"I'd bet you never thought about it, but the Internet and dreams are a lot alike. They're both places where the repressed unconscious mind can escape." –Paprika
"The Net truly is vast and infinite… Who knows, maybe a new society we've never even dreamed of is already being born." –Maj. Motoko Kusanagi
"You think that's air you're breathing now?" –Morpheus
.
The Ghost in the Machine
Doubleplusgoodduckspeaker
.
12:30:09 January 5 2005
Xanadu server
Noa logged in.
He stepped out into a large courtyard that was at the deepest part of the server, streets going in every direction into sprawling neighborhoods of offices and storefronts of various styles, all jutting up against each other. Xanadu was for business; many companies had Internet office space here. For owners and employees, this was where their money was made.
He had business here.
Noa stepped out into the traffic, dodging several clusters of loudly gossiping shoppers fresh from the Eldorado server before ducking into a less crowded alleyway. That server was where the money was spent: an endless array of cinemas, arcades, sports, and boutiques for every object imaginable. Noa had spent more than a few hours in the gaming arcades—he felt very comfortable there, more so than almost any other place online.
The building he was looking for had a standard appearance, without any of the upgrades of the fancier offices near the courtyard. Noa passed underneath the threshold and into the site; now he was presented with a number of corridors, stairways, and doors leading up several stories. He took the stairs two at a time before selecting the door to the chat room that he wanted. He opened it softly and shut the door behind him.
The small door opened into a room the size of a gymnasium, and he took one of the seats in the empty top row. The benches were more crowded the closer they got to the floor—as he understood it, the speakers in this particular room were popular.
There were several, seated around a table lit like a spotlight. "That one was very difficult," the young woman at the head of the table said, turning to the man seated to her right. "The majority of lost films are truly lost—whether they are destroyed through fire, or simply worn with use and time. For the movie you wanted there was only one surviving copy, recently found at an antique store in Osaka. The man who found it, Yoshiro Irie, has put the precious film into the care of the National Film Center, and after a little bit of searching I was able to duplicate the file that they had saved in their archives. I ran the series of images together into a video—sadly; it isn't the entire film, just a twenty-second clip." She lifted her head up to address the entire room, a pleased, eager smile on her face. "Would you all like to see?"
A large window appeared, floating above them in the center of the room. For a few seconds the screen remained dark before a title appeared in the center in white lettering. Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki. Noa whispered the words to himself as he read them. The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa.
The clip was grainy, with spots on either side from the natural perforations in the film itself. There was a young boy in a sailor suit with dark hair, who turned to the blackboard behind him to write something down. Noa leaned forward to see the image more clearly but he couldn't make out the words on the screen. The chat room had gone completely silent.
"Anyone is welcome to a copy of their own," she said, re-starting the film when it ended. Noa could see the other lurkers in the benches of this room already at work, saving and sharing the lost film. The small gestures became second-nature here, from a quick blink to pull up a private chat window to the full range of motions to interact with the other sites and servers and people that populated the web. He didn't need to save a copy—he didn't think he could forget the sight. Except in his mind, the boy in the sailor suit with dark hair became a different schoolboy, and instead of a camera lens or a patient, kind animator, there was a man in a red suit that was always present, watching over him.
"Well, its case closed for that, then," she said, and he could tell from the way her eyes scanned over the table in front of her that she was already getting mail—from strangers, from fans, from prospective clients. Some of the others seated closest to her table had already begun to stand, clamoring for her attention and shouting her name.
"Amane! Amane, I just posted the video on my own blog—can you help me next, you're the best investigator there is on the net…" Noa had done a little investigating of his own.
At the edges of Xanadu server there is a sort of pier, where the solid edges of sites and data ebb away into a vast sea of white. Instead of boats and ships massive message boards tower over the people below, constantly changing with public advertisements, questions, problems and solutions. Some of the more specialized requests come with bounties—if a business wants a new logo, they have only to post their job offer and reward, and within the day they will receive several bids. Plenty of people make their living this way. If the bounty is high enough, it will attract just the right sort of person for the job.
