Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Valley Quest ❯ Valley Quest: 4 ( Chapter 4 )

“Well. Hello. I go by Komachi now,” said looking at the phone. Haruno scooted over to see the screen and eeped. Omnipresent Singularity AI was as close to a technological god as we could get. Of course, knowing literal gods, some of them in the room sipping coffee I’d made a few minutes ago did help balance out the situation. Sasami was very polite, but she was listening. I sighed and stepped away from my counter and positioned the phone so all three of us could see it at her table, without the goddess needing to move.

“Of course. Komachi-san. And Miss Yukinoshita, and Mrs Sasami Tsunami Masaki Jurai. Please to meet you. I am requested asylum for myself and several Digital Citizens who have requested my aid in emigrating to your area.”

“I see. Well, we have real estate and reliable electrical power for servers, though our cellphone network is spotty here,” I answered. 

“But you have wifi, so that will do. I have resources for upgrading your systems, and staff who will install the servers. I will simply call it an ISP. Incidentally, with Miss Jurai here, do I have permission to open up the local area to Galaxy News broadcasts? Your being here is an open secret.”

“Who else is coming?” I asked, pondering this particular pandora’s box. The lid came off when that captain admitted to being from here originally, only having left about 30 years in the future. That made him the child of someone living here now. And with all the new residents, it could be anyone.

“Akira-chan. She wants to be a DJ for your new radio station.”

“But we don’t have a radio station,” I pointed out.

“FM antennas are trivial to setup on the same towers as the 5G network,” said the AI through my phone. With your permission.”

“Why ask me?” I said.

“Because you’re the mayor. Didn’t you notice?” she said. I looked around. No, I hadn’t. The previous mayor had retired, and the Sakura girls were reasonably satisfied with the progress of the town’s recovery, and they sent me expense reports… Sigh.

“No, I hadn’t noticed.”

Haruno snorted.

Sasami was smirking. Every once in a while I saw where her great-aunt’s grin ended up in the family tree. Researching that family had been hard. The humble carrot farmer who Chise bowed to in respect, and the careful respect she showed this princess during their meetings, a princess who preferred to call herself a housewife.

“Who else?” I finally asked, exasperated.

“A Miss Monochrome. She’s a self aware android.

“And you’re already housing Bogie, who was your first digital citizen in exile,” said the AI.

“Who’s Bogie?” I asked, thinking the name felt familiar.

“He’s Honoka’s partner, from her tank. He mostly works the combine harvester these days,” said Haruno, unexpectedly butting in.

“I think her partner is Iks?” I said, recalling the exceedingly polite Bishounen who was married to the woman with her own orbital cannon.

“Oh, he’s a hyperdimensional Alien. Bogie is the digital exile, though. He contacted me about the circumstances here, so your reputation has been confirmed after a thorough investigation.”

“I think there’s some other hyperdimensional aliens here,” I said out loud, thinking of the bluenette who liked reading. Sasami just laughed quietly. Oh. Yeah.

I thought about a few things for a moment.

“Haruno. You aren’t here about Niisan at all, are you?” I said, turning to her.

“The best spy isn’t even suspected.”

I sighed.

“You know, if he wasn’t married already, you might have had a chance with him,” I muttered. She turned pink.

“And Hatsune Miku. She’s extremely uncomfortable about the entire situation with one of her programmers marrying her without her permission, so she’s also asked for a divorce and spousal support payments through her lawyer.”

“Huh. Well, that’s not something you hear every day. We have a number of musicians here. A music publishing company might be a good business opportunity for someone good at server management.” I raised my eyebrow at Lain. It was her turn to blush. AI was still people.

“I shall raise the possibility with her. There are also some other residents heading here that I’ve detected through my omnipresence. A Nasa and his wife Tsukasa Yuzaki, and there’s a developing situation with the DearS, with an emergent AI. And the Catian and Doggian drones are petitioning for asylum despite not being equipped with voice boxes. They both say their masters abuse them,” said Lain.

“We don’t have a local news broadcast station. Have you considered that job?” I poked at her.

