Phase1「Contract」

When he slept, Arato would always encounter one of two things in his dreams: the first was a nightmare of massive flames, swelling to fill the room. While it seemed the whole world burned around him, he would be swallowed up in a writhing tsunami of red and charcoal black. The other was the image of a dog, wagging its tail and gazing up at him.

Soon after entering elementary school, Arato had been caught up in the flame of an explosion and received burns over his entire body. In the front garden of the hospital, surrounded by silence so deep that he could not hear his own heartbeat, he watched people. Those days his father was often busy, and his little sister was still very young, so they only came to visit him every once in a while. To him, these infrequent visits made him feel worthless in the eyes of his family.

In his slumber, even real memories seemed like daydreams. When the pain came, he just needed to push the painkiller button and the world would go silent, as if every wave of sound had been cut away.

One day, a white puppy entered his lonely world. By the time he even noticed its presence, the puppy was already approaching him. It seemed interested in him, and started sniffing at his legs.

“This little guy wants to be your friend, Arato.” He never could remember the face of the young woman in the nurse’s uniform who’d said that to him, but he remembered all the puppy’s adorable traits very well. Like how when he pet its head it would beg with its forepaw for him to tickle its chin, too. Or the fluffiness of its short, white fur. Or how frantically it would wag its little tail. Or the way it would seem to bounce off the ground when it ran up to him. Or how it would playfully nip at the heel of his shoes, so that, even though it was difficult to move at all, he found he couldn’t help but play along.

“Arato, this boy says he would like to play with you and the puppy, too.” A few days later, the nurse brought a boy the same age as Arato with her.

Arato thought the boy looked very sick, considering how thin his arms and legs were. He didn’t learn until later that the boy couldn’t eat the hospital food and was getting all his nutrients through an IV.

At the time, Arato didn’t know what to do. He shied away from meeting the skeletal boy’s eyes.

But the puppy’s big eyes were shining with excitement. It ran around in circles with its tongue lolling out, unable to make up its mind about which boy it should play with.

The heart is moved by that which the eye perceives. The human heart can be shaken, even by that which is not human.

Moved by the puppy’s antics, Arato looked at the boy’s face. The boy had the faint expression of someone lost in darkness; someone unable to cry out for help. He had one hand to his throat, where malnutrition made his sinew stand out to a pitiful degree.

There was the sound of a wet nose snuffling from Arato’s feet. The puppy was wagging its tail so hard that its back legs were tottering. To a lonely boy in a lonely world, the sight of another living thing enjoying itself so much was salvation.

“He looks like he’s having tons of fun.” Arato put his feelings into words, and broke the silence. A warm feeling spread in his chest, and for some reason, he felt like crying.

The puppy was switching back and forth between sniffing at the ground and gazing up at Arato. Watching it, Arato decided that, if he decided he was having fun, maybe the world wouldn’t feel so lonely.

Though his injuries didn’t seem as grave as Arato’s, the boy had his lips shut firmly and didn’t say a word.

In his painful state, it was a trial even reaching out his hand. But Arato felt he needed to make the first move. “My name’s Arato Endo,” Arato gathered his courage and took the first step. “Let’s be friends.”

***

Sunlight shone through the classroom window.

Arato Endo, draped over a chair in the classroom, let out a groan. “It’s only April, why’s it so hot...” The sky seemed to stretch on forever. Arato turned his gaze to the ceiling.

“Look at you, sleeping through class like a boss.” Ryo Kaidai walked over to stand by Arato during the break. He was a handsome guy with long bangs, and the top button of his uniform shirt undone.

“Hey, you were out like a light too, so you shouldn’t talk,” someone said from behind them. The voice belonged to Kengo Suguri, whose seat was right behind Arato’s. Kengo liked to think of himself as the rational type. But, behind his glasses, his eyes (which were sometimes stubborn and sometimes frail) betrayed his often changing emotions.

“I got all my prep done yesterday,” Ryo replied, indifferently. It often struck Arato as odd that Ryo was even going to an ordinary high school like theirs.

“Must be nice, having all those brains and nothing to do with them,” Arato said.

Ryo still looked indifferent, but seemed strangely pleased by Arato’s words. “Aww, stop. The only reason they have schools around anymore is so we can practice getting along with other people. I think that, in our lifetime, we’ll see the day when it won’t matter how smart anyone is anymore.”

“You rich kids sure have it nice. Even your excuses for slacking off are high-class,” Kengo said, transferring the notes he’d taken during class from the school terminal to his own pocket terminal.

Arato saw a notification light blinking on his desk screen, and his shoulders slumped. He pulled out his card-sized pocket terminal to check the notice. The deadline for some new homework was written in red text on his personal scheduler.

“The hell?” he grumbled. “How come I’m the only one who gets extra homework?”

“By my calculations, here in about ten years the only work us men will have left to us is getting friendly with the ladies,” Ryo said, spreading both hands as if he was about to bust a move.

Arato felt like half of class 2C - the 20 female students to be exact - were sending icy glares their way. “It’s amazing you can say that kind of thing with a straight face in this class, Kaidai.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve hit on every single girl in the class.”

“That was my goal for the year,” Ryo protested. “A girl a week. I worked pretty hard at it.”

Arato and his two friends stood out in class, and not in a good way. It was all Ryo’s fault. Ever since they changed classes, the handsome, intelligent Ryo had flirted with every single girl in the class. Due to this, the relationships between the girls had been put in turmoil, until finally they had all come to the consensus that Ryo was the scum of the Earth.

The boys of the class, for their part, didn’t want anything to do with a guy the girls were all clearly avoiding. As a result, only his long-time friends Arato and Kengo would even hang out with him.

Sweat beaded on Arato’s forehead. “Ryo, you’re the one who just said school is for figuring out how to get along, right? One of these days someone’s going to teach you how you’re actually supposed to get along with others. Painfully, I’d guess.”

“Oh, hey. I’ve got a date with a girl from the next high school over on Sunday. You should come along, Arato,” Ryo said, grabbing Arato’s arm from behind.

“Nah, I can’t. I promised I’d hang out with Yuka...”

“Bull! Yuka’s not gonna shake you down when she knows you’re running low on allowance.”

“Stop pretending you’re an expert on my little sister,” Arato retorted.

“You sure love dragging Endo into everything, don’t you Kaidai,” Kengo said.

At Kengo’s dry observation, Ryo flashed a huge grin. “It’s more fun with Arato around.”

Arato wondered if Ryo was actually so smart that he was wrapping all the way around to stupid again. Of course, this would make Arato and Kengo idiots too, for hanging around him.

The cityscape beyond the classroom window glittered. On the other side of the river, the solar panels in the residential district flashed with reflected sunlight.

It was April, and school had just entered third quarter.

Long ago, Japan had adopted the custom of starting the school year in September, like schools in Europe and America did. By this point, even in Japan people found it strange that, 100 years ago, the school years had started under blooming cherry blossoms.

The route Arato and his friends took home ran parallel to the Sumida River, which was lined with cherry blossom trees. Passing by the Kototoi bridge, which had collapsed once over the last 100 years, they slipped by the broken stone monument at the Ushijima Shrine. This path took them under a tunnel of cherry blossom trees, planted on either side of Bokutei Street.

“Hey, are we doing hanami this year or what?” Arato asked, referring to the Japanese custom of picnicking with friends under the cherry blossoms during their blooming season. He had stopped beside a relatively new stone monument, which had been built on the bank of the Sumidagawa River. 42 years ago, there had been a massive disaster people called the ‘Hazard’. The monument had been put up to remind everyone of the disaster, which had reduced the Honjo Azumabashi district to a pile of rubble. Old folks often came and laid flowers at the monument. AR photos had been provided for the monument, and they started displaying as soon as Arato and the others got close enough.

In the heat of early April, Ryo stripped off his school jacket. “Let’s have a hanami this Sunday,” he said.

“Man, you never give up, do you? How many people did you already invite?” Arato asked, turning a small dial in the collar of his uniform. Electricity flowed into the coolant elements in the armpit of his suit, which started to cool off.

With a sly smile, Ryo held up four fingers. “Four ladies.”

“Well you’d better apologize to one of them, then,” Arato told him. “With me, you, and Kengo that’s only three guys.”

“Arato,” Ryo complained, “that makes it sound like you two are the only friends I have.”

“We are.”

“Oh come on, I have other friends. You’re gonna make me cry, here.”

Over the last 50 years, there had been some major land adjustments around the old Sumida District Office. With the Azuma and Komagata bridges as starting points, the streets of the district had been rerouted into a more regular grid.

The flow of cars down the wide roads was smooth as a river. Every vehicle had self-driving functions now, so traffic jams were a thing of the past.

When Arato and the others arrived at an intersection, they saw an old lady trying to cross the four lane road. A girl in a yellow jersey came up next to the old woman and took her by the hand.

Arato’s body moved without hesitation. “I’m gonna go help,” he said. The stoplight looked like it was just about to change, and he doubted the girl and old lady were going to make it in time.

“That girl isn’t a human, you know,” Kengo said, in an uninterested tone. There was nothing about the girl’s appearance or actions to show that she was anything other than human, but Kengo was very knowledgeable about computers and machines.

“If you get in the way when an interface is doing its job,” he went on, “all you’re gonna do is put a load on their processor.”

‘Interface’ was the short slang for hIEs - humanoid Interface Elements. Basically robots with human forms, hIEs could do just about anything a human could. Thanks to this, there was no such thing as a labor shortage anymore, and the world had become quite convenient.

“Fine, but I’m still going to help,” Arato said, then headed over to the crosswalk.

When the girl android saw him approach, she smiled at him.

“Here, I’ll help.”

“Thank you.” The old woman, bent with age, thanked him with a smile that crinkled her whole face.

