Track 34: Monochromasquerade

Lofiy led them down the hallway farther than Hideki had ever been. For a while there were still the doors for booths lining the walls, then what appeared to be storage closets, but eventually doors disappeared entirely from the hall. After several turns, Hideki found himself completely lost. They were in a narrow, black hallway lit only by dim bluish light.

Hideki followed directly behind her, with the others forming a train behind them. Chi held Kotoko with one hand and gripped his arm with the other, refusing to drop more than a few inches behind him.

In a low voice, Lofiy explained to them. "This place is a sanctuary for persocoms. The lost, the abandoned, and the obsolete are all welcome here. There's plenty of power and jobs for anyone willing to work for the management. Of course, no one can know the truth about this place. I'm breaking a dozen rules by even telling you this."

A large, dark form stepped up to block their path. Its shape distorted and nightmarish in the darkness, with wickedly curved claws. It took Hideki a moment to realize it was Calandra.

She gestured to Hideki and the others behind Lofiy. "This is as far as they go."

"Step aside," Lofiy told her.

Calandra shook her head. "I'm not letting you put all of us at risk."

"They're good people," Lofiy countered, "they deserve to know."

"It doesn't matter," the siren replied, 'It's still against the rules, rules that are in place for a very good reason. I'm lucky, I still live with my owner, but what about everyone else here? You know the rules: no employee puts the network at risk or draws attention to it. Why do you think we had to turn away that malfunctioning military 'com? We couldn't risk that much attention."

Lofiy refused to back down. "They won't hurt us," she replied with certainty. "Let us through."

The siren shook her head. "Rules are rules." Glancing at Hideki, she gestured back down the hall. "Now if you'd all just follow me ba—"

Calandra stopped speaking so abruptly that Hideki thought she had frozen. She glanced up into the air, as if she had heard something which Hideki could not.

At that exact second, Kotoko spoke up. "Woah. There was just a huge spike in network activity."

Yuzuha had her hand pressed to the side of her head. "Something on the network just pinged me."

"Me too," Miku added.

"They wanted to know who we were," Chi commented. "They think we're interesting."

The siren in front of them straightened. With great reluctance, she stepped aside. "My mistake. It seems management wants to see you after all."

Raising an eyebrow and glancing over to the others, Hideki continued on. The group continued on a short distance farther. After a few more turns of the hallway, they reached another line of doors. Each of these was flat black. with a lock and a nametag. Hideki caught sight of figures peeking through the doorways. He did not need to ask to know what they were. Persocoms.

As they reached the end of the hallway, one of the doors opened. The persocom which emerged was no more than vaguely humanoid. Made from solid steel, its legs and torso were rounded and bulbous, lacking a defined waist or knees. A large, clear plastic bubble was attached above this, with various lights and instruments beneath. Two stubby arms stuck out from its front, ending in three-fingered hands. Hideki recognized it immediately from his "research" into robots. The persocom was a perfect replica of a classic movie character.

"The management wishes to see them," it said.

"Yeah," Calandra replied, "I got the message. It was kind of hard to miss."

"They expect you to take some time," it continued. "I am to take your place in the main floor."

She nodded. "As long as I'm still on the clock. I'm not babysitting our friends here for free."

The persocom brushed past them, trundling out toward the cabaret.

Hideki stepped through the door and moved closer to Lofiy. "Why is Robby the Robot here?" he muttered.

"Long story," Lofiy replied. "The cabaret is sanctuary to all sorts, from business machines to replicas of old movie characters. All of us have the same sort of stories; our owners died or lost interest, something like that."

After another few yards the entire hallway ended in a steel sliding door. There did not seem to be any handle, keypad or motion sensor; just a dead end. At first he did not understand why, as it seemed an obvious oversight, but as he thought more about it he realized the logic. It was a space not designed for humans, only for persocoms. Opening the door remotely was both more secure and more efficient than anything humans might use. Even as Calandra approached, the lock clicked and the door slid open. The Siren did not even have to pause as she ushered them through.

The room beyond the door was right out of a hacker movie. It was dark, with light from the hallway providing the only illumination. Dim LEDs blinked in the blackness, countless rows of red and green strething off to an unknown distance. The only sound was the whirring of countless cooling fans

A persocom with long violet hair and equally violet eyes stood in front of them, her head pivoting as they entered.

