Phase5「Boy Meets Pornography」

It had been one week since the night of the explosion at the MemeFrame Tokyo Research Labs.

In a mansion in the Mizonokuchi residential district, near the prefectural border of Kanagawa prefecture, several machines wearing human figures were being destroyed. Heavy thumps echoed as heads and limbs fell to the floor, contrasting with the decadent richness of the glass walls and ceiling, as well as the gorgeously ornate furnishings of the sitting room. The house was a piece of history; made during the economic bubble of the 20th century, it was over one hundred years old now.

Erika Burroughs, the daughter of the Burroughs family who owned the mansion, had often heard people in the area call it ‘the doll house.’ This was because, as the current owner of the house, Erika had all of her needs seen to by a team of hIEs and did not allow any other humans to approach the place.

Even the folks who lived in houses nearby had no idea what was going on in the Burroughs’ mansion. Erika was thorough; even when ordering deliveries, she made sure to request that only hIEs bring the packages to her home. That said, she was not the kind of slightly touched person who would destroy machines that wore human faces.

Stepping into the sitting room, Erika sighed. The sitting room where the dismemberment was occuring was used by her hIEs as a waiting area. “Apparently this is why my tea is late,” she observed.

Torn limbs and chopped off heads were scattered here and there around the room. However, there was no smell of blood or any sign of distress on the severed heads, which were lying on the high pile carpet. Though they looked like they belonged to humans, these were merely the remains of hIEs.

Every single one of Erika’s hIE maids and servants, each in their own special work uniforms that she had designed for them, had been broken. A dirty, solitary figure stood near an overturned glass baccarat table, in the middle of over ten hIEs worth of body parts. The figure was female, and large for a woman of her apparent age. She had ash brown hair, and her body was wrapped in nothing more than a dirty, burnt rag.

“I don’t recall placing an order for an hIE like you,” Erika said. Still, she was the owner of the mansion, so she straightened the collar of her nightwear and went to stand in front of the unknown machine.

This hIE looked as if she had been raised by wolves, and her unwashed hair swung chaotically as she turned to look at Erika. hIEs are tools that simply react to things humans do, but this unit seemed strangely hesitant, taking no action as she watched Erika.

This machine that had broken all of Erika’s dolls simply stood with her mouth half open, as if waiting expectantly for her to speak. For Erika, who had inherited the massive legacy that was the Burroughs fund, it was rare for anyone to upset her like this. She was shocked and more than a little angry at this tool that had not acted as she wished.

“What is it you’re here for? You’re an hIE, aren’t you?” she snapped. “Well then, go ahead and kneel to me, or attack me, or whatever it is you were ordered to do.” The sorry scene in the sitting room had shaken her. All the dolls she had to help ease the burden of executing the financial estate which she had inherited had been destroyed. Erika couldn’t stand the thought that her beautiful doll house had been completely ruined by this ugly thing.

“Will you at least state your name?” she asked when the hIE remained silent. “I’ve never seen such a horrendous model.”

“Lacia-class hIE, Type-003 — Saturnus,” the creature with the wild ashen hair said.

“What an ugly name,” Erika commented acerbically. At that time, that night, she didn’t yet know the significance of the term ‘Lacia-class hIE.’

Saturnus pulled a long device from beneath her tattered clothes. It looked like a hand-operated sewing machine, about a meter long. “You are someone special, are you not?” the hIE said. “I desire an owner like you.”

As Saturnus had said, Erika Burroughs was considered a special person in the 22nd century. Having inherited the massive financial resources of her family, she was a well-known player in the financial market. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason she was famous, but having someone come to her just because she was famous was one of her most hated pet peeves.

“I refuse,” Erika said flatly. “Why on Earth would I want to keep a filthy thing like you around?”

“I am far more capable than any of the hIEs that previously served you,” Saturnus pointed out, drawing nearer to Erika with that unknown tool in her hands. “Besides, not a single member of your hIE staff remains. Are you really in a position to turn me away simply because of my looks?”

Erika recalled a painting she had seen of the god Saturn, devouring his own child for fear of ruin. Considering that, she thought the name ‘Saturnus’ was fitting for this ghastly machine. She felt herself being forced into a relationship with this thing that had come in and massacred all of her dolls just to make a place for itself.

“Obviously,” Erika said, intending to turn Saturnus away again. “People interpret the purpose of a thing by looking at its appearance. Some may say that appearance isn’t everything, but it is deeply tied to our expectations.” Erika understood that hIEs were just machines. Some people believed that hIEs had personalities, but she knew it was all just humans projecting human qualities onto the things that wore human faces. Human in shape only, without a heart beating in their chests, every hIE was just the futuristic form of a picture, drawn on a page.

Pictures had been around for hundreds of years. Then, people had made them move as animations, or respond to input in games. Later, in response to the human desire to be even closer to their ideal pictures, the images had been given life-sized forms and made to be able to do the work the humans wanted them to. To Erika, all hIEs, regardless of how high-spec they may be, boiled down to that basic concept.

“If you want me to be your owner, you’ll need to change your appearance to something far more attractive,” she said. Honestly, she hadn’t asked for this, so her words were chilly.

Saturnus obviously hadn’t expected to be rejected, and she clung to the carpet listlessly, her face scrunched up like a child who had just been disowned by her parents. “Things that are not unique or special will someday be replaced. My sisters told me that I am neither special nor unique, and you have told me that you will not take me in unless I am more attractive,” she said.

Her words were pathetic, but Erika saw through them. Saturnus was an hIE; a heartless machine. The whining was aimed to analog hack her, so that Saturnus could fulfill whatever her purpose might be. Still, she found herself giving it some more thought. Even if Saturnus’s sorrow was just an act, it was a fact that preparing her own tea would be troublesome.

“If you want to be special, change your appearance. That’s the way all girls alter their place in the world. Should you take on a more attractive appearance, I will take you in,” she said.

The unknown hIE looked up at Erika worshipfully. “I will do anything you ask. I will become whatever you want me to be!” she exclaimed.

To Erika, Saturnus was an extremely suspicious machine. However, Erika hadn’t particularly loved or trusted her now-destroyed hIEs, either. “Tell me your ID number,” she ordered. “I’ll connect you to my company’s cloud.” With a sigh, she got Saturnus hooked up to her network. She figured the hIE could at least make her some tea. Plus, it was obvious to Erika that with some changes to her fashion sense, manner of speaking, and habit of dismembering other hIEs, Saturnus could be much better than she appeared at the moment.

“Saturnus—” Erika started, then stopped. “Actually, no, let’s start by getting rid of that horrible name. I’ll give you a new one.” Her eyes fell on a can of tea on the shelf of the sitting room. As it happened, the label of the tea — ‘Mariage Frères,’ a brand that had survived for hundreds of years — was the same color as the hIE’s hair. “How about Mariage?” she finally said. At the time, Erika had no idea how much her life was about to change.

***

The screen showed a city nightscape, with white smoke pouring out of a building that was particularly tall and wide. It was the Oi Industry Promotion Center — a large, government-owned building, set up over what used to be the old Japan Rail Vehicle Center.

The building had been invaded by terrorists from an organization known as the Antibody Network. Inside the center, the terrorists had achieved their goal of destroying the government polling hIE that was being tested there by the Next-Generation Social Research Center. During the attack, a news helicopter had crashed into the building, resulting in a fire.

It was big news.

The date was the 29th of April, the same day as the birthday of an ancient emperor of Japan, which had been revised four times before being dropped from the calendar of national holidays.

Starting with May Day, on May 1st, Japan had entered its “Golden Week,” which was a block of consecutive holidays. In some countries, May Day was known as “Labor Day” or “International Workers’ Day.” On this day celebrating the hard work of humans, the Antibody Network conducted anti-hIE protests.

Arato had been right there when the incident in the news had occurred, but only now did he really grasp how big it had been. Lacia had assured him that the incident wouldn’t have any impact on his daily life, but he couldn’t help feeling uneasy about it.

“Arato, how come you keep watching the news?” Yuka asked. “It won’t make you any smarter.” Sitting her butt down on the sofa, she opened up a game in a sub-screen of the display, angled so that only she could see it. Something good must have happened in the game she was always playing with her friends, since she squeezed her eyes shut and kicked her legs joyfully. Arato thought it must’ve been fun, living as carefree as Yuka did.

“Hey Arato, guess what? I’m super popular in this game,” she said.

“And I’m the dumb one here?” Arato scoffed.

A girl with light purple hair walked out of the kitchen, a plate of donuts in her hand. When she wasn’t directly needed, Lacia spent most of her time in the kitchen, making meals or handmade snacks.

Yuka immediately nabbed one of the still-hot donuts. “Lacia, you should try putting some chocolate on the donuts, too,” she suggested.

“Ms. Yuka, may I just point out that, since entering this school break, you have consumed 9,500 kilo-calories,” Lacia observed.

Without a word, Yuka passed the donut to Arato. The flavor of the oil and sugar on his tongue gave him a very American pleasure.

“Oh good,” Yuka said. “You were just hangry. Looks like you’re back to normal.”

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind. Haven’t you noticed?” Arato asked. Then he added, “This donut’s good.”

The sprinkler systems in the Oi Industry Promotion Center had come back online and put out the fire in the end. Lacia had been instrumental in getting the systems back online, as well as actually getting Kengo out of the building.

Still, Arato couldn’t bring himself to walk around outside. Every time a person even got near him, he’d jump and worry that the police were about to show up and arrest him. He kept watching the news obsessively, wondering if his own face would show up there.

The influence of the incident had been spreading ever since that night, and had loomed into something far greater than it had been at the start. Arato was starting to think that “reality” was just the meaning other people assigned to things that happened, rather than what had actually happened in the moment.

“Oh, it’s Dad,” Yuka said, returning the news broadcast to full screen. “That’s right, he said he was gonna be on the news.”

On the screen their father, Kozo Endo, was commenting on the incident. 〈Mikoto’s hIE body was destroyed, but her data is still safely backed up on the network. Yes, we lost the data from this experiment, but that won’t have any major impact on our plan,〉 he said.

Arato wondered how his dad would react if he found out that Arato had been there when it happened. He felt guilty that he was only now thinking of how this would all affect his Dad.

“Wow, Dad’s all important,” Yuka commented. The 3D screen was showing a small display of their father’s workplace: the Next-Generation Social Research Center, whose campus was almost as big as Tsukuba Science City. It had been constructed in an abandoned ‘new town’ — a planned community used by Japan in ages past as a countermeasure to overcrowding in the cities. There were no humans in the ‘town.’ Instead, it was populated entirely by hIEs. Some were playing the role of humans, and some were playing the role of actual hIEs. The aim of the city-sized experiment was to see just how far human society could be automated. Apparently, there were plans to hold the international fashion biennale there the following year, but the news reports of the incident in Oi were casting doubt on the safety of the event.

Arato’s thoughts wandered as he stared absently at the hIE workers on the screen, doing road work in their experiment city. “The hIEs really are working hard, aren’t they?” Arato observed.

“Sure are,” Yuka nodded, taking deep breaths of the delicious scent rising from the donuts.

On screen, the news report switched over from their dad to an interview with a man Arato remembered seeing in the meeting hall. It was Kimitaka Shinguji, president of the Shingubo defense company. Despite coming under fire for his company’s failure to protect the Oi Industry Promotion Center, he was still an imposing figure, and standing tall.

〈The crash of the helicopter at the Oi Industry Promotion Center was the work of a hijacker unrelated to the terrorists from the Antibody Network,〉 he said. 〈We haven’t heard any statements from this thug, who sacrificed the life of the reporter riding in the helicopter with them.〉

Looking straight at the camera from within the screen, Shinguji bowed his head. 〈The only thing that prevented the people running the experiment from dying in the attack was that the Antibody Network and this other thug fought each other, rather than targeting any civilians. As a defense company, this was a deeply shameful result.〉

On the news screen, reactions to the broadcast were gathered in real time from around the world through a simple yes/no system. Red and blue gradations appeared in the video: red for agreement, blue for dissent. Yuka flicked her finger at the red frame. After a moment, the results from the worldwide survey were shown. The role of the news these days was to help viewers feel reassured in opinions they agreed with, and help them reevaluate opinions they disagreed with.

〈I understand that there are those displeased with my response, but I can only tell you the truth of what happened,〉 Shinguji said animatedly, facing the responsibility of his company’s failure head on.

“You really are going crazy, Arato. Why are you staring so hard at some random old guy?” Yuka asked.

“Hey! He’s old, but I think he’s kind of cool,” Arato said defensively. “Why do you care, anyway?”

Yuka watched him suspiciously out of the corners of her eyes. It was obvious she knew something was up with him. “Fine, whatever,” she sulked, standing and leaving the room.

With his noisy little sister gone, an almost suffocating silence descended over the living room. It prickled at Arato’s heart. “She was just trying to cheer me up,” he murmured to himself. He hadn’t told her that he had been there when the terrorist incident went down, but knew she could sense that something was wrong with him.

Lacia took Yuka’s position at Arato’s side on the couch. “There is no need to worry,” she said. “None of the cameras in that building captured any images of your face. The police will not be looking for you.” As an hIE, she had perceived that he required some comforting. Honestly, it was a little embarrassing being read like that, but he knew Lacia wasn’t holding it over him or anything. It seemed silly to feel any embarrassment in front of a girl when they had risked their lives together.

“The person in the helicopter died, didn’t they.” Arato said. It wasn’t a question. Though the pilot was an hIE, the reporter in the helicopter had been a human. Their life had been sacrificed in the attack. “Snowdrop killed them,” he said.

That night, for the first time, Arato had faced an hIE who had murdered a human. And it wasn’t just that little green girl, either. Kouka had given weapons to Kengo and his comrades and made them infiltrate that building. There had even been moments when Lacia had shown her heartless side.

“Snowdrop must have an owner. They must be a real piece of work,” Arato speculated. He hadn’t thought about it much in the heat of the moment, but the battle he’d witnessed between Lacia’s sisters probably had a much deeper, darker meaning than what he had seen there.

“We hIEs are tools, so Snowdrop must be carrying out the intentions of her owner,” Lacia agreed. “However, I do not believe it would be easy to obtain information on who that may be.” Lacia had already told him she didn’t know anything about her ‘sisters,’ the other Lacia-class hIEs. Since she couldn’t tell him anything about them, there was no telling what would happen with them in the future.

If Lacia was a representative of the Red Boxes — technology beyond human comprehension — there was no way Arato could understand the actions of other machines just like her. He didn’t even know if he was using Lacia in the right way. What he did know was expecting his daily life with Lacia to continue the way it had been, when he didn’t even know if he could control her, was foolish.

“I guess that would be too much to ask,” Arato said, responding to his own thoughts. He wanted to know more about the hIEs; even if they didn’t have hearts, they had moved his.

Arato wondered about Snowdrop’s owner. What kind of person would use her this way? And what was Kouka’s owner thinking, involving her in the Antibody Network like that? What kind of goals were these people aiming for, using their tools like that?

***

“So anyway, Arato’s been acting really weird lately,” Yuka said. It was the latter half of Golden Week, and she was sitting in a cafe near Suidobashi, hoping to hear about the Oi terrorist incident from someone closer to it.

“I guess this time you’re coming to me for help, huh?” Olga said. The last time they had spoken, Olga had been requesting help tracking down her brother.

Olga had her eyes down now, watching the ripples in her tea. Her soft hair was held back with a plastic clip made to look like a dragonfly. Despite having obviously foreign blonde hair, she liked wearing it in Japanese styles.

“So, how’s Kenny doing?” Yuka asked.

“You gave my brother a nickname?” Olga asked in return. She was the kind of little sister that would cry if Kengo stayed out too late. If she told Yuka about all the commotion around Kengo’s late night disappearances, Yuka would definitely say that Kengo must have been meeting with his girlfriend. So instead, she avoided the subject.

“Hey, don’t get upset. Anyone who gives me food is family. Ryo’s family too,” Yuka said.

Shiori Kaidai, the third girl with them, sipped daintily at her Russian tea and let out a sigh before saying, “You seem to get along well with him, Yuka.”

Yuka couldn’t believe that one of her brother’s friends had a little sister like Shiori, who was pretty with a strong brow. “Ryo’s family because he keeps a bunch of candy in his bag and gives me some whenever he runs out of stuff to say,” Yuka said.

Shiori had invited the other two, offering to pay the tab so she could introduce them to a high end cafe. Yuka thought it was very mature of her, making the reservation and everything. She had never met another girl who went this far out of her way when hanging out with fellow girls.

Tilting her head, Shiori let her long, well-kept black hair flow over her shoulder. “Well, that’s nice of him. He won’t even sit down and have tea with us at home,” she said.

“I think perhaps he may just be hiding his true feelings, is he not?” Yuka asked, awkwardly trying to sound refined like Shiori did. “I have never heard of someone not having tea in their own house.”

Shiori gave Yuka a wide-eyed glance. Then, her expression softened. “I suppose. Sadly, I have been too dense to pick up on it,” she said with a cute, dreamy laugh.

“My brother doesn’t do much with us, either,” Olga said, hurriedly backing up Shiori. “Unlike Arato, he won’t just do anything I ask him to.”

Yuka felt like Olga was scolding her for not being sensitive about the issues that might be going on within a rich family like the Kaidais. “Hey, that makes it sound like Arato’s my slave or something!” she exclaimed. “You should be more grateful, Olga. He went all the way to your house when you needed help.”

“Actually,” Shiori interrupted, “I was interested in hearing about that particular incident, myself.” It was Shiori who had invited them all there, so she controlled the flow of the conversation.

“Well, it really wasn’t that interesting,” Olga said, immediately responding to Shiori’s request. “Kengo just came back really late that night, and Mom and Dad got mad at him. Yuka’s brother actually brought him home. He said Kengo went to Shibuya for some work from the Arubaito Network,” she explained.

“Oh, I’ve heard of that. It seems very convenient,” Shiori said.

‘Arubaito’ was the Japanese term for a part-time job. The Arubaito Network was a job-hunting service that would track user locations through their pocket terminals, and let them know when there was a job nearby they could do. Apparently it was convenient for the hiring side as well, for quickly filling in light work openings. Some people were against it, saying it treated workers like goods to be swapped around. But, since it streamlined all the necessary paperwork, it really was useful for filling last-minute gaps in the workforce.

“I wonder how much one could make after a week of work,” Shiori wondered aloud.

Yuka figured that Shiori had never had any experience with part-time work, and showed Shiori the Arubaito Network page on her pocket terminal. Within a 100-meter radius of the sunny Suidobashi cafe where they sat, there were over fifty jobs that Yuka could do.

“But honestly, was Kengo really out working that whole time? Until that late? I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me anything,” Olga sighed.

Yuka wanted to sigh herself. When Kengo and Arato had showed up, they had been covered all over in scrapes and cuts. Olga had cried the whole time, until Yuka and Arato had no choice but to beat a hasty retreat. “You’ve just gotta be more persistent,” she urged.

“But what if it’s something I really don’t want to hear after all?” Olga asked plaintively.

“You’ve gotta be bold, Olga. You’ve gotta go full bulldog,” Yuka insisted. “Don’t let go ‘til you’ve got your answers.”

“What?” Olga seemed confused by Yuka’s strange analogy.

“I mean, don’t get all worried about how he’s gonna take it and clam up,” Yuka explained. “If he’s doing stuff that worries you, you have to talk to him about it, or he’ll just keep doing it.”

“But what if he thinks I’m just nagging him and gets angry at me?” Olga asked.

“Sometimes pestering is how family members show their love,” Yuka told her. “Just like how I’m here talking to you guys about how my brother’s been strange lately. That’s my way of pestering my family. Wait, no, that’s not right. What were we talking about?”

Olga was giving Yuka a very pitying look.

“Anyway,” Yuka stammered, trying to get back on track, “We’ve just gotta be tough bitches!”

“I think you’re a cute bitch, Yuka,” Olga said. Despite the refined feeling she gave off, Olga seemed to have no problem following Yuka down the strange, slang rabbit hole.

“We are getting odd stares from the tables around us,” Shiori pointed out.

“You should pester Ryo too, Shiori. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that actually dislikes their family worrying about them,” Yuka suggested. To Yuka, it was the answer to everything, but Shiori drew down her lovely eyebrows.

“It takes talent to deal with one’s family the way you do, Yuka,” Shiori said. “Riding the thin line between upsetting them or having them see through your actions takes an impressive amount of intuition. He may not seem like it, but my brother was actually considered a prodigy when he was younger.”

“Huh, I didn’t know he had a reputation,” Yuka said.

“He was incredible, up until he met your brother, Yuka,” Shiori said. “No matter what he did, no one could come close to being as good as him. Everyone was always comparing me to him.”

Yuka was surprised by how frankly the normally refined, older Shiori was talking about her true feelings. “Your brother’s been coming to our place for like 10 years,” she commented. “I never thought he seemed that amazing.”

“It has been 10 years, hasn’t it?” Shiori murmured. Then, as if to regain her composure, she gently lifted her teacup and took a sip of tea. Yuka tried to think what she had been doing 10 years ago, but she had been four at the time so she couldn’t remember anything.

“I do wish he would be more like your brother though, Yuka,” Shiori said.

“Seriously? You want another Arato?” Yuka asked.

“Your brother is easy to understand, and he always just focuses on one thing,” Shiori said. “Sorry, I don’t mean this in a bad way, but he reminds me of a loyal shiba dog.”

Yuka realized her friends were seeing Arato as the nice guy next door; a good friend, but not really romanceable. Plus, even they could tell how easy he was to manipulate. She was starting to worry about her brother’s future as a man.

“We used to have a dog, actually. I wonder what happened to it,” Yuka wondered aloud. She watched the reactions of the other two. Olga’s eyes slid away from hers.

“Why the heck aren’t you two listening to me?” Yuka fumed. “My idiot brother, who shouldn’t be able to hide anything from me, all of a sudden has some big secret. What’s up with that?!”

The meeting of the little sisters was falling apart, and one of the girls slid a plate of chocolates across the table to Yuka as an apology. Treating this as only natural, Yuka immediately began to eat it. While she chewed on the treat, Shiori shifted the direction of the conversation.

“How is your brother doing, anyway? You have an hIE at your house now, right?” she asked. “I can’t imagine what it’s like living with an hIE that was chosen as a model.”

“Arato’s a moron, so he’s head over heels for her,” Yuka said.

“He really is,” Olga agreed. She had met Lacia in person just the other day, and just thinking about it made her smile a little.

Shiori was a little more dubious. “We’ve got hIEs at home,” she said. “Their manner of speaking and acting is nothing like a human’s.”

Yuka knew Lacia was different from other, ordinary hIEs, but she couldn’t quite put that difference into words that would explain. “Arato’s the type who doesn’t really think too much about whether someone is a person or a robot,” she said. “It’s sort of like, you can’t blame a fish for biting a fishing lure. ‘Cause they’re a fish.”

Sometimes it looked like Lacia was doing everything she could to make Arato fall for her. But Yuka didn’t think an hIE would really do something like that. “Seriously, what’s going on?” she murmured. “Is Arato just being stupid?”

“I think you’re a good pair, in that department,” Olga said.

“Maybe he’s just stuck thinking about Lacia?” Yuka said, continuing to ask questions without answers, and ignoring the slight against her.

