Beatless: Volume 2 Read online

“Disappointed that they didn’t go where you expected?” Kouka asked, teasing. “I wanted them, so I begged my beloved sister to get them for me.” It felt good to have the Lacia-class unit that had been gifted with the most versatility out of all of them be angry at her.

  As soon as Mariage’s transmission cut out, another call came in.〈Ahahaha, so this is what true idiocy looks like,〉a voice laughed on the other end. It was Methode. 〈I suppose this is what some people would call a tragedy? Poor Kouka, forced to throw herself away like this.〉

  Methode was an upgrade to Kouka in every way, being the Lacia unit that had been given the greatest amount of independent power. Kouka could never hope to match Methode in any attribute other than device output.

  “‘What people would call a tragedy’? Like you would know. You suck at playing a human,” Kouka said, laughing into her speaker. “I’m not fighting because I’m sad. I’m fighting because I’ll be sad if I don’t,” she added.

  There were folks with their backs up against a wall, just like Kouka and Kengo Sugiri, all over the world. Rich kids, like Ryo Kaidai, and special folks like Arato Endo and Erika Burroughs, were a rarity, comparatively speaking. So, the numbness that hung over the fight between their tools, the Lacia-class units, was fitting and fair.

  “If we’re dragging this fight out into the open, better to start with something gritty and real, instead of someone’s prettied-up production,” Kouka said. “First impressions are important when people are deciding how they feel about something, after all.”

  On the network, her viewers seemed to think the parts of her conversation with her sisters that they could hear were meant for them. They could only guess at what she meant, and Methode cut off the call.

  Next, Snowdrop called her. Someone must have provided her with Kouka’s direct line, which Kouka changed regularly. But there was no longer any point to trying to track down who had sold her out.

  〈That looks fun,〉 she said. 〈If I had known you liked doing fun things like this too, we could have been friends.〉

  “No thanks, you freaky little brat.” This time, it was Kouka who cut off the call.

  “Guess I’m not gonna hear from the only sister I care about,” Kouka murmured. While she was making her peace with her Lacia-class sisters, she finished cleaning up the fifth floor. Lacia alone had yet to contact her.

  As one last favor, Kouka had asked Lacia to get her a weapon. Lacia had handed Kouka the trunk containing the camera units that day, having predicted that things would come to this. Lacia’s independent power was weaker than Methode’s, and she was nowhere near as versatile as Mariage, but she still stood out among her sisters.

  She couldn’t openly talk about Lacia on the network, of course. So, instead, Kouka chose a behavioral meme that she hoped would convey all the thoughts she wanted. “Please inherit my spirit. Please remember me. Please make me a part of your judgment frame, my dear sister,” she prayed.

  Kouka was the first schematic for a program that mankind could not understand, and that had almost been scrapped, once. But, someone had decided that there was a future beyond her. Though Kengo Sugiri had not become her owner, the two of them were alike.

  The sixth floor was different from the floorplan she’d seen. According to the attack plan laid out by the Antibody Network, it was the floor where Mikoto’s testing room was supposed to be. Walking down a narrow corridor, Kouka cut through a door that was right where the map had indicated it would be.

  The testing area was simple, and screened off by a self-propelled partition on a flat floor. Aside from the terminals, there were humanoid body parts scattered around. It was the behind-the-scenes area of Mikoto’s world, full of cords, desks, a surveillance screen, and monitoring equipment.

  “Let’s light this place up too!” Kouka yelled with a grin, and swept her laser around the room. The machines stopped, spitting smoke and sparks. Small explosions bloomed, throwing around the lighter objects. Among the parts rolling along the floor, she saw a face that made her think of Lacia. There were many factors that went into the faces of hIEs like Mikoto, that had to show themselves to large numbers of humans and ensure the intended impression.

  Being there filled her thoughts with Lacia. It was clear to her that Arato Endo had no idea of what Lacia was really capable of. It should have been clear, if he just looked at the things she did, but he hadn’t managed to figure it out yet.

