Phase2「Analog Hack」

Arato’s mornings had changed ever since Lacia had entered his life. In place of hitting the snooze button multiple times on his alarm before waking up in a messy rush, now Arato was gently shaken awake each morning.

After slipping on a simple shirt and some sweats, he washed his face and went to the kitchen. In the eight-tatami-mat living room, there was a table with four chairs around it.

He said, “Good morning,” and sat down.

“You’re late, Arato.” Yuka seemed to be in a good mood. She was holding a teacup with a cat on it gingerly; the cup had green tea in it.

“If you add sugar,” Lacia advised her, “it will taste like black tea.”

“Really?” Yuka perked up.

“It seems in Thailand, it is common to add sugar to this particular brand before drinking it.” Lacia’s pale violet hair swayed when she turned to look at them from where she was standing at the kitchen counter. She was a humanoid android called an hIE, and she was beautiful, even when dropping useless info bombs on them.

A painful feeling in Arato’s chest snapped him out of his daydreaming. She may not have had a soul, but her expression was perfect. Arato felt his face go red and start throbbing, like he had just been holding his breath.

Yuka narrowed her eyes a little, and put a finger to her lips. “Huh,” she decided, “let’s try it.” Then she grabbed the sugar bowl, and poured two heaping spoonfuls into the cup. Realizing that she had nothing to stir with, she stuck her chopsticks into the cup and spun them around.

“Here you go, Arato,” she said, handing her brother the cup.

“Why do I have to try it?!”

Lacia brought over a tray with rice and miso soup.

“Listen, this whole thing is your fault, so you need to do something about it. I can’t even start to wrap my head around all the crap going on right now,” Arato said. He gave thanks for the food, and raised the miso soup with fried tofu and cabbage to his lips. Lacia was trying to fix his lack of vegetables; since their mother had passed away over 10 years ago, he wasn’t used to being fussed over this way.

“There is no ‘crap’ going on,” Yuka told him, squeezing some rice dip out of a tube. It was close to mayonnaise, a good pairing with the rice. “Dad said he was totally fine with Lacia staying here.”

“Sure, he said that,” Arato said. “But did he really know what he was agreeing to?”

He had called their dad the night before, who was still absent due to work, to explain the Lacia situation. Despite being heavily involved in fundamental hIE research, their dad said he didn’t know anything about the device Lacia was equipped with. Same with the rain of flowers that happened on the day Arato became Lacia’s owner, and with whatever had been controlling Marie.

“It was great,” Yuka sighed. “He took one look at Lacia’s face and said ‘okay.’”

“As his high school aged son, I don’t think his reaction was ‘okay’ at all,” Arato disagreed. Their normally serious father had coughed and looked away as soon as he saw Lacia’s face. It wasn’t a great feeling, realizing his dad had a weakness for pretty girls.

“Come to think of it,” he went on, “the police didn’t show up after that flower thing, and it hasn’t been in the news, either.” A car had blown up, which, Arato thought, should have been enough to warrant some action. But, according to the neighbors he’d asked, all that had happened were some doors and windows getting locked, and once they were open all that was left was a broken car and Marie. Even with the storm of flowers that had fallen, a search afterward couldn’t turn up a single petal.

“You still haven’t told Ryo or Kengo about Lacia,” Yuka observed.

“Yeah,” Arato admitted, “there’s that, too.” It was true. Arato still hadn’t mentioned Lacia to his childhood friend Ryo, or classmate Kengo. The pile of problems he was facing gave him a headache.

Yuka displayed her bad manners by tapping away at the tabletop, which was also a flat-screen computer terminal, while she ate. Since the whole surface of the table was a screen, there were bowls of miso soup and rice obscuring most of the fashion magazines that came up, rendering them unreadable.

Yuka wore a sly grin as she brought an ad up onto the screen. 〈Fabion Media Group’s hIE Model Audition Grandprix — Lacia〉, it read. The ad had an image of Lacia. After seeing that the reward for the contest was way bigger than he had imagined, Arato had given up on fighting it.

“Lacia’s got her first job on Sunday,” she reminded them.

“Seriously,” Arato wondered, “what are we going to do about this?”

“Hey, luck only comes to those that laugh in the face of danger,” Yuka said breezily. “This is our big chance!”

“That sounds like the motto of an action hero.”

Lacia, the subject of their discussion, was calm and cool. Her actions were all chosen based on what Arato and Yuka did, so she never had to fear failure. “It will not be a problem for me,” she told them. “You do not need to worry, owner.”

“Let’s just chill,” Yuka suggested. “Here, have some tea, Arato.”

“Thanks.” The green tea Arato sipped tasted very sweet. Come to think of it, this was the green tea Yuka had dumped sugar in just a minute ago.

“How is it?” she wanted to know.

“It’s actually pretty good,” he admitted.

“Huh, I’ll try some too, then.” Yuka stuck her lips out and carefully took a sip from the teacup. Her eyebrows rose with the surprise of a happy discovery. “Life’s all about trying new things,” she sighed in contentment.

Arato felt as if he was becoming just as idiotic as his little sister.

Yuka had morning duty at her middle school, so she took off early, leaving Arato alone with Lacia.

“Are you really okay with this whole modeling thing?” he asked.

Lacia had completely finished all her normal morning chores, and had sat down directly across from Arato. He had told her to find some clothes for herself, and even though the ones she had chosen were cheap, they looked great on her. Arato didn’t know what to do with his eyes.

“I have checked the contents of the documentation,” she told him. “It appears to be a standard proxy labor contract.” The content of the contract was over Arato’s head, so he had left it for Lacia to figure out; a lot of people used hIEs as secretaries to keep track of complicated paperwork.

An hIE was the property of its owner. So, the proper procedure was to contract the hIE’s owner for the labor, then the owner would send the hIE as a proxy to complete the labor on the owner’s behalf. But Arato was still a minor, so he couldn’t sign the proxy labor contract himself. That was why he had contacted his dad the night before, after not talking to him for a while.

“Dammit, Yuka, you can’t just set stuff like this off and then run away,” Arato grumbled. “I need to give her a nice, long lecture.”

“It appears to me that you spoil Lady Yuka quite a lot, owner.” Lacia had hit the nail on the head, so Arato had nothing to say.

***

“What do you mean you ‘picked up’ an hIE?” Kengo demanded. Class was over for the day, so it was just the three of them left in the classroom.

“I couldn’t turn down a girl asking me to take her home, could I?” After Arato explained the situation, Kengo looked at him like he was an idiot.

Arato firmly believed anyone would make the same choice in his place, but Kengo appeared to disagree. “A normal hIE costs as much as a car,” he argued. “And if this one is good enough to win a modeling audition in one try, she’s a high-end one. Did you even tell the police what happened?”

“Well, if she’s that expensive,” Arato said, defending his actions, “then whoever lost her will see her modeling and come to claim her.” It wasn’t as though he hadn’t worried about the implications of what he was doing. If Lacia herself hadn’t convinced him that getting her image out there could be a good thing, he would have had her turn down the audition award.

“Well, what do you know,” Ryo snarked, “Sometimes you do think things through, Endo.”

“Right,” Arato said, not rising to the insult. “Anyway, I’m gonna link up with the house. It’ll be faster for you just to see her.”

“So your hIE can handle calls on her own?” Ryo asked, looking at the screen of Arato’s pocket terminal.

Arato had given Lacia a video phone so he could call her from the classroom with his friends. A ‘now calling’ sign popped up on the card-sized terminal display. After the third ring, the terminal connected to his home machine, and Lacia’s cool gaze appeared on the screen.

〈Are these your two friends, owner?〉

Kengo and Ryo let out murmurs of surprise and leaned in for a better look. As Arato had expected, one look at Lacia herself and the way she moved, and his friends were left speechless.

Ryo, with the top buttons of his jacket open, spread his hands in surprise. “What the hell, man? After everything we’ve been through together, how could you keep something like this to yourself?”

Kengo pulled his pad terminal out of his bag and linked it up with Arato’s. “Have her say her hIE serial number, please,” he requested. “She doesn’t look like an ordinary hIE at all.”

“Lacia, do you know your serial number?” Arato asked. “Kengo’s good with machines, so he can look up some information about you.”

On Arato’s terminal screen, Lacia responded kindly. 〈My serial number is: LSLX_22S99176LF. Shall I also send my unit code?〉

Kengo’s terminal automatically wrote out the number as Lacia said it. Without a word, Kengo stood up. He had Arato stash his pocket terminal in his desk and dragged him out into the hallway.

In the hall, Arato was surprised by how excited his friends looked. “Hey, what the heck?” he spluttered.

“Do you live under a rock? The LSLX is Stylus’s top of the line model,” Kengo said incredulously. “You could have found that out in two seconds, if you had looked. She’s a super high-spec machine.”

Stylus was an American producer of high-end hIEs. Arato had heard their name, of course, but with the budget of your average high schooler, they weren’t a company he thought of often. But first, he asked about something that had caught his attention:

“What was that unit code thing she mentioned?”

“It’s something each hIE is required by law to broadcast constantly, so we can always tell them apart from humans,” Kengo answered. “If you know their code, you can track the position of any hIE. There’s no way someone wouldn’t be searching, if they lost a machine like that.”

