by Satoshi Hase
Sirens whined from ambulances and fire trucks. There were ‘human’ hIEs who played police officers in the experimental city, but Arato didn’t hear any police car sirens.
The city which, up until about ten minutes ago, had looked just like the neighborhood around Arato’s house, was now in complete chaos. People were screaming and pushing past each other in the street. There were twenty thousand ‘human’ and normal hIEs packed into an area of only about five hundred meters in the experimental city. It was fine when they were all in their own apartments, but with all of them rushing outside, there was suddenly one hIE per square meter of ground. They started to spill out onto the road, to the point where cars could no longer pass by.
Arato’s terminal vibrated in the pocket of his jeans. He pulled it out, and saw calls from Lacia and Ryo. Lacia should have been in the apartment when it exploded. He took her call first.
“What’s going on?!” he yelled.
〈My apologies. Methode attacked,〉 Lacia said, her tone serious and blunt.
“Are you all right?” Arato asked. “I saw the explosion.”
〈Yuka was taken. She was not injured, though. All flammable objects in the living room of the apartment were burned by Methode’s attacks,〉 Lacia reported.
“Methode kidnapped Yuka?!” Arato’s thoughts went blank, as if his brain had been boiled to mush. Just as he had feared, Methode knew where he was and could get to him whenever she wanted. And her first target had been Yuka. He should have seen it coming.
〈I believe Methode’s owner has taken Yuka captive in order to exchange her for custody of me,〉 Lacia said calmly, as if she could already see the future playing out.
When she said it, Arato remembered that he had Methode’s owner right there with him. He looked around for Ginga Watarai. “He’s gone. He ran off!” Arato shouted.
There were too many human figures running away from the apartment; Arato couldn’t hope to pick Watarai out from among them. Still, Arato ran, looking for the man while still holding his terminal to his ear.
“Hey, did anyone see the guy I was just talking with? Where’d he go? Someone tell me!” he yelled at the crowd of ‘human’ hIEs.
All of them shook their heads in confusion.
“Lacia, can you scan for any other humans besides me around here? Methode’s owner was just here! He should still be around here somewhere!” he yelled into his terminal.
〈I attempted to interfere with the hIEs in the area, but I am unable to manipulate their data. Arato, be careful. There is something strange about the hIEs in this city,〉 Lacia warned.
The truth of her warning was playing out before Arato’s eyes, as fallen hIEs were starting to push themselves up on broken limbs. Supporting themselves awkwardly on limbs that couldn’t properly hold their weight anymore, the torn, disfigured humanoid machines began to spasm across the ground. Arato backed away slowly as he locked gazes with a pair of dead eyes set in a deformed skull.
“What the hell is going on?!” he yelled. “The hIEs that just busted all over the ground are getting up again.” They dragged themselves forward; each face expressionless, each body bearing wounds that anyone could tell at a glance should have been fatal.
The ‘human’ hIEs just kept watching from a distance, until a young male ‘human’ called out to the ‘suicidal’ hIEs, reaching out to touch one of them. As soon as he got within reach, though, the zombie hIE he was trying to touch leapt on top of him and bit his shoulder. The ‘human’ screamed as the hIE’s teeth bit deep into his muscular shoulder. And it wasn’t just one hIE, either. One after another, fallen hIEs leapt on the ‘man,’ beating and tearing at him.
Since the screaming of the ‘human’ was coming from a speaker rather than a real throat, it continued on even after his limbs had been ripped off and his body torn with wounds that should have been fatal. Arato forgot he was still connected with Lacia, and stopped to stare as the horrible scene played out in front of his eyes.
“What the hell?” he wondered.
Lacia’s calm voice coming through his pocket terminal snapped him out of it. 〈Get away from any hIEs that are acting strange as quickly as possible,〉 she instructed. 〈I will retrieve my device and make preparations to recapture Ms. Yuka and escape from this city.〉
Something cut off the call. In a panic, Arato wondered what had happened, until he saw that another call was coming in; it was Ryo. As soon as the call connected, he heard Ryo shouting in his ear. 〈What the hell are you doing, Arato?! Have you seen what’s going on outside?!〉
Just hearing his friend’s voice had a calming effect on Arato. “Someone kidnapped Yuka,” he replied.
