Analog Hack

by Infinity Caliber

Set a hundred years from now, in a familiar yet futuristic vision of Japan where society is run by incredibly human-looking robots, a boy meets a strange girl. With society divided on the line between progress and losing sight of the definition of 'humanity', a choice looms for 17-year-old Endo Arato. Is it easier to change oneself to fit society or change society to fit oneself?

1. Fated Reunion

Chapter 1: Fated Reunion

Summary:

"I am an object in human form."

"Even so, the human heart can be moved by that which does not possess a soul."

Set a hundred years from now, in a familiar yet futuristic vision of Japan where society is run by incredibly human-looking robots, a boy meets a strange girl. With society divided on the line between progress and losing sight of the definition of 'humanity', a choice looms for 17-year-old Endo Arato. Is it easier to change oneself to fit society or change society to fit oneself? The choices he'll make will decide the next stage in Human-AI relationships.

---

Whenever he slept, Arato found his dreams revolving on two variations of the same memory. The first was a nightmare. A never-ending mass of flames that swelled and shot forth to engulf all in its path. While the entire world burnt around him, Arato could only find himself helplessly swallowed by the tide of charcoal black and red heat.

The other dream was less invasive. It was an image of a dog wagging its tail and gazing up at him.

It is said that reoccurring dreams have a base in perceived trauma or subconscious beliefs. For Arato, that trauma lay in the past.

Soon after entering elementary school, an accident with an explosion occurred which left Arato with burns all over his entire body. At the hospital itself, surrounded by nothing else but the regulated beeps of medical equipment, Arato could only watch people as they bustled around his ward. Back in those days, his father was often caught up with work and his little sister was still an infant, so it was only once in a blue moon that he received visitors.

Possessing the malleable mind of a child his age, the infrequent visits only served to depress Arato and make him feel worthless in the eyes of his family.

His recovery wasn't as bad as his injuries. With the help of an easy-to-reach button, all he needed to do was to push that button whenever he felt the discomfort creeping upon him and his world would fall into a muted silence from the painkillers. Soon after, the sounds would fade and his vision would blur until he was drawn back into a slumber.

One day, when he recovered enough to walk around the front garden of the hospital, he came across a white puppy. Or rather to say, it had entered his world. That was because by the time he noticed its presence, it had already established an interest in him and it would have been difficult to shake him off.

"This little thing wants to be your friend, Arato."

A young woman with an empty blank spot that passed for her face said to him. No matter how many times he revisited this dream, Arato could never recall the face of the nurse. In contrast to that, he clearly remembered all of the adorable traits of the puppy very well.

Like how when he pet its head, it would beg with its paws for him to tickle its chin as well. Or the fluffy, short white fur that coated his body. Or how eagerly it would wag its little tail and bounce off the ground to nip at his legs. Or how it would roll over and swim with its legs in the air as he begged for belly rubs.

A few days later after he met the puppy, the nurse spoke again. A boy around the same age as him stood next to her.

"Arato, this boy says he would like to play with you and the puppy too."

If he was older, Arato would have known right off the bat that the boy himself was too shy to express his desires and it was the nurse, who by playing the role of a concerned adult, pushed the request forward and made it sound like it came from the boy instead.

But he was not, and thus he shied away from meeting the boy's eyes. The thin and sickly-looking boy whose limbs looked like feeble matchsticks. He would later learn that the boy had difficulty eating regular hospital food and had to receive all his nutrients through an IV.

However, in contrast to the gloomy atmosphere between the both of them, the puppy's large eyes were shining in excitement. It ran around in circles with its tag wagging and tongue lolling out unsure as to which boy it should now play with.

'The heart is moved by that which the eye perceives.'

That was the message that resonated with Arato. The human heart could be shaken even by that which was not human.

Moved by the puppy, Arato looked at the boy's face. It carried the faint expression of someone in a daze, lost and detached from the world around him. Someone unable to even cry for help. As if confirming that, the thin and pitiful muscles of his throat trembled silently.

There were soft patting noises as the puppy bounced on the grass. Its tail was wagging so hard it'd turned into a blur.

"It looks like it's having lots of fun."

A warm feeling filled his chest and for some reason, Arato felt like crying. The positive emotions from a non-human existence flowed into him and in turn affected him, a human, as well.

Watching it made him happy. That was the conclusion that Arato came to.

Though the other boy's injuries were not as severe as his, he still had his lips shut tight and remained quiet.

Moving his body that was dulled by the painkillers was a trial in itself. But Arato felt he needed to make the first move.

"I'm Arato."

Summoning up all his courage, he took a tentative step and extended his hand.

"Let's be friends."

---

"It's only April, why's it so hot..."

Endo Arato groaned out loud as he shifted in his chair. That was the downside of having a seat by the window. Even now, he could feel the sleeves on his jacket heating up from the intense sunlight coming in through the classroom window. Glancing towards the ceiling, he begged the AC gods to deliver their cool blessings onto him.

"Look at you, confidently sleeping through class like a boss."

A voice came from above him. Arato rolled his head off the arm he was using for support and turned to gaze at the person approaching him.

Kaidai Ryo. He was the slick, dashing sort of guy with long bangs that went around school with the top button of his uniform undone. A stark difference from the thin and sickly boy he'd once been.

"Doesn't sound like much coming from someone who clocked out early as well."

Someone said from the sides. The voice belonged to Suguri Kengo, another friend of Arato whose seat was right beside his. Kengo liked to project himself as the rational, logical type of person but behind his glasses, his eyes often betrayed his passionate emotions by lighting up during a particularly intense debate.

"I finished my prep work yesterday." Ryo replied indifferently. "By the way, keeping up with class material and not getting caught helps."

Arato always found it strange that someone like Ryo was even going to an ordinary high school like theirs.

"Must be nice, having all those brains and nothing to do with them." Arato said.

Ryo remained indifferent but seemed strangely pleased by Arato's words. "The only reason we have schools around anymore is so we can practice getting along with other people. Schools only exist because the government views them as a place to instill in us youth the 'core model of human society'. Or in other words, to pull students away from their interfaces in order to prevent them from getting too obsessed over it."

Even in the 22nd century, the belief that one's school life was a flower-shaped stage of creation still persisted. Arato wondered if it was due to the entertainment media that promoted it as such or because of it being a uniquely Japanese concept commonly shared among its youth.

Pouncing upon that excuse as a smokescreen, the government, who didn't even bother trying to be subtle about their concerns regarding the fertility rate on a good day, seized upon the idea that a 'school' was an ideal place to create an environment suitable for people to gain the necessary experience in building and maintaining long-lasting human relationships up till the adult age.

This was the contemporary mainstream thinking that formed the image of a 'school' in Japanese society. Therefore, the time allocated for them in regards to breaks and student interactions was much higher as compared to schools in the past. Of course, as only a fixed amount of hours existed in a day, that meant allocating fewer hours towards subject material over such social interactions. Obviously, this had the side effect of lowering the overall quality of education provided by schools, along with complaints among the Conservatives that Japan was losing its edge in regards to global education standards. But, with the counterargument being that with the widespread availability of information and ease of delivering self and assisted learning modules, a physical classroom was only a symbolic icon for education, the Japanese government accepted it as a necessary evil to push back against the fertility crisis.

Arato wondered if, in their lifetimes, there would ever come a time where it didn't matter how smart anyone was anymore when it came to school admission requirements.

"You rich kids sure have it nice. Even your excuses for slacking off are high-class." Kengo said as he transferred the notes that he'd taken during class from the school terminal to his own personal one.

"Hey, don't worry. By my calculations, in about ten years the only work we men will have left to us is getting friendly with the ladies." Ryo said, spreading out both of his hands in a melodramatic pose.

Arato felt like half of Class 2A, or to be exact, the twenty female students that comprised of it, were sending icy glares of scorn their way.

He resisted the urge to cover his face and groan.

"It's amazing how you can say this kind of thing with a straight face."

"What makes you say that?"

"You've hit on every single girl in class." Arato deadpanned.

"That was my quota for the year." Ryo protested. "A girl a week. Of course, that includes girls from other schools as well. I say I worked pretty hard at it."

It was because of this behavior from Ryo that the three of them stood out in class. And not in a good way. Ever since they changed class and entered their second year, the handsome, intelligent Ryo had gone around flirting with every single girl in his vicinity. Naturally, word soon got out and eventually, the Class 2A double X chromosome faction banded together in a show of unity to brand Ryo as the lowest scum of the Earth.

On their male classmate's end, they avoided the trio as well. Naturally, no boy their age would be caught dead associating with a guy who the girls were all clearly avoiding. He and Kengo found out to their misfortune that the unspoken social stigma applied to them as well. The cost of being seen as part of Ryo's 'clique' was steep indeed.

Even in the 22nd century, the hammering of nails which stood out and all of its implications still existed.

'Human behavior was the only constant throughout history.' That was what Arato took away. Either that or the Japanese truly were a stagnant race.

A flashing notification on his desk screen broke Arato from his idle thoughts. He pulled out his card-sized terminal to check the notice. What he saw made his shoulders slump and he couldn't help but grumble.

"The hell? How come I'm the only one with extra homework?"

