by Satoshi Hase
“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 th
at 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.
Shior
i 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.