Thanks to the chaos engulfing the city, it took ten minutes to get to where Ryo was waiting for him. All of the ‘suicidal’ hIEs that had thrown themselves from the higher floors of all the apartments in the area were attacking any ‘human’ hIEs they could find. The zombie hIEs walked, dragging their feet, obviously blind as they constantly bumped into others walking near them. It was clear that they had lost control of themselves, yet there was no fighting between the zombies. Since there would be no point to a social experiment city if the AI in control couldn’t simulate a realistic reaction in its residents, all of the ‘human’ hIEs were panicking.
The zombies didn’t hesitate to attack any ‘humans’ their eyes fell on, including women and children. Herded by three thousand rampaging hIEs, a large portion of the city’s seventeen thousand ‘humans’ were gathered in a nearby park. Since it seemed like the easiest place to find each other, Arato and Ryo agreed to meet up in the park as well. Ryo waved his arms so Arato could find him. Not that it was hard; even in a crowd of ‘human’ hIEs, it was easy to pick out a real human by his vivid, emotional movements.
Arato dashed over to Ryo, noting the hard look on his friend’s face. “I can’t get a hold of the admin building,” Ryo said. “And, I don’t think we’ll make it if we just wait for rescue.”
Without hesitation, Arato looked to Ryo to sort things out. “What should we do? Do you think all this is related to them taking Yuka?” he asked.
Ryo flashed him a wry smile, as if he had been expecting Arato to toss everything to him. “If they managed to mess with all however-many thousand hIEs at once, the whole behavioral cloud must be compromised,” Ryo said. “And normally, someone would have shut it off before it could spread this much, so someone must actually have taken physical control of the server.”
There wasn’t a shred left of the everyday cityscape Arato had seen just that morning. Everything around him was twisted and wrong. The thought that all it took for things to get this insane was a few bad orders to the hIEs made Arato seriously worry about the stability of his own future.
“I wonder if Dad and the others got away,” he murmured.
“The station’s crawling with hIEs,” Ryo said. “Unless they walked out, they must be hiding somewhere.”
Strange moans and screams from over a thousand mouths blended into an echoing cacophony throughout the park.
While Arato was still frozen with worry about his family, Ryo was already starting to move. “We’ve gotta move, Arato,” he said. “If we stay here too long, we’ll be boxed in.”
In one corner of the park, Arato could already hear screams and yells of anger starting to rise above the surrounding commotion. Zombie hIEs were already throwing themselves fiercely at the crowd in the park.
The ‘human’ hIEs were grabbing bits of wood or anything that looked solid and fighting off the attackers. But the zombies didn’t even flinch as they were hit and, one by one, they dragged down their prey. As soon as one went down, it was immediately swarmed by the wound-covered hIEs and pummeled. Once the attacks to their heads smashed the hair accessory that contained their autonomous AI, the ‘human’ hIEs fell under the control of the abnormal behavioral cloud and joined the zombies.
“Let’s take that,” Ryo said, pointing to a car one of the ‘human’ hIEs must have driven there. Once
he stepped out of the crowd in the park, Arato was immediately spotted by a dozen hIEs with broken limbs who started swarming in his direction. In a panic, he jumped into the automatic car Ryo had pointed out. More and more zombie hIEs were mobbing the park, as if they were actually starving for the flesh of the ‘humans’ gathered there.
“Those people need to run,” Arato said. “Or at least find a better place to make a stand against these things.” He knew none of them were actually human, but he couldn’t stop worrying for their sakes.
“The park must have been designated as their evacuation area in emergencies,” Ryo said. “The AIs must be at their limits, considering how they’re not attempting to adapt to what’s happening.”
Outside the car windows, Arato saw zombie hIEs, with their innards showing through broken skin, rushing toward the vehicle as fast as they could on broken limbs that left them stumbling awkwardly. He called up the autopilot function of the car and was about to punch in a destination when his finger stopped.
