Inform. Addicts

By Joshua Wilkinson

Twitter:@JoshuaWilkinjp

Self-Published. Copyright © 2015 by Joshua Wilkinson. All Rights Reserved.

Cover Image Credits

Book cover photo - Dariusz 'Nivelis' Mysłowski

Model and costume - Ewa 'Santa Evita' Barylińska

Photo shoot - 'Cyberpunk', Pospolite Ruszenie Fotograficzne

To enjoy further works of science fiction art like this e-book’s cover image, please check out http://www.deviantart.com/

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

              -Herbert Simon

Stratum 1: “Tears for Abaddon”

A thick fog blanketed the area surrounding the Louisissippi State Penitentiary, most of its opaque body composed of rogue nanomachines that had once controlled rain patterns in Texas, before the cyberattacks of the Third World War made the continent into a holy mess. Now these cloud combers were merely trinkets from a bygone era, an age before the New American Republic. Father Pahaliah did not dwell on the results of hubris that now swirled past his window, a nanome supported by mind boggling symbiotic relationships and feedback loops.

The Jumbee 344 cyclocopter that carried the priest towards the prison was piloted by two particularly foul mouthed Escorts, and though he did not care for these acquaintances, Escorts were the only ones allowed in the skies these days. As a thalassocracy that merely remained a part of the NAR for the sake of military protection, Louisissippi had very strict borders by land. Its shores, particularly around Neo Orleans, were the most crowded areas, and Pahaliah needed to get to the penitentiary quickly if he was to have his conversation with Garth Abaddon before the man’s execution. Even if he hated hearing God’s name abused by those miscreants, he would have had to put up with more of it if he took a boat full of swearing sailors into a Neo Orleans entrepôt.

“Thank you for flying with Kim and Calix’s air service,” the copilot said from the cockpit’s speakers. “We may not bear you as well as angels’ wings, but we have helluva a lot better scenery.”

Pahaliah tried not to look at the nude photos pinned up all along the inside of the cyclocopter’s interior. When the door to the aircraft opened and he was given the okay to exit, he could swear he barely heard the pilot’s laughter over the deafening roar of the rotors. The holy man clutched the stannic briefcase in his hands tightly. 

“Father Pahaliah I presume?” a squat man with a conspicuous cyborg eye shouted above the noise.

“Yes, and you must be Jago?”

“Correct. I’m here to see that you are guided successfully throughout the prison and treated with the respect you deserve.”

The priest kept his smile internalized, since letting his pleasure in the authority granted by a republic with a theocratic legal system show visibly would not be very humble. His breathing mask, for the area had more dangerous materials than nanomachines floating around in its atmosphere, had the emblem of the Judicial Church, or the other J.C. as some liked to joke, stamped on the end of its snout. Pahaliah liked to think of the cross with its double halos as a talisman against not only demons, but also harmful bacteria in this context.

After passing rows of police tanks, tankettes and hovercraft, the two men strolled through the bullet proof glass doors in the entranceway and approached the welcome desk. A burly man with a handlebar mustache sat behind it and leaned towards a computer monitor in an eyeball frying proximity.

“Kolibri, Father Pahaliah has arrived,” Jago said with a rather harsh intonation in his voice.

A smile crept onto the priest’s lips, and he wished that he could see Jago’s face at that moment, as the man stood in front of him, his expression impossible to read. Pahaliah could swear that he saw the “receptionist,” he had a hard time thinking of the gruff Escort this way, sweep a hand grenade into his desk drawer.

“The GREENLINE race is on,” Kolibri answered with a growl. “Keve Lozano is leading the pack…the nasty foreign bastard.”

“Kolibri!” Jago’s voice broke.

“Don’t get your prick in a knot,” Kolibri replied and pushed a button on his console. A heavy metallic door across the room opened with a shudder.

Jago gave an exasperated sigh before leading his charge to the station’s finest private meeting room. Pahaliah assumed it was anyway, since it smelled less like sweaty bodies than the rest of the station, including the lobby. The chair in which he set his thin body even had comfort adjustment settings. The priest wondered if it had been brought from Jago’s office, just for him. A glass divider ran the length of the room, though its presence did not fully relieve Pahaliah, as a permanent blood stain was visible on the prisoner’s side of the barrier.

