Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 31

H arumine woke up to an unfamiliar bustle and sounds of heated discussions outside the door. The mornings had never been this lively when he’d lived here, so, curious to see what the ruckus was about, he hurried out of bed and got dressed.

“Yours too? What should I do? Do you know anyone who could help?”

“Does anyone have a non-EA credit account or a regular bank account that’s still usable?”

There was some panic amidst the general hubbub. Most of the students were still trying to troubleshoot the problem but some were succumbing to desperation.

“What’s going on?” Harumine asked a student passing by.

“Have you checked your credit account? The EA accounts have been frozen. We were supposed to be leaving in the next few days, but if you haven’t paid for a ticket and can’t access credits, you’re stuck here. And what do we eat if we can’t pay for food anymore?”

“It’s not just students. If your whole family is employed through the EA, you’re screwed. I have one friend with some money to spare, so I managed to get myself a train ticket home, but I don’t have anything to eat for the next two days.”

The two students replying to Harumine’s question continued knocking on any of the doors still closed, asking for help from anyone who might be in a less dire situation than themselves. Harumine checked his palm reader for his account info, already guessing he was as affected by this as the students. Kagesawa came to the door.

“What is it?”

“The credit accounts have been frozen. Something catastrophic must have happened to the EA today. There should be something about it in the news.” He did a quick search and pulled up a few reports.

It was worse than he’d expected. It wasn’t a technical glitch. The government had been pressured to order a complete shutdown of the EA, citing numerous failures to disclose relevant, factual information about their activities.

In truth, it had more to do with the authorities failing to protect the empaths from the growing unrest. The AEM, SAI and JufO had signed a treaty to no longer actively pursue the empaths if the EA was dissolved immediately.

This shutdown meant that the whole credit-based banking system had been obliterated into nothingness in one blow. With no forewarning, there had been no time to arrange for any asset transfers, and some of the wealthiest families in the country had been rendered practically penniless. This was causing even more chaos and discontent. However, after it was done, it couldn’t be undone.

With the EA service infrastructure destroyed, there were no account records left to restore nor employees to do the work. A small batch of volunteers were working on an emergency solution, but no one was holding their breath that it would amount to something.

The government was issuing small sums of compensation, but had their hands full with the flood of applicants, even when most people refused the hand-out fearing that accepting it would be used as leverage to deny compensation for the full amount they had lost.

“This is bad.” Harumine felt cold. He hadn’t had much money to begin with, and now all of it was gone. Yajima came out of his room, looking more panicked than Harumine had assumed was possible.

“Did you see the news? Is this really happening?” He followed his questions with a few choice expletives.

“Is the EA going to do something about this?” someone asked.

“Wake up; there is no EA left! We’re on our own,” another one responded. It was the short truth of it.

“What do we do?” Harumine felt a bit of that desperation creeping in.

“Fuck!” Yajima looked ready to explode. Maybe he’d been rich? This would then be a worse blow for him and for Kagesawa.

At least the EA-issued credit chips were now equally worthless, so Harumine didn’t have to feel guilty about pushing Kagesawa to hand them in. It was a slim comfort.

“Payment issues?” Kagesawa asked Yajima, who was sizzling with frustration.

“I made the request before going to bed but didn’t think to transfer the money right away. I’m such an idiot!”

“How much?”

“Three million yen.”

“What do you have left?”

“About a half of that in an offshore account.”

“I can foot the other half, I guess.”

“You have that?”

That was also what Harumine had wanted to ask.

“I made some investments recently. It’s yet to bring any significant profit, but I had some beginner’s luck.” Kagesawa showed Harumine his banking app and investment portfolio. I also put some aside to various other places, but this is most of it.

“When did you…?” It was not a modest sum. It was also significantly more than the chips Harumine had forced him to turn in. Yajima’s one-point-five was a fraction of what was there.

Beginner’s luck. Kagesawa shrugged but did look pleased with himself. As well he should be. He’d saved their asses.