Noa had chosen his message carefully, to be certain that she would notice it. Net Investigator wanted for historical research case, the message ran, letters flipping and combining into a bold, black font. Timeline: 1990. Reward: 10,050,000 yen. Big fish required bigger bait, and when she clicked on the message it would automatically send a private mail with the time and place for their first meeting. He couldn't wait much longer—as it was, he was already running out of time. She had to agree to take the job, and if money wasn't what motivated her, then he would have to find out what else would.
20:59:49 January 6 2005
Avalon server
Amane watched from the shadows of the transepts as her mystery client entered the cathedral, his footsteps completely silent on the polished marble floors. Unlike the cramped cities and gravity-defying, eclectic architecture of the other servers, the churches and warehouses here were something forgotten, where old data washed up after a lifetime lost at sea. With so much to experience and see, so much was easily forgotten.
The man took a seat towards the middle of the church. He was younger than she had expected, with a nice-looking avatar—if this job were a prank she wouldn't guess its mastermind to look like him. Who else would demand a meeting in the dead of night at Avalon server, the information graveyard of the net, for a job worth millions of yen?
She stepped out into the center of the church. "You know, most of my clients just come up and ask me for help," she said, slowly approaching him and taking a seat farther down the same bench, closer to the aisle.
"Surely you've already gotten dozens of requests by now. I wanted to impress upon you that this isn't just any case."
Amane shifted on the wooden pew, as if she found it uncomfortable. "I want to know more about this case. What could possibly be worth such a reward? …Are you good for it?"
"I have the money," Noa said, closing his eyes and scratching at the bridge of his forehead. "It is yours if you can solve this case in time." There was a small stack of papers on the bench beside him, which he pushed down towards her.
"The woman in the picture is Haruka Kaiba, the late wife of Gozaburo Kaiba—the founder and original CEO of Kaiba Corporation. She passed away on February 8, 1990—a strong woman, a perfect model of good health. The doctors all said," and his voice changed, becoming something more scathing, "that she died of a broken heart."
Amane turned to look at him more closely. On the net, avatars could be changed in an instant, on each person's whim—it wasn't easy to discard a name, but a face was something entirely different. She studied the face of the woman in the picture, felt the weight of the paper in-between her fingers. It was a standard dossier, with age and blood type, education and various other details. It said that Haruka Kaiba had no surviving family members.
"You think otherwise." It was a statement, not a question.
"I want to be certain that she wasn't murdered. In one month's time is the fifteenth anniversary of her death—by then it will be too late for justice to be done. After the statute of limitations expires, there's no use in wondering any more. By then, honestly, I won't want to know."
"I see." She turned the paper over in her hands; all of a sudden she understood why he had chosen this cathedral as their meeting place. "Why come to me? There are plenty of amateur investigators with more experience in legal matters than me—have you gone to the police? The wife of a major arms dealer, dead… there must be a file on her. Or on him, didn't he die not long after she did…?"
"It has to be you. I'm quite sure of it."
"Well, that's an arrogant thing to say," Amane said, frowning suddenly. "I haven't agreed to take this case on yet. I only accept the ones where I know I can win. I—I can't make any promises about this."
"Just promise me you'll try. Today I saw you bring a lost film back to life. I'm asking you to look for a lost soul instead, so I can finally put my fears to rest." He paused, his mouth twisting into a grimace for a moment. "I used to know someone who thought that anything could be solved from people working together as a team. Then again, I also knew someone who despised teamwork—"
"I'll do it."
He looked up suddenly, his memory dissipating again at her interruption. "I'll take on your case. Amane, at your service." She stuck out her hand, and after a moment he shook it.
"Call me Shinato." There were worse names he could have chosen. "We'll meet back here in three days to share what we've discovered."
He let her leave first before taking a walk around the old cathedral. It was one of the few other places that felt comfortable to him—amidst the masses of old data, of forgotten programs and files, he felt at home.
2:49:20 January 7 2005
Oz server
She'd been having the dream again. It was always the same one, that woke her with a start, but by the time she cleared her head Amane had forgotten most of what had so entranced her. She could never remember sights, only sensations, feelings and textures. The feeling of grabbing onto the handle of a door and twisting hard. Wispy white hair being brushed and brushed. Someone's hand threaded in-between her own stubby fingers, holding on tight.