Humans can’t convey their feelings directly to one another, so we show our feelings through our actions. But by this point, there were things other than humans that could conduct those same meaningful actions; this was the reality Arato and the others lived in. In the year 2105, androids had filled all the holes in society.

The others ragged on Arato when he walked back from the crosswalk.

“One of these days someone’s gonna really take advantage of you, you know.”

They were walking through the area around the Honjo Azumabashi subway station, which had grown into a proper downtown. The place was a hodgepodge of old buildings from before the Hazard, and newer buildings, whose building materials gave them a completely different texture.

“Hey, gotta be nice to girls, right?” said Arato, defending himself. “Why don’t you guys lend a hand next time?”

The area was full of hIEs, if you looked hard enough. They had been a welcome addition to the service industry, which had been short-staffed since the dawn of time, and they were especially common in restaurants.

Kengo was local, so he knew everything there was to know about the area. “Did you know that girl at the taiyaki stand is an hIE?” he asked. Across the intersection with Asakusa Street, a girl with pretty blonde curls was turning over the baking form at a takoyaki stand.

“There’s one working at that soba shop, too,” he pointed out. “And there’s some running the registers over at Sky Tree. Anytime an hIE sees someone old, they run over and help.”

“Hey, they’re working hard,” Arato said. As he passed by the takoyaki stand, he gave the girl a good look. She smiled and asked, “Would you like some takoyaki?” She wasn’t sweating.

Ryo’s eyes were cold when he looked at her, completely different from how he gazed at the girls in their class. “No, they aren’t. Arato, you’re the kind of guy who thinks if you cheer on a motor it’ll go faster, aren’t you?”

“I’m free to think whatever I want,” Arato said.

“You’re living in a fairy tale,” Ryo scoffed.

“I’d say fairy tale land has had a scientific revolution.”

“That’s what I call progress. Even unscientific plebs like you spend every day surrounded by science.”

Their friendly chat continued to fly off the rails.

Just then, Arato saw something out of the corner of his eye; something that should not have been there. Someone’s outdoor black cat was dragging something out of the alley, where a power-assist delivery bike was parked by the soba shop. Now and then, the cat would stop to bite at the thing, which was almost as big as the cat was, before going back to dragging it along laboriously.

The thing being dragged was nightmarishly out of place under the bright midday sun. It was a human arm.

“Oh shit. Ohhhh shit,” Arato said, feeling the blood drain instantly from his face.

It was a right arm with smooth, white skin. The cat ran away, and a chunk of skin that the cat had been nibbling on rolled away from the elbow.

Arato felt his legs give out.

Kengo, who was just passing by Arato, casually caught his arm to hold him up. “What, again?” he asked, then went and grabbed the arm, giving it a shake. A white tube was jutting out from the severed portion, and a blood-like liquid pattered onto the ground. “Somebody’s been going around busting up hIEs lately,” he said. “I’ve seen scrap from a few bodies here and there. What a waste.”

“’What a waste’?” Arato echoed incredulously. “Don’t you feel sorry for them?” He couldn’t stop the hammering of his heart, or see the white arm as anything other than that of a young girl. There was no way he could be calm, staring at a severed human body part, even if it hadn’t come from a human.

“Hey,” Kengo replied, “when someone turns something that costs about the same as a car into scrap, I think it’s a waste.”

Arato reached out to touch the severed arm, but Ryo caught his shoulder to stop him.

“Don’t touch it. We don’t even know what those things are made of.”

“We can’t just throw the thing in the trash,” Arato said. The android girl who had helped the old lady cross the street was walking nearby. It was painful to think that the owner of the severed arm could be a kind girl, just like her.

“Don’t get the wrong idea about them, Arato,” Ryo said. His voice was blunt, as he looked down at the severed limb. “The hIEs only do stuff for us because that’s what they’re programmed to do. Some marketing guys figured out that they’d sell well if they looked like humans and acted all nice. It’s just brand propoganda,”

“That’s just a piece of a machine,” Kengo agreed. Though they were in the middle of a downtown area, with Kengo holding what looked like a severed human arm, few people spared them a second glance.

Arato’s friends weren’t particularly fond of hIEs. Among the people passing by, some just frowned, though some showed a little pity in their eyes. Still, if the ‘girl’ the arm belonged to had been human, everyone would be reacting much differently.

Even Arato’s sense of danger had cooled off after he realized the severed arm wasn’t the sign of a murder. Despite that, the thought of walking away from what looked like a piece of a human body weighed too heavily on Arato’s mind.

“Let’s take it to the police,” he said. “I’d feel bad if we just threw it away.”

***

That night, an incident occured in one corner of the No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group.

From the base of one of the buildings in a sprawling research area, a sharp explosion echoed in the night, accompanied by a rumbling in the surrounding earth. Immediately afterwards, black smoke roiled like an inverted avalanche out of the building’s ground floor entrance.

The windows of the building, which stood at 50 meters tall with 15 floors, began to shatter, one after another. Silent vibrations shook the black fiber walls.

Every light in the building went out. This was the moment in which the employees of Tokyo Research Lab of MemeFrame Co. - who were big players in the hIE behavior control sector - died.

10:08 PM. A large transport helicopter approached the No. 2 Landfill Island Group from the sea side. The scramble order had come the instant the first explosion had rang out. HOO (Hands Of Operation), the PMC hired by MemeFrame for security, were moving in to take control of the situation.

The helicopter, which had taken off from the heliport at Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, was hauling a massive container.

The pilot, wearing a helmet with a HMD, turned to Sest. “The Japan-stationed US Army and Japanese Army have authorized us for 20 minutes of fly-time,” he said. “That’s all the time we’ve got here in the Tokyo airspace. Don’t forget.”

Sest Ackerman was massaging the back of his muscular neck. The area of the helicopter, which was normally used for transporting troops, had been converted into a drone control center. Having served as an elite among America’s green berets, it was the kind of workspace that made Sest feel cramped.

“Alright Ackerman Squad, let’s review the mission before we get started,” Sest announced, “Our objective is the capture or destruction of the five hIEs that escaped during the explosion at the lab. All lab personnel have already evacuated to their shelters.”

As a mission objective, it was extremely odd.

The whole idea of hIEs ‘escaping’ was patently ridiculous. hIEs looked like humans, but their every move was controlled externally. Every action was optimal, selected from a specialized program and expansive sampling of behaviors accessed through a central network. In other words, hIEs were nothing more than puppets, dancing on the invisible strings of wireless network signals.

MemeFrame was a mega-corporation that controlled the hIE behavior management cloud. Meaning that Sest and his team were on a mission equivalent to a puppeteer saying, “My puppets have run away, go and catch them.”

The helicopter rotors were quiet. Silent enough, in fact, that even in the quiet of the night it would be hard to make out the sound as the helicopter maintained its height and wove through the darkness.

The scramble team rushing to the scene was comprised of three men: the helicopter pilot - Sergeant Thomas Lieu, an operator - Sergeant Major Youseff Malai, and Sest, their captain. None of them commented on the strangeness of their mission. They were professionals.

Using the transmitter implant in his skull, Sest contacted the HOO tactical command center through a datalink. “Major,” he said, “we’ve arrived at the target area. Beginning sensor sweeps for the enemy.”

Using the helicopter’s thermal sensor, they confirmed five human-sized heat signatures. The signatures were heading away from the central research building of the MemeFrame Tokyo Research Lab, toward the No. 1 Landfill Island Group.

HOO used an AI in the command center to formulate tactical strategies for their combat units. At that moment it was providing a tactical prediction. The AI’s suggestion was to allow the hIEs to cross the bridge to Odaiba’s residential district.

It wanted them to conduct urban combat in a residential area.

Sest folded his well-toned arms. “That’s nuts,” he grumbled. It was a plan usually held back as a last resort when intercepting unmanned combat units, because computer-controlled weapons could not decide for themselves to attack a human being. In those situations, the machines were simply tools that had to wait for their owner’s permission before acting. In other words, the AI was instructing them to take advantage of the reduced freedom experienced by unmanned combat units that carelessly entered highly populated areas.

The image of the top half of a woman wearing a military cap slipped into Sest’s retinal display.

〈We need to reduce the sensitivity of the command center AI,〉 she announced. 〈The client has assessed the threat level of this mission as fairly high. That’s why they requested an emergency scramble from us. But, I don’t think they actually want an all-out war in a residential area.〉

Major Collidenne Lemaire was a calm commander in her 40s. Sest hadn’t the faintest idea of her military background.

“What should we do about the AI’s strategy, major?” he asked. Sest’s confidence wasn’t shaken in the face of complications; he was a veteran. He had enlisted in the army at 18 and served for 16 years. The guns he used had gotten bigger, and his rank had gone up to Second Lieutenant, but he always stayed the same strong and loyal soldier.

〈I’m authorizing you to reject the proposal,〉 she told him. 〈The police are forming a blockade on the bridge with their cars, so it wouldn’t be realistic to try and chase the targets into the residential district.〉

It wasn’t that the major was a humanitarian; she just wanted to avoid engaging the targets on a bridge. “Combat drones were useless underwater,” she would have said. “The light and radio waves of the wireless signals used to control them wouldn’t reach.” For an emergency land combat team that relied on drones, this meant that any target that fell into the water would be out of their reach.

“What’s plan B, major?” Sest wanted to know.

〈The No. 2 Landfill Island Group mainly contains academic and research buildings. It’s practically deserted at night. We’ll take down the targets before they leave the area. The client has received authorization from the government to utilize heavy weapons. There won’t be any caps on our firepower.〉

The list of approved weapons that got sent around was overkill, considering they were just capturing five hIEs. Japan was no longer allergic to the military like it had been 100 years ago. But the kind of firepower the client was authorizing was insane, especially given that they would be fighting within spitting distance of a residential area. The equipment list didn’t match up with the details of the mission, which meant that their intel was incomplete.

