by Satoshi Hase
It was hard to get any intelligent thoughts out of the fog in his brain. That was probably why it was so easy to tell a real genius apart from an idiot pretending to be one.
“Do you really know Ryo?” someone asked.
“If Snowdrop’s flowers got into people’s home systems, things would be really bad,” Arato said. “Maybe if the government in Omiya didn’t cut off access to the cloud, folks inside houses with automated systems would have been in even greater danger.” He spoke like he knew what he was talking about. He remembered when he had first encountered Snowdrop’s flowers, and they had locked down people’s home systems, trapping them inside.
“I think only stuff that has manual functions will be working right now,” Arato continued.
The whole town had been cut off from automation. Everything that had been automated was now under Snowdrop’s control, and she could make it all do whatever she wanted it to.
“Things have gone to shit outside,” a young man with a shaved head said, walking over with a bag on his shoulder. “All the cameras, all the alarms, the cash registers; everything’s down since the power is out.”
He slung his bag roughly onto the ground. Among the food and water in the bag, Arato caught the gleam of expensive-looking accessories. In other words, the group was looting valuables from the town while the hIEs rampaged and the military fired wildly at anything that moved.
Ryo walked back into the room. “We’re all being taped by the observation aircraft in the sky high above us,” he said. “If they analyze the videos later they’ll be able to pick out anyone who looted, so you should change your clothes and your bag and hide your face so you can at least claim it wasn’t you.” So not only did Ryo know about the looting, he was actually giving them advice on how to loot better.
“What the hell are you doing, Ryo?” Arato yelled. “Why are you taking things this far?”
Before Arato could form another thought, his guards had grabbed him again. This time, the survivors just took his arms and dragged him roughly away from Ryo.
“In situations like this, the more time passes, the more people won’t be able to sit still. They’ll go out and grab whatever they can get their hands on,” Ryo explained. “But that means those who don’t move fast enough won’t get enough, and they’ll die. Rather than allowing that to happen, doesn’t it make sense to help everyone survive by forming a group like this and taking charge?”
It made sense; with the army sealing the place off, the whole city was dangerously near its breaking point. The military wasn’t being careful about who or where it shot, and Snowdrop’s zombie hIEs were roaming the city. Any human discovered by the hIEs would be run down and beaten like Arato had been. And who knew what the hIEs did with the humans they got hold of? Maybe they killed them, or maybe they had some even more horrendous purpose for them.
It was obvious that people who were hiding themselves within an area sealed off by a military blockade would be too fearful for their lives to try to go outside. However, in just a few short hours, Ryo had taken command of them and inspired them to the point where they were already able to go out and loot.
Completely ignoring Arato, Ryo started sorting through the looted goods. “In some households that have dinner early, it would be time to start thinking about what to eat,” he said. “Here’s the food. Stack it up by the door, in order of what’s going to expire soonest. We won’t be able to eat all of this ourselves, so share it with any new folks that show up.” Then he split up anything that could be used as a weapon among the people who wanted to take their turn outside.
With the desks cleared away, one corner of the room was completely bare. There, on the floor, someone had drawn out a map of the surrounding area in magic marker. Ryo had a stand-alone computer open, and was using it to keep track of the latest information as he asked the looters about any changes outside.
The next looter to return was a gangster-looking guy, who was lugging a heavy sports bag on his shoulder. From within the unfastened opening of the bag, Arato could see a mind-numbing amount of firearms peeking out. He figured they must have been collected from the corpses of soldiers who had died in the area.
“Just like you said, Ryo,” the punk said. “The zombies ran off with all the heavier stuff, but they left all the sidearms behind.” A shock passed through the men and women of the room. Weapons like that just weren’t seen commonly in Japan those days.
“Though all the soldiers have rifles as their main arms, each of them is also carrying a side-arm,” Ryo explained. “Anyway, those of you who go out with guns: if you start to shoot at a zombie, you need to call out and get everyone with you to focus on taking down one unit at a time. If you run into zombies with guns, just get the hell out of there.”
Ryo gave his orders without a shred of hesitation. That was why everyone there was looking up to him as if everything he said was the gospel truth. Arato hadn’t been much different; he had always depended on Ryo. That may just have been Ryo’s inherent charisma attracting Arato and everyone else who got near him.
“If you get stopped by soldiers, throw down your guns and say something, loudly,” Ryo instructed. “Tell them not to shoot you, or whatever. The zombies don’t surrender, so they’ll be able to tell you apart that way. If any of you is dumb enough to point your gun at a soldier, you’ll get locked up once this is all over.”
“If any of us make it that far,” someone said, and laughter rippled through the crowd.
Arato didn’t see what was funny about that.
“When you go out, take some guns and leave them on top of some vending machines in a few places,” Ryo continued. “That way, other people can find them and defend themselves. Spray paint a triangle pointing up on the side of the machine, so anyone who sees it can at least guess there’s something up there and check.” Ryo took a spraypaint can and demonstrated by painting a large triangle on the door to the room.
“If you meet anyone who’s already picked up a gun we left, tell them it was us who left it, and that they can get food and things they need here,” Ryo went on. “But don’t hand over any of our weapons to anyone who hasn’t taken their own initiative. They’ve got to ask us for asylum if they want it.”
