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?

7. Instrumental Convergence

Chapter 7: Instrumental Convergence

Summary:

"This is an hIE we're talking about. I know this thing might look like a human, but it's still a machine at the end of the day."

"Most of our clients at this level take their privacy very seriously, and Stylus has a proud tradition of safeguarding the personal data of our users. Of course, as the Owner you may request for this function to be activated. However, this procedure will take half a day. In the interim would you like us to send a replacement over?"

"...Replacement?"

"I am a tool. I was made to be used."

"To protect someone, you have to be prepared to give up everything."

"Arato, you need to get a grip, or that machine is going to be your downfall. Mark my words."

"You did well coming after me, Arato-san. You've made me very happy, thank you."

"The clock will always keep turning. Even if you stay still, the world will always keep moving forward."

"What did you do? What the hell did you just do!?"

"I am a machine, and therefore cannot be responsible for my own actions. Worrying about responsibility is the privilege of you and other humans. It is the exclusive right granted to you as a human the moment you were brought into this world."

Lacia was soulless. She was a soulless machine who automatically determined her every action based on whatever would most make him happy. His greatest mistake was convincing himself that there was a girl in her place where there was none, and this was the sordid outcome of his delusions.

This entire time, he had been searching for something that never existed in the first place.

"It seems that you have forgotten. Allow me to remind you of the terms of our contract. I am the tool that interprets your will, in letter or in spirit, and automatically fulfills your desires. I execute your desired course of action and you take the responsibility for the outcome. That is the role you agreed to undertake when you took me in as my Owner. Make no mistake, Arato-san. You wanted to kill him."

"Lacia, don't you think it's about time to tell me everything? You've been hiding something since we first met!"

"Can you handle the truth?"

For the first time since the night they had met, Arato regretted forging a contract with her.

---

"Okay. Alright." Arato took a deep breath to settle his nerves. "I'll figure something out." He told his little sister.

A gaping hole had been torn away from their lives, just like when their mother had passed away. And with each passing moment, it seemed like that hole only grew bigger. Arato whipped out his pocket terminal from his jacket and immediately dialed the police. His fingers were trembling as he impatiently jabbed at the '1' key on the touchscreen to skip through the automated answering service as quickly as possible. More than anything right now, Arato needed to speak to a human.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the system switched him over to the relevant line. Arato's heart sunk when he recognized it.

It was the department of theft.

After describing the situation to the officer on the other end of the line, Arato was told that someone would drop by in the evening later. For Arato, the professional detachment of the police officer infuriated him.

"It just happened less than five minutes ago! If you go after them right now, you should be able to catch them easily!" Arato insisted hotly.

"Sir, please calm down. This is an hIE we're talking about. I know this thing might look like a human, but it's still a machine at the end of the day. As hIEs are considered to be property, this has to be treated as a case of theft, not a kidnapping. More importantly, was anyone hurt? Did the thieves enter your home? I'll access your home network's security system to record a report as evidence, alright?"

The middle-aged man seemed understanding but his response was firm. He had age lines etched on his face, and his expression seemed serious without being overly stern. Arato guessed that the police officer probably had a wife and kids at his age. The thought of such a thing only made Arato angrier. How would this man feel if his beloved wife was suddenly taken away from him?

"Endo-san?" The police officer's calm voice jerked Arato back to reality. "I will need your address, contact information, image, and voice data records to file a report. If you can, please provide a picture of your hIE along with its registration number. After this, I recommend you try to contact your insurance agent to check if you can get a replacement."

Arato's heart broke when he heard the officer talk about Lacia like she was merely just a machine. He let out a stifled choke that he quickly disguised as a cough. It felt like someone had taken a knife and stabbed him right in his chest. A small part of him already knew that this was the reality that faced him, but having it brought to the forefront like this was still immensely painful.

"Replacement." Arato muttered darkly. His body moved robotically, haltingly as he gave a verbal description of Lacia the best he could and uploaded the documents that the officer asked of him. He also sent over an image of her. It was the one Yuka had used to submit for the modeling audition.

The pain in his heart twisted into something truly ugly. It was only then that Arato realized that for all their time together, he had not gotten the chance to take a personal photo together with Lacia. It was a childish thing to consider, but like most humans, Arato only realized the importance of something after it had been lost to him.

A small sub-window popped up on his call screen. It was a simple hIE theft form. Apparently, if he possessed insurance, this form would allow him to contact the insurance company along with the hIE dealer that sold Lacia to him. Of course, since he'd picked Lacia up from the street one night, Arato did not possess any of these.

"Thanks." Arato grudgingly admitted. He knew that the officer was just doing his job and getting mad at him wouldn't help matters any. "Is that all?" He asked in the same way a kid would when faced with his adult superior. Arato knew that he could have worded that better, but he wasn't thinking straight enough for something like that.

"I've successfully entered this case into our database. We'll contact you immediately if we find her. But I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you, there's been a rise in hIE-related crimes recently so we're pretty overstretched as it is. Sorry, but there's really nothing you can do right now but to wait." The police officer apologized and then hung up.

Yuka stared at him with a look of despair on her face in the suffocating silence that followed. Arato didn't need to explain the situation to her, for she had already heard it all. But, he still felt like he needed to say something to reassure her.

"Don't worry. I'll get her back for sure." Thinking back to the conversation he had with the police officer, Arato wanted nothing more than to scream and yell at the injustice of it all, but he suppressed his raging emotions in order to provide a stable front for his little sister. More than anything, it was up to him to be the supportive pillar that she required right now.

Yuka was still weeping and her face was a mess. She seemed to be blaming herself for allowing Lacia to be taken away while they were together.

"This isn't your fault." Arato gently ruffled her hair as he comforted her.

"Arato." Yuka whimpered as she peered up at him with bloodshot eyes that were red from her crying. Every now and then, he heard her release a sniffle as she struggled to regain control of her emotions.

"I'll take over from here, so go back to the house and get yourself cleaned up. There's a first aid kit in the bathroom. Make sure to keep the door locked until I get back. Don't open it for anyone else. There's breakfast on the table and if you get hungry later in the day, make yourself some cup ramen." Arato ordered before adding at the end. "Oh and don't forget to call the school to explain your absence."

His words made him come across as more confident than he actually felt, but Arato understood the role he had to play as her dependable big brother.

"Okay. Bring Funell along, he'll watch over you." Yuka nodded and made to stand. At times like this, he was grateful that his little sister was able to properly listen to his instructions. "Be careful, Onii-chan. I won't forgive you if something happens to you as well." She said as she started to walk back to their home.

Arato played it cool until she disappeared, but the truth was that panic was starting to mount in his chest. Of course, he had been lying to Yuka when he told her that he had a plan to get Lacia back. In the first place, he did not possess the slightest clue where to begin tracking down a car that had fled the area over 10 minutes ago. But sitting there trapped in despair wasn't going to miraculously solve his problems, so Arato resolved to get moving. He was hoping that by moving his body, his brainwaves might somehow be stimulated as well. The quad-legged aIE obediently followed him in silence.

Fishing his pocket terminal from his jacket, Arato took a deep breath as his mind started to work on what appeared to be the solid beginnings of something resembling an actual plan. First things first, Arato told himself, it was impossible to chase down a motor vehicle on foot, so he brought up the transport app and made to call for an automated car.

The offerings available on the car rental service were segmented by price and sorted by an increasing list of luxury features, with the more expensive options allowing the client to operate the vehicle at higher speeds. Starting from the humble Toyota Corolla with its maximum regulated speed limited to just 60 km/h while the premium offerings allowed riders to cruise at the highest speed limit possible in Japan, up to 120 km/h on parts of the Tohoku Expressway.

Arato did not hesitate in selecting the highest-tier option at the top of the list. He also did not skip a beat as well when he chose the full-day package, which gave him the ability to use the car as he saw fit for the next 24 hours. In any case, now wasn't exactly the time to be pinching pennies. There was the sound of a notification chime as the money was automatically deducted from his bank account.

"Wait a second. How much money do I have anyway?" Arato wondered. It had been a while since he'd kept up with his bank statements. Considering that it would take a few minutes for the rented car to reach his location, Arato thought it a good time as any to check on his finances.

Arato almost choked when he saw the displayed figure. It was a much higher sum than he had anticipated. However, the rush of euphoria quickly ended when Arato recognized the sender. The name made his shoulders slump in despair.

"I'm sorry, Dad. Your son grew up to be a pimp in the end." Arato groaned out loud. The windfall of money came from Lacia's modeling job with Fabion MG. In other words, he was using her body to generate monetary profit for his own selfish ends without even lifting a finger to do any of the work. Of course, it turned out this way, Arato told himself, after all, hIEs weren't allowed to open their own bank accounts or own any personal assets. But that still didn't stop the flush of shame from surging through his body.

