TOKYO—Japanese government officials confirmed Monday that the damage wrought on Japan's national infrastructure by the July 16th earthquake—particularly on the country's protective force field, quantum teleportation system, zero-point fusion energy broadcasting grid, and psychodynamic communications network—was severe enough to set the technologically advanced island nation back approximately 300 years to a primitive mid-22nd-century state of existence.

"Japan finds itself in crisis, with our society and culture temporarily reverting to a pre-cyberunification era," said Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, communicating non-telekinetically for the first time in his nearly 150 years of post-cryogenic life. "Though many citizens have been limited to algorithm-based emotion detection, neutron baths, speed limits below the speed of light, and other barbaric inconveniences for over a week now, I promise we will pull through."


Officer Hideo Shimura (left) and his cloned selves attempt to free quake victims trapped under rubble.

Abe rejected persistent calls to simply reboot the damaged nation, saying that such a measure could result in the loss of vital data, such as Niigata Prefecture and sections of Mount Fuji.


The quake, which was centered in the bluefin tuna–cloning fields near the northwest city of Kashiwazaki, measured bb460.c22/k, or the rough equivalent of 6.8 on the less sophisticated Western Richter scale. It resulted in the first confirmed human or human-hybrid fatality in Japan in over 60 years, and more than 700 injuries. Citizens' protective exoskeletons reportedly remained operational through the first wave of seismic activity and three of the four aftershocks. According to first responders, injured exoskeletons were hastily repaired with antiquated third-generation nanotechnology, while subatomic robots were released into the bloodstream to fix any irregularity they could recognize.

"The earthquake destroyed our connection with the Trinity Flow, the frequency that harmonizes the…you would say, I think, 'computer'?…with the daemonetic implants in our citizens' overbrains," scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro-Prime of the TechnoDiet told Western reporters.


Teleportation of food and water remains at a standstill as technicians in Kobe continue to fix the extensive damage to the eight-million-yottabyte mainframe computer, a four-by-three-inch quantum femtoprocessor responsible for accessing and fulfilling the thoughts and desires of all Japanese.

Quake victims wander the streets in search of synthetic water and a neural implant charging station.


The United States' offer of $20 million and a shipment of steel, tractors, forklifts, and cranes was politely declined.

The prime minister said that the greatest effort would be exerted on rebuilding the Procross Buster Quasigravitic Lensing Frame, the motive force behind Japan's automated network of roads, aerobuildings, and levitation canals. The total cost of the project, the prime minister speculated, is somewhere in the ë70 trillion range, a majority of which will be underwritten by Nippon Tertius, a transubsidiary civilization in the Haltropic galaxy.


Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people throughout Japan continue to live in desperate circumstances. Those whose metahabitats were destroyed in the quake are being issued replacements, though citizens are expected to grow them themselves. Kyoto resident Aiko Shunji criticized the homes' reconfiguring walls and blink-controlled climate as "relics of the past" that are "barely suitable for humans, let alone for members of Japan's Glorious and Peaceful Ninth Recension."

"The older generations can talk all they want about the virtues of eating meals in pill form and taking the moving sidewalk instead of the wormhole, but this is just plain deprivation, and it sucks," Shunji, 92, said. "It doesn't help that recovery efforts have been so slow. Why is it taking so long for officials to reconnect something as basic as the Neural Net?"


Abe reassured citizens that the disaster was merely a temporary setback.

"It should only be a matter of days before the Asahi Ultima Crisis chronotriggered reversion engine is once more online," Abe said. "Citizens of Japan, I promise you: Once our folded-space-time technology is again functional, this whole earthquake will never have happened."