Chapter 27: The False Maps

Hikaru silently stares at the map of Gran Andes in their shared temporary apartment in Sector Palmas, trying to figure out where the old space center that the old lady mentioned was. 

Sprawled out on the table was hundreds of old maps and textbooks about the geography of Gran Andes, but none of them seemed to mention a space center anywhere. It was as if it either never existed or the existence of it was completely erased from history.

But that’s impossible, he thinks to himself as he stares at the map, even if the world government was the one behind it, it takes an extreme amount of effort and silencing for that to happen. The only proof we have of its existence however, is some old lady from Shanghaijing. There’s got to be at least another source of information that the government didn’t destroy.

His eyes slowly move across the map, reading the names of some of the old countries that united to form Gran Andes.

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, he reads some of them off as his eyes trace upwards until they reach the top of the map, but none of them have a space center... 

As he reaches the corners, there at the edge of his vision, he sees Alto gently poking at Kyomi who was resting on the window like a cat.

Wait, that’s right, we do have another source of information on us, he realizes.

“Alto!” he calls out as Alto turns to face him.

“What is it?” he inquired.

“Do you remember there being any space centers in Gran Andes or South America before you were powered off?” Hikaru asked.

Alto thinks for a moment before replying, “yes, I do actually. However, neither Alaric nor Amelie have ever taken me there before, so I don’t know where it is.”

Hikaru sighed, a little disappointed in the answer.

“But you can at least confirm with a 100% certainty that it exists, right?” he asked.

Alto nodded his head.

“Yes. I believe it was also one of the most used space centers for launching satellites into space, which is why I remember it,” he adds, “I don’t know the name of the space center because I spent most of my time at the Kennedy Space Center where I was made, before being transported to Austria where Alaric was.”

“Hmm…” Hikaru mumbled, “Well at the very least it’s comforting to know that I’m not doing all of this for nothing.”

He slumps back down on his chair, looking back at the maps sprawled out on the table again.

Satellite launches huh? Hikaru thinks, maybe I’m looking for the wrong information. Wherever the space center might be, it’s definitely not on these maps… maybe instead of trying to find one directly, I should look for factors that play into where they might place one.

He stands up and begins to refold all the maps and stack the books back into his bag as Alto curiously looks over to him.

“Where are you going?” he asks, while Hikaru goes over to pick up Kyomi.

“I’m going to the library to do some more research,” Hikaru answers, “so unfortunately you can’t come along since large robots are banned from entering due to causing too much noise, but if Celia comes back from her airship license registration, then please let her know. I’ll send a text over to her as well just in case.”

Alto nodded and said, “I need to recharge my battery anyway. Kyomi was taking up the space.”

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“Alright, the system detects that you already have an engineering license on your Global ID, so I’ll go ahead and add an airship learner’s permit onto it, which allows you to drive an airship under supervision,” the lady behind the counter says, looking back to Celia from her computer, “once we receive confirmation from a certified instructor, we’ll give you full license, and if you don’t know a certified instructor, you may head to any of our dedicated facilities located around Gran Andes. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them now or visit our website later.”

Celia stares at her with an empty, exhausted expression as she forces a weak smile, tired from waiting at the office for half the day — all for a quick three-minute session.

“Thanks,” she says with a tired voice before heading out and checking her phone for new messages.

“How’s everything going on your end?”  a message from Hikaru reads.

“I couldn’t find any space centers despite looking through the maps, so I figured that since its location might’ve been erased by the government, I’m going to look for the optimal conditions for a space center to see if we can make an educated guess where one might be.”

“I’ll be at the library in case you’re curious.”

“Also, Alto is still inside our apartment since he can’t come along. He says he needs to recharge his battery anyway because Kyomi was taking up the space on the window earlier.”

The library sounds like a nice place to relax, she thinks to herself, plus, I’m curious to see how the libraries in this country look.

Because Celia had only ever studied in her room, she never associated the library with stress, and found the place to be quite a cozy and comfortable place to relax.

“I just finished getting a learner’s permit for the airship.” she replied to him.

“I’m a bit tired from all the waiting at the licensing office, so I’ll start my training tomorrow instead.”

