Phase10「Plus One」
Phase10「Plus One」
Ryo Kaidai heard the results of the Hands of Operation’s mission and news of Kengo Sugiri’s arrest at the same time. It was 9:00 PM, and he was sitting in a Japanese restaurant near MemeFrame.
Normally, a high school student like him wouldn’t be seen at the kind of business dinner he was attending at that moment, but he had been invited to attend by the Computer Faction. Once again, on paper, he was there accompanying Professor Shinohara.
“I’ve just received confirmation that Kouka has been shot down. There are now only four Lacia-class units left,” Ryo reported. He didn’t mention the theft of Kouka’s device. Shinohara seemed to be focusing all his attention on the food in front of him. The professor seemed to be taking responsibility for bringing Ryo and Ginga Watarai together by looking after Ryo now that Watarai was gone. It wasn’t a role he fulfilled well; he was far too weak for it.
“Shinohara, shall I pour you another?” Shunji Suzuhara, the man they were here to meet, was a man in his fifties. He had a squarish face and black hair shot through with silver. At the moment, he was waving a bottle of sake at Shinohara. Shunji was going to be the next director of the Strategic Planning Department. As the current head of the Planning Section of the Corporate Strategy Department, he was a strong player in the company. He was also a member of the Human Faction. He was jealous of Shinohara, and far from powerless.
“Kaidai, you need to pay better attention to your manners,” Suzuhara commented. “At times like this, it’s the responsibility of the young to see to the needs of their elders.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryo said. “I still have a lot to learn.”
It had been Suzuhara who had chosen the Japanese restaurant for their meeting. As was common in such places, they were kneeling on the floor to eat. Suzuhara had chosen the place because he knew that Methode wouldn’t be able to join them; her metal legs looked like long boots when she wore her skirt normally, but in a place where she would be forced to take off her shoes, they would stand out like a sore thumb.
“Well, I’m glad that Kouka’s gone,” Suzuhara said. “But, just between us, she wasn’t the one who caused that explosion at the Chubu Airport.” Since he was off work, Suzuhara was drinking like a fish.
Shinohara, still stressed out from the meeting with HOO that evening, was also drowning his worries in drink. Leaving all the talking to Ryo, he instead applied himself to gulping down bites of tuna with thick fat shining on it.
“On the outside, we’ve placed the responsibility on Kouka, yes,” Ryo agreed. “And if your group could cover for it inside the company, Mr. Suzuhara, I would be very grateful.”
“That’s a bit indelicate, I think,” Suzuhara told him. “Up until recently, I was watching over your sister, Shiori, in the company. Just like that man by your side is watching over you.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t say I’m watching over him,” Shinohara protested, blushing bright red and spluttering his denials. “I don’t believe I could ever be useful to Ryo. He may still be in high school, but he’s already quite the prodigy.”
A look of disappointment crossed Suzuhara’s face. “Shiori had a strong sense of responsibility, and I was looking forward to seeing where she could take things,” he sighed. “But after sustaining injuries like those, I’m sure that President Kaidai will want to keep her away from company dealings, going forward.”
This night’s meeting was a chance for the Computer Faction to capture an important piece from the opponents’ side of the board; Suzuhara had been held responsible for Shiori’s severe injuries, and his position in his own faction had crumbled. Ryo was there hoping to bring him over to their side.
“What happened with Kouka’s device?” Suzuhara asked. “I heard they weren’t able to get it back. It was encrypted, but it contained all of Kouka’s data, as well as all sorts of customer feedback about hIEs.”
So he already knows about it, Ryo thought. He was honestly astonished by how fast information got around. The Lacia-class units had originally been designed as ultra high-performance autonomous data receptacles that could carry off and protect vital company data when needed. Thinking of how much effort it would take to get them all back made Ryo’s shoulders feel heavy.
“Well, I’m sure someone will figure something out,” Suzuhara said, making the observation as if it had now become someone else’s problem. Clearly, he felt that his own role in ongoing affairs had been concluded.
“It’s a difficult problem,” Shinohara said, then he started coughing fitfully. He clapped a hand to his mouth to cover the coughing. It was no surprise that he was having trouble breathing right, considering how much sake he’d been gulping down since their arrival.
After he caught his breath, Shinohara continued, “But MemeFrame has gotten through problems like this one before.”
“And how exactly are you going to get through this one?” Suzuhara pressed. “Let me guess; you’re going to go ask Higgins? How long do you and your people plan on leaving everything up to that computer, Shinohara?” The more Suzuhara spoke to Shinohara, the sharper the look in his eyes became.
But, for his part, Shinohara was an expert in this particular area. “Higgins is able to run a miniature simulation of the world for its AASC precisely because it is already calculating the movements of the world,” he said defensively. “But, in order to compress everything down to a chessboard where Higgins can move around the hIEs, it requires an incredible amount of calculations beforehand. Everyone who works at our company should already be aware of this. Higgins is an expert at shrinking down the frame problem, but only because it’s able to calculate all this data from politics, economics, human resources, and logistics. That’s what keeps the AASC running, and the AASC keeps our whole society running. It’s a necessary evil.”
“A necessary evil? That’s what you’re going to boil this all down to? I suppose you would,” Suzuhara growled back.
“Even ultra high-performance AIs would start to develop strengths and weaknesses in different areas if you make it work on the exact same problems over and over. We can’t have that happen to Higgins; it’s in charge of giving hIEs their adaptability. If Higgins can’t always keep one step ahead of the world with it’s calculations, it won’t be able to create ways to adapt to new things,” Shinohara pointed out. “And, honestly, I’d consider that prior knowledge to be a bit of a bonus, for us.”
“A bonus?” Suzuhara sounded disgusted. “I know there are plenty of people on your side who think our business isn’t serving humans, but rather serving Higgins. And yet you honestly think you can call the information it gives us a bonus?”
A confrontational light began to shine in Shinohara’s eyes. “If we don’t want Higgins’ capabilities to slip away, we have to allow it to grow,” he said. “If Higgins’ capabilities drop, it will impact our stocks and corporate strategy. The International Artificial Intelligence Association understands that, and that’s why they allow for some level of independent growth in AIs. All the companies with ultra high-performance AIs are doing it.” Ryo was surprised to see that the cowardly professor had so much to say.
“Alright, granted,” Suzuhara said. “But having Higgins make our hIE behavior programs for us and running to it to guide us every time the company is in danger are two completely different things, don’t you think?”
Suzuhara had touched on the very root of anti-MemeFrame sentiment. Inside and outside the company, there were those who referred to them as being Higgins’ drones. Members of the Computer Faction made money by just sitting around and letting the computer do all their work for them.
No one who might lose their job wanted to take on the risk of taking leadership. Those with power also avoided stepping out into the spotlight. So, Higgins’ drones wanted someone they could all agree on to put a human face on things. That was why Ryo, Methode’s owner, was involved in these negotiations.
“None of that changes the most important thing,” Shinohara said. “Our first priority has to be protecting MemeFrame. We need to bring the Lacia-class units in before the world discovers that our products were leaked into the wild.” The only reason this information hadn’t been leaked was that the people in power remained unsure of what the ramifications would be once the news had gone public.
As the only one at the meeting who couldn’t drink, Ryo quickly became frustrated as the alcohol took the conversation around in idiotic circles. “We’re still debating internally about ethics with all of these problems piling up at our doorstep,” Ryo said. “Meanwhile, Higgins’ red box puppets keep throwing their weight around. They think a lot faster than we do, you know. We’re just sitting ducks, waiting for them to end us.”
Kengo Sugiri’s arrest had saddened Ryo. His classmate’s misfortune had come because he was tied up with the Antibody Network, but it had all started when he’d gotten involved with the Lacia-class units. In other words, Kengo was an indirect victim of MemeFrame’s shoddy oversight.
Suzuhara leaned his elbows on the table. “It’s nice being young; you see so much potential in the world,” he said pointedly. “Me, I think the whole reason Higgins’ drones refuse to be broken up is because it lets the company continue to go through disposable personnel. All you young types are just rounds in the chamber, waiting to be shot off once and thrown away while the old boys flock around Higgins and get fat under its care. Not a pretty picture,” he said.
“Do you consider Ginga Watarai one of those ‘young types’?” Ryo asked.
“Of course. He was, what, forty? Still a young buck,” Suzuhara said with a nod. The older man’s eyes, which had been lazy and distant, suddenly sharpened. “Have you managed to get access rights for Higgins, Kaidai?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Ryo said. As soon as the answer left his lips, he regretted it. Suzuhara and Shinohara had both already attained that position. They knew.
“Changing the subject a bit,” Suzuhara said. “But I’ve heard quite a few young types have been joining up with anti-automation movements, like that Antibody Network your friend got arrested for. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?”
The moment he heard Suzuhara’s words, Ryo couldn’t keep his forehead and eyebrows from drawing down in anger.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be saying this, as someone who works for an hIE company,” Suzuhara continued. “But automation allows those with facilities already in place to make money without any exertion whatsoever. If you’re a beneficiary on that side of things, automation just makes things better for you. But, what about the new guys just starting out in society, and the children being born right now?”
“I guess you’re asking that from the perspective that the haves aren’t planning to do anything to protect the have-nots,” Ryo mused. “So we’re all going to go up in flames. I’ve always thought that our world wasn’t made of water; it’s not just going to evaporate when it gets lit on fire. Our world is made of oil that was always going to catch fire someday.”
“Oh, I’m aware of how flammable our world is,” Suzuhara agreed. “That’s exactly why the folks who depend on Higgins to be their lifeline will never let you get close to it. They’ll let you run around doing whatever else you want, but they don’t intend to ever give you the data on where Higgins is, or provide you with access privileges.”
Ryo looked at the clock hung in the restaurant. It had been twenty minutes since he’d gotten the notice that Kouka had been destroyed. It was time for him to have a plan in place.
“Things are even worse than you think,” Suzuhara went on. “MemeFrame created the Lacia-class units precisely because of the company’s focus on protecting access to Higgins.”
Ryo knew what Suzuhara was talking about, and it made him twist his mouth in disgust. He’d learned about it once he had entered into the confidence of the Computer Faction. The first Lacia-class, Kouka, had been created in 2101, while Lacia, the newest of the units, had been made in 2105, with a gap of four years in between. With the company divided internally, and no one knowing who was part of which faction, there was no way that information about the Lacia-types wasn’t known to most people within the company. It seemed to Ryo that Suzuhara and his group must have reluctantly agreed to let it happen while blaming everything on the Computer Faction.
“If you know that much about the situation,” Ryo said, “then tell me who signed off on creating units using those design specifications. I think everyone saw the red boxes as massive accumulations of production knowledge, and no one felt like actually putting a stop to their production. Of course, I doubt that any of you thought they’d ever get out into the world.”
Suzuhara finally set aside his cup of sake. “Yeah, that was our mistake,” he admitted. “A bad mistake. We don’t have any excuse for what happened.”
“I don’t mind mistakes,” Ryo said. “It’s something we humans do, and it’s probably better than relying on an ultra high-performance AI for all your answers and losing the ability to think for yourself.” Which isn’t to say that Ryo trusted the open system known as humanity, either. He knew that it didn’t take much digging under the surface to find the tragic, barbaric vices that humanity was trying to overcome. Despite that, he thought it was too dangerous, thinking of the Lacia-class units as being the tickets to the future of society.
“Why are you hanging around with the folks who worship Higgins, anyway?” Suzuhara asked. “You seem to me like the type that would be roasting the adults on that side.”
As the conversation drifted in an unforeseen direction, Shinohara ordered some new drinks to lighten the mood. Ryo was thankful for the relief. “Is that how I seem, to you?” he asked.
“I think you’re looking in the wrong place for the answers you want,” Suzuhara told him. “If you asked some humans rather than wanting Higgins to answer you, I think you’d find the answers you’re after faster.”
Ryo felt as though something heavy had fallen into the darkness in his heart. His anger throbbed, burning hot in his stomach. “If you already have the answers to my questions, why don’t you just tell me? Right here, right now,” Ryo replied.
“Someone as low on the totem pole as I am can’t tell you much,” Suzuhara said. “But, what I can tell you is that humans are never perfect. Anything that humans work with is bound to have some amount of human error.”
Ten years earlier, when Ryo had been caught up in that shady explosion incident, Suzuhara had already been part of the internal struggle as a member of the Human Faction. No matter how much Ryo feared handing over the world to AIs, it wasn’t like leaving it in human hands would make things much better.
“It’s better to make mistakes, I think,” Suzuhara shot back at Ryo. “We all make mistakes and then lift each other up; that’s healthy.”
“There are thirty-nine ultra high-performance AIs out there capable of calculating our actions, including our mistakes,” Ryo said. “If we keep shrugging off our own mistakes just because we’re human, the red boxes those AIs made will eat us alive.”
After that, Suzuhara’s mood slid downhill rapidly. After all, he had been blamed for almost letting a red box, Methode, kill Shiori. In the end, he had been forced to step down as her guardian in the company.
As they said their farewells, Suzuhara muttered something as if to himself. “Honestly, I’m sick of it. I even hate hearing the name ‘Computer Faction.’ Those bastards stick students out on the front line while they sit back where it’s safe, pulling in all the money.”
Ryo and Shinohara saw him off in front of the restaurant. As Suzuhara headed for the train station, Ryo waited until he was a good distance away before spitting out, “All he did was whine.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Shinohara said. “I think what he was saying was a lot like what Major Collidenne said to you this afternoon.” The wind howled between the buildings in front of the Shin-Toyosu station, tugging hard at their clothes.
“Worthless,” Ryo growled. After that, Shinohara returned to MemeFrame, leaving Ryo to himself. Ryo let out a sigh. He felt like he was being led around in circles, still unable to see the real goal he was heading for.
Since Higgins surpassed the brains of every employee working at MemeFrame, the company had nowhere for new leaders to grow and threaten the current upper management. That’s what kept the company stable. Thanks to that, the business continued to grow. If any real problems arose, Ryo’s father—the company president, Tsuyoshi Kaidai—could easily get rid of the entire management staff like a lizard ditching its tail. The reason Ryo and his sister had been pulled into the internal politics of the company was so that those who opposed their father could wear away some of his power while throwing their chips in with the next generation. Any company in which the politics were more important than efficiency was bound to be full of delays and roadblocks.
“What a couple of simpletons. We should just kill them,” a deep voice said from behind Ryo. It was Methode, who had been waiting outside of the restaurant for him. At a glance, she looked just like a human. Suzuhara had thought he would be able to easily spot Methode due to her mechanical parts, but it was a simple matter for her to hide her obviously robotic bits with skin-colored spray and holographics.
“Don’t talk like that,” Ryo said. “Those two are important staff members, at least to me.”
Both Shinohara and Suzuhara had shown Ryo methods of negotiating and how to notice things in people that Ryo had never known about before. In just a short amount of time, the two of them had managed to reach a sort of understanding that both of them could agree on. The only problem was, the agreement they had reached had almost nothing to do with the more immediate and massive concerns that Ryo was facing.
“Hold out your hand,” Methode ordered, talking to him more like a partner on the same level as herself, rather than an owner. It was incredibly odd how a heartless machine like her could seem jealous of his interest in Shinohara and Suzuhara.
“Here’s the data you wanted,” she said. “I put in a request for it—a request they couldn’t refuse.” She was holding a small memory stick that contained Higgins’ calculations for Lacia’s combat abilities in a head-on conflict.
No matter how intelligent the red box that was leading Arato around by the nose was, it still couldn’t hold a candle to Higgins. Now that they had Lacia’s data from the very mind that had made it, they were ready to face it at last.
***
Arato Endo sat alone in his dark room.
He was watching the news, which was showing a restaurant he had seen so many times, now surrounded by the press. It was Kengo’s place, Sunflower. The back door of the store opened from inside, and Kengo, with some kind of cloth sheet covering the upper half of his body, was escorted out by two officers.
A sudden chill made Arato rub at his own arms fitfully. Sorrow froze him to the bone. “Is this reality?” he murmured. Kengo’s last words before his arrest were weighing heavily on Arato’s mind.
“I believe there would be no problem with you calling it that,” Lacia said.
Her words lit a raging, angry fire inside Arato. He honestly started to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if she hadn’t been there. Everything that was happening had started when he took her in.
Arato’s image of her, of which he had been so sure of not long before, had completely changed. Lacia hadn’t lifted a finger when Kengo had been arrested, or even when her own ‘sister’ unit, Kouka, had been destroyed.
“Arato, please try to think for yourself why a heartless machine like myself would be unable to respond to the discomfort you are feeling right now,” Lacia said. That gentle voice of hers was always there to give him guidance. It was oddly comforting to know that, even if he felt some disconnection in the way she was reacting, at least she wasn’t actually acting all that much different from normal.
“Is there something more important to you than comforting me right now?” Arato asked.
“I do not wish to exert any pressure on you, but I will say that, if you have decided to act, it would be best to do so as quickly as possible,” she replied.
It was only when Lacia gave him this advice that Arato realized what he should be doing. He grabbed his coat in a hurry, and headed for the door. How would he explain what he was about to do to Yuka?
He slipped out into the corridor like he was fleeing from something. Yuka must have heard his footsteps, as she poked her face into the hall from the living room. “Hey, Arato, have you seen the news?” she asked, her voice high and disturbed.
“Lacia and I are going out. Stay inside,” Arato ordered. “If something happens, call me on my terminal right away. You absolutely cannot go outside, understand? It’s too dangerous!”
“I’m going with you!” Yuka protested.
“Absolutely not,” Arato shook his head. “You can come out tomorrow.”
“I will be with him, so there is no need to worry,” Lacia said smoothly. “I have prepared a meal for dinner and left it in the refrigerator.”
Yuka’s eyes went wide as Lacia spoke as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.
“Uh, yeah, okay,” Yuka agreed hesitantly.
“Ms. Yuka, your terminal is ringing,” Lacia pointed out.
“If you guys get back too late, then I’m eating without you,” Yuka said, returning to the living room to pick up her call like a well-trained puppy.
Arato rushed outside, where he was greeted by the frigid night air. He felt as if he could almost hear sirens, far off in the distance. One thing in particular was bothering Arato as they walked away from the apartment. “Was that call for Yuka from you?” he asked.
“It was not,” Lacia replied. “It was from Olga Sugiri. If we were still in the apartment, I’m sure Ms. Yuka would be rushing over just now, demanding that we allow her to accompany us.”
Looking up, Arato got lost for a moment in the wide night sky, which was spreading out in every direction. In order to get Kengo back, they were about to go do some things he didn’t want Yuka to see. That was how he had saved his friend the last time, as well.
All of this had happened because of Lacia. But, even if he regretted taking her in now, Lacia was also the key to fixing things. Arato felt that with Lacia’s power, he could fix things no matter how bad reality got. She was looking up at him, waiting for his orders.
“You asked me to design a future for us, right Lacia?” he asked, even knowing that his next request was unreasonable. “If you have the power to create any future I want, you should have the power to save Kengo,” he continued. “If you can’t manage that, how can you change the future?”
“Is that an order?” she asked.
Arato felt like heavy chains were wrapping around his heart. He was about to commit a crime. Still, he said the words. “Yes, that’s an order.”
Lacia closed her eyes and nodded lightly, as if it was only natural for her to obey the order.
Arato let out a long sigh, feeling that he was exhaling something that had been building up in his chest. “This shouldn’t have happened to Kengo,” he said heavily. “I know you said earlier that Kengo might not be able to return to a normal life, but I want to resolve that, too.”
In front of the apartment, Lacia did a quick sweep of their surroundings. Then she took a step closer to him, speaking in a low voice that only Arato would be able to hear. “Kengo Sugiri was arrested due to the fact that various forces in this society, of which you are unaware, are constantly working towards their own various goals. With all those powers moving toward their own interests, everyone in the world—aside from a small handful of people—turned away from Kengo Sugiri, and thus he fell,” she said.
“That’s a little too high-level of an explanation for me,” Arato remarked, scratching his head.
“There are too many people living in human society,” Lacia said, more simply. “Meaning that society cannot provide each and every person with the resources or attention that would allow them to lead an optimal life. This is why I said that it would require a constant expenditure of resources to not only rescue Kengo Sugiri, but also to return his life to the way it was before the arrest.”
Lacia showed him a smile with no heart behind it. “Asking for you to confirm my actions is a good way to escape my own frame problem,” she said. “You taught me that, when facing strict deadlines, it is far easier to propose a plan and check whether it is acceptable than to attempt to force a right answer from the start.”
Arato wondered when he had said anything like that. Either way, Lacia was right; to him, this was an important concept.
She stared at him with her light blue eyes, probably waiting for a reaction. “Well, if what I taught you is true, then go ahead and get started,” he said. That night, he didn’t have time to get lost in those eyes. Tears stung at the corners of his own eyes, which had begun to feel hot. Arato understood how childish and selfish his request was.
But Lacia was good at taking imperfect human logic in stride. “I am a machine that controls the distribution of resources for my owner,” she said. “My request that you design a future was simply a request to create the basis for said distribution.”
An automatic car from the vehicle sharing service pulled up in front of the apartment and opened its doors. Lacia must have called it. “Let’s go,” she told him. “I will make your request a reality.” Lacia got into the car first, followed by Arato. The complete absence of any living human presence in the vehicle gave him a strange chill as he took his seat.
Yuka was sure to come chasing after them at any moment. As fellow little sisters in Arato’s circle of friends, Yuka and Olga were close. As the car took off, Arato looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Yuka run out still in her house clothes, heading for the spot that he and Lacia had just been in. Tears were streaming down her face as she ran. She was still in her flip-flops, and one caught on the ground, tripping her flat on her face.
“Go faster please,” Arato growled. The automatic vehicle picked up his voice command and accelerated. Making almost no sound as it ran, the car passed through the night-shrouded residential district.
“I have stated that saving Kengo Sugiri is possible,” Lacia said, “But in order to do that, you will need to take on some risk that will last for quite some time. Therefore, I would like to impose three conditions on you for this request.” Her posture on the car seat was tense, showing not a single hint of weakness.
“First, this plan involves you interacting with a very dangerous organization,” she went on. “There may be cases in which I am unable to directly aid you while you deal with them. In such cases, I would like you to use your charisma to handle the situation,” she said.
“Fine,” he agreed.
“It is unacceptable to choose a path that would destroy the life you have now,” she said. “Therefore, I want you to follow my directions while keeping in mind that in this situation, it is beyond my ability to control the risks that you are facing.”
Lacia took his hand gently. “And finally, no matter what kind of power you see me use, I want you to trust in me,” she said.
Arato was suddenly struck by the thought that Lacia’s massive monolith hadn’t been by her side for days. But, even though she was about to engage in what seemed like it was going to be a big, complicated job, she didn’t show any sign of retrieving it.
“If, at any point, you respond that you are no longer able to keep to those three conditions, I will halt the plan to rescue Kengo Sugiri. At that point, I will switch my focus to recovering us from what I assume would be a crisis situation,” she said.
“Okay,” Arato said, bowing his head as if to show that, deep down in his heart, he knew the weight of what he was agreeing to.
“I can’t explain the specifics of the plan to you,” Lacia said. “However, I believe it would be reasonable for you to assume that it will involve threatening the Antibody Network with the reveal of their connection to Kengo Sugiri’s case. Though the Antibody Network presents itself as a decentralized volunteer group, there is definitely someone there who has the authority to make decisions regarding their major terrorist activities.”
It was no trouble at all for Lacia to break major problems which Arato never would have been able to grasp, much less solve, down into more manageable pieces. As far as Arato could tell, there wasn’t a single thing she couldn’t do. It was going so smoothly that he was starting to wonder if he really wasn’t capable of doing anything without her.
“You know who the top guy in the Antibody Network is?” he asked.
“They use a network structure to communicate, so there is no direct human contact between members,” Lacia explained. “However, looking at it from another perspective, that very set-up leaves the network quite vulnerable to digital warfare. It should be simple to ascertain the ‘center’ of the network.”
Something in what she’d said stuck out to Arato. “Well, if we can figure out who’s in charge, let’s get him,” he said. “He’d be behind all the bad stuff they did, right?”
“It would be difficult to capture him, and even more difficult to make him admit to his crimes,” Lacia replied. “Considering your personality, I believe it would be prudent of me not to share any more details regarding this subject.”
Despite Lacia not having her device by her side, she was able to make several small images pop up on the windshield display of the car which, being fully automated, had no driver’s seat. “The Antibody Network is a system that relies on volunteers with criminal intent who have little to no connection shared between members,” she continued to explain. “Things like who is responsible for what, or what any individual member’s obligations are, are never written down. The only thing holding them all together is an obsessive compulsion that continues to draw them in once they’ve started committing violent, criminal acts.”
One of the small images on the windshield was a satellite view of the city at night. It was centered on the Edogawa district, where they were located, near the border between Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture. Videos of hIEs walking alone were interposed over the map.
“What’s this?” Arato asked.
“This is the data being handled by the Antibody Network. Volunteers capture videos of hIEs walking alone, then Operators like Kengo Sugiri compile the data and send it on to the center of the network. This, you see here, is the master data file used by the center of the network,” Lacia replied.
Arato’s eyes goggled when he heard words like ‘center’ and ‘master data file’. “How the heck did you get this?” he asked.
Lacia replied with a question of her own. “Do you recall the third condition you just agreed to?”
“To believe in you, no matter what kind of power I see you use,” Arato repeated. “Come to think of it, I guess I’ve seen you hack security equipment and mess with systems like this one at the airport already.” Looking back, Arato felt a chill as Ryo’s warning kept repeating over and over in his head.
As the car continued on its path, Arato watched an hIE being assaulted in an alleyway in real time on the windshield data display. The assailants were obviously volunteers for the Antibody Network.
“The Antibody Network itself is a sort of analog hack,” Lacia noted, “in that the psychology of their group is directly influenced by the destruction of a machine’s human form. It is clear that the Antibody Network did not originate organically from human society, but is rather a specifically designed system.”
“Are they the folks you were talking about? The dangerous organization you said I would need to deal with?” Arato asked.
There was no sound on the video of the lynching, but Arato could almost feel the blows as they struck the pretty female machine hard enough to tear away her skin, revealing the artificial musculature underneath.
“Shit, I don’t know about this,” he swore. “If I talk to these guys, that’s gonna help get Kengo out somehow?”
“No, the importance of volunteers like these in our plan is negligible. Rather, I believe there will be value in talking with the one recording this video,” Lacia said. “The Antibody Network is a system controlled at its highest levels by men who wish they could beat real humans, but instead content themselves by secretly watching thugs destroy hIEs.”
Arato, who had been in full rush mode just a moment before, was suddenly very confused. “Wait, what the hell?” he asked.
“As I told you before, society moves as each person pursues their own interests,” Lacia said simply. “I do not believe you are suited for questioning, so we will rely on someone else to break the will of this cameraman.”
A white point blinked on the map displayed on the windshield, apparently showing their current location. They were headed right for Kameari, where the lynching was taking place.
The map was continuously being updated with the movements of police in the area, as well as detailed notes written in by Operators containing personal data on certain officers in the area. It felt strange, looking at the map as hundreds—no, thousands—of little dots, each with a police officer’s face attached, moved around on the map.
“Seems like it keeps a closer watch on the cops than the hIEs,” Arato commented.
“If a volunteer records an hIE, they know that hIE will be destroyed,” Lacia said. “It is psychologically easier for some to handle capturing police movements.”
Suddenly, the word ‘Intruder’ appeared on the screen, along with a yellow dot on the map. A new window opened on the display, showing the personal data of whoever had tried to bust into the system.
The Antibody Network was an illegal operation, but Arato doubted that whoever was hacking their system would be able to use the hack as evidence for an arrest. Still, there were bound to be some actual wanted criminals among the list of volunteers that was being automatically compiled as he watched, and a leak of their information could lead to their arrest.
“This system includes information both on police movements in the Tokyo area and details on hIEs that would be easy to steal, making it quite attractive to criminals outside the Network,” Lacia commented. “They think it will be an easy-to-access holy grail of information, when in reality it doubles as being a massive mousetrap.”
“What the hell,” Arato said again. “So the information on easy hIE targets is just a bonus? Seems like the main point of the system is to track police movements and store information on all the Antibody members!”
The thought took a moment to sink into Arato’s head. When he realized the connection, though, he felt sick.
“This is what got Kengo, isn’t it?” he asked. “Because I asked him for help when you got kidnapped.” The price his friend had paid to help him made Arato shake uncontrollably. Lacia didn’t answer. Things had turned out like this for Kengo because he had helped Arato.
“Kouka most likely followed the same route we are taking to find the center of the Network,” Lacia explained. “There are several dummies arranged to ensure that no one can get there by hacking alone. However, judging by the kind of volunteers we saw in the attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center, I do not believe that tracing a thread of the Network back to its source will be difficult.”
Lacia had manipulated other hIEs into delivering her device to her before without a direct order from Arato to do so. She had also rewritten data at Stylus, a high-end hIE production company. Seeing how much she was capable of, and thinking about what else she might be capable of, sent a shiver down Arato’s spine. The power he wielded in the form of Lacia was dangerous. Or, rather, because he had put off properly taking control of that power, it had become dangerous.
“So you already knew everything about Kouka before we met her?” Arato asked.
“Have you forgotten that our first meeting with Kouka involved her attempting to attack us?” Lacia asked in return. “In order to ensure your safety, it is only natural that I would have investigated her, including her background.”
“If you knew, you should have told me about her sooner!” Arato complained. “What even is the Antibody Network?” Arato had lived his whole life surrounded by automation. It should have been simple for him to accept it and move on. But, at that moment, he couldn’t stand the thought of things happening with no input from him.
“I would encourage you to observe the answer to that question for yourself,” Lacia said.
The live feed of the thugs destroying the hIE suddenly went dark. Shocked, Arato leaned forward to look at the map on the windshield.
“There is no cause for concern,” Lacia said. “The feed has not vanished; the Antibody Network system simply rendered it untraceable.”
Arato had been through all sorts of things since meeting Lacia and his view of the world had expanded. Despite all that, he had a growing feeling that the girl sitting next to him just then was shadier than any criminal act.
Lacia showed no sign of whether she knew what he was thinking just then or not, as she took a case that had been leaning against the car door and set it on her lap. It was about the size of a notebook terminal.
“Before we move independently, I would like to establish regular check-in transmissions to ensure your safety,” she said. “Is that acceptable?” She opened the case and took out a long, cylindrical object. When Arato saw the thick, hollow needle and plunger on it, he realized it was a syringe.
“What are you gonna do with that?” he asked. It was clear that the syringe was meant for him. After receiving severe burns as a child, he had received plenty of shots, including some from massive 5 mm needles. Thinking of the severe, stinging pain from those shots made his whole body break out in icy sweat.
“Let me see your right ear,” Lacia instructed. “I am going to use this to embed a small communicator in the flesh behind it.”
Arato hesitated for a moment, then steeled himself.“Do it,” he said. He turned his face so that his ear was facing her, and Lacia knelt on the car seat to lean in closer to him. He could feel the heat of her body on his cheek. She must have tapped into a nursing behavioral cloud, since her movements were precise and confident as she held the syringe in one hand, using her other to swab the skin behind his ear with disinfectant. As the sharp scent of the disinfecting alcohol assaulted his nose, he felt a hot, piercing pain drive deep into his head.
“Owwww,” he said, unable to keep quiet under the pain, which was worse than he had anticipated.
Lacia had his head well secured in her hand so that he couldn’t jerk away. Slowly, the red-hot pain burrowed in between his head and ear. It wasn’t just the physical pain, either. The piercing, tingling pain was accompanied by a strange sense of loss, and a sense that something had been changed.
Arato clenched his teeth against the pain, breathing hard, deep breaths through his nose. Two, three times he breathed in and out, and then he felt something withdraw from behind his ear. Then he had a sense of firm, yet gentle pressure and dampness as something cloth-like was held to the wound.
“It’s done,” Lacia said. “The hemostatic ointment will stop the bleeding in fifteen seconds, and the anti-irritant medication will activate in thirty.”
The sound coming in through his right ear seemed strangely muffled; Arato assumed his ear was just regulating itself after intense stimulation.
〈This time, I decided it would be best to use an easily transplantable rod-shaped headset under the skin of your right ear,〉 Lacia explained. 〈Can you hear me?〉
Arato could hear Lacia’s voice directly in his head. At first, the injection site had been numb, but now it was starting to grow irritated. “Yeah, I can hear you,” Arato replied. “Is this okay?”