Arato felt a strange warmth flooding the room. What they were doing was clearly illegal, yet there seemed to be a strange bond between everyone there, like coworkers all focused on completing the same job. And Ryo was at their center
It was clear that Arato himself had been left outside their little circle, though.
“You’re starting a gang,” Arato accused. There wasn’t anything else to call it; Ryo was putting together the beginnings of a gang in the sealed-off town. The disastrous combination of danger, isolation, and concentrated power was starting to give off a very unsavory smell.
“Well, it’s true the morality in this town is about to plummet like a stone,” Ryo said with a shrug. “But I’d say it’s better than letting everyone die, wouldn’t you?”
“What are you trying to do?” Arato asked. “Handing out guns like that to everyone, you’re basically telling them to become criminals.” He was honestly scared of the person his friend had become. All the people who had been shocked by the sight of the weapons looked to Ryo for some kind of guidance.
“The criminal arts are actually quite useful in breaking free from automation,” Ryo said. “Even these days, people still have to commit crimes on their own power, since they’d lose control of AIs if they had them study illegal techniques. Doing whatever it takes to cling to life is just human nature.”
Though the zombie hIEs were fast, they didn’t have much ability for finding hidden things. Discerning meaning from the triangle marks painted on vending machines would be beyond their cognitive abilities. In other words: Ryo was, at that moment, creating a new system that used the methods criminals used to avoid detection by the government to protect the lives of those who had been abandoned in the crisis.
Ryo drew little triangle
s on the map on the floor, checking their positions against the one cloud-free terminal they had, his movements precise and mechanical. Arato assumed those were places where guns had been left.
“This isn’t going to end until the hIEs go down,” Ryo said. “So I’ve chosen to put my faith in my fellow humans. If everyone wants to survive, the best way is to just admit that we’re all worried more about ourselves than things like laws, and change the rules accordingly.”
Even as Ryo said it, more people were filing into the room. Ryo’s organization was growing rapidly, right before Arato’s eyes. People were bringing in more and more items, and no one seemed particularly concerned whether they were stolen or not. It was up to each person whether they wanted to become tough enough to survive.
Comparing himself to the amazingly talented Ryo, Arato felt ashamed that they were the same age.
“The army isn’t going to help us,” Ryo went on. “Besides, there’s no proof the people walking around on the street weren’t already mugging and looting before we started doing it. I just want to believe that my fellow humans have at least the bare minimum amount of morality.”
Of course, Ryo never mentioned what the actual line for that ‘bare minimum’ of morality was. Arato could already see one of the men stuffing some of the stolen jewelry into his pocket. No one in the room who noticed called him out for it. In that room, the camaraderie that tied them together as a gang was more important than the laws set up by a country that had failed to protect them from the zombie hIEs.
The man, whose name Arato didn’t know, showed him a smile. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “There ain’t gonna be any proof for them to pin these crimes to us, when it’s all over,” the man said. “Without cloud storage, where are they gonna store all that automatic footage?”
Most devices sold those days were built on the premise that they would always be hooked up to the cloud network. The computer Ryo conveniently happened to bring along was actually quite a rarity. It would have been impossible, honestly, for him to have gotten his hands on one after Snowdrop showed up. He had probably known it would be the most useful thing in that situation. In other words, if Arato had taken Lacia’s hand, knowing she was an ultra high-performance AI, Ryo had planned on using that area to hold their final showdown.
“I will warn you, though, that the military has data on the distinctive bullet striations all of their firearms make when fired. Meaning that if you use one of them to kill someone, they’ll use that data as evidence to arrest you,” Ryo said. In guiding the trapped civilians, it seemed as though Ryo had thought of everything.
Arato still couldn’t accept things the way they were. “Is this how you wanted things to turn out, Ryo?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Ryo replied. “Are you ready to take responsibility for the choices you make?”
Arato was so busy being shocked at the scene playing out in front of his eyes that Ryo’s question caught him off guard. “What choices?” he asked, as the air seemed to press in on him.
“Think about it,” Ryo said. “It would be fairly easy for you to create an even more spectacular disaster than this one.”
Arato felt actual pressure from Ryo’s gaze as his friend looked down at him.
“Snowdrop doesn’t care about the humans here,” Ryo said. “If I boil things down that much, even you can get it, right? Methode and Snowdrop are fighting right now, and the army is gunning for Snowdrop, too. But what happens to all the people stuck here while all that goes on? We have to do whatever it takes to make it through this.”
Arato’s hands were shaking. In that room, he was the only one who understood what Ryo was really saying. His genius friend wasn’t putting together a gang with the intent of saving the people in that town.
“With all this going on, even an idiot like you can finally understand the weight of that Armageddon switch you’ve got your finger on, right?” Ryo asked. “You remember what she uses to manipulate humans, right? She twists our whole economy and uses it as a weapon. If you push that button, how many voids like Kichijoji right now do you think will spring up around the world? Hundreds? Thousands? More?”
