・ Author's Notes ・
Well then, another week, another update. Nothing special so far… I'll let the chapter speak for itself again, I don't need to speak for it! Onward!
・ ・ ・
"Well, Luka," Kouki said, "these are your fellow androids. It's about nearly 1PM right now, since we got off to a bit of a late start this morning. Not like that's a big deal. I'll release all of you to mingle amongst yourselves for lunch break right now. As for Meiko, Kaito, Rin and Len, Studio 2 will be open after lunch break so you can catch up on contracts. As for Miku and Luka, you'll be able to use Studio 1 after lunch. I've cleared out the usual mixer from Studio 1, so Miku, remember what I taught you a few days ago, since you'll be handling the mixing side of the studio."
"Yes, Master," Miku said, and made a slight bow. "I won't touch anything unless necessary, and I'll be sure to follow all of the instructions you gave me."
"Good," Kouki said. "With that said, it's time I got going. The higher-ups want me to meet with them to discuss the completion of Luka and her tests. I probably won't be back until much later, so make sure to do your best without me. Later!" Kouki made a slight bow of his own, and then moved past the androids and into the hall past, presumably making his way to the elevators he had mentioned previously. With Kouki now gone, several of the other androids breathed a sigh of relief. Miku walked over to Luka's side.
"It's really nice to meet you, Luka!" Miku said, giving Luka a bright upward smile. Despite having been activated for much longer, Miku was obviously made to be younger in appearance. She stood a clear several inches shorter than her newly-activated compatriot.
"Oh, yes… Nice to meet you too, Miku," Luka said, trying to give a smile. To be honest, she wasn't exactly sure what she was doing. Her memories had been prepared with everything she needed to know about singing, emotion, and such. But they had nothing on simple interpersonal interaction. Apparently, that was an afterthought.
"C'mon, this way," Miku said, and pointed towards the hall with the cafeteria, where the others had already begun to head. "I'll teach you everything you need to know about getting your food!" She grabbed Luka's hand without an afterthought, and started to pull the woman down the hall. Luka followed along, concluding that this was probably the best course of action to take, when an energetic girl grabs your arm and tries to take you somewhere.
Miku continued to hold Luka's hand and brought her into the cafeteria. It was a expansive, open room, with a large number of tables set up for use. Several of them were already occupied by scientists, while many others remained empty. Luka could see Murakami sitting at one of the tables in the corner of the room, accompanied by a white-haired woman who was facing away from Luka. Murakami gave a slight nod as she noticed Luka looking in her direction. Luka nodded back and then returned her gaze to Miku.
"You go in through here," Miku said, and pointed to a short line leading into a second room. She pulled on Luka's hand yet again, bringing them to the end of the line. Miku led the woman through the line, constantly offering suggestions and teaching Luka the procedures of the Crypton cafeteria line. From one master to another, Luka thought. At least this one is cute, I suppose. Wait, what am I thinking? The girl was undeniably cute. The pair exited the line with fully stocked food trays, and Luka paused as they reentered the cafeteria.
"So where do we sit?" Luka asked. "Is there any specific place?"
"Nope," Miku said. "C'mon, I usually sit over here. Follow me." Luka decided to follow the girl, who had no intent of allowing Luka not to follow. The blond-haired twins were already occupying two of the seats, but there was room enough for teal-haired girl and her companion. They ended up sitting across from each other, at a long rectangular table. Next to them were the twins, also sitting across from one another, and beside them, the eldest pair.
"Alright, let's eat!" Rin said as the final pair sat down at the table. The others, except Kaito, who had already begun, nodded and started to work on the trays in front of them.
"Is that a usual occurrence here?" Luka asked Miku.
"Pretty much," Miku answered. "Rin doesn't like to start unless everyone's here. We all sorta just go along with it. A little bit of waiting doesn't hurt, our lunch break's long anyway." Miku smiled, and Luka found the expression just a bit infectious as she too turned to her tray. Luka thought she might be able to get used to this kind of life.
"So what are we going to do after this?" Luka asked. She figured the other girl might know more, seeing as she would be the guide…
"That's… A… Secret," Miku said with a wink. "No really, though, I'll be training you on how the real contracting stuff goes. It's not that hard, I bet you'll get it in no time. If there are enough jobs to do, we'll stick around there until dinner break, and then we're done for the day. I usually go and hang out in the lounge for a bit, or go back to my room. It's up to you what you do, though!"