Ryo, who they had left behind in the classroom, also stowed his terminal and joined them in the hall. He was the son of the president of a major company, so he hadn’t batted an eye at finding out that Lacia was a high-end machine.

“Well, we can’t decrypt the code, but we can trace its broadcast history.” Arato obviously didn’t understand, so Ryo explained: “hIE dealers all have the unit codes for their merchandise so they can track it if it’s stolen. So there’s no way the person who lost your hIE wouldn’t have been able to track her down already. Of course, there’s always the possibility that she’s got some mechanical condition preventing her from broadcasting the signal.”

“Even if you can’t decrypt the signal, anyone who knows the code should be able to pick out a signal that resembles it. But neither the dealer nor the previous owner have come to collect her. Plus you’ve got her face all over the net with that Grand Prix thing. It’s strange that no one has come forward yet,” Kengo said.

Kengo and Ryo took turns pointing out all the different ways Arato and his sister were completely clueless.

Arato, for his part, was surprised that his friends were digging in this deep. He thought they were taking it way too seriously. “Well, maybe she doesn’t have a dealer or a previous owner,” he told them. “Maybe I just got lucky.”

Kengo was speechless, and Ryo immediately shot down Arato’s wishful thinking. “No way. This is seriously shady stuff. I mean, what the hell is that huge coffin thing in your living room? I’ve never seen any hIE accessories like that.”

“Have a little sense of self-preservation,” Kengo urged him. “Wouldn’t you find it odd if you just ‘found’ a brand new car? Just think about it: some Ferrari just shows up out of nowhere and asks you to be its owner. Wouldn’t that freak you out? This is like some kind of urban legend.”

“How come all your analogies involve cars?” Arato asked, voicing his honest impression.

With school already over, the evening sun was shining in through the windows of the hallway.

“Kaidai, I really want to punch this moron,” Kengo said.

But Ryo, for his part, had a good head on his shoulders sometimes. “Have you told your dad about this, Arato?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Arato responded. “He said we could keep her.” Both of his friends gave him looks that said they didn’t believe him. They had some respect for Arato’s father, who was working for a semi-public research institute.

Ryo grabbed Arato in a headlock. “Forget about that. I can’t believe you kept this from us for a whole week! Some friend.”

Arato went back to the classroom and looked at his pocket terminal, where Lacia was still waiting dutifully on the other line. 〈It seems to me your friends are worried for you, owner.〉

“They just keep an eye out for me since I tend to be careless,” he explained. Arato didn’t see anything dubious about Lacia. But his friends were obviously on guard about her, even knowing she had saved his life.

Ryo spoke, not to Lacia but to Arato; “Get her behavior cloud serial number, too.”

Before Arato could pass the request on to Lacia, she had already sent a code with over forty digits of mixed numbers and letters to his terminal.

Ryo took a photo of the code with his own terminal. “hIEs get their behaviors from different control services,” he explained. “So, with her behavior cloud serial, we can track down what company is feeding directions to our lovely lady here.”

The actions taken by each hIE were not decided within the humanoid units. Instead, each hIE would communicate with a massive behavior control cloud and receive instructions on the optimal action to take based on the data the hIE sent.

When he tracked down the information he was looking for, Ryo’s face went stony. Arato grabbed his arm. They had known each other since childhood, and Arato knew Ryo had a habit of trying to keep bad news to himself.

Just as he thought, the information on the terminal screen Ryo showed him wasn’t good: ‘MemeFrame Co., Licensed April, 2105.’

“That serial number’s one of ours,” Ryo said. Ryo Kaidai’s father was the president of MemeFrame Co., and it was MemeFrame’s behavioral control service that was currently telling the soulless Lacia ‘do this.’

“So you don’t know anything about her, Ryo?” Arato hoped this revelation would be a new lead on some information, but Ryo just hid away his terminal.

“Arato,” Ryo told him flatly, “don’t get involved with her.” All Ryo’s earlier interest had vanished. He just told Arato to stay away from her, with a hard look in his eyes. Arato felt like Ryo was acting in some story he didn’t know about.

“I’m serious,” Ryo insisted. “Don’t get involved with this hIE.”

“‘Get involved’?” Arato protested. “I’m already her owner.”

Ryo, who was always so full of confidence, couldn’t meet Arato’s eyes. In all their years as friends, Arato had never seen Ryo that pale, or wearing a smile that forced. “You should get away from her. Right now. You don’t need an hIE. You’ve got a good life.”

***

After that, Ryo continued to act strange. When it became clear that he was going to try to squeeze every last bit of information about when Arato met Lacia out of him, Arato headed home by himself. The whole thing had Arato’s brain in a fog, so much so that he didn’t realize he had forgotten something at school until after he and Yuka had finished dinner.

“I can’t believe you came home without your pocket terminal. How did you even ride the train?” Yuka asked, exasperated.

Lacia brought some after-dinner tea to the table on a tray. “Requests for fare and admission fees came in through the home system from owner’s personal identification tag,” she said.

“Oh, did dad give you one of those tags?” Yuka asked curiously. Purchases and fare payments these days were made automatically using the personal ID tag in everyone’s pocket terminals. It was very convenient, but it meant you couldn’t do anything if you lost your terminal. Some people took to carrying small back-up ID tags somewhere on them just in case; Arato’s was a thin, easy to wear bracelet.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I need my terminal. I’ve got homework to do, and I left my datalink at school, too.”

“Then just don’t do your homework,” Yuka shrugged. “Tell your teacher fate ate it.”

“Hey, there’s an idea,” Arato said.

“Owner, I do not believe that fate was involved.” Lacia’s cool observation kept Arato from being swept up in Yuka’s nonsense. Under Lacia’s pure blue gaze, he felt like a perfect specimen of failure.

“The school’s closed at night, though. It’s already eight, so I’ll just have to get it tomorrow,” Arato said.

“There is an hIE clerk at the school at all hours, so it should be possible to retrieve it tonight,” Lacia said.

And so, it was decided that Arato would go and get his things that night.

Arato boarded the subway, Lacia in tow. At that hour, the Urayasu line was full of white collar types returning from work, and the subway headed to Asakusa was almost empty. But the folks who were riding with them kept stealing glances at Lacia.

“I guess you’ll start standing out even more once your hIE modeling stuff really takes off,” Arato said. He felt a strange swell of pride, even just standing next to her.

“There may be cases where such attention could be harmful,” Lacia told him. “We should ensure a means of traveling without attracting notice in the future.”

To be fair, it wasn’t Lacia herself drawing all the gazes. To hide her giant black coffin, they had wrapped it up in a protective sheet, so it looked like more ordinary luggage. But the sight of a weak-looking girl easily carrying a burden that was big enough to almost bump against the roof of the subway car was too strange to ignore.

“I know you get worried if you don’t have that with you, but it draws a lot of attention,” Arato said.

“Once my hIE modeling work begins, I expect I will not be able to carry it regularly. We should think of a countermeasure,” Lacia said.

It may have been Arato’s imagination, but when they stepped down onto the platform, he thought that the train tilted back a little, as if it had been relieved of a heavy load.

The subway fare was automatically deducted from his home system through the ID tag on Arato’s wrist, so he was able to pass through the gates empty-handed. Only after they had left Honjo Azumabashi Station did he wonder what happened with Lacia’s fare.

Arato didn’t feel like going to Kengo’s family shop after their earlier talk, so he decided to just walk to the school. There were a surprising amount of hIEs around the station area, when he actually looked for them. They all just seemed to blend in with the city; each one soulless, heartless. Counting the dozens, maybe over a hundred hIEs there, Arato tried to think of how each different owner handled their hIE. It made his brain overheat.

“Is something the matter?” Lacia peeked at his face curiously. Despite having seen this area numerous times, Arato was gawking around like an out-of-towner.

“I’m just thinking, it’s crazy how many humans around here aren’t actually human,” he said. “It makes me realize just how incredible this time we’re living in is.” Arato realized it was the first time he had just gone on a normal walk with Lacia. Though it was a little embarrassing, it was nice to have a girl taking interest in him.

Walking by her side, even the same old road to school felt special. Once they had gotten a ways away from the station and crossed the Kototoi bridge with Tokyo Skytree to their side, the number of people around decreased. The lights illuminating the night around them were streetlamps, plastic multipurpose signboards, and those from the houses they passed by.

“Is it still frightening to walk at night?” Lacia asked.

Arato blushed at her question, feeling like she had seen right through him.

“Should I begin walking you to school, owner?” she went on.

“No way!” Arato objected strenuously. “I am absolutely fine going by myself!” Bringing your hIE to school was against the rules. hIEs were bundles of sensors and transmitters, so in the classroom they would be a gateway to all sorts of cheating and pranks.

They arrived at the school gate. There wasn’t a single light left on in the school building.

“I have opened the gate, owner.” Lacia opened the heavy metal gate with one hand, as if it weighed nothing. She may have been shorter than him, but her strength was inhuman.

Arato still knew almost nothing about her. The only thing he did know was that the depth of her mystery made him uneasy. On the other hand, it made him excited that this mystery was his.

“hIEs really are amazing,” he remarked. With his school as a backdrop and the moonlight shining down on her, Arato stared at Lacia, transfixed. Even dressed in ordinary clothes, she looked more like a character in a story than a being from the real world.

“Let us head to your classroom, owner,” Lacia told him. It was her first time at the school, but she headed straight for the stairs, having already downloaded map data from the school’s cloud.

