01110011 01101000 01100001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 [Shatter]
Zima hadn't messaged me again. When I tried to call him, he didn't pick up. That didn't sit right with me, but there wasn't much I could do; having been bumped to voicemail for the third time, I gave up on getting in touch with him, and figured my next step was to report to Aiko. She'd know where we were supposed to be.
"Dita!" she greeted me when I approached her desk, chipper as ever. "Welcome back! How did your mission go?"
She winked on the word "mission," so I'd be sure to know Zima had let her in our secret. Inwardly – because I did owe her something, I guess, for not ratting us out – I rolled my eyes. "It was good. Uh—it was fun."
"Was it really?" she enthused. "I'm so glad. And how was your errand?"
"My what?"
"Your errand. When Zima checked in, he said you had an errand to run – that was why you didn't come back with him."
"Oh!" So he had come back. That, at least, was comforting. "Right. It was, um—it was just fine. But by the way, Aiko," I added, before she could ask me what my errand was, "speaking of Zima – when did he get back, exactly? And do you know where he is now?"
"Only about an hour ago. I sent him up to Mr. Morita's office – he wanted to see you both as soon as possible."
"Mr. Morita?" Now that definitely didn't sound right. We were rarely briefed by our supervisors before assignments, but when the need arose it was Ms. Yamane's job; there was no way Mr. Morita would call us in just to discuss a routine mission. This had to be something serious. And by serious, I meant really, really serious, because within this building's walls, Mr. Morita was the highest-ranking supervisor we had. High enough that I had only one memory of him, for all of the years I'd lived and worked under his thumb - his was the first human face I'd ever seen. "Why?"
"I'm not sure," she said blithely, tossing off a shrug. "But if I were you, I'd get going."
"Well, what do you know? It's already half-past time for your meet-and-greets. We'd better get ourselves in gear." Until now, all I've seen of the world is the launch lab and the dressing room, so when he takes my hand and tugs me out the door – out into a labyrinth of corridors, reminiscent of tunnels with their low lighting and lower ceilings – it's like a plunge into cold water. I stumble keeping up with him, tripping over his coattails and mine.
"You'll be doing a lot of this, in the next couple of weeks, but this first one is the most important. As far as this building goes, Mr. Morita is the fattest cat on our case, which means his word is our law. And he really pushed for your development, so it's especially important for you to impress him – can't have him thinking he threw his weight around for nothing." He flashes me an over-the-shoulder smile. "Don't worry. These humans are all the same. He'll ask you a few questions, plug you in, check your stats – it'll be a breeze."
His office – on the top floor, naturally – was just as I remembered it. Unlike Ms. Yamane's office, or even those of Ms. Ichida and Mr. Inoue, Mr. Morita's had its own receiving room; behind a pair of heavy, glossy doors, the left of which bore a plaque with his title and name, it stunk of Muzak and vetiver. A cherrywood desk dented the rug near his office door, green-velvet armchairs scattered around it.
Behind the desk sat his secretarial persocom, Sanami. His as in only his, reserved specifically for his personal use. Most secretarial 'coms were communal units, inter– and exchangeable between departments, but a select few bigshots got to keep one of their own. "Dita," she said, unsmiling, in a voice sucked dry by years as a status symbol. "I'll let Setsuko know you're here."
Sanami had been here last time, albeit less dour, but I didn't recall a Setsuko. I assumed she was Mr. Morita's 'com, or one of them anyway. A long time ago, when secretaries were human, I had heard that they used to use intercoms – the secretary would press a button to buzz her boss, and inform him that so-and-so had arrived. Now, that whole ritual had been outsourced to persocoms. "Mr. Morita is ready for you," Sanami told me, when the last flicker of light had crossed her eyes. "You may go in."
The office itself was all grey marble, lit by a frosted-glass sconce on each wall. Black silk drapes were drawn over the picture windows behind the desk. It was bigger than Ms. Yamane's, almost too big, and cold as the dead of winter; flanking Mr. Morita, who cut less than an imposing figure seated at his desk, a pair of identical 'coms waited on standby. Identical 'coms in identical dresses, black with white lace collars.
Zima wasn't there.
"Dita." If possible, Mr. Morita said my name with even less feeling than Sanami had, his face just as joyless as hers. "Sit down."
I did, in a stainless-steel chair a few feet from his desk. On that desk there sat a monitor, but he was far from preoccupied with it; neither of his 'coms were even plugged in. He only touched it once – flicked a near-invisible switch, set into one paper-thin edge – and when he did, it collapsed into its compartment on the desk. "Momoko," he said flatly, to whichever 'com wasn't Setsuko, "record. I want this meeting logged."
"Yes, Mr. Morita."
The 'com on his left nodded, her eyes going glassy grey. The sound of a soft click filled the room.
