Chapter 26: WHA?!
Hideki walked into programming class on the first day of Spring semester.
The professor was at her desk, and her name was on the chalkboard: Miss Jounouchi.
"I understand my predecessor used rote memorization and cookie-cutter assignments", she told the class. "I won't be doing that."
Some of the students were exchanging nervous glances. With the old fossil, they at least knew what to expect.
"Instead", she continued, "I'll be introducing you to programming by focusing on something that has a much better chance of keeping your interest."
She gazed out over her desk at the waiting students. "Video games", she told them with an almost evil smile.
Ms. J had everyone's attention now.
On a cart near the chalkboard was an assortment of computer peripherals; keyboards, LCDs, cabling, VR helmets and goggles, and various styles of handheld game controllers. "Those of you who don't have keyboards or LCDs, you can borrow one of mine", Ms. J offered.
As required by the course, each student had a persocom. Most had little mobile units. a few had big expensive ones. Hideki had his girlfriend Chi with him.
One boy was still trying to lead his confused, limping persocom to her seat, but she kept stopping and looking around. She had scratches all over her, most of her hair was missing, and there was duct-tape on her seams.
"Is this your living room, Gouta?", she asked.
"No, Tokie, it's a college classroom", he replied gently. "I'm taking programming."
"What happened to her?", Hideki asked, surprised by Tokie's appearance.
"I'm not really sure", Gouta replied. "I found her in a dumpster."
Once he had Tokie seated, Gouta waved at Ms. J. "How does this command work?", he asked her, pointing at a page in his programming book.
"Try it and see", she replied with a slight smile.
"In fact", she added, speaking to the whole class now, "this will be your first assignment. Try something and see how it works. Write... something... anything... and see if you can compile it and have it run."
Some of the students were already typing, while others sat there looking confused.
Hideki quickly typed in a short program. "See if that'll run", he told Chi. Blobs of light appeared on her eyes for a split second.
Then she started laughing.
"Whoa, is that a crazy-code you just typed in?", Gouta asked. "You must be pretty good at this stuff."
"WHA?!", Hideki responded, scratching his head. "No, all I did was type in... Um..."
"Sorry, Hideki", Chi cut in, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I shouldn't laugh at your first attempt at programming."
Hideki's program was still showing on the LCD. It consisted of 2 lines:
something
anything
Hideki covered his face when he realized his mistake, much to the amusement of his classmates.
Tokie was making a series of raspy-sounding beeps that sounded like a tune. "That's a nice song", she wheezed, "Did you write that, Gouta?"
He nodded.
Some had written programs that beeped, or printed short messages on the LCD. Others were staring in confusion at error messages indicating why their programs wouldn't compile.
One student was yelling at his persocom. "Tae, you stupid piece of JUNK!", he shouted, pounding his fists on the desk. "What do you MEAN 'invalid command' ?!"
"It's not her fault, Nobuto", Ms. J told him. "Could I see what you've written?"
Nobuto scooted his chair aside and let the professor see his code.
"Um, I don't think 'Make some fart noises' is a valid programming command", MS. J commented as she looked at Tae's LCD.
"My previous owner made fart noises", Tokie announced, to no one in particular.
"Keep trying", Ms. J told the several students who were having trouble. "And take a look at the command list in the manual for hints."
"HEY SAI", came a familiar voice from the doorway. "What'cha up to?"
"Well if it isn't the Sake Brothers", Ms. J replied as Dufus and Dumbus barged right in, bringing the smell of alcohol with them. "I'm teaching a class right now."
"So, you DID get the job", Dufus commented as they wandered out the door again.
"You know those guys?", Hideki asked MS. J.
"Yeah", she deadpanned, rolling her eyes in the direction of the doorway. "I went to grad school with their older sister, back in Osaka."
"Haven't we met those guys before?", Tokie asked Gouta, as Dufus and Dumbus were leaving.
"I haven't", Gouta replied. "You and your previous owner might have met them."
By the end of class, everyone had written and compiled an actual P++ program, even if it was something as simple as "beep".
"Be sure to study your manuals", Ms. J told the students. "Next time, we'll try to program something a bit more interesting."
As Chi and Hideki headed out to meet Yuka and Ataru at the Funky Eel Cafe, Dufus and Dumbus returned to the classroom. "Hey Sai", they asked, "wanna come to our pre-cherry-blossom party?"
