Act 1: Beating Heart

Segment 2: New Year, New Life

Chapter 2-9: Eight Letters

"Oi, Ryuta, Yuuka, you guys took a while," Takaharu said.

"Our bad. We were, uh, a bit busy," Yuuka replied.

Asuka snickered. "Busy, huh? Just the two of you?"

"What…"

"Do you need more time alone? Your bedroom is upstairs after all."

"If this is just going to be about whether or not Yuuka and I are in a relationship," Ryuta remarked, "I'm out." He turned around and headed for the partition's gate, about ready to leave.

"Wait, Ryuta, we actually have something important to talk about!" Satsuki yelled. "Asuka, can you learn to read the room a bit?"

"My bad."

Ryuta turned back around. "This better be life-threatening then."

Takaharu's face darkened. "It could very well be, guys."

He sat back down in a chair. "Go on."

"I guess Yuuka didn't tell you on the way here."

"No… we were both preoccupied."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter, we're all here now. Hey, sit, Yuuka. We could be here a while." He rubbed his temples. "So we were in the arcade today, yeah? This abnormal portal forms literally right in the air."

Ryuta tilted his head in shock. Up until now they'd never experienced multiple in one day, and this was the first time one had managed to materialize without a solid anchor. "You mentioned a heart."

"I did. Fuck, that thing was disgusting," Takaharu groaned. "It spewed out a few weird blobby things. They lumbered around but they went after Monodramon. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but this…" he trailed off, only shaking his head.

"And Makoto and Rei haven't found anything so far?"

"Not yet," Satsuki replied. "They might have been looking in the wrong places."

"What do you mean by the wrong places?"

"They thought that something of this scale and impact would have to be some kind of national defence or commercial program gone wrong, so they completely ignored the academic world. You can imagine how hard that would be to get any information on," she explained. "Plus, they didn't have too much time until now. You know, end-of-semester exams and all. They're doing all they can."

Ryuta grunted, leaned back, and looked skyward, like he usually did when he was in thought. "Amorphous living blobs?"

"They were humanoid in shape," Monodramon said. "Like, they were about a metre tall and had two arms, but only one leg."

"What colour were they?"

"One was black and red, the other was black and white. Why? You have a theory?"

Ryuta grimaced. It was astoundingly unlikely, but it seemed like the right lead. "Can we ask Makoto and Rei to look specifically for projects attempting to do biological simulations?"

"What kind of biological simulation would cause abnormal spaces to appear and produce results like those?" Kazuhiko asked. How had he jumped to that conclusion?

"The ones gone horribly, horribly wrong. My thinking was," Ryuta explained, "if the Digimon could cross from their world to here-"

Falcomon interjected. "Nothing stops a Human World program from going the other way," it realized. Ryuta nodded. That was the theory. "But then… what would that have looked like? Every program in the Digital World gets represented with some kind of visualization."

"I don't know, you would know better than me," Ryuta admitted. "But that's what comes to mind."

"And the blobs?" asked Monodramon.

"Program mistakes. They sound crudely formed, after all." He shrugged. It was a wild guess, and he was swinging for the fences. "Whatever it is, we need to find it and get it shut down."

Lomamon seemed uncomfortable. "But what if it's not a human thing? What if it's something corrupting inside the Digital World? That's still a possibility."

The room was silent for a while. Then Takaharu said, "Then we go. All of us."

"Really?"

"What other choice do we have?"

Ryuta set down his messenger bag and pulled out his laptop. Takaharu asked, "Do you really bring that with you everywhere you go?"

"I do now." He started typing at the visualizer program. There were just a few tests left to make succeed.

"Dude, do you ever stop working?"

Ryuta paused. So this was why his father always came home late. Neither of them could bear to set their work down when there was a fire to put out. "Takaharu, we've got some big problems to deal with. I can't stop."

Takaharu cast a glance at the others, who were all varying levels of amused. "Classic Ryuta," Asuka sighed.

"Something wrong with that?"

"You never seem to take time to relax. You should," suggested Satsuki.

"I'll relax when this is all over."

"Suit yourself. Well then, what do the rest of us do about this?" She looked at Takaharu expectantly. "Not like any of us are that good at programming."