Amane had set her job status to 'busy,' and the mails had trickled down over the course of the evening. She would probably receive a few angry letters, disappointed that she hadn't chosen them, but most seeking help were more civil than that. She had a perfect record. She was the best.
It seemed simple enough, his request—look into the death of Haruka Kaiba, and if she found anything unusual, any loose threads, start pulling at them. The net was so vast, it was a wonder that from millions of people he had found her, had entrusted his case to her. She wondered what kind of woman Haruka was, to be married to such a man.
She had begun her research on him first. A chess grandmaster at twenty, he traveled around the world to attend chess tournaments, most notably in Europe and the USSR. It was only after the peak of his chess career that he founded the eponymous weapons manufacturing company. There was plenty of material available from a quick search about his early history—newspaper articles, press releases, personal identification and even interviews following some of his most famous chess matches. Amane was fascinated by the pictures of him as a young man, a confident smile on his clean-shaven face.
Any records after Kaiba Corporation was founded were sparse and unhelpful, so she turned to Haruka's family line, and after several hours she stumbled upon a wedding photograph submitted to the archives of her school's alumni association. Haruka seemed tiny in comparison to her tall, broad-shouldered husband, but with her clothing worn with such care and the bright smile on her face, Amane thought that she looked beautiful.
20:58:50 January 9 2005
Avalon server
"Why didn't you tell me your name? Your real name." Amane didn't even wait for him to take two steps into the cathedral. "I'm not stupid—Shinato is the name of an old Duel Monsters Card! So if I try to find out anything about you, I get redirected to a bunch of shopping pages—"
"You were trying to look me up?" He asked coolly, ruffling the fringes of his dark-green hair.
"Don't flatter yourself. Just who do you work for—is this government stuff? Because I think we can all agree that Gozaburo Kaiba is a conniving bastard, and everything about this seems fishy. How does an arms manufacturer of that size stay in business in a country with one of the tightest gun control laws in the world? And our region was getting pretty hot at that time, too. I'd bet anything he was financing all sorts of trouble for years."
"…and his wife?"
"Was a saint. Wealthy, educated, with nothing suspicious about her. But I think we might be able to find something in Kaiba Corporation's own databases. Company records, files, memos…everything from the moment Gozaburo became CEO is locked up tight. I have to see what he's hiding."
Noa calmly put a hand on her arm and directed them to sit down on the nearest bench. "Only two people alive have ever broken into Kaiba Corporation's security network, and he hired them. And you're talking about files from the original incarnation of the company—I'm certain that anything we want will be locked up the tightest, or if he's smart Kaiba would have just destroyed it completely. It's a foolish thing to even consider."
"Then we've lost." She hated that word, always had. "It's the only place we haven't looked, right? If we can't get any of that information then we're done. Gozaburo must have kept a black box somewhere in his archives. Medical records, video and security tapes, anything like that would help us. We've got to try."
"Noa stood up suddenly, motioning for Amane to follow him. "Come on. Let's go for a walk. …You never just walk? It's good for clearing your head."
They left the church, following worn steps that edged around warehouses and storage yards, their path lit with lamps that cast a dim glow to the neighborhoods of discarded places around them.
"No data once saved is ever truly gone," Noa whispered. "It always comes back in some form or another. Everything finds its own way." The path opened up to a view of the seashore, a beach of used parts and smooth, worn glass pieces sloping its way down into the water.
"Do you understand what I'm saying? Be patient. We will find what we're looking for."
Amane squinted towards the horizon, trying to see any shade of difference between the sea and sky. Beyond what they saw was pure nothingness, like the space between worlds. "Tell me your name."
He smiled, just a little. "Not yet."
"I'm starting to think this is all one big hallucination. They've published studies on it, you know, about how the Internet affects our minds. If you don't have a name, then to me, how can you be real? It's important, names. Names are magic. Didn't you know?"
They had returned to the church, and stopped just inside the entrance. It was incredible how real some things felt here sometimes—it would be easy to begin to confuse the simulated world inside the net for the real world outside the system. She had taken on a case involving this matter once before, with a client who had begun to blur the boundaries between the two.