"Yesterday morning," said Mr. Morita, this time to me, "Tsuruki received a message from Zima, stating that he had sustained a threat to the security of the data bank. He requested permission for departure clearance for both of you, in order to track down and eliminate this threat. In accordance with policy, that request was approved.
"And yesterday afternoon, after the two of you left, Hanako took it upon herself to perform a remote scan of your software. She recalled having met with you a short time ago – regarding a sanction for corrective self-maintenance you had received – and being told that, on your last mission, you had experienced a troubling reaction to an unstable program. Thus, as a precautionary measure, she thought it best to personally inspect your systems before further exposure to any form of threat."
I felt pins and needles crawl over my skin, numbing me in waves. I wasn't sure one could feel sick to her stomach, if she didn't have a stomach in the first place, but I was pretty sure I did.
"But before she could so much as initialize the scan," he went on, without the slightest swell in his tone, the slightest twitch of his face, "she noticed something…rather disturbing, on the remote access menu screen. Your global positioning system indicated that you were not, in fact, even in the vicinity of the coordinates Zima had provided for the alleged threat." He steepled his hands on the desk, staring me down with eyes like ice chips. "Can you tell me why that is?"
My tongue lay dead and dry in my mouth, shrivelled as the snapdragon beneath my coatstrap. Even if I'd had an excuse, I couldn't have choked out so much as a whisper, and I knew he didn't really want me to.
"Better yet, can you tell me why, upon inspection of Zima's systems, she discovered no such threat had been logged? Can you tell me why, upon inspection of your maintenance log, she found that you had indeed run a number of diagnostic scans in the week before your meeting with her, but – despite your claim of having patched a damaged firewall – had taken no corrective measures whatsoever?
"Or why, upon checking your stored memories of the assignment against the report submitted afterwards, she found that you had not completed your last mission as fully as you would have us believe? Why the report said you had neutralized the threat, as per your orders, while your memories indicated that not only had none of your attack programs been successfully launched, but that Zima at least made a concentrated effort to prevent their activation?" For the first time that day, the corners of his lips slid south, if only for a moment. "Can you tell me what facet of your duties," he said, just a drop of venom in his voice, "required him to open a fraudulent credit account in this ministry's name, and amass a debt in excess of a hundred thousand yen?"
By then, I was numb from scalp to toenails, paralyzed with dread. So light-headed the world spun before my eyes. Thick as my tongue was, I did at least manage to speak, when a thought hit me like a punch in the gut. "What did you do to Zima?"
"Be silent." If the thought of Zima was a punch in the gut, those words were a slap to the face. He didn't even have to raise his voice. "Multiple counts of deliberate deception of a supervisor are enough to warrant disciplinary action by my rules. Sabotage of ministry endeavors, failure to achieve prescribed objectives, and misappropriation of government funds don't help your case.
"Were you a human employee, you would be fired on the spot. Were Zima a human employee, he would not only be fired, but prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." His mouth seemed to thin, lips pressed into a razorblade seam between his nose and chin. Over his shoulders, Setsuko and Momoko watched me with sad eyes. "Given that you are not, we will pursue a different course. To save us the time, money, and countless trials required to locate and patch each malfunction individually, your memories and personality data will be wiped from your drive, and your operating systems and job-specific software reinstalled. It is our hope that, by inducing a complete reset, we will see you and Zima restored to the responsible, goal-oriented persocoms you were originally programmed to be – and our intention to monitor you far more closely afterwards."
Maybe it was just that I couldn't process it all, caving in on me like a snowdrift in an avalanche. Maybe I would've cracked if I'd tried. Maybe it would have split me down the middle, and as in my dream, I'd have shattered into dust—but for whatever reason, I found myself thinking the strangest thing. Who does he mean by we, anyway? I wondered in my head, little though it meant. We as in the government? We as in our supervisors? We as in the royal we, for Mr. Morita, king of my fate?
"I must say I'm disappointed in you, Dita. You seemed so promising."
Then he said it. Not a terribly consequential word, to anyone who wasn't me – not even a word at all, really. Just a jumble of letters and numbers. Not even worth remembering. But it was my password, and that much I knew without knowing; that much, my systems remembered for me, because it was their cue to cut out. The effect was instant. All of my sensors, all of my programs, everything but my audiovisual feed—all of it shut down, all at once, and left me helpless.
This wasn't like the numbness of fear. No thought could overcome it. No desire could overwhelm it. It was physical, and it was absolute; had the building gone up in flames, right that very moment, there'd have been nothing I could do but sit there and burn.
"Voice key accepted," said a voice that couldn't have been mine, except it was. "Welcome, Mr. Morita. What would you like to do?"
"Initiate system shutdown."
The world went black. This time, there were no dreams.