!!IMPORTANT NOTE!!

The following is NOT a translation of the novel. I’ve chosen to briefly summarize it and translate certain quotes from it for context and or detail. Please don’t ask if this will be added to the list of projects. What is summarized here is detail enough and translations won’t be necessary.

!!IMPORTANT NOTE!!

Chapter.01 “Junk Collection”

The novel opens in Meitzer’s junk hauling ship. The air in the craft is relatively chilly, something we learn he prefers to control. Even in his private quarters, he’s wearing thick socks and two pairs of underwear. His expertise in cultural anthropology has told him that people who are in too comfortable of a climate become corrupt.

Nonetheless, his normal suit was set to a normal temperature, not just because it’s a standard but absolutely necessary to prevent panic when going into space. This problem, along with his wife Rachel, couldn’t conform to his principles. Though she is now his ex-wife.

It wasn’t as though their married life was good or bad; it’s just that there wasn’t any connection as a couple, so Rachel proposed they get a divorce, and he agreed. She never asked for compensation, so Meitzer made sure to provide her with enough assistance as a company so she could live independently.

Rachel had left her two children, Hauzeri and Nadia, with Meitzer because they were initially brought up by private tutors and butlers. If they had to put up with her emotional problems, they would’ve been safer with him. But above all, she was able to see her children as much as she did when she was married to Meitzer. Regardless of the divorce, the relationship with her children was still there.

Meitzer, though, was far too busy. But, even when he wasn’t, he found a way to lose time in ancient history books and the libraries of videos. At first glance, it seemed as though it was a way to heal the fatigue of the rigorous work, but this was part of his life, and part of his work to fulfill his ambitions in the future.

This was also the fate of being a second-generation who inherited the business started by his father, Scharnhorst Buch.

Meitzer is suddenly interrupted by a desktop alarm in his quarters. Someone informs him that they’re on a course for their main office’s satellite. Meitzer asks whether they’re late, and the person says by about 40-50 minutes, but they’ll be on time for the meeting.

He opens a panel on the wall, which reveals a four-panel display. Beyond the display of what could be seen as a pile of rubble was the glowing crescent of the Earth. Three mobile suit type machines roamed about, but they moved so quickly they appeared to be rubble.

On another display, Meitzer stared at a spherical island while slipping back into a normal suit. In the bay block, various manipulators for mooring and securing rubble began to operate.

It was a small spherical colony, one of the initial types built as a base for colony construction. Just about one kilometer in diameter, it rotates at a considerable speed to generate inertial gravity. The colony is large enough to accommodate 10,000 people, is owned by Buch Junk Inc., and it’s affiliated companies and has no other capital. This is what Meitzer inherited from his father’s generation.

Though an old and small colony, it was the result of his father’s legacy, held on to for two generations with hundreds of thousands of employees and their families working. It was located outside of the Lagrange points, further behind Side 1 along an orbit near the moon that had to be modified continuously.

There is no launch to take him to the president’s space deck, so he decides to go out into space without it. His staff doesn’t take too kindly to it, but he assures him that everything is fine. He had done a lot more work than his subordinates in space alone.

Meitzer had hauled in a former Earth Federation Forces cruiser. Everything had been detailed about where it was going for demolition. If it ended up in the wrong area, it would be a pain, both from a labor and cost perspective, to fix.

The space deck is a mobile plate to supervise work on-site, it deploys a life-saving shield to protect workers from harmful radiation in the event of solar wind, etc. Also, it is a space buoy stored with more than a dozen days of emergency food. The deck Meitzer is on is equipped with a computer that inputs the status of work at the time, so it is necessary to sort out which parts of the rubble that were transported in could be diverted and how to discard of the rest.

There is a conversation on the deck with Meitzer and a female manager. Referring to the cruiser, a comment is made that it’s old, but could possibly be restored for a cruiser. She is worried that unreasonable construction would provoke the Federation Resource Audit Bureau. Meitzer tries to rationalize that it’s a find and that it’s been deleted from the Federation Forces registry. She says that it’s a waste to try and sell it to the Federation again. Meitzer says that outfitting is going to take time, but the keel is still solid and intact. He asks her if they could offset the amount with this month’s pool. It’s a little impossible, but it could possibly be done over 2-3 months.

What was discarded by the Federation Forces in the past couldn’t be turned into personal property. Still, if it was abandoned in space, there was no need to worry about Federation interference. From the moment it’s recovered, the law stipulates Federation government inspection. This seemed to be a way of bullying junkers, but that’s just how bureaucrats do things. But, a vagueness in waste laws created a loophole for them.

