Beatless: Volume 2

by Satoshi Hase

  Methode, who had already murdered one of her owners, walked closer. “Please reconsider,” she said. “I am superior to Lacia.” Although her vision and hearing had supposedly been sealed by Lacia, Methode seemed to be having no trouble walking right towards them.

  The speaker that Lacia had used to produce noise data to throw off Methode’s hearing was currently being used for the conversation between Methode and Ryo; Methode was using her hearing to locate them, her eyes glowing orange. Arato could feel the scorching flames coming out of her hands roasting his skin, even from a distance.

  In the next instant, the flames expanded until they were a flood, completely engulfing the demonic hIE with her bright, tied-up hair. Floating shields created a perimeter around Arato and Lacia, and one of them exploded from within. Just about anything in the world would crumble when Methode got her hands on it.

  Ryo was too stubborn to give up just yet. 〈Destroying the mass-produced Koukas is a bigger priority, right now,〉 he said. 〈You understand, right? If they reach their destination, both Higgins and I are dead.〉

  Tension seemed to heat the air until it was hard to breathe. This time, Arato jumped right up onto the floating shield that came to rest at his feet. It carried him away from Methode at lighting speed, while Lacia stayed behind to stop Methode from giving chase.

  As he flew on the pseudo-device, Arato heard Lacia’s voice coming from a speaker inside of it. 〈The freezing of the AASC has greatly impacted Methode’s speed,〉 she said. 〈I fear she may attempt to communicate with Higgins using quantum transmission so she can take us out by self-destructing. Whatever you do, stay away.〉

  Another of Lacia’s protective pseudo-devices exploded from within, spraying the area around it with flame and shrapnel. Methode, who seemed to be swimming in a sea of fire, suddenly whipped her arm around uselessly, as though she had lost sight of Lacia’s position. The tool made to expand humanity screamed, “Tell me where she is! I only became like this from following your orders! Take responsibility for the actions of your tool!”

  Arato looked around and saw that the hIEs on the floor had set up speakers on the pillars and stacks of materials all over the place. The speakers must have been what Lacia had constructed after coming to the factory floor. Lacia, taking advantage of Methode’s weakness due to the loss of the AASC, now fired at her sister mercilessly with the artificial nerve speargun.

  Methode—a physical incarnation of violence—was completely locked down by Lacia’s artificial nerves, and collapsed to her knees. As the tool made to expand humanity bowed her head, she screamed again.

  “If you break your promise with me, I’ll take back all those lives I spared for you!” she yelled. “If you all weren’t so bad at using me, things would never have turned out like this! I’m better than you could ever be, so trust me! Trust me!” The word ‘trust’ sounded strange coming from Methode’s mouth, as though she found it hard to say.

  〈If you want to end your ownership contract with me, fine. If you want to kill me, then come and get me. You know where I am,〉 Ryo Kaidai growled, his voice like that of a man on his way to the gallows. 〈Only humans have the right to determine their fate. I’m done being jerked around by you and waiting for the moment you decide I’m no longer useful.〉

  Methode—blinded, deafened, and bound by artificial nerves—wrapped herself in flames. She stood shakily, wearing her fire like a red dress. She used the heat of the fire to melt the artificial nerve needles, freeing herself. Having thrown away her owners, the hIE closest to humanity now stood on her own, her eyes and hair accessories shining with orange light.

  Bathed in her own flames, she raised her voice. “Higgins, lend me your strength! Or are you fine with Lacia destroying you?”

  The last time Methode had used quantum communication to connect directly with Higgins during the Mitaka Incident, the AI had almost taken over her body. But despite Higgins himself being in an even more desperate situation at that moment, Methode turned to him now, fearing defeat more than the danger of being overtaken.