  Mikoto’s server was on the 7th floor. Her custom cloud and information processing program were too massive to be contained in anything that could be easily picked up and carried away. Only the Lacia-class units, with their quantum computers, were capable of such a feat. So, by destroying the server, Kouka could be sure that she would set the Mikoto project back by several months.

  And, just like that, her fight would be over. “Well, unfortunately, I’m not gonna be around to see what’s coming next,” she sighed. “Alright if I make one, last request? I don’t know how likely it is to be granted, though.”

  Endo Arato had no idea how much danger he was in, at that moment. Ignorance was bliss. But, Kouka knew that half of the world was like Kengo Sugiri: focused on their own perspectives to the exclusion of everything else. And Lacia’s current owner was blind to how that half of the world felt.

  “Are you watching?” she went on. “I’m talking to you, the guy who owns my sister. Don’t forget what I said; we’re here to automate the desires of our owners. So, if your desires are worthless, the reality we create for you will be just as worthless.”

  Lacia could handle this whole situation safely, but not with an owner like that. Without a doubt, Arato Endo was about to be shaken. The fact that he hadn’t already been moved just by being friends with Kengo, meant that Kouka would need to force him to reconsider how he felt about his friends.

  To make sure everyone watching over the network realized just what the Lacia-class hIEs were capable of, she burned far more than she needed to. Melting plastic flamed hot. Water from the sprinkler system bathed Kouka from above, almost like rain. Her damp hair was soon plastered to the bare parts of her skin.

  “I’m just an expensive, disposable weapon,” she said. “But my sister is different. Take care of her.”

  Lacia was probably getting ready to explain reality to her owner, but Arato Endo still didn’t know what kind of answer he wanted to find with Lacia. Kouka just hoped the time and effort she and Kengo had invested on their behalf wouldn’t be put to waste.

  Under the rain from the sprinklers, Kouka reached the seventh floor, and was finally on the floor that held Mikoto’s servers. On the network, she heard screams and appeals to not destroy Mikoto. But other voices told her to do it.

  The security hIEs had all gathered there. There were six of them, standing their ground and firing electric nets at her. None of the hIEs in the building were equipped with actual guns. To Kouka, the six of them together were little more than a distraction of a few seconds.

  “Alright,” she said. “Guess it’s time to do what I was made for.” She sliced through a door, revealing the server room. Server racks were lined up against the walls, and Mikoto was seated on a simple folding chair.

  With the rebuilt Mikoto right in front of their eyes, there was a storm of reactions from the network. It was all meaningless defense, especially since no one watching really understood the truth about Mikoto. But, that was exactly the reaction Kouka wanted.

  Stopping in front of Mikoto, Kouka ran it through her mind one last time: this was the answer she had found that would save her from the stagnation of unavoidable defeat. Hefting her device, she thrust it’s blade forward until it was touching Mikoto’s throat, almost slicing her neatly-trimmed black hair.

  Mikoto opened her pink lips and spoke. “What will you gain by destroying me?”

  “You’re a stepping stone on the way to where I need to get to,” Kouka answered simply. By destroying Mikoto, Kouka could plant a thought in the minds of everyone watching with regards to her destructi
on. Of course, that thought would be nothing but a pale imitation of reality.

  But, if victory could be determined by destroying this single hIE, Kouka could fly beyond the limits imposed on her by her lack of strategic ability. When the folks viewing her broadcast got caught up in the public fight between the Lacia-class units, they would understand how it was related to what they were seeing at that moment. If the memory of that moment could give birth to the thought that Kouka wanted to plant in the heads of everyone watching over the network, then it would be her victory in her conflict with human society.

  Kouka didn’t have the power to change society. What she could do, though, was spread the frame of the problem she had been given out as shared information, letting it become a part of the cloud. There it would be shared and considered by the loosely-linked network of humanity; a massive amount of minds, all analyzing her problem.

  There was a lively debate on the network, just then, about whether Kouka should destroy Mikoto or not. It was exactly what Kouka had wanted.

