On A Godless Planet Volume 1 Chapter 16

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is all the result of coincidence and forced explanations!"

"And they stuck a spear into a white stew and stirred it up to create a country? Sounds pretty dirty to me."

"No, no! It's symbolism! Not a euphemism! Symbolism!"

I should remember this, I decided.

But then Kuwajiri raised her hand.

"By the way, the heliocentric theory did exist well into the past."

"It did?"

"Yes. Similar concepts could be seen in different parts of the world even in BCE times. It's one of the ways of thinking that developed when people observed the astronomical bodies. In Europe, Aristarchus of Greece proposed it at around 200 BCE and the idea was established at around 400 BCE in China. …Although in China's case, they only had the general concepts of 'heaven' and 'earth', so they weren't talking about astronomical bodies. And in CE times, Middle Eastern astronomers realized it at around the 7th Century, but it didn't spread far since it didn't mesh well with Islam's teachings."

"Another case where myths like ours just get in everyone's way."

"Perrrsonally, I don't care eitherrr way."

"But don't those things eventually get reverse-imported into the myths like with Yomoji-senpai?"

"The heliocentric theory was spread by the Jesuits, so that would be the…15th or 16th Century? That puts it past when the myths came about, so the later mythologies don't even have that in them. And with the existing myths, there was no real need to incorporate the heliocentric theory into them. In fact, it was best to avoid that since it might conflict with their teachings. …At times like that, they tend to take a divided view where the teachings determine the extent of the G.o.ds' abilities and the scientists determine how things actually work. But…"

"That makes the myths and the G.o.ds something separate from the human world, doesn't it? They're a little too good at segregating us away, aren't they?"

"And that is why myyy advantage s.h.i.+nes so bright."

It seemed to me like the authority deck was stacked too heavily in certain G.o.ds' favor.

Yomoji-senpai was probably well outside the norm. He was blatantly OP.

And he also had the ability to, uh, "create" humans like me in his myths, so…

"The authority is all focused on certain G.o.ds, isn't it?"

"Yeah, that's why we use politics and other dirty tricks to get around that."

Come to think of it, this whole outsourcing thing was an example of that.

"Can you make it rotate 120 times a second?"

"Going the house or techno route, huh?"

"It'd be hilarious if there were eruptions and lightning strikes giving it a nice booming beat to go with it."

"Pff…"

Imagining that seemed to tickle Senpai's funny bone, so she was out of commission for a bit. But…

"Is it bad to make the speed rise and fall?"

"How fast do you think it is rotating right now?"

"About 35km/h?"

"In 1990 terms, the earth is rotating at 1674km/h on the equator."

"Man, we're zooming along!"

"Oh? But it's slowed quite a bit. The speed drops by 8km/h every 10 million years."

"Is that at all relevant for the terraforming?"

"With a faster rotation speed, the lighter ga.s.ses in the atmosphere are flung out into s.p.a.ce. If you could control that well, you could create a planet with only the ga.s.ses you wanted. …In fact, the original earth's speedy rotation tossed out the unnecessary ga.s.ses to create the environment it later had."

To sum up, a fast rotation had its uses.

When Sumeragi started to think, Raidou spoke to Kuwajiri.

"Kuwajiri."

"Yes?"

"Sumeragi doesn't tease you when you're explaining things for her."

"That does not change my opinion of her."

That was fine, so he patted her on the shoulder and said one last thing.

"There's a lot we couldn't manage without you. You're doing a good job."

There really are a lot of possibilities out there, I thought. So…

"Any other reasons why a fast rotation would be good?"

"I would really prefer not to say it, but politics."

"Politics? How so?"

"Well," said Senpai.

"If the rotation is sped up to a 90-minute day with the gravitational pull and centrifugal force in equilibrium at the equator, the natural environment would be a complete mess. But if G.o.ds like us terraform it and create phases and molds, I think we could create areas that would remain safe even without us. In that case, the planet would be habitable and reaching satellite orbit would be quite easy. I mean, you could ignore the pull of gravity at the equator."

"Oh, so it would be a ridiculous terraforming that showed the later humans that they could use that planet for resources."

"More than resources, you could also make a resort out of the natural environment. You could also dock s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps and whatnot without using much fuel going in and out of orbit."

"So your imagination's the limit…"

"With a G.o.d creating phases and molds to support you, you really can have pretty much anything you imagine. Of course, the bigger things would need to be outsourced."

"Hmm, but, um…isn't this planet's composition almost identical to earth's?"

"Then," I said.

"I think that's a good enough answer as to what would happen if Senpai and I worked on terraforming this planet and didn't ask for any outsourcing."

Even I understood some of this.

"If Senpai and I just kept working at it, we could create the land, the sea, and the mountains together. We could do pretty well on the surface."