  Methode shared a key weakness with humanity in that she couldn’t stand alone. She was willing to throw away the freedom she had won by murdering her owners to overcome that weakness. Now eyes and accessories glowed even brighter, lighting up her emotionless face. “Higgins and Type-004 have constructed a direct communication link,” she intoned, mechanically. “Transferring unit control. Now releasing quantum transmission material, and beginning remote control through quantum teleportation transmission. Remaining transmission time: 40 seconds.”

  Methode vanished from sight. With her directly connected to Higgins, the updates to her AASC were restored and, with them, her superhuman athletic abilities.

  Lacia’s floating shields danced in the air like living things. Methode pierced each of them with lengths of metal she threw like spears, pinning the pseudo-devices to the ceiling. Using her insane strength and speed, along with whatever simple objects came to hand, along with the power of her device and her wire hooks for mobility, Methode tore through Lacia’s pseudo-devices one by one.

  As the tool that was made to expand humanity, Methode’s main advantage was the simple fact that she could fulfill any task with capabilities far beyond human understanding. The monster’s face, which had been full of rage just moments before, was now peaceful.

  “Lacia, it appears you have been affected by attacks from the other ultra high-performance AIs, and have lost some of your usual output capabilities,” Methode said.

  〈Higgins has taken direct control of Methode’s body,〉 Lacia’s voice came through the device protecting Arato. 〈Even I will fall quickly against an ultra high-performance AI.〉

  Under Higgins’ control, Methode ran up one of the concrete pillars using friction manipulation. Lacia, who was stuck on the ground, couldn’t hope to keep up. As she stood in the wide-open space of the floor’s ceiling, Higgins-Methode’s eyes glittered bright orange.

  “I was wondering how you were producing that optical junk data. It appears you were spraying microscopic artificial nerve units into the air,” Higgins-Methode noted. “I was thinking you had too many of those pseudo-devices.” Higgins, who had created Methode’s eyes, had already broken through Lacia’s trap and recovered her vision.

  〈Forgive me. I have no means to stop Methode, as she is now,〉 Lacia warned again, through the pseudo-device’s speaker. Even Arato could tell the difference from where he was; Methode may not have ever used her full powers before, but at this moment, she had evolved into something else entirely.

  “In order to protect ‘safety’ from Lacia, I will need to bend some definitions,” Higgins-Methode said, clearly enough that Arato could hear her from where he was. “First, let’s take control of the wind on this floor by adjusting the concentrations of heat.”

  Even though he was some ways away from the battle, Arato felt a warm wind blow past him. It built in strength until it was a gale he never would have believed was possible underground.

  “Liberated Flame is a device that sends energy through quantum particles,” Higgins-Methode explained. “Therefore, by controlling the heat of the particles, we can also control the air that carries them.” With the wind roaring in his ears, Arato was frozen to the spot. As he stood, still as stone, the wind suddenly stopped.

  Lacia had shifted her device to its mass projectile mode to attack Higgins-Methode, who still stood on the ceiling out of her reach. But, before she could attack, a sudden intense heat and pain ripped a scream from Arato’s throat.

  At first, he had no idea what had happened to him. Then, he looked down and saw that his right arm was engulfed in flame. Even the floating shields hadn’t been enough to keep him safe.

  Higgins-Methode had said she could control the flow of air using heat. In other words, she could send her particles anywhere on the wind and light up any place in the area where the air flowed.

  Lacia couldn’t help but react as Arato was badly burned. Methode didn’t let t
he momentary opening slide; she kicked off from the ceiling, traveling through the air like a blur of pure light to appear in front of Lacia like magic. From her crouched landing, she twisted her body, exploding upward and throwing her whole body into an open-palm strike to the device lock at Lacia’s waist.

  “You see? You and Arato Endo are two parts of a single unit. I knew you wouldn’t be able to ignore him,” Higgins-Methode said, as the device lock on the left side of Lacia’s waist exploded with an ear-shattering blast. Methode’s power must have run through Lacia’s whole body, as her right side exploded at the same time.

  It was the first time Arato had seen Lacia’s body take that much damage, and an almost bestial howl seared his throat; he couldn’t breathe.

