Three.

–I’m grateful for all the arrangements you’ve made for the opening of the Borneo branch office, but I don’t want you to take it that way just because you’re going to be stopping here," said Nagata, who was also unhappy that he wasn’t part of the team. For example, Mr. Nagata seemed to be dissatisfied with the fact that he was not part of this project, but I wonder if it would be a good idea to empty the laboratory and send everyone to the branch office. 　The old director was talking like that, his silver hair glinting in the sunlight coming in through the window. 　–The branch office is just that, a branch office, and it is only natural that the best of the best should go there, but that does not mean that they should all go there, just as we cannot move Tokyo there, no matter how convenient Shonanjima is. Tokyo may be geographically a little far, but it is still the place where we should announce to Greater East Asia. For this purpose, how about sending someone like you or Mr. Nagata to the institute? The center of Greater East Asia is Tokyo, that’s all anyone knows.

That’s all anyone knows. Kiso, looking very festive, nodded his head in agreement. But as time went by, Kiso had time to think about why he was so stunned that he had decided to stay. Was it really just a betrayal of his passion for experimentation, or was it just a vague longing for a land he had not yet seen? If it was experimentation, I had done a great deal of it here before, and in this day and age when we are cut off from Western science, it is hard not to feel encouraged by the achievements of the Borneo branch, which are being made by up-and-coming people in a place with favorable conditions and with excellent competition. Interesting. 　As time and days went by, Reijiro Kiso, head of the magnetics laboratory, finally regained his strength. 　As the director said, the reason why we chose Borneo, even though they are both on the equator, is that the Western civilization that came eastward first landed on Java, and then almost Westernized Java, making it the most developed island in the East Indies, and then tried to go east again, but Borneo was still really untouched, so Borneo was the best place for them. But now, we must bring the East Asian culture westward. To do so, we can use the facilities already acquired by the enemy, but it would be interesting to first give the leftover Borneo the first light of the East Asian culture. –And he said something like this, and he also said that the director was going to be there, too.

I will do it. I want to create gold industrially by elemental transmutation, which Western alchemists have not been able to do for hundreds of years, and the current cyclotrons are still not good enough. 　Murao’s nervous eyebrows were serious. 　Yes, I agree, with the current cyclotrons, it still takes days to convert a spoonful of mercury. …… If you are making gold at thousands of yen per gram, you are making gold and going bankrupt, ha ha ha ha. –What about you, Mr. Ishii? 　I see: …… 　Kiso was convinced that he had made the right choice in selecting Michiko Ishii for the upcoming trip to Borneo. 　It was satisfying to have Michiko, who had shown a gentle and often manly will, among the young staff (the more they were aware of the importance of their work), who could easily become enthusiastic, as if she knew that the nail she had hammered had hit the mark. Murao’s face would turn pale rather than flushed when he was excited, but seeing him looking particularly pale since the day of the announcement made me think of this even more.

Fourth. 　In the midst of a somewhat restless and busy schedule, the Borneo-bound staff left for Borneo. It was as if a month or so had passed in the blink of an eye since the announcement, and the young staff members had simply left in a hurry. After they left, it was not so bad for a few days, but after a week, Kiso began to feel left out again. Although the number of staff had been reduced by about one-third, he still felt as if the entire laboratory had been deserted. The assistants in the laboratory, who were slowly working on their experiments, seemed to have no enthusiasm at all. 　While he felt that this was not a good thing, he also felt that he could understand the feelings of the remaining staff members, and he could not force himself to give them a warning. He felt a sense of defeat that he had been the one to select the people to go to the branch office, albeit very privately, and at the same time, a sense of relief that he had stayed behind for that reason. Kiso silently stared at the backs of the remaining staff members who were silently marking the experimental characteristic curves on the graph paper of the report in the deserted laboratory. Sometimes, when a staff member asked for his opinion, he would shout so loudly that even he was shocked, or he would laugh on purpose.

Toward the end of the second month after his departure, he received his first personal letter from the Borneo office. 　It was a personal letter from Michiko Ishii to Reijiro Kiso. 　–It has been a long time. Thank you for taking the trouble to see me off when I left. I wanted to write to you earlier, but it was my first trip to an unfamiliar place, and I had to think about work all the time. 　However, thanks to the efforts of the people at the destination, things have gone unexpectedly well, and we are now able to start work at the Institute’s Borneo branch office. When I saw the mangroves in Borneo for the first time, I cannot describe the feeling I had. The tropical forests that cover the land are said to be home to apes, but I have not had the chance to see them with my own eyes. (We don’t want to have anything to do with it.) Anyway, let me tell you that we are all doing very well. Anyway, I am happy to inform you that we are all doing very well, and the institute is in an unexpectedly magnificent building (it used to be a coconut palm company).

As for my work - the influence of the magnetic forces of the north and south poles on the equator - I do not yet know how it will turn out, but when it is ready, I will take a precise ossilograph curve of the north and south poles and let you know. However, it seems that at the equator, which is at the same distance from the poles, the magnetic forces of the two poles seem to be in equilibrium, but in fact, the poles seem to be floating to one side or the other all the time. This may be due to the wobbling of the earth’s poles, the earth not being a permanent magnet made of steel, or electromagnetic effects in the air, but it is difficult to determine. Another interesting thing is that on the equator, there seem to be more magnetic field lines coming from the north pole–the northern hemisphere–than those coming from the south, which is an unthinkable and strange difference, since a normal magnet would have the same number of magnetic field lines emitted from both poles.