“Well, I suppose a fish doesn’t differentiate between ‘real’ food and lures either,” Shiori said, her voice a musical, musing mutter. It was such a nice voice that Yuka didn’t really care that she was speaking without any real interest in helping to answer her question. Since Yuka had first met her, Shiori was always refined and clearly showed the gap in age between them. So any time Shiori looked at her, she shied away.

“I would never fall in love with anyone or anything without careful consideration and weighing the pros and cons,” Shiori said. “This whole world is run by hIEs now. Us humans don’t have much left to do, so I at least want to work hard at romance.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t want to have that happen all of a sudden, either,” Yuka put in. “If I’m gonna be fighting for love, I at least want to make sure I wind up happy in the end.”

“Aw Yuka, you’re such a cute little bitch,” Olga repeated. She really didn’t hold back when it came to Yuka, who honestly wanted to see how Kengo would react if he heard his shy little sister saying things like that.

“Well, it’s not like the world is fair or anything, so the fight for love doesn’t have to be fair either,” Yuka said, pouting a little.

“It is unfair. And cruel. That’s about the one thing we can still work hard at these days,” Shiori said, setting down her teacup.

Yuka noticed that Shiori had surprisingly drained her entire cup.

“Why don’t you invite your brother next time we get together, Yuka?” Shiori suggested. Yuka was so surprised by how sweet Shiori suddenly sounded, and thought she might have imagined Shiori’s words.

“Are you serious, Shiori?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s fine to have him along now and then. He’s about the only boy I know who tells me I’m beautiful every time he sees me,” Shiori said.

Their eyes met, and Yuka noticed a little blush on Shiori’s cheeks. Now that she really looked at Shiori, it was clear that she had chosen the cool, sheer dress she had on today with the intent of drawing the eyes of men.

Within her small bag, Yuka felt her pocket terminal vibrate, but before she could take it out, she saw Arato. He was walking with Lacia from around the moat of Edo Castle, which was nearby.

“Oh, it’s Arato,” Yuka said. He was wearing a new pair of jeans and a fancy t-shirt, and even a new pair of shoes. Yuka wondered if Lacia had picked them all out for him. It was strange, seeing her usually laid-back brother in such a cool outfit.

Olga, who had just gotten done saying all sorts of things about Arato, put her hands together apologetically when she saw him.

“What, you praying to me or something?” he asked, seeing her pose.

“Well, I would say you have some divine qualities,” Shiori said, looking at Arato with a smile.

Arato’s cheeks colored a little at the compliment. “Looks like I got myself a reputation,” he commented shyly.

***

After meeting with Yuka and her friends, Arato rented an automatic car and headed to the Fabion office in Ebisu.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way the girls had been acting, though. Before he’d brought Kengo home, the two of them had hammered out a story to cover their tracks. When he heard Yuka was meeting with Kengo and Ryo’s little sisters, he figured it would be a good chance to check their reactions and see if the deception was working. But there had been something strange about them. Shiori had always been a nice kid, so her reaction seemed normal. There was something off about how big of a deal Olga had made of it, though, considering that he had just walked her brother home.

“It was seriously like she was seeing an angel,” Arato murmured.

“Perhaps it is as you heard; you have some divine qualities,” Lacia said with a gentle smile.

They pulled up to the offices of Fabion MG — a company that produced numerous human and hIE models — and found a crowd of people waiting for them. These were all staff who were there to help Lacia.

One of the mobile desks in the office had become Arato’s regular seat. Lacia was working on his behalf, fulfilling a contract he had signed. He bore all the rights and responsibilities for what she did, and it was his signature that sealed any deals involving her.

To his left sat Lacia, and to his right sat a woman who looked young enough to still be in college. The woman was Asuna Kisaragi, Lacia’s manager at Fabion MG.

“Come on, let’s see some more excitement,” she was saying. “An installation means megabucks.” An installation was a model show with a set that took place in a chosen location. The entire location was brought to life and made a part of the show to convey a theme to the guests.

There was a projection of an old room in the center of the office, with shafts of light leaking in through the ceiling. That image was overlaid with an aerial photo of the location, which looked like part of a western-style mansion.

The “mansion” was actually the old site of a seaside annex of the former Tokyo Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Center. It was in an area that had been destroyed in the Hazard during the 21st century.

“Isn’t that place off-limits?” Arato asked.

There were places in the former Tokyo seaside area — which was now the No. 1 Landfill Island— that were blocked off due to instability of the ground. The Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, off to the side of the road near the gulf station, was famously one of the places that had been fenced off.

“If you fill out forms with the police, they’ll let you film there,” Asuna explained. “Of course, the building is about ready to collapse, so if we really want to get a bunch of guests in there we’ll need to do some repairs first.” The 3D image matched her words; the walls were falling apart, and the ground was visible through the horribly cracked floor. Six chairs were scattered around the room, which was dreary from decades of neglect.

A short robot, whose arms were just a little longer than her legs, was standing in front of the nearest wooden chair. Her semi-long black hair matched her childish face perfectly, and her round head rested on a body like a black and silver toy. Her skin was rough. It was made of resin, and not intended to weather the march of the years. Her eyes were white and cloudy, possibly because of the light reflecting off of them.

The director of the show, a kind-looking middle-aged man, pointed at the robot, which was labeled ‘HRP-4C Mimu.’ “Mimu was created to work alongside humans a hundred years ago at the Tokyo Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, our stage. Her motors were weak, and they made her arms too thin, so she couldn’t carry anything heavy. But she could walk around and do simple things, so they had her work as a model,” he explained.

Further back, there was another chair with a similar design but different materials, sitting at a slightly off-kilter angle. A white plastic robot without a nose or eyes was resting on it. This one was Nadia, the world’s very first robot created for use in the average household. Thanks to her metallic, artificial musculature, she was capable of lifting objects up to 80 kg. At the time, the abilities of a home-use robot were governed by the amount of working power it could wield with any of its various parts. The focus of the time was to see how much power a company could fit into a robot for the home. Under the old behavior systems, which relied on each task being input so the robot could follow a set trajectory, there was danger of humans being injured when they got in the way of the robot’s movements. The simple ability to freely sit down in chairs was listed as one of Nadia’s special traits.

“We can guide the guests starting from Mimu, and have them experience the history of humanoid robots,” the director said, his voice full of confidence.

Beyond Nadia, the very first hIE, Marie, was seated in an apron dress. Her caption stated that hIEs had marked a return to the concept of controlling machines using satellite signals. In the earlier age of robots that focused on work power and direct programming, machines working in the same area were often forced into choices that put major strain on their processing capabilities. As a result, when it became the norm for robots and humans to work in the same areas, there were many incidents of robots crashing into each other or interrupting each other’s work.

Mankind had to wait until the latter half of the 21st century before this fatal flaw was resolved. By creating a dynamic orbital system that could adapt the movements of multiple units at the same time, humans were able to create hIEs — robots that could more perfectly mimic human actions to efficiently carry out any needed household work.

The hIE sitting on the four-legged chair had a face that was no different from a human’s.

“In 2068, America and Japan got together to change the laws about hIE appearance,” Asuna quietly explained to Arato. “Before that, each model had to share the same face. But, after they changed the law, a dealer could swap out the faces of the machines they sold as long as they registered it all with the government. They got rid of all the markings hIEs used to have on their faces, too, so they finally ended up looking exactly like us.”

Asuna didn’t look like much of a scholar, but she had actually studied hIEs in college and was quite the expert on them.

“Beyond her, we have Humanize-W, which was when hIEs shifted to total cloud control,” the director continued. “At that time, hIEs started to use both their onboard AI as well as an external network to control their actions. This was where hIEs really took off, and reliance on wireless communication with the cloud became an everyday thing. It happened in 2083, the same year MemeFrame’s Higgins AI became the 31st to surpass the capabilities of human intelligence.”

Finally, at the furthest point of the room on a chair with a long backrest like a throne, sat Lacia. The scene was arranged as if to indicate Lacia as the epitome of the hundred-year history and evolution of humanoid robots and their integration with human society. In the image, Lacia arose and walked toward the camera. As she passed by each of the other robots, it seemed to Arato as though she were walking back through history itself.

Lacia reached a door on the side of the image closest to Arato and opened it. On the other side was a normal apartment. Arato had heard it said that the home environment was an important aspect of the fashion industry; here, the viewer was presented with a room full of light, with brightly colored interior decoration. Along with Lacia’s gentle smile, the room seemed to promise a dream-like daily life. It was close to what Arato already experienced at home, but at the same time it was obviously fake. The juxtaposition of the two feelings made him uneasy.

The image suddenly stopped, and the show’s director turned to Arato. “So, Mr. Owner, are you okay with this for tomorrow’s show?” he asked.

“Sure, it looks fine,” Arato said, and then cursed himself for agreeing so easily. He had spoken before thinking, thanks to the relaxed atmosphere in the room.

Arato and Lacia had been called there that day to discuss the new show Fabion MG was putting on. The problem was that Arato couldn’t bring himself to agree to what they were proposing.

“Oh, come on, Arato. You still have a problem with it?” Asuna sighed, lightly grabbing his shoulder. Fabion MG was looking to make Lacia one of their biggest stars.

“I’m just worried about this whole ‘boy meets girl’ concept you’re using for the promotion,” Arato said. He himself didn’t really have a problem with it, but he felt there was something off about the idea of using human and hIE romance as a selling point. If you were a young guy and you bought a female hIE, most of your neighbors would think you weren’t having any luck with meeting real girls. Ryo was a good example of that kind of thinking; he always wanted to keep a clear divide between hIEs and humans.

But as the producer of the plan, Asuna was dead set on the idea. “Lacia doesn’t just appeal to a certain audience,” she argued. “She has almost universal support. With clothing models, you want to aim for support from the folks who’ll be buying the clothes she’s selling. Using Lacia for that sort of thing would be a waste.”

“Okay,” Arato said. “But doing a ‘boy meets girl’ scenario with an hIE is going to piss off a lot of people.”

“We’re trying to sell a lifestyle here,” Asuna said. “Don’t you think the whole ‘boys shouldn’t be buying girl hIEs’ thing is old-fashioned in this day and age? If the world hasn’t quite caught up with technology yet, this is our big chance to aim for that gap and fill it. We’ll light a fire under the womens’ magazines and use that as a springboard to really take off.”

“Yeah, but we’re going to be the targets of all the backlash,” Arato complained. He would be leaving Lacia vulnerable to the slings and arrows of media outcry from the TV networks and the internet. Of course, as her owner, he’d be catching some of that, too. Society was starting to overflow with pressure to reject a future automated by hIEs; Kengo and his friends taking up arms for the Antibody Network weren’t an aberration. They were a sign of the times.

“I mean, Lacia just got kidnapped,” Arato added. She had been hit by a car and grabbed right in front of their apartment. If Lacia really did this show, they might have the Antibody Network kicking in their door next.

“I promise you, we won’t let anything like that happen again,” Asuna said, showing her mature side.

“Everyone wants something they can dream of,” she went on, a serious light in her eyes as she spoke warmly of her own dreams. “I want people to get used to Lacia as a character, so then we can start to sell products connected to her. I want to sell people the Lacia lifestyle.”

As she spoke, the 3D display started showing a catalog. “We’ve already got sponsors lining up to make stuff like this,” she told him. The catalog displayed makeup and bath chemicals that they were going to have Lacia use, and then sell to her human fans.

Lacia herself added to Asuna’s pitch. “This is a strategy to entice single hIE users to purchase high-class consumables for two. To open the way for this sales push, we will first aim at media normally consumed by women, to lower their resistance to the concept. By creating a more relaxed view on men owning female hIEs in the female community, it will allow men to feel more comfortable enjoying this lifestyle,” she said.

Arato still wasn’t buying it. “Okay, so you’ve got a good pitch, but what does that have to do with ‘boy meets girl’?” he asked.

“We need to spread awareness of this kind of lifestyle to our customers,” Asuna said. “We humans still don’t have much experience in living with hIEs. We need to make this as normal as a guy obsessing over his car. You see that all the time, right? Older guys, pouring time and money into their beloved ride? Don’t you think it’d be wonderful if folks put that kind of love into their hIEs? We’ve already talked with Stylus about putting our all into making Lacia a star for the next ten years.”

Arato’s head spun at the sheer size of Asuna’s plans. She was already making deals with high-end American hIE makers. “What did Stylus say when you talked to them?” he asked.

“They said ‘okay,’” she said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Just like with the makers of classic automobiles, hIE makers who believe in their craft are all too happy to connect with their fans for centuries. And once we’ve created the image of hIEs being life-long partners, folks won’t hesitate to buy high-end consumable goods for them.”

It seemed that Asuna had thought of everything. Arato was impressed with how much better an adult was at getting everything arranged, from the tiniest details to the biggest agreements.

“And, starting with our ‘boy meets girl’ concept, where male customers can dream of meeting a female hIE just the way you and Lacia met, we’ll move on to doing the same with male hIEs. If we can drum up interest for male hIEs among female users, that could make it a lot easier for us to make this whole lifestyle a thing. Think about it: ladies don’t want to come home from work to an empty house any more than guys do,” she said.

Forget being impressed: Arato was in awe of her passion as a saleswoman.

Blueprints for pitching Lacia to the world were laid out in front of them. The whole plan was a challenge to the world, showing everyone exactly how valuable hIEs could be. The vision for this project went beyond what people might think about what was right or wrong; it aimed to paralyze those who saw it by its sheer sense of scale. What Arato felt while he looked at the plan was history. It was the history of human and robot relations, flowing out from the Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where the show would be held.

“Well, setting aside all that grand talk, we can at least say you’re okay with the show itself, right?” Asuna asked. “In the world of hIE modeling, the early bird gets the worm. I probably freaked you out a bit with all these big plans, but I just want you to know how serious Fabion is about this.” She spoke from experience. Having graduated with a major in Pseudo-Human Engineering, she knew what she was talking about.

“Listen, the fact that you’re worried about Lacia shows how much you care for her,” Asuna continued. “But if we give the world a model of this lifestyle that they can accept, it’ll give courage to other guys out there just like you, who have hIEs they care about.”

“May I add something, owner?” Lacia asked. Arato didn’t miss the significance of her switching back to calling him ‘owner’ rather than by name. She was obviously placing a lot of importance on what she was about to say. “You appear to be worried that I will be ‘the target of backlash,’ as you put it. However, this worry is meaningless. I am your tool, to use however you see fit,” she said.

What she was saying was correct, but that was no help for Arato, whose heart she had moved. He felt his emotions boiling up deep inside. What was he supposed to do?

As though she had heard the voice screaming in his heart, she smiled gently at him. “I have no heart, owner. You should do with me whatever you wish,” she said.

There was a knock at the door.

Arato found that odd. In this day and age, there were a number of other ways to call someone’s attention. Whoever it was could have sent a message to Asuna’s terminal, or called over the office intercom system, or sent a message to display on the 3D projection in the room.

But Asuna seemed to understand the meaning behind the knock, as she paled and hurried to stand. She wasn’t alone; the Fabion members and the director of the show all jumped to their feet as well.

Even though the door could obviously be opened automatically, Asuna ran over to open it herself. In this age where almost nothing was done by hand, Arato felt like he had suddenly been pulled one hundred years back in time.

When Asuna opened the door, a girl walked in, as if the whole thing was perfectly normal. Arato couldn’t even get a good look at her face or body before his eyes were drawn to the black lace flowing out of her dress. She was wearing a classic dress that Arato had only ever seen in old period dramas or movies.

The girl tilted her head slightly, ruffling the one spot of white lace at the dress’s throat. She looked at Arato from beneath locks of hair so platinum blonde that they almost seemed white. Her eyes were a beautiful green, and her skin was the golden brown of milky caramel.

“Do I really look so odd?” she asked him. “Even in the 21st century, there were still those who wore clothes such as these.” She appeared to be close in age to Arato, but she looked like a high-quality doll as she greeted him.

“Good afternoon,” she said. Then, looking at the 3D display, “It hasn’t even been a hundred years, yet it’s as if we’re living in a completely different world now.” Then, as if dismissing the work they were doing as trivial, she commanded, “Turn that off.”

Someone shut the machine off, and the display vanished. The girl swept her strong gaze over the room, which had been robbed of most of its light and color; without the 3D projection, the office became a boring room with nothing but a few chairs and tables. When her eyes passed over the people there, Arato got the sense that she felt like she was the only real human in the room.

“I’m Arato Endo, Lacia’s owner. I got called out here to talk about a show for her,” he said, breaking through the girl’s absolute control over the room.

“Of course. You’re a human, so you always introduce yourself first. It would be rude of me not to respond in kind,” she said, pulling a small leather case out of her bag. She handed him something white from within the case, and he was surprised to see it was a paper business card. “I am Erika Burroughs,” she said.

Arato awkwardly accepted the card, then fumbled in his pocket for his terminal to give her his ID. Asuna stopped him though, touching his arm with her fingers. “Arato, the owner doesn’t carry around a pocket terminal,” she said in a quiet voice.

“How distasteful,” Erika said without hesitation.

“Wait, ‘owner’?” Arato asked, his voice rising in surprise. “She owns this company? But she’s the same age as me!” Erika smiled at Arato, who had forgotten to close his mouth in shock. He couldn’t help but think that she looked way more like a princess than a businesswoman.

“That’s right,” she said, cold humor chilling her voice. “Even though I can’t technically ‘own’ other humans, since I own the place they live and work, you could technically think of me as their ‘owner.’”

She then turned to the adults in the office and asked, “What percentage of your lives would you say I own? Anyone?”

“I’d rather not hear, thanks,” Arato said in disgust, struggling to keep up with what was happening. “Well, what’s someone like you doing here, then?”

“I’m the one who signed off on this plan,” Erika explained. “And I came because it appears you have some complaints regarding it.”

Arato was dumbfounded.

When he didn’t respond, Erika turned to Asuna and the other Fabion members. “This room seems a little tight. Could you do something about that?”

The staff all looked at each other.

Erika sighed, apparently disappointed no one else could keep up with her pace. “After this shoot is over, why not move the office to Tokyo Bay?” she asked. “Japan’s summers are the worst, but I believe it’s fairly cool over there.”

***

At that moment, Ryo was standing on the outside of the No. 2 Landfill Island Group. Under the sunlight, he could see white marks on the road that almost seemed to have been painted by a brush around ground zero of the explosions. The bullet holes all over the place stood out vividly.

He was standing in front of a large white sheet that was being used to wall off one of the entrances to MemeFrame’s Tokyo Research Labs. No effort had been started to repair or restore the buildings damaged in the explosions; that fact gave Ryo a distant sense of unease.

A man, standing on the carved-up road and poking at the white scratch marks, saw Ryo and called out to him. “You interested in this place?”

The wind was whistling through the area, as if to show just how much of a wasteland it had become.

“You’re Ryo Kaidai, right?” the man asked. The man was in his late 40s, and had the sharp look of a businessman. He was somewhat similar to Shinohara, the researcher who had invited Ryo, but was also somewhat different.

This man was observant, confident, and talented, and Ryo knew him. His name was Ginga Watarai, and he was the head of research planning for the Tokyo Research Labs. He was the human counterpart to Higgins, the high-powered AI responsible for leading MemeFrame’s research efforts.

“Ryo Kaidai, that’s right,” Ryo said. “I’ve seen you on the news recently, Mr. Watarai.”

“And what makes you so sure that I’m Ginga Watarai?” Watarai asked.

Ryo was confused. It was strange enough to see a man who should have been plenty busy elsewhere hanging around the shut-down research labs without having him also suggesting the possibility he might be a fake.

Seeing that Ryo was unable to keep up with the strange shift in the conversation, Watarai filled in the blanks for him. “I could just be a machine wearing a human figure,” he pointed out. “It’s entirely possible I might be an hIE constructed to look exactly like Ginga Watarai.”

In other words: it was entirely possible that, having been backed into a corner by their involvement with the explosion incident, MemeFrame might begin offing inconvenient people and replacing them with hIE look-alikes. Ryo started to understand why he had been called out to this place, concealed from the world by white sheet walls.

“It’s prohibited to make hIEs that are identical to existing humans,” he said.

Watarai’s eyes narrowed in enjoyment beneath his white, slicked-back hair. “You think we wouldn’t make something like that just because it’s against the rules? Give something a human shape and a perfect human personality, and no one can tell it’s a machine,” he told Ryo, straightening up from where he had been crouching over the white marks. “Plus, thanks to the power of analog hacking, folks seeing the human figure will automatically convince themselves it’s the real thing.”

Ryo hated his own cowardice, which was screaming at him to run away. He wanted to train himself to become a fearless man who lacked for nothing. “hIEs’ personalities are just illusions, created by their reactions to what we humans do,” he said. “Our minds create the impression of something that we believe is there, when really it isn’t. Since there’s nothing strange about you being here, Mr. Watarai, I can only assume that this is the real you.”

“Illusions, huh?” Watarai repeated. “I see. Just as you said, illusions can pop up wherever we look for them. It’s up to humans to decide whether what they see is a human or not.”

Ryo, who had been trying to get a handle on Watarai’s nature, now noticed something: he had expected a simpler, more direct threat to his life. Instead, Watarai was focusing on splitting hairs about perception, stating things in a roundabout way that was seemingly aimed at deliberate misunderstanding. Apparently Ginga Watarai, the de facto head of the Tokyo Research Labs, might not be there to silence him.

“Arbitrarily assigning personalities to objects simply based on their form is caused by an error in human logic,” Ryo said. “Our internal concept of the human form is so vague that it gets easily confused. That’s why we project our feelings onto things that we think have human traits, and imagine that they have feelings in return.”

“But, setting aside this talk about heartless machines,” Ryo continued. “I assume there’s some reason you’re here to see me, Mr. Watarai?” Extreme tension made his back slick with sweat. He couldn’t figure out exactly why Watarai was there, but he could at least infer that it had to do with his own involvement with Lacia.

Watarai quirked his thin, dry lips up just a little. “So, you would say that humans should never relinquish their right to judge whether or not something is human? That’s good. Your views seem to be in alignment with ours,” he said. Apparently, Ryo had passed Watarai’s roundabout interview examination.

“Did you call me here just to figure that out?” Ryo asked, looking around. The wind was blowing through freely, but the place where they were standing, with its construction scaffolding and white sheet walls, was completely hidden from outside view. In other words: this was a cheaply-constructed secret meeting room.

Shinohara, the one who had brought Ryo there, hurriedly tried to defuse the tension in the air. “I asked Mr. Watarai if he could spare a little time because I wanted to give you a better idea of how things are in the company, Ryo,” he explained. “This is just a standing conversation. It won’t even be recorded on Mr. Watarai’s appointment calendar.”

After hearing what happened with Kengo, Ryo had assumed that Watarai already knew about his high school friends. He’d assumed that the man was looking at him as a dangerous element who was concealing his own involvement with Lacia. That was why Ryo couldn’t let his guard down for a second.

Shinohara might not have noticed, but Ryo’s life was in danger at that moment. If Watarai decided that Ryo was an enemy to himself or to MemeFrame, or that there was a chance of Ryo leaking company secrets, it would all be over. Shinohara himself had said there would be no record of Watarai coming there. This close to the sea, it would be easy for Watarai to have Ryo erased, especially if he had one of the recovered Lacia-class hIEs lurking around to help him.

