Ch.9898. Entrance.

After many trials and errors, I finally created a robot-specific charger with my own hands. Seeing the robots moving freely instead of minimizing their speech and movement to conserve battery power gave me a sense of achievement I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I hadn’t been sleeping well due to anxiety from watching their batteries drain. But after several days of proper rest, I couldn’t help feeling good seeing my friends moving around freely.

For once, I laughed and chatted genuinely as we finished a simple meal. Then I went upstairs and looked out the window. Despite achieving my first goal of making a charger, snow was still falling outside.

“Wow. It’s piled up high.”

When I first entered the facility, the snow only reached my knees, but now it had accumulated to the height of the building’s first floor. I was shocked when I woke up to find the window completely dark, only to realize it was entirely covered with snow.

Though I’d holed up here to avoid wandering outside in the blizzard, now I couldn’t leave through the door even if I wanted to. To get out, I’d need to bring Alexander up and somehow break through the thick windows.

“I’m just wondering… the city won’t collapse under all this, will it?”

A city built on top of another city. And another layer built on top of that.

Even the sturdiest structures collapse when pressure exceeds their limits.

It seems fine for now, but if heavy snow continues to pile up… just like old city buildings that collapsed under the weight of snow, not only this floor where I’m standing but the entire Ark might collapse.

“Whoa.”

The thought of potentially falling hundreds of meters along with the entire city made me shudder involuntarily. I’d considered many possibilities for my future, but this would certainly qualify as one of the worst endings.

“I hope that doesn’t happen. I’d at least like to choose my final moment myself.”

Since neither my birth nor my current situation were of my own choosing, I wanted my end, at least, to be entirely my decision. It would be sad if both the beginning and end of a human who believed in and valued freedom were suddenly determined by outside forces.

So hoping the Ark would hold until then, I went back down to the first floor. Regardless of my anxiety, my time here was limited, so I needed to use it wisely.

“Perfect. The shape is flawless… and the smell and taste are pretty convincing, don’t you think? You’d believe it was a candy bar made by an Oompa Loompa.”

“Should I dance and sing beside it?”

“That would be fun, go ahead and try.”

Having lived a life mostly consisting of destruction and cleanup, I was thoroughly enjoying what might be my first act of true creation. Was it because of the endless snowfall outside? I was genuinely enjoying this situation.

The feeling of omnipotence—being able to create anything just by thinking about it. The drive for improvement and exploration that followed. While anything would have been entertaining after such monotonous days, I was completely immersed like a fish in water.

Perhaps this was my true calling all along. In the past, even when I wanted to try something, my body wouldn’t cooperate, and disappointed by a reality where nothing came easily, I turned to the virtual world instead.

“This is the most complete food I’ve made so far. I really hope it’s actually edible like it appears to be.”

The first floor was filled with the charger and various tools and machines I’d made. I could clear enough space by removing failed items and traces of trial and error, but I was reluctant to erase evidence of my efforts. So I continued my experiments on the second floor. Though I shouldn’t talk, considering how easily I erased things others had made.

Anyway, my current focus was creating edible food. A dark brown rectangle. The sweet aroma and taste on the tip of my tongue resembled chocolate, which I now missed dearly.

“…”

But I just couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t work up an appetite. In fact, my previously growling stomach quieted down as if saying “this isn’t right.”

Was it because I knew this wasn’t real chocolate?

No, it didn’t feel like that. Apart from my conscious knowledge that it was fake, my instincts were telling me this couldn’t—shouldn’t—be eaten. Even clay food replicas wouldn’t trigger such revulsion. This should be far better than insect carcasses I’d forced myself to eat when truly starving.

“Hup.”

Still, as long as it was edible, that would be enough. I could endure the nausea. I closed my eyes tightly and put the chocolate in my mouth. The texture and taste in my mouth were definitely those of chocolate—and I could clearly feel it traveling down my esophagus and filling my stomach.

“How is it?”

