Chapter 34: A New Ally-bi

Vitoria nearly spit out her tea as the three of them lounged about on the couches around Vitoria’s living room.

“You found… a what?” Vitoria asked.

“A rocket…” Celia nervously repeated, “and we were hoping that because you want to do a controlled collapse of a part of the dome, that you’d be willing to help us get it launched so that you can implement everything that you wanted to in the dome…”

The room was filled with an uncomfortable silence before Hikaru bursted out, “just for the record, we are not the ones at fault for the rocket parts that were found at the warehouse. This rocket launch we’re working on is entirely unrelated to that, and we’ve been pretty good at hiding it up until this point. So you can definitely trust us to keep this confidential; it’s just that the timing is unfortunate with where the rocket parts were found, and we just need your help to cover us… ma’am…”

Vitoria narrows her eyes at the two of them while somehow also simultaneously raising her left eyebrow. Her look was so serious that it physically made it harder to breathe in the room, as the two of them felt their hearts nervously pounding in their chest. Next to her, Celia could feel the sense that Hikaru was ready to make a run for it any given moment, but just when the tension was about to reach its peak, Vitoria’s face relaxed and she started laughing.

“Hahaha! I can’t believe you guys actually had the guts to bring this up with me of all people,” she said, “I mean, meeting with the direct enemy as a last resort? That’s just crazy — but the exact type of crazy I might just need to make this work.”

Celia and Hikaru immediately began to relax, as Hikaru unclenched his hands from the armrest, and Celia took a deep breath.

“But anyway,” Vitoria continued, “of course you guys weren’t the ones responsible for the rocket parts found in the warehouse; because I  was.”

Celia and Hikaru’s eyes widen in shock.

“What?!” they both shouted in unison.

“What?” she asked, “don’t be too surprised; you guys were the ones who came to me expecting that I might be up to do that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t expect you to be the one actually behind it,” Celia said.

“That’s why I said don’t act too surprised,” Vitoria pointed out, “it’s fair to be shocked by the truth but you can’t tell me you wouldn’t expect me to do it.”

Hikaru and Celia sat in the room in silence, dumbfounded by the revelation.

“The truth is that I’ve actually been working on this for a while now,” Vitoria continued, “like I said in the speech, ever since I discovered that nothing new has been implemented to the Tropodome over the last 50 years, I made it my mission to start an initiative to change that. I was going to go through with it regardless of what people thought; but I was curious how many people would agree with me so I made that speech. Regardless of the outcome, it wouldn’t have affected my actions whatsoever.”

“Well that’s good because it didn’t seem like many people actually liked the idea…” Celia murmured.

“Is that so?” Vitoria said, “I think I disagree — but not based on what happened earlier today. I’m actually willing to be that a lot of people are quite open minded about things. After all, when things don’t tend to change after a long period of time, humanity tends to have a history of growing restless.”

She places her cup of tea down on the table and crosses her legs.

“I believe that all humans are born with this innate sense of wonder in them,” she continued, “when things are restricted and locked away from them, they tend to wonder why, and when given an unreasonable explanation they take it upon themselves to act. That unreasonable explanation is what I want the people to see. If we can just show them that the dome can be safely broken through and repaired, more and more people will realize that there’s no need to stop us from going to space. That’s what you two want to achieve isn’t it?.”

Celia and Hikaru nodded their heads.

“And it's my goal to improve and stabilize the dome,” Vitoria said, “meaning your assumption is right that our goals do indeed align. Making people choose freedom over safety is hard to do, but when given the opportunity for both, a lot more are willing to comply.”

“Hmm… not that I’m not grateful for it, but why do it with us?” Hikaru asked, “you have the means and the money to buy supplies and stuff to do your own thing. After all, there’s many more ways to damage the dome than launching a whole rocket into space.”

“You’re right in suspecting why I might be willing to work with you,” Vitoria nodded, “the ‘rocket’ I was building was not actually a fully functional rocket meant to go to space. My team and I don’t have the knowledge nor the capabilities to construct that sort of thing, nor do we need to. All we needed to do was just take down one area of the dome with a specialized projectile and replace it with new drones, however, as you can see, our plans are currently fumbled. They found where we’ve been hiding our supplies which means that we need to start over again, which is undesirable to say the least. If you guys actually found a rocket that just needs a bit of repairing, not only will it be more accurate with what it’s targeting, but it would also take less time and money to recuperate our losses.”

Celia shrugged and said, “I suppose that’s reasonable.”

“Plus,” Vitoria continued, “I’ve taken a liking to you two. The amount of audacity it took to actually propose the idea to me — I’ve already said it once, but I’ll say it again — I’m truly impressed by it.”

The two of them blushed as they basked in her praise.

“Just one more thing,” Hikaru suddenly added, “why are people so afraid of a total collapse of the dome, if we’re only targeting one part of it? That doesn’t seem to make sense to me.”

“It’s because they know a lot of things about how the dome works, but quite frankly, not enough,” Vitoria explained, “the Tropodome isn’t just a bunch of stationary nano drones floating in the troposphere. Each and every drone is constantly moving to some extent, and every one of them serves a purpose in the complex system they form. Each of them rely on each other to communicate things such as when rain is scheduled for a city, or when the conditions for a dangerous storm are beginning to brew in a specific region. They then send signals to each other, so drones in the ocean can bring the necessary water vapor to the drones over the regions that need rainfall, or so that nearby drones in the region that the storm is brewing in are able to produce just the right amount of molecules in the air to counteract the formation of a storm. If one set of drones are taken down in a certain region, it could severely mess up the communication line they have going, and affect other drones in other regions across the globe.”

Hikaru and Celia looked at her confusion.

“I don’t understand then…” Celia said, “wouldn’t that make them right to assume a total collapse?”

“They would be right… if there weren't already emergency procedures in place for that,” Victoria said, “not only is it completely fine for a set of drones to go completely missing from an area for an hour or two, but if an area really needed repairing, drones located in the ocean that don’t really do anything except collect water vapor all day and monitor for storms, shift towards the area that needs to be filled. Otherwise, a single successful attack on the Tropodome at any point in time would cause it to collapse, and if that was the case, then we wouldn’t have one today. Now you may be wondering, but yes, we do eventually replace the drones in the ocean that are used to fill the hole in the Tropodome with new drones, but the problem is that the integration of newer drones is too slow because of how rare dome attacks are, meaning that nothing effectively gets changed in the dome in the grand scheme of things.”

“But a safety measure existing seems so obvious,” Hikaru said, “why don’t we just explain to people how that works?”

“It’s not as obvious as you think it might be. After all, both of you were just wondering why their thought process was wrong,” Vitoria pointed out, “you also severely underestimate the ignorance and stupidity of some people. Sometimes just telling them isn’t enough, and they need to physically see proof of what’s going on.”

She then stood up from her couch and stretched her arms.

“Now if you don’t have any more questions, let’s think up the details of your alibi,” she said.