Rose’s heels tapped rhythmically as she walked through a Shinjuku Station corridor. Her face betrayed signs of annoyance as she knocked on a door and walked into Kurotori headquarters without waiting for permission. The room smelled of cheap Kusarian cigarettes, as usual. Hano smoked in the backroom when he was alone and was absolutely convinced no one noticed. Of course everyone noticed, but everyone was also polite enough not to point it out.

“Hano, what is so important that you need to summon me personally over here?” She asked, looking at the ceiling before moving her gaze to behind the desk where her accountant and advisor usually sat. That’s when she noticed he wasn’t alone. “And who is that?”

Inside Hano Nobuyuki’s office sat a younger man — boy even, he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five — who stood up immediately as she entered. The moment she looked at him, he put his hands down his sides and bowed his head in the familiar Kusarian gesture of respect. Unfortunately for her, it also meant she couldn’t study his face more carefully, something she did always when someone was about to ask her for money.

Hano cleared his throat. “This is Hantaro Honda, a recent Kyushu University PhD. He has a pitch for you.”

“Oh, it better be a good one,” Rose replied and glanced at the young man again, who was still keeping his head down. She raised her eyebrow. “At ease, soldier.”

Honda raised his head, visibly confused. “Ma’am…”

“I’m not Kusarian,” she interrupted him, “I am, as some of you say, a gaijin. Since you are here means that no other Kusarian would want to talk to you, or you couldn’t talk to them. And since Hano decided to call me here all the way from New Tokyo means that you managed to convince him that whatever you have is a great idea. But I’m the one with the money, and I’m not easily impressed. So, do go ahead. Tell me what your business is. Impress me.”

She sat down across the desk from Nobuyuki, while the aspiring entrepreneur did his best to compose himself. “I… Well… I don’t have a business… But I think… Samura…” He looked towards Nobuyuki with desperation in his eyes.

“Mr Honda thinks,” Hano sat back and put his hands together, “that Kusari is on its way to starving in a few years, and he claims he has found a solution to the problem.”

“That’s… That’s right,” the young scientist confirmed the accountant’s words. An uncomfortable silence befell the room.

Rose moved her eyes every couple seconds between Honda and Nobuyuki, trying to figure out if either of them was serious. Finally she sighed, rolled her eyes and waved her hand in a circle. “Elaborate, please.”

“As you might know,” Hano rustled a few papers, “the bulk of Kusarian diet consists of rice and fish. Rice is ubiquitous and plentiful. The fish, according to him,” he pointed at Honda, “are becoming a problem. The primary source of fish is Planet Junyo in Shikoku, whose fisheries are responsible for nearly eighty percent of the total fish consumed in Kusari. Or rather they have been, until six years ago, when the GMG took over Planet Kurile.”

“I don’t follow,” Rose replied. “What has a backwater planet in the Sigmas got to do with fish?”

“Two centuries ago,” Honda chimed in, now more in his element, “Samura experimented with using plancton from Kurile to populate the sterile oceans of Junyo with fish. They waited until the alien organisms acclimatised to the waters of Junyo enough to multiply and soon after introduced various species of white and oily fish to the planetary ocean. The endeavour was a great success, with the population of fish skyrocketing and after sixty or so years Junyo fisheries produced as much fish as Kyushu, New Tokyo and Honshu put together. It was immensely profitable and made the price of nutritionally complete food competitive with the alternatives provided by Synth Foods.”

“And that’s common knowledge in Kusari?” Rose asked, beginning to understand the picture. “If it is, it’s already priced in whatever you might want to do with it.”

“Not very. Just rumours among old-time professors at the Kyushu University. Samura doesn’t like to publicise details about the inner workings of their industry, much less admit that such a vital process was revealed to be so fragile.”

“The price of fish has already increased by twenty-five percent over the last two years,” Nobuyuki added. “Most say it’s because of the war with Gallia, market instability and inflation. But assuming his story checks out, that might not be the real reason. And I, for one, don’t see any holes in it.”

“So, if I got this right,” Rose sat up and closed her eyes, pretending to visualise the situation. “Junyo fish eat Kurile plancton. Samura ship in the plancton from Kurile. GMG takes over Kurile. Samura doesn’t have the fish food anymore. And no one has noticed anything?”

“There is enough fish food in the oceans for a few more decades, naturally,” Honda replied. “But there’s less of it with every passing day. And if the food isn’t plentiful, fish multiply less, and the fisheries are not able to cope with the demand, so they raise prices. Eventually the entire thing is going to come crashing down like a house of cards.”

“I haven't been looking too closely, to be honest, but I don't recall seeing all that much on the news about Kurile over the last couple of years,” Nobuyuki interjected before Rose could reply. “There has been suspiciously little said about the GMG takeover. Someone might be covering something up. It doesn’t matter who, it matters that there’s money to be made with it.”

“We’ll get to that,” Rose stopped him and turned to Honda. “Why do you come to me with this, then? Why not Samura, or Kishiro, or someone else who understands the situation better?”

The accountant smirked and replied instead of the scientist. “Isn’t it obvious? If it’s Samura covering up, he noticed it and it means he is dangerous, so they will deny anything he says. If it’s Kishiro, that’s a free pass for their Synth Foods friends to take over Kusari food market. So the only person who can do anything about it is someone from the outside.”

Honda resorted to merely nodding to confirm the accountant’s words.

“I see,” Rose answered. “Very well. You have convinced me that there is a problem. Now, I hope that you also have a solution for it?”

“I believe I do…” Honda replied with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “During the research for my thesis, I came across a species of Kyushu algae that responded very well to aquaponic hydrocarbon-based fertilisers…” He stuttered.