"Heh, eh… I'm not sure," Takaharu admitted. "I didn't think this far ahead. Uh… Kazu? Any ideas?" He shook his head. "Okay, then… Yuuka?"

"I have no idea either. Falcomon?"

"Huh? I – I don't know, but… maybe we should find out exactly what's causing these things to happen first. I don't really want to see these hearts up close."

Monodramon was incredulous. "And just leave them be? What if they start birthing those blobs on their own? What if they walked out of the space?"

"They can do that?"

Monodramon's fists clenched. "Well, we don't know for sure, but… if we can go in, they can probably get out! We can't wait for that to happen!"

"I… I think I'd rather wait for Makoto, Rei, and Ryuta to figure out something," Falcomon replied. "I don't want anyone getting hurt unnecessarily."

"Me neither," added Yuuka. "We might still have some time in between abnormal spaces opening. We can fit some research time in."

"Kazuhiko! Then we're going on patrol on our own!"

"U-uh, sure, Monodramon." Kazuhiko didn't seem so sure, but he couldn't deny Monodramon anymore.

"Falcomon," said Hawkmon, "I know you want us to be safe and all, but this is not just about us now. This is about the Human World."

"Still, I don't think we should just go up against something we don't know anything about," Falcomon replied.

"We may not know much even after finding out what's causing it."

"Better than nothing!"

Gabumon looked between the two of them. "This isn't the first time you've disagreed, huh?"

"Nope," replied Hawkmon. "In that case, Falcomon, can you help Ryuta look for clues?"

"Of course."

The room went quiet for a while again. It seemed like they were going to split up their efforts for now. "Ryuta, what if I pick up on an abnormal space?" Amedramon asked. He didn't reply. "Ryuta?"

"Amedramon, can you hop in my phone for a moment?"

"What? Ok." It disappeared from view. "What's up?"

"It's done, I think." He plugged his phone into his laptop and transferred the visualization program over. "The program runs in the background all the time, so unfortunately it will burn a bit more battery than normal, but at least I'll be able to see you in here." He tapped on the program installed on his phone. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment – and then a pixelated version of Amedramon appeared in a home screen widget.

He smiled, pleased with himself. This took longer than he had hoped for, but at least it worked now. He raised his phone to everyone else to show them. "Just like that," he crooned.

"Nice! Why the pixels, though?" Takaharu asked.

"Any more rendering than that and the battery really drains. I could scale it up, obviously, but I had to be mindful that some of us have lower-grade phones." He glanced at Yuuka and Kazuhiko. "I'll distribute it tonight. It's easy to install."

"Couldn't you just have a settings slider for that?"

"Takaharu," Ryuta replied, "software is harder than it looks."

"Oh."

Amedramon popped back out. "You didn't answer my question, Ryuta."

"Do you want to keep running around?"

"N-no, not really, but I don't think we have a choice," Amedramon pleaded.

"We always have a choice," Ryuta replied. "I know you and I have different thoughts on the matter," he added, before Amedramon could complain. "Give me a week."

"And what if things change before a week is up?"

He rubbed Amedramon's back. "Then we get out there and give those things hell. Okay?" It growled happily and nuzzled his arm.

"So then…" sighed Takaharu. "I guess it's the eight of us. Yuuka, you're with Falcomon, Ryuta, and Amedramon, huh?"

She shrugged. "I guess so." She didn't know what to look for, and she had the sense neither did anyone else, but she didn't disagree with Falcomon at all. But at least it meant some private time with Ryuta.

Rei tapped her pen against the table. Asuka and the others had told her and Makoto about the sighting yesterday, and Ryuta was there in person today to confirm it. The three of them, plus Amedramon, Yuuka, and Falcomon were in the Nagatomo family apartment. Despite that, though, the place was still deathly quiet, save for the sound of computer fans and their mother, Sora, preparing something for lunch. She didn't really believe them yesterday, but it wasn't like there was much else to work with.

Makoto and Rei were busy clicking and scanning through university paper after paper, while Ryuta was working on the scanner. He had started calling these portals Junctions, because the Digimon had said they had sensed them before, and that they always seemed to lead to some kind of otherworldly space, even if they were dead-ended. His phone had been recording the signal given off by them, so he had some testing data to work with. In fact, this seemed to be taking him less time than the visualizer app he had just finished.