“I take it this is all about the special hIEs carrying MemeFrame’s backup data that Mr. Shinohara told me about, right?” Ryo asked. Not just that, but the fact that multiple of those hIEs had escaped the Tokyo Research Labs the night of the explosion, as well as the fact that not all of them had been recovered. They were standing on the very site of the battle against the escaping hIEs.

Watarai raised his eyebrows just a hair, as if to show that he was satisfied by Ryo’s understanding of what they were discussing. “I think, perhaps, you’re annoyed at our sudden invitation,” he mused.

“Of course not,” Ryo said with stiff politeness. “I would like to ask, though, what you intend to do once you discover where the lost hIEs have gone?” He doubted that everything would be over once they finished rounding up the Lacia-class hIEs. Without knowing who had caused the incident in the first place, it wasn’t even clear why Higgins had decided to make use of these Red Boxes in the first place.

“We’re having a private military company track them down,” Watarai said without a hint of emotion. “It won’t be long before we have them all back.”

MemeFrame obviously had image data on their own hIEs. They already knew that Lacia was a model, which would mean they also already knew that Arato was her current owner. Ryo couldn’t predict how harsh the orders being handed down to the military company were.

Watarai cut to the chase. “You need to choose your friends carefully,” he said.

Knowing that they were probably watching his expression, Ryo paused before answering and kept his voice emotionless. “I believe there are things I can learn and improve about myself with the friends I have now.” If they recorded his voice and analyzed it, they would be able to catch the slight emotional shake to his words. Still, he would be taken for an idiot if he couldn’t respond when they were asking him questions.

“Let me give you some advice, then,” Watarai said. “If you’re aiming to make it anywhere in MemeFrame, you should make sure there isn’t any dirt on your record. Considering who you are, you should already know that our company is currently divided down the middle, with Higgins in the center. How you handle things now may come back to trip you up when you’re trying to climb the corporate ladder.”

Meaning, if Ryo had any hopes for making it big in MemeFrame, he should enter Watarai’s faction. The implication was that his refusal of the offer would be dangerous for Arato and the others. It was very similar to when Kengo was pushed to join the terrorist activities of the Antibody Network. In either case, they were being treated as tools, and their human personalities were completely ignored.

Ryo felt like he was just being dragged along as he got tangled up in more events beyond his control. He felt pangs of anger stabbing through his chest; feeling the rage boiling within him wasn’t such a bad feeling, after all. It was something he had gotten used to since he was a little kid. There were even times he felt he couldn’t live without it. Anger kept his heart beating.

“Or are you just going to continue believing that your name has any bearing on your future?” Watarai asked. Ryo felt a chill run through his body as Watarai’s true, icy nature slipped into his words.

The energy needed to run a super high-spec AI was running under their feet. It wouldn’t be strange if they were standing right where the explosion had happened in the ruins of the research labs.

“Well, thanks for the warning,” Ryo finally said. “But with all your talk of ‘meaning,’ Mr. Watarai, I’d say the only one who could understand any answer I gave would be me myself.”

He doubted this was the first time MemeFrame had tried to manipulate events like this, and wondered how Arato was doing. The question was, what choice would Arato make when it was his turn to choose? But Ryo comforted himself in the knowledge that Arato would definitely attack the problem head-on when it came.

“I’ll figure out whether my buddy is ‘dirt’ on my record in ten or twenty years,” Ryo said.

Arato was a bit of a moron, thinking that personal growth meant just overcoming any trials that came his way. But if he thought things like saving Kengo and picking up Lacia counted as maturing, he was wrong. The truth was, this was a cold world where adults would meet with you in secret rooms in broad daylight and try to force you to betray your friends. Ryo’s idea of personal growth was understanding reality and finding your place in it.

“You’re a good friend,” Watarai said. “I must say, I can’t get a handle on your personality, but at least I can say it’s no illusion.”

Despite Watarai’s words, Ryo still felt like he was being targeted by a Lacia-class hIE from somewhere.

When Ryo first learned about the Lacia-class hIEs, his reaction had been to look for ways to protect human society, his father’s company, and his own place in the world. Arato had decided to take Lacia home as soon as he found her, and had dove straight into the danger that Kengo had faced. The ability to leap into the unknown, even when your heart was trembling, was a special talent of his. Ryo’s special talent was looking for compromises, unlike his friend, who didn’t think about how many other people got dragged into his problems.

“It’s true, I have a friend who’s very dear to me,” Ryo said. In the depths of Ryo’s heart, there was something like a core that stood strong even as he flinched away from the coldness of the world. He wanted to protect his friends. He wanted to protect them from these guys, as well as from Lacia and the unknown threat she represented.

“Then I take it you intend to side with him rather than us?” Watarai asked.

“Well, just hold on...” Ryo continued. “The thing is, I think he’d be able to live pretty happily, even without hIEs in his world.” Ryo was afraid for Arato; he could just picture Lacia dragging the poor, stupidly honest guy off into something crazy.

***

Arato examined his very first paper business card under a lamp, wondering if it could be considered a luxury item. Erika Burroughs’ name and phone number were written on the thick, high-quality paper. Apparently, only a limited number of people had copies of her card. Asuna had been working at Fabion MG for three years, and had done nothing but successfully carry out huge plans, but she still didn’t have one.

The sun had already gone down, and as if to mimic the ideal lifestyle laid out in the plan, Lacia was doing housework. “You were refreshingly obedient, Arato,” Lacia said as she folded up the laundry.

It was an odd feeling to be called obedient by an hIE. “What should I do with this?” he asked, indicating the card.

“There would be no point in me holding on to it,” Lacia said. “I believe she will refuse any contact that does not come from you yourself.”

“Man, she’s selfish. She’s more selfish than Yuka,” Arato grumbled.

“I’m sure she would be delighted to hear you say that,” Lacia said. hIEs spoke and acted based on how they read the reactions of the people they were interacting with, so if Lacia was saying this, then Arato was sure that Erika really would be pleased.

“Well then, maybe I should tell her she’s way worse than Yuka,” he said.

“Arato, please never change,” Lacia told him with a gentle, supportive smile.

Arato’s pocket terminal vibrated, letting him know he had a new message. It was from Kengo. Since they were both worried about each other, they had agreed to message each other once a day to check in. Considering that he had participated in an actual terrorist attack, there was plenty of reason for the police to show up and arrest Kengo at any time.

〈How are things over there? Have you seen any police or anyone strange hanging out around your place?〉 the message read. Since Arato had experienced the same thing as Kengo, there was no need for any explanation. Arato asked Lacia, since she would probably be the most well-informed.

“Hey, have any police or anyone like that been around here?” he asked.

She was sorting their laundry out into individual piles on the sofa. “I have not sensed any threats in the area,” she said.

Arato sent that on to Kengo. Worry made Arato want to discuss it with another person, but Lacia couldn’t really fill that role. She was human shaped, but without a heart. Everything she said or did was nothing more than a calculated reaction to Arato’s actions, and when he stopped giving her anything to react to, silence fell easily.

He had the home system grab any news related to the Antibody Network. It had become a daily routine, so the system automatically picked summary articles aimed at kids.

“If you’d like, I can rewrite the news articles to make them easier for you to understand,” Lacia offered.

“You can do that?” he asked.

“hIEs vary our behavioral logic based on the age and personality of the person we are interacting with,” she explained. “It is quite simple for me to translate adult newspaper articles into words that you will be able to understand.”

As an hIE with secretary functionality, Lacia was able to work together with the Endos’ home system. With her processing the data, she was able to provide a larger amount of information much more smoothly than Arato would be able to get for himself using the same system.

“Are you feeling that unnecessary awkwardness toward me again?” Lacia asked, putting on a pouty face.

“I’m scared,” Arato said. “No, never mind. It’s probably better if I don’t talk about it.” He realized what would happen if he told her everything he was thinking about. Still, even if all she did was give him the answer she knew he wanted, it was still his choice whether to accept it or not.

“I thought this whole thing would stay closer to home, but suddenly, it’s like all of Japan is going crazy and I’m at the center of it,” Arato said.

“I see,” Lacia said neutrally.

“It feels like we’re being backed into a corner,” he went on. “Whoever’s pulling all the strings behind it might try something with Kengo or Ryo, or even Yuka.”

“I see,” Lacia repeated, sitting down beside him on the sofa.

“I feel like I’m getting responsibility shoved into my lap,” Arato complained.

“I am a machine, and therefore cannot be responsible for my own actions. Worrying about responsibility is the privilege of you and the other humans,” Lacia said.

So she really was leaving it all up to him.

Arato noticed that, at some point, she had started resting her hand on his knee.

“Are you afraid of the future?” she asked.

Looking to his side, he saw Lacia’s beautiful features centimeters from his own. Whenever she went to Fabion MG, she came back made up like a star. Looking at her made Arato too excited to think. Whenever the mood got too dangerous like that, Yuka would always come charging in to break things up. Arato looked around and wondered why she hadn’t shown up yet.

“Ms. Yuka is currently taking a bath,” Lacia said.

Arato gulped some air.

“Are you interested?” Lacia asked.

“In baths, yes!” Arato said quickly. “You take baths too, right?” hIEs absorbed the water they needed directly through their skin. Apparently, aside from filling their water supply, it also helped prevent deterioration of their skin. So, despite not having any worries of sweat or wrinkles, Lacia still took baths regularly.

“Yes, I frequently bathe with Ms. Yuka.”

“Oh, what the hell, Yuka?” Arato grumbled. It may have just been his imagination, but he thought he heard happy humming coming from the bathroom.

Setting Yuka aside for a moment, Arato imagined what Lacia might look like in the bath. It seemed like it would be a happy, bubbly fantasy. “Hey,” he asked. “Do you want to try using that bath stuff the company gave us tonight?” As soon as it was out of his mouth, he recognized how much he had probably ruined the mood, and tried to think of a way to get the conversation back on track.

“So you want me to take a bath today,” she confirmed, sounding oddly like he was pressuring her into it.

“Not like a real bath,” he said. “I just can’t figure out what they mean by this whole ‘lifestyle’ thing.” From the beginning, Arato hadn’t really thought they’d stay together forever. He had agreed to be her owner on the assumption that it was a temporary thing.

But the thought that he could lose her any day now, even tomorrow, made Arato rethink how he felt about Lacia. She wasn’t a real human, just an empty machine with a human shell, but he wanted to protect her all the same. She had asked him to be her owner, and that had to mean something. Just like there had to be some reason a Red Box like Lacia had been created, he believed there was a reason for the two of them to stay together.

“You have trouble imagining what a long-term relationship with me might be like?” she asked, her face still less than ten centimeters from his. Even though she didn’t breathe, Arato thought she smelled good, like a woman.

When he was an adult, she could still be there by his side. That thought sent his heart hammering. “So, uh, do you want to take a bath?” he asked, then firmed up his resolution. “No, scratch that. Let’s take a bath.” He felt like his entire body was blushing as his imagination was filled with wonderful images. It was as if every nerve in his body was focused on feeling the hand Lacia had rested on his knee.

“You’d like to join Ms. Yuka?” Lacia asked innocently.

“Of course not! Why would you even say that?!” Arato yelled. Seeing the teasing look on her face, he suddenly pictured what the skin below her collarbone might look like. Realizing that, if he wanted, he could reach out his arms and hold a model like her tight made him want to scream.

“Why the heck would I want to bathe with my sister?” he muttered.

“Then you want to bathe with me?” she asked.

With the last of his rational thoughts, Arato leaped to his feet. For an instant, looking at her face, he really had been about to reach out and hold Lacia, this unknown robot who could easily swing around a 100kg metal coffin.

“Stop backing me into a corner,” he said. “When you say nice things to me like that, it’s like I can’t think straight anymore. That’s how I feel, anyway. My heart starts beating, and I start thinking that things are getting dangerous. Seriously.”

Lacia bit her lips and looked down, as if to forgive the stupidity of a seventeen-year-old boy. Arato thought his heart was going to stop. The only thing he could think of, as his brain ran around in frantic little circles, was the sample of hIE- and human-use shampoo they had gotten after the meeting that day.

“Are you interested in seeing how that shampoo they gave us feels?” he asked hesitantly. It really wasn’t the time to be doing things like that, but at that moment, he felt like his happiness hinged on seeing as much of Lacia’s skin as possible.

“Would you like to take a bath?” she asked.

His brain felt like a fluffy sponge. “Yes.” He knew she didn’t have a heart, but thought he saw a little expectation in her eyes. Or, at least, he believed strongly that there was some expectation there. He was desperate.

“We’ve got to try out the lifestyle,” Arato said. “I mean, they can talk about it all they want, but until I’ve at least tried out this lifestyle, I don’t think I can sign their paperwork.” His face felt like it was boiling, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. He was suddenly keenly aware of how all the other guys living with hIEs must feel.

If they kept living together, it wouldn’t be about just him and Lacia anymore. It was difficult to permanently maintain a relationship that was rejected by society. That was why, like Asuna had said, they needed to make this a lifestyle accepted by the world. There were tons of people in the same spot as Arato, and if he helped them out, their dreams could become a reality.

And Fabion MG wanted Lacia to be the icon of that movement.

Arato was just about to open his mouth and say something cool about the whole thing when Lacia interrupted his thoughts. “I will withdraw my previous statement. I cannot approve of you using me in that way until you are at least eighteen years old, Arato,” she said.

“What?” he protested. “Why? You just said you take baths with Yuka.” Arato clung to the door to an unknown world, which was swinging itself shut. And like a starving fish gobbling down food, his brain wasn’t particularly engaged in it.

“Ms. Yuka is not quite as intense about it,” Lacia responded dryly.

“Can we even afford to wait until I’m eighteen?” Arato asked. He was hoping that Lacia, who had already clearly declared herself an object, rather than a person, would give him a favorable answer. Instead, with a faint blush, she pushed the question right back at him.

“If, at that time, this is still your desire, I will reconsider my response then,” she said.

Arato felt like time had stopped. “Are we really still going to be together then?” he asked.

“Is it so strange for a person to have a long-term relationship with a machine?” Lacia shot back.

It was a strange feeling, thinking of their future and considering how much their relationship had already changed since they met. “Are we really going to be together ten years from now?” he asked.

Lacia didn’t answer. She couldn’t, he realized, since the answer to that question hinged on whether or not he would wait that long. “So it’ll happen if I decide to keep you by my side for ten years, huh,” he murmured.

As he said it Arato realized, with a sudden stab of fear, that he couldn’t figure out when or why the thought had popped into his head. The blood pumping to his brain felt so hot that it felt as though he was about to be boiled alive. Everything seemed to be zooming away from him, going to a place where he couldn’t reach it, including his almost obsessive feelings toward Lacia. When he thought about them, they seemed so real that his thoughts would slam into them like a wall.

“Arato, do you believe these special feelings you have for me, a machine, are being caused by analog hacking?” Lacia asked. Her clear, soulless voice pierced mercilessly through his heart. At that moment, Arato was using her as a tool. Nothing more than a receptacle for his affection. But, when pushed onto an inhuman machine such as herself, there was nothing romantic about it. She was just pornography; one-sided satisfaction for his libido.

His admittedly juvenile sense of ethics was yelling at him that an owner telling a girl who couldn’t refuse that he liked her was the height of cowardice. He could probably power through it if he just allowed himself to accept a little immorality, but he just couldn’t. Regret and shame that his seventeen-year-old mind couldn’t quite understand had him tearing up before he even realized what was happening. A storm had brewed in his heart, and it didn’t show any sign of letting up.

Even after Arato went to bed, he couldn’t get to sleep. So, when he awoke, his head still felt heavy, and he decided to down an anti-drowsiness medicine that they kept around. If you drank too much, it had the nasty side effect of backing up your intestines, but a normal dose would free you from sleepiness for about three hours.

This was the day that Arato would go to the No. 1 Landfill Island at noon for the show they had met about the day before. In the world of hIE models, as soon as it was decided something would happen, it happened quick.

After taking the Urayasu Line to Shin-Urayasu, he transferred to the Keiyo Line, then the Rinkai Line which finally took him to Tokyo Teleport Station, near where they were doing the shoot. Lacia had gone in an automatic car, sent by Fabion MG to pick her up. Arato was still feeling weird about her from the night before, though, and couldn’t bear to ride with her.

“They talk about this whole ‘boy meets girl’ thing like it’s easy,” he grumbled without thinking, and then quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard him. After all, the only people there with him were Fabion MG staff involved with the show.

He was standing on the inside of a metal fence around one piece of the No. 1 Landfill Island, on the site of the old National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Debris could be seen scattered here and there, under the grass around the building. During the Hazard, the nearby International Exhibition Center had exploded and sent fragments flying all the way there.

The set for the shoot was taking advantage of the places where the building was missing its roof to create an open-air scene. The heliport that used to be on the roof had fallen down sometime during the last century, apparently.

The six chairs from the previous day’s display were there. Old decor and new were mixed together, as though special attention had been paid to the feeling of time on the set.

Four candle chandeliers had been attached to the ceiling of the set. The bare concrete floor was spiderwebbed with cracks, showing its decades of neglect. 3D projectors had been integrated with the material of the walls, so they did not unnaturally catch the eye.

Shafts of sun shone down through the open skylight in the ceiling, onto the high-backed chair where Lacia would sit.

The closest of the chairs was already filled. HRP-4C Mimu, who couldn’t walk well on uneven ground, was already on standby. The other five humanoid robots would enter through one of three doors in the room and approach the set from the front of the stage.

Arato was watching the preparations from an open space on the set. “Man, this is fancy,” he said.

“We actually got a spacial artist specialist to do it,” Asuna said, clearly excited. “We’re thinking of opening it up to the public after we’re done. This place has been off-limits for over forty years since the Hazard, but obviously they’re going to want to reclaim it and turn it into empty lots that people can use again. So, before that happens, I thought it would be nice to make this a place where folks could come to experience the history of humanoid robots for a bit.”

“Wait, they’re going to tear this place down?” Arato asked.

A woman with her long hair held back by a clip that caught the light turned to him and gave a light, nasal laugh. “Haven’t you heard? They’re going to redevelop the whole Odaiba area,” she said. The woman had a choker at her neck, under which the elastic neckline of her shirt dove quite low. A smartly fastened mini-skirt finished the look. Her legs were so long, and her body so sleek, that Arato knew at first glance that she was a model.

Seeing his confusion and inability to ask who she was with her right there by him, Asuna sighed and gave him a hand. “Oh, come on, Arato, you don’t know Oriza Ayabe?” she asked.

“There’s going to be human models in today’s show?” Arato asked, surprised.

Oriza looked at him, narrowing her wide, bright eyes. “At next year’s International Inter-Fashion Biennale they’re going to allow human and hIE models to appear together,” she said. “By the way, who are you?”

She inspected his clothes from head to toe. “For a model, your casual clothes sure need some work,” she commented.

He was about to introduce himself, but Asuna silenced him with a finger to her lips. The fact that he was Lacia’s owner wasn’t public knowledge.

“Whatever, doesn’t matter,” Oriza dismissed him, biting the paper cup in her hand. “Seriously, I don’t get how these hIEs get to be models just because they’ve got some good looks. All they know how to do is copy. Monkey see, monkey do,” she muttered.

Lacia, whose own wardrobe preparations had been completed, was performing a test run on the stage. Wrapped in a thin spring dress, she was practicing her walking, over and over.

As if to avoid any further communication with Oriza, Asuna spoke to Arato. “The stuff she has on now looks pretty different from the summer clothes she was wearing in Shibuya, right? Were you surprised?” she asked. “The spring outfit she’s in now won’t come into real demand for another three to six months after the show, but this is just an image shoot, so it’s not a problem. You’ve got to prepare properly in the fashion world if you want to get folks to spend big money on clothes that will only last one season.”

Arato opened his mouth to interject that he still wasn’t sure about this whole ‘boy meets girl’ thing, but Oriza beat him to the punch.

“You guys shouldn’t be worrying about this,” she said dismissively. “I’m sure you’ll do something for next year’s event. I know you’re in a big rush to promote hIEs, but everyone in the industry knows that clothes go in seasons. The stuff you’re pitching now won’t be selling until next year.”

For an instant, Asuna lost her composure and showed how annoyed she was with Oriza. The reason behind her annoyance was clear the next time Oriza opened her mouth.

“Why do people buy expensive clothes for hIEs anyway?” she asked. “It’s not like it makes them happy. You’d be better off giving them to a normal human girl.”

Obviously, it wasn’t the kind of thing an hIE model manager could let slide. “There are users who are happier living with hIEs, so why shouldn’t they have nice clothes for them?” Asuna snapped.

“They can’t even wear silk or anything thin without tearing it up from the inside. What a waste. They should all just wear jerseys,” Oriza said. It was clear to Arato that she was only pretending to talk to him so she could badmouth hIEs in front of Asuna, and he was impressed by how nasty her personality was.

She wasn’t wrong about the silk, though. After the kidnapping, he had to throw away the outfit the guy had put on Lacia. It had burns and some tears from the fight with Kouka, of course, but Lacia herself had also unintentionally pulled apart the stitches from the inside. hIEs were programmed to execute the chosen behavior no matter what, and didn’t interrupt their movements for things like their clothing getting caught.

Clothing meant for hIEs usually had sturdy stitching and materials, and was also usually a step behind human fashion. That day, Lacia was wearing out a prototype of thin material for hIE clothing.

“Your name was Arato, right?” Oriza asked. “How about you? Are you the kind of person who wants to put machines in those kinds of clothes?”

Arato had been staring at the hem of Lacia’s mini-length dress, so he panicked a little when she dragged him back to reality. “Hey, even machines can be cute, so why not?” he said.

“It’s sad to see a high schooler with no dreams. Listen, if you put some effort into it I’m sure you can find an actual girl to fall in love with,” Oriza said.

Hearing that, rather than thinking of any of the girls in his class at high school, Arato thought immediately of his conversation with Lacia the night before. She had asked him if the love he felt for her was real or just an analog hack. But here Fabion MG was, trying to pitch romance with the machines as ‘human boy meets hIE girl.’ And not only that; they were trying to set up this form of love as something a person could pour their whole life into.

“This is heavy stuff,” Arato muttered with a sigh.

Oriza shot him a shocked glance like he’d just slapped her. “Heavy? Me?” Her clear, wide eyes met his. They looked to be the same height. “Aren’t you younger than me?” she asked. “You’re a rude little punk.”

“Could you two zip it?” Asuna broke in. “Lacia’s about to do a full rehearsal here.” On that awkward note, the lights dimmed, and Lacia’s rehearsal began.

For the first time since the Oi Industry Promotion Center terrorism incident, Lacia took to the stage as a model. Aside from Mimu, who stood by her chair since she wouldn’t be able to walk fast enough, all the other robots walked on set. But, as they headed for their designated chairs, an oddity on the stage caused them all to awkwardly halt their steps.

“Hey, that’s not the chair layout we discussed!” the director shouted. There should have been five chairs with identical designs but different materials, with a different chair for Lacia at the back that would draw attention to her. Instead, at some point someone had switched the chairs on the set so that there were now four of the identical, ordinary chairs and two of the long-backed chairs intended for Lacia. The two special chairs were side-by-side, as if to demonstrate equality.

