Chapter 21

Translated by SkyTL Edited by SkyTL

Chapter 21: Testament

It must have been about thirty minutes since we received the signal. After a few steps, we reached a slightly open floor with a series of doors.

This area is very badly damaged. The walls and floor are undulating, as if they had been subjected to a large load, and there are several large cracks . A large pipe protrudes from the ceiling as if it had been ripped out in the middle, but at first glance the pipe is empty and it is impossible to tell what originally ran through it .

Since we couldn’t tell what had been ejected from the pipe, we sent a small robot ahead as a precaution, but we couldn’t detect anything strange . I wonder if it was water or something else.

According to the map, one of the doors in the row seems to be the source of the signal.

We approached the door without getting out of the rover. The door is quite large and has a round handle. It appears to be an airtight door.

If there had been air on the other side, it would have been very uncomfortable and I would have had to be very careful to open the door, but the indicator in the middle of the door showed that there was already a vacuum on the other side . Once the door is open, there is no need to worry about an air leak.

The door was locked and secured, and the power was completely off at this point.

Of course, you could also open the door by hand with the round handle that comes with it, but this type of manual lock is so strong that a large man would have to use all his strength on it .

Before I could even think about what I could do with such a door, Riza jumped off the little rover and approached the door .

Well, that’s what happens.

Riza grabs the handle with both hands, turns it carelessly , and the airtight door easily unlocks .

Riza’s body is made of an extremely strong metal skeleton and artificial muscles made of plastic that expand and contract depending on the tension, and despite her girlish appearance, she is capable of unparalleled physical strength .

“I’m going to take a look.”

Riza said, leading two small rovers through the door. On the inside of my helmet is a small window that shows the footage from the rover camera.

The room was cluttered with some obscure equipment, but I soon found what I seemed to be looking for.

Crouched in the back of the room was something rather big and humanoid.

An infrared scan showed no sign of heat.

Riza approached the figure and touched it lightly . It was a human corpse, completely desiccated.

“It’s a dead human.”

Riza said, as if to confirm what she had seen.

This corpse is the first real human we’ve seen here.

—I had a bad feeling about this. I looked at Lacey and saw that her eyes were wide and her face was pale.

It is said that [the death of a human], the greatest violation of the first principle of not harming people, is a great shock to robots .

Even if it is a situation for which one is not responsible at all….

Since there were no real humans when Lacey was created , this must be the first time she sees a human corpse. I must admit that I was careless, because I could have foreseen that this would happen when I received the beacon .

This girl is different from Riza, who is used to human death.

“Lacey, turn off the camera. I’m going to go, but you wait here.”

“U-um, me too…”

“Don’t worry, Riza is here.”

It’s probably best not to let Lacey see a human corpse in person. If you’re not careful, she’ll have more than just a stroke. There’s even a chance the neurochip could be irreparably damaged.

…This reminds me of a story I heard in Thomas’ studio. Thomas was so shocked that he collapsed when he saw a human corpse. Fortunately , he survived without after-effects, but that is not always the case.

When I got out of the big rover and walked through the door, I saw Riza cowering in the corner of the room.

“Are you sure it’s the Doctor-Walker?”

“Yes, sir.”

As she says this, Riza examines the wrists of the corpse. Personal devices are often worn on the wrist or hip. This custom dates back to the time when people wore mechanical watches. The corpse of the dead person also wore the device on his wrist.

The beacon came from this device.

Dr. Rogers Walker’s personal terminal has been sending out signals and using the remaining energy for over a hundred years .

“Riza, can you get any data out of the device?”

“I’ll try.”

Riza summoned one of the rovers and connected the power supply and communications cable to the Doctor Walker terminal .

The contents of the private terminal are fully encrypted, and no private data can be accessed without the owner’s consent .

However , in the event of the owner’s death, the system is able to record the circumstances of the death in order to investigate the accident or incident .

Of course, the records are encrypted so that only law enforcement can decrypt them, but there is no such thing in Astoria today .

I am now the dictator of all government agencies.

The data Riza had retrieved from the terminal was decrypted and began to appear on the display inside the helmet .

“The cause of death appears to be starvation.”

Amid the chaos created by the loss of air aboard the Astoria, Doctor Walker was on his way to see Ira.

Just as he was about to do so, he was hit by a sudden decompression and had to escape into this room with its airtight door.

He survived for about two months with the emergency supplies and oxygen generators in this room until he finally ran out of water and food . After that, he apparently ran out of air.

He did not appear particularly distraught at the time of his death, and his account of his final moments was calm .

“… Is this a will?”

There was something strange about the list of dates. He had lost his family before he died, but he had left some messages on the terminal.

Most were addressed to colleagues, but some were addressed to Miss Whitford, for whom he was responsible . However , they are encrypted with a personal key, and we cannot decrypt them so we can read them.