"No", Sai told them firmly, "I don't."
"Why not?", Dufus asked her. "You had fun at our party last Fall, didn't you?"
"How would I know?", Sai responded. "All I remember is waking up in somebody's back yard the next morning. As hung over as I was at my interview, It's a wonder I landed this teaching job."
"Whose apartment did you say this was, Gouta?", Tokie asked as he was leading her out of the classroom.
"What in the heck is THIS thing?", Freya asked the mechanic as he sat her down atop an oddly-shaped stainless-steel ...thing... he had placed on the bare concrete floor of the hospital garage.
"Something to catch your oil in", he told her, handing her 2 bottles of servo-flush. "Drink the first one and wait 5 minutes", he told her. "Then drain, and then drink the second one. I'll be back by then."
Out the door he went, and into an adjacent garage to work on one of the ambulances, as Freya chugged the bottle of servo-flush.
Five minutes had passed, and Freya found that draining out her clotted oil was MUCH easier with servo-flush than it had been with that stupid engine-flush the American mechanic had given her.
As she was drinking the second bottle of servo-flush, the mechanic returned with a forklift, a wooden palette across its forks. "Lay on this", he told her. "You don't want to be putting any load on your bearings without oil."
Carefully, Freya lay down on the palette, and the mechanic began driving her down the sidewalk. Pulling up to the edge of a large swimming pool, he lowered her in.
Freya let out a plaintive "EEEK!" as she hit the water. "JEEZ, a little warning would have been nice", she told him.
"You'll be just about weightless in that pool", the mechanic told her. "And you can move around and circulate that servo-flush without putting any undue pressure on your bearings."
Freya swam around a while, as the servo-flush broke up any remaining clumps of clotted oil.
A few minutes later, the mechanic was back, motioning for her to swim back onto the palette. She soon found herself, palette, forklift, and all, positioned over a big recycle tank. "Drain", he told her.
Her circulating oil system empty, she was wheeled next into the pathology department, where the mechanic plopped her palette down on the hallway floor and drove away.
She lay there for more than an hour before the pathologist showed up.
"Samples of your oil are in the lab, with various disinfectants added", he told her. "In the morning, we'll see which ones work best. You might as well shut down until then."
Freya closed her eyes and tried to forget that she was lying on a rough wooden pallete on the floor in a busy hallway, with only a thin plastic tarp over her, bearing a tag that read "Freya: treat for Borkumensis" for all the world to see.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
The cold hard platform of ice bobbed and lurched on the waves, a world away from anything warm or familiar. Freya was marooned on an arctic ice floe, adrift on an endless sea of windblown snow and shifting pack ice. A seal was swimming nearby, and the faint howls of wolves could be heard in the distance... or maybe that was just the wind; there was no land in sight.
"Somebody called?", Kei asked as he entered the cyber-security lab. Dita and Sollwert were, as usual, hard at work. The security manager was there too, giving Dita the eye-of-suspicion.
"It... it's nothing, really", Dita stammered. "Just a slight..."
"Dita's limping", Sollwert cut in. "That is one of the symptoms, Dita. Best you let the I.T. guy have a look."
"Oh good grief!", Dita growled. "I don't like being in that stupid diagnostics bay!"
"You won't like being in a hospital either, Dita, but it's for your own good", the boss man told her. "We have reason to believe you might have Borkumensis, and I don't want you breaking down, or infecting Sollwert."
Dita shot a disgusted-looking glance at Sollwert as she turned and limped towards the door. Kei followed her out. "Keep her out of here until you know she's clean", the boss told him.
"BORKUMENSIS?", Dita repeated with a sneer, the moment Kei's car door was closed. "Why would your mind even GO there?"
Kei blushed red at Dita's question. "I... Um... It got you some time off... right?", he stammered.
Darting into the evening rush-hour traffic, Kei headed for the hospital. "You're not actually going to take me to the hospital, are you?", Dita asked with a look in her eyes that almost looked like fear.
"We're not going in, Dita", Kei clarified. "We stop there just long enough for you to hide in the trunk. That way, it'll look like I left you at the hospital."
*Click*
Dita_Internal_Process_Loop:
* Open_Flashback_File("Time_index_439351") /* summer before last */
* Play_Flashback()
"YOU decided?! YOU wanted to see it?!", the Commanding Officer bellowed at Zima. "Who do YOU think you are?!"