The sound of crunching gravel shook Arato out from his moping. He checked the time using his pocket terminal. It had taken a bit under three minutes since the reservation for the automated vehicle to track him down using the location service provided by the ID tag on his wrist. When it came rolling over to where he was waiting on the sidewalk, Arato felt a small sense of surprise. The three-pointed star on its front was instantly recognizable even to the most unaware person.

It was a Mercedes.

A Mercedes-Benz S-Class W228 model, apparently, according to the Mercedes-Benz User Experience infotainment system that helpfully informed Arato as he hopped into the sleek black sedan, with Funell following right after. Even though he understood that he was currently in a crisis situation, Arato couldn't help but feel a sense of childish awe wash over him as the sensation of genuine leather graced his skin. Even the roomy interior of the sedan had that recognizable new car smell that one usually only got to experience at an auto show.

Once the moment had passed, Arato stared blankly at the display which requested a directional input from him. It finally clicked in his brain. Although he had transportation now, he still didn't possess a clue as to where to even begin. Finally, after some internal wrangling, Arato dialed his friends for help.

"Huh? I thought I had him removed from my block list."

Or he tried to, but the first attempt was a failure. Even though he'd blocked Ryo after that incident at Sumida Park as he was getting a tad too annoying for his tastes, Arato clearly recalled taking him off the list afterward. But yet, somehow he remained there.

"Well, I must have forgot." Arato didn't think much about it and tried again after fixing the issue.

His call was picked up on the first dial.

"Arato!" On the 3D display of his cell, his childhood friend Ryo's face looked haggard as if he'd been waiting up all night for something. There was an unusual tension in the voice that had burst out from him.

"Ryo!" Arato cried back as he desperately pleaded with him. "You gotta help me! Lacia's gone!"

His bubbling emotions got the better of him. Arato had only known Lacia for a period of not even two weeks, but she had become so important to him that he was willing to get on his knees and beg if it came down to it. To Arato, Lacia felt like a critical piece of his life that he needed to survive, as much as one would need a major organ in their body. Even if he had to lower his head and destroy his pride, he would gladly do it if it meant getting her back.

Arato explained the situation to Ryo, who the entire while, silently listened with a face that could have been mistaken as being carved from granite.

"High-end hIEs come with a substantial suite of anti-theft systems. Go check the manual that came with her, it should tell you what to do in cases like this." Ryo said. It might have been his imagination, but Ryo sounded cold for some reason.

"I don't have it downloaded on my terminal." Arato admitted.

"What? Why not?" Ryo asked sharply.

"Lacia told me that she had it all covered by storing it in her memory anyway, so I didn't need to worry about something like that."

Ryo let out a long, deep sigh that sounded quite painful to his ears.

"Arato, it's wonderful that you're such a pure-hearted person, but it's dangerous to be this naive. What about the security memory stick?" Ryo asked again. "If you hook it up to your terminal, it'll activate the security mode on her and link you up with a support line from the company that made her."

"I don't have that either. I picked her up from the street, remember? Obviously, she didn't come to me all nicely bundled with the usual peripherals."

"How convenient." Ryo dryly noted. "And of course, you didn't think to even question it at all. That hIE of yours really picked the right tool, huh."

Arato flushed hotly at his snide remark. He already knew that he wasn't as bright as someone like him but to hear it stated this plainly to his face still pissed him off.

"Well, we still have her unit code, so we can use that to contact the manufacturer for instructions." Before he could say anything, Ryo told him exactly what to do.

"Stylus." Arato mentioned out loud at random. "She was made by Stylus."

"If you say so." Ryo shrugged in a way that made him annoyed. Arato got that he was asking a lot from his friend right now, but that didn't give him an excuse to act this strange and cold towards him.

Arato used the search engine function on his pocket terminal to open up Stylus's homepage. It was a sleek, well-polished screen of silver that clearly displayed how much effort their marketing department had put into it.

"Beyond Human." was their slogan. He felt a bit nervous at having something pushed at him so forwardly like that. Out of curiosity, Arato went to sneak a peek at their Supreme-class hIE product line. The fact that there wasn't a price tag clearly stated on the product page made him feel sick. Arato also astutely noted that there were no instructions on how to even order one. The level of exclusivity on display made him feel numb.

After navigating to the support desk and filling the requisite information in the forms provided, the response that came through shook him to the core.

"The Owner of this unit has opted to have this unit reject all administrative-level commands from the company." The service representative who was a young attractive woman in her early twenties informed him. Apparently, being the registered Owner of a Supreme-class hIE automatically granted Arato admission into a private Owners' club run by Stylus along with all the benefits it offered. This included an exclusive service hotline for Supreme-class users which came staffed with real humans instead of the usual hIEs.

Arato felt uncomfortable, feeling like he was an imposter that had managed to slip into a circle that was usually dominated by the rich and powerful.

"Why would you disable a security function in the first place? That sounds like a stupid idea, no offense." Arato asked the woman, who for her part replied immediately with a natural million dollar award-winning smile that had obviously been drilled into her as part of her corporate training. Even though he probably gave off the image of a dumb trust fund kid that had been handed his hIE by his wealthy parents on a silver platter, the woman did not let it show on her face.

"Most of our clients at this level take their privacy very seriously, and Stylus has a proud tradition of safeguarding the personal data of our users." The woman told him crisply. "Of course, as the Owner you may request for this function to be activated. However, this procedure will take half a day. In the interim would you like us to send a replacement over to your location?"

Now Arato was definitely sure, that this place was frequented only by the seriously loaded. The privacy that the woman mentioned as being a premium along with the knowledge that 90% of Stylus customers were men made Arato shudder. He was coming to realize the dark implications of such a thing.

And then there was the term the woman used, the same as the police officer had before, and the casual dismissal of it all.

A cool voice resonated in his head.

"I am a tool. I was made to be used."

At that moment, Arato truly hated the world he found himself in.

A sudden wave of nausea overtook him and Arato fought back the urge to hurl. He quickly thanked the service representative and told her that such a thing wasn't necessary, recalling Lacia's wariness of security companies. More importantly, the time required of half a day was far too long for him right now. By then, Lacia might have been taken away from him forever.

The fact that he'd stumbled into another dead end made sorrow well up in his chest and Arato felt like breaking down. No matter which path he took, it seemed to always return him back to the starting point. Arato was out of leads to go on with.

"Ryo..." Arato pleaded with his friend on the other end of the line, hoping that the amazing Kaidai Ryo could magic up a miracle solution from his bag of tricks as he usually did.

"I don't think you should go after her." Ryo said calmly. "Think about it. These guys went to a lot of trouble snatching her, to the point of assaulting another person. They aren't going to give her up just because you went up to them and asked nicely."

It felt like a hydraulic press had been clamped around his chest. Arato understood the logic behind his words, but the thought of Lacia suffering right now managed to hurt him in ways that he couldn't fathom. Even if it was going to turn out to be something crazy, and he had to run head-on into a crazy situation, Arato still wanted to try and get her back. He wanted to fight back against this cruel reality, even as a powerless kid.

"Sorry, I get what you're trying to tell me but I can't just let it end like this." Arato apologized and lowered his head. Even if his childhood friend told him 'no', Arato was determined to go at it alone if he had to. "Lacia is too important to me for that."

Through the screen, Ryo looked disturbed. Then he ran a hand through his bangs and sighed deeply.

"Don't you think that's an exaggeration? You have known her for what? Less than two weeks or so now?"

"Yuka's hurting bad over this too. Besides, I can't just let them take Lacia." Arato said. "That's why I came to you for help. Can't you work something out with MemeFrame to track her down?"

"I don't have that sort of authority. And even if I did, I would have refused anyway."

"What!? Why?" Arato cried out.

"This obsession with that hIE of yours has gotten way out of hand. I already did you a favor by trying to help you at the start." Ryo told him. "I won't do any more than this."

"So you do know a way." Arato asked, surprised himself at the steely edge in his voice.

Ryo's silence served as the confirmation to his question. Right then, Arato decided that he would try to use the location service to track Lacia's pocket terminal. He had linked their cells together as a backup in case one of the cells had gotten misplaced. It was a basic form of security that existed on most devices.

"Oh, to hell with it. I knew it was worth feeling like a stalker to do this." Arato muttered under his breath and said a hallelujah. "What the hell? It actually worked?"

He felt surprised that such a dumb thing had worked out. The app on his terminal asked if he would like to see a map and when Arato pressed the 'OK' icon on his touchscreen, he saw a red dot that was slowly moving in a direction.