"I don't know yet, honestly," Luka said. "I figure we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. So you must know your way around things if Master trusts you enough to operate the other half while you train me."
"Kinda sorta," Miku said. "I'm not an expert yet, not at all, but I think I should be able to do what we need today… I hope… Don't worry, though, I think I got this." Her smile became a little unsteady.
"I have faith in you, at least," Luka said. "You have been doing this a lot longer than I have, after all!"
"Aww, thanks," Miku said. "I'll try my best not to disappoint you…" She turned away, hiding her blushing face. After the heat on her face dissipated a little, she turned back to Luka. "So Luka, how has your first couple of days been so far?"
"It's tough to say," Luka said. "Confusing, if I had to put it into one word. It's taking me some time to try and figure out exactly what I'm doing." She sighed. "It's going to take some getting used to, really. Everything's coming at me so fast, it's hard to try and pick what to focus on. Not to mention, the things that aren't coming at me straight on are buried within my memory, and I can't even begin to find where to start on those. It's like… I know what I'm thinking right now. I can easily visualize and remember things from the past that I've actually properly experienced. But those 'memories', aren't quite the same. It's like somebody inserted text directly into my brain, despite it not working quite that way. Even when I've read text, it shows up in memory as an image, not as raw words. These… these are just raw words. It's entirely different."
"Oh yeah, I remember back when I was going through that," Miku said. "Don't sweat it, Luka. As long as you just keep doing what you know, and stick with me, and I promise it'll get better! It's only been a couple of days, you only really know Master and the doctor… But don't worry, you've already got a friend, me."
"Thank you," Luka said, and returned the smile perpetually on Miku's face. She wasn't exactly sure what to think of these developments. On one hand, she felt warm inside, satisfied and pleasant. But on the other hand, she felt something lacking still… She dismissed those thoughts, though, and continued both her lunch and her discussion with Miku. "It's good to know I'm not alone."
"Of course!" Miku responded. "Don't ever worry about that, Luka, we're all here for you!"
"Thank you, again," Luka said. "There must be something else to talk about, though. It feels a little awkward when we're just talking about me."
"Well, you're the new girl," Miku said. "Of course we want to talk to and about you… But it's alright. Is there anything you want to know about me?"
"Well…" Luka began. "I don't know if there's anything I want to know in particular, really. I just want to know… about you. I don't know exactly how to say it."
"Just… about me, huh?" Miku asked in response. She tilted her head, thinking. "Well, you know my name and what I look like, obviously. Um… My favorite color is pink, I really like singing, so I enjoy my job… I like watching anime and reading manga on my free time…" She paused for a moment. "Y'know, you never realize how hard of of a question that is until you get asked it! I dunno what else to say…"
"That's alright," Luka said. "I don't think either of us want to talk about ourselves much…" By this point, despite all the talking, the pair was basically done with their meals. Miku stood from the table with her tray.
"C'mon, I'll show you where to get rid of your tray," Miku said to Luka. She stood and followed the girl, who quickly showed her and taught her the disposal procedure. "Alright! C'mon Luka, now that we're done, we should head on over to the recording studio."
"You lead, then," Luka said. Miku found no problem in this suggestion, and led Luka out of the cafeteria. The pair crossed through the lounge yet again, this time empty as the others still worked on finishing their meals. Miku led her down and to the door marked "Recording Studio 1". Miku placed her hand on the handle, and it unlocked instantly. She opened the door, and motioned for Luka to enter. She complied, and entered into the first studio.
The room was slightly larger than the other studio, on both sides. The room's content was similar to its counterpart, with a mixing board, computer, speakers, microphone, all of the typical arrangements of a recording studio of Crypton's caliber. Unlike the other, however, a door led off to another attached room, one labeled "Instrument and Equipment Storage". Miku entered, and closed the door behind the two of them.
"Alright Luka!" Miku said enthusiastically. "You can go over to the booth side, I'll handle it all over here." She sat down at the mixing bench, and took control of the bench as if she was naturally comfortable with the setup.
"Alright," Luka said. She crossed over to the heavily soundproofed booth on the other side of the room, and sat down at the stool like she had the last time.
"Let's get started, then!" Miku said over the PA speaker. "On a table behind you is a pair of headphones and a tablet, go grab those."