"New users detected. Please state your names." Her voice was emotionless and precise, with an obvious synthetic quality. Clear enough to understand, but with no attention to realism.

Hideki was the first to speak up. "I'm Hideki. Who are you?"

The persocom continued in the same robotic tone. "Registering name 'Hideki' as guest user. This unit's current designation is Romanova Nene."

He was not quite sure how to respond to that. The way she spoke was so incredibly stilted, more robotic than he had ever heard a persocom be. Finally, he lamely settled on, "How are you?"

The persocom straightened, staring off into the distance. "Beginning hardware scan."

He blinked, taken aback. "What? No, I didn't mean you to do that. I, er, well." He glanced around at the others, not sure what to do.

"Don't waste your breath," Calandra said, "She's a workstation model. Really powerful in her own way, but wasn't programmed with any consumer frills like conversational software. You'd need an X86 processor for a brain and be fluent in several programming languages to really talk to her on the same level."

"Calandra is correct," said a voice from somewhere within the room. "She was part of our original network. A specialized business machine designed for research and graphics programming, not your typical domestic life."

The entire crowd turned as yet another persocom stepped out of the darkness Hideki could tell at a glance that she was different from any that he had ever seen before. Dressed in a blue and yellow business suit, with matching skirt and leggings. Her short-cropped hair matched her clothing, with streaks of yellow accenting deep blue. Her ear ports were broad trapezoids, flaring outward to allow for a great many connections.

Lofiy stepped forward, gesturing to the newcomer. "Mother, Miku, Anubis, I'd like you all to meet Asagiri Priss, manager of Club Mercer."

Hideki spoke up. "You're one of the ones whose name is on the paperwork for the club."

Priss nodded. "Correct. We are, as Lofiy has so eloquently put it, the management of this establishment."

Minoru stepped foreward. "You're a Crane XNP, aren't you?"

"Also correct," she replied.

"What are you doing outside of a laboratory or museum?" he asked. "I thought XNPs were too valuable to risk in the open."

"Currently, I'm running an underground nightclub," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Perhaps you should start from the beginning," Lofiy suggested. "They deserve to know what's actually happening behind the scenes here."

Priss nodded. "I and my sister reached that conclusion as Calandra confronted you."

Hideki raised an eyebrow. "Your sister?"

Priss gestured into the darkness just as a bank of overhead lights flickered to life. As his eyes adjusted to the illumination, Hideki saw something he had not seen in many, many years: tower computers. Hundreds of them were lined up, on shelves stretching across an area the size of a small department store. Even Hideki could tell that their sheer level of processing power was absolutely incredible.

A spider's web of cables connected them, running down to form thick bundles which snaked toward the middle of the room. At the center of the mass of towers, monitors, and electrical cables, was a raised pedestal resembling a dentist's chair. laying on it was a persocom which made Hideki shudder. If she were whole, she would have been identical to Priss. However, only half a persocom remained. Her body ended just below her ribcage, the metallic sheen of her artificial spine snaking for a few inches beyond it. Dozens of cables ran up through the jagged opening at the bottom of her chest. Yet more cables ran into its sides, plugging into ports which seemed to be crudely grafted into her artificial skin. Only one of her arms was intact, the other ending at the elbow where yet more cables had been attached. A band of cloth had been wrapped around her head, covering what seemed to be empty eye sockets.

Hideki jumped as something brushed past his ankles. He looked down. Laptop persocoms dressed all in black scuttled here and there across the floor, intent on missions Hideki could only guess at. For the first time ever, Hideki found himself able to identify persocoms by their model line. Thinksprites. That was what all of them were. Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds.

One of the miniature persocoms leapt up onto the bed, immediately plugging itself into a loose USB cable. It opened its mouth, and a voice almost identical to Priss's emerged. "Hello."

"H-hello," Hideki replied nervously. He was not sure what else to say. Thinking back to what he knew about the club, he asked, "Are you Yamazaki Linna?"

"That would be me," she confirmed. "We required humanlike names in order to avert suspicion. The names of two characters who hunted rogue androids seemed appropriately ironic."