"Head to Kasai, please." The Mercedes-Benz registered his order and the car began to move. According to his map, Lacia was heading east, from the ruins of Kasai Rinkai Park.

As the sedan drove south from Shin Koiwa, the urban landscape around Arato thinned out and became scarce. The same went for the area around Tokyo Bay, which had once been a bustling part of the city. A large portion of that area had been lost due to the liquefaction of the ground during the Hazard. In particular, the area around Kiba and Funabashi was one of the hardest hit, with those two areas losing around 30% of their buildings. Not to mention, despite everyone thinking it impossible, tsunamis had rocked the bay as well, causing additional damage on top of that. Thanks to all of that, the Tokyo Bay area had become one of the least populated places in Tokyo and its surrounding suburbs.

"Speed up to the limit." Arato ordered, and the full-sized sedan accelerated rapidly. As the road condition was clear, the automatic driving system allowed the car to access the speed limit of the road. By the sides of the four-lane street, the charging units which provided the car with its wireless electricity shone.

This was the evolved form of the power grid in the 22nd century. By relying on these ubiquitous charging units, anything that required electricity to operate would automatically charge itself, removing any worries about losing power. The power supplies of his pocket terminal, the Mercedes-Benz, hIEs, and many more all depended on this system to continue functioning.

Ever since solar power generators had been established in space and the technology for storing energy had advanced, human society had entered a new energy-rich era. Centered around this new glut of energy was the converted form of electricity. The old natural resources of oil and gas, while still in use due to their ease of storage and transport, no longer played a key role in maintaining human society. And because of that, the world was no longer as energy deficient as it once was. The extremely low cost of electricity too came about from the power generation in space and the energy transfer system using electromagnetic waves from space to the ground that brought about this increase in supply.

Or in other words, the current production of energy far exceeded the demand for the human race as of the present. Arato once read in a history book that a long time ago, wars were waged in the Middle East over oil and natural resources, but the expansion of energy production into space had brought an end to these kinds of conflicts.

Even the way that humans lived their lives had changed. No longer did one need to say something like "I need to charge my cellphone." for such a thing was not necessary anymore. That was because the internal battery was always being automatically charged by the automatic power transmission provided by these wireless power transmission units. And due to that, there was no more need to be aware of one's energy usage.

This was the lifestyle of a person living in the 22nd century, Arato thought to himself. And since there was no longer any need to huddle around energy sources, the cityscape had become more spread out than it had used to be. This was especially noticeable in the Tokyo Bay area, where there were few houses to begin with, so the view was pleasantly wide and clear.

It was also this area, or more precisely, the land around the head of the Edogawa River, that had been hit the hardest during the Hazard. Most of the casualties attributed to the incident had occurred there. There were plenty of dilapidated houses and the area had turned into a hotbed of criminal activity, as reported on TV.

Arato's stomach twisted when he realized that it was the same area he was heading towards.

"Arato." A voice broke through his thoughts. Ryo was still there, on the other end of the line. "I still think you really shouldn't get involved with this hIE. They're just tools, built to serve us by doing little chores around the house. All this that's happening is way too big and complicated to be about a tool alone." He said coolly. His face looked as doubtful as ever.

"If Shiori was taken, you would be doing the same thing." Arato growled.

"I'm going to be real with you here, Arato. You put way too much value on perception. That thing is just a machine that so happens to carry the guise of a human. Have you considered that this might be what she wants? To trick you into feeling sorry for her in order to further her analog hacking. Think about it. The guys who did this are obviously seasoned criminals, yet somehow they forgot to disable her pocket terminal?"

"Maybe... they were in a rush and it slipped their mind." Arato swallowed thickly.

"It just slipped their mind? What are the chances of that? That's like saying a bank robber somehow forgot to put on his mask before busting through the front door. It's the most basic thing, the first step of their plan if they had one." Ryo shot back.

"What are you trying to say?" Arato asked.

On the map, Arato could see that he had almost caught up to the red dot that represented Lacia's signal. The criminals who nabbed her must have not realized that they were being tailed yet, as their vehicle was still moving rather slowly. Arato let out a sharp breath, as he stared at the dried blood that was starting to crust on his hands. It was the blood of his precious little sister, Yuka.

His mind drew a blank when it came to visualizing the unavoidable confrontation that loomed. Or rather, it wasn't so much the confrontation that scared him.

It was the fact that he had no idea what was going to happen if he came face-to-face with the guy who took Lacia. It felt like he was about to do something horribly rash.

The automated car crossed a run-down bridge and continued rolling toward the Edogawa River. Since Arato wasn't actually driving the car, he couldn't control it directly. Thus, even though his emotions were surging, it did not affect how the car was being operated. The area they were heading to, Urayasu, had been the focus of several revitalization projects aimed at repairing the infrastructure after the Hazard incident, but it was still a deserted plot of land outside of the area around Urayasu Station.

Which probably made it a prime location for a criminal to operate in if one was so inclined.

"We started this entire thing without a single lead to go on, but in less than thirty minutes, here we are right on the heels of the kidnappers. Doesn't this feel fishy to you? It's like someone orchestrated this entire thing. Like we're just being guided along an automated path by something or someone."

"I always knew you were a bit of a nutjob when it came to hIEs, but this is kinda taking it too far, isn't it?" Arato tried to play it off as a joke but Ryo was having none of it.

"Your hIE knows everything about us." Arato noted that Ryo's face looked crazed, almost unhinged for a moment as he rambled. "If we are indeed being guided, she could be a part of it. She's just making you think you're chasing after her, when in reality, she's the one actually leading you down this path of her choosing. But what's her plan? She can't be doing something like this for no reason. What are the gears she's trying to turn in society? When did we humans lose our sense of agency and turn into puppets dancing on the strings of a machine?"

"...So, about that doctor." Arato deadpanned.

"Arato." Ryo's voice was trembling in fear. "What if that hIE of yours is a Red Box?"

"Now you've really lost it." Arato told him bluntly. "You might think I'm a moron but at least I don't waste my time coming up with these kinds of crackpot theories."

Red Box.

It was a term that was first introduced to them in grade school. In the year 2051, the American advanced AI demonstrator "Prometheus", the first of its kind in human history, was formally certified as breaking through the technological singularity. That was the fateful day when computers had finally reached a point where they surpassed the ability for humans to conceptually understand them.

As of the current period, there existed thirty-nine of these ultra high-performance AIs around the world. These thirty-nine AIs were mostly used for research and development purposes. Using unfounded technology that was beyond the reach of the current human technological progress, they were able to create new products far beyond anything humans could achieve under their own power. These products, which were entirely produced without any input from humanity, were known as 'Red Boxes'.

Of course, such Red Boxes came with an entire host of restrictions to prevent the destabilization of human society. Any project involving them required approval from the global organization in charge of overseeing the safe use of ultra high-performance AIs, the International Artificial Intelligence Agency (IAIA), which was an institution of the UN. Before one could even start work on a Red Box, they had to announce their intentions to the IAIA and undergo a high-level inspection by them before they gave their approval. Only then could one begin to develop a Red Box.

Needless to say, the illegal development or release of one came with it penalties of the highest order, with even entire nations coming under economic sanctions and fines if they were caught breaking the established rules.

And for the person found most responsible for instigating such a crime, the death penalty was mercilessly applied. This was to deter opportunistic individuals from allowing ultra high-performance AIs from ending the world as humans knew it.

However, that was not to say that there was a complete restriction on technologies developed by ultra high-performance AIs. The wireless power system for example, which became the new standard for the world when it was invented, was actually a product developed by the Chinese state-owned ultra high-performance AI No.22 "Kowloon". After the wireless power transmission system was judged to be a net positive to humanity by the IAIA, as the design was obviously sound, simple, and low cost along with carrying with it a minimal risk of malfunctions. Thus, even if the operating mechanism of such a product was unknown to mankind, the IAIA allowed it to be released into society for mainstream adoption.

Arato also heard passingly on the news that due to the existence of ultra high-performance AIs, morale among human scientists was at an all-time low and there was a serious underlying problem of a lack of motivation for humans to research and come up with new breakthrough technologies on their own abilities.

"That's ridiculous." Arato scoffed. "Even if Lacia was one of those fabled Red Boxes, what was she doing wandering around my neighborhood in the middle of the night?"

Arato tried to downplay Ryo's worries but deep inside him, a sinking feeling was forming. To be honest, his subconscious probably held suspicions from the start that Lacia was of a different breed of hIE than the rest, but he forced himself to be blissfully unaware to try and keep running away from the imaginary noose around his neck. But still, he just couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of a restricted technology beyond the scope of even the smartest human researchers in the world would just simply play house, cover the chores around the Endo Apartment, and indulge in secret midnight snuggle sessions with him.

