Beatless: Volume 1

by Satoshi Hase

  “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 answe
r. 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.