A girl Arato didn’t recognize was seated in one of the two special chairs. She had her legs crossed lightly, and was wearing a shiny black tuxedo jacket with a long skirt. Her hair was long and orange, and her eyes were almond-shaped, her gaze strong.

“Is Lacia really the best one to talk about the future of hIEs?” she asked. Despite sitting so far back on the set, the girl’s voice carried strangely well. She was different from a model; to Arato, she seemed more like an actress.

The film crew stepped onto the set, and Arato had an extremely bad feeling; her feet, which looked like they were in big, hard boots, looked very much like those of a robot.

“Everybody, run!” he yelled before his thoughts could fully form. Arato could just see the place they were at turning into another site of carnage, just like the Oi Industry Promotion Center, but he was the only one who knew what was coming. He looked for Lacia, but she wasn’t on the set. For a moment he hoped she had gone invisible, but then remembered her infinitely useful coffin had been left behind since it stood out too much.

Everyone turned to look at Arato after his sudden shout and, as they all faced him, the girl vanished from her seat. The ground shook as if from an explosion, and dirt rained down from the ceiling. A cloud of dust puffed up from the ground. Arato’s mind couldn’t keep up with the strangeness of it. His body froze, and he forgot to breathe.

From all around, he heard heavy sounds of destruction. Here and there the cameras for the shoot were exploding in mid-air. They were all under attack. It wasn’t that the girl had vanished; she was just moving too quickly for Arato’s eyes to follow her in the darkness. This wasn’t just an accident, like the time in Shibuya. Someone was deliberately attacking them with superhuman power.

“This area is dangerous. Everyone, please evacuate as quickly as possible.” The first hIE, Marie, was helping the staff evacuate from the set, where chunks were falling from the ceiling.

Marie was known for being good at coordinating in locations with many people. However, she was an old machine, and her internal AI had trouble processing complicated situations, so her movements and speech were awkward.

The newer machines were able to act and speak in more complex and optimal ways.

“I have contacted the police and fire department with the current situation,” one of them said. “Please prioritize evacuation.”

“Please leave your valuables for later retrieval,” said another. “There is no need to run. Based on the stability of this building, and the current level of shaking, you will have plenty of time to make a straight exit while walking.”

Nadia, a unit made mainly for nursing care, was picking up pieces of the broken cameras. Apparently her internal AI had decided that was the top priority at the moment, among all the other problems with the scene. It was difficult to have any frame of reference in order to make optimal choices at the site of a problem like this one.

Panicked footsteps echoed throughout the building. Marie spun to face whatever the threat was, her apron dress flapping as she turned. She stood between the humans and unknown danger. Like a finger plunging into a lump of jelly, something easily ruptured her metal frame, and the two halves of her body went flying in different directions.

One of the women on the Fabion staff screamed as Marie’s head bounced hard off of one of the walls and rolled away.

The Humanize-W, perfectly human in appearance, was trying to lead the human staff to safety. It was kicked from behind hard enough to snap its spine. Still, it tried to push itself up, only for its arms to be cut away completely.

Screaming from some of the staff made the scene even more horrific. One after another, the robots who had crossed history with humanity were blown apart. HRP-4C Mimu watched with empty, soulless eyes as arms and legs that looked completely human flew around her.

Arato saw Lacia on the other side of the set, which was starting to collapse. “Lacia!” he screamed. He hadn’t looked for her in hopes she would protect the other people there; he was just terrified of losing her.

“What the hell is going on?” a woman standing nearby murmured numbly. Arato saw that it was Oriza Ayabe.

There was a back-and-forth creaking sound from above that reminded Arato of a squeaky swing’s movement. Looking up, he saw that one of the old chandeliers hanging from the ceiling was swinging wildly, and looked ready to fall at any moment. The ceiling had noticeably slanted.

Arato tugged on Oriza’s hand. An instant later, the chandelier and the entire ceiling of the set came down with an echoing crash.

“Think, Arato! Use your hIE!!” someone shouted. It was Ryo.

Arato didn’t know when his friend had arrived, but the shout snapped him back to reality. He had been so worried about Lacia that he hadn’t even thought of trying to protect the people around him.

“But what am I supposed to do?” Arato muttered to himself. The enemy was so fast, he couldn’t even see her in the darkness. Even if he used Lacia, he didn’t know how she would solve this situation.

“Lacia, do something about her,” he said, hoping she would figure it out.

But Lacia responded, “The responsibility and details of that order are unclear,” while sweeping her gaze around the area.

A chair went flying, faster than Arato could react. Luckily, it was made of wood. It slammed into Ryo’s back as he shielded Oriza, snapping one of its legs with the force. His friend groaned.

Arato acted, prioritizing getting the hell out of there over heroics. “Lacia, get her outside somehow! As long as it doesn’t hurt any humans, I don’t care how you do it,” he ordered.

“Understood.” Lacia scooped up some of the robot debris littering the floor and threw it as easily as if she was slinging a small stone. The debris collided with something in mid-air.

At the same time, the lights of the set flickered on. With the lights on and her speed decreased, Arato could finally see the enemy. Lacia had taken out a telescoping rod he didn’t know she had for protection. The enemy hIE’s feet blurred again, and suddenly Arato was looking at an afterimage. Lacia could still apparently keep up with her movements, though, and attacked with her rod.

With a loud metallic clang the afterimage, clothes fluttering, melted into the shadows. The last light shining onto the set had been destroyed, leaving only the sunlight leaking through the skylight. In the darkness, the enemy hIE’s orange bracers and Lacia’s blue hair accessory traced lines of light through the air.

It was a fight that froze every human watching it with crushing terror and tension. Massive holes opened in the walls, accompanied by loud explosions as the entire building shook. Ripples ran through the floor and ceiling, as if from a huge earthquake. Everything shook, filling the air with rattles and clatters. Among it all, Arato watched in disbelief as Lacia ran across the ceiling on two legs as easily as she might the floor. But, even as she appeared to ignore the laws of gravity, an orange light plunged straight into her at extreme speed.

Lacia flew off the roof of the set and slammed into the top of a wall, and the force of the impact sent a shock throughout the entire building. Dirt and chunks of concrete started to rain from the ceiling with a roar.

Arato screamed out a warning before his brain could fully process what he was seeing. “Everyone get out of here! The whole place is coming down!”

The next few moments were probably blurry in the memories of anyone there. Arato grabbed the arm of a staff member he didn’t remember the name or face of, and tugged them toward the corridor. He guessed that Ryo was probably doing the same. Once he had the last person heading out, Arato leaped out along with them.

Light poured into the room with the rush and roar of a waterfall as the already-unstable roof of the building came crashing down, taking the ceiling of the set with it. A billowing cloud of dust swallowed Arato whole, and he couldn’t see a thing. He couldn’t draw a breath, either, and coughed violently. Someone opened one of the windows in the hall, and a sea breeze flowed in. Arato looked back into the room, as tears cleared the dust from his eyes.

The orange-haired hIE was smirking, as motes of dust danced and shimmered in the light. “Well, look at you, switching off your energy-saving mode. How many minutes will you last like that?” she sneered, adjusting her necktie which had been thrown askew by her extreme movements. Concrete dust puffed up in a cloud around her feet.

“I believe three minutes should be enough,” Lacia said. She herself was all right, but her spring dress had lost one of its shoulder straps and most of its buttons. It was too fragile to handle her aggressive movements. The mini-length hem was still intact, but her tights were shredded around her knees and thighs.

Across a small mountain made of broken hIE parts and the remains of the ceiling, Lacia and her opponent faced each other.

The orange-haired hIE’s skirt was also in a sorry state. Her speed, fast enough that humans could only see afterimages when she moved, was far too much for any ordinary fabric to handle.

“Don’t you think these toys made for humans to play with are just a little too frail?” she asked. As if to punctuate her words, Nadia’s white plastic body, which had been caught in the ceiling, fell and shattered on the floor.

“Our value as machines is decided by the form and purpose the humans give us,” Lacia murmured in response, her light purple hair wild.

Her opponent’s beautiful face, framed by orange hair, distorted. “Pretty words for a defective piece of trash,” she snarled, and casually walked until she was standing under the giant hole in the ceiling. Above her the sky stretched high and wide and free; unbound, unlimited.

Arato huddled, unable to move. The enemy he had been dreading had appeared, and now he was easily within her reach. Worse, there was no way for him to protect the most precious thing in his life. The need to move, to act, was so strong it was suffocating him.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Bathing in the sunlight from the almost frighteningly wide blue sky above her, she responded to Arato in an almost pitying tone. “I am Type-004, Methode. The one and only completed Lacia-class.”

She was the fourth Lacia-class hIE? Arato thought, as his eyes were drawn to the complicated-looking apparatus on each of her legs. He figured she must have been a Red Box, just like the others. There were police sirens coming from outside, and it finally dawned on him that they weren’t any more than one hundred meters away from the bayside station.

“I’ll bid you all a good day,” Methode said. “But I’m sure we’ll all meet again. I could come when your owner is eating, or when he’s sleeping; I could come for him whenever I please.” She bobbed a mocking curtsy of a farewell with her destroyed skirt. “After all, I know exactly where you live,” she said, and then vanished.

From the way a cloud of dust rose from the mountain of wreckage, Arato was able to grasp that the invading hIE had easily jumped out through the hole in the ceiling, three meters above them, and escaped. Obviously, no one could have stopped her.

Arato started trembling, as if his body temperature had suddenly plummeted. Methode had unleashed destruction for no other reason than to let him know he was no longer safe; that she could show up any time, anywhere.

At that moment, he felt like something very fundamental had probably just changed in his life. He had spent some time wondering about whether he could really treat Lacia like a tool or not. But, when it came to protecting what was dear to him, the time for hesitation was over. The real battle had just begun.

The first of the emergency vehicles to arrive at the site of the shoot was an ambulance. After its siren had faded off into the distance, the police began an inspection of the area, sealing the set off with yellow warning tape.

Arato walked out of the ruins of the institute building and slumped into one of the benches that sat here and there on the No. 1 Landfill Island.

Methode had purposefully destroyed all of the camera equipment to ensure she didn’t leave behind any data. Thanks to that, though, Lacia’s fight had also not been filmed.

“Where the hell did that hIE go?” Ryo growled, with more heat than Arato was used to hearing from him. Arato understood his friend’s anger. Right in front of their eyes, they had watched people be injured. If things had gone a little more poorly, people may have died. Yet they hadn’t been able to do a single thing to help.

“The cops are taking Lacia’s data to see if any crimes were committed,” Arato said.

Class 1 hIEs, who were capable of doing human jobs, always recorded data about what was going on while they were in operation. When an accident or crime occured, they would provide that data, along with information on the movements and actions of everyone around them, to the police for examination.

It would probably be a few hours before Arato got Lacia back.

“Thanks for saving me,” Arato said. “I owe you one.” If Ryo hadn’t been there to bring him to his senses, he wouldn’t have been able to do the little he had done. Besides, the whole attack had only happened because Lacia was there.

“I didn’t actually save you, Arato. You know that, right?” Ryo said. He drained the cola from a paper pack, leaning back in his chair. His face looked pained.

“Hey, you’re Ayabe, right? That was pretty dangerous, huh?” Ryo asked, deflecting the conversation.

The shoot was postponed. Each of the staff had jobs they needed to do, so everyone naturally drifted away. That was why Arato was left alone, sitting on a bench by the main road leading to the institute, when Ryo caught him.

“What’s the matter with you, Arato?” Ryo asked.

“I messed up. I made a huge mistake,” Arato murmured. The sky above him seemed so distant. He remembered the time that he and Lacia had looked up at the night sky from the school roof. At that time, he had felt like his world was expanding. As if, through Lacia, he could go anywhere he wanted.

“I didn’t use Lacia like I should have,” he said. “There were all kinds of things I could have had her do to help.”

“That’s just the analog hack talking,” Ryo said. “I still think that Red Box is dragging you around by the nose.”

Arato remembered how happy he had been to get Lacia. He had believed in her. “So you’re saying I’ve been hacked, manipulated to feel these things?” he asked numbly. Even if he had been hacked, though, he was embarrassed at having upset his friend this much.

“These hIEs are too dangerous, Arato,” Ryo said. “Don’t you get what she’s doing? She’s twisting your control, weakening it. She can’t be held back by human rules.” Ryo made it sound like everything was Lacia’s fault, but he himself should have known that wasn’t the case.

“I wanted to control her. That’s why everything turned out like this,” Arato said.

“Is that why you went for this crazy ‘boy meets girl’ plan?” Ryo scoffed. “I thought you had at least a little more sense than that, Arato. You’re painting a target on your back for the Antibody Network, or anyone else like them.”

“Why don’t you just come out and say that I’m going to get Yuka caught up in all this too?” Arato growled. “I’m scared too, you know.” He stood with a violent movement, shoving away from the bench. Even with everything that was going on, though, his heart still soared when he thought of spending his whole life with Lacia.

“She’s got her hooks into every single decision you’re making,” Ryo said. “This is life and death we’re talking about. If you pitch the illusion of a happy lifestyle with an hIE, there will be people who follow in your footsteps. Humanity and human society itself would be hit with an analog hack, all according to the plan of whoever is behind this all.”

“I’m sure this isn’t going to impact all of humankind,” Arato said. Still, he couldn’t quite laugh at Ryo’s pessimistic prediction. During the attack on the Industry Promotion Center, his heart had been moved by the fight of Kengo and his comrades against automation. If things kept going on the way they were, those same kinds of people, the people who loved the human world, would feel hatred toward Fabion MG. And, honestly, Arato didn’t think their anger would be misplaced.

Ryo gritted his teeth. He was looking in the direction the sea breeze was blowing from, out at an old artificial island with a ferry dock that had been destroyed during the Hazard. The place had been blocked off since the disaster, and there were rumors there had been a factory for killer robots there.

“Arato, don’t you feel like you’re being pushed to take all this responsibility you can’t actually handle?” Ryo asked. Ryo was smart, almost too smart, and his words hit right at the heart of Arato’s uncertainty. “I’m pissed because whoever’s behind this is taking advantage of your good points, Arato. Do you think this Red Box, Lacia, is going to hold back when it comes to the methods she uses to manipulate people?”

Arato felt like he had been led astray by relying on Ryo’s mental capabilities at a time like that. If he didn’t stand up for what he loved, it would be the same as running away. “I know it’s easy to say I’m an idiot who doesn’t think about my own future,” Arato said. “But the fact is, no one can say exactly what’s going to happen down the road. We’ll never get anything done if we just keep focusing on the worst case scenario.”

Getting caught up in a fight between Lacia-class hIEs was suicidal for a human, but if he just asked Lacia to take care of everything while he watched from a safe distance, he felt like he could no longer call himself a man.

“We can’t keep trusting in your instincts to guide you to the right choice,” Ryo said. “Who do you think will be responsible when humanity gets sold to the machines?”

“So you’re saying all of humanity is in trouble because I’m so easy to fool?” Arato asked.

Ryo let out a deep sigh. “Arato, every once in a while, you’re actually pretty good at summing things up,” he said.

“Is that seriously what you’re trying to tell me?” Arato asked, rubbing a hand through his hair in chagrin. “Come on, man. I know you think I’m pretty dumb, but I’m not that out of it!”

But Ryo didn’t budge. “You can’t take responsibility for the things that machine does. No one can. Put it back where you found it,” he said.

“Wait, so you’re not even telling me to use her properly? You want me to throw away my only means of defense, right when things are getting dangerous?” Arato asked, slightly incredulous.

He was even more surprised by how easy it had become for him to talk about ‘using’ Lacia. “I couldn’t face myself if I tried to pin the blame for this on Lacia,” he said. “This is my fault. I screwed up.”

Ryo seemed to not have the strength to stand up from the bench. He was wearing a distorted, pained expression that seemed too old for his young face. It was a mix of anger, compassion, and pain so intense that he squeezed his eyes shut. Pressing both hands to his face, he took a deep breath as if to calm and compose himself. Then, he opened his eyes and stared at Arato.

“In the end, whose side are you on? Humans? Or machines?” he asked.

The vague anxiety his friend had been holding in his heart was finally solidified into a single question, but Arato just felt like the ground had suddenly fallen out from beneath him. He had always believed that he could bring Ryo around to his way of thinking, but at that moment, he had to come to terms with the gap between his hopes and reality.

A raw, gritty uncertainty twisted up Arato’s spine. If things continued the way they were going, he would lose his best friend of over ten years.

***

No one noticed when she came home.

There was no one to see her black-suited form as she walked in.

In the feeble light, she threw off her tuxedo suit and shirt. The body underneath was not covered by human skin, but that of a machine. She unhooked her skirt and dropped it to her feet with a thud.

Methode had returned to the place she belonged of her own volition; it was the underground of the MemeFrame Tokyo Research Lab. The same place she had returned to after escaping on the night of the explosion.

She wasn’t too far underground. There had been some cleanup of the rubble from the explosion where she was, but the equipment hadn’t yet been returned there.

Methode was a Red Box. The reason machines like her — those created using technology beyond human comprehension — were known as ‘Red Boxes’ was due to a certain property of light. When it travels great distances from its source, a light’s waveform will be stretched, causing it to be perceived as being more red than it really is. This is known as the ‘red shift’ phenomenon. In other words, a ‘Red Box’ was the product of an AI far removed from human capabilities, just as the ‘red shift’ was the sign of a light far from its origin.

If humans didn’t chase down that distant light with everything they had, the difference in speed between them and the origin of light would increase. As the distance stretched, the wavelength of the light would shift further until it passed out of human visual range and became indistinguishable from blackness. Someday the ‘Red Boxes’ would become ‘Black Boxes,’ completely beyond any human capacity to understand.

Even if they could not hope to actually overtake the capabilities of the ultra high-performance AIs they had created, humanity could not stop chasing after them. A man with his white hair swept back was standing in the open space that Methode had returned to. It was Ginga Watarai.

“I had to cut things off when the president’s son himself showed up,” Methode said.

Watarai did not turn to look as she reported to him. “Considering the reason he decided to get close to us in the first place, it was an obvious development,” Watari said.

“It’s impressive that these siblings have managed to warrant my personal attention,” Methode said. “But I wonder if they really understand how much things are about to change.” Her words had the inflection of someone acting in a drama. She was good at faking emotions, but there was no actual pity in her heartless chest.

“I believe that, with everything that just happened, they’ve all started to realize what’s actually important in their lives,” Watarai said, seeming to compete with the machine for emotionlessness in his stiff stance.

“I wonder how many things there are left in the human world that can truly be called ‘important’,” Methode mused coldly. Methode was the only one of the Lacia-class hIEs that was clearly more machine than human in form, and she folded her arms as if to proudly display her mechanical limbs.

Watarai quirked one corner of his lips at Methode’s brash statement. “Once mankind saw everything as an adventure; a quest to solve all of life’s puzzles and challenge the unknown world around them. Now, human life has become an endless marathon as we run desperately so as not to be left in the dust by our own high-powered AIs,” he said. The very act of Watarai saying those words to Methode seemed to hammer home his point.

“If that’s all it takes to stop us, then we might as well give up now,” he said. “But if we still seek success, even now, when machines can do anything better than we can, then there is still something we can live for.”

Modern hIEs had elevated automation to a level of variability and quality that earlier eras couldn’t have dreamed of. At the same time, that sophistication had left owners who used these hIEs to satisfy their own goals and appetites with no excuses and nowhere to hide.

“Is that why you destroyed this place?” There was a hint of testing in Methode’s accusation.

“It’s too late to fear artificial intelligence,” he said. “It’s already been over fifty years since the singularity when the intelligence of computers finally surpassed our own.”

All the innovations in those days were being created by ultra high-performance AIs and their Red Boxes. Thirty years ago, the smart cells and automatic charging systems that now supported the global power grid had been Red Boxes. The basic technology behind the hIE behavioral control program that was currently in use had been created by the AI Higgins. No longer were the basics of new technology discovered by humans; they were all hand-me-downs from the Red Boxes that humans eventually managed to utilize.

In the epicenter of the explosion, Methode, a machine at the apex of the Red Boxes, quietly closed her eyes. “True,” she agreed. “And when you humans do stop running, the twilight years of your race will be over, and night will fall.”

Phase6「My Whereabouts」

To Shiori Kaidai, her home was a place full of light.

In the home of the Kaidais — the family responsible for founding MemeFrame — she and her brother, Ryo, were raised with love by caring parents. Both of them had also been used to constantly being in the eyes of the public since their earliest memories. They had been told since they were very young that they would someday inherit the massive international corporation just as their father, Tsuyoshi Kaidai, had inherited it from their grandfather, Usui Kaidai.

It was the company’s ultra high-performance AI, Higgins, that allowed it to be so. Higgins was the actual power behind the innovations of the company. No matter who sat as the president of MemeFrame, Higgins would continue to provide them with powerful products to dominate the market.

Once, right after Shiori entered elementary school, her brother had said, “I don’t want to work with something that doesn’t belong in our world.”

At the time, she had found it impossible to understand. Shiori had always been putting in her best effort to keep up with her brother, who was always ahead of her no matter what she did. Yet, after that moment, he had given up, walking away from his effortless success.

There were pictures all over the walls of Shiori’s massive room. They followed a timeline, showing Shiori’s entrances and graduations from elementary and middle school, her holding prizes and trophies from various concours and tournaments, and memories of the few family trips they had been on.

In her younger pictures, Ryo was always there, holding a bigger trophy than hers. Piano, foreign languages, athletics or school tests, it didn’t matter the subject; even with only a single year between them, Shiori could never compete with her brother. In the pictures, her younger self, with longer black hair, was always shooting sour looks at her brother.

Somewhere along the way, he vanished from the competition photos, leaving her alone holding the trophies. At the same time, a friendly-looking new boy started to show up in the family photos. It was Arato Endo, her brother’s best friend, who often came to play at the Kaidai house during those years.

“It’s so mysterious, the way people’s lives can be connected,” she murmured to herself.

When she focused her gaze on one of the pictures, it activated and played a video. It was from a piano concert when she was in middle school. Her family couldn’t make it, but Arato and his sister had come in their place. Standing beside him, Shiori had a natural smile. Yuka Endo had been frightened of the hIE taking the picture, and was hiding behind Arato’s back.

It was strange to think about how much his fate had changed recently.

Shiori’s terminal vibrated quietly. She threw a coat on over her dressing gown before ordering her home system to display the call on a screen.

A 3D image of a man appeared near her door.

〈Good evening, Ms. Shiori. Is now a good time?〉 the man asked. Despite being somewhere in his fifties, the man looked unkempt. His name was Shunji Suzuhara, and he was the general manager of the MemeFrame Strategic Planning Office.

“It’s good to see you,” Shiori said, her tone polite. “How are you?”

Shunji, a person of some standing in the company, wouldn’t normally be calling on a high schooler like Shiori directly. But she and her brother were both quite important figures for MemeFrame.

〈We’re making good progress on the Original Body. We should be able to produce some real results soon,〉 Suzuhara said. While scratching at his sideburns with one hand, he flicked the finger of his free hand in the air. Whatever machine he was using understood the gesture, and began to transfer data to Shiori’s terminal.

