Beatless: Volume 2 Read online

  “So Yuri’s a Hello Kitty cup too, huh?” he mused. When you got right down to it, an hIE model’s job was to fill a role with their own appearance. Since the people who saw Yuri thought of her as being a top idol, she was treated like one. Lacia was doing the same thing.

  Arato suddenly felt like asking something of the girl going green with envy next to him. “If you saw shops raising the prices of the clothing you wear specifically because you wear it, would that make you happy?” he asked.

  “If that didn’t happen, I’d be a failure as a model,” Oriza replied. “And that goes double for walking mannequins like your Lacia.”

  “I don’t follow,” Arato said.

  “If folks don’t look at you and say, ‘man, I wish I could be like her,’ then you’re worthless as a model,” she explained. “Though, honestly, it’s getting annoying with them taking it all the way into lifestyle stuff with this ‘boy meets girl’ concept.”

  Apparently, Oriza knew the concept behind Lacia’s ads, and her cloudy face suddenly brightened as she seemed to remember something. “Hey Arato,” she said. “Introduce me to that boy, Ryo. The one who saved me during the attack.”

  “I don’t know if having me set you up with him is a good idea,” Arato said. “But you should just go talk to him. I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy no matter what you say.”

  “Well it’s not like I can romance an hIE, right?” Oriza said, eyes shining at the thought of dating Ryo.

  “He’s said pretty much the same thing,” Arato said. “Maybe you two would be good together. I can’t set you up with him, but I can at least give you his number.”

  Arato stood, watching Lacia and the male model acting out their lifestyle on stage from far enough away to not bother the staff. “Sorry, but it kinda pisses me off to see them play-acting at being lovers, now that I know what real romance is,” Arato growled. Even though he knew it was an act, he couldn’t help seeing the fake romance as a reflection of the real thing.

  But Arato knew that, apart from himself, the other people who saw this video would see a dreamlike reality in which humans and hIEs had drawn closer together. To the fans watching the video, the clothing Lacia wore as an hIE model was more than just an outfit; her wearing the clothes made people want to buy them, even at high prices. There was a gap between the value the clothes were perceived to have and their actual existence that slipped through the holes in the viewers’ rationality, which created a reason for them to buy the clothes. The company was using analog hacking to raise the value of objects by manipulating the viewers’ perceptions of those objects. To return to Erika’s analogy: if a company wanted to sell a Hello Kitty cup, they only had to convince children that it was more than just a cup.

  “Fabion does some pretty shady stuff,” Arato muttered, without thinking.

  Oriza looked at him like he was a moron. “You mean using analog hacking?” she asked. “Even without hIEs, everyone’s been doing that since forever ago. Why do you think businesses put characters on products in the first place?”

  “I guess that’s what Erika meant when she was saying there had been stuff like the cup going on throughout history,” Arato mused. “At the party, too, she was talking about fictional characters interacting with the human world, or whatever. I guess it does make sense.”

  Like the broken Mikoto, Lacia was gaining popularity among viewers both young and old. In order not to disrupt the image of the characters they created for their models, Fabion MG treated them with extreme care. Even during the shoot that Arato was watching, if the male model got too close to Lacia, the director would instruct him to open some space. It was just like how rights holders, back when the Hello Kitty cup was made, would always fight to protect their copyrights to ensure that nothing would sully the image of their character.

  Fabion was looking to create a new icon—a new Hello Kitty, as it were. They wanted Lacia to be a character, so that when they slapped her on a cup, or goods, or clothing, anyone who saw them would see the ‘boy meets girl’ hIE and human romance dream which the company wanted to project.

  “I don’t really want her to turn into a character,” Arato said. “I just want her to stay the same old Lacia. I know she’s always saying she’s just a machine that takes on any personality she needs to, but I still think there’s a real her.” Arato couldn’t look away. He had developed an obsession with the image he had of Lacia, and the relationship they had in his heart.

