Japan in Alagaësia

The Red Seal Ship

The Red Seal Ship

RIKEN Centre for Brain Science. Reiwa 2, mid July

The research team was staring at the generated results displayed on the supercomputer. The lead researcher of the "Preliminary Quantification of Idiosyncratic Electromagnetic Spectrums on Cognition" project banged his fists on a grey table. "It can't be!" he hollered.

The other researchers, technicians, and engineers were looking at him nervously, some shifting uneasily. "Should we run another test?" one of them asked carefully.

"... No," the lead researcher muttered. Grudgingly, he added: "these are likely the only results we will get."

Nods and affirmatives were seen and heard from the others in the research team. The tense atmosphere in the sizable lab slowly abated to a more relaxed one, and soon people started talking excitedly, discussing the significant findings of their project.

"I can't wait to be featured in the NHK along with you guys," someone said.

"Right you are," someone else agreed. "This finding, groundbreaking right? The ones at Tokyo University never managed to crack it, hah!"

"Still, this might be good for our careers, but the actual discovery is very unnerving. If the sea serpent can actually sense and influence cognition, perhaps even motor behavior, of external organisms, who's to say they're the only ones? Can we humans handle this new problematic?"

"Another thing that boggles me," one of the senior researchers said, "is that if it was this obvious that a specific wavelength and frequency of electromagnetic radiation could achieve... 'mind control', then why wasn't this discovered long ago by the scientific communities in America, or the EU, or Britain? Or China today?"

"Because this isn't Earth," the lead researcher interjected unexpectedly. He had been raving to himself away from the rest of his team, but it seemed he was finally composed enough to join their discussion. Suddenly, as he said his next few words, his exasperation seemed to make a lot more sense.

"The results strongly imply that some fundamental physical law or laws operate differently than before the transfer."

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The next stop is Komaba-tōdaimae.

Tsubasa looked up from his feet at the soft sound of the train announcement. Slowly he rose from his seat in the train and, doing his best to avoid the personal space of other passengers, stepped out of the doors.

The familiar chirping of birds welcomed him as he walked across the tree-covered Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo. Cries of seagulls sounded as they glided across a blue sky. A sky turned bluer ever since the transfer.

Tsubasa's feet worked on autopilot as they took him to the classroom for today's lecture on Turkic linguistics, one of the few courses that had resumed in-person classes since the pandemic.. Quietly he slipped into the seat of an empty row, mindful to avoid the ones that were already taken. As the minutes went more students filled into the room, greeting each other and taking seats in the rows except the one he sat at, which he didn't mind.

He didn't.

The lecture started and seemed to drag on for quite some time. Then lunch break came around, and he promptly vacated the campus. He absently scoured through the nearby restaurants and eateries. The next phase of food rationing measures were about to come into effect, which would not avail restaurant businesses. Indeed, ever since the first measures had been introduced, seafood based donburi, sushi and sashimi, and other seafood based dishes had become the staple, the reallocation of the food supply reflecting the relative abundance of fish and rice compared to other, scarcer food products. At least the freshness had not been compromised... yet. Grocery and convenience stores on the other hand were buckling under the stress of having to enforce the rationing mandates, as the government had so far balked at the question of issuing ration cards, instead pushing the responsibility to the retail sector to enforce quotas and price controls, and the effective monitoring of individual customers and their purchases. How sustainable this decentralized approach would remain was debatable, with the increase of people hopping between different stores to abuse store-specific consumer quotas...