Rose raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“Well… I was hoping… With your gracious funding… More necessary research could be done…” The scientist continued to stutter.

“That’s why I called you,” Nobuyuki picked up the thread of Honda’s argument. “It’s clear he’s inexperienced, he doesn’t have a company, doesn’t have a patent. Just has a research paper and an idea that has a solid potential to solve a problem Samura doesn’t even know they have. The downside is minimal — I checked how much these experiments costs and it’s not much — and the potential upside is very high. I suggest this: Mr Honda sets up a corporation and files for the patents. For footing the bill for the preliminary research Kurotori gets twenty percent of the stock. If the idea is confirmed and found promising, we buy out a majority and see that it gets off the ground. If not, not much has been lost.”

Rose rubbed her chin for a few seconds, then nodded. "Deal."

It was the first time she had set foot on the planet. The campus of the faculty of agricultural sciences of Kyushu University was genuinely impressive. No wonder, she thought, that a nation so dependent on traditional methods of feeding its population put so much money and power behind its education in that area.

She looked for directions on her PAD to the labs where she was supposed to meet with Honda. Hano was not here this time, but she hoped the young scientist would stutter less when he was on his home turf.

In the meantime, she had been reading more about the plight of Kusari fish. The situation was exactly as it had been described to her by the two Kusarians the month before in Nobuyuki’s office. Samura had hit the jackpot with the Kurile plankton, which adapted itself immediately to the new environment, but had made itself — and whole of Kusari — calamitiously dependent on the alien organisms from the Sigma planet. The GMG takeover was actually far more disastrous than what anyone expected.

“Rose-sama,” she heard from behind her. She turned around. Honda bowed as was Kusarian custom. She didn’t bow back. She couldn’t find the custom anything but pretentious.

“Good morning. Hope the second round of research ended up being promising.”

“I’m happy to say that it was a great success,” he raised his head. “We have confirmed our previous findings and found a species of algae that would be a perfect source of food for forage fish on Junyo. I have the results with me,” he passed her a file from a messenger bag that he carried. “I was just walking back to the faculty building, I can give you the summary on the way.”

“Let’s go then. I can hardly be bothered to read jargon-dense research notes and I’m eager to hear what you found.” The pair directed their steps towards one of the taller buildings of the campus.

“Well,” the researcher began, “we stated with a chemical analysis of the Junyo water. It is much more sterile than typical ocean water on other planets, there are very few organisms other than the Kurile plankton. When we introduced various species of algae directly into the water, just to see what would happen, the alien organisms consumed it almost entirely in a very short period of time. We ended up having to grow the seaweed in separate tanks and replant them when they reached maturity. That would be a serious setback — the cost of replanting the seaweeds on the deep Junyo sea floor would be gigantic.”

“How gigantic?” Rose asked with a hint of worry in her voice.

“Too large to be feasible at scale. Thankfully, one of my assistants suggested that we pass through the water from the separate tanks through the chemical lab as a control group. In one of the tanks there was a slightly higher concentration of silver. We started adding HydroGro to the water, just to see what would happen. After a few days the number of silver particles increased dramatically and the water was visibly more pure. We moved the plant to the tank with the Kurile organisms and not only did it not get consumed but actually the antibacterial properties of silver resulted in killing off much of the alien plankton.”

“Interesting. So you think these weeds could clear out the Kurile bacteria entirely from Junyo?”

Honda shook his head. “Unlikely, not in the short term. The introduction of the bacteria took fifty years and that was a ‘quick process.’ However, perhaps if we could convince at least one of the fisheries to let us plant the grown seaweeds on the seabed, I am fairly certain we could sterilise an area of the sea from microorganisms. Once that’s done, maybe we could begin rebuilding something of a regular ecosystem there.”

“I see," Rose replied matter-of-factly. The entire endeavour genuinely started to pique her interest. "I’ll talk to Hano about this. And I’ll read your notes. We’ll be in touch.”


Three days after visiting the Kyushu University campus Rose sat once again in Nobuyuki’s office sipping coffee.

“These research notes, have you found anything interesting in them?” she asked looking at the ceiling.

“Not really. Everything confirmed what you’d told me. I did get in touch with the fisheries. The manager of only one responded. He had some curious stories.” Hano spoke slowly, multitasking the response with typing on his desktop console.

“I don’t care about his stories, I want to know if he wants to make a deal,” Rose’s eyes didn’t leave the ceiling for a moment.

The accountant tapped the console a few more times. The printer started spitting out some pages while he sat back and looked at Rose. “He wants to sell the fishery, actually, convinced that Samura isn’t taking Kurile back. When I explained the situation, he didn’t even want that much, far below market value in my view. But—”

“Excellent,” she interrupted him and moved her gaze from the ceiling to the door. “I don’t need anything else then, I’m gonna get out of here.”

“Wait, wait,” he slapped the desk. “There’s a bit more to it. And I think it’s a pretty big deal. Apparently some of his workers, especially those who worked closest with the fish and the water, have recently started getting quite sick. Some of the people working on those platforms, especially the blue-collars who stay there for months, and eat nothing but the products of those fisheries, have been showing symptoms. He seemed convinced that this stuff is somehow toxic.”

Rose glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Haven’t you considered that it might just be cosmic radiation or microwaves or other assorted esoteric xenoepiphenomena?”

The printer stopped. “You don’t sound convinced,” Hano stood up and took the papers.

“I’m not. But if he’s willing to let us make money for free I’m going to indulge him.”

“Fair enough. The papers are ready for you to sign, then,” he put the stack in front of her, “and and a new one is going to be under your belt.”

Rose read through the first page. “AgInfusion?”