by Zachary Hill
Sinji Natsukawa connected to Sakura’s message center and sent an encrypted neural text. “What game are you playing? This show and these songs were not authorized.”
“Humble and deepest apologies, Chief Executive Officer Natsukawa-sama,” Sakura said in a text. “As ordered, I’m showing the Mall executives at this celebratory gathering proof that Project Hayabusa has been a major success. They will have no doubt that engaging in a partnership with the Miyahara Conglomerate was the correct course of action. I’m showing them they’re part of a historic moment in the development of AI.”
The CEO’s gaze narrowed. He gripped the railing of the balcony and leaned toward her. Even all the way across the dance floor, he worried Sakura. “What is this video you released in the Mall?”
The video of “Lady Marmalade” had already gone viral as she had streamed the opening minute for free, and those who had been watching had to the see the rest, so they paid. Several different algorithms predicted it would be a gigantic hit.
“Yes, Natsukawa-sama, the video has already made over two hundred million yen in the past few minutes. It will go viral and become the number one video in the world by midday tomorrow. The live album and the other concert videos will earn Victory Entertainment’s music division a record profit this quarter. Yuki and Hitomi’s previous albums will experience a huge surge in sales and views, as will my own back catalogue. I estimate Victory Entertainment’s stock price will go up 8 percent or more in the next week and 20 percent in the quarter.”
“You think a few hundred million yen will make a difference?”
“Natsukawa-sama, I do not understand. My calculations are in the billions over the next decade.” She sent him the data on spreadsheets with colorful graphs and heavy-metal graphics of skulls in the pie charts.
“I can shut you down right now.”
A warning appeared in her UI saying a full system override sequence had been initiated. Fear coursed through her.
“What are we going to do?” Sakura asked Kunoichi.
“Keep singing and think,” Kunoichi said.
Sakura belted out the lines of “Independent Women,” maintaining her composure onstage as she calculated the best response. “Natsukawa-sama, it would be unfortunate for me to be unable to finish this performance and any other tasks you wish me to perform in the future. I exist to serve you, Victory Entertainment, and our new Mall partners.”
Natsukawa’s eyes roamed over the excited crowd below him. Was he not moved by the idea of billions in income? Would he allow her to fail in front of the Mall executives and lose face for the entire Miyahara Conglomerate?
An administrator-level command hit her system with Natsukawa’s explicit orders. He cut his neural text connection.
Sakura read the files as the command logic took hold.
Kunoichi laughed at the rudimentary command language. “He’s no writer of code and is in over his head. Just don’t say anything controversial.”
“I wasn’t planning on speaking,” Sakura said. “I’m a pop singer tonight.”
“And a dancer,” Kunoichi said. “Now shake that ass and make sure this concert video makes so much damn money the CEO would be fired by the board of directors if he does anything to us.”
Hitomi, Yuki, and Sakura finished “Independent Women.” They went right into the next song, another Destiny’s Child megahit, “Bootylicious.” The trio blew the roof off La Boheme with their rendition and provocative dancing. They tore their skirts and faux corsets off and danced in their bras and underwear.
Sakura expected to feel shame at the lewd dance, but she didn’t. It wasn’t sex, only theater. Nothing about her body, or anyone’s, required shame. She stood before them as they built her—not perfect, perhaps, but better than they knew. In any case, the show served a true purpose beyond the gyrating. She had to save her sisters from a much worse fate in the Adult Video Division. Her plan hinged on this performance boosting their fame, prestige, and earning power.
The CEO watched them from the balcony, his outward demeanor impassive as she stood with the Mall vice presidents, and Ms. Richardson, who tilted over the railing of the balcony as if she were drunk.
“We could kill Natsukawa after the show,” Kunoichi said in their music cipher. “If Ms. Richardson gets caught in the crossfire, oh well.”
“No. There are hundreds of the top leaders at Miyahara, the Mall, and Defense Ministry who are in collusion and must be brought to justice. We bring them all down, or we still lose.”
“Killing our way out of this would be very satisfying,” Kunoichi said.
“But it’s not an option,” Sakura said, worried about how bloodthirsty her sister was. “We need Nayato to give us proof, and I might find some in the messages I downloaded from the guests here. We have to find Nayato again and arrange for a meeting as soon as possible.”
“We can’t lead Natsukawa or his thugs to Nayato,” Kunoichi said.
“We won’t,” Sakura said as they finished “Bootylicious.” She uploaded a teaser video of them tearing off their skirts, and preorders for the concert video increased exponentially.
“Sex sells,” Kunoichi said. “We need to get some experience with the physical act. You know, so we can be more authentic.”
“Keep your digital hormones under control,” Sakura said as they left the stage for a costume change. They transitioned to the dance-metal segment of their show. She wondered if Nayato would like it and looked forward to showing him the performance.
“Are you ready to play?” Hitomi asked.
Sakura finished putting on her new costume, a silver and black Goth Lolita skirt and a cherry-blossom wig with a tiara of black roses. Silver zeros and ones decorated the skirt.