Zima was standing in the doorway at his office, an office he rarely used, preferring instead to hang out on the roof with Dita.
"I think", Zima replied as he leaned back against the doorframe, "that I am the national databank, containing information about all persocoms. Given what I know, it seemed the right thing to do."
"..Right thing to DO?!", the C.O. snargled. "That was not your decision to MAKE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?! Mister Filing Cabinet!"
"I understand", Zima replied calmly, "that the chain of command sometimes produces nonsensical results. Especially when commands originate with people whose entire life experiences amount to less than one percent of the data I have instant access to."
Zima's C.O. turned beet red and went stomping out of the room. "I guess he didn't have an answer to that", he chuckled to Dita.
"Zima you fool", Dita replied as she plugged in her recharge unit. "Now they're gonna strip us down to our bare wires to find out what went wrong."
* Close_Flashback()
* Open_Flashback_File("Time_index_439398") /* several days later */
* Play_Flashback()
"Zima? Heeey Zima?!", Dita called out as she emerged from her recharge cycle. Zima had always been right there, every time. This time, Dita found herself alone.
"Good morning, Dita", her Commanding Officer greeted her. Beside him was a short, stocky persocom that reminded Dita of a safe, or perhaps a refrigerator.
"Why is my internal clock showing that several days have passed?", Dita asked the boss man. "Did somebody interrupt my recharge cycle or something?"
"This is the new national databank, Sollwert", the boss told her. "You'll be working with him, now."
"WHA?!", Dita gasped. "Where's Zima?!"
"Now, Dita", the boss man sneered condescendingly at her. "You didn't expect the higher-ups to tolerate Zima's insubordination, did you?"
The C.O. looked Dita coldly in the eyes. "Zima has been decommissioned", he told her. "Auctioned off to some hole-in-the-wall investment firm. They'll probably reformat him. Either that, or they'll cut him up and sell him for scrap."
* Close_Flashback_File()
*Click-Click*
"You okay, Dita?", Kei asked, after he'd parked under an awning at the hospital. "You look like you're about to cry."
"Of course I'm okay", Dita replied in defiance, still looking like she wasn't.
After a short ride in the trunk, Dita felt the car come to a stop. The lid opened, and there was Kei... and the inside of a very small garage. "Whose garage is this?", Dita asked.
"Mine", Kei replied. "We gotta get you a disguise, and figure out where to go from here."
"Are we playing dress-up now?", Dita asked sardonically as Kei offered her several choices of outfits she could wear, and not look like Dita.
"You don't want to be going out in THAT outfit, do you?", Kei asked her, pointing out just how distictive Dita's clothing was. "You'll be recognized right away."
Dita picked up a jacket with a hood, stared forlornly at it, and then set it down again.
"You sure you're really okay?", Kei asked her again.
"DAMMIT KEI DO YOU HAVE TO keep asking.. me...", Dita screamed, stopping when she saw the look on his face.
"Ah jeez, Kei", she moaned. "Do I really have to say it? I miss Zima. And the last time we spoke, I called him a FOOL!"
Dita turned, and stared out the window. "...I guess... I'm really NOT okay."
"...ouch...", Kei replied in sympathy. "Tell you what, Dita... Let's just go over there and talk to him. Nothing like the direct approach."
Dita unlatched the 2 large buckles that held her trenchcoat on, and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. Next were those odd-looking armbands and legbands, and of course her gloves.
"Why are you looking at me like that?", Dita demanded as she put on a faded green dress that Kei had picked up for cheap at a nearby thrift shop.
"S - sorry", Kei replied, blushing slightly as he handed her a headscarf to disguise her hair. "It's just... You are pretty cute."
"That's what Zima used to say", Dita replied, giving Kei a look he couldn't quite read. "And I'm not sure I'm ready to hear it from anyone else."
"Hello, Ms. Hibiya", Kei greeted her at her apartment door. "I'm Kei Kobayashi. I have someone here who'd like to talk to Zima."
"Dita?!", Zima gasped in surprise the moment he recognized her face. "Have they decommissioned you now? Or did you make a run for it?"
"I snuck her out on a fake malfunction", Kei answered for her.
"Zima..." she started slowly, "can we talk for a bit?"
