by Satoshi Hase
“You did good today,” Asuna said, handing him a plastic juice pack.
The two of them were taking a break outside the old building, which had remained the same since its rebuilding in the 21st century. There was still too much of a crowd surrounding Lacia to approach her.
Arato was grateful for the time. He didn’t know what he should say when he was face to face with Lacia again. It might not have had any effect on her, but Arato would need a bit of time for the afterglow he’d felt during the event to die down.
Across the street, in front of the Tokyu main store, yet another crowd had gathered to stare at Lacia. All the girls interested in fashion had continued on into the store, so the crowd was now mostly made up of men.
Suddenly the crowd scattered, breaking off into smaller groups. Someone screamed, and Arato jumped to his feet.
A man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, was swinging his bag around in the middle of the scattered crowd. Another man was being escorted out of the department store with both arms pinned behind his back by a security hIE. The hIE’s bare skin was metallic, so anyone could tell its role at a glance.
“What happened?” Arato asked.
Asuna contacted someone on her pocket terminal before responding. “Looks like that guy they threw out grabbed Lacia’s shoulder. The shop tossed him out for us.”
The man the hIE security had grabbed took off running, almost falling over himself to get away. He didn’t look back as he tore off toward Yoyogi Park. His violent actions were surprising, considering the high-quality suit the guy was wearing.
“These things happen sometimes,” Asuna said, glaring after the man with a bitter expression. “That’s one of the downsides of analog hacking. People tend to interpret certain jobs and actions in the same way, when paired with a human shape.”
“So is Lacia’s job dangerous?” Arato asked.
Asuna seemed to realize that she’d said too much, and made an ‘x’ gesture with her arms. Apparently she wanted this all to be off the record, so to speak.
“Our sense of sight works faster than our brain’s ability to assign meaning to what we’re seeing. We can be moved by what we see before we can think about it, and analog hacking aims for that gap in our perception,” she told him. “Even if we’re only using it for business, our users assign meanings and stories to what they see on their own. Sometimes, those turn into fantasies that run wild in the user’s head. When things get out of control, unlike cases with human models or celebrities, the users often protest that hIEs are just objects, anyway.”
Asuna’s words disturbed Arato deeply.
“What I’m saying is that criminals have less restraint in their actions toward hIE models than they would against humans,” Asuna concluded. “But don’t worry, we take good care of all our models.”
Despite her assurance, Arato couldn’t help but feel worried.
It was already evening by the time all of Lacia’s work was wrapped up and they could head home. Arato and Lacia had been told that it would be best not to take the train home that night, so someone from the company drove them to Shin Koiwa Station.
Arato wanted a chance to walk and talk with Lacia before they arrived home. “I heard Fabion offered to provide personal security for you. Are you sure you’re okay turning them down?” he asked.
Lacia had turned down the offer of her own accord. She was carrying a plastic bag; they had given her the clothes she had modeled that day. The folks at the department store had also found her several outfits to match a variety of settings and occasions.
“There is no need,” she responded. “hIEs are conglomerations of sensors. If a security hIE were near me for an extended period of time, they would be able to discern information regarding your place of residence, owner.”
“Well, okay, but it’s not like they’re going to use that information to do anything bad,” Arato said.
Lacia’s pale blue eyes were expressionless. “The data would be transmitted to a security company,” she said.
Arato started to ask what that had to do with anything when he remembered the night they’d met; Lacia had been dragged into combat as soon as she’d met him. He doubted that she put much trust in security companies.
“Well, we can always ask them to come if things start looking dangerous,” he concluded.
It was an April evening, and the sun was still quick to go down. A 3D image floated above the sunset-dyed road, informing them that a vehicle would pass by in forty seconds. They stepped to the side of the narrow street, letting the slow-moving car pass them by.
“You were really amazing today, Lacia,” Arato told her. She was still the same Lacia she had been that morning, but he felt like a new distance had opened between them.
“I have not changed at all,” she disagreed, syncing her steps up to walk beside him.
Just feeling her there by his side made Arato draw in a sharp breath; it was different from just looking at her. When Lacia was beside him, she was in all his senses. Awareness of her dominated his thoughts. She smelled good.
“You’re wearing perfume,” he said.
“This is the latest summer scent from Dior.” A shy blush crept up her cheeks.
Arato felt his own cheeks getting hot in response. “It’s good on you,” he admitted. “No surprise there.”
After the danger of their first meeting, the two hadn’t done much walking outside together. But, to Arato, Lacia was already a fundamental part of his daily life. It was to the point where he almost had trouble remembering what life was like before her.
Feeling awkward, Arato started to walk a bit ahead of her, but Lacia grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “Are you distancing yourself from me?” she asked, concerned.
“Well, you’re the Grand Prix winner,” he pointed out. “I know that I’m your owner and all, but I’m starting to feel like it’d be a bad thing to think of you as only belonging to me.” Arato would have never believed that he could feel this way about her, up until he had tagged along to her first job.
