Phase4「Automatic World」

Kengo Suguri was ordered to ride along with nine other guys. Within the automatic microbus they were all riding, no one spoke. The evening sunlight coming in through the windows seemed particularly sad to Kengo.

That day, as soon as he had gotten home from school, Kengo had changed and left for the meeting spot where the Antibody Network vehicle would pick him up.

Starting the week before, Kengo had ridden on that bus every day. It took him and the others to an old factory near the Edogawa River, where they conducted their training. The training menu was split up into two sections. First was running behind their leader, and stopping whenever he gave the signal. Then, they were all given rifles and told to shoot at a target just thirty meters away at a signal. Since the Antibody Network was made up of volunteers, everyone there was an amateur when it came to things like this, and their movements were awkward. Aside from Kengo, the other members were older men in ages ranging from twenties to forties, all sweating while their trainer, who apparently had military experience, shouted at them.

Their commander was sitting in the seat nearest the only exit of the microbus, just like he did every day. But today, there was a different kind of tension in the bus. Today was the day their attack plan would be put into action.

Kengo thought about his family, and felt like his stomach had been stuffed full of something bitter. He was being forced to participate in the attack as a penalty for unauthorized use of the Antibody Network system. He had no idea if he would be coming back alive. And even if he did, would he be able to avoid getting arrested?

None of his fellow passengers looked happy to be there. Their faces, dripping with sweat, were frozen in hard, bitter expressions. Everyone was thinking that this could be the day they would die, and Kengo was no exception.

“Your mission today is to attack the Oi Industry Promotion Center. The building is thirty-six stories, and the meeting room where they’re holding the experiment is on the 22nd floor. Your objective is to destroy the hIE spearheading the movement to automate our government. This hIE may not be able to fight, but let’s get one thing straight: that thing has the power to corrode human society,” their commander said. He spoke in absolutes, allowing no room for anyone to agree or disagree. He was simply reiterating the briefing they had already been given earlier.

Outside the windows, which were covered with blackout film, Kengo saw high schoolers around his age enjoying a nice stroll through the city. He couldn’t believe he was on that bus right then, instead of out with those other kids.

Kengo looked down at the bullet-proof combat gear he had been given. He was pretty sure this was going to be a mess; they were about to step out onto a battlefield with only the most basic of disciplinary training.

His sister Olga’s face floated up in his mind. His mom and dad, too. They were probably working in the restaurant right then. “What the hell am I doing?” he asked.

Some of the other men sitting in the bus turned to look at him. The air sparked with tension, as the men wordlessly admonished Kengo for his lack of conviction. He was still a high schooler, so he had to show his face at home, but everyone else there had stayed at the meeting site to work on the plan, since it had been laid out for them the night before. The Antibody Network was made up of volunteers who wanted to help destroy the hIEs that wore human forms and automated human work. They all had different backgrounds, but most of them shared the same hatred. Of course, there were probably others there who’d had their family threatened just like Kengo.

The microbus, which had been running automatically, started to slow down.

“It’s an inspection. Just keep calm, sit there and shut up,” the commander said from his post by the door.

Before Kengo could get his panicked breathing under control, a uniformed police officer knocked on the microbus’s driver-side door. The window on that side slid down automatically. There was no way anyone would overlook the strangeness of Kengo and the others, all of them decked out in combat gear. Kengo shrank into himself; they were going to be arrested as terrorists, he was sure of it. A small part of his mind also chimed in that he would probably be expelled from school as well.

But, his fears of arrest turned out to be unnecessary. The police officer poked his head in the door, gave the interior of the bus a single glance, then waved the bus through.

Kengo’s face was dripping with sweat. From what he could see, he wasn’t the only one in the bus who thought they were done for. Under the glare of their superior, they exchanged desperate glances and seemed to find a little comfort in seeing that they weren’t the only ones who were terrified.

The bus descended into an underground parking garage. It was dark, and all Kengo could see was a wide-open space stretching out, broken only by pillars. Route guidance was projected onto the concrete floor, and there was a van parked nearby.

“Get off,” the commander said. “We’re commencing the mission.”

To Kengo, it sounded like he was pronouncing a death sentence.

“Don’t use your guns on anything but hIEs,” the commander added. After leaving his position by the door, the commander got the firearms that had been stashed in the nearby van and handed them around. The group of volunteer terrorists seemed more sorrowful than tense as they received their weapons.

Kengo didn’t know the whole plan of attack. But he did know that there were two men there with actual soldier training, along with 10 amateurs. He had heard that the security in the Oi Industry Promotion Center was tight. He could hardly think through the nerves and excitement, and his fear was telling him the best idea might be to just hide so no one would attack him.

Kengo told himself to stop thinking about it. Everyone there was armed now; if he chickened out, his comrades might just shoot him themselves. This whole plan of using amateurs to attack a heavily secured location was insane, but he didn’t even have his pocket terminal to call for help. Everyone’s terminals had been rounded up earlier, to prevent anyone from pulling their personal information from their ID tags.

Kengo thought about his family again. Even though he was getting involved with something illegal, he still wanted to return to his home alive after it was all over. He prayed for someone to save him. If only he had been the type to ask for help right away, like Arato always did, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. His whole body was numb with regret.

Still, no matter how he tried to spin it, Kengo’s activities with the Antibody Network had always been a crime. Thinking about that, he felt anger boiling in his chest. He wished the police would show up before they could start their terrorist attack. Instead, the leader of their mission showed up and, when Kengo saw who it was, he felt even worse; he recognized that face. She looked like she was having the time of her life.

“Your mission is to run up to the 22nd floor of this building. You can’t use the elevators, so good luck,” she said, standing in front of them with her dull red hair tied into two long side-tails. She was wearing a bodysuit that looked like armored underwear. It was the mysterious hIE, Kouka.

She had on a bullet-proof tactical vest that showed far too much skin, and which was stuffed with knives and firearm magazines. The amateur terrorists were eyeing the young girl in front of them uneasily, but Kouka just kept smiling.

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I may look under-equipped, but my whole body is a cybernetic replacement,” she lied. “All this bare skin is actually military-grade bulletproof material.” It appeared that she wasn’t going to tell them she was actually an hIE.

The others, who had never seen a person with full-body replacement cybernetics, were obviously relieved by this explanation, and seemed to think she would be a reliable leader. Only Kengo knew the truth about her.

Just like when she had threatened him and tossed him onto this battlefield, Kouka looked at him and grinned. “As humans, we won’t stand for them trying to automate our government,” she went on. “We won’t forgive them. That’s why we’re here today. If you see a security hIE, shoot it, because we’re the humans here.”

The infiltration unit, who had all lined up, responded with a sharp ‘Yes, ma’am!’ Aside from that, no one said a word. Their training from the past few days, combined with the weight of the guns in their arms and the atmosphere of the place, had instilled some discipline in these amateurs.

Japan in the 22nd century wasn’t the safe country it had once been. The Self Defense Force had returned to being an army, and the military industrial complex had revived. PMCs were often hired to provide security. As a licensed facility, this place Kengo and the others were in could easily get a hold of Class 3 hIEs, which had extremely lax controls on what kinds of equipment they could use, including firearms. It was a distinct possibility that Kengo and his fellow terrorists could die in a shootout. Kouka was driving a bunch of amateurs with guns onto a battlefield, without even explaining the armaments of the other side.

“Just leave the dangerous guys to me,” she said confidently. “You all just focus on destroying anything that isn’t human.”

The impromptu terrorists were pushed forward by their own hatred and senses of justice. Their feelings of disgust at a society full of hIEs had brought them to this point. Their leader, Kouka, signaled with her hands for them to follow her. Holding onto their guns, the men all followed the little red girl. Only Kengo wasn’t caught up in the heat of the moment. His whole body was shaking, and his face was pale.

***

Arato stood in front of the restaurant, Sunflower. Rather than going in through the front of the restaurant, he went down an alley to the side where there was a door to the Suguri residence. Inside, behind the restaurant, as one would expect there were cardboard boxes of vegetables and other ingredients giving off a distinctive smell.

“Man, it’s been forever since I’ve been to Olga’s house,” Yuka said, peeking her head around Arato’s side. For some reason she had decided to come along, and Arato was a little worried about her. Seeing Lacia’s kidnapping must have really scared her, since she hadn’t gone to school since and seemed to be afraid of going anywhere alone.

“Are you okay? You’re not worried something like the kidnapping is going to happen again, are you?” he asked her.

“Nope. Lacia came back, and I’ve eaten some delicious food since then, so I’m all better,” she responded, showing him a smile.

Lacia, who had also come along, gently smiled back at her. “There is no cause for concern. I have not detected the presence of any suspicious persons since then,” she said.

“See? Lacia says it’s okay, too. I don’t mind if you spoil me, but don’t turn into a helicopter parent,” Yuka said. Though she was trying to show him her resilience, her gaze kept wandering. That close to a restaurant, she was unable to resist the delicious smells drifting toward them; seeing that his sister was the same as always came as a relief.

“Don’t go eating anything here,” Arato warned her. “It could be considered an eat-and-run.”

“I won’t. If I wanted anything, Olga’s dad would just give it to me anyway,” Yuka responded while kicking off her shoes.

The narrow back entryway of the Suguri household was connected to the back of the kitchen. Heading into the back of the building from the entryway, one would find the Suguris’ kitchen and living space. Olga and Kengo’s rooms were on the second floor.

“Thank you for coming,” Olga Suguri greeted them. She had inherited her light golden hair and looks from her mom, and didn’t look like Kengo at all. Still, her weak, gentle voice did remind Arato of Kengo’s kind disposition.

“Olga, let’s go get some tea,” Yuka said, looking back as she headed toward the Suguri family’s kitchen.

“But...” Olga trailed off. She was shooting worried glances at Arato. Olga was a year younger than Kengo, which made her two years older than Yuka, even though she could have passed for one of Yuka’s classmates. Normally, Yuka should have been more polite to her elders, but she spoke to everyone pretty much the same.

“Go ahead and relax and drink some tea. We’ll get things sorted out,” Arato said.

Kengo’s little sister gave him a little bow. “I just can’t understand how Kengo is feeling, Arato,” she said.

Arato didn’t really know what to say, so he let Lacia do the talking. The hIE addressed Olga’s concerns. “One of the possible uses of an hIE is to utilize machines that the user is not comfortable with for them. As long as the machine in question is not overly specialized, I should be able to handle it,” she said.

But Olga seemed frightened of Lacia for some reason, and avoided meeting the hIE’s eyes.

Yuka took Olga by the shoulder. “Okay, we’re gonna go drink some tea,” she said, pushing Olga toward the kitchen as if Yuka was the host and Olga the guest, rather than the other way around.

Lacia smiled encouragingly at Arato, who looked apologetic. She wasn’t a human, but she followed the Japanese human custom of removing her shoes before entering the house. Then, she quickly arranged all the shoes in the entryway properly before finally stepping up into the hall.

Kengo’s house was so ancient that it seemed like a relic forgotten by time. It was over sixty years old, built during the last century. The wooden floor of the slightly dark hallway was dull, and the wallpaper looked ancient. There was no home system set up in the Suguri household, so there were switches for the lights and machines on the walls; this was a rarity these days.

Arato and Lacia walked up the stairs to the second floor. Even though the restaurant was in the same building, they didn’t see Kengo’s parents. From what Arato had heard, Kengo’s folks didn’t care much for hIEs.

Lacia tried to avoid mentioning the pain of human relationships as to not upset Arato. “To confirm: your friend broke his promise with his younger sister, and she has been unable to contact him, correct?” she asked.

They stepped into a room with tatami mat flooring. It was the first time Arato had been in his friend’s room, but in a single glance he could see Kengo’s passion. As if to rebel against the ancient wooden house around him, Kengo had decked his room out in machinery, with cords running to countless power strips. He even had a wireless server set up, though it looked to be second-hand. This was the only room in the house that made Arato feel like he was in the 22nd century.