“It’s not going to be enough, though.” Kagesawa was looking up the enrollment numbers for the SEU. 9541 times the average ticket price or 27.6k, assuming they all need one, that’s… 263331600 yen. I’m a bit short.

“Please tell me that wasn’t a mental calculation.”

“The ticket price was a very rough estimate because the hometown listed in the student records isn’t necessarily where everyone’s headed. I didn’t see the need to try to map all of that out in detail. Instead, I collected the twenty-five most common places and calculated the average fare. Also, not everyone’s going to need the help. Since the accuracy isn’t great, I didn’t think I needed a calculator to figure out the exact numbers. If it’s a bit off, forgive me.”

“I didn’t mean to critique your methods. I was wondering how the hell you whipped that out of your arse so quickly.” Harumine didn’t even want to know how he’d gotten a hold of the student records.

“Oh. Habit maybe?” I’d need a filter to determine who to donate to, to keep it fair. Or more money. Or rely on most of them being resourceful enough to figure it out themselves or make do with less. He seemed to be considering it in earnest. “Anyway, I think we should have a chat with the faculty in case they already have a plan.”

“I’m surprised you’re so keen to help.”

“What else is there to do? I can’t save everybody, but I have some resources. I can maybe try to do something about what’s right in front of my face.”

The rest of the campus was in similar disarray, with people trying to figure out what to do with zero finances. There was an announcement through the SEU notification system that there would be emergency assemblies in the auditorium from nine o’clock until noon.

It quickly became clear that a large portion of the faculty had run off with what they had to avoid having to share or otherwise deal with the mass of disgruntled students. It was deeply disloyal and shameful, but not entirely unexpected with so many of them experts hired from abroad.

Hase-sensei and Fujitani-sensei were still at the lab analysing data, but most of their respective teams had been disassembled and recruited to other tasks. It was commendable that they were still willing to help, but their cooperation probably relied on their love for the subject rather than any affinity towards either Harumine or Kagesawa.

As before, Harumine waited in the observation booth with Yajima, who trailed behind them like a dog because Kagesawa was yet to transfer him the money he’d been promised.

Kagesawa was busy redoing some of the diagnostics. He looked like he was in a considerably better mood and focusing on the task like a champ. It probably helped that he was no longer dampening the link while he worked. This provided Harumine an unobstructed window into what he was doing: namely, breezing through the second to last test at a speed much closer to average.

I could make riskier investments for quick returns, but that might leave us worse off. Evidently, he wasn’t as focused as Harumine had assumed. I’ll need to do some risk analysis. If I compromise anonymity, I could also squeeze something from sales. What did I have left… the two stacks from Emōto, S Pharmaceutical, T Financial Group… He finished the last test.

“These results make no sense. What did you do?” Hase-sensei interrupted Kagesawa’s inner monologue. “Why are we seeing this level of activation in 3A and 3B? It’s a simple tendril reach indicator, not a load test!”

“Oh, sorry, that might be my fault. I have something on my mind. Should I do them again?”

“No, this seems like a problem across the board. You’d have to retake everything.” The professor flicked through the results with a bleak expression. “Have you been using the link again? Why is it still developing rapidly?”

It’s probably because I’ve been using it. Kagesawa chuckled inwardly.

You’ve what? Harumine had to butt in.

Haven’t I been projecting to you all day? It hardly seems like it matters at this point.

Is it because you helped me yesterday?

“How bad is it?” Kagesawa leaned over the desk to see the professor’s screen.

“You’ve passed two more stages. This makes no sense. Some of this activity is too high to measure with what we’ve got here. If this is correct, we should be seeing more symptoms… probably.” Hase-sensei turned to Fujitani-sensei, who was busy trying to diagnose a possible issue with the equipment.

Don’t worry about it. Kagesawa glanced towards the one-way window. He did not seem worried. That in itself was suspicious and worrying. Really, it’s OK. I’m entertaining them because it was faster to access the system through this lab than my backdoor. Fujitani-sensei has higher credentials than Hase-sensei. I wonder if he’s aware of it. Kagesawa gave Harumine a little wave and a thumbs up.

