Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. I do not own Sword Art Online. Sword Art Online is owned by Reki Kawahara and ASCII Media Works.
Lt. Taichi Kurosawa, Tokyo Metropolitan PD Bomb Disposal Unit
February 25th, 2023, Argus Software HQ, Akihabara, Tokyo
"What's the situation, officer", I asked the police officer, one of several standing next to the two police cars that blocked off a roughly 500 meter section the main road through Akihabara, around the headquarters of Argus Software inc. I got the call from the officers at the scene about 30 minutes ago.
Apparently, another mail bomb had been sent to the offices of Argus. This was relatively common within the first few months of the Sword Art Online crisis, people blaming Argus as a whole for the loss of their loved ones. In the first few weeks alone, there were five bombs sent to Argus HQ.
The attacks had ceased when Argus fell victim to dozens of lawsuits over Sword Art Online, and it became clear of that the rest of the employees of Argus did not know about the addition of the microwave generator in the device- Kayaba Akihiko had drafted the plans himself and send them directly to a low-wage factory in China, where the people who produced the device had no idea exactly what they were making. Not to mention that, after a series of recent lawsuits, Argus had sold the rights to Fulldive technology to RETCO Progress, and was rumored to be about to declare bankruptcy. Apparently, however, some people didn't get the message.
"One of the clerks working in the first floor mail room told us she was sorting through incoming mail when she found a package with a tear in the side with some wires sticking out of it. Everyone in the area of the building has already been evacuated"
"All right", I said, "Yamasaki", get the EOD bot ready".
"On it, sir", Yamasaki, the explosive ordnance disposal robot operator, said as he opened the back doors of the police truck with the help of another officer, revealing the Mark V-A2 EOD remote control EOD vehicle, a remotely machine about the size of a riding lawn mower, protected by Kevlar plates equipped with a manipulator arm with attached wire cutter, and a high pressure water jet and a shotgun loaded with slugs, to disarm bombs in a more forceful manner.
The robot moved down the ramp, before rolling forward, towards the entrance of the Argus Software Building, easily negotiating the four steps between the street and the entranceway. I looked at the laptop screen of Yamasaki's shoulder, watching the feed from the color video camera on the robot.
Yamasaki had no trouble finding the mailroom- he had guided the remote controlled EOD bot through Argus HQ over the last few months that he had practically memorized floor plan. The package question was on a counter in the mailroom. It was not a box, but rather one of those oversized manila envelopes, about 10 cm thick and 20 cm wide and 40 centimeters long.
Yamasaki moved arm on which the camera was mounted to get a closer look at the package. The package had a bulge in it roughly the size and shape of length of metal pipe. The corner of the package had a couple of wires sticking.
"Looks like we're dealing with dealing with a pipe bomb with an electric detonator", I said, "The water jet should be able to take care of it."
"Activating water jet now, sir", Yamasaki said, as he placed the crosshairs for the high-pressure water jet over the two exposed wires. Yamasaki pressed a key on his laptop, and the high-pressure water jet fired with enough force to sever the two wires and even blew a hole in the casing of the pipe bomb. The paper package was completely blow away, now shredded, soaked remains lying on the other side of the room. The water leaking out of the hole blown in the pipe bomb was black. The device was most likely a black powder bomb.
With the bomb rendered safe, I got into my car and returned to the EOD HQ. The rest of the squad would deal with removing the disarmed device, and I would go back to trying to find a way to disarm the microwave device in a Nerve Gear.
Overall, I had mixed feelings about this job; I was a bit annoyed that I had to be interrupted from the Nerve Gear project. On the other hand, it was nice to actually succeed at disarming something. We were getting nowhere fast. There were so many redundant wire and trigger mechanisms, that in four months time, we had not even been able to cut more than four of the dozens of wires in the device before we set off microwave.
Not to mention other methods of disarming the device- using a shotgun slug, small explosive charge, or the robot's water jet to take out the battery were obviously too dangerous- in a couple tests I conducted first with a pea-sized plastic explosive charge and later the EOD bot's water jet, the battery was destroyed, but the forceful disarming methods sent lethal plastic shrapnel into the simulated (made from ballistic gel and a type of plastic, with a similar density to human bone) victim's head. It was the kind of problem that made you want to swear loudly, fly into a rage and break something, or drink heavily.
Yukiko Nakahara, National Police Agency
April 9th, 2023. National Police Agency Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan.
Three months have passed and the effort to hack the Nerve Gear was, suffice it to say, not going well. We have made no progress whatsoever in finding a way to disarm the Nerve Gear device, and not for lack of trying. I've lost count of the number of nights I've spent on overtime, fueled on espresso, trying to find a way around maze of firewalls that protected the Nerve Gear's internal software.
On the occasions I am able to get some sleep, have to fight against bleeping sound of that microwave detector echoing in my head, reminding me of the failure that, every second, is endangering thousands of lives. So far, we've intercepted some game records and even some miscellaneous chatter between players of the game, however, the only thing of any interest to the investigation we've found is a little more on the suspicious "Heathcliff" character.
It seems even more likely now that "Heathcliff" is Kayaba Akihiko. I'd say, either he's Akihiko, or else he is an extremely skilled hacker, as he seems to have manipulated the very source code of the game to give himself an unfair advantage.
For one, I've managed to get a hold of the leveling records in Sword Art Online. It states that Heathcliff started the game as a level 100, and that all of his skills were at 1000/1000. That should not be possible, as the highest level at the official start of the game was level 15, attained by one of the beta testers. Not to mention, I noticed that the source code for "Heathcliff's" HP bar has some weird coding that isn't on the others. No one on the task force have any idea what this means though. Something tells me it is yet another unfair advantage, though….
Souta Kobayashi
May 16th, 2023, Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan.
It was a release date for a high profile video game, yet the crowds that surrounded the Akihabara electronics store I was the manager of seemed less dense than usual. It was understandable why the crowds were smaller- today was the release date of a virtual reality console, the AmuSphere.
RETCO Progress Incorporated, the corporation that bought Fulldive Technology after Argus went under due to a series of crippling lawsuits, stated that the AmuSphere was completely safe, and went out to prove this, releasing information on how the device used a lower frequency microwave generator, which could not harm the user as the Nerve Gear could, and featured a number of other safety devices, including an emergency logout feature. Nonetheless, people are naturally suspicious of virtual reality after the Sword Art Online fiasco six months ago. In fact, I still have a significant number of unsold AmuSpheres.
I was not surprise at the comparatively small number of AmuSphere customers. Indeed, I was more surprised at the very existence of the AmuSphere at all. This is because the CEO of RETCO progress, Shouzou Yuuki's daughter Asuna is one of the 10,000 people trapped within Sword Art Online. One would think, given the circumstances, that Yuuki would have been a little more reluctant to utilize the technology- apparently he is has donated considerable amounts of money to the effort to care for the victims while they are trapped in Sword Art Online, as well efforts to disarm the Nerve Gear, however, even with his money, as well as massive amounts of government funding, the efforts to rescue the victims of Sword Art Online were getting nowhere. It was clear that this was a problem one could not simply throw yen at and expect results.
Authors Notes: The Mark V-A2 explosive ordnance disposal robot mentioned in the first section is meant to be a fictional improvement on the real-life Mark V-A1 EOD bot currently used by US Army, the Israeli Defense forces, and police departments of Los Angeles and Toronto. As for the water jet, this is a real EOD technique, but I'm not sure if a water jet on an EOD bot would actually blow a hole in the actual casing of a pipe bomb or just take out the firing mechanism.
