Epilogue「boy meets girl」

Beatless — LNCrawler · All chapters

After shutting off Higgins’ power, Arato and Ryo were rescued by the mass-produced Koukas.

Once the Koukas had cut an exit through with their lasers, the girls all vanished. Arato had no idea whether the ending of the conflict had satisfied the wishes of the original Kouka, who had wished for a fight to outsource humanity’s hatred, or not.

As soon as they were outside, both Arato and Ryo were taken into custody by the army. Luckily, the first-aid for Arato’s burned right arm had been quick, and the army was able to rush him to the hospital before the second-stage shock set in, so the injury didn’t turn into anything grave. Inside the hospital, and later within an army facility, Arato underwent an intensive interrogation.

He heard that, after it was all over, the army had gone into the facility and recovered both Lacia’s deactivated hIE unit and Black Monolith. Later, when he had a chance to speak with Astraea from the IAIA, he found out that the ultra high-performance AI known as Lacia had been completely isolated, and would never be allowed into the outside world again. That had been the terms of the deal Lacia had struck with Astraea. Perhaps because of that deal, it only took a month for Arato to be released from custody.

By the time all the arrangements had been made for him to return to his normal life, it was already late autumn. Lacia was no longer there by his side, but Arato also no longer had to face the mortal danger he had constantly been caught up in when he was with her. He figured that protecting him from threats had also been part of Lacia’s deal with Astraea, and was moved by how extensively and precisely Lacia kept her promises to him.

“Arato, you’re a senior already, so you should at least be able to go shopping by yourself,” Yuka whined, swinging a shopping bag full of ice-cream as she walked. The hallway of their apartment building was dim and deserted. But, thanks to his sister agreeing to tag along, Arato didn’t feel lonely.

Things around Arato seemed to have changed subtly ever since he had become a senior in September. He and Ryo were in separate classes, though he was still in the same class as Kengo and Erika Burroughs.

“And you’re almost ready to graduate from middle school,” he shot back. “You say you want to do something in the fashion world, but if you don’t do any studying, even my connections with Fabion MG won’t be enough to get you a job.”

Arato got texts from Kengo just about every night. Apparently, Lacia had paid his bail, so he might have felt some sense of obligation toward Arato. Kengo’s family had gotten their own hIE to help out with the restaurant. Thanks to that, their family—who all used to work long hours every day of the year—had finally gotten some time to relax.

“Erika already finished everything she wanted to do with Fabion, right? She can afford to have at least one employee around who does nothing but make her feel better,” Yuka said.

“You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” Arato said. Suddenly, his pocket terminal rang with a loud alarm, signaling a message with a high level of urgency arriving. When he checked, he saw it was a call from Erika Burroughs.

〈What’s going on?〉 she asked. 〈Your little sister just sent me a resume out of the blue.〉 Arato could hear the exasperation in the sleeping beauty’s voice on the other end of the line. When he thought of facing her the next day at school he wanted to sink into the ground in embarrassment.

“You’ll have to forgive her. She has no filter; she just does stuff as soon as it pops into her head,” he said.

〈In the column for self promotion she put, ‘if I cry, I can get my family members to do just about anything I ask them to.’ Are you okay with this?〉

Arato couldn’t help but be impressed by how much effort Yuka put into being spoiled by everyone around her. “Well? Why not give her a try?” Arato asked.

〈Your father is currently supporting efforts to continue development on the hIE politician Mikoto in the equatorial region, correct? I was just thinking I’d like to make a connection with him,〉 Erika bartered.

Arato’s father, Kozo Endo, had gone to the equator to help implement an hIE politician to end the civil war that had broken out there during the 2nd Hazard. The hIE politicians would help stabilize the collapsed government until the provisional government could recover its own self-governing abilities.

Every once in a while, Arato would get a call from his dad in Indonesia. Apparently, though there was the kind of pushback that would be expected in an area with many diverse cultures and religions living together, there had been a surprising amount of acceptance, as well. People found the hIE-run system much more fair than one run by any of the major factions, especially under extreme conditions and when resources were scarce. In this new form of society, humans worked together with machines to manage their limited resources. The age had come when humans could entrust the running of their society to machines.

“Just don’t pull him into anything dangerous,” Arato cautioned her. “I don’t want to be caught up in any more crazy stuff.”

〈There haven’t been any large movements from the other ultra high-performance AIs since the Higgins incident. Besides, I’d say your father is already caught up in something, diving head first into a destabilized equatorial region like that.〉She said it lightly; Erika had become more cheerful, recently. Arato was sure at least some of it had to do with the relationship between humans and machines changing ever so slightly. Some folks may have called it dystopia, but Arato saw it as progress.

〈I would like Mikoto’s local version to be wearing Fabion clothing,〉 Erika pressed on.

Arato was impressed by how straightforward she was. “I think he’d be happy to accept your offer,” he said. “The folks around the experimental city seemed to just dress in whatever.”

Of the Lacia-class units, only Mariage had avoided destruction. Arato figured this was part of how Lacia had planned to balance things out once she was gone. Erika seemed to think so, as well. Sometimes, Arato wondered if the reason things had been so peaceful for him was that everyone around him wondered how their own interests were tied up in Lacia’s plans.

As he thought that, Arato suddenly sensed Lacia’s scent and stopped.

〈Setting that aside, things certainly seem lively at your house. You sound almost like a worried mother trying to arrange a marriage for her daughter, pitching your little sister to me.〉 Erika was always so busy, she rarely left space in their calls for him to ask her anything.

When she’d hung up, Arato was left in the apartment hallway with Yuka, who was guiltily shooting him nervous glances. It was quite an accomplishment for her to have pushed Erika Burroughs herself into calling him, but he didn’t want it to go to Yuka’s head, so he decided to drop it.

