Chapter X
"...I do find that where I expect most I find least satisfaction..."
-- The Diary of Samuel Pepys, January 11, 1668
The students learned of the installation of the MAPU's when the technicians had descended on the library that morning. By late afternoon, a very vocal crowd had gathered in the quad to share their grievances and state their demands. The primary unspoken demand was for someone to show up and arrest them, so their parents could see them on the evening news. The campus police had played this little game far too many times to fall for it this time. The leaders of the protest decided to escalate matters by tearing down the library reading room MAPU's by force. This operation turned out to be more difficult that they first thought, as all fifteen MAPU's in the reading room were mounted near the thirty-foot ceiling, and no one thought to obtain the necessary equipment. Rather than give up their momentum, the students attempted to form human ladders to get up to the units and somehow find the leverage to "tear them down!" The result was a lot of broken bones and smashed reading room tables.
The anonymous Tachibana temp in charge of watching the MAPU's that day was probably having the time of his life. Professor Chisa Yomoda, however, had a strong dislike for violence. The fact of the protest was all right with her, but she preferred not to see the ugly statistics first-hand. She had fled to the reading room from her quad-side office so she could grade her student's papers in peace, and now she was forced to move once again. The students assumed she was going to get the police, and cheered as she strode past them.
The only other quiet place Chisa knew of was the auditorium, and luckily, the janitors were inside and had left the doors unlocked. Seeing that the lights above the rows of seats were off, she climbed up to the stage, moved a prop table and chair together, and got back to work.
After making his way back to the university by the most circuitous way he could think of, Taro entered the main library from the faculty entrance in the back, picked up his backpack from a coin-operated locker, and worked his way to the front entrance, which is where he started that morning. If anyone were watching him, it would look like he had spent the whole day doing research.
He heard a voice, as he was speed walking across a corner of the vast reading room: "You know, I'm beginning to have second thoughts about this whole business of trusting you."
Instead of looking for the source of the voice, Taro looked up at the ceiling and spotted the multiple MAPU's. He then took a good look around and wondered what could have possibly happened in the few hours since he had passed through here last to make this place into such a mess.
Finally meeting eyes with the hologram of Lain, Taro sat down with a pained look on his face. "Let me guess, you were spying on my conversation with Myu-Myu, weren't you?" He suddenly looked the girl in the eye. "Well, let me tell you something. First of all, you had no right to spy on a private conversation. And second, I happen to suffer from a lack of instinct. It's the main reason I had to become so smart, so I could figure out the stuff everyone else's guts told them. That's one of the reasons I was there. Besides, I appear to be the only hacker who ever visits those poor people. I think you need to show a little respect for a sad moment in the history of our chosen profession. What did you ever do for them?"
Lain stared at him incredulously. "You...you have no idea what I've done for those people. You think I didn't try to stop it? You think I have the power to make everything go my way? There's such a thing as free will in this world, Taro, and the alternative to that is a world beyond your worst imaginings. As for your precious privacy, the guy who wrote 5-P should be the last person to complain about that. If you must know, your conversation was being monitored in real time, and I was listening in, in case you or her should say something compromising."
Taro's face turned red as his mind futilely tried to process that last outburst. "Hey! Wait...who was...how did...were you there when...have we met before? I have the strangest feeling we've met somewhere, but I can't remember where...."
Lain put her head in her hands and laughed bitterly to herself. It takes an insult for him to remember me! She sighed and looked up at him. "It wasn't the Men in Black, it was a rival security organization."
"Really?" he smiled incredulously. "This could be good. This could be very good."
"Well, yes and no. The Men in Black found out about the other group, and right now they are deciding how to respond."
"How are Reika and Arisu?"
"They should be good to go."
"We'd better get moving, then."
