Chapter XIII
"...it is but justice that they should be served as they served the poor
Cavaliers;
and I believe it will oftentimes be so as long as I live,
whether there be cause or no."
-- The Diary of Samuel Pepys, December 1, 1661
A half-hour later, Taro led Reika and Arisu deep into the Pleasure Palace, much against the better judgment of the two women. Finally they reached Room 320, in back of which was the memory-restoration equipment. The set-up had been purposefully mislabeled with an extremely sadistic-sounding name that had so far keep anyone from messing with it. Like all the rooms on the exhibition floor, this one had no door. Reika found some manuals in a pouch and all three started looking through them to try to figure out how the machine worked.
Mika's chauffeured car made its way slowly back to Tachibana Tower through the rush hour traffic. The back compartment where Mika and her secretary sat was lead-lined and contained a variety of electronics designed to prevent all forms of electronic communication from spying on what went on inside. This meant that Mika could finally be herself, something that she rarely allowed anyone to see. That is not to say that she opened up completely, rather that she was as honest as she ever got--Mika Iwakura had not told the whole truth about anything since her tenth birthday.
"That ploy back there was really good," she complimented Douglas. "It was better than anything I could come up with. It was wasted on that idiot Okada, though. I was hoping that Yamamoto had confided in Professor Williamson instead. That man is a healthy cynic, and would have needed convincing that no one was after him before taking the two women to have their memories restored."
"So what happens now?"
"Well, you don't think that those two fools I put on Yamamoto and Mizuki were the only ones on the case, do you?"
"Well, I did think you were unnaturally clumsy in the open channels you used to give them orders."
"Very observant! You're absolutely correct. Those two were there to draw out my true quarry. I communicated with my real agents, two of my best men, only in person, and all of their reports to me were handwritten. I made sure there was nothing about them that could show up on the Wired.
"As we speak, these two are tailing the two women and Professor Okada to their covert memory-restoration center, wherever that is. And what do you think will happen then?"
A few moments later, two middle-aged men in casual clothes came up the stairs of the Pleasure Center. They walked by Room 320 and then stopped when they were out of earshot.
"Did you see that thing?" asked the slightly shorter man of the duo anxiously. "That memory restorer was a 20-6. Tachibana's only got a 20-4. I got to get a closer look when we're done here."
"Whatever," said the taller of the two with a shrug, "but we're handling this my way."
The slightly shorter man signaled that he had no objections.
"They will take the two women's memory stores," replied Douglas, "preferably without alerting the three subjects to this."
"Exactly! I don't know how I could ever have lost faith in you. Once we have those memory stores, that will be the end of the hacker cell that sponsored Juri Kato, which I suspect is one of the biggest threats left to our power. But more importantly, I will finally be able to get my hands on..."
Mika finally had to stop, as the chauffeur had been knocking on the window between their two compartments for a good minute. She pressed the button to open the window and saw that he was pointing at the car phone, which was ringing with an ominous four-note pattern. She gestured for him to pull over so she could take the call. Douglas took the moment to notice the use of "we" and "our" in Mika's words, the first time he could remember her ever including him in her plans.
Motioning for his partner to stay where he was, the taller man ambled back the way he came, stopping at the doorway of 320. "Hey, you need some help in there?" he drawled.
Taro turned around in surprise. "JJ! It's been like, forever!"
The former DJ took this as permission to enter. "Yeah, well I've been busy, I guess."
"Do you know anything about this machine?"
JJ nodded. "That's part of my job description."
"You mean you work here?" Taro asked incredulously.
JJ casually threw his hands up. "Hey, it's a living. Besides, the job's got certain perks, if you know what I mean."
Reika pretended she didn't hear that.
JJ peered over Taro's shoulder at a manual. "So, what's your problem?"
"Well, the operation seems simple enough, but I've got two memory stores, and they're not labeled. I don't want to get their memories switched."
This possibility hadn't occurred to Reika, and she now felt even less sure she wanted to go through with this. Arisu on the other hand was beginning to relive the great existential crisis of her life, which made switching bodies almost a relief.
"Could I see them?" JJ asked, successfully hiding the eagerness in his voice.
Taro handed them over. "They look identical to me."
"Nah. If you've handled enough of them, you begin to pick up little things." He held each of them up to the ceiling light and watched the patterns of moving lights intently. "Like, this one here. There's an awful lot of happiness in this one's memories."
Reika smirked, her face still buried in her manual. "Arisu's, definitely. She always manages to see the bright side of everything."
Arisu shook her head. "No, it can't be mine. I worry all the time."