“I guess this is his main computer, huh?” Arato said doubtfully. “Even though it’s his family asking, I still don’t feel great about pulling information out of this thing.” Olga had asked for his help through Yuka. Apparently, Kengo had been staying out really late for the past week. Today, he had even said that he was going to spend the night at Arato’s place.

“C’mon, man, you can’t always use my place as an excuse,” Arato muttered.

“Mr. Suguri appears to have disabled the GPS tracking in his pocket terminal,” Lacia said. “This house is not overseen by a home system, so I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this statement. But, judging by the item tags of the equipment in this room, I cannot find any trace of Mr. Suguri packing any large luggage before he left.” According to Lacia, hIE were also capable of controlling home electronics. He was impressed by how quickly she grasped the whole situation after seeing Kengo’s room for the first time.

“Yeah, he didn’t have any luggage with him when he came to school,” Arato agreed. It wasn’t a great feeling, intruding on his friend’s living space when his friend wasn’t there. He had been to the Suguri home a few times, since it was close to the high school, but never like this.

Kengo’s bed was neatly made, but he had apparently tossed his pad terminal on top of it. Lacia looked at it, and it booted up without her needing to touch it. Kengo’s desktop computer also started up at the same time, so Arato wondered if the two were connected.

“I am disabling the password,” Lacia said.

A shiver ran up Arato’s spine as he thought of the implications of what Lacia was doing. The password screen appeared, and Lacia broke through it in an instant. A program started running on the desktop computer. It showed a map of the eastern side of Tokyo all the way to the border with Chiba prefecture, an area Arato was familiar with. There were points of light scattered all over the map, as well as images of hIEs walking alone and videos of police officers.

“Lacia, what the hell is all this?” Arato asked. He didn’t understand what the map meant, but he had a very bad feeling about it.

“I believe this is the cause of your friend’s irregular behavior,” she responded, as the accessories decorating her soft hair began to shine with blue light. “I will attempt to recover as much deleted data from the disc drive as possible,” she continued. “Recovery complete. I will use a natural language search and list any e-mail data that relates to this program.”

A computer was a person’s identity; it was their wallet, and their privacy. But the security system that was supposed to protect this fundamental right of any citizen offered no resistance to Lacia, and five text e-mails popped up on the screen. Terms shared between the five e-mails were automatically highlighted in color.

“It appears that your friend is involved with the Antibody Network,” Lacia announced. “This program is used to track the movements of hIEs who have integrated with human society, as well as police movement data. This data is compiled from information contributed by an unspecified number of informants.”

“So these guys kidnapped Kengo?” Arato asked.

“He appears to be an ally of the conspiracy. Judging from the content of the e-mails, as well as the functions of this program, I believe this group destroys lone hIEs while avoiding police detection,” Lacia responded.

Arato remembered when they had found the arm of the hIE near here, and Kengo had explained that those kinds of cases were common lately. His own friend was probably helping the guys doing that. In this room, he was seeing a side of Kengo he had never known unmasked. Kengo had probably hidden it from his family down below as well.

Lacia had stopped manipulating Kengo’s computer. “What shall we do?” she asked.

“Obviously we’re going to go look for him,” Arato answered.

She turned her clear blue eyes to him. “Kengo Suguri has committed criminal acts,” she said soberly.

Arato felt paralyzed. Of course what Kengo was doing — stealing other people’s hIEs and destroying them — was a crime. He let out a sigh. “What the hell are you doing, Kengo? I thought we were friends. Why wouldn’t you talk to me about this?” he wondered. It was a shock, having a person he thought of as a good friend hide something this big from him.

“Arato, look at this. He had my ID number bookmarked, so he could search for it at any time.” Lacia was looking at the screen that proved Kengo was involved in crime. The map on the screen was centered on Sunflower, and there was a light purple mark there, different from the other hIE tracking marks.

“When I was taken, he used this program to aid you,” Lacia said.

Once she said it, Arato understood. Kengo had been able to track Lacia’s movements when Arato was chasing the kidnapper. He had used his criminal program to help Arato out.

“I guess he’s been worrying about that ever since then,” Arato said. While he had been relaxing after the whole kidnapping thing, Kengo had probably been worried sick about the repercussions of his actions. Why hadn’t he just talked to them about it? The ancient smell and look of the Suguri house seemed to press in on Arato, the old air seeming to weigh him down.

Lacia was still silently watching the computer screen. Though she was displaying a clear, cool expression like a human might, she was still a machine.

“Are you seeing anything else interesting in there?” Arato asked her.

“Mr. Suguri’s nightly disappearances began the day after you and I encountered Kouka,” she said.

Just hearing that name made Arato’s whole body flinch with terror. The little red hIE that claimed to be Lacia’s younger sister had declared Arato unfit to be Lacia’s owner. Ever since then, Arato’s relationship with Lacia had become awkward. He understood that Lacia wasn’t human, of course, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to think of her as a tool, either.

“Would you like to utilize me?” Lacia asked, looking up at him. Her body was bathed in a red afterglow, dyeing her the same color as Kouka. Lacia was always looking to him to make these decisions, as if deciding was just what humans were expected to do.

“Please find out where Kengo is,” Arato said. For better or worse, the urgency of the situation overrode Arato’s normal hang-ups. It had been his intention to use Lacia from the beginning, ever since Olga had first asked for his help. That was the whole reason he had brought her there. He just hoped that by using her, he would be able to help Kengo. If it was for the sake of his friend, Arato could overlook his usual hesitation to use Lacia as a tool. Even if they got dragged into a fight, Arato felt this goal was worth it.

Lacia accepted Arato’s request with a smile. “Acknowledged,” she said. Arato had conveyed his will. Lacia automatically transformed that request into a list of tasks, and began to execute those tasks automatically. “Please wait for a moment. I will determine what kind of activity your friend has been caught up in,” she said.

***

When Ryo Kaidai got the call, he was sitting in a meeting room at MemeFrame. In front of him was a researcher older than his dad. He had been working at the Tokyo Research Labs that had been half-destroyed in the explosion the other day. Ryo had talked his dad — the president of MemeFrame — into setting up this meeting with the researcher, saying that he was thinking of his future after graduating from high school.

“Your years in high school will be the best years of your life. It’s best not to let worries cloud up your enjoyment of this time while you have it,” the researcher advised. Seeing that Ryo was getting a call, he asked if Ryo’s friends were all right.

“Please don’t worry about it. I’ll just call him back tonight,” Ryo said, rejecting the call.

The call had been from Arato. Ryo had a bad feeling that his friend had been caught up in something shady again. But, ever since Arato had picked up Lacia, strange events seemed to be happening around him more frequently, and Ryo was sure eventually it was all going to blow up in a way they might never recover from. That was why he was here, talking to this researcher.

“It was a shock, seeing the news about the explosion at the Tokyo Research Labs,” Ryo lied. “It got me thinking about my future. A bunch of kids at my school were talking about it, too.”

The researcher, a fifty-year-old man named Shinohara, had streaks of white in his hair. He folded his arms and frowned. When he sighed, Ryo could smell tobacco on his breath. “The police are working to track down the terrorists,” Shinohara told him. “But if an incident like that can get young kids thinking about hIEs, I suppose we can call that a silver lining.”

Arato had met his Red Box hIE the night of the Tokyo Research Labs explosion. MemeFrame was the company behind the world’s leading hIE behavioral cloud, as well as Higgins, an AI with capabilities far surpassing human knowledge. It wasn’t hard to see how it was all related. And if Lacia was related to MemeFrame, that meant this Shinohara guy could also be connected.

“You were thinking of going to a college with a pseudo-human engineering program, right, Ryo?” Shinohara asked.

“I got interested in hIE behavior control after hearing about the incident at the Tokyo Research Labs, so I started looking into that kind of thing. From what I read, our system is incredibly powerful, right?” Ryo answered the question with his own.

The researcher looked down shyly at the compliment to his work, but Ryo was on the trail of what he really wanted to know.

“The hIE behavioral clouds are shared between multiple servers connected by a network, right?” Ryo went on. “That’s why, even if one server gets destroyed, another can just jump in and cover for it, so hIEs never stop working.”

Ryo projected a 3D image of a schematic he had made. It seemed to impress the researcher, who leaned in for a better look. The MemeFrame cloud network was a platform that unified the behavior programs from several different companies; it was comparable to Sony or Nintendo from the early days of video games, or MS and Apple from the PC market.

“But I heard the Tokyo Research Lab was a center that provided updates. Which is weird, since all the machinery down there got blown away but our servers still kept running normally,” Ryo continued.

MemeFrame was also the company behind AASC, the control infrastructure most behavior control programs were built around. The Tokyo Research Lab provided regular updates to the AASC, so that hIEs could continue to react in optimal ways to social situations that changed with each passing day. Considering all that, it was strange that MemeFrames’ services had kept running, even after half the Tokyo Research Lab facility had been destroyed.

“I know everyone’s always been chasing after perfect data back-up and recovery methods, but how did MemeFrame pull that off?” Ryo asked, finally arriving at the question he had wanted to ask. This was important enough that he had ignored a call from his best friend. He wasn’t going to let this chance to get some answers slip away.

“This is touching on some trade secrets, so it’s just between us,” Shinohara said. The researcher was near retirement, and had spent time as a staff member at the labs; he hadn’t missed the fact that Ryo was related to his boss, Tsuyoshi Kaidai.

“The big disaster in the last century really drove home the importance of backing up our data,” Shinohara told him. “Equipment’s going to break down sooner or later, so we prepared some hardware that would let our data retreat from danger on its own two legs.”

Ryo felt like he had just stuck the final piece into a puzzle, and the picture it showed him was a horror beyond his comprehension. The ‘two legs’ Shinohara was referring to were hIEs. Which meant one of those two legs was the girl Arato had picked up the other night.

Thinking of the amount of data the Tokyo Research Labs had been in charge of, the physical weight of the quantum computers and storage devices that contained it must have been incredible. Plus the AASC, including the data storage units, and the processing engine for keeping tabs on all the data in the storage units, as well as the databases for utilizing the data in the storage units, and the applications that allowed for value to be derived from the databases, all took up four entire buildings. All that hardware and software, an entire data center, had been crammed down into the black coffin that Lacia carried around.

As the carrier of that coffin, Lacia had to be prepared for an extremely difficult job. Since a major disaster would knock out the wireless recharge systems, she would need an incredibly high-capacity battery. Plus, she would need to be able to make decisions about her own actions, in case the behavioral cloud was taken offline. Her capabilities were far beyond those of any average hIE.

And, if the Red Box named Lacia had been designed by MemeFrame’s super high performance AI, Higgins, everything would fit neatly into place. That must have been where Lacia and Kouka had come from.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting you to use that sort of method,” Ryo said.

“Oh, come now, Ryo. You’ve been watching our experiments and hanging around the labs ever since you were small. I must say, I’m glad you’ve recovered since, you know, that time,” Shinohara said.

Ryo did his best to force a smile. He hadn’t always hung around the labs as a kid. But, once Arato had started relying on him to be the smart one, his interest in the labs had grown. Still, he was already regretting sticking his nose into this. The Tokyo Research Labs were completely shrouded in darkness.

“So, our data succeeded in escaping,” Shinohara said.

Of course, if none of the hIEs carrying the data had returned after the explosion, Ryo doubted Shinohara would be describing it as a ‘success’. That meant at least one of Lacia’s Red Box sisters must have been retrieved.

“I guess I should probably stop joking around about this,” Ryo muttered to himself.

The air in the conference room felt heavy, and Ryo was having trouble breathing. Though, to be fair, Ryo had expected this outcome. He had thought of all the possibilities; what to do if they took him to the police, what to do if the researcher tried to hide the truth. He couldn’t complain when the horrible truth came rolling effortlessly into his lap.

Another call came on Ryo’s phone. It was Arato again. Ryo’s bad feeling grew stronger. “I’d better see what this is about,” Ryo said, excusing himself out to the hallway to take the call.

There was an unusual tension in Arato’s voice. When Ryo heard what he had to say, all the blood drained from his face; Kengo had been destroying hIEs as part of the Antibody Network. Plus, he hadn’t come home that day.

