While Noah remained deep in meditation, undergoing a new evolution,
much changed within Gateway Corporation over the course of two hundred years.
First came the crisis caused by the absence of their spiritual pillar.
When Noah, the guardian of the great family who had been with them since distant antiquity, suddenly vanished without a trace, unrest within Titan began spiraling out of control.
Eventually, demonstrations demanding to know Noah’s whereabouts and the truth became severe enough to blanket the entire moon,
dealing a crippling blow even to Gateway’s overall corporate operations.
At the same time, corporate states on other planets and moons caught wind of the turmoil and began extending their black hands.
Spies to steal information, agitators to fan the chaos further, and assassins to kill persons of interest.
The crisis continued to swell, threatening to grow beyond their ability to contain it.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, Veronica, the family head, the Council of Elders, and the senior executives of the six core divisions held an emergency meeting.
In the end, they decided to reveal Noah’s current circumstances.
Not the raw truth, however. They would embellish it somewhat.
Frankly, if they announced that the absolute guardian who had led the Yurick Family for more than ten thousand long years was now practically comatose due to the side effects of a forbidden experiment,
it was obvious what devastating chaos would descend upon Titan.
Thus, they activated an emergency protocol they had prepared long ago without Noah’s knowledge.
First, they eradicated outside forces attempting to interfere with Gateway Corporation amid the confusion using the elite troops of Iron Anchor, the military command division. At the same time, under the leadership of Dharma Temple, which oversaw spiritual unity and religious rites, they calmed the chaos across the entire moon and broadcast live footage of Noah, who had been missing all this time.
The monks of Dharma Temple announced, with a religious framing, that Noah’s seclusion was a noble ascetic practice undertaken to attain great enlightenment.
For the Yurick people, who had inherited Buddhist beliefs generation after generation since ancient Earth, this embellishment worked with devastating perfection.
The ten million members of the family firmly believed that Noah was finally ascending to the state of a "living Buddha."
Fortunately, the boiling public sentiment subsided in an instant. Instead, the atmosphere across the entire moon became fervent with reverence.
While Gateway Corporation escaped a great crisis amid that strange peace and finally had room to breathe,
Earth and Mars received the triumphant news that the long-desired Warp engine had finally been developed.
The moment humanity declared its grand first voyage toward the galaxy, Gateway Corporation judged it a perfect opportunity to expand its trade network to a galactic scale and invested vast capital into the historic project.
Accordingly, it sent large trade fleets and exploration vessels along with the first Warp-voyage fleet.
Of course, even upon reaching new frontiers, they would be unable to establish new Passages while Noah remained asleep.
But even without using Noah’s miraculous Passage, Gateway Corporation could still operate normally with its existing trade vessels, though profitability would be comparatively lower.
Logistics Aurum, the interstellar logistics headquarters and largest of the six divisions, resolved to push ahead at the vanguard as galactic pioneers, gathering intelligence from beyond the void and laying the groundwork in advance.
Yet shortly after the massive ships entered the unknown dimension of the Warp, all that reached Titan’s control center were signals of urgent confusion, bloody combat, and the grim news that their Warp engines—needed to return to realspace—had failed.
After a final desperate text message stating that they were locked in a fierce battle against endless hordes of grotesque lifeforms pouring from the Warp beyond reality, communications were severed, and the fleet vanished without a trace.
One day, after only a very brief interval of real time had passed.
From the heart of deep space, a full forty-one light-years from the Solar System, a single ultra-long-range quantum transmission arrived simultaneously at receivers on Earth, Mars, and Titan, accompanied by signs of a terrifying, planet-destroying explosion.
It was a video message, like a last testament, sent with his final strength by the captain of Gateway’s strategic heavy exploration vessel—the final survivor of the stranded fleet.
The captain’s final appearance onscreen was utterly unlike the man who had departed Earth half a year earlier.
His frail flesh, worn away by the long years within the Warp, had vanished without a trace, replaced entirely by a cold mechanical body.
With brutally high-powered heavy weapons hanging from all over his body, he was a walking war machine in the truest sense.