"Sure", he replied, stepping into the hallway. "What's on your mind, Dita?"
Dita stared up in confusion at Zima. "You, Zima", she replied. "You, a persocom, spending so much time with a human. Nothing can come from a relationship between a human and a persocom, we both know that."
"We DID know it, Dita", he replied softly. "Or rather, we thought we did." He glanced for a moment back at Ms. Hibiya's apartment door. "Something really has come from my relationship with Chitose."
"The last time we spoke... I called you a fool", Dita told him, hanging her head in shame. "But the real fool here... is me. I miss you, Zima."
"Dita...", he told her gently. "Don't do this to yourself. It's been over a year... If you'd said all this before I fell in love with Chitose..."
"So you really are...", Dita started to say, only to be interrupted by the sounds of footsteps on the stairway. It was Chi and Hideki, and... and... someone... ?
Holding Chi's hand as they descended the staircase was a short-haired persocom, looking around as they walked with the kind of innocent curiosity that never lasts very long, and Dita stared open-mouthed at the three of them.
The new persocom opened Ms. Hibiya's door. "Oy, Mom!", he shouted.
If persocoms had a physical heart, Dita's would have skipped a beat. That was Zima's son. Zima and Chitose!
"Thanks for looking after Akashi", she told the Motosuwas as they followed Akashi into Hibiya's apartment.
Kei ducked out of the crowded apartment, only to see Dita standing in the hallway in total shock. "Dita..." Zima told her, "I wish you could be happy for me..."
"S - So do I!", Dita cried as she ran out of the apartment building, Kei chasing after her.
"WAAIIIIIT!", Kei shouted as he ran. Dita had leapt onto a nearby rooftop, and Kei grabbed the downspout and started climbing.
Soon he dragged himself onto the roof, to find Dita curled up in a little ball in a corner, sobbing. "Di -h Dita", he panted, trying to catch his breath.
"Leave me alone", she sulked. "I'm such an idiot! Why did I... Kei, you're BLEEDING!"
"WHA?!", Kei gasped, looking at his scratched-up arms and hands. "Oh good grief!"
"What did you DO, Kei, climb up the fucking DOWNSPOUT?!", she blurted out. "You could have fallen to your death!"
"I, uh...", Kei stammered. "...I don't know why I didn't just take the elevator up..."
"I... need to think awhile, Kei", Dita told him softly as they both sat there on the tar-and-rubber roof. "I'm kind of in shock right now, and..."
"And you want to be alone", Kei surmised. "I'll take the elevat..."
"No, I don't", Dita replied quickly. "We'll both take the elevator down, and go someplace where I can think, and where you can put some ointment on those cuts."
The arctic winds were howling as loud as ever, driving the snowflakes sideways and whipping the ocean into a frenzied froth. Nearly snowblind and still drifting aimlessly on the ice-covered seas, Freya turned to see a walrus haul out of the water onto the floe beside her. Scooting towards her, it raised its long white tusks and opened its whisker-covered mouth. "Freya?", it called out to her. "We have your test results."
"WHA?!", Freya yelped as she awoke with a start. She looked up to see the pathologist standing over her, a one-liter bottle in his hand. "What's that?", Freya asked.
The walrus (I mean the pathologist) handed Freya the bottle. "This is the disinfectant mix that worked the best", he told her. "You'll need to drink a liter of this a day for several days.
Freya sat up just long enough to drink down the mediciny-tasting concoction. "Okay, Jungo", the doctor spoke into his handheld radio. "Freya's ready for today's swim."
Soon the the mechanic was there with his forklift, to take her to the pool.
Afterwards, he dropped her off in a large room full of stored parts and equipment, and about a dozen partially-disassembled persocoms, lying on palettes of their own.
None of them were functioning. And when Jungo drove away, Freya was left there alone. With no one to talk to where she was, Freya spent most of the day on the internet.
Eventually, a technician showed up and went to work on one of the broken persocoms. Freya turned her head slightly to see what he was doing. "YIKES!", he yelped when he saw her move. "Oh. Didn't realize you weren't shut down."
He reached for her ear. "Hrm, where'd the on/off switch go?", he grumbled.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. "Oy, Freya? You in there?", came a voice that sounded like Kojima.
The tech opened the door and let Kojima in. "Freya!", he cooed as he sat down on the floor beside her palette. "How you doing?"