"Obviously." Ryo quipped.

"You're lucky you're not losing marks." Kengo said.

Arato rolled his eyes at the lack of support forthcoming from his friends. "Hey, wasn't it you who said school only existed for breaks and socializing?"

"Like I said, ten more years." He grinned. They continued their idle banter as they left the school.

"Guess what. I got a date with a cute girl from the neighboring high school on Sunday. You should come along too, Arato." Ryo said, grabbing his arm from behind.

"Nah, I'll pass. I promised Yuka I'll play with her..."

"Liar! Yuka isn't gonna twist you around when she knows you're running low on cash."

"Stop acting like you're an expert on my little sister." Arato sniped.

"You sure like to involve Arato in everything, don't you?" Kengo dryly noted.

At his deadpan tone, Ryo flashed a huge grin.

"It's more fun when Arato is around."

Arato wryly noted that if intelligence was considered a circle, then Ryo was someone who was so smart that he looped right back to being an idiot. Or maybe it was him and Kengo that infected him with their idiocy from hanging around him so much. The classic idiot trio of the three musketeers.

Outside of their classroom, the cityscape expanded. Residential districts with attached solar panels on both sides of the river shone in the reflected sunlight.

It was currently April, and their school had just entered its third quarter. The third semester was warm and comfortable, but it brought with it the exam season along with a multitude of career fairs to provide employment guidance for students. It was also the semester when the sports clubs emerged after spending an entire semester in their indoor practice grounds.

"Mid-terms... huh." Arato muttered under his breath as he dealt with the reality of every student. The May mid-term exams were less than a month and a half away. And following that another one and a half months later, their finals at the end of June.

"Did you know?" Kengo started. "Apparently, they used to start the first semester in April."

At the beginning of the 21st century, the education system in Japan transitioned to a September enrollment. This was due to an increase of Japanese students studying abroad in Europe and the United States. From these students came a strong request for Japan to synchronize their schedules with the West. While enrolling in September became increasingly common, not all schools followed in their footsteps and continued with the traditional April enrollment cycle. If Arato had to reckon a guess, the ratio would roughly be 3:7 with the majority of schools in Japan adopting the style of western enrollment in September, the minority being mostly private schools.

"Starting school in cherry blossom season? That doesn't feel right." Arado said.

By this point, even in Japan people found it strange that a hundred years ago, the school year began under the blooming cherry blossoms.

The route that Arato and his friends took home ran parallel to the Sumida River. On its sides, the path was lined with cherry blossom trees. As they passed the Kototoi bridge, they slipped past the broken monument at the head of the cantilever bridge. Arato glanced at the spots of blackened blood and fat on the asphalt bridge. They came from a time long ago, where countless refugees died as they huddled in fear under the bridge. It was a subtle yet brutal reminder of Japan's experience with air raids conducted by American B-29 bombers during the Second World War.

March 10th, 1945. The public information terminal on the bridge flashed the date of that slaughter. And yet today, Japanese and Americans were close friends on the world stage.

Time it seemed, does indeed heal all wounds. Arato thought to himself. Even the most bitter of enemies could become friends.

The path continued, taking them under a tunnel of cherry blossom trees, planted on either side of Bokutei Street.

"So, we doing hanami this year or what?" Arato asked, referring to the traditional Japanese custom of picnicking beneath the sakura during their blooming season. He had stopped beside a relatively new monument, which had been built on the bank of the Sumidagawa River. Forty-two years ago, a massive disaster called the 'Hazard' occurred there. The monument had been built to remind everyone of the disaster which turned the Honjo Azumabashi district into a pile of rubble. A wreath of flowers lay at its base, the main offerers being the elderly folks who recalled the disaster in living memory. As Arato and his friends moved closer to the monument, AR photos along with short accompanying descriptions began displaying themselves.

"Let's have a hanami this Sunday." Ryo spoke as he stripped off his school-issued blazer.

"You never give up, do you? How many did you invite with that persistence of yours?"

Sweat began to bead on Arato's face as he asked, working on a dial on the collar of his jacket. The rising heat of April was starting to be a pain to deal with.

"That hits the spot." He let out a sigh of pleasure as electricity flowed in the coolant elements inside his suit, which began to rapidly cool off. "It's the first time I set it to 'cool'."

"Four ladies." Ryo held up an equal amount of fingers as he smiled slyly.

"Well, you better go apologize to one of them." Arato said. "Since with me, you and Kengo that only makes the three of us."

"Hey, Arato." Ryo complained. "Don't make it sound like you two are the only friends I got."

"We are." Arato deadpanned.

"You're killing me here."

The trio continued to shoot the shit as they walked. The last fifty years had been a source of major land development around the old Sumida District Office. Beginning from the Azuma and Komagata bridges, the infrastructure of the district's streets had been overhauled into a more regular grid. The illuminants on the median strip shone brightly, forming a power transmission unit that sent wireless power to electric cars. When powered by the power transmission unit on highly developed roads, modern electric cars could essentially run forever until they broke down from mechanical issues.

Arato glanced towards the street, the flow of cars down the wide roads was running as smoothly as a river today as well.

This was due to the fact that in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, in order to regulate traffic and ease congestion, it was against the law to drive using the steering wheel of a vehicle. Outside of the twenty-three wards, in areas such as Tachikawa and Yokota, manual driving was still allowed which led to the high popularity of use among young users seeking joyrides.

As the amount of on-road vehicles varied, the acceleration and braking systems of each vehicle were automatically adjusted as necessary. This combined with the widespread adoption of self-driving functions made traffic jams a thing of the past.

The trio stopped before a junction. As Kengo and Ryo continued talking, Arato noted a pair across the intersection. An old lady was trying to cross the road with the assistance of a girl in a yellow jacket. She had grabbed the old lady by the hand and was walking her across.

The traffic light seemed like it was about to change. And Arato doubted that the pair would be able to make it in time.

His body moved without hesitation.

"I'm going to give her a hand." He said.

"Hey, Arato!" Ryo called out after him.

"That girl isn't human, you know." Kengo stated in an uninterested tone.

There wasn't anything off about the girl in terms of her appearance. And as such Kengo's words might have come off as strange to the uninformed. But Kengo was a nerd with a capital 'N'. He possessed a wide array of knowledge when it came to machinery and computers.

"Interrupting an interface during its work is just going to put more load on their processor." Kengo said.

'Interface'.

A slang used to refer to hIEs (humanoid Interface Elements). They were tools made to resemble the human form. By mimicking the form of a human, it was able to perform most jobs that required human dexterity. Thus, even a country like Japan with its shrinking population had no issues with labor shortages.

And because of that, the world had become quite convenient indeed.

"I'm still going to help." Arato replied as he headed over.

When the female hIE noticed his approach, she smiled at him, lines forming on her artificial skin.

"I'll take this side."

"Thank you." The old woman said, her back hunched over with age.

It was not possible for humans to link their brains together to share their emotions directly. Thus, humans required 'gestures' to express themselves. Actions that were universally agreed upon by society to signal and convey their current feelings.

In a world where androids had taken up all roles in society, that was the reality that faced Arato and the rest of humanity.

When he got back, his friends started needling him.

"One of these days you're going to get catfished, you know." They teased.

By the year 2105, the Honjo Azumabashi Subway Station had developed into a proper downtown. As they walked, a mixture of shoddy and sparkling buildings appeared. The contrast between the new and old buildings were stark in their material appearance. A grim reminder of the rebuilding efforts that followed after the Hazard.

"It's better to be sweet on girls, right?" Arato replied as he defended himself. "Why don't you guys lend a hand next time?"

"That's just a tool for humans." Ryo stated in a flat voice, as if he was speaking to a particularly dull child. "What's the point of helping a tool?"

There were hIEs all around them. The area that they were in was packed with commercial merchants dealing in the service industry. It was there that the work provided by hIEs were particularly welcome in resolving the labor crunch.

"That girl at the taiyaki stand." Kengo added as he pointed across the intersection at Asakusa Street, towards a girl with pretty blonde curls who was busy turning over the baking trays. "Did you know she's an hIE?"

"Same goes for the clerk at the soba shop and the receptionists running the registers over at Sky Tree." He pointed out. "They're all hIEs. Any hIE will run over to help an elderly person crossing the road. Its what they were programmed to do."

The Sky Tree. A broadcasting and observation tower in the Sumida district that also served as the tallest building in Japan, and second tallest overall in the world. Arato made a mental note to bring Yuka there to play one day.

"Seems like they're all hard at work." Arato said as they passed the taiyaki stand. He flashed the blonde a smile, with the girl returning in kind.

"Would you like a taiyaki?" She smiled. Despite the muggy heat of April, there was not a drop of sweat to be seen on her.

"They're not." Ryo cut through. His eyes were frigid when he looked at the girl. A far cry from the way he looked at the girls in their class. "Arato. You're the type of guy who thinks cheering on a motor will make it go faster, aren't you?"

"I'm free to make my own interpretations." Arato said weakly. It was a childish reply, Arato knew that himself. But it was all he had to go against Ryo's bulletproof logic.

"You're living in a fairy tale." Ryo coldly shot him down. "It's just a fantasy."