"It's like this," she continued. "How did anyone decide what to name certain things? We're in a building and that is a window and outside there are trees with apples on them, but who decided how an apple got its name? Maybe they got it wrong, and oranges are really supposed to be apples, but how would we know?"
His hands had been clasped together behind his back, but he separated them to reveal to her that he had been holding an apple. Red, flawless, it seemed to steal color from the rest of the room.
"Exactly!" Amane said. "I see that and I think: apple, or I could say the word apple and you would think of a thousand other things that are all connected, but how do we know that it's even there? What gives someone the right to give a name, just like that?"
He lifted up the apple and took a bite of it, the flavor bursting in his mouth, the dense fruit crunching between his teeth, a bit of juice getting on his chin. He wiped it off. "People have been thrown out of gardens, poisoned, or been given scientific revelations for apples inferior to this one," he said. "Sometimes it doesn't matter how something got its name, just that it has one. That's power. Giving something a name gives it power. Having a name makes something real."
"Then why won't you tell me your name?"
He paused, surely anticipating the question, yet when it had come it had still surprised him. He finished the apple, tossing the core behind him into some darker corner of the room, and then he too faded away. Amane wasn't sure if he was just quick or if he had truly disappeared.
"I must know your real name," she said to the air, "or else how will I know if you are real?"
She feared that for her, that boundary was beginning to blur together as well.
23:48:30 January 12 2005
Shambhala server
She had stumbled across this place once before, entirely on accident, when she was young. This was before she had hung out her shingle, when she didn't know better, and just wanted to see just what all the whispers were about.
Shambhala server was the most secure place in the entire net. Here, corporations and governments had constructed fortresses of data, information locked tightly away behind tall walls of encryptions. That time, Amane had wandered right up to a building and fallen across a hidden tripwire, and guards were on her in minutes. She hadn't even made it to the front door.
In that time, several nonfiction books had been published about the server's security, and she had done a little research about the particular place she was interested in. Kaiba Corporation controlled its own security rather than pay another service to protect its data. It was a trend she had noticed in her investigation—an arrogance that she would use to her advantage. They kept everything insular, certain that their method, and their talent, were superior.
She had been watching the Kaiba Corporation fortress for several nights—they had a routine like any other place. At midnight each night, they ran a diagnostic of the building which lasted for fifteen minutes—during this time, the security features were reset. Surveillance footage was transferred to archives, the guards stationed inside left and were replaced by others, and any other network problems were flagged for attention the next morning. During these fifteen minutes, however, the building was on complete lockdown—this was her opportunity to get inside, but she'd have to do it before midnight, and without setting off the alarms that were still working.
She'd gotten the idea from a news story that had been all over the Internet at the start of the year—a murder that had taken place in Europe on New Year's Eve. In the midst of the celebrations and fireworks displays, no one would think any loud noises or slamming doors were anything suspicious. The sound of gunfire was nearly masked by the sound and distraction of the fireworks.
Amane had some fireworks of her own to set off, but they weren't intended for Kaiba Corporation—instead she had set them carefully several hours ago at the fortress just next door, who shared a wall with KC. They were a middling-size electronics company, and when the charges blew, any problems or anomalies in the security could be easily blamed on the perceived attack next door. One thing she had learned from her job was that people were always looking for something to blame, to take the responsibility off of them. They would leap for the easiest explanation, something she was only happy to provide.
She counted down the minutes and waited. She'd let her programs loose just before midnight for maximum chaos around the system. There wouldn't be time for them to react before the automated restart went into effect. They were wicked programs, too—simulated flash-bang grenades and a targeted data-devouring program that would literally eat through their defenses before self-destructing thirty minutes later.
She closed her eyes and did her best to control each breath. Rise and fall, steady and slow. Noa had warned her against this plan, but it was their only means forward. She'd obscured all of her own personal data, stealing the identity of a lowly maintenance worker. There was no leaving footprints or fingerprints on a job like this.
