Chapter 22: The Fear of Success

As Alto and Hikaru exit the doors of the train, Celia waves over to them from behind the security railings.

“Over here!” she calls out as they make their way over to her, “thanks for coming guys.”

“No problem,” Hikaru said, “we’re in this project together after all, but… I’m not sure how useful I’d be with this internship of yours. You said it had something to do with metal synthesizers?”

Celia nodded and said, “I don’t know much about metal synthesizers either but I figured if we worked together we could piece our knowledge together to come up with something. The standards for what counts as a success for this project are pretty low so even if it’s something dumb as long as it works, we succeed.”

“And all of this is so we can buy a ticket to Gran Andes because there’s supposedly a space center there right?” Hikaru asked.

Celia nodded.

“There’s a low chance the old lady was telling the truth, and even if she was, the space center might not even exist anymore, but it’s not like we have any other option,” she reasoned, “if we don’t have a space center to work with, this whole thing becomes a thousand times harder to do.”

Hikaru silently thought for a moment and finally murmured, “Gran Andes… that’s a whole ocean away from here. We’d have to take a train back to Euracia and head to Madron and then take a whole boat across the Atlantic. At that point we should’ve just checked out the Kennedy Space Center in the United Countries of America like we considered at first.”

“Well this time we’re heading there with slightly better odds that a space center is actually there,” Celia argued, “and we’d have a lot more funding to get there as well.”

“Not only that, but if what the old lady said was true that the space center is completely forgotten, then that means we can also secretly build a rocket there without being found out,” Alto pointed out, “I agree with Celia that we should take our chances and go to Gran Andes.”

“Fine then,” Hikaru finally relented, “the only problem is that we don’t know exactly where the location of the space center is in Gran Andes and that if it’s truly a forgotten place, then that means there’s no trains or working roads connecting to it, so logistically transporting materials there to build a rocket is going to be a nightmare.”

“That’s true but…” Celia takes a moment to think before remembering An, “we can figure it out as we go. There’s no point in thinking about these things if it turns out that the space center doesn’t exist there anyway. As for transporting materials, I’ve got a freelancer friend who owes me a favor, so I can call her up for some ideas. There’s a chance she’s worked in Gran Andes before so she might know a thing or two about how things work there.”

“A freelancer?” Hikaru asked, “That would be a good addition to our team wouldn’t it? Those types of people typically have a lot of workplace connections that we can make use of.”

“Ahaha…” Celia nervously laughs, recalling what her grandmother said about her, “I don’t think she’d be too interested in helping us with our space stuff. She owes me a favor, but asking her to commit a crime might be going too far. I’ll just ask her for help while skimping out on the details.”

“Hmm,” Hikaru mumbled, “that’s too bad. She would’ve been really useful if she could help us out more than once, but that’s understandable.”

Alto tilts his head.

“Are freelancers highly revered nowadays?” he asks, “I remember back then that freelancing was considered a poor person’s job that was often looked down upon as an official profession.”

“Really?” Celia asks, “well technically it’s still not considered a real job, because of how spontaneous it is. Freelancing is hard to get into, but at the same time, that’s why people who can successfully make a living off of it are generally well respected. They don’t make a lot of money but they have a lot of connections and do pick up a lot of skills along the way which makes them a pretty good person to befriend. Befriending one is also a two way benefit because the freelancer gets another connection to their collection and the person they befriended has access to the previous connections they had. It’s why Hikaru wants one to join our team.”

“Ah I see, then that really is unfortunate,” Alto concluded, “but at least we get to use her to some extent, which is better than having nothing to work with.”

“Well we don’t know exactly how useful the freelancer Celia found is,” Hikaru pointed out, “it all comes down the freelancer and the experiences they have gained so far.”

Celia nodded.

“We can’t count on her too much, but we should still use her when we can,” she said, “but anyway, that’s enough discussion of our plans, we should start trying to solve this commission now.”