"Well, it seems like fairy tale land has had a scientific revolution."

"That's what I call progress. Even unscientific plebeians like you spend every day surrounded by technology." They weren't even bothering to mince their words, Arato wryly noted. At some point, it felt like his friends were just running their mouths.

"At least thanks to hIEs taking over the service industry, the number of SMS cases have been steadily dropping. It seems that people aren't so picky after all, as long as it comes from a woman." Kengo added.

As their banter continued aimlessly, Arato noticed something at the corner of his vision.

Something that should have not been there. A brutal scene that should not have existed in the peaceful and civilized society that was modern-day Japan. From one of the many alleyways that lined the street, a black cat was dragging an 'object'. Every now and then, the cat would stop to bite and pull at the 'object', which was almost as large as the adult cat itself, before continuing to drag it around as if it was a toy to amuse itself with.

"Oh shit."

Arato exhaled harshly, a lightheaded feeling in his head as his cerebral cortex finally completed the processing of the 'data' that his mind was denying access to. A few seconds passed, but they felt like an eternity. Regarding the identity of the 'object', his brain had finally caught up to the current image of reality that his eyes were providing him with.

It was an arm. Smooth and white. He felt his knees almost buckle.

"Oh shit...!"

His cry spooked the cat. It leaped back into the alleyway, the bit of skin that it was nibbling on tearing off with a ripping sound.

Kengo, who stopped at his outburst, casually caught his arm to support him.

"What, again?" He asked as he approached the broken arm. "Recently, there's been people who go around busting up hIEs."

Kengo picked up the arm and shook it as if it was a piece of waste. A liquid with a blood-like consistency dripped onto the ground from the white tubes jutting out of the severed arm.

The sight of it made Arato swallow the bile in his throat.

"I've seen leftover scrap here and there." Kengo said clinically as if he was describing the weather instead of a gruesome event. "What a waste."

"What a waste?" Arato echoed in disbelief. "Don't you feel sorry for them?"

He couldn't stop the rapid beats of his heart. To Arato, the pale arm that Kengo was waving around was no different from a human one. There was no way he could force himself to remain calm. Even if the matter of fact was that the severed arm came from a machine and not a human, Arato's sense of right and wrong refused to allow his internal perception of reality to bend towards that logic.

"Hey." Kengo replied. "I mean it more like in the sense if someone turned something that cost as much as a car into scrap, I would consider it a waste."

Arato wasn't listening. His world had come to a stop. Wrong things were wrong, no matter how one might try to frame it.

He reached out to touch the severed arm.

"Don't touch it." Ryo caught his shoulder to stop him. "We don't know where it came from."

Arato mashed his teeth together. As usual, Ryo was right again in that infuriating manner. hIEs themselves may not have possessed the same human rights as them or the protection the civil code offered, but damaging one was still considered destruction of property. In other words, the area was a crime scene. And Ryo warnings were just that, to avoid them from getting questioned over a misunderstanding regarding the fingerprints they left behind.

But even still. When a machine with a human form was damaged, it was normal for one to empathize as such.

"We can't just dump it in the trash." Arato protested.

His mind went back to the girl in the yellow jacket. His heart twisted in pain when the thought that the severed arm could have been hers crossed his mind. A kind person like her didn't deserve such a fate.

"Don't get the wrong idea about them." Ryo said, his voice direct and blunt as he looked down on the severed limb with an empty gaze reserved for objects. "hIEs only do stuff for us because that's what the cloud that they're connected to is telling them. They have no free will. These machines only look like us because some big-brained marketing executive figured that they would sell well if they looked like humans and acted all nice. It's just brand propaganda."

"It's just a machine." Kengo echoed.

If one hadn't guessed by now, his friends weren't exactly fond of hIEs.

Though they were in the middle of a downtown area with Kengo holding what appeared to be a severed human arm, an act of surreal insanity that would have had people screaming in fear in a civilized society, there were few who spared them a glance as they passed by. There were some that merely frowned at them, but provided no further comment as they continued about their day. If the severed arm had belonged to a human instead, Arato was sure everyone would be reacting much differently.

With his brain finally synchronizing to the situation, Arato soon found his sense of danger rapidly cooling off along with his heart rate.

"Let's inform the police." He said. Despite his feelings diminishing, Arato still felt the heavy weight on his shoulders from walking away from what seemed like a piece of a human body. "I'd feel bad if we just threw it away. Besides, it's not right to just leave it here."

Even as the police arrived and took their statements, the uncomfortable feeling inside of him did not subside.

---

That night, an explosion occurred at the No.2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Group.

Rippling flames shot out from the base of one of the buildings in the research area, the earth rumbling and shaking as the shock wave passed over it. Right after, thick, oily black smoke surged out like a rolling cloud from the building's ground floor entrance. The greasy smell of soot and twisted metal hung in the air.

The windows of the fifteen-floor tall building shattered outwards, the shards reflecting the moonlight in a dazzling display. Its walls were shaking from the fierce power of the explosion. Every single light in the building went out with the windows as well.

This was also the moment when the employees of the Tokyo Research Lab of MemeFrame, the corporation which was the dominant player in the world of hIE behavioral control with a 90% market share, died in a blaze of flames.

The time was 10:04 pm. The full moon was out tonight.

A bulky military-style helicopter carrying a large container entered from the direction of the sea and hovered above the area above the No.2 Landfill Island Group. It belonged to the PMC hired by MemeFrame, Hands Of Operation (HOO). The scramble order had came in as soon as the explosion occurred. After taking off from Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, they were now here to take control of the situation as ordered by their client.

"We have been authorized twenty minutes of fly time by the Japanese Army and the US Army stationed at Okinawa." The HMD equipped pilot turned as he informed Sest. "That's all we got before we have to pull out of Tokyo airspace."

Sest Ackerman rubbed the bridge of his nose. He'd previously served with the elite American Green Berets, and his large, muscular body bore many scars as proof of his multiple tours of duty. The military helicopter, which was normally used for transporting Air Assault troops from the Airborne divisions had now been converted to serve as a mobile drone control center. Compared to the cutting-edge equipment he'd worked with in the past, it was a workspace that felt downright claustrophobic to Sest.

"Ackerman Squad." Sest barked. "Let's review the mission. Our objective is the capture or destruction of the five hIEs that escaped during the explosion at the lab."

As a mission, the objective was strange. That was because in the first place, the idea that hIEs could 'escape' was plainly ridiculous. hIEs might have possessed human forms, but their every move was externally controlled by a behavioral management cloud. Each action they undertook was optimal, selected from a specialized program and expansive sampling of behaviors accessed through a central network, and as such they were by no means autonomous. Neither did they possess the ability to make autonomous decisions within their frame. Also, it was this behavior management cloud, which determined the behavior of hIEs, which was considered a service unto itself. Therefore, the behavioral cloud as well did not contain any orders which possessed the potential for an hIE to execute an action program that allowed it to escape from its Owner due to the legal liability of the parent company and the risk of it being sued.

Rather than true intelligent AI, an hIE was something more akin to a terrifyingly developed chatbot. Thus, that was the reason why when most people referred to their hIEs getting away from them, they tended to use the term 'lost' and 'recovery' instead.

'Escape' was reserved for humans, not objects. On paper, the probability of an hIE 'escaping' was about as much as a microwave oven or refrigerator 'escaping' from its Owner.

In other words, hIEs were nothing more than puppets dancing on the invisible strings of wireless network signals.

And yet MemeFrame, the powerful mega-corp which held a near-monopoly market share of 90% of the hIE behavioral management cloud had ordered Sest and his team to retrieve or destroy the 'escaping' hIEs. It was as if they were sent on a mission by a puppeteer saying "My puppets have run off, please go and catch them for me.".

The helicopter continued to maintain its overwatch position over the area. It made no sound, thanks to its sound-dampened engines and the specially treated rotor blades. There, it floated in the sky, like an invisible bird weaving through the darkness. Unless one possessed specialized equipment, Sest was confident in the helicopter's ability to maintain its stealth.

His scramble team consisted of three men. Their pilot, Sergeant Thomas Lieu. Sergeant Major Youseff Malai, their drone operator. And finally Sest himself, their captain and squad leader. All of them were seasoned professionals who made no comment on their strange mission.

"Major." Sest said, using the transmitter implanted in his skull to contact HOO tactical command. "We've arrived at the target area. Beginning sensor sweeps for the enemy."

"Picking up five heat signatures currently en route towards Reclaimed Island One." As if on cue, Sergeant Major Youseff called out the information provided by the thermal sensor on the helicopter. As stated, the signatures were moving away from the former ruins of the central research building of the MemeFrame Tokyo Research Lab and towards the No.1 Landfill Island Group.

"The AI is formulating a plan." The reply came through from within his skull. "Lure them to a residential area before attacking."

HOO used a standalone military-grade AI installed in the command center to formulate tactical strategies for their combat units. At the moment it was providing a tactical option, which was to allow the escaped hIEs to cross the bridge to the Odaiba residential district and engage them there.

In other words, the AI wanted them to conduct MOUT.