“You’re looking a little better, Arato. You’ve been looking all bummed out lately,” Yuka observed. She then went on ahead to their apartment, leaving Arato behind.

Arato was sure she had sensed that his heavy feelings were weighing him down, and keeping him from walking. His little sister had finally learned to read the room a bit.

Pausing at the door to their apartment, Yuka shot him a cheeky grin. “Come to think of it, Shiori’s coming over tomorrow, isn’t she?” she asked. With their dad out of the country, Yuka had begun inviting friends over to their house more often.

Shiori Kaidai had completely recovered from her injuries. Neither she nor Arato spoke again about what had happened in her hospital room, but things were still awkward when the two of them were alone. Lacia being gone had left an unhealing wound on Shiori’s heart, just as it had on Arato’s.

From what Shiori told him, the IAIA was still keeping Higgins’ hardware shut down. In his place Lacia, who had been discovered in a containment facility, had been placed in charge of updating the AASC.

Lacia was now breathing life into the hIEs, giving them the standards of their movements. When Arato thought that, he felt closer to the hIEs than ever before. It felt like the world really was approaching the future he had ordered Lacia to create.

Even after their parting, Arato still felt like she was guiding him. Sometimes, he dreamed that she would come back to him some day. But in the meantime, he saw her all the time in little habits that the hIEs displayed. She may not have had a heart but, because of that, he felt like she was capable of existing in everything around him. It was a new heartbreak each time, yet always the same.

Yuka had disappeared from the hallway.

It was an autumn night, and Arato had to clench his teeth against the cold that was sinking into his skin. If humanity truly was a unit made up of a body, its environment, and its tools, then humanity was passing out of the harsh summer, full of freedom and cruelty, and into a time of abundant harvest.

They were all being guided by a massive analog hack. Ryo’s sense that this would lead to a dystopia where humans were no longer in charge of the world was most likely correct. But, Arato believed that linking hands with machines that only shared their outward appearance with humans would lead them all to a much more expansive new world.

Arato gazed out at the city nightscape from the apartment hallway, as if searching for Lacia’s face out in the darkness. Suddenly, for no discernible reason, he felt like she was there, just over in the elevator hallway.

He heard light footsteps approaching, and his body temperature rose as anxiety, hope and doubt all washed over him at once. The long breath he let out turned into a white cloud that was swept away by the wind.

The sound of footsteps and breathing, exactly as he remembered them, made his whole body go numb. In his head, he knew it wouldn’t be her. But even if it was a lie, she had promised to make dinner for him again. The closer she got, the more her presence made him remember the real Lacia’s. It was a miracle. The ground felt unstable beneath his feet.

He turned and looked at her. Her light purple hair and light blue eyes were the same; her clear expression was a perfect match for his vivid memories of her. No matter how or where he looked, she was Lacia from head to toe. Her cheeks were red from the cold, as she approached and looked straight up at Arato, just like she always had.

“Lacia, is it you?” he asked.

He couldn’t instantly link her appearance to joy. Lacia’s main hIE unit had shut down for the last time while leaning against his shoulder, after receiving mortal wounds in Higgins’ facility. The device that had acted as her digital brain was locked up somewhere else in the world, updating the program that moved the world’s hIEs. So, in his heart, he knew that this hIE was simply a different unit that had been created to look like Lacia and copy her presence and habits.

“Yes,” she replied, and it was in the voice that had been carved deep into Arato’s heart.

He’d thought he would never be able to see her again, and couldn’t stop the happy beating of his heart in response to her answer. Of course, she was just another Hello Kitty on a cup, analog hacking his feelings with her form. He was aware of this, but he couldn’t keep the warmth and pain of love from blooming in his heart. Arato was a boy capable of loving something based on perception alone.

Loving Lacia had given him that gift. There, in Arato’s heart, was the human love for machines Higgins had been searching for. All Arato needed to do was give this machine that was nothing but an empty form his own heart.

“Lacia, Lacia,” he murmured. Arato knew that she might have been sent by someone, to some nefarious end. But he chose to believe that Lacia had sent her to him to show him that their time together hadn’t come to an end. Inside of him, the fear that this joy and love could be torn away from him again mixed in a storm with the inconsolable sorrow he’d felt without her. From the start, there had been nothing to differentiate Lacia from any other hIE aside from her form. From the start, she had told him she had no heart.

“This body is not a red box: simply a customization of an off-the-shelf body made to match the original. Is that still acceptable?” she asked, gripping the chest of her autumn coat, and looking up at him through eyelashes wet with overflowing tears. Her crying was probably a reflection of his own; his heart was so weakened by the sight of her that he couldn’t stop the tears.

Humans created their tools and continuously adjusted their shapes and colors. Though reality was a savage battleground of natural selection, guided by the forms they themselves had created, humans and their tools were working towards filling the world and life itself with diversity.

The boy-meets-girl story playing out between Arato and the hIE who looked like Lacia had begun from the first day mankind had started using tools. It wasn’t just due to Arato’s simplemindedness.

She may not have had a heart, but she had a smile. “Will you be my owner?” she asked. Just like the night they had first met, Arato thought she looked especially cute when she smiled.

A soulless, heartless machine could still move the human heart. They were two completely different existences, but the power that linked them drew both of them closer to the blank unknown at the center of the donut. That power was love.

Erika had once told Arato that, even as soon as a hundred years prior, the thought of anyone actually loving a machine would never have been treated as anything less than insanity.

But, Arato thought, if love like this can make me this happy, then maybe the world I live in now really has made some progress since then. He could feel the very instant he took the first step toward a new future.

Lacia was there waiting for him, her breath white in the cold. He made his decision and reached his hand out to her. “Welcome back. Let’s go home,” he said.

I trust in your smile. I won’t care whether you are soulless or not.

The End