  “Huh, that hIE really has you wrapped around her finger, huh?” Oriza snickered.

  “Oh leave me alone,” Arato said.

  But Oriza showed him an honest smile that seemed to come from the heart. “Girls just can’t help but tease a boy in love,” she said.

  Arato was glad she seemed to understand him, and couldn’t help but smiling himself. He couldn’t help but think Oriza looked a little prettier than she had a few moments ago. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You really are an easy mark,” she laughed. It was a little embarrassing, having almost everyone he met tell him that. Seeing him shyly dropping his gaze and blush, Oriza broke out in another broad grin.

  A voice came from behind them. “Miss, you’re almost up.”

  Oriza hurriedly ran to the set, her feet light.

  Arato thought he recognized the voice that had given Oriza the reminder, and turned to look; it was Erika.

  She met his surprised look with a shushing finger pressed to her lips. “I’m using red box environmental camouflage,” she explained. “Nobody further than two meters away from me can see me.” It was true; nobody seemed to notice that the owner of Fabion MG was right there in the studio. Their conversation was a complete secret.

  “Are you sure you should be using red box technology that lightly?” he asked.

  “Oh, humans will be using it soon, I’m sure,” Erika said, waving away his concern. “No need to be stingy, I’m just trying it a little ahead of the curve.” She beckoned to someone with a finger and, suddenly, Mariage was by her side. The hIE, in a maid uniform and with her flaxen hair in a bob-cut, handed Arato the trunk case she was carrying.

  “Give this to Lacia. It’s part of our trade,” Erika explained to him. On set, Lacia was in a photo shoot with Yuri, who was also one of Erika’s private dolls. Erika turned her back on the stage, and spoke to Mariage. “You couldn’t pull off a look like that,” she said.

  “That’s not one of my functions,” Mariage said, dropping her eyes. Though she was strong enough to challenge Methode, the strongest of the Lacia-class red box hIEs, she couldn’t rebel against Erika. Erika seemed to find that highly dissatisfying, and spared Mariage a single, disappointed look before ignoring her hIE and turning her full attention to Arato.

  “You’re already planning to confront society as it is. Why don’t we combine our efforts?” she asked.

  “I’m not trying to ‘confront’ anything,” Arato replied. “You’re the one trying to pick a fight with the world.”

  “You are so slow,” Erika sniffed, snapping her black folding fan shut. “As an hIE model, Lacia’s already making waves in society. I wonder if it’s the AI in Black Monolith that gives her the desire to be seen by humans,” she mused.

  “How do you know she feels that way?” Arato asked.

  “Do you really not know? Even though it was your sister that submitted Lacia’s name for the model contest, Lacia could have easily manipulated the results and lost on purpose if she didn’t desire this outcome,” she said.

  Arato couldn’t deny the logic in that.

  “Lacia’s too famous,” Erika went on. “You can’t try to hide her anymore. Eventually, both she and you are going to be in the public eye. Sure, there may be some strings attached, but I’d say having Fabion MG backing you when that happens isn’t a bad deal at all.” Erika seemed to be enjoying herself, the same as when she’d been tapping her finger on that Hello Kitty cup.

  Arato couldn’t find a reason to turn her down. He honestly believed it would go well
, just like she was saying. After Lacia responded positively to his confession, and becoming friends with famous models and CEOs, to his mind the future looked very rosy. After Arato’s thoughts drifted in that direction, he ended up lost in his daydreams for a while.

  Erika left around the time that the shoot started wrapping up. It may have been that her red box camo interfered with his ability to sense her presence, but it seemed to him that she’d simply faded away from one moment to the next, like smoke on the wind.

  There wasn’t a drop of sweat on Lacia as she descended from the stage. When she saw him, it was as if the act she had just been performing no longer existed. She reacted to him, and was the same Lacia as always.

  “Erika came by,” he told her. “She said she wanted to help us.”

  Lacia’s sunny smile clouded over. “I see,” she said. “What do you think, Arato?”