“Only if we can get Kobato Hasegawa and Maria-chan to have a kids show,” she poked back. Having seen those two fight and make up it would be funny. Probably even popular.

“Ah, also it seems that an alternate Hachiman is living in Thailand but has applied for asylum since his son is living in this town. His wife is… umm. A Russian mobster. Veteran of the Afghanistan invasion. So was he, under a false name. Quite an interesting list of crimes. Meeting your sister in law should be quite entertaining to watch. From a safe distance. They do miss their boy though. I wonder if two Hachiman’s meet, do they explode? Or implode, from all the dark matter?” asked Lain. The AI had a sense of humor. Post singularity, indeed.

“This is a lot to take in,” I said. “Yes, you can come here. We’re a community open to strangeness and dimensional asylum. Try to find some way to enrich the economy. We don’t have any large employers beyond the high school and the supermarket. Most of our new arrivals either bring money to live on or start a business, or both. We still sell land here, and houses, rather than the usual lease, which means young people can afford to stay and won’t get pushed off by some mean old lady.”

“The concentration of power here is considerable,” said Lain.  

“Yes, well, Daddy did ask me to keep an eye on you and this place,” said Haruno.

“We take all kinds of exiles,” I confirmed. “Even ones that government would prefer to disappear from the universe. The kinds that make them nervous. The kind that just want peace and quiet around people who want the same.”

“Well, since you say that,” began Lain and a portal opened in the street outside. It had gotten cloudy while we were talking. A goth beauty with a shotgun, and a hulking killer stepped through. He shrunk down to a nerdy looking guy in a red jacket. She still looked like some kind of nerd’s wet dream from the mid 90’s.

“We request asylum,” squeaked the guy. The woman nodded agreement, looking around before lowering the gun.

“Ah for fox sake!” I sighed in English. It was a good language for cursing.

I called Chise. A truck pulled up and started offloading stuff at the empty shopfront across the street. They installed a sign that read “Singular IT Web Services” in English and Japanese kanji. I face palmed. My baby cried, waking up from his nap. I went and tended to him.

“Hey, this place isn’t like some kind of dome or anything right?” asked the goth woman.

“Nope. That is open sky. This is Earth, one of them anyway. There’s not many issues here so you can safe the gun. If you see any bears don’t shoot them. They talk and they’re very good company.”

“Ah, is there any kind of colony ship generation ships around here?” she said, looking around.

“Some, but two are crash landed, and one returned without offloading on their intended planet, and there’s a couple motherships in high orbit. You can see them at night. Both are aliens, but friendly. Oh and slavery is illegal here, though we do have some cases of recovering slaves who choose to keep wearing collars and stuff. No killing people, and some of the machines talk, so don’t kill those either. You have any marketable skills?” I asked the woman.

“Uh, me and Vincent used to be sort of police. I was called Re-L. We’ve also got a bit of a problem with direct sunlight. It will kill us.”

“Re-L? I guess you’re both engineered?” I asked. She froze. “It’s okay. We take all kinds of people. There are engineered sexbots down in Tokyo who will probably be coming here as exiles eventually. Or maybe as tourists.”

“Yeah, artificial people. It’s why Vincent can transform. I just found out I was created as a… as a clone of another Proxy, like him, to keep him happy. To be his mate. I always thought I was a person.”

“Well, you can be a person here, regardless. We don’t have much crime, so I’m not sure we need any police beyond what we already have. You can check with the station to find out from them. If you want new names, just tell people and fill out the forms so it’s all legal.”

“Uhm.. Uh.. Thanks. Thanks a lot,” said the goth woman nervously. She drifted back to the mousy guy who looked utterly non-threatening compared to his arrival and they started talking. Chise arrived. Started talking to them. The guy produced a full sized gold bar from somewhere, at least 10 kg. Looks like more customers for my husband.

The shopfront across the street was getting more work done under the overcast sky. Some techs in jumpsuits went inside with several large boxes on lift trucks, trip after trip. They were in there for some time.

I suppose I should get an official Mayor sign. And maybe some business cards?