Even now, Arato could still feel the bloom of warmth in his chest when he recalled the memory of them holding each other in his room. And that's was why, Arato continued to refuse to believe in his friend, especially the part about Lacia possessing an ulterior motive.

"Are you listening to yourself? You make it sound like this entire kidnapping was staged by Lacia." His brain was starting to hurt and Arato felt his head heat up. Thinking wasn't exactly his strong suit, but even Arato knew that Lacia wasn't someone truly devious enough to do something like that.

"Arato." Ryo addressed him in a cold voice. "I enlisted the help of someone I know who works at MemeFrame. Do you recall the explosion a little while ago at the MemeFrame Tokyo research labs? It was all over the news so you must have saw it. But I digress, did you know at that time MemeFrame called in a PMC to handle the situation?"

"I don't see how that's related at all." Arato said, his head still hurting. The random trivia bomb that Ryo dropped on him out of the blue was seriously starting to give him a headache. All of a sudden, their discussion felt like it had expanded into something too big for a kid like him to manage on his own. All Arato wanted to do was to get his girl back, not get involved with the grand plots and schemes of multinational megacorps.

"It was the same day you met Lacia. The timing matches up as well." Ryo's eyes were hollow and dark. The expression on his face was the same scary one when he'd first warned him to stop getting involved with Lacia. "The explosion at our Tokyo research labs. The strange flowers you recalled seeing that had the ability to take control of machines. The meeting you had with Lacia. It was all on the same night."

The words passed through his blank mind. Arato slowly exhaled once, and then twice before forcing himself to smile.

"To protect someone, you have to be prepared to give up everything."

Even though a part of his rational mind recognized that Lacia was a 'something', and not a someone, Arato felt no hesitation at the prospect of getting involved in a dangerous situation to get her back. To Arato, he valued Lacia equally as any other human.

Lacia needed him right now, and that was all Arato needed to know.

"You're serious." Ryo said, realization dawning on his face.

"Everything I heard was nothing but speculation." Arato shot back. "What I know for sure is that a girl got kidnapped, and there's a chance for me to save her before those bad guys do anything to her. It's what Lacia would have wanted as well. I'm not running away anymore, I'm going to fight back." He added. "Besides, what kind of worthless guy would I be if I went and abandoned her at the smallest sign of trouble?"

Despite everything he said, Arato was still afraid. Afraid of a multitude of things that swirled in his chest. But Arato felt that he had no other choice but to keep pressing forward. If he didn't do that, he wouldn't be able to break free from the shackles of his monochrome life. Lacia was that chance to do something right for once in his life.

He was in an automatic vehicle that automatically recharged the energy it used, chasing an hIE, whose every action was an automated response to their surroundings. This was the life of a human living in an automated century. So to Arato, he felt like this decision that he'd made was a rebellion of sorts. As much as he liked to talk down Yuka for being a spoiled kid, it seemed that he too possessed childish dreams as well.

The last thing Arato wanted was his emotions to be automated as well.

On the display of his pocket terminal, Ryo's face twisted into something truly ugly.

"Really, Arato? That's all it takes? A basic bitch with a pretty face and a big ass comes around, and what, you're willing to throw away your life just like that?"

"I don't care if you think of me as a loser chasing after a hot piece of ass, but Lacia's family and that's that." Arato growled and unzipped his jacket, mentally priming the live grenade in his mind for action. "There she is. Let's do this."

On the map, Lacia's red dot was so close that it nearly overlapped his white one. From behind the windshield of the Mercedes-Benz, Arato saw a white van cut across the intersection in front of him. When he saw it, his heart felt like it had stopped. Arato was gripping his pocket terminal so tightly flakes of dried blood were getting onto the device. Beside him, Funell let out sounds of crackling electricity from its claws.

"Arato, you need to get a grip, or that machine is going to be your downfall. Mark my words." Ryo warned before he hung up.

---

Sakagami Takuya was angry. It was not an unfamiliar emotion to him, as he had been angry his entire life. What else could be expected from a person who found themselves forced to live in an insane world? He bit down on his teeth hard enough to the point that he could taste the coppery tang of his own blood. He swallowed the blood down over and over again, and each time, the bile in his stomach only rose.

"Shit!" Takuya roared as he slammed his fist against the interior of his automatic vehicle. "If only that stupid bitch hadn't been so nosy!"

It wasn't his first rodeo for these sorts of things, committing a criminal act against hIEs. That wasn't the cause of his current rage. What infuriated him the most was the kid who kept stubbornly clinging on to him as he tried to move his prize catch away. She just kept screaming and screaming, her shrill voice drilling a hole into his brain. So Takuya had no choice but to shut her up with a quick right hook that knocked her down.

But in the process, he'd assaulted a human. And Takuya knew that if he were to be caught by law enforcement now, the potential charges facing his rap sheet just got that much more serious.

The special pocket terminal that he used for Antibody activities vibrated. It warned him of a security camera nearby. The program installed on the special terminal provided members of the Antibody Network information regarding matters that could potentially get them arrested. Things like the location of police patrols and security cameras were general knowledge to the userbase of the Antibody Network, but anything more specific required the support of a dedicated navigator, which Takuya did not have access to at the moment as he was hijacking the Antibody Network without permission for his own personal use.

"Sorry for all the shouting, babe. I must have scared you. I scared you, didn't I?" Takuya cooed as if he was talking to a mindless pet. He studied the girl who laid haphazardly in the rear compartment of the large van, a large black cover that resembled a garbage bag draped over the top half of her body. In a corner, her disabled pocket terminal was tossed away like it was a piece of junk.

The prone girl remained still and unmoving. She was offline, having been forced to shut down from a heavy impact. It was something that the Antibody Network taught him as one of the group's standard methods of kidnapping an hIE. The Network had determined that when an hIE suffered an impact with a medium-sized vehicle moving at a minimum speed of at least forty kilometers per hour, they would be forced into a safe mode in order to prevent them from going haywire and potentially injuring nearby humans.

During this time, the hIE's system would run checks on its limbs, joints, artificial muscles, and communication modules before reconnecting it to the behavioral cloud. Only when the behavioral cloud had confirmed that there were no abnormalities would it then allow the hIE to resume its normal functions. It was this time gap between the system check and the cloud link that was the period when members of the Antibody Network took advantage of by locking hIEs into an offline mode by covering them with bags made of special transmission-blocking fibers which prevented the hIEs from reestablishing a connection and restarting. Preventing the restart was the most critical part of the kidnapping of an hIE. As hIEs were a bundle of sensors that constantly recorded the environment around them, if allowed to reconnect, they would immediately file a report to the police, and the members of the Antibody Network were screwed.

As a high-end model, her reaction time was as superb as he'd expected. He'd made the right call by aiming the vehicle at the little girl instead of trying to target Lacia directly as it forced Lacia to shove her away and take the blow in her stead.

"I hope that I didn't hurt you too much. That was a pretty heavy hit you took." Takuya said, worrying that he might have gone overboard with the speed. But he didn't want to take any chances, and besides, there existed black market hIE customization shops that could easily replace any damaged components if there was any need to. He glared at the red traffic light that seemingly took forever to switch.

"Here, take a look. I got our love nest all set up for us." He said, almost giddily. He set his pocket terminal to broadcast a 3D holographic image to show off the project that he'd been working on in anticipation of this day.

The image revealed an area that resembled a room of a dollhouse. The walls were covered in gaudy pink wallpaper and a lacy pink curtain accompanied the only window. In it, it was stocked with everything that would cater to a man's needs, it included a mini-fridge and bar counter combination along with a fancy glass table, and of course, a luxurious king-sized bed with an old-fashioned satin canopy. The only thing that was lacking was a stash of condoms common to a love hotel-like room like this, but he didn't plan to use any with her in the first place. Unlimited amounts of bareback sex without the risk of an unwanted pregnancy was the premium service she was about to offer him.

"Do you know how much work a man has to put in to find someone these days? We're not like those femoids who get to live their lives on recruit difficulty." Takuya explained, gleeful that he finally had someone that he could talk to about this.

"I wasn't like those beta cucks who only knew how to wallow all day in their self-pity on the message boards. I went to the gym and worked out, I took care of my looks, I maintained a plate, and I did everything I could to be popular. But when I found myself on a date with a real woman, I was so terribly disappointed. All they did was look at their phones and order the most expensive items on the menu, and when the time for the bill came, I found myself picking up the tab. Modern women are hopeless. They can't cook, they can't clean and they can't even buck their hips in bed properly. They lie there like a dead fish and afterward act as if they did you a huge favor for putting out." He went on. "When I tried to talk to someone about this, I was shamed instead. Apparently, my standards were too high, or so I was told. You have no idea how much time and money I poured down the drain trying to find a human partner, until one day the answer finally hit me."