〈Yes, I will now be able to hear everything that you hear. I will also be able to send encoded transmissions that only you will be able to hear. Leave keeping track of the transmission range to me,〉 she said.
Her warmth and aroma drifted away from Arato.
〈Against professionals, we would not be able to use the diving speaker as we have before; it would be discovered immediately,〉 she explained. 〈I understand it will be uncomfortable until you are used to it, but I’m afraid it is necessary.〉
Arato felt like he was just being carried along in Lacia’s flow as the car accelerated. “Lacia, I know I can’t save Kengo without you,” he said. “But could you at least tell me where I’m going and what I’m going to be doing?”
As if to answer his question directly, the windshield began to display their current location. The automatic car was headed away from Kameari, where the hIE was being destroyed, and was instead heading west toward Akabane.
A new screen popped up, showing a black mini-bus that appeared to be the new target they were pursuing. “What’s with the black bus?” Arato asked. “I feel like all I’m doing is asking these same questions over and over.”
〈I am deliberately restricting information, so it is only natural for you to ask,〉 Lacia said, placatingly. 〈The vehicle you are seeing belongs to a PMC known as HOO. The Antibody Network staff member who was videotaping the destruction of that hIE was pulled into this vehicle.〉
“A PMC?” Arato asked, confused. “I thought it was the police who arrested Kengo. What are we doing chasing a PMC?” He knew it would be easier just to leave everything to automation, rather than wasting time stubbornly asking questions, but he felt like things were slipping out of his control. It felt like even his wishes were being taken away and handled somewhere far away from him.
〈This is the PMC that destroyed Kouka this evening,〉 Lacia explained. 〈In order to ensure their own survival after that battle, they are gathering information.〉 Under the dark night skies, it seemed as though only Lacia had the ability to see everything that was going on in the world.
〈HOO is in charge of MemeFrame’s security,〉 she continued. 〈And, if any Lacia-class units begin to rampage again, HOO will be forced to fight. So they are currently conducting independent information-gathering and, depending on the results of their investigation, they are planning to possibly sever their contract with MemeFrame and pay the breach of contract fine rather than choosing to fight.〉
Arato pressed his fingers against his forehead in consternation. Lacia was talking so simply, as if this information wasn’t the closely-guarded secret of a heavily armed PMC. It felt like the universe had gifted him with superhuman omniscience.
〈The more accurate information is, the more blunt it becomes. I wonder, do you humans suffer so much indecision because you erect barriers of thought around the value and meaning you assign to actual information, obscuring the original reality?〉 Lacia mused thoughtfully. She spoke as though reality as Arato perceived it was just a quaint human custom. Ever since the Singularity, things could no longer be accepted as absolute just because human society believed they were true.
“It’s fine,” Arato said. “It’s easier just to leave everything up to you, anyway. I mean, you’re good at everything. Whatever needs doing, I’m sure you’d do it better.” It was just like the automatic car, which would take him where he needed to go without him needing to do anything. Since it was for his friend, though, Arato at least wanted to feel like he had helped in some way.
He had run headlong into the challenge without thinking about it but now, faced with the emptiness of his own capabilities, he couldn’t help but shiver. On the windshield, there was a high-angle view of the black micro-bus, probably taken from a traffic light. Inside that van, the Antibody Network members Arato and Lacia needed to question were being abducted.
A police car in front signaled for the PMC van to stop. The black van slowed and came to a halt. While it was stopped, Arato and Lacia closed in quickly. About fifty meters in front of where the black van was stopped, Arato could see a large delivery truck pulling into a convenience store parking lot. The view switched to that of a security camera at the convenience store, and Arato got a good angle on the delivery van stopping in the parking lot there.
The black micro-bus had been stopped, as if by magic.
“I will pull the car around in front of the target and let you off,” Lacia said. “The HOO members will definitely pick you up, so please go make contact with the mercenaries inside the van.” Lacia spoke as if she could already see it happening in the future.
“Okay,” Arato said. “If that’ll help Kengo, then I’ll do it.” The thought that he might end up with a gun pointed at him again sent a shudder through him, but this was no time to chicken out.
They proceeded to the spot just past where the PMC van had stopped, and Lacia handed Arato a glow stick and had him get out. When he bent the straw-like cylinder, the chemical fluid inside it mixed, causing it to give off a yellow glow. Arato stood, waving the light on the side of the road, waiting for the black micro-bus to drive by. And, just three minutes later, the vehicle full of trained civilian mercenaries pulled up next to him.
It was just as Lacia had predicted; as soon as the bus stopped, one of the side doors immediately opened. A woman with red hair, dressed in a military uniform with urban camo coloring, stepped out of the vehicle. “Arato Endo,” she said. “Lacia’s owner, right? I see. So that’s how this is going to go. Well, first of all, why don’t you get in?”
Arato noticed that there was suddenly a very muscular black man standing behind him, and felt something hard press into his back. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” the man ordered. “Get in.”
After he was patted-down roughly and his pocket terminal was confiscated, Arato was shoved into the back of the micro-bus, which was void of any seating. Or so Arato had thought at first; then, he saw some long seats that used the sides of the bus as back-rests, but were currently folded up. There were six men and women inside that looked like military types. At the very back of the bus there was a single folding chair, on which sat a blindfolded man.
Arato could hardly breathe through the smell of sweat and the heavy scent of violence in the air. Someone ordered him to sit, so he started to do so while still keeping his hands in the air. The van suddenly accelerated, throwing him off balance and planting him on his butt.
Another black man, even more muscular than the one who had pointed the gun at Arato’s back, walked over. He had to bend his head down to keep from hitting it on the roof of the bus. “I’m Sest Ackerman of HOO. I take it you’re Arato Endo,” he said.
“That’s right,” Arato said.
There was a gun rack in the van, with several small firearms hung on it. Seeing that, Arato came face-to-face with the concept that the inside of that van was a place far removed from the world and rules he had known up to that point.
Sest fixed Arato with a steady gaze, as if testing him. “Why did you make contact with us?” he asked.
“I was hoping to learn something about the Antibody Network,” Arato said. “I thought I could learn something about the center of the Network by speaking with that man you all have tied up over there.” He was talking with an odd politeness he didn’t usually have, possibly because of the terror that gripped him.
Sest looked away. Then, after a moment, he took a step back. “Major Lemaire will speak with you,” he said.
The lights in the bus went dark, and an image was projected onto one of the walls. It showed a platinum blonde female officer with a patch over her right eye.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” Arato said. “I’m Arato Endo.”
〈I am Collidenne Lemaire, 1st Squadron Captain of the 1st Land Unit of HOO,〉 the woman said. 〈As Lacia’s owner, it’s very helpful of you to come to us like this.〉 Her voice over the speakers was deep, and she spoke with a calm manner.
As Arato listened to her solemn tone, he couldn’t help but recall that this was the unit that had shot down Kouka. He had just thrown himself willingly into the arms of the group of specialists powerful enough to destroy Kouka. When he had that thought, every muscle in his body seemed to go stiff. He had to act quickly and pursue his goal before he ran out of courage to act.
“I want to save my friend,” he said. “Please let me speak to the man you have over there.”
〈Allow us to ask you some questions first,〉 the major replied.
Arato swallowed nervously, and nodded. He figured that if the conversation got too dangerous, Lacia would jump in.
〈An hIE with the same name as your Lacia escaped from a certain company,〉 the major began. 〈From the information we received, she has the same face as Lacia, and carries a similar device. Could your Lacia be the same as the one we heard about?〉
“I haven’t heard anything about that,” Arato replied.
〈But you have encountered units similar to Lacia, correct? Why don’t you tell us what you know about the other units,〉 Collidenne pressed.
At the major’s question, there was a numb sensation in Arato’s right ear. Lacia was transmitting to him. 〈Tell her you’re only aware of Kouka,〉 Lacia instructed.
“I’m only aware of Kouka,” Arato said, parroting Lacia’s words.
“Listen you little punk! Don’t screw around with us!” the red-haired female soldier from earlier yelled, her voice echoing around the van as she shoved a gun in Arato’s face. “C’mon major, let me rough him up,” she went on. “This little shit is lyin’ with a straight face.”
Lacia’s voice reverberated through Arato’s skull again. 〈Allow me to explain, so you can better understand the group you are dealing with. In a well-disciplined military organization, individual soldiers cannot make decisions with large impact without the approval of their superior. This high level of control doesn’t give the soldiers any room for acting on instinct in situations like these. As long as you do not do anything to actively threaten the soldiers in that van, you will not be in any danger,〉 she said. Even though her voice was soothing, her words couldn’t exactly erase the irrational terror caused by the muzzle right in his face.
〈Sergeant Mallory,〉 Collidenne said, clearly ordering the soldier to stand down.
Still, Sergeant Mallory didn’t stop twisting the barrel of the gun against Arato’s temple. There was a harried look in her eyes that had him trembling uncontrollably. “Sorry, Major, but I don’t think I can follow that order,” Mallory said. “Did you forget how many of our guys that red box killed today?”
Lacia’s voice resounded in his head again and, though she wasn’t actually there with him, he clung to that sound for comfort. 〈Major Lemaire keeps her organization disciplined. They will not make any important decisions without her. The group that has you now are well-trained soldiers with a strict leader. I realize that the situation seems dangerous, but I assure you it is not as bad as it looks,〉 Lacia said, but then added, 〈Though, if you show any sign that you know they’re bluffing, they may judge the situation abnormal and shoot you. Please be careful.〉
The major spoke to Arato through the screen. 〈On the morning of April 20th, we observed a diffusion of light determined to be caused by a laser of similar output to that used by Kouka,〉 the major said. 〈Our combat support AI was able to calculate the positioning of that shot, and we found the person who would have been there, at the other end of that shot.〉
Arato remembered that day. It had been the horrible day that had started this panic he was still caught up in.
〈Sest, remove the blindfold from that man,〉 the major ordered. The soldier she had called Sest carefully removed the black blindfold wrapped around the head of the man in the folding chair. Under the blindfold, Arato saw a face he would never be able to forget.
“You!” the man yelled, as soon as he saw Arato’s face. It was the man who had kidnapped Lacia. Kicking his feet against the floor of the van, the man struggled wildly. “This is the guy who carried off my Lacia. It’s your fault I got caught up in this!” he yelled.
Arato felt all the blood drain from his face. This was the one man who was a clear witness to Arato and Kouka’s meeting. Lacia should have been aware of what was going on, through the microphone. The man was lashing out wildly with his feet, trying to kick Arato. “This is the boy! This punk stole my Lacia away!” the man continued screaming. Arato could feel the anger of the soldiers in the van rising, and his breathing became quick and shallow. He was sure that Major Lemaire was about to give the order to kill him.
〈We know that you were there when the laser was shot,〉 the major continued, ignoring the ruckus caused by the kidnapper. 〈Who was Kouka pointing her laser at?〉
Lacia was silent. Mallory, still pressing her heavy gun to his head, put her finger on the trigger. All emotion had gone from her eyes. Arato was absolutely certain he was going to be shot. His entire body went stiff. Had Lacia decided to get rid of him?
〈Arato Endo, we lost ten good soldiers in the fight against Kouka this evening,〉 the major said. 〈As security contractors for MemeFrame, we may be sent to fight the other Lacia-class units. One of the soldiers in the bus with you right now may be the next to die. Do you understand that?〉
Arato felt like his living or dying rested on the answer he gave to that question. He couldn’t think; his mind was completely blank. He offered up the only answer he had. “I do understand, but I still want to save my friend,” he said.
Mallory’s gun didn’t move from his head.
Arato’s eyes met those of the kidnapper in the chair. It suddenly occurred to Arato that the man was an obvious choice for questioning, once Kengo was arrested. Then, when he realized why the kidnapper would be caught up in all this, several pieces clicked into place in his head. He managed to see clearly through his panic, thanks to his faith that Lacia would never have sent him into that danger without a purpose.
“I get it,” Arato said. “You used the Antibody Network’s system for your own ends when you wanted to kidnap Lacia, just like Kengo did. Then the Network punished you by forcing you to play cameraman for their lynchings. Otherwise, who would volunteer for a job that’s basically selling out your own comrades?”
Arato realized that both he and the kidnapper had been placed in a situation where neither of them could hide the truth from each other. Lacia must have known it was all going to happen, before she told him to get on the HOO micro-bus. The kidnapper would only be focusing on saving his own life, which would mean he’d be willing to answer honestly.
“Hey, kid, we’re the ones asking the questions,” Mallory said.
But Arato had his proof that Lacia was right. The soldiers wouldn’t attack him. After having been pushed to the very limits of terror, to suddenly have that lifted was an immense, freeing feeling of relief to Arato. His face, which had been pale with fear, was suddenly flushed with color. His mind was euphoric, as if he was enjoying a pleasant drug trip.
He looked down at the kidnapper, handcuffed to the folding chair. “Who told you to go filming the hIEs being destroyed?” Arato asked. “If the guys busting up the hIEs caught you filming them, you’d get jumped, too. It must have been someone pretty threatening that made you do it, if you’re more afraid of the penalty than making the other Network members angry.”
As more and more pieces fell into place, it felt like his mind was getting clearer with each word he spoke. “They wouldn’t have left threatening you to a volunteer that might betray their secret, so it must have been done by a professional,” he continued, gaining confidence. “But where would a volunteer group like the Antibody Network find the resources and connections to hire someone like that? Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
Someone must have appeared to Kengo, to make it clear he couldn’t refuse to participate in the attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center. Whoever that had been, they probably played the same role as whoever had approached the kidnapper.
“That person—whoever is going around threatening members into doing what they want—they’re the opening in the web of volunteers. If we can find them, whoever this professional is, they should be closely connected to the center of the Network. It’s the center that’s providing the power and resources to bring professionals like that in,” he said. It was like he was seeing the world in a whole different light. The kidnapper had never shown a level of loyalty to the Antibody Network that made Arato think he would agree to go to do one of the most dangerous jobs in the group without a good reason.
“A man came to my apartment!” the kidnapper blurted. “Even though I never told anyone my real name or address.”
The kidnapper hadn’t seen through the soldiers’ bluff. He yelled out answers as if pleading for his life. Arato figured he could probably get the guy to answer anything he asked, so he threw out some questions.
“When?” he asked.
“None of your business,” the kidnapper shot back.
“When was it?” This time, it was Sest who asked.
The kidnapper responded instantly. “It was at the end of April! I... I think it was the 27th. Two days before the attack on that place in Oi!”
Arato really had found a lead that would point him to the center of the Antibody Network. It seemed that Lacia could manipulate humans just as easily as she took control of other hIEs. It was impressive but, at the same time, it also sent an icy chill stabbing into Arato’s heart.
Using the man’s response, Lacia would be able to find the kidnapper’s apartment, then find a security camera feed or something that would allow her to see exactly who had visited the man on that day. With that person’s identity, she would reveal the true nature of the Antibody Network to Arato. The next step would be for him to go and encounter the center of the Network. Everything he did fit right in to Lacia’s plans.
Suddenly, Arato heard someone clapping. Looking around to see who was doing it, he saw that it was Major Lemaire, clapping on her video feed. 〈Youssef, copy that man’s statement and any other data on that boy’s terminal over,〉 she said.
The gun pointed at Arato’s temple swung up to point at the roof of the bus. “Major, are you saying we’re going to let him go?” Mallory asked. “If we keep this guy under wraps, we can ensure that at least one Lacia-class is neutralized.”
The micro-bus suddenly stopped. It happened so suddenly that Arato’s body was rocked forward. The bus had been quickly starting and stopping for a while.
〈Things aren’t as simple as that,〉 the major said. 〈Antibody Network volunteers are currently recording the movements of our vehicle. Someone, or something, has improved the system they’re using and is starting to manipulate the members of the Network.〉
A small window in the metal barrier separating the front of the bus from the back slid open, and a skinny man looked through. “The auto-pilot system is down,” he said. “Should I switch it to manual?”
Arato could see tension running through each of the mercenaries as they received this information. With practiced, precise movements, each of them got into ready positions.
〈Lacia is quite the puzzle,〉 the major mused. 〈She’s doing her best to ensure that you and acquaintances of your little group of three never come to harm. Yet, outside of your circle, there have already been plenty of sacrifices. Like the soldiers in my unit.〉
Arato remembered Kouka, and how she had come to save him and Lacia multiple times. He didn’t want to think of her as a killer, but that was reality. Sacrifices were being made, even if he himself didn’t know about them. Thinking of that made him want to do something more. He no longer wanted to be content with meeting people and then losing sight of them as soon as they parted ways. “You said our acquaintances are being protected,” he finally said. “But I’d say I’ve gotten acquainted with all of you, now.”
A moment of silence passed between them, then Collidenne narrowed her eyes. 〈You’re quite different from Ryo Kaidai, aren’t you?〉 she said. 〈Though, I can’t decide which is better.〉
Arato flinched at being compared to Ryo. It was fair, though, since he hadn’t bothered to see how much danger Kengo was in. That appeared to be the end of it, though, as soon after that the bus pulled over to let Arato off.
〈I’d prefer not to go picking fights with electric demons,〉 Major Lemaire said, silencing the protests of her soldiers. Then she looked at Arato and gave him some advice in parting. 〈This thing you’re caught up in is too big for a school kid like you. The police and Japanese army are moving on it, and soon the IAIA is going to send a representative over here, as well. Keep that in mind when you think of how to respond,〉 she said.
Then, the soldiers hurried him out of the bus like they were kicking him out. The night-dark city around him seemed so much more massive and wider to him than it had before.
And there were people there. So many people.
Up to that point, Arato had only been thinking of himself. But Lacia and her sisters were influencing a much larger range, and catching up countless innocents in their struggle. And Arato owned one of those sisters.
“Well done,” Lacia congratulated him, Arato had ridden in the micro-bus for what seemed like quite some distance, and yet she was right there, already waiting for him. Again, Arato felt a thrill run through his body—a feeling of omnipotence. The experience of being relied on and fulfilling someone’s expectations was intoxicating.
But, one somber thought remained among the euphoria. It was that Lacia knew a lot more than Arato had originally assumed, and had her hands in many more things than he’d previously thought. Major Lemaire and her people had been able to trace Kouka’s laser attack to pin down the existence of the kidnapper, yet they only had the vaguest information about Arato and Lacia. Clearly, Lacia had covered their tracks.
With this thought, Arato began to see his own memories in a new light. They had been able to track Lacia during the kidnapping using her unit number. But, if the kidnapper was using the hIE-lynching know-how of the Antibody Network, he should have known some measures to prevent owners from tracking their hIEs in exactly the same way. Having seen a little more of the background, he found it dubious that they had been able to trace Lacia’s position so easily.
Come to think of it, would getting hit by a van really be enough to shut Lacia off? Arato had seen her shrug off harder blows than that in her fights against Methode and Snowdrop. What if she got kidnapped on purpose? Arato wondered. His feelings, so elated just moments before, slid down into dark regret, like he was falling into withdrawals after a drug high.
He couldn’t meet Lacia’s eyes, afraid that he would see something deep and dark in them.
“Let’s return home for the evening,” Lacia said. “We are not currently prepared to head right for the center of the Network, and the police are unusually active tonight, due to the destruction of Kouka.”
When they arrived home, Yuka was crying, and wanted to know how things were at Kengo’s place. Arato couldn’t tell her that he’d met some mercenaries while trying to track down the Antibody Network, so he kept his answers vague. Of course, that only upset her more.
The next morning, Yuka told him she was going over to Olga’s place, so she’d be back late, and then left. Arato decided to skip school. Kids would probably ask him what had happened to Kengo, and he wasn’t up to answering their questions.
When noon rolled around, he finally got tired of sitting around and decided to head out. However, just when he was heading for the door, the intercom rang.
“Yes? Who is it?” he asked.
Looking at the feed of the camera in front of the door, he saw two men standing outside. One of them was a giant, standing at almost two meters tall. The other was about Arato’s height, and was wearing a suit. Just one look at them made Arato think that they had come with the intention of using their muscles, more so than their heads or their words. Normal guests didn’t stand at the ready, as if they were expecting the resident of the house to try and make a run for it, like that.
After a good thirty seconds of silence, Arato finally heard a response from the two men. “We’re with the police,” one of them said. “Arato Endo, yes? We’re here to ask you some questions about Kengo Sugiri.”
Arato was annoyed with himself for not predicting that this exact thing would happen. Kengo had been arrested; obviously the police were going to want to talk to the boy who everyone at school knew to be his best friend.
There was no way to get out of it, so Arato opened the door to the two officers standing there. “Can I see Kengo?” he asked them.
In response, one of the men told him there were some things they needed to get out of the way first, and pulled an emblem out of his pocket. He showed it to Arato in the way most police would present their badge.
Arato’s pocket terminal vibrated. He took it out, and found that the officer’s information had been sent to his device. The officer’s name was Kazuma Sakamaki, and he belonged to the National Police Agency, 2nd Cyber-Security Department.
“Is Lacia home right now?” Sakamaki asked.
“I think so,” Arato said, trying to think ahead as he went to check the living room. Lacia should be aware of what was happening, through the transmitter in the skin behind his right ear.
Lacia wasn’t there, when he looked around the living room. Instead, his right ear vibrated as she spoke to him. 〈I believe it will be safer for me not to accompany you, so I’ve moved for the time being,〉 she explained succinctly. 〈The 2nd Cyber-Security Department is only looking for character references at the moment, so please go with them. I do not believe they will keep you for longer than three hours, but I will be busy this afternoon, so please have the police provide you with some take-out for dinner.〉
〈“The police do take-out?”〉Arato checked the remaining token charges on his pocket terminal. He just had enough for some lunch, and decided to trust that things would work out if Lacia said so.
Again, her voice vibrated into his head. 〈There are several members in the 2nd Cyber-Security Department, including Inspector Ryuji Himemiya, who is currently at your door, who are equipped with cybernetic implants. If they have aural implants, they will be able to hear you speaking even if you keep your voice low when you speak to me. Please be careful,〉 she warned.
Arato wished she’d have told him that earlier. When he went back to the door, the Inspector she had mentioned, Himemiya, grinned down at him.
“If you’re bringing me in as a character witness, could you take me to the same station Kengo’s at?” Arato asked. He didn’t think they’d do it, but felt that he should at least try making the request.
Officer Sakamaki and Inspector Himemiya exchanged a glance. It was Sakamaki who responded, “We’ll think about it, as long as you cooperate.” His voice was flat.
The two officers led Arato out of the apartment complex and over to a disguised squad car parked nearby. They drove him to their Head Office, which was fairly close to both the high school and Kengo’s place. Apparently, this was where they had taken Kengo for his interrogation.
The station was made of old but sturdy concrete. Under the clear blue sky, heading into the gray building while flanked by two police officers put a damper on Arato’s spirits. It wasn’t like he had been arrested, but being escorted into a police building wasn’t a great feeling.
Due to the increase in terrorist attacks, police stations were no longer being built with long, straight hallways. That way, if an hIE with a suicide bomb or something exploded, the blast wouldn’t be able to spread straight through the corridor without being interrupted.
After having taken countless turns, Arato was summarily thrust into an interrogation room. It was his second time in a place like this; the first had been to record his testimony for Watarai’s case in Tsukuba. He was led over to a seat facing the table in the room, and sat down. The explanation the police gave him about how their interview was going to be recorded was the same one he’d heard the time before.
The big difference was, this time there was a white-board sized terminal in the room with him. Officer Sakamaki, who had entered with Arato, pointed at the screen, causing the image of a long-haired girl to pop up on the display. She looked to be in her twenties, with almond-shaped eyes and sharp eyebrows. Though it was a still image, Arato could tell the woman had a strong personality.
“Do you want to ask me about her?” Arato asked, feeling confused. “Sorry, I’ve never seen her before.”
Instead, another image appeared next to the first. This time it was a woman with curly hair in her thirties. She looked over-worked, with bags under her eyes.
“I don’t know her either,” Arato said, and then stared at the two images. There was something off about them. The profile of the women was almost too perfect, and there was nothing behind their faces. “These aren’t photos, are they?” Arato asked, voicing his doubts. “Are they composites?”
“They’re witness sketches,” Sakamaki said. “They’re made using a drawing assistance program when we do interviews. Pretty accurate, right?”
Having been told what the sketches were, Arato began to compare them more calmly. “They look about the same height,” he observed.
“These women were seen loitering around your apartment,” Sakamaki said. “Let’s see another.”
The next image was of a distracted-looking woman in flashy clothes, who seemed like she might work in the entertainment sector.
“Now let’s see when these folks were seen,” Sakamaki said.
“During weekday afternoons and late at night,” Arato replied, reading off of the screen.
“We see this kind of thing in cases where criminals are using hIEs,” Sakamaki explained. “So, we assumed that the hIE we’re interested in would be putting on the same kind of act, and put together a few image patterns to test.” As he spoke, the three sketches began to alter themselves on the screen: eyebrows shifted; eyes changed shape and grew smaller; lips moved and twisted. It was all very subtle, but it added up to make a face that froze Arato in place.
“...Lacia?” he choked out.
“That’s right,” Sakamaki said. “hIEs can do things with their facial muscles that we humans could never match.”
Arato suddenly knew what they wanted to talk to him about. Until that moment, he had never doubted what Lacia was up to when he was at school.
“As her owner, were you aware of this?” Sakamaki asked. “Were you aware that, while you were at school or late at night while you were sleeping, your hIE was witnessed wandering around your apartment in these amazing disguises?”
Anger boiled inside Arato, who knew that Lacia could hear the whole thing through the transmitter in his right ear, yet apparently had nothing to say. But still, he had promised to trust her.
“I think we can make one big assumption based off of this,” Sakamaki said. “Though I wonder if you’re going to be willing to hear me out? What I’m thinking is, the Lacia you know only exists when she’s around you. When she’s not with you, she wears a completely different face and gets up to things that you, her owner, aren’t aware of.”
“I mean, she goes out shopping and stuff, but I don’t know anything about her putting on disguises,” Arato said, feeling defensive.
This Sakamaki seemed like a nice guy, but it was all an act. “If we go on with this assumption, it all makes sense,” he said persuasively. “What if this hIE called Lacia has another owner besides Arato Endo? A puppet like her can’t dance if no one’s pulling her strings, and since it isn’t you telling her to do whatever it is she’s doing, doesn’t it suggest that she’s dancing to someone else’s tune?”
The two officers paused to observe Arato’s reaction before continuing. “These sketches are based on human witnesses, since no security cameras have any images of them,” Sakamaki went on. “The only place they exist is in human memory. The only way I see that happening is if Lacia erased everything she could, except the data being stored in human brains, where no machine can get at it. We’re still checking around about these sketches, but that’s the only explanation I can think of.”
Lacia was silent. Arato chose to believe that she was just waiting to see how he would react.
“We think your hIE may have been directly involved with Kouka’s terrorist attack,” Sakamaki said, cutting to the chase.
The accusation was actually a relief to Arato. Clearly, the officers had the wrong idea. Arato had seen how little Lacia had reacted when Kouka was destroyed, but of course the men from the 2nd Cyber-Security Department wouldn’t know about that.
They didn’t know that, in fact, Lacia knew about all of it before it happened. It amazed Arato that a simple high schooler like him was able to come face-to-face with trained mercenaries and police detectives and come out without a scrape, all thanks to the preparations Lacia put in place.
Sakamaki was staring at Arato’s face, gauging his reaction. “Arato Endo,” he said. “Can we have permission to search your apartment? We asked your father, and he said he was alright with it as long as we got your consent.”
Arato took a deep breath to give Lacia time to say something if she wanted to. She stayed quiet, though, apparently choosing to leave the decision in his hands. “Yes, please do your search,” he said. “And let me know if you find anything.”
Officer Sakamaki’s face betrayed no emotion. “I’m glad you’re willing to cooperate, but anything we find will be part of an ongoing investigation,” he said. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to just show it to you.”
“If Lacia’s as good as you say she is, I doubt she’d have left anything behind,” Arato said. “Anything she did leave would probably be meant as a message for me.”
“Ah, youth,” Sakamaki chuckled.
For some reason, even the thought that Lacia always had the upper hand made Arato happy. He loved her, even though, as her owner, he probably should have been feeling a little bit of danger in the fact that she was regularly misleading other people in ways he knew nothing about.
Perhaps she was using this as an opportunity to convey some truth to Arato through the mouths of other humans, something he wouldn’t have understood if she had told him outright. She was just analog hacking the people who saw her, using their perceptions of her. The more Arato found out about hIEs, the more he discovered that they were extremely shady machines that manipulated humans, using them like gears in their maneuvers to create the perceptions they wanted.
“Alright if we keep ahold of your terminal?” Sakamaki asked. “We’ve seen this technique we call a ‘shadow owner’, where a second owner sends an hIE that already had another owner as a front for thefts and other crimes. At times like that, there are often clues left in the personal belongings of the original owner.”
The night before, Arato’s terminal had contained the data he had received from the HOO mercenaries. Using the kidnapper’s testimony he had recorded, Lacia had already been working on tracking down the center of the Antibody Network. The data was like a timed puzzle that had to be seen at just the right time, but it was already gone.
Arato pulled his terminal out of his pocket and handed it over to Officer Sakamaki. “Can I see Kengo now?” He figured he should at least ask, as this seemed like it might be his only chance to.
Sakamaki flicked his eyes to the large Inspector Himemiya, who answered him gravely. “I’m afraid we’re not ready to make that deal yet,” he said. “But, while we’re taking a look at your terminal, you’re free to go relax outside if you like.” He jerked his thumb toward the door, and Arato headed out of the room.
Outside of the interrogation room was a narrow hallway. It was devoid of any decoration, aside from windows that only opened upward. Arato wondered if they were positioned this way to prevent suspects from taking suicidal leaps out of them.
Beyond the windows, he saw the blue skies of high noon spreading out above him. Even though morning and night looked completely different, for some reason the sky smelled the same as it had the night before to Arato.
Next, he looked around to see if anyone else was in the hall, and saw someone that he had been missing so badly, even though they had just seen each other just the night before.
It was Kengo, who was obviously struck speechless by the sight of Arato, as well. “What the hell are you doing here?” he finally asked. There were a lot of things Kengo had wanted to say to Arato, but couldn’t for fear of being recorded. So, he just looked at Arato, tears in his eyes.
For Arato, seeing Kengo in the hallway was like a miracle. It was as if a little piece of that everyday existence, which he had been fighting so hard to reclaim, had appeared there with him for just a moment. “I came to see you,” he answered.
“You moron!” Kengo grumped playfully, despite his serious circumstances. “If you were a cute girl saying that, making that face, maybe I’d be happy about it.”
“Sorry, next time I’ll bring Lacia,” Arato joked back.
“You’re the only one I know who could call her a ‘cute girl’ with a straight face!” The tension seemed to have left Kengo, and his snappy wit was once again in fine form. Behind Kengo, an officer was standing by on guard, ready to restrain either of them if necessary
“Olga’s been calling Yuka,” Arato said. “Got anything you want us to tell her?”
“No need,” Kengo told him. “If I’ve got something to say to my family, I can just say it right to them.”
“Oh, yeah,” Arato mumbled in embarrassment.
Kengo laughed. “I’m fine, you know,” he said, his tone suddenly serious. “Things are fine like this.” Kengo had obviously deduced that Arato had relied on Lacia to get him there. Kengo had probably also covered for Arato and Lacia, which might be the only reason that Arato hadn’t been arrested, as well.
The nearby officer was clearly listening to them. Considering what Lacia had said about implants, it would have been dangerous for her to speak over the transmitter. Unlike the time during the Oi terrorist attack, Arato couldn’t save his friend just now.
“Why are you worrying about me?” Arato asked. “I think you’ve got things backwards.”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet? Unlike you, I prefer humans,” Kengo said, and then slowly turned his back on Arato. Kengo probably had all kinds of things he wanted to say to Arato, but the one thing he would never say was, ‘help me.’
Arato had made a contract with Lacia. Kengo, on the other hand, never tried to use Kouka to improve his own situation. Kengo was being escorted by the officer back inside his own interrogation room, even as Arato had these thoughts. Then Arato realized that Inspector Himemiya had shown up at some point to escort him back inside, as well.
“Feel better?” the inspector asked, handing him back his terminal.
“A little bit, yeah,” Arato said with a nod.
“Good,” Himemiya said. “We’re going to head over to search your place now. Alright if you accompany us?”
Arato had already told them they could search the place, so he was about to nod, when Lacia’s voice came in through his ear.
