Beatless: Volume 1

by Satoshi Hase

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

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

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

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

  “So these guys kidnapped Kengo?” Arato asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is she sure?” Ryo asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ***

  Arato cut the call.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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