by Satoshi Hase
The one-sided mirror through which the inspector was observing the room would look like an ordinary wall from the other side. Changes in technology had led to some changes in police work, but some of the basics were still the same as they had ever been. For example: the testimony of the person who first found the body in a murder case was always extremely important.
This kid, Arato Endo, was the one who’d found the body in this particular case. He was the son of Kozo Endo, head researcher at the Next-Generation Societal Research City, where the incident had occurred. They had footage of Arato speaking to the victim, Ginga Watarai, for quite some time on the morning of the murder. Apparently, they had discussed some basic knowledge regarding hIEs. Their conversation had happened around the same time that the hIEs had begun throwing themselves off of apartment buildings, so it wasn’t that strange of a topic for them to be discussing at the time. What caught the attention of the police was, right when the sound of the suicidal hIEs got too loud, they could no longer hear the content of this conversation. At that moment, during the part of the video they couldn’t hear, the boy who found the body and the murdered man had been arguing.
According to Arato, the argument had started when Ginga declared that he had kidnapped Arato’s younger sister. Said younger sister, Yuka Endo, had already corroborated the kidnapping. Why a man who could easily be considered the top of MemeFrame’s research arm would kidnap a little girl was still a mystery.
Sakamaki’s intuition as a detective told him that Arato Endo was hiding something important. He was there to decide whether the Watarai case should be brought under the jurisdiction of the 2nd Cyber Security Department.
〈How’s it look, chief?〉 Assistant Inspector Ryuji Himeyama, sitting right by Sakamaki’s side, sent him an encoded message. Many officers who had been taken out of the Metropolitan Police Department and made to earn their bread in the public safety sector had taken to upgrading their bodies. Himeyama had an artificial retina that overlayed digital information over his actual eyesight, and a communication device that allowed him to turn his thoughts into signals. Since criminals were using mechanical implants and limbs to enhance their own abilities, it was only natural that the police would need to upgrade themselves to keep up.
Sakamaki had the same set up as Himemiya, and he shot back an encoded message while keeping his eyes on the work of the two local detectives who currently had jurisdiction of the case.
〈This one is ours, don’t you think?〉 he asked. 〈The Next-Generation Social Research Center has more AIs under their care than anywhere else in the country.〉
The National Police Agency’s Cyber Security Division was mainly focused on monitoring networks, detecting, and protecting against hackers. Sakamaki and Himemiya belonged to the 2nd Cyber Security Department in the division, which focused specifically on monitoring AIs. They were a much smaller section than the main Cyber Security Department; not because they were particularly elite, but because the number of cases related to AIs was fairly small.
〈You always choose us winners, chief,〉 Himemiya snarked. 〈Just looking at this, I get the feeling we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.〉 Himemiya’s mental message was accompanied by some information: MemeFrame was hiding Watarai’s information. Kozo Endo and the other researchers from the Next-Gen Societal Research City said they had been too busy protecting themselves from the hIE units that had gone berserk to act on anything happening in the city. To say it all stank would be an understatement.
Sakamaki sent back his own transmission. 〈We’re humans, trying to keep tabs on AIs that are way smarter than we are. Plus, even getting the proper equipment set up to deal with the level of AI crimes that would come to our department is a nightmare. But, that’s our job,〉 he sent.
〈We study all year for shit that never shows up on the test,〉 Himemiya quipped. Himemiya had formerly been with the riot police, and a large portion of his body was artificial. The metallic implants enhancing his muscles and skeleton were benefits available only to residents in urban areas, due to the constant delicate maintenance they required. Though Himemiya’s fancy equipment didn’t get too many chances for use.
Sakamaki called up the desk of the 2nd Cyber Security Department Head, Chief Inspector Cyril Kamiki. His call went through immediately. Their chief was a strange guy; he had actually asked to be assigned to this post, where there was almost no hope of forwarding his career in the force.
〈Sakamaki, how’s the Watarai murder looking?〉 Kamiki wanted to know.
