“The view from Hashida Tower is spectacular. Perfectly regimented streets were lined up using GPS, and buildings were sized specifically to allow maximum viewing of the Tower from every possible angle. In fact, all of Hashida Prefecture was designed with the tower as it’s most premium tourist attraction. It stands 112 stories, beating out the Taipei 101 destroyed in 2017 along with Taipei itself. The Hashida Tower is now in the lead for the Emporis award, this year, 2028.”

The stewardess-like woman in the short Truman-era cap with veil lead a blue streak through the outer edge of Hashida Tower’s lowest tier, the Hashida archology. She would occasionally stop to point over a balcony or out of a tall standing tinted window, making gestures that made Range want to buy a vowel. He would say something, but beyond being impolite, he was afraid to set his age so well before the rest of the tourists in his company. Many of them probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway, it was nearly 30 years old. Coming to a turn in the hall, in fact a sharp corner that overlooked much of the city’s newly rebuilt shopping district. The neon signs were understated per city ordnance, the streetwalkers were few and well dressed, blending into the business crowd just leaving work for lunch. Range was impressed, but despite his focus on the town, he would still hear the guide’s works hollowly echoing throughout his ears.

“Next, on our right you will see at street level the new shopping district. With it’s grand opening this past week, all of the property values in the city went up 6%, thanks to Mr. Hashida’s suggestion it be placed outside the archology to aid in local revenue building! Mr. Hashida is very generous.” And the woman moved on, Range still chewing on the totally contrived words she had spit at him.

The tour passed by, nobody noticing the absence of one more tourist from the group. Especially an old, sake-scented retiree office worker on a joy-tour. Range straightened up a little from the stoop he had affected for the walk up here to the 4th floor and turned to examine the industrial elevator behind him. In the distance he could hear the guide discussing with her tour the benefits of the Endangré Leeching Process used to get all of the radioactivity from the soil of Old Hiroshima. Without it, Hashida Prefecture could not have been settled as a far extension of Tokyo proper. From how deep into the rattling dialogue the woman was getting, Range decided she must not have noted his absence. With any luck, she would have no idea where in the building he was lost.

With a shake of his head and a scrubbing motion at his day old shadow of whiskers, Range produced a matte black prong-like key from his sleeve. With the pressure of his whole weight, he managed to insert it into a plate next to the elevator. Normally a gun-like machine was used for this, but it would have been much more expensive than the key alone on the black market. With some effort and a good bit of backbone he had not used in years, Range heard the elevator make a bell tone to signal it would be coming down. Stepping aside and looking out the window, he picked up the role of tourist once more. A dull look came over his eyes and the doors opened behind him, and making no human noises. Range took this as a good sign and stepped in, quickly reaching for the up button only to discover a smooth plate in its place. The doors closed and a hollow voice whispered in his ear, “Floor?”. Range nearly jumped from his skin and muttered, “All the way to the top?”. The elevator answered with another bell tone and began heading up.

Range sighed in relief, not sure how to react to it simply obeying him. He surveyed the walls, pulling his ancient-looking trenchcoat in tight around him to feel a little more secure. No cameras? He looked at the corners with a sense of awe, and noticed that the elevator had another key entry like the one in the hall. He nodded sagely to himself, some of the floors must require a key to get out on. Restraining the urge to tap his foot, he listened as the elevator announced every tenth floor, speeding upwards in a way he could barely feel. Range remembered a time when he was younger where it would have taken a whole two minutes to reach the top of a fifty story building. The office building he worked in until the times of the great upheaval and war was at most fifty stories, but he was never sure. The elevator claimed to go to the fiftieth floor, but he only ever counted 49 floors from the outside on his 15 minute lunch breaks. The disparity always bothered him. But it wouldn’t much longer, Range had decided to take up religion in his old age. One of the tenets of his new faith was not to question the things that bother you, but simply to let them be as it is God’s will that not all things be understood. This tenet made sense to Range, more sense than the actions he was about to undertake.