“Are you good at finding stuff like this?” Arato asked curiously.

“Your pocket terminal is broadcasting its location,” Lacia explained. “It is much like heading toward a light in a dark place. The world as perceived by humans is quite different from the world we perceive.” Her smile was sweet, but she was just a machine dressed like a human.

Arato’s classroom was on the third floor. They didn’t run into anyone on their way, and nothing stopped Arato from opening the door to his classroom and going inside.

“Well dang,” he said. “If it was this easy, I guess it’s good that I came to get it tonight.” There on his desk was his pocket terminal, just as he’d left it. As expected, he’d forgotten it when he’d left after talking to Kengo and Ryo about Lacia.

In the abandoned classroom it seemed as though anything could jump out of the deep shadows, which made Arato check them all nervously. Though, with Lacia there, it wasn’t all that spooky. In fact, it made him nervous in a whole different way; her movements didn’t change, even in the dark.

“Should I accompany you to school tomorrow?” she asked again.

“I don’t think so,” Arato told her. “Some weird rumors might start.”

“Too bad,” she said.

Her beautiful form walked without hesitation. Seeing that, Arato felt that walking slowly and hesitantly, with his back bent in the darkness, was strange.

“Since we have come all the way here,” Lacia said, “shall we take a walk through the school?”

Following Lacia, Arato felt like he was stepping into a completely unknown world. She really was a mystery to Arato, but that just made her all the more exciting to him. The school at night seemed to stretch out around them, lonely and fantastic. He felt his head getting all fuzzy as he tagged along right behind her. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging like crazy.

Lacia climbed the pitch black stairway, and Arato almost felt like they were on an adventure together. As a second year student, Arato had never been to the fourth floor, which held the third year classrooms. Just a little way above his ordinary world was a small taste of the unknown, and with a few simple steps, his world had expanded.

Lacia’s movements were gentle but quick, and she kept ahead just out of Arato’s reach. He couldn’t catch her, even after reaching the top of the stairs, and his breath grew ragged.

“Well climbed,” Lacia remarked. She was waiting for him in the darkness of the dead end.

“You walk fast,” Arato panted.

As he complained about this unfairness, she crouched down and held out her hand to him. Since they were in a high school, she almost seemed like she could be an upper-classman, offering him a hand. Suddenly, their relationship became confused in his mind. She looked so human that the idea of her going to school normally with him wasn’t so strange at all.

“Would you like to explore the rooftop?” she suggested. Without waiting for a response, Lacia opened the door to the roof, as though it was obviously the next step.

“They don’t let students go out there, ‘cause it’s covered in solar panels.” Arato tried to stop her, but ended up stumbling forward instead, out onto the rooftop, where a strong gust of night wind blew around him.

The wide roof was covered in lines of solar panels, arranged in groups of five. Each one was tilted slightly to more effectively gather sunlight. There was walking space between each of the groups for maintenance, only about two meters wide.

“Then we will refrain from touching the solar panels!” Lacia, who had gone out first, spun around as if dancing, letting her skirt flare up. The moon bathed her in white light, as if it, too, was admiring her smile. Her smooth skin seemed to glow in response, and the light seemed to accent her cheeks and the thin line of her neck.

Arato looked away without thinking, and his eyes were met with a brilliant view of the Asakusa area at night. The lights of the city were like a shining carpet, stretching from Azumabashi and Asakusa up to Ueno and beyond. It was spread out in front of him so wide, so distant, that it made Arato want to yell.

He thought, if he asked, that Lacia would take him anywhere he wanted to go. “Thanks,” he said whole-heartedly. “I’m glad I took you in, Lacia.” Honestly, it almost felt ungrateful thinking of her as something he took in, when she showed him wonderful sights like that.

“Sorry,” he went on. “Being up here, looking down, it just... It just makes me feel crazy! Like I just gotta move my body!” He ran around on the rooftop like a dumb, happy dog, running around while wagging its tail like crazy. There was no reason for it, but there was a huge smile on his face.

“Please tell me more of your wishes,” Lacia requested sincerely. “It would be good to expand your world more, owner. I am an interface made to interact with users who wish to expand their worlds.”

Arato couldn’t understand what she was saying, but he felt like the peaceful world of his school was just a stepping stone, and he was receiving an invitation to somewhere far away. In the back of his mind, he knew. He knew that the school gate and the locks on the doors hadn’t just happened to be open for them; he knew Lacia had opened them all, easily.

Lacia’s blue eyes radiated with a light, different from the lights of the city. He realized that she knew he had noticed her ability to open the locks, and also understood that he had chosen not to ask her about it.

“You said you trusted me.” She smiled. “That is why you trust in my actions as well.”

“I guess that’s true,” he agreed. Lacia was a complete unknown, but she entranced Arato. Honestly, saying that there was a possibility that her original owner might appear once Lacia became an hIE model was a lie; Arato had already formed an attachment to her. Somewhere along the way, he had decided not to let her go, even if it meant losing his ordinary life.

“Since you trust me,” Lacia continued, “how will you use me, owner?”

Arato couldn’t answer that. He just felt that, as long as he was experiencing the world with her, he could expand his horizons as far as they needed to go. Excitement shook his body. He didn’t know what to call this feeling inside, but it made his heart sing and blood rush to his face.

The sweet heat of it didn’t fade until Yuka called him, worried at how late it was getting.

***

Lacia had to be at the company for her first job at 9:00 AM on Sunday.

They met the woman who was going to be Lacia’s manager in a coffee shop in the Ebisu Station building, which was on the Yamanote line. She was in her thirties, and wearing light makeup. She stood when she saw Arato and Lacia walk in. She looked very capable. Sitting next to her was an assistant in a fluffy outfit whom she had apparently dragged along.

The manager made a big show of taking her pocket terminal out of her handbag. “Arato Endo and Lacia,” she began, “I’m pleased to meet you. You really can’t beat seeing the real thing, huh?”

Arato greeted her, thinking she seemed pretty excited.

The manager still had her pocket terminal out and seemed to be expecting something. She explained to Arato, who had no idea what she wanted, “I’ll send you our digital business card, so could I have your pocket terminal please?”

“Oh, yeah,” he blushed. “Sorry. I’m new to this whole thing.” Arato fumbled his terminal out of his pocket. The address manager in his terminal automatically opened in response to her terminal’s request signal.

While she tapped at the terminal, the woman started to introduce herself. Before she could, though, the young assistant behind her snatched away the terminal.

“Huh?” Arato said.

“Surprise,” the assistant crowed back, “I’m the human one here!”

While Arato stood there, completely lost, the business card data popped up on his terminal, and the information was automatically dumped into his contacts.

The young assistant, who was wearing more makeup (mainly pink) spoke to Arato as if they were old acquaintances. “So you’re Lacia’s owner, huh? Boy, you’re young!”

The logo of the Fabion Media Group was displayed on Arato’s terminal screen.

“I’m Asuna Kisaragi,” she said, introducing herself. “Fabion MG Planning Department.”

“Then who is this?” Arato wanted to know.

“This is our hIE, Kasumi,” Asuna explained. “Instead of being privately owned, she’s owned by the company, so she’s a little different from your girl, Arato.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Kasumi,” Arato replied earnestly. “My name is Arato Endo.”

Asuna stifled a throaty laugh.

“Does anyone ever tell you you’re quite the honorable man, Arato?” Kasumi asked. She was obviously a veteran, and knew how to talk to people.

“Asuna, please refrain from trying to buddy up with our client just because he is a high school student,” the hIE lectured sternly. “We are on the clock.”

“Well, let’s all have a seat first,” said Asuna, who didn’t look too happy at being lectured by a machine. The coffee shop had wireless power supplies and hotspots available, but apparently the interior decor and service hadn’t changed in a hundred years. Time hadn’t brought any great changes to the art of giving customers a place to relax and drink coffee, and meeting clients at a coffee shop like this was an equally long-lived custom.

Asuna unfolded her pocket terminal until it was the size of a sheet of paper. “You’ve looked at the contract, right?” she asked. “Starting today, Lacia will be working as a model for Fabion, but our work orders will be coming to you, Arato.”

Lacia, who had been silent up to then, spoke up. “I have informed my owner of the implications of a proxy labor contract.”

“Got it,” Asuna said. “So you can use the secretary cloud too, Lacia? Impressive.” She did seem genuinely impressed.

“Actually, we’d like to keep all of Lacia’s information secret while she’s modeling,” she went on. “She’ll be our mystery hIE model.”

“That definitely works for me,” Arato agreed, “but won’t that cause problems for you?”

“Lacia’s just too expensive of a machine,” Asuna explained. “We decided that if we gave out her details, folks won’t feel a connection with her. The customers who’ll be buying the clothing Lacia’s going to model will be high schoolers and ladies in their tenties, and we don’t want to scare them off with the impression that she’s in a whole different world from them.”

“So she’s expensive?” Arato asked.

Asuna’s mouth popped half open, the same reaction Kengo and Ryo had given him when he’d introduced Lacia to them, and stirred her apple tea with a spoon. She must have been shaking a little, Arato realized, because he could hear the spoon rattling against her cup.

“This is honestly my first time even seeing a Stylus Supreme Class machine in person,” Asuna admitted. “I’ve heard about 90% of the users are male, though.”