"Understood," Luka said, and turned behind her. Sure enough, there was a pair of headphones much like the ones in the other room, and an electronic tablet like the one Kouki was using in the other studio. Unlike the control device, though, this one seemed positively normal. No special extensions split off from it.
"Go ahead and turn it on, you do your contracts with it," Miku said. Luka complied, somehow knowing the interface instinctively. It had to be another piece of instilled knowledge from her memory banks. As it booted, it displayed a menu, featuring a long list of songs. Each one had a creator's name, a title, a priority number, a genre, and a length labeled.
"Is this the list of contract songs?" Luka asked.
"Yep," Miku said. "Each one on there is to be done by you sometime. You should do the ones with the highest priority number first. Those ones might have been waiting a while, or sometimes the artist paid more to get it done faster. If you've got a bunch of stuff at the same number, do it whatever way you want, if you like the genre, long or short songs, whatever. So go ahead, pick one!" Luka scanned the list for a moment, then tapped on the title of a song. The song expanded to fill the entire screen, displaying sheet music.
"Was that right?" Luka asked, unsure, needing guidance.
"Yep, perfect," Miku said. "Now you have a song! In front of you is the sheet music for that song, and it has everything you need to know. If you look, some notes have accents on them, which if you look back to your memory, you'll know what to do. Besides that, there's also markers at the beginnings of parts, telling you what kind of emotion to sing with."
"Okay, I think I understand…" Luka said. "So what do I do when I'm ready to do it?"
"Up in the top corner, there's a play button," Miku said. "All you have to do is press that, and you're ready to go! Just take a look through it first, and make sure you know what's coming. We only wanna have to do this once, so we can do more."
"Got it," Luka said, and scanned through the document displayed before her on the screen. She made sure not to skip a thing, a note accent, or an emotional directive placed somewhere along the line. When she was ready, she took a deep breath. "Alright. Let's do this." She pressed the play button on the top corner, and braced herself.
"Do your best!" Miku cheered, before the music began to play. She pressed a button on the panel, and music began to play in Luka's ears. She could trace the moving bar of the music, and followed it along until her part slowly approached. When her part actually appeared, she did the only thing she really knew how to do: sing. She couldn't guarantee she was doing anything right, but this, unlike much else, felt natural to her at the very least. She followed through the song as it played, trying her best to accent every note as the creator had planned it, not wanting to either disappoint or need to try again. She harnessed everything she could at the emotional directives, trying to sound her absolute best. When the song ended, she let out a sigh of relief.
"This is a bit more tiring than just being let free to do whatever," Luka said. "With this, there's the constant pressure of messing up at some point."
"Don't worry about it, Luka," Miku said over the microphone. "You did great! I didn't notice a single problem. And that's all there is to it, at least the first part. I have to do some audio magic at the end, but that's over here on this side. You're all done, and you can go on and get another song." Luka turned back down to the tablet and scoured the list for another song, while Miku did something at the computer on the other side. Luka found the next one, and waited for Miku to give her an okay signal. "Alright! I think that's all done. Now, for the next one…"
And so on the process went. For quite some time, Luka would choose a song from the list that was next, and sang it according to the instructions. Miku would do what needs to be done, while praising Luka along the way, and then submit the song as complete back to the one who requested it, where they could do with the audio what they wanted. The girls repeated their duty, until the list of songs was exhausted. There wasn't anything else to do in the recording booth, so Luka crossed back into the other side. She sat at a bench behind Miku's mixing table as she finished the final touches on the last song.
"So was everything good?" Luka asked.
"Definitely," Miku said. "You have such a nice voice, I'm sure they'll all be really happy to get their tracks."
"That's good…" Luka said. "So what do we do now that we're done?"
"There's a little time left, though I'd usually just go back and start my time off a little early," Miku said. "Master wanted us to stay here until he got a chance to check in on us, though. So we're kinda stuck here for now."
"Fun," Luka said, more than just a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Miku leaned back in her chair, and began to accidentally turn up a slider with her elbow. "Miku, you might want to-"
"I might want to what?" Miku asked with a yawn, as a large bang sounded. "Oops," was all the girl could manage to say. As if it could only get worse, the door began to slide open. Director Minami entered the room, seeing a shocked Miku staring at the mixer, and a Luka behind her on the bench averting her eyes.
"Well, how are you girls doing?" Kouki asked jovially, having not yet processed the situation he was walking into. Having taken a second to see the scene before him, his brows furrowed. "Dare I ask what happened here?" he asked, glaring at Miku.