“Wait. I have to save Yuka,” he said. “Ryo, you get out of the city. I’m staying here.”
Ryo called up the control panel for the car and tapped something in. The steering wheel shifted over until it was in front of Arato. “Take the wheel,” Ryo ordered. Then, when Arato hesitated, he went on with more force. “You always want to try to do everything yourself, right?” he asked. “So, you drive.”
“Fine,” Arato said. He took a deep breath, and then took hold of the wheel. He switched off the autopilot; as long as it was on, it would never move forward due to the safety measures in place that stopped it when a human figure was in front of it. With all the hIEs in the street, they’d never get anywhere with it on. He hoped he sounded confident enough for Ryo to trust him to get them out of this mess.
“Seems like only the hIEs in the city are messed up,” Ryo said. “It must be something in the local behavior cloud.”
An hIE with a completely smashed face was pounding on the hood of the car with its fists, shaking the entire car. It looked so human, it was impossible for Arato to not project a murderous rage onto it, and his stomach twisted in terror. It felt like reality as he knew it was turning to dust and blowing away. He thought of Lacia. Just like her, the thing smashing into the windshield of the car had no heart, no soul.
He felt as though Lacia would probably tell him that even the fear that was freezing him was nothing more than an analog hack. Thinking about her, and about his connection to her, took some of the edge off the terror, though.
It struck Arato at that moment that he might be pretty simple minded after all. He was already driving without a license again. Remembering the airport, he focused on the road ahead. “The accelerator is on the right, on the right,” he muttered to himself.
Ryo’s face went pale. “Wait, if you have to remind yourself of that, move over and let me drive,” he said.
Arato squeezed his eyes shut and slammed his foot down on the accelerator as hard as he could. The tires squealed and the car leaped forward, tossing aside any human figures that got in its way. Arato’s heart was hammering so hard that it felt like it would explode. Watching the car he was driving plow through things that looked human made his mind go blank with shock.
Normally, an impact from a vehicle was enough to put an hIE’s body into a stand-by state. They wouldn’t resume operation until they had run a full check on their functions. When Arato ran over the zombies, however, they continued to move as if nothing had happened.
“Which way takes us out of this city?!” Arato shouted, his hands shuddering on the wheel. It didn’t matter if they were hIEs; watching a human body roll over the hood of the vehicle he was driving and hearing it land with a thud behind the car wasn’t something he could experience without a thrill of terror.
“The behavioral control server is probably in the central management building,” Ryo said. “Whatever’s behind this is probably there. If the guys who grabbed Yuka are the ones behind this, they might be there too.” Arato couldn’t help but take his eyes off the road and look at Ryo.
The plan had been to take Ryo to the edge of town and then go back for Yuka. But Ryo gave him another wry smile and shrugged. “Let’s just go get her. No telling what might happen if we don’t go there first,” he said.
“Thanks,” Arato told him. To show his gratitude, Arato stepped even harder on the accelerator. The program that helped hIEs avoid traffic must have kicked in, because they started to wobble out of the car’s path. Slowly, the crowd of human figures began to part, opening a way forward for Arato. His mind was full of getting Yuka back as quickly as possible, so he didn’t hesitate to slam aside the hIEs that were too slow to dodge with the car’s bumper. He lost count of how many times the car shuddered as it sent hIEs flying. It was almost as though the terror he had felt had turned in on itself, transforming into a rush that made his whole body feel hot.
Ryo also looked a bit high as he leaned his elbow against the car window. “How long are you planning to stay with Lacia anyway?!” he suddenly blurted. “You know that Red Box is just manipulating you, right? She’s trying to create a world that’s more convenient for the robots.”
“So maybe she is, so what?!” Arato shouted back. The inside of the car felt hot. Even with a crowd of zombie hIEs reaching out for him, Arato still felt like opening the window just to get some air.