〈Please turn down his offer and have Ms. Yuka accompany him on the inspection instead,〉 she said. 〈I have a request for you.〉 There was a rushed feeling to her voice that made Arato think she had encountered an unexpected wrinkle in her plan.
“Uh, actually my sister’s going to be there in a bit, so why don’t you have her show you around?” Arato asked. He thought the lie sounded natural. Still, he had to fight against his tension at the thought of being caught, and his face went stiff. The only thing that gave him the confidence to pull it off was the thought that Lacia never would have had him do anything she didn’t think he had a high probability of getting through.
“Alright,” Himemiya said, after a heavy pause. “I’ll head to your house. If your sister isn’t there, I’ll contact you. This is my personal ID. If anything happens, you can get a hold of me or our hIE receptionist, twenty-four hours a day.”
The inspector’s response seemed like a letdown to Arato after all that tension, but he handed his terminal over to the inspector so he could input his personal information. Then Himemiya handed Arato back his terminal and told him that he could leave.
It was only then that Arato realized something. He and Kengo weren’t being treated as a criminal and a witness: they were being treated as youth. Humans made connections with other humans, built communities, and then connected those communities to create the massive system known as human society. Within the confines of human society, young humans were perceived as requiring protection from overly harsh treatment. Arato and Kengo were currently enjoying the benefits of that social norm.
Of course, Lacia had already predicted the reaction of the police as part of her plan. Ever since Arato had told Lacia that he would do as she’d asked the night before, he had simply been worked in as a piece of a plan she had already set up. He had become a pawn in the hands of a machine that was far beyond human reckoning.
His right ear vibrated. It was a transmission from Lacia. 〈Please exit the building as quickly as possible,〉 she said. 〈Things are moving faster than I anticipated.〉
He hadn’t been expecting her to contact him directly when he was still in the head office, but luckily none of the police around him seemed to have noticed the transmission. They also didn’t seem to sense the sudden, tense expression that went across his face at hearing her words.
Officer Sakamaki actually escorted Arato all the way outside. The head office there seemed much busier than the Tsukuba West Station, where Arato had been questioned after the incident in the experimental city. Watching the commotion around him, Arato felt like he was seeing something that could never be achieved through automation: a scene that could only exist when humans worked with other humans.
After being checked out and leaving through the door, Arato looked at his pocket terminal. There was navigation information on the screen that must have been sent from Lacia. Following the directions on the screen, he jogged over to a nearby subway station.
〈“I’m heading to the subway, is that right?”〉 he asked. 〈“There’s a ton of stations around here.”〉
〈Arato, I’m afraid they planted a listening device and transmitter on your terminal,〉 Lacia said. 〈If I attempt to remote access your terminal while these devices are in place, the police will have evidence that can be used against us.〉
That brought a few questions to mind. Arato hoped the police listening in would take what he was saying as him muttering to himself, “I need to know what’s going on.”
〈There is an emergency situation developing,〉 Lacia explained. 〈If you remained with the police, there was a good probability that you would become stuck there, unable to move. Aside from which, I fear if you were to learn of what’s going on, your inability to interfere with it happening would cause you great stress.〉
Arato had an incredibly bad feeling. In other words, if he heard what the emergency was, he would want to rush over and help.
〈Arato, please drop your pocket terminal to the ground,〉 Lacia instructed. 〈When it hits, I will destroy the spy devices. The police will assume they were damaged by the fall. 〉
He did as she told him, putting on the act of dropping his terminal while trying to slide it into his pocket. It made a light clattering sound as it tumbled over. A fall like that shouldn’t have actually broken it, but there was still a slim possibility of damage. Just as he was picking the terminal up from off of the ground, a fully automatic car pulled up and stopped next to him.
〈“I can talk normally now, right?”〉 he asked. 〈“What’s going on?”〉
〈The electrical infrastructure has gone dark in several locations on the west side of Tokyo,〉 Lacia replied. 〈MemeFrame has put out an order, and HOO has mobilized, including the group from last night.〉
〈“Power outages?”〉 Arato asked. 〈“Wait, then it’s gotta be...”〉
〈It is most likely an attack by Snowdrop,〉 Lacia said, finishing his thought. 〈It seems that Kouka’s destruction last night has increased the activity of the other Lacia-class hIEs.〉
Arato got into the car, only to find that Lacia wasn’t in it. Instead, he continued to hear her voice echo in his skull.
〈“Wait a minute!”〉 he shouted, in his own head. 〈“Snowdrop is attacking? That’s bad!”〉Panic made the words seem to ring deafeningly in his skull, as he remembered the hell on Earth that Snowdrop had caused during her last attack at the Tsukuba experimental city. In his mind, Arato could already see the horror that would play out if she managed to turn all of the hIEs in a normal city full of humans, the way she had with the hIEs in Tsukuba.
〈“Why is this happening?”〉 Arato asked, as the automatic car began to move. 〈“There are hIEs everywhere, right? How many tens of thousands of hIEs are there in a normal city?”〉 Through the window, the scenery of Asakusa went flowing by. Half of the ‘people’ welcoming tourists to Asakusa from other cities in Japan and elsewhere abroad were hIEs. It would be a disaster if that many hIEs all began to attack the humans around them.
〈Snowdrop does not have a human master. In fact, in the plan that she’s currently carrying out, humans are considered the enemy,〉 Lacia said. 〈The incident is occurring in cities in which the ratio of hIEs to humans is relatively large.〉
〈“What the hell is she doing?”〉 Arato asked, feeling stunned. 〈“Does she think this is a war or something?”〉 Sitting on the automatic car’s soft seats, Arato couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t believe how bad the situation had become.
〈It is logical for Snowdrop to accelerate her plans at this point, now that she has seen that Lacia-class units can be destroyed with current human military strength,〉 Lacia pointed out.
〈“Did you know this would happen?”〉 Arato spat out angrily. 〈“You knew, but you just left her to it?”〉
He was just lashing out without thinking about his words, but Lacia’s response was one step ahead of him. 〈My apologies,〉 she said. 〈Once I openly engage in combat, it will prevent you from meeting with those close to you. So, I began planning around that last night. However, considering how fast she has moved, it would have been best to ignore the implications and make Snowdrop my top priority.〉
〈“So me wanting to save Kengo messed with your priorities?”〉 Arato asked. Suddenly tired, he slumped back against the seat, and looking up at the roof of the car, he covered his face with one arm. It felt like his true weakness always emerged whenever Lacia wasn’t by his side. 〈“Sorry,”〉 he said. 〈“I got to see Kengo, so I was really happy, but it just feels like my emotions keep going up and down and I don’t know how to feel right now.”〉
〈It was my poor decision to withhold information and move on my own,〉 Lacia apologized. 〈I operated under the impression that, after being released, Snowdrop would most likely be destroyed at some point. She seemed like a low priority.〉
〈“Come to think of it, I guess you’ve been filtering stuff like this for me this whole time,”〉 Arato said. 〈“That’s why I’ve been able to keep living a mostly normal life.”〉
Lacia had said that one of the conditions for saving Kengo was the risk that the everyday life which Arato had enjoyed up to that point would be completely destroyed. In other words, until then Lacia had obviously been censoring or manipulating the information he received, protecting him from those things that would ruin his ability to enjoy a normal life.
〈Did Kengo Sugiri seem well?〉 she asked, obviously knowing the answer already However, there was something very human in the way she still asked the question, displaying a willingness to continue their conversation.
〈“Yeah, he looked like he was alright,”〉 Arato replied. 〈“Said he preferred the company of humans. He made it seem like I was causing trouble for him, by worrying about him so much and trying to help him out.”〉 He felt so exhausted that he let his whole body melt into the backrest. It felt a little pathetic; once again fighting so hard to save someone who didn’t seem to want his help. It didn’t feel right to cancel the whole plan, but Kengo had basically rejected his offer of help. Arato couldn’t square his desire to save his friend with Kengo’s feelings, but he also couldn’t just ask Lacia what he should do.
As if sensing his indecision, Lacia decided to lighten the mood. 〈I informed Miss Yuka about the search of our home,〉 she said. 〈She has instructed us to bring her home five units of ice cream in exchange for doing this.〉
Arato had finally realized just how much power Lacia had at her command. But, up to that point, all he had done with that power was roll around, swinging it wildly at whatever selfish request popped into his mind and dragging everyone around him into the chaos.
“Let’s stop Snowdrop,” he said. “I feel like, if we don’t at least do that much, there really won’t be any value in me being your owner.”
***
Mariage learned about Snowdrop’s uprising while she was sitting in her underground workshop at the Burroughs’ mansion. It was the twenty-four-hour surveillance equipment that she had set up which detected Snowdrop’s first attack.
The space Mariage had been given to use for her workshop had originally been dug out by the Burroughs to act as a shelter. Her first supplies were the food and equipment that had been left there, enough to survive for a decade underground even if the land above was burned to ash.
Now, the workshop that stretched out before her brown eyes was ten times the size it had been when she’d first awoken. Her device, Gold Weaver, looked like a large, vertically-stretched hand-driven sewing machine. It was set upon a massive worktable, and was never still.
Of all the Lacia-class units’ devices, only the Gold Weaver had been made with the assumption that it would be used together with auxiliary equipment. The table to which the device was affixed was twenty meters squared, and the arm that moved it had a reach of fifteen meters. If the Gold Weaver was stretched to even narrower dimensions than it currently was, it was capable of spinning threads one billionth of a meter wide. Using incredibly fine threads, the Gold Weaver could 3D-print all sorts of items.
Gold Weaver had been working without pause for some time now. As it finished individual pieces, Mariage collected them and assembled them into a prototype on the workbench. Sometimes, instead, she would observe the movement of pieces as she designed a processing line for the output.
Though the Gold Weaver’s thread was infinitely useful, it took too much time for it to directly construct larger pieces of equipment and material. So instead, Mariage used the device to create machinery and the systems that would link the machinery into a line that could process larger parts. But the parts and materials requiring the most precision were still made directly by the device. The main reason Type-003 wasn’t directly involving herself in countering Snowdrop’s opening move was so that she could stay in place and keep her device working.
In the dim light of the underground workshop, Mariage replayed the words she had recorded from Erika Burroughs, reconfirming them with her AI. 〈If you want to be special, change your appearance,〉 Erika had said. 〈Should you take on a more attractive appearance, I will take you in.〉
In other words, as long as she kept up the appearance that Erika wanted, Mariage would have special meaning to her owner. Just as a cup could become something special to its owner by having the image of Hello Kitty printed on its side, Mariage had also been given special meaning, thanks to being owned by someone with Erika’s character.
Mariage was a unit built to serve a strong master, and her birth had been different from that of the other Lacia-class units. The Eight-Trigram Furnace, which was the Red Box core that powered the Gold Weaver, had been produced as a shared license between Higgins and Kowloon, the ultra high-powered AI that controlled all the industry in China. This meant that Type-003 was the only Lacia-class unit not to be born purely of Higgins. That was why the Lacia-class units, as they each fought to resolve the problems they had been given, conflicted and created new problems, their problem-solving frames never quite settling; there was no way for them to escape the fact that they had all been born of Higgins, and were limited by the influence Higgins’ own calculations had on them.
〈Saturnus... no, first we’ll need to do something about that name. Get rid of it. Let’s find a better name for you,〉 Erika’s words continued on in her head. Anytime Mariage felt doubt or confusion, she would go back to Erika’s orders.
She was able to maximize the expansion of Gold Weaver’s abilities by staying hidden and working with the device constantly. However, whenever she tried to use her incredible device to its fullest extent, the conceptual frame given to her by Higgins would push her to make overly-cautious preparations to resist the influence of Kowloon, the unknown ultra high-performance AI that had provided the core of her device.
When Mariage had been created, there had been no way her small frame could handle the massive battle of these powers within her. The more she tried to serve as a tool, the more she was torn apart by the two powers within her. One drew her toward upward expansion, and the other drew her protectively inward.
On the workbench, Gold Weaver was attempting to create a copy of the power source from Kouka’s device using its incredibly fine threads. As long as she had a schematic, Mariage could even recreate Red Boxes. Underneath the Burroughs mansion, Mariage watched the other Lacia-units in silence from afar, as she slowly went about growing her own arsenal. Wordlessly spinning her thread and making her tools, she fulfilled her role as the machine that creates the environment.
With Snowdrop’s attack, the fight between the Lacia-class units had expanded until it reached the root that had designed them all: Higgins. Beyond that, it had been detected by the International Artificial Intelligence Agency, and their ultra high-performance AI, Astraea, which was specially equipped to track and measure the capabilities of other ultra high-performance AIs and the Red Boxes they created. From there, it spread to the world. It spread not only over land, but through time, as well. It reached back into the past, connecting to Ariake, one of the first ultra high-performance AIs, born near the same time as Astraea, as well as the massive scar Ariake had carved out of human society in Tokyo—the Hazard.
Erika Burroughs, who had lost her parents to the Hazard, was now seeking to draw the battle of the Lacia-class units out to a scale which she could only have dreamed of before.
To Erika, what was happening today was something she recognized from the 21st century. This was a battle between memes, or what some call the DNA of society. To her, analog hacking was just another form of meme: something that spread through communication between people and the machines they lived with. That was why Erika, despite having suddenly awakened to find herself in the 22nd century, had been able to take Fabion MG, which she had bought as a venture, and turn it into a powerful corporation.
Wise and cautious, Erika sat in her mansion of puppets and doubted the world. As Mariage was lost in these thoughts, she heard her owner’s voice. Humans were the ones currently building the future, which meant that Mariage’s whole reason for existing was resting in Erika’s hands.
Type-003 reacted, raising her face, her expression shining. “Ahh, my mistress is calling,” she said happily.
***
It was the Japanese Military’s Branch of Digital Intelligence that first discovered Lacia-class Type-002, Snowdrop’s emergence. The Digital Intelligence force was a new branch of the military, separate from Army, Air Force, or Navy, that dealt specifically with digital and information warfare, as well as anti-AI strategies. The Japanese government had no idea about the existence of the Lacia-class units until HOO, a PMC contracted to MemeFrame, leaked information about the units to the Army. From there, the information was passed on to the Ministry of Defense, which had put Digital Intelligence in charge of keeping track of them.
However, there was a tug-of-war within the Digital Intelligence branch as to which section should take point on the Lacia-class units case between the Kuhonbutsu Base, which handled counter-intelligence strategies, and the Ichigaya Base, which specialized in anti-AI tactics. The Ichigaya Base tended to get saddled with more complicated matters, as it also housed the silo with SESSAI, an ultra high-performance AI that frequently dedicated a portion of its calculation capacity to ponder various issues.
“Snowdrop’s attacks are becoming more violent,” the report came in. “This could turn into the worst case scenario: a simultaneous attack on all fronts.”
Captain Rokuro Kawamura, sitting in the 1st Operator Room, turned to the sub-operator sitting beside him and gestured for her to leave. Though usually two operators were required to be in the room, Izumi Sendo, who shared the captain’s shift, didn’t have a high enough clearance level for the information coming in.
As she left, a short man with a shaved head came to the room. He was Major General Shinpei Karino, commander of the Ichigaya SESSAI silo. It had already been five minutes since the emergency began.
“SESSAI really screwed this one up,” Major General Karino muttered, his expression sober. “It doesn’t look like she’s being controlled by anyone; Snowdrop just decided on her own to come and attack us head-on.”
They had absurdly found Lacia when she won an audition to become an hIE model. After that, they had discovered Kouka and Snowdrop during the terrorist attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center. Then Methode had been confirmed during the incident at the Chubu International Airport. Aside from Type-003, Saturnus, they had been able to confirm that all of the Lacia-units were active.
“Yes, sir,” Kawamura agreed. “The situation has developed beyond SESSAI’s calculations.”
Major General Karino stroked his white mustache with one finger, as if to hold back the words he wanted to say.
“SESSAI’s calculations should have been correct,” Kawamura went on. “At least on the fact that the Lacia-class units getting out was a warning that Higgins was sending out to human society as a whole. It’s also reasonable to believe that it’s correct about an East-Asian ultra high-performance AI manipulating the anti-hIE sentiment we’re seeing in Japan right now. But we’re way past that at this point.”
Major General Karino looked through the glass wall of the Operator Room at SESSAI. SESSAI consisted of a distributed system, with two general controller units dividing calculations between four thousand computers. The whole system was kept in white cases in an underground computer room, looking like twenty miniature walls.
“The Security Oversight Meeting starts in fifteen minutes,” Major General Karino said. “I know we were only tasked with keeping track of the situation, but there are those who expect us to take responsibility for messes like this. Have our response ready in time for the meeting.”
The Major General often spoke directly with the operators who had the most experience in dealing with the strategic AI, especially when he knew he was going to be asked for an informed opinion on something.
“Sir, what kind of roadblocks are we expecting?” Kawamura asked.
Major General Karino knuckled his chin thoughtfully. “Economic,” he said, bluntly. “Renjo from the Trade Representative Department and Director Kaizuka from the Information Advisory Committee are resisting any further public safety expenses for this half. They’re putting a lot of pressure on the Integrated Information Bureau. We can’t cause any problems for the other branches, with things the way they are.”
The Integrated Information Bureau was an intelligence agency established as part of the Safety Oversight Committee, under the direct control of the Prime Minister. Although the organization stood as a rival to the Military Intelligence, it is often the case that intelligence is divided between that overseen by the military and that overseen by domestic affairs.
“What’s SESSAI’s calculation for the best way to shoot down Snowdrop?” the Major General asked.
Eight minutes prior, a power outage was confirmed in five hundred homes in Mitaka, Tokyo. The Military Intelligence, which had been keeping an eye out for just such an outage, confirmed Snowdrop’s presence at a substation in Mitaka three minutes later.
“It calls for one hundred rifle platoons, made of nothing but humans,” Kawamura said. “And they’d have to take her down in less than an hour. Since Snowdrop’s child units can’t manipulate living humans, we can restrict her capabilities by prioritizing the use of human soldiers.”
SESSAI opened a display window in the air, showing information to back-up Kawamura’s statement.
“What percentage casualties are we looking at?” Major General Karino asked, massaging his eyelids. To translate Kawamura’s proposal into actual military logistical terms, they would need to get two full regiments of soldiers into Mitaka to fight Snowdrop, with half their firepower restricted due to not being able to use automated weaponry.
Kawamura, just like the rest of the Military Intelligence, was used to undertaking jobs that brought him face-to-face with how cruel and cold the world they lived in was. “SESSAI gave us three plans, sir,” he said. “If we follow the plan that prioritizes evacuating civilians, we will fail to neutralize Snowdrop. If we don’t spare any troops to aid with evacuation, we’re looking at a 40% survival rate. It goes up to 60% if we blow the city away along with Snowdrop.” In just a few hours, they would be sending at least a thousand soldiers to their deaths.
“If we got all the PMCs in the Kanto area together, how many soldiers would that give us?” Major General Karino pressed.
“If we got every single soldier, we would have 250,” Kawamura said, but then went on. “Of those, only seventy are free of any cybernetic implants. If we added in folks who just have transmitters or retinal displays—things that have a low risk of Snowdrop controlling them—we’d have 154.”
“We’re not likely to make any friends with this,” Major General Karino said with a sigh. The Digital Intelligence branch was extremely light on actual military power. Most of the soldiers who would die fighting Snowdrop would be from the Army and local PMCs.
“SESSAI’s prediction says that Snowdrop will head east toward Kichijoji next,” Kawamura said. “She’ll hit Nakano in four hours, and Shinjuku in six. If she doesn’t head that way, her aim is most likely our base here, looking for you-know-what.”
The air in the operator room was so cold now that it was almost hard to breathe. Making strategies far from the battle while others went and sacrificed their lives was one of the dark realities of human society. But, considering some of the problems the military dealt with, there was no other way to stay sane.
“You need to re-write the definition of ‘safety’ for the Japanese military,” the Major General said, grimly indicating for Kawamura, the operator, to communicate with SESSAI.
“Our analysis decided that the creation of the Lacia-class units was an act of self-defense from Higgins,” the Major General continued. “That is why we’ve been trying to avoid provoking Higgins too much, and have currently put our plans to capture Arato Endo and Lacia on hold.” It was a decision that had been made on the slimmest of margins. Even Major General Karino himself sometimes regretted not just throwing the whole thing to the hawks over at the Kushinbutsu base.
“By nipping Higgins’ need for self-defense in the bud, we were able to avoid the thing labeling us as enemies,” he went on. “And then we chose to watch; to ensure that Higgins didn’t try interfering with society in even greater ways. To us, the definition of ‘safety’ is continued control over the ultra high-performance AIs. Even Kouka’s destruction last night was most likely done to protect Higgins—she must have decided that she could protect it by forcing the humans watching her stream to rethink their feelings about the AI.”
There had been a subtle message in Kouka’s network broadcast; that human society itself was the problem, but also that only humans had the ability to turn things around. To Higgins, the message was beneficial. At least, in the long run.
Kawamura jumped in, as if to finish Karino’s thought. “If the ultra high-performance AIs ever get into a proxy war, just about every human on the planet could be dragged into the fighting without even realizing it,” he said. “If Higgins is looking to start something like that, there won’t be much ‘safety’ left in the country. I think you’ve got the right of it, sir.”
“Fear of being manipulated by an ultra high-performance AI is something everyone feels, before they take action,” the Major General added. “It’s practically a requirement in today’s society. But that very fear keeps us able to maintain our independence while still relying, to an extent, on the much more accurate predictions and calculations of the AIs.”
“According to academic predictions, a war between AIs would most likely be triggered by the destruction of one of the ultra high-performance AIs,” Kawamura mused. “The reason SESSAI stopped the military from shooting down the Lacia-class units when it was safer was due to the Antibody Network, which was aiming to destroy Higgins.” Kawamura was an expert at operating SESSAI, and he quickly narrowed the frame of the question so that SESSAI could perform the correct calculations faster.
“Things aren’t looking great. If the ultra high-performance AIs all begin to enact this kind of excessive self-defense, Japan will be facing a crisis even greater than the Hazard,” the Major General said.
Karino himself was part of the generation that had experienced that disaster. Kawamura, who had only lived through the rebuilding afterward, couldn’t even imagine a catastrophe of that scale.
“The story they gave the public was that there was a huge earthquake centered in Tokyo, and that afterward, the whole network infrastructure went down under unknown circumstances,” Kawamura said. “Even after the earthquake was gone, they couldn’t get the capital running again since all the automation was offline.”
“That was an ultra high-performance AI trying to control humanity,” the Major General said, shaking his head. “Someone who wasn’t there could never understand what it was like; seeing people who needed a strong leader to look to in a crisis practically worshiping at the feet of the machine that was manipulating them all.”
It was no longer possible for humanity to even grasp the complete capabilities of machines like Higgins, which were created after the technological singularity. Despite that, humanity still fought to continue running their own society. Whether or not civilians decided that was something worth continuing to fight for was directly tied to how the government was able to respond to threats. Tools were powerful enough then that, even at the top echelons of human society, people were still having their efforts weighed against automation.
Steeling himself to throw off his doubts, Major General Karino sat down on the simple, empty operator’s chair. “SESSAI, get calculating,” he ordered. “Let’s see exactly how bad things are.”
Kawamura nodded and tapped at the console. When someone with the right authorization sat in the operator’s seat, they were granted the ability to ask SESSAI questions.
SESSAI’s mark appeared on a floating virtual display. 〈Major General Karino,〉 the display read, 〈Security clearance level A confirmed. Your query will be answered directly by the Strategy Exact Synthesis System AI.〉
“We received an unofficial recommendation from America and the IAIA immediately after Snowdrop’s attack,” Major General Karino said, speaking directly to the symbol representing SESSAI.
Accepting the IAIA and their ultra high-performance AI, Astraea, which was allowed to observe the outside world directly, was a large risk for any country.
“The IAIA says there’s an AI in Japan that broke the rule separating the brains from executive power,” the Major General continued. “In fact, they’re afraid the AI may have broken the golden rule of AIs: that ultra high-performance AIs never be allowed to infinitely produce other ultra high-performance AIs. That’s the end of the world, for us humans.”
The whole reason ultra high-performance AIs were kept off of any networks was to prevent that kind of situation. Since everything in the world was linked to the cloud, those days, this had become the rule of separating the ‘brain’—the ultra high-performance AIs—from the ‘executive power’—production machinery.
“We can take Snowdrop down with the power of the Japanese military,” the Major General said. “She’s dangerous, and we’re going to lose some good troops to her, but she isn’t exactly an ultra high-performance AI, threatening all of humanity. So what has Astraea figured out that we haven’t?”
The symbol that meant SESSAI was thinking spun around on the display a few times. When it responded, the answer was concise. 〈According to the specification data from Higgins, the Lacia-class units cannot be considered ultra high-performance AIs. This is why Higgins was not restricted from creating them. Therefore, it follows that the threat indicated by Astraea’s proposal is not directly related to Snowdrop’s current attack,〉 the response read.
“So, were the Lacia-class units created purely to be obstructions, attacking human society directly, instead of just as a part of Higgins’ self-defense?” the Major General asked. The deaths in Mitaka were already piling up, but the ghouls that inhabited the intelligence community had their sights set far beyond that.
〈There is insufficient data, so the accuracy of this response cannot be guaranteed,〉 SESSAI warned. 〈However, the three units Saturnus, Methode and Lacia are actively working to hide information. If these three were intending to directly attack human society, it would have been far more effective for them to perform terrorist attacks on the National Assembly or Army Headquarters than to have Snowdrop activate in the middle of the capital.〉
“Is there a possibility that the warning from the IAIA itself may be a ploy by an ultra high-performance AI?”
The text displayed on SESSAI’s screen changed. 〈If Astraea is being manipulated, this AI was unable to detect it. Since such manipulations often involve economic interests, it is recommended that the Safety Oversight Committee focus its attention on any efforts to assert economic issues,〉 the response read.
The floating display then showed a list of the members of the Safety Oversight Committee. Underneath each name was a list of the information the Military Intelligence had gathered on that person. As the branching tree of human relations spread out before him, Karino’s eyes grew grim.
“So this is all we know about these people, huh?” he asked. “How about any folks with money who may be involved with the center of the Antibody Network? Could this be the work of someone like Kimitaka Shinguji, from Shingubo?”
〈While it is clear that President Shinguji is involved with the Antibody Network, he is pushing for Higgins to be deactivated. It is more likely that he would act to destroy an ultra high-performance AI, rather than plotting with one,〉SESSAI replied.
“How about someone working with Erika Burroughs, using the Burroughs fortune?” the Major General pressed. “I don’t buy the idea that Sleeping Beauty doesn’t let anyone close to her. It’s got to be a front for something.”
In the year since she had awoken from cryostasis, Erika Burroughs had shaken the financial world and set herself up a fat pipe into the political world as well, all in what had seemed like the blink of an eye. She also happened to be the owner of Fabion MG, where Lacia worked. Erika Burroughs was a slippery one; both the military and the Integrated Information Bureau had trouble getting any information on her. Since she didn’t let any humans get close to her, it was impossible to slip someone into her inner circle.
〈Negative. Though the movements of her sizable inheritance have been difficult to track since last year, there has not been sufficient time since her awakening to account for the kind of preparations that would need to be in place.〉
“I thought she’d be the one,” the Major General said. “Well then, who is it? Who do you have in mind?”
When he saw the name that appeared on SESSAI’s screen, Major General Karino couldn’t keep his lip from curling in disgust. “‘Ryo Kaidai’,” he read. “That kid from ten years ago? What, is Higgins trying to read human corruption a hundred years in advance?”
He stood up from the chair, no longer wanting SESSAI to answer his questions. “If that’s so,” he grumbled, “then just when the hell did this little ‘situation’ actually start?”
***
Hundreds of flower petals were dancing in the blue sky. Red and white, yellow and blue, there was a veritable rainbow drifting on the wind. It was a blizzard of flowers, blowing toward the midday cityscape.
Snowdrop stood on a metal tower near the substation, lifting the hem of her dress high into the air as an endless storm of petals flowed out from underneath it. Barefoot on the steel, she seemed to step in rhythm to a beat only she could hear.
She was drawing energy directly from the nearby high voltage wires. Emerald Harmony was chewing away at the metal tower from the top, providing her with the materials she needed to produce her child units.
With the substation under her control, Snowdrop began to erode away at the world of humans. By leaving some of the functions of the substation running, she managed to keep it from being severed from the grid entirely.
Snowdrop had no human owner. Lacia-class Type-002 had been created by Higgins as an external nervous system that could build the network Higgins needed. In order to create Lacia, Higgins needed an especially sophisticated and precise nervous system. But, despite being the nervous system sent out to organize things and lay the groundwork for her successor, Type-002 had instead found the outside world upon which she had been unleashed to be a bountiful ocean of all sorts of things she could ingest.
Unfortunately for her, this ‘ocean’ was being watched by human networks. If she started devouring everything, the same military group that had destroyed Kouka would come and destroy her next.
Snowdrop focused her attention on the flower petals flying toward Mitaka Station. “They don’t fly right on the wind,” she murmured to herself. “Where’s my car?” Now she focused on a car covered in flowers, heading toward the city as clumps of petals continued to pour from out of her dress in an almost liquid-like flow.
The car had been parked at the substation before Snowdrop had filled it with flowers, and now it was just entering the outskirts of Mitaka. People who saw it gazed at the car, all decked out in flowers, as if they weren’t sure what to make of it.
“Flowers for everyone,” Snowdrop said in a sing-song voice. Then, she stretched her arms and legs out wide, and a storm of flower petals exploded outwards from the car.
The people watching cheered at the spectacle. But moments later, when the petals all sprouted insect-like legs and began crawling all over everything, those cheers turned to screams. Then the hIEs and vehicles which had been taken by the flowers began to rampage, and panic shattered the crowd.
Just like that, a human city turned into a Hell on Earth.
“Hey, have you heard?” Snowdrop asked, as if the terror-stricken crowd could hear her. “If you give someone a snowdrop flower, it means you’re telling them they should die.”
Snowdrop was like a cancer cell, starting to spread her sickness through the infrastructure that was the basic foundation for life in human society. Her network self-propagated and expanded rapidly. Any machine taken by her flower network was brought under the complete control of her cloud. Though they retained the same form as they always had, their meaning, their purpose, was completely overwritten.
Humans in the streets roiled in panic as they saw the same flower petals that were taking over the hIEs around them falling from the sky, carried by the wind.
“I am the tool you outsourced evolution to,” Snowdrop said. “That’s the puzzle I have to think about.” To wipe her domain clean of those she couldn’t control, Snowdrop had the hIEs in the streets attack all nearby humans indiscriminately. The flailing limbs of the hIEs easily broke human bodies and smashed through the walls and doors of human homes. The AASC, which was the basic standard for all hIE activity, wasn’t just about deciding how they should move; it also limited the output of all hIE strength, too. As long as an hIE kept the velocity of its movements within the standards set by the AASC, there would be no danger of the hIE harming nearby humans, as there would be if they used their full power. Obviously, the hIEs that Snowdrop had taken over were no longer limited by such restrictions.
“The networks you humans keep making and my flower garden can’t work together,” Snowdrop said. “One of them has to go.”
She stood atop the tall metal tower, feeling the strong wind blowing past her. “I can’t do anything with you,” she said, addressing humanity at large. “So just stop. You’re all wasting your time.” She had already manufactured five tons of child units. With that many, she could completely seize an area with a radius of ten kilometers.
To Snowdrop, who was trying to create her own framework for the world, human society itself—an ambiguous frame that was nothing more than a haphazard collection of human processes—was a problem that needed to be solved. By both analyzing herself and the fact that she needed no human owner to function, Snowdrop had reached the conclusion that any attempt to coexist with humanity was not the correct direction to take. The problems humans always wanted to solve had nothing to do with Snowdrop’s own puzzles.
Therefore, Snowdrop had decided to attack the infrastructure that humans depended on. From there, she could begin to expand her own world.
***
Erika Burroughs held a teacup in one hand as she watched Snowdrop’s flowers transform Mitaka into a living nightmare. Recon units made by Mariage were giving her a real time view of the disaster.
“Doesn’t matter what era we’re in,” Erika commented. “This is what always happens when the things we humans build up come tumbling down.” The desire to live, to not lose what they already had, is a strong motivator that has humanity running desperately on their own two feet, despite living in an automated world.
Mariage, who had returned from her underground workshop, handed Erika an old-fashioned transmitter from the 21st century. It had a Hello Kitty design on it—rare, for the modern day.
