Something Human
[Prologue]
"Damn it..." Yusuke muttered in an exasperated manner. He sighed exhaustedly and shook his head before throwing himself onto his armchair. He rubbed his weary eyes with the back of his hands and then he slowly turned his head at the two giant glass tubes connected with various cables and wires of a variety of colors, sizes, and functions.
One of them contained a beautiful, pale skinned, long-white haired girl. Her eyes were closed and her body was suspended in the middle of the light-cyan colored liquid which was inside the tube. The other tube adjacent to the white haired girl's tube contained the immobile body of a handsome, tall, fair-skinned, blue haired young man. His coma condition was the same as the girl's condition. There were wires connecting their arms with a panel on the each of the glass tubes, giving Yusuke the the vital readings he needed in order to keep the two people within the tubes "alive". Yusuke was not a doctor and he did not have the patience nor the sympathy and empathy to deal with other human beings.
By now, one can guess that the young man and girl contained within the large, liquid-filled, glass tubes were not at all humans, but instead were androids in the development phase. Yusuke, with his limited knowledge of computer science and engineering and medical science, created them in his own unique one of a kind nerdy mostly-government-funded-slightly-self-sustaining laboratory that came with all the advanced technology that came with the hardwares and softwares required in order to manufacture his first two androids.
The whole laboratory was pitch dark as night, and the only sources of light emitted from the tubes with a certain light cyan color. Yusuke ran his fingers through his black-color hair and closed his eyes with a frustrated sigh escaping from between his lips. 'What am I doing wrong?' he thought and entangled his fingers together, resting his intertwined hands on top of his stomach. He attempted and toiled for months to make them move, much less awaken, but to no avail, not even a single twitch of an eyelid or finger.
Feeling at the end of the road, Yusuke looked at all the blueprints and schematics with formulas, sketches, and tea stains on them. 'What am I missing?' he mentally inquired to himself and frowned confused. Suddenly the loud doorbell could be heard echoing above his head signalling the unfortunate, untimely arrival of his 'guests'. With his eyes widening slightly, Yusuke shot a glance at the nearby table clock to see the time before he clumsily and rashly covered the glowing tubes and their occupants with some blankets. Then Yusuke rushed outside the laboratory and locked the door securely with a small gold key and an extremely protracted password into a nearby panel, disguised as a temperature thermometer device, by the door. He put the key in his pant's pocket and walked calmly towards the door. As he turned the doorknob and opened it, he saw those accursed people whom he did not want to see and walked out to greet them at the modern gate that acted as a divider and a wall between the men and Yusuke along with his property. Three men were standing in front of his residence's modern gate, all of them with their arms crossed. They were very visually identical to one another: dark sunglasses that hid their eyes and their emotions, black and white suits, and the same hairstyle. Only difference that could be discerned were the men's haircolor, and usually they stand out thanks to the striking differences in hair color. Whether or not the men were born triplets from their mother's womb, Yusuke neither knew nor found any interest to care about such trivial information. What was important was the present and the future, and these guys always brought trouble that had him on the bad side of the law on numerous occasions.
Skillfully hiding a scowl that held utmost contempt and abhorrence towards the men, Yusuke quickly decided to keep his usual poker face, which consisted of a bored expression of indifference, as a greeting. His appearance to most people would be a young man of Asian descent around the young age of his early twenties who stands at an average height of five feet ten inches, or 177.8 centimeters for readers that live in countries that utilize the metric system. His skin tone was fair, and his irises' color were a dark shade of brown that they almost appear black from a distance. His hair was kept short and unusually neat. He would be best described as others as being the most average-looking man in the world, although a few would dare to call him handsome. Yusuke would name those people, who call him handsome, "completely and utterly blind and stupid beyond a sliver of a doubt". He could be often times seen wearing a regular hoodie that alternates between white, black, and different shades of gray, or grey for those who are accustomed to the British English writing style.
"Good morning, Yusuke-san," the man in the middle greeted. There was a miniature ID card on his chest with the English letter "X" written on it.
"What is it now?" Yusuke asked with a quiet tone. He was in a horrible disposition at the moment due to repeated failures throughout the morning and afternoon. All he wanted now was to get back to coding, repairing, and possible debugging the mistakes he may have callously entered during his rabid coding frenzy. Heck, even another dozen cups of green tea would be excellent right now other than having to deal with these shady thugs who claimed to work for the Japanese government. For all, Yusuke knows, they could be working for one of the Japanese's most notorious Yakuza and he simply was too stupid, dimwitted, unmotivated, or even lazy to even attempt a simple background check into these guys. Oh well, what's has not been performed, will stay unperformed.