She looked up at him. He was still intensely focused on his laptop, despite having Yuuka and Amedramon looking over his shoulder. Falcomon was tapping away at Yuuka's laptop. Rei shook her head. The sight of a Digimon using a laptop weirded her out still, but she supposed it was because she wasn't around nearly as much.

"Found anything yet?" asked Ryuta.

Makoto grunted. "A lot of tiny articles." He set his glasses down and rubbed his eyes. "I'm going to go take a break." He stood up and walked to the window. A light drizzle was coming down. "Rei?"

She sighed. "Same." She stretched in her chair. "I wonder how the Tamers are doing."

Yuuka glanced at her phone. The four Tamers had split into pairs of two to cover a bit more ground, but without the Scanner that Ryuta was working on, they were walking blindly. She wished she could understand what she was looking at, but even after Ryuta had tried explaining it to her, it made no sense still. "No news," she announced.

"No news is good news, I hope," Rei replied.

"I hope so too." She felt a bit useless, but Falcomon was insistent on doing its own research.

"Hey, Ryuta," Falcomon said, "look at this." He leaned over. "This is an unusual name."

"Is it? Oh, it's just an English name. I forgot you've only been around Japanese people ever since you came here."

"What do you mean?" Falcomon seemed genuinely confused.

"Ah, how do I explain it… every language and culture has a way of naming that makes sense within itself."

Falcomon blinked. "I don't get it."

"Well, how do Falcomon talk about one another without getting confused?"

Falcomon looked at Amedramon. "You've got one too, right?"

"A name? Yeah, I don't really use it," it admitted. "When I was around other Amedramon, sure, but not now."

"So I guess," Ryuta said, "imagine every sector had its own set of names that Digimon were given."

Falcomon's eyes narrowed. "Why…?"

Ryuta shrugged. "It's just the way humans are." He returned to his programming, then paused. "Hey, I just had a thought."

"Hm?"

"Would you understand other human languages?"

"Falcomon, have you noticed?" Amedramon asked. "When we came here, we just switched languages, like we'd always been able to. But it's not like we've heard any humans talk before."

Falcomon blinked at Yuuka, then Ryuta. It noticed Rei and Makoto were staring too. "Good point. How…?"

Yuuka asked, "Didn't you say you'd seen some human-built things in the Digital World occasionally?"

"Yeah, I think so. How is that related?"

"Ryuta, what do you think?" Yuuka asked.

He thought for a moment. "I've been pondering it for months, honestly. The only thing I can think of is that information from the Human World constantly leaks into the Digital World. But I can't explain why that would have such a profound impact on the Digimon. After all, even for the ones here now, our world was just mythical until they came here for themselves." He shook his head. "I don't know, I genuinely don't."

Rei returned to her scrolling and reading, but then her head flicked up back up. "Wait, what was that name you found?"

"There are a lot of names here," Falcomon said. "Let's see… Anthony Bentall?"

"No idea who that is."

"Maria Spatafora?" Rei shook her head.

"Brian Mackenzie?"

"Oh! Makoto, isn't that-"

Makoto spun on his heel. "What about Brian? What's the paper title?"

Falcomon scrolled back up. "A demonstration of hachimoji nucleic acid and cellular expression simulations via distributed computation. I have no idea what that means," it admitted.

Makoto frowned. "This… hold on." He walked over to the laptop Falcomon was using. "Fourteen years ago, yeah, that's what I thought. He's moved on since then to even larger projects."

"I guess he was one of your course professors?" Rei asked.

"Yep, distributed computing and concurrency fundamentals," he replied. "This is an old paper, though. What the hell is hachimoji? [1] Eight letters?" Makoto returned to his own laptop and tapped it into the search bar. "Oh." He inhaled sharply. "Well then."

[1] You might want to look this one up.

"What is it?" Rei leaned over. "What…? Wait, really?"

"Ryuta, did you know," Makoto said, "that life could have more than four nucleotides?"

