometimes grouped together.

Even though it was a summary, it was quite lengthy, so Himena was skimming through it when her eyes caught a yellow sticky note attached near a photo of a glass tube. She looked at it carefully and her eyes widened.

[Trace amounts of liquefied Negative found inside the glass tube.]

‘Why is Negative showing up here?’

Surprised, Himena pointed directly at the document and asked the agent:

“Who provided this document?”

“Director Tandy… oh.”

“I’m sorry, I need to go ahead first!”

Himena ran straight to the Science and Technology Department’s office with the folder in hand. Seeing this, William got up from his seat and opened the refrigerator in the corner of the office.

“Would you like something to drink?”

The bewildered agent unconsciously nodded.

While the agent and William were spending a leisurely moment, Himena, who had already arrived at the Science and Technology Department, looked at Tandy who was walking with his hands behind his back and said:

“Haa, I heard, it was, found.”

“Agent Libero, why don’t you catch your breath before speaking?”

“I’m sorry, haa, haa…”

“It’s under detailed examination in the lab, follow me.”

Tandy beckoned to Himena with his finger and went ahead, while Himena followed, still breathing heavily.

As they headed toward the lab, Tandy looked around once and spoke in a low voice.

“While examining the glass tube, the examiner detected energy waves that hadn’t been detected before.”

“Is that energy indeed Negative?”

“That’s right. It was spread thinly across the entire glass tube.”

“So does this confirm it’s a water gun that uses liquefied Negative?”

“That seems to be the case. We’re conducting detailed tests and making a replica, but there’s a very small, really minor issue.”

“A minor issue?”

Tandy forced a smile and said:

“A crucial component is missing.”

“What? A component is missing?”

“To be precise, we don’t have a component made of the same material.”

Tandy entered the lab with Himena following behind, and they stood in front of a small stone fragment placed on a petri dish.

Smaller than a fingernail and cracked, this black stone fragment was pointed on one end like a teardrop and rounded on the other. A deep purple light flickered faintly through the cracks.

“What is this? Surely this isn’t the component you mentioned?”

When Himena asked, Tandy made a troubled expression.

“…We don’t know either.”

“What?”

“All the engineers and researchers in the Science and Technology Department have said they don’t know what this mineral is made of or where it was found.”

Tandy and the surrounding engineers looked serious.

“The other components are all easily obtainable in space, and some can even be manufactured on Earth. But this mineral… nobody knows about it.”

“It’s Vulcanus.”

“Yes, this Vulcanus… wait, what?”

“Dexter?”

Dexter was suddenly standing behind the two, crunching on a crispy taco.

He handed a plastic bag of tacos to Himena and said:

“Here, lunch.”

“Thanks for the taco, but what did you just say?”

“What, lunch?”

“Are you going to keep joking? Even at important moments?”

Under Himena’s fierce glare, Dexter put the taco he was eating into another bag and said:

“Vulcanus.”

“Can Agent Hughes explain exactly what Vulcanus is?”

“Vulcan, Burhan, some call it Adamantine though that’s not the accurate term.”

As Dexter licked the salsa from his hands and mouth and moved closer to the Vulcanus mineral, the nearest engineer blocked him.

“You cannot approach evidence with food!”

“How petty.”

Blocked by the engineer, Dexter spoke from a distance from the Vulcanus mineral.

“Anyway, not many aliens know about Vulcanus. That’s why engineers and researchers are unlikely to know about it.”

“Many researchers working at OSA are known prodigies even in space. Why wouldn’t they know?”

“Because it’s a mineral that only comes from a specific planet. There’s a planet called Etna, an unusual place where most of the land is volcanic. This mineral is produced with a rare probability when volcanoes erupt there.”

Tandy stepped forward toward Dexter, stared at him, and asked:

“And how do you know about this?”

“When I was young, I briefly worked part-time for a mining company that specialized in extracting this mineral.”

“When you were young? Didn’t you just say most of this planet is covered in volcanoes?”

“What wouldn’t a young guy without skills do to make money? Besides, I didn’t know it was such a dangerous job.”

Dexter recalled those times with a bitter expression.

“I was suspicious because they paid too much, but it was a well-known mining company, and I only heard that the management was mining it at someone’s request.”

“Then what role does this mineral play?”

“Vulcanus?”

Dexter looked around the lab and spotted a laser pointer on a desk.

He picked it up, twisted off the cap at the front, and fired the laser at the ceiling while speaking.

When the laser pointer didn’t show a clear dot but rather a diffused beam, Dexter looked at Himena and Tandy and asked:

“How does the laser look now?”