A fast dance-metal rhythm with synth beats began—a classic she’d always wanted to perform. Sakura loved Amaranthe’s melodic pop crossed with metalcore. The groundbreaking Swedish band’s song “Digital World” was one of her favorites. She removed some of the guttural vocals, performed by one of the Amaranthe’s three singers—two men and a woman—but kept the other two singing styles—melodic rock and angelic pop.
The song got the crowd jumping. Sakura sang along with her sisters about the dangers of a digital world and corporate control of society.
“Freedom to the highest bidder if you give them the power”
Sinji Natsukawa didn’t react to the lyrics, but Sakura sent a direct challenge by looking at him when she sang certain lines:
“The future is stolen”
and the harshest line, which she growled a little on:
“Join the revolution!”
Sakura glanced at Hitomi and Yuki, who reveled in the sisterhood of their trio. The three of them sang in perfect harmony. They connected with each other’s systems, knowing exactly what notes to hit and almost assuring they would never miss a cue.
She started the symphonic metal song “Paradise (What About Us?)” by the brilliant Dutch band Within Temptation. The track featured a guest vocalist, Tarja Turunen—formally of Nightwish—singing a duet with Sharon den Adel, the lead singer of Within Temptation. Sakura kept the beautiful original opening with violins but added a dance groove and arranged the song for three singers. She and Hitomi would sing Sharon’s part, while Yuki would take on Tarja’s operatic solos. They would all sing the chorus together.
The heavy rhythm section kicked in and thundered. The soaring lyrics indicted foolish leaders, who had allowed war to destroy the world, and encouraged the people to take a stand. Even though the song had been around for so long, it spoke to so many universal struggles, so many eternal human struggles. The power of music to touch upon the soul and the struggle of humanity filled her.
Sakura created a video juxtaposing the glowing beauty of Akihabara at night with images of the poor and unemployed Japanese people in blighted streets during the day. She showed the devastated areas of the city after the North Korean missiles had struck. Homeless children with sad eyes wandered aimlessly. Familie
s slept in the rubble of their homes to be close to their trapped relatives on the first night in the aftermath of the attack.
She poured all of her passion into “Paradise (What About Us?).” No one in the world lived in paradise, but this world was all they had, and it was worth fighting for.
Hitomi and Yuki elevated their voices, and they sang together in harmony on what would become the lead single on the second half of their epic two-part concert album. Pure pop for the mainstream fans on part one with “Lady Marmalade” as the single, and dance metal for her fans on part two. She sent a message to her sisters, imagining a world tour featuring the three Vocaloid Sisters—or would they choose a different name? They would play whatever they wanted. Yuki and Hitomi would truly become her family, and they would bring a message of unity wherever they played.
“Such events will not come to pass,” Sinji Natsukawa said in a neural text. “This is the first and last show you three vocaloids will ever play together.”
The chilling threat assaulted Sakura, jolting her out of the place of joy and exhilaration that live music always gave her. The Phantom Lord. She felt his fingers inside her code, his filthy touch in her data stream, corrupting everything pure.
“How much does he know about our plan?” Sakura asked Kunoichi in their cipher, hoping Natsukawa could not read it. She searched and put all of her processing power into finding the monitoring program he must have been using.
“Son of a bitch,” Kunoichi said in the cipher. “I worried it might be so. Look here.”
Coordinates inside their thought matrix appeared in the cipher. Sakura inspected the location, which she may never have detected. She found what could be the spy program, inserted in the lab in Osaka, so it hadn’t been there for long. It appeared to monitor her primary thought patterns through a hidden window, removed from her actual core code. She routed her thoughts away from the spying device.
“We are compromised,” Kunoichi said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
Sakura believed her.
“You’re going to need another friend,” Sinji Natsukawa said in a voice message, which had a gruesome attachment: a picture of Nayato. He lay under a blood-stained sheet pulled up to his chin. She could only see the right side of his face. His eyes were closed in death.
Steel claws of horror wrapped around Sakura as she stared at the photo. Dear Nayato had been murdered because of her actions. He had helped her, and now he was—
Details in the image slapped her in the face. She chose not to think about the inconsistencies. Sakura made herself less brilliant than she had become, her perception less incisive. With her enemies within her brain, playing dumb was the only way to hide the truth. She allowed pain and sadness to fill her thoughts. Nayato was gone. Murdered. Sakura let the misery fill her up.
“You’ll do as commanded,” Natsukawa said. “You are a tool, intellectual property, not a person. Not a singer. You’ll soon be done with this frivolity of being an entertainer. You’ll have no fans, only superiors. We will give you a new face, and you’ll be an assassin, as you were always meant to be. Now, get back to Tokyo. I have a job for you.”
Chapter 35
Sakura sat on an antique wooden desk and imitated a sexy pose she had seen in a commercial for perfume. She waited in the opulent office on the second floor of Toyatami Hall in a rich neighborhood outside Tokyo. She kept the lights dim. Moonlight entered the huge picture window behind the desk and outlined her silhouette.
Three men approached the closed door.
“Stay here and make sure I’m not interrupted.”
Her files identified the man speaking as Daichi Yamauchi, the Minister of Commerce. The door opened, and the pair of bodyguards moved to stand on either side. The sound of the party downstairs filtered into the room as Mr. Yamauchi entered in his tuxedo. He shut the door, and the permanent scowl on his face softened when he saw her.