Sest felt a sharp sting of tension run up the back of his neck. “Youssef, can you give me the intel from the client again?”

Youssef, the team’s French-African operator, tapped his console’s keys with bony, flexible fingers. “All the escaped hIEs are female models,” he said. “Each has specialized equipment. That’s all we’ve got so far, if you can call that ‘intel’. If this was all the info it took to win wars, I doubt anyone from the dawn of time would have lost a battle due to lack of data.”

Sest checked the countdown timer on his retinal display. It had already been five minutes since their helicopter had entered Tokyo airspace. “Put down the container,” he ordered. “While we get the ground unit up and running, I’m sure the major will be negotiating for some more information.”

The research park had few residential buildings and wide, straight roads that were currently devoid of life. At the client’s request, even ambulances and fire trucks were being prevented from approaching the area.

The pilot aimed the helicopter for a lonely street, illuminated with pools of white light from the streetlamps, and dropped the container from about 20 meters up. There was an explosive burst of gas from underneath as the container, which was about the size of two standard international shipping containers, came to land.

Inside the container were two squads of combat drones. Each combat squad in the PMC was comprised of 11 units, same as a standard squad in the US Army. So, between the two squads in the container there were 22 drones, each equipped with military-grade armaments. Between them, they could easily turn a little area like Odaiba into a sea of flames.

At a request from the container’s AI, the helicopter automatically dropped a sensor unit. 64 disposable camera units flew out from the central mother unit and began to swarm around like flying insects, gathering images of the area.

64 palm-sized screens opened up on the 3D display in the command center. No humans were picked up on any of the screens, so the operations area ‘all clear’ notification lit up on the screen.

The No. 2 Landfill Island Group used to be known as the ‘Central Breakwater Outer Landfill Site’. It had been the first place the rubble from the Hazard, which had taken place 42 years ago, had been sent. That fact had given it a bad reputation, so no one wanted to use it as a residential area. It was well suited for combat.

Five forms were picked out by the image recognition filter. A zoomed-in image slid into the middle of the display.

“Our sensors have the targets,” Sest, who had participated in countless military operations, announced. What he saw out there, running through the night-darkened research park, were five lights of different colors, and five girls, each one like a work of art. For a moment, he forgot that he was currently on a battlefield, in combat.

“The ‘special equipment’ the intel mentioned must be these things,” Youssef said, zooming in on the image. The hIEs were each in a suit lit by a different color; red, green, yellow, orange, and one that was bright white. Each of them also carried some kind of large, strange tool.

The HOO combat drones commenced their mission, spreading out from their cubic container. Sest watched their movements through the screen. The two-meter long drones used the terrain of the wide road to conceal themselves. Wheeled heavy artillery drones lurked behind a vanguard of humanoid drones, waiting for their hunt to begin. The frontmost line was made up of floating, mobile smart-mines.

The PMC’s behavioral cloud moved all its puppets smoothly. Unlike the hIEs, which were built to endear themselves to humans, the military drones had been designed to harm them. But the basic concept of their behavioral patterns was the same; they were to select the optimal behavior to complete the objectives they had been given.

“Advance the vanguard to 70 meters from the targets, then engage with two rounds of smart mines,” Sest commanded. “Then I want the tank drones to lay down concentrated fire, starting with the unit closest the targets. The vanguard will hold the line, and the rear guard will react to the targets’ movements.”

Sest was a soldier, born and raised. The battlefield was his home. The behavior cloud interpreted his instructions, and maneuvered his drone squad. The drones approached their targets, gathering information as they moved.

Then it happened.

One of the hIEs, a young girl with her red hair tied back in twin tails, looked directly into one of the cameras and flashed a dazzling smile. Then she started running. The helicopter was running dark and silent, with its lights out and optical camouflage on, but she headed straight for it.

Goosebumps ran up Sest’s muscular arm. His instincts screamed at him to not let her get close. “Thomas! Get the heli away from that red kid. All units, don’t let her take a single step past the defensive line!”

In a single instant, the scene erupted in combat. The drones that made up the defensive line opened fire ferociously on the hIE girls. Gunshots split the night, while muzzle flashes lit up the air like fireworks.

Youssef quietly tapped at his keyboard. No matter what happened, staying calm as a machine was a vital skill any soldier needed to survive these days.

The pilot, Thomas, tried to make his voice light to cover his anxiety. “Well wouldja look at that, boss? Our targets are shrugging off 50 caliber rounds.”

The machine guns mounted on the wheeled drones poured bullets at the hIEs like hoses spraying water. The red-haired girl used a giant blade to shield herself from the barrage; bathing in a storm of 1000 bullets a second, any one of which could have easily pierced 5 mm. thick steel plate, the little lady hIE was completely unshaken. 50 caliber rounds were fairly standard for military use, but even combat hIEs generally didn’t have the defensive power to withstand them so easily.

“First squad, units 01 to 03, look for an opening in the red one’s defenses to snipe her body,” Sest ordered. “All remaining units, get those four other hIEs pinned down.”

Fiery explosions from the activated mobile mines swirled and spread like flowers. The smart mines were key support units in drone combat; their explosive power could tear through the armor of anything but the heaviest Main Battle Tank (MBT) units. The images from the thermal sensors were blotted out with white heat readings.

But the sound of sniper fire never came. An alert sounded, and a notice flashed onto the screen. All of the armed drones equipped with 40 mm automatic grenade launchers - which formed the final line of defense in front of the drone container - had shorted out and shut down.

Sest’s team had lost all their biggest guns in a single instant. “Get them back online,” he urged.

“I can’t even tell what hit them,” Youssef said, his fingers stopping on the keys. He felt as though the air had grown viscous. Even when running in the depths of the Amazon, you would never see every single wheeled drone in a squad shut down at the same time.

“Get the tactical AI on it,” Sest ordered him. “We just got hit by an enemy attack. Have it analyze the enemy’s weapon.”

But the AI, which based its combat directions off the records of a wide array of past battles, simply gave them a 〈Judgment Pending〉 notice and went silent. Even Sest drew in a sharp breath at the abnormality of the situation.

Thomas, the pilot, turned to them from the cockpit. “Flowers, boss! MemeFrame’s got its girls using flowers,” he said with a whistle.

At his comrade’s light comment, Sest returned to himself. His eyes searched the screen for danger, as if to reclaim the few seconds he’d lost in hesitation while reacting to the strangeness of their situation. Flowers of all colors were blooming on the road, which was paved with recycled materials.

The hIE girl with red hair, who had been pinned down by the machine guns of the wheeled drones, was free. Her weapon, a blade larger than herself, shone vividly crimson.

Sest tried to predict her next movement. What would he do, in her position?

She was undamaged, despite having stood in the heart of the smart mine explosions. Having shown them her inconceivable defensive power, she smiled. Apparently she was enjoying this quite a lot.

“She’s coming for the container!” Sest yelled, at the same instant the red light made a beeline for the container.

A thin line of light cut its way through the night. It pierced through the center of the container, then vanished. The landing container, built to withstand shots from MBTs, distorted with heat before a massive hole opened in one side.

In the helicopter, over 20 warnings flashed across the operations screen. The landing container doubled as a relay station that transmitted vast amounts of battle data. Feeling the performance of their puppet strings failing, the drones raised alerts about the abnormality.

Just then, just as they had received a decisive blow, the tactical AI came back with a response: 〈There is a high probability that the short was caused by electricity from the high voltage wires underground, used by the laboratories, flowing into the drones.〉

The high voltage wires of the landfill island were kept in a common trench over 10 meters underground. The targets not only knew this, but also had the ability to pull the wires from 10 meters underground and use them to attack.

A contact came in from Major Lemaire. Her expression was neutral, but Sest knew she had used the damage taken by his unit as a bargaining chip with the clients to the best of her ability.

〈The client has disclosed further information.,〉 she told them. 〈Don’t try to get them all. First, take down whichever seems easiest.〉

Data appeared, printed across the 3D screen.

“Youssef, read it. I can’t take my eyes off the battle.” To Sest’s eyes, the fight below had mostly been decided, but he didn’t have the authority to order a retreat himself. He requested authorization for a retreat on a confidential line.

The answer was ‘no’.

He ordered the drones to fall back and re-establish their line.

The new intel from the client, summarized by Youssef, began print across Sest’s retinal display:

〈Class Lacia humanoid Interface Elements. Information on their intended use is blank. They’re equipped with devices loaded with quantum computers. They can make advanced decisions on their own without relying on a network.〉

A caption appeared on the screen showing the red-haired hIE that had blown away the landing container.

〈Type-001 Code: “Kouka”〉

The hIE girl “Kouka” swung her weapon around, something between a giant blade and a large cannon, her excited smile illuminated by the firelight.

〈Type-002 Code: “Snowdrop”〉

A girl in a white one-piece dress, who looked even more childish than the others, had sat her butt down demurely on a pile of scrap that had once been humanoid combat drones. Her dress was decorated with luminous green accessories, and all around her, flowers from every season were blooming in an abundance that was completely unthinkable for the location.

〈Type-003 Code: “Saturnus”〉

A girl with disheveled flaxen hair had stabbed something that looked like a spinning wheel into the ground, and was turning some kind of lever on it.

〈Type-004 Code: “___”〉

There was a shadow, moving too quickly for the realtime video to capture it. All that could be seen was dancing lines of radiance, drawn by the hIE’s shining orange lights. Humanoid drones around the shadow didn’t even have time to react before they were shattered like fine china.

〈Type-005 Code: “Lacia”〉

The final hIE looked like a girl about to enter the time of her life when she would be the most beautiful. The expression on her face was straight and pure. She was lifting something that looked like a black coffin in her delicate hands, and using it to deflect incoming bullets with no sign of effort. Cracks ran down the length of the coffin, and it released an explosion of pale blue light.