“So, do you know where Kengo is?” Ryo asked.

〈Lacia says he might be at the Oi Industry Promotion Center,〉 Arato said. Throughout the call, Ryo thought his friend’s voice seemed more mature than normal.

“Is she sure?” Ryo asked.

〈Lacia found some memo data of Kengo’s. It says they’re targeting an hIE experiment happening there.〉

Ryo started to say ‘take it to the police,’ but stopped himself halfway. Instead, he just said, “Never mind, don’t go,” before falling into a stunned silence.

Lacia was a product of the Tokyo Research Labs. This meant that the researcher on the other side of the door had a deep connection with her whole situation. But, he had spilled the beans to Ryo because of Ryo’s familial connections.

Ryo’s mouth tasted bitter, like the tension was squeezing his organs until bile came out. He often teased Arato for not being the brightest bulb, but his friend did have the ability to follow a chain of events, from a single bit of information all the way to conclusions, that Ryo didn’t want to think about. The fact that MemeFrame wasn’t openly searching for their products, the escaped Lacia-class hIEs, meant they probably didn’t want the police involved with the whole thing. If it got out that they had lost control of some Red Boxes, in the worst case scenario, the executive officer of the company — Ryo’s father — could be called in front of the Diet for questioning.

“Don’t take this to the police yet,” he repeated. The ease with which Arato agreed made goosebumps appear on Ryo’s arms.

〈Got it. I figured you would say that,〉 Arato said. Then, despite having just gotten finished with that theft case, Arato added: 〈I’m going to go rescue Kengo. I figured I should let you know.〉

“What the hell man? Are you crazy? It’s not like Kengo’s gonna be alone. He’s mixed up with some terrorists,” Ryo said.

〈Kengo helped me out. This time it’s my turn,〉 Arato responded simply.

Ryo’s face was dripping with an uneasy sheen of sweat. He was so tense that it was starting to make his head hurt. “This is all information that hIE is feeding you,” he said desperately. “That Red Box. You don’t know if someone’s controlling that thing. Would you even know if she was leading you on?”

It was the same as the things that hIE, Kouka, had said. If Lacia and Kouka were working together, it would be too easy for them to manipulate a human. Without any sort of proof, there was no way Arato could actually know that he wasn’t being lied to.

“Sit this one out. It’s pointless to throw away your life like this,” Ryo said.

〈If it’s ‘pointless,’ I just have to give it a point,〉 Arato retorted. He hadn’t changed, ever since they were kids. It was because he could say things like that, without thought or hesitation, that Ryo had always hung out with him.

“This isn’t the time for one of your macho one-liners,” Ryo argued. “In ten years, the only job for human guys like us will be chatting up human girls. Have your hIE handle it. There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

〈It seems like Kengo really hates hIEs. If Lacia went after him alone, there’s no way he would listen to her. It is what it is, Ryo. I’ve got to go,〉 Arato said.

Ryo, who always let his rationality drown out his emotions, also felt like he had been saved by Arato, who always acted on his emotions first. Still, Ryo found it hard to discuss what he had found with his friend, who was almost too good. Deep inside, Ryo knew the day would come after graduation when the two of them would take separate paths as they went out into society.

***

Arato cut the call.

He was looking up at the sky over the city, which was fading from evening to night. After Lacia had pulled Kengo’s most likely location off of his terminal, they had rented an automatic van to drive them to Oi.

He had left Yuka at Sunflower, telling her and Olga they would bring Kengo back safe and sound. It would be a horrible lie to have told if it turned out Kengo wasn’t all right. But that just strengthened Arato’s resolve to bring Kengo back in one piece.

“So that’s the place Kengo and his buddies are planning to go all terrorist on,” Arato said. The Oi Industry Promotion Center was a government-run business building that took advantage of its location near the Haneda Airport. It was a thirty-six story tall high-tech structure with heavy security.

“I just hope they haven’t started yet,” Arato muttered.

The building was massive, with the lot that had once been the JR Vehicle Center being only one small corner of it.

“I switched my device to sensory mode and made a search of the building interior. I am already detecting gunshots from weapons equipped with silencers,” Lacia said from her position within the van.

Arato’s body froze solid as soon as he heard the word ‘gunshots.’ He had acted all tough on the phone with Ryo, but saying cool, heroic things was easy. Actually doing them was a different story.

He knew he was making a pathetic expression, so he gritted his teeth and slapped his face with both hands. You aren’t the only one there who’s terrified, Arato reminded himself. Kengo’s suffering way more than you are. Plus, Arato had Lacia by his side. He had been caught up in some crazy things because of her, but he knew in his heart that she had never betrayed his trust.

Arato knew he was too quick to trust people, but he forced a smile and said the words he couldn’t take back: “Well, no sense sitting here worrying. Let’s go!”

And, as always, Lacia helped her thoughtless owner get closer to his goal. “It will be difficult to enter the combat zone and extract Kengo Suguri safely,” she explained. “The security system within the building is still active. If we disable this system in order to enter, we will be seen by the building security as a new threat.”

Arato looked down at his own body. On the way there, Lacia had him stop and buy a resin jumpsuit and gloves. He also had a motorcycle helmet to put on before he went in, which meant he would look exactly like what anyone would expect terrorist reinforcements to.

“Since our objective is to rescue Kengo Suguri, I believe it would be optimal to enter without alerting the internal security system,” Lacia added.

The back hatch of the van opened. They had parked it in an alley behind the building. Lacia had been changing inside. Seeing her in the black and white bodysuit from the night they had first met was oddly sensational to Arato. She was a cute girl, and thinking of her as a tool, as his own tool to be exact, made blood rush to Arato’s head.

“Can we do that?” Arato asked.

Using only her light blue eyes, Lacia guided Arato’s eyes to the inside of the van. There, laid out haphazardly on the floor, was her black coffin with its innards expanded.

“You may remember, on the night we met I used a meta-material attack to render our targets invisible,” Lacia said. Arato didn’t follow, so she expanded her explanation. “We will become invisible,” she said.

At Lacia’s prompting, Arato put on his terminal goggles, and then the helmet. Lacia had told him that, apparently, the meta-materials with negative curvature would become unstable if applied directly to the skin due to the water content in human sweat.

The Black Monolith — Lacia’s coffin — which looked almost tree-like in its expanded state, flashed twice. Once they had bathed in a film of the meta-material, light of a specific frequency would bend and flow around them. In other words, they had both become invisible from every angle. The problem was, the light redirected by the meta-material included light that would normally enter the eyes to provide vision, and Arato’s field of vision went pitch black.

“Please activate your terminal goggles. The Monolith will collect sonar data and project a 3D stereo display directly to your retinas.” Lacia’s voice echoed out of the total darkness.

Arato opened the visor of the helmet and flipped the switch on his goggles, which started to project a monochrome world. Anything that repelled sound appeared as a stark outline against a black background. Then, as each pulse of sound passed, the objects would slowly fade from view. There was a kind of magical beauty in the transience of this black and white vision, and Arato felt like he had stepped into another world: a colorless world made of visible sound, where he walked unseen.

He let out a slow breath of admiration. “I feel like I’ve turned into something else,” he joked. “Something not human.” Looking at the monochrome world, he suddenly started to wonder if Lacia perceived the world the same way he normally did.

“Though you are invisible, you still rely on your voice to speak. This is inconvenient,” Lacia decided. “I believe it would be optimal for you to utilize a transmission implant.”

“I’d rather avoid surgery if I can,” Arato told her.

“Very well. Please bite down on this,” Lacia said, handing him a small white object, the size of an eraser, with her invisible hand.

Arato put it in his mouth and bit down on it with his back teeth, which sank into the object as if it had been chewing gum.

“This is an underwater speaker, for use while diving. The mouthpiece speaker electrically stimulates the auditory center directly, transmitting audio directly to the brain,” Lacia explained.

“Wait, when did you buy this?” Arato asked.

“I prepared it in anticipation of just such a situation,” Lacia said. “I can understand what you say without the need for you to open your mouth and say it, so please keep your mouth shut when you talk. You wouldn’t want them finding us because they heard your voice, would you?”

〈This is a weird time to be switching to your big sister style of talking, Lacia,〉 Arato said, practicing his speaking without breathing.

The system guessed what he was saying based on mouth and throat movements, and converted the interpreted text into electric speech, which Arato heard over the speaker. Through the same speaker, he heard Lacia’s simulated voice echo in his head.

〈We are about to break and enter, so please leave your pocket terminal behind. It could be used to pinpoint your location.〉

Lacia always used a speaker to talk anyway, so she was an old hand at these secret, silent conversations. Arato handed over his pocket terminal, and Lacia cut the power and left it inside the automatic van. With that, Arato had also cut himself off from contact with the outside world.

Through the goggles, he saw Lacia as a white shape made not of light but of sound. She pulled her device out of the back of the van. 〈With my device in sensory mode, the incoming data load is greater than I can process. In order for me to ensure that my chosen behavior is optimal, please take my hand,〉 she said.

With one hand supporting her heavy device, Lacia hesitantly reached out her left hand. Arato took it, and he felt her narrow fingers grip his. He felt how soft she was. 〈Aren’t we standing a little too close together?〉 he asked.

〈My behavior control program contains no data for optimal behavior toward a human I cannot see. Therefore, I believe it will be less burdensome for my processor to react to your movements, rather than to the outside world. Is this unpleasant for you?〉 she asked. Lacia, who always seemed so confident in the actions she took, was relying on him. She pressed in close to him, and he smelled a sweet scent, despite her not breathing. It made his pulse race.

〈Well, let’s make sure we’re really invisible,〉 Arato said. Her footsteps were shaky as he escorted her out of the alley. No one looked at them as they made their way to the Oi Industry Promotion Center; it was clear that no one could see them.

They were about to illegally trespass into a restricted building. If they were caught, Arato could be arrested. 〈If this goes wrong, they might take you away, Lacia. Are you still okay going along with me on this? It’s kind of a selfish request,〉 Arato said.

〈This is something you have decided to do,〉 Lacia said, as if that explained everything. Her white audio image tilted its head slightly. A heartless hIE would never rebel against the wishes of its owner; as a tool, she saw no problem in being used for the sake of her owner’s goals. The only issue was Arato’s own feelings on the matter.

〈Are you sure about this, Arato?〉 Lacia asked. 〈This may very well cost you your life.〉

〈Well, we’ll just have to try our best to make sure that doesn’t happen,〉 Arato said. He had already heard how deadly this rescue mission was going to be, but having her call attention to the danger again made his breath catch. 〈And, in the end, what I do is up to me, right?〉 he asked.

Lacia just smiled, an analog hack to make his burden lighter. 〈Then let us say my answer is the same as yours, and leave it at that,〉 she said.

In a world of audio images, the building they were heading for looked nothing like it would to the naked eye. The surface of the building was made of white ripples, spreading floor by floor, with the 15th floor as their epicenter. That was where Kengo and his comrades were fighting.

***

The Oi Industry Promotion Center was an advanced information management facility. This meant that any radio waves not authorized by the facility were completely blocked out. hIEs, which were basically walking clumps of sensors and recording devices, were especially heavily restricted, considering all the spying they could do. It was an important security feature for any facility that handled highly classified information.

These sorts of controls were vital in an era where everything was connected wirelessly. All unauthorized transmissions from the outside were rejected, and you couldn’t rely on any wireless equipment inside the building. On the other hand, the security inside the building were free to use all the hIEs and automated equipment they wanted. Of course, these restrictions were only meant to prevent things being brought in from the outside, so anything set up from within the building was free game.

Kengo hid himself behind a corner of the corridor, leaning against the wall. Combat was raging all around him. The whistling of silenced gunshots, which sent bullets cutting through the air, were echoing off the walls of the corridor.

“Get me out of here. Get me the hell out of here,” Kengo begged. He looked down at his gun. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “Why the hell are they shooting at us?” he asked.

He was drenched in sweat. Nearby, one of his comrades, who had been shot in the legs, was dragging himself along and crying out with each movement. At first, the security forces had been using the rubber bullets they normally used for suppression. But, after the Antibody Network members used actual firearms to take down several security hIEs, the guards had switched to live rounds.