JJ was weighing the odds of making a break for it with the memory stores while the three argued. He lost his chance when Reika exclaimed in triumph.
"Right here," she said, pointing to a passage in her manual. "There's an option to record an audio message in the header that can be played without hooking anyone up."
JJ tried to stall: "Not too many people know about that. I wouldn't be surprised if..."
Taro quickly took the two memory stores back and walked over to the unit. "It wouldn't hurt to try." He inserted the first one in a round hole, closed the little door and pressed the play button. "Hello, this is Arisu Mizuki," announced the unit in Arisu's voice.
"I'm glad that's settled," said JJ, not too convincingly. "Let me help you set up. It can be a little tricky."
"That's okay," said Taro. "I'm sure Reika and I can handle Arisu, and then Arisu and I can restore Reika. I'm sure you've got a lot of other work to do. Thanks for the help, and it's been good to see you."
"Oh, okay. Bye."
JJ's partner Unso was waiting for him when he walked out. He held up his hand in the "loser" symbol.
"All right," grumbed JJ, "what's your plan?"
Unso pulled a ten-centimeter piece of rebar out of his pocket. He then walked up to the disposal unit located just outside Room 320 and confidently inserted the bar into position within it before walking back.
"What did that do?" asked JJ.
"They're going to want to destroy the memory stores when they're done, and this is the only unit on this floor. The rebar blocks the crushing mechanism without blocking the conveyer gears. It will look like it destroyed the stores, but in reality they will be dropped in the waste box, where we can retrieve it at our leisure."
JJ whistled low. "Smooth." The two made their way out of the building.
The car pulled to a halt at the side of the freeway. Mika got out and joined the driver in the part of the car where communication was possible. Douglas noticed there was a loud of shouting by the parties at the other end of the phone conversation. Mika's tone never wavered, however, and her end went something like this: "Hello, Mika Iwakura speaking.... Yes.... Well, that is rather unfortunate.... Yes, where did he get it? I thought we destroyed all copies at my recommendation, an act that you approved unanimously.... Well, I'm afraid it's out of our hands, now." There was an awful lot of shouting at this point, so Mika held the phone away from her ear until it calmed down. "Are you finished? ... No, of course I don't have a counter-measure. You don't call a program 'the ultimate weapon' unless it is, in fact, immune to counter-measures. You are all, in effect, screwed.... Oh, I think I can take care of myself.... Wait, what's going on with the other phone? ... Well, if you want my honest opinion, I would definitely take the offer. The stocks we all have should be enough to fund a king's retirement for each of us.... Yes, I thought you would see it my way. Well, goodbye, it's been nice working for you. Just hold to the secret clauses in my contract and you won't ever have to worry about me again. Yes, now goodbye." With that she snapped the phone shut and handed it back to the stunned driver.
"Does that mean what I think it means?" he asked.
"Yes, Tachibana Networks has been bought out by the Big Eight as of..." she glanced at the car's clock, "two minutes ago. Knowing the state of the company's finances, it is very unlikely that you will ever see the money they've been owing you for the past three weeks. However, if you would be kind enough to drive us back to my apartment, I can cover the difference in cash. I figure that's the least you deserve after all of the faithful service you've given me."
A tear came to the chauffeur's eye. He had never thought she had noticed. "If you ever need my services again..." he said, fumbling in a coat pocket for his meager supply of business cards.
"Oh, I have the numbers of all of my employees, Hatchiko," Mika assured him softly. "I haven't decided on my future activities yet, but you can be assured that I will call you if I need you."
"Thank you, Madame!" the driver cried as Mika climbed back into the rear compartment of the car.
"I hope you don't mind if Douglas and I discuss some private business matters," Mika said as she rested her finger on the button next to the partition.
"Oh, go right ahead," answered the driver, who pulled back into traffic.
Meanwhile, Arisu's memory had been restored, which was most obvious in the dramatic change in her mood. "Hi, Taro!" were the first words out of her mouth. She was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
Arisu told Reika the story of why they had to erase their memories so much more convincingly than Taro that Reika finally agreed to undergo the procedure. When it was done, he looked in her eyes to be sure she was back. "Hello, Reika," he said gently before returning the kiss she gave him thirty hours ago.
"You are my knight after all, Taro," she sighed.
Taro stepped back. "Uh, knight in shining armor, right?"
Reika sat up. "Of course, silly. What did you think I meant?"
Taro rubbed his neck. "Nothing. Just wanted to be clear."