"That's nuts." Sest grumbled as he folded his ripped arms. Urban warfare was usually considered an option of last resort due to the excessive risk of collateral damage and unacceptable levels of civilian casualties it implied. This was something that had not changed even in the 22nd century. Fighting a determined enemy in an urban environment was, to put it simply, a pain in the ass.

"It's a radical plan, but pretty effective against hIE units incapable of harming humans."

But still, he could see some merit in the plan. Because military-grade cloud-controlled weapons could not decide for themselves to attack a human on their own without receiving confirmation orders from higher up, until they received such approval, they were merely tools waiting for their Owner's permission before acting. In other words, the tactical AI was suggesting to them to take advantage of the restricted freedoms experienced by the unmanned combat units that they were now currently facing by setting up an ambush in a highly-populated area.

"The risk tolerance of the command center AI needs adjusting." A female voice came through in his head. "The client has assessed the threat level for this mission to be fairly high. That's why the scramble order was given. But I don't think the client actually wants to turn the residential district into an all-out war zone."

The top half image of a woman wearing a military beret and uniform appeared on Sest's retinal display implants.

Major Collidenne Lemaire. A tough woman in her forties and his direct superior in HOO. She was an enigma, Sest himself did not possess the slightest clue about her military background.

"Your call, Major." Sest asked. His confidence wasn't affected in the slightest in the face of such unexpected complications. He was a hardened warrior. Enlisting at the age of eighteen in the US Army Special Forces and serving for sixteen years thereafter, from the jungles of South America to the blood-soaked sandpits of the Middle East, he'd seen the best and worst humanity had to offer. The weapons he used might have gotten more destructive and his rank might have increased to Second Lieutenant, but he knew better than anyone that no battle plan ever survived first contact with the enemy.

"Reject the proposal by the AI." She ordered. "The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is forming a blockade on the bridge, so it wouldn't be realistic to try and pursue the targets into the residential district."

The rejection wasn't due to the fact that the Major was a humanitarian that desired to limit civilian casualties. She was a professional mercenary first and foremost. Completion of the objective held priority above everything else. Rather, it was that she preferred not to engage the escaped hIEs on a bridge. It was because the firepower of an emergency land combat team such as theirs were mostly confined to unmanned combat drones. The light and radio waves of the wireless signals used to control the drones were unable to be transmitted underwater. And as such, if any of the targets fell into the water, they would be placed out of their reach.

"What's plan B, Major?" Sest asked.

"We'll go with our second plan. The No.2 Landfill Island Group mainly consists of academic and research buildings. It's practically deserted at night. We'll disable all targets before they leave the mission area. Authorization of the use of heavy artillery has been granted by the government. None of our firepower is restricted."

A list of approved weapons quickly scrolled down on Sest's optical implant. If one considered an hIE to be merely an 'appliance' like a toaster, then the firepower being issued was complete overkill. Japan in the 22nd century might have not been as allergic to the idea of a military as it had once been, but employing railguns and automatic howitzers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area seemed downright insane. The equipment list clearly didn't match the mission details provided by the client. Which left it as either a case of their client, MemeFrame completely losing their marbles...

Or their intel was incomplete. Sest noted grimly. And he had a sinking feeling in regards to which was the correct assumption.

"Youssef, go over the intel from the client again."

Youssef, the team's Algerian operator, tapped his console with bony fingers.

"All of the five escaped hIEs are female models." He readout. "Each has specialized equipment. That's all we got so far in terms of 'intel'." Youssf finished in a sarcastic tone, indicating his distaste at the lousy information they were given. It seemed that he too shared the same thoughts with him regarding their intel.

A snake of tension crawled up the back of Sest's neck. Now he was sure that their client was withholding information.

Sest checked the mission timer on his retinal display. Five minutes had already passed since their helicopter entered Tokyo airspace. That left fifteen minutes of their authorized fly time to go.

"Lower the container." He ordered. "We'll let the Major negotiate for more information while we get the ground units up and running."

There were few people around the civilian research park at night, indicated by the just as few numbers of residential buildings that catered to the employees of MemeFrame. The park's roads were currently devoid of life. Even the usual emergency response vehicles did not appear, a request that was forwarded from their client.

Thomas guided the helicopter towards a lonely street at the corner of the research park. With the sound of a releasing winch, he dropped the large bulky container from twenty meters up. The air around the landing zone exploded outwards in a dust cloud as it hit the ground.

The container doors opened to reveal its contents. Inside it, there were two full squads of unmanned combat drones. Each squad contained eleven units, organized along the line of a standard squad in the US Army. The combat drones were heavily armed with military-grade armaments. With each possessing a terrifying mix of autocannons, heavy machine guns, missiles, and remote mines.

Between the twenty-two of them in total, a little area like Odaiba could easily be turned into a flaming hellscape.

A sensor unit was automatically dropped from the helicopter by the AI's request. Soon, there were sixty-four disposable camera units buzzing from the central mother units like a swarm of flying insects, gathering images and data from the nearby area.

The No.2 Landfill Island Group had used to be known as the Central Breakwater Outer Landfill Site. It had been the first place where the rubble from the Hazard disaster had been sent to. This gave it an air of tragedy and a bad reputation, thus its value as a residential area was low. With no civilians around, it was a place well suited for mechanized combat.

Sixty-four unique palm-sized screens appeared on the 3D display on the helicopter. As expected, they confirmed that there were no nearby humans in the area. And as such, the green 'All Clear' notification lit up the screen, granting them authorization to begin the mission.

"Our sensors have the target." Sest announced as the camera units picked up the five forms. The sixty-four screens on the 3D display gave way to a zoomed image.

Sest, who saw himself as an unflappable soldier due to his participation in countless military operations, had thought he'd seen everything that was to see. But the image he saw, five zipping lights through the dark background, each a different color assigned to a girl, was like a work of art. For a moment, Sest forgot that he was currently engaged in a battlefield, locked in combat.

"So that's the special equipment the intel mentioned." Youssef said, drawing a focus on the hIEs on the display. Each hIE was clad in a bodysuit that lit up in a different color. Red, green, yellow, orange and one that was the purest shade of white. Each also was carrying along with them some kind of strange tool, large and bulky in its appearance.

"Begin the mission." Sest shook off the surreal atmosphere and ordered.

At his command, the combat drones started to deploy, rolling off the container as they proceeded to spread out in a skirmish line. Sest oversaw the drones as they deployed. The vanguard consisting of two-meter tall humanoid drones was using the terrain to conceal themselves. Bringing up the rear in support, wheeled heavy artillery drones lurked. At the very front of contact, mobile smart mines floated.

All of their movements were automatically and smoothly executed by HOO's custom behavioral cloud. Unlike commercial hIEs which were made to endear themselves to humans, the puppets controlled by the military and PMCs were built to harm them. They were also autonomous as compared to the heteronomic hIEs. This was borne out of the 2071 Lisbon Conference, where autonomy for machines were removed from mainstream civilian use, but retained in some form in military drones as the battlefield required a faster reaction speed. Which was the reason why military drones did not exactly comply to the standards set forward by AASC. Instead, they required a special plug-in by the controlling organization to operate. This was achieved by reducing the computational burden provided by the removal of complex linguistic features common to commercial hIEs. However, as a trade-off to prevent military hIEs from spiraling out of control due to their autonomic privileges, the behavior of military hIEs were severely restricted as compared to their civilian counterparts.

But the basic concept between military and commercial hIEs remained the same. In that, it was to select the most optimal behavior possible and complete the assigned task they'd been given.

"Have the vanguard advance seventy meters, then set two smart explosive charges." He ordered. "Tank drones are to lay down concentrated fire starting from the unit closest to the targets. While the vanguard holds the line, the rear echelon will adjust as necessary to the target's movement. We'll destroy each target as they approach."

The behavioral cloud quickly and efficiently interpreted Sest's orders. Without pause, the drone squad started to approach his designated targets. As they moved, the drones fed information to the behavioral cloud, which was constantly processing the input data to determine the best course of action.

Then, something that should not have happened, happened.

The first target that the drones were going after, a young redhead with her hair tied back in twin tails, looked directly into one of the many camera units floating around her to smile directly at Sest.

Goosebumps broke across his dark skin. His soldier instincts, the alarm that kept him alive across countless conflicts, screamed in danger. It wasn't possible for her to recognize him. The helicopter was a stealth model, painted with a special signal absorbing coating. With its lights turned off and additional optical camouflage enabled, it should have been impossible to track.

But despite all that, the girl found them anyway.

Then she started running.

"Thomas!" Sest barked. "Get the heli away! We've been spotted! All units form a defensive line and engage! Safeties off!"

And just like that, in a single instant, the area transformed into a hellstorm of shell casings and cordite. Gunshots rang out in rapid succession, the jackhammer of thunderous explosions roaring in the night. The drones on the defensive line were firing on the girl, a spring shower of steel in April. A cloud of smoke engulfed the helicopter as it discharged its canisters during its evasive maneuvers.

"Well, look at that." Their pilot Thomas spoke in a tone filled with forced lightheartedness. "Kid's shrugging off .50 caliber rounds."