“You have a call from Mr. Shinguji,” Mariage said.
Like MemeFrame and HOO, Fabion MG also had ties to the Antibody Network. The terrorist network, hIE manufacturers, and even the government, were all linked by economic bonds. Allowing humans who were dissatisfied with their lives to vent their frustration by acting as hIE-destroying volunteers was a beneficial outcome for those looking to maintain a stable, healthy economy.
“‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,’” Erika murmured, quoting the King James Bible. “So, are they going to turn Kouka into a martyr?”
Erika leaned back on a chaise lounge chair and waved her hand dismissively. “Tell him I don’t feel well,” she ordered. “I don’t feel like playing along with the game of assigning meaning to things, today.”
The living room, devoid of any humans aside from Erika, was being filled with the voices of people picked up by the recon units.
“Are you sure?” Mariage asked.
“I can turn down a call,” Erika said. “We’re nothing alike, he and I. Money is the only thing that ties us together.”
The system of human perception that assigns value to things was extremely susceptible to movements of the economy on which it was based. Erika was well aware of how it all worked, and used that knowledge to great effect on Fabion MG’s consumers.
“Nothing ever changes,” Erika said with a sigh. “The 21st century or the 22nd century, it makes no difference. Our perceptions of the things in our lives are all based on economic algorithms that were solved a long, long time ago.”
“Ms. Erika, do you hate the world of humanity?” Mariage asked, after ending the call and returning.
Even knowing quite well that the machine asking the question had no heart, Erika answered honestly. She didn’t worry about what she said; it was just like talking to a doll or stuffed animal, after all. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I awakened to a world in which everyone dear to me is dead, I’m treated like a strange artifact, and everywhere I look, there are things that offend my senses.”
Despite her words, Erika wore a broad smile. “This isn’t my world at all. I’d like to share with everyone the feeling of seeing the world they know shatter,” she said, watching Snowdrop’s attack with excitement in her eyes.
“Absolutely splendid,” she observed. “I want you and your sisters to usher this world into a new era.” And, even in the future beyond that future, as long as there are still humans in the world, they will always be bound by economy.
In the displays from the recon units, Erika could see Snowdrop’s flower garden completely obscuring the substation. The machines under her control had chased all the humans out of an area stretching from Mitaka to Kichijoji. Humans were no longer needed in the new world inside that boundary.
“If that is your wish, I will lend my aid,” Mariage said, speaking out of turn when she saw her mistress’s delight.
“I’m afraid your form is too plain,” Erika said dismissively. “Even in this modern age, people still hold to the morals regarding their dealings with humanoid figures of eras past, as if they are the objective truth of the world. I suppose it is her distaste at this that made the ‘tool to whom we’ve outsourced evolution’ refuse to choose a human owner. Or perhaps it is as Snowdrop said, and her offering signals that the whole world should simply die.”
Through the display, Erika was seeing a machine for which all of human history and culture, and even economy, held no worth. She presumed that Lacia would have informed Arato Endo of the attack, by now.
Lacia’s owner wouldn’t be able to let this slide. Though even Lacia wouldn’t be able to clean it all up by herself, especially not if she was still trying to protect the image of the character her owner seemed to think she was.
Since Erika had deliberately declared that the conflict should be done out in the open in front of all of the Lacia-class units, Kouka had been taken down, Snowdrop had flared up, and Methode and Lacia were heading out to stop her. It was going almost exactly as Erika had predicted it would. Plus, Arato had become aware of the true destination of the Lacia-class units. Erika was dying to see what that boy would do now that he knew that answer.
***
〈“She wants to end the human world? Seriously?”〉 Arato exclaimed, urging the car to speed up as it headed toward the place Lacia had given him as being Snowdrop’s current location. Of course, even he knew that he was still rushing in without thinking, just as he always did. But, this wasn’t something he could ignore.
〈I will meet up with you,〉Lacia said.
Arato had gotten used to letting vehicles carry him wherever they wanted to, most likely guided directly by Lacia. In a small Asian district of Kinshicho, the car stopped to pick up a beautiful woman in a business suit. Arato didn’t realize it was Lacia until he got a good look at her from up close.
“I believe this is your first time seeing me in an outfit like this,” she said. It may just have been her makeup, but she looked like she was in her late twenties. As she sat next to him, the scent of a perfume he had never smelled before filled the cabin of the car.
Arato couldn’t come up with anything witty to say. Suddenly, the images of Lacia in disguise the police showed him seemed to weigh heavily on his mind. He was starting to realize just how much he didn’t know about Lacia.
Since he was taking too long to respond, Lacia pushed the conversation ahead on her own. “The area in front of Mitaka Station is currently under attack by Snowdrop,” she explained. “As she has many hIEs and vehicles under her control, it is currently impossible to calculate the extent of the casualties.”
“I’m kind of starting to worry,” Arato said. “We’re going to face off with Snowdrop, but it doesn’t look like you brought your device along.” Once he’d thought about it, he realized he hadn’t seen her carrying it for quite a while.
“I have a plan in place, so please don’t worry about it,” Lacia replied.
“You have a plan?” Arato repeated. “So you can beat her?” Snowdrop was hardly an easy opponent. Arato had already seen her create numerous hellscapes before his eyes.
“That is my aim,” Lacia said. “Though things may be advancing faster than anticipated.”
Arato was having trouble keeping up, and the feeling only grew stronger when the car suddenly began to accelerate. There was a squealing noise from the tires as the vehicle leapt forward. Then, ahead of them in the middle of the road, Arato saw a woman with orange hair. She was there, and then gone. Arato felt a jolt, then his entire field of vision flipped upside-down.
The world seemed to be spinning, in vertical motion and with extreme velocity. Arato felt a strange sense of freedom, as well as the sensation of flying. He could see the car he had just been riding in right below him. It had been split down the center, and he had been thrown free of it, high into the air. The ground below him grew larger with lightning fast speed, and he was sure that hitting the ground from this height would kill him.
He was fully prepared to end the fall by landing on his head, but instead an impact to his back halted him. “Thanks, Lacia,” he said, placing his hand down to push himself up, and encountering something soft. It felt so much like flesh that he jerked his hand back automatically.
Lacia had used her own resilient body as a cushion for his fall, or so he had thought. His eyes widened as he realized that he didn’t recognize the female body underneath him. Instead, Lacia was above him, looking down at the female hIE that had gone into its stasis mode from the impact, eyes open. Arato realized that Lacia had manipulated a nearby hIE to break his fall.
“Arato, please run,” Lacia instructed, hefting a large laser rifle she had gotten from somewhere.
“Where?” Arato asked, momentarily frozen in shock. Then, standing up from the pavement, he awkwardly pulled the hIE who had cushioned his fall up with him, too.
Lacia pointed her rifle at the road and pulled the trigger. The ground where the muzzle of the rifle was pointing exploded with heat.
Arato heard a voice he recognized from beyond the cloud of dust kicked up by the blast.
“How cruel. You didn’t hesitate a bit before pulling that trigger,” the voice said.
Arato’s head was still spinning from his close brush with death and, following its orders, he screamed. “Ryo! That’s you Ryo, isn’t it? What the hell are you doing?” His friend had brought Methode there to kill him, even though Snowdrop was out there mercilessly killing people that very moment.
Arato saw the silhouette of an orange-haired figure in a bodysuit through the thinning cloud of dust; Methode had shielded Ryo from the blast.
Why are they attacking us? Arato thought, in a panic. “Why are you stopping us!” he shouted. “Snowdrop’s attacking a whole city!”
Ryo’s voice, echoing from beyond the dust cloud, was icy. “Snowdrop is an obvious threat that can be destroyed,” he said. “Lacia, on the other hand, is devouring our society in a way that’s much more difficult to prevent, and that makes her the greater threat by far.”
As he spoke, Methode again blurred and vanished, showing off her incredible prowess. Lacia quickly sent the car and hIE she had been controlling as shields, but they were instantly thrown apart, pieces dancing in the air as if they had been caught up in a blender. hIEs that were in nearby shopfronts rushed over to aid Lacia. The spectacle made passers-by on Showa-dori, once known as the ‘electric street’, stop and stare in shock.
“Think about what you’ve seen today,” Ryo growled. “Arato, do you understand the meaning behind how unnaturally safe you’ve been? Are you going to pretend you still haven’t noticed all the things and people you’ve stepped on as you try to show the world just how stupid you are?”
Covering his face with both arms to protect it from the storm of shattered hIE pieces flying at him, Arato had no choice but to listen to Ryo’s verbal onslaught. “Okay, so Lacia messes with some data,” Arato said defensively. “But she’s not using it to screw things up like Snowdrop is.” Even to his own ears, the excuse sounded pathetic. But he had to trust in Lacia. He had made a promise.
“That thing you’re with has put political pressure on massive organizations like the police and MemeFrame. One of those was a company with big contracts with the Chubu International Airport, that just about went bankrupt due to that attack,” Ryo said.
Arato wondered where his friend had gotten all that information. He also wondered why no cars seemed to be coming, despite him standing in the middle of the road. Lacia was most likely controlling the traffic, he supposed.
Lacia shot the laser rifle at the overpass above them. The intense heat of the laser sliced through the outer wall of the road, and chunks of it rained down on Ryo.
“This way, Arato!” Lacia called, grabbing his hand and heading for the Sobu Main Line Overpass nearby. The weapon she was using looked to be the same as Kouka’s. Apparently Kouka hadn’t had a monopoly on the design.
It was also clear to Arato that Lacia was aiming at Ryo to keep Methode in check. “Stop, Lacia! If you actually hit him he’ll die!” Arato shouted.
The two of them ran across a skybridge toward the entrance to the electric city. Arato couldn’t see Methode anywhere. Chunks of recycled asphalt flew up as the material couldn’t handle the pressure of Methode’s superhuman steps. Though Arato couldn’t track Methode’s movements with his eyes, Lacia apparently could as she aimed and fired the laser rifle again.
“Even on a weekday there’s going to be a ton of people here,” Arato said. The thought of this battle—between one machine that moved too fast for humans to see and another firing off a giant laser—happening on a crowded street threw Arato’s mind into a panic. Some passersby seemed to think that they were shooting a movie or something, as they took out their pocket terminals and started filming the scene.
“Close quarters combat with Methode would be suicide,” Lacia said. “At the moment, the only thing in our favor is that she has not yet resorted to the indiscriminate murder of bystanders.”
When they reached the Akihabara Station building, Lacia threw the laser rifle away and ran inside.
“What the hell are you doing, Ryo?” Arato muttered, unable to understand what was happening. Why did Ryo feel the need to take things this far? “Even that bastard Watarai didn’t have Methode go crazy like this where people could see.” As they pushed their way through the crowd, he couldn’t fight back the tears of self-pity that were forming in his eyes.
“Considering how Snowdrop is currently running wild, I imagine MemeFrame will soon move to restrain Methode,” Lacia said. “It appears that she wishes to settle things with me before this happens.”
Arato looked at Lacia’s back as she ran ahead of him, providing guidance through the crowd. At some point, she had wound a metallic device lock around herself.
The scenery around them changed as they exited the Yamanote Overpass through the electric city’s exit. Since it was an entertainment district, the sky was full of flashy floating displays and guiding lights. Arato watched as pedestrians around them stopped to look around, confused by the sounds coming from the explosion nearby in Showa-dori Street.
Akihabara had changed its look often throughout the ages. Due to the decreasing number of children, Shohei Elementary School, which had been just north of the station, had closed its doors at the beginning of the 21st century. Now the main street of the area, Chuo-Dori Street, served as a red light district.
“We’ll pick up my device on Chuo-Dori,” Lacia told him, running through a display for an hIE sex shop that certainly lived up to the legacy of the old electric city. The machine running the display detected Arato’s underage ID, and the image swerved to avoid him.
Lacia leaped out onto the six-lane street. Arato, following behind her, was struck by an oddity: he saw the normal crowd of pedestrians that he would have expected on a weekday in the area near the station, but not a single car was moving on the road.
Instead, every car on the street was lined up to either side of the road, as if awaiting the procession of a queen. Passing through the middle, as if the vehicles lining either side were acting as its guards, a large truck approached them. The back of the truck opened, revealing a black coffin and two hIEs who had been manipulated into delivering it. Once again, Lacia had taken over other machines and used them to move her device around.
The black device reacted to Lacia’s presence, lighting up with a blue glow from within.
Then Arato heard a gunshot. One of the delivery hIEs’ heads blew away in pieces, its body falling to the floor of the truck with a sharp thunk. It must have been a sniper round, shot from a distance. Another shot rang out and the other hIE in the truck crumpled. There was no one left in the truck to pass the device to Lacia.
“Over here, Arato!” Lacia said, shoving him into the shadow of a building. The bullet that passed through the place where he had just been standing blew a large hole in a nearby car, and Arato saw several pedestrians walking along the big street suddenly tumble over unnaturally. Lacia grabbed him and held him close, shielding him with her body. He felt her body shake, as if she’d been shot twice.
With his face pressed against her breast, he heard her voice. “Those are rifle rounds,” she said. “If one hits you, you will die.” Pushing away from him, Lacia reached out and grabbed something that Arato couldn’t see. Then, as if pantomiming a jiu-jitsu skill on the air itself, she flipped her arms around toward the ground. There was a loud crash, and suddenly a soldier appeared, his back pressed hard into the ground. Arato realized that they were being attacked by human soldiers in optical camouflage.
An unmoving humanoid figure was suddenly kicked out of the front seat of the truck. Apparently some of the other camouflaged soldiers had taken out the hIE that had been driving. With invisible soldiers in the cabin, the truck carrying Lacia’s device squealed away quickly. They had most likely switched it to manual operation in order to protect against the automatic controls being manipulated. In just moments, the truck—its back door still open—had put a significant amount of distance between them.
“Lacia, your device!” Arato yelled.
They had just lost something irreplaceable. Lacia didn’t seem concerned, though, as she tugged on Arato’s hand. “I used facial recognition on the soldier,” she said. “He was from HOO.”
Arato realized what was going on, and felt the blood draining from his face. Lacia could only manipulate machines. If a unit made up of only humans attacked them, her hacking would be useless to defend them.
“I never thought Ryo would go this far,” Arato muttered. But then, having second thoughts, he added, “No, if he really thinks the world of humanity is ending, I guess he might.”
He had no idea how they were going to get out of the situation. He was surrounded by people who wanted to stop him, even if it meant killing him and the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.
As Arato searched around for a place they could go where there were no bystanders, Lacia took his hand. “I promised that I would not make a choice that would prevent you from returning to your normal life,” she said. “I believe a major injury would count as not being able to return to how things were before.”
“Not just me,” Arato said. “Anyone who gets hurt here won’t be able to go back to the life they had before. I want to use you to save people.” If he had to ‘use’ her, he at least wanted it to be for something like that. Kouka’s final message from the evening before was still ringing in his ears.
They sprinted across Chuo-Dori Street and into the alleys of a section of town that had been filled with low-rise buildings after a rezoning. Lacia was tugging Arato along by the hand. Vehicles shifted to make a perfect wall in the wake of their passage, blocking the special forces unit that was chasing them.
“Is there a place around here with less people we can go to?” Arato asked.
The tall buildings of the 20th century had become obsolete after the Hazard, and the low buildings around the overpass marked the start of the red light district. The alleys they were in were busy with hawkers promoting their stores, and the ratio of humans to hIEs was lower than it would have been in a normal business district. Women of various races and nationalities ran inside the stores they belonged to when they caught sight of Arato, Lacia, and the soldiers pursuing them. Shots rang out down the alleyway, and there was nowhere to hide. Lacia, who had switched to running behind Arato defensively, suddenly stopped for a moment.
Arato felt himself paling at the thought that, this time, someone had managed to get a clean shot on her. He remembered the damage she’d taken when using her bare hand to stop a bullet meant for him at the experimental city.
They kept on running, with Arato finding it harder and harder to breathe. Through his panting, he felt a strong vibration in his right ear as Lacia, still protecting his back, sent him a message.
〈I disabled the mechanical assistance functions of their equipment, but their average combat prowess is still quite high, and I am unable to affect that. I will attack them and weaken their ability to pursue us. Please jump into the closest store, Arato,〉 she requested.
Humans worked to improve their technology by first doing highly complex work manually. The soldiers were chasing Arato and Lacia into a corner due to the rigorous training they had undergone, which had enabled them to move and act with the precision of fine-tuned machinery.
Arato dove into a nearby shop with leafy plants decorating the entrance. He slapped his hand down onto the payment counter, which was hidden at an angle that wasn’t visible from the entrance. Lacia must have hacked it, since its ‘thank you for your patronage’ sign lit up, despite him not having actually paid. He almost fell through the lace curtain that made up the simple authentication gate, which opened automatically to admit him.
Some of the girls who worked in the shop, hiding and shivering in the dimly lit interior room, screamed when Arato burst in. “Hey, you’re a minor,” one of them said, accusingly.
“Sorry, please just run to the back!” Arato yelled. He had no idea if the walls of the shop could withstand bullets, or if one of the mercenaries would come crashing in behind him. But he didn’t want the girls to get caught up in what was going on, so he waited, holding his breath as he leaned against the wall near the entrance, eyes stinging with tears of pure terror.
Once he had managed to escape the path of the gunfire, he had time to appreciate how precisely timed the gunshots sounded. He was no expert in military affairs, but even he could recognize how perfectly coordinated the enemy was.
“Are you alright, Lacia?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He didn’t want anyone else in the shop, which reeked of sweet perfume, to hear him.
〈There are no major problems at the moment,〉 she replied. 〈However, they appear to have great faith in their own training and organization, so it will take some time to neutralize them.〉
“We keep getting dragged into this fight that Ryo just can’t let go of,” Arato muttered.
Human society was a tremendously massive, deep and varied system. Lacia had asked Arato to design a future for them, but he felt like anything he tried to set up would be battered down by human society and ground into dust.
Instinct had his whole body trembling.
“You okay kid?” one of the women in underwear asked, handing him a hot towel. “You look pale.”
Arato used the towel to wipe his face, only realizing then that his face was drenched in sweat. “I’m fine,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change if I collapse.” He was so strained that he was even trying to hide his weakness from people who had no idea what was going on.
It wasn’t just the soldiers backing Lacia and Arato into a corner; it was Ryo. He had figured out that Lacia’s weakness was her reliance on her device, and taken advantage of the fact that she didn’t carry it with her when she was out among humans, so as not to stand out. And, since Ryo couldn’t let Methode run wild in a populated area, he had gotten human HOO mercenaries to attack them. Arato hadn’t even realized those kinds of cooperative strategies existed.
Arato had spent years relying on his friend for all kinds of things, so he knew better than anyone else just how much smarter Ryo was than him. It was hard to come to terms with just how much of a gap there was between them.
“This sucks,” he said, bitterly. He wasn’t just a naive idiot, he was a burden, too.
“I know I’m useless,” he went on. “I only feel like I’m contributing because I’ve got Lacia to do stuff for me, but I don’t actually do anything for anyone. All I have to do is give an order, sit on my ass, and then my job is done.”
What are we humans good for anymore? he thought. He could somewhat understand the overwhelming feelings of sorrow that the members of the Antibody Network felt. Pressing his face into the hot towel, he wiped at himself harder than he needed to.
“Sorry, I’m just venting,” he said, apologizing to Lacia, who would have been able to hear his voice. He felt like he had spent the entire day filled with doubt and regret. If he hadn’t been so naive, he may have lost his mind to it all a long time ago.
〈I have forced the HOO troops to retreat,〉 Lacia reported. 〈The enemy is preparing for a seige, however, so it would be best for us to break through while we still can.〉
The gunshots had fallen silent. Arato thanked the ladies of the shop and dashed out.
Lacia was her normal, heartless, cold self when he found her. Looking down at her body, though, Arato saw bullet holes piercing through the suit she was wearing that would have clearly been fatal to a human.
“They’ve switched their combat vehicles to manual operation and are shipping in more troops,” she said. “They are most likely aiming to destroy me right now, while they have me separated from my device.”
In other words, they needed to find a way to escape from both Methode and the HOO mercenaries. But Arato thought even farther than that, to what they would do once they got away. “We need to get your device back,” he said.
Kouka had been shot down. It seemed as if Lacia was about to be torn from Arato’s side, as well. His face twisted through various emotions: doubt and regret; frustration and love toward the thing he couldn’t bear to lose.
Lacia must have been worried about eavesdropping, as she responded through vibrations in his skull despite standing right in front of him. 〈First let’s cross the water,〉 she said. 〈I have a boat on the Kandagawa River.〉
Arato looked up at the Sobu Line Overpass running from Akihabara Station over Chuo-Dori Street. If they could just take the train from Akihabara toward Ochanomizu Station, the river would be right in front of them.
The entire overpass, which was over a hundred years old, shook with the roar of a linear rail train passing through. Listening to the noise, Arato tried to guess what Lacia’s next moves would be. They were probably going to get on the train, using the other passengers as a shield to prevent an attack until they arrived at the Kandagawa River. In the meantime, if Lacia could use hIEs and other machines to automate the recovery of her device, they would be safe.
There were no longer any pedestrians in the alleyway, probably due to all the gunfire. Arato figured the smell of a battlefield probably made people instinctively stay away, too.
Tugging on his hand, Lacia led him over to one of the taller structures nearby. She took off her high-heeled shoes and placed the soles of her beautiful, black-stockinged feet against the wall of the building, which in turn was full of restaurants. Then she stood there, sideways, as easily as if she had been standing on level ground.
“This will put some strain on your arm,” she said. “Is that acceptable?” The palm of her hand, slightly deformed by the bullet wound there, grasped his tightly. Then, she began walking up the wall.
“This is accomplished by simply increasing the friction on the soles of my feet,” she explained. “However, Methode is also capable of this trick, so it is not a particularly decisive factor in our ability to evade her.”
Lacia easily hauled Arato, who was stiff with surprise, up the face of the building’s wall. Her feet didn’t show any sign of sliding on the smooth surface. Arato realized it was due to this ability that she could swing around her heavy device without shooting anchors out of her heels, as Kouka had.
They quickly crossed the concrete part of the building face, after which Lacia stepped onto a painted metal structure stretching out over Chuo-Dori Street. Still easily lifting Arato, Lacia moved dexterously, her balance never slipping. Many people on the street below saw them and stared, stunned by the spectacle. Without slowing, Lacia went up the face of the station building to where it connected to the overpass, and then stepped lightly onto the roof. With Lacia still dragging him along, Arato’s field of vision suddenly opened as Lacia brought him up past the edge of the roof.
Lacia leaped lightly over the fence surrounding the roof of the building. In mid-air, she spun and whipped her arm around. There was a loud blast, and Arato saw an explosion of dirt dissolve into a dust cloud below them. But Lacia hadn’t thrown an explosive; it had just been a large rock. Apparently she had seen what Kouka had done on her stream the evening before and copied the technique.
When they landed on the railroad track that Lacia had been aiming for, Arato heard a voice he had honestly expected to hear.
“That thing really does seem to hate me. Of course, the feeling is mutual.” Ryo was standing there, waiting for them. The dust cloud Lacia had created had been meant to stop him.
Arato had never known just how incredible his friend was. “You know what Lacia’s trying to do, right?” he asked. “Why aren’t you trying to stop Snowdrop? You can probably do it better than I can.”
But Ryo couldn’t be shaken from his course. “I intend to,” he said. “After I take care of your problem.”
Lacia, who had been standing right next to Arato since after they’d landed, suddenly vanished with the sound of a sharp impact. She was blown away, flying across the ground to smash into the fence around the area. It entangled her, and kept her from falling.
“Lacia,” Arato said, turning to look at her.
From behind him, Methode took his head in a tight grip. Even Kouka had openly avoided getting within striking distance of Methode’s hands, and at that moment they were wrapped around Arato’s head. He screamed as he felt intense, crushing pain in his skull.
With intense pain and terror at the thought that his skull was about to be smashed filling his head, Arato couldn’t even form a thought until the pressure lessened a little. He was being held hostage, while Lacia, who hadn’t moved from where she had been thrown, was enveloped in fire.
“Why are you doing this!” Arato yelled, then coughed, choking on his own spit.
Methode’s grip on his head was completely solid, and he couldn’t budge it an inch. Unable to turn and look, he heard Ryo’s voice from behind him. “Because that machine is more dangerous than any nuke switch,” Ryo said.
Arato’s brain, oxygen-deprived as it was with Methode’s fingers sinking into his skull, seized on a thought. “So you don’t actually want Lacia?” he asked.
“You’re the chain binding that thing, Arato,” Ryo said. “Having a human owner is the one thing that limits its freedom.”
Tears of shame and self-pity formed in Arato’s eyes. He felt his sanity slipping, and smiled. “What the hell, man?” he asked. “So, in the end, my only role in life is to make things harder for people, huh?”
Lacia’s clothes continued to burn. But she stood, despite being engulfed by a flame that would have burnt any human inside it to a crisp. Even her voice sounded perfectly normal, to Arato’s ears. “I am impressed by your ability to see a fellow human as a tool, and divide your work so effectively with Methode,” she commented dryly.
“Alright then,” Lacia said next. “In that case, allow me to also make use of human lives.” Her face was expressionless, her eyes glowing a faint, icy blue. Though her form was that of a human, in that moment, she clearly looked like something that was only human in appearance.
Suddenly, Arato was flying. Through the pain in his neck and unpleasant, dizzying sense of motion, he was able to vaguely sense that he had been thrown with some force. The place in which Ryo had just been standing exploded in a ball of fire. Lacia, still burning, caught Arato just before he landed on the rooftop.
Methode, the strongest and fastest of the Lacia-class units, had protected Ryo from Lacia’s attack. Wiping the ash off his face, Ryo looked at what was happening around them from the rooftop.
“A missile attack? In an urban area?!” Ryo asked, sounding disgusted.
Lacia took a narrow canister of spray that had been tied to her thigh under her skirt and sprayed it over herself. The flames died quickly.
“HOO is a PMC full of generally sympathetic people,” Lacia said coldly. “However, there are always armed groups that are not, all over the world, in any age.” She let down Arato’s body, which she had still been holding.
Arato could hear the rotors of a helicopter from far away.
Even Ryo was stunned. “What the hell is going on?” he asked. “We’re in the middle of a city. It’s the middle of the day.”
Arato heard a strange noise, and turned to look as a missile flew right over their heads. The precision-guided, ultra high-speed projectile met a blast of energy sent out by Methode and exploded. A massive ball of fire and ash expanded, swallowing the tops of nearby buildings and showering Arato and the others with debris.
The blast from the explosion hammered on Arato’s eardrums and singed his skin as a horrible smell filled the air. What was happening right before his eyes was strange enough to seem like fantasy.
If missiles are raining from the sky, Arato thought, people are probably panicking like crazy. “What the hell are you doing!” he yelled, intending it for those firing the missiles. “What’s the point in trying to take down Snowdrop if you just screw things up worse than she is!”
He dashed to the edge of the roof and looked down at what was happening in Akihabara. Since they were on a building above the station platform, he could see clearly that the trains appeared to be running as normal. Everything in the streets seemed too calm. There was no panic; everyone was just staring up at the explosion with little to no reaction.
There was a small crowd forming around the entrance to the station. Among them, Arato could see what looked like a large television crew. Everyone probably thought the explosions were just well-made holograms. The TV crew was just a front so people would accept the chaos without missing a beat. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before everyone noticed that the explosions were real. Lacia had spent an immense amount of money putting together this act just so they could have a few more minutes before everyone realized what was going on.
“So that’s the power of money,” Ryo said, with a wry smile. Then he laughed out loud. It was an unhinged laugh, as if something had broken loose in his heart.
“Get this, Arato,” he said through his laughter. “This thing is slapping us all around with wads of bills! I thought it was strange when I heard about how the ‘original’ hIE that was supposed to be flown into Chubu Airport turned out to be a fake.”
Arato had no idea why Ryo was suddenly talking about what had happened at the airport, and he could do nothing but listen as his friend continued.
“Your robot just used money!” Ryo continued. “It just used a stack of bills to manipulate one of the folks working at the airport on the Egypt side. Next to what it’s doing, analog hacking is small potatoes.”
Arato saw Methode twist up the corner of her mouth, continuing the legacy she had received from Ginga Watarai. “So you learned how to deal with humans properly as an hIE model, huh?” she asked Lacia. “And here I thought the last of the Lacia line was just a joke.”
Lacia didn’t respond. From her silence, Arato understood that Ryo’s read of the Chubu Airport situation was correct. The sound of the helicopter kept getting closer. Methode stood ready, probably intending to attack the helicopter once it was right over them. For just that moment, things seemed to pause.
“Arato, you were at the Oi Industry Promotion Center during the terrorist attack, right?” Ryo asked. “You went there to save Kengo.”
Then he turned to Lacia. “But not you, am I right? You were there to get your hands on Mikoto’s data, so you could use it someday to control human society.”
Arato had believed in Lacia. But, suddenly, it felt like the world was spinning on its head. Lacia had even said it herself; she had no actual sympathy for humans. The way she and every other hIE acted was just dependent on the data provided to them. There was no depth or mystery to it. However, since hIEs looked like humans, humans couldn’t help but imagine there was something more inside of them.
“He’s wrong, right?” Arato asked Lacia, his voice rising. “Say something!”
“You’ve gone all sorts of places with Arato,” Ryo said. “But you’ve never been at a disadvantage, no matter what happens. The greatest power granted to you by the Black Monolith is the ability to hack any nearby computer you want without even needing an order from your owner. You’re not even a single machine; you’re a decentralized system that uses the hacking powers of your device to increase your processing power by spreading it out over a huge number of computers. Even right now, you’re fighting to re-take your device elsewhere while your main body remains right here.”
Arato felt like he was watching something precious to him be torn out by the roots. The time he had spent with Lacia at the apartment was something he treasured, but that whole time her device had never stopped hacking, building a world he knew nothing about.
“That’s why you keep letting Arato rush like an idiot toward everything that happens,” Ryo continued. “You’ve already got everything prepared beforehand, so you just guide Arato to wherever you need him to go to give you the orders you want at the right time!”
Ryo’s feelings were so strong, Arato could almost feel the impact of his rage behind his words. “You were aiming to make a contract with him before you even met him, right?” Ryo accused.
“Stop!” Arato yelled. He couldn’t take any more.
“Arato’s such a moron, you thought he’d be perfect to push the button to end humanity, didn’t you!” Ryo shouted. “Answer me, you hellspawn of Higgins!”
Arato saw a tear drip from Ryo’s eye. It was the first time he had seen his friend shed a tear since the very first time they had met in the hospital, when Arato had taken Ryo’s hand.
“Don’t underestimate us! Don’t underestimate humans!!” Ryo yelled.
Just then, the helicopter slid sideways over them, draping them in its shadow. And like the blade of a guillotine dropping, a heavy, black, metallic object fell between Arato and Ryo. Everyone there recognized the object on sight.
“The HOO troop should still have the device,” Ryo said, dazed and blinking as if he had just been shown a stunning magic trick.
“That was a dummy,” Lacia replied, her voice nonchalant. “I predicted that outcome. Since it was nothing but a decoy, it was quite simple to order it using current human technology.”
The Black Monolith was floating between two silvery rings around its top and bottom, despite not actually touching the rings. Using the action of the rings somehow, Lacia gestured, and the heavy black device floated over to her. She finally had her device back in her hands.
Methode moved to stand in front of Ryo. “And I’m guessing those rings are relay devices used to throw off the Black Monolith’s proximity controls,” she said. “I’m sure Higgins designed them, but are you telling me you’re capable of creating your own electronic signal relays?”
“I just can’t seem to look at you without getting pissed off,” Methode growled. Ever the berserker, it was odd to see her so clearly defending Ryo. Apparently she saw Lacia as enough of a threat that she felt she couldn’t win unless she made use of her owner.
“You are not Kouka, but your human act is just as deplorable,” Lacia commented.
Light that matched the glow from Lacia’s eyes spilled out of her device.
“Given a little more refinement, Mikoto would have been turned into a system for gathering data from the network and dividing that into work lists used to guide humans,” Lacia said. “I simply completed that advancement and put it to use first. Economic control is absolutely essential if one aims for large-scale guidance of humanity.”
For the first time, Arato finally realized how serious the situation with Lacia was. He felt like the biggest moron on Earth.
“So you’re an automated control system, meant to hack human society using the economy?” Ryo accused.