Arato avoided her gaze, nonchalantly eating the parfait in front of him. There was no way he could tell her he had just randomly taken Lacia in.

“Arato, I noticed you don’t have Lacia wear an emblem,” said Asuna.

Kengo had asked him about the same thing, as if it were strange, Arato thought. According to Kengo, it was odd for Lacia not to have any accessories with brand logos on her body. Nor were there any brand marks on her special equipment or clothing.

“Well, I just didn’t want her to stand out too much,” Arato said.

“So you’re that kind of owner, huh?” she commented. “I was going to tell you not to release any of your erotic images of Lacia to the net, but I suppose that’s not necessary.”

“Just because I’m her owner doesn’t mean I can do whatever I want with her.” Arato blushed at the way she’d seen right through his horny teenage heart.

“I know, I know. Sorry for doubting you. But, serious talk, if fans see you two being a little too friendly once she becomes an hIE model, you might catch some hate from them,” Asuna cautioned. “Obviously, hIE model owners should be free to do whatever they want. But from the consumer’s viewpoint, they see the model owners and their hIEs as having a romantic human relationship.”

She fixed Arato with a steady gaze. “I glanced at your parent’s signature. Your father is Dr. Endo, isn’t he? Lacia’s actually his, right? I’m surprised he’s letting her model.”

“You seem to know a lot about this stuff,” said Arato, whose father was a celebrity in the world of hIEs, and popped up on TV or the net every now and then.

“Despite what I’m doing right now, I actually majored in Psuedo-Human Engineering,” Asuna told him. “We talked about Matsuri during the class, obviously, and I did a paper on your dad’s work.”

“I’m sorry,” Arato apologized. “Dad didn’t really talk to us about that whole thing.” He didn’t really like talking about his dad’s work, since it kept him from ever coming home.

Fabion MG was a media group mainly devoted to fashion ads. They produced many human and hIE models, and also published magazines about fashion and local flavor. Since one of the strengths of hIE models was that they didn’t feel cold (which helped when doing shoots of thin summer clothing on chill, cloudy days), Lacia’s first job would be promoting this summer’s trends.

Arato walked about fifty meters behind the shoot, heading down Meiji-dori Street toward Shibuya. He kept his eyes on Lacia’s back the whole time. She was wearing a short skirt and a top that seemed to go through gradations of material, with textures from leather to cotton, and a cute 3D image was displayed at her feet.

Seven cylindrical machines were floating in the air around Lacia, each of them only the size of three sugar cubes. These were ultra-lightweight cameras. Together they were able to capture Lacia from every angle, and upload the data to the network in real time.

Lacia looked like she was in a flock of butterflies with the cameras floating around her, and the shooting started while she walked along Meiji-dori Street.

Asuna, who had tagged along to watch Lacia’s first job, murmured in admiration. “Looking good, Lacia.”

Arato couldn’t take his eyes off Lacia’s back, either.

“Look, everyone’s turning to look at you,” Asuna pointed out. “When you’re doing hIE model work, you don’t want to do it all cooped up in a static setting like a studio. Best to do it out where there’s some scenery, and turn it into a real event; that’s what gets people talking. It’s easier to buy clothes once you’ve seen them walking around the city. Models like Lacia, who can make even walking an art, are the most successful.”

Lacia had a refined manner of walking that fit a model. Between stretches of rhythmical steps, she would pause naturally to pose now and then without seeming too obvious. With her there, the scenery became a stage for her performance.

“Incredible,” Arato said. “She really does look like a model.”

“The Fabion MG’s custom behavior cloud she’s connected to is basically a huge collection of actions that properly show off our clothing,” Asuna told him. “That way, even your average hIE can become a pro model instantly when they access it. But please, feel free to keep saying nice things about it.”

hIEs only acted based on recorded data of human behaviors. Even knowing that, Arato couldn’t help but feel that Lacia was something special.

“hIEs are more agile than humans, so we can give them more difficult directions on timing and such,” Asuna went on. “I think a lot of our directors are going to request these event-style shoots for Lacia, so you should get used to it, Arato.”

Meiji-dori, which had become a major six-lane street, was being kept free of the city’s normal chaos by the Shibuya Police Department. This area was mostly taken up by business offices, but there were still plenty of people around who were photographing Lacia with their pocket terminals.

Arato felt like she was so far away, even though he could easily catch up to her.

Camera drones flew like butterflies from the camera crew, who were all carrying packs that looked like mini-coolers on their backs. The drones were ultra-lightweight, but even without wind to fight against, they could only last about fifteen minutes in the air. The units that were running low would limp back to their containers, to be replaced by fully charged ones.

“This event allows for folks to take their own pictures,” Asuna told him. “It’s probably going to be nuts once we hit Shibuya.”

A huge image of Lacia was being displayed on the monitor-type billboards on one of the nearby buildings. It was a real time video of her walking against the clean city backdrop. The price of the clothes she was wearing, along with information like the materials and style, were displayed with perfect timing on the video.

Arato was caught up in the sudden rush of information he was seeing, when Asuna caught his attention. “Arato,” she urged, “check out your pocket terminal.”

After taking it out of his pocket, Arato saw that Lacia was displayed on the screen, and he zoomed in. “Huh,” he said, “it’s not showing any GPS information.”

“Why do you think we walked all the way from Ebisu to Shibuya?” Asuna asked, letting out a pleased laugh. “If we don’t give all the nearby customers a chance to gather, there won’t be any party.”

“More people are coming?” Arato looked around. He realized there was a line forming behind them, and that across Meiji-dori Street, many more people were stopping.

“It was your sister that recommended Lacia to us, right?” Asuna said. “Fabion MG is very talented at aiming for places where we can get between three thousand and ten thousand people together.”

Before Arato could ask just how amazing getting ten thousand people together was, Asuna continued. “Now, compared to the selling power of the cloud itself, ten thousand people may seem like small peanuts. But the number of folks here with us physically is only about 1/20th of the people watching this broadcast on the net.”

In the cloud-based world, a huge amount of people were all linked up to the same service. So, even if a company’s product wasn’t especially unique, they could secure great sales simply by controlling the flow of information to their customers with precision. Meaning, the cloud controlled a huge portion of economic trends. Arato had heard about it in the news.

Asuna shot him one of her characteristic grins. “Gonna come see? It’s pretty incredible when you get ten thousand people in the same place.”

“By the way, where’s Kasumi?” he asked. “The hIE from earlier.”

“Kasumi’s in the liveliest spot of the show,” Asuna told him. “She’s with the director.”

“It’s nice having dedicated soldiers at our company who can work twenty-four hours, never leave to join another company, and whose bodies don’t break down,” she went on, frowning in mock jealousy under her pink-dyed hair. “But honestly, she’s my rival. To get anywhere in the company as a human, I have to gain more trust from the clients than she has.”

As an hIE model, could Lacia’s joining the company edge other people out of a job? Since he couldn’t do anything about it now, Arato swallowed back the question that had come to mind. He decided to blame the sudden guilt on Yuka, for having kicked off this whole modeling thing in the first place.

“Well, none of that matters,” said Asuna, chiding herself and lifting her gaze. “I’ve just got to do my best for this job today!”

The closer they got to Shibuya, the more folks gathered around to watch. Lacia was moving crowds, and Arato felt like she was also moving hearts.

In Shibuya, Meiji-dori Street ran into the two layers of the Shuto Expressway and Route 246, and the region around Shibuya Station had been remodeled numerous times due to the area’s complicated logistics. Currently there was a large mezzanine that provided access to Meiji-dori Street, the bus terminals between the street, and the escalator-type foot bridge that led to Shibuya Subway Station.

Lacia adjusted the bag hanging from her shoulders. She then tapped at her bracelet-style pocket terminal, and Arato’s own device started ringing.

〈Are you watching me, owner?〉 Arato heard Lacia’s voice as it came through his terminal. From the top of a big footbridge, She turned to look at him with a brilliant smile.

Arato unconsciously started to wave back, but Asuna stopped him. “The natural pose of turning to look back at someone is one of Fabion’s custom cloud specialties,” she said. “Watch, next she’ll turn.”

Lacia spun smoothly on one foot, which set her pale violet hair dancing. For an instant, the everyday world around her seemed to become something extraordinary. Even the act of getting her hair back into place seemed choreographed, as if she was a ballet dancer or an actress in a musical.

“If she takes off as a star, we’ll actually put together a specialized program just for Lacia in the cloud. You should definitely look forward to seeing that,” Asuna said.

Pedestrians walking out of the Shibuya Station building complex raised a commotion when they encountered Lacia. It was only natural that they were surprised, suddenly running into a live modeling event like this.

Lacia continued to play the perfect model, not missing a beat. Hundreds of people were now snapping photos of her with their pocket terminals.

Arato felt crushed by the heat and the presence of the crowd.

In the decades since the network had become a part of everyone’s lives, there wasn’t much that could draw people out of doors anymore. Anything that could move that many people in this day and age was huge, powerful. It was clear this was a special event, for the simple fact that it moved people who were used to not being moved. And, just as people find it easier to spend money on a trip, coming outside to see the event gave these people a whole new mindset.

Every single digital display Arato could see had been jacked to show Lacia’s debut.