“…”

I should say it’s delicious. Both to reassure the robot looking at me with concern, and to convince myself that I could actually eat this.

“Open the window.”

But I just couldn’t bear it. My stomach felt bloated, as if demanding to know what I’d just eaten. Though not painful, the revulsion surging through my nerves made me fling open the window and throw myself out.

Though it was only the second floor, the building had unusually high ceilings, making jumping without safety measures quite dangerous. But outside, snow had piled higher than my height. Rather than hitting the ground, I was completely enveloped in snow as I looked up at the dark sky and let out a sigh.

“So this doesn’t work either. I just upset my stomach for nothing.”

Objects I create disappear when they leave the created space and encounter reality. The same applied to food already in my stomach. Feeling my stomach suddenly empty, I slowly got up from the snow. I scooped up a handful of snow and ate it to appease my growling stomach, which was complaining about having eaten something strange only to end up empty again.

“So it seems we can’t create food. Why do you think that is? Is it because it comes from living organisms?”

“I don’t know. If that were the case, we shouldn’t be able to replicate wood either. It makes sense, but I don’t fully understand it.”

This wasn’t going to work. I’d tried everything I could, thinking how convenient it would be to solve the food problem, but the word “impossible” doesn’t exist for nothing.

Objects created here disappear when taken outside. What if I created food and completely absorbed it into my body? It might work, I thought, assuming my body rejected it due to the discrepancy with real food.

But the level of completion made no difference. I tried replicating everything from foods I craved to nearby meat and canned goods, from simple items to chocolate with distinct flavors, but none of them were edible.

It was truly sad. If things had worked out, I could have lived comfortably here without needing to go outside. Perhaps this was a message: enjoy your dream-like existence, but don’t forget reality.

“Well, looking on the bright side, maybe this would help someone trying to manage their weight.”

Though the fake food disappears the moment you leave, making your stomach feel full while you’re eating it might work for dieting if you can tolerate the disgusting feeling. Come to think of it, I think I had diet meal pills in my bag. Surely they don’t work the same way.

“It’s disappointing, but I feel better having tried everything before giving up.”

In the end, to use anything I made here outside, I’d need to gather materials directly. No wonder there was a huge scrap heap near the launch pad.

Now that I had some experience, I could probably make useful things for outside use if I could get basic food ingredients or metal circuits. The problem was that I had no way to gather materials alone. If only the elevator that was here when I came up worked, but since it didn’t, I had to spiral my way up.

“Alright, enough of that. Let’s get back to what we were doing. Get in there quickly.”

“Okay, but please don’t be rough with me today. Sob, sob.”

“Rough? It’s just that you’re built so complicated.”

I had three goals: make a robot charger, create edible food, and restore the worn-out robot bodies to a sturdier condition, if not their original state. With one success and one failure, I needed to focus all my efforts on the final goal.

“Really, the things I do for others.”

“You’re doing it for yourself, aren’t you, Mori?”

“That’s not wrong, but aren’t you being a bit cold?”

Pretending to be sad, I put on goggles and a mask as I looked at the robot inside the transparent container. I also gathered metal plates collected from near the launch pad and tools I’d made myself. Anyone seeing me now would think I was an engineering student.

After spending days understanding the basic structure, identifying malfunctioning parts and damaged components, all that remained was making the worn-out robot body shine again.

“You really need to be gentle! You know that! Maybe it’s better to leave alone anything you don’t understand!”

“I know. Why don’t you trust me?”

“…Would you lie down on an operating table if an unlicensed doctor offered to perform surgery on you and say, ‘Yes, thank you’?”

“Of course not. What would I be trusting?”

“That’s exactly how I feel!”

A rapidly rotating drill, a high-temperature torch modified from a gas lighter I had, a grinder, cleaning agents, WD-40, and more.

I’d prepared everything I’d seen and heard about, and I was mentally ready. I’d run through the simulation in my head multiple times.

So I told the robot not to worry, but it clearly didn’t want to be handled by a non-professional.