One of the letters, however , is somewhat surprising.

It was a farewell letter addressed to the crew of the Eos, that is, to us Earthlings.

“To us?”

“It’s encrypted with the Eos public key.”

Public key cryptography is an ancient system that uses two sets of special keys, each of which can be decrypted with a mathematical trick using only one of the keys .

An Aeos public key is distributed to any entity that wants to send a secret ciphertext to Aeos, and it is encrypted with the public key .

The public key quantum crypto algorithm used in the will is very difficult to crack even with the latest quantum computers, and the ciphertext cannot be decrypted without the correct key .

In short, this will is addressed to the crew of the Eos and can only be decrypted with the Eos key kept by Riza.

It seems that Dr. Walker wanted to tell us something, but did not want the people of Astoria to know about it.

His will consisted of a rather long text file. We can read it on the way back.

“Riza, is there anything else?”

“ I don’t think there is anything in particular, but I can leave a rover behind to check it out.”

“Hmm…”

There didn’t seem to be anything else that would have prompted her to stay and investigate.

I shrugged, feeling that the huddled Doctor-Walker was trying to tell me something with his will .

I shrug my shoulders. I think we can let it go for today. I took it upon myself to check out his will as soon as possible.

“We’ll leave one of the little rovers here for the investigation, pick up the body, and go home for the day. I think we can leave the autopsy and burial to Ira.”

“Yes.”

I left the room, leaving Riza to pick up the body, and looked up at Lacey, who was still clinging pale to the big rover.

“Lacey, that’s the end of the investigation for today. We’re going to pick up the doctor’s body and go home.”

“I wasn’t much help…”

“It’s always been that way. Riza is good at what she does…”

Everyone is useless in the face of Riza’s excellence. It’s too much for me to care about.

With that in mind, I climbed onto Lacey’s side of the big rover and sat some distance away from her.

Since we needed one of the big rovers to transport the doctor’s body, the one I had come in was for the doctor. On the way back, I will ride with Lacey.

As soon as I gave the order to the rover, my strange rover slowly started moving.

“Um, Lyle-sama.”

Just as I am about to check the doctor’s will, Lacey sits down in an awkward position not far from me.

Lacey looks up at me anxiously and almost touches me.

“You’re not going to die, are you…?”

“Not anytime soon, and I’m not going to die before I complete my mission.”

“…This is the first time I’ve met a dead person.”

She averted her eyes from me, turned around, rolled onto her knees and fell silent. This is what happens when you’ve just learned that people die on the other side of the wall. If I die, or even if I don’t die, if I’m badly injured in front of her, the sensitive neurochip could self-destruct and die on its own .

I reached out and tapped Lacey’s helmet lightly with my fingertips and said.

“You shouldn’t think about it too much.”

I cut off communication with Lacy and the others, leaving her to her thoughts.

I couldn’t let Lacey see the doctor’s will, so I switched my helmet shield to opaque mode.

Lacey tugged at my sleeve as if surprised that I was no longer communicating with her, but I calmed her down with one hand and displayed the doctor’s will in my helmet .

…It was quite long.

I started at the beginning of the will and slowly worked my way down.

The doctor’s will was quite long, but the content itself was relatively simple.

It was simple, but it was amazing.

After reading it for about an hour, I called Riza on my communicator and groaned.

“…Riza, did you know about this?”

“I knew about this possibility in the material Ira published about Simulants. I just learned that it was intentional and not a design flaw.”

“Does Ira know about this?”

“ I don’t think she knows about the will, but everything else is probably known.”

…It seems to me that these robots like to keep things from me and are not very good at keeping things to themselves.

But what the doctor gave us is more than we could have imagined. It may not have been the outcome he wanted, but in a way, he gave me what I needed most.

Once there, I take a deep breath, close the Doctor’s will, and switch my helmet to transparent mode to restore communication with the rest of Riza .

“Lyle-sama…?”

“Oh!”

A sudden voice tugs at my sleeve. Startled, I look over at Lacey, who is staring at me with a serious expression on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“…Is everything okay with you?”

“No, of course I’m fine. What’s wrong?”

“…I don’t know what’s wrong, I just lost contact with you”.

“…I was just thinking about something and disconnected. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. If you thought something was wrong, you should have asked Riza.

“… Riza… She doesn’t like us, so…”

She said, a little grumpily .

Well, it’s true that Riza is more than a little cold towards the Simulants. It’s not so much that she’s cold, but rather that she doesn’t care. I’m sure she doesn’t hate them, but it looks that way to her.

No, no, that’s not important, that’s not important. I have something to tell them.

But how do I tell them…

“…Lyle-sama? How can I help you?”

“I’ll call Charlotte tomorrow and we’ll talk more.”

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