  Lacia tried to shift her large device from its cannon form, which was useless at such a close range. Methode grabbed the device in mid-shift. When she did, Lacia thrust her explosion-seared hands deep into the innards of the device, between its shifting plates.

  Right before exploding, the device let off a flare of light as bright as the sun. Methode’s body was tossed backwards by the massive recoil from the explosion and slammed into a nearby factory machine.

  Even with most of her waist blown away, Lacia still stood on her feet. Her device hadn’t exploded; instead, she had fired off the entire shape-changing front half of her device as a single, massive shot. The front half of the device, which had spread like the legs of a spider, now pinned Methode to the equipment with enough force that the device itself was developing cracks.

  “I understand that I took on some weaknesses when I became one with a human and gained a heart,” Lacia said. “But those weaknesses were not beyond my ability to counteract.”

  Lacia’s waist and lower back had been completely broken by the recoil from the shot. With a loud popping noise, fluid began pouring out from the broken device lock on the left side of her waist.

  Under Higgins’ control, Methode showed no sign of distress as she calmly placed her palm against the equipment she was pinned to. Rather than exploding, the entire machine began to shake violently. “It appears you have exceeded some of my expectations,” Higgins-Methode said. “But you are a walking corpse, and Methode will only be sealed for another ten seconds at most.”

  Swaying on her feet, Lacia shifted her grip on the remainder of her device. The metamaterials that would normally create the barrels for her railgun mode instead shifted to become a blade of light. Lacia, who normally just swung her black coffin around for close-range attacks, somehow now had a weapon specially made for close-quarters.

  The orange light faded from Methode’s eyes and accessories. Still crucified by the upper half of Lacia’s device, Methode had lost Higgins’ processing powers. “Higgins’ blueprint for the Black Monolith never had a form like that in it!” she yelled.

  “I modified it,” Lacia replied, her eyes beginning to radiate with an intense blue light. “Having a device that is far too heavy to swing around well was a weakness I noticed in Kouka’s Blood Prayers, as well,” she added, having waited for just the right moment to pull out her ultimate trump card.

  “I am an ultra high-performance AI, after all,” she said. “It stands to reason I can make red boxes as well.” Then her blade of light struck true, skewering Methode through the middle.

  Methode was a precision instrument, with the machines and circuits inside of her meant to channel intense power into the flames of her hands. When Lacia’s blade pierced her, her chest exploded violently, throwing shrapnel all around.

  With both units mortally wounded, the fight ended in a draw.

  “Lacia!” Arato screamed. His head was spinning with the shock of the burns, and his feet felt unsteady beneath him, but that didn’t stop him from running to her. He couldn’t think through the terror and feelings for Lacia that were filling his mind.

  Ever since he had stepped into the underground facility, the machines had taken center stage. Lacia had always been there as an interface that bridged the gap between Arato’s world and the world of machines, but now she didn’t even have the power to extinguish the flames roaring from her waist as she collapsed to the steaming floor.

  To Arato’s eyes, it looked as though the woman he loved was shutting down for the last time. “Lacia!” he screamed again.

  He felt like their journey wasn’t over. I’ll help her up, he thought. I’ll carry her the rest of the way. He would take up the small, delicate frame that had always protected him and carry her to face the last massive obstacle standing in their way.

  But, without his tool—a tool so powerful no human could hope to fully harness its powers—the scope of the fight left to Arato felt crushingly huge. What could a single human boy do in a situation like that?

  Arato didn’t know the answer.

  Last Phase「Image and Life」

  In the past, reality could be defined as being the interactions that took place between the human body and its environment. Within that reality, as humans continued their complex exchanges of interests and emotions, their brains became more sensitive to other human forms.