“For now, I’ll meet up with you at the library”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Celia enters the library, she looks around at the enormous bookshelves piled all around the place. The local library was relatively short compared to the rest of the buildings in the city — standing at only a mere 7 stories in height — but the open area at the center of the library that allowed the people below to see all of the floors above them, made the building seem much more impressive than it was on the outside.

She makes her way in through the book scanners at the entrance of the library and navigates her way to the dedicated research section on the third floor. There, she found Hikaru searching away at one of the many public supercomputers in the computer labs.

“Hey Hikaru,” she calls out his name quietly, as he does a quick turn around.

“Oh hey, you’re here,” he says as resumes his research, “I’ve been mostly trying to see if I can find old maps and locations online because scraping stuff off the internet is a lot harder to do, but I’m not skilled enough with computers to do a proper deep dive.”

“Yeah, I’m not super great with them either,” Celia says, “the best I can do is some high end research; finding stuff that’s been purposely removed isn’t really in my area of expertise.”

“Welp, I figured that might be the case as well, so I did some other research,” he continued, “based on what I found, space centers are typically built on top of flat land, near the ocean, and away from populated areas. The flat land helps support the infrastructure of the building and makes it easier to logistically transport things to it, and the ocean makes it so that debris from the launch safely falls away from civilians. These factors alone didn’t help narrow down the search options much but when combined with something else I realized, I think I’ve figured out a reasonable search area.”

He then opens up a map of the world, and zooms in on the equator line.

“Alto mentioned that the space center the old lady was talking about was a popular location to launch satellites from, which I didn’t think of much at first, but then I remembered something I learned from my aerospace engineering class that plays an important factor in making rocket launches easier,” he explained, “it’s called the slingshot effect. I don’t know if you know this, but rockets don’t directly launch towards the moon. Instead, they orbit the Earth a few times to build enough momentum to escape the gravitational pull of the earth, and then launch straight towards the moon using the properties of circular motion.”

He points to the equator on the map.

“Because the rotation of the Earth is the fastest at the equator, it helps with creating a slingshot effect to help the rocket build momentum faster which saves a lot of time and fuel, and therefore a lot of money,” he continued, “I figured that if they launch a lot of satellites at that space center, they would’ve placed it near the equator to lower the cost of each launch, which, when taking into account the other factors, and the geography of Gran Andes, this lowers our search area to…”

He traces his finger across the screen, highlighting the area just above the equator.

“Anywhere at the middle top parts of Gran Andes,” he finishes.

Celia looks to where he was pointing, and does her own deductions in her head.

Between the city of Carama and Rio de Brasilia was the Amazon Rainforest; an area designated as a national park that cities didn’t expand past. On the map they were looking at, it showed that the rainforest had actually grown in size over the centuries, and was now covering a large part of land where the former countries of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana used to be.

“Isn’t that part of land now the Amazon Rainforest?” she asks.

“It may look that way on the map, but quite frankly I don’t believe it,” he says, "the maps we have now can lie, and the expansion of the Amazon Rainforest being caused by the reduction of the global warming phenomenon back then is a very convenient one to make, don’t you think?”

Celia thinks for a moment and then nods her head in agreement.

“I suppose other than that, everything else makes sense,” she says, “the maps lying to us is actually the most unreasonable part about all of this, and even then it’s not too far-fetched. Even if we don’t find anything there, it’s actually not a bad first guess.”

“The only problem is that because it’s the Amazon Rainforest we’re crossing through, we have to take an airship since no roads, trains, or boats go directly into or through it. I did some research and found that if we have a national park pass, we can slap a sign onto our airship that allows us to travel freely through it. The fees are pretty hefty though, so we’d need to start doing some commissions on the ProtoTask app in order to make sure we have enough for living expenses.”

“Then I’ll work on getting the license and an airship from my friend’s friend, and you start picking up commissions so we can start the search as soon as possible,” Celia decided and then jokingly repeats a similar line he said to her when she headed to Shanghaijing for the internship, “good luck on those commissions, we’ll need the money you get to buy an airship.”

Hikaru narrows his eyes and scratches his chin.

“Didn’t I say something similar to you before?” he asked, “I feel like you’re mocking me, but I can’t remember when.”

“Maybe,” she said with a sly grin, “who knows.”