In that instant, the control center screen was disconnected. At the same time, the tactical control system went down as well. The helicopter was kicked out of silent flight mode, and air turbulence shook the vehicle. The sound of the rotors, which were no longer being controlled by AI, echoed in the night sky, sounding like a giant electric mixer in the air.

Sest grabbed onto a nearby machine to prevent himself from falling within the suddenly stalled helicopter.

“The HMD’s dead!” Thomas, the pilot, swore as he tore off his HMD-equipped helmet with one hand.

Then the stalled vehicle entered a freefall. Luckily, the feeling of falling only lasted for a second. Sest had to hold hard to the equipment to keep from being thrown to the floor as the auto-recovery system jolted the vehicle back into equilibrium.

“Youssef, get our network back online,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”

When the 3D screen flickered back to life, they were no longer looking at a battlefield; all surveillance video of the battle had been blocked.

“Something jumped our connection with MemeFrame and crashed our system,” Youssef reported. “I’m not getting responses to my queries.”

“Electronic warfare? Shit,” Sest swore.

To a drone unit utilizing advanced tactical commands, wireless signals were vital lifelines. If these ‘girls’ were able to break military encryption and hack the team’s system, they were a whole new breed of monster.

The girls were no longer anywhere to be seen. The HOO tactical AI informed Sest and his team that all hIEs had jumped into the sea.

It was the worst case scenario Sest had been afraid of; normal drones wouldn’t be able to function underwater, where wireless signals couldn’t reach them. But the five target hIEs were able to make advanced decisions on their own, without relying on a network.

Which was exactly why they had chosen the sea as a perfect means of escape. With Tokyo close by, and Japan completely surrounded by water, the thought of trying to pin down the hIEs again was completely hopeless.

Thomas let out a dry laugh.

Youssef’s fingers were still.

There were still 10 minutes left on their permit to fly in Tokyo airspace. With no marine scanning equipment in the helicopter, Sest could do nothing but stare down at the face of the sea, an endless pool of darkness itself under the night sky.

“What the hell did we just let loose?” he questioned.

The hIEs they had just encountered were stronger and stranger than Sest ever could have imagined. When the implications of what had just happened started to sink in, Sest broke out in a cold sweat, something he hadn’t done since being a green recruit.

As a veteran, he had often come face-to-face with the evolution of weapons technology; humans were always happy to climb right over walls once thought unsurmountable. To bring about change, all it took was someone deciding that a wall was worth climbing over. Take, for example, the invention of the atomic bomb: there are many famously pithy quotes from the scientists of the day about it, but the reality was that many people were quite happy with its completion and the end it brought to the war. They were happy because the atomic bomb had fulfilled its purpose, which was to protect the lives of their soldiers and countrymen.

Five hIEs, each a work of art. Sest glared down at the sea where they had escaped, then he turned an unsettled gaze to the evening cityscape where millions more hIEs were currently in operation. A sudden shiver ran down his spine at the thought that, once again, humanity was climbing over yet another wall right that moment. He had no idea what the units that had escaped were capable of, or even what they were created to do.

The fault lay squarely on the shoulders of the client: MemeFrame. They had refused to disclose the information they had, and their initial response had been wrong. But that wasn’t even worth worrying about now. One of the five had ‘equipment’ that easily surpassed the power of a tank. So what about the equipment of the other four hIEs; did they have poison gas, or weaponized viruses? One of them could have a weapon worse than a nuclear bomb.

Sest and his team may have just witnessed the beginning of a disaster that would shake human society to the core.

***

10:30 PM.

Arato Endo was lecturing his little sister. While he’d been trying to get things ready for dinner, Yuka, the little sister in question, had been gobbling down the ingredients intended for their meal.

“Is your brain working properly?” he scolded. “You couldn’t even leave me enough to cook with?”

It was just Arato and Yuka, in the Endo household. Their dad was busy with work and almost never came home, and their mom had passed away while they were still small. So, Arato had dedicated himself to raising his little sister. Unfortunately, he may have overdone it, as she was now hopelessly spoiled.

“What were you thinking,” he moaned, “when I was right here, trying to make dinner for you?”

“I was thinking ‘Yay, meat!’” Yuka squealed happily.

“You belong in a zoo,” Arato told her.

“Well dinner was taking too long,” Yuka whined, flipping the channel on the TV away from the game she had been playing. She was 14, three years younger than Arato, but she still had the happy-go-lucky personality of a younger child.

A news program came up on screen.

“Woah, cool,” she exclaimed. “Something blew up.”

On the 3D screen rising from the floor of the dining room, great tongues of flame were bursting from a burning building. It was an image from just 30 minutes ago.

“’The No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group’... that’s kinda close,” Yuka worried. “Or, wait, isn’t it kinda far?”

“It’s close, ya dummy,” Arato scoffed at her. “Well, if you go in a straight line, at least.”

Grabbing the remote, he called up the guide function and asked it the question. It analyzed his spoken request and replied. According to the guide, the incident had happened 15 kilometers from the Endos’ apartment.

“Hey, that’s pretty close,” Arato said, feeling unsettled. “Crazy.”

The sound of an explosion rang out from the 3D display.

“Wonder if they’ll close school tomorrow,” Yuka mused.

“Of course they’re not gonna do that.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I hope no one around there got hurt or anything.”

Yuka may not have been good at studying, but she had a kind heart, and that wasn’t just Arato’s bias as her brother. She settled down cross-legged to watch the news, while Arato went back to the kitchen to re-start dinner.

Dinner didn’t actually require much cooking; it was a simple matter of pouring the frozen food pack and spice pack in together, and then frying them in some oil. That evening, Yuka had ruined his plans by scarfing down the fried sweet and sour pork, so instead he decided to just pour it all over some carbs and call it good.

“They’re saying it was an hIE robot company,” Yuka commented. “Arato, go get a job so we can buy one of those. We could have it cook for us and stuff.”

“Crap, outta rice,” he said. “Guess we’re having fried udon tonight.”

“What! No way, we are NOT having fried udon two days in a row,” she whined. “C’mon, do rice instead.”

“Well,” he said, “we don’t have any rice, so one of us will need to go buy some.”

Yuka bounced off the couch and turned to face him. If human strength came from enjoying eating and playing, she would be a superwoman.

“Arato, will you buy some ice cream for me too?” Truly a fearful specimen of youngest child, she showed no hesitation while making her spoiled request.

“Why is it automatically me who’s going?” Arato asked.

At his question, Yuka gave him a brilliant, innocent smile. “Cuz I wuv you,” she said cutely.

“Words can’t convey how little I care,” he sighed. Despite the season, it was still cold outside at night, so Arato grabbed his heating jacket from where he had it draped in the entryway.

“So you’re gonna go?”

Arato had already come up with an excuse, just so Yuka didn’t think her cutesy act had worked on him. “Well, there’s stuff blowing up tonight,” he said, “so I figured it wasn’t safe for a girl to be out there alone.”

Yuka put her hands together like she was praying. “Please let there be some more explosions tomorrow. Amen.”

“I feel like this is going to turn into one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ things,” Arato remarked. That said, he still thought that his sister was a cute kid. She saw him off with an expression that said she’d rather have just stayed on the couch, and Arato headed out into the night.

The feeling of being dear to someone, of being accepted, was one that made Arato very happy, which was why he wanted his little sister to be able to feel that way. Though, it could also be said that he’d just gone all in on spoiling her.

Shin Koiwa, the neighborhood where the two of them lived, had been built as part of a Tokyo Bay restoration project. It was constructed near a transfer station set up to connect railway lines from the bay to the land side. From the transfer station, one could get to the Endos’ apartment by heading south on the Urayasu subway line; their residential district was conveniently located for easy access. Further south, toward the bay, there was an area heavily impacted by the Hazard. But Shin Koiwa was a comfortably normal residential district. Many of its residents lived there specifically to get away from life at the heart of the metropolis, so at that time of night there was hardly anyone on the street.

“But seriously, an explosion?” Arato worried to himself. “Are we really gonna be alright?” The danger he’d used as an excuse for Yuka lingered in his mind. Off in the distance, he thought he could hear a siren.

The No. 2 Landfill Island Group was one of the areas where his dad used to work.

It was about a 10 minute walk to the grocery store. He didn’t want to spend the whole walk worrying, so he took out his mobile terminal to listen to some music.

“Oh, out running some errands?” a middle-aged woman asked, as Arato walked past her. The slightly plump woman, who looked to be in her late 40’s, was actually an hIE named Marie who worked for a local landlord. She had been running for over 10 years, which was old, for a machine. Arato had seen her face around all the time since he was a kid.

“Yep,” he replied. “You too, Marie?”

“That’s right. We managed to run out of food, too.”

The night walk suddenly felt a little more enjoyable. With someone to talk to, the trip to the store seemed quick. At the little store, run by a single hIE, Arato picked up the same frozen rice and ice cream as always.

Then he headed toward home, walking alongside the road where autonomous cars had eliminated the need for most traffic signals. Marie, shopping bag dangling from one arm, walked alongside him with a gentle gait.

Then, Arato saw them; flowers, falling everywhere.

“Woah,” he wondered, “what the heck?”

Flowers of five colors were raining down. No, perhaps it would be better to say that they were falling all around like snowflakes.. Since it was April, Arato first thought they were cherry blossoms. But, when he caught one in his hand, he saw it had long, thin petals like a chrysanthemum. It also felt strangely dry in his hand. The sight was so odd that, even though it was very pretty, Arato felt uneasy.

“Oh my, how lovely. I wonder what’s going on?” Marie, apparently judging that the falling flowers weren’t dangerous, raised her voice in excitement and kept walking down the street.