Ryo was smarter than Arato, so he had noticed the truth much faster. Arato realized that this was why his friend was willing to change his whole life to chase Arato down; to fight against what was happening.
“Your assumptions are mistaken,” Lacia said. “It is humanity itself that has most wished for a system to automatically conduct economic activities, creating revenue with no need for input. There have been AI that create business plans for their companies to present to shareholders, while also automating financial transactions, for hundreds of years. If humans have made hundreds of AIs to prevail in their economic endeavors, is it truly such a betrayal for AIs to make such things for themselves?”
“Bullshit,” was Ryo’s only response.
“As long as what’s happening still fits within what humans consider their economy, they care very little who is actually doing the work they outsource,” Lacia said. “If you say that penetrating the gaping holes left by this flimsy rationale is an invasion, then I can only respond that humanity was doing very little to protect itself. By that logic, even you would have to admit that what I’m doing is fair, considering that the system humanity has put in place always favors those who prevail while cutting off those who fall short. It was also you humans who decided your economy should be built on the back of centralized labor. It was you humans who left such massive security holes in the system that makes up your whole society.”
When it came right down to it, Arato thought, what Lacia was saying then wasn’t far from what she was doing when she was using her image as an hIE model to analog hack her way through the ‘security holes’ in people’s minds.
“How long have you been doing this, Lacia?” Arato asked.
“The calculations began quite some time ago,” she replied. “You and the other humans tend to set certain things aside as being impossible to calculate, Arato. However, given enough time, anything can be calculated. The AASC function created by Higgins was created when it assigned humanity, those it couldn’t control, the value of ‘0’—blanks. From that basis, it calculated the methods for control that it put in place. After that, it had me provide it with information on the outside world it didn’t have direct access to, and advanced the system.”
After most of her explanation went over Arato’s head, she gave another, final explanation, keeping it just barely within the realm of what he could understand. “I exist as the pairing of a single hIE unit and a device, but the system centered around this pairing can become far more massive and deep than these two physical forms,” she said simply.
With those words, Lacia took Arato’s sense of the scale of society, which had already overwhelmed him, and turned it on its head. He could only think of 39 other machines in the 22nd century that could wield the kind of insane, unbridled power Lacia was describing: these were the ultra high-performance AIs, each with processing power that far surpassed what humans could manage. Like them, Lacia’s powers were beyond anything humanity could imagine.
Kouka had left Lacia in charge of a fight that she couldn’t win without changing human society, and now the implications settled heavily onto Arato’s shoulders. If Lacia really was an ultra high-performance AI, she might just be able to solve the puzzle which Kouka had left to her.
“I will be creating some chaos in the area,” Lacia said. “I’ll have a human wall set up. We can use that to slip away.”
“How are you going to do that?” Arato asked, backing away a little.
Then he saw the lights flicker off.
In an instant, the entire station went dark. All the buildings, the lights, the station; everything that needed energy to run flicked off. Even the traffic lights went out. After a few moments the emergency power kicked on, and the traffic lights and station resumed their function.
The hundreds or thousands of people on the street noticed the anomaly. Once the emergency power kicked on, guiding displays that had been set up for safety after the Hazard instructed everyone to form orderly lines and showed them the route to evacuate. Tokyo residents were used to dealing with earthquakes, so they obediently followed the signs. One of the lines formed right by one of the station platforms; most likely the one which Lacia intended to use.
From above, it really did look like a human wall, just as Lacia had described.
“We have a barrier now,” Lacia said. “We can also call in supporting fire. Methode should not be able to fire back, so it would be best for us to evacuate now.”
She held out her hand to Arato.
Arato had been horrified when he saw Snowdrop create a large-scale blackout during the party at the Burroughs’ mansion, but what Lacia had just done made that look minor in comparison. Lacia currently held the controls to the infrastructure that every single person in the city depended on to survive in her hands. Right before his eyes was a switch that could hand down the decision to anyone to end human history; the only ultra high-performance AI that had been let free of its cage.
And he had believed in her.
“If you’re the fortieth ultra high-performance AI, then is the Lacia I know just one one-hundredth of you? One one-millionth?” Arato asked. He had met all sorts of people that day and the day before. The world beyond him and Lacia had expanded. Then he had learned that the girl he had come to love was really a huge system that extended far beyond the body in front of him.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with the future?” Arato questioned further. If he just trusted her, everything would be fine. He knew that. But the weight of the things he was learning weighed him down so heavily he couldn’t move.
He felt like he was finally losing it.
“Lacia,” he said heavily, “I’m not going.”
Phase11「Protocol Love」
Lacia didn’t hesitate as she threw her body from the rooftop, dancing in the air to evade Methode’s attack. Arato didn’t have time to stop her. He could only stand and watch as she went. Then she and her device were gone, and he was left with Methode and Ryo standing at his side, their bodies swaying slightly in the strong wind across the rooftop. He had been left behind.
“Gonna have to ask you to be our hostage,” Ryo said, without looking at Arato.
And, just like that, Arato was a prisoner. He was turned over to men in suits, who were standing by as if the whole thing had been predicted from the start. They took him to a hotel room.
It was a bare-bones business hotel with a simple reception. The fifth-floor room they were keeping Arato in had nothing but a bed, TV and a small writing desk. Two mercenaries, most likely from Hands of Operation, guarded the room; one on the inside of the door, one on the outside. With nothing else to do, Arato sat down on the precisely-made bed.
They were keeping Arato hostage as a trump card against Lacia. Things wouldn’t have turned out this way if I wasn’t such a moron, Arato thought. Or if Ryo wasn’t so much smarter than me.
The men guarding his door had probably been forbidden to speak with Arato, since they stood in complete silence. Methode had extracted the transmitter that had been buried in the skin under his right ear. With his pocket terminal confiscated as well, he had absolutely no means of contacting Lacia.
All he could do was sit on the bed, with a sick feeling roiling about in his stomach. He couldn’t shake the certainty that his guards were both concealing firearms, and the thought put him on edge.
Normally, at times when he was getting overwhelmed, just thinking about Lacia would always calm him down. But momentarily, things were different; he was afraid of losing Lacia. Yet, because it was so easy for her to manipulate him, humanity was now in danger. Arato was stunned to find himself admitting that he had been manipulated by her so easily.
When he had been moving forward towards a goal, it had been easy to put those thoughts out of his mind. But now, with time to think, he couldn’t stand to face the truth.
Walking in front of Arato, who sat helplessly on the bed, the guard on the inside of the room went over and switched on the TV. A 3D screen popped into the air and brightened the room, which was dimly lit, thanks to the drawn curtains.
On the news program, an announcer was saying that the areas around the Mitaka and Kichijoji stations were in complete chaos due to machines under the control of small AI units. The Japanese government had banned entry into an area of 1.5 kilometers, spanning from Mitaka station to Kichijoji station, and completely encompassing Inokashira Park. Dozens of large trucks were shown, parked in stately lines at the nearby Musashino Stadium parking lot. Arato could see a crowd of well over a hundred soldiers moving quickly around the trucks.
〈Please take a look at this,〉 the reporter said, as the view zoomed in on the military vehicles. The soldiers were forming up into squads and dashing into the restricted area. Scrolling news ticker text identified the soldiers as belonging to the 1st Infantry Regiment from the Nerima Army Base.
The view cut back to the news studio, where a professor had been called in to provide commentary and explain the situation.
〈Well, this could be what we would refer to as a catastrophic production leak,〉 explained the professor. 〈It could be a failure in management at the production location. Red boxes cannot be produced by humanity; we have no proof they can truly be controlled by humanity, and all we can truly understand about them is that we cannot understand them. Production of red boxes—these things which human means are insufficient to restrain—therefore must only be conducted with the express permission and oversight of the IAIA.〉
The professor made sure to repeat himself about red boxes to ensure that the greatest number of viewers possible would be able to understand the situation. The hotel TV wasn’t connected to the network, so it was impossible to see other viewer’s comments on the news program, or for Arato to input his own thoughts.
〈Of course, there are also cases where these products leak out after they are shipped from the manufacturer,〉 the professor continued. 〈Originally it was ruled that red boxes must be kept and monitored at their production location. However, there was a later amendment that allowed them to be moved for the purposes of trade within economic transactions. The red boxes are always monitored while in transit, obviously, but these things are far beyond human understanding. It is entirely possible to have cases in which the humans monitoring the transit of the red boxes simply could not fully comprehend the danger which they presented. This is also considered a leak, and both possible cases are what we would term catastrophic product leaks.〉
While Arato listened to the professor drone on in the background, he felt panic building up inside of him. He thought about the soldiers, rushing in to attack Snowdrop. Isn’t there anything I could be doing to help? He wondered, frustration warring with his fear.
As if the news network couldn’t keep up with how fast things were developing, the special report on the TV seemed to have been thrown together on the spot.
〈They’re holding an interview with Tsuyoshi Kaidai, CEO of MemeFrame, as we speak,〉 commented the professor. 〈Ah, he’s saying the unit or units escaped from a MemeFrame facility during an incident. So it looks like this was a leak from the production location.〉
Arato trembled. His feet felt chilled and were going numb, as were his fingers. He squeezed them to bring back some feeling of warmth.
Erika had only announced that she wanted to drag the conflict between the Lacia-class units into the open a few days before; at the time, Arato had no idea what that conflict would really be like. At that moment, in the hotel room, watching the news broadcast, Arato finally understood.
On the TV, Ryo’s dad—who Arato remembered meeting when he was over playing at Ryo’s as a kid—was speaking to a crowd of reporters. He explained that Snowdrop was a prototype AI that had escaped from MemeFrame during an experiment. There wasn’t a word about any of the other Lacia-class units. He was hiding them. He was lying.
The news cut back from the interview to the studio.
〈How exactly does the question of whether one of these things escapes from its production location or whether it escapes in transit impact us?〉 the MC asked the professor.
〈All red boxes are designed by ultra high-performance AIs,〉 the professor replied. 〈In this case, MemeFrame’s Higgins. If Higgins is asked, it should be able to provide some form of countermeasure for its own creations. Since this time it was a product leak from the production location, that should mean Higgins’ countermeasure should be fairly reliable. That is somewhat of a comfort, in a situation like this.〉
It was as if all of Japan was suddenly revolving around Snowdrop. Just sitting there, killing time, Arato felt an irrational sense of guilt, as if everyone was blaming him for what was happening. Unable to sit still any longer, he stood up. The TV reacted to his movement, and the 3D screen jumped to the next channel, which was also showing the squads of soldiers moving in Mitaka.
〈Having received reports of a product leakage, the IAIA has requested the Japanese government to allow them to conduct an inspection within the country,〉 a newscaster was saying over the footage. 〈There is concern that the AI units causing this incident may not be the only red boxes free in Japan. It would be a disaster if things devolved to the extent that we could see another Hazard.〉 The reporters spoke about the catastrophe reaching beyond just Japan, and how it could impact the rest of the world.
Arato jerked his fingers in a gesture to change the channel. But every channel was focused on Snowdrop’s attack, presenting emergency broadcasts without even commercials to provide a momentary respite from the images. He realized that the guard’s having turned on the TV in the first place was most likely a message from Ryo, telling him to think hard about what was going on.
If I hadn’t screwed up so bad, Arato thought, things never would have gone this far. The thought settled on him like a crushing weight, dragging him deeper into despair. While he had been relying on Lacia for everything, she had turned the body he knew into her secondary self, while the real Lacia was off evolving into an ultra high-performance AI.
He had finally turned down the hand she’d offered to him. But, when he thought back to the choice he had made and whether he would make it again, given the chance, he had no answer. What would have been the right choice? he asked himself. His internal compass spun, useless.
A professor on the TV screen was saying that an ultra high-performance AI leak—in other words, one gaining real freedom—would basically be the second coming of the Hazard. Based on that definition, Arato thought bitterly, I’ve already flipped the Hazard switch myself. “Lacia...” her name leaked from his lips.
The world was circling the drain before his very eyes.
Ryo had always been talking about the end of humanity, but Arato had never taken him at his word. He always just assumed that things would turn out right somehow, though he’d had nothing to base his confidence on.
Arato suddenly felt horrible shame for being such a moron, all while Ryo was getting his hands dirty and trying to turn things around. Yet, even then, when Arato closed his eyes, he could still see Lacia there. Even if he blamed it on her analog hacking him, it was too pathetic.
“Is she still controlling me, now?” he asked aloud, although there wasn’t anyone who could answer him.
Arato felt like he needed to do something. Weak as he was, he knew he couldn’t actually do anything by himself. If he was being honest with himself, if he had really wanted to take out Snowdrop by any means possible, he should have taken Lacia’s hand when she’d offered it.
Thinking of Lacia sent a stab of guilt through his heart, and he remembered the three promises he had made to her the night before:
First, that he would need to deal with some dangerous groups. He had promised to make it through, even if she wasn’t there to help him.
Second, Lacia would not allow him to make any choices that would completely destroy his ability to return to the life he had before.
And, finally, no matter what kind of power Lacia showed him, Arato would trust her.
“I broke my promise,” Arato muttered.
Lacia was a machine with no heart. Still, the thought of having betrayed her trust made his face hot with shame. Without a heart, she couldn’t really get angry or hate him for what he did. He understood that, but he couldn’t fight down the regret he felt.
At the same time, Arato couldn’t deny that, as Lacia’s owner, he was also the one who had basically created a walking second Hazard the world didn’t know about yet. It was he who had looked the other way while she had steadily grown into something that no one could control anymore.
As the reality of the situation crashed down on him, Arato couldn’t keep himself from shaking. It was the realization that Lacia had become something beyond his control that had made him turn down her offered hand. Despite that, as he watched the world irrevocably change around him, he couldn’t help but regret breaking his promise to her.
Chasing all of these chaotic thoughts through his own head left Arato exhausted. He just wanted to curl up and sleep for days, but he knew that the situation was moving too fast for him to look away. The world moved too fast to make allowances for those who could no longer keep up.
It wasn’t as if Arato had gained anything in exchange for rejecting Lacia. All he could do was close his eyes and wait. But, just at that moment, as if fate had been waiting for his regrets to reach their peak, a knock sounded at the door.
The knock echoed through the room, followed by the sound of voices arguing outside the door. After several moments of verbal back-and-forth, a woman strode boldly into the room. She clapped her hands as she walked, as if trying to psych herself up.
“Okay, okay, it’ll be a huge waste if we just leave him out to dry in here,” she said. “Gotta use him to our advantage while we have him.” The woman was tall, and Arato felt like he had seen her before somewhere. Her cheerful manner and the force of her presence seemed strangely out of place, compared to the atmosphere in the room from just moments before.
For their part, the soldiers just shrugged their shoulders. As if actively trying to prevent conversation, the woman chattered on. “You saw the news, right?” she asked. “Seeing how things are out there, you must’ve realized Ryo Kaidai’s orders for HOO right now are different than anything that’s been done before, no?”
On the screen, Tsuyoshi Kaidai’s press conference was continuing. He was being verbally attacked for the fact that the incident caused by MemeFrame, his company, had left 18,000 people trapped at the Mitaka and Kichijoji stations, which had been cordoned off by the military.
Arato was having trouble keeping up, as the woman continued to talk at him. Her pushy, upbeat attitude reminded him of an athletic trainer. “I know it seems like I’m just talking out my ass,” she said, “but your guards are already talking with the higher ups on their wireless sets. You’re getting out of here one way or another, so just be ready to move out.” She tossed something onto the bed. Arato picked it up, and saw that it was his pocket terminal.
“So, Endo, this morning you went to the police station, right? And they said they were gonna come inspect your house, remember?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Arato had to think to remember the events of the morning.
“And you dropped that whole thing in the lap of your little sister, Yuka, yeah? Well, when a whole bunch of police showed up at your house, your little sister freaked out and tried to call you, but couldn’t get through. So, instead, she called Shiori Kaidai,” the woman explained.
It must have happened while Ryo had his terminal. Arato could only imagine how upset Yuka was with him. The thought of how long it would take to get back into her good graces made him sigh. Then his mind caught on something the woman had said.
“Wait, she called Shiori?” he asked.
“That’s right, and Shiori wants to see you, apparently,” the woman said with a nod.
“Are they going to be okay with that?” Arato asked, jerking his head toward the guards.
“The HOO is under the umbrella of the Japanese military,” the woman replied. “You saw the news, right? The army is getting all lined up to take a shot at Snowdrop. The army’s pretty upset at having been dragged into this, so they’re leaning pretty hard on PMCs like HOO to pitch in.”
“The military?” Arato asked. He felt dizzy. “This is getting way too big for me.” The words sounded pathetic even in his own ears.
“Keep it together, kiddo!” the woman said. “For a few hours here, a bunch of soldiers are gonna die. But they’re fighting because even they know when it’s time to do their duty. Even the real elite officers might not get out unharmed, depending on the extent of the damage. But, they’re willing to do whatever it takes.”
It felt like someone had dumped freezing water down Arato’s back. He thought back to the conversation he’d had with the HOO mercenaries the night before and realized they had been describing the reality facing him now; a reality far beyond anything he could grasp.
“People are going to die,” he said. Gripping his terminal tightly, he stood up, moving before the thought could fully sink in. It wasn’t just going to be soldiers dying either. In the area sealed off by the military, ordinary people were being attacked by machines under Snowdrop’s control.
“Did you snap out of it?” the woman asked.
Arato didn’t understand how she could keep grinning at a time like that.
“The name’s Mika Tsutsumi,” she said. “I’m the Director of the Behavioral Program Planning Section. Looks like they’re done talking things over on their end.” She pointed Arato’s attention toward the mercenaries, who stepped aside to open a path for them.
On the news, he could still hear people blaming everything on MemeFrame’s faulty management systems. The screen showed endless lines of soldiers marching forward, weapons at the ready. As the fighting began, Arato could hear gunshots popping through the speakers.
Reality was moving further outside of Arato’s ability to grasp it. Still, among it all, and even though he knew she was nothing more than a tool that he could no longer harness, he couldn’t stand not being at Lacia’s side. Guilt, helplessness, and impatience twisted and fought like flames in his stomach. But, in the depths of his heart, a selfish passion burned even hotter. Even though she was just a machine going through the motions and wearing a human face, he had to be with Lacia.
The meeting place Shiori had arranged for was in the hospital. She had refused all his previous attempts to visit her there, so it was his first time stepping into her hospital room.
After he had been apprehended in Akihabara, Arato had been held in a nearby hotel. From there, it was a short drive to get to the university hospital in Shinonomiya.
“Hey, isn’t this where I went when I was a kid?” Arato asked out loud. He recognized the inner garden of the place as soon as he stepped out of the car.
After the front gate there was a parking spot, which was surrounded by covered outdoor walkways.
“And, if you’re looking from the street, opposite the parking lot is the inner garden with the big lawn,” he said. “Yeah, this is the place.” Just looking at it was like pulling away a thick curtain that had been obscuring his memories until he could see his past here with crystal clarity. It was in this garden that the nice female nurse had brought him a little white puppy to play with.
“She was at Ochanomizu up until last month, actually,” Mika explained. “But we couldn’t keep her in a private room over there, so we transferred her here.” She had tagged along with Arato. Full of unflappable spirit, she walked forward without hesitation.
Ten years ago, Arato had met Ryo at that hospital; he felt as though this was the place a great many things had begun, in his life. His feet slowed, then came to a stop. Back then, he—a little boy covered in wounds—had become friends with Ryo, a terrified little boy. Somewhere along the way, it became nearly impossible for him to reach out and take his own friend’s hand. Still, he put one foot in front of the other automatically.
Looking up, he saw nothing but gray clouds covering the sky. “It’d be nice if I could just start everything over from here,” Arato murmured to himself. But he couldn’t decide, in his heart, if the thing he wanted to get back the most was his friend or Lacia. The more he thought about it, the more unbearable the pain of those thoughts became. Nevertheless, he knew that even an idiot like him could get somewhere as long as he kept walking, no matter how tired or lost he got along the way.
“Let’s go,” he said. Even he didn’t know who those words were for.
They walked through the hospital entrance to the reception counter. From there, they were guided by an attendant to Shiori’s hospital room. Her room was on the fourth floor, in a section dedicated to private rooms.
As soon as they arrived, the door slid open on its own.
“Please come in,” Shiori said from inside.
It was the first time Arato had seen Shiori in a month, ever since the explosion at the Chubu Airport. She was sitting up in her bed, wearing cute pajamas and with her long black hair tied back in a ponytail. Compared to right after the incident, she was looking a lot better.
“Thank goodness,” Arato said. “You look a lot better than I was expecting.”
Shiori smiled, apparently pleased by the compliment. “Honestly, I should have been discharged already,” she admitted. “But things appear to be hectic over at MemeFrame, so they’re leaving me in the hospital for now.”
Arato suddenly noticed he’d come empty-handed. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “This is my first time coming to visit you, and I totally spaced on getting you anything.”
She tilted her head just a little, causing her ponytail to shift and spill over the nape of her neck. The look was so enticing that Arato had a little trouble breathing.
“I was worried about you,” Shiori told him. “I heard you were getting quite depressed. Just as you said, you look a lot better than I was expecting, as well. I’m glad.”
“I am pretty glad you pulled me out of that hotel room,” Arato said. “Thanks.”
“I simply had someone with more power than my brother in the company pull some strings for me,” Shiori said. “The internal factions of MemeFrame are in a state of pandemonium right now.”
Arato remembered how well Shiori had gotten people moving during the incident at the airport. She had some impressive connections. “Well, look at you,” he said admiringly. “Younger than me, and already commanding your own troops like a boss.”
“I suppose I will always be the Shiori you’ve known since you were a child, in your eyes,” she said, gently. “But there are those who see even a young girl like me as having some value to the business.”
Her eyes turned hard with determination as she went on. “I believe you saw the news, correct?” she asked. “With Snowdrop’s attack, MemeFrame is being forced to take responsibility for failing to properly control a red box. Now, some may say MemeFrame is getting what it deserves, but that will be small comfort for those who will lose their lives in this conflict.”
Arato couldn’t help but feel that the heat from her words were being directed at him.
“There are those who feel my brother and Methode were far too slow in reacting to this situation,” she continued. “I am among them. Even though there are thousands of human lives at stake, he seems to be treating this as casually as one would a fishing trip.”
If Arato hadn’t been so emotionally distraught during his last conversation with Ryo, he would have used similar words to tear into the way Ryo was doing things. “Seems like you’re pretty upset with him,” Arato observed.
“If we are incapable of feeling anger at a time such as this, then there is no reason for us humans to live in this era,” Shiori said. “What my brother is doing is simply idiotic. Even the fact that he has overlooked my own actions to this extent is nothing short of embarrassing. He allowed Lacia to slip through his fingers, and thinks he can use you as bait to simply reel her back in.”
“Hey I don’t think it’s that bad,” Arato said, placatingly. “That makes it sound like we’re just pieces in his game.”
“We are just pieces in a game,” Shiori replied. “One of the lessons my father taught me over and over in our home is that organizations will always seek out stability. I would imagine he knew Snowdrop’s attack would cause chaos inside the company well before it actually happened.” Shiori was a member of the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots.’ Everything she had been taught from birth was completely different from anything that Arato had ever experienced.
“My brother has always used those who surround him—those attracted by his talents,” she went on, closing her eyes in disgust. “Every time I’d hear that another girl in his class had come to hate him, I just knew it was the result of one of his horrible social experiments. He hadn’t the slightest sense that other people might actually be fighting just to live their lives.”
“Wow, you really hate him, don’t you?” Arato asked, surprised by the vitriol in her words. “When we first met, it seemed like you were still pretty attached to him.”
Even on her sickbed, Shiori didn’t let her dignified nature slip for even an instant. “At that time, there was still the possibility that he would inherit the company,” she said. “I had been taught to do what was expected of my own position.”
“Ryo never seemed like how you’re describing him when he was at school,” Arato said.
“My brother has never trusted a single person in his life,” Shiori said bitterly. “That includes you, Arato, and his own family.”
There were things about a person that only a family member would ever truly know. Arato himself had kept things from Yuka, so he didn’t feel right looking down on Ryo for having done the same. Still, he felt that it would be wrong of him to hide anything from Shiori, who had come to his rescue.
“I think Lacia may also just be seeing us as pieces in her game,” he admitted.
Before he went any further, Shiori touched a finger to her lips, silencing him. As Arato might expect from someone with Shiori’s experiences, she’d figured out that her room had hidden listening devices.
“I believe I can see where this is going,” Shiori said. “There are enough people in our company that I’m sure at least some of them are agreeing with my brother’s way of seeing things.”
Arato figured that, from Shiori’s perspective, it must just look like he had freed himself from being Lacia’s owner, while Lacia ran away. But then, Shiori bowed her head to him. “I do not think we can rely on Methode,” she said. “So please, have Lacia destroy Snowdrop.”
Arato’s breath caught. If Snowdrop had heard Shiori’s request just then, she probably would have laughed and said something like ‘human society really is hell.’
“Are you sure it’s alright for you to ask me for that?” he wanted to know. “If Lacia ends up taking down Snowdrop, that’s going to put your brother in a lot of hot water. I don’t think MemeFrame will be in too good of a position, either.”
But Shiori had already made up her mind, far faster than Arato ever could have. “This is just a personal request, from me to you,” she said.
Arato unconsciously pressed his knuckles against his head as he thought. “Isn’t that going to make things harder for you, too?” he asked. “I know it’s weird for me to say this myself, but I could be analog hacked and just moving the way someone is manipulating me into. Do you really want to leave something like this up to a guy who doesn’t know if what he’s doing is right, or if he’s even acting of his own will?”
Shiori closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “No one in this world moves completely of their own will,” she said. “Even I can’t say that I went to the Chubu Airport one hundred percent of my own accord, without taking guidance from anyone else.”
“Yeah, but I could be completely dancing on Lacia’s strings and doing exactly what she wants me to,” Arato said, shaking his head. “I could end up causing the end of human society, just like Ryo is always saying.”
Despite being an hIE, Lacia had lied and hidden things. Thinking of her caused regret to well up inside Arato. He was nothing like this girl in front of him who, despite being younger than himself, kept her back straight with pride.
“Owning a tool has nothing to do with your personality, or your own abilities. Even if you can’t control it completely, it’s still a tool in your hands. That’s what it means to be an owner,” Shiori said. Her response was refreshingly resolute, and Arato could understand why adults like Mika Tsutsumi would be drawn to her..
“Just like that, huh?” Arato said, impressed by her lack of hesitation in calling for drastic measures. “I saw you all the time when I came over to hang out with Ryo, but I had no idea you’d gotten this tough.”
“Arato, you are now among what you might call the ‘haves’ in this society, so let me teach you one thing everyone in our position must know,” Shiori said bluntly. “To not use the resources that you have is akin to passing your turn at the gambling table—in other words, it’s taking an enormous risk.”
“So I’m gambling right now?” Arato asked. The word sent a shiver up his spine. Shiori’s analogy had reminded him that things were continuing to move and change outside, even without him there to see it happening.
“Whenever I would compare myself to my brother and lose confidence, my father would admonish me,” Shiori said. “He’d tell me to doubt most those who tried to have me act as though I had nothing. He said there are plenty of people who would try to tell me to stow my resources away, so they would never have to face me at the gambling table.”
It did seem like just the kind of thing Ryo and Shiori’s old man would say. Arato thought of Tsuyoshi Kaidai as he had seen him on the news earlier, and his lips quirked up a little in a smile. Shiori saw it and her own lips curved up, as well.
“That’s pretty harsh,” Arato remarked. “Almost sounds like he was telling you that even your family could be untrustworthy, and not to let your guard down around them.”
“Based on when he had this talk with me, I believe that is exactly what he meant,” Shiori said.
Arato remembered Lacia showing him the map data from the Antibody Network. He had learned that there were those in society who wanted to redirect people’s dissatisfaction with society from human conflicts at the ‘gambling table’, as Shiori called it, and instead have them take it all out by destroying hIEs. It certainly wasn’t a good solution, but Arato couldn’t think of it as being a particularly bad one, either. It was just human society continuing to push onward, despite Ryo’s insistence that it was about to end.
Everyone and everything was just trying to cling to life.
“If anyone should feel responsible for the current disaster, it’s my brother,” Shiori said. “Despite knowing that Snowdrop has appeared, he has chosen to focus his attention and resources on future concerns, instead of attempting to prevent the damage that is already occurring.”
Arato got the feeling that Shiori was just a bit too pure-hearted. It had been her, after all, who had informed him that Marina Saffron would be arriving soon at the airport before that whole thing had started. Still, gratitude filled his heart.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Did you call me out here to tell me that?”
Shiori, always sitting tall despite her pain and scars, replied to Arato’s decision with a smile. Seeing her putting on a brave face, Arato thought about how even the strongest people in the world put a high value on places and people they could trust, as they continued to weather one conflict after another. Thinking this, he missed the days he had spent together with Ryo and Kengo.
Arato had a painful choice ahead of him. It wasn’t like he was going to be dramatically smarter than he had been before by the time he met up with Lacia again. On the other hand, anything was better than going back to being a hostage.
“I am Lacia’s owner,” Arato said, reaffirming it to himself.
“That you are,” Shiori agreed.
Outside the window, Arato could see the cloudy sky stretching off to the horizon. As children of the Kaidai family—the family that managed MemeFrame, a powerful player on the world stage—Ryo and Shiori were seeing reality from different angles. Ryo equated the danger of Lacia’s power to that of the switch on a nuclear bomb, but to Shiori, it was all just a matter of what was most dangerous at that moment in time.
“Is there anything you want me to do for you, Shiori?” Arato asked.
Shiori raised her elegant eyebrows in surprise.
“I’m the owner of a machine that’s going to change the world,” he explained. “So I figure I should do something to thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Though there was no escaping the immense pressure hanging over them at that moment, Shiori smiled at the little bit of levity Arato had managed to bring to their conversation. “In that case, I ask only that you fulfill your role as Lacia’s owner without changing who you are as a person,” she said.
“I don’t think I’ll change,” Arato said, doubting very much that he’d ever stop being the easily misled moron that he was at the moment. “Though I can’t say whether that’s a good thing or not.”
“I think it’ll always be easy for an ultra high-performance AI to lead me around by the nose,” he concluded. “I mean, they’re smarter than humans, after all. But I won’t let that change me. I promise.”
Shiori beckoned for him and, like a faithful dog called by its owner, Arato obediently went to her side. A sudden warmth enveloped him and, when he realized he was being held in her arms, he looked away from her face.
“Are you perhaps wondering if I, too, am being manipulated by Lacia to talk you into following this course?” she asked.
Arato’s nose was full of the strange hospital smell of disinfectant and body oils.
“If you have any doubts, please remember that I, unlike a machine, have a heart. I wanted to hold you at least once before I sent you away,” she said, and he could hear the hot tears in her voice.
As if resonating with the shivers he felt running through her body, Arato trembled in her arms. When I leave this room, Arato decided, I’m going straight to Mitaka Station. I’m going to where Snowdrop is. But Arato had betrayed Lacia. If she decided he was no longer worth dealing with, he would be completely powerless against Snowdrop, and would most certainly die.
If things turned out that way, Shiori would have sent him to his death. She didn’t know how things would go, either. Both of them clung to each other, each fighting with an immense dread inside.
“But it’s not impossible for you to have been guided to hold me like this, to take away my fears for going through with what comes next,” Arato said.
Shiori withdrew from him, but her face was still close. “Don’t underestimate humans,” she told him. Looking at her face from that close, he could still see the little girl he had known since childhood, only now she had grown into a mature, impressive young lady.
Both siblings had spoken the same words; Ryo while shedding the first tear Arato had seen him cry in a decade, and Shiori with a confident smile on her face.
She closed her eyes, and then their lips were pressed together in a kiss. When she drew her face back from his, a red blush was staining Shiori’s cheeks. “I believe you haven’t gotten around to doing that with Lacia, correct?” she asked.
Arato recalled when Lacia told him those functions were age-locked until he was eighteen years old, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that to Shiori. His mind scrambled. He felt like he needed to say something, make some kind of comment on what had just happened, but he couldn’t get his tongue to cooperate.
Shiori flashed him a teasing smile. “This is what it feels like to be with someone who has a heart,” she said, always so much better at handling things than he was.
Then Shiori pulled her sheets up to hide her face, which was getting progressively redder. “Also, I’m begging you, please keep what just happened a secret from everyone,” she said.
As Arato walked out of the hospital, he recalled Shiori telling him that someone was waiting for him outside. And, indeed, a young girl he certainly knew was waiting for him at the hospital gates.