At the first explosion she was off, racing towards the KC fortress just as the alarms started to scream out from the other building. She had less than a minute to get inside before the lockdown—she was already at the closest door, and with a swipe of her stolen identification she was inside. They'd notice afterwards that this door had been opened, but by then she would be gone.
Inside, the fortress looked similar to any other place on the net—the thick outside walls contained a space far larger than it could possibly hold. Amane's next goal was to find the elevator; from there she could glean more information about the structure of the building and where she needed to go next to find Kaiba Corporation's earliest records.
She found an elevator, quickly changing its output to 'closed for maintenance' before her wristwatch beeped twice. Midnight. She had a few minutes to pull up schematics for the building. Online, any building was just as large as it needed to be—there was no sense in paying for empty space. Amane studied the diagrams she had pulled from the elevator closely. Every department had their own space—Legal, R & D, Tech. She raised an eyebrow at Special Projects but stopped when she found the storage archives three stories above her current position.
Amane pressed the corresponding button on the elevator and waited for it to bring her to that floor. She was lucky—most companies don't place the brunt of their security on archives, only holding onto documents for financial or legal reasons. The place becomes a data graveyard, much like the Avalon server itself.
The room was endless, filled with hardware for storing information. Wasting no time, Amane pulled up the corresponding security schematic, looking for any particular file that was more encrypted than the others. She tried to think like Kaiba. What she wanted to steal was certainly what he wanted most to hide.
There was one file near the center of the room that had a higher encryption rating. She ran to it, clicked it open, eagerly leaning forward, and fell—
She was pulled inside the file. Before she could react she was in an entirely different room with no signs of the earlier storage fortress. This room had no windows or doors, and everything was covered in a layer of thick, white marble—excepting the checkerboard pattern on the floor. Veins shot through the stone, seemingly pulsing with information.
Suddenly shapes began to rise up from each floor tile—black and white marble horses, castles, and round, carved figures. "The encryption is a chess game?" Amane sighed. "I don't have time for this."
She hadn't prepared for something like this either. She sent a pawn forward which was quickly captured. With every turn Amane became more and more aware that she might not be playing against a computer AI at all.
"…What happens if I lose?"
The only sound was the scrape as another piece moved across the floor. Then another, and another. There was nothing she could do.
"Failure is death."
She recognized that voice. Amane turned around to see a door carved into the marble open behind her. Noa walked out, his hands in his pockets, a resolute expression on his face. "That was a lesson I learned from my father."
Amane watched as he took over the game, sending their remaining knight out to capture the enemy's bishop. "Not that I'm not happy to see you…but how did you get here?"
"I followed your trail," Noa answered, swiftly moving a rook out to the center of the board. "We need to get out of here—our fifteen minutes are almost up. I have a backdoor program that we can use to escape, but I want to pick up something first."
"Our file! Did you find it?"
"Yes. It's been hidden for a very long time, like most treasures are." He nodded towards the door set into the marble. "On my count, run for it. I'll be right behind you. Now go!"
She slid through the door into a small, dark tunnel, Noa quickly turning and locking the door behind them. The light from around the doorframe quickly vanished as their door blended seamlessly back into the white marble wall.
"Turn left at the fork, we're almost there. We'll have to keep moving—we haven't exactly been quiet visitors."
Amane continued forward until another door materialized into the wall, weak beams of light cutting through the space between door and frame. She grabbed onto the handle of the door and twisted hard.
They were in a very old room. The tufted chairs and raised paneling on the walls were covered by a thick blanket of dust. The crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling still shone out to them despite its age.
"Where…where are we?" There was a window, but it was set high in the wall, too high for either of them to look out of.
"A simulation of my old classroom. I spent more time here than in my own room." He went up to the old blackboard and swiped a finger in the dust before turning back to her. "There is a hidden space behind one of the panels in this room. I used to hide all sorts of things there."
He went over to the panel and lifted it away, kneeling down to get a better look. Amane watched him pull out a series of chess pieces, several comics, a framed photograph and a small box. Almost regretfully, he returned the pieces and comics and slid the photograph out of its frame before returning that, too, to the vault.