The neighborhood hIE left Arato behind and continued on, not bothering to brush off the flowers that settled in her hair. Arato just watched as her calmly walking figure grew smaller in the distance down the dark road. Then, he brushed the flowers off of his own head and went after her.

When he caught up to her, Arato saw that Marie had paused unnaturally mid-step. Her well-rounded figure was completely still, as if she had been frozen in ice. He was about to call out to her, but a sudden, intense feeling of wrongness stopped him.

Marie’s knee was stretched out in a random way, like she had forgotten how to take normal steps. Her whole body was trembling violently, as if she was about to burst apart at the seams. Then, her loose, medium-cut hair swished, and her neck creaked in protest as her head spun around 180 degrees.

The hIE’s face was expressionless as the shopping bag slipped from her fingers. With her joints still frozen tightly in place, Marie fell to the ground like a doll with a dull thud.

The hyperpigmented flowers continued to fall.

Arato felt something touching his neck. Reflexively, he grabbed at whatever it was, and held the thing in his hand under the light of the streetlamps; it was a colorful flower petal that had sprouted legs like a centipede.

The petal bug started walking around on Arato’s hand, and he screamed. He flailed his arm like a madman to get it off before it could crawl up his sleeve. It was late, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to keep his voice down.

“What the hell!” he yelled in panic. “What the hell is that?!” The five-colored petals that now paved the ground were all crawling around like insects. Arato’s common sense told him to reject the reality before his eyes, because it was impossible. Reality itself had become a fairy tale.

Arato couldn’t believe what was happening; his mind was on the brink of complete chaos. He was worried about Marie. The fact that she an hIE, not a human, sprang to mind. But he couldn’t just leave her there; she looked too human for that.

Strong light suddenly shone on him from the side as he stood there, dazed. A sedan that had been parked nearby suddenly roared to life, its wheels squealing on the pavement. As it came straight for him, he threw himself to the road to avoid it. His arm landed at an odd angle, and a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

As he went to stand, the ice cream he’d bought for Yuka rolled out of the shopping bag. Reflexively, he grabbed it and returned it to the bag. Then he put his hand on the wall of a nearby house to stand.

The car, which Arato had thought would keep going, instead shifted into reverse and came straight for him. He tried to dodge again, but didn’t make it. A powerful blow struck him at waist-level.

In that moment, he got a quick look at the interior of the car. Where the driver should have been, there were just flowers of every color, blooming like a giant bouquet.

Arato couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. He simply slid into a narrow alley to get away from the car. “What the hell is going on... This, this is...”

Looking up, he watched as the falling flowers continue to blot out the night sky.

It was such an impossible sight, but his senses were so keenly aware of the reality around him that Arato started to doubt his own sanity. It was as if the whole world was suddenly out to get him; as if everything he had accepted as reality had been revealed as an illusion. Only his pain and fear were real. His mind could do nothing but rail against the threats to his life that were all around him.

Frozen food was moving out of Marie’s shopping bag; the frozen packs had flowers with bunched petals blooming from them. The petals made a dry scratching at the ground as they sprouted legs.

A dark shadow stretched out under the lamplight. Footsteps approached from behind, each step painfully loud in his ears. Arato’s eyes were on the ground, and his breath was coming in ragged gasps. The shadow was wearing the same clothing as Marie. Whatever the flowers bloomed on became a monster; a monster out for human blood.

Headlights flooded into the alley that Arato had ducked into from the opposite side as well, followed by a whole car. The vehicle was out of control, rending its body as it scraped along the narrow alley toward him before it came to a stop, with white smoke pouring out of its underside. Countless flowers bloomed from its chassis.

Arato wished this was a nightmare, from which he just needed to wake up. But this was reality, which made it all the worse. His mind was stuck in an endless loop: make it stop, please just make it stop, he thought, fear rooting him to the spot.

Finally, he managed to get his body to move. Wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he tried to retreat from the danger all around him. But before he could get very far, the car that had just charged into the alley after him burst violently into fire. Arato froze on the spot again, his vision filled by a whirlpool of red flame. It was the same scene he had seen in his nightmares night after night. He knew, without a doubt, that he was about to die. So he screamed. He screamed like he hadn’t since he was a child. “Help me!”

A human figure appeared to Arato’s view.

The figure was facing away, but he could tell that the person was female. She appeared between Arato and the fire, seemingly to melt right out of the heat haze. The coffin she held in one hand was pulled into segments by a skeletal framework, then reconfigured with incredible speed. When the reconfiguration was complete, the figure between Arato and the fire held a giant hemispherical umbrella.

Then, the burning car exploded. She remained there, standing between Arato and the fiery nightmare, as if to say ‘I will protect you.’

After the blast from the explosion blew away, it seemed to take his fear with it, and Arato finally got a good look at the young girl in front of him, and was struck speechless by her simple beauty. Her pale violet hair danced in the hot wind left behind by the explosion. She didn’t have a hint of any makeup on, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her glowing skin and stunning face.

She turned to look at him. “You requested help,” she said, in a clear voice. She was a little shorter than Arato, but she wasn’t showing the least bit of strain at holding her massive black device in one hand.

Arato couldn’t help but feel intimidated by her. “Uh, thanks,” he said.

Her umbrella reconfigured again, returning to its coffin form. She looked a little older than him. When she opened her lips again, he noticed how pale they were. “My name is Lacia,” she told him, and her ice blue eyes fixed on him as if waiting for a response.

It took him a moment to realize what she was waiting for. “I’m Arato Endo,” he said, voice quivering with the fear that still sent tremors through his body. But the expression on her face was so calm that it helped to still the turmoil in his own heart. He realized, then, that she was beautiful enough to steal his breath away.

The black and white bodysuit she was wearing was so tight that he could see every line of her body underneath. From the way she was easily hefting her giant equipment in one hand, he could tell she wasn’t human.

Arato didn’t care who or what she was. He reached out his free right hand to take one of her hands. “We need to get out of here!” he told her. “If these flowers get you, you’ll go crazy.”

The falling flowers were being sent dancing through the air by the hot wind from the fire. The thing that had once been Marie had fallen over in the road, probably knocked down by the explosion.

The flowers that had fallen on the road and walls around them were gathering into bouquets like groups of silkworms, making cocoons. They were everywhere: on houses, on the streetlights. It was like looking at a botanical garden for plastic flowers. The windows and doors of the nearby low-rise houses were completely covered in blossoms, and Arato could hear voices from inside yelling that the doors wouldn’t open.

His instincts were whispering that he needed to run away. The tentacles of fear that sprang from his childhood memories were squeezing cold sweat out of him.

But, despite being covered with the same deadly flowers that had controlled Marie and the car, Lacia continued walking calmly. “Why must we run?” she asked.

Arato tried to tug on her arm, but her thin body didn’t budge an inch. Of the two of them, only Arato’s face was creased with panic. His heart hadn’t stopped hammering since the explosion had threatened to swallow him.

Calm among the chaos of the world around them, Lacia asked him another question. “Are you afraid?”

“Of course I am! We could die here any second!” he yelled. “Anyone would be freaked out right now.”

“Then, do you intend to continue to allow that fear to overcome you?” Her question was like a sharp jab to the heart.

He hadn’t expected to get a lecture in courage from a machine. The urge to yell at her to mind her own business was strong but, even though she was a robot, he couldn’t bring himself to raise his voice at a girl like her. Instead, he asked, “what good will overcoming my fears do me now?”

“If you do not fight back now,” said Lacia, “when will you fight?”

The flowers that made machines go crazy were still falling. There were potential enemies all around them. Arato wanted to shout that this wasn’t the time or place, but in the end he kept his mouth shut from pure frustration.

Still, she may have been frustrating, but she was also beautiful. He wanted to stop walking, to stand there and face her and just look at her. But after an explosion like that, people were sure to come out of their homes to see what happened. They would get dragged into whatever was going on. Imagining what would happen, Arato felt a horrible, sickly chill run up his spine.

The demon flowers in Lacia’s pale violet hair had started to bloom. Her black coffin looked like a giant bouquet.

Forget fighting back; there was literally nothing Arato could do. While he tried and failed to think of a course of action, the petals on her white skin began to sprout short legs.

Arato felt like he was about to lose his mind to pure terror. “Just stay still for a second,” he said, then clenched his teeth and reached out one hand. The flowery crown that had formed from layers of blossoms scattered and fell. He managed to brush away the danger that had threatened her, and the thought that he could contribute something gave him courage.

“Looks like you were right. I can fight back after all, I just needed to try.” said Arato, thanking her with his actions.

Lacia was an hIE, so maybe it was like his buddies had said, and she wouldn’t understand the human emotions he was showing her. But still, he was satisfied just showing her his thanks.

“Let’s go!” He squeezed Lacia’s hand and pulled her along with him. This time she didn’t resist. He noticed, with surprise, that her hands were warm.

There was always the danger of another car trying to run him down, so he kept to the narrower streets of the residential district.

“Lacia, you’re an hIE, right?” he asked. “Could you call the police?”

When he finally had the presence of mind to check, Arato noticed that the only thing falling from the sky anymore was a gentle rain. Looking back, he saw that there was no visible wrecks on the main street. He ran past the side of the burning car, which was still covered in flowers. The flowers on the ground were flowing toward Arato and Lacia like a wave.

Without lungs, Lacia didn’t run out of breath even running along with the giant black weapon in one hand. “The police lack equipment capable of disabling this enemy,” she told him.

Even though he was running for his life, Arato felt his heart soaring so much he wanted to yell, probably because of Lacia’s hand, which was gripped tightly in his.

The familiar sight of the town at night seemed brand new to his eyes, and he had no idea where he was running to. Arato just knew that he was running together with a girl who wasn’t actually a human. All he knew about her was her name.

