Beatless: Volume 1 Read online

  Phase1「Contract」

  When he slept, Arato would always encounter one of two things in his dreams: the first was a nightmare of massive flames, swelling to fill the room. While it seemed the whole world burned around him, he would be swallowed up in a writhing tsunami of red and charcoal black. The other was the image of a dog, wagging its tail and gazing up at him.

  Soon after entering elementary school, Arato had been caught up in the flame of an explosion and received burns over his entire body. In the front garden of the hospital, surrounded by silence so deep that he could hear his own heartbeat, he watched people. Those days his father was often busy, and his little sister was still very young, so they only came to visit him every once in a while. To him, these infrequent visits made him feel worthless in the eyes of his family.

  In his slumber, even real memories seemed like daydreams. When the pain came, he just needed to push the painkiller button and the world would go silent, as if every wave of sound had been cut away.

  One day, a white puppy entered his lonely world. By the time he even noticed its presence, the puppy was already approaching him. It seemed interested in him, and started sniffing at his legs.

  “This little guy wants to be your friend, Arato.” He never could remember the face of the young woman in the nurse’s uniform who’d said that to him, but he remembered all the puppy’s adorable traits very well. Like how when he pet its head, it would beg with its forepaw for him to tickle its chin, too. Or the fluffiness of its short, white fur. Or how frantically it would wag its little tail. Or the way it would seem to bounce off the ground when it ran up to him. Or how it would playfully nip at the heel of his shoes, so that, even though it was difficult to move at all, he found he couldn’t help but play along.

  “Arato, this boy says he would like to play with you and the puppy, too.” A few days later, the nurse brought a boy the same age as Arato with her.

  Arato thought the boy looked very sick, considering how thin his arms and legs were. He didn’t learn until later that the boy couldn’t eat the hospital food and was getting all his nutrients through an IV.

  At the time, Arato didn’t know what to do. He shied away from meeting the skeletal boy’s eyes.

  But the puppy’s big eyes were shining with excitement. It ran around in circles with its tongue lolling out, unable to make up its mind about which boy it should play with.

  The heart is moved by that which the eye perceives. The human heart can be shaken, even by that which is not human.

  Moved by the puppy’s antics, Arato looked at the boy’s face. The boy had the faint expression of someone lost in darkness; someone unable to cry out for help. He had one hand to his throat, where malnutrition made his sinew stand out to a pitiful degree.

  There was the sound of a wet nose snuffling from Arato’s feet. The puppy was wagging its tail so hard that its back legs were tottering. To a lonely boy in a lonely world, the sight of another living thing enjoying itself so much was salvation.

  “He looks like he’s having tons of fun.” Arato put his feelings into words, and broke the silence. A warm feeling spread in his chest, and for some reason, he felt like crying.

  The puppy was switching back and forth between sniffing at the ground and gazing up at Arato. Watching it, Arato came to the conclusion that, if he decided he was having fun, maybe the world wouldn’t feel so lonely.

  Though his injuries didn’t seem as grave as Arato’s, the boy had his lips shut firmly and didn’t say a word.

  In his painful state, it was a trial even reaching out his hand. But Arato felt he needed to make the first move. “My name’s Arato Endo.” Arato gathered his courage and took the first step. “Let’s be friends.”

  ***

  Sunlight shone through the classroom window.

  Arato Endo, draped over a chair in the classroom, let out a groan. “It’s only April, why’s it so hot...” The sky seemed to stretch on forever. Arato turned his gaze to the ceiling.

  “Look at you, sleeping through class like a boss.” Ryo Kaidai walked over to stand by Arato during the break. He was a handsome guy with long bangs, and the top button of his uniform shirt undone.

  “Hey, you were out like a light too, so you shouldn’t talk,” someone said from behind them. The voice belonged to Kengo Suguri, whose seat was right behind Arato’s. Kengo liked to think of himself as the rational type. But, behind his glasses, his eyes (which were sometimes stubborn and sometimes frail) betrayed his often changing emotions.