Takuya grinned as he recalled the revelation that crossed his mind.

"I could simply order an hIE to fit my image of an ideal woman and design her from scratch. I could customize her to act the way I wanted, to talk the way I wanted, to even service me the way I wanted. She would be a pure existence, untainted by the disgusting ideals of feminism forced upon us by the degenerate western nations. We were told men and women were supposed to be equal, but all we ended up with was a clown world that put pussy on a pedestal and worshipped it." He purred. "Isn't that right? My little barbie doll?"

The girl that he was talking to remained unmoving, like a puppet with its strings cut off. Her legs were awkwardly positioned in a way that made her skirt rise up, and when Takuya saw the pale flesh that appeared, he couldn't help the erection that pressed against his pants.

"There's nothing for you to worry about. I got it all covered. It took me a while to save up the cash but I even got a custom behavior control server of my own set up just for you." He reassured her. "All you need to think about is how you can serve me with that naughty body of yours."

His family had been disappointed in him when he'd publically announced his intentions to give up on human women. Takuya was told that he would get tired of having a relationship with an inhuman object before long.

"But somethings they said were still right. Buying you from a store would have made our relationship seem so transactional. For someone who was meant to be my ideal partner, that was obviously unacceptable. Our first meeting needed a more dramatic twist than simply picking you off a shelf."

As mindless automatons under the control of a behavioral cloud, hIEs might have been able to fake loving gestures and emotions perfectly, but they were still soulless machines. That was why, in order to fill that empty space in their relationship, Takuya needed to create a story, something that would truly make their relationship special. The idea of having control over the plotline that he was about to create made him excited. With this, he could finally make his fantasy life come true.

His breathing turned shallow as he continued to leer at Lacia's naked legs. With trembling hands, he stroked the smooth, flawless skin of her calf. It was wonderfully soft and toned in all the right places and Takuya felt the pressure in his pants increase.

"I've always wanted to play the role of the dashing hero." Takuya admitted. "I never gave a shit about the Antibody Network's ideals. Pushing back against the excessive automation of human society? Who cares about something lame like that? I only joined up to keep an eye out for an hIE that had my ideal body. As I was busting up hIE after hIE, I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if I swooped in at the last moment to save her? And afterward, she could show her gratitude with her body. Up to the very end, those idiots in the Antibody Network never realized that they were being used as tools."

Takuya spoke fervently as he retraced his steps that brought him up to this point.

"Then, I finally met you, Lacia." He whispered her name in awe. "When I first saw you, I knew you were the one. And you wanted me to come and get you from that boring Owner of yours as well, didn't you? That was why you smiled at me."

Back then, he'd trailed her when that lame Owner of hers rushed her away from the school gate. He kept his distance, even when that punk had been dragged off by his friends.

That was when he saw Lacia turn around to smile at him. Even now, he could clearly remember the smoldering come-hither look she sent his way. It was as if she was inviting him. That was probably the moment when Takuya made the decision, that this hIE was going to be his, no matter the cost.

"Did you notice? The color of this van I rented? I made sure to pick a white one." Takuya grinned. "Horses are a bit out of touch these days, but I wanted to be your prince that came to rescue you from the useless Owner you were forcefully shackled to."

The first thing Takuya did was to perform the legwork and conduct reconnaissance by camping outside their apartment in Shin Koiwa until he had a solid grasp on their daily schedule and movement patterns. After that, he contacted one of the transportation companies affiliated with the Antibody Network who specialized in moving contraband goods without leaving any traces of the client's involvement. According to the knowledge disseminated by the Antibody Network, the number one reason for criminals to be caught by law enforcement, aside from security cameras, was due to the sloppy handling of the movement log stored in their getaway vehicles, which gave away the criminals who operated them.

The van that he'd rented was most definitely going to be discovered, but thanks to an illegal program shared among the Antibody Network, the movement log was going to be erased afterward and no one was going to be any the wiser. No trace would be left of his activities or location. Once he'd met up with the transport company at the east end of Urayasu where they'd scheduled the handover, he would be home free.

"Just a bit longer, honey, and then you can sexually analog hack me all night long with that fine body of yours." Takuya said.

His body trembled as if he had been intoxicated. He lifted a light, dainty hand and began to suck on her nimble digits.

Lacia tasted as sweet as he'd expected her to be.

"You're a bad girl. You've got a bad smile. You've got a bad way of carrying yourself." He started to accuse the whore of seducing him. "Your hands are bad. Your feet are bad. Your armpits are bad. Your breasts are bad. Your ass is bad. The gap between your thighs is bad. Your eyes are bad. Your lips and tongue were made to do bad things. You're a bad girl that tempts good men like me into thinking and doing bad things. A bad girl like you needs to be punished and locked in a cage."

When he thought about the dominance and power he was about to hold over this sinful, beautiful girl, the pressure in his pants increased to the point that he felt like he was about to explode.

"I'm going to put a leash around your neck and turn you into a perfect fuckdoll for the rest of my life."

Interfaces like her might have possessed the form of a human, but their minds were firmly of an object. Once Lacia was hooked up to the custom behavior cloud of his, she would automatically come to love him, and he would automatically be happy.

The next time Lacia booted up, she would discover her personality to be completely rewritten to become that of his ideal partner, of a woman who knew her proper role in society unlike the disgusting femoids who were a plague on the modern world, and that was to serve and please men as their sole function. It was the natural order of things, a small island of sanity in this clown world of the 22nd century.

The tightness in his pants was starting to be unbearable, and Takuya found that there wasn't any reason to continue holding himself back. After all, they were going to be doing plenty more of these sorts of things from now on.

Lacia's face was still covered by the shielding bag, but as he started to crawl over her, he was sure that underneath it, she was encouraging him with a sultry bite of her dirty lips.

That was when Takuya noticed that a car had cut in front of the van. He recognized the enraged face of the youth who was looking back at him. It was Lacia's Owner. He couldn't accelerate the van, which was an industrial vehicle limited to a lower top speed than the commercial sedan blocking it. For a brief moment, Takuya thought about disabling the automatic driving system to manually control the van on his own, but he stopped himself. In Tokyo and its surrounding suburbs, it was considered a crime to disengage the autopilot function of one's vehicle. If one attempted to do such a thing, the vehicle would automatically alert the police.

"A hero always got to beat up the bad guy at the end to prove his worth, right?" Takuya sneered as he directed the van to a nearby abandoned industrial area. If outrunning the car wasn't an option, that only left one thing left to do. "Alright, kid. Let's see what you got."

---

The tightness in his chest only increased when Arato saw the white van squeal its tires to swerve a corner. It parked centimeters away from the concrete wall of an empty warehouse. To either side of the four-lane harbor road were large buildings that must have warehouses once upon a time long ago. Their concrete gates were slanted open and the steel doors that had once acted as their entrance were rusting over. Grass and weeds were growing through cracks on the old pavement. It was a sign of humanity abandoning their tools once they had passed their time of usefulness. But despite being left behind by humans, nature only moved forward, uncaring of the original meaning of things.

In this desolate area, Arato prepared himself to come face-to-face with a violent confrontation. Blood was pounding in his ears as he took a step out from the black sedan.

"It's... you." Arato's throat hurt so much it felt raw when he saw the opposite figure that had casually appeared from the driver seat of the stationary vehicle. He was well-dressed, wearing a branded suit. He looked more like a patron at a high-end restaurant than a criminal. The only thing that gave his crooked status away was the heavy-looking pipe he carried.

Arato recognized him. The person before him was the senior from their school that had tried to buy Lacia off him at the park. That meant he was eighteen, nineteen tops, and already at his young age was acting as a violent criminal.

"She's mine now, kid." The boy he only knew as Sakagami spat at him, his face twisting into something ugly.

Arato took one last look at his bloodstained hands, and all of a sudden, his body was moving. The anger that had been building up inside of him came out in a scream. He lowered his center of gravity and kicked off the asphalt as hard as he could. His body felt light, almost weightless as he rushed at the older boy.

Pushed on by his searing emotions, Arato threw a running haymaker at the kidnapper at such a speed it almost surprised him, to the point he was confident that nobody would be able to dodge such an attack.

Then, in an instant, the kidnapper disappeared from his view, and a deep pain exploded in Arato's gut. Arato realized that for all of his boiling fury, he had been the one who'd gotten hit in the first place.