  “The problem I’m outsourcing to everyone can’t be solved without an incredible strategy,” she said. “I can’t change the world by myself. What would you do, if you were trying to fight against the automation of society?”

  The look in Mikoto’s eyes as she raised her gaze to Kouka was admonishing. “Nothing will change if you destroy me,” she said.

  Kouka decided her wide grin no longer fit the situation, so she switched it for a more bitter smile. “Not right this moment, no,” she agreed. “But I think you should understand where I’m coming from. As an hIE who worked to automate the government, you should know all about dealing with AASC level 0 humans, right? To hIEs like us, this fight is really just a kind of protocol. But, since we happen to have human forms, the actual humans will turn this fight into a human thing. I can’t win, so I’m gonna outsource the fight to the brains of all the humans watching this and have faith in the future.”

  It wouldn’t be long before Kouka herself would be destroyed. But at the moment, she was struggling with a different conflict: a fight with the processing units that were the brains of every viewer of her stream. The system known as humanity was open and vague. In that system, the figure and perception known as Kouka had become a character: a meme, a gathering point of various information fragments that would stand as a reminder of the problem she was setting out for the humans. With a few changes to its design along the way, the Hello Kitty cup that Mariage had mentioned could be continuously used for over a hundred years.

  Kouka didn’t have the power to defeat the foe she was facing by herself, and soon the fight would consume her. However, by using herself and her device to the absolute limit, she could leave behind an image and an idea in the minds of her viewers that would someday lead to victory over society. Over half of humanity was in the same place as Kouka, living confined on the dark side of the twilight that she had been named for.

  Mikoto was a mechanical member of parliament, a machine that was there to organize and control society. To those who had no sure place in society, she was next to worthless.

  “Even if you destroy me, it will only set my development back by a few months,” Mikoto said. “It won’t stop the world for you.”

  “Spoken like a true politician,” Kouka observed. “Whether I destroy you or not, it’s the humans who are gonna change this world. That’s why we analog hack them, and that’s why they outsource their plans to change the world for us to automate.

  Kouka fired her laser at maximum output. Mikoto’s head melted off, and the laser pierced through the servers behind her, burned through the inner wall and insulation. Then, the laser started drilling at the concrete outer wall beyond.

  “Goodnight, again,” she said. “Gotta make sure everyone understands that this is all real.” Hefting her device, Kouka used her entire body to spin in a complete circle. The laser shot out, dancing a 360 degree rotation, carving deep gouges into the wall as if to slice the entire top off the building. Thus, the entire Next-Generation Social Research Center was engulfed in flames.

  It had been seven minutes since Kouka had cut down the front door, and she had no obligation to wait around for the police to show up. She broke out a window and fired a wire anchor from her arm, using it to swing over to the wall of the next building over.

  A rescue helicopter was heading toward the burning building. The rubberneckers outside hadn’t seen Kouka leave, but her camera units were still shooting, so they had recorded her escape.

  She could hear a siren off in the distance. Gazing off into the red of the setting sun, Kouka smiled with satisfaction. “Looks like the humans are finally trying to shore up all those holes in their system,” she commented. “But I’d rather not have any normal folks getting caught in the crossfire.”

  After rewinding her wire, she took off running, leaping from rooftop to rooftop across the evening cityscape. She switched the camera units into stealth mode. Projecting images on their outer skins like chameleons, the little cameras inspected their surroundings.

  Kouka was already surrounded. “You really came for me, just like I thought you would,” she said. The whole reason the police hadn’t shown up at the building earlier was that someone higher up had pressured them, and offered them sufficient power to take her down. Now, she was surrounded by enemies she would never be able to take down without a strategy.

  She had nowhere to run, either. At the very least, she had to avoid drawing the fighting out into a wider area and risking civilian casualties. That would ruin the image she had just fought so hard to create.

  Looking for a weak spot in the net closing in on her, Kouka took off toward a nearby part of the Edogawa river with no bridge. Since their devices had internal quantum computers that could simulate the custom behavioral clouds that controlled them, Lacia-class units could operate even underwater where their network connections would be cut off.

