Beatless: Volume 2 Read online

  “I’m in high school, but no matter how hard I work, I’m never going anywhere,” he said. “Why the hell was I born in this age?” If he had been living in the time when Erika Burroughs had gone into cold sleep, even a normal guy like him could have made it somewhere with hard work.

  After listening to his tearful monologue, Kouka opened her closed eyes. “I can win you this fight,” she said.

  “What?” Kengo asked, having no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’ll bring you victory on this battlefield,” she said. “I am the tool that brings victory in conflict with humans; that’s what I’m made for. I still have to pay back the favor I owe you. I’ll stop the world from changing, and knock this whole stupid fight into the future.”

  “Why would you do that for me?” Kengo asked. Still, despite his doubts, he was happy just to hear her offer. It was almost like she was commiserating with his feelings of helplessness, though she had no heart to feel the pain.

  Kouka smiled, framed from behind by the light of the setting sun on the clouds, which were as crimson as her hair. “It’s a meaningless fight, with no reward and no way out,” she said. “Just the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to try. War’s always a pile of shit, anyway. As a weapon, I was hoping to get into a pointless fight where I could just go berserk sometime.”

  For a moment, her usual smile faded, replaced with a far more complex expression. “I want this battle you’re caught up in,” she said. Full of the desire to save him, to his eyes, Kouka appeared more human than she ever had before.

  “What’s in it for you?” Kengo asked.

  “Didn’t I just say that I wanted to get into a pointless fight?” she shot back. “That’s what it means to fight as the underdog. Though, I guess you could say I’m not getting much out of it.” As a weapon, Kouka was top-class. She wasn’t some mass-produced hunk of crap that you would find scattered around in countries where political unrest reigned. Kouka herself was aware of this.

  The sunset shining behind her was so vivid, Kengo doubted he’d see another like it as long as he lived.

  “I’d be happy if you just remembered me, when it’s all said and done,” she said.

  ***

  Ryo Kaidai paused on his way into the room that had been booked for his meeting, and looked over his shoulder at the setting sun outside the windows.

  For some reason, he suddenly thought of Kouka.

  Then he swung open the door to the meeting room, because Kouka meant nothing to him. She was Kengo and Arato’s problem.

  Hands of Operation, the PMC contracted to MemeFrame, had its offices in Akabane. In a meeting room in a high-security building, Ryo met with members of the company. The first was a business-suited woman in her forties, with a patch over her left eye. She pulled off her beret, revealing pinned-up platinum blonde hair, and held it in her right hand. The other was a giant black man who had barely managed to stuff his huge, muscular body into his noncommissioned officer’s uniform. The two stood at attention.

  Ryo knew absolutely nothing about the culture of PMCs. For a moment, looking at them as they stood stiffly behind their chairs, he had no idea how to proceed. Finally, he decided there was no way he’d be able to match whatever social norms they were used to.

  “Please take your seats,” said a feeble voice. At last, the two members from HOO sat down. They were the very images of the perfect soldiers; discipline and years of training were apparent in their every movement.

  “This is Ryo Kaidai,” said the middle-aged man with a weak voice. He had been the only one to sit down immediately. “He doesn’t actually work at MemeFrame yet, so he’s just here to watch today.”

  The man was Professor Shinohara, MemeFrame’s representative at the meeting, and the man who had introduced Ryo to Ginga Watarai. But, despite Shinohara’s effort to downplay Ryo’s presence, it seemed the PMC had done their homework about what was happening behind the scenes at MemeFrame, because the female officer fixed Ryo with her gaze.

  “I’m Major Collidenne Lemaire of HOO,” she said, her introduction as blunt as a clenched fist.

  Ryo fought down the illusion that he was being slowly dragged down into an endless swamp of troubles with sheer force of will. Living under the daily threat of Methode deciding to kill everyone he knew or loved had inured him to that feeling of tension.