Even as he delivered his final words, he violently moved his many modified arms, fighting a savage battle against the daemons surging furiously from beyond the edge of the screen.
[Lost... we fought desperately in this hellish dimension for three hundred and seventy-one years. We tried somehow to endure against the enemies endlessly breaching in from outside... but in the end, our weapons and resources were all exhausted. And so, as the last one left, I make my final choice.]
Beyond the desperate view of mechanical sensors blinking red, the captain forced out his final words as though vomiting blood.
[If you receive this transmission... study our records and prepare thoroughly. Beyond lies both the possibility to propel humanity forward and hell itself. ...Lastly, Noah. Please, remember me.]
With those agonized final words, the overloaded exploration vessel’s engines unleashed an unimaginable detonation powerful enough to rip apart the surrounding Warp-dimensional barrier in an instant.
He had sacrificed his own life to punch completely through space and send that single transmission.
Ironically, less than half a year had passed for humanity in the Solar System since the first fleet went missing.
The command authorities of every planet could not hide their horror at the bizarre temporal distortion by which three hundred and seventy-one years in the Warp amounted to only six months in reality.
Although the first voyage had ended in catastrophic failure, the leaders of Earth and Mars were blinded by the mad efficiency of having crossed the cosmic distance of forty-one light-years in merely half a year, and effectively regarded it as a success.
They classified the message as top secret, then, based on the recorded data sent with it, fanatically devoted themselves to further researching Warp technology and finding a solution.
Gateway Corporation, by contrast, remained levelheaded.
With Noah, its current leader, sunk in deep sleep, it was impossible to immediately connect new trade routes using the Passage.
Thus, the leadership headed by Veronica resolved to build up their internal strength perfectly to face the coming era, until Noah awoke safely.
On the surface, Gateway focused on trade and transportation, but it possessed technological capabilities accumulated over more than ten thousand long years. On that foundation, its internal departments had been rigorously divided.
Logistics Aurum for logistics, Mechanica Gate for technology and machinery, Bio Aegis for biology and genetics, Iron Anchor for the military, Shadow Index for intelligence, and Dharma Temple for faith.
The six divisions divided the fields according to their respective roles and devoted themselves to large-scale preparations.
In particular, unimaginable funds were concentrated on Iron Anchor, the military command division among the six, lending military strength an unprecedented degree of power.
Since they did not know whether the new era would bring new allies or new enemies, the other divisions also stepped forward to fully support Iron Anchor in preparation for war.
First, Bio Aegis, the genetic bioengineering institute, provided comprehensive physical enhancement procedures to nearly all of Iron Anchor’s elite soldiers, drawing upon the pinnacle of the family’s genetic engineering and biotechnology.
Those far removed from combat, such as administrative, supply, and maintenance personnel, were excluded. Even so, hundreds of thousands underwent the enhancement procedures.
After undergoing unimaginably sophisticated biological enhancement surgery, the men and women of the Yurick Family found themselves reborn with bodies incomparably stronger than before.
Their physical frames grew far larger than those of ordinary people, and their strength, stamina, mental fortitude, recuperative power, reflexes, and even natural lifespans were fundamentally on an entirely different level.
Though their appearances and features were similar due to inheriting Alexei’s bloodline, in substance they were monsters that could rightfully be called superhumans, having comfortably surpassed humanity’s limits.
The new elite force was named the Immortals. Its proportion among Iron Anchor’s combat forces would gradually be increased, and its numbers would continue to expand in the future.
Furthermore, to deal with hostile lifeforms in the Warp, they established Eclipse, a unit composed of the family’s rare black-haired, black-eyed Pariahs.
Eclipse’s armor and weapons were all specially made for anti-psyker combat, and because of the unavoidable sense of alienation and discomfort Pariahs caused, their voices were replaced with mechanical ones.
Anticipating that the need and demand for Pariahs would increase in the future, restrictions on Pariahs having children were lifted. In addition, under Bio Aegis’s leadership, their genes were extracted for artificial cultivation.
It might have been a little coldhearted, but should they die in combat, their corpses would invariably be processed into materials for anti-psyker weapons.
Not everyone was smoothly reborn as a superhuman.