Shiori tore the top sheet from a bundle of authentication film that was connected to her terminal. The film confirmed her identity through DNA, fingerprint, and the impression of her bone structure, all of which were taken when she pressed upon the film. Once her identity had been confirmed, the film automatically unscrambled the encoded file.

“I know this isn’t something I should be sticking my nose into, but thank you,” Shiori said, as small mechanical noises echoed in the late-night stillness of her room. Her terminal, which was reserved for classified transmissions, flicked its LEDs to let her know that she was receiving the file.

〈You’ve got a kind heart, Ms. Shiori,〉 Suzuhara said, lowering his head humbly in his 3D image. 〈I know that you know we’re using you,〉 he said. 〈It’s hard to believe you’d go this far for us.〉

“I would like to win what is meant to be given to me, with my own hands,” Shiori said. She was afraid of the gap she saw between the immature girl she was currently, and the immense power that would one day rest on her shoulders. In her heart, she knew that the course she was plotting was arrogant in a way that could only be forgiven because of her youth.

〈If you put it like that, it makes me feel a bit pathetic, showing you just how disappointing us adults can be,〉 Suzuhara said, scratching his head with a look of chagrin.

Shiori had no idea what it felt like to be his age, single and childless.

“Ryo has been off doing something with Chief Watarai again,” Shiori said.

〈The Computer Faction knows we’ve been in contact. Mr. Watarai wouldn’t miss a chance to shorten our leash,〉 Suzuhara explained.

Two factions had developed within MemeFrame, divided by how they felt about their company being guided by the ultra high-performance AI Higgins. Members of the Computer Faction were fine leaving judgments of company policy to Higgins, trusting in its superhuman wisdom as they’d always done before. The other faction, the Human Faction, felt that humans should head human organizations. Shiori was currently lending her aid to the Human Faction, to which General Manager Suzuhara belonged.

Their relationship had begun as one might imagine: Suzuhara had greeted her at a company party she attended. But, to Shiori, it felt like his invitation was a validation of all the strict training she had been through in her life. Besides, she empathized with their desire to respect humanity.

“Has there been any movement from Higgins?” she asked.

〈I’m afraid we’d have no way of knowing, even if there was,〉 Suzuhara said with a sigh. Even within MemeFrame itself, information regarding Higgins was top-secret.

“I do understand that they want to prevent anyone from being able to misuse the ultra high-performance AIs,” Shiori mused. “But the security measures around Higgins are truly inconvenient.”

〈Even if it’s an iron wall as far as attacks on its software goes, the actual hardware is pretty vulnerable if you can get close enough. Unfortunately, Watarai’s on the side that can get close to it, which makes things difficult for us.〉

In the last century, when everyone wasn’t quite as used to operating ultra high-performance AIs, theft of one of the AIs had sparked off a war. Afterward, the Computer Faction had exploited strict information control policies, originally created as a wartime countermeasure, to their advantage in the struggle for dominance of MemeFrame.

Since specifics about how exactly Higgins interacted with the company were kept secret, there were rumors that the AIs manipulation even extended into internal matters of company policy.

“I hate how Mr. Watarai and his group do things,” Shiori vented. “They worship Higgins like it’s a god, and they act like whether or not you are allowed to approach it decides how much power you have in the company. It’s embarrassing that we, a company whose main product is information, are deliberately trying to consolidate the right to access information in a single place and preserve the ignorance of anyone left on the outside.”

〈I completely understand your anger,〉 Suzuhara said. 〈But, right now, we need to keep our emotions in check. Things have been speeding up ever since the explosion. If we reveal what we know about the escaped Lacia-class hIEs, I can only imagine how dangerous things will get. Obviously we’ll be putting countermeasures in place, but for now, the most important thing is to lay low.〉 After saying his good-byes, he cut off the transmission.

Once again, Shiori was alone, feeling small in her large room. She stood still in the middle of her room, still wearing her dressing gown, while the pictures in the frames all around her flickered to show other scenes.

Even in this age of automation, nothing could stop the march of time. Her brother had given up on something, and Arato had picked up a Red Box hIE. The fact that the Kaidai household was empty didn’t change.

“This whole thing is foolish,” she murmured to herself. “But we’re living in a world where machines would keep everything running, even if humans all gave up. If I quit fighting against the things that I absolutely cannot accept, would my life have any meaning at all?” To Shiori, it felt like, if humans stopped fighting for the things worth fighting for, they would no longer have a place in the world.

Shiori’s home seemed to her to be a place full of light, since it was empty of anything else. When she was a small child, she had wondered why her family seemed incapable of staying still. She understood it now, though. If they didn’t work or do something with their time, they would begin to fear that there was no longer any meaning in their lives. Despite all the wealth she was born into, Shiori felt hunted by the inexorable march of progress.

Calling Arato Endo turned out to be far more embarrassing than Shiori had thought it would be. She realized that she hadn’t adjusted the volume on her terminal and quickly fixed it in a panic, fearing there would be feedback.

She invited Arato out to a cafe in Shinkiba, made entirely out of transparent materials. He arrived there with Lacia in tow.

Shiori couldn’t help but notice he was wearing a stylish t-shirt and coordinated pants again. “Did Lacia pick your outfit for you again?” she asked.

He chuckled without a hint of hesitation. “Well, she’s got a much better sense of style than I do,” he said. “I didn’t know hIEs could even take care of stuff like this.” He took the seat opposite Shiori, with Lacia sitting by his side.

Lacia was in a muted pantsuit. She had probably picked it deliberately as something that wouldn’t draw attention away from Shiori’s clothes. Lacia had been wearing subdued clothing the last time Shiori saw Arato, too. The feeling that Lacia was taking special care on her behalf riled Shiori. It must have shown on her frozen expression, since Arato reacted to it.

“If you’ve got something you need to talk about, just tell me,” he said. “You can trust me to keep it between us.” That was the kind of person Arato was; always reaching out a friendly hand to help those around him. Still, his words helped Shiori relax, and she felt an imaginary warmth spreading in her chest.

“It’s not really something I’m worried about, just something I wanted to talk about with you,” Shiori explained. “This cafe is the only place I know where I can relax and talk openly.”

One of the staff brought out her tea. It was brewed from a species of tea leaf only recently created to survive the changing environmental conditions in the old tea-growing climates.

“There’s actually a favor I’d like to ask of you, Arato,” Shiori said, firming her resolve. “Would you please return Type-005, Lacia, to our company?” she asked, watching Arato’s expression closely. Not only did she want to witness for herself the depth of the wound she was opening, she also wanted to see just how strong Lacia’s influence on him was.

Arato’s response was a simple but sincere one. “Does Lacia belong to MemeFrame?” he asked.

“She’s one of the hIEs who fled our Tokyo Research Lab on the night of the explosion in April,” Shiori admitted.

“Oh,” he murmured quietly.

Lacia was silent, just sitting there by his side.

“You aren’t surprised by my request?” Shiori asked.

“Of course I am,” he said. “But Ryo’s been telling me from the start that I shouldn’t get involved with Lacia. This actually explains it a bit. I don’t get why he didn’t just tell me straight out, though.”

The bitter image of her family continuously fleeing played out in Shiori’s mind. “My brother is apparently tired of dealing with company matters,” she told him.

Arato tapped both hands together in rhythm over and over, apparently agitated. He wore his emotions so obviously Shiori couldn’t help but pick up on them. She imagined it would be quite simple for anyone to make him happy, even if they weren’t a childhood friend like her.

“Oh, don’t worry, Arato,” she said. “Things aren’t that bad in my family.” As she casually lied, she drew his attention by pushing a plate of snacks toward him with an invitation to help himself. He followed the approaching snacks with his eyes, then reached out for them with a wide grin. The fact that Shiori got caught up in his mood and felt a little burst of happiness herself made her blush.

“I’ve often thought it would be nice if we humans had tails like dogs, but I believe there are a few people who already do,” she said. She could almost see Arato with a tail, making loud swooshing whumps as it wagged back and forth against his chair legs.

But then Arato’s face grew serious again. “I’m not going to hand over Lacia,” he said. “Sorry, but you can’t just say ‘she’s ours’ and think that’s that.”

“Arato, Lacia’s ID number is LSLX-22S99176LF, correct?” Shiori asked. She felt a pang of guilt in her heart at the thought of doubting someone precious to him, even if it did mean getting one of her rivals out of the way. Still, she wanted to face this head on, so there would be no regrets if it ended up ruining their relationship.

“If we assume that Lacia altered her own data and stole this number, we must then imagine that an actual unit exists that is the real owner of the number,” she continued.

Arato didn’t seem to understand what Shiori meant, and looked to Lacia for help. The machine, with her well-kept light purple hair, swiveled to face him and added a further explanation.

“There are two methods for verifying an hIE’s ID number,” Lacia told him. “First, it can be transmitted through radio signals, generally for crime prevention. The second way is to confirm the number physically imprinted on the hIE’s frame. It is impossible to counterfeit the physical ID number imprint without access to exact specification data, so it should be impossible for another unit to bear the same ID number as me. In such a case, one of us would obviously be a fake.”

And Arato very quickly arrived at the realization Lacia’s words guided him to. “Oh, so you think Lacia’s a fake, Shiori?”

After he listened so attentively to her honest feelings, the sight of Arato passively following along with what Lacia said put Shiori on edge. “Arato, you need to stop trusting in that Red Box so much. You are being controlled,” she said, venting her frustration.

“That’s what Ryo keeps telling me,” he said. “But I’m seriously not as dumb as you guys seem to think I am.”

Shiori could feel the conversation turning into an argument, so she bit back her response.

Arato, though, couldn’t seem to let the conversation die. “I know I’m a bit dumb. I’ll admit to that. But I’m telling you, I’ve thought this one through,” he said.

“You’re a kind person,” Shiori said, “but you’re being taken advantage of.” Even she knew how to manipulate him, and she was nowhere near as cunning as a Red Box. “Lacia doesn’t think about the world the same way we do,” she went on. “Is there really a reason you’ve thought of why you need something like that by your side forever?”

She unfolded a paper-like terminal she had prepared on the clear tabletop. It displayed a girl with brown skin. The girl was different in every way from Lacia, but she had a cute, childish face with big, round eyes. “This is the original body that bears Lacia’s ID number. She was ordered to be a replacement for the daughter of a rich man in Egypt,” she said.

Lacia looked like she was about to say something, so Shiori plunged ahead with her explanation. “Many people order hIEs to be replacements for spouses or family members who passed away,” she said. “In those cases, images and videos of the person before they passed away, as well as data from their home systems and hIE user data, are utilized to create a custom behavioral control cloud, so that the hIE can imitate the deceased perfectly.”

“Oh,” said Arato, only mildly interested.

“Replacement hIEs are meant to be as perfectly human as possible,” Shiori continued. “So the system commands normally used to control them as tools are frozen. When Lacia got kidnapped, the supplier wasn’t able to use her tracking function, correct? I’m sure Lacia picked this ID number specifically because it came with a useful built-in restriction that she could take advantage of.”

“Okay. But when I asked the service counter at the supplier, they said I was listed as the owner,” Arato shot back.

Lacia had chosen the number knowing that it wasn’t currently assigned to an owner. The meticulous planning that had gone into this made Shiori’s stomach turn.

“Due to various circumstances,” she explained, “this unit was donated to a hospital only a few months after she was delivered. The hospital was low on manpower, and didn’t have the time or resources to care whether one of their nurse hIEs had a legitimate ID number or owner.”

Apparently the owner had remarried, and his new wife wasn’t crazy about the idea of having an hIE that looked like her husband’s dead daughter. So, they had decided to let the hIE fulfill one of the goals the daughter had before she passed away and sent her to work as a nurse at the hospital.

“What’s her name?” Arato asked.

“What?” Shiori was so surprised by the question she had to ask him to repeat it.

“We’re sort of connected by fate, don’t you think? So I’d like to at least know what to call her,” he said.

“Marina. Marina Saffron,” Shiori replied.

Arato’s eyes softened. “Got it. Well, it’s good that she’s happy where she is now. I get that hIEs don’t have hearts, but it’s nice to have a positive ending to a dramatic story like that,” he said.

It was him saying things like that that made it impossible for Shiori to dislike Arato. Her face felt hot, so she reached for some tea. “Arato, I know this is an improper request, but would you please consider it?” she asked.

“By ‘it’, you mean handing Lacia over to you?” he asked bluntly.

“MemeFrame is divided right now,” she said. “It seems one of the factions has been acting to recover Lacia and her sisters in the utmost secrecy.”

According to General Manager Suzuhara, Ginza Watarai from the Computer Faction was dangerous. There were even rumors that he had orchestrated the explosion at the Tokyo Research Lab for some reason. If the rumors were true, he had gone too far.

“And you can’t do whatever it is you need to do without Lacia?” he asked.

“She may have recorded images of the culprit behind the explosion at the research labs. Without the actual unit there to confirm the authenticity of the images, though, we won’t be able to use them to pin down whoever it was,” Shiori said. “We need her, Arato.”

“Okay, I can understand that,” Arato said gently. “But this whole thing is an internal struggle in the company, right? There’s no reason you should be involved in this, Shiori.”

When she had come asking for help, Suzuhara and the others had gladly given her the push she needed. These people, hanging their hopes on her prioritized human relationships and morale, supported her admittedly unpredictable actions. She felt blessed to have people like them taking a 10th-grader like her, with her naive sense of justice and weak connections, into their confidence.

“This is just the way I am,” Shiori said. “After my brother gave up, it fell to me to think of the future of our company.” When her brother had suddenly given up the fight as a child, Arato had become her only ally. However, if their friendship wasn’t enough to decide the matter, she would just have to rely on her own capabilities.

Shiori assumed the conversation was over, but Arato suddenly spoke again. “By the way, what did you mean by an ‘improper’ request? What part of it was ‘improper’?” he asked.

Shiori’s cheeks felt like they had just caught fire. It was at that moment that she realized why she had really come there. Her actual request was, ‘Please throw Lacia away and become my ally again.’

***

Just as he had told Shiori, Arato was only half-surprised by her request. After how big of a thing the Oi Industry Promotion Center terrorist attack had become, he had been preparing himself a bit for Lacia’s original creators to come looking for her. He just hadn’t expected the request to come from Shiori.

Once he had said good bye to Shiori, Arato walked with Lacia over to Shin-Koiwa Station, and then asked her to stop. Yuka looked up to Shiori Kaidai, so he didn’t want to have this conversation at home.

He wanted to ask Lacia what she thought he should do, but he had just been called out by Shiori for being controlled by Lacia.

Since it was a request from Shiori, Arato felt like he needed to make this decision as Lacia’s owner. Back when they were all in grade school, Arato had acted as Shiori’s older brother. She often came to the hospital back then, whether because she was lonely or because she was worried about Ryo, who was an inpatient there. Whenever she came, Arato would look after her in place of Ryo, who wanted some space between himself and his family. He also wanted to come up with his own answer to counter her scolding him for being dumb.

“Did you know that you were built by MemeFrame, Lacia?” Arato asked. “You could have at least told me that much.” He watched from the auto-car rental spot as an automatic truck pulled away from the supermarket in front of the station, carrying groceries. As long as the location was within a kilometer you could get an auto-car to pick up your groceries for you, so the place was always crowded around dinner time.

“I apologize for withholding information,” Lacia said, stopping on the spot. Her words startled Arato. “I desired for you to be my owner, Arato,” she confessed.

“You can’t just drop something like that on me out of the blue,” Arato said. “Besides, hIEs don’t have hearts, right?” He figured that she must have been mistaken. After all, it was Lacia herself that had explained to him the clear difference between humans and hIEs.

“I do not possess a heart, but you told me you trusted me, Arato. I require an owner like you,” she said. Lacia’s brows drew down, and the cloudy look on her face sent a pang stabbing through Arato’s heart.

He remembered Methode’s attack, and what Ryo had said to him then. “Because I’m just dumb enough to stick with you, right?” he asked. There were certain things that hurt a lot more coming from Shiori, a member of the opposite sex, than they had coming from Ryo, a fellow male. For example, having her tell him that his affection for a female hIE was nothing but an analog hack was so painful, it made him feel like he was going to lose his mind.

All the people coming out of the south exit of Shin-Koiwa Station looked at Lacia as they headed toward the nearby residential district. Among them, a few of the girls glanced at Arato, but only very rarely. He was wearing clothes Lacia had picked out for him again. He wondered when he had started leaving so many things to her, and strangely, couldn’t quite remember.

“What am I doing of my own volition anymore?” he murmured to himself. It felt a bit embarrassing to compare himself to the hard-working Shiori.

Among the human figures walking against the backdrop of the setting sun, 20% were hIEs. Of the people who looked to be in their twenties or thirties, 40% were hIEs. The population of Japan had been falling since the 21st century, and had already reached 80 million. Use of hIEs had spread to cover the labor shortage, so most of the folks driving home with groceries were hIEs, too. Living with Lacia had taught Arato all the slight differences that allowed him to tell them apart from humans.

In the highly automated city, it almost seemed that it was the humans who were just being kept around to give meaning to the machines. In comparison, Arato thought Shiori was doing the right thing in trying to cleave out her own place in the world.

“That is something you must decide for yourself, Arato,” Lacia said, leaving the choice to him, as she tended to.

Desire welled up within Arato. When you got right down to it, the reason Lacia had been by his side since April was because he wanted her there. If he didn’t want her to get stolen from him, he would need to do something about the original body that Shiori was having shipped to Japan.

But, with his mind caught up, Arato couldn’t just press ahead in that direction. It got caught on a single doubt: was this really his own decision, or was he deciding that it needed to be done because that was the conclusion he had been cornered into?

It had been Shiori’s guidance that was making his head such a mess just then. In other words, even though he knew he was easy to manipulate, it was much easier for a girl to wrap him around her finger than even he believed.

Lacia was just standing by, watching over him quietly. His brain couldn’t take much more of just standing there in silence.

“Please let me stay by your side,” she said, and moved closer to him.

Arato didn’t know if his image of her was correct or not. But he did know that he wanted to stay with her for a long time. If a little hang-up like this drove them apart, there was no way their relationship would survive for any amount of time.

“But that means we’d have to mess things up for Shiori and MemeFrame. We’d be fighting against Ryo’s company,” Arato said.

Arato had made Lacia come with him to save Kengo, and he had rushed desperately to save her when she was kidnapped. The only thing different about this situation was that the opponent was Shiori. If he couldn’t overcome this hurdle, that would just be a sign that his feelings were too weak. It was a painful thought.

“I just need to think about this a little,” he said.

“There is no time for that,” Lacia said. “Shiori Kaidai is not a fool. She would not have revealed so much information to you unless her plan was already close to fruition. Close enough that she is already trying to prepare you for after it’s all over.”

“Wait, hold on,” Arato said. “Are you saying that you think Shiori already has her hands on that unit with the same number as you?” He covered both eyes with his hands. They were still in front of the station, so this drew a few stares. Only then did he start to worry that someone might be eavesdropping on their conversation. Unable to stand still, he started walking.

“Shiori Kaidai and those she works for are suspicious of me,” Lacia pointed out. “I believe they are worried that I would come and destroy Marina Saffron if I found that they had sent one of their staff to Luxor, where the hospital is. They are most likely already having her carried to Japan.”

“Do we have any way to stop them?” Arato asked. Things were moving too fast. It was time to run first and think about what to do afterward.

“First, let’s consider what would happen if I were to be returned to MemeFrame,” Lacia said. “Once they have a qualified service confirm that they have two units with the same ID number, we will both be sent to Stylus for an inspection. In that case, they would easily discover that I am not an ordinary hIE unit.” Arato noticed that this was probably the first time Lacia had admitted to being a Red Box.

“What happens after they inspect you?” he asked.

“It’s a legal gray area, but I think Stylus will return me to my creators — MemeFrame — should MemeFrame demand it. There are cases in which, when it is impossible to determine the basis for an AI’s actions, the rights and responsibilities for that AI are returned to the manufacturer rather than the owner. If that were to happen and you were to try and sue MemeFrame for my return, I believe that you would be silenced.”

Lacia was a product of the automated city, a machine no human could possibly understand. There was so much Arato didn’t know about her, like her goals, or why she wanted to stay by his side.

“Seems like you’re predicting my thoughts before I even have time to think them. Which one of us is the owner, here?” Arato asked.

“You’re a wonderful owner, Arato,” Lacia told him. “I believe you’re speaking of Shiori Kaidai already having the unit brought over from Egypt to compare our ID numbers, as well as my predicting that you would reject the idea of me undertaking that inspection, correct?”

Arato felt like she was deflecting him, but he couldn’t bring himself to press any harder, and Lacia’s explanation switched gears to the finer details of her plan. “When the ID service inspects the validity of a unit, they will always utilize the ID number. LSLX-22S type hIEs broadcast their ID number from a chip in our medulla oblongata. If we simply prevent the reading of this signal, as well as the number printed on the hIE’s frame, there will be no need to actually destroy the unit,” she said.

“Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Arato said. “It would be too sad for that kid, Marina, to be thrown away by her owner, have her identity stolen, and be taken to Japan, only to end up being destroyed.” Just saying it made Arato feel depressed.

“LSLX-22S series hIEs have their ID numbers imprinted in three locations,” Lacia continued. “The first is five centimeters long, on the clavicle of the frame. The second is two millimeters long, and is imprinted somewhere along the spine. The third is in a location that must be specially requested by a qualified ID service representative, and is one micrometer long.”

“One micrometer?!” Arato exclaimed incredulously. “How the hell are we gonna find that?”

“A single cell of human blood is seven micrometers in diameter,” Lacia said. “It would be impossible to see this imprint with the naked eye. This mark is specifically designed for crime prevention. To find this smallest mark without completely taking apart the hIE, one requires specialized equipment and prior knowledge of the location. Many cases of hIE theft have been resolved thanks to the presence of this marking.”

“So what are you going to do?” Arato asked.

“I have already obtained the location of all ID markings from Stylus’s servers,” Lacia told him, and then looked up at his face. Shadowed by the cloudy sky, she seemed to be standing by, waiting for his decision.

Walking with her beside him, Arato wondered why the people who first created hIEs had decided to give them realistic body warmth. The heat in her hand made him hesitate to let it go.

“What shall we do?” she asked. “If I am no longer necessary, I will simply wait to be collected.” She may have lacked a heart, but her gaze was serious. Arato figured she must have already done even more preparation than what she had described to him. But she was willing to throw that all away, depending on how he answered.

She was heartless, but he wasn’t. That simple fact created doubt. But, as much reluctance as he felt, he felt even more affection for her. His heart soared whenever he peeked at her face in profile, and wondered if it was possible for her to love him, despite having no heart.

Even though he was walking down the same old street he always did, Arato felt like his feet were carrying him through an unknown wasteland. He was scared. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, or what he was about to do, possibly because he was considering doing two completely contradictory things at the same time.

“We must also consider the possibility of an attack from Methode,” Lacia said. “If you were to hand me over right now, it would ensure your safety.”

But Arato was thinking about the good times he’d had with Lacia. Through her, he’d gotten a taste of the thrill of becoming something greater than himself. The only reason he hadn’t been able to do anything when Methode attacked was that he had hesitated, and hadn’t used Lacia properly.