〈Let’s do it,〉 Sakamaki replied. 〈For an AI case, the cleanup after this murder was way too slapdash.〉 Sakamaki looked at Arato Endo, who was still undergoing his interrogation. Usually, in a crime involving AI, dumb guys like this Arato kid were only used as terminals to carry out the AI’s intent. But Arato was the one who found the body; he was right there at the heart of the incident.
Arato Endo was hiding something. Sakamaki rolled all his doubts around in his mind, examining them from every angle. The victim had kidnapped the boy’s little sister, Yuka Endo, and tried to use her to coerce Arato into handing over his hIE in the server room that had become the location of the murder. Before that, Yuka had been taken by Watarai to the city administration room. Then she, Watarai, and two PMC mercenaries had gone next door, into the server room.
In a shopping mall nearby the scene of the crime, the police had found burns that appeared to have been caused by some kind of flamethrower weapon, along with the scattered remains of fifty-twohIEs. There was also a hole in the wall of the server room that looked like it could have been caused by the main gun of a tank. Arato Endo insisted he didn’t know who or what had caused any of these.
According to the officers who had responded to the initial call from the scene, the boy’s hIE, Lacia, had been in a simple dress, with no sign of any weapon large enough to blow that hole in the server room’s wall. Her owner, the boy, refused to respond to any detailed questions about her. They had done as thorough an inspection as they could without taking her apart, but found no deviations between the inspection report and the maker’s specifications.
Beyond any of that, though, was the most important piece of evidence they had found: the flower-shaped robots. When they checked the flowers against the police database, the flowers matched almost exactly with the ones that had been used to take control of a helicopter in the Oi Industrial Promotion Center attack. This murder was connected to the hijacking of the helicopter, which had led to the death of two reporters.
If the two cases really were connected, this could be the most prominent AI-related case in the past decade, at least to Sakamaki’s knowledge. The thought made him shudder. 〈Do you think the cleanup was so rough because it’s that thing Astraea warned us about?〉 he asked.
That was precisely the reason Kamiki had sent Sakamaki to check on the case in the first place. 〈Concealment has been too low a priority in this case, considering the scale of it. I believe the time has come,〉 Kamiki replied.
In recent years, AI crimes that lacked any of the normal mistakes or negligence of human crimes had been on the rise. This was the nature of crimes to which AI was applied, as correctly predicted by Astraea, the ultra high-performance AI used by the IAIA, or the International Artificial Intelligence Agency. Astraea had also predicted that someday the intensifying AI crimes would reach a turning point, just as they had in this case.
〈You think this is a clash between two different AIs that have gotten involved in criminal activity?〉 Sakamaki asked. Most criminal groups died out not because of police cracking down, but through conflicts with other criminals. Throwing AIs into the mix didn’t change that. There was a distinct possibility that the incident in the experimental city had been caused by two criminal AIs butting heads.
〈And did the experimental city just get caught up in all this? Or was it involved right from the start?〉 Kamiki mused. He was sharp, but there were AIs out there much better at reaching conclusions than he was.
The main reason the 2nd Cyber Security Division existed as part of the public security sector was to maintain the restrictions which kept Japan’s ultra high-performance AIs in check. Though humans enjoyed the benefits of Red Boxes, they still feared the ultra high-performance AIs that created them. That was why the AIs were kept in isolation, and prohibited from ever accessing a network. Many people believed that, should the AIs ever gained freedom, it would spell the end of human society. Opposing AIs, competing directly with each other and increasing their own calculation performance to defeat their opponent, was one of the important signs on the roadmap that led to the total liberation of the ultra high-performance AIs.
Kamiki’s next message came in a conspiratorial whisper. 〈Can you confiscate the Endos’ hIE?〉
〈The boy’s her owner, and he says no,〉 Sakamaki replied. 〈Unless we can provide a good reason, I don’t think we can take it. Plus, if we make the wrong move here, I guarantee it’ll light a fire under Dr. Endo.〉
The world of those involved with high-performance AIs was small. Arato’s old man, Kozo Endo, had been under observation from the Cyber Security Division for twenty years. Matsuri, Mikoto’s prototype, had caused some consternation among the police force; there was no need for human police officers in the automated society that Dr. Endo was trying to create. Some might say the attention they were paying to Endo was just ill will at being replaced, but it was also natural for anyone to want to check the capabilities and nature of their own successors.