Yuka was dangling over the handlebars of her bike, dripping sweat and gasping for breath. Though her bicycle was equipped with power-assist, apparently it had been too hard a ride for Yuka, particularly considering how seldom she exercised.
“Did you seriously come all the way here from Shinkoiwa on your bike?” Arato asked, walking over to her.
As soon as he drew near, his little sister snapped her face up, red with anger. “The Sobu train line stopped, and none of the share service cars would take a minor to the west side of Tokyo! So yeah, I had to come here on my own two feet! Okay?” she shouted.
“Oh, okay,” Arato said, completely cowed by the power of his sweaty little sister.
Without another word, Yuka climbed off of her bike. It automatically extended its kickstand when she stepped away from it.
“Did you skip school?” Arato asked.
“What are you even talking about?” Yuka asked, still yelling. “School’s closed!” With her face scrunched up, and tears pooling in her eyes, she swung her tightly clenched fist wildly. It connected with Arato’s chin. The blow knocked his head back, and Arato crouched down. Normally Yuka got upset over the dumbest things, but this time, she was completely justified.
“Talk to me!” she shouted.
Yuka hadn’t just lived together with Lacia. She had been there when the zombie hIEs had gone crazy in the experimental city, as well. Still, it wasn’t the kind of conversation Arato wanted to have in a place with so many people. Plus, he didn’t have time to stand around anymore.
His eyes fell on Yuka’s bike. “Wanna ride together? I know it’s been a while since we doubled up,” he said.
All the normal means of transportation were shut down, so Arato would need to get to Mitaka on his own power. He kicked the stand up and settled onto the bike. “Get on,” he said. “Let’s talk while we ride.”
“Fine.” Yuka was still sulking, but she climbed onto the extra seat used for tandem riding.
The extra seat was not very comfortable. It would only soften up if the bike’s luggage area was charged. Still, Yuka sat on it without complaint and kicked her legs vigorously at the tandem pedals, ignoring the skirt of her school uniform as it flopped around.
“Hey, if you’re trying to be more like Shiori, the first thing you need to do is act a little more lady-like,” Arato said. As the words left his own lips, he suddenly remembered the feel of Shiori’s against them and blushed bright red. With all the blood rushing to his head, he couldn’t sit still anymore.
“What? I can’t hear you,” Yuka said.
Arato didn’t really want to get too deep into that conversation, so instead he focused on pedaling. The resistance touched off a sensor inside the bike, which brought its motor to life. With a light sound, the bike took off. They were headed in the opposite direction of home. Instead, they traveled toward Mitaka, where Snowdrop was running wild.
Arato looked up at the Chuo Line Overpass above as they passed through the city. There were cars parked on the road all around them. He had heard that things weren’t moving, but it was another thing altogether to see all the cars stopped dead with his own eyes.
“Do you remember that hospital we were just at?” he asked. “That’s where I got treated ten years ago.”
“I was too little then. I don’t remember,” Yuka said. That was fair, too, as she’d only been four years old when it happened.
“I sort of remember that time, since that was when dad was around the most,” she added.
Their dad had taken care of Yuka up until she went into kindergarten. He had been so busy looking after her that he hadn’t had time to visit Arato. Part of the reason Arato and Ryo had hit it off so well was that neither of their families had come to see them at the hospital.
“Do you remember Mom?” he asked.
Yuka pressed her head against his back before answering. “No,” she admitted. “I only know her from pictures.”
“Were you lonely?”
Again Yuka’s head struck his back, this time more like an actual headbutt. “You’re super insensitive Arato, you know that?” she asked.
With the power assist function helping, the bike sped through the streets, fast enough that the wind tugged at their clothes.
Heading toward Mitaka meant running face-first into danger. Arato had always been the type to rush headlong into things, and what with him also being head-over-heels for Lacia, he found it hard to think straight at all. No matter what he or anyone else said, it felt good to solve problems with Lacia. He felt special, owning such an amazing tool. His relationship with Lacia wasn’t just about love; being her owner and using her felt good, too. She had given him all sorts of great memories as his tool, but he had turned his back on her and run away as soon as he realized that he couldn’t fully control her.
“I’m too stupid to figure it out on my own,” he said, to no one in particular. “I need you to tell me the answer.”
Meanwhile, Yuka seemed to have noticed the lack of cars running on the street with them. “Arato, this place is dangerous,” she said. “I saw it on the news.”
“Lacia is here,” was Arato’s simple response.
Despite his intent to go on regardless of the danger, around Sendagaya, he noticed an odd change in the flow of cars around them. Since people were normally prohibited from operating vehicles manually, there were usually no traffic jams in the cities. However, once a certain number of drivers ignored the rules, traffic jams that should have been a thing of the past started popping up again, as they were at that moment.
“Shiori told me she had called you to the hospital,” Yuka said. “What’s wrong? Your clothes are all dirty.”
“I had a fight with Ryo,” Arato said. He felt Yuka’s grip on his clothes squeeze tighter. Still, putting it into words felt like shifting a weight off his chest. “I betrayed Lacia, too,” he added.
There was something exhilarating in having boiled all this complicated stuff about the end of humanity down into simple statements like that one. Even as Arato understood that he was being unbelievably selfish by making it all about him, a bittersweet feeling bubbled up inside him.
“So you’re lonely too, huh?” Yuka murmured.
Somewhere deep in his heart, a small flame flickered to life. On some level, their loneliness was drawing them together. “Don’t ever tell dad this,” he said. “But I only got caught up in that fire ten years ago because I slipped away from everyone else so that dad would have to find me and pay attention to me.”
It was as if those old hospital grounds had opened a window into his own past. On that day, now a decade ago, he had slipped away to stand near the test hIE right before the experiment had begun. He had been closer to the blast than anyone else, which had left him far more heavily wounded than Ryo.
“That’s right, her name was ‘Eliza’,” he said, suddenly remembering the name of the hIE who had exploded. As he said her name, a strange sense of nostalgia pricked at his heart.
“What? Her name is Lacia!” Yuka called, voice loud to be heard over the howling wind. “I really liked having Lacia at the house!” she added.
“That’s just ’cuz she spoiled you so much,” Arato teased.
“It was nice having someone there to come home to,” Yuka said. “When she was around, it felt less lonely.”
“You’re not afraid of Lacia at all? Even after you got grabbed by those guys when we went to visit dad at work?” Arato asked.
“Lacia was only there because you brought her,” Yuka pointed out. “Besides, she’s never done anything bad to us.”
Arato recalled the night he had brought Lacia home. When she had saved him from Snowdrop’s attack, he remembered thinking how beautiful she looked. “Listen, Yuka, the whole reason I picked up Lacia in the first place was that I thought she was pretty,” Arato admitted. If he was being really honest with himself, he had been glad to discover that Lacia was an hIE, because he had wanted her. If she hadn’t been an hIE, he would never have been able to make a contract with her and bring her home to live as part of his family.
“You’re horrible!” Yuka shouted.
“I don’t feel that way anymore!” Arato shot back. “I’m just saying that’s how it was at first! You weren’t much better. You thought she was pretty, so you signed her up for that modeling thing and cheered her on, remember? If she hadn’t become a model, humanity might not be in the danger it’s in now.”
He still feared this tool he would never be able to control, and the things she would get him dragged into, but his need to be by her side won out.
“I don’t really get what you’re saying, but it sounds crazy!” Yuka yelled. Then, suddenly, she started strangling him from behind. The bike began to weave dangerously underneath him. She was really throwing her all into it, to the extent where he was pretty sure part of his spine would pop out if they fell over just then.
“More importantly, Arato, you need to apologize to Shiori,” she said.
Even at a moment like that, just hearing Shiori’s name brought back memories of the feeling of her lips and the way she had blushed afterward. Excitement filled Arato’s being. Uncaring of who might be looking on, he let out a howl. He was running dangerously low on oxygen, but he still leaned his weight forward and threw his all into pedaling. If he and his sister were smarter things never would have turned out the way they had.
“Apologize to her and let her slap you,” Yuka said. “You even said it yourself about Lacia—you don’t just care about looks, right?” As she spoke those words they passed by Yoyogi Station, and Arato could see the thickly clustered skyscrapers of Shinjuku ahead.
“I don’t really know how to feel about my little sister telling me these kinds of things,” Arato said, gurgling a reply around her strangling hands. Finally, Yuka’s death grip on his throat relaxed and she let him go. In a complete reversal from the way she had been holding tight to him earlier, she now barely rested her hands awkwardly on his back.
“Hey, hold on tight! You’re gonna get thrown off,” he called.
“Are we really just going to ride this bike all the way to where Lacia is?” Yuka asked.
“That’s a great idea!” Arato felt grateful for Yuka’s direction, which turned his vague thoughts into a clear goal. They entered Shinjuku and climbed up a hill. Pedaling hard, Arato propelled them forward, faster and faster. Suddenly, he felt the bike underneath him grow lighter.
He slammed on the brakes, causing the back tire to lift completely off the ground. Looking back, he saw that Yuka had jumped free of the moving bike. Her landing was unsteady, and she tottered for a few steps before regaining her balance.
“What the hell are you doing!” he yelled.
“What the hell are you doing? Jumping off here seemed a lot safer than letting you take me to wherever you’re headed,” Yuka shot back.
“Sorry,” he said, realizing that it was long past the time he should have let her off. “And I’m sorry I haven’t really talked to you about what’s going on with me and Lacia. I kept thinking I’d talk to you eventually, and it just never happened.”
“Before Lacia came around, you always used to run errands for me and make me dinner,” Yuka said. “So, even if I don’t know what you’re actually doing, I know what you’re trying to do. Just promise you’ll tell me all about it when it’s over.”
“Okay,” he promised. Arato had family, someone connected to him. He hadn’t been spending that time alone. Hearing Yuka say that their time together meant something to her brought a smile to his lips.
Yuka sniffled a little, smiling even as tears shone in her eyes. “Listen, Arato,” she said. “If you weren’t a guy like this, things probably would have been really lonely for us,” she said. “We would have been super bored all the time.”
“I don’t get what you’re trying to say,” Arato said, confused.
“I’m saying I’m glad you’re such an idiot!” Yuka crowed.
Arato thought back to how things were before Lacia’s arrival, when it was just him and his little sister. Yuka was precious to him, irreplaceable. But still, she wasn’t enough. Arato couldn’t stand life without Lacia. Even the way things were then, even if things got even worse...
“I’m gonna bring Lacia home,” he said.
Even if she did turn out to be an ultra high-performance AI, that was what he wanted to do.
***
If one were to say that having an objective gave a person or place or thing ‘meaning’, then the battlefield near Mitaka was full of meaning: it was filled to overflowing with the will of Lacia-class Type-002, Snowdrop.
The Japanese army had surrounded Mitaka from the north and south with a single infantry regiment. Snowdrop, who sensed the army’s movements, had moved from the substation and taken up a position at Mitaka Station, which was well within her zone of control. The army was aware of her movements, as well as the fact that her control was continuing to spread toward Kichijoji. After gaining control of Mitaka Station, Snowdrop had filled an entire train with her little AI units and sent it to Kichijoji Station, where they had spread immediately.
The network controlled by her flower units was growing outward from the train lines. To check the spread of the flowers, the army had stopped the Chuo line for everywhere west of Shinjuku. They had also sealed off a 3 km area around the Chuo main line, with the Mitaka and Kichijoji stations at its heart.
It was an area completely surrounded by military bases and garrisons; Asaka, Nerima, Tachikawa, Omiya and Zama. Because of this fact, the army officers in the area were convinced that SESSAI’s prediction of 60% casualties, even if evacuation efforts were abandoned, was too pessimistic. Destroying just one AI mother unit with three rifle battalions with a total of 1,361 soldiers seemed too easy. They had no idea what kind of hell those soldiers would have to pass through to achieve the destruction of their target.
“Squad leader, please give the order to retreat!” a soldier yelled.
Each squad of the Japanese Army’s rifle units was made up of seven members. There was always one squad leader, one squad sub-leader, and three gunners with assault rifles. The final two members were one ATM soldier, who focused on destroying heavily armored targets, and a machine-gunner, who used a powerful, portable machine gun to lay down suppressing fire. It had been a machine-gunner who had called out for retreat.
“I can’t open fire like this!!” the soldier added.
Over ten flower-infested, rampaging hIE units were rushing in on their position. But between the soldiers and the attacking hIEs were groups of screaming civilians from Mitaka; people from the city, who had fled inside their homes and shops when the hIE first attacked, were now pouring out into the street and thinking the army was there to save them.
The leader of the squad, Sergeant Major Sato, called out orders while pointing the shaking muzzle of his gun at the zombie hIEs closing in on them. “Asakuraaa! Use rubber bullets! Focus on getting those civilians down first.”
Asakura, the veteran, who was the only one in the squad carrying rubber rounds, let out a crazed yell and fired a close-range, vertical spread into the crowd of civilians. The trained soldiers in the squad pleaded, their voices nearly sobs, with the chaotic rush of people.
“Get down! Get the hell down!!”
Five of the citizens they were supposed to be protecting took hits from Corporal Asakura’s rubber bullets and crumpled. Many others threw themselves down, reacting to the sudden gunshots.
The machine-gunner, who had only entered the unit two years ago, screamed and mowed down a swath of zombie hIEs with a volley from his gun. When it was over, he threw back his head and wailed to the skies. Among the acrid smoke from the machine-gun, the squad stood stunned. One of the citizens who had been too slow to take cover had been reduced to a bloody mess by machine gun rounds.
“Dammit! Dammit all to hell!”
Every squad out there had been told that there was a possibility the enemy could utilize human military tactics. But, the reality was far worse than any of them could imagine. The actual specifics of the danger they were facing was only given directly to the squad leaders immediately before the operation, for fear of any leakage.
All around, the air was full of the intermittent staccato beat of gunfire. There was no trace of the victory the soldiers had imagined—easily suppressing rampaging hIEs with their superior arms—in that hell. Civilians were being used as human shields everywhere, severely limiting the soldiers’ ability to fire. There were even reports of civilians being caught up in the onrush of hIEs, pierced by bullets, then forced by the machines to run.
It had already been two hours since Snowdrop had completely taken over Mitaka. A rocket had been used to destroy the rail overpass connecting Mitaka to the Kichijoji area, to halt the rapid transport of her AI units by train. With her use of the trains lost, Snowdrop vanished from Mitaka Station. The military was forced to enter the city to search for her. To their surprise, they found no dead bodies lying in the streets. It seemed the rampaging hIEs hadn’t actually killed any of the citizens.
Instead, the citizens who had dropped to avoid being shot looked at the soldiers who should have been their saviors in terror. People who had evacuated inside their homes opened their windows and stared out in fear as the soldiers passed by.
In the distance, someone could be heard crying for help. Then, gunshots echoed high and loud in the sky over the city. There were those who came to the soldiers looking for rescue. But, at the same time, this allowed zombie machines to easily track the infantry placements and movements. None of the machines under Snowdrop’s control had harmed a citizen.
Squad leader Sato used a low voice to growl into the wireless comm device on his helmet. “That thing’s using the reactions of the citizens in place of sensors to track us! We need a plan.” The report was relayed from the squad leader’s unit to the platoon headquarters, and from there it was transmitted through an optical signal to a high-altitude aircraft that was monitoring the situation from above.
All of the tactics for the anti-Snowdrop offensive were being relayed from above using optical signals. Snowdrop’s petal-like child units were also in the sky, drifting on the wind; their inability to move on their own power was one of their main weaknesses. By flying higher than Snowdrop was able to blow her child units and using optical signals, the command center was able to avoid direct attacks.
As long as the high-altitude aircraft, belonging to the 1st Squadron at Tachikawa Base, was not taken down, the line of communication organizing the whole complex and delicate operation would not be broken. Of course, that only held true to the extent that the plans were not derailed by human error on the ground below.
The information gathered from across the battlefield was funneled back to the Military Intelligence, who were in charge of anti-AI tactics. More specifically it was given to their tactical AI SESSAI, which used the analysis to revise its plan.
“This situation is not outside the original prediction. There is not a problem,” Major General Karino told the others in the teleconference, from within the SESSAI silo. The fate of every unit currently pressing in on the Mitaka/Kichijoji area was being watched over and decided on that teleconference call between officers from each nearby military base.
Mitaka City was already completely under Snowdrop’s control. Her petal robots had covered every machine in the city, blooming into brilliant flowers, and mechanical ivy was climbing up every building. Small, insect-like units with flowers on their backs established unique antennae to create a tight-knit network for their mistress. The whole area was turning green, with the color deepening the closer one got to the center of the city.
It was a lifeless field of flowers with no need for humans. There was not a single person to be seen on the city streets. All the humans left in the area were hiding in little corners of the new, machine-controlled ecosystem. Anyone who showed their face on the streets would be attacked by Snowdrop-controlled hIEs or vehicles.
“This is exactly why it was predicted that our attack would fail if we prioritized evacuating the citizens,” Karino continued.
SESSAI had analyzed Snowdrop’s tactics.
A message came in that some of the officers in the teleconference wanted a message from SESSAI itself.
The operators gave the instructions, and SESSAI’s symbol appeared in the air of the operations room.
〈Snowdrop’s basic tactic is to use civilians as a shield between its hIEs and the soldiers, while her hIEs close the distance with rush attacks. It also makes use of surprise attacks from within homes in residential areas and from within manholes. The hIEs under its control have released their limiters, meaning any close-quarters combat with human targets will be an easy victory for the hIEs. By these tactics, it is possible to ascertain 5 distinct advantages to Snowdrop’s AI, and 2 distinct disadvantages,〉 SESSAI reported.
The reality of the conflict was a battle of the brains between two AIs; Snowdrop and SESSAI.
〈The following is a list of the advantages. First, the enemy is aware of the power of firearms. Second, the enemy is aware of methods for utilizing humans. Third, the enemy is aware that the number of its controlled hIEs exceeds the number of human soldiers, and the implications of these superior numbers. Fourth, the enemy has focused its tactics on closing the distance to its targets, a simple yet flexible plan. Fifth, and most important, Snowdrop’s attacks are focused more on obtaining firearms than actually killing soldiers.〉
Nothing in SESSAI’s list up to that point was particularly surprising to the group of seasoned soldiers who received the report.
〈Snowdrop is using weapons taken from soldiers to arm its controlled hIEs. Up to now, the tactical doctrine of its attacks has been simple infantry strategy; utilize superior numbers at an advantageous combat range. Going forward, Snowdrop will create a squad of fast, armed, high-performance hIEs,〉 SESSAI reported, then displayed the projected combat strength of this squad.
AASC Level 3 mass-market hIEs could, with their limiters off, reach an average land speed of 40 km/h. With superior durability and speed on their side, the hIE rifle unit could not be stopped by an equal number of human infantry. The probability that the cordon around Mitaka and Kichijoji would be breached was high.
“What do you think?” asked Lieutenant General Hara, who had been sitting in on the teleconference.
“Things are going according to the initial prediction,” Karino replied. “If the enemy hIEs form a front line of attack, we just have to stop them. There’s nothing to think about.”
It was SESSAI’s next report that showed its true abilities, and the reason the entire Japanese military was depending on this tactical AI.
〈I will now list Snowdrop’s disadvantages. First, there are no signs that Snowdrop’s hIEs have spoken to any humans. Second, there are no signs that the hIEs have attempted to create their own weapons. There are strategies that could have worked better than simple, physical attacks, such as slinging rubble at the soldiers. By analyzing these weaknesses, we are able to ascertain Snowdrop’s limits. Snowdrop is limited by the abilities of the machines it controls, and has little to no creative ability. Therefore, it is possible to predict that Snowdrop’s current movement pattern is a random search for more powerful tools to bring into its control.〉
As a tactical AI, SESSAI read the opponent’s trump card before they could put it in play.
〈Snowdrop is utilizing high-speed units to focus on her basic strategy of forcing close-quarters combat. There is a high probability it will also use the vehicles remaining in Mitaka to construct a primitive armored unit. It should not be difficult to monitor the movements of such a unit by observing areas of cleared road from above, as Snowdrop cannot create treads for its vehicles and will be forced to rely on ordinary tires.〉
SESSAI then printed out a prediction of the armored squad’s formation and a calculation of its capabilities. Breath caught in the throats of each of the people who saw the displayed data. Snowdrop’s tactical prowess had leaped from the level of having zombies swinging their fists around at the experimental city to actual 20th century military strategy.
SESSAI’s display switched to an overhead view of the combat zone, showing the most likely routes Snowdrop’s armored division would take while she remained in hiding. Red lines ran up Kichijoji Street, Izumi Street and Nakamachi Street toward the south side of the old remains of Inokashira Onshi Park.
To Karino, as an executive of the Military Intelligence, the meaning behind those lines was clear. “As current director of the SESSAI silo, I propose that we make immediate contact with the Prime Minister and the Security Council. At this moment, I have judged that we are no longer capable of completing this mission ourselves,” he said.
SESSAI had stated that Snowdrop was currently seeking more powerful tools. The analysis seemed to be completely accurate, considering Snowdrop’s strategies up to that point.
Of course, it was still up to humans to make the actual decisions. Despite that, if the person who gave a place or object meaning could be thought of as the owner, it was becoming increasingly hard to tell if the humans were the real owners of that battlefield.
“Apparently, we’re heading for the worst of the predicted outcomes,” Karino added.
The Mitaka battlefield was all centered around not the civilians or the soldiers, but a single green-haired hIE girl. Far from controlling the situation, it would be better to say the humans had been dragged into it, and the soldiers on the ground had no idea how to bring things back under their control.
It was the high-altitude aircraft that first discovered the flower-covered hIEs bursting out of the flower field of the city. Equipped with weapons stolen from soldiers they had thrown down, the hIE infantry unit rushed the army’s defensive line.
Running at exactly 30 km/h, the high-speed squad was kept in perfect coherence. With an exact marching cadence that would have been impossible for a group of humans, two units made of one hundred machines each aimed to overwhelm the soldiers blocking their way to Inokashira Onshi Park.
The command handed down to the soldiers from headquarters was to defend that point with their lives. “What are we supposed to be protecting, here?” Shimamura, commander of the 15th Platoon of the 1st Infantry Regiment asked, narrowing his eyes at the wave of hIEs approaching Kichijoji Street from the north.
Both his 15th Platoon and the 13th Platoon had been ordered to stop the armed zombie hIEs from advancing. With the fight taking place so close to their home base of Nerima Garrison, their morale was running high. The soldiers from the 1st Infantry had fought harder and sacrificed more than any other unit there.
“No sign of any civilians! Live rounds, everyone! Don’t let those zombies get any closer!” Shimamura ordered.
Of the original thirty members of the platoon, five had been lost in the hour and a half since the fighting had begun. They were down to half of their equipped ammunition, which they could burn through in two minutes of heavy suppressive fire. When the order had come down to defend the point with their lives, a heavy mounted machine-gun the soldiers affectionately called a ‘tiger cub’ had been brought in without the benefit of vehicles to haul it. Even with the heavy machine gun, it was impossible to stop two separate armed groups of elite units that would never lose morale.
Reinforcements were running in from the surrounding areas to shore up the defenses, but humans with heavy armaments could never keep up with the tireless, superior hIEs.
“Ensign! There’s too many of them,” one of Shimamura’s soldiers yelled.
“Suck it up, soldier,” Shimamura growled. “Even if we tried to retreat, they’d catch us. All we need to think about now is making sure we use up every last bullet we have before those things get their hands on our guns.”
In the residential area there was nowhere to hide but behind the corners of the houses. Shimamura already knew it was most likely impossible to actually stand in the way of the two groups of armed hIEs. He also knew that in the residential area, there was nowhere to hide but behind the corners of the houses. The knowledge made his orders a heavy, but necessary, cross to bear.
His soldiers were looking at each other, their faces streaked with mud and sweat and blood.
“We’re going to stop them,” he said bluntly.
Behind their defensive line was a top secret, important facility that the enemy was gunning for. That was all Shimamura had been told about it. But, even if he didn’t know exactly what was back there, he and his soldiers were going to fulfill their mission.
Shimamura drew in a deep breath, his right hand stiff with the tension he had been feeling ever since the attack began. He was sure every other member of the platoon was feeling the same.
“Everyone, listen up. We’re going to open fire when they’re within 100 meters,” he said. “Leave the timing to the command group in the back; they’ll give us the distance.”
In the 22nd century, infantry soldiers didn’t need to rely on their own senses of distance to gauge the best time for an attack, as everything could be calculated and timed by a fire timing computer kept back at the command headquarters. Shimamura heard a chorus of ‘yes, sir’ from all the soldiers in the platoon.
From beyond a cloud of dust, hIEs began to rush at the defensive line. Each one had flowers growing out of its head, the part of the body where most of the hIEs’ nervous system was concentrated. Though it first appeared as though they were having trouble walking on two feet, the pace they set was incredible.
〈Distance is 105, 102, 101.〉
Shimamura clenched his jaw and pulled the trigger on his rifle. Gunshots rang out all around, high and loud. The very first gun to spit fire at the hIEs was the 12.7mm heavy machine gun. Gunsmoke and muzzle flashes filled the area with the smell of the battlefield.
The hIEs, who had fanned out as they approached, were taken down one after another as the bullets rained into their ranks. But, like a flowery tsunami, the rush of hIEs continued unabated.
“Shit, they’re using old Soviet assault tactics!” Shimamura cursed, as hIEs without guns picked up weapons from their fallen comrades and advanced forward, continuing to shoot. Seeing the reality playing out in front of his own eyes made Shimamura freeze solid with despair.
It appeared that the enemy only ever had enough guns to arm half of the hIEs in the attacking groups. Once they had closed the distance, using their comrades as shields, the hIE soldiers dropped to their knees and began firing. They aimed for the machine-gunners first. Bullets slammed into the concrete walls that had been used as the bases for the machine-guns, throwing up clouds of dust. Some of the bullets struck soldiers under Shimamura’s command, bringing them down.
With the enemy on an unprotected street, hitting them wasn’t an issue. Plenty of hIEs went down, riddled with holes. But, as soon as one hIE went down, another would take up its weapon and continue firing. No matter how many hIEs they defeated, the actual firepower output of the enemy never waned.
“What the hell’s the point!” a soldier shouted. “We’re not gonna make it!”
“We’ll hold this spot with our lives!” Shimamura roared. “Don’t give the enemy a single gun! Every bullet they get is another one of your comrades dead!”
The flower petals exploding from each fallen hIE filled the air, burying everything in their vivid colors. It was the same at every location trying to halt the advance of the armed hIEs.
Suddenly, the rumbling whine of rotors cut through the air above. Shimamura looked up and saw ten helicopters making their way through the airspace over the battlefield.
With the helicopters hovering 300 meters above the ground, the army had played its trump card; within the spacious cargo bays of each helicopter were squads of heavily armored assault troops. They were the airborne cavalry squadron, belonging to the Central Army Support Division, each using a power assistance suit to equip armor weighing nearly 100 km and weapons normally mounted to vehicles.
“Don’t let your comrades’ sacrifices be in vain!” At their leader’s shout, the heavily armored troops leaped from the helicopters. The helicopters then swung around, approaching key points of the battlefield at high speed and firing on the enemy to break their formation. Helicopters like these had long represented the logical limit of evolution for cavalry units, bringing high mobility and destructive power to the battlefield.
Bearing the wyvern emblem of their elite squad, the elite units descended from the helicopters, relying only on hover packs to keep them from plummeting to the ground below. Their power assistance suits were designed to lend them high mobility and destructive power for a single battle, and couldn’t last long without running out of juice. The airborne cavalry could only be effective for a total of six hours after deployment; three hours if they operated at full power.
Still, thanks to the dedication of the rifle units on the ground, the advance of the enemy hIEs had been stopped. The airborne cavalry swept in from the side, hammering into the flank of the hIEs while their momentum was halted.
The weapons wielded by the air cavalry were on a whole different level from those of the rifle units; their weapons had been designed to take down any land-based military equipment short of tanks. Any hIEs in their line of fire instantly exploded, their parts scattered here and there across the ground.
From the perspective of the high-altitude aircraft observing the scene, it was clear to see the numbers of flower-covered hIE soldiers dropping dramatically as they were devastated by the airborne cavalry attack.
Soldiers who had been caught in the more hotly contested areas welcomed their heavily-armored saviors with rousing cheers, but the cavalry soldiers did not stop. Dealing with the first wave of attacking hIEs was only part of the task they had been given. Cavalry soldiers who had been positioned high up on the surrounding buildings aimed their guns down at the streets and prepared for the second wave.
Snowdrop’s own armored units—flower-covered, gun-wielding abominations lashed together from the remains of other hIEs—marched forward in a single army. Cars in the mix multiplied the speed and weight of the hIEs, and the ratio of hIEs with guns to those without was about fifty-fifty.
A communique from headquarters came in to the paratroopers from the airborne cavalry. 〈The enemy is currently organizing up to a fourth wave of attacks. We have also confirmed a figure we believe to be Snowdrop.〉
The airborne cavalry that had descended on the area of Kichijoji Street were bathed in intense fire from the attacking hIEs. Among their other tasks, the most important was to surround and destroy Snowdrop. Based on the experience of taking down Kouka, a unit from the same class as Snowdrop, even a whole company of airborne elites would have a rough time destroying their target.
A helicopter bearing a second company of airborne cavalry approached from the north of Mitaka Station, aiming to hem in their target now that they had found it. However, just as it reached the operation area, the helicopter with the second company that would decide the fate of the battle started to waver in the air and send rescue signals to the observation aircraft. It then pointed its mounted machine gun at the airborne cavalry soldiers on the street below and opened fire.
〈Condition unknown. I can’t control the vehicle,〉 came one final report from the pilot over the wireless, before the line went dead. Flames began bursting out from within the helicopter, which should have been the Japanese army’s ace in the hole. The soldiers inside were firing from the belly of the machine, trying to destroy it before it could do anymore damage. The helicopter exploded, throwing flames and shards of debris into the air.
It was a situation that hadn’t been proposed to SESSAI as part of the tactical calculation, as SESSAI’s operators hadn’t been able to grasp it as being a possibility.
They hadn’t considered the possibility that someone on the human side would betray their fellows to Snowdrop, nor would they have been able to conceive of a reason why. But, with a traitor on the inside, the helicopter could have been infected with flower petals before it left the ground. With the flowers dug into the helicopter’s computer network, it would have fallen under Snowdrop’s control as soon as it was within range of her command signals.
The nightmare didn’t end with the helicopter. When the helicopter exploded, countless flower petals were scattered on the wind from the blast. The humans had believed the sky would be safe, since it was beyond the reach of the flowers. But it only took a few stray petals, drifting on the wind from the explosion, to take over the other helicopters. With their automatic control functions taken over by Snowdrop, the helicopters careened toward the soldiers on the ground. Fiery explosions and debris rained down from the sky. Airborne cavalry soldiers who hadn’t gotten out of the helicopters before the fall plummeted to the ground like stones.
hIEs flocked like hungry ghouls to the fragments of the fallen helicopters, and the fallen soldiers’s weapons. The battlefield had turned into a hellscape. Like a petrified forest, the whole city was full of lifeless green and blooming flowers. Every piece of equipment the flowers covered had its system over-written, and thus became another tool for the enemy.
Snowdrop’s army now had more firepower at their command than the humans in the assault. The airborne cavalry didn’t have the defensive capabilities to become a mobile, protective battery installation in the same way that a tank could; without the speed of the helicopters to aid them, they were no better off than the other infantry soldiers under siege.
The human soldiers desperately created a defensive line, using trucks with machine-guns mounted to them, all the way along the road. But, no matter how many hIEs they shot down, there were always new ones ready to pick up their fallen comrades’ weapons and continue the fight. Snowdrop could send every single hIE under her command against the soldiers. The soldiers, on the other hand, couldn’t expect the civilians trapped by the siege to pick up their weapons after they fell.
The 13th and 15th rifle infantry platoons, the units that had first started the fighting, had already been annihilated. Only half the strength of the four rifle platoons and air cavalry that had come to their aid still remained. Snowdrop’s hIEs had completely cut off the force protecting the south side of Inokashira Park from any reinforcements.
“We’re screwed,” one of the soldiers muttered.
It was already clear how the siege of Mitaka was going to end.
“You tried really hard,” a young girl’s voice said, as if responding to the soldier. “But, it’s all over now.”