Chimes from hundreds of terminals, all of which were receiving data, resounded like raindrops on dry land. They were receiving a bombardment of coupons for local shops, good for that day only. With these coupons showing Lacia’s image, customers could spend a day in Shibuya for less, or take advantage of certain shopping strips that were offering select bargains.

This was the power of Fabion MG. The group that had chosen Lacia. The group that could move ten thousand people.

“Is she going to be all right walking straight into the crowd like that?” Arato asked.

“If you’re obviously getting in the way of a model in Shibuya, the police will get after you, so everyone keeps walking. Once she’s past the station and over on the side with the Hachiko statue, she’ll be meeting up with the winner from last year’s Grand Prix — Angela — and Yuri, our top hIE model.”

Arato heard a commotion from the other side of Shibuya Station, and guessed that the top model Asuna had mentioned was at the heart of it. Surrounded by the noise of the crowd, he was growing a little light headed, but his attention snapped back to the present when Asuna elbowed him lightly.

“We’ve got something real special set up at the scramble crossing by the Hachiko exit,” she said slyly. “That’ll be the climax of our show.”

Not wanting to miss whatever was coming, Arato hurried down the foot bridge. Asuna also lowered the adjustable heel height of her pumps and followed him down the stairs.

“Excuse me, I’m just passing through,” he said. Watching the bus terminal out of the corner of his eye, Arato cut across the station building. Thanks to the growing crowd, he had drifted quite a ways away from Lacia. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to miss the best part of the show.

The posters wrapped around the station’s pillars all showed a girl with dark green hair, which had been cut into a bob. Arato had seen her before on TV; she was Fabion MG’s top model, Yuri.

On the other side of the station was the statue of Hachiko, which had been destroyed once and resculpted. A blonde girl was leaning against the statue’s pedestal, and she waved when she saw Lacia. She was an energetic girl with a clean, cute look. Her whole vibe was that of a child, raised with lots of love. Arato guessed that she must be Angela, the winner of the Grand Prix from last year.

The instant Lacia stepped into the area, a girl standing at one corner of the diagonal road crossing turned to look with perfect timing, her green hair shining and dancing as she spun. Though the girl’s outfit showed a lot of skin, she made it look refined; there was something almost supernatural about her beauty that drew all eyes to her. This was Yuri.

All around Yuri were other human girls, each of them in middle or high school. They all had healthy bodies that couldn’t hope to match her unrealistically sleek proportions. However, they all seemed to be enjoying themselves, and each wore accessories that matched with Yuri’s.

Lacia headed toward Fabion MG’s top models, as if meeting up with them had been her destination all along.

In perfect synch, the pedestrian walk signals of the diagonal crossing all turned green. The traffic lights for the streets in all four directions went red, and there just happened to be trailers wearing the Fabion MG logo parked at the stop line for each street. Music began to swell loudly, taking advantage of the dramatic moment, and the wall displays on the surrounding buildings switched to Fabion broadcasts. For a moment, that little piece of the city became a stage.

As if under a hypnotic spell, the three hIEs walked slowly out into the middle of the suddenly supernatural scene.

Three-dimensional sound announced the leading actors of the show.

Then, even though no signal or direction was given, everyone at the crossing stopped walking.

Lacia followed the pedestrian crossing out into the street. Along the way, Angela joined her, and the two met up with Yuri, who was humming to herself and waving to all the guests.

The trailers at the intersection began to project regularly-spaced 3D images in the air. Perhaps at the request of guests watching through the network, images of the girls from seconds prior were projected large, burning themselves into everyone’s memories. As the girls’ impression grew on everyone, the viewers felt more strongly connected to them. They began to feel like they had been fans of these models since long before; everyone was fascinated by the oddly appealing mismatch that existed between the three of them.

When the music climaxed, the three hIE models synchronized their individual movements to execute a miraculously harmonious turn in the rest between one note and the next. After a ninety second chorus of the music ended, Lacia again started leading the procession toward the old Seibu building side.

Lacia was just another pedestrian again, but a moving crowd of people and cheers formed up around her. Left behind, Arato could only watch from the station side of the crossing.

Yuri headed into the Fashion building with a natural walk; her whole outfit for the day had been arranged by the companies in that building. Camera drones chased after her elfin back. The expressions and actions of each model were so entrancing that they made Arato forget his nerves, and he wanted to get closer to them. The people following Yuri turned naturally into just another line of customers at the Fashion building.

But the festival mood of the place hadn’t died down; all the shops around, small and large, were still throwing around coupons. Mini-events ran outward from the crossing, like branches spreading out from a trunk. It was a party for separating customers from their cash, like a net spreading to catch a school of fish.

Looking around, Arato remembered that Lacia’s target consumers were girls from high school age up to around twenty-five. It came to mind because he was completely surrounded by exactly that demographic at the moment.

“What the heck?” he said, realizing what had been bothering him just then. The oddity that he couldn’t quite put his finger on was that no one there at that moment cared in the least that Yuri, Angela, and Lacia weren’t human.

Asuna, who, Arato remembered, had majored in Pseudo-Human Engineering, murmured in his ear. “Ever heard of ‘Analock’?”

“What?!” Arato could barely hear her over the sound of the crowd still remaining from the show.

“Analog hack!” Asuna yelled. “It uses the idea that hIE don’t have the same meaning to their actions that humans do, even though they look like us. Humans are always looking for patterns and meaning, so we get stuck in this gap of convincing ourselves that hIE actions have meaning! So folks build hIE, then program them so humans will like them and let their guard down. Then, they use that opening to manipulate people.”

For example: just then, many people had been ‘hacked’ into spending their money.

“Arato, your girl Lacia uses her form to get people to move of their own accord,” Asuna finished. “She hacks society itself.”

Arato, who had been left behind at the crossing, noticed many couples in the crowd around him. There were plenty of customer service shops around, so the couples could share a discounted date until evening, thanks to the coupons. He knew that what Asuna was saying was a lie which Fabion used to shield itself.

“Lacia wasn’t the one who hacked these people,” he said. “That was you and your company.”

“That’s true,” Asuna said, without any malice. “That’s just what models do. But I do get a feeling of accomplishment when everyone follows our lead so easily.”

In the end, Lacia headed up Bunkamura-dori Street to the main branch of the Tokyu department store chain. Arato was exhausted from being tossed around in the waves of humanity following her.

“You did good today,” Asuna said, handing him a plastic juice pack.

The two of them were taking a break outside the old building, which had remained the same since its rebuilding in the 21st century. There was still too much of a crowd surrounding Lacia to approach her.

Arato was grateful for the time. He didn’t know what he should say when he was face to face with Lacia again. It might not have had any effect on her, but Arato would need a bit of time for the afterglow he’d felt during the event to die down.

Across the street, in front of the Tokyu main store, yet another crowd had gathered to stare at Lacia. All the girls interested in fashion had continued on into the store, so the crowd was now mostly made up of men.

Suddenly the crowd scattered, breaking off into smaller groups. Someone screamed, and Arato jumped to his feet.

A man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, was swinging his bag around in the middle of the scattered crowd. Another man was being escorted out of the department store with both arms pinned behind his back by a security hIE. The hIE’s bare skin was metallic, so anyone could tell its role at a glance.

“What happened?” Arato asked.

Asuna contacted someone on her pocket terminal before responding. “Looks like that guy they threw out grabbed Lacia’s shoulder. The shop tossed him out for us.”

The man the hIE security had grabbed took off running, almost falling over himself to get away. He didn’t look back as he tore off toward Yoyogi Park. His violent actions were surprising, considering the high-quality suit the guy was wearing.

“These things happen sometimes,” Asuna said, glaring after the man with a bitter expression. “That’s one of the downsides of analog hacking. People tend to interpret certain jobs and actions in the same way, when paired with a human shape.”

“So is Lacia’s job dangerous?” Arato asked.

Asuna seemed to realize that she’d said too much, and made an ‘x’ gesture with her arms. Apparently she wanted this all to be off the record, so to speak.

“Our sense of sight works faster than our brain’s ability to assign meaning to what we’re seeing. We can be moved by what we see before we can think about it, and analog hacking aims for that gap in our perception,” she told him. “Even if we’re only using it for business, our users assign meanings and stories to what they see on their own. Sometimes, those turn into fantasies that run wild in the user’s head. When things get out of control, unlike cases with human models or celebrities, the users often protest that hIEs are just objects, anyway.”

Asuna’s words disturbed Arato deeply.

“What I’m saying is that criminals have less restraint in their actions toward hIE models than they would against humans,” Asuna concluded. “But don’t worry, we take good care of all our models.”

Despite her assurance, Arato couldn’t help but feel worried.

It was already evening by the time all of Lacia’s work was wrapped up and they could head home. Arato and Lacia had been told that it would be best not to take the train home that night, so someone from the company drove them to Shin Koiwa Station.

Arato wanted a chance to walk and talk with Lacia before they arrived home. “I heard Fabion offered to provide personal security for you. Are you sure you’re okay turning them down?” he asked.

Lacia had turned down the offer of her own accord. She was carrying a plastic bag; they had given her the clothes she had modeled that day. The folks at the department store had also found her several outfits to match a variety of settings and occasions.

“There is no need,” she responded. “hIEs are conglomerations of sensors. If a security hIE were near me for an extended period of time, they would be able to discern information regarding your place of residence, owner.”

“Well, okay, but it’s not like they’re going to use that information to do anything bad,” Arato said.