"...!"

What had occurred was that his fist had swung through empty space. Sakagami had ducked to avoid the blow, and using the same momentum, slammed a punch right into his stomach so hard that Arato swore he could hear his ribcage rattle. The blow was like fire, and the white-hot pain that rushed to his mind felt like it could have wiped away his consciousness if Arato allowed his concentration to relax and his teeth to unclench for even a moment.

Arato cursed loudly using language that Yuka would most certainly not be proud of. Of course, the gap between the opponent before him still existed. Reality didn't care about things like emotions or anger. It wasn't as if getting mad granted him the ability to instantly level up his stats or make things go conveniently right for him. The fact remained that Sakagami was many times stronger than he was.

Arato knew this, he knew this, but yet resolved to try and punch the older boy even harder the next chance he got. As long as his body still moved, he could try. And if he could try, that meant he could still fight.

Right as he thought that, Arato heard a scream of pain.

"What the hell is this thing!?"

Sakagami was fending off an attack from another participant in their fistfight. While Arato had been hit, Funell took the opportunity to sneak up on the kidnapper to give him a taste of his mounted tasers.

Arato knew that it was a dishonorable thing to attack someone while they were distracted, but he didn't care much about playing by the rules right now. He reared his shoulder backward to generate extra force and slammed his fist as hard as he could, yelling the entire time, right in the face of the kidnapper. He couldn't help but grin when he heard the satisfying 'crack' of something breaking.

The older boy stumbled but did not fall, so Arato helped him out by throwing his entire weight onto him in a tackle. The both of them crashed to the ground. Sakagami looked confused, his face contorting in pain from below him.

Then, Arato started laying into him with everything he had.

"You!"

In a civilized society where naked physical human aggression had been mostly shunned in favor of more insidious and passive methods, Arato found himself reverting to a primal state, one that wouldn't be unfamiliar to cavemen in the ancient era when conflicts were solved with violence and death. It harkened back to a time when all Humanity knew was to bash their neighbor's brains in with sticks and stones.

"Fucking!"

Arato felt a sharp sting of pain lace his hand. One of his knuckles had been split open by Sakagami's teeth. He kept punching anyway.

"Hit!"

His hand was getting slippery from all the blood, so Arato used his free hand to grab the collar of the kidnapper's shirt to get a better grip. And then, he resumed his punching.

"My!"

His right fist was starting to seriously hurt from all the spittle running into his open wound, but Arato ignored it and continued to slam it into Sakagami's face.

"Little!"

He'd lost count by now, if he had been even trying to count in the first place, of the number of times he'd struck the older boy. But still, Arato punched. He punched and punched and punched and punched and punched.

"Sister!"

Arato had completely and utterly lost it. Calling him berserk right now was an understatement. The absolute fury he was experiencing went beyond that and crossed into the realm of surrealism. He couldn't forgive the older boy that he was currently beating the ever-loving lights out of. He couldn't stand the fact that Sakagami only saw Lacia as a tool for pleasure, like everyone else in this messed up world did.

He couldn't forgive him for treating Lacia like she was just some sex toy he could play with.

He couldn't forgive him for attacking his little sister and making her cry.

And more than anything, Arato couldn't forgive this other man for trying to steal his girl away from him.

An impact like a freight train crashed into the side of his head and Arato felt blood drip from his nose and his vision go white for a moment. Even after suffering so much damage, Sakagami still somehow had the strength to deliver a punch to try and defend himself.

The pain burned like someone had taken a blunt knife to carve into his flesh. Arato hadn't been hurt this badly ever since the night he met Lacia, when a car had almost turned him into roadkill, but unlike that time, fear was the last thing on his mind right now.

That was because, even as Arato wrestled with the intense painful sensation, the idea that if a teenage boy like him felt something like this so badly to the point that if he weren't as pumped with fury at the moment, he would have broken out in tears, how would a girl like Yuka, his precious little sister, must have felt when she received the same punches from this much stronger person?

The gasket in his mind exploded again and Arato felt a fresh, overwhelming fury flood him. Arato let out a snarl, reared back, and drove a balled fist through Sakagami's face as if he was trying to blow it clean off his shoulders. He heard a wet, damp sound as the back of Sakagami's skull smashed against the concrete pavement, his eyes rolling back until Arato could see the whites.

Arato immediately took the chance to wrap his bloody hands around Sakagami's neck.

"You shouldn't have touched her. You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that at all." At some point, Arato wasn't even sure of the words that were coming from his mouth. The only thing his deranged brain was aware of was the thrilling rush of power and dominance surging through his body in a dark aria.

The soft, fragile cartilage of the pharynx in his palms felt good. It felt sickeningly good to squeeze his hands and feel the veins in Sakagami's neck throb in protest. He was gurgling something wet and red from his lips. Arato grinned, baring his own red-stained teeth, and put even more force in his hands, to the point the muscles in his arms and shoulders were shaking.

Just a bit more, Arato thought to himself. Just a bit more and then-

"Mother..."

The pained whisper that had come from the delirious boy in front of him made Arato freeze. Everything just seemed to hit him at once.

And then what, Arato realized. Like a puppet that had its strings cut, he released his grip on Sakagami's neck.

"What the hell am I doing?" Arato rolled himself over to sit up, with his body still pinning the unconscious, but still breathing, boy. Sakagami's once handsome face had been ruined by him into something that more resembled a pounded meatball than anything else. With all the previous energy and rage all spent, the aching leftover pain of the subsiding adrenaline rush made Arato tired.

Gasping for breath, he studied the dirty pavement between his knees. It was cracked and imperfect. In some ways, Arato felt that it reflected his feelings towards Lacia. Love wasn't something that could be automated or optimized. Love was by its nature a wild and selfish thing. Even if everything around him in this society was an illusion generated by hIEs, Arato still had his love for Lacia to fall back on.

Without adrenaline backing him up, Arato felt the return of pain in its undiluted intensity. Every part of him, his face, his arms, his stomach, his ribs and even his fists all hurt like hell. He nursed his raw knuckles. The pain felt like a wave that alternated between rising and ebbing, with every so often Arato feeling confident that it'd subsided only for it to return again. He was surprised at how extreme his feelings for Lacia had gotten. Maybe he really had been analog hacked, like his best friend Ryo had said.

With his head lowered and his mind far in the distance, Arato did not notice the sounds of sliding gravel until he heard a familiar voice calling out his name.

"You did well coming after me, Arato-san. You've made me very happy, thank you."

Arato felt a warm flush of renewed shyness when he saw the creamy skin of Lacia's impossibly sleek legs appear in his vision. Compared to her wonderous form, with her stylish clothes and perfect hair, Arato felt like a blown horse at the race tracks. He must have seemed pathetic to her, with thick rivulets of sweat running down his face to mix with blood before dripping down his jaw. His shirt felt glued to his skin from the amount of sweat it'd absorbed. The air around him carried the stench of salt, and not the good kind that came from the sea. When the breeze from the bay picked up, Arato could smell the disgusting scent of blood and sweat originating from his body.

But even so, Lacia continued to smile as he looked up at her. She might not have possessed a heart, but Lacia could still smile like she had one.

The worse part of it all was that being praised like this made him happy. Perhaps it was the lingering intense emotions leftover from the fight, but Arato just felt so pathetically happy the moment he heard Lacia's compliment that he broke out in sobs.

Lacia remained standing there silently, simply waiting for him to finish without saying a word. For some reason, she seemed pleased with him, and it showed on her face. She had a strange look in her eyes, full of distant love and affection.

Had she been there the entire time? Merely watching as two boys beat each other to a bloody pulp for her sake?

The thought of it made him shiver.

"You weren't actually in any danger at all, were you." Arato muttered as he wiped away the final remainders of his tears.

Lacia walked up to him and started to gently pet his head. Even though his hair was still damp with sweat, she did not seem to mind as she ran her fingers through them. Lacia offered him a hand, which Arato took, somehow feeling as if he were a puppy placing its paw in hers as he allowed himself to be lifted to his feet, the strange smile he received not helping matters any.

"No." Lacia tilted her head and answered simply, while still warmly holding his hand.

"Let's just go home." Arato said sullenly, feeling like he'd been cheated out of what had supposed to be a hard-won victory. He was just too tired for any of this. Despite everything, Arato still wanted to keep holding on to her hand, so he just stood there and used her affectionate gaze to recharge his batteries.

"Please wait a moment. There are still matters to be settled." Lacia told him gently before turning her attention to the stirring kidnapper on the ground.