  “Well, it makes me happy to have anyone saying they want to help us out,” he replied. It felt almost like Erika was saying that she wanted to see the future together with him; it made his heart swell a little with pride. That wasn’t a bad feeling. But the gaze of Lacia’s frosty, pale-blue eyes was like having a bucket of ice-water dumped over his head.

  “Arato, are you sure you’ve fully grasped the situation?” she asked him carefully. “Erika is a media and rhetoric specialist. If we join with her, she will have the ability to freely manipulate our images, and the perception of our relationship.”

  “Well sure, there are some downsides, but there must be some benefits, too,” Arato said defensively. Seeing Lacia’s expression fall, it felt like that wonderful bubble of good vibrations from just moments earlier had burst.

  Their conversation was drifting into areas that shouldn’t be discussed in the middle of the studio, so Arato had Lacia follow him into a corner where some of the bigger props were stored. It seemed like it was the right choice as, once they were alone, Lacia reached out and grabbed his sleeve. She dropped her eyes, avoiding his gaze.

  “Erika sees a reflection of concepts that existed during her time in analog hacking. Because of that, I believe this battle we are involved in is approaching a major milestone,” she said. “I think it will soon become apparent to you.”

  It was like she could see the future.

  “Well, if something’s coming, we should just get around in front of it and stop it, shouldn’t we?” Arato asked. “There’s got to be something I can do about it.”

  “In order to stop what is coming, it would be necessary to throw away the current lifestyle we have,” Lacia said. “I am afraid you are too dear to me for me to share that information, Arato.” Her voice was a gentle murmur. Lacia drew closer to him, and he caught a waft of perfume from her body.

  “Do not take Erika’s words at face value,” she told him. “Erika and her Fabion MG company intend to use her powers of persuasion in the war she will wage on society. I believe the choice made by Ryo Kaidai and Methode in rejecting Erika’s proposal was the correct one.” She spoke seriously, as if she was warning him away from a deadly pitfall.

  “I don’t think we need to be quite that suspicious,” he argued back.

  “Erika says she wants to make information about us public, yet continues to hide the existence of Mariage,” Lacia pointed out.

  Arato had spent quite a bit of time with Lacia by this point, and had come to pick up on some of the nuances in the way she acted. “Listen, I know you’d never tell me to my face that I’m easy to manipulate,” he said, “but you still shut down all my ideas, sometimes. Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to do?”

  Her light blue eyes fixed on his. There was a desperate plea in them, like she wanted to tell him something from the bottom of her non-existent heart. “I want you to design the future you and I will walk toward,” she said. “I don’t want to play the part that Erika has written for me. I want you, my owner, to write the script of our lives.”

  Arato had enough trouble keeping up with the incidents that kept happening right in front of him. To him, taking on the whole future seemed like too big a problem for his brain to handle, but Lacia’s eyes were full of confidence in him.

  “I have the power to make any future you wish for come to pass,” she said.

  ***

  Kengo Sugiri didn’t have the power to change the future. So, when he saw the email, it seemed like a death sentence.

  When he got home from school, the email was waiting for him on his home machine. It contained orders from the Antibody Network. The mail had no subject line, just instructions in the body. It was an attack plan for the Next-Generation Social Research Center. The NSRC was a third-sector organization where Kozo Endo worked, with its headquarters in Matsudo. Apparently, the aim of the attack was to destroy the server machine that housed Mikoto’s AI. The Network was riding the rising wave of anti sentiments aimed at AI oversight stemming from the incident at the experimental city. It was probably also meant as a protest against Mikoto, who was somehow becoming even more popular after having been destroyed during the attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center.

  It had been a while since Kengo had last gotten any orders, since he was currently being watched by the public safety police. He was completely backed into a corner; any suspicious movements and they’d arrest him immediately.