  Shinohara, however, reacted to the obvious irritation in the major’s voice, sucking in a quick gasp. HOO had demanded that MemeFrame come to them in Akabane for this meeting, as it wasn’t something required in their contract. Intimidated, Shinohara couldn’t keep his voice from trembling.

  “I’d like to request that, per our contract, you destroy Lacia-class Type-001, Kouka. That is what I would like you to do. I have seen a report that your tactical AI judged, based on Kouka’s durability and performance that, while retrieval may be impossible, destruction should be-...” Shinohara rambled on haltingly.

  Ryo had proposed outsourcing the destruction of Kouka to HOO. The PMC was a much more stable source of combat power than Methode. Humans could run the attack and, if Methode only stepped in once Kouka was gunned down and delivered the last blow herself, the risk to her would be minimal.

  But the PMC had requested a meeting before they would undertake the mission.

  “I already informed you of the reason for this meeting when I set it up,” the Major said, “but, ever since the Lacia-class units got out, we’ve been forced to fight with strategies based on shoddy information full of holes. We’re not going to take on this mission until we’ve decided that we have all the information we need to really understand what we’re up against with this red box.” Her deep voice was full of her solid determination.

  Shinohara, his face going sickly pale, shot Ryo a desperate look. Ryo decided it was time to stop leaving things to the obviously overwhelmed professor. The way things were going, it wouldn’t have been strange for Shinohara to wind up being assassinated by Methode.

  “When facing a red box, I understand that you’d naturally feel uneasy about whether your normal combat tactics will hold up,” Ryo said. “But I guarantee that you can think of Kouka as nothing more than an extension of the combat drones you’re used to dealing with.”

  Ryo put just the right amount of emotion in his voice while regurgitating the answer he had prepared beforehand. Obviously, he couldn’t tell them about Erika’s intention to make the battle between the Lacia-class units public. It was for this exact reason that reducing the number of Lacia-class units in the world had become a more urgent concern, and why the most immediate target was Kouka. She had to be destroyed before she could join forces with Lacia, whose combat prowess was far beyond the reach of modern weaponry.

  After exchanging a glance with the major, the noncommissioned officer, Sest, spoke. “But this Kouka is an AI capable of growth,” he said. “And, right after she first got outside, she was able to take out a whole unit of our rapid response force.”

  On the night the Lacia-class units got out, Sest’s unit had lost a massive beachhead container to a shot from Kouka’s laser cannon. That night they had been facing her with drone soldiers, but this time it would be humans. It was the most serious kind of negotiation; calculating the risks and possibility of success with the understanding that human lives would probably be lost in the process. The only reason the soldiers were able to speak about it this calmly was their professional discipline.

  Ryo had no experience playing with people’s lives as if they were pieces on a chess board, so he tried to think of how Ginga Watarai would have handled it. “I understand that there are many differences between us,” he said, “but I think we all share the same basic concepts of capitalism and discipline. If we don’t even have that in common anymore, I suppose it might be time to rethink our contract.”

  “What does that mean?” Sest growled.

  Ryo clenched his gut against the queasy feeling of throwing away a piece of his own humanity. “Our relationship is very simple
,” he said. “Nothing has changed.” There were all sorts of things he wanted to say beyond that, but it was the nature of economic relationships that intent and actions all got swallowed up in the end by the simple quest for money.

  Sest, who had been a soldier since before Ryo was born, looked down at him. “We’ve got good people and equipment tied up with our strategies for taking down the Lacia-class,” Sest said. “But, if we had known about their digital warfare capabilities, or the fact that some of them can turn invisible, we wouldn’t have been caught with our pants down like that! And, from what I’ve seen, you still don’t have anything about the red boxes’ digital warfare capabilities in the data you just gave us!”

  As his voice rose to a shout, Shinohara yelped out, “But you said no one died!”

  Sest just kept his arms folded, glaring down at them. Talk of death brought images of Watarai’s corpse up in Ryo’s mind, and it was almost like he was breathing in that bloody scent again.