The heavy machine guns mounted on the drones that Thomas spoke of was of course the venerable M2 Browning. Updated and modernized more times than one could reasonably count, John Moses Browning's creations continued to serve in front-line units even in the 22nd century. And for good reason, when fed with military-spec API rounds and firing at a rate of 1200 rounds per minute, it was able to deliver a punishing stream of firepower, with each projectile possessing the ability to penetrate a 30-millimeter steel plate at a hundred meters. Even hIEs designed for combat weren't able to absorb such punishment, a couple of glancing hits maybe, but in no way could they survive a sustained barrage.

With eleven barrels available to a unit, the arithmetic was simple. A drone squad at full strength could pour out 220 of the large anti-material rounds per second. A wrecking ball of brass that only required an operator to point at a target, snap their fingers, and say 'Delete this'.

The wheeled drones spat out a nonstop stream of bullets at the rogue hIEs like a broken faucet. And just like Thomas mentioned, all the bullets in the world didn't even seem to slow them down. The redhead had used a giant blade to shield herself from the barrage, as if she was a nymph casually bathing in the waterfall of steel.

"Units 01 to 03 from First Squad to look for openings in the red one's defenses." Sest ordered. "All remaining units, suppress and pin down the other four hIEs."

While the redhead continued to casually preen under the stream of slugs, the support drones move in from the flank and detonated the smart mines they'd prepared earlier. A storm of fire and fury enveloped the girl. The smart mines were key support units in drone combat. Each of them packed enough firepower to knock out anything lighter than a full-on MBT with all the bells and whistles.

Even at a safe distance from the sky above, Sest felt the helicopter shake from the pressure wave released by the aftershock of the explosion. For a moment, the thermal display was blotted out with white from the heat readings. Quickly, Sest ordered the artillery drones to resume firing.

But the final volley of autocannon fire meant to finish off the enemy never came.

"What?" Sest asked out loud.

The reason for the silencing of their big guns was clear as displayed by the alert notification that flashed on their screens. All of their wheeled artillery drones had mysteriously shut down.

"The ballistic drones are deactivating for unknown reasons." Youssef called out.

Sest felt the air in the helicopter still from tension. The probability of an entire drone squad shutting down at the same time was minuscule. A moon shot. Even during operations in the deepest parts of the Amazonian jungles, where the local infrastructure was extremely poor and underdeveloped, Sest had never encountered anything like it.

In an instant, the bulk of their firepower was rendered useless, and the path to the drone container lay open.

"Get them back online."

"I can't tell what hit them." Youssef said, his fingers flying over the on-screen keyboard. "The drones aren't responding."

"It's an enemy attack. Have the tactical AI analyze and come up with countermeasures." Sest ordered.

The tactical AI HOO used was one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal. By analyzing data from past battles and basing its combat directions on that, it was able to achieve a high level of efficiency in a real-world battlefield. Like a grizzled old guard, there was no longer anything that could blindside it.

But tonight, the impossible happened.

"What?" Sest found himself repeating the words that appeared on the screen.

'Judgement Pending'. Or simply put, the AI was telling him "I don't have a clue. Wait till I figure something out.".

The abnormality of the situation made Sest draw in a sharp breath and pause. He was then broken out of his haze by a voice.

"Flowers!" Thomas turned to them from his spot in the cockpit and yelled out. "The MemeFrame girl is using flowers of some sort!"

At the sound of his shout, Sest scanned the area displayed by the screen with extra haste in order to make up for the few seconds he'd wasted by being in a daze at their strange situation. As Thomas pointed out, flowers of all colors across the spectrum were blooming on the road. A clearly unnatural development going by the fact that none of these flowers existed before tonight.

"How...? What's going on?"

In the meantime, the redhead hIE did not lay idle. In a beat, she'd taken the opportunity offered by the disabled drones to surge forward. Her blade, larger than her body, danced in a flurry of motion. She made the distance between them seem inconsequential.

With sounds of tearing metal, the drones of the defense line exploded in a shower of parts.

And then she rested her body against her weapon in a cocky pose, her crimson visage vivid in the night. She did not possess a single scratch on her body, despite the bullets, smart mines and other attacks directed her way. Seemingly pleased by her performance, her lips curled in a teasing smile. To Sest, the redhead seemed like she was having the time of her life.

Sest's mind raced as he tried to predict her next move. He did not have to think for long. With their defense line breached and the smart mines expended, the choice was pretty obvious.

"She's targeting the command station!" Sest yelled. And to prove him right, the girl bolted off towards the drone container at such a speed that she seemed like a red light zipping its way across the battlefield.

The redhead hefted her blade in a manner resembling a rifle, a menacing red glow emitting from its center. The flowers around her began to be blown away from the surging energy condensing around the laser oscillator. With a shock wave that cleared the flowers around her to form a ring, the girl fired the weapon.

A crimson beam of energy cut across the night. It slammed into the center of the drone container. The walls of the container, armored enough to withstand railgun fire from a Type 10 MBT, began to twist and melt as they distorted with heat. Soon, the armor buckled and a massive hole was punched through.

Dozens of warnings flashed across the operation screen in the helicopter. The container doubled as a relay station that transmitted instructions and battle data to the drones. Now that it was destroyed, the rest of the drones started to stutter and limp. Just as the scale of their defeat became apparent, the tactical AI released its findings on their screens.

"There is a high probability that the short circuit was caused by electricity running from high voltage wires underground the research laboratories. This surge then disabled the functionality of the drones." Sest repeated.

In a landfill such as the No.2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Group, the high voltage wires were kept in a trench ten meters underground. This not only meant that their opponent possessed the ability to excavate ten meters worth of earthworks to rip out the wires, but to redirect the voltage running through them into a form of attack.

They weren't fighting machines, not anymore. Sest thought to himself. They were fighting monsters.

The implant in his skull vibrated, and an image appeared on his retina. Major Lemaire's expression was neutral, but Sest could sense her tightly controlled fury underneath the surface.

"The client has disclosed further information." She told him. Apparently, she'd used the damage suffered by his unit as a bargaining chip to obtain more information. "Don't try to get them all. Take out whichever seems easiest first."

Data appeared in a scroll on their 3D display.

"Lieutenant, the MemeFrame corporation just released a statement." Youssef turned towards him.

"Read it out. I'm busy with the battle."

Although calling it a 'battle' would be a misnomer. With the command station in pieces and their drones destroyed one by one, the outcome of the fight had already been decided. But as field commander of this operation, only he possessed the authority to contact higher command to authorize a retreat.

From the encrypted line came back the answer to his request.

'No.'

Unfazed, Sest ordered what was left of their assets to fall back and reestablish a new defensive line.

"Lacia-class humanoid Interface Elements. No information exists on their intended use. They're equipped with quantum computers and are able to make advanced decisions on their own without any network support."

As instructed previously, Youssef began to summarize the information, accompanied by captions printing themselves on his retina.

With the captions aiding him, Sest was finally able to identify each of their targets, starting from the redhead that'd given them so much trouble.

Lacia-class hIE Type-001: "Kouka".

The redhead girl with twintails who swung around her giant gunblade like it weighed nothing to her lithe frame, a wide excited grin on her face.

Lacia-class hIE Type-002: "Snowdrop".

A child-like girl in a simple white dress decorated with luminous green accessories. Physically, she was of a much younger age than her peers. She was giggling and tossing flowers from every season around her in child-like wonder as she sat on a pile of scrap that had once belonged to the combat drones, the dissonance between her underdeveloped appearance and her disturbing behavior apparent to the extreme.

Lacia-class hIE Type-003: "Saturnus".

A girl with flaxen hair and a black and gold bodysuit that vaguely resembled a flight attendant stabbed a spinning wheel-like tool into the ground, turning the lever attached to it.

Lacia-class hIE Type-004: "Methode".

Standing in a pose of cool confidence, there was a blank expression on the tall girl. Unlike the rest of the units of her class, Methode's body was clearly mechanical, with inhuman heels and lines running down her bodysuit. With a gunshot-like crack, her orange hair whipped in the air as she sped off, too quick to be captured on real-time video by the camera drones. The only thing they could record was the path of destruction she left in her wake, the humanoid combat drones being reduced to twisted scrap.

Lacia-class hIE Type-005: "UNKNOWN".

The final hIE was a girl who seemed like she was about to enter the phase of her life when she would have been the most beautiful, the golden time that existed between a child and a woman. Her expression was inscrutable, but at the same time, it felt like it carried with it a sense of gentle purity and subtle temptation. Like Kouka before her, she lifted the black coffin by her side without effort, using it to deflect bullets directed at her with ease. A dim blue light covered the coffin as the girl used it as a shield.

"What?"

Out of all of their targets, this particular one gave him pause. It was not due to her looks, even though he could hear Youssef whistle out "Nice ass." in the background as her turn to be the focus of the display came. After all, PMCs were by nature less regimented as compared to regular military and such a casual comment was the norm even during an operation with professionals.

But rather, the displayed image of the girl was being affected by visual artifacts, as if some form of interference was degrading the feed. Not to mention her code, or rather the lack of it when the other four clearly possessed a name to call them by.

Squinting his eyes to try and power through the impaired image, Sest noticed the hairclip-like device on her head softly light up. The goosebumps returned, this time on the back of his neck. His soldier's sense of danger was warning him, that something bad was about to happen.