Lacia’s pale blue eyes were expressionless. “The data would be transmitted to a security company,” she said.

Arato started to ask what that had to do with anything when he remembered the night they’d met; Lacia had been dragged into combat as soon as she’d met him. He doubted that she put much trust in security companies.

“Well, we can always ask them to come if things start looking dangerous,” he concluded.

It was an April evening, and the sun was still quick to go down. A 3D image floated above the sunset-dyed road, informing them that a vehicle would pass by in forty seconds. They stepped to the side of the narrow street, letting the slow-moving car pass them by.

“You were really amazing today, Lacia,” Arato told her. She was still the same Lacia she had been that morning, but he felt like a new distance had opened between them.

“I have not changed at all,” she disagreed, syncing her steps up to walk beside him.

Just feeling her there by his side made Arato draw in a sharp breath; it was different from just looking at her. When Lacia was beside him, she was in all his senses. Awareness of her dominated his thoughts. She smelled good.

“You’re wearing perfume,” he said.

“This is the latest summer scent from Dior.” A shy blush crept up her cheeks.

Arato felt his own cheeks getting hot in response. “It’s good on you,” he admitted. “No surprise there.”

After the danger of their first meeting, the two hadn’t done much walking outside together. But, to Arato, Lacia was already a fundamental part of his daily life. It was to the point where he almost had trouble remembering what life was like before her.

Feeling awkward, Arato started to walk a bit ahead of her, but Lacia grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “Are you distancing yourself from me?” she asked, concerned.

“Well, you’re the Grand Prix winner,” he pointed out. “I know that I’m your owner and all, but I’m starting to feel like it’d be a bad thing to think of you as only belonging to me.” Arato would have never believed that he could feel this way about her, up until he had tagged along to her first job.

Bathed in the gentle light of the setting sun, Lacia brushed her hand through her light violet hair. The motion was the same as one Arato had seen her use during the show. He momentarily forgot how to speak, and Lacia gave a gentle laugh.

“If the fact that I gave a show for everyone disturbs you, then I will give a show just for you, owner.”

It was the same old path home Arato always took, but with Lacia there, it made his heart soar.

As they drew closer to the apartment, they ran into a crowd of people in the street. There were three police cars parked there, and officers in uniforms were stretching ‘DO NOT ENTER’ tape around the area. When they arrived at the scene, Arato saw a female officer handling the onlookers. Arato asked a nearby, friendly-looking middle aged man what had happened.

“Someone busted up an hIE,” the man told him.

Whoever was going around destroying hIEs, they had been near Arato’s apartment. He remembered the arm he had found on the way home from school and felt sick. With Lacia by his side, he suddenly felt danger all around them, and his skin broke out in goosebumps before he could regain control of his emotions.

“How come the cops are making such a big deal of it this time?” the man Arato was talking to asked, to no one in particular.

Arato could feel something strange about the situation too, but couldn’t put his finger on it. The tension of the scene was heavy enough to prickle his skin. There were even news crews there with camera units. Then, Arato realized what was wrong with this scenario.

“Hey,” he said. “How come there are police here this time? This is completely different from how they treated that other case.” hIE were machines. When he had turned in the arm from the last case, everyone had treated it like he’d stumbled onto a troubling piece of trash.

Lacia responded to the question that had dawned on him. “This time, the owner was with the hIE. Apparently the owner was injured while attempting to protect the hIE.”

“Someone got hurt? That sounds pretty serious,” Arato said.

“Three adult males exited a large white vehicle in this area, and attempted to abduct a female hIE. The hIE’s owner, who was accompanying her, offered resistance. As a result, the owner was beaten and received light injuries that are projected to be healed within the week,” Lacia said.

“As soon as a human gets injured, everyone starts taking it seriously,” Arato said. “Unlike what happens when an hIE gets busted.” Humans weren’t machines, after all; everyone else accepted this difference automatically. But Arato couldn’t bring himself to make that kind of distinction in his mind.

“Do not worry. The hIE is also in good condition,” Lacia said.

Arato was curious as to how Lacia knew all this information, but decided not to pursue the topic. With her enhanced senses, she could have been eavesdropping on the conversations between the police officers.

The female officer standing nearby looked over at them. “That officer is an hIE,” Lacia said. “She is recording audio and video information from the area.” All hIEs made recordings of what they saw and heard, but police specifically used their hIE recordings to check for any suspicious persons in the area of a crime.

Arato didn’t feel like he had anything to feel guilty about, but for some reason the idea of being recorded by the police put him on edge. Suddenly, he heard someone clicking their tongue loudly nearby; a man who had been about to apologize for touching the police tape realized he was talking to an hIE, and snatched back his hand. He then shoved past Arato’s shoulder and left the crowd.

Lacia had an expression on her face that said she had picked up on something.

“Owner, should we consider the enmity demonstrated by that man just now to be a normal response? I have analyzed all statements made by him recently. He should have had sufficient information and understanding to realize that the officer there was an hIE,” she said.

“Then why did he act like that?” Arato asked.

“He was misled by the image of a police officer projected by the hIE; in other words, analog hacked. But he reacted with anger to this hacking.”

“That makes sense.”

“As an hIE model complicit in analog hacking, I wonder how much we should worry about my hacking creating people who feel enmity toward me,” Lacia said with an anxious look.

Something caught in Arato’s chest, though he had no idea what it was. “It’ll all work out,” he reassured her. “If something happens, I’ll be there to protect you. I am your owner, after all.”

He wanted to calm her fears, even though he knew she had no heart to tremble.

Not everyone treated hIEs well, and some people even despised them. Arato could feel their hate radiating from the scene. Kengo and Ryo had told him not to get involved with Lacia, but he felt like he had to do the manly thing.

“Owners should always be responsible for their hIEs. So if it starts to feel dangerous, just quit. I’ll do all the apologizing for you,” he said. Lacia had no soul. Therefore, Arato thought, she could do no wrong. Probably.

***

Kengo Suguri was upset; he had received a sudden request for escape routes. The group had only been supposed to grab an hIE and bust her up, but instead they’d ended up beating on some guy.

“What the hell are those guys thinking?” Biting back his own voice, Kengo folded his hands in front of a stationary terminal. When he stuck his finger into the 3D display, anything he said would be taken as audio commands.

“Give me all the positional data you have on the police in Edogawa ward,” he said. “Also, I’d like to speak with someone above me, so send out an encryption code. This whole thing is above my pay grade.”

The Antibody Network Kengo was part of was a group driven by an interconnection of evil wills. For example, a single member might upload the location of an hIE walking by itself in a place where people couldn’t see to the network. That act alone was not illegal.

But then a group of people full of hate would gather with weapons. Though hIEs were bundles of sensory and recording equipment, there were plenty of ways to render these ineffective if you just knew how.

Then, different people who only vaguely knew what had happened would upload information on the movements of police cars in the area to the network. All they had to do was point their pocket terminals in the right direction; it was no trouble at all. And that was how the culprits slipped away.

The Antibody Network was a defensive wall, holding back the analog hacking that had been eroding human will ever since hIEs had started wearing human figures. They were all volunteers, each connected by an evil intent which none of them could deny.

Kengo was one of the members in charge of distributing information to the enthusiastic executioners of the group. He was also one of the few members in the network who took on jobs that could actually get him arrested, so he worked alone, isolated in his room. This was his way of stopping the hIE erosion of human society.

On his screen, facilities provided by the Antibody Network were shown on a regional map. Kengo pointed to a shop near the waterfront with his finger. The system automatically calculated a safe route for movement based on the current position of the police and their probable search areas. Even a group of amateur criminals could outmaneuver the police if enough of them pooled their capabilities. There were even some police in Kengo’s group; they were officers who felt that hIE were edging humans out of jobs in their department.

“Everyone, after you’ve passed the next two traffic lights, go another thirty meters and then get out of the vehicle. There aren’t any cameras watching that spot. Once you’re out, put the vehicle on auto-mode and send it to the coordinates I show you.” Kengo’s words, now converted to text, were sent to the criminals.

The response came as a text to Kengo’s pocket terminal. ＜Thanks. We owe you.＞

A shiver ran up Kengo’s spine at the friendly message. He didn’t feel guilty about the things he did for the Network, but that evening in Shin Koito, a real human had been hurt. The people he was helping at that moment were guilty of assault.

“Savages,” he muttered. But the Antibody Network needed savages like them to outsource all the dangerous work to. “Don’t bother feeling indebted, you savages.”

The other day, on his way home from school with some friends, Kengo had seen a torn-off hIE arm. It was definitely the work of the Antibody Network. Kengo had guided a group of savages, their eyes filled with hate, to the place where they destroyed that hIE.

It was very possible that the Antibody Network could someday attack the hIE that Arato had picked up. An order could come along from someone up the chain of command in the Network to do just that. Kengo didn’t want to think too much about what to do when his own friend’s property got involved.

As he glared at the 3D display in front of him, he heard footsteps from behind. A hesitant voice called out from the other side of his traditional sliding screen door. “Kengo, dinner.”

Kengo’s home was an eatery in Azuma-bashi called Sunflower. It had a prestigious fiftyyear history. There were twenty-eight seats in the restaurant. The whole place had a relaxed atmosphere, where customers could enjoy the western-style cooking that Kengo’s dad had practiced in much larger restaurants.