A very small number of dropouts failed to endure the enhancement procedures to the end.
If rejection left them in a vegetative state, or if the enhancements activated too aggressively and shortened their lifespans while creating a risk of rampancy,
their bodies, damaged by the failure, were safely reconstructed, after which they were given generous compensation and honorably discharged.
Once the newly established Immortals and Eclipse received Mechanica Gate’s full technological support, the machine and technology development institute, the complete form was finally born.
Newly forged advanced heavy weapons and nano-armor were distributed, equipping the Yurick Family’s elite soldiers as perfect human strategic weapons capable of crushing any army in the galaxy head-on.
Their military evolution did not stop at the birth of superhuman weapons.
Mechanica Gate’s furnaces, manufactorums, and shipyards operated without rest. From super-heavy armored forces to trample battlefields, to decisive weapons that would change tactical maps, and starships that would adorn the night sky, every aspect of their military infrastructure was completely remade and advanced.
Naturally, as vast quantities of new equipment poured in during this process, enormous amounts of outdated equipment were rendered obsolete.
But Gateway Corporation did not simply let it rot away.
They exported every last one of those obsolete weapons to underdeveloped frontier colonies in the outer Solar System, such as Uranus and Neptune, which were relatively behind the times, as well as to mercenary corporations and pirates.
Those suffering from a shortage of firepower gratefully purchased Gateway’s secondhand weapons at high prices. Thus, even while undertaking a massive military buildup, the corporation demonstrated the terrifying acumen of not suffering so much as the slightest financial loss.
The leadership of Gateway Corporation, as well as Titan’s citizens and the children of the Yurick Family, made truly thorough and perfect preparations to welcome the coming new era.
Yet deep within their hearts, a great emptiness still remained.
Through those long years, day and night, they yearned only for Noah, the family’s eternal guardian, to awaken from his deep slumber.
They wanted, without fail, to share with their master Noah the great and meaningful history they would forge with their blood and sweat.
Had their fierce and blind yearning finally reached the underground cavern at Titan’s core?
Whoooosh— The instant tens of thousands of clones simultaneously snapped open their closed eyes, the tightly shut eyelids of the original Noah slowly rose as well.
I listened to every word of Veronica’s lengthy report while noisily sipping cola through a straw—the same sharply sweet taste as ever, despite all the years that had passed.
"...That concludes the report on the reorganization and current state of the six divisions’ forces."
Veronica dismissed the hologram and bowed her head.
I took another swallow of cola and let out a hollow laugh.
"Ooh... So, to sum it up, while I was asleep, I became a ‘living Buddha’? Now that I hear it, this reeks of a cult."
"That was... the unavoidable best choice at the time, to prevent rioting on Titan and interference from outside forces."
Veronica’s head dipped slightly, dejectedly. For a formidable woman who had ruled a colossal corporate state with an iron hand for two hundred years,
the attitude she showed before me was exactly that of the young lady she had once been.
I laughed aloud and gave her shoulder a few gentle pats.
"I’m not scolding you, so don’t look so down. I’m the one who got scared of the future, locked himself underground, and fell asleep on his own accord. How could I possibly blame any of you? I’m just grateful that you endured those harsh years without anyone falling behind, and proud of you for leading the family so perfectly while I was gone."
"...You keep making this old woman cry."
Veronica roughly wiped away the moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes.
Her hair, turned white with age, and the fine wrinkles on her hands caught my eye.
"What old woman? To the eyes of an immortal like me, whether a hundred years or a thousand pass, you’re still my little girl from just the other day, bringing me a tray of cola."
"...Do not tease me."
"Ha ha, I mean it."
I grinned and drained the rest of my cola.
Ahh... just as I thought. Buying Pepsi was the right move.
I had to give up on Coca-Cola because they were pointlessly proud, though.
"Still, becoming a Buddha out of nowhere is quite the title I never imagined... but if my precious children can find peace of mind and unite by believing in it, then I’ll gladly wear a little label like that. It’s not as though becoming a Buddha in appearance alone changes what I truly am, right?"
After all, a Buddha was not a god, but an enlightened human and a teacher, so it was not all that different.
...Right?
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