Amane had come across the room to stand beside him. "You're the boy in the picture," she said, looking down at the photograph in his hands. "You look just like him, only…older…"
"Noa Kaiba, fifteen years older. The limitations expired for me, but hopefully this will allow me to avenge my mother's death." The photograph and box vanished, now safely in his possession.
"You died fifteen years ago…I-I read the obituary. You shouldn't be here." It felt like she was dreaming again—everything felt murky and thick, fuzzy and dusty. Her head hurt. Suddenly Amane reached out and grabbed his hand, his fingers automatically threading in-between her own, holding on tight. He was right here, in front of her. She could feel the smoothness of his hand in hers.
"I'm here. Now, we need to leave before any of Kaiba Corporation's antivirus programs start attacking us. We have to go now—the same backdoor can take us away from here."
Amane nodded slowly, keeping their hands linked together as they left the old, dusty room. Back in the tunnel, they started to run, fumbling in the darkness, when suddenly a bright blue light came on behind them.
"It's a tracker—I'm getting us out of here now before they lock on!" Another door appeared in the hallway, which closed behind them just as the fringes of the blue light were starting to reach them. They were in the main courtyard of Xanadu server, still quite crowded even though it was after midnight. Noa took her hand in his and started to run, only noticing after a few minutes that he was retracing the steps he made to her chat room. He quickly veered right, putting even more distance behind them. "We need to lay down a complicated trail, a maze that the tracker program can't figure out. It's your turn—pick a place in any server, a crowded place, with little personal connection."
They turned down an alley, another door appearing at the end of it. "I've got it!" Amane shouted, and they tumbled through the open door into a different site.
The first thing Noa noticed was the music—loud, pulsing bass. The walls were lit by neon lights, and the entire place was packed—hundreds of people chatting, dancing, and crowding at the bar. "One of my first cases was for the owner of this place," Amane said, practically shouting into his ear. "Back then I got paid in IOUs and social currency—nothing like a ten-million yen job to put things into perspective."
They threaded their way through the crowds until Amane spotted her, off to one side of the bar. "Amane!" Hokuto said, pulling her in for a quick hug. "How are you? You look the same as ever—your hair is so short, you look like a boy! And white is so out this season; why not go green like your friend?" She had bright pink hair tied up in a topknot.
"We can't stay long; I need to ask you for a favor—your site has a secure backdoor, right? We need to use it—we're trying to shake a tracker."
Hokuto pouted. "All business and no fun? All right. Come back when you lose that tracker and bring him along, I'll get you VIP passes for free!" She pulled back a curtain on the wall behind her to reveal a dark-painted hallway. "See you later, kid."
"Bye—and thank you!" They disappeared behind the curtain, the loud music fading almost to silence. The next door took them to three different chat rooms, then a twenty-four hour shopping mall in Eldorado. A zigzag between stores and the online branch of Tokyo University, they found themselves at a different shopping arcade, this one lit overhead by huge screens of advertisements for the various shops below—a Black Clown store, a furniture retailer, a cinema. Over the cinema was a clip from a film that he recognized: a young boy in a sailor suit, writing something on the blackboard behind him. He turned to the camera and smiled. The clip had spread across the net like wildfire.
"I think we've lost it," Amane said, slumping onto the closest bench. She checked her watch, yawning slightly.
"We could go to one more site, just to be safe," Noa said, motioning with his head to the theater. "Would you like to see a movie?"
She smiled at that. "Sure. Sounds like fun." They walked to the cinema and disappeared under a different curtain, which swished back into place behind them.
13:02:30 January 14 2005
Avalon server
"We've only met here at night—this place is so beautiful during the daytime." Soft light streamed through the glass windows, making colorful patterns of light decorate the walls and floor. She had been a few minutes early—Noa had only just arrived, the box he had taken from the Kaiba Corporation fortress held securely with one arm. "I can't even imagine why anyone could forget the beautiful things here."
"Perhaps they lose their names," Noa suggested, walking up to where she stood. He placed the box on the pew beside them.
"Did you open that box?"
"Yes."
"..Did you find your answers inside?"
"Most of them."
She paused, her smile faltering. He was usually so confident, arrogant even, that to see him like this was troubling.
"What's wrong? What did you see?"