In an instant, everything turned dark. The cockpit, which was once brightly lit up by countless displays, shuddered with a whine as the telltale sign of a disconnection sounded. Everything from displays to communications to the tactical control system went down with it.

The helicopter rattled violently like an animal in its death throes. No longer controlled by the AI autopilot, the helicopter exited stealth mode, its rotors stalling as it entered a freefall.

"The HMD's dead!" Thomas, their pilot grunted as he ripped off his helmet and grappled at his stick.

"Shit." Sest found himself swearing as he tightly gripped his safety belts to avoid being thrown to the floor.

Luckily for them, the freefall only lasted a second as the auto-recovery system came back online and equilibrium was restored. Thomas was now piloting the helicopter manually via Eyeball MK1.

"Youssef, get the network back online." Sest said as he squinted out in the distance, himself also relying on eyesight. "What's going on?"

All of the displays were down and their surveillance video feeds along with it. Now, rather than a soldier looking at a tactical overview of the battlefield, Sest had become nothing more than a tourist with a bird's eye view over Tokyo Bay.

"Something shut down our connection with MemeFrame. The system's dead." Youssef reported. "My queries to the drones aren't going through."

"Electronic warfare?" Sest swore under his breath. So that was what it was.

For a scramble team that relied on combat drones to do all of their actual fighting for them, the wireless signals that the drones received comprised their lifeline. And also their Achilles heel. Of course, the signals that the military drones used were encrypted to prevent such a situation from occurring in the first place, but it seemed that the security in place wasn't enough.

Sest grimaced as the consequences of the attack became clear in his mind. If these 'girls' were able to crack military encryption and completely invalidate drone warfare, or even worse, hack them to turn them against their former masters, they were going up against a new breed of monsters.

"Where are they?" He asked.

The girls were nowhere to be seen. His question was answered with a beep on his console. The HOO tactical AI had updated him that all five hIEs had made their escape into the sea.

And just like that, the writing was on the wall. Their mission was now a guaranteed failure. The worst-case scenario had come to pass. Ordinary combat drones did not possess the ability to operate underwater as the wireless signals couldn't reach them. The helicopter did not possess any marine scanning equipment, and arranging for specialist amphibious warfare drones would take far too long. With Tokyo, and Japan in general surrounded by sea, any hopes to contain or pin down the escaping hIEs were futile.

The air in the cockpit was still with the sense of defeat.

But more pressingly, the idea that hIEs, which were mere 'intensely developed chatbots, but chatbots following the directions of a cloud all the same', could analyze the situation and come up with such a perfect escape plan against his team was one that turned stomachs.

This meant that they were capable of making advanced decisions on their own, without relying on a network.

The possibilities were endless. And terrifying to the utmost.

With the grim implications of tonight's events beginning to sink in, Sest broke out in a cold sweat, something that hadn't occurred to him since basic.

"Just what the hell were we up against?" Sest questioned.

There were still five minutes remaining of their authorized fly time in Tokyo airspace. He used the remaining time to stare down at the dark sea below them, an endless expanse of black water that reflected the glittering moonlight.

As a veteran, he was used to weapon technology evolving. Humanity was always locked in an never-ending arms race to invent new and more efficient ways to kill each other with, after all. The knife became a spear. The bow became a musket. And the musket became a repeater. Through the nature of competition, military research was always looking ahead to counter their opponent's current arsenal. To invent some new fantastical gizmo to slaughter humans only required a sales pitch to an interested politician.

Take, for example, the nuclear bomb. Invented at the height of World War Two and only ever deployed against Japan. There exists many famous and well-documented quotes regarding the terrifying power of the bomb and the heralding of a new nuclear age. But the reality was at the time, the nuclear bomb was seen as a blessing that allowed the Americans to end the war with minimal bloodshed. The nuclear bomb allowed for the preservation of lives for their soldiers and countrymen.

Somehow, Sest felt that the five hIEs that slipped from his grasp tonight was the herald of another new age.

He turned to look at the city of Tokyo where millions of hIEs were being operated, a shiver running up his spine. If these five hIEs, who possessed the capability to make their own decisions, were only the prologue to a new revolution in machine society. He possessed not the slightest clue regarding their capabilities or their purpose of creation, but he knew enough to be afraid.

The fault for tonight's failure rested solely on their client, MemeFrame. It was due to their refusal to disclose mission-critical information that forced them to enter the battlefield blind. But for a grunt like him, that was above his paygrade. It was something for the corporate division of HOO to deal with. Sest's mind went back to the combat performance of the hIEs he'd seen today. The redhead, who was the only target that displayed their capabilities openly, possessed firepower in excess of a tank.

What did the other four possess, Sest thought to himself. Chemical weapons? Nerve gas? Weaponized viruses? Biological warfare?

One of them could be carrying something akin to a nuclear bomb.

A hollow atmosphere washed over the helicopter's cockpit. All three men present understood that they might have witnessed the potential beginning of a disaster that possessed the possibility to shake human society to its core.

---

"Are you an idiot or something?"

Endo Arato was lecturing his little sister. He'd been in the middle of preparing dinner for the both of them when Yuka, the little sister in question, thought it a good idea to sneak bites of the deep-fried pork behind his back. At first, he let her be, telling himself that it was just a few pieces and she couldn't help it. But by the time he'd next turned to check on the ingredients, the pork battalion was wiped out to the last by the lightning Yuka offensive.

"That's more than just a quick bite." He scolded the other half of the Endo household. "You couldn't even leave enough for me to cook with?"

With their mother passing away at a young age and their father too busy with work to return home, that left the responsibility of raising his little sister falling onto his shoulders. Unfortunately, he might have overdone the spoiling, Arato noted with a wry smile.

"It's not my fault you took so long to make dinner!" Yuka whined with cheeks stuffed full of pork. She was fourteen, just three years younger than him, but she still carried herself with the behavior and personality of a child.

"Either way, what were you thinking? Eating all the meat for the sweet and sour pork." Arato moaned, joining his sister in the complaining.

"I was thinking along the lines of, "Yay, it's meat!"." Yuka squealed in delight with a dreamy expression on her face.

Honestly, she was hopelessly spoiled by any metric. But Yuka herself was so innocently cute that Arato couldn't bring himself to stay mad at her for any actual length of time.

"You belong in a zoo." Arato said.

"Gaoooo!" Yuka mimicked before turning back towards the TV and slumping in a slovenly manner. Truly, she was a creature of comfort. Apparently, the only thing that crossed her mind was 'Food', 'Video games' and 'Socializing', in that order.

"Anyway, look at this." She called out, pointing towards the TV. An urgent update from the Daily News channel had appeared. "Woah, cool. Something blew up."

On the wall-mounted display unit in the living room that served as their TV, an image of destruction on its screen. Information scrolling on the sidebars provided details regarding the situation.

"The No.2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Group... Hey, that's kinda close isn't it?" Yuka wondered idly as if she was discussing a piece of news from a faraway land. "Or is it far?"

"It's close, you idiot." Arato scoffed at her. It was at times like this he wished Yuka take things more seriously. "If you calculate it in a straight line, that is."

"Is it?" Yuka casually droned in disinterest. "I see, that's terrible."

Arato grabbed the TV remote to input the location using the GPS. The device responded to his verbal query and mapped a route from Shin Koiwa. According to the map provided by the guide, the incident occurred only fifteen kilometers from their apartment.

"Hey, that's pretty close." Arato frowned as he digested the specifics. While he was pondering that, another explosion rang out on the 3D display as if confirming his queasiness.

"I wonder if they'll close the schools tomorrow." Yuka mused.

"No way they will."

"Guess you're right. Yuka moped. "I hope no one there got hurt or anything."

Yuka might not have been a model student, her shoddy grades being proof of that, but she still possessed a kind heart. She was a good person at her core, which was why Arato held a soft spot for her despite her childish immaturity. Returning to the kitchen, he tried to salvage what was left of their dinner.

In the first place, before one assumed the wrong idea regarding his proficiency as a chef, 'cooking' was a misnomer. 'Assembly' would have been a more precise term. Dinner itself did not require much work. With the convenience provided by prepackaged spice mixes and frozen food packs, the only work required from Arato was to heat them in some cooking oil after mixing them up. It was not like he made the stuff from scratch, he was just a high schooler after all.

"The news is saying it was done by an hIE robot company." Yuka added extra commentary from her place on the sofa. "Hey Arato, go pester Dad for some cash so we can buy one of those. I heard they can cook and stuff."

But the sweet-sour pork plan had been dashed by Yuka. Which left him to come up with whatever bits and pieces he could scrape up from the fridge. He found two eggs and some leftover greens. With it, he could form a base for some egg-fried rice. But as he searched, Arato found himself swearing under his breath.

"Crap." He said quietly to avoid Yuka catching on, before calling out in a louder voice. "We're out of rice! Udon's fine, right?"

"Whaaaat!? Absolutely not!" Yuka whined. "We just had udon yesterday! Please make it rice!"

"Well, it is what it is. Unless one of us goes to buy some, it's noodle night once more." Arato made it sound like he wasn't willing, but he was already grabbing his jacket and moving towards the entrance of their apartment. At times like this, he really did spoil her too much.