  “I got all my prep done yesterday,” Ryo replied, indifferently. It often struck Arato as odd that Ryo was even going to an ordinary high school like theirs.

  “Must be nice, having all those brains and nothing to do with them,” Arato said.

  Ryo still looked indifferent, but seemed strangely pleased by Arato’s words. “Aww, stop. The only reason they have schools around anymore is so we can practice getting along with other people. I think that, in our lifetime, we’ll see the day when it won’t matter how smart anyone is anymore.”

  “You rich kids sure have it nice. Even your excuses for slacking off are high-class,” Kengo said, transferring the notes he’d taken during class from the school terminal to his own pocket terminal.

  Arato saw a notification light blinking on his desk screen, and his shoulders slumped. He pulled out his card-sized pocket terminal to check the notice. The deadline for some new homework was written in red text on his personal scheduler.

  “The hell?” he grumbled. “How come I’m the only one who gets extra homework?”

  “By my calculations, here in about ten years the only work we men will have left to us is getting friendly with the ladies,” Ryo said, spreading both hands as if he was about to bust a move.

  Arato felt like half of class 2C — the twenty female students to be exact — were sending icy glares their way. “It’s amazing you can say that kind of thing with a straight face in this class, Kaidai.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’ve hit on every single girl in the class.”

  “That was my goal for the year,” Ryo protested. “A girl a week. I worked pretty hard at it.”

  Arato and his two friends stood out in class, and not in a good way. It was all Ryo’s fault. Ever since they changed classes, the handsome, intelligent Ryo had flirted with every single girl in the class. Due to this, the relationships between the girls had been put in turmoil, until finally they had all come to the consensus that Ryo was the scum of the Earth.

  The boys of the class, for their part, didn’t want anything to do with a guy the girls were all clearly avoiding. As a result, only his long-time friends Arato and Kengo would even hang out with him.

  Sweat beaded on Arato’s forehead. “Ryo, you’re the one who just said school is for figuring out how to get along, right? One of these days someone’s going to teach you how you’re actually supposed to get along with others. Painfully, I’d guess.”

  “Oh, hey. I’ve got a date with a girl from the next high school over on Sunday. You should come along, Arato,” Ryo said, grabbing Arato’s arm from behind.

  “Nah, I can’t. I promised I’d hang out with Yuka...”

  “Bull! Yuka’s not gonna shake you down when she knows you’re running low on allowance.”

  “Stop pretending you’re an expert on my little sister,” Arato retorted.

  “You sure love dragging Endo into everything, don’t you, Kaidai?” Kengo said.

  At Kengo’s dry observation, Ryo flashed a huge grin. “It’s more fun with Arato around.”

  Arato wondered if Ryo was actually so smart that he was wrapping all the way around to stupid again. Of course, this would make Arato and Kengo idiots too, for hanging around h
im.

  The cityscape beyond the classroom window glittered. On the other side of the river, the solar panels in the residential district flashed with reflected sunlight.

  It was April, and school had just entered third quarter.

  Long ago, Japan had adopted the custom of starting the school year in September, like schools in Europe and America did. By this point, even in Japan people found it strange that, one hundred years ago, the school years had started under blooming cherry blossoms.

  The route Arato and his friends took home ran parallel to the Sumida River, which was lined with cherry blossom trees. Passing by the Kototoi bridge, which had collapsed once over the last one hundred years, they slipped by the broken stone monument at the Ushijima Shrine. This path took them under a tunnel of cherry blossom trees, planted on either side of Bokutei Street.

  “Hey, are we doing hanami this year or what?” Arato asked, referring to the Japanese custom of picnicking with friends under the cherry blossoms during their blooming season. He had stopped beside a relatively new stone monument, which had been built on the bank of the Sumidagawa River. Forty-two years ago, there had been a massive disaster people called the ‘Hazard.’ The monument had been put up to remind everyone of the disaster, which had reduced the Honjo Azumabashi district to a pile of rubble. Old folks often came and laid flowers at the monument. AR photos had been provided for the monument, and they started displaying as soon as Arato and the others got close enough.