But the times were changing. Most of the restaurants around Kengo’s house used hIEs for employees. Some of them even had the hIEs doing the cooking.

Kengo’s mom and little sister were sitting in the family dining room adjoining the restaurant when Kengo came out. Though her hair was a rich blonde, Kengo’s mother spoke fluent Japanese as she chastised him. “Kengo, you must always be on time for meals.”

His mother, Veronika, had been a foreign exchange student from Russia. She had passed her looks on to Kengo’s little sister, Olga, while Kengo himself looked more like his father.

“Where’s dad?” Kengo ventured to ask. His mom tended to go quiet when anyone brought up the store.

Instead, his honey-haired sister answered in a mumble. “He’s in the restaurant. Hey, how come we don’t get hIEs? If we left them in charge of the shop, dad could come eat with us.”

“Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean we have to,” Kengo said.

That night, dinner was fried food that was almost too professional. Their dad’s fried dishes were delicious, with crisp, crunchy skin. Kengo could hear loud laughter from the restaurant. Even though they didn’t serve alcohol, there were always customers who got noisy.

“Is dad gonna be all right?” Kengo asked no one in particular. His dad was an old-fashioned chef who really loved working with customers. The recent downward trend in customer etiquette was having an impact on his mental state.

This was one of the negative effects of analog hacking. People were so used to their servers being nothing more than food-making machines these days, that they had forgotten polite cultural norms that used to be common sense. No one complimented the chef anymore, or bothered to say ‘thank you.’

Normal exchanges between human hearts had easily grown rusty.

The commotion from the restaurant showed no sign of stopping. It wasn’t the kind of place that could depend on familiar regulars; tourists to the Sky Tree area and students came there often.

Kengo’s mom stood up from the table. “I’m going to go check on the restaurant,” she said. Then it was just Kengo and his sister.

“Kengo,” Olga asked curiously, “do you not want us to get an hIE?”

“Those aren’t cure-alls for every problem we have,” he said. “They’re just like human-shaped cars.”

hIEs were just like cars. Now that cars drove themselves, all a person needed to do was sit down and let the car do the driving. Human movement had become automatic, and hIEs were the same. They were human-shaped, so it was easy for them to fit into human society, and the range of work they could automate for the humans was wide. That was all there was to them.

That was all there was to them, which was exactly why the Network had to keep the hIEs from taking the world away from humans. The precious and nostalgic feelings that lived under the roof of his father’s shop could only thrive in a place where humans could still exchange their emotions. That was the reason Kengo had joined the Antibody Network.

“You like saying that everything is like a car, Kengo,” Olga said.

When Arato had said the same thing earlier, Kengo had felt like punching him, but he couldn’t get angry hearing it in Olga’s gentle voice. “So you think so too, huh?” he sighed.

“And you don’t have to get all philosophical on me,” Olga added.

“Sorry about that.”

They heard a creaking noise from upstairs and Olga, always an anxious girl, looked at him nervously.

“Guess I’ll eat first,” he said.

He ate what he could, and Olga offered to wash up afterward. While she was doing that, Kengo headed upstairs to the second floor. He hadn’t been able to enjoy dinner due to the twisting feeling in his gut. Sending that information to the other members of the Antibody Network earlier had made him an accomplice in a crime.

Their sixty-year-old wooden house only had two wireless power plugs, so all the terminals in the house were wired. The lights were wired too, and weren’t being controlled by the house system.

This meant that there was no way to know if anyone had snuck into Kengo’s room. Despite this, what was waiting for Kengo when he opened the sliding screen to his room was far beyond anything he could have imagined.

It was a girl, wearing an almost ridiculously sturdy-looking bodysuit. She had accessories like the ears of a beast in her red hair, and her big, red eyes were smoldering with inner light. There were visible seams on places where her pale skin showed. The large metal device she had left nearby was so heavy that the floor was bowing underneath it; that explained the creaking noise from earlier.

The window was wide open. With the moon at her back, the girl gave him a smile that showed her white teeth. She was obviously enjoying herself.

“Who are you?” Kengo asked. He tried to add some heat to his voice, but it trembled.

“I’d shut that screen if I were you,” she said.

Kengo hurriedly stepped inside and slid the screen shut behind himself, without taking his eyes off of her. There was something horrible in his room; no human could have carried the heavy device that she’d brought.

Whatever it was, it was obviously the girl’s weapon. Kengo had never seen a blade of such a ludicrous size; it must have been over a meter long. But there was also a gun-like extension from the back of the device that appeared to be a laser cannon. Kengo couldn’t predict exactly how powerful an output it had, but size-wise it was bigger than the main gun of a military tank.

If the girl decided to go crazy with that weapon, Kengo’s house would be a pile of rubble in three seconds.

“What the hell. What the hell is going on?” Kengo asked. His only thought was that one of the volunteers from the Antibody Network must be involved. Nothing else made sense. He had checked out some information on current humanoid military drones and their equipment out of curiosity before, but he had never heard of a drone with this level of heavy armament.

The ‘girl’ started operating Kengo’s terminal, despite the password lock he kept on it. Her hair accessory was giving off a faint glow.

Even though she hadn’t actually touched it, the terminal expanded its 3D display, and programs started popping open almost faster than Kengo could follow with his eyes.

“Hmm. So that’s the signal my sister’s been sending out,” the girl said. There was a graph on the screen. Kengo recognized it as the unit code he had gotten from Lacia.

“That machine is your ‘sister’? Are you an hIE?” Kengo asked. Even knowing that all hIE conversations and actions were based on instructions from the cloud, Kengo found what the girl said too strange. It was almost like she, a machine, had some kind of special feelings toward Lacia, who was another machine.

“Say something, please. Why is there a heavily armed hIE in my room?” Kengo asked.

“My name is Kouka,” she said. “I’ve come from higher up the Antibody Network.”

The Antibody Network was a group of human volunteers trying to protect humanity from the erosion of society with their own hands. The thought of even that group outsourcing their work to an hIE was the height of irony. Kengo’s tiny senses of duty and justice were completely dwarfed by the immensity of the issue before his eyes, and his emotions were so confused that he felt like crying.

He had no idea about the whole story of the Antibody Network he was a part of.

***

The Endos had fried shrimp for breakfast.

“Woah,” Yuka said, swinging her legs back and forth under her chair. “Oh, hey, speaking of fried shrimp, the stuff over at Kengo’s family’s place is amazing. You should take me over there to eat again.”

“Are you aiming to be the most spoiled kid ever or something?” Arato asked.

“It’ll be a reward for me taking care of the apartment while you’re out,” Yuka said. Without a shred of hesitation, she reached out her chopsticks to steal a shrimp from Arato’s plate. He attempted to take some of hers in return, but her plate was already empty; Yuka was the type to eat her food in order of preference.

Lacia had already finished her work in the kitchen, so she took a seat with them. It was a breakfast scene that had become standard over the last week, but there was something different about it that day.

It had been awkward talking to Lacia on the way home. When they arrived home there had been a sense of relief, but for some reason Arato suddenly found it hard to even look straight at her.

He had tried to strike up a conversation with her a few times, but he would always turn to Yuka instead at the last minute. He felt a strange sense of inferiority, as an ordinary high school student comparing himself to an up-and-coming model.

And just when he needed her to step up, Yuka had stopped talking to Lacia, as well. Arato wished she would take responsibility. She was the one who had brought about this whole modeling thing, after all.

“Hey, say something to Lacia,” Arato told his sister.

“Lacia, you were super cool in that shoot,” Yuka said.

“I saw it, too. You really were amazing,” Arato said, following Yuka’s lead. He wanted to add something more. The shame of his own pathetic nature made him want to grab his head in despair.

Lacia’s cool, pale blue eyes met Arato’s. She had just gotten back from a photo shoot, so there was a touch of makeup on her lips. Just that little bit of added glossiness made Arato’s breath catch. Things he wanted to say to her bubbled up inside, but he couldn’t get them out of his mouth. It was as if he was unconsciously trying to build an invisible wall between them. He felt completely unreasonable.

“Owner.” Arato thought his heart would explode when Lacia suddenly spoke to him.

“Yes!” he burst out in reply.

“Good grief, Arato. Calm down with the puppy dog impression,” Yuka said.

That evening, there was a light knock at the door to Arato’s room. He had just been settling down to sleep, so he was a bit irritated when he went and opened the door.

Lacia was standing there, dressed in pajamas that she had just bought that day. “Owner, would you like to have some tea with me?” she asked. In the end it was she who invited him, and so easily.

“Man, I’m a moron,” Arato said.

“Has your body warmed up?” Lacia asked, making up some black tea in a pot. She had picked out some spices at the store that day, so she was actually making a special chai blend.

hIE did not act of their own accord. They simply repeated behaviors they pulled from the control cloud. Even Arato understood that. But thinking of how Lacia moved and looked when she was in model mode, he couldn’t help but feel nervous.

“I understand that humans as young as you are have trouble with changes in your own emotions, owner,” Lacia said.

“Don’t say it like I’m a little kid. I really don’t know how I’m supposed to act right now,” Arato said. Her prominent collar bones did a good job of drawing his eyes toward her chest. Before his brain could even register that he was enjoying a nice view, he’d broken out in a cold sweat.