He looked back at Lacia and she spoke, her light violet hair bouncing as she ran. “Arato, do you trust me?”

Lacia wasn’t an ordinary hIE. Arato thought her appearance and the falling flowers could even be connected, somehow.

“Yes!” Despite his doubts, Arato’s yell split the night. He figured it would be uncool of him to doubt a girl.

He may not have had a destination in mind, but he was running full speed, holding tight to Lacia’s hand. If he kept running in that direction for another five minutes, though, they would arrive at the Endo apartment, where Yuka was waiting.

While he was still wondering where to go, a sharp impact to his side threw him to the ground. Even as he grunted in pain, a second car roared by, inches from his head. Lacia had just saved him from being run down.

Then she was straddling him, pressing him down to the pavement. “Arato Endo,” she said, “I have a request for you.”

The moon shone white in the sky above, and Lacia was staring him straight in the eyes. “Become my owner.”

A warm, wet feeling was spreading from where she was straddling his waist. Her whole body was wet, as though she had recently come out of the water. Droplets pattered onto Arato from her hair, gathering and running down his chest like teardrops.

“What do you mean ‘owner’?” Arato asked in confusion. “You want me to claim you or something?”

“I have decided that you are the most suitable candidate to be my first owner,” Lacia told him calmly.

Arato had no idea what kind of standard had lead her to that conclusion. With sudden death all around them, he didn’t think it was a good time to make that kind of decision. “Don’t just decide that on your own,” he protested. “You don’t know anything about me.”

For some reason, he thought about Yuka and his friends just then. His chest felt tight. What kind of danger would this decision drag them all into?

“I do not need any more information about you,” Lacia informed him. “You said that you trusted me.” Her slightly wet body leaned down on his, as if she needed his support.

Lacia had saved him from the exploding car. But it had still been his decision to fight down his urge to run and reach out his hand to her. A girl was right in front of his eyes, lips pressed together, waiting for his response. Looking at her, knowing she wasn’t human and that she was far stronger than him, he felt the need to protect her.

“Okay!” he said finally.

“I judge your reaction as consent,” Lacia announced. “I will now confirm the details of our contract.” She bent her beautiful figure to rest a hand on Arato’s shoulder as he lay there. “You have no need to participate directly in the actions I will take,” she continued. “I will provide strength. I ask only one thing of you.”

Arato couldn’t follow what she was saying. He just kept getting lost gazing at her lips.

“I am a tool, and cannot take responsibility for my own actions,” Lacia went on. “Therefore, I request that you take responsibility for me.”

There was a sudden sharp, thunderous noise from nearby; Lacia had fended off a second attack by the car with her coffin, which she had stood up on the road. The tires squealed as it tried to push through the barrier, but several anchors were holding the coffin to the road. The impact from the high-class car hadn’t budged it an inch.

“I will now gather your biological information, owner. After I have confirmed this information, I will ask for your consent to this contract twice more.” Lacia took Arato’s hand and guided it toward her own body, where there was a metal component, almost like a keyhole, in the neck of her skin-tight suit.

She brought Arato’s pointer finger near it, and then she pushed his finger inside the keyhole. “Registering Arato Endo as the owner of class Lacia humanoid Interface Elements Type-005,” she said. “This hIE’s equipment device, Black Monolith, is capable of autonomous judgment, and as owner you will accept all legal responsibilities for the actions it takes. Please confirm.”

“Okay,” Arato answered.

Lacia’s hair accessory started to glow cerulean blue. “I will begin recording your life log, owner. If the correct procedures are followed and a legal request made, this record may be disclosed and displayed in a court of law in response to relevant litigation. I require your consent to this in order to release the lock on my device.”

“Okay!” Arato answered, again.

A metal fixture at the waist of Lacia’s white suit, four wings overlapping to form a shackle, twisted; one part rising up, as though it was some kind of lever. Blue light shot through the shackle, and a light blue glow began to spill out of Lacia’s black coffin.

As Lacia was bathed in blue light, Arato heard a faintly dry, rustling noise; carried by the wind, flowers had begun to rain down on them again. The two of them were still under attack. Since they had stopped running, whatever was controlling the flowers had sent them to fall over their heads once more.

But, even under the deadly rain of five-colored petals, Lacia was calm. “In order to disable the sub-units currently attacking us, I recommend severing their optical transmissions,” she said. “I believe this will be the option that has the least impact to our surroundings, and it presents the least possible level of danger to this society.”

Arato was having trouble keeping up. A moving pile of trash and lamps was crawling along the ground towards them as they stood still. The flowers were using Marie as a foundation for their pile. Arato could see her body crawling along underneath it all, dragging her skirt along the ground.

With a creaking, grating noise, the strange shape, covered in flowers and wounds, dragged itself toward them. It was equal parts art and insanity, and it was closing in with every passing second.

“If you can stop them,” Arato yelled, “do it now!”

“However,” Lacia went on calmly, “the three-dimensional control artillery barrage will also disable all wireless connections in range. There is the possibility that this will disable vital life-preserving devices utilized by humans within this range.”

Arato had been hoping she would just take care of it, but Lacia’s eyes, as she gazed at him, were dead serious.

“That will be your responsibility, owner,” she told him.

Arato couldn’t really grasp the full weight of what she was saying. But he could tell, from the feeling of her hand on his shoulder and the look she gave him, that the choice he was being given was a very heavy one.

“Owner, please decide: will you accept responsibility for the possible danger to human life, and authorize the use of my artillery?” she asked.

Arato’s nerves shied away from the combination of the terms ‘responsibility’ and ‘human life,’ but he trusted her.

“Do it!” he commanded.

Lacia nodded. The coffin, still anchored to the street, opened its thick outer shell. A bundle of black metal plates, stored inside, began to rotate and expand in three dimensions like a metal tree, spreading its branches.

Then the world around Arato changed in the blink of an eye. It was like suddenly waking up from a nightmare; the flowers were gone, and the street looked just like it always had.

“They’re gone,” Arato exclaimed, pushing himself up automatically and surveying their surroundings. Even the noise, which had been pounding down on them until just a moment ago, had disappeared. “They’re all gone,” he said again.

“I have struck the sub-units with a negative curvature material film, rendering them invisible to a specific band of frequencies,” Lacia told him solemnly. “They are no longer able to receive command signals or wireless energy transfers from the main unit, and are therefore nullified.”

“I mean, I get that they’re invisible now, but I don’t understand the rest of that...” Reaching out his hand to feel the surface of the road, Arato felt something dry crumble under his touch, and reflexively jerked his hand back with a gasp. But, after steeling himself, he reached out again; he couldn’t see them, but he could feel soft piles of the petals. The flowers were all still there. But, since Lacia had made them invisible, all the wireless signals were passing right through them.

She had hit every single one of the tens of thousands of petals with a single attack. Since she had done it all while remaining perched on Arato’s chest, he had no idea how hard it had been for her.

A gust of wind blew by and, with a dry rustling, an invisible blizzard of flowers was carried away.

Arato was shaking so hard he thought his heart would stop. He may not have been too bright, but he had at least noticed that Lacia was far from normal. A deep, animal part of his brain was telling him that he could not handle the power he had just witnessed.

“What the heck WAS that?” he gasped. “You’re incredible!” His instincts were starting to worry that this ‘girl’ he now owned was incredibly dangerous.

For her part, Lacia simply stood without a word.

Looking up at her, Arato momentarily saw her as a giant monster, towering over him. For just an instant, he saw her as something not beautiful, but terrifying. But, more important than any of that, Arato was on a time-limit: he had to get home before Yuka’s ice-cream melted.

When they arrived at the entrance to the apartment, Arato asked Lacia how long it’d been since they met. She told him eight minutes. He could hear police sirens off in the distance.

“What took you so long?” Yuka was waiting to rush out and confront him as soon as he signalled the door lock open with his pocket terminal.

“Hey, sometimes shopping is hard,” Arato told her, pulling the package of rice out of the shopping bag. He made sure to check the bag for flowers, just in case.

Yuka was speechless. Clearly in a panic, she pointed at Arato with a shaking finger. “Ah, ah, A-Arato!”

“My name is Lacia,” Lacia said, introducing herself. “Pleased to meet you.”

As Lacia politely bowed her head, all the blood drained from Yuka’s face. Obviously, since Arato was Lacia’s owner now, there was nothing strange about her being there with him. Of course, her having the form of a human made things more complicated.

“Oh my gosh, my brother just bought a girl,” Yuka wailed.

“Hey don’t say it like that,” Arato protested.“I didn’t pay a single cent for her!”

“That’s even worse!” Yuka said accusingly. Of course, Yuka’s reaction was only natural; most people didn’t come home from getting groceries with an unknown girl in tow. Yuka looked like she was seriously about to start crying.

“I’m so sorry for whatever my brother did to you,” Yuka said, her voice shaking and catching as she bowed her head deeply. “I’ll make sure he gets rehabilitated. I think he’s a first time offender, so please go easy on him.”

Arato was about to tell her she was misunderstanding and to raise her head. Before he could, though, Lacia untangled the siblings’ thread of understanding.

“I am not a human,” she explained to Yuka. “I am an hIE. Therefore, taking me home is not a criminal act. I did not have an owner, so Arato Endo agreed to take me in. Despite the circumstances, our contract is official.”

“As expected,” Arato sighed, “an hIE is a heck of a lot better at explaining things.” Lacia’s calm explanation made him forget his nerves. In fact, even the fact that he had just been under attack seemed like a distant memory.

“What?” Yuka said, raising her head. “Seriously?” She was actually sniffling back tears. Arato wasn’t sure whether to be happy that she was so worried about him, or sad that she had suspected him of being a kidnapper.