  In the heat of early April, Ryo stripped off his school jacket. “Let’s have a hanami this Sunday,” he said.

  “Man, you never give up, do you? How many people did you already invite?” Arato asked, turning a small dial in the collar of his uniform. Electricity flowed into the coolant elements in the armpit of his suit, which started to cool off.

  With a sly smile, Ryo held up four fingers. “Four ladies.”

  “Well you’d better apologize to one of them, then,” Arato told him. “With me, you, and Kengo that’s only three guys.”

  “Arato,” Ryo complained, “that makes it sound like you two are the only friends I have.”

  “We are.”

  “Oh come on, I have other friends. You’re gonna make me cry, here.”

  Over the last fifty years, there had been some major land adjustments around the old Sumida District Office. With the Azuma and Komagata bridges as starting points, the streets of the district had been rerouted into a more regular grid.

  The flow of cars down the wide roads was smooth as a river. Every vehicle had self-driving functions now, so traffic jams were a thing of the past.

  When Arato and the others arrived at an intersection, they saw an old lady trying to cross the four lane road. A girl in a yellow jersey came up next to the old woman and took her by the hand.

  Arato’s body moved without hesitation. “I’m gonna go help,” he said. The stoplight looked like it was just about to change, and he doubted the girl and old lady were going to make it in time.

  “That girl isn’t a human, you know,” Kengo said, in an uninterested tone. There was nothing about the girl’s appearance or actions to show that she was anything other than human, but Kengo was very knowledgeable about computers and machines.

  “If you get in the way when an interface is doing its job,” he went on, “all you’re gonna do is put a load on their processor.”

  ‘Interface’ was the short slang for hIEs — humanoid Interface Elements. Basically robots with human forms, hIEs could do just about anything a human could. Thanks to this, there was no such thing as a labor shortage anymore, and the world had become quite convenient.

  “Fine, but I’m still going to help,” Arato said, then headed over to the crosswalk.

  When the girl android saw him approach, she smiled at him.

  “Here, I’ll help.”

  “Thank you.” The old woman, bent with age, thanked him with a smile that crinkled her whole face.

  Humans can’t convey their feelings directly to one another, so we show our feelings through our actions. But by this point, there were things other than humans that could perform those same meaningful actions; this was the reality Arato and the others lived in. In the year 2105, androids had filled all the holes in society.

  The others ragged on Arato when he walked back from the crosswalk.

  “One of these days someone’s gonna really take advantage of you, you know.”

  They were walking through the area around the Honjo Azumabashi Subway Station, which had grown into a proper downtown. The place was a hodgepodge of old buildings from before the Hazard, and newer buildings, whose building materials gave them a completely different texture.

  “Hey, gotta be nice to girls, right?” said Arato, defending himself. “Why don’t you guys lend a hand next time?”

  The area was full of hIEs, if you looked hard enough. They had been a welcome addition to the service industry, which had been short-staffed since the dawn of time, and they were especially common in restaurants.

  Kengo was local, so he knew everything there was to know about the area. “Did you know that girl at the taiyaki stand is an hIE?” he asked. Across the intersection with Asakusa Street, a girl with pretty blonde curls was turning over the baking form at a takoyaki stand.

  “There’s one working at that soba shop, too,” he pointed out. “And there’s some running the registers over at Sky Tree. Anytime an hIE sees someone old, they run over and help.”

  “Hey, they’re working hard,” Arato said. As he passed by the takoyaki stand, he gave the girl a good look. She smiled and asked, “Would you like some takoyaki?” She wasn’t sweating.

  Ryo’s eyes were cold when he looked at her, completely different from how he gazed at the girls in their class. “No, they aren’t. Arato, you’re the kind of guy who thinks if you cheer on a motor it’ll go faster, aren’t you?”

