Part 62: The Round Table Conference reconvenes

"Thanks for coming out here even though it's Saturday. You are all great lab mems of inquisitive minds."



Kurisu sighs deeply.

"I can't believe it's the height of summer, but instead of going on vacation, I'm stuck in this sauna talking with a bunch of perverted creeps. Where did I go wrong?"

She's really giving us a verbal beatdown.

"Wipe your tears, you experiment-loving girl without a single friend."

"I-I wasn't crying! Anyway, you're the one who mailed me to come here, right?"

"Indeed, it was I, but the one who faithfully abided by that mail and punctually arrived at the lab... was you."

"You know, Cris is actually a very obedient and diligent girl. That's what Mayushii thinks♪"

Mayuri smiles and murmurs as she eats some nuggets from McD's.

"Mayushii thinks Cris is so adorable like that."

"Eh, wha...?! How can this girl say something like that while eating a nugget..."

It's not something to be worried about. That's just how Mayuri is. I've been with her for a long time, so I'm used to it.

"A yuri flag, huh. I get it."

"Please unget it."

"Here, Cris, I'll give you a nugget, okay?"

"Th-Thanks..."

While listening to the heartwarming conversation, I place my laundry on the table when--



"I just washed them!"

"Like I care. You lack delicacy if you can just put your laundry with your underwear in magnificent display right in front of a girl your age."

"If you're that interested in my underwear, then just say so."

"Wh-Wha...! I'm not interested at all!"

"Now, now, you two! No more saying underwear, underwear. Mayushii's trying to eat here, okay?"

"You say that, but you're still putting nuggets to your mouth."

"Don't interrupt me."





"I talked to Daru yesterday, but I noticed something about the results of our serial experiments! D-mails have too much of an uncertain factor. As a result, they have no guarantee."

"There's no helping it, right? After all, you're entrusting the result to how the receiving party responds. But conversely, if you can psychoanalyze the other party's character, you might be able to better manipulate them."
"With that psychological element in mind, though, it might be impossible for Hououin Kyoumunderwear."

"Makise, do you just want to say underwear?"

"Putting underwear aside, it's a fact that D-mails still feel like a gamble. I want more certainty so I can expose the conspiracies of The Organization and SERN, guiding chaos to the world. And that, ladies and gentlemen gathered here today, is the fact of the matter. The topic of today's round table conference is--"



"If you want a round-table conference that much, at least go buy a round table."

"You know, Cris, Okarin said it before, but the round table exists in everyone's hearts!"

"Mayuri, you're a really pure girl... But you shouldn't take everything Okabe says seriously."

"Really?"

"The definition of a round table doesn't matter now. More importantly, the topic is that, instead of using D-mails, I want to explore for a solution to physical time travel like SERN."



Prompt answer, and she's glaring at me even sharper than she did during the whole underwear thing.

"SERN's been using such large-scale equipment for more than nine years, and they still haven't succeeded, you know? It's not something we can possibly hope to do."

"You'll become a GelOkarin! Ehehehe."

"Doesn’t that sound like Gero Froggy? Why'd they get popular, anyway?"

()

"No, this isn't a laughing matter..."

"Isn't it too early to give up? Haven't we already succeeded with D-mail, a first in all of human history?"

"Bur we're not the first. SERN did it before us, right?"



"Such baseless confidence. Anyway, wasn't it just a coincidence that you could use D-mail? We still haven't figured out what replaces the lifter."

"Don't we just need to figure it out?"

"It's all useless. How do you deal with a problem that not even SERN can figure out? If you can't set the local field, then you won't know where you'll leap to."

"I'll pass on leaping into the nothingness of space."

Local field setting certainly is a troubling problem. If you can't tell where you'll leap, there's no meaning to time travel at all.

"No, wait a sec."



"...Now that you mention it..."

"Doesn't it arrive properly since you set the mail address?"

"I don't think a phone signal can be received from millions of kilometers away, though."

"Mayushii thinks that maybe the signals are somewhere that can't be reached."



"Or maybe cellphones already have black holes and white holes."

"You shouldn't speculate. You have zero basis for that."

"Is it possible that it forms a wormhole?

"No wormholes have ever been confirmed to exist."

I groan. Kurisu and Daru say no more about this inexplicable situation. Only Mayuri smiles. No doubt she doesn't understand and is just smiling for now.

"In any case, the cold, hard truth is that D-mails arrive in the past. We're leading SERN in that regard. Now, for time travel, could we possibly apply the same mechanism as D-mails?"

"But with D-mails, you can only send 36 bytes of data. It's seriously impossible to just roll up a person and physically transfer them."

SERN's probably having a hard time with that, too.



I get goosebumps when I recall the tragic fate of the researches in the Jellyman's report. The ring singularity of a Kerr black hole. Super gravitational space-time distortion.

If you can adjust the volume of electron injection from the lifter, you might be able to make the ring singularities naked, but that adjustment is such a challenge that even SERN is having a hard time with it. Even if we do locate the lifter's replacement, it's not a problem we can solve quickly. Meaning that at present, we can only send a mere 36 bytes of data.

I wonder what size a human body is. I've got a feeling it's no less than an exabyte...

"It's best if we don't think about physical transfer for now. Even just data time travel is an amazing feat, so we should just be patient with that."

Data time travel... huh.

"That's a backwards utterance unthinkable for researchers who seek the truth of the world."

"I'm telling you to know your limits. If you're going to seek the truth, you need to have the appropriate brains, equipment, and funding. With such an impoverished circle, your high ambitions don't mean much.
I thought about it before, but we should bring the Microwave Ophone to a proper research institution and entrust it to a specialist. Since SERN is keeping their time machine research top secret, if we just make an official announcement, it'll be helpful for the future of mankind."



"I'm speaking seriously here! This isn't the time for jok--"

"And we've also hacked SERN. Those guys are a heartless bunch who'd go as far as to do human experimentation. Behind the scenes, a powerful political power crossing through national framework has been rearing its head. If we officially announce the Microwave Ophone (Temp), we might be erased."

"Are you watching too many movies?"

"The name "Committee of 300' appeared in actual SERN documents."

"Yeah, but..."

Kurisu's tone of voice weakens.

"Mayushii's kinda scared..."

"If our hacking got found out, then we'd seriously get erased. I didn't make any mistakes that would give us away, though."

"Also, this is the most important problem, but..."

I lower my voice, and look seriously at their three faces.