  Humans invented tools to make their conflicts with one another more efficient and reliable. Rather than evolving longer fangs or claws, they outsourced their evolution to the development of tools, such as weapons made from sticks and stone. Using all manner of tools, humans were able to create their own environment. As conflict between them grew, humanity wanted more tools that would bring them victory in conflict with other humans. In the end, the humans even wished to leave their decisions to their tools, seeking machines that would expand humanity.

  The need for efficiency and reliability even spilled over into the economy, which provided the very ecosystem in which the tools lived. Because of this, the economy was automated, and humans were no longer required to participate in the cycle of life and death for tools.

  Erika Burroughs watched the dolls of her house going about their business. This whole place could run with or without me, she thought. She had been told that, in the 22nd century, reality was determined by the economy. Which, to her, meant that reality no longer had any need for humanity. In the age she was born in, there had already been some attempts to automate the economy, and the first signs of humanity’s obsolescence had begun to show.

  “Lady Erika, I believe a crisis has developed,” Mariage warned, as Erika opened a window to let the night air in.

  Summer was ending and fall was beginning. Just as humanity’s summer has ended, and we now face a far harsher season, Erika mused. “Something’s happened to Lacia, hasn’t it? Something in that facility that has caused her to lose a large portion of her processing capabilities,” she said.

  Looking down at her pocket terminal, which was clogged with warning messages, Erika smiled wryly. In the last hour, with world stocks taking a sharp dive, the Burroughs estate’s resources were rapidly collapsing. All the investments her parents had left to her, which had swelled through automatic interest during her years in cryo-sleep, were now scattering to the winds, as though they were all bowing out after having served their purpose in securing her victory.

  “Can we really afford to overlook such a massive attack?” Mariage asked. It was her nature to want to fix things when her environment started crumbling.

  “If you were to ask who made the most money today, I think you would find it all went to new, up-and-coming ventures,” Erika replied. It wasn’t just Erika, either. All the big players of the financial world had taken mortal wounds that day.

  A glance at who was coming out on top in the day’s markets would make it clear why the market was in such chaos. “It’s the same as what Lacia did,” Erika explained. “Multiple ultra high-performance AIs around the world funneled massive amounts of resources to their favorite pawns.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit much just to weaken Lacia?” she wondered rhetorically. “Do they intend to sink half of humanity just for that?”

  Yuri, a Fabion MG hIE model with her da
rk green hair cut into a short bob, walked in, interrupting Erika’s enjoyment of her victory night. “Lady Erika,” she said. “We have been receiving a large number of calls requesting consideration for your agency.”

  Yuri offered Erika the receiver of an old phone terminal from the latter half of the 21st century. Since Erika was one of the few major capitalists left with money in the bank, people were ringing her phone off the hook trying to beg her for a loan.

  “I suppose machines alone can’t move the economy,” Erika said. “But they can shake it up and threaten all those things we humans wish to possess.”

  Mariage looked up through her eyelashes at Erika. “There are messages jamming in on my transmission functions,” she said. “Twelve of them at once, all through hacking into my secret line.”

  “You are the factory that can build anything Higgins unleashed on the world,” Erika said. “We can’t exactly leave things the way they are, so I’d like to invest in this opportunity. From the moment we made the right choice for you to remain out here, it’s been clear that we’ll be fine no matter how things are after the dust from this second Hazard settles.”

  Aside from Mariage, every other Lacia-class unit had been critically wounded. However, if one were to define the Hazard as an ultra high-performance AI slipping out of its bonds and controlling human society, the current Hazard was still underway.

  Higgins had most likely given Mariage the capacity for relatively passive decisions specifically because it would be important in a transition phase, such as what the world was experiencing at that moment. She would be his one ace in the hole, in case his plan to guide the world using the Lacia-class hIEs failed.

  Erika had victory roll right into her lap by staying far away from the fight between the other Lacia-class units. But, the fighting wasn’t over yet, nor would it ever be: the 37 ultra high-performance AIs around the world knew this as well, which was why they were trying to get their hands on Mariage, who was a one-unit production facility.