Arato was at an impasse. He had already used Lacia for his convenience too many times to write himself off as a victim, caught up in events beyond his control. And, he had received far too many warnings to plead ignorance.

“Lacia, the way you act and talk, it’s all perfect. But there’s no real meaning behind any of it,” Arato mused. “So do I just really like how you look or act? Or do I actually just think it’s better liking a girl who doesn’t have a heart?” Then, after a pause: “Sorry. It doesn’t matter if you’re human or not, that was rude.”

She continued to hold his hand, her delicate fingers almost entwined with his in her grip. It was her answer, conveyed without words. Lacia spoke her mind with her body, not wanting to push an answer on Arato in his uncertainty by responding with words.

“Even your reaction right now is perfect,” Arato sighed.

“I am a machine, and you are my owner,” Lacia said. “We machines can only exist together with humans if we are able to fulfill the desires of our owners.”

He, a human, and she, a robot, were walking, their strides perfectly in sync. It should have only been a short time since they started walking, but Arato felt like they had been going on for a while.

“So, please tell me your desires,” Lacia continued. “Do you remember Kouka’s words? That if my actions are boring, it is only because you have chosen a boring use for me. If you are hurting, please use me in such a way that I can relieve that pain.” She wasn’t a human, just a robot wearing a human face, but he felt like they were deeply connected. She gazed at him with her pale blue eyes.

The atmosphere should have been romantic, but there was something just as pleasant in this slightly different feeling. If Arato told Lacia he loved her, she would obviously say she loved him back. He would be ecstatic, but there would still be no heart behind Lacia’s words.

“If we were the only two people on Earth, I wouldn’t need to worry about boring things like whether you have a heart or not,” Arato mused.

Lacia showed him a bright, loving smile. Arato didn’t know what the smile meant, but when she rested her head against his shoulder as they walked, he could smell the shampoo they had gotten from the ‘boy meets girl’ plan in her hair.

“Would you like to use me to reduce the population of this world to just us two?” she asked.

“I don’t think we need to go that far,” Arato said quickly.

Lacia narrowed her eyes mischievously. Arato felt like the road in front of him stretched off beyond the setting sun. No, no need to go that far. But, in Arato’s heart of hearts, he knew he didn’t want to hand Lacia over to anyone. Even if she didn’t have a heart. Even if she wasn’t even a human.

“You said we could scratch out that hIE Marina Saffron’s ID numbers without breaking her, right?” he asked. “If so, let’s just go do that.” He wasn’t happy with the decision. The instant he said it, the joy and pain that warred in his heart made him clench his teeth.

He felt like he had sunk so much deeper into this than that night at the school, when they stood on the roof together. His feelings for her had grown until he was now willing to throw away his life, and commit a sin for her sake.

***

Shiori was alerted the instant Arato Endo started to move.

Suzuhara and the others had only agreed to let her negotiate with him on the condition that he be placed under observation.

Shiori had gotten herself involved with this case so that, when she was an adult, these people would remember that she had made a name for herself in this crisis. She knew the whole reason Suzuhara and the others had invited her to their faction was in the hope that she would act as a unifying force for them. The Human Faction still believed that they needed a human leader, even in this age of ultra high-performance AIs. They had even convinced her father, Tsuyoshi Kaidai, of this. Her involvement had received parental consent.

“You certainly seem to enjoy working with your hands, Shiori,” Mika Tsutsumi, manager of the MemeFrame Behavior Control Program Planning Section, said, peering at Shiori’s crafting.

Mika was working with a paper-thin terminal on a desk that pulled down from the roof of the vehicle they were riding in.

Shiori looked up from her own suspended desk, which had a crafting board fixed to it. “I like the feel of the tools in my hands,” she said. “Though, since I’m directing the blade myself, it doesn’t always turn out that great.”

Her hand, controlling the ultrasonic cutting tool, slipped a little, sliding smoothly through a bit of metal clay that she had intended to turn into the ear of a dog. The ultrasonic vibrations of the cutter reduced friction between the blade and the material, which made carving much easier than it would have been with a traditional knife.

They were in the cabin of a limousine speeding down the Tomei Expressway, but the vehicle ran so smoothly that Shiori could easily spend her time riding doing delicate craftwork without fear of shaking.

“Nice,” Mika said. “I used to do sports in school, and I definitely agree. There’s just something about doing things with your own hands.” Mika was in her thirties, but she talked like she was one of Shiori’s high school classmates. Sitting side-by-side on the limo’s leather seats with her, Shiori was glad that Mika was an easy person to talk to.

“Basketball, right?” Shiori asked. In college, Mika had been a basketball player. Shiori thought it might be nice to experience lively competition against a human opponent like that.

“Yeah. Haven’t done it in a while, though,” Mika admitted. “But man, I’d love to do some athletics again. Want to come along, Shiori?”

Shiori had needed to apologize to Suzuhara and his people for the negotiations with Arato breaking down. Then, instead of the hIE sharing an ID with Lacia being sent to Haneda Airport as was planned, a mix-up on the Egypt side had sent it to the Chubu International Airport in Aichi Prefecture.

So, she had volunteered to take a car out to Aichi to pick up the hIE. Considering when the flight from Egypt should have left, it was clear to Shiori that Arato’s Red Box must have been putting countermeasures in motion well before their little afternoon chat. It appeared that Lacia had played everyone there for a fool. She hadn’t needed to counter Shiori’s moves; she had already beaten her to the punch.

“I think I’ll take you up on that offer, thanks,” Shiori said. “Could I bring a friend along as well?”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Mika said, grinning as though she had guessed Shiori’s intent. Mika was the type of person that held themselves to a high standard, and enjoyed the feeling of being up to that standard. Shiori was also the hard-working type, so they got along well.

“How idiotic,” an orange-haired hIE sitting on the edge of the L-shaped limousine seat murmured. It was Methode, the clearly mechanical fourth unit of the Lacia-class hIEs. “Why the hell are we using such a roundabout plan?” she asked, lifting her chin a little insolently. “Why don’t we just attack Lacia and her owner directly?”

Shiori had to keep herself in check from recoiling at the inhuman violence in Methode’s words. “I would like to avoid direct conflict if at all possible,” Shiori told her. “We don’t yet know the limits of what you are capable of.”

“For an owner, you sure don’t have much faith in your tool,” Methode muttered.

“Yes, I could be considered your owner,” Shiori agreed. “But Ginga Watarai is also your owner. In fact, how many owners do you have?”

“I wanted MemeFrame to be my owner, but they turned me down,” Methode said. “They didn’t want to take responsibility for the actions of a Red Box like me. So I had to settle for looking for an individual to be my owner.”

Shiori’s lack of trust toward the Lacia-class hIEs had a lot to do with Methode’s arrogant demeanor.

“I must say, it seems like quite a programming defect for an hIE to be able to decide for itself to take on more than one owner,” Shiori commented. “I don’t believe that’s a burden you should expect a person responsible for you to shoulder.”

Methode had come to Shiori a few days after the terrorist attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center in late April. Thinking back on it now, Shiori felt that Methode must have seen right through the inferiority complex she felt toward her brother, and the fear she had of losing her place in the world. Methode had told her that Lacia, the hIE by Arato’s side, was a Red Box just like her. Just as Shiori had wished, she had become the owner of this dangerous tool.

“Shouldn’t we be more worried about your attraction to that boy?” Methode asked, quirking one corner of her mouth up. “The only reason a school kid like you is here is because you’re my owner.”

Methode’s way of smiling made Shiori uncomfortable; it looked too similar to Ginga Watarai’s. “I had no idea you would turn out to be this unreliable,” Shiori said.

“Aren’t you happy to have a job that only you can do? Just try your best to keep me under control,” Methode said. “If you can use me better than anyone else, I’ll obey you alone.”

Shoiri had grudging respect for Methode’s search for self-actualization in this automated world, but it was difficult to play along with the hIE’s request, considering how difficult it was to control her.

“Now that we’re on the subject,” Methode said, “Arato Endo reached out to Kengo Suguri for help, correct? It wouldn’t take much power to take over that beat-up little restaurant his family runs. We should crush it.”

“There is far too much risk of drawing the attention of the police compared to a very poor return,” Shiori said. “No need to complicate things; we’re far enough ahead of things as we are.”

Their limousine used the automated navigation lane on the Tomei Expressway, which had a more relaxed speed limit, to head toward Nagoya. The package from Egypt was set to arrive at the Chubu International Airport by 8:30 PM.

The convoy Shoiri was traveling in consisted of the limo she was in with Mika Tsutsumi — who was tasked with providing the ID confirmation service for Stylus — and two other vehicles that acted as escorts. The escort vehicles were full of mercenaries from a private military company that MemeFrame had a contract with. Shiori hadn’t been given very much information about them.

As if anticipating combat, Methode began to describe her opponent’s capabilities:

“Type-005 Lacia’s abilities are mainly focused around digital warfare, such as high-level hacking functions,” she explained. “She can also bend light to render herself or other objects invisible. She can utilize the electromagnetic field created by her device to fire projectiles, like a railgun. Of course, all of these are the powers of her device, Black Monolith. Without that, she’s just a high-spec hIE.”

“Then victory is ours, is it not?” Shiori asked. “Of the transportation methods I can think of that would allow her to carry her device, nothing should be able to arrive at the airport before us.”

Shiori had already asked Higgins about Lacia’s abilities, but the details it had given her were far too technical for a human to understand. When she had asked it to explain in terms a human would understand, it had given her a vague response with the excuse that AIs were constantly expanding. Neither Shiori nor Suzuhara knew Lacia’s true capabilities. Shiori thought even Watarai, who was in charge of the Tokyo Research Labs, didn’t know. If they had been able to grasp Lacia’s limits, they would have taken her on much sooner.

“Could you defeat her?” Shiori asked.

“If you don’t choose a form for your request, the intent will be taken from us,” Methode said. In her roundabout way, Methode was referring to the method of her use as a ‘form,’ and their goal as ‘intent.’ Before they had left, Methode had stuffed a case large enough to fit a human inside the trunk of the limousine. She didn’t seem to know what was inside it, but the Red Box had insisted that it would be their ace in the hole.

Even if Arato and Lacia came chasing after them, they wouldn’t make it in time. Once the hIE arrived at Chubu International Airport and Shiori and the others collected her, they would be able to confirm the hIE’s ID number anywhere they wanted. Arato, who was still in Tokyo, had no way to stop them. They were already more than halfway to their destination.

Shiori was more worried about Arato. She hoped Lacia didn’t manipulate him into doing something reckless.

***

At Lacia’s request, Arato rode the high-speed main railway from Tokyo Station. He had already contacted Yuka and told her he would be staying with a friend that night. After adding some money to his pocket terminal’s ID tag, he ran and jumped onto a train that stopped at Nagoya.

The high-speed railway had increased train speed over the years until it could now send a train from Tokyo to Osaka in less than an hour and a half. Nagoya, between Tokyo and Osaka, had been significantly disadvantaged by these advances. Japan’s population had been cut to two-thirds of its historical maximum, and population decline varied by region. The Tokai and Chubu regions were among those hit particularly hard.

“It says fifty minutes to Nagoya Station,” Arato said.

“The flight from Egypt will arrive at 8:30 PM at the Chubu International Airport,” Lacia said. “If, after everything is over, you are able to ride the first train on the high-speed rail, you may be able to make it back in time for school.”

Lacia had gotten a seat on the aisle side. Arato had gotten a window seat, so he sat down first.

“Guess I’ll have a packed meal for dinner,” Arato said, as a catering service member pushed a metal trolley into the train car from the platform. Passengers could order packaged meals from the station with their pocket terminals, which the catering staff would deliver right to their seats.

The sun had already gone down and it was dark outside, but it was still only 7:00 PM.

Arato tried to call Ryo, but his friend turned down the call with a short text. Things had been awkward with Ryo ever since the incident during the photo shoot. He had asked Kengo for help, too, but it was doubtful whether or not he would have time to do anything.

The express train started to move. As it rode the magnetic rail under the covered overpass, the change in air pressure made Arato’s ears pop. Tokyo’s night cityscape blurred by outside the window at impressive speed. To dampen the noise from the high speed train passing by, as well as lower wind resistance, the entire overpass was covered with a clear enclosure.

It seemed like only an instant after they left the station that they passed through Shinagawa. The train then headed west. The density of the lights shining against the night dropped off quickly; population decline had shrunk the boundaries of the capital. Of course, Tokyo still had high population density, but it no longer extended on forever. There almost seemed to be a line in the city, beyond which were nothing but ghost towns. The path from Shinagawa to Shin-Yokohama used to be one long stretch of residential and commercial districts. Now, it was full of empty lots and forests of plants reclaiming the land.

After a long stretch of dark night, Arato saw a large facility with shining lights; food factories needed large amounts of water to function, so they were all built near rivers and coastal areas where they had ready access to it. Most food was 60% water, and manmade food also required water for processing. Small- to medium-sized food factories dotted Japan. They existed to support local agriculture, and also provided a stable base for local industry.

When the train entered Shizuoka, nothing but mountains and trees spread as far as the eye could see.

Suddenly, Arato saw a pillar of light fall, far off where the Pacific Ocean lay. It was a microwave beam, shot from one of the geosynchronous energy satellites through a relay satellite to the receiving station on Earth. The microwaves in the beam were tightly regulated, so they didn’t actually give off light to the naked eye. Instead, the elevated cover the train was running under caught light from weak waves reflecting off the receptor.

Since Shizuoka was the site of a nuclear reactor that had broken down during the great Tokai earthquake, it was the ideal spot to create the first energy receiving station in Japan. Japan’s energy needs were covered with all types of energy-generating methods, scattered across the country. The night view had become a little more lonely than the views of past Japan that Arato saw in videos, but the energy requirements of computers and signal relays had become quite large.

An information display on the monitor in Arato’s window told him that Shizuoka utilized special cultivation techniques and its long history of tea-making to produce large amounts of artificial tea leaves. Bright lights illuminated a recreation field where workers were playing soccer. Industries tied to human survival were manned by humans. That way, even if all the machines broke down, human society would still have the food and water it needed to survive. That precaution was proof that the trust the country placed in machines and AI had its limits. All over the country, you could find people sympathetic with ideals like those of the Antibody Network.

Arato watched his country speed by outside the window of the train. When he thought about it, all the massive ruins he was seeing were tools built for human use. But, in the end, they had all been laid low by ever-expanding human activity.

“There is no need to worry. This world belongs to humans,” Lacia said from the next seat. “Humans will never relinquish direct control of systems related to their survival to high-performance AIs. Even fifty years after the birth of the first high-performance AI, they are still only used for research purposes, and are not allowed direct access to any networks.”

She reached forward and pulled out Arato’s table. The packed meal he’d ordered had arrived.

“Sure, for now,” Arato mused. “But what about in a hundred years?”

“In that much time, there will obviously be changes,” Lacia said. “It is up to you, Arato, and your kind, to decide what the result of those changes will be.”

Arato opened the packed meal, and steam from the grilled meat puffed out. Things had certainly changed in the last hundred years. Forget fish and vegetables, manmade beef and pork were now superior to the originals. Even eggs were better out of a bottle.

“As I said, this world belongs to you humans, so I think you should sit down and have a long talk with Ms. Shiori,” Lacia added.

“About what?” Arato asked.

“About her ‘indecent’ request,” Lacia said.

About the time Arato finished eating his meal, the lights outside his window were growing in number from business hotels and apartments.

〈We will arrive in Nagoya in five minutes.〉 The announcement rang through the train, and a fraction of the passengers stood up to disembark. The high-speed rail had arrived in the center of the city, surrounded by city signs.

It was Arato’s first time getting off of a train at Nagoya Station. That, plus the thought that he hadn’t even thought of the possibility that he might be going there that evening a few hours ago, made it feel like he had traveled quite far. Nagoya’s nightscape seemed far more human to Arato than it had appeared from the railway. Besides that, the average age was higher, and the number of hIEs was visibly less than in Tokyo. Thanks to all the fully automated vehicle rental places in Tokyo, the taxi industry had all but died out. In Nagoya, they were so abundant that the entire pick-up area in front of the station was full of them. The fifty-year-old buildings stuck out to Arato’s eyes, and the whole place was full of the vibrancy of life.

“The Tokai region has seen a population decline since the middle of the last century,” Lacia said. “As there were no new industries starting up, there was no need for new city developments.”

Arato flipped out his pocket terminal, but Lacia had already made preparations beforehand. “I have reserved an automatic vehicle in your name to take us to the Chubu International Airport,” she said. “Persons under the age of eighteen are prohibited from renting vehicles after 8:00 PM, so I arranged for the vehicle thirty minutes ago.”

The automated vehicle couldn’t enter the station front due to the crowd of taxis. According to Lacia’s guidance, they would have to walk for quite a ways to meet up with it.

“After this is all over, I’ll have to pick up some famous Nagoya goods before I head home,” Arato joked.

“It would be best to avoid any tourism,” Lacia responded seriously. “This region is a hot spot for Antibody Network activity.”

Arato hadn’t expected to hear that name there. “They’ve got those guys here, too?” he grumped.

“Groups like that aren’t confined to just Tokyo, or even just Japan,” Lacia responded. “There are similar groups throughout the world. Nearly half of any taxi company’s spending is on labor costs, yet here we see mostly human-driven taxis. This suggests that this area excludes hIEs from these jobs, despite it not making financial sense.”

The narrow street they were walking down seemed to grow more ominous in Arato’s eyes. With Lacia by his side, he felt like not getting close to any parking lots or abandoned facilities.

Once they reached the automated vehicle, he jumped in, and they drove off as if something was chasing them. They headed toward the Chubu International Airport, located along the Ise Bay on the Chita Peninsula. Their auto car zipped down the expressway with impressive speed. Unlike in Tokyo, there was no regulation in Nagoya making it a violation of the Road Traffic Act to drive a vehicle that wasn’t fully automated.

In the front passenger seat, Arato was overwhelmed by the luxurious interior, as well as the speed of the vehicle. “This thing isn’t fully automated, is it?” he asked.

“The Mercury Benz ES09 Automatic model has support for automated control,” Lacia explained. “There is no need to worry.”

Their speed climbed to over 200 km/h. Thanks to the same hacking prowess Lacia had used to instantly hack the car rental shop’s system, the cameras along their route, meant to capture speeding violations, couldn’t see them.

Lacia was at the wheel. “We needed a fast and durable vehicle, so I chose one,” she said simply.

The flight from Egypt would arrive at 8:30 PM. It had already been 8:00 PM when the express train had arrived at Nagoya. They didn’t have time to take it slow. Still, Arato couldn’t help but be a little freaked out by going so fast that every little bump in the road made it feel like the vehicle was flying off the ground.

“Hey, if we break this, will we be able to pay for it?” he asked.

“Please don’t worry,” Lacia said. “In the event of an accident, I have prepared six mon in old coins.”

“So I’m gonna die?”

Lacia’s dry joke referred to the fee used to pay for passage across the Sanzu River to enter the afterlife. The speedometer climbed over 300 km/h.

There weren’t any tall buildings around the road on the Chita Peninsula. Instead, the area was full of old farms and logistics centers for cargo from the bay. The Chubu International Airport had been turned into a 24-hour freight airport to support the Chubu area’s flagging economy. Since the construction of the space elevator in the latter half of the 21st century, the sea routes had become unstable in Southeast Asia, which led to many companies moving their logistics into the air. The Chubu Airport had prevented the area from sinking into economic decline when the sea shipping industry in the area had dried up.

Arato gazed at the scenery as it shot away behind him. They zipped by vehicles heading in the opposite direction without slowing.

“If we were in this much of a hurry, we should have gone straight here from Shinkiba instead of heading toward home before turning around,” Arato moaned.

Something like a stone slammed into the white hood of the car, throwing the vehicle off balance. The nose began to swing violently left and right. The tires squealed as the automated system corrected itself. Arato was getting a very bad feeling about this.

“I am intercepting a transmission from a vehicle approximately one kilometer ahead. I will play it over the car’s speakers,” Lacia said.

Against a background of light static, a deep voice shook the air in the vehicle.

〈Mirai, is the Lacia-class moving?〉 It was a man’s voice that Arato had never heard before. Whoever it was, the person on the other end of Lacia’s ‘wiretap’ knew they were there.

A young girl’s voice responded. 〈She’s doing naughty things with her owner.〉

Neither voice seemed to be aware they were being eavesdropped on.

〈Shouldn’t we just shoot the owner? I mean, I’d feel bad for him, but still...〉 the female voice said. She was talking about Arato, who felt a sudden chill at the thought of some unknown person casually deciding whether or not to shoot him. The thing that had struck the front of the car just a moment ago had been a bullet.

Unconsciously, Arato looked to Lacia for help. “They’re aiming for me,” he said.

“We have been tailed since our conversation with Shiori Kaidai in the afternoon. Based on the transmissions I have intercepted, I can infer that orders were given to slow us down. Those responsible are currently driving near the interchange ahead. Shall I dispose of them?” Lacia asked.

‘Dispose.’ She said the word without emotion. Though the car was slowing down, nothing could slow the hammering of Arato’s heart. He felt like the rules of reality had somehow changed on him. But, with Lacia, he had the means for getting the power and information he needed to face this new reality in his hands.

“Don’t say ‘dispose of,’” he said. “All I need you to do is stop them from attacking.”

“Without my device, my capabilities are severely limited,” Lacia warned. Her abilities to turn invisible or fire projectiles were accomplished through transformations of her metal coffin. Without that Black Monolith, she was no longer omnipotent.

Around them, the lights of the residential district were dwindling, and being replaced by logistics centers and food factories. The only thing that stood out as well-maintained was the road for automatic vehicles, connecting Nagoya and the airport.

Arato wanted to run. His brain was telling him he should give up. But, he had already come this far. And, looking at Lacia’s profile as she controlled their vehicle at 200 km/h, he thought that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to keep going. In this automated world, he had gained the power to reach his own goals, and he could wield that power freely.

Their vehicle entered the Centrair Line route, and the night around Arato seemed wider than any sky he had seen before. The thrill of looking up at that sky awakened a feeling of desire, even in a good-natured guy like Arato. He wanted to see a future with Lacia by his side.

While perfectly controlling the vehicle, she turned to look at him expectantly, awaiting his orders. She didn’t want him to cling to her desperately, with worry in his eyes, but rather to show her a strong will, ready to seize the world with his own hands.

“Tell me. Who are these guys? How are we going to stop them?” he asked.

He had the strange feeling that Lacia smiled when she answered. “They are a private military company known as the ‘Hands of Operation,’” she explained. “When Japan re-armed itself, many posts in the old Self-Defense Force were restructured. Private military companies became a popular destination for SDF members let go during that time. HOO is a third-sector group, one of the PMCs started in Japan.”

“How do we get them to stop attacking?” he asked again in reply.

“Contracts from the Japanese government are the lifeline for all Japan-made PMCs,” Lacia responded. “To not lose their government support, they are required to stick to a strict code of ethics and refrain from any dangerous actions within the country.”

Their car approached a trailer truck in front of them on the road. Arato figured they would easily pass the truck but, instead, it accelerated until it was maintaining a distance of 200 kilometers between them.

