The Disposable Official Car

[Core Room]

"When a car breaks down, you throw it away. It's a defeatist notion, but it is a shift in thinking, I'll grant."

"It's not as though they break in half a year or so, and by the time they do, we'll surely have found some solution."

"But there are no artificial satellites in this world. Can a car even be made to run?"

"If you choose a manual car rather than an automatic and have it sent over, anyone with a driver's license can operate it by hand. Then again, official cars aren't taxis, so most of them are manuals anyway. For the record, by my 'setting' I merely hold a license; I'm a paper driver."

In English the terms are Autonomous car and Manual driving car, and have nothing to do with the transmission. And of course, even a fully autonomous car with no steering wheel and the like can't always move on its own, since in an emergency it's operated remotely, or brought to a fail-safe stop and towed away.

"Could we not use the dungeon proper as a radio tower and make it a substitute for a satellite?"

"That would require modifying the automobile itself, so it's beyond us for now. It'll become possible once we have the personnel, in time."

"So then, the cars we need are?"

"Electric vehicles compatible with manual operation. Short-range models without even two hundred kilometers of range will do fine."

"Electric? Because we can charge them from the dungeon?"

"Yes. Gasoline and diesel would require cultivating algae and refining it, which we lack the technical skill to attempt. Alcohol we could obtain by distilling summoned liquor, but mass production is difficult. Methane, propane, hydrogen, none of those can be produced in quantity, either. What's more, fuel-burning cars won't run inside the dungeon owing to the unique law, so you might not even be able to get them out of the garage. Hybrids don't have the garage problem, but they don't solve the gasoline-supply problem."

"Open flame is forbidden, after all. So then, isn't there some science teaching-kit out there with an algae for synthesizing hydrocarbon fuel, or the like?"

"Gasoline is far too dangerous for children, so if there were one it'd be the adult sort, but even if we got hold of the algae, using it for cars runs into the problem of 'refining.'"

"So, to sum up the features of the tier-group elevator versus the car?"

"The tier-group elevator carries no breakdown risk and is strong against attack, but it's high-cost and low-capacity. The car, on the other hand, is superior in operational flexibility, but it can break down or be destroyed. Something like that. For the record, cars will be necessary in the future. Trains I can't even imagine a way to obtain, so they're on hold. To begin with, we can't very well build even the rails as dungeon structures."

"Then rather than make a double investment, a car will do, I suppose. I'm not the one riding it, either way."

"Dungeon energy is finite, too, so there's also the option of putting off the decision and summoning just a few cars. Since the highways are shared with pedestrians and oxcarts, we can't get up much speed, mind you."

"We could take a leaf from the Edo-period daimyo processions, play a voice going 'Down on your knees, down on your knees!' and make them clear the way."

"That 'down on your knees' was only for the Three Houses; for ordinary daimyo other than them it was 'make way' or 'stand aside.' So long as you don't go charging into the procession the way they did in the Namamugi Incident, trouble rarely arises. For the common folk it was just like a festival's costume-daimyo parade, the usual thing being to clear the road and watch."

"At any rate, we don't need eight cars, surely."

"As things stand a license is required, so we'll have to check who has one. Automatic-only licenses won't do, though."

"Then, Status, open."

When the Dungeon Master said this, Marie called up the Master's résumé from the Core.

"In the Master's case, the name field is blank, and the current address is Adachi District, Land of Musashi… The academic and work history are just 'setting,' so we'll set those aside. As for licenses and qualifications, a First-Class Construction Execution Management Engineer and various others…"

"There's a 'setting' that I had the eligibility to sit the Second-Class Architect exam but failed to obtain it."

"Though I call it a Status, it can't be made into anything more than a plain résumé. It's not as if intelligence and the like can be put into numbers. In my own case, the sex field comes up blank, for one."

Not hermaphroditic, but sexless.

"So: ask whether a car is needed, check the Status, no, the résumé will do, see whether they have a license, and provide the car. That's it."

"And will the Knight Commander and the others need to set up a driving school and issue licenses?"

"By then we'll be able to use self-driving cars, so, good enough!"

In the end, besides Marie, only the doctor Sapien-sensei and the newspaper reporter Farigole held manual-car licenses. The maid Anne, and Scarlet and Kinran from sales, had automatic-only licenses; Rāja had none and got about on horseback, and Mint had no driver's license either. Which meant that, for the time being, the cars usable came to three.