NOVEL WEB Book 8: Chapter 0
A rectangle of light palely illuminated the black box.
The symbol at the edge of the screen meant it had no signal.
How many times had I viewed that video file on my phone now?
It was 7PM in general elevator #13 leading to the general viewing deck of the Tokyo Skytool.
That was the country’s largest broadcast tower and we were stuck in the elevator after the power went out!
“Are you serious?” I muttered.
I rubbed the elbow-length sleeve of my black jacket.
Can this really happen? I mean, they were going on about the storm outside and how it was causing a bomb cyclone out of season, but wasn’t it supposed to have passed while we spent a few hours checking out this giant structure? This was the foundation of so much communication infrastructure, so how could even the backup power go out this easily? We used a three-day weekend to visit Tokyo and check out spots for celebrating our dad’s new job and then this happens. Aren’t TV and radio the first places to get information on disasters? So if this place is knocked out, everyone will rush to the internet. And then it doesn’t matter if we’re trapped in a metal box or not. The internet lines will be overwhelmed and no one will have a signal anywhere in the capital!
“Fuguu…”
The elevator was supposedly the fastest in the country while also keeping vibration to a minimum, but it was hard to judge the truth of that when it was stopped. In the same elevator, Ayumi, my little sister with curled ends to her black twintails, groaned weakly with her arms around her knees and her back against the wall. Since it was just her, Erika, and me, she did not bother hiding the indulgent tone of her voice even though we were out of the house. She was wearing a track jacket over midriff-exposing jogging wear, but this was not the kind with a large nametag on the chest. Both the top and bottom were pure white and the track jacket only had the zipper done at the neck, so it fluttered behind her like a cape.
And when I say she had her arms around her knees and her back against the wall, I mean she had been seated like that until she rolled over onto her side.
Plus, the lucky girl got to use Erika’s thighs as a pillow.
“So how many hundreds of meters up are we? When will help arrive? C’mon, Onii-chan, get everything done with your phone like you always do.”
“Don’t ask the impossible. There’s nothing I can do without a signal. Without a connection to Maxwell, I’m just a high school boy. …And pressing the elevator’s emergency button isn’t accomplishing anything, so I’m kinda stumped right now.”
“You said that before, didn’t you?”
“Because you keep asking the same questions over and over.”
What was that stitch-covered Zombie talking about? It was frustrating for me too, but shouting and making a fuss wasn’t going to get us a connection here. What, were we supposed to open the square panel on the ceiling and escape into the elevator shaft like in an action movie? When everything was dark from the power outage and we were hundreds of meters up without a railing? There was no way I was doing that. Unlike in movies, reality couldn’t just cut to the next scene. Up or down, it would be a hellish journey to safe ground.
Being stuck in the cramped and dark elevator was hardly fun, but sitting and waiting was the right decision here. Our voices couldn’t reach anyone, but they were sure to notice the elevator was stuck partway up like this. It wasn’t like our car had broken down in the middle of the desert or the South Pole. We weren’t going to starve before help arrived.
So what was our biggest problem here?
“When exactly will help arrive? If we’re dragged out of here during the middle of the day, it could easily be fatal for a Vampire like Erika.”
“Ha, ah ha ha. Don’t worry about me.”
My older sister Erika was lending Ayumi her thighs while wearing a black gothic lolita dress and leather-looking pants. The combination of her blonde ringlet curls and her nice body had quite an impact. I probably had her to thank for the faint “girl’s bedroom” smell hanging in this dangling elevator from hell. And she was reaching some pretty high levels of big sisterliness with how looking after someone helped calm her down.
Ayumi, who could be a little short on little sisterliness or girliness at all, pouted her lips while resting her head in Erika’s lap and toyed with the double zipper at the neck of her jacket.
“You heard Onee-chan.”
“If you’re willing to just accept that, then I really have to question your humanity,” I said.
“I know that! Fuguu!”
Ayumi energetically puffed out her cheeks and Erika worked to calm her down despite being the one with a real time limit here.
It was around 7PM, so we probably had around 10 hours until dawn. It changed depending on the season, but it was worth making an early estimate.
And then…
Creeeak.
It was an unpleasant sound.
Like a thick bundle of metal bending or the hinges of an old door that had not had any anti-rust spray applied.
We all looked up at the ceiling. That habit was apparently unique to the great earthquake nation of Japan and we knew intellectually it wouldn’t tell us anything useful, but it was a reflex.