The elevator spoke out “One hundred, ten. One hundred, twelve.” in it’s patronizing robotic monotone. The doors opened into sunlight and greenery. An arbory rose around him, the final story of the tower walled in thick glass and filled with trees native to the one lush Hiroshima. They were not very tall yet, but had at least another fourty feet to grow before they would touch the ceiling. Range spent enough time gawking at the room that the doors almost closed before he exited the elevator. In an effort not to press his luck, the old man padded out warily into the open. The trees spread out to either side, but a wide golden sand path lead from the elevator to a sitting area full of benches at the edge of the tower. Range disturbed patterns drawn in the sand with each step, noting they must have taken ours to form by men careful not to disturb the underbrush while in a state of Zen. Reaching the glass wall, he looked back to see what damage he had done and he saw the most remarkable thing. The sand rolled over itself, the tiny pieces of quartz returning to the places they last remember without any prompting. In less than a minute, the path looked untread.

Range was disgusted. He reached into his coat, pulling out the two things that meant the most to him in life. One was a flask he quickly opened and pulled a swig from, looking down from the tower to admire the new city. He followed the streets with his eyes, “I’ll be damned, she was right… It’s a perfect grid down there. Like God reached down and drew lines in the sand and they used them for roads.” On that thought he glanced back at the path again and shook his head, “Man trying to recreate his great work. Hashida must be a monster to think he could do such things so idly.”

In his right hand, Range examined a cylinder the size of a small thermos, with a red push button on the top of it. It looked very low tech, but Range held it delicately and sat it on the edge next to the glass. He looked down at the city, through the clowds and took in man’s misguided work. He was bothered that such effort was put into perfection when the world was already perfect, it was man’s bombs that made it imperfect. Hiroshima, Taiwan, all in the world had felt the effects of these weapons in one way or another. He pulled a pamphlet from his pocket, examining the front of it. His mouth opened and he spoke out in time with reading the words, and old habit he hadn’t lost since his children had grown up. He used to read to them before they thought him useless and stodgy.

“The Revisitationist Church, established 2009. You seek answers stolen from you, you seek solutions you do not understand and you want nothing but benefit for anyone else.” The pamphlet had been given to him when he went to speak with the leaders of his new church. They had given him the standard cylinder, not one tenth the size of the one he now carried and entrusted it to him as they passed on to speak to the next Visitor in line. When he followed the speaker, he was told to go away and that many others had come to pay their respects and find solitude. But Range was not tame in his need, and told the speaker of his wish to do something. One day before Range entered the tour, he gained the church’s trust and was asked to carry a great burden. A burden he had no trouble baring.

Range nodded with the sentiment and continued, “But it has been taken from us, taken from you, from everyone by those that would revel in their god-like creations. A vast grid of energy spans across the world, shooting through the lower Heavens and cutting a stark pattern against God’s stars. Stars put there for us to look at them, to marvel at and understand how small and unimportant we are in his great Machination, but the times have come for that to end.”

Taking a step back from the ledge, Range looked around to make sure he was alone. He licked at his lips and guzzled the sake with abandon. Looking down at the empty flask, the old man marveled at how many times in his life he spent nursing a sake or holding it in toast. “Sake is the drink of the celebrant and the bitter, old, and alone. Yes. That is one truth of my life… It is good to see these truths so close to the end. I will miss my daughters, but I will not miss my sons. They are selfish and learned it from a life of selfishness I lead. That is my burden to carry. That is my only regret… Well, beyond the regret of letting my wife run off with a fishmonger. I do still regret that. But there are some things a man just cannot do, and putting my lips-… Well, enough of that.”

With another look around the garden, Range approached the metal cylinder he sat down only to rest a finger on it’s top. “But there is one thing I will not regret… I will not regret opening a hole to Heaven so that my children will make it Home.”

Range pushed down the button, and the top of Hashida Tower lit up a shade of orange so bright that it looked to all below as if the sun rose. To ignite at the height of 112 stories, the explosive had been made hot enough to incinerate the five floors below it as well. Mr. Hashida did not even have time to react to the burning sensation on the floor below before becoming a newly falling layer of ash and hot metal sailing toward the ground. Glass filled the high winds around the tower, glittering like shining pixie dusted comet trails, carrying the light of the blast for miles. At the top of the glass room, a smaller room the size of a closet incinerated holding the primary node for the Grid in the Hashida Prefecture region and Range Ogura’s children noticed a minute five second lapse in service. Forced back into their prospective Aeos units to await a relink, they cursed the efforts of tyrants and religious fanatics.

Below in Hashida proper, it took a total of ten seconds before the backup nodes realigned close to the ground and the Grid was back online in the Prefecture.

Range’s ashes blew around in the lower atmosphere, his soul well on its way for wherever they go, and his work was already undone.