But what could be done? Just as a monk can’t shave his own head, there were structural limitations to a robot performing self-maintenance.

“Come on. Give up and accept it.”

The robot spun around in protest against the illegal procedure.

“Eeeeeek!”

But trapped like a mouse in a cage, there was nothing the robot could do.

“How was it? Better than you expected, right?”

“I hate to admit it, but it feels good. My body definitely feels lighter.”

“See? I told you I’m good with my hands.”

Whether to call it repair or maintenance, the work didn’t take as long as all the fuss suggested. Being an amateur, I only did basic work—cleaning or grinding rusty parts, reinforcing cracked areas with metal plates collected from various places.

“I’d like to work on your circuits and modules too, but that’s scary…”

“I strongly decline that offer. No need to kill a robot.”

Of course, what I did was merely making the stiff body more sturdy and easier to move, which didn’t significantly impact the robot’s lifespan.

For a proper repair, I’d need to work not just on visible parts but also on delicate circuits and components. That would require proper blueprints. Unlike maintenance, which can be done intuitively, circuits can’t be understood just by looking at them unless you’re the designer, and they can’t be casually tampered with.

But apparently wary of robots replicating and creating other robots, the robot said it had knowledge about other machines’ blueprints but not about its own structure or design.

With neither of us knowing the proper design, the consequences of a mistake were too great to risk it. It was disappointing not to take advantage of this rare opportunity for a detailed examination, but better than losing a friend.

“I don’t know if there will be another chance, but if there is, I’ll look at you more thoroughly next time.”

Of course, I hadn’t completely given up. We might find unexpected information or opportunities while traveling.

After everything I’ve been through, I won’t blindly hope for that moment, but not hoping doesn’t mean giving up on everything.

“Now then… I should fix up Puppy too?”

“Whine…”

“Where are you going!”

Just as eternal night doesn’t exist, snow doesn’t fall forever either. The snowfall gradually subsided, and the clouds began to clear. The time to leave this place was slowly approaching.

-Message sent.

A message had arrived while I was staying here. Naturally, there was no reply. Everyone would be in deep sleep, so that was expected. Even if someone was awake and checked the message, I had no way of knowing who read it. And if they sent a message back, it would take a long time to arrive, so I decided not to dwell on it further and turned off the computer.

“I’ve had some disappointments here… got some minor injuries. A lot has happened. But it was fun.”

I changed clothes in the room now filled with traces I’d left over the past few days. A space created solely by my imagination and desires. The time spent in this dream-like space, which would disappear shortly after I left to face reality, was extremely enjoyable. But now it was time to face reality.

“Damn. I should have kept that candy bar in my mouth. I ate more than I thought.”

I clicked my tongue looking at my noticeably emptier bag, then climbed onto Alexander and fastened the safety belt. Even though the sun had risen, the snow hadn’t immediately disappeared and was still piled higher than the first floor. I’d left the window wide open to jump into it.

“Let’s go!”

I started the engine and immediately turned the handle to leap forward. I worried that we might sink and get stuck upon landing, but that fear proved unfounded—Alexander ran just fine on the accumulated snow.

“The world really does have more things I don’t know than things I do know.”

It’s amazing that something this heavy can ride on soft snow, though some of the long-accumulated snow must have frozen. I suddenly realized that everything we call daily life is just what we’ve become accustomed to—when examined closely, it’s a series of wonders.

In this wondrous world, I drove on and on. Thanks to the snow, there was no risk of falling into or getting caught on anything, so I moved at a speed I normally wouldn’t dare.

“Ahaha!”

Was it the increased speed? Seeing the sun after so long? Or having done thoroughly human things? Looking up at the clouds passing close by, laughter burst from my lips.

“…What’s this?”

After days of driving, I discovered a structure and stopped Alexander.

A slanted entrance standing in the empty snowfield.

Once again, stairs leading underground and lights seemed to whisper to me, beckoning me to come closer.