City Series:Volume6e Afterword
Afterword[edit]
And with that Panzerpolis – Berlin has ended.
This was a fairly indulgent book for me, but I managed to get through to the end. Now that I think about it, this was my first series. I only managed to do this thanks to all of you, so thank you.
I’m so glad I got to write this. (Really, that’s the main thing I keep thinking.)
Meanwhile, I can’t seem to contact H-kun by email. I wonder why.
I can only come up with weird speculation for such a weird friend, so I paid another friend an unexpected visit last night.
“So what’s up with H? I can’t get in touch with him.”
“Oh, you hadn’t heard? He broke his arm so he’s not on the internet.”
“Huh? How’d he manage that? Lose another fight? Pathetic.”
“No, that’s the thing. He works in a similar business to you, right?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“He apparently finished some big job in his room in the middle of the night, so he went out to the convenience store for a late-snack to celebrate.”
“Okay.”
“It was late and he wanted to get home quickly, so he took a shortcut on the way back. You know that park near his home?”
“I do. Did he get into a fight there?”
“No. There was one of those things in the middle of the park. You know, a swing machine with an elephant on a giant spring. Gween gween (SFX).”
“Is that the sound it makes?”
“It’s close enough. Anyway, he must have gone a little crazy because he climbed onto the elephant and started grinding it (not the right term) for about ten seconds. Now, we’re talking about a guy approaching 30 going all out, so the elephant’s angle was going down past horizontal.”
“Get to the point.”
“So you see, he had a lot of momentum built up, but it turned out the thing didn’t have any brakes.”
“They generally don’t.”
“He tried to swing back the other way to stop himself, but he only shifted the motion vector diagonally. He still tried to make it work, but he was getting tired, lost his grip, and launched himself into the air.”
“Oh?”
“He apparently landed headfirst in the nearby sandbox and found his right arm was bent at an odd angle. I didn’t have anything better to do and checked the place out the day before yesterday, but the sandbox is 4 meters away from the elephant.”
“I can see how flying that far would break your arm. But now I really can’t ask him to do the afterword.”
“Why not use this conversation?”
“Oh, that’s a good idea.”
Was it really, though?
Anyway, thank you for sticking with this for all five volumes. If you read it again starting from ’37, you should see a lot of connections and motives you missed the first time, which could be fun.
Now, what I’ve been working on lately. Zeon City – Tokyo and Image City – SF are publishing alternately in the bimonthly MediaWorks novel magazine Dengeki hp. They’re a lot more lighthearted but still have the same Cityness, so check them out if you have time.
My background music this time was the Messiah Chorus from Handel’s oratorios. I was listening to that the entire time I wrote the final battle.
I was listening to it again today while editing, but I was also wondering: “Who will have the toughest time from here on?”
Okay, we’re finally going back to modern times next time. We’re flying all the way to Detroit for that one.
June 2001. A humid morning.
-Kawakami Minoru
Satoyasu Page[edit]
With that, we managed to get it finished.
That’s good. Is it good?
Until next time.
-Satoyasu
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