The place reeked of blood, and Kengo could see the remains of security hIEs scattered here and there in the corridor. They bore the logo mark of Shingubo; a prolific, government-subsidized drone supplier that made unmanned equipment for the Japanese army.

It almost seemed to Kengo as though his normal life from just a few hours ago, attending classes at high school, was an illusion. He had been chased into a corner, and he couldn’t shake the stomach-churning tension that had settled on his shoulders.

“This is bullshit. Sending in humans to fight just because we couldn’t use drones in here,” he cursed.

There was only one reason their team of rookies was even still alive. A piercing noise came from further down the corridor, after which the gunshots fell silent. A young girl’s relaxed voice broke the sudden stillness.

“20th floor, north side, suppressed. D-8, you got injured. Report to D2 — the sergeant — and get some painkillers. Then fall back to one of our secured routes. Sorry, that must have hurt. Good job out there,” she said. It was the red and black hIE, Kouka, that had taken down the security hIEs. She was fulfilling her role as the leader of the attack for the Antibody Network perfectly.

The D group, which included Kengo, had taken point on the infiltration. Struggling under tension and danger from every side, they had managed to make it to the 20th floor. They were exhausted. But, there had only been three injuries so far, and no casualties. Considering that they were actually being shot at, it was nothing short of a miracle.

“Everyone, move up,” Kouka ordered. “If the security folks get around behind us, I won’t be able to protect you all.”

The exhausted invasion force appeared from the shadows of the corridor. Kengo also walked out into the northern corridor, where bullet holes showed vividly on the walls. The red-haired Kouka was standing there, with a two meter tall Shingubo security hIE laying at her feet. The blade of Kouka’s massive device was piercing it.

“D-9, you’ll back me up while we go to floor 21. It’s the meeting reception floor, so we’re almost there. We might run into some humans, so let’s be careful,” she said.

A chilly, itching sensation ran through the dog-collar style terminal tag that Kengo had received at the start of the mission. To get around the wireless transmission defenses of the building, they were using terminals with a 10 meter infrared transmission range. He was D-9, so his collar was letting him know that he had been chosen.

To stop the itching sensation from the collar, he stepped forward despite his reservations. Someone whistled from behind him. Apparently, some of his terrorist comrades were jealous of the attention he was getting.

“Give me a break,” he spat, with a mouth that felt as dry as a bone.

Kengo, along with every other terrorist there, was just an amateur who wanted to take out his hatred toward hIEs. If Kouka hadn’t been there with them, the attack would have been suppressed in an instant. Everyone there should have understood that it wouldn’t have been strange for any of them to die at any time. And, if any of them could die at any time, everyone should have been wondering when it would be their own turn.

Amidst these extreme conditions, the Antibody Network members believed that if they simply followed orders, they would prevail. They stopped thinking about anything else, and obeyed Kouka blindly.

Kouka was smiling brightly, with not a drop of sweat to be seen. Her voice whispered out of Kengo’s collar terminal, since he was within the ten meter infrared range. 〈You should be more friendly with the others or you’ll stick out like a sore thumb,〉 she said.

Since unauthorized hIEs shouldn’t be able to operate within the building, the infiltration team all believed Kouka was a dependable human commander. There was no way any of them would believe the girl standing in front of them was a Red Box that defied human understanding.

“D-9, reporting in,” Kengo said, announcing himself by his number.

All the infiltration unit had done so far was work up a nice sweat running behind Kouka, who possessed battle prowess far beyond their own. The Antibody Network had outsourced their work to an hIE, who was now automating the very human act of hate-driven violence. In this blasphemous holy war, the impotent humans had to rely on machines. Insanity was swallowing Kengo’s world.

〈That’s a good boy. No one would believe you, even if you did try to tell them I’m not a human,〉 Kouka said as she ran toward the emergency staircase, red hair dancing behind her.

“The police are stuck on the 1st floor, so let’s hurry. I’ll cut a path, so everyone just get up to the 22nd floor without taking any casualties, got it?” she called out to the others.

Kengo gripped his gun tightly. Among all that chaos and violence, he didn’t have the courage to draw the wrath of the others by trying to reveal Kouka as an hIE. In life-threatening situations, people tend to lose their ability to detect deception. So, just as humans used fake humans — hIEs — to do their work and make their lives easier, Kengo used fake enthusiasm to cover for himself with the rest of his team.

“Don’t get so excited you forget the rules, now,” Kouka said. “We’re only shooting hIEs.”

The men all voiced their acknowledgement. Never in their wildest dreams would they believe that Kouka, who had become the proxy for their rage, was an hIE herself.

Kouka used the blade of her giant device to cleave the door of the fire escape in two. Faster than Kengo could react, Kouka vanished through the doorway. Harsh light and heat blasted out from the door a moment later, along with gunshots, which were quickly cut short.

“D-9, fall back, quickly! Everyone, get behind the corner of the hallway and shoot,” Kouka ordered. “But don’t shoot until you’re behind cover.”

Metallic human figures burst through the smoke pouring out of the fire escape; one, two, three of them. Kengo crept away, hoping to avoid notice, but he heard footsteps chasing after him. The security hIEs had bypassed Kouka and were coming straight for Kengo and the others. Kengo knew he could be shot at any moment. His legs tangled and he fell, scraping his face along the carpet. He was most afraid that a stray bullet from his untrained comrades could hit him, so he tried to curl in on himself to make as small a target as possible.

His vision shook with the trembling of his body, but he saw a red and black girl leap out from the smoke. Despite her footfalls usually being light as a dancer’s, suddenly she kicked off the ground hard enough that Kengo heard it and felt the vibrations on the floor. Kouka easily pierced through the body armor of one of the security hIEs, skewering it from behind with her red blade.

The other two security hIEs responded immediately to Kouka’s aggressive attack, which had brought her into close proximity. They were too close for her to make a sweeping attack with her large device, so Kouka whipped out a large pistol from a hip holster and pressed it to the side of one hIE’s head. The gun didn’t have a silencer, so it roared when she pulled the trigger.

The only large security hIE still standing pointed its gun at her back. Kouka lashed out with a backward spinning kick, just grazing the hIE’s chin. An anchor pile shot out of the heel of her boot, piercing the hIE’s head and ripping it clean off its shoulders.

“All done,” Kouka said. Her confidence on the battlefield was almost hypnotic. Even Kengo found it hard to tear his eyes away from her awe-inspiring power and refinement.

The infiltration team, who hadn’t had a chance to pull their triggers once, returned to the corridor. It was unclear what they were even there for anymore, considering Kouka’s strength. Kengo felt anger bubbling up hot in his belly, and clenched his teeth.

“How the hell did it even come to this?” Kengo muttered. His rage at being caught up in this scam had been wrung out of his heart, leaving only the strong desire to flee. Society can’t rot without many people desiring it. Just as Kengo was in that moment, people came to terms with situations that they felt they couldn’t change. Slowly, they crumbled.

Kengo had been forced into this work under duress, and exhaustion had pushed his mind and emotions to the limit. But this whole crazy situation had come about as the result of what he thought were completely rational choices.

Looking down, he saw one of the fallen security hIEs twitching its arm. The metal hand was attempting to grasp its firearm. When he noticed that, Kengo moved. When he saw the pieces of the hIE bouncing and twitching across the floor, it took him a moment to realize what he had done: he had shot the half-broken hIE. He got a noseful of gunpowder smoke, and felt like he was going to choke. For the first time, he had destroyed an hIE with his own hands.

As he continued to jerk his finger on the trigger, bullets flew out one after another. The recoil made the barrel of his gun swing more and more wildly. At the realization that he was currently, present progressive tense, staining his hands with an actual crime, Kengo’s mind froze.

“Savages.” The word leaked out like a sob from his mouth. His hands were stained with savagery.

〈Nicely done. Sure you don’t want to become my owner? I promise you’ll make it out of here alive.〉 Kouka’s voice whispering through Kengo’s collar terminal pierced through the paralysis in his brain.

“Hell no,” he said.

〈Then let’s make a deal,〉 she said.

Only Kengo could hear her tempting voice among the storm of gunshots.

〈If you don’t want to die, just call for me. I’ll save you,〉 she said.

The hiss of silenced gunshots suddenly echoed pleasantly like water spraying from a hose. Following Kengo’s lead, the other members had begun to rain bullets on the other hIEs who were still moving. A machine that couldn’t fight back was the perfect target for them to take their rage out on. They showed no sign of stopping, or pausing to wipe away the sweat that was pouring down their faces. They were completely berserk.

They destroyed these hIEs much more easily than the Antibody Network volunteers who attacked hIEs on the street, armed only with tools or blunt weapons.

“You’re all looking great out there. I guess I could let you guys take the win,” Kouka said. “Do you want to win?”

Everyone besides Kengo raised their voices, covering fear with exultation. “Yes!” they yelled. In reality, the ones who were truly wishing for a victory here weren’t Kengo and the others there, but whoever had sent Kouka.

Kengo and the others had stopped being humans. They were just tools being used by the hIE whose orders they were taking, who was automating this victory. It made Kengo sick.

***

It was like Arato wasn’t even a human anymore.

He crept carefully through a monochrome world, made up of visible echoes. The white stereo images of the world spread around him, drawn by a quiet noise Lacia was making. They had taken escalators for the first 15 floors, on their long journey to the 22nd, but from there they’d been forced to take the stairs.

He heard Lacia’s voice directly inside his head. 〈I am sorry we cannot take the elevator,〉she told him.

〈Nah, no problem,〉 Arato said. 〈Being invisible makes this super easy, anyway.〉

Since Lacia’s device weighed over 100kg, they couldn’t bring it on an elevator. Elevators were constantly monitored for weight due to their limits, so it would be easy to detect them that way, even if they were invisible.

〈It’s actually pretty fun, walking around invisibly,〉 Arato added. Of course, it wouldn’t be quite as fun if he got caught, but that fear just seemed to feed into an unknown, adventurous excitement within him.

Passing through the luxuriously decorated meeting reception area on the 21st floor, Arato and Lacia climbed the massive staircase toward the next floor. Two ladies were standing on one of the landings of the staircase. They kept talking, completely unaware, as Arato and Lacia passed by. The 22nd through 25th floors of the Industry Promotion Center were dedicated to large meeting halls, which sometimes even got used for international meetings. The two ladies Arato passed by were beauties but, in his monochrome world, they just looked like unpainted dolls.

The carpet, laid out on the splendid artificial marble steps, absorbed the sound of Arato’s footsteps. Lacia kept away from the ladies, afraid that her weight would make a noticeable dent in the carpet as she passed.

〈Sorry. Please lend me your arm again,〉 she requested, pressing in close to Arato. It seemed that the situation that put the most stress on an hIE’s ability to decide on an optimal action was when they were dealing with a type of interaction for which there was no behavioral precedent in their system. So, for Lacia, sticking close to Arato and having him escort her made her behavioral decisions simpler.

“Are they still doing the experiment in the meeting room?” one of the ladies asked her companion.

“They refused landing permission for the police helicopter,” her friend said.

“No way. Do they really think our security will be enough for all this?” the first woman asked with a sigh.

“The police wanted control of the wireless network in the building, so our guys told ‘em no,” her friend said.

Neither lady noticed a thing as Arato and Lacia slipped by less than a meter away. It really was like Arato was no longer human, but some kind of creature, hiding in the air itself.

Lacia had returned her device to its coffin-like compact state, and was holding it in both hands with the utmost care. Business-suited adults were standing around here and there by the grand stairway, talking with each other. Their voices sent vivid white ripples out through the stereo world Arato was seeing.

“These people are crazy,” the woman said. “Even if they get the experiment pushed back, it’ll still be done later.”

Arato could smell the perfume of the ladies through his helmet. His senses were heightened by the thrill of doing something illicit. He felt so free, although the thought of being caught made his heart beat so hard that it felt like it would burst. Nonchalantly, he gazed closely at the nameplate-adorned chests of the women, and chased their tight-skirted butts with his eyes for far longer than he would have if he was visible.