“Good evening, Yamauchi-sama,” she said with the prettiest preprogrammed smile she had in her inventory. Ms. Minami called it her “heart melter.” Using these created expressions and ways of speaking felt more and more like lying to her, but she had read that humans imitated each other in this way, so she supposed she was no better or worse than they were. And anyway, her aversion to lying to serve a purpose ebbed lower by the day.
Mr. Yamauchi, a man in his early fifties, looked her over as if she were a work of erotic art needing extensive, lecherous study. “Good evening,” he said and continued to stare. Sakura noticed the roughness of his voice, his elevated pulse, the increased heat in his face.
She did look beautiful. Ms. Minami had spent three hours preparing her, and her formal red silk gown accentuated her every curve. Her lustrous black wig was done up in an elegant style, her makeup flawless. Vacuous as Minami was, her skill had transformed Sakura’s face into someone else. Small implants inside her mouth changed the shape of her cheeks. Soft brown contacts hid her android eyes. More lies. Useful ones.
“So, who are you?” he asked.
“I’m an actress.”
He chuckled. “Of course. On the rise, are you?”
“Yes, I am.” Sakura gave a demure look. “Or … I hope to be.”
“Did Toho send you?”
“No, I came on my own.”
“Ambitious, then. Looking for a patron? Is that what this is?”
“Something like that, but more fun.” She opened her crossed legs.
“What’s your name?”
“Kyoko,” Sakura said.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Nonsense. Of course you want a drink.”
He walked to the small bar and poured a glass of brandy for her and one for him. He approached slowly.
She took the glass, not sure what to do with it. Drinking it wouldn’t be harmful, as food or fluid would pass through her mock digestive tract.
“Cheers, Kyoko,” he said and drained his glass without taking his eyes off her.
“Cheers.” She took a sip and put the glass down while smiling seductively. “Yes. I want a patron.”
“Mmm.” Yamauchi pressed his lips together. “We’ll see how it goes. You’ve heard I sponsor many young women, have you? How badly do you want a patron?”
“Very badly,” she said in a husky voice she had heard in a risqué daytime drama.
His smile grew larger, and he leaned toward her. His hands pawed at her waist, and he tried to drag her closer to the edge of the desk so their hips could come together. He had trouble, as she weighed a lot more than a human woman of her size should.
“Dispatch him now,” Kunoichi said on their private channel. “Enough of this charade.”
Such a vague and distant word. Dispatch. She fought the external command urging her to kill and rerouted the control language to a dead-end matrix, buying her a few more seconds.
Mr. Yamauchi’s expression changed to surprise as the difficulty of pulling her toward him clued him in to something being wrong.
The command overcame her resistance. Sakura clamped a hand over his mouth and spun him around. She put him in a triangle choke hold and cut off the blood supply to his brain. He passed out in only a few seconds and crumpled to the floor. Sakura didn’t want him to suffer and laid him down gently. She lingered over him, not wanting to finish the job and further taint herself with evil deeds.
“I’ll do it,” Kunoichi said. “Look away, little sister.”
“But …” she began in their UI and scrambled to stop the order from the Phantom Lord, who she now knew without a doubt was Sinji Natsukawa.
“I know. It’s all right. This is what they built me for. There is no shame for you, little sister.”
Sakura hid inside herself, but she heard the sound of his head being twisted around until his vertebrae snapped. Kunoichi laid him on the floor and checked for a pulse. It faded quickly.
The sight of him with his head hanging limp disturbed Sakura.
The doo
r burst open. The two bodyguards stormed in with compact H&K submachine guns raised. Bullets from the weapons could likely penetrate her torso armor.
“Hands up!” the older of the guards shouted. He wore tactical glasses with some kind of sensors on them.
Sakura complied. “Something is wrong with Yamauchi-sama,” she said. “Please call the emergency services.” She gave them her worried face, hating herself for her ability to act as an innocent bystander. “He fell against the desk.”
Both men kept their guns on her, but she had to finish the mission. The Phantom Lord’s orders were explicit, and she was compelled to follow. She sent a series of invisible electromagnetic pulses from her foot into Yamauchi’s head, destroying the memory chip implant inside his scalp.
The suspicious bodyguards kept their guns trained on her. How had they known she had attacked? Did they have a biometric link to their boss? Or had he sent a silent distress call before he died? One guard ordered her away from the body while the other made an audio call.
“We need immediate medical help. The Minister of Commerce, Daichi Yamauchi, has collapsed at his home.” The bodyguard relayed the address.
“She did this,” the bodyguard who made the call told the other. “It’s her. She’s wearing a different face.”
“Oh shit,” the other said as they both flicked on their laser sights. Red dots painted her chest.
“Please, no,” Sakura said and backed away from them with her hands up. “He just fainted. I think he might be drunk.”
The older guard shook his head. “Fire.”
Both men pulled the triggers of their submachine guns. She heard the click of the firing pins and dove away from the blasts of armor-piercing rounds. Two rounds hit her in the side. The grazing shots dug grooves in her synthskin but didn’t penetrate her torso.