Chapter 38: Those Who Dreamed of the Future

“We still haven’t found the culprits behind the warehouse incident?” an gruff older man says as he paces about the room.

“No sir, we haven’t,” Weston replied as he sat at a table with a group of other DDF agents in the meeting room.

“We’ve already done a proper city sweep of the engineers, checked shipment logs, and examined the equipment for DNA traces,” Weston’s partner, Anita explained, “but the person who's behind all of this seems to be very meticulous about how they’re doing it. We found no evidence on the equipment and not a single suspicious person.”

“Really?” the old man said, “not a single one in the entire city?”

“Well there were two suspicious ones actually,” Weston recalled, “they filled all the marks but the only problem is they work at our main branch. We also don’t have any proof on them outside of them arriving in Gran Andes during the time period we suspected the rocket parts were being stocked up, which could also be wrong.”

The old man sighed in frustration.

“Wait sir. I don’t see what’s the big deal if we don’t find the culprits. They haven’t actually attacked the dome so no damage was caused. Plus we’ve probably already scared them out of the city with how much we’re patrolling it,” a rookie DDF agent says.

“The problem is that it’s a bad look on us,” the old man said, “a giant stash of materials were stocked up in the city without us noticing it, and now we’re supposed to tell the people that we don’t know who did it?! We’ll be eaten alive by the media outlets, and we’re going to lose a lot of trust that the people have in us. We’ve been pretty good at catching the people responsible for the dome attacks so far, and we need to keep up the perfect streak we already have.”

“But sir, we can’t do anything if we’re out of leads,” another DDF agent points out, “it’s not like we can do anything else if we don’t even know where to continue.”

“THEN FIND MORE LEADS!” the old man shouted before sitting down on the chair and calming down, “Look, I’m willing to give this case another month okay? If we don’t find any more leads by then then I’m willing to drop this case and accept the consequences of it.”

He then looks around the room, eying every single agent in there before pointing to Weston.

“You! Weston!” he called, “I’m going to put you in charge of this operation. You used to be a detective right? You were hired into the DDF for reason. Go put your skills into use; you’re the best we’ve got for this operation when we’re pulling at straws.”

Weston looks around the room warily before saying, “ay sir, I will lead this operation.”

“Good then. This meeting is now DISMISSED!” the old man shouted.

The agents begin filing out of the room as Weston lets out a tired sigh.

“Sorry that you got put in charge of this,” Anita says as she gives him a pat on the back.

“Yeah, yeah it’s not your fault,” he said, “in a sort of sense, that old geezer is right; I’m probably the most qualified person on the team for this job. I really just want to get this over with though, so I can go home and see my wife and daughter.”

Anita smiled.

“Well? Do you have any clues for where to look?” she asked.

“Hmm… not really? But mostly because I genuinely believe that the actual culprits are no longer in the city,” he said, “I mean we’ve been patrolling the area for almost a month now; they’ve probably set up another base somewhere else, and we’re just wasting time surveilling an abandoned one.”

“The only problem with that is that we’ve already closed off ports for passenger ships in Carama,” Anita pointed out, “and that’s basically the only practical way to enter here unless you’re saying they escaped through the Amazon Rainforest.”

“The Amazon Rainforest…” he mumbled, “that’s not too far fetched actually. We don’t have access to airship logs because they’re hard to track, but we do have signal transmission logs. We can check when and where a signal was detected over the Amazon Rainforest and use it to see if maybe they escaped to Rio de Brasilia over it. That would give us a proper justification to move onto the next city.”

“Heh, not bad, detective man,” Anita joked,  “I think that just might work.”

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Meanwhile back at the space center everyone was hard at work. Hikaru along with Kyomi, Tabby, and a group of Vitoria’s assistants were carefully drilling and melding away at different parts of the rocket, shaping, remolding, and replacing many of the damaged parts.

Along with Alto’s help they had set up a transport system using the underground tunnel to transport parts from the metal synthesizers of Celia and Hikaru’s airship as well as fuel from the chemical synthesizer’s from Vitoria’s airship.

Over the course of two weeks, they slowly but surely began to repair the rocket with the help of everyone combined.

While all of this was happening, Celia was hard at work studying the control panel guide Alto found. At the front of the book was a manifesto written by the last astronauts that worked there, detailing everything they did to preserve the facility. It was originally written in French, but with Alto’s help she managed to translate and read what it said.

According to the manifesto, a bunch of the facilities were missing including the payload and integration facilities used to build the robot and all 8 of their launch pads, because they had to act like they were demolishing the space center to some extent. Since they knew they had to resort to this, they built one last rocket inside of a hidden launch site underground and named it Astraea.

Its name held a powerful meaning — it was based on a Greek goddess who was one of the last to leave the Earth for the stars, and whose return would signal the start of a golden age. The engineers at the facility had named the rocket so, because they believed that in the far future, whoever found the rocket would hopefully steer humanity towards the right direction once more.

After everything was in place, in order to preserve the control center, they made up a lie that the Amazon Rainforest was expanding at a rapid pace due to the increased rainfall from the nano drones. They had an insider in the government to convince them it was true, and they ordered a mass evacuation of all operations in the area. Years later, because they had control of the satellites, they created false maps of the Earth that showed that the area was covered up by the Amazon Rainforest and used it as a disguise to hide the space center.

Eventually all records of the existence of it were destroyed, and the only evidence of it ever existing was to only be passed down by word of mouth. It was only after she finished reading the manifesto that Celia truly realized how much of a responsibility was put onto them.

“It seems that the dreams of the former astronauts and space program employees were able to reach the future after all, regardless of how scattered out their plans might’ve been,” she remembered Alto saying to her after reading the manifesto out loud, “Alaric convinced the universities to still teach Aerospace Engineering, allowing Hikaru to make the necessary repairs on the rocket. Amelia thought up the plan to hide me so now I’m able to exist and help everyone out as well as go to space. The previous astronauts of this place fought hard and played the long game to keep this facility alive, and lastly, the existence of this place was passed along through word of mouth from An’s grandmother to you, allowing all of this to happen.”

Celia solemnly thought for a moment as she sat there in the control room alone.

“No,” she said, “that’s not the last step. The last step is putting all of their efforts into action and sending you on your way to the moon and then using it to convince the world that going to space is worth it again. Only then can we truly say that their dreams have reached the future.”

Alto tilts his head.

“I suppose you're right Celia,” he said, “I can’t believe you’ve managed to say something wiser than me.”

She smiled and gave him a hug, “and I couldn’t have done it without you.”