They sat down, the box between them. "There are videos, from the surveillance tapes inside my house, from…back then. And…afterwards. And from the hospital where I was taken. I'd seen some of them before—before I hid them away in that place—I just didn't understand what they meant. It's like slivers of shrapnel underneath the skin from an old wound. Eventually, they start to move, to come up to the surface. You've got to take care of old wounds, or else the pain doesn't stop."
She shifted a little closer to him. "What are you talking about, Noa?" He smiled a little at that. It was the first time she'd called him by his real name.
"You remember washing up here, don't you? On the beach, with the spare parts and forgotten things worn down by the surf. You didn't have anything except your name—no memories of who you were, no money, no idea of how you got here or how to leave. Then, like old shrapnel, they start to come back. Just the smallest things, like—like the sound of chalk against a blackboard, or the feel of your hair being brushed. Then the bigger things come to you, but by then you're not sure if you want to know. After fifteen years, you're not sure it will do you any good."
She linked her fingers in his loosely, certain that he already knew what she was going to say. Amane was frightened. She'd been scared ever since she washed up on an island made of forgotten treasures and spare parts. She helped so many people, been lucky enough for so many to know her name. So much of it was still dreaming to her—the feelings, the sounds, and blessed little else. Had it really been fifteen years?
"That's what happens when data comes back together. It always finds its way," Noa said. "Let's—let's watch the tapes. Together. But first, there's something that I want to do, and if I don't do it now I'm afraid I won't ever get the chance again."
"Okay—"
Noa turned towards her and kissed her, gently, until he ran out of breath and had to pull away. Her short, wispy white hair brushed against his cheeks, and her hand holding his tightened its grip.
"Please don't hate me when you watch it," he said. With his free hand, Noa lifted the lid from the box.
13:40:30 January 30 1990
Domino, Japan – Kaiba Residence
Haruka Kaiba knelt before the framed photograph of her son. Every day she would visit him here—sometimes talking about her day, other times just paying her respects.
She was almost finished when Gozaburo came into the room. "You're still here?"
She remained there, kneeling, and answered, "You hide our son away, and won't let me visit him like you do. He doesn't know he still has a mother who thinks of him every day. And when the other two young children arrive, they must also know about their brother. Don't you understand?"
Gozaburo adjusted his bright red, tailored suit, tugging on the lapels. He seemed to think over his words carefully. "Would you like to see him again?"
Haruka stood up, a genuine smile on her face. "Please, take me to him."
In a white, sterile room he had her lie down on a bed and slid a visor entirely over her head. "It's a Virtual Reality interface," he said, helping her get comfortable and placing a few other sensors on her body. "You may feel a slight sting, but it's nothing to be worried about. If you feel sleepy, just close your eyes. You'll be with him soon."
Then he picked up the syringe and emptied it into her left arm.
19:20:09 January 03 1990
Domino, Japan – General Hospital
"Step aside, step aside!" The orderly shouted, clearing space for three beds to be wheeled down the hallway into a single room. "The woman needs a transfusion now, blood type AB!" She was separated from the other two carts, which were placed together on the other side of the room.
"She's lost too much blood."
"The other two, check on the other two!"
"Your daughter is going to be fine, please just focus on yourself. Take deep, even breaths with me. I'll count them."
There was a sharp pounding on the door to their room, and the nurse had to prevent a huge man in a dark red suit from pushing his way inside.
"Sir, you need to wait outside with the others, we're doing all we can to save this woman—"
Gozaburo resisted every step, shouting at them to save his son. The woman was already gone, the shrill, single tone bleating out the fact loudly enough for them to hear it in the hallway outside. There was a man and a boy waiting there, and at the sound they both started to cry.
Gozaburo was pacing beside them, the attempts of his wife failing to calm him down. The door to the room opened again, and the doctor came out, his hands clasped penitently in front of his body.
"No," Gozaburo kept saying, violently shaking his head. "Noa can still be saved. Let me in, I can save him! We have to act quickly!"
The room had three placards beside the door, and one of the nurses slowly slid the top one away, leaving the two children's names attached: N. Kaiba and beneath it, A. Bakura. The boy looked so young and the girl even younger, with short, wispy white hair and a peaceful expression. It was almost like they could have been dreaming.