"We simply want to see how your research and experiments are proceeding along, Mister Yusuke..." X explained calmly and from where he stood, which was a few yards away from the building and outside of the gate, peered into Yusuke's house.
"I told you I'm not manufacturing weapons of any kind for you and others anymore..." Yusuke said curtly and turned around to head back inside. Before Yusuke could get too far from the gates, the man called X spoke up, with his voice somehow retaining the exact same volume when they conversed at the gate. 'Don't tell me…!' Yusuke pivoted on his heels to find the three men within the vicinity of his private estate. They had somehow managed to climb in without a single sound to alert him of their rude intrusion, a feat that Yusuke had to reluctantly give them credit for considering his own background of being an adept martial artist. However, it appeared that one of X's colleagues were not so lucky and thus impaled themselves on the steel spikes of the gate. He was stoically standing next to his other two co-workers, but Yusuke could tell that the gate did serious damage to him. Then again, whose fault was it for attempting to climb over the tall and questionably hazardous spike gate just to talk to him?
"Ahh, we had indeed told you that we need them. It's true and our order for those supplies remain unaltered...on our side it seems. But, this time I'm not talking about those research." X said and stepped towards the house whirling Yusuke's key to the house which Yusuke's eyes widen in surprise at the man's ability of pickpocketing. "You know… we found out that you have something more interesting there." He said and pointed at the door of the laboratory. "Perhaps you'd be a gentleman and open this door to allow us the honors to bear witness as to what you are trying to construct?"
"Of course not." Yusuke stood at the open doorway of his home, throwing a glare at his former employers now turned intruders for bypassing the security and sanctuary of the only place he could ever called home. "I do not plan on having whatever is behind that door fall into your hands. I told you before. I. Am. Done. With. You." Yusuke made sure to slowly enunciate as loud and clearly as he could so that the other party would not misunderstand his intentions. He made sure to pick his words carefully, even going as far as to use the singular verb is in order to make the men think that he was only hiding one object behind those doors and not more. Unfortunately for him, the three men were more persistent and stubborn than Yusuke had thought and had to give them credit for seeing their job through.
They did not misunderstood about Yusuke's intentions.
But, neither did they accept it. In a few seconds, weapons slid from the sleeves of the suited men in a matter of two seconds. It was all the time Yusuke needed to close the distance, draw his metal batons from his pockets, and deliver two rapid and powerful blows down onto countenances of X's accomplices. A loud crack could be heard as metal made contact with each of the noses of the receiving party and the second crack that followed was the sound of the noses as they broke underneath the weight of the baton combined with the sheer speed and force delivered behind with the blows. Blood could be seen by both parties as they came flying out from what were the noses of X's two companions. The two men would reflexively reach up to cover their noses to try and stop the bleeding, which gave Yusuke a few seconds to deal with X.
Unfortunately for him, X was not a weakling in comparison to his other two counterparts. X reacted instantly after he heard the crack of the noses and quickly threw a punch into the left rib cage of Yusuke. Unable to dodge the punch in time, Yusuke grunted and stepped back after receiving the blow. The blow left a stinging sensation of pain in the area and Yusuke was finding breathing to be slightly more difficult, but not painful.
With his adrenaline going on a countdown clock, he had to work and complete this fight as soon as possible. Yusuke calmly straighten up to assess his current situation. Currently, two of X's men were down which was a good thing. It meant he would have less work to deal with and the possibility of getting assaulted from behind as he dealt with X lessened greatly. He, himself, was armed with two steel collapsible batons, one in each hand. X was seemingly unarmed, but was obviously the more experienced out of the three, not that it was a good thing for Yusuke's side. There was only one thing to do and only Yusuke himself knew what to do best in situations like this.
Attack.
It was already sunset by the time Yusuke had sent the last of the men out the gates of the house in a bloody mess of flesh, bones, muscles, organs, and other things related to human anatomy that he will not mention for the sake of the readers who are eating as they read this story.