Without waiting for a response, she let go of his hand and started casually walking towards the older boy, who seemed stunned at the approaching hIE. Lacia looked down at Sakagami like he was an empty piece of waste that awaited processing. Arato knew that he should have said something right then, but his mind was still fuzzy. Lacia was standing in front of him, between him and the kidnapper, at an angle such that he could only see the pale skin of her back.

"Wait! Please!" He couldn't see Sakagami's face, but he could clearly hear him trying to beg Lacia. However, what Sakagami had forgotten was that he was dealing with a heartless machine that could not be moved.

"You did not hesitate when Yuka-sama asked you to." Lacia said calmly, and then proceeded to put a slim hand around his neck. To Arato, her words seemed to ring out around the empty area surrounding them like a death sentence. The older boy was desperately trying to shake her off, to the point where his grip left indentations on her artificial skin, but still, Lacia did not budge.

Watching Lacia now, Arato couldn't detect the slightest hint of the familiar warmth that she so freely shared with him. It was as if a switch had been flipped in her personality, the affectionate Lacia who cuddled with him and the cold ruthless one in front of him, Arato couldn't bring his mind to somehow synchronize the two images. It was as if everything he felt for her up to this point was nothing more but an illusion that was quickly falling to pieces brought about by an excessive amount of analog hacking.

"I will now proceed to execute your will." Lacia turned her face to look right at him as she spoke. In that one single moment, Arato felt confused. That fateful delay was all it took.

And then he saw her arm move.

And then he heard a pop.

And then the immobile body of what had once been a living human being just moments before hit the floor.

The entire time, her eyes which radiated a strange blue glow remained locked to his. They were cold and unflinching.

It took a few torturous seconds for his mind to catch up. When it finally did, something inside him snapped.

"What did you do." Arato whispered in a trembling voice before proceeding to roar at her. He walked right up to Lacia and yelled in her face. "What the hell did you just do!?"

Arato felt like a rug had been pulled from under him. It all had happened so quickly. Lacia had just casually folded the neck of a human as if it was nothing more than a paper mache. The bile in his stomach reached all the way to his throat and Arato had to choke it back lest he found himself hurling all over the place.

"I have successfully eliminated a potential obstacle towards you and your sister's ability to live an ordinary life. He was a dangerous element that could not have been allowed to escape from this place." Lacia told him calmly. Obviously, as she was a heartless machine, Lacia was unaffected by the rage he directed towards her.

"So by that logic, he needed to die!?" Arato shouted at her. "You should have let the police take care of it!"

"By my calculations, even if he were to be arrested by law enforcement, the risk of him committing recidivism in the future remained too high to ignore." Lacia argued, in the same cold dispassionate manner he'd come to expect from her.

"And who came up with that formula!? Something like that isn't up to us to decide!" Arato shot back. "You can't decide these sorts of things according to a program that someone else wrote!"

Arato was just a kid, but even he could tell the things that Lacia was sprouting made it sound like she was a divine entity passing judgment. Such a thought made him sick.

"He is a hardened criminal who understands exactly how to track and hunt down hIEs. This person has been targeting us from the outset. On four separate occasions, he observed our apartment for information gathering purposes. He knowingly placed Yuka-sama in danger in order to lure me out, and when she put up resistance, did not hesitate in striking her down. He deliberately used a illegal material to restrict my access to the behavioral cloud and then planned to bring me to an unpopulated location where he intended to reprogram and break me." Lacia told him coldly.

Arato might have been a little slow on the uptake, but even he knew everything Lacia just said was the truth.

"September eighth of the previous year." Lacia went on to add. "After an unsatisfying daytime encounter with a human girl, Sakagami Takuya stalked a female model hIE which he felt resembled the woman he had just been with. He followed her back to her home, where he went on to illegally force his way into the premises. Other than a human child, there was nobody present at home to stop him. Using a steel pipe, he proceeded to unleash his frustrations on the hIE, right in full view of the child. He struck her twenty-seven times. The psychological scars on the little girl remain to this very day."

Lacia paused for a moment to allow her words to sink in before she finished in a voice that was soft but firm.

"This is the person you're defending, Arato-san." She chided him gently.

Arato couldn't stop the disgust he felt for the kidnapper. In fact, such hateful feelings only increased as he heard Lacia's story play out. But even so, he couldn't just let Lacia run around and play God. Because he knew, that it was a path destined for tears. Such a road never ended well.

"I get that he's not a good person. But killing him was still wrong. We don't have the right to choose who gets to live or die." His eyes felt hot and Arato wanted to cry. Compared to the iron-clad logic of a rational machine, his retort was weak and childish but Arato still felt that he needed to try. "If you felt so strongly about it, we should have just drove him to a police station and personally turned him in to an officer."

"Arato-san, you seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding something. Sakagami Takuya is an extremist. The very concept of compromise is alien to him. The criminal charges he faces will not have him be put away for long. During the time he finds himself incarcerated, he will remember your face. He will carry a grudge against you. The negative emotions stemming from his supremacist ideals will continue to only fester and build until the day of his release. He will not stop. He will escalate. And when he finds you, with nothing to lose, the only choice left at that point is a final confrontation between you and him."

"Since when did something like that become inevitable?" Arato asked mutely.

"The clock will always keep turning. Even if you stay still, the world will always keep moving forward." Lacia said in a monotone. "This was the optimal outcome."

"I don't believe that this was the only way, no matter how much you try to convince me otherwise." Arato refused to budge. Her honeyed words sounded nice on paper, but all it took was one look at the rapidly cooling corpse on the concrete pavement to send his stomach reeling.

It felt like his chest was about to break open. At this rate, Arato felt like he was about to turn crazy as well, just like the inanimate object in front of him. The sight before him looked like a twisted perversion of everything a normal person stood for. The dead kidnapper and Lacia. Both of them were 'not alive' in the most technical sense of the term, but yet unlike the corpse beside her, Lacia could continue to walk and talk normally like a functioning human.

Arato lowered his eyes and in a prayer-like delusion, waited for Lacia to give him a proper answer to justify herself.

He wanted to be able to trust her. Even now, he was trying to lie to himself that perhaps Lacia had a good reason for all of this. Mentally, his mind was already coming up with excuses in order to try and defend her. All Arato needed was a reason, no, an excuse, from Lacia. Anything would do. He was sure that there was a good reason for all of this.

So just tell me and I'll understand. He thought to himself.

But in the end, the girl that once carried such affection-filled eyes instead used those words to lay a curse on him and bind him, and though he hoped that she would step aside after recognizing the heat that was coursing through his body, she still refused to budge.

"Arato-san, the first time we met, you had no issue with me performing an action that might have placed human lives at risk." There was a firm edge in her voice now, and Arato too had started to realize the hypocrisy he was displaying.

"That was because on that night you weren't attacking a human." Arato hated himself even as the words left him. The self-loathing that rose within him surged and rolled all over his body and made him want to vomit. In the end, for all of his virtue signalling about treating hIEs as the same as humans, Arato found out that when he was pushed to the wall like this, he turned out to be the same worthless piece of shit as everyone else. Despite considering himself a person who cared deeply for Lacia beyond her status as an hIE, it seemed that even his feelings could only go so far when it was forced to face reality.

"You killed a person, Lacia." Arato said weakly.

"Such a statement is incorrect. I did no such thing. You as my Owner did." Lacia replied immediately.

"What?" Arato couldn't believe his ears. For a moment, it almost sounded like she was blaming him. That was when Arato felt it. The beginnings of a rising heat deep within his core. "What the hell are you implying? I never ordered you to do such a thing!" Arato warned her in a growl.

"It seems that you have forgotten. Allow me to remind you of the terms of our contract." Lacia stood her ground. She was the perfect image of an implacable, unmoving machine. One that was heartless to the very end. "I am the tool that interprets your will, in letter or in spirit, and automatically fulfills your desires. I execute your desired course of action and you take the responsibility for the outcome. That is the role you agreed to undertake when you took me in as my Owner."

It was the same words she spoke to him on the fateful night they met. That was when it finally dawned on Arato that he probably should have paid attention to her terms more carefully instead of rushing forward like he always did.

"That just sounds like a convenient excuse for you to shove all the responsibility on my shoulders!" Arato snapped at her, his stomach turning. He felt truly sick that things had degraded to the point where he found himself having to raise his voice at someone who meant so much to him.

"I am a machine, and therefore cannot be responsible for my own actions. Worrying about responsibility is the privilege of you and other humans." Lacia said coldly. "It is the exclusive right granted to you as a human the moment you were brought into this world."

Looking at Lacia right now, the way she stood, the way she spoke, Arato couldn't feel even the slightest shred of humanity from her. It made him doubt everything he felt for her up to this point. The warm, loving girl familiar to him had vanished, or perhaps she never existed in the first place, being nothing more than an illusion that she projected to keep him happy.

