Chapter 31: The New Plan

“Alright Alto, I’m going to leave the supplies here,” Hikaru says, dropping off a load of cleaning supplies in front of the building before running back to the airship.

As he makes his way onto the deck, he watches with Celia as Alto goes to pick up the supplies off the ground. Alto had been cleaning out the facility for a little over two weeks now while Celia and Hikaru had been traveling back and forth from Carama to make money off of commissions on the ProtoTask app and restock on cleaning supplies every so often.

They had also dropped off a new pair of Neurolinks so that Alto was now able to communicate with them over longer distances, unlike what happened when he got launched 25 kilometers away to the underground launch site. They also promptly gave him a tablet so that he could better record and take pictures of the facility while also being able to communicate with them while they were working in Carama.

Once they made sure Alto was okay, Celia begins to start up the airship and take off back towards the city. 

Their new plan was simple; after Alto found a backup power source to turn the lights back on in the facility, they got to take a better look at the rocket they discovered. To their surprise, other than a few rusty spots, the rocket was seemingly intact; they just had to replace the parts that got weathered down over the years, and then it would probably  be operable.

The truth of the matter was that because Alto wasn’t an engineer and neither Celia nor Hikaru could actually get close enough to do a personal examination of it, they had to go off on a lot of assumptions. However, they knew that no matter the case, that they needed a lot of money, so whilst Alto worked on decontamination, Hikaru and Celia would focus on getting the funds.

As the airship soared through the skies, Celia suddenly remarks, “I still can’t believe that Alto has built-in decontamination protocols.”

Hikaru laughs.

“That also surprised me as well even though I think I remember reading somewhere that ALTOs came with that function in case they needed to decontaminate themselves and other devices on the moon,” he explains, “because they didn’t know what might needed to be decontaminated and how they might have gotten contaminated, they probably just trained them with all the decontamination protocols that they knew of.”

“I guess that's reasonable,” Celia says, “I still think it’s crazy how many contingencies they built into Alto, but it makes sense given that they were supposed to be able to operate on the moon for many decades.”

After stabilizing the airship and setting it on autopilot, Celia sits back and relaxes on one of the benches outside of the control room.

“Now if you don’t mind me, I have a Vitoria Santos speech I need to catch,” she said, pulling out her phone to open up a livestream.

“For too long we’ve been rich in innovation but lacking in implementation,” Vitoria says, standing on a podium inside of a massive stadium in front of a large crowd.

Vitoria was a tall black lady of African descent in her early forties. Her hair was styled in a braided ponytail with golden braid cuffs, and she wore a black blazer with matching work pants over a white shirt. Her expression was stark and formal, and paired with her imposing and tall figure, she inspired confidence in many people like Celia.

“Over the past twenty years I’ve worked at New Genesis, we as a corporation have come up with over 100 different ways to improve the Tropodome,” Vitoria continued, “the problem? Not a single one of these things have ever been implemented. Because of this, I went ahead and did a little research and found that nothing has changed since the last improvement we made over 50 years ago. That is why as the lead researcher of the Science Department at New Genesis, I am calling on the people of Gran Andes and the world as a whole to advocate with me for a temporary controlled collapse of the dome. That way we are able to implement these new things we’ve come up with and repair the dome in case of a —”

Suddenly an unidentifiable object was thrown at her from the crowd, cutting the speech short, as someone in the crowd shouted “booo!”

Then, to Celia’s horror, more and more people began booing and jeering at Vitoria as more objects such as food and drinks began to fly towards the stage.

“Uh.. cut the broadcast… cut the broadcast!” she heard a reporter’s voice shout behind the camera before the livestream was promptly cut off.

“That… didn’t sound like it went well,” Hikaru says as he looks over from where he was sitting, “what happened?”

“I… I’m not sure,” Celia said, still trying to comprehend the overwhelmingly negative reaction from the crowd, “I understand having an opposing opinion but for it to resort to something like that? There’s definitely something wrong.”

“Well I just hope that she’s okay,” Hikaru says, “I don’t know the exact details of what happened, but that didn’t sound good.”

“Yeah, me too…” Celia murmured, what was going on in Carama?

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

As the airship approached the closest landing dock to their apartment, the two of them notice that the city was a lot quieter than usual.

“Woah, what’s wrong with the city?” Hikaru remarks as he looks over the railing as Celia slowly docks the airship onto the platform.

After successfully landing it, Celia exits the control room and says, “yeah… it’s a lot less lively than usual…”

“Do you think it’s something to do with what happened at the speech?” he asked.

“I hope not…” she said, a little bit worried, “that would be way too much of an overreaction.”

The two of them quietly stand at the railings, looking over at the gloomy atmosphere of the city.

“Well in any case we need to get going,” Hikaru said, trying not to let the eeriness of the setting get to him, “we can probably figure what’s wrong the city as we go throughout the day.”

He opens up the list of commissions on the ProtoTask app and his eyes widen with surprise.

“What is it?” Celia asked.

“Its just… that’s a lot of commissions not taken,” he said.

Celia opens up her phone and blinks in surprise upon seeing the long list of available commissions.

“At least that means we have a lot more opportunities to make money, but that’s definitely strange,” she murmurs as her eyes roam over the names until someone in particular catches her attention. “Vitoria Santos?!” she suddenly shouts, quickly tapping the commission to accept it before anyone else could.

“Wait, really?” Hikaru asks as he looks over at her screen, “I guess something might’ve broken at the speech that she needs repairing. Whatever the case, looks like you got a date with your favorite celebrity.”