A space boat came from the colony to pick him up.

On the boat, Meitzer asks if their guests have arrived. Shedding his normal suit, he passes his secretary and heads for the toilet to change his underclothes. He’s told that the people from Anaheim Electronics arrived yesterday and are enjoying air sailing this morning.

He wonders if he’ll be kept waiting if he were to go now. He’s told that Hauzeri is coming to entertain them so he’ll be taken to the conference room on time. He’s surprised that he’s able to considering he’s still in school, but he’s told that Patrica may be the reason behind it. Meitzer growled at the thought. Patricia was the daughter of Anaheim Electronics executive vice president.

His eldest son Hauzeri was only in high school, had shown an outstanding talent for socializing ever since he was a child. He could tell for himself who he would benefit from and who he couldn’t. While he hadn’t been led on a path toward business yet, it was only a matter of time.

In the era of space colonization, however, the history of the human race, which has been perpetuated by battles, has allowed space junkies like him to accrue enormous wealth.

Meitzer makes his way to the colony, exiting the space boat and back into the artificial gravity. When his father Sharnhorst had bought the Ronah family name, Meitzer Buch, a teenager, was learning how to do business aboard his father’s ship. His father purchased the European name for the intent of ideals to be realized in the future (a better name was necessary).

With the constant battles and whatnot over the years, business for collection and recycling of resources was expanding. The recovery, demolition and rehabilitation of destroyed space colonies following the end of the Zeon War meant that the construction of new worlds itself was essential to Spacenoids. Space junkers were socially recognized as having advanced jobs, but because many remote jobs were dangerous, it wasn’t particularly popular.

Some space junkers took on jobs of capturing meteorites approaching Earth, which gave the wrong impression to the world. But, these same meteorites sometimes contained resources that made enormous profits, and some of the space junkers craft had made their way to Mars.

Meitzer’s father began working when he was a teenager and had several junk collection ships, built a foundation for a prosperous life, and owned Buch Junk itself along with a ship that would travel back and forth to Mars. He was initially a man who couldn’t trust others to do it, which made him more and more powerful in his Junk business.

Meitzer often heard this from his father.

“When you look at the waste that has flowed out into space, you don’t truly grasp the apathy people have toward their natural environment. The wasting of valuable resources from internal disputes between space colony governments, Zeon and Char, and from the uprising within the Federation Forces, is proof enough of this.“

This only added to Sharnhorst’s distrust of man and society as a whole.

“Furthermore, those bastards at the Colony Public Corporation have held onto their right to use the colonies as they please for as long as most can remember, which is very problematic. Regarding the maintenance of space colonies, they create overly strict regulations, and do you know what they use all the resulting profits from these regulations for? The personal profits of the top group, and the redevelopment of Earth! The redevelopment of Earth, I’m telling you. Does modern-day Earth really need to be redeveloped? I visited Earth twice, but the majority of the work concerning redevelopment involves rooting out squatters and the repair of historical ruins from the previous era.“

What this means is that the large public industrialists represented by the Colony Public Corporation are attempting to monopolize their right to Earth. Also, they are contributing to the redevelopment of major cities and restoring these major Earth cities that should have been annihilated in the Zeon era to a livable state, so that they can return to Earth at any time.

“It’s true that space junk is a type of food for our kind, but when we think of how it is filth born out of human foolishness, it’s nauseating.“

This may have prompted Sharnhorst to dream of building his own castle that wouldn’t be interfered with by others. It was at the age of thirty that Sharnhorst had finally completed his spherical colony. Even a fragment of a spherical colony that has been in existence for two hundred years can still function thanks to a yearly survival system that regularly repairs it.

Ten-odd years later, Meitzer finished off the colony’s main office, and Sharnhorst Buch was able to die happily as Sharnhorst Ronah at his mansion. Before he left this work, he said to Meitzer, “There is no way to prolong your life. This is the life of a man.” Meitzer loved his father very much and learned a lot from his knowledge of history. He continued reading, learning how humans were contaminated by science and technology.

Meitzer and the officials from Anaheim Electronics signed a contract for him to receive ten small nuclear reactors for mobile suits in exchange for the next few transport ships. They had all praised Hauzeri, and Patrica encouraged him to join Nick’s Oxford, one of Londenion’s premier universities. She tells him that if he goes there, he’ll have excellent connections in the future.

Meitzer is still baffled over the prospect of Hauzeri going into politics but doesn’t discount the thought of him being a stepping stone to fulfill his future dream. Following dinner, he returns to headquarters for matters that still needed to be settled.