  Still, Kengo rested his elbows on his computer desk with a sigh. “I told myself I’d pay more attention to reality and the people around me, no matter how shitty the future might end up being,” he growled, wiping away the beads of sweat that were dripping down his face.

  “But you can’t run away, anymore,” a voice said. “This time, you’re done for.” The voice lacked any emotion as it spoke the fatal words, like a machine simply reading out data. Looking up, Kengo saw that Kouka had entered the room at some point and was sitting on his windowsill. Kengo was feeling so overwhelmed by his own situation that he’d barely reacted to her entrance.

  “Why’d you run off half-cocked to help out, if you were just gonna turn out like this?” Kouka asked him, sounding exasperated. She may have been a product of super-human development, but she was still nothing but a doll. Still, with everything he was going through, having something human-shaped by his side was still comforting.

  Kengo leaned back in his chair. To him, the sixty-year-old house around him was where the future came to die. Unlike Ryo’s rich family, for Kengo’s family and the restaurant they ran in the poor part of town, the development of hIEs was a serious threat. Kengo had wanted to spread his wings beyond the confines of the old, tiny house, so he had scraped together money from his work at the family restaurant and bought himself a terminal.

  “I joined up with the Antibody Network when I was searching around the internet, all pissed off about life,” he said. “There were ads for volunteer Antibody operators all over the place: some real, some fake. I was looking for something I could do to make things a little more fair in the world.”

  He had been relieved to find that there were so many other people besides him who felt they were being left behind as society moved forward. But he knew from the beginning that what he was doing was a crime, and that judgment would come someday.

  “You might not believe it,” he continued, “but until recently, I really, strongly believed in what the Antibody Network was doing, and was happy to help. Why the hell did I mess with it? If I had just kept my head down and kept playing my part in the Network, I never would have gotten dragged into the spotlight.”

  If he had just kept helping other volunteers bust up hIEs, things would have been fine. He hated the things just as much as the rest of the Network. If he hadn’t abused the Network’s internal system to help his friends, he never would have had to shoulder the burden he had.

  Kengo’s eyes felt hot, and his voice became husky with unshed tears. He’d be lying if he said he wouldn’t take it all back. “Everyone’s changing,” he said. “Endo and Kaidai just keep running on ahead and leaving me behind. I’m just a normal
kid from a poor family, going nowhere. I can’t keep up with them.” He wasn’t normally the kind of person who whined this way, but his life had been such a mess lately, and his heart was full of regrets. Even he knew that he was just blowing off steam.

  The evening sun shone in through his window.

  “I’m not like them,” he went on miserably. “The two floors of this restaurant are my whole world. All I could do with my life was give up on my future and sit here, helping the Antibody Network bust up a bunch of rich bastards’ hIEs.” That had just been blowing off steam, too. He could use excuses like his family restaurant not getting the business it needed, or his dad’s honor as a chef being damaged, but in the end, what he had done was help criminals commit crimes.

  “You should have swallowed your pride, got down on your hands and knees, and begged for help,” Kouka said. She was right. The Antibody Network was a group of volunteers, so he should have been able to run whenever he wanted. If he had reached out to Arato for help in desperation, Lacia could have cleared things up in an instant. But Kengo had been blinded by his own pride and naivete, so now it was too late to change things. The Antibody Network knew that he hadn’t managed to break clean away from them, and had sent instructions so he could go and die for them. He was sure his conversation with Kouka was being heard by the public safety police.

  “It’s not even that I’m just wishing I hadn’t done all that,” Kengo muttered. “I’ve been helping bust up hIEs because I don’t want the world to change, so I hate the fact that those guys are changing and leaving me behind.” He got the feeling that, if he had reached out his hand to Arato Endo, he could have become something special. He could have just followed his friends’ lead and made something of himself.

  Ever since Arato had saved his life at the Oi Industry Promotion Center, Kengo had only been thinking of himself. “Dammit,” he growled. Fighting back tears, he looked up at the old wooden boards of the ceiling. He was nothing, and he would never amount to anything.