"Um… About that… E-eheheh," Miku laughed nervously. It only served to annoy the master further, his eyes narrowing, and his voice rising steadily to a yell.
"Just what did you do?" the master asked. "That is not a request, 01. That is an order!"
"Yes, Master," Miku said. The tone disappeared from her voice. "After the completion of our duties, an accident was made where a slider was turned too high on the mixing panel. This appears to have caused a structural failure in one or more components."
"You did what!?" Kouki yelled at Miku. "Did I not tell you to be extremely careful, and not to touch anything other than what you must!?"
"Yes, Master," Miku said, still seemingly entranced. "I have failed you due to my negligence in attention."
"Not only have you failed me, you may have damaged sensitive audio technology!" Kouki said.
"It was an accident, Master…" Luka said, trying to spare Miku from the master's anger.
"Did I tell you to voice your opinion, 03?" Kouki asked, clenching his fists. "And you're even daring to question my authority? Silence, 03!"
"Yes, Master," Luka said meekly and yielded. Kouki's hand released, unfurled to a flat palm. He struck Miku across the face, leaving a light red mark on her face, and making her withdraw back. Luka began to reach out, to help the girl, but withdrew her hand, not wanting to attract Minami's further ire.
"Now out of my way," Kouki said to the still cowering Miku. The girl slowly slid out of the way, not wanting to contradict any more orders. Kouki walked over to the mixing table, and began to examine it. He brought out a key ring from his pocket, and unlocked a lock at the edge of the board, and lifted off the top of the board, which was hinged on the opposite side. A waft of smoke lifted from the board, smelling strongly of ozone and burning electronics. Kouki scowled as he looked on.
Kouki walked over to the instrument and equipment storage room. "You had better hope with your life that we have an extra back here," he said, unlocking the door with his ID card. He opened the room and entered, hiding him from the pair's view.
"It's okay, Miku," Luka said, reaching out to brush Miku's hair with her hand. "It's not your fault. I should have noticed before you turned it too high." She spoke softly, trying to reassure the cringing Miku without Kouki noticing and lashing out at her again. Miku made no response, as Luka quickly righted herself and returned to her original pose so as not to arouse suspicion as Kouki exited the room with a box.
"Thankfully for you two, we have a few extras in stock," Kouki said, and returned to the board. He also held a dustpan, with which he brushed up a few shards of glass. He unscrewed something from the panel, and took out an object from the box. It was a vacuum tube, a now rare and highly specialized piece of equipment. Kouki lowered the slider next to the empty socket, and proceeded to screw in the new tube into it. He carefully set down the lid of the mixing board and locked it. "So then. You get off lucky this time," Kouki said, some of the malice from his voice dissipating now that the issue had been resolved. He turned to the still-cowering Miku. "01, stand up."
"Yes, Master," Miku said and stood up. Her knees shook as she did so, as if she could collapse at any moment.
"I will forgive this incident, just this once, seeing as we had a spare," Kouki said. "However, if I find you have been neglectful in your assigned duties, ever again, there will be a more severe punishment. 03, I will assume you had no role in this incident other than failing to prevent it?"
"That would be correct, Master," Luka said.
"I will give you merely a warning, then," Kouki said. "Be very careful to try and prevent incidents, understood?"
"Yes, Master," Luka said.
"That's it, then," Kouki said. "I'll examine your work later. I assume if you were both on this side, that means you completed all the assigned contracts in time. You're dismissed."
"I'm very sorry, Master," Miku said, as she prepared to leave from the room.
"You're dismissed," Kouki said, nothing more.
The two girls stood soundlessly and worked their way around the director and out of the studio entirely. Kouki remained inside, appearing to arrange things back into the format he preferred. Luka shut the door behind them, taking care that he wasn't disturbed any more than he already was. Miku then spoke up.
"I'm sorry, Luka," Miku said. "I think I'm gonna go back to my room a little early today. I promise I can stick around for dinner and everything tomorrow!" She began to slink off into the residential hall, leaving the pink-haired woman alone. Luka decided to go on by herself to dinner, and soon afterward retired to her room, her second day ever finished on a remarkably low note…
・ ・ ・
END OF CHAPTER 3 - Learning
As always, for instant updates and commentary, follow me on Tumblr, the link is available in my profile.