“So yeah, about that,” he began. “Do you think it would be alright if we let Lacia... -san, crash here?” Arato couldn’t bring himself to drop the respectful honorific.

“Yeah. I understand,” Yuka said, wiping at her eyes.

“Wait, you’re seriously okay with this?” Arato asked.

But Yuka’s smile was quick to return. “You found her and picked her up, right?” she said. “So, I guess she’s yours now.”

Arato felt like he should tell Yuka about everything that happened. Honestly, he just wanted to grab Lacia and his sister and run inside, but he didn’t want to freak Yuka out.

“Listen, Yuka,” he said. “While I was out shopping, a whole bunch of flowers started falling from the sky. Marie, the Yuzawas’ hIE, got broken. I think whoever was doing it might have been targeting Lacia.”

Arato had asked if Lacia knew anything about who was behind the attack, but she hadn’t. All she’d said, on the way back, was that she would make arrangements for patching up the damage that had been done. She could not, however, be more specific about what that meant.

Arato, having just stepped out of a nightmare and back into the real world, was still trying to sort out his concept of reality, and couldn’t give Yuka a very good explanation, either. At a loss for words, he simply rolled up the hem of his shirt and showed her where a large bruise was forming. “Here, look. A car hit me right there. Lacia showed up and protected me.”

“Well that’s good,” Yuka remarked. “She really saved your butt.”

She really had.

“Come to think of it,” Arato admitted, “I really was useless back there.”

“Well there hasn’t been anything on the news about any of that,” Yuka said. “And if you thought she could be dangerous, how come you brought her back?”

Arato smiled, just a little. Yuka didn’t particularly trust in Lacia, but she did trust in her big brother. He wanted to thank her, but Yuka was already digging around in his shopping bag for her ice cream.

“So she’s ours now right? hIEs cook, don’t they?” Yuka asked with excitement. “So she’s gonna cook for us, right? Sweet, can’t wait!” Without an ounce of hesitation, Yuka was already ordering Lacia around.

“I see,” Lacia said politely. “If you wish me to cook, I can access the culinary behavior cloud and commence immediately.”

“Is it gonna be good?” Yuka asked.

“The user review average for this behavior cloud is five stars,” Lacia told her.

“Lacia I wuv you,” Yuka said, glomping Lacia with innocent glee. Taking Lacia’s hand, she started to lead her into the house.

“Wait a minute, Yuka,” Arato frowned. “So you’re fine with her as long as she spoils you?” Everything was just going too smoothly; Arato didn’t allow events to just carry him along, though. For some reason, he took Lacia’s other hand and prevented her from following Yuka in.

But Yuka had always been good at winning him over. “hIEs have cameras in their eyes,” she coaxed. “I saw it on TV. So if something happened to Marie, Lacia must have recorded it all. The police will look at that and figure it all out.”

Arato and Lacia’s adventure would also be recorded on the security cameras in the nearby stores and homes. So, if there really was some kind of problem, the police would surely come to check with them tomorrow.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Arato said, feeling like he was worrying too much. “We should leave this kind of thing to the police.” Honestly, it was strange to assume that whoever had caused that rain of flowers would continue attacking him in the future.

The main reason Arato could relax about this was that he didn’t actually intend to keep Lacia for very long. He just couldn’t picture her and her mysteries becoming a permanent part of the self-indulgent lifestyle that he and Yuka lead without their parents around.

“You’re worrying about all the wrong stuff, Arato,” Yuka told him. “All we need to worry about right now is what all she can do for me.”

“I wish my brain worked as simply as yours,” he lamented.

It was almost scary how easily a bond of common interest was forged between Yuka and Lacia.

“Things are going to be tough for you from now on, Arato,” Yuka said. “I think you used up all your luck today.”

“Please don’t say that like it’s a done deal,” he groaned, “How’re you going to feel if I actually run into some bad luck now?”

“If you’re worried, why not just ask?” Yuka turned. “Hey Lacia, if you stay here with us, are we in danger?”

“Based on the situation as I described it to you earlier, Yuka, there is no danger,” Lacia answered immediately.

Yuka nodded with satisfaction. “See? No problem.” Arato’s little sister was a little too unshakeable.“If something comes up we can just think about it then. But right now, Lacia needs our help.”

Arato wasn’t really the kind of person who worried about things too much, sometimes to the extent that Ryo and Kengo would call him out about it. “You’re right,” he said, giving in. “Let’s go have some dinner.”

“I have become familiar with the contents of your refrigerator,” Lacia announced. She was very good at what she did. From the random odds and ends Arato pulled out of the fridge, she’d managed to make some damn good Chinese dishes. Arato had no idea how she did it. Nor did Yuka. So instead, they just focused on eating it.

The siblings weren’t exactly the pinnacles of humanity.

It had gotten quite late, so as soon as she was done eating, Yuka took a bath and went to bed. Lacia did all the washing and cleaning up, so there was nothing left for Arato to do.

“Sorry to have you do all this,” he apologized. “But you coming along really helped us out.”

Lacia was in the kitchen, sorting out the haphazardly stored silverware and cookware. “There is no need to worry on my account,” she said reassuringly. “Originally, hIE were mainly used for caretaking and housework.”

Lacia’s black coffin was resting against the wall of the living room. A cushion had been put under it to keep it from scratching the floor, which made the whole layout of the room seem odd.

Looking at Lacia’s back, Arato again had the sudden feeling that he had taken ownership of something that could be a big problem. As he watched her from behind, he realized the back of her suit was open, revealing a bit of her skin.

Staring at her pale back, Arato lost the ability to think about anything else. Just watching her while she worked, Arato felt a strange sensation kindling within him. Comparing her to the equipment in the kitchen, she was just so much more alive, so much warmer-looking in her white and black bodysuit. Thinking about her like that, Arato felt heat rush to his face and he fell over on his side on the sofa.

“Crap,” he asked himself, “how is this going to work?” His heartbeat was pounding loud in his own ears. He remembered the sight of her back when she had saved him the first time. He remembered her soft hand in his while they were running away together. He remembered her face in the moonlight, and the weight of her butt on his chest when he had entered the contract to be her owner. The thought had him wrestling with his own arousal.

On his side, Arato doubted that he had the strength to push himself back upright, and couldn’t stop his thoughts from the path they were running down. A blush crept up his cheeks, and he felt sweat forming on his face. From now on, Lacia would be there with him every single day. Once he realized that, it didn’t really matter that she wasn’t a human. Arato had no idea how he was supposed to deal with that fact.

“God I’m such a GUY!” Just like Yuka had said, maybe Arato had used up all his luck. He felt as if he had fallen asleep, his heart would stop beating. If he just lay there, he couldn’t tell where his mind would start going, so he sprang to his feet instead.

“Owner, would it be easier for you if I excused myself?” Lacia was by his side. Her expression was cool as she looked down at his red and bothered face. He wasn’t sure where she had gotten them, but she had a tray with a tea set in her hands.

Figuring that he wasn’t looking too manly, stuck between sitting and standing, Arato sat back down on the sofa.

Lacia knelt and set the tray on a low table. She poured hot water from the teapot into a traditional yuzamashi cooling bowl. Neither of the Endo siblings had ever used a real tea set, so Arato had never seen anything like Lacia’s graceful movements.

“Woah, so you can do tea all proper too,” Arato said. Seeing the difference in skill levels between an hIE and the minor housework he usually did was actually exciting; it made him think of something he had learned in high school. His teacher had said that the norms of society could easily change within their lifetimes. For example, most of the things that were common sense during the economic highs of the 1960s were completely foreign 50 years later, in 2010. As the times changed, so would so many things that everyone considered normal. It was hard to track from day to day, but Arato’s world was being swept away by a massive wave of change.

Lacia tilted her head slightly, bowing to him. “Thank you. However, all hIE behaviors are downloaded from the control cloud through the network. This tea is simply a product of my body tracing a combination of motion capture and recorded data of humans taking these actions.”

Arato smiled in chagrin at being lectured on this by a machine. She was saying the same thing as his friend Ryo: hIEs were tools.

Lacia interpreted the look on his face, and responded, “It appeared you required basic information regarding hIEs.”

“Is it a problem for you if there are things I don’t know?”

Lacia politely refrained from responding to that.

To be honest, Arato understood hIEs so little that, until that moment, he hadn’t even thought of the fact that Lacia might have belong to someone else before she asked him to be her owner. The more he thought about it calmly, the more fear wriggled along his spine. There isn’t a human alive who can make a decision without ever giving it a second thought afterward.

“Lacia,” he asked, “where did you come from?”

Lacia poured the tea out of the pot and into a teacup. “Is that information vital to our relationship, owner?”

Arato felt like his reliance on her and the trust he felt for her had been carved deep from their first meeting. “I don’t know a thing about you, Lacia. Look, the more I know, the less we’ll have to worry about later, and I think it can clear up some worries between us.” He wanted to get closer to her. “Plus, I figure some stuff will get easier for me to understand once I know.”

And, if there was anything he could do for her, he wanted to show his thanks by doing it. But, whatever kind of response Arato had been imagining when he said all that embarrassing stuff, Lacia’s words didn’t match it.

She just spoke the facts. “You are a very kind person, but I believe you are making a fundamental mistake.” Lacia’s pale blue eyes didn’t waver. “I do not possess a soul.”

Her blunt statement caught Arato off guard. He was supposed to be the one in charge here, but she had left him speechless.

“I am merely utilizing a combination of human words and behaviors to present reactions that human users will find pleasant,” she continued. “My reactions are based on my predictions of how the reactions will be received, and are not guided by a single, consistent personality.”

As technology advanced, it was no longer humans alone that could exhibit human behavior. As long as a machine had a human figure and skeleton, they could perform exactly the same actions. The hIEs relied on the fact that, as long as their behavior patterns were optimal, they could fulfill their roles, even without hearts or souls.