"I heard about that, I just didn't realize it was called that," he replied. "Is that what this is about?"

"I'm not sure what the Professor would be working on by now, since he mainly just supervises grad students now and lets them do the research instead. I guess he's still got something going. But it's probably related to this."

Ryuta crossed his arms on the table. "You think it's his stuff then?"

"I don't think so, but I could ask him for some more references and information. We've met, but briefly." Makoto scratched his head. "Though I figured he would be more careful than this. I guess if they're using ML then a lot of mistakes are possible. But this bad? Like, manifesting in the universe levels of bad?" He shook his head. "Still doesn't make sense."

"Unless," replied Rei, "Ryuta is right, and some of that program got into places it shouldn't."

"Wait, what did you say earlier, Ryuta?" Makoto asked.

"It's possible some of it got into contact with the Digital World. If that happened, then all bets are off," Ryuta explained. "I can't say what that contact would have done to it, but I would be willing to guess it imparted information onto it that it shouldn't have ever known about."

"And so you think it basically gave it new forms of life to work with," Rei asserted.

Ryuta shrugged. "Digimon exist. I'm sure a lot of things are possible at this rate."

Makoto started typing into his email client. "I'll send him an email. I was thinking about asking to become a grad student for him anyway after one of his assistants suggested it."

"Hey, include me on that email," Rei said. "I'm not in computer science like you, but this seems too interesting."

"Sure. He might recognize your name from the women-in-engineering society as well."

The apartment returned to the quiet of Makoto and Ryuta tapping away at their keyboards. Rei didn't really feel like looking at more documents now that they had a lead, and neither did Falcomon. Lunch came just in time, and so did a ping from Kazuhiko. Ryuta glanced at his phone.

• • • • • • •

Sumida Tamers

Shimizu Kazuhiko
Monodramon found one
[link to address]
We might head in
12:59

Nagatomo Asuka
oh damn
be careful guys
13:00

Koyama Ryuta
Anything unusual about it?
13:00

Tokuda Satsuki
Gabumon and Monodramon don't sense anything peculiar so far
13:01

Koyama Ryuta
👍 Keep us posted.
13:01

• • • • • • •

"They found another one," he announced.

Amedramon growled. "This is really ramping up. Ryuta, we should go out there."

"We won't get there in time."

"Still! I don't want to just sit around and wait for something to happen!" It stomped about. "Ryuta!"

He sighed and laid his chopsticks down. His phone buzzed again. "Too late," he said, "Kazuhiko and Satsuki are going in."

Amedramon let out a frustrated roar, making everyone's heads snap to attention. "Then I'm going out there by myself!"

"You are not going to do that!" Ryuta thundered.

"Stop me, then!" It made a break for the door and grabbed the handle and pulled. Rei shook her head. How could a quadrupedal creature have such nimble front paws? Then again, Amedramon did have very well-defined digits.

"Get back here!" Ryuta ran after it. The two of them disappeared around the doorway. The apartment returned to silence.

"Yuuka," asked Falcomon, "should we follow them?"

Yuuka didn't even lift her head to look. "No… this is for the two of them to figure out. I'm sure they'll be fine." She continued eating.

"Are you sure?"

"They're closer than they might seem. This is like two siblings having an argument. They'll be okay. Right, Rei?"

Rei snorted with amusement. "Asuka and I turned out relatively unharmed, at least."

While the others finished up lunch, Ryuta was running after Amedramon. The little dragon was faster than he expected when it broke into a full sprint. He kept fit himself, but there was a point at which he would always be unable to keep up.

He watched it glide away into the air. A few people below stared skywards, wondering what the shadow passing above them was. He yelled wordlessly in frustration. This was like Haru running off on her own, except now it was a dragon that could glide through the sky. Ryuta turned and hurried down the stairs as quickly as he could. Waiting for the elevator would take longer.

By the time he had made it to ground level, Amedramon was out of sight. All he had was a vague idea of which direction it had been going in, which was the direction towards where Kazuhiko and Satsuki had reported from. "Amedramon, if you get hurt, I'm going to lock you up in my room, I swear!" he muttered as he ran.

"Wait, it could just jump into my phone. Damn it!" That wouldn't do anything.