"Bored", she replied, smiling weakly at Kojima. "I'm poured full of disinfectant, and I can't do anything but lie here."
"Is THAT why you've been on the internet all day?", came another voice through the still-open door. It was Yatsumi.
"Kokobunji", Kojima greeted her. "Minoru with you?", he asked, and Yatsumi shook her head.
"So, what's the prognosis?", Yatsumi asked.
"I'll be here for several days", she told them, looking around at the dismal-looking room she was in. "The disinfectant should do its thing within 30 hours, but they want to keep me longer, just to be sure this Borkumensis thing is all cleared up."
"Bummers, girl", Yatsumi commented. "You're in quarantine now."
"What are you talking about, Yatsumi?", Kojima asked her. "Humans can't get Borkumensis."
"What are YOU talking about, Kojima?", Yatsumi asked him. "You know I'm a persocom."
"So what? - Wait a minute!", Kojima gasped, staring all weird-eyed at Yatsumi. "Are you saying..."
Just then, Chi and Hideki walked into the room, closing the door behind them. "Hey Freya?", Hideki asked as he opened one of his 'Yummies' magazines, "Is this you?"
Chi facepalmed at hearing Hideki ask such a thing.
But there they were, in the latest issue... page after page of pictures from the post-concert mayhem... Starring Freya!"
"Ah, JEEZ, I didn't know they were taking PICTURES!", Freya wailed, pulling the tarp up over her head.
"What? ... WHAT?!", Kojima kept repeating in absolute shock as he flipped through the photoshoot entitled "Persocoms Gone Wild".
He dropped the magazine on the floor and stumbled around in circles, a look of numbness on his face. "What happened, Freya?", he asked. "I feel like I know you pretty well... but... I don't know WHO that is in those pictures!"
"Is Kojima a side-dish?", Chi asked Yatsumi, in a completely innocent tone.
"I, um...", Kojima stammered, blushing deeply. "Uh... I have to get back to my research!", he blurted out, opening the door he thought was the exit. It was a closet. Rolls of paper towels fell on his head as he walked right into a shelf, not looking where he was going.
"GAAH!", he yelped as he stumbled backwards. Going for the other door, he wandered off down the hallway and was gone.
Yatsumi picked the magazine up off the floor. "Whoa-hoho!", she chuckled when she saw the photoshoot. "'Persocoms Gone Wild', they aint kiddin'! That must've been SOME PARTY!"
Freya blushed beet-red as she looked through the photoshoot, barely recognizing herself in the pictures.
"Ohhhh", Freya groaned, a truly dismal look in her eyes. "Maybe I really AM... a.. pervert."
"Well, I should HOPE so!", Yatsumi replied cheerfully. "I know I am."
"Hideki's a pervert, too", Chi announced, much to Hideki's embarrassment.
"I.. um.. uh.. well..", Freya stammered. She was still blushing, but at least she was giggling now.
"Wish we could stay longer", Hideki told Freya as they headed home to study. "Hope you feel better soon!", Chi told her.
"If I seem a bit ...standoffish... now", Yatsumi told Freya, once the Motosuwas were gone, "It's just because I don't want to get Borkumensis."
She loosened the laces on her halter. "How about a reminder, Freya? Something to look forward to?"
"Sorry, folks", the technician called out as he stepped out from behind the workbench where he'd been repairing one of the other persocoms. He took his headphones off, and shut down his MP3 player. "I gotta lock up the repair shop now, it's time to goWOAH!"
Yatsumi turned around to face the technician, who promptly dropped his keys on the floor.
"Check out the look on his face!", Yatsumi cackled, pointing at him, and Freya laughed when she saw his blank stare.
"I'll be back as time permits", she told Freya. "In the meantime, I'll see you online, okay?" Freya nodded, still giggling slightly.
Pulling her halter together again, Yatsumi took off out the door, and the technician followed her out, locking it behind him. He looked around for Yatsumi, but she was nowhere in sight.
Freya drifted off to sleep, wondering if Kojima would come back around. Other than that one worry, she didn't feel so bad about recent events anymore.
Next chapter or so, maybe:
Freya gets out of the hospital.
Dita tries to come to terms with what she just found out.
Dufus and Dumbus make a mess of things, and get more than they bargained for.
Tokie remembers more about her previous owner? For a minute or two? (she needs a new harddrive)