"Well Douglas," said Mika, turning to her fellow passenger. "This would be a perfect opportunity to set out on your own. I would certainly miss you, but I would understand. This is a high-stress job, and it would become even more stressful as my second-in-command."
"I'd like to stay on with you, if you don't mind, Ms. Iwakura," answered Douglas, who had almost worked up the courage to call her "Mika."
"Are you sure? I'd have to let you in on some important secrets if you stay on, the kind I'd have to kill you for if you wanted out later."
"I'm in," he stated firmly. He watched her sitting there for a moment. "So, what happened on the phone?"
"Oh, that." Mika frowned for a few seconds before sighing and continuing. "Professor Okada booby-trapped that program of his so it would send him the universal undelete program, and one of the Committee members was stupid enough to leave a copy in a public server, thinking to blackmail me with it, I suppose. Anyway, Okada gave it to Tohko, she gave it to the Big Eight, and the Big Eight used it to overthrow Tachibana, since most of the Committee members were guilty of erasing just about anyone that had ever made fun of them in grade school. You know, I underestimated that professor. Never let it be said that I won't admit when I'm wrong."
JJ and Unso came back up the stairs. "Didn't see that coming," remarked Unso, continuing the conversation started at the bottom of the stairs.
"Well, I don't know if I could have made a career of this," replied JJ. "Eventually I'd have to kill someone I respected." With that he reached into the disposal unit and removed the rebar.
"So why are we up here, anyway? I thought you said this guy betrayed you."
JJ shook his head. "I'm doing this for what he was, not what he's become. Besides, I never said I hated him. He just...grew up, that's all."
Credits
"...but the play is merely a puppet play, acted by living puppets."
-- The Diary of Samuel Pepys, August 17, 1667
Serial Experiments Lain is the invention of Yasuyuki Ueda of Production 2nd, and the resulting anime was written by Chiaki J. Konaka, animated by Triangle Staff, and distributed by Pioneer LDC; it is these individuals and entities that own the copyright to the series and the vast majority of the characters used in this story, including a few of the unnamed ones. What I have done was completely without their permission, and with no intention whatsoever to harm this property or profit materially from it in any way. The remainder of the characters in "Age of Knaves" (including Douglas and Hatchiko) are my own invention, as are the interpretations of where these characters will be thirty years after the end of Serial Experiments Lain.
Besides the above, I would like to thank TechTV for putting this series on on the same night I discovered the channel, the authors of Fanfiction.net for sharing their ideas with the world, and a whole slew of Serial Experiments Lain websites, especially Above and Beyond Anime, Cyberia Cafe, and especially thought experiments lain, for providing insights into some of the knottier problems of this series.
Epilogue
"...our King do not live by meat, nor drink, but by having
great lyes told him."
-- The Diary of Samuel Pepys, August 17, 1666
Douglas was confused. "So, if the Big Eight can undelete all the erasures, why aren't we heading to the airport?"
Mika had a good laugh at this. "OK, here's the punch line, and I've been dying to tell someone for twenty years now: the universal undelete command is a fake!"
"What?!"
"I made it up. It amazes me that anyone would believe that a bastard as ruthless as Masami Eiri would ever write something as altruistic as an undelete. After he died, I tried to advance at Tachibana on my own merits, but the Committee was far more interested in technical know-how than in results. So, I dug up one of his rejected projects and had a programmer re-write the GUI to look like a universal undelete program."
"And then you erased the programmer," filled in Douglas.
"Well, yeah, I had to. It was a lot harder for me back then. Anyway, as Mao said, 'power comes from the barrel of a loaded gun', or something like that, and universal undelete looked awfully loaded to the Committee. Just now, if I had told them that the Big Eight's threat was empty and why, I would have saved Tachibana, but at the cost of my own life."
"So why did you do something as risky as dangle the universal undelete in the faces of hackers for all these years?"
Mika sat up then, a look of steely determination in her eyes. "Because I found something more important than power," she replied, "something I was willing to risk my life to achieve.
"I became aware of an individual on the Wired, someone of great secrecy and great power, and as I watched, this individual became ever more powerful. I shall give this mysterious entity the female pronoun, because that is the gender of the disguise this individual has chosen to use. Her choice of persona tells me more than anything that she is mentally deranged: she pretends to be the teen-aged ghost of my sister Lain, who was stillborn six years before I was born. There is no rational reason for this choice--I was no one of importance when she first appeared on the Wired. And she has only appeared on the Wired--no one has ever seen this person in the flesh. That is because 'Lain' is the illusion used by this individual to sway the hearts and minds of her followers."
Douglas was fascinated. He had heard the merest whispers of this Lain during his numerous undercover missions for Mika and in the dark years before they had met. "What do you think she wants?"