〈We’re right in the middle of this singularity in which AIs are surpassing human intelligence, and all the higher-ups want to make sure that society rides out the turbulence to make a safe landing,〉 Kamiki said. 〈But that guy has started to get really eccentric.〉
Sakamaki could hear Kamiki’s confidence bleeding through into the transmission. Ever since one of his public experiments at MemeFrame had been destroyed in an explosion ten years ago, Kozo Endo had refused to cooperate with the police. Arato Endo had been a victim of that incident. Sakamaki’s boss had made up his mind to dive into this, even if it meant rushing straight ahead without a care for what they might slam right into.
Inside the interrogation room, Kozo Endo’s son looked exhausted, as anyone might expect given the circumstances. He was slumped down, listening passively to what the detectives running the examination were saying.
Next to Sakamaki, Himemiya apparently noticed something, as he suddenly pointed through the glass at the Endo kid. “He reminds me of this dog we used to have,” he said. He was using his own voice instead of encoded transmissions, just shooting the shit. But this was exactly the sort of time for which Himemiya’s intuition as a detective was most reliable.
“It was the dumbest dog I ever saw,” Himemiya continued reminiscing. “It didn’t care if it knew a person; it was always following folks around, wagging its tail. It was so friendly, people passing by or hIEs doing deliveries were always petting it. But, no matter how much you would scold it, it’d never give up on trying to get friendly with people who hated dogs.”
Normal folks were usually exhausted after a little while in the interrogation room, especially the person who discovered the body following a murder. After being told to repeat their story countless times and having everything they said examined in detail, even an adult would be worn out. From Sakamaki’s estimation, the Endo kid was probably feeling honest shock from seeing a dead body, and also maybe a vague sense of unease at the concept of death in general. But, sometimes, the kid’s expression would soften; it probably happened without Arato himself noticing it. The detectives were doing the old good cop/bad cop routine so obviously that anyone should have been able to figure it out. But, just like the dumb dog from Himemiya’s story, when one of the detectives showed some fake compassion toward Arato, the boy honestly seemed happy about it. Sakamaki was honestly impressed by Himemiya’s insight.
“Guys like him are naturals at shrugging off stress,” Himemiya continued. “I doubt we’d get anything out of him if we tried getting rough.”
“He’s a minor, so don’t even think about getting rough with him,” Sakamaki growled. “We just need to focus on getting evidence the right way.” Under the circumstances, it would be hard to lean on the kid any harder than the detectives already were.
Himemiya switched back to encoded transmissions. 〈Just how much of a connection do you think this kid has with Watarai’s murder and all those units going crazy in the experimental city, Sakamaki?〉
〈Don’t forget the explosion at the Chubu International Airport,〉 Sakamaki added. Then he pulled up some data that the 2nd Cyber Security Division’s AI, Matrix, had sent him. Sakamaki used his artificial retina to overlay the information over his natural vision. The data included footage from a security camera at the Chubu Airport in which the Endo kid was looking right at the ‘red lady,’ an operative of the Antibody Network terrorist organization. She had led the attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center, though other than that she apparently had no criminal record, nor was she listed in the ICPO database. The footage told Sakamaki that, just one week prior to Watarai’s murder, Arato Endo had been at the Chubu Airport and within a few dozen meters of a known terrorist.
〈You think this kid is with the Antibody Network?〉 Himemiya asked. 〈He doesn’t look as gloomy as those guys tend to.〉
Sakamaki hadn’t looked at the kid from that particular angle yet. But, when he did, he found himself agreeing with Himemiya’s appraisal. 〈In AI cases, we don’t chase criminals,〉 Sakamaki reminded Himemiya.