“What’s he doing? Does he think it’s an amusement park ride?” Yajima seemed at the end of his tolerance.

OK, so the SEU is almost as screwed. They can’t access most of their funds because it was funnelled through the EA, but they have some private backers and property left to utilise. Can you tell Yajima I can see what he meant about the JufO ties.

“He says he can see what you meant about the JufO ties,” Harumine repeated. Yajima leapt from his seat to look closer.

“How is he doing it?!”

Did he perk up? I thought I heard something. Kagesawa was amused.

Clearly I missed something yesterday. When did the two of you get this chummy? And JufO? I’d like to know what the hell is going on. Harumine relayed the equivalent of stink eye through the link.

I’m accessing some private messages currently. Some scandalous correspondence going on between Fujitani-sensei and someone named Kurosaki Akio. Any idea who that is?

A former classmate but no one Harumine knew beyond the name.

Don’t you have better things to do?

“What’s he saying? How’s he doing it? Is he doing it right now?” Yajima was still nose pressed against the glass, practically drooling at Kagesawa’s perceived hacking prowess.

Is he mouth-breathing yet? I can almost imagine it. Kagesawa was barely stifling his laughter. Oh, what do we have here… His statement and the feeling Harumine was getting through the link made his hair rise.

What? What did you find? If someone from the SEU had ties to JufO, what else was there? A link to the AEM? What?

Someone didn’t finish their Advanced Linking Biology assignment on time. Kagesawa turned to look at the window and raised his brows.

“Shit.” Harumine let out an involuntary huff.

“What? What’s wrong?” Yajima jolted from the surprise.

“That’s enough now!” Harumine flung the door open, ready to give Kagesawa a few stern words, but Kagesawa merely snorted and chuckled in his usual relaxed manner.

“Cute…” his voice trailed off, but it was enough to throw Harumine off.

“What?”

Your freshman ID photo. What a tiny little Satoru, awww-uh. His face was begging a firm punch, much too happy to be decent.

“I think we’re done here.” Harumine grabbed him by the arm to pull him along.

“Sure.” Kagesawa smiled. I got what I was here for. Also, I can revisit whenever I feel like it.

“ Is something wrong?” Hase-sensei asked, although he was still too preoccupied with the confounding diagnostic test results to actually pay attention.

“He’s going to need a break.”

“Oh? All right, don’t go too far.” The professor continued to stare at his screen.

Harumine took a quick look at what was so fascinating. There was a visual representation of the activation levels during test four, with the whole measured area glowing red.

“I still think it’s got to be a calibration error.” Fujitani-sensei stared at her end of it.

Is it test four they’re looking at? Kagesawa asked and put on his jacket.

Yes. Having done these tests and seen their results many times before, the image was undeniably disturbing.

Don’t worry about it. I was bored, so I responded to the tasks with a stream of research data from next door. They’re doing an interesting study on tendril elasticity looking for growth patterns that promote better tendril health. There’s currently only one student doing all the work in there, so I processed some of the raw feedback for them while I was doing my thing. It was fun.

You have a strange sense of fun. Harumine sighed. “I need breakfast.”

“That might be tricky to arrange. It seems the cafeteria is working with less than half of its usual staff. People have been shuffled around to deal with other concerns.” Kagesawa headed for the door.

“And you know this, how?”

“Someone should probably fire the mail server administrator for gross negligence.” They exited into the corridor with Yajima not far behind, periodically asking Kagesawa either how, when or what. Kagesawa brushed him off to troubleshoot the food issue. “We may have better luck at the konbini, honestly.”

“You’re probably right.”

“After that, I think I’m going to set up a system on the student intranet to distribute some first aid to the students who are looking to go home and are stuck here. The staff seem busy taking care of the needs of the students who are staying. Helping the leavers leave should ease that load and make it more manageable.”