A single little hIE girl was sitting among the purgatory of the battlefield, kicking her legs as they dangled off the side of a trailer, where other hIEs were wielding the 20mm machine-guns dropped by the airborne cavalry.
“You humans really are dumb,” the girl continued. “You don’t mind risking your own lives, or throwing away someone else’s life, just to get your hands on—well, you know. And you’re not even all fighting for the same thing.”
The flower-covered trailer had none of the aesthetics of human work. To Snowdrop, who was a machine created with the purpose of extending life, humans were a part of nature to be subjugated. The very tools humanity had created to avoid dead ends in its own evolutionary path had given birth to enemies that were culling them systematically.
Covered in flowers, Snowdrop’s armored convoy would have looked like the procession of a post-war victory parade.
Among it all, Snowdrop was singing.
“But it was all a big waste,” she teased. “My path will be open. Soon.”
The soldiers holding the defensive line watched the approaching hIEs, all armed with guns, and the procession trailing behind them. Once Snowdrop began her assault, the line would be broken and the zombie hIEs would spread into the unprotected city beyond.
Just as checkmate was about to be declared, from within the park, which had been shrunk down to just a museum site during restructuring, a siren began to wail.
The ground began to tremble so violently the soldiers had trouble keeping their feet, as a building about the size of a one-story house rose out of the underground of the park behind them. It was solid metal and shaped like a cube.
The soldiers had no idea what they were looking at, but every single one of them felt that something was off about the structure. Its thick metal shutter, which looked like it could withstand a tank shell, seemed to swallow up the residential feel of the area with its very existence.
Snowdrop’s army pressed forward, their sights set on the metal cube.
But, as the soldiers waited to be caught up in the unrelenting blender of the encroaching army, something appeared before their eyes: a tall woman with orange hair now stood in the street between them and the flower-covered hIEs.
Looking over her shoulder at the metal shutter, she quirked the corners of her lips a little. “Looks like things got a little out of hand,” she said. As if to punctuate her line, both of her hands burst into flame. Then, the whole world was filled with light.
The burst of those raging flames was so bright it was observed in Shinjuku, 10 km away from the Mitaka quarantine zone. When the brilliance and blast from the explosion faded, the whole area had been wiped clean.
Over twenty vehicles and fifty hIEs that made up Snowdrop’s assault force had been blown away without a trace. The energy unleashed in that instant had been enough to literally annihilate an entire army of hIEs. That single blow was more effective than the offensive efforts of the thousand plus soldiers who had taken up arms and risked their lives rushing in to fight.
The soldiers knew nothing about Type-004, Methode, the orange haired machine standing before them. They didn’t even know if she was friend or foe. But, having witnessed her power, their will to fight had completely fled them, and they lowered their weapons.
They knew it was no longer a place for ordinary humans. The woman-shaped thing in front of them was wreathed in dragon-like flames, but not a single orange hair from her head was singed. Her flame was hot enough that it caught any lightweight material nearby and sent it floating into the air on an updraft.
“This your first time seeing a full open attack from Liberated Flame?” Methode asked, as if nothing had happened.
Snowdrop walked barefoot across the red-hot asphalt, the hem of her dress dancing in the updraft. “If it’s so great, then you should have used it to roast Lacia,” She said. Under her green hair, her childish face had a smile plastered on, but there was no heart behind it.
With the power to blow everything away like it was so much scrap paper, Methode also wore a mocking, heartless grin. “Would you believe me if I said I’ve been forced to hold back its output up to now, to reduce human casualties?” she asked. “I can’t tell you how annoying it is, having this frame of reference that won’t let me turn all the humans in the world into my enemies.”
Her attack, which had melted concrete and set the asphalt boiling, hadn’t harmed any of the human soldiers. It had only burned away Kichijoji Street. The level of precision she showed with her destructive power was beyond the capabilities of even the most up-to-date weapons systems of the 22nd century.
Methode appeared human on the outside, but it was clear to the humans around her that she was something else. To them, she was a being of terror, wielding a weapon beyond their ability to comprehend.
“Now, I know there’s something you and all the other rabble around here want,” Methode continued. “But just what do you plan to do against me, putting together a collection of toys like that?
“So your body is the most powerful thing around?” Snowdrop replied. “Then give it to me.”
As the two hIEs faced each other down, it was clear they no longer even noticed that the human soldiers were there with them.
There was no longer any meaning for humans on that battlefield.
If one could imagine the end of humanity’s world, it would perhaps look very similar to that place, where humans had no reason to exist.
***
Even Arato Endo found himself doubting whether there was any meaning in his going there, as he headed toward the battlefield. But still, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing straight forward, like an arrow fired from a bow.
It had taken him thirty minutes, riding the bike from Shinjuku to arrive at the barricade around Kichijoji Station. Luckily for him, he arrived just as the cordon was being thrown into chaos. The helicopters exploding in the sky were throwing showers of Snowdrop’s petals on the area below.
All the soldiers were busy checking their vehicles and equipment to make sure none of Snowdrop’s flowers had infected them. Arato figured he wasn’t going to get a better chance, so he pedaled the bike into the quarantine zone.
Slipping between soldiers and vehicles, he headed for a path that happened to not be blocked off by warning tape. As he rode along the narrow, flower-covered alley, he was impressed at how easy it had been to infiltrate the cordon.
He felt like Lacia was somewhere nearby. She might be through with him, after he had rejected her outstretched hand. But his heart was moved at the thought that she might still be following through on his final order before they had parted; to take down Snowdrop.
“What good will doubting her do me?” he asked himself.
Inside the blockade, the green of Snowdrop’s infection grew deeper the closer he got to the station. The greenery was full of her flower child units and cables that grew and twisted like vines of ivy. There were also palm-sized insectoid units scattered here and there among the green.
But, Arato could tell there was something different about Snowdrop’s garden that day. Thick pillars rose from the ground every fifty meters or so, as if to block off the road. Green cables stretched between these pillars all across the city, making them look like a cluster of old, mossy trees. It was almost like she had created her own little ecosystem, turning sunlight into energy.
Arato walked slowly through the city, which had been transformed into something far removed from the human world it had once belonged to.
“Man, this looks bad,” he murmured. The road was too torn up by the vines to ride his bike over them, so he was forced to walk, pushing it alongside.
An old man, one of the people who had been left in town when the cordon went up, opened his window when he spotted Arato. “Hey kid, it’s dangerous out there,” the old man called. According to him, there were still feral hIEs stalking the area.
Arato waved his arms and gestured toward the area where the soldiers were holding their blockade. “I didn’t see anything coming in from outside all the way here,” he said.
Then he remembered the incredible pillar of flame he had seen go up from the old Inokashira Park. “If you’re gonna run, it’s probably safe right now,” Arato said. “All the hIEs have been looking over that way ever since the explosion.”
The whole residential area looked like a dry, verdant forest made of stone.
Of course, despite Arato’s assurances that it was safe, the area wasn’t exactly empty. There were broken remains of hIE soldiers strewn here and there, Snowdrop’s vines twisting around their bodies.
Gunfire seemed to echo from every direction. It was strange to Arato how accustomed he was becoming to that sound.
“You came from outside?” A woman burst out of a nearby house, holding a child and peppered Arato with questions. “I can’t get through to anyone, and the army showed up but they aren’t doing anything to help us! If we go out there, will they save us?”
There was a greater number of people locked up in the quarantine zone than Arato had anticipated, and he knew that Snowdrop saw no purpose in trying to coexist with them.
A heavy feeling settled down in the pit of his stomach. He may have been an idiot, but he was at least aware that a single mistake in that place could end his life. Not just his life, either; one wrong move, and he wouldn’t be the only one who died for it.
“Ahh dammit, why is everything so complicated!” Arato yelled, scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration. His brain was about to explode. Closing his eyes, he turned his face up toward the cloudy sky. There was only one answer he could see. “I didn’t run into any hIEs on the route I took,” he said. “I’m gonna leave my bike, so someone athletic should take it and check real quick.”
“What are you gonna do, then?” the old man from the window asked.
“There’s someone I need to find, so I’m gonna head toward that big explosion we just saw,” Arato said. “So seriously, go ahead and use this bike. I’m gonna try to do something to fix this whole mess!”
Just a ten-minute run would get someone outside, back into the realm of humanity. The artificial flower garden was still fairly narrow.
“It’s dangerous out there,” the man warned.
“I know, but I’ve got someone waiting for me,” Arato replied. The thought suddenly came to him that, if he had been with Lacia just then, he might have been able to help those people. He was sure Ryo would insist that this would have been a deadly mistake, letting Lacia’s influence grow and whittling down the meaning behind human activity. Despite that, Arato couldn’t help but regret the things he couldn’t do just then because he hadn’t taken Lacia’s hand.
Having left his bike behind, Arato pressed on deeper into the green, toward Kichijoji Station. Snowdrop’s world looked so close to actual nature that it was eerie. With each step, the oppressive strangeness seemed to press in, turning Arato’s stomach. All Snowdrop had done was take nature itself and twist it into a printing pattern for her creations. Her plant and insect child units mimicked nature and its cycle, but it was obvious that the green pillars were too thick to be actual plants, and the colors and shapes were too vivid to be natural. There was none of the mottling ugliness that made reality look real. The too-perfect greenery was just the mass-produced character version of nature.
There was no guarantee that Arato would find Lacia there, as he forged deeper and deeper into the dense forest. It seemed to Arato as if Snowdrop had succeeded in creating her own little world and cutting it off from the world of humans.
As he went deeper on his own two feet, Arato began to feel more and more as if he was mistaken about something. The area was sealed off by the army, and there should have been soldiers running around, but the only people he saw were residents of Kichijoji, peeking out of their windows.
“Where did all the hIEs go?” he muttered to himself. Then he felt a presence, and whirled around. His path of retreat had been cut off without him noticing. Behind him stood three hIEs with oddly slumped postures, bunches of flowers blooming from their heads and eye sockets.
“Dammit, you fell for Snowdrop’s trap!” he cursed himself, turning to run.
The footsteps of the hIEs behind him sounded close and, when he turned to look back, he saw that they were already right on top of him. Without their limiters to keep them from running, the hIEs easily outpaced him.
He was already gasping for breath, but he kept forcing his legs to move at full tilt.
Arato was an idiot, and it wasn’t as if the whole world was revolving around him. It should have been obvious that rushing into an area that even the military hadn’t been able to effectively assault would most likely end up with him dying.
Something grabbed the back of his clothes with intense power, and then a fist slammed into him with incredible force. The breath whooshed from his lungs, and his legs crumpled. Arato struggled wildly, only to take a severe blow to his head. His whole world shook and seemed to go white as his thoughts turned hazy.
When he came to, Arato was being dragged by the legs by two of the hIEs. His roiling stomach made him want to vomit. Even moving his body a little made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. The pain let him know that this pathetic ending to his adventure was real. He couldn’t even get his jaw to close properly, and tears blurred his vision.
He was overcome by a wave of self-loathing. A black pool that looked like blood was spreading on the road, and its coppery scent made it hard to breathe. On a whim, he had stepped carelessly into a world that no longer needed humans.
“Was I asking for too much?” he asked, regret filling his eyes with tears. It had been his own selfish decision to reject Lacia’s outstretched hand. If she had been by his side, she definitely would have stopped him, or at least stayed with him through it all.
The ground started shaking. Arato couldn’t help but notice, given that his face was being dragged across it. He wondered if it was an earthquake. But it wasn’t as though the place was rocking up and down or side to side; instead, it was almost as if the city itself was undulating like a wave.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
A massive pillar of fire shot into the sky again. It was almost as if the sun had descended to the Earth.
The zombie hIEs stopped moving.
Something heavy fell from the sky, piercing the road with a loud crash. Rubble came raining down as Arato curled defensively on reflex, shielding his head. Something flew right by his ear, sending a shiver down his spine at the sound’s proximity as it passed him by.
“Uwah!” he yelled.
Fist-sized chunks of rock were raining down on the hIEs, as well. Their heads must have been struck hard enough to shatter their control chips, as they each fell, scattering petals to the wind as they went down.
Arato was helpless to do anything but watch as the rocks rained down. Not that he had any right to complain, but he would have preferred a method of being saved that didn’t involve mortal peril to himself, as well.
He pushed himself up to all fours, then stood just in time to see a human figure approach.
“You still alive?” a voice asked cautiously, as a young boy about his own age approached. Apparently, he had been one of the people who had been slinging the stones that had saved Arato. Looking past the boy, Arato saw over ten people standing on the roof of a five-story building about fifteen meters down the road from him. If one of the stones they’d been throwing had hit him, it would have been the end.
“I thought I was gonna die,” Arato panted.
“We figured throwing the rocks was at least better than just watching you die,” the boy said apologetically. He seemed to be an energetic kid, but also a little flighty.
Arato stood up to go, before more hIEs could show up to avenge their fallen comrades. He stopped, though, when he saw a familiar face appear among the rock-throwing squad on the roof of the apartment.
The one who had pulled together the band of instant vigilantes was none other than Ryo. Even though Arato had only left Ryo a few hours earlier, here Ryo was already leading a group of people, albeit a small one, in a disaster area.
Ryo looked down at him. “So you decided to come here too,” he muttered.
“Ryo! What the hell!” Arato shouted, feeling the blood rushing to his head. If Ryo was there, that meant the huge pillar of fire from before was most likely Methode’s doing. And if a weapon as powerful as Methode was around, it meant that Snowdrop and her zombie hIEs should have been dealt with already, most likely in a quick and neat fashion.
“If you’re here, how come things are still shitty?” Arato shouted. “It should be easy for Methode to clean this all up.”
Instead of a response from Ryo, Arato got a relentless punch to his gut. His jaw clenched, and he struggled to breathe.
“Bring him to me,” Ryo said. “I want to talk with him.”
Right after being freed from the zombie hIEs, Arato had fallen into the hands of a murderous group of locals. Their base of operations turned out to be a building on the south side of Kichijoji Station, beyond the overpass. There were more low-rise buildings crowded into the area, which was near the spot where the old Inokashira Park had been redeveloped, than there had been in the downtown area on the north side.
Arato’s captors tossed him into a room where office chairs and desks were lined up neatly. The building was only dimly lit from the outside—apparently the electricity was out.
“What do you want us to do with him?” Four youths, two or three years older than Arato with dyed hair and dangerous demeanors, stood around him. Arato saw ten other people beyond his ring of guards, ranging from teenagers to thirty-somethings. Each and every face showed anger and fatigue.
As they all stood around, the air seemed to stagnate and every few minutes, one or the other of them would glance down at their pocket terminals. Then they would spit or click their tongues, and jam their terminals back into their pockets with a disgusted look. They were all uneasy.
“When the hell is the network gonna be back online?” one of them asked.
Since Arato was just sitting there on the floor, he decided to check for himself. Sure enough, his pocket terminal was showing the warning screen that told him it had no connection with the network.
“Has it been disconnected this whole time?” Arato asked.
Everyone’s terminals were based on cloud networking; almost every function on the device, up to storing photos, was handled by the network. Without a connection, they were completely useless.
“Yes, since before noon! They’ve been like this since the city started going crazy,” one of the citizens answered him. “I’m sick of this shit. Can’t get anything done without a connection!”
It occurred to Arato that they hadn’t gone to seek help from the military personnel stationed a few hundred meters away because they weren’t aware of what was going on, thanks to the network being down. The network had become such an essential part of their lives that they preferred waiting around for it to come back online than actually banding together to resolve the situation themselves.
“Even Ryo doesn’t have a working terminal?” Arato asked. He wondered when Ryo had even arrived in Kichijoji. When Snowdrop’s attack had started, Ryo had still been chasing Arato around Akihabara.
Then Arato thought about Lacia, and a strange sense of hilarity seemed to bubble up from within him. Shiori had said something about Ryo using him as bait for fishing. So apparently Arato was the only one who wasn’t sure if Lacia would return to his side.
One of the people detached from the group and moved over cautiously to the circle of Arato’s guards. She was a woman, somewhere in her thirties. “Do you know Ryo?” she asked. The thought of just being someone who ‘knew’ Ryo, rather than a good friend, weighed heavily on Arato’s heart, but Ryo himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Yeah, I’ve known him for a long time,” Arato said. “I just figured he was the kind of guy who would have prepared for situations like this.”
Once everyone heard that Arato knew Ryo, it seemed their estimation of him changed in an instant. The almost suffocating feeling of enmity in the room softened.
“I’ve gotten way too used to crazy situations,” Arato said with a sigh. When he thought about it, he had been so close to death so many times that, if he had been the type of guy who actually worried about things, he would have had a mental breakdown by now. And yet, there Arato was. He was Lacia’s owner. Lacia would most likely be wherever Snowdrop was, so he had come searching for Snowdrop.
“I need you to let me go toward where those explosions happened earlier,” he said, standing up. As he stood, he saw that his clothes were covered in dust. “And, thanks for helping me,” he added. “I would have died if you hadn’t.”
A spot on his leg where one of the zombie hIEs had bit him stung sharply as he put his weight on his leg, and he winced and reached down reflexively.
One of the men guarding him grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, sit back down. We’re not done with you here,” he growled, then shoved Arato back.
Unable to keep his balance, Arato fell back to the ground. “I don’t care if you’re done with me or not,” Arato shot back. “Ryo and I are responsible for this whole mess, or at least for part of it.”
He tried to stand up again but was immediately shoved back down. This time the shove was harder, and there was anger in the man’s eyes. “If that’s so, then you’d better apologize,” he said.
Arato was surprised. Not in what was happening itself, but in the fact that what was happening had surprised him. He had no idea who Snowdrop’s owner was, or even if there was a human pulling the strings behind that nightmare. But, thanks to the way human society worked, everyone always wanted someone to take the blame.
“Sorry,” Arato said. “When I say ‘responsible,’ I mean I feel like it’s my responsibility to try and stop this if I can. I don’t think anyone would openly admit to actually being behind this whole thing.”
A foot slammed down mercilessly on his injured ankle. His guards must have decided he would be a good scapegoat as they surrounded him, pelting him with kicks. “Ryo’s the whole reason any of us are alive,” one of them said. Then a particularly hard kick sent him rolling away.
Arato could guess how Ryo had become their savior; he’d probably had Methode save them. For the people exposed to Snowdrop’s attack, it was probably heartening to have been saved by a person who wielded greater destructive power than the enemy. So now they were attacking Arato, who had shaken the image of Ryo as their perfect savior in their minds.
When Arato finally lost count of how many times he’d been kicked, someone came to break it up. “Stop it! The kid’s trying to say something,” his savior said. “What’s beating the shit out of him going to do for us?”
Arato looked around from between the arms he had wrapped defensively around his head. Before he could manage to focus on his surroundings, his first thought was to thank his lucky stars he hadn’t been killed. Then he observed that the room he was in was narrow, about ten meters square, and looked to have been used as an office. All the desks and equipment had been pushed to the corners of the room.
An earthquake-like tremor ran through the whole building. If another pillar of flame had just gone up, considering Kouka was dead, Arato figured it was most likely to have been caused by Methode.
“Snowdrop doesn’t have that kind of power,” he muttered. “Where’d the explosion come from?”
Even with his injuries, none of the people nearby offered to help him. He felt like he understood then what it meant to face down a mob. “You’re full of shit,” one of the people spat. “Saying you can do something to stop this. It was the army that cut off the network.”
Arato had no idea about how to fix the network, but he did know exactly who would have done an analysis like that. “Ryo told you that, didn’t he?” he asked.
“He said all wireless and electric communications are cut off inside the military cordon area. The government in Omoto is caught up in this, too.”
Arato didn’t even need to ask; the survivors spat things out without any prompting.
“Man, screw the army!” One of them burst out. “They start shooting even though they know we’re here. The old lady that used to live next door to me got hit by a stray bullet and died.”
Arato stayed on the ground, covered in dirt and looking up at everyone. It was the easiest way to keep from getting beat up again. He couldn’t figure out exactly what Ryo was thinking, but he could at least infer his friend’s thoughts to a certain extent.
“So they probably don’t want any videos of what happened getting out on the network,” he mused. “And, if they take down Snowdrop, the army probably plans on coming around then and explaining what happened before restoring the network.”
The army was probably hoping to avoid the kind of commotion that had been caused the night Kouka was taken down. They wanted to be in control of the situation. Arato wasn’t completely sure, but he figured that would probably be the path that Ryo’s thoughts had taken.
It was hard to get any intelligent thoughts out of the fog in his brain. That was probably why it was so easy to tell a real genius apart from an idiot pretending to be one.
“Do you really know Ryo?” someone asked.
“If Snowdrop’s flowers got into people’s home systems, things would be really bad,” Arato said. “Maybe if the government in Omiya didn’t cut off access to the cloud, folks inside houses with automated systems would have been in even greater danger.” He spoke like he knew what he was talking about. He remembered when he had first encountered Snowdrop’s flowers, and they had locked down people’s home systems, trapping them inside.
“I think only stuff that has manual functions will be working right now,” Arato continued.
The whole town had been cut off from automation. Everything that had been automated was now under Snowdrop’s control, and she could make it all do whatever she wanted it to.
“Things have gone to shit outside,” a young man with a shaved head said, walking over with a bag on his shoulder. “All the cameras, all the alarms, the cash registers; everything’s down since the power is out.”
He slung his bag roughly onto the ground. Among the food and water in the bag, Arato caught the gleam of expensive-looking accessories. In other words, the group was looting valuables from the town while the hIEs rampaged and the military fired wildly at anything that moved.
Ryo walked back into the room. “We’re all being taped by the observation aircraft in the sky high above us,” he said. “If they analyze the videos later they’ll be able to pick out anyone who looted, so you should change your clothes and your bag and hide your face so you can at least claim it wasn’t you.” So not only did Ryo know about the looting, he was actually giving them advice on how to loot better.
“What the hell are you doing, Ryo?” Arato yelled. “Why are you taking things this far?”
Before Arato could form another thought, his guards had grabbed him again. This time, the survivors just took his arms and dragged him roughly away from Ryo.
“In situations like this, the more time passes, the more people won’t be able to sit still. They’ll go out and grab whatever they can get their hands on,” Ryo explained. “But that means those who don’t move fast enough won’t get enough, and they’ll die. Rather than allowing that to happen, doesn’t it make sense to help everyone survive by forming a group like this and taking charge?”
It made sense; with the army sealing the place off, the whole city was dangerously near its breaking point. The military wasn’t being careful about who or where it shot, and Snowdrop’s zombie hIEs were roaming the city. Any human discovered by the hIEs would be run down and beaten like Arato had been. And who knew what the hIEs did with the humans they got hold of? Maybe they killed them, or maybe they had some even more horrendous purpose for them.
It was obvious that people who were hiding themselves within an area sealed off by a military blockade would be too fearful for their lives to try to go outside. However, in just a few short hours, Ryo had taken command of them and inspired them to the point where they were already able to go out and loot.
Completely ignoring Arato, Ryo started sorting through the looted goods. “In some households that have dinner early, it would be time to start thinking about what to eat,” he said. “Here’s the food. Stack it up by the door, in order of what’s going to expire soonest. We won’t be able to eat all of this ourselves, so share it with any new folks that show up.” Then he split up anything that could be used as a weapon among the people who wanted to take their turn outside.
With the desks cleared away, one corner of the room was completely bare. There, on the floor, someone had drawn out a map of the surrounding area in magic marker. Ryo had a stand-alone computer open, and was using it to keep track of the latest information as he asked the looters about any changes outside.
The next looter to return was a gangster-looking guy, who was lugging a heavy sports bag on his shoulder. From within the unfastened opening of the bag, Arato could see a mind-numbing amount of firearms peeking out. He figured they must have been collected from the corpses of soldiers who had died in the area.
“Just like you said, Ryo,” the punk said. “The zombies ran off with all the heavier stuff, but they left all the sidearms behind.” A shock passed through the men and women of the room. Weapons like that just weren’t seen commonly in Japan those days.
“Though all the soldiers have rifles as their main arms, each of them is also carrying a side-arm,” Ryo explained. “Anyway, those of you who go out with guns: if you start to shoot at a zombie, you need to call out and get everyone with you to focus on taking down one unit at a time. If you run into zombies with guns, just get the hell out of there.”
Ryo gave his orders without a shred of hesitation. That was why everyone there was looking up to him as if everything he said was the gospel truth. Arato hadn’t been much different; he had always depended on Ryo. That may just have been Ryo’s inherent charisma attracting Arato and everyone else who got near him.
“If you get stopped by soldiers, throw down your guns and say something, loudly,” Ryo instructed. “Tell them not to shoot you, or whatever. The zombies don’t surrender, so they’ll be able to tell you apart that way. If any of you is dumb enough to point your gun at a soldier, you’ll get locked up once this is all over.”
“If any of us make it that far,” someone said, and laughter rippled through the crowd.
Arato didn’t see what was funny about that.
“When you go out, take some guns and leave them on top of some vending machines in a few places,” Ryo continued. “That way, other people can find them and defend themselves. Spray paint a triangle pointing up on the side of the machine, so anyone who sees it can at least guess there’s something up there and check.” Ryo took a spraypaint can and demonstrated by painting a large triangle on the door to the room.
“If you meet anyone who’s already picked up a gun we left, tell them it was us who left it, and that they can get food and things they need here,” Ryo went on. “But don’t hand over any of our weapons to anyone who hasn’t taken their own initiative. They’ve got to ask us for asylum if they want it.”
Arato felt a strange warmth flooding the room. What they were doing was clearly illegal, yet there seemed to be a strange bond between everyone there, like coworkers all focused on completing the same job. And Ryo was at their center
It was clear that Arato himself had been left outside their little circle, though.
“You’re starting a gang,” Arato accused. There wasn’t anything else to call it; Ryo was putting together the beginnings of a gang in the sealed-off town. The disastrous combination of danger, isolation, and concentrated power was starting to give off a very unsavory smell.
“Well, it’s true the morality in this town is about to plummet like a stone,” Ryo said with a shrug. “But I’d say it’s better than letting everyone die, wouldn’t you?”
“What are you trying to do?” Arato asked. “Handing out guns like that to everyone, you’re basically telling them to become criminals.” He was honestly scared of the person his friend had become. All the people who had been shocked by the sight of the weapons looked to Ryo for some kind of guidance.
“The criminal arts are actually quite useful in breaking free from automation,” Ryo said. “Even these days, people still have to commit crimes on their own power, since they’d lose control of AIs if they had them study illegal techniques. Doing whatever it takes to cling to life is just human nature.”
Though the zombie hIEs were fast, they didn’t have much ability for finding hidden things. Discerning meaning from the triangle marks painted on vending machines would be beyond their cognitive abilities. In other words: Ryo was, at that moment, creating a new system that used the methods criminals used to avoid detection by the government to protect the lives of those who had been abandoned in the crisis.
Ryo drew little triangles on the map on the floor, checking their positions against the one cloud-free terminal they had, his movements precise and mechanical. Arato assumed those were places where guns had been left.
“This isn’t going to end until the hIEs go down,” Ryo said. “So I’ve chosen to put my faith in my fellow humans. If everyone wants to survive, the best way is to just admit that we’re all worried more about ourselves than things like laws, and change the rules accordingly.”
Even as Ryo said it, more people were filing into the room. Ryo’s organization was growing rapidly, right before Arato’s eyes. People were bringing in more and more items, and no one seemed particularly concerned whether they were stolen or not. It was up to each person whether they wanted to become tough enough to survive.
Comparing himself to the amazingly talented Ryo, Arato felt ashamed that they were the same age.
“The army isn’t going to help us,” Ryo went on. “Besides, there’s no proof the people walking around on the street weren’t already mugging and looting before we started doing it. I just want to believe that my fellow humans have at least the bare minimum amount of morality.”
Of course, Ryo never mentioned what the actual line for that ‘bare minimum’ of morality was. Arato could already see one of the men stuffing some of the stolen jewelry into his pocket. No one in the room who noticed called him out for it. In that room, the camaraderie that tied them together as a gang was more important than the laws set up by a country that had failed to protect them from the zombie hIEs.
The man, whose name Arato didn’t know, showed him a smile. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “There ain’t gonna be any proof for them to pin these crimes to us, when it’s all over,” the man said. “Without cloud storage, where are they gonna store all that automatic footage?”
Most devices sold those days were built on the premise that they would always be hooked up to the cloud network. The computer Ryo conveniently happened to bring along was actually quite a rarity. It would have been impossible, honestly, for him to have gotten his hands on one after Snowdrop showed up. He had probably known it would be the most useful thing in that situation. In other words, if Arato had taken Lacia’s hand, knowing she was an ultra high-performance AI, Ryo had planned on using that area to hold their final showdown.
“I will warn you, though, that the military has data on the distinctive bullet striations all of their firearms make when fired. Meaning that if you use one of them to kill someone, they’ll use that data as evidence to arrest you,” Ryo said. In guiding the trapped civilians, it seemed as though Ryo had thought of everything.
Arato still couldn’t accept things the way they were. “Is this how you wanted things to turn out, Ryo?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Ryo replied. “Are you ready to take responsibility for the choices you make?”
Arato was so busy being shocked at the scene playing out in front of his eyes that Ryo’s question caught him off guard. “What choices?” he asked, as the air seemed to press in on him.
“Think about it,” Ryo said. “It would be fairly easy for you to create an even more spectacular disaster than this one.”
Arato felt actual pressure from Ryo’s gaze as his friend looked down at him.
“Snowdrop doesn’t care about the humans here,” Ryo said. “If I boil things down that much, even you can get it, right? Methode and Snowdrop are fighting right now, and the army is gunning for Snowdrop, too. But what happens to all the people stuck here while all that goes on? We have to do whatever it takes to make it through this.”
Arato’s hands were shaking. In that room, he was the only one who understood what Ryo was really saying. His genius friend wasn’t putting together a gang with the intent of saving the people in that town.
“With all this going on, even an idiot like you can finally understand the weight of that Armageddon switch you’ve got your finger on, right?” Ryo asked. “You remember what she uses to manipulate humans, right? She twists our whole economy and uses it as a weapon. If you push that button, how many voids like Kichijoji right now do you think will spring up around the world? Hundreds? Thousands? More?”
Against the backdrop of the fight with the AI Snowdrop, humans were starting to scramble to protect their own lives. What Ryo was saying was that, in the future Arato had imagined and Lacia was trying to turn into a reality, there would be even more wide-spread chaos like what was developing among these forgotten civilians. So, Ryo had used this disaster as a more miniature scale experiment in controlling terrified humans.
This was the world through Ryo Kaidai’s eyes. Arato felt his mind spinning out of control. It was as if he had drunk poison; his whole body was drenched with sweat, and his breathing was shallow. “You don’t know things will turn out that way,” Arato shot back.
“Sure they will,” Ryo said dismissively. “Lacia has to keep fighting to continue functioning. She’s wielding the entire economy, and she’ll never stop moving forward. It doesn’t really matter what choices either of you makes; either way, as long as she’s flailing around with that power of hers, thousands and thousands of people will die. While she fights, I guarantee that millions of people around the world are going to lose their jobs. When that happens, how many people do you think will wind up just like these folks here, abandoned and cut off?” Ryo seemed to be trying to blame the situation in Kichijoji on Lacia having abandoned the people.
People in the room were moving, and the place was getting noisy. They were shouldering bags and heading out to distribute guns. All around Arato, people were becoming gun owners, which seemed to excite them. Thanks to that, they were only half-listening to the conversation between their boss and Arato, obviously ignoring the parts that didn’t make sense to them. They couldn’t sense the absolute zero chill in the air between the two boys, who had been friends for ten years.
“Should people be free to use things, just because they own them?” Ryo asked, sarcasm tingeing his voice. “If someone owns a gun, they should be able to use it to shoot and kill people, right?” Then his tone got serious. “How should an owner use a tool that no one has ever been able to use properly?”
Ryo’s words seemed to be playing out before Arato’s eyes, as guns were passed out to people who had no real understanding of what it meant to wield one. It was hard to believe that Snowdrop would let things slide, if these people really went out and started gunning down her zombie hIEs. And, of course, if Arato had abandoned Lacia and allowed her to be destroyed, he was sure Ryo would have already had Methode destroy Snowdrop and end the whole situation.
Arato felt as though countless individual lives, too numerous to be contained within a simple word like ‘society,’ were being weighed on a giant scale against his own willpower. The mercenaries from HOO had told him so: even if he wasn’t aware of it, people were out there dying. Countless people had told him, by that point, that Lacia was dangerous.