But…

"But if we sped up the rotation, that surface might break. I mean, we're imagining a world like the Divine World which is based off of 90s earth, so…"

"You want the same rotation speed as the 90s earth?"

"Yes. The 90s, or the earth from that period, is what I want to create with you and where I want to be with you afterwards."

How would that work? My thoughts here were kind of complicated. After all…

"That Divine World is only based on the 90s, so I don't really know that era. I mean, I'm a created being. But…"

I decided to say it.

If that was all I knew, then that was fine with me. And…

…If that 90s world is where Senpai is, then that's fine with me too.

That was more than enough, so I started to say so.

But Senpai pulled me close and hugged me.

"Ohh," gasped s.h.i.+fu.

This was sudden.

Without warning, Senpai-chan hugged Sumeragi. She went at it pretty forcefully, so a certain thought came to mind on reflex.

…She's eating her!!

But that was not what this was. This is one way of expressing herself.

Yeah, that's right.

This is the right way of doing it, she thought.

"What is this about?"

"I'm don't know the details, but Senpai-chan was an estranged G.o.d. She may have been removed from the main lineup for some reason. She is still wors.h.i.+ped, but only as a family member, I guess? If not for that, I think she would have been an unwors.h.i.+ped G.o.d."

But…

"Then Sumeragi-chan found her and said they could work together."

And…

"Sumeragi-chan is a created being and most of her memories and everything are preinstalled lies. Since she's a human, she truly is all alone. She just became aware of that. She's saying a lot of stuff, but she knows she doesn't really have anything of her own. …Only Senpai-chan really understands how that feels, so she wants to show Sumeragi-chan that she has a partner who will work with her."

Kuwajiri said nothing. It could always be doubtful whether or not she understood everything.

But s.h.i.+fu hoped it had gotten through to her.

Because Kuwajiri was also a being created by the G.o.ds.

"…Ridiculous."

"Right?"

"You aren't going to deny it?"

"Why would I?" she said with a smile.

"Hugging someone and holding them close isn't very efficient. It uses up both hands, narrows your field of vision, and keeps you from moving."

But…

"That kind of ridiculous stuff is the best."

"I really, really want to run away right now."

"You're luuucky I'm the only other guy here."

"Norse G.o.ds base our pride in battle and victory, so the only real romantic relations.h.i.+ps in our myths are about conquest and kidnapping. Normal romances tend not to turn out well…"

"Tooru! I can hear you!"

…I can hear all of you too!!

I'd done it.

But I regret nothing! Well, I actually regret a lot. And I would probably come to regret a lot more.

…But anyway.

I had wondered earlier what would happen when Sumeragi-kun learned my ident.i.ty, but that was a tough question to consider. The way I was pushed away in the past came rus.h.i.+ng back to me.

When he originally chose me, he had known that when he did it.

So I wanted to think it would be fine.

But…

…He forgot all about that during the first rollback.

That meant he did not know my ident.i.ty.

But he still said he wanted to be with me. I was going along with that, but what would he think when he learned the truth again?

I didn't know.

I wanted to trust in him. So…

"S-Sumeragi-kun."

I could sense something in him…well, her now. That one and only human was feeling lonely.

That reminded me of when I was unchosen and alone. It was so much like how I had accepted that and acted like it was unavoidable.

But I did not have to accept it and it was not unavoidable.

This person here had wanted me.

So I wanted to convey the same grat.i.tude and feelings she had given me.

"If you are ever feeling lonely, just remember that I am with you now."

"Yay!"

I can hear you!

But had I gotten through to him…no, her? Had I shown her that I would be with her just like she said she would be with me?

"Sumeragi-kun?"

Sumeragi suddenly went limp in my arms.

"Eh!?"

Her knees gave out and I quickly tried to support her, but I was too slow. She fell to her knees and then collapsed to the side. I had no idea what had happened or how to respond, so Balancer spoke up.

"Mediiiiiic!!"

Sorry, but that's my job.

I apparently pa.s.sed out for around seven minutes.

Senpai grabbed my shoulders and sat me up.

"Waaahhh! Are you okay!? Are you okay, Sumeragi-kun!?"

"I'm the one who has to fill out the rollback form for Kunugi-senpai, so please don't make me write 'suffocated by b.o.o.bs' in the cause of death field."

I more or less understood what happened.

"I had a valuable experience!"

I looked back in my memories. Yes. Senpai had hugged me and I was all like "More! Do it more!" while breathing in to fill my lungs with b.o.o.b air.

"It smelled really good…and then I pa.s.sed out."

But the pressure had been incredible. They were really firm and there was so much…volume to sink into, I guess you would say? Also, the high body temperature and dampness made it all seem more real.