〈This whole being invisible thing is making me a lot bolder,〉 he commented.

〈Yes, you do seem to be enjoying being an invisible man to the fullest, owner,〉 Lacia said.

Arato felt a chill run up his spine. For a moment, he had forgotten that Lacia was right there with him, and he started to sweat. His fantasy was torn away, and he suddenly felt about an inch high.

Of course, Lacia didn’t have feelings, so it was only through her correct example that Arato felt reprimanded. He was aware that she wasn’t actually jealous, but just the thought that she could be sent his heart racing.

〈It doesn’t look like Kengo and his buddies came this way,〉 Arato said.

〈An approach through the front entrance would be impossible for anyone who is not invisible,〉 Lacia said, responding to Arato’s unspoken question. In other words, she gave the response Arato wanted to hear.

〈Yeah, now that you mention it, this is the place all the actual visitors come through, so it must be under crazy amounts of surveillance,〉 he agreed.

〈I imagine that the rear entrance to this area is currently locked in a fierce battle. Since there is no danger of involving visitors or staff there, the security hIEs can utilize more dangerous weapons,〉 Lacia told him.

〈So that’s what’s happening right now?〉 Arato asked, paling at the thought of Kengo being shot.

〈There is no need to worry,〉 Lacia said. 〈Kouka is aiding the infiltration unit from the Antibody Network.〉

Arato let Lacia automate his desire to get to where Kengo was. Apparently, the Antibody Network was relying on Kouka. It wasn’t the best situation, but if it kept people from dying, Arato couldn’t complain.

When they reached the top of the grand staircase, two hallways stretched out on the 22nd floor. One led directly to the meeting rooms, while the other turned into a spacious lobby area with seats and vending machines.

〈The meeting room where the experiment is being conducted is three stories tall, from the 22nd to the 24th floor. The seats are arranged along stairs, leading up the back. The 25th floor has the monitor room for the meeting room, where the staff will be watching over the experiment,〉 Lacia explained.

Kengo and his comrades were headed to the same destination, but Arato and Lacia had arrived first. Since all visible light was being bent around them, no one around noticed their presence. Even the sensitive security cameras couldn’t pick them up.

〈Stop, please,〉 Lacia said. 〈Three steps ahead, the area is irradiated with x-rays to prevent anyone from carrying in dangerous materials. With the current settings, we will not be able to remain invisible.〉

Arato quickly froze. 〈So, how do we get through?〉 he asked, strangely unphased by the obstacle.

〈I will transmit fake data,〉 Lacia replied. 〈I will display the security zone on your visual field. On my signal, you will need to cross that zone in the space of three seconds.〉 In its sensory mode, Lacia’s device was transmitting more data to her than she could process completely. Despite that, being able to read the massive amount of information being transmitted within the building and rewrite some of it without stopping was truly a feat no human could hope to match.

An orange zone appeared, lying like a belt across Arato’s monochrome field of view. At the same time, a timer showing 30 appeared in the air above the security zone and began to count down.

〈I have released the lock on Black Monolith’s electronic warfare mode. I am now rewriting the buildings’ internal system data in a perfect simulation, created in my device’s virtual area. I will transcribe it to the building’s internal system for exactly three seconds,〉 Lacia said. There was no cloud to tell her how to behave properly as an invisible person. All around them were people related to the experiment, waiting to see the results. There was no room for her to try to act human.

〈Give me your hand. I’ll guide you to the other side,〉 Arato said, taking her soft hand and gripping it strongly in his own. The feel of her skin through her gloves excited him. Kouka had told him that Lacia’s fighting was only worthless because of how her owner chose to use his tool, but Arato knew there was worth in what they were doing at that moment.

The instant the countdown hit zero, he pulled Lacia behind him and sprinted through the security zone. He was going so fast, he almost tripped over his own feet when he stopped. His helmet felt heavy.

Next to the sweat-drenched Arato, Lacia was cool and calm. She was a tireless tool, always working to help her owner draw nearer to his goals. 〈From this point forward, there are several security zones, so we will be taking a safer back route to our destination,〉 Lacia said.

A 3D map of the large meeting hall, which stretched up from the 22nd to the 25th floor, displayed on Arato’s retinas. He looked at the red line indicating the route they were going to take. The destination displayed on the map startled him into speaking. 〈Hey, wait, this says our destination is right in the middle of the meeting hall.〉

〈Diet members wishing to hold secret discussions protested the use of security devices inside the meeting room. So, while the security around the room is tight, it is uncharacteristically lax inside the room itself. Once we are inside, we will be in a safe zone,〉 Lacia explained.

He felt the building shake a little; the fighting was already close enough to feel its effects, and the rich doors to the meeting room loomed white in Arato’s monochrome world.

〈Let us go. It would be convenient if someone were to open the doors from the inside for us,〉 Lacia said.

The door opened, and people began to flee from within the meeting room. Arato saw loud noises, which were sending white ripples out through the doors. Some were pale, others enraged. All of them were complaining about the unfairness of the situation, saying ‘how are we supposed to keep up with that?’ as they all filed out into the corridor.

But there were security hIEs guarding the doors. Each was over two meters tall, and Arato doubted they would overlook the doors mysteriously remaining open while he and Lacia snuck in.

〈You want me to get in there before the doors close after someone comes out? There’s only like a five centimeter gap,〉 Arato said, coming to a stop.

〈Based on my preliminary investigation, it should be impossible for these hIEs to detect. I stand by my recommendation of entering through the front,〉 Lacia said, her voice echoing in Arato’s head, giving him courage. Her preparations were perfect. He would take responsibility, and follow her guidance.

〈Well, we’ve come this far already. I guess I’ll just have to trust you,〉 he said. Telling himself that there was nothing to worry about, he slid in beside a middle-aged man, drinking something from a disposable plastic bottle, who happened to be coming out of the door. Then, just for an instant, Arato used his fingers to stop the double doors from shutting. The security hIEs didn’t notice Arato’s trick, happening right under their noses.

Once inside, Arato found the meeting hall to be full of sound. At one end, a woman with fine attire stood on a raised platform. On the other end, a long, steep staircase went up nearly fifty meters, with seats to either side of it.

Arato was standing in an open space between the lowest row of the seating and the front of the raised platform. Halfway up the stairs was a door to the 23rd floor, with a door to the 24th floor at the top of the stairs. Above this door, the walls of the 25th floor were glass, allowing anyone standing there to look down on the meeting room. The corridors on the meeting hall floors of the Oi Industry Promotion Center were arranged in a square around the meeting halls.

The seats were only sparsely populated. A long-haired woman was in the middle of talking. They were in the middle of the experiment.

Arato wasn’t smart by any means, but he had looked into this experiment since his dad was involved with it. The plan was to mix hIE representatives in with human representatives in local congresses. If successful, it would be used in areas where corruption or conflict endangered the human governing council. The hIEs would act as proxy humans, repeating opinions expressed by civilians through surveys and network commentary. Up to now, it was impossible for anyone who wasn’t a government expert to get their opinions and ideas presented in government meetings as either questions or bills. Arato’s father was working in the NSRC — the Next-Generation Social Research Center — to automate that process.

〈So that’s Mikoto,〉 Arato said, pausing to look at the woman — the hIE — on the raised platform. She was wearing a suit, and seemed to be doing her best to keep an innocent expression on her face.

“The Android Politician is a system designed to improve the quality of legislation. Currently, in Japan there has been continual feedback from the electorate that the quality of lawmakers in this country is low. This plan has been developed to counter the loss of faith in the Japanese government,” Mikoto said, her strong voice ringing out from above Arato’s head.

Apparently, the topic of discussion for the experimental debate was to have Mikoto discuss with members of the government whether she was necessary or not.

Arato saw a Diet member in his thirties stand in the stairway seating. To Arato’s vision, the man was a pure white statue. Through a microphone, the man raised his objection to Mikoto’s speech. “Just because we’ve got hIEs on the council doesn’t mean the quality of the human legislators will improve. Quite the opposite, in fact. If human lawmakers feel they can leave their work to the hIEs, this may actually lead to a decline in quality,” he said.

“Current political science studies predict that this will not happen,” Mikoto responded calmly. “And, should the incredibly improbable happen and quality decline, please remember that I am an hIE created for the purpose of gathering civilian opinions to maintain democracy. If the majority should ever decide that I am a hindrance to society, as the one who will automatically convey civilian opinions in the government arena, I myself will announce the prohibition of hIEs from government positions.”

Arato had read the same things Mikoto was saying in a textbook. He hadn’t really understood it at the time, and it appeared the Diet members in the room also weren’t convinced. Mikoto continued her speech.

“In human society, worth is decided when its members — the humans — decide ‘this thing has worth.’ Democracy is a simple but powerful system, in which members of society who support the worth decided by humans meet together to maintain and ensure that worth. It is only logical for artificial intelligence to be used to support this system. In cryptocurrency systems, in which value is supported by common consent, automation is a prerequisite,” she said.

Several representatives stood up from their seats and left, muttering ‘enough of this.’

Regardless of whether the experiment was a success or failure, it did not appear to be going over very well with its participants. With terrorists closing in, and such a low level of debate, it was a given that many would choose to flee.

〈Kouka and her comrades are currently engaged in combat on the 21st floor,〉 Lacia said.

Arato felt someone beside him; Lacia had also infiltrated the meeting room. She was wearing a grim expression, perhaps disappointed by the lukewarm reaction of the participants in the experiment.

On the massive display behind Mikoto, ‘currently repelling intruders’ was displayed in on-screen text. The fact that the meeting room wasn’t already consumed by chaos showed how much everyone trusted the building’s security.

Just then, the furthest door, the one to the 24th floor, opened. A man with a suit that fit nicely with his chubby frame came walking down the stairs and into Arato’s monochrome world.

The man spoke. “This wasn’t a planned part of the experiment, but I see a problem with it. I’m Shinguji, the one providing the security hIE for this building,” he said.

“Understood. Please ask me a question,” Mikoto urged.

Shinguji threw out a probing question. “This isn’t the first time anyone’s tried to make an hIE government official. There’s been plenty of plans before now, but they all got quashed. I’m sure you know why, correct?”

Mikoto was perfectly fair. She would not hide information that might be damaging to her. “That is because an hIE representative cannot handle sudden changes in public opinion during times of emergency. If there are major changes in public opinion, I will always attempt to guide the government in accordance with these changes. As an example, if the public responded to a survey and requested a war, I would follow the results of that survey and lead the country in a truly foolish direction,” she responded.

The black-haired hIE did not hesitate as she laid bare her own shortcomings. “My purpose is to gather unrestricted complaints and requests from the general public. An hIE representative is nothing more nor less than a system for accumulating reactions toward the government from civilians, processing these reactions into data that can be easily stored on a computer, and bringing these reactions to the floor of a government arena. My participation in meetings such as this one, in which I ask and answer questions, is merely a method to vocalize the hopes and disappointments of the people that cannot be cleanly reduced down to data. If the citizens are foolish, I am merely a tool for bringing that foolishness to light,” she continued.

“Wouldn’t you say that’s a defect in this system?” Shinguji asked, and Arato could hear the combative edge to his sarcasm.

Mikoto seemed neither cool nor hot in her reactions. So, when someone brought heat to the discussion, it almost seemed like their emotions were amplified in contrast to Mikoto’s calmness.

Shinguji was stubborn in his attack. “The whole concept of an hIE representative just shows how low the public’s expectations toward the government are. We automate things when we no longer care about their quality as long as a machine spits out the results we want. When we assign human work to hIEs, it means we’ve lost our faith in what humans can accomplish,” he said.

Mikoto put on a sad expression. “Automation is nothing more than humans organizing their work into a manual, and training machines to fulfill the conditions laid out in that manual on a cycle. Even in the field of customer-facing jobs, automation is something that has continued since the 20th century, in restaurant chains and franchise retail stores. To address the wider issue you are indicating, it is easier to rely on automation for a higher level of work transparency and precision than it is to expect the same of humans,” she said.