Ayumi removed her cheek from Erika’s thighs and sat up.
“Wh-what was that sound? Something just creaked, didn’t it!?”
“There’s apparently a big storm out there, so wouldn’t it just be this tall structure shaking side to side as part of its anti-earthquake construction? That just allows any vibrations and impacts to leave the building safely, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
Erika rattled off the model answer, but the slight tension in her soft white cheeks belied her tone of voice. She may have been trying to convince herself more than anyone.
Yes.
No matter how much we tried to logically rationalize it, we had no idea why the elevator had suddenly stopped. Had the power simply gone out, had a wire snapped, had the pulleys and weights reached equilibrium, or had the emergency brake activated? We knew nothing.
And if you did not know the initial conditions, you could not build a logical argument on top of that.
Creeeeeeeeak!!
There it was again.
My eardrums were pierced by a metallic sound like rusty bolts being forcibly turned and my sense of equilibrium felt a little bit off. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but I wasn’t.
Had the elevator just tilted?
It was only a bit, but had it!?
“O-O-Onii-chan…”
“It’s okay. It is, right? This is the country’s biggest broadcast tower. How could a storm knock it over?”
“But during the weather recently, haven’t they been using phrases like ‘once in half a century’? And wouldn’t the tallest structure be the most affected by wind?”
“Which is why they’ll have given it plenty of countermeasures for that.”
…Although I had no way of knowing if the architects had taken into account these “once a century” or “once a millennium” storms the meteorologists had been talking about.
“Umm, Satori-kun?”
“You too, Erika? You haven’t caught Ayumi’s panic, have you? You’re the one who calmly brought up the anti-earthquake construction earlier.”
“Yes, well, I don’t know what kind of disaster prevention systems the Skytool has. Maybe it has gyros, pendulums, coil springs, dampers, magnets, or whatever else.”
“What’s your point?”
“Um, do those things still work when the power is entirely out? And not just the normal power, but the backup power like right now?”
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”
It had a lot more impact coming from her.
And it didn’t help that my phone had no signal so I couldn’t contact Maxwell.
Crrrrreeeeeeaaaaaaakkkkkkkk!
The meaning contained in that disconcerting noise changed entirely.
We were suspended in a small box hundreds of meters above the ground. It did not matter how sturdy it was or how many safety features would kick in when all 10 of its wires snapped. None of it mattered if the entire Tokyo Skytool was snapped in half by the powerful crosswinds of the storm.
A much more specific fear of death clutched at my heart.
I could only scream.
“W-we can’t just wait here! We need to escape!!”
[Mobile Temp] Tokyo Skytool [File 02]
The country’s largest multipurpose wide-range broadcasting tower located in Sumida, Tokyo. Its name was selected from public suggestions. Some say it was constructed to match the shift to terrestrial digital TV broadcasts, but it actually provides a variety of bandwidths and other tasks, including TV, radio, flight guidance, weather data collection, some emergency radio, and high-speed wireless internet support. Its extremely high output covers almost the entirety of the city center. Although there are rumors even those specs were intentionally lowered to maintain an equilibrium with the local Kantou TV stations.
It stands 650m tall.
The general viewing deck is located approximately 470m up and the special viewing deck is located approximately 500m up.
The general and special viewing decks and the restaurants there are open to walk-in guests, but due to their popularity, a reservation is highly recommended.
The ground-level area contains a broadcast relay facility, a large shopping mall containing approximately 300 shops, and an aquarium. Due to the sturdy design and the large capacity of the shopping mall and the rest of the ground-level area, it has been designated a wide-area shelter in case of emergencies.
It might seem surprising, but Tokyo Skytool itself is only a transmission facility and it does not contain any actual TV or radio broadcasters or production facilities. Thus, there is no national broadcaster or commercial flagship station associated with it. But since it is a nearby landmark with such a close connection to broadcasting, many production teams will readily request to use it as a shooting location, so it contains an extremely high number of TV cameras even for one of the city’s landmarks.
About the broadcast tower’s elevators.
(From the ground level to the general viewing deck.)
Normal elevators: 8. Large industrial elevators: 2. Emergency stairways: 1.
(From the general viewing deck to the special viewing deck.
Normal elevators: 3. Large industrial elevators: 1. Emergency stairways: 1.
No one has ever been trapped on the viewing decks or the normal elevators.
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