Cybernetic Cabaret Resampler: There's Supposed to be a Cheat Code for Happiness

Hey everyone! I know it's been a little while since the end of Cybernetic Cabaret. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about it; I'm still working on the sequel. But between the Evangelion fic and other projects I'm working on, it's going to be a little while longer before you'll see it here. In the mean time, here's a little short story prequel.

The phone woke Shuko from a dead sleep. Her first reaction was irritation, wondering who could possibly be calling her in the middle of the night. Her second was confusion. It was far too late for telemarketers, and her friends and family knew better than to call her while she was sleeping. What time was it anyway?

The interior of her apartment was dark, with only the dim glow of the streetlights filtering in the window from below. Her eyes flicked to the luminous face of the clock. 3:37 AM. she turned over. Whatever it was, it could go to voicemail. The person on the other end, however, had other ideas. After another few rings they disconnected, then two seconds later the ringing began again.

Sighing with exasperation, she picked up the phone. "hello," she mumbled.

Ichiro's loud Osakan accent burst from the receiver. "Can we automate the inputs?"

Her brain was still mostly asleep. "Can we…wha?"

"The angel dolls," he replied with a hint of irritation. "Can we set one up to run all on its own? Automate the input signals so it could make its own decisions?"

That was the problem with him; he expected her to always be on the same page.

Shuko groaned and turned over. "Ichhan, it's three in the morning, can't this wait?"

"No!" The reply was immediate, shouted so loud she had to pull the phone away from her ear. "I need to start this yesterday!"

There he went again. Mihara Ichiro was the most brilliant scientist she had ever met, but he could charitably be described as eccentric, and uncharitably as gibbering insane. No doubt he'd watched too much late-night anime, hyped himself up with some brilliant idea, and now wanted her to help him make it work.

Shuko ran over every possible argument she could make in her head and guessed at Ichiro's probable responses. She quickly realized that he was not going to let this go. Even if she hung up, he would just call again and again until she answered once more. The most brilliant scientist of their generation, and also the most stubborn.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes, resigning herself to waking up. "I suppose you could simulate the actions. Actually, it would be even simpler than mental control. Eighty percent of the system's processing power goes to just interpreting neural signals."

"Without that overhead, it would just be the reactions to given events," he muttered to himself.

"A normal external computer could handle that," she suggested, "record player data from matches to build a library of appropriate responses, then refine it with machine learning." She yawned. "It might not have to be a big library either. I don't know, I'd have to think about it."

"What about storing the computer onboard?"

"You'd never miniaturize it enough," Shuko replied, "we're pushing limits with how much we can put in the dolls as-is. Give it another five, six years then maybe, but right now you'd need a doll at least three feet tall."

"Don't worry about the size," Ichiro replied, "I just wanted to know if it was possible."

Shuko was actually becoming irritated now. "Ichhan, are you going to tell me what all this is about?"

She could practically see his grin through the phone lines. "You'll see! I had an idea while I was watching anime—a great idea! Chitose is going to love it!"

"Speaking of Chitose, how are things going between you two?

There was a pause at this. When he finally replied, he said, "she's just fine!"

With the way he was acting, she could tell he was lying. Shuko was perhaps the only one besides Chitose that could see through the front of his goofy personality. Something was bothering him, and she could guess what it was.

She still remembered the night Ichiro had showed up at her door, heavily drunk and crazier than ever. Through his incoherent ramblings, she was able to piece together what had happened. He and Chitose had been to the fertility clinic. They had been trying to have a child for months with no success. Finally they had consulted a doctor, who had given them the bad news: Chitose was infertile.

Despite her best efforts, there was not much Shuko could do to comfort him. She did not have the best of track records with her love life. An early marriage, pregnancy, and divorce, then leaving her daughter with her parents to focus on her career. Looking back, she had been stupid and in love, willing to sacrifice everything for her boyfriend. Even now, she could not bear to talk with little Misaki, and it made her feel terrible. As if she had failed her duty as a mother which, she admitted, she had. She wished that she could go back in time, make better decisions. But she could not do anything, not even comfort the man who was like a brother to her. Seeing Ichiro with Chitose was adorable, and never failed to make Shuko squee internally. The fact that they wanted and could not have what Shuko had and wished she did not, it did not seem fair.

Shuko sighed. "Look, if you two need a surrogate, all you need to do is ask. I'm a terrible mother, but my uterus works well enough."

She did not make that offer lightly. Going through pregnancy again was a terrifying prospect enough on its own. She had been young—too young, really—when she had given birth to her own daughter. By all accounts, being a surrogate was even harder on both the mother and the child. But Icchan was closer to her than anyone she had left; if he needed something, anything, she would help.

"Don't you worry, it's fine," Ichiro replied. "More than fine, actually. Soon, none of it will be any problem." After a pause which lasted less than a second, he added, "Don't worry about size on that automation, it's not a problem. I'll deal with it. Thanks again!"

There was a loud slam and the line abruptly went dead. She knew exactly what had happened: Ichiro had literally slammed the phone back down on its cradle to disconnect. Shuko was left holding the handset, in her darkened apartment, listening to the dial tone.

That was it then. As quickly as Ichiro was there, he was gone. The same way it always was. As she listened to the tone emerging from the receiver, she wondered what he was planning. There was, of course, good reason to want automated angel dolls. Practice, solo battles, automated tag-team partners for larger battles, it had so much potential for evolving the game. But storing the computer internally was impossible at the doll's current size, and having an oversized one was impractical without introducing an entire new line of larger-format dolls. That in itself was impractical, both in terms of size and money; the public would never buy it.

No, the mad inventor clearly had something very different in mind with this, but what it was she could not begin to guess. Her brain was too foggy from lack of sleep. Perhaps tomorrow she could ask him what this was about, but she doubted he would tell her.

She sighed. Why did she get the feeling this was the first of a great many late-night phonecalls?