It was one of the most basic tenets for solving AI cases; normally, police worked to hunt down the humans who committed crimes. Humans would never be truly free of crime, so criminal activity was accepted as one part of the massive system known as human culture. But AI crimes were different. In AI cases, humans were never the main perpetrators.
The AIs that automated crime relied heavily on the use of analog hacking. Whether they used human forms like hIEs, or just video or voice data, they all took advantage of the meaning that humans would project onto their human-like output to create security holes in human awareness. By slipping through these holes, the criminal AIs were able to manipulate the actions of humans during the crimes. Since analog hacking itself wasn’t illegal, Sakamaki had heard that some AIs had stocked up thousands of humans they could use as tools in their plans at any time.
Sakamaki kept studying Arato Endo through the glass. The friendly-looking kid’s eyelids were fluttering a little. Kid must be tired, Sakamaki thought. It was clear the boy had been analog hacked and turned into some AI’s tool for this case, and Sakamaki’s gut told him the shadows in this case were wide and deep.
***
Ryo Kaidai analyzed his own actions, to see whether or not he had been turned into a tool. It was something he had to check every day since he had become Methode’s owner; just being with her meant he was undergoing analog hacking. Though he could endure it or brush it off to some extent, for as long as she was in operation, he wouldn’t be able to completely avoid it. Ergo, organizing data as he sat in a brand new limousine had become part of Ryo’s daily routine.
After becoming Methode’s owner, he had finally come face-to-face with the reality of just how massive Watarai’s influence had been; it was much larger than he had imagined. He had been the head researcher of the Tokyo Research Labs, of course, but after becoming Methode’s owner, Watarai had also gained a controlling seat in the Computer Faction at MemeFrame. And now, the man who had wielded all that power had suddenly died.
Ryo got a new message on his terminal about once a minute, each from someone linked to the connections and power which Watarai had cultivated. Internal issues at MemeFrame centered around Higgins, the company’s ultra high-performance AI; Watarai had been the one playing gatekeeper for access to Higgins. Ryo may not have liked the way the guy operated, but he had to admit that Watarai had been one hell of a powerful man.
“Didn’t you wa
nt to control everything yourself? Even I get tired sometimes,” an orange-haired woman said from the leather seat across from Ryo. Methode had taken to acting like his secretary since they had paired up. She was wearing a smart-looking business suit today, but her crossed legs were metal.
“The Public Safety Police are nipping at our heels,” Ryo said. “If we rush things, they’re bound to dig up some of the skeletons in our closet. We need to get our ducks in a row before we move.”
Methode twisted the corner of her mouth in a wry smile; Watarai was dead, but his habits lived on in her behavioral memes. “Snowdrop left some impressive evidence at the scene,” she said. “Try to sweep too much under the rug, and someone will notice the bulge.”
There were too many things about the incident that were out of Ryo’s control. The police couldn’t know about Methode and the other Lacia-class hIEs, so he had been forced to talk to Arato and make sure their stories would match. Much worse than that was Watari’s dead body, and the huge amount of Snowdrop’s flower robots that the police had found. Thanks to the flowers, Ryo had to tell the police that Snowdrop had fled the scene of the explosion in April.
“When the other Lacia-class broke out, Watarai testified that all five of you were lost,” Ryo said.
“He did,” Methode agreed. “Which is why the police held you for a full twenty-four hours. Obviously, if one of us actually stayed behind, it was possible that the other four were still around, as well.”
Methode, who had benefited the most from Ginga Watari’s death, always parceled out the absolute least amount of information she could when responding to Ryo. Watari had been the one who put all these events into motion, but now, with him gone, the only one who knew the full extent of his plans was Methode. Without her help, it would be impossible for Ryo to take up Watarai’s mantle.
“I don’t think the police know you exist yet, though,” Ryo said. Being around Methode made even Ryo start to feel as if humans had outlived their usefulness. As Lacia-class Type-004, her core specifications were extremely high. Her AI was highly adaptable, her armor was durable, and her output capabilities were off the charts. Compared to this mechanical superwoman, Ryo couldn’t think of a single thing that a human could do better than she could.