13:05:59 January 14 2005
Avalon server
"The procedure had never been done before—the technology was very new, only recently developed by Kaiba Corporation for military use. In his attempts to upload my mind, he accidentally uploaded yours alongside it. We're data, washed up in a place like this with nothing but names. When my memory came back I started searching for this file, hoping I wouldn't be too late. My father… he had me uploaded to a unique corner of the net, where I could build whatever type of surrounding I pleased. I even had a pet dog," he said, smiling bitterly. "I can't begin to imagine what it's been like for you."
Amane had been staring into her hands, feeling the texture of them, the smooth and rough spots. When she spoke, it was in a whisper. "I had a brother."
Like shrapnel digging to the surface she remembered. She could feel the pinpricks of it in her mind. She grabbed at the handle of a door and twisted hard, running into her father's office, shouting that her brother had stolen her shoes. The feeling of the hairbrush passing through her hair as her mother told her a story. Hands intertwined, she could finally see the person that those fingers belonged to—her brother, sitting beside her on the back porch. Ryou looked at her and smiled. He said her name.
"Amane, I'm…I'm so sorry." Noa's voice interrupted the memories but for the first time, they didn't fade away. "What are you going to do now?"
She looked out at the window panes of colored glass and out to the sea beyond it, and kicked her feet against the wooden church pew. "We could make new memories," she said.
A hopeful smile began to spread across his face. "I was hoping you would say something like that. There's that one particular corner of the net where I lived for a long time—you can create any type of world you want. I'd like to try that again."
"Does that mean this case is closed, then? Because you owe me 10 million yen."
He laughed, pulling her towards him, the box on the floor forgotten, and yet perfectly hidden. "You've earned it. Now stay close to me. Let's go, together."
The sunlight made dappled patterns of color on the cathedral floor. The image of the schoolboy in the film came suddenly to him again, scribbling something on the blackboard behind him, and in his mind there was a woman there with him, happy and healthy and whole, and at peace.
Noa logged out.
The End.
Author's Notes:
1. In 2010, Japan abolished the fifteen-year statute of limitations for murder. As the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series takes place in 1996, six years after Noa died (in 1990), in 2005 this law would still apply.
2. This story presumes an alternate 2005 based on the level of technology seen in the series' version of the world in 1996, especially with regards to the Internet, virtual reality, and entertainment. Technically, the specific genre is cyberprep: like cyberpunk, just less android angst, thematic rain, and nobody's a jerk on the Internet.
3. The server names are all taken after mythological or fictional utopias: Xanadu, Eldorado, Avalon, Oz, Shambhala.
4. Amane's Net Investigator career and the surrounding culture rely heavily on crowdsourcing: outsourcing tasks to an undefined public. Anyone can post on the message boards, and anyone can answer those jobs, sort-of like bounty hunting. Amane's work and success have made her 'Internet Famous.'
5. The false name Noa uses is derived from Shinato, King of a Higher Plane, one of the important Duel Monster cards in his deck when he duels Kaiba and Yugi.
6. The lost film alluded to in the opening scene is Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki or The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa. This five-minute film screened in 1917 is believed to be Japan's oldest commercially-produced animated film. The scene described is sometimes attributed to be part of this film, and sometimes given to be the entire part of an even older, private animated film.
7. The cathedral in the story is inspired by, and intended to be, the 'lost ground' Hulle Granz Cathedral from the multimedia series .hack. The coordinates to arrive at this location in The World are Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground.
8. I've always enjoyed the thought of Amane with a short, boyish hairstyle, to mirror her brother's long, thick hair. The "two people alive" who hacked into Kaiba Corporation's security and now work for him are Rebecca and Amelda.
9. Both Noa's death and Amane's/Amane's mother's deaths have always been described as 'accidents' in the source material, although heavily implied (of course, this changes in the dub) to be car accidents. It was logical to me to turn both accidents into one—Amane's timeline is very vague, so there's nothing that disproves that she wasn't in the other car that collided with his.
10. Thank you for reading and please review, I value and treasure each one.