A/N: So in one of the reviews, someone asked if I was going to post another chapter quickly to make up for the fact that I took so long about the last one. Funny enough, they were right! Here you go!
Hee-hee… the plot begins to thicken in this part… Muahaha.
The sky outside was dark and getting darker by the time Kurogane worked his way down to his company's research labs. He scowled a bit as the automatic door opened to let him through; ever since the business freeze, he had been caught up in a delicate balancing act, with the media and the other netnavi companies swarming hungrily beneath him. As a businessman, of course, Kurogane was used to walking tightropes. He knew how to flatter, bargain, and beguile as needed, and had powerful allies in as many places as he thought he was likely to need. This long, drawn out tension was wearing on him, however, and everywhere he went, he could feel his anger boiling just beneath the surface.
Kurogane was not a patient person.
Walking briskly across the entryway and into the room where the main experiments were taking place, he turned to the first person he saw and snapped "Get Suzuki-san."
The scientist, a medium-sized man with short, black hair, jumped at the sudden command. "K-Kurogane-sama! Ah, yes, of course! I… Uh…"
"I'm here," said a voice, approaching Kurogane from just ahead. Kurogane turned as Suzuki, the head scientist in charge of the anti-glitching campaign, strode forward smoothly across the tiled floor. "I'm sorry for the wait. I wasn't expecting you to arrive so early."
The first scientist scurried away, suddenly looking very preoccupied with something on his PET. Kurogane barely noticed; if the man wasn't in charge of anything important, then he wasn't worth Kurogane's concern.
"I got out of a meeting early," Kurogane said, striding forward through the center of the lab. The long room was more like an enormous hallway than anything, extending far enough into the distance that Kurogane could barely see the other end. Computers, desks, and tall bits of equipment lined the walls on both sides, and dozens of people stood or sat throughout the area going about their various tasks. "Now. I believe, Suzuki-san, that I asked for an update on your progress here?"
The woman nodded curtly. Her smooth, dark hair was pulled up into a bun, and she clutched a clipboard in a pair of chocolate-brown hands. Briskly, she turned around and began to lead him down the long passageway of electronics. "Of course, sir. I suppose I'll get straight to the point—I'm concerned with some of the findings of our experiments."
"Are you, now?" Kurogane said, raising an eyebrow. Agitation welled up inside him, but he stomped it down. No use getting angry when he didn't even know what the problem was.
"You see, sir, while we are confident that we've found a successful model of programming to override the glitch, we've become concerned about the new program's level of permanence."
"Define 'concerned'."
"Once the program is installed, I highly doubt that it can be un-installed."
Kurogane looked closely at the scientist, wondering whether he was missing something or whether the woman was just slow. "And is this a problem?"
The woman stared straight ahead as they continued to move, her brown eyes unblinking. "Well, it's just that this is a highly comprehensive, binding program. If—…"
"If I wanted my programs uninstalled, then I wouldn't install them in the first place," Kurogane said, cutting her off. "From what I can tell, this is good! It means that no one will be able to tamper with the programming once it's there, doesn't it?"
"Well, yes," the scientist conceded, "but if there's a flaw in the programming, then we won't be able to fix it once it's in place. This would make both maintenance and re-customization… difficult. "
After a moment's pause, Kurogane sighed. He glowered around at the lab's many computers, watching the work with an almost resentful eye. "I see. And what do you propose to do to fix this mess?"
"Well, there are two choices. We could continue tinkering with the design, trying to make the program easier to work with…"
Kurogane snorted. By the sound of it, they had tried that already, and it hadn't worked. …Not to mention that advertising the new software as 'tamper proof' and 'hacker resistant' could be a major selling point.
"…Or," the scientist continued, "we could just begin a new series of extensive tests on real netnavis to see how well the program runs. Unfortunately, you may have to let go of Netcorp's e re-customization services, but we can check the program thoroughly for any flaws and make it as durable as possible. If it does well under testing, then we turn this thing over to the markets. Not ideal, but simple."
"Do you think the software will hold up without any glitches long enough to forestall any complaints about the maintenance?"
"I hope so. We'll only know after we complete the tests."
Kurogane nodded his understanding. "Well, then, I highly recommend you continue. I hope you weren't planning on using new netnavis, though—the other companies wouldn't like it if I made more, even for experimentation." He sent an irritated glance around the room; many of the scientists there were employees of NovaTech or Nihon Electronics, as part of the joint effort to find a solution to their problem. While he was glad of the chance to utilize their resources, he was becoming seriously annoyed at their inflexibility and paranoia concerning the companies' temporary truce.