As Arato listened to her, he felt a light chill creeping up his spine. Mikoto’s defense of automation was nothing more than her gathering and summarizing the opinions of humans. Those cold words were cobbled together from the actual feelings of humans in society, regarding their fellow humans. A sadness for the world — a world where humans were deeming other humans unnecessary and replacing them with machines — spread in Arato’s heart.

〈Is this really all about what’s most convenient?〉 Arato asked philosophically. Obviously the Antibody Network believed that the automation of their world wasn’t just a matter of convenience. Enough so that they had taken up guns to resist it. He started to feel embarrassed about continuing to snoop around as an invisible man. On the second story of an old restaurant, Arato had discovered that Kengo was continuing to support the anti-hIE group Antibody Network, and now he felt like he was coming face-to-face with the reason why.

〈I do not know what you are feeling right now, Arato, but a government-funded, large-scale experiment like this should be enough of a sign that it is a next step which people deem necessary,〉 Lacia said, still standing by Arato’s side. Since the hall was their destination — the point where they would wait for the ambush — they couldn’t just leave. 〈Arato, do you believe a fully automated world would be worthless?〉 she asked.

Arato didn’t know how to answer. He wanted to stop Kengo, but he felt like he was starting to understand what his friend was fighting for.

Shinguji didn’t sit down. Instead, he stood on the stairway, staring down at Mikoto. “If all it takes to replace humanity is some machines following directions, that fact gives birth to a whole slew of questions and arguments,” he said. “Just as this very experiment is currently under attack.”

“The Next-Generation Social Research Center is currently conducting an experiment using a complete simulation of city life to ascertain whether it would be possible to leave these aspects of human life to machines or not. Once the results of this experiment are available, they should provide an answer to your question, Mr. Shinguji,” Mikoto said.

This is what Kengo and his comrades were coming to destroy. The tension at being this close to their target gave Arato goosebumps. Even looking through his monochrome stereo vision, Arato could see Shinguji’s powerful presence. He felt pressure from the man like a wave of heat.

But, as it turned out, the heat wasn’t just from Shinguji’s intensity; the building shook, and hot gusts swirled around the room. The sound of an explosion from nearby sent tremors through the air. It was impossible for Arato to stay upright without grabbing something for support. Due to the height of the buildings, it took several long moments for the shaking to cease.

Everyone looked up.

Something was falling from above. It looked like hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny fragments of something. As the things made no sound, Arato could only see them through the vibrations of other sounds in the room. They looked like flower petals, dancing mysteriously in and out of his vision as they fell into the meeting room, which was supposed to be completely sealed off from the outside. There was no way flower petals would be falling naturally into a room over twenty stories above the ground.

Everyone in the room seemed confused. The sight was so astounding that no one was particularly panicked by it. Any tension in the room seemed to fade. But Arato, grabbing one of the falling petals, felt like he had been dunked in ice water; they were the same things that had been falling on the night he met Lacia. It was another storm of flowers with the ability to take over machines and make them go crazy.

Forgetting for a moment that he was trespassing there, Arato started to yell out a warning. A hand gripped his and squeezed until his bones creaked. It was Lacia.

〈The warning will come soon, without our help,〉 she said.

***

Kengo and his comrades saw the rain of flowers a few minutes before Arato and Lacia were bathed in it.

They had managed to enter the 21st floor — the reception area for the meeting hall — but there, they had been stopped by heavy fire from security hIEs. The Antibody Network had come through the fire stairs. In order to be used in times of emergency, the fire stairs had easy access to the main corridor. Looking at it from a defensive perspective, if they were unable to hold off the invaders at this point, their guests would be in danger. So, the guards had solidified their defenses there.

Even Kouka, at their head, was having trouble advancing. She had solidified their hold on the fire stairs, but the Shingubo security hIEs had gathered in the hallways and meeting rooms the Antibody Network wasn’t targeting, and had formed a solid defensive line.

In other words, even if she was able to pierce through their defenses there and lead Kengo and the others forward, they would be stopped by the defenses on the 22nd floor. This would allow the remainder of the 21st floor forces to take potshots at their flank and, though Kouka would probably make it out fine, Kengo and the others would be done for.

In the midst of all this, one of the exhausted volunteers said something strange. “Do you guys hear someone singing?”

Then, as vibrations started to shake the air, they turned their eyes to the walls of the building. The ceiling, floor, and walls all shook simultaneously, as if the building had been struck by a great blow, and everyone had trouble staying on their feet. They were surrounded by the sound of an explosion and shattering glass, and Kengo was thrown helplessly to the floor.

He pulled himself up in a corridor that was suddenly full of dust. The walls, made of concrete and some opaque material, had been destroyed. “Are those flowers?” he wondered.

The thick tempered glass walls of the corridor they were in should have shown them an expansive view of Oi’s office buildings, but the glass was so full of cracks now that it had become half-opaque. What looked like a helicopter rotor had split through the wall and appeared to be the source of the cracking. Rubble had been scattered across the floor, making their footing unstable.

But, there was something that drew their attention even more than a helicopter rotor stabbed into the wall; it was the fact that the metallic rotor was blooming with flowers of all colors.

The wind from outside the building was gently flowing in through the broken wall.

“What, did that thing crash into the building?” Kengo asked, staring in shock at the colorfully blooming helicopter. The rotor was still trying to spin, jerking back and forth and sending out sparks.

“Looks like a news helicopter. It slammed into the 22nd floor at pretty high speed.” At this voice the men, who had been pulling themselves up, turned and snapped to attention automatically. Kouka had returned.

Before any of them could ask what a news helicopter was doing there, Kouka continued speaking. “Looks like it worked. While security deals with evacuating the guests safely and handling that helicopter, they won’t be able to set aside enough manpower to stop us anymore,” she explained.

Members of the invasion team shot each other uneasy glances. But, as amateurs, they had decided to leave all their decisions to their leader. There was nothing for them to do but go forward.

Despite being an hIE herself, there was violence in Kouka’s voice as she spoke. “One more step, and we’ll be at the meeting room where they’ve got Mikoto. Let’s all repeat the doctrine of the Antibody Network before we go in there. Everyone, do no harm to a human! Protect the humans, and only pull your trigger if there’s an hIE in your crosshairs,” she said. Her rough words stirred the fire in the infiltration team, turning them into a mob armed with guns.

“Let’s hear it. Say it loud!” she called, stabbing her bladed device into the ground with feeling.

“The Antibody Network will defend humans, human society, and human culture!” the infiltration team repeated, at the top of their voices.

“The Antibody Network will never shoot a human!” As the members repeated the phrases together, the uncertainty in their eyes was replaced with enthusiasm. They were going to do it. They had to do it.

“You will only shoot at what your leader tells you to!” Kouka said. She was locking down some of their capacity to think, and solidifying their obedience. As a tool for victory, she was perfect. This machine had taken the meaning out of the fight for Kengo and his companions. But, since Kengo couldn’t hope for a more sane reality to come along and rescue him, he found himself connecting with his comrades, who were all delirious with fatigue, excitement and fear. He wanted to destroy whatever Kouka told him was okay to shoot. The thought that he was chomping at the bit to follow the orders of an hIE was mortifying.

“You there, what will you do if someone I haven’t told you to shoot comes up and punches you?” Kouka asked one of the infiltration team members with a flushed face.

“If they’re human, I will allow them to punch me without shooting!” he replied smartly.

“You pass,” Kouka said with a wide grin. All they could do was follow her. “Well then, let’s get these fireworks started!” she called, then changed her device into a powerful laser and shot the helicopter through the thick glass walls. Flames and violent wind from the explosion flew into the 21st floor.

The invasion of the 22nd floor almost seemed like a special show, with Kouka as the starring actress. With their forces divided to protect their guests from the spreading fire, the security hIEs could not stop her. She knew exactly where they would be, and shot them down with blasts from her giant laser cannon. The security hIEs tried to hide behind walls and shoot at her. Kouka drew a knife and gun from her bulletproof jacket so quickly that it seemed like sleight of hand. Her every movement was dramatic, as if her actions before had been toned down to get the infiltration team accustomed to her.

There wasn’t even time for the pincer attack from the 21st floor that they had been dreading to happen before Kouka smashed through the defenses. She showed no hesitation or sorrow for the violence. As an hIE, she had no heart. Human in nothing but form, she was almost too untouched by the destruction around her.

As Kengo stepped into the corridor leading to the meeting hall, the floor under his feet became carpeted, and the decor more comfortable. He also heard a rush of voices. Classy adults in suits were screaming and running. Kengo and his gun-toting friends were obviously not something these people came across in their daily lives.

“We’re not going to hurt you! The Antibody Network doesn’t shoot humans!” Kengo yelled. He doubted that anyone would believe him after they had broken through security with their guns, but he felt that he just had to say it.

“Don’t worry. We’re the allies of all humans,” he said. As one would expect, no one listened.

“Murderers!”

“Help!”

“Police!”

And gunshots continued to split through it all. Kouka was blowing away security hIEs with incredible skill. The infiltration team was being swallowed up in the chaos. Since no one seemed to want to listen, one of the infiltrators raised his gun and shot a round at the ceiling.

“Shut up!” he yelled. The civilians all crouched low, holding their heads in fear. Only the infiltration team was left standing.

“What the hell are you doing?! This isn’t what we came here for!” Kengo shouted. He pushed himself closer to the guy firing into the ceiling. After wasting a whole clip, the man dropped his arms in exhaustion.

Kengo found the harshness of the world he was in unfair. It was always divided between those who were always suffering, and those who could enjoy their lives. Even within Japan, families like Kengo’s hadn’t seen a change in their status in one hundred years.

The door to the meeting room opened, spewing out a stream of evacuees shoving past each other in a rush to get out.

“D-6 through D-12, get into the meeting room. D-2 to D-5, guide the guests to the big stairway. Don’t even think about putting your fingers on those triggers!” Kouka ordered, while dispatching the security hIEs from close range.

Hefting her massive device, she dashed into the storm of flower petals. As if to escape from the hallway full of people who saw them not as heroes but as criminals, the infiltration team members followed her in through the door.

Kengo followed her as well, his body feeling heavy from how much sweat he had shed. He kept his eyes down, not wanting anyone to see his face. “Get me outta here,” he cried, not letting the words escape his lips for anyone to hear. He just wanted it to be over.

The flower petals were so thick in the air, it was like trying to swim through a flood of five-colored water. Kengo could barely make out anything three meters ahead. He couldn’t see the target, Mikoto. Under the circumstances, he thought it would be impossible for them to still be conducting the experiment.

A little girl in a white dress was standing in the middle of the storm of flowers. She looked about four or five years younger than Kengo’s sister Olga. He thought she might have been a grade-schooler, but the sight of her made Kengo freeze.

There was no way a girl as young as her was involved with the experiment. Plus, the way she was standing there, throwing flower petals out of her hands, was completely out of place. Her long, green hair and matching green eyes were cute, but definitely didn’t look human.

A voice Kengo recognized screamed from nearby. “Help! The flowers! They’re crawling all over me!” A member of the infiltration team was slapping at his body wildly, and Kengo dropped his gaze to his own gun. Dozens of the flower petals had grown insectoid legs, and were crawling around the mechanical portion of the firearm. Each petal was a tiny robot.

“Snowdrop’s child units won’t hurt humans. Just slap them away if they start coming for your collar terminals. Everyone just calm down,” Kouka said, shifting the form of her bladed device.

A line of flower petals burst into flames, shot by Kouka’s high-powered laser. The soundless beam of death from Kouka’s laser caught the green-haired little girl, and the sleeve of her white dress burst into flames.

A hundred blazing flowers illuminated the meeting hall as they danced in the air, but the girl Kouka had called ‘Snowdrop’ did not fall. Instead, parts of her hair twitched like the ears of an animal. Then she touched both of her hands lightly to her own stomach.

“Come,” she murmured quietly, ignoring her own flaming clothing.