"Where are you going?" Yuka asked rhetorically in a too innocent voice, low key lording her victory over him.

"To the store, obviously." Arato replied dryly.

Yuka hopped off the couch to bounce up to him. When it came to matters related to snacks or food, she was an infinite bundle of energy, as if powered by the wireless charging stations around them instead of calories like any normal person.

"Onii-chan!" She pouted. "Buy me some ice cream while you're at it! Neapolitan, neapolitan!"

Her switch had been completely flipped into 'little sister' mode and was openly making demands without any hesitation like a child. In other words, Yuka was telling him 'spoil me'.

"What do you mean while you're at it..." Arato grumbled in a mock show of defiance. Even a doormat like him still desired to maintain some measure of his pride.

Yuka seemed to have predicted his grousing perfectly. She flashed him a brilliant smile as her eyes went wide and doe-like, the secret weapon of all little sisters everywhere. An overdose of sugar that made one feel diabetic.

"I luv you, Onii-chan!"

"Whatever."

She was annoying but cute. Or maybe she was annoyingly cute. Or cute in an annoying way. Whichever it was, Arato turned aloofly as he fiddled with his heating jacket and prepared to leave. Despite it still being spring, the weather was still cold at night.

"You're going?"

Arato glanced at the digital clock. It was 10:32pm.

"It's not safe for a girl to go out this late at night. Especially when there's stuff blowing up." That was the excuse he'd come up with on the spot, in order to not let Yuka find out that her cutesy act had worked its magic on him.

"Then, I hope that these explosions become a daily event from now on." Yuka clapped her hands together in a prayer.

"Be careful what you wish for. Maybe the konbini is next." Arato remarked as the chilly night air hit his cheeks. Behind him, he heard Yuka cry out "Have a safe trip." in an exaggerated manner. Even without looking, Arato could visualize her salute as she saw him off.

Feelings of being accepted, of being desired, of being dear to someone. Those were the things that brought him happiness. After his stint in the hospital, he knew better than anyone the bitterness that arose when those emotions were denied to someone. Even if it was just his annoying sibling, Arato wanted her to experience the feeling of being loved.

Although like mentioned multiple times before, Arato thought wryly, he might have overdone it by going all-in on spoiling his little sister.

A relatively comfortable residential district greeted him. Shin Koiwa, the neighborhood they lived in, wasn't exactly prime real estate material. Rather, it was built as part of the Tokyo Bay restoration project. Constructed next to Koiwa in the Katsushika ward, it was built near a transfer station in order to set up connecting railway lines from the bay. Mainly served by the Sobu and Chuo-Sobu lines, the Endo household was located in a convenient location. One only had to take the Urayasu Line, operated by the East Japan Railway Company, south to reach their apartment. With many of the residents in the area picking Shin Koiwa specifically to get away from downtown urban life, it was by all measures a quaint neighborhood. Despite their family's access to wealth, it seemed that too was his father's reasoning for choosing to live here.

All the better for them, Arato mused, he could scarcely imagine how spoiled rotten the both of them would have turned out if they had to grow up in a place like Ginza.

Southwards, towards the bay, laid rubble and debris. Even forty years on, the evidence of the Hazard still lingered as a reminder. An everpresent ghost that warned humanity of the potential danger associated with Super Intelligent AIs.

It was about a ten-minute walk to the Lawson's near their apartment. In the distance, Arato felt like he could hear the faint sounds of an emergency siren.

"But seriously, an explosion?" Arato worried as he picked up the lab-grown pork. A flash sale product, he noted with pleasure, with the use by date soon approaching. Frozen rice and ice cream followed. "Will we be alright?"

Even though he'd acted all cool in front of Yuka just recently, he couldn't help but be worried. After all, the place where the explosion had occurred, the No.2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Group, was where his father used to work.

"Do I spoil her too much?" Arato sighed as he glanced at the price tag of the luxury ice cream that Yuka favored. 749 yen, his wallet cried out in pain, and for a mere single serving at that. He placed the basket of groceries on the automated register. With a whirring sound, the basket was lowered into a separate compartment. This was to prevent shoplifting. As the unmanned register began to scan and tabulate his purchases, Arato studied his surroundings idly.

To none of his surprise, the store was empty at this time of the night. The convenience store might have been a 24/7 operation, but regular humans still followed a day-night cycle. The only presence in the store other than him was the hIE behind the service counter. Even then, she was not in charge of checking out. Her only purpose was to provide assistance to customers, the elderly in most cases, who had trouble utilizing the automatic payment systems along with general help and inquiries.

"That will be 1682 yen."

A female voice, the standard announcer type common on train stations, informed him. Arato waved his cell over the display and a beep notified him of the deduction made from his account.

"Thank you very much."

The compartment opened and once more with another whirring sound, the basket of his groceries was raised. This time, a smaller compartment beside his basket opened up as well to dispense disposable grocery bags.

Returning to the apartment by the same route in reverse would take another ten minutes. A short enough time to ensure that Yuka's ice cream didn't melt on the way back. He was about to fish out his terminal to listen to some music on the way back when a voice called out from beside him.

"Oh. Out running errands at this hour?" A slightly plump middle-aged woman in her late forties asked. She wasn't human, rather 'Marie' was an hIE working for a local landlord. She was an older machine, Arato recalled seeing her around the neighborhood even as a child. If Arato had to guess, he'd known her for over ten years.

"Yeah. My little sister ate all the food." Arato replied sheepishly.

"There's nothing to be shy about that. You and Yuka-chan are both going through puberty after all." She said.

"That's not the problem. It's her manners that need work."

"Is your father working late tonight, as well?"

"He usually isn't home on most days."

"That must be tough on you. Raising Yuka-chan all by your lonesome."

Talking to Marie like this, the night walk soon became less dull. With someone to engage in conversation with, the distance back to his apartment seemed much shorter than it actually was. The road was clear, as always. Autonomous cars and wireless signaling had eliminated any congestion or haphazardly parked vehicles. Marie, her shopping bags dangling from one arm, was walking beside him with a steady gait.

"Sometimes, I wish we had an hIE like you at home, Marie-san." Arato admitted. Although he knew better than anyone if that happened, Yuka would have been even more spoiled than she was at the moment.

"Oh my." Marie smiled affably.

It was then, during a casual walk home with an equally meaningless daily conversation, that Arato saw them.

Flowers. Of every color, falling everywhere around them.

"Woah." Arato mumbled. "The heck? These aren't cherry blossoms." Since they were in April, Arato's first thought was that the cherry blossoms had come early. But, when he caught one of the petals in his hand, the long, thin petals were clearly not cherry blossoms. Not to mention they felt strangely dry to the touch as well, lacking the moistness common among recently dropped flowers. Although they were pretty, a strange sense of unease settled in his stomach.

Flowers dyed with colors that ranged all along the spectrum were raining down. Or rather, they were floating in the air like snowflakes.

"My goodness." Marie, her voice rising in excitement, said. "What could they be?" Apparently judging the flowers to be non-dangerous, she continued walking down the street, leaving him in the dust.

The sense of unease grew.

"Hey, Marie-san! You're going too fast!" By now, Marie was walking at such a pace that she became a rapidly shrinking figure along the dark road. After quickly brushing the flowers off his head, he hurried to catch up with her.

In a short while, he'd managed to catch up with her. But not because of him making an effort to sprint. Rather, Marie had paused mid-step for some reason. Her body was frozen and unnaturally still. Her stillness was so sudden and complete that it reminded Arato of a program crashing.

Except hIEs didn't crash. They were connected to a constantly updating cloud.

The unease in his body grew intense, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand.

The shopping bag slipped from her arm. Marie was trembling, first slightly, and then in increasing levels of violence. It was as if he was watching a person suffer a stroke. If Marie was a human, Arato was sure she would have lost control of her bowels by now.

"Marie...san?" Arato called out cautiously, still unsure of what was happening.

His call must have triggered something within her. Because with a swishing sound, her curly brown hair flew as Marie spun her neck to face him.

A full 180 degree turn accompanied by a sickening crunch.

Arato fought back the urge to hurl.

With her body and joints still frozen in place, and her neck twisted at an unnatural angle, Marie crashed to the floor with a dull thud. The entire time, the brightly pigmented flowers continued to fall.

It was then, Arato felt a scratching itch on his neck. His reflexes answered and his fingers quickly grabbed at the itch. Under the light of the street lamps, he examined the purple-hued flower petal in his grip.

The petal had sprouted out mechanical legs like a centipede. And then it began to move.

Arato screamed out loud, as one would when a creepy crawly was on one's body. He swung his arms around frantically, desperate to shake it off. In his frenzy, Arato hadn't realized how loud his voice was getting in the silent night.

"The hell is this!?" He continued yelling in a panic. "What the hell are these!?" His eyes were showing him a vision of an impossible reality. The paved ground was covered in crawling petal-insects. They made a dry scratching sound as they scurried across the ground. But try as his brain might, he could not reject the reality before him, his eyes mercilessly telling him otherwise. His common sense had left him and the world had become insane.