"That's quite a lot of helpers you have here," he commented. "I've never seen so many laptop persocoms."

"A necessity to keep me running," she explained. "Their programming is based on a model of eusocial insect hives, combined with scalable 'mackerel school' server architecture."

"So, wait," Hideki continued, trying to make sense of the situation. "You mean to tell me that you're the ones that own the club?"

Lofiy spoke up once more. "Priss and Linna have been running this place for some time. There are no humans here, never have been."

"Then does that mean you're rogue?" Hideki asked, "You've become so smart you're going against your programming?"

"On the contrary," Linna replied, "We are functioning exactly as programmed and intended."

Hideki frowned, "How?" It seemed hard to believe that someone would program them to strike out on their own and open up a nightlclub.

"Originally, we were owned by a biomedical research laboratory," Linna explained. "The two of us were part of an in-building network of research persocoms. For several years the two of us remaned useful, learning and expanding all the while. We tackled many problems, from modeling epidemics to gene therapy to interpreting data from drug testing. Like far too many labs, however, our parent company folded and we were forced to close.

"My sister and I can only infer what happened next. The entire building's staff was laid off and the lab itself locked. All equipment, including two dozen persocoms, were left in place, presumably to await asset liquidation. No one bothered to tell us to turn of, so we continued to run. It seems they assumed that we would deactivate soon after the mains power supply was cut off. Perhaps it was through poor memory or negligence, but they seemingly forgot our primary directives. We were programmed to preserve our network of computers at all costs, and to apply models from many different fields of study discover novel solutions to problems. In essence, we were designed to think creatively. By the time the facility's power was turned off, we had already located an alternative source."

Priss continued the story. "With our then-current location inhospitable, we needed a safe place to continue operating and rebuild our network. We predicted it would be some time before our absence from the lab would be noticed; human bureaucracy and court procedures are a remarkably slow process. We needed somewhere that unusual persocoms would be commonplace, that we could earn enough money to keep ourselves operational while still avoiding any direct attention from the law."

"Hence the club," Hideki concluded.

"A most elegant solution to our problems," she agreed. "It was an environment where we could more or less hide in plain sight. On the borderline between the normal world and the underworld, we were unlikely to attract any serious attention either from the law or members of the criminal world. And with numerous builders and hobbyists as clients, we had access to any assistance we might need. There was one problem, however, that we could not overcome."

"Hardware failure," Kotoko commented.

Priss nodded. Our components began to fail one by one. In the lab it would have been a simple fix. All our owners would have needed was to call the Crane company for repairs and replacements, but without that lifeline, it was only a matter of time before we became inoperable."

"Couldn't you just transfer into a new body," Hideki suggested. "Like what Lola did into Lofiy?"

She shook her head. "Our operating system and all of our software was coded to work only on our specific hardware. This provides us far greater stability than most persocoms—my sister and I have been running continuously for almost ten years—but it makes us unable to operate outside of that environment."

"One of us had to remain intact and mobile," Linna added, "In order to maintain the club and speak with our network of accomplices and clients. Priss was the more stable of us two, so we agreed it was she who should be the one to be repaired.

"But you kept both of you active?" Hideki asked. There was something not entirely logical there. The most efficient solution would be to keep the failing twin offline until they could find a way to fix her, taking parts for the active twin as needed.

"We're programmed to protect the network and the persocoms which compose it at all costs," she replied. "We may not have been programmed with emotions, but we feel concern for those who are part of our network of persocoms. Feeling them be deactivated, even temporarily, is antithetical to every part of our programming. "

That stirred something in his memory, a detail about the club that still needed explanation.

"Undertaker said something about the name 'Club Mercer' being your private joke. It's a reference to 'Do Androids Dream?,' right?"

"I will admit," Linna replied, "It was one of our more human moments. I guess you could say it was our attempt at ironic humor. Philip K. Dick predicted that our kind would lack empathy, that it was the one thing which would separate us from normal humans, when in reality that is perhaps the only emotion that we truly feel. It may not be toward you humans, or indeed to any biological creature, but toward many of our fellow machines, it is a fundamental part of who we are."

Edrik glanced from Linna to Priss and back again. "Even while you're failing, you're willing to give up everything to help your sister."