I tried groping my own b.o.o.bs to see if I could reproduce the feeling, but…

"It's just not enough…"

"Eh!? Eh!? Do you want to feel mine!? Is that it, Sumeragi-kun!? Do you need to feel them to recover from the brain damage!? That's it, isn't it!?"

"No! Senpai, if you let me do it now, it would be out of sympathy for nearly killing me! Sumeragi Izumi is not the type to accept a pity grope! That would be wrong!"

"I think she's gone completely insane now."

"Yeah, is it like having some corrupted cache stuck in memory?"

"Heyyyyyy! I'm perfectly sane!""

Everyone but Senpai gave me a highly skeptical look, but that just meant Senpai was on my side.

"Aren't you a little too businesslike!?"

"So what's a planetary axis?"

You don't even know that? I thought while displaying a diagram.

"Oh, that stick you stab through a roast chicken!"

That was not a central axis at all, but this was getting annoying, so as an AI, I decided to let it slide.

"What angle? What's wrong with straight?"

"Um," cut in someone else. It was Kuwajiri.

"It would still depend on the rotation and revolution, but a straight axis would almost entirely eliminate any sunlight to the poles, leaving them completely frozen."

But the idiot did not seem to understand, so I displayed a diagram.

First, a circle. That was the planet.

Then I drew an axis through the center. Vertical was fine.

"It'd be nice and toasty?"

Kuwajiri gave a blatantly irritated look. Yes, my image processing skills were perfect. I could even tell she was realizing how long this would take to explain.

But this was part of my job, so I spoke in her stead.

"What does that mean?"

"If the earth is a lifted b.o.o.b and you're viewing it from the front, can you see the top?"

"Oh, now I get it!"

That irritated me, but I decided to accept it as a testament to Raidou's skill.

"The climate-related G.o.ds would have to create phases and molds to reduce the global climate stress."

"In that case," said the ape.

"What if we pointed the axis toward the sun?"

That's a fairly interesting idea, thought Kuwajiri.

"What do you think would happen then?"

"Eh? Well…"

Senpai-san drew up a diagram of a planet with a horizontal axis pointed toward the sun.

With roast chicken, this would be like cooking it from the side with the handle for turning it. That was inefficient, but at the same time…

"One side would always be daytime, so the sun would warm it, but the other side would always be night and it would get cold?"

"You would think so, but not really."

"What's that supposed to mean? Hmm?" said the idiot, so Kuwajiri explained. She really does listen when she's interested, she thought while doing so.

"Planets do more than rotate. They also revolve around the sun. So if this…right pole would you call it? Well, if this side was always daytime, when the planet revolved to the other side of the sun, that would reverse. The side that was always night would now always be day and vice-versa."

And that was not all.

"That is only considering the times when the poles are facing the sun. The planet is actually revolving all the way around the sun, so the front and back sides of the roast chicken will also get cooked. There would be a time in the revolution when the front and back were pointed at the sun and the right and left poles both ended up frozen just like with the previous vertical axis."

"What would happen with a planet like that?"

I couldn't even imagine it, so I immediately threw in the towel and asked. The answer came from a surprising source.

"Iiin this case, you would have a planet where the frooozen region moves arrrround with time."

"Really?"

"Reallly, really. It would keep channnging which side was always night, so the freezing cold and scorching heat would swaaaap out over the course of a year. And at the miiidpoint, both poles would be frozen."

What would happen then?

"The movement of water during the freeeezing and melting process would erode away the land at the poles and the large ocean currents would get rid of all otherrrr land too. You would end up with an ocean planet full of intense currrrents."

That was incredible.

"Just out of curiosity, what good would a planet like that be?"

"Well, that would be a planet with currents that moved according to set rules over the course of a year. If you could secure some kind of mobile land there and used it as a habitable zone, you could harness the current's great power and gather the ocean resources that came from what should have been in the land."

"Mobile land?"

I realized what she meant after saying it.

"The frozen icebergs at the poles!"

"Oh, you're sharper than I thought."

"Of course I am! An ocean planet sounds great! Everyone could wear swimsuits, Senpai could wear a swimsuit, and I could wear a swimsuit! No boy swimsuits allowed! Do you get it now, Kuwajiri!? What's that look for!? Your face sure changes a lot!"

"Well, there are a lot of ice and land G.o.ds, plus lots of ocean G.o.ds. If you placed molds on the currents, you could create routes and recovery areas for the large iceberg."

"You can do whatever crazy stuff you want if you've got a G.o.d helping you, huh?"

"So how did all of you set your axises?"

"You knowww that horizontal one we talked about? III tried that once."

"You created…a water planet?"

"Only temporarilyyy. I mean, my myths have a great flooood, right? So I wanted to give that an exciting test run even iiiif I'd do the real thing differently."

Yeah.

"Aaand that ended up drowning the people from competing myths. Oops."

"You're an evil G.o.d…"

"Flooding an entire planet for a test run?"