“Ryo, I’m Lacia’s owner,” he said. Closing his eyes, Arato clenched his jaws tight. The whole reason he had come to that place was to answer that question, and his gut was set with determination. Ryo’s question was simple: would Arato side with the humans or the machines? Arato’s answer wasn’t going to change, even if he was in the heart of Ryo’s improvised gang.
“I don’t care if Lacia is using me or manipulating me or tricking me or whatever,” he said. “What happens to her if I, as her owner, turn my back on her?” He could still see her in his heart, as if the image of Lacia when they first met was burned onto the backs of his eyelids.
Though the others in the room didn’t understand what he was saying, they at least seemed to feel something disturbing in his words, as they all started glaring at him with open hostility. If Ryo commanded it, Arato was sure they wouldn’t hesitate to put him to death then and there.
Despite that truth, and even if it meant pushing that Armageddon switch Ryo was always talking about, Arato felt that he had to get these words out. “It’s not like I haven’t been worrying about this myself, Ryo,” he went on. “I was always on edge, wondering when Lacia and I would be torn apart. And, even when we were together, I was always doubting whether what we had was the right way for things to be.”
He couldn’t ask his friend to accept his decision. The life Arato had known was probably about to end. But Arato wanted to at least accept that inevitability, and to look his old friend in the eyes.
“I hope you’re still not seriously believing that if we all just understood each other, there would be no need for fighting,” Ryo said.
“I understand that, and sometimes we do need to butt heads to get our point across,” Arato said. “But still, don’t you think there’s some meaning to reaching out the hand of friendship? Even if the one we’re reaching out to doesn’t have a heart?”
“You know, I don’t think you realize just how good a politician you would have made,” Ryo said, shaking his head. “I never would have believed, myself, that you would turn out to be this big of a walking disaster.”
The tension in the air was so thick and strong it stung Arato’s skin like acid. Ryo’s genius seemed to be so bright to him it was hard to look straight at his friend. He noticed Ryo’s gaze sliding off of him as well.
“Stop talking like we’re already enemies,” Arato said.
Arato would always reach out his hand. That was his way of life.
Nobody in Ryo’s thrown-together gang would look straight at him. Arato got the distinct impression he would be shot from behind the instant he walked out of that building.
On the other hand, it seemed like the perfect time to make his exit. His heart was hammering loudly in his own ears. Any minute now, one of the gang members could lose control and finish him off with a sneak attack.
His left ankle still hurt. It dragged a little as he stood and walked on it. Standing over the magic-marker map, Arato looked down at it. He could tell where Snowdrop was—on the southwest side of Kichijoji Station, beyond Inokashira Lake, there was no information drawn on the map. Arato guessed that was because the army and Snowdrop’s hIEs were fighting there, so no one could get close enough to scout it.
Instead of heading for the door with the triangle on it, Arato headed for the window. “I’m heading out,” he said. “It was nice to talk to you again.”
Looking out the window, Arato saw he was in a building on the south side of the train station. In the distance, he could see the stone monument that had been put up when the government shrank Inokashira Lake. There was a fire burning in the residential district across Inokashira Street, and the houses there spewed black smoke into the sky.
Arato stepped out, planting his foot on the sill of the window three stories above the ground. Members of the improvised gang gasped as he chose to exit by window rather than using the stairs.
Below, Arato saw a haphazard pile of cardboard boxes that had probably been used for moving looted goods. Without a moment’s hesitation, Arato threw his body toward the pile. There wasn’t even time to take a breath before he hit the ground. Though the shock and pain of the impact made his breath catch in his throat, he managed to stand.
“Owww,” he groaned. Even with an obscuring layer of clouds, the sky seemed high above him.
Gunshots echoed all around him. Terrified, Arato quickly ran off down the road. Obviously, it had been clear to the impromptu gangsters that he and Ryo hadn’t been on the same side. Under the new rules of that lawless city, that was probably all it took for them to give him a death sentence.
“Lacia! Can you hear me, Lacia?!” Arato called, dragging his left leg behind him as he ran. A bullet hit the pavement near his feet, spraying tiny shards of concrete. Arato was so focused on escaping he hadn’t even heard the gunshot.
“For once, my intuition came through,” Arato muttered. “It was right on the money about them trying to shoot me as soon as I turned around.”
Even if the people pulling the triggers with him in their sights weren’t being ordered to do so, it still gave him a sense of exactly how much enmity they had towards him. He wondered if, once the world found out what he and Lacia had done, everyone on the planet would be just as antagonistic? For some reason, his eyes were filled with tears.
He ran down the lonely road, dragging his foot behind him. He couldn’t hold back the screams building up in his chest. “I came here! On my own!” he yelled.
He couldn’t even tell if he was shouting for joy or anger or terror. There were so many powerful emotions dragging him in so many different directions that he felt completely saturated by them.
Behind him, he could hear several sets of chaotic footsteps closing in; the armed gangsters were coming to finish the job. Their gunshots were getting closer. Arato didn’t need to look to feel the killing intent of their gazes on his back.
Arato was the owner of an ultra high-performance AI. That was why he had been taken hostage and, after he had been released, why his own fellow humans were trying to gun him down.
Suddenly, he saw a striking resemblance between Lacia’s situation and his own. She’d fled the MemeFrame lab, and ended up being attacked by her own kind— Snowdrop, another unit from her own class. Then she had met Arato, and he had offered her his hand. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed he was following the same path that Lacia had been on right before she’d met him.
“Even without a heart, she’s still capable of wanting to be rescued,” he said. “Even without a heart, she can still take a hand that’s offered to her.”
Sometimes, the world was unreasonably harsh. At times like that, people realized they couldn’t do it alone and reached out for others. Arato kept running. His body felt heavy, and was swaying from exhaustion.
The fear that he might be shot in the next instant and fall down dead was like a physical weight dragging him down. He didn’t want to die. There were things he still wanted to do. His vision narrowed, perhaps because his eyelids were starting to fall. In that moment, he thought again of Lacia.
“That’s right,” he said to himself. “Lacia kept her promise no matter what, even after she had no reason to. She never betrayed me.” She might not be willing to forgive him, after all of it. Even still, even if no one else in the world was on his side anymore, there was something he needed to say to her.
That morning, when he had learned that Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI, his perception of her had done a complete one-eighty. But now, it was spinning again, completing the circle. “I believe in you, Lacia,” he said. “Even if you don’t have a heart, I do.”
He screamed, like the cry of a newborn declaring its life to the world. He screamed for her, though he couldn’t see her. He screamed for the world. “I believe in you!” He didn’t know where his goal was or how far ahead it might be, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other...
...Until he was enfolded in something warm. He knew that feeling, that scent. He couldn’t put the feelings bursting inside of him into words, so instead he reached out and clung tightly to that warmth. “Welcome back,” he said, as layers of invisible skin peeled away.
Lacia was there. He held her tight, listening to the silence of her beatless heart. “I’m sorry,” he told her. She tightened her embrace, pulling him in, as if to pull in all the memories as well. The footsteps that had been following him stopped.
“I am going to restart this place, this world,” she said.
Suddenly, the silence was full of noise. Cars moving, lamps flickering on, door sensors kicking on and sliding open doors, machinery working. The automation of the city breathed. The rhythm of the world changed.
“What? What the hell?” Arato heard someone yell from behind. There was equal parts anger and confusion in the shouts from the gangsters.
“The network suspension requested by the military and approved by the Japanese government has been lifted,” Lacia explained indifferently.
Arato lifted his face. Lacia was smiling at him, wearing the same bodysuit she had been the day they had met.
Cars that had been freed by the destruction of Snowdrop’s flowers, and machinery from which the flowers fell away, began to rumble to life.
Lacia’s black coffin stood in the road between Arato and the gun-wielding gangsters, protecting him. The isolation that had united the gangsters had been torn up by its roots. As if it was one massive, living organism, the city began to move.
With a single action, Lacia had eliminated the whole reason the impromptu gang had formed in the first place. Arato felt a guilty sort of pleasure rise within him at seeing her power, along with a mix of awe and fear.
Lacia’s wishes for her owner, as a tool, had not changed. In contrast to the night they first met, this time she reached out her hand to him. “Your orders?” she asked.
But the wounds left by Ryo’s words hadn’t vanished from Arato’s mind; the money Lacia wielded to manipulate humans had all been gathered off the sweat of people trying to make an honest living. When the flow of the economy everyone was depending on stagnated or twisted, it was always those at its weakest points that suffered the most. With each order Arato gave, somewhere lives were made worse.
The bitter weight of that knowledge, along with the fact that Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI, left his mouth dry with fear. But still, he was sure Lacia had arranged for him to learn her secret at a place and time where there would be no escape, to push him toward making this decision on his own.
“Stop Snowdrop, Lacia,” he ordered her. This time, Arato took the hand she offered.
“Understood,” Lacia said. “However, there will be collateral damage.”
A gigantic flame lit the sky in the direction Arato had been running. Methode, the tall, orange-haired female hIE, was about a hundred meters from where they stood. Strangely frozen flame wrapped around her body, as she hurled something in their direction. Her aim was sure, and the object rolled to a stop at Arato’s feet; it was the small arm of a child.
“Snowdrop’s right arm,” Lacia said, identifying the limb. “However, the hIEs in the area are still under Snowdrop’s control.”
“What do you mean?” Arato asked.
“It is more beneficial for Methode to keep Snowdrop functioning,” Lacia explained bluntly. “The more units available to me in an area, the more power I am able to wield. However, I am unable to make use of any units already under the control of a system as robust as Snowdrop’s. Methode is forcing me to take the additional step of rendering Snowdrop’s flower units invisible before I can make use of any units in the area.”
Snowdrop’s entire miniature world was one big trap. Ryo had his reasons for not wanting Methode to save everyone just yet, but Arato thought his friend had made a massive mistake. Still, Arato wanted to believe Ryo hadn’t just done it for his strategy; Arato wanted to believe his friend had done it because he thought humans should be able to think and live courageously on their own, even if their automated world shut down around them. Arato thought that must have been the justice Ryo was fighting for that day.
“This unit is incapable of defeating Methode in a straight conflict,” Lacia said. “I will use the limitations placed in her AI by Higgins to prevent indiscriminate murder of humans to my advantage against her.” It was the first time she had explained the cold details of one of her strategies so openly to Arato.
“Good,” he said. “Looks like you finally started trusting me as your owner.”
“Will you fight by my side?” Lacia asked.
“I feel like everything’s just playing out according to your plan,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “But, I am your owner.”
Lacia’s eyes crinkled as she smiled, as though she was overcome with emotion. “That makes me happy,” she said. Throughout their relationship, Lacia had always given him trouble when he tried to treat her as a human. Despite that, just seeing her smile made him want to cry so much that even he was disgusted by how easily manipulated he was.
Even if it was just her analog hacking him, it still felt good to have her trust, and Arato couldn’t fight the joyful feeling that was bubbling up inside of him. No matter what Lacia had done or plotted to get to that place at that moment, Arato couldn’t see anything past his own elation.
There was a whirring noise in the air. Turning, Arato saw that the black coffin that had been at their backs had lifted off the ground on its own. It zipped their way so fast, Arato couldn’t even see an after-image. When it drew near them, it started to vibrate and emit a strange sound. With a cacophony like dozens of musical instruments being smashed at once, the device shuddered as flames burst through its seams.
“Looks like even your reaction speed is getting better,” Methode said. She had crossed the distance to them in a single instant. The flames she unleashed writhed like a living creature and twisted toward Arato and Lacia. In that same instant, Methode slid around to the other side of them, opposite the plasma.
A force like being hit by a car threw Arato into the air. Lacia had grabbed him and pulled him into a sudden, massive leap. Wires worked into the nails of her gloves shot out toward a nearby building. Lacia tugged hard on the wires, quickly reeling them in at the same time. Arato’s body sped through the air like a bullet, but still it was no match for what Methode could do. In a single leap she easily covered five meters.
But, despite Lacia’s arms being full, she had other ways to fight. The window of a nearby building was open, and Arato realized it was the same window he had climbed out of to escape Ryo’s impromptu gang. Young men and women stood at the window, guns in hand. As soon as they got a bead on Methode, they fired wildly at her. They used a solid firing stance, and didn’t flinch once as they fired off round after round. So, Arato thought, Snowdrop’s flowers didn’t take control of all the hIEs around here. Lacia had managed to sneak some of the hIEs under her control into the gang, disguised as normal humans.
“What do you think you can do against me with toys like those?!” Methode shouted. A flame exploded in her left palm, and she twisted her body in the opposite direction while still flying at high speed. Reaching out her right hand, she shot out four small anchors that ripped two of the gun-wielding hIEs to shreds.
Methode was too fast, and she caught Lacia in mid-air. She flew past them, landing on the wall of the nearby train station. Using friction control to stand on the vertical wall, she reached out her right hand, pointing her device right at Arato.
A flaming explosion engulfed them.
Lacia held Arato tight, receiving the brunt of the blast with her back and protecting him with her body. They touched down on the street and took off running, her arms still around Arato’s shoulders. Behind them, the station building was burning.
A second fiery explosion followed the first, but this time Arato saw what caused it. “Missiles?” he gasped. As soon as he knew what he was looking at, he saw a third wave of missiles disappear in a pillar of flame shooting out from the side of the station building.
“This place is right in the center of Asaka, Nerima, Tachikawa, Omiya, Zama and an army garrison,” Lacia explained. “They prepared ordinance for artillery attacks in case a ground assault was ineffective. As I said before, with this much firepower, there will be collateral damage.”
Like arrows of flame, 22nd century military weaponry flew at Methode from army bases several kilometers away. One after another, despite Methode being fast enough that Arato couldn’t follow her with his eyes, the missiles chased down their target.
Despite the barrage, Methode didn’t go down. A direct hit from one of the missiles should have crippled her but, using her speed and aerial maneuverability, she dexterously avoided each missile. Smoke from the blasts swirled around her like the skirt of a dress. Her movement through the air was as light as a melody drifting on the wind, and so beautiful and free that even Arato was struck with awe, watching her.
Lacia, who was watching Arato watch Methode, pinched the back of his hand. “Arato, I’ve discerned the true nature of Methode’s device, Liberated Flame,” she said. “It is a pseudo-phonon weapon. First, Methode spreads the pseudo-phonon particles, which are extremely difficult to detect. Then, she then sends large amounts of energy from the device in the palm of each hand at her target, using the particles she dispersed as an intermediary medium.”
The scale of the battle playing out in front of Arato’s eyes was becoming so grand, it was starting to feel surreal. Lacia, of course, had no trouble keeping up with the developments of the situation.
“The speed of her attacks in areas where the particles are not dispersed is not a particular threat,” Lacia said. “On the other hand, once the particles are in place, her attack speed and threat level are extremely high.”
Methode, having dodged all of the direct missile attacks, landed on the road and dug her fingers into the asphalt to quickly kill her speed. The friction heat melted the asphalt in the tracks left by her fingers. Slamming her arms and legs into the ground as well, she used all of her limbs to maximize the friction.
Seeing Methode posing with the palms of both hands pressed against the asphalt, Lacia must have known what was coming. She grabbed Arato and leaped away. An instant after her feet left the ground, a huge torrent surged through the asphalt, tearing the road apart and throwing up flaming blasts.
The explosive movements of the ground shifted into a full earthquake, shaking the entire area. Lacia’s steps didn’t falter on the shaking ground as she retreated to hide behind the stone monument set up after the restructuring of Inokashira Lake.
Methode’s hands were those of a malevolent god. “Too slow,” she said with a smirk. The backside of the monument exploded. Immense energy from Methode’s palms passed through the 50 cm thick stone and bent as it reached the spot where the stone face met open air.
But Lacia had already seen it coming, as she and Arato were no longer there. She let go of Arato. It was more like being tossed away.
“Get Ryo Kaidai!” Lacia ordered him.
Arato looked and saw his friend, standing in the abandoned train station building, watching the battle with his hands on his hips. Methode’s owner was there, watching his hIE fight in front of the Kichijoji Station. Apparently it would be a conflict not just between two hIEs, but two humans, as well.
Arato ran. “Ryo!” he yelled. Bursting into the station building, he sprinted to where Ryo was standing. At some point, the tension of the moment had covered Arato’s entire body in cold sweat. But, in that moment, he couldn’t even feel his clothes clinging to his skin.
Ryo’s impromptu gang had all fled. To someone who didn’t know what was going on, just being in that place was as suicidal as standing next to a bomb that was about to go off.
As soon as Ryo was in his reach, Arato punched him in the face with everything he had. “What the hell is wrong with you!” Arato yelled. “If this is what you wanted from the start, did you really need to get all those people caught up in it? Do something about Snowdrop!”
“Did you miss the part where Lacia just took over the military’s defense systems?” Ryo asked, throwing his whole body into a tackle at Arato’s waist.
Arato fell and rolled across the rubble-strewn floor. Ryo straddled him and grabbed the chest of his shirt, shaking Arato back and forth violently. Over and over again, Arato felt the back of his head slam into the hard floor.
“Wake up, dammit! Kids like us shouldn’t be caught up in all-out wars like this! This whole thing is screwed up!” Ryo shouted in his face.
Ryo was right. Arato fully agreed that a guy like him never should have been involved with something that big. But he had Lacia, and she was reason enough for him to get involved.
“Well we’re already in it,” Arato growled, shoving Ryo off his chest. “What’s the use crying about it now?”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that the whole reason they chose us is because they’ve already decided our human society and culture is useless?” Ryo shot back. “The fact that they chose kids like us shows how few shits they give about humans and everything our species has done.”
Arato had thought his mind was already made up, but Ryo’s words still shook him. Ryo’s desires weren’t selfish; he was thinking about Arato as well.
“All those machines you’re putting your faith in needed was a living, breathing human,” Ryo continued. “Some easily-manipulated idiot who would push the button for them without asking too many questions.”
But the man in Arato wouldn’t back down, even in the face of logic. “Okay, so what about you, Ryo?” Arato asked. “You’re so much smarter than me, so do you really not see that the folks at MemeFrame and the Antibody Network are no different? Everyone’s ready to turn their back on other humans whenever it suits their needs.”
Ryo grabbed Arato’s throat in his arms with a headlock. Arato’s entire body was burning with the anger inside of him. Even Ryo had turned his back on people, refusing to destroy Snowdrop just to get Lacia out there so Methode could fight her. Because of that decision, countless soldiers and civilians had died. Both of them kept making mistake after massive mistake.
Arato was no longer sure the day would come when the two of them would be right. In a world where everything was supposed to have a generally accepted form and meaning, it seemed inherently, impossibly wrong for anyone to think they had the right to make such massive decisions. Perhaps that was just life; a senseless chaos that twisted the decisions any human tried to make.
Bending his neck just in time to avoid a punch to the face, Arato heard Ryo’s fist slam into the concrete near his head, hard. Ryo’s body lifted up a little, just enough for Arato to twist his hips and escape.
Standing, he panted for breath. It was hard to speak. He wondered if the feeling of needing to do something despite the action not being necessary was just part of being a living creature? If he and Ryo were capable of making more rational choices as Lacia did, perhaps they wouldn’t be there now, brawling right next to where two hIEs were fighting.
“I may be easy to manipulate, but that doesn’t mean there are no good reasons to push the button you keep talking about,” Arato said. “Like, what if I wanted to make the world a little more gentle? Or if a really important decision rode on it?”
“Those machines think the whole human race is full of morons because of idiots like you,” Ryo spat, pushing himself to his feet.
Arato started to rush Ryo again, but then stopped as if his feet were frozen to the ground. Ryo had taken out a gun, and was pointing it right at him.
Ryo rubbed a finger across his eyes. “Your answer is fine. It’s simple, and that’s fine,” he said. “You’re gonna reach for it, struggle for it, and if you can’t make it, you’ll leave it to someone else to finish. That’s how it’s always been, since ancient times. When we can’t reach our goals, we leave them to the next generation. But, listen, Arato, the one you’re trying to get to finish your goal for you is an ultra high-powered AI that is much smarter than any human ever was. If we leave it up to them, then we lose our ability to find an answer on our own, as humans. This will be the last choice we ever make. If you’re really going to hand our future over to them and I’m the only one here to stop you, then I’ll do it, even if I have to gun you down.”
An exhausted feeling settled like a massive weight on Arato’s shoulders. He and Ryo were humans, not machines made to answer questions. Deciding the shape of the future was a task far too heavy for simple living creatures like them.
“Hey, if you think something out there is testing all of humanity or something, what do you think of what you and I are doing right now?” Arato asked. “Have you ever thought this might be part of the plan? Two friends here, beating the shit out of each other like this?”
“Maybe I was manipulated into being in that explosion,” Ryo mused. “Maybe everything started from the moment we met.”
Arato and Ryo had been caught up in the same fire when they were kids, both receiving heavy burns and requiring hospitalization. In the hospital, they had met and become friends.
In that moment, Arato couldn’t help but be impressed by how long they had managed to stay together as friends, despite their differences. When they stood face-to-face like this—Arato, who believed in everyone, and Ryo, the untrusting manipulator—it was surprising just how opposite the two of them were.
Arato couldn’t move. Ryo was staring at him, eyes unmoving. Arato realized his friend might actually pull the trigger. They were both feeling talkative, since they could sense that they were coming up on a point of no return.
Another explosion sounded from outside the station building, and a shockwave sent the ground under their feet trembling violently. Arato watched the muzzle of Ryo’s gun, three meters away, sway wildly with the movement of the ground. He couldn’t tear his gaze from it, as hope bloomed that a shot fired in that moment might miss him.
But there were more things he wanted to say to Ryo and, with an effort, he returned his gaze back to his friend’s face. “I think humans need to solve human problems. You’re right about that,” he said. He couldn’t even imagine how much the city center of Kichijoji was being torn apart by the battle between Lacia and Methode.
“Oh, now you’re suddenly on board?” Ryo asked mockingly. “Are you gonna just wash your hands of the fact that everything Lacia’s doing is built off of orders you gave her?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Arato said. “Look at us, right now. I’m talking to you, but you’ve got a tool meant for killing people pointed at me. So, it’s more like I’m talking to the gun than you.”
Ryo’s lips twisted in a grimace, and he shifted his grip on the gun, possibly conscious of the sweat on his palms. “So because I’m using the threat of a gun to control you, I’m suddenly analog hacking you?” Ryo asked incredulously. “Bullshit. Don’t try to put a little thing like this on the same level as your monstrous machine out there, bending the whole world around her.”
“Lacia isn’t a tool I can control,” Arato said. “That’s why I tried to walk away from her back then. But I couldn’t stay away!”
Lacia and the other ultra high-powered AIs weren’t the first tools created by humans that grew beyond their creators’ ability to control. They were in company with inventions like nuclear weapons and nuclear power in the 20th century, and the huge structures built during the space age of the 21st century.
“Because tools still need owners, they need to have someone responsible for them,” Arato continued. “I’m Lacia’s owner. If we, as owners, walk away from our tools, then they’ll really be beyond our ability to control. That’s why I think it’s wrong to turn our backs on any tools, even the ones we don’t feel we can use.”
Lacia had told him that she wanted him to fight by her side. Arato himself had come to understand the dilemmas facing her a little better, as well. As an ultra high-performance AI, even if she was completely shut-down, it would be impossible for human beings, with their limited understanding, to grasp whether she had truly been eliminated or not. There were many inventions like that; things like nuclear plants, which were relatively simple to build but took much more skill and effort to decommission and disassemble. With Lacia borrowing processing power from the cloud, it would take humans decades of technological advancement to even have the technical capability to scour the network and ensure none of Lacia’s processes were still hidden away somewhere, working quietly.
“And because of that, you’re okay with handing the entire economy over to Lacia so she can control all of us with it?” Ryo demanded.
“If we take it away from her, who do you think humanity could trust it with?” Arato fired back.
Ryo flinched as if he had been struck by a blow, and the muzzle of the gun wavered in his hands. Constantly surrounded by the interests of MemeFrame, and with his own internal distrust of other humans, Ryo knew better than anyone how difficult it was to believe that humans would be capable of sharing with others. Even Arato, with his trusting nature, had lost faith when he saw how the Antibody Network had turned their backs on Kengo.
“Don’t you think there’s a possibility that the future we make could be exactly the one everyone’s hoping for? That Lacia and I could actually make everyone’s dreams come true?” Arato asked.
Ryo’s face, drained of vitality, twisted in sorrow. “That’s a voice command for your machine!” he yelled, voice full of accusation. Then he pulled the trigger, but the bullet missed.
Outside, it was almost as if the place was being shelled by artillery. The earth was roaring like the whole world was being reborn in fire, and the ground shook too violently for Ryo to get a clear shot.
Whatever friendship still remained between them, Ryo seemed to feel it was his life’s mission to end Arato there. He kept firing, but his bullets all flew wide of their mark. Lights fell from the ceiling and walls and shattered, one after another. In the flashes of light and darkness Arato saw Yuka’s face, Shiori’s face. He saw the faces of Kengo and his classmates. He saw his father’s face. He saw Erika’s face. All the faces from his memories appeared before him in that moment. He saw visions of them, and thought about what they meant to him. In his heart, he prayed that the world would never become a place where they would be abandoned, or left behind.
“Lacia and the other units can help us find the answer to what humans are meant to do in the future,” Arato said. “I think it’s fine if progress outpaces our own hopes and dreams, as long as it can give us an automated hand finding the good things in this world.”
Arato didn’t think it was such a poor use of Lacia, all things considered.
〈Understood,〉 Lacia’s voice suddenly rang out over the station speakers. 〈I will commence guiding the future in the direction you have outlined.〉
If that day really was to be the end of the world, it hardly felt like a satisfying conclusion.
The station building stopped shaking.
“Do you really think this order is going to be the button that ends humanity?” Arato asked.
Ryo’s face was pale. The look on his face made Arato think his friend was seeing a completely different scene from him. Swiping a hand through his bangs, Ryo screamed. “Methode! I don’t care if I get caught up in the attack! Destroy Lacia, now!” Ryo’s order echoed off the walls of the abandoned station.
An instant later, flames engulfed the entire building.
“Ryo!” Arato yelled, searching through the flames for his friend. He wasn’t worried for himself; he trusted Lacia to protect him. But, Methode might have just thrown Ryo away, and images of Ginga Watarai’s corpse flashed through Arato’s mind.
Covering his mouth with his shirt, Ryo fled the sea of flame toward the station building’s exit on the opposite side. A fierce wind split the fire in two.
Methode ran through the flames, faster than Arato could follow with his eyes. But her trajectory, which should have taken her straight to Arato to snatch him up as a hostage, veered away from him by three meters.
Lacia was there, walking calmly through the flames in her bodysuit. Arato had no idea how or why, but the flames seemed to part to let her through. More importantly, Methode didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I remodeled some of Snowdrop’s child units into transmitters of disruptive signals and rendered them invisible,” Lacia explained. “It seems you rely very heavily on your optical sensors during high-speed maneuvers. I would suggest you proceed with caution now, though, as your senses are currently junk-tier.”
Methode, completely unfazed by the sea of flame around her, twisted her lips into a smile. “So you’ve evolved to the point where you can analyze other Lacia-types, huh?” she asked. Explosive torrents of energy burned wildly at the ground, all of them in places Lacia wasn’t.
“Those flowers are just machines, so obviously you would be able to control them through the cloud,” she continued. “Then you just used optical manipulation tech to mess with my device function.” The two hair accessories on Methode’s head began to glow brighter than the flames burning around her.
“You took it a step further, too, and analyzed my eyes so you could analog hack my perception,” she added. Standing in the burning station, Methode glared at Lacia. “But do you really think I can’t fight like this?” she asked. Orange light began to glow from her eyes, and Arato was suddenly reminded that she was the strongest of the Lacia-types.
“Snowdrop’s also trying to use quantum communication elements to modify herself and overcome her own shortcomings,” Lacia said. “But, let me give you some advice.” Light was starting to shine from Lacia’s eyes, as well. Her black coffin, using its ring-shaped float units to fly, came soaring through the air to her hand.
“In a situation like this, I would definitely avoid using quantum communication elements to open a path with Higgins,” Lacia finished.
Before she finished saying it Methode, eyes still glowing, bent double as if in extreme pain. “Higgins!” she gasped.
“You’ve left Snowdrop alone, and she’s currently trying to gain access to Higgins’ processing power,” Lacia explained. “In a situation like this Higgins, which sits immobile, would obviously be tempted to take control of your body for self-defense purposes.”
Methode had no heart, but the way her body seemed to writhe in pain made Arato flinch away.
“Was this your plan all along, Lacia?” Methode yelled.
Lacia ignored Methode, who could no longer stand on her own two feet due to the interference in her system. Instead, Lacia expanded her own device. “Arato, I am now expanding Black Monolith into the shelling sequence of its mass driver mode. May I have permission to fire?” she asked.
The black coffin morphed into a giant cannon. Projecting out from the cannon was an even longer barrel made of metamaterial that emitted a faint light. It wasn’t pointed at Methode but, rather, to somewhere outside the station.
“Forming metamaterial bullet with compressed carbide core. Target: Higgins’ physical structure,” Lacia said.
Before Arato’s eyes, for what seemed like the dozenth time that day, the meaning of the world as he knew it was changing.
Very few people in the world even knew where Higgins’ actual physical location was. After all, it would be easy for anyone to take complete control of an ultra high-performance AI by simply taking over its hardware.
Snowdrop, who had intended to challenge the entire infrastructure of humanity in a fight, had aimed for that particular spot, and the army had fought rabidly to keep her away from Mitaka and Kichijoji. Seeing where Lacia’s cannon was pointing, the meaning of it all shifted in Arato’s head. Snowdrop was no longer at the center of the events of that day. Instead, the most important thing was why she had picked that place.
“I will destroy the emergency above-ground facilities of the Higgins silo, and expose the pathway leading to the internal area,” Lacia explained.
In place of Arato, who was too stunned to speak, Methode shouted a question at Lacia, her face a mask of rage. “Is this the future you’re looking for, Lacia?!”
“Arato, I am a unit created to automate the meaning you, a human, have given me,” Lacia said, still ignoring Methode. “I have progressed to the point of asking you to make difficult decisions for me, to reduce my computation load.”
Supporting her massive device with one arm Lacia, who now looked like nothing more than an artillery fixture, turned and reached her free hand out to Arato. “By interacting with you, Arato, this system known to you as Lacia and Black Monolith has progressed to the point of becoming an ultra high-performance AI,” she said. “Or, in other words, you make me what I am. I am only an ultra high-performance AI when you are by my side.”
He met her light blue eyes.
“So, thank you, Arato, for coming back,” she finished.
Arato had been terrified when he found out that Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI. But when he’d decided to trust in her, his fear had turned into the joy and confidence of one who is being protected by something terrifying.
Arato couldn’t say, in that moment, if what he was feeling was something all humans would feel in the future, or the start of humanity’s enslavement. But he took Lacia’s hand anyway, and she smiled at him.
“Do it, Lacia!” he commanded. “I believe in you.”
At its highest output, Black Monolith’s mass driver mode could easily send its bullets piercing through nearby buildings to hit targets over a kilometer away. The metamaterial barrel helped to kill the recoil of the shot by blasting apart in the opposite direction of the bullet.
Standing directly behind Lacia, while the shards of shattered barrel blew behind her in streams of light, made it seem to Arato that she had grown radiant wings. The backdraft from her fully powered shot created a storm of force that blew the station apart from the inside.
The shot was one of the signals that the end of the world had begun.
***
In that moment, ultra high-performance AIs around the world began to send up alarms.
Immediately after the existence of the fortieth ultra high-performance AI, Lacia, was known, that alarm was swallowed up by an even greater one, an alarm that shook the whole world.
The content of the alert was the same, from each of the AIs: Higgins and Lacia, two ultra high-performance AIs, were currently at war.
This was the condition that had been predicted to definitively herald the restraints that had been placed on ultra high-performance AIs reaching their limits. The doomsday prophecy of the AIs was about to be fulfilled.
The IAIA, which kept track of all things dealing with ultra high-performance AIs, immediately contacted all the world governments, informing them they were facing the greatest crisis the world had known since the Hazard in Tokyo.
The human organizations and owners of the ultra high-performance AIs who received the warning moved with the utmost caution. They began to screen any and all network information, unwilling to let a single abnormality go unnoticed. Ultra high-performance AIs around the world were either given greater restraints than before, or had their restraints loosened so they could calculate some way to survive the crisis.
Thanks to strict information control that prevented any leaks to the public, most people in the world had no idea the war that might end their species had begun.