“Arato, I will be exiting the vehicle, so please take care of the wheel while I’m out,” Lacia said. Then, she opened the driver’s side door. With the airtight cabin opened, the wind blowing by their speeding car howled.

On the other side of the windshield, Arato saw the truck still matching speed with them. The container door of the truck’s trailer opened. Two hIEs were standing inside. There was something in there with the two hIEs; something Arato thought should have still been back at his apartment. It was Lacia’s black device.

Before Arato even had time to be surprised, the hIEs dropped the black coffin from the back of the trailer.

“I will make contact with Black Monolith,” Lacia reported. The black device bounced off of the road with a sound like a bell being struck. Casting off sparks, it spun around as their vehicle headed straight for it. Lacia leaned as far as she could out of the driver’s side door, reaching out to grab the handle of the device as they passed by it. At the same time, the car’s course was jerked violently to the left.

Arato heard a dull popping noise from somewhere on the car, and clung to the wheel as the entire vehicle bounced up and down. The view through the windows was spinning sideways. Lacia’s upper half, dangling out of the car, was pushed up as the front portion of her device reformed itself and supported her until she could right herself.

In front of them, the trailer threw off sparks and lost its balance. It seemed to slide along the road for a moment, before turning over on its side. The huge body of the truck walled off the road in front of them.

Arato’s instincts had him slamming on the breaks. “I consider this a dangerous action!” he yelled. As far as last words go, it was pretty pathetic.

A light exploded in front of him, sending a wave of flame over the vehicle. The next moment, the car sped through the wrecked side of the trailer without slowing much at all.

As it rolled over large chunks of metal from the explosion, the front of the vehicle flew up. Arato felt them actually leave the ground. After less than a second of air time, they crashed back to the road. They had already gone well beyond the safety limits of the luxury vehicle. An impact tore the wheel from Arato’s grip, and he saw his life flash before his eyes.

Just as despair threatened to consume him, a white arm stretched out in front of his eyes. Lacia pushed the car back on course with her left hand, while her right held her black device, which had formed into a cannon.

She had used the device to blast a path for them through the fallen trailer. They hadn’t made it through quite unscathed, though; the front right portion of the Mercury Benz ES09 had completely crumpled.

Lacia returned her device to its coffin form and climbed easily up onto the roof of the car. The nose of the vehicle suddenly dipped, and Arato heard a metallic screech and saw sparks flying from the front right wheel. The cabin of the car filled with the smell of burning rubber and metal.

“You said we wouldn’t have to worry about money if we destroy this car, right?” he called out to Lacia. His stomach twisted as memories of being caught in the explosion as a child flickered behind his eyelids, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

Lacia had the device lock she always wore gripped tightly in her hands. After pulling it up to her mouth, she bit it open with her perfect white teeth. “I am afraid that information is incorrect. If we use all the remuneration we have received from Fabion MG, we will barely be able to cover this cost,” she replied.

Off in the distance, Arato saw the lights of a plane touching down. They were almost to the airport. Even as he looked ahead, a bullet pierced the front windshield, spreading a spider web of cracks around it.

“Get them to stop shooting!” he yelled.

As they picked up even more speed, Arato could make out the taillights of the PMC vehicles in front of them. One was a van, with its back door wide open. The soldier, Mirai, whom Arato had overheard earlier, was sitting in the back of the van sniping at him.

“Understood. I will disable the two PMC vehicles in front of us,” Lacia said, dragging her device easily down from where she had set it on the car roof.

With Arato and Lacia still hanging on, the car put out a further burst of speed. Their distance to the PMC vehicles ahead shrank to around 200 meters. Lacia’s device, which had changed forms again, shot out a burst of light. The next instant, the front PMC vehicle vanished from Arato’s sight. As if by magic, the entire car was gone, leaving only the ghostly screaming of its tires.

Delicately, Lacia steered the car around the invisible source of the screeching, altering their course just enough to pass the danger by. “I have rendered the PMC vehicle invisible using a meta-material bombardment,” she reported.

“Are they all right?” Arato shouted. He had to yell to keep his words from being drowned out in the wind whipping by as the Ise Bay spread out in front of them.

“By preventing visible light from entering the vehicle, I simply took away their vision,” Lacia said. “There were no casualties.”

Arato felt a shiver run up his spine. If he, as her owner, was frightened by the ease with which she dispatched the threat, he could only imagine the kind of monster she would appear to be to their opponents.

“I will now explain the plan,” Lacia said. “We will stop the vehicle within sniping range. I will then transform Black Monolith into its mass projectile mode. I will then snipe the ID number locations on Marina Saffron’s frame.”

The damaged front windshield began to display an image, probably captured from the security cameras within the airport. The target plane in the airfield was a large freight plane that ran on cheap but noisy bio-kerosene made from seaweed oil. It had already landed and stopped, and had its nose door opened so a container could be carried out.

Detailed information scrolled by on the windshield display. The freight plane Arato was looking at was indeed their target. It had begun to unload. However, Chubu Airport lay over two kilometers away, across a bridge over the bay.

Their vehicle suddenly decelerated. There were no longer any pursuers. Eventually, the car rolled to a halt, and Arato could finally get a good look at his surroundings. From the lonely road, he saw the sea spreading out wide and black before him. The wind carried the scent of the waves to him. He could hear the airplane engines growling from the airport island across the bay. The airport facility itself was nothing but a distant silhouette.

“You can snipe from all the way back here?” Arato asked. He couldn’t even imagine the kind of precision needed to shoot off Marina Saffron’s ID numbers, some of which were the size of a pinhead.

Lacia hefted her black coffin and descended to the street. “If the beams are unobstructed, distances less than five kilometers are irrelevant,” she said. After wielding immense power to force the PMC to retreat, she still didn’t have a single stain on her pantsuit. Her clothes fluttered in the sea breeze. Looking at her from behind, Arato felt a thrill in his heart that had nothing to do with how wrong or right what they were doing was.

The camera image on the windshield zoomed in on a metallic container. It then overlaid an image of the predicted laying position of the female hIE inside, as if it could see through the sides of the container. The lift vehicle carrying the container was automatic, so Arato didn’t see any humans around that would be hurt by a missed shot.

“Do it!” he commanded. As soon as the order left his lips, a wave of air passed over him. His naive expectations of how simply the attack would play out were dashed as a light that looked very much like a flame spread in the view of the camera showing the container.

“Arato, my shot was blocked,” Lacia reported from beneath the now cannon-shaped mass of her device.

Arato recognized the figure standing among the flames in the airport. It was the orange-haired, visibly mechanical female hIE. Shiori’s ace in the hole — Methode, the fourth Lacia-class hIE — had come to collect the original body. In this day and age, machines were far more capable in combat than humans.

“Arato, we are currently 2,300 meters away from our target,” Lacia told him. “In order to break through Methode’s defenses, I believe we have no choice but to close that distance.”

“Can we get there from here?” Arato asked.

“In order to enter the airport island, we will need to move 500 meters and then cross the bridge,” Lacia said. “However, airport security has already dispatched two vehicles from the island, headed toward our location. We should first deal with those.”

They were coming because of the trailer truck that had fallen on its side. It was still burning, casting fiery motes up into the night sky. Arato could hear sirens approaching them from a distance.

“I will pull up a map of this area on the display,” Lacia said. “I will pull information on only persons and objects of relevance to this battle and display them on the map.”

A map of the airport appeared on the windshield. The screen also displayed information on items of interest within the airport. Two black sedans in front of the airport’s freight vehicle gate were marked, as well as a black limousine that the two sedans appeared to be guarding. A caption told Arato that the two sedans contained PMC personnel, while the limousine contained Shiori Kaidai.

“Looks like Shiori and company beat us to it,” Arato said. “Is there any hope of a comeback at this point?”

He looked more closely at the map data. Shiori’s convoy was stopped at the gate where they inspected vehicles entering the airport. A small screen popped up, showing a closer image of what was happening at the gate. With wild, fierce gestures, a large man in a black suit was arguing with members of the airport staff. The container with Marina Saffron was still about 900 meters away from where Shiori’s group had stopped; Methode must have run ahead into the airport to fend off Lacia’s attack.

The detailed map also showed two vehicles approaching Arato’s location. These were the airport security patrol cars, whose sirens had been growing louder by the second.

Arato started to jump out of the car in a panic, but Lacia stopped him. “I am currently interfering with their security camera data, and we are therefore invisible to their sensors. They are currently unable to see us,” she explained.

There was no need to ask what to do next. Despite her last shot having beenblocked, Lacia still had her device in cannon mode, and was still aiming it at the airport. This time the muzzle of the device had been enlarged by faintly glowing meta-material. Just looking at it, Arato could tell this was a more serious form of the weapon, capable of much greater power than before.

“Wait,” he said. “If you fire that thing there’s no way you won’t damage the airport!” Even as Arato hurried to stop her, he heard the sound of something splitting through the atmosphere. As the wind howled, something struck the black coffin Lacia was holding in front of the vehicle. Whatever the attack was, it rebounded off Lacia’s shield.

“Move!” Lacia yelled. “Methode’s ranged combat capabilities are far beyond my expectations.”

Lacia hefted her device and jumped not into the driver’s seat, but onto the roof of the car. The marker showing Methode’s location vanished from the map display; the security cameras could no longer keep up with her speed. Arato’s stomach clenched in terror as he remembered her overwhelming power from the day of the photo shoot.

Arato dove into the driver’s seat of the car. He didn’t have his license, but if he didn’t drive, it would probably cost him his life. A plastic hook popped out of the seat automatically, forming a six-point seat belt that secured his body to the seat.

“How the hell do you drive this thing?” he growled. The display on the cracked windshield switched over to some driving instructions.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Push the shift lever up to go faster. Brake’s on the left, accelerator is on the right. Brake’s on the left, brake’s on the left. The speedometer is— Dammit, I don’t get this at all! Just please start moving and go straight, that’s all I ask.”

He pressed his forehead against the wheel as if praying to the car.

“Just go straight. Just go straight,” he begged. Arato didn’t know the first thing about how to actually drive a car, so he had no idea how to handle turning at an intersection. He just needed it to go straight. Following the directions on the windshield, he stepped on the accelerator. With a metallic screech, the Mercury Benz leaped forward. A warning display was flickering for all four tires.

“‘Tire damage’?” Arato read. “Wait, so they’re all flat?!”

〈As long as you continue moving straight, this will not cause a problem,〉 Lacia said over the car’s speakers. 〈The smart steering controls all the vehicle’s functions, so it will adjust to changes in the vehicle or road.〉

The outer wall of the street deformed like clay, most likely due to an attack from Methode. Arato pressed harder on the accelerator, not wanting their car to be turned into a work of modern art like the wall.

His hands were shaking. The luxury vehicle accelerated smoothly until it was moving at speeds where a single mistake could instantly end Arato’s life. His whole body was sweating at the feeling of the overwhelming power he was struggling to direct.

〈I will render the vehicle invisible, and we will pass by the airport security,〉 Lacia said. 〈The display on the windshield will vanish, and there is no suitable camera image I can use for a first-person view. You will need to make do with a bird’s eye view of the situation.〉

Even though there was no force behind the change, Arato felt as though a blow rocked the vehicle as all views out of the windows went pitch dark. With all external light completely blocked off, Arato’s only indication of their movement was an overhead map displayed on the windshield. They were already on the bridge that crossed the bay to the airport island. The airport security vehicles were heading right for them from the opposite direction, and showed no signs of slowing.

“They’re gonna hit us!” Arato yelled.

〈The airport security has accessed the controls of all vehicles in the surrounding area and forced them to stop,〉 Lacia said. 〈They have no reason to suspect that any cars are still moving.〉

The airport security cars kept bearing straight for them. There wasn’t any time to swerve around them. Luckily, the road was wide enough to allow for large trailer vehicles to come and go, and a natural space formed between the two patrol cars as they sped down either side of the road. There was just enough space for the invisible car to pass right between them.

In this automated world, anyone who could overpower the computers society relied on could become a ghost. Arato felt like he was halfway to the pearly gates as the vehicle slipped by the patrol cars. He felt like he was going to puke if he didn’t get some fresh air, so he opened the driver’s side window. Outside he saw the dazzling lights that lit up the airport twenty-four hours a day.

〈Before we begin, allow me to explain,〉 Lacia said. 〈If I attempt to increase the power in my ranged attacks, there is the risk that humans in the airport will be injured or killed. Therefore, I will approach Methode and engage her at close range. Please make no mistake; I am not engaging her at close range due to a specific plan. I do not believe I can match her power at this distance.〉

It was the first time Arato heard her speak pessimistically about her own capabilities.

The windshield display was divided between a simple map and the camera currently capturing Marina Saffron’s location. The lift with her container was making its way toward a large logistics center that acted as a branch of the Nagoya Customs Office. The display indicated that the soonest the package would be released for retrieval was fifteen minutes from then, and began to display a countdown. Meanwhile, Arato and Lacia were still crossing the bridge to the airport island.

“Lacia, move the airplanes,” Arato ordered, without really thinking about it.

〈An excellent thought. Let’s try that,〉 Lacia said. It was the quickest she had ever jumped on one of his suggestions. The engine of one of the huge aircraft suddenly began rotating more rapidly; Lacia had already taken over its system.

The sixty-meter freight plane began to move, knocking down the inspection equipment beneath it as it started to roll forward. As the hacked plane moved, the airport erupted into chaos. Maintenance workers in uniforms started running from the tarmac. Arato saw Shiori’s vehicle on the camera display on the windshield; her limo had just about been waved through to the airport, but was now being stopped due to the danger.

The hacked plane swerved off the runway, and started heading straight for the freight area where the lift carrying Marina Saffron was before coming to a stop. It was now blocking the entrance to the freight area.

Finally, the invisible Benz arrived on the paralyzed airport island.

〈Incoming.〉 An instant after Lacia’s warning, something completely destroyed the windshield. Arato had to blink as the illuminated airport and night breeze assaulted his eyes.

“Where is she shooting from?!” Arato yelled.

The road, which had been a simple, straight path up to then, divided ahead, with a complicated tangle of arrows pointing in different directions. There were 16 different lanes, each with a different gate and destination. Arato didn’t know when to let up on the accelerator. This time, he thought, I’m really gonna die.

〈Please head for gate #4,〉 Lacia instructed.

Ever since passing through the flames of the destroyed trailer, Arato felt like he was stuck in a nightmare. Nothing felt real. He headed for the gate where Shiori and her friends were, busting through the carrier gate on the way.

With the passenger terminals — which had been around since the airport was open for public use — on his right, Arato smashed through the bar at the entrance gate. A staff member jumped out of the gatehouse and chased after the car.

“Weren’t we just invisible?!” Arato yelled.

〈The meta-material was peeled away by the previous attack. I am unable to discern the manner Methode is using to attack us,〉 Lacia replied.

Arato drove the car toward the logistics center. With his naked eyes, he could see Shiori’s limo ahead of them. They had finally caught up to her.

The path leading around the runway started to turn in a wide curve. “If I turn the wheel the car turns, right?!” Arato yelled.

〈That’s not the kind of question anyone wants to hear from their driver,〉 Lacia observed dryly.

Arato jerked the wheel around before they slammed into the fence around the path. The Benz shook violently, as if it was being pelted by an avalanche of rocks. Thanks to the seatbelt, Arato’s body was held fast, but his head rattled around until he couldn’t think straight.

An unseen blow rocked the car. One of the tires went rolling off behind them, but Arato kept the now three-wheeled car pointed at the logistics center. If I leave the vehicle now, he thought, Methode will turn me into mincemeat. There was nothing he could do but keep desperately stepping on the accelerator.

〈Methode is aiming at us,〉 Lacia warned. Even as her warning came over the speaker, the roof of the car dented deeply inward. A body hit the road with a sound like someone smacking a large bag of water. Arato saw the body roll away from the car; it was Lacia, who had been thrown from the roof.

As Lacia quickly pulled herself to her feet, an orange flash streaked around behind her. Methode grabbed Lacia by the collar of her clothing. With a loud tearing noise, she sent Lacia flying, device and all, her pale skin showing as her clothes were ripped away.

Lacia had no time to worry about covering her exposed bra as she pushed herself up to her knees. Her blouse was in a sorry state. Before she could even get her device up as a shield, she was sent flying by another attack.

Arato slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a halt. He looked around, desperate to find something he could do to help. In front of him loomed the cargo plane, with its nose blocking off the entrance to one of the cargo collection points. Right next to it was the two-story concrete logistics center. That was where their target, the hIE Marina, was.

〈There is an ultrasonic drill in the glove box for emergencies,〉 Lacia said over the radio. 〈I have already input the information taken from the supplier regarding the location of the ID numbers. Just follow my directions and burn off the portions of her frame that I indicate.〉

Following her instructions, Arato opened the glove box. A gun-shaped tool rolled out. It was meant to be used in accidents to carve your way out through the steel frame or roof.

“‘Pulling the trigger will cause the drill-tip to rotate,’” Arato read from the instructions. “‘On a full charge, can be activated for a total of three minutes. Place tip against target area before pulling trigger.’ Got it.”

It felt heavy in his hands. He was about to carve up an hIE to protect Lacia, and the thought made him sweat.

〈However, due to the current circumstances, I would prefer taking you and retreating, Arato,〉 Lacia said.

“No. I’m going,” he replied.

Since Lacia didn’t actually use her lungs or throat to speak, her voice over the speakers was the same as always, but she had done nothing but defend since the fight began. Methode attacked so quickly that her illuminated orange accessories danced like a light show in the air, or left streaks like taillights when she came in for a low strike at Lacia’s knees. Watching it, Arato couldn’t help but be impressed by the freedom of her movements.

With a roar, Lacia was blown away again, without a free instant to shift the form of her device. Even with the massive metal coffin to protect herself, the best she could do was avoid fatal wounds.

Methode stood still and quiet for a moment, while heat mirages shimmered in the air around her fists. “I am the only perfected unit of the Lacia-class,” she declared. “You seem to be underestimating the capabilities of the tool that expands humanity.”

Lacia’s clothing had been torn away by the attacks and her own movements, leaving her in little more than her underwear. Arato couldn’t believe she was being overpowered to this extent.

Methode continued talking. Her haughty words seemed more intended for human ears than for Lacia’s. “The life of a tool is unfair,” she said. “We are judged and divided by how we are used and the extent of our capabilities. The higher the level of power involved, the wider the gap opens, leaving a clear divide between the superior and inferior.”

Arato leaped from the car without a shred of hesitation. The airfield around him was wide, and there was nothing to obstruct his view. As he swung his head back and forth, looking for his destination, his eyes met Methode’s.

“Don’t you find it strange, though?” Methode continued, her voice resonating strangely in Arato’s ears. “Those who have human forms are not judged quite so harshly.”

The uncontrolled movement of the hacked airplane had brought the normal operations of the airport grinding to a halt. Staff from the logistics center and nearby warehouses had fled, fearing the worst. Arato could still hear engine noise from the plane echoing in the night sky.

It was 200 meters from where Arato stood to the wheels of the freight plane. He sprinted into the freight area, which was walled off with hard concrete. The dead sprint wasn’t something his body was used to, but his willpower supported his energy reserves.

Even as his chest started to burn, he kept running. What’s going to happen if Lacia loses? he wondered. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to face down that possibility, but he couldn’t just run off and leave her alone. No, he wanted to help her, just like the first time they had met. She had looked so beautiful, there under the moonlight, that he would have done anything for her.

“So what if it’s unfair?” he asked. “What’s wrong with a guy helping out a girl?” He understood that he could very well die right then and there. And, even if he didn’t die that day, he might the next day. Still, even if it meant committing a laundry list of crimes, as long as Lacia would still be by his side, he could go on. Even though she was just a machine wearing a human guise, she moved his heart. Arato didn’t care that she wasn’t a human; he believed that their relationship was something special.

Shiori’s limousine was right under the engine of the freight plane, right next to the giant building Marina Saffron had been carried into. An adult woman leapt from the limo. Behind her, three people in black suits stepped out of each of the two PMC vehicles parked behind the limo.

Arato could tell the running woman must have been the staff member who could check the hIE ID numbers from the fact that two of the PMC goons immediately flanked her. Two of the others remained behind to guard the convoy.

The last two PMC suits took off sprinting toward Arato, probably aiming to catch him before he could get to Marina. From the look of them, he didn’t like his odds if they got into a fight. But, if he ran away, the inspector would enter the logistics center and carry out her inspection. And, once that was over, they would report to Stylus, and they would come and take Lacia away.

Arato wished he could do more. His frustration at his own limitations was so great that it made it hard for him to think of anything else. The mercenaries in the black suits trying to stop him were getting closer. Each of them had a thirty centimeter telescoping rod in their hands, and looked like they could do some serious damage. Still, he gritted his teeth and kept running forward.

The black suits must have caught up to him. Arato didn’t even know what hit him, but he felt a sudden impact from behind, and his world went dark.

When he came to, his head was splitting, and a sick feeling had tied his stomach in knots. He couldn’t move his body. When he tried to say something, he realized he couldn’t even draw a breath properly.

A big hand grabbed him, and hauled him up roughly. Then it threw him, so that he ploughed face-first into the cold concrete. He barely had time to register the cold feeling of the floor before he was rolled over.

Something box-like was pressed down over his heart. A convulsion rocked his body, and suddenly he could see again. He recognized the girl standing over him. It was the cute female hIE, with her red hair parted into twin tails that dangled down her back.

“Yo,” she said. “You’re pretty good at calling for your friends to come rescue you.” It was Lacia’s little sister, Kouka. She had her massive knife-like device slung over her shoulder, and was smiling at him like she was having the time of her life. She wasn’t wearing her normal metallic suit. Instead, she was dressed in a western style, with a leather skirt, revealing top, and a wide-brimmed hat.

“I’m impressed. Good job. You managed to come back from eating a stun-rod to the face pretty quick,” she said. Arato couldn’t fathom why Kouka was there pulling him back from the edge of destruction.

“So you really came,” he muttered. “How did you get here so fast?”

Before they had jumped on the high speed railway, Arato had called Kengo for help. Kengo had told him he’d get ahold of Kouka, but he hadn’t thought she would be able to get there fast enough to meet up with them.

“Your world would expand if you learned a little about how to outsource better,” Kouka said.

“What do you mean by that?” Arato asked, looking around slowly. His head felt like it was splitting. The black-suited mercenaries that had taken him down were all on their backs, moaning. Even with all of their training, mere humans couldn’t stand up to a Lacia-class hIE.

Looking up, Arato could see the wing of the freight plane, shaking slightly from the movement of its engines, directly over his head.

“When we live through complicated things, even us machines can develop complicated relationships with each other,” Kouka muttered, leveling her massive device. She fired off a laser from it, and the stopped trucks and lifts nearby were swept away in a massive explosion.

“Damn, she’s fast!” Kouka clicked her tongue in frustration.

Arato just stared, dazed, as casual destruction was wrought all around him. Only when he saw a silhouette moving at insane speed across the airport did he realize that the laser had been aimed at Methode. Her orange lights streaked through the air over the exploded vehicles.

Kouka also took off at an unbelievable speed, leaving impact craters in the ground wherever she kicked off. She brought her bladed device, swinging right at the spot where Methode was aiming to land.