"Now, now," interrupted Senpai. And…

"So how did you Norse G.o.ds set yours?"

"Ours is tilted diagonally with a bit of a wobble to the axis itself."

"Our home is at a pretty high lat.i.tude, so creating an identical environment reduces the area we can use. So by adjusting the tilt and adding an axial wobble at a set period of time, we expanded the area with a climate similar to the Norse regions."

"Then we just had to establish a frozen region phase along the boundaries of our myths. The rules say if none of the competing myths come to the boundaries of our myth in a set period of time, those boundaries expand further, but then we might end up outside the frozen region."

"Well, if that does happen, we can create more frozen region by controlling the others. Although creating mountains to obtain higher land might require asking the Jotunn for help."

"We're basically at a good stopping point for the time being."

"So, Sumeragi-kun, what do you want to do about this planet's axis?"

I thought about that, but…

"What's the most important natural environment in s.h.i.+nto mythology?"

"Eh?"

"I want to know what environment would most make you go 'oh, this is nice' when you step outside."

"Oh…" said Senpai while looking up into the sky. And…

"It's too soon to reward me."

"Huh?"

"Oh, just speaking to myself. But…"

"s.h.i.+nto is all about the four seasons. Very distinct ones at that."

"In that case, you should tilt the axis, although not as much as ours."

"Tilting it makes the seasons good?"

"It depends where on the planet you'll be living, but if you're thinking of j.a.pan like in the Divine World, then tilting the axis will make the seasons more distinct."

"The planet will be tilted as it rotates and also revolves around the sun. That means the position along the revolution will change how long the sun hits a specific area during a rotation and that causes the seasons. …That horizontal axis from before was basically an extreme version of the seasons."

"Oh, and maybe we were cheating a bit here."

I wondered what that meant, so I thought about it for a bit.

…Oh.

It hit me. How was it unfair for the Norse group to push me to tilt the axis?

"If we tilt the axis, it'll give us s.h.i.+nto-style seasons at j.a.pan's lat.i.tude, but you'll have a Norse environment if you go further north!"

Yes. They had said before that the planet was round, so the poles didn't get as much sun. So you normally couldn't give the entire planet the same environment. Which meant…

"Creating seasons suited for j.a.pan will create a different environment outside of that, and that gives you land to live in too, doesn't it?"

"Even if you all would have a hard time living there, we can do it with ease. And if you can't live there, why not give it to us, right?"

"I pointed this out with our later relations.h.i.+p in mind, so make sure you think about this."

So telling me was a special service. And…

"By wobbling the axis to adjust it and by having the G.o.ds apply phases to the land, you can expand the range of j.a.pan's seasons. Of course, the mythology's territory is not restricted to that environment, but there is more you have to deal with the larger the compatible environment is. … I could calculate all that out, so how about it?"

"Hmm."

Was this worth thinking about then?

Expanding the environment would give us what we wanted, so it sounded like a good idea. But…

"Can I wait a bit to answer that?"

"Huh? Why?"

Something about this bothered me for some reason. But not because I was afraid the Norse group was pulling a fast one.

"I'm wondering what…or how much I actually want."

"How much?"

"Yeah. If I'm thinking of living in a place, how much land would I want?"

"C'mon, we're talking about the land for s.h.i.+nto believers, so just take a whole ton of it."

Everyone realized there was a difference between what we were talking about.

And after some thought, s.h.i.+fu-senpai clapped her hands together.

"Oh, I get it! We're G.o.ds, so we're all about snagging as much land for our believers as we can get, but Sumeragi-chan is human, so she's using how much s.p.a.ce she would live on and using that to figure out how much land the s.h.i.+nto humans would need."

"Humanityyy has a way of growing. It's best not to beee too stingy."

I understood that, but for some reason…

"Saying this is my place and that's yours is fine and all. But…"

I was a created human.

But I could work with Senpai.

And I liked having fun in the club with the others.

"I feel like it would be better if everyone could be together and just have a blast."

Yes, I thought.

…I wish we could do that too.

As an estranged G.o.d, I chose to believe him.

I really hoped that would be possible.

Balancer felt an odd sort of satisfaction.

The only actual accomplishment today was establis.h.i.+ng the star system's mythology.

They had made no terraforming progress at all. A decision had to be made on the rotation and revolution before anything could be done there, so everything was on hold until that decision was made.

But there was a reason why Balancer felt satisfaction.

…Everyone together, hm?

The G.o.ds used the terraforming to compete over territory for the people of their mythologies to control.

But this human - created though she might be - had rejected the G.o.ds' way of doing things.

What did that mean?

She only had that hope for harmony because she believed in everyone's good nature. But…

"Hey, if you're gonna praise me, really go for it, AI!"

This may have created new meaning in introducing humanity to the equation.