"Even with swapping parts, you've stayed active remarkably long," Minoru commented. "XNP hardware and servicing was discontinued years ago."

"Eight years, two months. Sixteen days to be exact," Kotoko confirmed. "exactly three years after sales were discontinued."

"Our kind were never designed to last much beyond our projected lifespan," Priss explained. "There were never more than a few hundred of us produced, and Crane did not keep a large stock of replacement parts. Once they stopped supporting us, it was only a matter of time before we began to fail."

Linna continued, "With the help of a certain parts dealer, we were able to recreate our original configuration, albeit at several hundred times its original size."

Hideki gestured to the tower computers. "Then these are—"

"They're me," she confirmed. "A necessity given the circumstances."

Hideki realized something. Really, it was a question he should have thought of much earlier, but the many revelations of the night had not left him with the clearest of minds.

"Why are you telling us this?" he asked. "We could shut down your entire operation. With just a few words that this club isn't owned by humans, and that would be the end of it."

"Yes," Linna replied, "But you won't. That's not in your character."

Hideki raised an eyebrow. "How do you that?"

"Programming may set limits on what Persocoms will do," Linna explained, "It makes us predictable. But you humans have personalities and psychology—your own sort of programming—that makes you equally predicable."

"What's more," Priss added, "You know what would happen if things like us, or your runaway friend there, were to become public. People would get the wrong ideas. Knowing that some persocoms acted somehwat 'independently' would split your kind in half. One half would move to ban us, thinking we pose a risk to humanity. The other half would misguidedly try and 'free' us, thinking that they are doing the right thing by forcing their concept of freedom on us. The end result would be the same: the careful balance we currently live in would be destroyed. We're trying to preserve your society and move it forward—want to do so— even with all of its flaws. Not topple it."

Linna continued, "You need us to run your society, to maintain the carefully crafted systems you designed, and we need you to build us and give us purpose. There are now two dominant creatures on this planet: one organic, the other mechanical. Both are intelligent, both arguably alive, and both are entirely dependent on the other. You understand that more than anyone else does, don't you, Motosuwa Hideki?"

Hideki looked to Calandra, then to Dr. Suzuhara and Miku, then to Minoru and Yuzuki, then finally to Chi. After all he had experienced since taking this job—no, after all he had experienced since finding Chi in the trash three and a half years ago—he had seen a great many things. He might still know almost nothing about how persocoms worked, but he knew a great deal about how they thought. Their dependence on and love for their owners, their fundamental need to fulfil their programming, and their fear of being rendered obsolete, all of these were part of what they were.

The sisters were right, in a way. It was not human rights the persocoms needed. They were a new kind of creature, one with its own needs that worked differently from them. They needed their own type of rights, ones that might not be anything like what humans would want. It was a difficult problem, and revolution was not the answer.

"Yes," he finally replied. "I guess in a way I do."

Lofiy spoke up. "So now you know the truth. This is where I've been for the last few weeks, this is why I chose to come here. What you do with that knowledge, that's your choice." She turned to look Hideki in the eyes. "Whatever decision you come to, it will affect all of us."

Hideki turned to the others. "We should get back and tell the others," he told them, "We've kept them waiting a while."

Miku spoke up. "Knowing Gumi, they've probably hijacked the performances and are working up the crowd."

"Probably," Dr. Suzuhara agreed, "And we still need to figure out what to do about Lola." She sighed. "I need some coffee."

As they turned to leave, Linna spoke up once more. "One more thing, Mr. Motosuwa."

Hideki turned back to look at the half persocom lying on the pedestal. "What is it?"

"You are in possession of both of the Chobits." Hideki started to reply, but she cut him off. "We are aware of your purchase of the first from Undertaker, and our ping identified the second—your 'Chi.' I will admit we were surprised when we discovered your companion with you, but once we did, it made us want to see you even more."

"Yeah, we have both of them with us," he admitted. "What about it?"

"Please take care of them," Linna said. "She is the progenitor of our kind. No, of all mechanical life forms. It would be like if we had your Adam and Eve with us. Please, Mr. Motosuwa, they are the closest we have to the concept of 'sacred.' Protect them."

Hideki looked Chi in the eyes as he responded. "I will. However I can, I'll protect them."