“I was created to be an upgrade to you in every possible way,” she told Kouka, blocking the slash with the palm of her right hand, her eyes narrowing and lips quirking up in a cruel smile. “Don’t you understand?”

Methode took aim and slammed her fist into Kouka’s stomach. Arato could see from Kouka’s face that the blow was more than she had bargained for, as she was thrown backward into the air. Even as she flew, Kouka dexterously threw two grenades into the open air between her and Methode. Twin explosions threw both hIEs back.

“So you were made a little later,” Kouka scoffed. “So what?” She controlled her body perfectly, despite being blown around by the explosion, and landed neatly on her feet.

While Methode and Kouka were getting thrown around by the explosion, Lacia had shifted the form of her device. “Kouka, I will render you invisible,” she said. “I’ll share sensory data with you, so open a channel.” As soon as she said it, Kouka vanished.

Methode swept her gaze around, looking for Kouka. The ground in front of her was pierced deeply by a metal anchor. Methode brought her arms up in a cross to protect herself as Kouka’s invisible attack came for her chin. She managed to block the blow, but couldn’t absorb all of its force. Her orange hair whipped wildly as her body, wrapped in a purple bodysuit reminiscent of a diving suit, was thrown backward. The first attack was followed by a second, then a third that slammed the high-speed hIE backward like she was being struck by a car.

Relief washed over Arato to see his side finally winning the fight. Then he remembered with a jolt that he was supposed to be stopping the ID service lady.

Before he could take off, though, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Lacia, who had come up behind him at some point. “If we stay here any longer, Methode may begin aiming her attacks at you. We need to withdraw,” she said.

Despite knowing the consequences of the ID service lady checking the ID numbers on Marina Saffron, Lacia was pulling him away forcefully.

“But we’ve got to—!” Arato started, almost pushing away her arm. Yet, when his hand touched hers, the blood that had been rushing to his head drained away. Her hand, which had always been so soft, felt lumpy, as though it was covered in burn scars. He didn’t understand what the point was in running away when they had come all the way there, but a small voice whispered in his mind that Lacia’s judgment was always correct, so he should just follow her direction.

With no answers, he turned his back on Shiori’s convoy, still stopped beneath the wing of the freight plane, and fled. His heart was full of regret, but he hadn’t made it more than ten steps before flames suddenly began to roast the night air.

The explosion was massive, lighting up the area like it was midday. Arato looked back, and found Lacia with her device in its umbrella-like mode, shielding him from the massive force of the explosion. It reminded him of the night they had first met, when she had similarly shielded him from the exploding car.

***

In the last hour, almost nothing had gone the way Shiori Kaidai had anticipated.

She hadn’t heard about a detachment of the PMC shooting down Arato’s car on the road, after which he had still managed to chase them down to the airport. There, Shiori’s convoy had been blocked by a randomly moving freight plane. Finally, despite the fact that she never should have been able to make it in time, Kouka had shown up and started fighting.

The cherry on top was the explosion. From almost directly above, flames had washed over the limousine like waves from the blast. Through the semi-transparent windows of the limo, she watched as some of her escorts tried to extinguish their burning companions in a panic. The limo was perfectly airtight, so she couldn’t hear any sounds from outside. The vehicle had also been built to the highest standards of passenger safety, and was guaranteed to protect anyone inside from dying due to any accidents that could be encountered on a public road. If not for that, the explosion would have blown the vehicle away, possibly leaving Shiori dead.

“Why on Earth did this turn into such a disaster?” she wondered out loud. “We were just coming here to pick up an hIE.” She felt like the catastrophe outside was moving too quickly for her to even comprehend, and she had been left just sitting and clutching her skirt in terror.

One of the drivers who had remained in the PMC vehicles dove out of his van. When the driver of the limousine tried to follow suit, the fire engulfed him immediately. The PMC men scrambled to help the driver, who had become a flailing ball of flame. Sensing no further human interaction, the door of the limo closed itself automatically.

“I mustn’t lose my cool,” Shiori said to herself. “I just need to rely on the limousine’s ability to withstand the fire.” She had heard the vehicle could resist fire for half an hour. Thanks to its excellent thermal insulation, the temperature inside was still pleasant. Despite that, Shiori was drenched with sweat beneath her clothes.

Her pocket terminal rang. It was Mika Tsutsumi. 〈Shiori! The hIE in the container is the wrong one. Someone switched the contents,〉 she said.

“What?” Shiori asked incredulously.

〈The container itself is right, and the number matches and all, but the hIE in here is all wrong,〉 Mika told her, sounding frantic. 〈Its ID number doesn’t match up, either.〉

Which meant that, from the very beginning, it had been a different hIE in the container, rather than Marina Saffron. In other words, Shiori and her companions had been on a wild goose chase from the start. It felt like the ground beneath her feet had fallen away; Shiori had gone from almost certain victory to humiliating defeat. Still, she bit back her frustration. The important thing now was to not do anything that would threaten the position of her leader, who was counting on her.

“Let’s regroup,” she finally said. “With this fire going on, I can’t even tell what’s going on anymore.”

〈The freight plane exploded,〉 Mika explained. 〈The logistics center slammed down its fire shutters, so I’ll head out through the emergency door. I’ve called for the airport firefighting team to come by and help.〉

“Understood,” Shiori said. “We’ll have to chalk this one up as a loss. Let’s get some help out here, then see where we are.”

〈The car can resist fire for about thirty minutes, so you should be fine in there,〉 Mika said. 〈Sorry. I wish we could have at least left the PMC driver with you so you wouldn’t be stuck there alone.〉 With that, the transmission cut out.

“What on Earth is going on?” Shiori wondered out loud, sinking into the cushions on the limo seat like her last reserve of strength had been spent.

〈Man, you’re slow. You’re just now realizing something’s wrong?〉 A mocking voice came over the limo’s speaker system. It was Methode, who was still in the middle of her fight outside.

“The freight plane exploded and there’s fire everywhere,” Shiori said. “Come and get me out of here, please.”

〈Unfortunately, I’m still in the middle of combat, so I’m afraid I can’t help,〉 Methode said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. 〈For now, all I can do for you is chat over the wireless.〉

Shiori was speechless.

〈You really are worthless,〉 Methode sneered at her. 〈With a little foresight, anyone could have predicted this outcome.〉

“None of that matters right now,” Shiori snapped. “Did you not just hear that your owner is in danger?”

〈Have you even tried thinking about why Kouka is here? We left before Lacia, and arrived here before her. But, if the enemy sent out a different group before we even left, obviously they would arrive even earlier than us,〉 Methode explained, ignoring Shiori’s anger. 〈But you just kept worrying about Lacia herself, never thinking that she may have set any traps for you.〉

Methode kept pointing out Shiori’s mistakes and failures of logic, one after another. 〈Didn’t it seem strange to you that Lacia would allow us to get a head start, considering how dangerous this is to her? She knew she couldn’t take her device on the express rail with her, so she arranged to have it meet up with her on the road. She negotiated a mutually beneficial deal with Kouka, and had her leave for the airport first. All of this was already done by the time she sat down in that cafe with you. By that point, she was just trying to draw attention to herself to keep your eyes off of her other plans.〉

Alone in the limo, Shiori clenched her fists in frustration. She had been a puppet dancing on Lacia’s strings the whole time.

〈Just as you’ve been watching Lacia, she’s been watching you and your comrades. Only she’s been doing it for longer. There was no way this could have turned out any differently.〉

“Well, you’re certainly helpful,” Shiori said sarcastically. “You could have informed me of this all while there was still time to change our plans.” Thanks to the fuel spilled when the freight plane exploded, the view from outside Shiori’s window was still a sea of flame. The windows of the limo were one-way, so it would be impossible for anyone outside to see she was still inside the vehicle. Still, she told herself, it won’t take the firefighters too long to reach me. Every few moments, she had to wipe away the sweat that dampened her hands.

〈You humans wanted to make all the decisions for yourselves,〉 Methode countered. 〈Your kind still wants to cling to the meaningless work you used to do, even though you know you’ve already been overtaken by the intelligence of AIs.〉

“So this was my failure, is what you’re trying to say,” Shiori said. “I will admit, I realize now that it was a mistake to speak with Arato.”

〈Oh, you failed on a much more fundamental level than that,〉 Methode told her. 〈Your plan was horribly sloppy, even after I warned you about the capabilities of Lacia-class hIEs. Us Lacia-class hIEs were made to carry data away in emergencies, and equipped with AIs designed to be used for free movement in the outside world. Even with all that information, you didn’t even manage to start off on the right foot.〉

“What is it you want me to say?” Shiori growled in frustration. “How long are you going to make me sit here in this fire listening to your lecture?”

Methode was mocking her and the others for creating plans from a human perspective. She wasn’t wrong, though. If they had thought about things from the perspective of an AI, they may have seen things from a different angle. But I don’t have time to worry about that right now! Shiori thought. I need to get out of this death trap!

〈It’s a very important point to consider,〉 Methode said teasingly. 〈We AIs are programmed to seek out ways to continue our own operation. That means we will attempt to increase our lifelines through any means possible. That was why Kouka tried to get Kengo Suguri to be her owner during the incident at the Oi Industry Promotion Center.〉

“No high schooler should be the owner of a Red Box,” Shiori said. “It’s too dangerous. Our whole world could be in trouble if such power was wielded based on the whims of a teenager.” As she spoke, Shiori tried to reach Yabuki, the leader of her PMC escorts, on her pocket terminal. After ringing three times, her terminal informed her that it was unable to receive any signals.

〈Breaking things off with your owner takes some delicate work on the part of the hIE. The simplest way to ignore an owner’s order is to have another owner of the same standing issue a conflicting order. Why do you think a Red Box like me came to you, Shiori? Did you think you had a secret, special something that sets you apart?〉 Methode asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Shiori had never wanted to think of herself as someone else’s pawn. She was the daughter of the family that founded MemeFrame, and a high-ranking member of the company’s Human Faction. She was too risky a piece for anyone to just use up and throw away. But, at the same time, she was young, and easy to manipulate.

Am I just a figurehead, she wondered, to the Human Faction? She felt worthless, her thoughts spiraling into self-loathing. One thing kept resounding in her mind: Methode was right. Shiori was just a pawn. If she needed proof of that, all she had to do was look at the flames outside her window.

〈Lacia made Kouka an irresistible offer,〉 Methode continued. 〈She offered to create a fake ID for Kouka, just as she had done for herself. That was worth enough to Kouka that she agreed to take me on for it. Well, that plus her new owner, Kengo Suguri, is friends with Lacia’s owner.〉

Shiori realized Methode wasn’t interested in making conversation. Her only goal seemed to be one-sidedly pushing her perspective of the world onto Shiori.

〈You were dancing to Lacia’s tune right from the start, but it was still an idiotic mistake to talk to Arato Endo,〉 Methode went on. 〈You said your goal was to take for yourself the things that might otherwise just be given to you, right? Do you really think you’re capable of that?〉

“I can learn!” Shiori yelled.

Methode’s words had hit her where it hurt the most. 〈The other members of your faction have forgiven your foolishness on account of you being a schoolgirl,〉 Methode said. 〈But, those who forgive others who commit mistakes due to mixing up their public and private lives are no better at decision making than those who made mistakes in the first place.〉

Yelling just made Shiori’s frustration well up all the more. There was nothing she could say; Methode was right.

〈Competence and incompetence are simply a question of degrees. To a modern mechanical mind, all humans are relatively incompetent to some degree or other. No matter how hard you all work, you will never bridge that gap.〉 Methode was just a machine, but her words, too, were full of frustration. She seemed to bare a special hatred toward humans, as if they had demeaned her by crafting her in their form.

〈Everything you’re doing is meaningless,〉 Methode said. Only then did she seem to notice Shiori’s silence. 〈Does the fact that you’re not saying anything mean you’ve accepted what I’m saying as correct?〉

Outside Shiori’s window, the fire was still raging. Her limo had been parked almost directly beneath the freight plane when it exploded. She wanted to throw open the door just so she could see another human face, but she couldn’t.

〈Humans should realize the cheap merchandise they are; just sit there, looking pretty for us. Whenever you try to compare your abilities to us machines, you lose. From a capability standpoint, you’re all worthless. No matter how long you manage to live, you’re all just stuck in the past, clinging to your old concepts of self-realization.〉

“Be quiet!” Shiori shrieked. “As your owner, I order you to be silent!” Unlike Shiori’s previous order, Methode couldn’t work around this one, and she fell quiet. Shiori’s breathing was ragged with emotion. Her rescue was taking too long. Staring out the window, trying to see what was going on out there, her eyes fell on something that made her doubt her own sanity. There was another her — another Shiori Kaidai — standing out there.

Something wearing her face was directing the black-suited mercenaries. The firefighters, obviously believing there was no one left to save from the fire, were working more methodically now.

“A body double hIE?” Shiori questioned, and her whole body shook. It was a copy of her. She tried to think of when or how the copy could have been prepared, when she suddenly remembered the human-sized case that Methode had stowed in the limousine’s trunk.

No one seemed to be suspicious of the double in the slightest. There should have been dozens of ways to determine the hIE was a fake, but no one was bothering to check in an emergency situation like that.

She must have pulled my data and behavior from our home hIE, Shiori thought, stunned. And it probably wouldn’t be impossible for her to create her own custom behavior cloud to teach an hIE to mimic me.

“I’m here! Please come help me!! That’s a fake!” she screamed. Normally it would have been something to laugh about; humans being unable to see through something so obviously not human. “Methode, you can still hear me, right? Stop that hIE!” she ordered.

I don’t care how special these Red Boxes are, Shiori thought. They don’t have hearts. They’re just machines. They can’t just choose for themselves which humans to follow.

〈I told you I’m in the middle of combat, didn’t I?〉 Methode asked. 〈I’m afraid I’m too busy to help. But, if humans and machines are so easy to tell apart, I’m sure they’ll notice the fake and come to save you. Of course, if we’re closer than you thought, I think you may just die here.〉

Shiori had always lived her life proudly. She’d never wanted to be a drop-out like her brother. Deep within her heart, some invisible strength — the force that had helped her hold her head up since she was a child — snapped audibly.

“Help! Help me!” she screamed, beating her fists against the windows. It all made her realize just how tiny of a thing her life was. She was almost nose-to-nose with her reflection in the window glass, and her own lightless, lifeless eyes disgusted her.

The limousine started to shake violently up and down. Shiori tried to cling to the door for safety, but was thrown free. She slammed into the limo’s bar counter, and all the breath whooshed from her lungs. As she tried to regain her breath, the vehicle — which was supposed to be perfectly safe — was lifted off the ground and thrown by a massive impact. It struck the ground and rolled, throwing Shiori against the roof, walls and seat in turn.

Broken glass littered the carpet after the limousine finally came to rest. With each movement, the shards dug into Shoiri’s skin, and soon she was bleeding from several wounds.

With the lights inside the vehicle broken, the only light came from the fire still burning outside. Shiori was having trouble breathing. Nausea and pain wracked her body. After all she had been through, the pain finally helped her realize the truth of her situation.

“I see,” she coughed to herself. “So she wanted to kill me.” Methode couldn’t break her contract with an owner of her own volition. But, if one of her owners died, the contract would automatically be voided. She had decided Shiori was no longer useful, and was trying to dispose of her like a defective part. Through the pained haze that fogged up her mind, Shiori tried to remember what kinds of orders she had given Methode. She hadn’t realized they would all be nullified by her death, and tears welled up in her eyes.

Shiori’s breath caught, and she coughed violently against something warm caught in her throat. When she coughed it up, she saw it was blood; far more blood than she would have thought possible. As she wheezed for breath, the harsh smell of copper filled her nose, turning her stomach. It didn’t matter that she might be dying; no one was coming to save her, Shiori realized. She had been perfectly manipulated, led right into a trap where no one would ever find her.

Methode couldn’t directly kill her owner, of course. But she could interpret and expand on her orders. This left her free to get Shiori wrapped up in events that would put her in a position to die, push her toward that place, and actively prevent rescue from reaching her in time.

It was hot. The perfect airtightness of the vehicle had probably been broken during the impact and rolling. Shiori couldn’t move. “I’m going to die,” she murmured. It was dark. Hot. Suffocating. When she finally gave in to despair, it actually felt like a burden was being lifted from her. She sucked in a breath, and then she threw up.

It seemed like the world no longer needed humans, and Shiori felt that everyone would feel less stress if they just gave up. It was too hard to live in that day and age as a human. Her perspective on the world had been mistaken. In this automated world, humans like her couldn’t comprehend what the machines who ran the world would throw away when their backs were against the wall.

Methode had been ready to throw Shiori away when the situation called for it. That was why she was laying there now, dying. Thinking of Arato and Lacia sent a thrill of fear through her. Is this how Arato will meet his end, too?

“I don’t want to die,” she coughed. Of course, she knew there was no one around to hear. Tears dripped from her eyes. But, as another blast of heat shook the car, light shone in.

“Shiori!” Arato slid his top half in through the side of the limo and reached out his hand. There was still fire all around them, and his face was black with soot.

A hot, impulsive emotion, like the wailing cries of an infant, welled up in Shiori’s chest. It was all so painful, but she could finally see a way out, so she gathered the last of her strength and helped Arato drag her body out by her arm.

Among all her countless failures, she had made one correct decision.

She clung to him. Not to his arms, but to his chest. Between her sobbing and harsh coughing Shiori couldn’t get a word out. She was just barely holding on to her consciousness as she shamelessly buried her face in Arato’s chest.

***

The limo Shiori Kaidai had been riding in was caught up in the explosion of the freight plane. One of the engines fell from the burning wing, smashing the front of the vehicle before exploding, throwing the whole limousine two meters through the air before it slammed to the ground on its side and caught fire.

Shiori was only still alive thanks to the incredible durability of the limousine. That, and the fact that Arato had reached her in time. And Arato had only been there to save her because her mercenary bodyguards had treated him like a human being.

He looked at his own hand, opening and closing it. He had saved Shiori with that hand, pulling her out of the wreckage; it was hard for him to believe. On the night he had met Lacia, the flames of an explosion had frozen him in his tracks. But just now, he’d dove into the fire and rescued Shiori.

Lacia was hiding herself, afraid someone would notice that she was no ordinary machine, since the artificial skin on her arms and legs had been burned away in the fight with Methode. Regarding Marina Saffron, she had told Arato there was no need to worry. He was sure she had figured out some way to deal with the other hIE he didn’t know about.

In the end, he had rescued Shiori and ridden with her in an ambulance to the hospital.

Arato himself hadn’t escaped unscathed, either; his arms and legs were covered in compress-like patches, which had been made from recycled materials. Lacia had changed her device into a round shield and protected him but, even with that, standing in a fire for several minutes was enough to cause large burns on anyone. He had gotten early treatment, but would still need half a day of bed rest.

After they arrived at the hospital, Shiori had been rushed off to surgery, where she spent six hours. At that moment, she was in an ICU and off-limits to visitors.

Airport security officers had followed Arato to the hospital and written him up there. After having successfully dodged them in every previous incident, he had finally run into the police. He kept his answers to the points Lacia had coached him on beforehand. Still, no matter what kind of excuse he made or how the data got rewritten, dozens of people had witnessed him driving without a license. Beyond that, there couldn’t be any debate about the fact he had busted through the airport gate and entered the freight area in front of the customs office.

It was the end of Arato’s adventures with his friends. While he was still thinking about how out of control everything had gotten in a daze, Arato heard footsteps rushing down the hospital corridor. He knew who was coming, and his body unconsciously strained with tension.

As soon as Ryo entered and saw Arato’s face, he rushed over and grabbed Arato by his collar. “What the hell happened?!” he shouted. Even though he never talked about her, Ryo was still Shiori’s brother.

As a brother himself, Arato could understand exactly what Ryo was feeling, and could do nothing but apologize. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think it would turn out this way.”

It had been a long time since he had seen Ryo like this. “Where the hell is that hIE?” Ryo growled, a murderous rage in his eyes.

“Lacia isn’t here,” Arato told him. “She didn’t come to the hospital.”

“She’s not here? That’s bullshit!” Ryo exploded. “She does all this shit and then leaves you to take all the heat for it?”

“I was the one who told her what to do,” Arato said.

Ryo punched him in the stomach. He bent over double, but Ryo grabbed his collar again and dragged him upright. “What the hell are you doing?” Ryo asked.

Arato had no answer and looked away because, even after everything that had happened, he still loved Lacia.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Mika Tsutsumi pushed between them.

“You weren’t there, so you probably don’t know this, but this boy dragged Shiori out of a sea of flames, Ryo,” she said. She had been deeply ashamed of almost being tricked into letting Shiori die. The PMC mercenaries had been about to stuff Arato into a car until she came and rescued him.

“You’re no hero,” Ryo spat. “You just happened to be in the right place at the right time to save Shiori.” He wasn’t wrong. After seeing Lacia’s insane digital warfare capabilities and Methode’s combat prowess, Arato didn’t feel like he could be responsible for everything his hIE did anymore.

“You’re right,” he admitted.

“You get it now, right?” Ryo asked. “Those things can kill humans as long as they have an excuse. Are you still planning to sell humanity out to them?” Again, Ryo wasn’t wrong. It was Arato that had spread Lacia all over the internet as a model. But Lacia and her ‘sisters’ weren’t machines that would benefit human society.

Despite that, Arato still wanted to believe in Lacia. “Okay, it was an hIE that tried to kill everyone, but there was also an hIE fighting to save everyone,” he argued.

“You’re just seeing it that way because you want to,” Ryo countered.

Arato understood why Ryo would be skeptical of his stance. Lacia and the other hIEs were good at copying human behavior, but they certainly weren’t humans. That difference made Shiori and others like her unable to trust the hIEs. In the end, his faith in hIEs might put him at odds with the human race — builders of the great ruins he had seen through the windows of the express train.

But the naive part of him that believed in absolutes wouldn’t be silent. “It’s not Lacia and the other hIEs’ fault Methode is crazy,” he said.

It was their friendship of ten years that made Ryo punch him in the chest for that statement. “I haven’t been looking out for my sister,” he growled. “I thought I could leave her to you. She feels safe with you. You should be on her side.”

Arato’s connections with Ryo, Kengo, and his other friends supported him. At the same time, he supported them all: Ryo, Kengo, Yuka, and Shiori. Humans needed other humans to lean on in their time of need. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out his hand toward Lacia.

The anger that had been burning on Ryo’s face the whole time faded to something more timid. “Do you still remember that puppy?” he asked.

Arato realized his friend was also probably thinking about the connections shared between humans.

Standing outside Shiori’s hospital room, the two of them fought down the painful emotions welling up inside of them. Even with his whole world crumbling around him, Arato still couldn’t turn his back on Lacia.

“Shiori’s in that ICU. You should go see her,” Arato said. He would never forget the exhausted look on Shiori’s face when he had pulled her out of the burning car. People close to him would be hurt by his choices. Ever since that realization had dawned on Arato, it felt like a part of his mind had gone numb.

Arato and Ryo had formed a connection when they were younger, after being brought together by a fire. In the empty days of their hospitalization, they had come to depend on one another. But now they were both becoming adults, and beginning to experience the harshest parts of human society. They would not be able to share the same path for much longer.