Lacia walked over to stand next to him, while he remained seated in his chair. “Owner,” she said, “would you please stand up?”

“Of course,” Arato said. He stood, and Lacia was right there by his side. Her sweet scent made his brain go fuzzy.

“I have begun to work as a model, but because of that there is awkwardness in our relationship, owner. I believe we have gotten things out of order,” she told him. “I believe if we do not alter the way in which we feel about each other, we may not be able to handle sudden changes in our situation.”

“What do you mean ‘alter’ the way we feel?” Arato asked. Or at least, he tried to. Lacia’s hand covered his mouth, and only a mumble escaped.

“For the next five minutes, I will change the nature of my communication with you, owner,” she said.

Arato had no idea what she was talking about. He tried to free himself from her thin arms with both hands, but she didn’t budge. Considering that she could lift her giant coffin-like device with a single hand, she obviously possessed incredible strength.

“Please be quiet. You will awaken Lady Yuka again,” Lacia said, holding a finger in front of her lips. Her pajamas were in a bit of disarray from Arato’s struggling. She must have noticed where he was looking, because she pulled her collar back into place with her fingers.

“Some hIE users seek a certain kind of excitement. What I am about to do is just a little game. Don’t worry, I’ll go back to how I was before when it’s over,” she said. Then she whispered: “Close your eyes.”

Arato shut his eyes as he was told. When he opened them, he felt a stab of confusion.

The girl in front of him no longer looked like Lacia. Her eyes were open a little wider than normal, and there was a gentle smile on her lips. The expression on her face made her seem younger.

“Hey, wait a minute. What the heck is going on?” Arato said, trying to laugh it off. But in an instant, he felt cold sweat on his back.

Lacia was right there in front of him, but his senses were telling him this was a person he’d never met before. Her expression and the way she stood and moved had completely changed. This girl couldn’t even pass for Lacia’s twin.

“Just as you like spoiling Yuka, I’ll spoil you today, Arato,” she said. Her manner of speaking, from her intonation to her accent and word choice, had all changed as well. Arato couldn’t perceive her as anything but a different person. Yet strangely, he felt no desire to stop her. It was probably due to the perverse excitement he felt at the thought of a secret encounter like this, kept quiet so as not to wake his sleeping sister.

“All right, go ahead and spoil me,” he said. Even as the words left his mouth, he felt a pang of self-loathing. He had no idea what was about to happen, but even that fact just made things all the more exciting to the point where he didn’t really care anymore.

“Leave it to me,” she said. Though she was shorter than him, Lacia reached out her arm and started stroking Arato’s head. It was strange, being treated like a child, but to be fair Arato did the same thing to Yuka all the time.

Getting his head stroked was something Arato hadn’t experienced in years, and it sent a strange, ticklish sensation through his body. It also made guilt well up within him. He felt a rush of confusion and surprise, like he had suddenly been tugged into a dance he didn’t know. This was reality, not some story he was experiencing, so he had no idea what to do with his body.

“What am I supposed to do while you spoil me?” Arato asked. His cheeks were red, and he felt his brain switching off more and more with each passing second.

“Oh, you’re doing just fine. How about you lay your head on my lap and think of what else you’d like me to do,” Lacia said.

“Uh, I don’t think we’re ready to go there yet. Actually, wait, let me think about it,” Arato said. His throat felt dry. Did they really have that kind of relationship? Arato knew the answer to that question. This wasn’t real. It was just a lie that had started a few minutes ago.

When he thought that, Arato felt his chest tighten, and he clenched the back of his jaw unconsciously. Arato knew Lacia would switch from the way she had treated him up to then, and treat him like this from now on. All he needed to do was ask.

She had no heart, no soul. All she was doing was performing actions drawn from the behavioral cloud. So it would be nothing for her to continue to perform this lie perfectly for as long as he wanted. All the sides of Lacia Arato had seen; the Lacia who rescued him, the Lacia who invited him out onto the school roof, the Lacia who posed for models shoots, they may as well have been illusions.

Lacia herself had told him these truths countless times. But the thought that the personality and characteristics that Arato had started to see as precious were all just window dressing that Lacia could toss aside in an instant came as a shock. It was like walking in a dream, only to be shoved off a ledge. He didn’t know where to put his feet, and every breath brought pleasure and pain.

After pulling out a chair with both hands, Lacia sat down quickly. She gently turned up the hem of her pajamas, then let out a short, breathy laugh and patted her thighs. “If you lay your head on my lap,” she invited, “your whole world may change.”

This girl had no soul. The perfection with which she acted out this new relationship made a shiver run up Arato’s spine. She felt nothing of the fact that there was no trace of the Lacia he knew in the way she was acting now.

“Let’s stop. This is embarrassing,” Arato said, feeling himself being drawn out of the moment. Lacia wasn’t a human; even the fact that she appeared to be human was nothing more than an illusion.

In response, Lacia showed him a bittersweet smile he had never seen before. “Is that any way to talk to your big sister?” she said. “That’s what you’ve always wanted, right? A big sister.”

“You used the home system to look at my album,” he accused. “Didn’t you?”

“What’s wrong with that? As your big sister, I just wanted to know more about you, Arato,” she said. Lacia’s gaze was full of deep affection. With that much love being sent in his direction, Arato started to think maybe it was all right to get a little spoiled.

He made his decision. “Oh, okay, I guess I can rest on your lap,” he said.

“The five minutes are almost up. Would you like an extension?” Lacia asked.

“I’m the worst.” Arato was so embarrassed, he wanted to hide his face behind both hands and disappear. Was this all just his frustrated sexual desire coming out, or was he just lonely? He felt like he was seeing his own evil twin in a mirror.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away,” Lacia said. She tugged on his hand. When he stood up, they were face-to-face.

Arato didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know who he was talking to; the Lacia he remembered, or ‘big sis’ Lacia. His words were a jumble, stuck inside his head. He felt like he was talking to a human-shaped wall. In his mind, he doubted whether or not she was real. But her shape, her warmth, the way she breathed; all of it overwhelmed his doubt.

“Do you still feel the need to distance yourself from me?” Lacia asked.

It did feel like something had been broken down, and the air between them was suddenly less stagnant. But, even as Arato felt that, somewhere inside he could tell that it had happened because Lacia had pushed things in that direction.

Arato wasn’t very bright, but he finally noticed what had happened. “You analog hacked me,” he said.

“Yes. I believe taking on the work of a model and thereby causing distance to form between you and I was a miscalculation of priorities, Arato,” she said, responding in the manner he had gotten used to. Her expression, too, was that of the Lacia he had met that first night. At last her meaning and her form had returned to their original balance, and Arato felt relieved. The only thing that hadn’t gone back to normal was her calling him ‘owner.’

“You’re not going to call me owner anymore?” he asked.

“You gave a very positive reaction to being called by name, so I altered it,” Lacia said.

It didn’t make Arato feel bad at all. In fact, he was actually happy about it. Which, in turn, made him depressed at how easily swayed he was. “Man, I’m easy to please,” he sighed. Since he had become Lacia’s owner, at least there was something new every day. She kept snapping effortlessly through everything he had taken for granted in his life.

The next morning, everything that had happened the night before still filled his head. When he was with her, he felt like he was going to be swept away by his own intense emotions, but when they were apart, the loneliness suddenly scared him. That morning, his awakening was horrible. He was still seeing constant nightmares but, ever since he’d met Lacia, the content of the dreams had changed.

What the heck did I become the owner of? That was the question jumbling around in Arato’s head. Were all hIEs just like that? Or did this have something to do with Lacia being high quality, as her ID number seemed to indicate? Was her ID number even legitimate, or was that fake, too?

Just like his friends had said, maybe his whole meeting with Lacia had been some kind of urban legend come to life; that almost seemed to be the most likely answer. The thought that, someday, this strangeness would consume his whole life, and even Yuka would start speaking to him with a different voice and wearing a different face, made his skin crawl.

“I need to tell her never to do that again,” he said. He knew things couldn’t go on exactly the same forever, but he wanted at least tomorrow and the next day to be the same.

He wiped off his sweat from the night with a towel left by his bedside, and headed out to the living room. Breakfast was all laid out, but no one was there. Yuka was on trash duty that morning.

“She’s having Lacia help her again,” Arato said. Since Lacia had arrived they didn’t let the trash pile up anymore like they had before, but on the flip-side, Yuka had gotten very dishonest about doing her chores by herself.

Suddenly, from below he heard the screeching of brakes and a loud slamming noise; for him to have heard it all the way up on the fifth floor, it must have been big.

Breakfast that morning was Japanese-style, the same as always, with Lacia carefully balancing out their nutritional needs. Arato had just dipped out some pork broth and brown rice into two bowls when the door slammed open.

Yuka came running in. “Arato! Come quick! Lacia j-just got hit! Some weird car hit her!”

Yuka was crying, and Arato felt like someone had just doused him in freezing water. He had a good idea what was happening. Things had just gotten very dangerous.

“Sh-she got knocked down and s-some guy took her away,” Yuka stammered.

Arato couldn’t believe it, and turned to look. Lacia’s black coffin was still in the living room where she normally left it. Lacia had left her weapon behind.

The breakfast on the table was steaming. Everything still looked the same. But suddenly, something was missing. Just like with Lacia the night before, form and meaning shifting apart, and Arato fought the urge to vomit.