Kengo heard a metallic creaking from the entrance of the room, where the remains of the destroyed security hIEs had begun to move. They were like walking corpses, two or three units together with flower petals gathered around their broken parts. Where they gathered, the dancing petals formed full flowers.

Members of the infiltration team, half-crazed by the strangeness of the scene, fired wildly at the flowery zombies. But, no matter how many holes they punched through them, the corpses did not stop. Kouka, fearing a stray bullet might hit a human, ordered them to stop firing.

Kengo wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve. He had realized that this girl, Snowdrop, must have been the one who’d attacked Arato on the night he met Lacia. He couldn’t help comparing himself to Arato. “Endo sure is something else,” he said, feeling the tiny flower petal robots crawling on him, even under his clothes. They felt dry, as if they had come off of an artificial flower. The feeling of them swarming over him was shaking Kengo’s sanity.

“How the hell did he have time to make a contract with an hIE in a situation like this?” Kengo asked himself. It didn’t matter how hot the hIE was, or how much he trusted her, Arato’s sense of danger must have been broken. Thinking of his friend, Kengo felt the corners of his mouth twitching up in a small smile. It helped him pull himself together.

“I just have to take out that hIE, then we can go home. This whole thing is her fault,” Kengo said, raising his gun as he waded through the flower petals in search of the political opinion aggregator hIE.

There was no one on the podium, and the seating was all empty. A young woman with black hair in a red and white suit was standing under the podium, giving instructions to the evacuees. “Please stay calm! Just keep walking. The experiment has been cancelled. We will be contacting you later with a follow-up,” she said. On her head, the machine-controlling flowers had gathered like a floral crown. The well-dressed representatives from the experiment were following her orders, using their suit coats to protect their heads.

But Kouka had told Kengo that the flowers wouldn’t do anything to humans. Though they were crawling all over his body, Kengo hadn’t noticed the flowers trying to congregate on his head or anything. Therefore, the woman in front of him being swarmed by the petals must be Mikoto.

Rage throbbed dully within Kengo. He and his comrades, exhausted from their long battle, had been greeted by screams. Yet the people trusted this hIE, who was automating their world, to guide them. These people had no problem following the orders of an hIE. Both the evacuees obeying Mikoto and Kengo’s comrades blindly following Kouka seemed the same in Kengo’s eyes. He was sick of it all.

Steadying his gun, he pointed its muzzle at Mikoto. “Everyone, open your eyes,” he said into the chaos around him. “Everything dear to us is being stolen away by these things pretending to be human.” He wanted to destroy them all. Even if this hatred consumed everything else, he wouldn’t mind.

***

Arato ran over to Kengo as soon as he saw his friend point his gun at Mikoto.

〈Kengo! Stop!〉 he tried calling out. But his friend, a white demon in Arato’s monochrome world, didn’t hear him. Arato was still invisible and still biting down on the mouthpiece speaker.

He couldn’t just leave his friend to get lost in the chaos of the moment, so he grabbed Kengo’s gun from the side. Kengo, who suddenly had his aim thrown wide by an unknown force, tried to shake him off.

“What the hell?!” Kengo yelled.

Arato forced Kengo’s resisting hands apart so he could tear the gun away. He was invisible, but the gun was not, and the sight of his gun floating freely in the air made Kengo freeze. Arato turned and threw it, so it landed and skittered underneath the podium.

Lacia’s voice echoed in his head through the mouthpiece speaker. 〈We are currently hidden from the eyes of the other Antibody Network members by the rain of flowers. We should take him now,〉 she said.

〈If we grab him right now, like this, he’ll never want to talk to me again!〉 Arato yelled back, without opening his mouth. The attack by the hIE Kouka had called ‘Snowdrop’ was something Arato and Lacia hadn’t planned for. But Arato couldn’t just ignore what was happening.

White waves of acoustic imaging flowed outward from around the little girl’s stomach, which was round with baby fat. It seemed to Arato that the sound was actually coming from her stomach.

“Dance, dance,” Snowdrop chanted, using both of her little hands to gather a pile of white petals to the stomach of her white dress before scattering them. Every time her dress moved, petals scattered from it, like feathers falling off a bird taking flight.

〈What’s going on with her?〉 Arato asked.

〈I believe there is an instrument within her clothing to produce the child units. They are constructed of foaming resin, so I would wager that Snowdrop still has the means to produce many more flowers,〉 Lacia said, squeezing one of the petals between her fingers. The child units, which were light enough to float on the wind, continued to dance around in the air.

〈Hurry up and get out of here! That kid is dangerous!〉 Arato tried to warn Kengo again. He tried to open his mouth and actually yell it out, but it still didn’t reach Kengo’s ears.

Kengo was looking around to the left and right within his limited frame of vision. He turned to look at Kouka, possibly hoping for new orders. His movements were so mechanical and awkward, and he couldn’t hear Arato’s voice. To Arato, it was like they were in different, lonely worlds. He felt like they had both become something inhuman.

So, Arato decided to go back to being human. 〈We’re not going to get anywhere like this. I’m taking off my helmet,〉 Arato said.

But Lacia’s eternally calm, rational voice stopped him. 〈There is a possibility that you will come under attack from both Snowdrop and Kouka,〉 she said.

〈Fine, but I’ve got to do this. If I don’t, this whole place could burn down,〉 Arato responded. The sprinklers weren’t working. In fact, Arato couldn’t even hear a fire alarm. Most likely, it had all been disabled by Snowdrop’s flowers.

Aside from that, since Snowdrop appeared to be a Red Box, Kouka was using her laser and heated blade with wild abandon. With each attack, she filled the air with more and more burning petals, which spread fire wherever they came to rest on the carpet. The fire had probably already penetrated the carpet, and started burning the floor itself.

It was unbearably hot. Arato tried to pull his helmet off, but found that the neck area expanded when he pulled at it. No matter how he tugged, it pulled at his skin but he couldn’t get it off his head. It was probably a safety feature.

〈Arato, I believe our goal here was to rescue your friend, not put a stop to the terrorist attack of the Antibody Network,〉 Lacia said.

He wasn’t getting anywhere with getting the helmet off, so Arato just pulled open the visor and spat out the mouthpiece speaker. “Lacia! Put out the fire in the meeting hall,” he ordered.

“You will take responsibility for whatever happens?” Lacia asked.

For a moment, Arato was mystified by the change in her voice. Since he had discarded the mouthpiece, she was no longer speaking directly into his head. “Fine!” he yelled. After a few more desperate tugs, he finally got the helmet off. Then, he peeled the retinal display goggles off his sweat-drenched face. His field of view transformed from a monochrome world where anything that didn’t make noise was practically invisible to a sinister, burning garden.

“What the hell?” he said. He hadn’t been able to see the light from the flames with his stereo vision, and it was bright enough to hurt his eyes. Snowdrop’s petals, a silent grey before, now stood out. Each one was vivid and unique, with its own coloring.

“Snowdrop’s child units have a composition very similar to living creatures, so they burn well,” Lacia commented. “So, she continues to create new ones to replace those lost in the fire, which Kouka in turn continues to light on fire.”

Arato saw that his head was no longer invisible, and felt like he had returned to humanity once more. “So one of them is creating endless fuel, and the other is lighting it up,” Arato summarized. Looking around to see if all the humans had made it out, Arato couldn’t see Kengo through the thick curtains of flowers.

“You may have forgotten this fact in the moment, but you will die if you are shot, Arato,” Lacia said. She hadn’t removed the meta-material rendering her invisible, and not being able to see her shook Arato’s confidence.

“I’m aware of that!” he shouted.

Every member of the Antibody Network infiltration team was carrying a gun. Now that he thought about it, he found that his legs were frozen in place with fear.

“Kengo!” he called as loud as he could.

In the middle of the meeting hall, an especially huge flame was blazing. In the midst of it, Arato saw Kouka kick off of the burning carpet and rush at Snowdrop. Her blade bit into the shoulder of the eight-armed combat machine Snowdrop had created from flowers and parts from the busted security hIEs. Burning red as it cut through metal, the blade sank deep into the innards of the stitched-together creature.

Kouka then stabbed the thing with the piercing anchor that shot out of the heel of her shoe, and sent it flying with a kick. Flowing from one motion to another, she pushed off the ground with her feet and dove straight for Snowdrop. The large accessories set with green stones that were wrapped around the little hIE girl’s body stopped Kouka’s shining red blade.

Snowdrop was sent flying, smashing through desks and turning expensive equipment into scrap as she flew. Like a stone skipping on the surface of a pond, she bounced three times off the desks of the seating in the hall before crumpling to the ground.

“Looks like even my device can’t get through that defensive power,” Kouka said, scratching her head in consternation.

At that moment, the storm of flowers that had been falling all that time stopped and vanished, as if someone had taken an eraser to the world. Arato had seen this phenomenon before. The night he met Lacia, she had rendered a large amount of the petals invisible, to prevent radio control signals from reaching them.

Snowdrop was pulling herself up. Like a puppy that had lost its toy, she swung her head back and forth, looking for her hidden child units. “Lacia’s playing hide and seek,” she said. Even as she spoke, more petals were pouring out of the hem of her white dress, turning the carpet beneath her into a flower garden. It was a fantastic sight, far divorced from the reality that Arato had once known.

With the storm of artificial flowers abated, Arato looked for Kengo in the meeting hall. All the other members of the infiltration team had apparently fled. Only Kengo remained, looking confused by the rapid changes to the scene around him.

“Kengo, over here!” Arato called, but Kengo still didn’t notice him. Arato knew he didn’t have the power to stop Kouka and Snowdrop. The only way he had gotten there at all was relying on Lacia’s orders; Arato’s strength was essentially meaningless. Even the fact that he was standing there on the front line at that moment was nothing but a hindrance to Lacia. But Arato still wanted his presence there to mean something.

Kengo must have noticed his voice, since he started heading toward Arato. But his head was turned to the side by Kouka, who had come to stand beside him. “Do you want to get out of here alive?” she asked. “Then become my owner. This could be our only chance to roast that little duckie over there,” she said, indicating Snowdrop, who was standing barefoot on the carpet.

“Is that why you brought me here?” Kengo asked.

“Get down, please!” Lacia yelled out a warning, and Arato automatically ducked low.

Snowdrop spread both of her arms wide. “Look what else I can do,” she said.

Alarm bells sounded in Arato’s head, and he covered his head with both hands while burrowing down into the flowery carpet.

A blast of wind swept everything in the room off of the ground. Arato was screaming at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t hear his own screams. A flying desk flew over his head, and the floor appeared to be rippling like water. Arato was slammed to the ground hard enough to rattle his skull, and he couldn’t stop screaming. It seemed like his mind would shatter from the fear if he stopped. His vision clouded with tears, and a spasm of tension ran through his body, making all of his muscles strain taut.

When he managed to get his head up, Arato saw a wide night cityscape spreading out in front of him. Whatever had happened, it had ripped huge holes in the walls of the building, allowing him an unhindered view of Tokyo at night.

A strong wind whistled through the holes, and Snowdrop had a contented look on her face as she enjoyed the feel of the wind. The green stones set into the accessory wrapped around her delicate body — which must have been her device — were glowing.

“Lacia, are you all right? Where’s Kengo?” Arato asked. He could see the now visible Lacia in front of him. She had shielded him using her coffin-shaped device.

“Snowdrop took control of a helicopter and arrived here by ramming it into the building,” Lacia explained. “Kouka destroyed that helicopter, but Snowdrop brought another one in through the hole the first one created.”

Snowdrop had noticed Lacia, and was looking at her now with a tilted head. “So your invisible stuff goes away if it gets attacked?” she asked. Then, the small green-haired girl started picking pieces of the security hIEs, who had been split right down the middle, out of the debris from the explosion. “I thought these would be strong enough for me to use for a long time.”

Arato couldn’t help but see the broken machines as the corpses of soldiers, and looked away. Very little in the meeting hall retained its original form. The whole place was a pile of rubble. Looking for Kengo, Arato saw that Kouka had stuck her blade into the ground to protect the both of them. Despite her having saved him, Kengo was backing away from her.