“She’s gonna betray you!” Ryo shouted. “She could have already made contracts with some other owners without you knowing.” Arato wondered if Ryo had heard about Shiori and Ginga Watarai both being Methode’s owners. It was true; Lacia may have been doing the same thing. Thinking about her while she was apart from him squeezed at Arato’s heart.
Ryo glared at the malfunctioning automated city through the car window. “I’m only coming along with you to save Yuka,” he muttered. “Don’t expect me to lift a finger for the sake of that Red Box.”
“I’m not just doing this for Lacia,” Arato said. “I just want to do whatever I can to help.” Ryo was silent. Arato knew what he had said didn’t make any sense; if he was honest with himself, there may not have been anything he could do in this automated age. When that thought struck him, he felt his chest tighten until he couldn’t breathe. Even with everything he had seen, he had still wanted to think of himself as being unique. Considering the world he was living in, that was probably a silly thought. But then, when he thought of Lacia, he felt strangely lighter. Even though it was hardly the time for a smile, he found his mouth turning up into a grin.
The central administration building was right next to a shopping mall. Arato’s dad had explained that the place had been used as a power control station in the new town, in the age before smart cells were used for electricity. The cables running from it all over the city apparently helped with the monitoring Arato’s dad and his team did.
The navigation screen was telling Arato to go around the shopping mall using a narrow back street, since the car couldn’t go through the mall. If we get surrounded in an alley that small, Arato thought, we’re done for.
“What do you think will be there waiting for us in the admin building?” Arato asked, hoping his smarter friend could give him an idea. Ever since they had first met in grade school, that had been his habit whenever he was presented with a tough question.
“Who knows?” Ryo replied. “‘Nothing good’ would be my guess.”
“True,” Arato agreed. It seemed like a good idea to accept the possibility Methode might be there. With one hand still on the wheel, he used the other to feel around in the glove compartment on the left of the dashboard. Just like the Benz, this vehicle came equipped with a supersonic drill. “Take this,” he said, handing it to Ryo. “That’s probably the only useful thing in the car. Let’s go to the mall and see if we can grab anything else.”
Ryo stared perplexedly at the drill Arato handed him. “You sure have changed,” he observed.
Arato’s second time driving was going more smoothly than his
first had. He kept the vehicle headed toward the mall, still smashing aside zombie hIEs with the car’s front bumper.
“I figured out that I have to be able to get things done myself, or I’ll lose people who are dear to me,” Arato replied.
“Red Box girl is that important to you?” Ryo asked.
One after another, zombie hIEs kept leaping in front of the car. There was a fire burning unchecked nearby, and Arato could see flaming bodies running back and forth. All around him, there were scenes of brave ‘human’ hIEs trying to fight off the horde of zombies, only to be dragged down. All these grisly scenes were fully automated.
He saw the mall through the windshield. If he didn’t go and face whatever was waiting for him there, if he didn’t save Yuka, he would never be able to look his father in the face again. Especially after his dad had been so cool about the whole Lacia thing.
“We’re probably going fast enough to jump up the entrance to the mall,” Arato said. “But I guess the stairs will be safer.”
“Damn, I forgot how crazy you can be,” Ryo said wryly.
Slamming his foot on the accelerator, Arato pushed the car to leap up the short steps in front of the mall. He steered them around the fountain in front of the mall and up another, steeper set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, the speeding car actually left the ground as it crashed through the front automatic doors of the mall.
The entire vehicle shuddered violently as Arato’s ears were full of the sound of shattering glass before the vehicle landed inside the mall with a jolting impact. He forgot which side was the brakes, and accidentally slammed on the accelerator once before correcting himself and stomping on the right pedal. The back tires squealed, and the vehicle fishtailed wildly before finally coming to rest. Arato’s head had been thrown around so much his whole world was still spinning.
“Doesn’t look like any of the hacked hIEs have come in here,” Ryo said, looking around.
The mall was set up with a large main space that split off into countless small shops. On the side of the main area across from Arato, an escalator ran up to a movie theater on the secomdfloor. Of course, all the shops were closed, with nothing to them but signs and empty shelves.