“The laser is diffused and blurry.”

Dexter put the cap back on the pointer, and the laser showed a clear, focused beam as it should.

“This is what Vulcanus does.”

“It focuses light?”

“Something like that. More precisely, when energy is exposed to Vulcanus, it penetrates inside and converges toward this pointed part.”

“Oh, so it’s like a funnel?”

“If you’re thinking of a concept that gathers energy and sends it in one direction, then yes, it could be like a funnel.”

Dexter squinted at the Vulcanus mineral and continued:

“But that’s all Vulcanus does. It’s a mineral that makes any energy converge to a point and then discharge, and it has no other use.”

“So it’s hard to obtain and not particularly useful?”

Dexter nodded at Tandy’s question.

“That’s right. Its application is ambiguous. There are countless alternatives.”

“But what about the Negative? It’s clearly shaped like a gun, and traces of liquefied Negative were found in the glass tube. Doesn’t that mean Negative has been weaponized?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t know. Among the people here, who knows about the power of Negative? No, who even knows how dangerous Negative is?”

Dexter looked around at everyone present, including Tandy and Himena.

“You, me, the director, even the researchers and engineers. Did any of us know how Negative has been used until now? We know it’s dangerous and classified enough for the Galactic Union to block information about it. But nobody knows what role the collected Negative plays. We can only guess.”

“That means…”

“We have the liquefied Negative confiscated from Encyclopedia earlier, and we need to experiment directly to understand.”

Tandy shook his head at Dexter’s suggestion.

“If the Galactic Union finds out about this, they could impose severe sanctions on Earth, and it wouldn’t just be OSA’s problem. Can Agent Hughes handle that responsibility?”

“We don’t know what the gunman might do next, so can we really just ignore this issue? We need to know what we’re dealing with to know how to respond.”

“Just knowing that Negative has been weaponized should be enough…”

Dexter interrupted Tandy’s words.

“No. We don’t know how much damage Negative causes or what effects weaponized Negative has.”

Himena agreed on this point.

“People hit by Negative could turn into monstrous creatures that harm humanity, or something cruel could happen. I think the same as Dexter on this.”

At their words, Tandy squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head.

It was too big an issue for Tandy to decide alone.

While Dexter’s suggestion was tempting, this wasn’t something the Science and Technology Department could handle independently, and they didn’t know what sanctions the Galactic Union might impose if they made a mistake.

“Let’s suggest a meeting hosted by the Secretariat.”

“What?”

“Why should low-level employees like us rack our brains? Let’s bring in all the higher-ups and let them worry about it.”

Dexter suggested throwing this problem to the Secretariat, where the Director, Deputy Director, and OSA executives would gather.

Tandy glared at Dexter, then smiled.

“Avoiding responsibility?”

At Tandy’s attitude, Dexter also smiled cheekily and replied:

“Avoiding responsibility? The decisions of higher-ups would be better than those of low-level employees like us. Even if we decide something, it’s meaningless if the higher-ups overturn it.”

“I think it would be good if the Science and Technology Department and our special investigation team just organize the information and pass it to the Secretariat, asking them to decide what to do.”

As Himena also answered in a bright voice, Tandy chuckled and pointed at the two of them.

“These kids are something else, huh? Trying to pass responsibility to their superiors.”

“Shouldn’t we learn from our esteemed seniors?”

“Ha, esteemed seniors. Alright, after lunch, let’s organize the information with our researchers. I’ll speak directly to Director Makoa.”

Pleased with Dexter’s answer, Tandy gave Himena and Dexter a firm pat on the back, grinned, and left the lab.

Dexter rubbed the back of his neck and said:

“Is this really being handled properly?”

“Yes. We’ve done all we can at this point.”

Himena smiled brightly, but then frowned as she realized something she had forgotten.

“But you seem to pass opinions to others when things get difficult?”

“What?”

“You did the same with Judy.”

“That’s because no matter what I say, you all decide who I spend time with anyway.”

“Don’t you think you’re the problem?”

“If my overwhelming charm is a problem, then yes.”

“Ah, come on! Give me a serious answer.”

Of course, Dexter wouldn’t give a straightforward answer, and instead poked Himena’s armpit area with his finger.

“Eek!”

“That’s not something we can discuss at work, so a little later in the office, when we’re alone.”

At Dexter’s whispered voice, Himena narrowed her eyes and glared at him.

“Talk to me properly later.”

“Gladly.”

And so the two began writing down information about Vulcanus and Negative with the researchers, making it clear enough to understand at a glance.