  “Calm down, Shinohara,” he said. Ryo faced terror daily, ever since having forged that contract with Methode. The contract was a tightrope walk between the fear that Methode might go on a killing spree and lay the blame in his lap, or unilaterally decide that she didn’t need him anymore and sever the contract at her pleasure. The only thing holding that demon back at the moment was the fact that she still saw a benefit in keeping an above-the-board contracted owner. Even if he was only her owner on paper, it required quite a bit of toughness just to make it through each day.

  “The documents we provided contain a summary of all of Kouka’s capabilities,” he continued. “No matter how things go in a fight against her, I doubt there will be any digital warfare going on.”

  “How likely is it that she’s developed new capabilities that would place her beyond the reach of our weaponry?” Sest asked.

  “I believe she has figured out a countermeasure for armored vehicles, but that’s all,” Ryo replied.

  “So she’s different from, say, Snowdrop?” the major cut in.

  Ryo had been expecting the question. The testimonies given to the police about Snowdrop’s attack would have already been spread around to the Japanese military.

  “We’ve already provided the Japanese military with the data we have relating to Snowdrop,” he said, not missing a beat.

  Silence fell over the room. Everyone present was already used to suppressing the swirling emotions they felt. Fools and scholars, heroes and cowards; the only thing they truly shared was silence. No matter what was going on inside of them, as long as they maintained silence, they could keep up the illusion of professional decorum. It was just like how hIEs spread in society by matching their responses to the expectations of the humans they interacted with.

  Major Lemaire fixed Ryo with her silent gaze. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  Both the soldiers in front of him and the monster waiting behind him were terrifying. But someone had to take on the role Ryo had, and he couldn’t trust anyone to take it on for him. Besides, regardless of anything else, the PMC was still interested in profit. Compared to Methode, Ryo found human tools much easier to deal with.

  “No, that is all,” he said.

  The major put the beret in her hand back on her head, as if to signal that the conversation was over.

  “What is this world coming to?” Ryo growled. After leaving the HOO office building, he called home to say he’d wander around the city for a bit before heading back. The thought of going straight home to Shintoyosu and seeing Methode’s face just then made him feel sick.

  He felt like he had been an inch from dying at least three times that day. That platoon leader, Sest, had looked like he wanted to reach across the table and strangle him. When Watarai had died during the incident at the experimental city, the two HOO mercenaries assigned as his bodyguards had been severely wounded. Three more of their mercenaries had been injured in the airport attack, as well. They kept drawing the short straw in their jobs for MemeFrame.

  “Seriously,” he spat. “This world is circling the drain.”

  Humanity’s history on Earth wouldn’t last much longer. The final afterglow of twilight was fading, and darkness was swallowing the city around him. Ryo walked around Akasaka with only his driver hIE as an escort. Some model named Oriza Ayabe sent him a message; apparently she had gotten his contact info from Arato.

  Calling her back was, honestly, a moment of weakness for him. Ryo felt like he had to come up for breath after spending days drowning in the harsh reality of his life. HOO would be keeping their eyes on him, of course. MemeFrame weren’t their only clients. But he still needed to spend some time relaxing. He had to keep his mind off the terrifying thought of how much damage HOO was going to do that night.

  “Hey Kaidai, your dad owns MemeFrame, right?” Oriza asked him. “How do you pick who does your commercials?”

  “I don’t have any say in that,” he said. “And I’m not even officially in the company yet.”

  It felt like the night sky was going to fall down and crush him. HOO was preparing a strategy for taking down Kouka. Kouka was a stand-alone unit, given the ability to operate by herself. This meant that she was particularly high-spec, but also that the possibility of her developing unforeseen abilities like Snowdrop was extremely low. That very night, the number of Lacia-class units in the world might be decreased by one.

  “Well, whatever,” Oriza said. “Where do you want to go? You said you wanted to hang out.”