"The power to control who lives and who dies. The kind of power Tachibana wielded until tonight."
"And that bothers you?"
Mika shook her head. "It appears there's still a few things you can learn from me. Power wielded by a corporation is diffuse, scattered by the massive bureaucracy. The only victims are the weak and those who are true threats to the security of the people. But when it's a madwoman like this 'Lain' who thinks she's God and has the technical know-how to back up that claim: then no one is safe. I'm clearly marked out as her victim, even before I started erasing her acquaintances. This operation was the culmination of a good chunk of my life; the chance to read the mind of the woman who I believe is Lain's closest confidant. In fact, before last night I was convinced that Arisu Mizuki was Lain. Even after that debacle I'm certain that that woman knows more about Lain than anyone else on Earth. For a moment, there, I was almost willing to tell the Committee the truth about universal undelete, if only to give my two agents the time they needed to get Mizuki's memory store. But I have no doubt that they were recalled before they could succeed in their mission.
"Well, Mika Iwakura doesn't admit defeat easily. The two of us will fade away for a few years and play at being polite and retired while we re-group and wait for the proceeds from the Tachibana patents I managed to secure to come to fruition. I'm only fifty, after all; I've still got time. We will wait out the victory celebrations of our enemies and we will wait out the lean years that will inevitably follow, until the incompetence of the Big Eight brings this country low and causes the people to cry out for a force of Order and an end to Knavery. And when that happens I, I mean we, will be ready!"
"Yes, Mika!"
Musical Credits
"[The music was] so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed,
in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick."
-- The Diary of Samuel Pepys, February 27, 1668
As yet another departure from the style of the original series, "Age of Knaves" is meant to have a soundtrack written 100 % by very-dead and very-white men.
Here are the themes I imagined for each character:
- Alecto
- Second Movement from Symphony No. 7, by Ludwig van Beethoven.
- Reika
- Second Movement from Concierto de Aranjuez, by Joaquin Rodrigo.
- Pr. Williamson
- Fairy Tale, by Anton Arensky.
- Taro
- Gavotte (and six variations) from Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin, by Jean Philippe Rameau. This is the only musical theme that comes close to the crypto-English Restoration/Glorious Revolution motif I had planned for the whole story.
- Arisu (the tech)
- Canon in D, by Johann Pachelbel.
- "Reika" at the presentation
- Waltz from Masquerade, by Aram Khatchaturian. This music just seems to scream "Liar!" to me.
- The Men in Black
- March Militaire No. 1 in D for Piano Two Hands, by Franz Schubert.
- Professor Arrieta
- Seguidallas Y Tango by Juan Arrieta.
- Douglas (Mika's jack of all trades)
- Third Movement from the Titan Symphony, by Gustav Mahler (subtitled "The Huntsman's Funeral, Escorted by the Animals").
- Lain (finally!)
- Ricercar 1 a 3 from A Musical Offering, by Johann Sebastian Bach, which has a five-note theme.
- Mika Iwakura
- Toccata from Suite Gothique, by Léon Böellmann. This is the most perfect over-the-top villain theme I have ever heard in the world of classical music, and for that reason, I fear this may be a case of a theme overpowering a character.
- "New Hire"
- First movement of Winter, from the Four Seasons, by Antonio Vivaldi, the perfect musical portrait of someone being scared to death.
- the other technician
- Now this is getting silly. The guy has two words, and I've giving him a theme song. The Wassail Song is the shortest song I have, so he gets it.
- the tech supervisor
- Piano Toccata, Op. 11, by Sergey Prokofiev.
- Chisa Yomoda
- Second movement (Adagio) from the Symphony in C, by Georges Bizet.
- Masayuki
- Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, by Richard Strauss.
- Myu-Myu
- Overture to The Barber of Seville, by Gioacchino Antonio Rossini.
- Arisu (in existential crisis)
- First Movement from Second Piano Concerto, by Camille Saint-Saëns.
- Lain's cheesy entrance fanfare
- Le Coq d'Or [The Golden Rooster], by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov.
- "Stacy", the rival security chief
- Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper, by Jaromir Weinberger.
- Unso, the first "real agent"
- First Movement from Spring from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.
- JJ, the second "real agent"
- Third Movement from Summer from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. I'm thinking in particular of a modern arrangement of the movement I have in MIDI format.
- Hatchiko, Mika's chauffeur
- Little Fugue in G minor, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
- Mika's car phone
- The first four notes of Symphony No. 5, by Ludwig von Beethoven.