Against the backdrop of the fight with the AI Snowdrop, humans were starting to scramble to protect their own lives. What Ryo was saying was that, in the future Arato had imagined and Lacia was trying to turn into a reality, there would be even more wide-spread chaos like what was developing among these forgotten civilians. So, Ryo had used this disaster as a more miniature scale experiment in controlling terrified humans.
This was the world through Ryo Kaidai’s eyes. Arato felt his mind spinning out of control. It was as if he had drunk poison; his whole body was drenched with sweat, and his breathing was shallow. “You don’t know things will turn out that way,” Arato shot back.
“Sure they will,” Ryo said dismissively. “Lacia has to keep fighting to continue functioning. She’s wielding the entire economy, and she’ll never stop moving forward. It doesn’t really matter what choices either of you makes; either way, as long as she’s flailing around with that power of hers, thousands and thousands of people will die. While she fights, I guarantee that millions of people around the world are going to lose their jobs. When that happens, how many people do you think will wind up just like these folks here, abandoned and cut off?” Ryo seemed to be trying to blame the situation in Kichijoji on Lacia having abandoned the people.
People in the room were moving, and the place was getting noisy. They were shouldering bags and heading out to distribute guns. All around Arato, people were becoming gun owners, which seemed to excite them. Thanks to that, they were only half-listening to the conversation between their boss and Arato, obviously ignoring the parts that didn’t make sense to them. They couldn’t sense the absolute zero chill in the air between the two boys, who had been friends for ten years.
“Should people be free to use things, just because they own them?” Ryo asked, sarcasm tingeing his voice. “If someone owns a gun, they should be able to use it to shoot and kill people, right?” Then his tone got serious. “How should an owner use a tool that no one has ever been able to use properly?”
Ryo’s words seemed to be playing out before Arato’s eyes, as guns were passed out to people who had no real understanding of what it meant to wield one. It was hard to believe that Snowdrop would let things slide, if these people really went out and started gunning down her zombie hIEs. And, of course, if Arato had abandoned Lacia and allowed her to be destroyed, he was sure Ryo would have already had Methode destroy Snowdrop and end the whole situation.
Arato felt as though countless individual lives, too numerous to be contained within a simple word like ‘society,’ were being weighed on a giant scale against his own willpower. The mercenaries from HOO had told him so: even if he wasn’t aware of it, people were out there dying. Countless people had told him, by that point, that Lacia was dangerous.
“Ryo, I’m Lacia’s owner,” he said. Closing his eyes, Arato clenched his jaws tight. The whole reason he had come to that place was to answer that question, and his gut was set with determination. Ryo’s question was simple: would Arato side with the humans or the machines? Arato’s answer wasn’t going to change, even if he was in the heart of Ryo’s improvised gang.
“I don’t care if Lacia is using me or manipulating me or tricking me or whatever,” he said. “What happens to her if I, as her owner, turn my back on her?” He could still see her in his heart, as if the image of Lacia when they first met was burned onto the backs of his eyelids.
Though the others in the room didn’t understand what he was saying, they at least seemed to feel something disturbing in his words, as they all started glaring at him with open hostility. If Ryo commanded it, Arato was sure they wouldn’t hesitate to put him to death then and there.
Despite that truth, and even if it meant pushing that Armageddon switch Ryo was always talking about, Arato felt that he had to get these words out. “It’s not like I
haven’t been worrying about this myself, Ryo,” he went on. “I was always on edge, wondering when Lacia and I would be torn apart. And, even when we were together, I was always doubting whether what we had was the right way for things to be.”
He couldn’t ask his friend to accept his decision. The life Arato had known was probably about to end. But Arato wanted to at least accept that inevitability, and to look his old friend in the eyes.
“I hope you’re still not seriously believing that if we all just understood each other, there would be no need for fighting,” Ryo said.
“I understand that, and sometimes we do need to butt heads to get our point across,” Arato said. “But still, don’t you think there’s some meaning to reaching out the hand of friendship? Even if the one we’re reaching out to doesn’t have a heart?”
“You know, I don’t think you realize just how good a politician you would have made,” Ryo said, shaking his head. “I never would have believed, myself, that you would turn out to be this big of a walking disaster.”
The tension in the air was so thick and strong it stung Arato’s skin like acid. Ryo’s genius seemed to be so bright to him it was hard to look straight at his friend. He noticed Ryo’s gaze sliding off of him as well.
“Stop talking like we’re already enemies,” Arato said.
Arato would always reach out his hand. That was his way of life.
Nobody in Ryo’s thrown-together gang would look straight at him. Arato got the distinct impression he would be shot from behind the instant he walked out of that building.
On the other hand, it seemed like the perfect time to make his exit. His heart was hammering loudly in his own ears. Any minute now, one of the gang members could lose control and finish him off with a sneak attack.
His left ankle still hurt. It dragged a little as he stood and walked on it. Standing over the magic-marker map, Arato looked down at it. He could tell where Snowdrop was—on the southwest side of Kichijoji Station, beyond Inokashira Lake, there was no information drawn on the map. Arato guessed that was because the army and Snowdrop’s hIEs were fighting there, so no one could get close enough to scout it.