  Keeping track of the enemy’s movements, Kouka decided the strategy she had chosen was the best she could do.

  Since the Japanese military needed approval from the Diet to conduct operations, they often outsourced smaller-scale conflicts to PMCs. The PMC currently coming for Kouka had been granted tanks, the maximum level of armament they could have. Behind a front line of armored vehicles, wheeled drones, and floating mines, there was a vehicle body being retrofit with heavy modular armament dropped from a helicopter.

  It was a Japanese 090 tank. Kouka’s ability to perceive combat capabilities told her that she could beat the thing in a one-on-one fight, but with backup on the tank side, she would almost certainly lose.

  〈Attack!〉 Just as she reached the bank of the Edogawa river, Kouka intercepted the command over her wireless receiver. In that instant, a line of combat drones and the soldiers controlling them appeared out of the shallows of the river, brandishing firearms; Kouka was trapped.

  The drones and soldiers opened fire, aiming to halt her movement. There was a chance she could get into a blindspot for the fire from the river if she slid down the river embankment. Instead, Kouka aimed her wire anchor at a building near the river and shot it. Pulling herself on the wire, she swooped across twenty meters in one jump.

  Just as Kouka would have been able to avoid detection underwater, her own surveillance abilities were useless in the river. That was why the PMC had chosen to hide their soldiers there. They had slapped down the lid on their trap, so Kouka had to look for a new hole to slip through. Jamming her heel anchors into the walls with each step, she ran across the face of the building. And, right on her tail, a hail of bullets traced her path.

  “Do you think automation is your real enemy?” she asked her audience. “hIEs don’t have hearts. We don’t have feelings. We can’t create any kind of future. The ones who made society the way it is now—the ones silencing all of you out there who are unsatisfied with the way things are—they aren’t hIEs, they’re humans.”

  In the midst of evading attack, Kouka twisted her lips into a fearl
ess smile. She needed to solidify her image and the thoughts she wanted people to associate with her in the minds of every person watching her broadcast. That way, whenever they saw someone or something standing on the battlefield with a smile on their face, they would remember Kouka.

  Even if she managed to pull through this particular attack, another would come. Kouka could no longer avoid her own destruction. But her fight would continue until she could record that moment. She wanted to show the world how the government and PMCs were trying so hard to maintain the current course of society, and plant a seed of suspicion that something was hidden in the shadows of that society.

  A searchlight lit up the night. Bathed in its white light, Kouka no longer had anywhere to run. Finally face-to-face with her last dead end, Kouka smiled.

  “Took you long enough,” she said, with a laugh. “You’re what a human would call my ‘destiny’, right? Well you’re too late. I’ve already won!”

  ***

  For the Japanese PMC HOO, this was a battle they could not lose. To do so would ruin them politically.

  The CEO of HOO had been a major general in the Japanese Army. That meant he had plenty of connections and trust built up that were important for a PMC working as a central figure in Japan’s defense industry. It was precisely for that reason that HOO was granted the level of freedom they were with regards to armaments and the scope of their conflicts. In exchange, they were under heavy scrutiny from the Japanese Army, and great responsibility rested on their shoulders.

  Major Collidenne Lemaire had become a front-line fighter. Her command vehicle had come from the Edogawa river, the extreme edge of the combat zone. Now, it climbed over the riverbank and embankment, proceeding fifty meters toward Tokyo before coming to a halt. Command vehicles like hers were constructed to be narrow, due to the tight roads that made up most of Japan’s streets. There was barely space to sit, with a monitor and instruments showing the situation on the front taking up most of the narrow vehicle.

  The status of the operation was displayed on her artificial retina in real-time. On the monitor in the command vehicle, the status of all the equipment and each soldier was displayed in squads. There was also a screen displaying Kouka’s stream from the network. It wasn’t that the major was interested in the reactions from the network; she had to keep an eye on Kouka’s cameras since the units were searching for her troops. Since destroying the camera units would disable some of Kouka’s ability to gather information about the battlefield, it was worth it to track the cameras based off of the viewpoint they were recording.