Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK
Illusions of the Sun
3: Field Trips and Friendships
When the bus first pulled up in front of the waiting students, Shinichi wasn't too sure if he wanted to get inside it. The idea of packing their entire class inside the one vehicle didn't strike his fancy at all. But by that point it was too late to back out of the field trip and he knew Kaito was really excited about the whole thing. So he squared his shoulders and allowed himself to be swept up into the bus with the rest of the chattering crowd.
He was jostled back and forth by the press of students until he squeezed between two girls and managed to snag a seat by the window. Moments later Kaito joined him, straightening out his school uniform before taking his seat.
"Everyone sure is excited," he remarked, watching the rest of the class scramble into all available seats.
Shinichi nodded. "They did say it just opened. And apparently everyone who's gone says it was really interesting."
"Let's hope it's all they say it is then."
"I still don't see what could possibly be interesting about a tech museum," the girl across the aisle from Kaito complained. "I mean, it's just a museum! How interesting could it possibly get?"
"With that attitude, not very," the blond boy sitting in the row in front of them snorted.
"I actually think this should be fun," the brunette sitting beside the blonde said in a placating manner when the first girl's mouth began to open again. "Just give it a chance Sonoko. I heard they've set up a lot of interactive exhibits so it's not like your average museum where you only look at things."
"Oh, well, I guess that would be better," the girl called Sonoko relented. "You should learn from Ran, Blondie," she added. "She makes a much better argument than you. And you call yourself a detective."
The dark-skinned boy sitting across from 'Blondie' snickered loudly at that. "Man she's got you there Hakuba. You should know the best way to win an argument is to present good reasons."
"Says he who is the king of reason," Blondie—or rather Hakuba—replied dryly, the sarcasm in his voice thick enough to cut. "Remind me again, who was it who nearly trampled the evidence on that murder case last Saturday?"
Now it was the dark-skinned boy's turn to glare. "If I hadn't gotten there so fast there would've been two deaths instead of one," he snapped. "Or are you saying you don't care about that?"
The blond bristled. "I said no such thing. I was simply pointing out that a little caution would not have gone amiss. If you had indeed destroyed the evidence, accident or not, there would eventually have been more than two deaths on that man's hands."
"Can you two stop talking about that stuff so loudly?" the brunette hissed, punching the blonde lightly on the arm and glancing around the bus. "You're going to ruin everybody's day. We're going to have fun and learn something here. And you're going to give our new classmates the wrong idea about this city with all this talk about murders," she added, turning to give Kaito and Shinichi an apologetic smile. "Don't mind them," she advised. "Heiji and Saguru here both like to call themselves detectives so they tend to talk a lot about these things, but murders aren't half as common as you might think just listening to them. It's just they've been rivals since preschool so they like to compete over this and, well, yeah…it's like they can't talk about anything but dead people anymore."
"That is so not true!" the dark-skinned boy—Heiji, was it?—protested. "I talk about other things."
"That's all right," Kaito told the girl (he believed Sonoko had called her Ran). "We don't scare easy."
"That's good." The girl smiled. "By the way, I'm Mouri Ran. I hope you're both liking it here."
"Very much, thank you."
"It's a beautiful city," Shinichi agreed, smiling a bit hesitantly back at the girl. This was the first time he'd had a conversation with one of their new classmates that wasn't about school since the first few days when he'd spent most of his time finding ways to avoid being interrogated. He'd gotten a little more comfortable with people over the past few weeks, but it was a slow and grueling process and he was sure he'd never like crowds.
X
The students were unloaded in front of a rather impressive looking building with large, glass windows that glittered in the daylight. A waterwheel loomed to the right of the front doors, spinning in a stately slowness as it welcomed each new guest and bid the departing farewell. It was beside this wheel that their teacher stopped to give the gathered students their instructions. Each student would be responsible for writing a detailed report on at least two different exhibits—their thoughts about the exhibits, what they learned, what they might already have known, how well the information was presented through the exhibit in question, etc—to be turned in the following week.
"That said," Yoshino concluded, smiling at her class, "the whole point of today is to let you explore and give you an introduction to the wonders of the world's advancing technology. So make sure you take advantage of this opportunity and really look around. We'll meet back here at two and the bus will take us back to school."
With that the students filed into the museum, had their tickets checked by the attendants at the front desk, and dispersed.
The moment they were able Kaito grabbed Shinichi's hand and dragged him off to see the robots. There were cleaning robots and service robots and even little pet robots who purred or chirped or squeaked depending on what you did with them. Shinichi rather liked a three foot tall parrot robot that translated things that were said to it into different languages (though it had a tendency to mess up on syntax and occasionally popped up with words that had nothing at all to do with what had been said).
After that they found themselves in a room walled with computers at which various people sat, typing maniacally. A sign on the wall announced that each computer was running a different chatterbox. The goal of the test was to converse with the chatterbox and hopefully get it to reveal itself as being inhuman.
"Ha!" a triumphant cry rang out suddenly and Kaito and Shinichi both recognized Heiji's voice. "I did it in one and a half minutes! That's a minute faster than you did."
"You do realize that we were interacting with different programs," came the much quieter, desert dry response. "Any comparison made thus has no relevance whatsoever."
"Yeah but this one's supposed to be the best."
"Really? And where, pray tell, does it say that?"
"Right here in the museum guide book!"