Bathed in the gentle light of the setting sun, Lacia brushed her hand through her light violet hair. The motion was the same as one Arato had seen her use during the show. He momentarily forgot how to speak, and Lacia gave a gentle laugh.
“If the fact that I gave a show for everyone disturbs you, then I will give a show just for you, owner.”
It was the same old path home Arato always took, but with Lacia there, it made his heart soar.
As they drew closer to the apartment, they ran into a crowd of people in the street. There were three police cars parked there, and officers in uniforms were stretching ‘DO NOT ENTER’ tape around the area. When they arrived at the scene, Arato saw a female officer handling the onlookers. Arato asked a nearby, friendly-looking middle aged man what had happened.
“Someone busted up an hIE,” the man told him.
Whoever was going around destroying hIEs, they had been near Arato’s apartment. He remembered the arm he had found on the way home from school and felt sick. With Lacia by his side, he suddenly felt danger all around them, and his skin broke out in goosebumps before he could regain control of his emotions.
“How come the cops are making such a big deal of it this time?” the man Arato was talking to asked, to no one in particular.
Arato could feel something strange about the situation too, but couldn’t put his finger on it. The tension of the scene was heavy enough to prickle his skin. There were even news crews there with camera units. Then, Arato realized what was wrong with this scenario.
“Hey,” he said. “How come there are police here this time? This is completely different from how they treated that other case.” hIE were machines. When he had turned in the arm from the last case, everyone had treated it like he’d stumbled onto a troubling piece of trash.
Lacia responded to the question that had dawned on him. “This time, the owner was with the hIE. Apparently the owner was injured while attempting to protect the hIE.”
“Someone got hurt? That sounds pretty serious,” Arato said.
“Three adult males exited a large white vehicle in this area, and attempted to abduct a female hIE. The hIE’s owner, who was accompanying her, offered resistance. As a result, the owner was beaten and received light injuries that are projected to be healed within the week,” Lacia said.
“As soon as a human gets injured, everyone starts taking it seriously,” Arato said. “Unlike what happens when an hIE gets busted.” Humans weren’t machines, after all; everyone else accepted this difference automatically. But Arato couldn’t bring himself to make that kind of distinction in his mind.
“Do not worry. The hIE is also in good condition,” Lacia said.
Arato was curious as to how Lacia knew all this information, but decided not to pursue the topic. With her enhanced senses, she could have been eavesdropping on the conversations between the police officers.
The female officer standing nearby looked over at them. “That officer is an hIE,” Lacia said. “She is recording audio and video information from the area.” All hIEs made recordings of what they saw and heard, but police specifically used their hIE recordings to check for any suspicious persons in the area of a crime.
Arato didn’t feel like he had anything to feel guilty about, but for some reason the idea of being recorded by the police put him on edge. Suddenly, he heard someone clicking their tongue loudly nearby; a man who had been about to apologize for touching the police tape realized he was talking to an hIE, and snatched back his hand. He then shoved past Arato’s shoulder and left the crowd.
Lacia had an expression on her face that said she had picked up on something.
“Owner, should we consider the enmity demonstrated by that man just now to be a normal response? I have analyzed all statements made by him recently. He should have had sufficient information and understanding to realize that the officer there was an hIE,” she said.
“Then why did he act like that?” Arato asked.
“He was misled by the image of a police officer projected by the hIE; in other words, analog hacked. But he reacted with anger to this hacking.”
“That makes sense.”
“As an hIE model complicit in analog hacking, I wonder how much we should worry about my hacking creating people who feel enmity toward me,” Lacia said with an anxious look.
Something caught in Arato’s chest, though he had no idea what it was. “It’ll all work out,” he reassured her. “If something happens, I’ll be there to protect you. I am your owner, after all.”
He wanted to calm her fears, even though he knew she had no heart to tremble.
Not everyone treated hIEs well, and some people even despised them. Arato could feel their hate radiating from the scene. Kengo and Ryo had told him not to get involved with Lacia, but he felt like he had to do the manly thing.
“Owners should always be responsible for their hIEs. So if it starts to feel dangerous, just quit. I’ll do all the apologizing for you,” he said. Lacia had no soul. Therefore, Arato thought, she could do no wrong. Probably.
***
Kengo Suguri was upset; he had received a sudden request for escape routes. The group had only been supposed to grab an hIE and bust her up, but instead they’d ended up beating on some guy.
“What the hell are those guys thinking?” Biting back his own voice, Kengo folded his hands in front of a stationary terminal. When he stuck his finger into the 3D display, anything he said would be taken as audio commands.
“Give me all the positional data you have on the police in Edogawa ward,” he said. “Also, I’d like to speak with someone above me, so send out an encryption code. This whole thing is above my pay grade.”
The Antibody Network Kengo was part of was a group driven by an interconnection of evil wills. For example, a single member might upload the location of an hIE walking by itself in a place where people couldn’t see to the network. That act alone was not illegal.
But then a group of people full of hate would gather with weapons. Though hIEs were bundles of sensory and recording equipment, there were plenty of ways to render these ineffective if you just knew how.