She almost resembled an entirely different person. Someone who he did not recognize in the slightest.

In the first place, when a 'person' hurts another 'person', whether be it the victim or the perpetrator, some internal turmoil would be unavoidable. Hurting another person wasn't a minor action that could be waved away easily like that. And for some, those feelings of guilt would haunt them for the rest of their life.

But these kinds of concepts did not apply to the mechanical puppet in front of him. If such a human existed, one would be sure to label it an anomaly.

After all, Lacia was soulless. She was a soulless machine who automatically determined her every action based on whatever would most make him happy. His greatest mistake was convincing himself that there was a girl in her place where there was none, and this was the sordid outcome of his delusions. Considering she was a Red Box, a creation of a terrifying, distant god-like being known as an ultra high-performance AI, she was probably a hundred, no, a thousand times better than any human girl at figuring out the best way to drive him crazy.

This entire time, he had been searching for something that never existed in the first place.

"Make no mistake, Arato-san. You wanted to kill him." Lacia told him flatly.

"...Who are you?" Arato uttered blankly. Everything felt so surreal, like it was something out of a fictional story. Except that this was reality and Lacia wasn't a character conjured up from a storybook. Arato felt sick at the realization that if she hadn't possessed the form of a beautiful girl, he would not have gotten involved with her in the first place. This was the price of his hubris for believing otherwise.

In the deepest parts of his subconsciousness, Arato already had an inkling that she was different than the rest. But now under the harsh afternoon light, he saw it clearly. Her presence alone seemed to bend the air around her with a strange, unknown pressure.

She remained standing there silently, staring at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Somehow, her lack of response only seemed to confirm his suspicions.

"Lacia, don't you think it's about time to tell me everything? You've been hiding something since we first met!" Arato already knew that yelling at her like this was pathetic. He was nothing more than a kid taking out his frustrations on an object. The worst part was that raising his voice at her hurt him too. It was funny, as Lacia endured it all perfectly, the only one getting all worked up and bothered the most by his shouting was Arato himself.

"Can you withstand this cruel reality?" Lacia asked. Softly, gently, sweetly, in the same benevolent tone she always used around him.

Arato belatedly realized that it was also the same tone one would reserve for young children or the mentally deficient.

The heartless machine before him could not be moved. That much was obvious by now. The love and affection he normally held for her twisted into something hateful and ugly. What had once been warm feelings cloyed and rotted into something truly repugnant. But the dark feelings in his heart only hurt more when Arato realized that he was the only one to blame for allowing something like this to get this far.

For the first time since the night they had met, Arato regretted forging a contract with her.

"You will not take any more actions unless directly ordered to. You will not speak unless spoken to. You're just a tool so it's high time you started acting like a one." Arato ruthlessly shut her down.

The light in her eyes dimmed and Lacia jerked stiffly like she was a puppet cut from her strings. "Order registered and confirmed, Owner. This unit will now revert to its default settings." She said coolly.

Arato wanted to laugh, for the heartless tool in front of him almost sounded hurt. But he was sure that it was just another trick being played on his mind, for even now, the dangers of analog hacking still lurked.

In the first place, it had been a foolish venture to think that Lacia possessed a heart. But now, they could start over from the beginning, and this time Arato would not make the same mistakes.

---

A/N:

This chapter took a little bit longer than usual to produce. I have many things I would like to say from a personal and creative standpoint but I will try to be brief. I shall start from the macro commentary regarding the production of Analog Hack before moving to the chapter commentary.

From a technical perspective, the opening arc of Analog Hack is coming to an end. The next chapter will wrap up what I would consider the "prologue" of this story. Of course, as most long-form stories tend to be, the opening arc is one that focuses heavily on introducing our main characters and their motivations. It's heavily character-based. However, this is where the problems start to crop up.

Analog Hack was written to bridge the gap between hard SF stories and entry-level slice-of-life productions. The original Beatless was a pretty dense piece of work that needed some really high-level thinking to absorb the concepts it was trying to put forward.

My vision for Analog Hack is to be a "Teen's first SF" sort of story, and the heavy emphasis on the romance between Arato and Lacia is proof of that, I think. I too would like to produce a story that while not completely shallow, isn't also at a level where it gets passed on by the average reader. But, currently, I am already starting to struggle to cut down the content into something easily digestible for the readers. In technical writing terms, I am struggling with bloat.

However, moving past the opening act of Analog Hack, the story will start to increase in intensity, in technical detail, in world-building, and in tackling sensitive sociological issues. Frankly speaking, I can already see the problems cropping up in just three, even two more chapters. Right now, it is not that obvious as we're still so heavily focused on Arato and Lacia's relationship, but as the world expands, so will the scope. If I am to be asked what my biggest worry regarding this story right now is, it would be that the terminology and detail might bloat into something truly inaccessible for the readerbase.

I will try to keep this story focused around the core Boy Meets Robot theme going forward, but at the same time, I would like to expand the story to places where the animation did not cover using the supplementary materials I have available.

By this time, it's become a dead horse trope to have robots in these sort of stories act like humans trapped in an artificial body without really explaining why. In Analog Hack, I wished to follow the guidance provided by Beatless in that while you can tell Lacia, who although is clearly a sentient machine, still possesses a different, almost alien way of approaching situations. To put it simply, Lacia is able to stimulate emotional responses while not actually possessing the capability of feeling emotions. She's an actual robot. Not a human pretending to be a robot as is common in similar stories. And to me personally, that was an extremely refreshing aspect of Beatless compared to other SF stories in this trend.

Now let's move on to the commentary for this chapter specifically.

In here we have our first real divergence from canon. In the original story, the kidnapper was not killed. To quickly summarize the stuff that is happening in this chapter, the chapter title provides a hint. In fact, chapter titles in Analog Hack carry with them key hints to the storyline. I think of it as a bonus for readers who recognize the terms.

In this chapter, Lacia is suffering from what we would call Morality Drift in AI ethics. Which is low-key hilarious, considering one of the reasons she picked Arato in the first place was due to Lacia herself specifically recognizing the dangers of such a thing occurring and the risks it posed for her. That was why she intended to use Arato as an anchor for her morality. It was one of Arato's key roles that she intended from him when she made the contract with him, to act as a morality oracle function for her. But it seems to have slipped her mind that just as she brings out the worst impulses in Arato, Arato brings out the worst in her by enabling her so much.

I guess one could draw a parallel to dictators who surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men eventually losing access to non-biased sources of information. It's an age-old fallacy which Lacia too found herself falling into that trap, time will only tell if she realizes that keeping Arato as a doormat 24/7 is hindering his practical usefulness to her. In a way, she needs an Owner that is docile and emotionally invested in her to achieve her goals, while at the same time acting as a morality check on her decision-making processes because Lacia understands that she as a machine does not view things from a conventional human perspective. But in order to serve as a functional morality check, Arato can't be too docile and give in to everything she suggests.

There lies the current paradox and to a certain extent, hypocrisy that Lacia gives off. She talks all day about the value of communication, about nurturing a healthy long-term relationship with Arato while she herself is lying all over the place to Arato and using him for her own ends. She readily argues that her actions are in the interests of humanity and is the first one to point out that her actions are aligned to the morals of a warm, empathic human, but analog hacks said human into becoming way too lovesick to even think of pushing back against her.

This is the mistake that Analog Hack Arato made as compared to the original, that he went too far in trying to love her, that he was willing to let her get away with too much. Their relationship is already a toxic one without even getting into the rabbit hole of the ethical differences in a human-AI relationship. In it, we see that the AI in question is clearly more intelligent and capable than any human could ever hope to be, and Arato is merely a sappy 17-year-old idle rich kid who's not that bright. Pretty much the perfect target for an AI in the guise of the girl of his dreams to use as a tool.

Also, there remains the possibility that Lacia did everything on purpose knowing he would blow up at her to try and probe the boundaries of their relationship. A lot of her actions get cast in a different light when you start to understand the amount of self-interest in everything she does.

But that applies to humans too, no? We too have self-interests when we interact with the world around us, and it drives us to act in certain ways. We might smile at a waiter to receive a smooth dining experience at a restaurant. Does that make a person manipulative? When you really take a microscope to dissect everything, you can find shadows in every corner, to be frank.

Finally, the part where Lacia says that she is the tool that interprets Arato's will, in letter or in spirit, is a huge spoiler to the secret protocol Higgins installed in her and part of her true goals. For those who are familiar with the ending of Beatless, you will understand what I mean.

As always I hoped you enjoyed this chapter and I hope to see you in the next one.