The research institute that developed and manufactured karakuri devices lay on the outskirts of Edou.
“I’ve already heard everything from the shogun!” I’m Hiraga Genko—the twenty-fourth head of the Hiraga family, and director of the Hiraga Research Institute! Pleased to meet ya!”
The head of the Hiraga family turned out to be a woman—petite enough to be mistaken for a girl in her teens, though in truth, she is apparently somewhere in her thirties.
Her eyes, brimming with curiosity, locked onto me.
“So this is the karakuri doll from the West!”
“Uh… y-yes, ma’am.”
“Oooh! You can pull off such a complicated expression so easily! We’ve been trying to make humanlike dolls ourselves, but expressions like that? We are nowhere close!”
Whether from excitement or sheer fascination, Genko is practically snorting with enthusiasm as she ran her hands all over my face and body.
“This skin feels so real! What is it made of? And there aren’t any seams anywhere! Even the hair…. it’s like it’s actually growing out of your head! Hey, can I—just a thought—take you apart? Just a little?”
“Of course you can’t!”
“Why not?! Just a tiny bit! I swear, only the tip—just the tip!”
The tip? The tip of what, exactly…?
“I’m delicate, you know. Even a little dismantling is strictly off-limits.”
“Tsk, boring! No… wait a second—are you really a karakuri doll? You’re not an actual baby in disguise, are you? That would be a whole different kind of shock if that is the case!”
“A-anyway, just hurry up and show us inside already!”
Most of the facility turned out to be a massive workshop for crafting karakuri products. What amazed me most was that it wasn’t people making them by hand— even the manufacturing itself was done by karakuri.
“For the common products, it’s all fully automated.”
Genko explained.
“You mean… you use karakuri to make more karakuri? That’s an incredible system.”
Aside from a few staff stationed here and there for quality checks, the place was shockingly devoid of people. It was the kind of thing you could never replicate with magical tools that required human labor. When it came to mass production, karakuri might have the clear advantage.
“We put most of our manpower into development. Karakuri still have depths we’ve yet to reach you see. No matter how much we study, there’s always more waiting to be uncovered after all.”
I was also shown around the development site.
“This team here’s working on communication karakuri. In other words, machines that let people talk with each other anytime, no matter how far apart they are.”
“How would you do that without magic?”
“By using something called electricity.”
“Electricity?”
“That’s right. We convert a voice into an electrical signal, send it along wires, and—bam—it reaches the other end. We’ve already strung wires across most of the country so people can keep in touch, but laying all that cable is no easy task. Right now we’re working on making it wireless instead. But to do that, we gotta study radio waves a whole lot more.”
Electricity. Radio waves. Neither was a concept I’d ever even heard of before.
“Electricity is a kind of energy you can’t see. It comes from teeny-tiny particles moving around together. For example, when two things rub against each other and make a spark—that’s static electricity. You ever had your clothes crackle and snap in winter? That’s the stuff.”
“I see, I see… So lightning would be caused by electricity too, then?”
“That’s right! Look at you, catching on fast. Your comprehension is off the charts!”
Electricity is basically something that travels through matter, but radio waves, while similarly invisible energy, apparently travel through air and space. They’re called radio waves because their properties resemble waves.
“That’s quite interesting. It works in a completely different way from magical tools.”
The mechanisms behind these seem to be quite deep, once you start researching them.
“Hmm, I don’t get it.”
“…Me too.”
“Same here.”
Fana, Anje, and Karen didn’t seem to understand the concept at all, and they had a faraway look in their eyes the whole time.
“This is the vehicle development team. They make great vehicles that can transport people and cargo at high speeds, and we have a variety of models, from four-wheeled to two-wheeled, and in all sizes, from large to small. We also have vehicles for use in civil engineering and agriculture.”
It seems they eventually want to build roads throughout the country, allowing people to travel long distances easily.
“I’m also thinking of something even larger that can carry a lot of people and cargo. Of course, I’ll eventually need to make it fly.”
So she’s basically planning to create something like a magical airship without using magic.
While I had my doubts about whether she could really do that, Genko’s confident tone made me think that perhaps one day it might actually be possible.
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeineijiworks.wordpress.com.
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