  “Let’s go grab something to eat,” Ryo replied. Stuffing his hand into his pocket, he made a circular gesture on the face of his pocket terminal with one finger. It read the gesture, and the terminal vibrated powerfully seven times, paused, then gave two long vibrations and nine short ones. 7:29, then. His next appointment was at 9:00, so he had an hour and a half to relax.

  “I heard you were modeling for Fabion MG?” he asked.

  Oriza’s face brightened up. “Oh good,” she said. “I mean, you called me, but you didn’t really look like you were enjoying yourself. I thought things weren’t going well.”

  It did feel a little weird. On the one hand, it felt like he was still protecting his connection with Arato by going out with a girl Arato sent his way, but there was also a sense that he was desperately trying to do something a normal high-schooler would.

  “It’s going fine,” Ryo said. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

  Walking down the streetlight-lit route 413, they soon arrived at Gaien Higashi street, where a company-owned female hIE in a uniform passed them by. Holding a paper bag bearing a company logo, she dexterously slipped through the crowd, moving fast even in high heels.

  “Huh, must be an hIE,” Oriza said. “That’s the one thing that makes me feel jealous of hIEs; they never trip up, no matter what kind of heels they have on.”

  “That’s a basic performance requirement for AASC Level-3,” Ryo explained. The ability to walk on normal roads in high heels without any risk of tripping was one of the results of Higgins’ advances.

  “Oh hey, I hear about AASC all the time in commercials!” Oriza said, jumping on a familiar subject.

  Ryo wondered in annoyance why Arato had thought it would be a good idea to give this girl his contact information. “It stands for ‘Action Adaptation Standard Class,’” he said. “Each hIE has different specifications and capabilities, and their behavioral control clouds would crash if we made them try to suit their instructions to every single hIE, regardless of performance gaps. So instead, we create behavior programs based on standard capabilities that every hIE unit will have.”

  Units that couldn’t meet the sensory or motor standards for AASC certification were only usable in the home. Each hIE also had to undertake an inspection every two years. If their movements strayed from the established standards, it could cause accidents when they tried to coordinate their actions with other hIEs they encountered outside.

  “Huh, interesting,” Oriza said, though her voice held no enthusiasm.<
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  “Level 3 of the standard is about the same performance as your average adult male. At level 4, it’s more like what you would expect of a pro athlete. Level 5 is for positions like firefighters or police officers; places where they’re expected to perform much better than a normal human would,” Ryo listed.

  Even though Oriza had asked, she gave only polite reactions to his explanation, and her big eyes seemed to slide away from his when he looked at her.

  “You could see hIE cooperative behavior routines as a game of dolls being played out in a miniature version of our world inside of Higgins’ AI,” he said, trying to use analogy to get the point across to her. “In the hIE behavioral programs that Higgins creates, it has to take into account everything from damaged or malfunctioning hIEs, which are given a standard level of 1, all the way up to high-performance level 5 units. To put it another way: in Higgins’ simulation there are only five types of dolls. By simulating the entire world in miniature for its projections, Higgins is able to avoid the AI Frame problem.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember learning about the Frame problem in middle school,” Oriza said. “I know that one.”

  “AIs have trouble making choices related to handling the problems right in front of their faces,” Ryo went on, ignoring her insistence that she already knew the information. “They’re bad at dividing problems up into lists of priorities in order to resolve the jobs they’ve been given.”

  Oriza played idly with her long, vividly-colored long hair and stared at a distant patch of green that may have been the Nogi Shrine park. “Huh, interesting,” she said again, flatly. Then she let out a fake little laugh and added, “You sure are smart, Ryo.”

  “But, despite that,” Ryo pressed on, “hIEs have to deal with just about every problem that exists in our society. That’s because Higgins is able to simulate our world in miniature, and translate our problems into what amounts to a game of chess that it can play with the standardized dolls that are its chess pieces. Did you know that, in Higgins’ miniature world, it also assigns AASC levels to humans as well? They are treated as dolls that it can’t control in its simulation. We’re all ‘AASC level 0’—i.e., dolls that Higgins can’t trust to follow even the most basic directions.”