A moment of silence filled with the rustle of paper followed.
"It says it is one of the most sophisticated programs. Note, the 'one of'."
"Oh for goodness sake…" Ran, who had been standing behind the two boys seated at the computers, let out an exasperated sigh. Neither of them seemed to hear her as they continued to argue over the comparative merits of their respective records when measured against the level of the chatterbox programs in question.
"You weren't kidding when you said they're always competing, were you?"
Ran started at the sound of Shinichi's voice and turned to find the two new students standing beside her with bemused expressions. She sighed then smiled. "Nope. Can't admit they're friends to save their lives but they're harmless. But if they keep this up we're not going to get around to seeing anything else," she added, scowling.
"You don't have to wait for them," Kaito pointed out, amusement dancing in dark indigo eyes.
"No," she agreed, "but if I don't keep bugging them they're going to spend the whole day here and they have to write about at least two exhibits."
"Then it is fortunate they have such a kind friend," the magician laughed. "Here, let me help you."
Reaching out quickly, he grabbed the back of each of the arguing boys' chairs and yanked. The rolling chairs zipped out from under their occupants so fast that for a split second it looked like the two were sitting on thin air. Then the room echoed with twin cries of shock as they fell rather painfully onto their rears. Shinichi covered his mouth with a hand to stop himself from laughing (it didn't seem right to laugh but oh the identical looks of confusion on their faces as they just sat there, unmoving and staring in wide-eyed incomprehension up at the computers that had been at eye level just moments ago). Ran however, probably spurred on by her earlier exasperation, had no such compunction. She gaped for only a second before bursting into a fit of giggles.
The two boys sitting on the ground snapped out of their daze at the sound and glanced around to find their audience of three. Only by now Kaito had already disposed of the incriminating chairs by sliding them under other computer desks, so what the two saw was one laughing girl, one boy with a hand over his mouth, and one smirking boy with inquiringly raised eyebrows.
"Are you two just going to sit there or did you want to actually visit some other exhibits?" the last asked as though merely curious about their intended schedules and not at all about their seating. This earned him two suspicious looks which only made his grin widen.
"Come on you two," Ran said, having calmed down somewhat. "We really should get going. You can come back here later if you really want to."
"Nah, let's try something else," Heiji replied, getting to his feet and straightening out his clothes. "No reason to come back when I've already won. I don't need Hakuba here to admit it to know I'm right."
"That would be because you have perfected your ability of self delusion," the blonde scoffed, but he too showed no desire to continue hanging out in the chatterbox room.
"So would you two like to come with us?" Ran asked, turning back to Kaito and Shinichi.
The two traded looks before Kaito answered. "Where were you headed?"
"I was thinking the Room of Lights."
"That sounds interesting." Shinichi looked to Kaito who nodded and slung an arm over his shoulders.
"Sure, why not?"
X
The Room of Lights was pitch black with faintly luminous lines on the floor to guide visitors through its murky depths. The room itself had eight different stations, each a bizarre collection of maneuverable lenses, mirrors, prisms, and wires. At some stations small flames burned bright in the darkness, at others a thin artificial fog made the paths of laser lights visible to the human eye. Visitors could arrange the lights as well as the surrounding tools in order to explore how they affected the way light traveled.
They also found Sonoko setting up mirrors in an attempt to make the lasers spell out her name.
Everyone was having fun seeing what they could make the lights do until someone let out a high pitched shriek of shock accompanied by a hwumph as a burst of fire at one station temporarily lit the entire room. Several attendants immediately made a beeline for the station in question.
Standing at one of the laser stations, Heiji shook his head. "Man it's like being in an amusement park instead of a museum."
"An amusement park?" Shinichi asked, a bit confused. "Do people usually set things on fire and scream in amusement parks?"
"What? No! Or, well, maybe the screaming, but that's not what I meant. I was just thinking that all these exhibits are more like games so being here's more like being at an amusement park than being at a museum where you're just supposed to look at stuff." He paused as though struck by a sudden thought. "Haven't you ever been to an amusement park?"
"There weren't any where we're from," Kaito said smoothly.
"So you mean neither of you have ever been to an amusement park?" Sonoko demanded incredulously. "That's pathetic!"
"Sonoko, don't be so rude!" Ran exclaimed, face flushing with embarrassment at her friend's behavior. Turning, she smiled apologetically at the two boys in question. "Would you like to come with us to Tropical Land? We were planning to go there this weekend with some friends of ours. You're both welcome to join us."
"Tropical Land?" Shinichi repeated, puzzled.
"It's an amusement park," Hakuba explained. "We can take the bus there. It's fairly new but the papers have been giving it fairly decent reviews."
"So do you guys want to come?" Ran asked again.
Shinichi could see the expectation in their faces despite the darkness of the room but he found he wasn't sure what to say. Did he want to go? Part of him did, the other part shied from the thought, and the rest had no idea what to think. A warm hand closed over his before he could finish debating with himself and he glanced up to catch Kaito's eye. The magician smiled softly before turning his attention back to their classmates.
"We'd love to," he said cheerily like he dealt with these sorts of things every day. "As long as it's no trouble."
"Oh, no trouble at all," Ran assured them. "We're meeting at the park near school Saturday morning at eight."
TBC
A.N: Hmm, it's fun writing them all in the same class. Anyhow, see you next time!