But even with his mind breaking down and on the brink of self-destruction, there was still someone else in trouble. The fact that she was an hIE instead of a human mattered naught to him. What mattered to him was the human form. And that was something he couldn't force himself to ignore.

"Marie-san! Are you okay!?"

A painfully bright light forced Arato to shield his eyes. It came from the side where the automatic cars were parked. A cruiser roared to life and bolted towards him. It was accelerating at the maximum rate, the squeal of its tires on the pavement proof of that. Arato rushed to throw himself out of its path. As he landed, a stab of pain shot up along his shoulder, but it was preferable to being turned into roadkill.

Sucking in a breath that felt like shards of glass, Arato put as much force as he could into his torso and knees. With his uninjured arm, he scooped up the expensive ice cream that rolled out back into his shopping bags. It was funny to him, even at a time like this, he was still looking out for his little sister. He closed his eyes to stabilize his breathing and waited for the pain to subside to a dull throb.

Or he would have, if not for the car coming his way once again. If it was just a malfunction to its accelerator of some sort, the car would have just gone ahead and crashed into a wall or something. But instead, it shifted gears into reverse and came straight for him once more.

That was when Arato knew for sure, that the car was specifically out to get him.

This time, his dodge was slower. The condition of his tired and hurt body was starting to negatively affect him. A jackhammer smashed into his torso and drove the breath out of his lungs. Arato did not even possess the air required to cry out in pain. But as his body rolled across the asphalt, Arato took the chance to get a good look into the interior of the car. There, instead of a human or an hIE in the driver's seat, there was a mass of blooming flowers. A grotesque bouquet of hyperpigmentation.

"What the hell is happening..." Arato wheezed as he dragged his body into a narrow alley. There, he pulled himself together and laid back against a dumpster to rest. The car couldn't get him here, not with the width of the back alley. Above, the falling petals continued to litter across the night sky.

He could scarcely believe his eyes. The entire situation was so surreal that for a moment, Arato doubted his own sanity. But the pain, fear, and other negative emotions tuned his senses so keenly that if his current predicament was indeed a dream, then it was the most realistic dream ever. Ergo, this was his new reality now, like it or not. The illusion of normalcy broke down completely and became his new reality. But, his mind continued to rebel against the insanity and did everything in its power to reject the data provided to it by his senses.

The sound of footsteps appeared before him, along with a looming shadow. Arato rose his eyes to meet the figure, his breathing still ragged and painful. The shadowy being was wearing the same clothes as Marie. But the monster sharing her skin was in no way related to the kindly hIE. A disgusting mass of flowers had bloomed over the massive neck wound she sported. Her head was hanging at a grotesque angle, any human with her current wounds would have clearly been dead ages ago. Yet, the monster continued moving towards him, baying for his blood.

A loud crash shook the ground, and the alley was flooded with light. From behind the monster that formerly used to be called 'Marie', the out-of-control car had wrecked itself against the entrance of the back alley before coming to a dead stop. Thick black smoke was pouring from its engine block and Arato could smell the hydrogen sulfide in the air. Even in its damaged state, a countless number of flowers adorned the car, as if it was an abandoned piece of hardware from a distant dystopia.

Mashing his teeth together and ignoring the sting of the lactic acid accumulating in his muscles, Arato tried to force his body to move. But when his body rose, it was not from his own power.

"Marie...san?" He croaked out.

The pressure on his neck was immense. Casually, as if she was lifting a toy, the hIE picked him up. Her arms were shaking, not from hesitation or emotional regret but from the motors and servos along her frame working overtime to snap his neck. A current of hot air washed over him. From behind them, gouts of spurting flame erupted from the wrecked car.

There, in a grimy back alley, Endo Arato's life of seventeen years was about to meet its abrupt conclusion.

Like hell it is!

The cornered beast in his mind snarled. Faced with his looming death, a more primal nature revealed itself. Arato was pissed off. Death was a ridiculous notion to someone like him, who was barely an adult. He was in good shape and had no major health issues to worry about. Up till tonight, his biggest worries were spoiling Yuka, finding a part-time job, and worrying about pocket money. No boy his age should have been made to grapple with the nature of their mortality in this way.

It was a fact that pissed him off to no end.

His good arm lashed out, raining blows on his captor. Fueled by desperation, dull thumps rang out as Arato threw punch after punch.

"...!" Arato let out another choke. Despite the strength he'd put into his frenzied attacks, the difference in physical capabilities between an unfeeling entity like an hIE and a flesh and blood human was clear cut. Even as his fragile body stuttered and weakened, the machine holding him only seemed to strengthen her death grip. The flames behind them peaked in intensity, it seemed as if the entire street was bathed in the orange-red glow of a flamethrower. The car was about to explode and consume them all in purifying flames.

Once again, for the second time, and just like his nightmares, he was about to be caught up in another explosion.

And this time, Arato knew without a doubt that he was going to die.

It was then, through his dimming consciousness, that a small flame deep inside his heart flickered to life. It burned through the shackles of his nightmares. Buried from a decade ago, a small fragment reappeared to him, clear as day.

A bare woman on an operating table. Her face was so pure that one could not help but be drawn and fall in love with her. It was this face that beckoned Arato closer to her. She turned her gentle gaze towards the starry-eyed child that approached her. In his memory, the girl told him, with a smile full of deep regret.

"Get away."

At that time, Arato wasn't quite so sure about believing her. But a child like him responded easily to orders and he turned to move. Even today, faint burn marks still lingered on his back.

The window opened. On the brink of death, his foggy memories were being pulled into a sharp focus. Arato hadn't noticed it, but his eyes were wet with tears. That's right, the one hIE, no, the one person that he owed his life to. In the course of his facile, privilege-filled lifestyle, he'd forgotten her name.

Until now.

It was a meaningless action. But even so, as his dying body fell limp and his vision failed, Arato softly exhaled her name.

A silhouette darted.

The burning car exploded and flooded the street with fire.

---

His breath caught in his throat.

It was just so surreal.

He should have been obliterated, wiped out from existence. The charred street around him was proof of that.

A crazed hIE out for his blood, a nightmarish car gunning for him, flowers colored across the entire spectrum falling like snowflakes from the sky. All of it came together to paint a scene so absurd it flirted towards the fantastical.

However, Arato was only vaguely aware of his surroundings. There was something far more eye-catching before him.

A human figure. No, a girl. A lone girl stood in front of him, wearing a peculiar cloth made of advanced material. She was facing away from him, but he could tell her gender from the black and white bodysuit she was wearing, cut so tightly that Arato could see every line of her supple body underneath.

She appeared from the hazy hot air, seemingly out of nowhere. The coffin she held in one hand was pulled into segments by a skeletal framework, it reconfigured itself with astonishing speed into a giant hemispherical umbrella-like object.

The girl remained standing there, between him and the fiery nightmare. The soft glowing blue light casting away the shadow and flame. Even though she had spoken nary a word, the message provided by her milky-white back was crystal clear.

'I will definitely protect you.'

It took him some time to finally gather enough sense to speak. His reply was crude in comparison to her unspoken words.

"Ah..."

A watery sigh released itself from his throat. He was rendered speechless.

The flames from the explosion were quickly dying off. But it was something Arato paid no heed to. Something which had once been the absolute focal point of his life until a few moments ago was completely discarded. Or rather, 'discarded' was not the proper term.

It was 'stolen away'.

The wind was strong tonight. It made the clouds drift, allowing the moon to briefly appear.

The figure was bathed in silver light from above.

Her physical presence was so mesmerizing that it made everything, even the fantastical scene around them, seem like a pale imitation of reality. Her bodysuit, black and white in its appearance, was cut in a way to enhance rather than to hide her body. It was tight and open in places to draw the attention of men, but not so much in an overt manner that it crossed the threshold into crassness.

To someone his age, it seemed like the gown of a temptress.

However, even that could not hold a candle to her countenance. A radiance so bright that it seemed to force everything else into the background.

Light violet hair danced in the hot wind left behind by the explosion, her icy blue eyes and pale lips a perfect match. She didn't have a hint of makeup on, but he couldn't take his eyes off her glowing skin and stunning face, a sculpted masterpiece that would have left Aphrodite herself green with envy.

In an instant, the girl had captured-

His gaze.

His attention.

And his heart.

She was just that beautiful.

To a fault.

To an extreme.

That one might have even called it violent.

An ethereal moon-like entity so aggressively beautiful that Arato couldn't help but be intimidated by.

She turned to look at him.

"You requested help."

Her voice was pure honey, the sound waves traveling through the air excessively decadent in its rich stickiness.

It was as if the world had stopped for Arato. The adrenaline and fear flooding his body up till then were washed away in a wave of muted awe, the stilling of his heart assisted by the calm expression on the girl's face. Only the girl filled his vision. The girl became his world and his world became the girl.

Even though Arato felt like a sacrilegious heretic-

"What is your name?"

And that he might have been divinely punished for it. He asked anyway, to the girl who looked a little older than him.

"I am Lacia."

It took him a moment to realize that she was waiting for a response from him. For the first time, their eyes met.

"Endo Arato."

In the year 2105.

In a world where society was all but entrusted to humanoid robots called hIE.

A fated reunion took place.

And thus, the boy met the girl once more.