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“What do they think we are, a metallurgist?!” Hikaru cried out in anguish as he faceplanted onto the table of Celia’s hotel, “are you sure they hired the right type of person? We’re engineers not metal workers.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking for the past week,” Celia said as she rested on the bed; her body laid flat as she stared up at the ceiling.

She had divulged the details of her commission to the rest of them and they had been trying to come up with an idea for the past couple hours.

Alto takes one good look at the state of the room and suddenly announces, “I think we should take a break.”

Everyone looks up at him in surprise.

“I learned long ago from Alaric that it’s not good to hole yourself in a room like this when you’re having trouble coming up with ideas,” he continued, “nor is it good to think about something over and over again for hours on end. Sometimes all you need is a break. Both of you have been pursuing your dreams constantly for a while now and we still have two and half weeks to complete the commission, so taking a break isn’t too bad of an idea.”

Hikaru nodded in agreement.

“I’m completely exhausted after only thinking about this for an hour. I don’t even know how Celia managed to deal with this for a week,” he said.

“That’s assuming I’ve been perfectly dealing with it,” Celia joked before rolling onto her side to face the desk that Hikaru sat at, “well? Any ideas on where we could go tomorrow? It's getting pretty late out so I assume we aren’t going today. I’m not from around here so I don’t any good places.”

Hikaru thinks for a moment before finally saying, “I’m not from around here either, but I do know a few good places in Tokyosaka. There’s a cool iDIVE exhibit in the sector right across the sea from here. It shouldn’t be too far away.”

iDIVE?  Celia wondered, oh right, the organization that replaced NASA.

After the disestablishment of NASA, a new establishment was formed a few decades later with a focus on underwater exploration instead of space. They were known as the International Deepwater Investigation and Voyage Establishment, or iDIVE for short. They had a couple of exhibits placed around the world that Celia was interested in but never got the chance to visit.

“That sounds interesting,” Celia nodded in response, “I’ll be down to go.”

“Great, then I’ll order the tickets for tomorrow,” Hikaru said.

As he begins chatting away with Kyomi to make the travel plans, Celia looks over Alto. She still found it strange that Alto of all people suggested that they take a break from pursuing their dreams after making the large speech convincing her to drop everything and pursue it back on the rooftop a month ago. 

Suddenly, she recalls what the old man Mr. Stein told her a few weeks ago.

Life is indeed short, but you shouldn’t discount how long it can actually be, she remembers if Alto agrees with the sentiment, then maybe it was right.

Alto catches her staring at him and asks, “what is it?”

“Oh it’s nothing,” she replied, “I’m still shocked that you suggested we take a break from everything. Didn’t you say that before I know it, I’ll be too old to accomplish my dreams on time?”

“I only said that to push you into chasing after your dreams,” Alto admitted, “you may not realize it, but just like your great great grandfather, you are afraid of success. Without giving you the push in the right direction, you would’ve stayed in your comfort zone of being a general robotics engineer even though you’re capable of much more than that — you just weren’t ready to accept the responsibilities that came with pushing past what you were used to. In my opinion, there’s no real rush to pursue your dreams. The truth of the matter is that life seems so short that sometimes humans like you forget how long it can actually be.”

Celia blinked twice at the strange feeling of deja vu, but also took his previous words into account.

Well the truth is I still don’t think I’m ready to accept the consequences of what happens if we do succeed, Celia ponders, but somehow being able to work with someone else like Hikaru makes it a bit easier for me to not worry about it.

Seeing the saddened expression on her face, Alto asks, “what’s wrong? Don’t take what I said as an offense to you. That was not my intention.”

“No, no it’s fine,” Celia said, steering the subject away and slightly lying, “it’s just that I had a weird sense of deja vu when you said that last line. Some old man said something similar to me when I was doing a commission for him a few weeks ago.”

“Is that so?” Alto said, “then he must be a very knowledgeable person.”

“A very knowledgeable person indeed,” Celia nodded.