"Of course not, sir," the scientist said with a small nod. "We've already begun looking for suitable test subjects. In fact, we received the first one yesterday." Purposefully, the woman turned down a side corridor to their right. She then led Kurogane to the first room on their left, striding briskly through the automatic double doors and into a smaller lab with dim lighting.
There was nothing overly remarkable about this new room—it was just a standard research area with the usual control panels, monitors, and desks lining the walls. In the center of the room, however, was a tall, glass cylinder, and from the way that the scientist was looking at it, it was obviously the reason that they had come here. The cylinder, which was set into an electronic panel on the floor, glowed softly with a gentle, white light that seemed an odd contrast to the halfhearted, artificial lights in the rest of the room. Kurogane barely spared a glance at the screen of the computer connected to the cylinder, which displayed a series of basic stats and a short summary of other information. Instead, he scanned the inside of the cylinder, and was forced to bite back a fresh bit of annoyance at what he found.
There, cowering on the ground on the far side of the cylinder, was a girl.
A netnavi. Hugging her knees and trembling in an embarrassingly unprofessional way.
"A particularly bad case of glitching?" Kurogane shot at the scientist. His comment wasn't really a question—anyone could tell by looking at this uncooperative piece of data that it wasn't functioning the way it was programmed to.
The scientist nodded, her lips pursing a bit before she spoke. "It had what can only be described as a nervous breakdown," she said. "The netop was only nine, and was apparently very distressed when the navi stopped working. This distressed the netop's mother in turn, and she donated the navi to us in order to help us find a solution."
The navi shivered at the scientist's words, curling further into her tiny, pale violet legs. Enormous green eyes stared up at them from a pale, childish face. Then, unexpectedly, her lips moved, and she mumbled something so softly that Kurogane couldn't make out the words.
The scientist's eyebrows flew upward in response. "Pardon?"
"Echo," the navi said more clearly. She lifted her head the smallest bit, her chin-length black hair brushing against her cheeks as she did so. Her standard purple helmet gleamed softly in the light as she moved, and she choked a bit as she continued to speak. "Akiko named me Echo."
The scientist made a small noise of irritation, though her face remained calm. "Akiko-san, not Akiko," she said. "Addressing your netop should be done in tones of respect, rather than familiarity." The words were a nearly exact quote from Netcorp's standard description of their basic programming options.
The navi shook her head, screwing her eyes up in pain. "N-no. Aki said…"
"Akiko-san is your owner, not a friend." The scientist snapped. "She sent you back to us to be fixed."
"Didn't," the navi squeaked, hugging her knees to her chest more tightly. "Aki didn't abandon me. She didn't. She wanted me to stay home."
The scientist sighed. "As I said, Sir, it's a perfect test subject for the program."
Kurogane glowered at cylinder and the trembling figure inside. Years of hard work and planning had gone into building up his empire, and now, just when he had reached the top of the industry, all of it was crashing down because of this. Why him? Why this? The unusual glitches weren't just a usual corporate problem, they were downright creepy.
"How long until you'll be prepared to begin the experiments in earnest?" he asked.
"We still have several pages of code that are being reanalyzed," the scientist responded, "and I'd like some time to come up with at least one or two dozen more test subjects. I'd say we need approximately two weeks. I'll be able to provide a more specific time by the end of tomorrow."
Kurogane stood there for a long moment, lost in thought. "Just how confident are you that this experiment will succeed?" he asked, a small spark of inspiration igniting in the back of his mind.
The scientist hesitated, as if reluctant to give promises of success before the actual testing, but then seemed to shrug internally before starting to speak. "Almost positive. As I said, we're still reanalyzing the last sections of data, but I can't think of a single major reason that anything could go wrong."
"…So if I were to bring the important faces from Nihon Electronics, NovaTech, and IPC, you feel that they could watch the experiment's initiation without any embarrassment on our part?"
The scientist looked surprised. She pursed her lips, again seeming not to like the idea of letting others view the experiment before she was one-hundred-percent sure of success, but long years of working under Kurogane had taught her not to hesitate too long before she answered. "Well, certainly. I believe that if we experience any problems, we'll encounter them further along the road."
At this, Kurogane allowed his lips to curl upward into a small smile. The various company heads had been growing rather impatient, as of late. It would be wonderful to show them a bit of solid progress—and if Ijuin was there to watch him demonstrate the many resources that Netcorp could offer as a business partner, then all the better. "Ten days, Suzuki-san," he said, turning around briskly to walk back to his office. "I'm going to invite Ijuin-san and the other to witness the pivotal step in our design of this new software. I want the program finished by then, and ready to install."
He was so satisfied with this new turn of events that he didn't hear the terrified sobs of the young Netnavi behind him.