  “I’m free to think whatever I want,” Arato said.

  “You’re living in a fairy tale,” Ryo scoffed.

  “I’d say fairy tale land has had a scientific revolution.”

  “That’s what I call progress. Even unscientific plebs like you spend every day surrounded by science.”

  Their friendly chat continued to fly off the rails.

  Just then, Arato saw something out of the corner of his eye; something that should not have been there. Someone’s outdoor black cat was dragging something out of the alley, where a power-assist delivery bike was parked by the soba shop. Now and then, the cat would stop to bite at the thing, which was almost as big as the cat was, before going back to dragging it along laboriously.

  The thing being dragged was nightmarishly out of place under the bright midday sun. It was a human arm.

  “Oh shit. Ohhhh shit,” Arato said, feeling the blood drain instantly from his face.

  It was a right arm with smooth, white skin. The cat ran away, and a chunk of skin that the cat had been nibbling on rolled away from the elbow.

  Arato felt his legs give out.

  Kengo, who was just passing by Arato, casually caught his arm to hold him up. “What, again?” he asked, then went and grabbed the arm, giving it a shake. A white tube was jutting out from the severed portion, and a blood-like liquid pattered onto the ground. “Somebody’s been going around busting up hIEs lately,” he said. “I’ve seen scrap from a few bodies here and there. What a waste.”

  “‘What a waste’?” Arato echoed incredulously. “Don’t you feel sorry for them?” He couldn’t stop the hammering of his heart, or see the white arm as anything other than that of a young girl. There was no way he could be calm, staring at a severed human body part, even if it hadn’t come from a human.

  “Hey,” Kengo replied, “when someone turns something that costs about the same as a car into scrap, I think it’s a waste.”

  Arato reached out to touch the severed arm, but Ryo caught his shoulder to stop him.

  “Don’t touch it. We don’t even know what those things are made of.�
��

  “We can’t just throw the thing in the trash,” Arato said. The android girl who had helped the old lady cross the street was walking nearby. It was painful to think that the owner of the severed arm could be a kind girl, just like her.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea about them, Arato,” Ryo said. His voice was blunt, as he looked down at the severed limb. “The hIEs only do stuff for us because that’s what they’re programmed to do. Some marketing guys figured out that they’d sell well if they looked like humans and acted all nice. It’s just brand propaganda.”

  “That’s just a piece of a machine,” Kengo agreed. Though they were in the middle of a downtown area, with Kengo holding what looked like a severed human arm, few people spared them a second glance.

  Arato’s friends weren’t particularly fond of hIEs. Among the people passing by, some just frowned, though some showed a little pity in their eyes. Still, if the ‘girl’ the arm belonged to had been human, everyone would be reacting much differently.

  Even Arato’s sense of danger had cooled off after he realized the severed arm wasn’t the sign of a murder. Despite that, the thought of walking away from what looked like a piece of a human body weighed too heavily on Arato’s mind.

  “Let’s take it to the police,” he said. “I’d feel bad if we just threw it away.”

  ***

  That night, an incident occured in one corner of the No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group.

  From the base of one of the buildings in a sprawling research area, a sharp explosion echoed in the night, accompanied by a rumbling in the surrounding earth. Immediately afterward, black smoke roiled like an inverted avalanche out of the building’s ground floor entrance.

  The windows of the building, which stood at fifty meters tall with fifteen floors, began to shatter, one after another. Silent vibrations shook the black fiber walls.

  Every light in the building went out. This was the moment in which the employees of Tokyo Research Lab of MemeFrame Co. — who were big players in the hIE behavior control sector — died.

  10:08 PM. A large transport helicopter approached the No. 2 Landfill Island Group from the sea side. The scramble order had come the instant the first explosion had rang out. HOO (Hands Of Operation), the PMC hired by MemeFrame for security, were moving in to take control of the situation.