Then, different people who only vaguely knew what had happened would upload information on the movements of police cars in the area to the network. All they had to do was point their pocket terminals in the right direction; it was no trouble at all. And that was how the culprits slipped away.
The Antibody Network was a defensive wall, holding back the analog hacking that had been eroding human will ever since hIEs had started wearing human figures. They were all volunteers, each connected by an evil intent which none of them could deny.
Kengo was one of the members in charge of distributing information to the enthusiastic executioners of the group. He was also one of the few members in the network who took on jobs that could actually get him arrested, so he worked alone, isolated in his room. This was his way of stopping the hIE erosion of human society.
On his screen, facilities provided by the Antibody Network were shown on a regional map. Kengo pointed to a shop near the waterfront with his finger. The system automatically calculated a safe route for movement based on the current position of the police and their probable search areas. Even a group of amateur criminals could outmaneuver the police if enough of them pooled their capabilities. There were even some police in Kengo’s group; they were officers who felt that hIE were edging humans out of jobs in their department.
“Everyone, after you’ve passed the next two traffic lights, go another thirty meters and then get out of the vehicle. There aren’t any cameras watching that spot. Once you’re out, put the vehicle on auto-mode and send it to the coordinates I show you.” Kengo’s words, now converted to text, were sent to the criminals.
The response came as a text to Kengo’s pocket terminal. ＜Thanks. We owe you.＞
A shiver ran up Kengo’s spine at the friendly message. He didn’t feel guilty about the things he did for the Network, but that evening in Shin Koito, a real human had been hurt. The people he was helping at that moment were guilty of assault.
“Savages,” he muttered. But the Antibody Network needed savages like them to outsource all the dangerous work to. “Don’t bother feeling indebted, you savages.”
The other day, on his way home from school with some friends, Kengo had seen a torn-off hIE arm. It was definitely the work of the Antibody Network. Kengo had guided a group of savages, their eyes filled with hate, to the place where they destroyed that hIE.
It was very possible that the Antibody Network could someday attack the hIE that Arato had picked up. An order could come along from someone up the chain of command in the Network to do just that. Kengo didn’t want to think too much about what to do when his own friend’s property got involved.
As he glared at the 3D display in front of him, he heard footsteps from behind. A hesitant voice called out from the other side of his traditional sliding screen door. “Kengo, dinner.”
Kengo’s home was an eatery in Azuma-bashi called Sunflower. It had a prestigious fiftyyear history. There were twenty-eight seats in the restaurant. The whole place had a relaxed atmosphere, where customers could enjoy the western-style cooking that Kengo’s dad had practiced in much larger restaurants.
But the times were changing. Most of the restaurants around Kengo’s house used hIEs for employees. Some of them even had the hIEs doing the cooking.
Kengo’s mom and little sister were sitting in the family dining room adjoining the restaurant when Kengo came out. Though her hair was a rich blonde, Kengo’s mother spoke fluent Japanese as she chastised him. “Kengo, you must always be on time for meals.”
His mother, Veronika, had been a foreign exchange student from Russia. She had passed her looks on to Kengo’s little sister, Olga, while Kengo himself looked more like his father.
“Where’s dad?” Kengo ventured to ask. His mom tended to go quiet when anyone brought up the store.
Instead, his honey-haired sister answered in a mumble. “He’s in the restaurant. Hey, how come we don’t get hIEs? If we left them in charge of the shop, dad could come eat with us.”
“Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean we have to,” Kengo said.
That night, dinner was fried food that was almost too professional. Their dad’s fried dishes were delicious, with crisp, crunchy skin. Kengo could hear loud laughter from the restaurant. Even though they didn’t serve alcohol, there were always customers who got noisy.
“Is dad gonna be all right?” Kengo asked no one in particular. His dad was an old-fashioned chef who really loved working with customers. The recent downward trend in customer etiquette was having an impact on his mental state.
This was one of the negative effects of analog hacking. People were so used to their servers being nothing more than food-making machines these days, that they had forgotten polite cultural norms that used to be common sense. No one complimented the chef anymore, or bothered to say ‘thank you.’
Normal exchanges between human hearts had easily grown rusty.
The commotion from the restaurant showed no sign of stopping. It wasn’t the kind of place that could depend on familiar regulars; tourists to the Sky Tree area and students came there often.
Kengo’s mom stood up from the table. “I’m going to go check on the restaurant,” she said. Then it was just Kengo and his sister.
“Kengo,” Olga asked curiously, “do you not want us to get an hIE?”
“Those aren’t cure-alls for every problem we have,” he said. “They’re just like human-shaped cars.”
hIEs were just like cars. Now that cars drove themselves, all a person needed to do was sit down and let the car do the driving. Human movement had become automatic, and hIEs were the same. They were human-shaped, so it was easy for them to fit into human society, and the range of work they could automate for the humans was wide. That was all there was to them.
That was all there was to them, which was exactly why the Network had to keep the hIEs from taking the world away from humans. The precious and nostalgic feelings that lived under the roof of his father’s shop could only thrive in a place where humans could still exchange their emotions. That was the reason Kengo had joined the Antibody Network.