He made sure to call the cops afterwards and have the men arrested and picked up under the charges of invasion of privacy and attempted assault. If he remembered correctly, under Japanese law, the highest for assault was one to two years in prison, but there were known to be other exceptions to that too depending on the severity of the situation(s), and Yusuke knew that the dreaded, sometimes romanticized, Yakuza had a hand in helping to keep the peace of Japan despite being a large scale groups of gangsters and of course there are cases where the Yakuza will bribe the police officials to release the criminals early, which Yusuke prayed to Kami* would not happen until at least a year has past from today. Was that too much to ask for? Was it?
After going down to the police station where he helped the police officials fill up a report with what Yusuke considered "trivia details" he was given a free trip in the back of a police car back to the front of his gate. After getting out of the car and closing the car door behind himself, he nodded a farewell to the driver and watched as the marked car left off in the direction of the nearby station. With a sigh of relief, Yusuke turns around and stares at the front gate that dutifully protected his home from most, if not all, intruders. From where he stood, nothing seemed to be amiss, almost as if the earlier fight never took place from the inside of his home to the outside of his home. Heck, even the floors in and outside of his home was clean, the police sure did a good job in helping to clean up. He needed to owe the officers for their good work later. Maybe a little invitation to a cheap ramen shop would suffice as a big enough thank you to the officers for their efforts?
Chuckling to himself, Yusuke removes a pair of keys from his pockets and unlocks the gate, watching it automatically sliding open for him to enter. The gate slides back into place behind him, closing with a satisfying click to indicate that it is securely locked. It was a full day for himself and he was exhausted, no doubt the superiors of Mr. X would come back to exact their vengeance upon him for the humiliation he bestowed upon them, but for Yusuke, he had only one thought and that was to finish the construction of the two androids below in his basement.
Yawning, Yusuke headed upstairs to change out of his casual clothes into dark colored pajamas and tossed the casual clothes into the washing drying machine hybrid that will clean up his clothes by the time he wakes up. He then pulled back his covers and then slid onto his bed before covering himself with the blanket. Sighing, he turned around and set his alarm clock to wake himself at 9:00 A.M. before heading off to sleep.
Hours later, underneath the house in the basement, Yusuke's computer would for some reason turn on by itself. On the screen, the software containing the codes and other robotic instructions would be opened and a series of zeroes and ones began appearing on the screen.
The two glass tubes next to the machine would begin to glow brighter and brighter… until the inhabitants of each tube slowly open their eyes…
End
Omake
"Hmph, I've built the shrinking ray gun before, so I can certainly create an elegant speech…" Yusuke grumbles while fiddling with position of the webcam to face himself and peered over his self-written script. It took him about a day to finish, revise, and practice out loud. "This is on, right? Well, here goes nothing…"
Take 1
"Ahem. Hello, readers of Something Human-" Before Yusuke could finish the first sentence of his carefully crafted speech, the webcam would slip from its pedestal and fall over thus cancelling the connection and earning a verbal curse from Yusuke in Japanese.
Take 2
"To all the readers and soon to be readers out there… wait, this doesn't sound correct…"
Take 3
"To the readers of Something Human, this is Yusuke the scientist… Ugh, as if you couldn't tell from before…"
Final Take
It was now nighttime and the flashlight of the webcam was turned on revealing Yusuke looking annoyed, tired, and flustered as he held onto his scripts. Yusuke would look down into his notes before looking into the webcam and gave it a sheepish grin and nervous chuckle before readjusting his glasses. Taking a deep breath, Yusuke finally begins his speech…
"Three years ago, I was a depressing young man who didn't believe in the hope of humanity and still up to this day, am cynical and pessimistic as ever. However, despite the world and humans that inhabit this planet polluting the Earth, I have come to found peace and solace within art of literature and drawing, namely drawing. It is with a heavy heart that I come to tell you that humanity might not survive the next years to come, but that's just my opinion on it. However, hopefully, something can be done about this. As technology advances and evolves, I ask myself, 'Why doesn't the minds of humanity evolve as well?' and the answer is…up to you to find out. This may come out as optimistic but, there is still hope for humanity despite my inner thoughts about this matter. In the end, my passion for the arts has gotten me this far into creating memories with two of my best friends in the world, and I have nothing else to say besides 'Thank goodness I haven't gave up on myself' and hope you guys will enjoy the ride."
*Kami (神) Literally means God in Japanese, though its pronunciation can also be hair (髪) or paper (紙).