“What the hell is all this? What do you want with me?” he asked, his voice bitter.

The changed form of the room was a chilling metaphor to Arato’s eyes. In the early days, hIE hadn’t needed to speak; they were just there to automate the requests of their owners. But here were three of them — Kouka, Snowdrop and Lacia — who moved humans with their forms, rather than being moved. It was one big analog hack. Kengo was only talking with Kouka because she, a machine, had brought him there and was now leading him along, controlling his actions.

“Kengo!” Arato yelled, drawing his voice from deep within. After seeing the things Mikoto was trying to automate, Arato felt he understood Kengo’s fight. He couldn’t just stand by and watch his friend being manipulated. “You’re always telling me hIEs aren’t human. You’re here to fight because you are human, right? So think about what you really want to do right now. If you let her string you along, everything you’ve done will have been pointless,” Arato said. It may not have been convincing, but if Arato coming all the way there had a point, he decided it would be to say this to his friend. Of course, Arato himself still couldn’t bring himself to see Lacia as nothing but a tool, so he hoped his words would get through to Kengo.

Kengo wiped his face, muddy with dust and sweat, on the sleeve of his urban camo clothing. “Shut the hell up!” he shouted at Kouka. “I hate every single one of you!” Perhaps it was an ungrateful statement, and made in a fit of rage, but Arato could tell that it was coming from Kengo’s heart. Kengo had no weapon to beat Kouka down, so instead he used his words. “I don’t care if you’re the enemy of my enemy. That doesn’t make you my friend. I want all of you hIEs gone!” he yelled. Then he barked a short, ironic laugh. Perhaps he was laughing at himself. His mouth twisted into a wry smile.

Arato also couldn’t keep a strange smile off of his face. The circumstances weren’t ideal, and the content was rough, but it was the first time his friend had expressed his true feelings.

Snowdrop hugged the wreckage of the security hIEs to her chest and petted its head. “He turned you down. Poor Kouka,” she said, as if to comfort the other hIE. Then, with her thin arms, she lifted the head of the security hIE up into the air. “Humans are more trouble than they’re worth. They’re always messing up the Frame,” she said. The emerald accessory wrapped around her began to glow faintly. It stretched out its joints and came undone. It shifted in the air until it had formed a large circle in front of Snowdrop’s stomach, and the green emeralds all over it relocated to the inside of the circle.

Snowdrop pulled the remains of the security hIE into the ring formed by her device, with a movement that seemed to Arato like she was hugging the scrap to her dress. The emerald crystals on her device moved like the teeth of an animal, grinding up the pieces of the security hIE with a loud crunching noise. Arato started to see the ring-shaped device as a mouth with emerald teeth, which chewed up and quickly disgorged the scrap into Snowdrop’s waiting hands. She took each piece and slid it into her open dress, where it was swallowed up and vanished. Tiny bits and pieces of scrap fell from the hem of the dress like crumbs.

It seemed that only an instant had passed before Snowdrop had devoured the entire hIE in this manner. When she was done, she re-fastened the bracket that closed the chest of her dress. After letting out a cute little burp, Snowdrop murmured, “I see now, Emerald Harmony. You use these things like this.”

Arato heard the sound of rubble tumbling away from something behind him. Turning to look, he saw the muzzle of a gun peeking out from beneath a pile of destroyed desks. His instincts, which had become sharper ever since that first night he met Lacia, screamed at him. He dodged, and a bullet punched a hole through the wall where he had been standing.

Up until then, the hIEs controlled by the flowers, including the armed security hIEs, had just tried to grab their targets. But now, it seemed, Snowdrop had grasped the use of firearms.

As gunshots began to echo in the hall, Arato saw Kouka shove Kengo out of the way. Dashing to the pile of desks with incredible speed, she sliced off the muzzle of the gun, but Snowdrop had been aiming for just such an opening. A flower-covered hIE wearing a burnt flight jacket grabbed Kengo from behind. Arato realized it was the pilot hIE from the helicopter. It pulled at Kengo as he violently resisted, finally twisting the lower half of his body almost completely around to get him to move.

There was a giant hole in the wall and, through it, nothing but the night sky. Kengo vanished through the hole. Arato was running before his thoughts had time to catch up.

“Lacia, stop him!” he yelled. He ran into the strong wind blowing in from the burnt hole, heading toward the night beyond. For a moment, as he ran, he locked eyes with Snowdrop, and a shiver ran up his spine.

He knew that, somewhere, she had guns trained on him right then. All it would take was one shot. But he kept his eyes open, clenching his teeth, and put his faith in Lacia, who was there fighting alongside him.

Snowdrop went flying, together with the sound of something hard hitting something very soft. Before she could pull herself up, she was struck again. Lacia had apparently gone invisible again, and was taking advantage of having landed a surprise attack.

From the confines of the hall, Arato ran out into the open under the night sky. With each step, feelings of liberation and terror grew within him.

“Help me.” He heard a voice from beyond the hole in the wall, and it told him that Kengo hadn’t given up hope. He knew his friend was searching for a human hand to save him. So, not caring what lay ahead, Arato ran past concrete rubble and pieces of the destroyed helicopter. He saw fingers clinging to the outside of the thick, cracked glass walls. Kengo had just barely caught himself, and was hanging on with a drop of twenty-two stories below him.

“Hang in there!” Arato yelled. He stretched out his hand, and barely managed to catch Kengo’s wrist. It was sweaty, but it was also warm and human. After going invisible, sneaking in, and getting himself caught up in a battle, Arato had finally managed to reach his friend.

He held desperately on to Kengo’s arm, which was slippery with sweat. “You still alive?” Arato asked. Wedging his foot against the cracked wall, he pulled at Kengo’s arm until he felt like his own arms would fall off. The hIE that had tried to take a dive with Kengo had already fallen.

Kengo, despite the rescue, looked up at Arato like he was seeing a ghost.

“Hey, you’re safe, you should be happy,” Arato joked.

“You, your, head,” Kengo stammered in shock. His reaction finally reminded Arato that he probably looked very strange at the moment. He had taken the helmet off, but the rest of his body was still invisible.

“Well, just don’t let go. If you fall, you’re gonna die,” Arato said.

Wind around the building whipped up into a strong gust that washed over Arato’s body, and the scab-like meta-material coating his burnt jumpsuit was blown away. His invisibility cleared, and he returned to a more familiar form.

Kengo’s face, which had been tense with fear, relaxed. “Endo, what the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “And what are you wearing?”

Before Arato could answer, Kengo’s curious face crumpled, and he sniffled loudly. Seeing his friend break down, Arato felt like crying himself. “Duh, man. I came here to rescue you,” Arato said. He had reached out his hand to save Kengo, and their lives had been connected.

Kengo’s eyes were full of tears. “What the hell, man?! You’re such an idiot!” he shouted.

With the utmost simplicity, two hearts were moved.

Arato was exhausted, and his whole body hurt. He would be glad if he never had to experience anything like that night again. Still, he felt that there had been meaning in what had happened.

“So you really hate hIEs, huh?” Arato asked, looking down on Tokyo below, where everyone was using hIEs to automate their lives. The thought made his heart tremble, so instead, he kept tugging on Kengo’s arm as he looked up at the night sky, where the moon was looking down on the human world.

Kengo’s response, muffled by the wind, was a bit warmer than the cold night view. “Obviously I just like people better,” he said. In the year 2105, this was the automated world they were living in.

***

Kouka and the other hIEs were no longer talking. WIth no humans around, there was no one to hear them speak. Each of them was nothing more than a machine, aiming to fulfill the work they had been given. There was no need for them to communicate with other machines on their way to that goal. Or, at least, that’s how it had always been.

Snowdrop was staring at the hole in the wall Arato had run to. “Mmm, it feels better when the waves can come in,” she said. Normally a place that processed large amounts of data like the Oi Industry Promotion Center would restrict incoming electronic signals from outside, but the huge holes torn in the walls had done away with that protection.

Alarms were ringing. Due to the massive changes to the status of the building, the security system was in full lockdown to prevent information leaks. It was a more thorough response than there had been for an actual terrorist invasion. Every system had switched to emergency mode to protect the information that was the lifeblood of the company, and the sound of shutters slamming down echoed from the hallways.

Snowdrop raised both her hands and stretched. “I’m full, so I’m going home,” she said. By devouring them, she had learned how to manipulate the armed hIEs. Apparently tired from the effort, she gave a big yawn and started walking toward the door of the meeting hall.

Lacia had stopped attacking Snowdrop. As a model, she had a well-known face, so she focused on fixing her invisibility. In the end, she didn’t reveal herself to her Red Box sisters.

Without Lacia’s help, Kouka decided it would be impossible trying to take down Snowdrop. Switching her work priorities, she checked the status of the Antibody Network infiltration team. Her bladed device was keeping track of each of the members through their collar terminals. Aside from Kengo Suguri, all the members of the squad in charge of the infiltration — D squad — were following D2.

As their leader, Kouka spoke to them over a wireless channel. 〈D squad, make your way to the 36th floor. B squad will secure your route down from there. Rendezvous with them and get out of here. B squad’s helicopter has countermeasures in place, so it should be safe. A squad finished their ground preparations and have already withdrawn. C squad has completed their diversionary role and are withdrawing. I’m also going to take off now,〉 she said.

The orders she had gotten from the Antibody Network were to lead the members of the infiltration team and help them complete their task, so she looked around the meeting hall for Mikoto. She found the hIE infested with Snowdrop’s flowers, trying to pull herself up after being thrown down by the explosive blast of Snowdrop’s attack.

Kouka re-arranged the tasks on her work list. She decided it would be possible to conduct two different jobs at the same time, and continued her voice message to her squad members. 〈If you are arrested, go ahead and tell them whatever you know about the Network. No speculation, though. Make sure it’s stuff you actually know. If you understand, tap the tag of your collar terminal,〉 she ordered. Almost instantaneously, a confirmation came back from most of the terminals. Starting that day, the fight of the Antibody Network would be brought into a political light. Their destruction of hIEs would no longer be confined to busting up hIEs caught walking alone at night.

Mikoto caught sight of Kouka and smiled at her. Kouka pulled the trigger of her gun. Shot through the head, Mikoto completely stopped functioning. To those humans who still clung to the all-human world of yesteryear, she was the enemy. In order to show the world what an embarrassing heap of scrap this Mikoto was, Kouka emptied her entire clip into the hIE’s body.

Her work done, Kouka whispered a gentle message to humans who were slaves to their emotions. 〈You’ve all done a great job. Today, you protected humanity.〉 Beyond the massive holes in the wall, the nightscape of Oi spread out before her. She saw that Arato had managed to pull Kengo Suguri up onto the 22nd floor. Both boys looked exhausted, laying on their backs and wheezing for breath.

Kouka decided she had checked all the boxes on her task list, and spoke to Lacia, who she still couldn’t see. “I’ll leave those two to you, dear sister.” Then, she ran with light footsteps toward the night.

The boys didn’t even notice her passing by. “Morons,” she murmured, as she passed them by. Springing off the building, Kouka dove into the night sky. She fell.

Kouka and her sisters had each been given separate missions to fulfill that matched their unique abilities. It was amazing how different from each other they had all become in the twenty or so days since they had been released into the world. In order to adapt to the wide, wide world, Lacia-class hIE Type-001, Kouka, fell.

Though it was an unnecessary action, this machine that should have been subject to the will of others introduced herself of her own accord. “I am a tool you all need. I am the tool that ensures the victory for humanity.”

Snowdrop leapt down the elevator shaft. Type-002, Snowdrop, eroded the environment humanity had created, spreading her artificial flowers wherever she went. “I am the tool you outsourced evolution to,” she said.

In the MemeFrame building where it had all began, an orange-haired hIE that appeared to be resting on a chair opened her eyes. Type-004 confirmed her owner, and that she was in the optimal location.

“I am the tool that expands humanity,” she said.

To the naked eye, it appeared that the rubble-strewn meeting hall was empty. Type-005, Lacia, was separated from her owner, bending light to hide herself.

She said nothing, as silent as the empty room around her.