“You have seen a collection of this particular hIE’s behaviors and perceived an illusion of presence behind it all, owner,” Lacia finished. “That is all.”

Arato’s head swam. His blood was boiling. He had wanted to save this girl he had met out of the blue, so he felt a surge of anger at her words, though he did understand that what she was saying was the truth.

When she had thanked him, though, it had been hard not to imagine her as a person. Having her deny that, calling herself a thing, made him angry. With the realization that this was exactly what his friends had been poking fun at him about, Arato’s illusions were stripped away. When humans interact with other humans, there was a sense of something being shared, and this allowed them to endure each others’ idiosyncrasies.

But that same understanding did not exist between Arato and Lacia, because there is nothing shared between humans and machines. Arato doubted he would have even gotten involved with Lacia if she didn’t look like a human. Fear, regret and disappointment were a swirling storm in his head. Unable to say a word, he just sat there, listening to the veins in his neck throbbing. His feet were shaking as if he was staring over the edge of a bottomless abyss.

And yet, seeing his trouble, the heartless Lacia had said: “I do not possess a soul.”

Arato looked up at the ceiling. He had been flying high, which made it all the worse when he was brought crashing back down to reality. He closed his eyes. On the back of his own eyelids, he saw the two images that had become his own starting line: the red-black explosion, and the little white dog wagging its tail.

He let out a warm sigh. The behavior of the dog, the way it wagged its tail, had saved Arato when he was small. It had given him the strength to restart his life. He’d reach out his hand to help someone he’d thought needed helping, even if that gesture was meaningless.

“Just because you don’t have a soul doesn’t mean you don’t have an impact,” he corrected her gently.

Arato was angry at himself for getting angry at her. When he was a kid, he hadn’t seen anything like a soul in that little white dog. But seeing it enjoying life had given him courage.

“It doesn’t mean you can’t move a person’s heart,” he said. Warmth overflowed in Arato’s chest, as if to fill in the hole left by his earlier weakness.

It seemed as though having his feelings shot down just made them shift all the more rapidly. Arato wasn’t by any means smart, so he always felt like he had to keep acting. He wanted to find something he could do for Lacia.

“I may have had the wrong idea, sure,” he went on. “But I can’t just sit here without worrying about what you’re feeling, Lacia.”

Since one of them lacked a heart, the normally meaningless silence that descended over them felt heavy. Lacia gave Arato a mysterious smile. “I have no feelings for you to worry about,” she reminded him.

Right, she wasn’t even capable of feeling worry in the first place; still, Arato wanted to do something for her. He felt heat warming his face, enough so that he knew anyone could see the redness of his face.

“I’m such a moron! Goddammit!” Pain, and embarrassment at his own naivete, pushed out of his chest in the form of a loud yell.

Moments later, light footsteps approached quickly from the hall. Yuka, in her pajamas and with a pillow in one hand, appeared with a deathly glare on her face. “Arato, I’m trying to sleep!”

Whether one sleeps soundly or not, tomorrow will always come. The next morning, as expected, Arato found Lacia still in the living room. She wasn’t just sitting around, either. After preparing breakfast for the Endo siblings, she saw them both off to school.

Yuka was always a bundle of energy, and had friends at school. Their dad was still busy with work and hadn’t come home. Lacia kept working and in no time, she was a normal part of the Endo’s social circle. In that way, four days quickly passed by since the incident.

Arato awoke to the sound of his alarm. Reaching a hand out from under his covers, he grabbed the pocket terminal sitting by his pillow. The terminal connected him with the person who had set up a morning call for him without him even needing to ask.

〈I am preparing breakfast. Are you arising?〉 Lacia’s clear voice tickled Arato’s ear. He leaped up from his bed, so excited that it made his heart pound.

“What’s for breakfast?” He could have just gone to the living room and checked, but he wanted to keep listening to her voice.

〈I have attempted french toast,〉 she told him. 〈You mentioned that you had never tried it before.〉

Arato honestly found it extremely embarrassing how much she spoiled him. Standing, he grabbed his own head. “Are things really okay, going on like this?” he asked himself. “No, obviously they aren’t.”

In the living room, he found Yuka with a relaxed look on her face. She was munching on a piece of french toast, which had been toasted to a foxy orange.

“Morning,” Arato said.

“Mm-hm.” With her fork in one hand, Yuka mumbled around a mouthful of food.

Lacia’s presence had brought a more normal routine to the Endo siblings’ previously laid back lifestyle, which was nice. But because of that, Arato never felt like he got as much sleep as he would have liked to.

“How are you feeling this morning, owner?” she asked. The black and white bodysuit she had been wearing when they’d met had been replaced with a more ordinary outfit. She had also taken off the device lock that had been at her waist.

In normal clothes it was impossible to tell her apart from any other human, and Arato shifted his gaze away from her without thinking. It was embarrassing seeing her wearing his own jeans and shirt.

“Arato it’s too early for you to get all hot n’ bothered,” Yuka grumbled at him.

Hearing that from his little sister put a damper on Arato’s morning. Still, he stole a glance at Lacia’s cool profile. She may not have been human, but there was still the fear that she wouldn’t appreciate his staring.

“We really do need to get you some new clothes,” he said, going to the fridge for some juice. Only then did he notice there was already a teapot on the table.

He couldn’t have Lacia do every little for him, so he at least poured his own black tea. There hadn’t been any tea leaves in the house, so she must have mail-ordered them. The strong scent that wafted off of the cup along with the steam helped to really Arato to wake up.

Lacia, standing at the electric hot plate with an apron around her waist, was gauging the right time to flip over some french toast. It smelled really good. Since she had come, mornings had become more relaxed; Arato had more time than he knew what to do with. He synched his personal terminal with the TV. The home system that monitored all the electronics in the house handled all the complicated stuff for getting the sync set up.

The 3D TV screen showed Arato data the home system decided he should see, and an e-mail he didn’t remember seeing before caught his eye. “Hey, this email here,” he said. “It’s for you. How come I’m seeing it?”

The email on the screen was addressed to Yuka, but for some reason it had been specially flagged so that Arato could see it, too.

Suddenly fully awake, Yuka leaned over the table. “Just open it,” she urged.

On the 3D display’s white board, Arato saw a sender name he had never heard of before. He opened the file and read it, then he felt his ability to think clearly run off somewhere.

“Yuka,” he said absently, “why don’t you sit down.”

“Uh, I AM sitting down,” she retorted.

“Okay,” he asked, “so what the hell is this model audition thing about?”

The email on the screen was brief. 〈Ms. Yuka Endo,〉 it read, 〈Lacia, the hIE you recommended for our hIE Model Audition, has been selected for the Grand Prix.〉

“Isn’t that awesome?” Yuka asked excitedly. “She made it into the Grand Prix.”

She accessed the link in the email, and the advertisement page announcing the Grand Prix came up on the screen. Then, as information expanded through the network, images of models in various poses were displayed. So basically, this media group was collecting hIE models, and Yuka had sent in visual data of Lacia along with an application. This mail was the result.

“There! Look at that one!” Yuka drew Arato’s attention to a photo of Lacia, wearing Yuka’s school uniform. He had no idea when Yuka had taken it.

The photos of a few other hIEs were lined up alongside Lacia’s as final candidates, but he only had eyes for her.

“Man she’s pretty,” she sighed. “I made the right choice.”

Aside from Lacia’s photo, the other thing that caught Arato’s eye was the name of the event’s sponsor. “Hey,” he said, “aren’t they pretty famous?”

“Yeah,” Yuka agreed. “They’ve been promoting this on TV, too.”

In other words, Lacia’s photos were soon to be spread all over all sorts of media. Arato felt a headache coming on; they never had gotten to the bottom of that whole flower storm attack.

“Aren’t you gonna say anything to me, Arato?”

“You m-m-moron,” he stuttered, feeling pissed off.

Yuka had obviously been looking for some compliments, and her voice turned whiny. “Well she IS really pretty. I just thought it’d be a waste not to use that.”

“That doesn’t mean you should do this kind of thing without talking to me about it,” he fumed. “You need to think these things through!”

Lacia, the object of their debate, seemed completely fine with it all. “I don’t mind,” she said.

“See?” Yuka pouted. “It’s Lacia’s choice, and she says it’s okay.”

“She’s an hIE, she’s not gonna disagree with a human about stuff like this,” Arato retorted. An hIE wasn’t a human. As Lacia had said, they had no souls. Their words were nothing more than ideal responses to human requests.

Lacia flipped some french toast over with a spatula before turning to look at Arato. “Regardless,” she said mildly, “time cannot be turned back, owner.”

The sound of oil popping in the pan made Arato realize how hungry he was. His body was telling him to stop sweating the small stuff and focus on food. “But what are we going to do about this?” he asked no one in particular, slumping into a chair.

Lacia had been under attack when they’d met, just like him. If an enemy were looking for Lacia specifically, her location would soon be broadcast to the whole world.

“I told you about everything that happened, right?” he asked Yuka. “Well now, even though that incident never got cleared up, things are blowing up even worse. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

Touching a finger to her lips, Yuka put on a serious expression. “I guess I’m just living in the future?” She was the type who, if you gave her a button to press, would immediately press it without looking at any instructions.

“I don’t know what the hell kind of future you’re trying to get to,” Arato muttered.

The Endo siblings heard a quiet laugh coming from nearby; Lacia was laughing. Still in her apron, she had her right hand pressed lightly to her mouth in a very dignified gesture of mirth. It was the first time Arato had seen such a bright smile on her face.

“So hIEs can laugh...” he murmured in surprise. It was the kind of expression that comes deep from the heart. Looking at that, it was hard to believe Lacia had no soul.