“We thought it wise to bring Abaddon in after you were settled, since this will put you in a position of power from the get go,” Jago spoke encouragingly. “Here’s a uni for the communicator.” He handed his guest a small verdant coin.

Pahaliah inwardly cringed at the term uni, which was a shortening of “universal credit.” At least he had not referred to the currency as UC; pronounced “uck” like so many teenagers seemed to do these days.

“You charge people for talking to prisoners? What about their lawyers?”

Jago smiled. “We all have to make money in this crazy world in one way or another.”

The priest shivered at the discussion of money, something he thought himself above, most likely because the state provided him with everything he could ever need. Sliding the coin into the designated slot, he exhaled and gained his composure as the communicator showed a green light. A few seconds later, the handcuffed prisoner was ushered into the room by a wheeled, autonomous Escort with a sonic cannon trained on his head.

“Good day to you Father Pahaliah,” Abaddon said and took a seat. The sound of ankle restraints clicking into place followed shortly.

“I am sure you know why I am here today,” the priest said.

“Oh yes, of course. Nothing would look better than for a ‘war criminal’ to convert to the state religion just before his execution, and who else to send for such a task than the Fabric’s most cherished religious authority?” Abaddon had a mouth like the orifice on a VHS player.

Chafing at the term Fabric, Pahaliah tried not to let his displeasure with such a trivial matter show outwardly. As an individual who remembered the old terminology, the days when Internet was the established phraseology and this form of digital interconnection was mediated solely through devices external to the human brain, Father Pahaliah did not appreciate the new changes as much as he let on. Certainly, the Fabric gave him the opportunity to reach more people, but that did not mean he had to like the system.

“Yes, I am here to answer all your questions about God, the afterlife, this life…”

“Look, let’s cut to the chase.” Abaddon yawned and scratched his shaved head. “They are serving some tube grown wubb as my last meal, and I don’t want to miss it.” 

“Do you know that you are a sinner, and that you must accept Christ to be saved?”

Abaddon grinned this time. “It depends on what you call sin Father. After all, there is very little I did during the war that you did not do yourself. You were an interrogator stationed in Hidaj, right? With a specialization in understanding the Muslim mindset, you had the tools to elicit more information from our enemies.

Not a muscle in Pahaliah’s face twitched. He knew that a man of such a reprobate mind would not miss the opportunity to call a religious individual’s past into question.

“Well, I did not betray my nation, or my God.” He fixed the prisoner with an iron gaze.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I did not sell those secrets to the Russo-Sino-Iranian Alliance? Is it really so hard to believe that I was set up by the very people I spent thirty years slaving for?”

“Oh I am sure there is a perfect conspiracy to explain away your incarceration.” The priest smiled slightly.

“The funny thing is that there are perfect conspiracies everywhere.” Abaddon’s grin was neither slight nor pleasant. I used to be the guy who designed and implemented them, remember? Take what I was just watching on the telesight before they brought me out here – a sitcom. See people think that the term ‘sitcom’ is short for ‘situational comedy,’ but it really stands for ‘sitting communication,’ as it was the first genre to fulfill this role.

As it became more abundantly clear that leisure time mattered to modern man, the sitcom became the perfect way to understand the idle individual. ‘Which program would John or Jane Doe want to watch in their free time?’ experts would ask. ‘What values do they wish to have reinforced through entertainment?’ Now our telesights even have built in cameras to detect what mood one is in and what program is recommended. Just remember next time that you are sitting around watching a televangelist program that men and women like me are learning everything about you, and as a bonus, communicating to you what values we want reinforced in the American public.”

He tried hard not to, but Father Pahaliah laughed openly. Perhaps he wished to feel less awkward in a conversation with a member of the FSO (Federal Surveillance Organization). Perhaps the thought of such a sinner implying that he knew so much about the population made him even more uncomfortable. Surely such intrusive surveillance was God’s right and not man’s.

“Speaking of the telesight, my favorite show is coming on fairly soon, and I would like to watch one last episode before they hang me. Surely you’ve heard of Schadenfreude?”

“That’s the one with embarrassing and painful videos of people in accidents, right?” Pahaliah asked.

“Yes, it makes absolutely no sense to me why watching others’ pain should entertain me, but I am glad at least that I am not the only one with this sadistic nature. Truth be told, we all have this dark side, even you Father.” Abaddon licked his lips when he said this.

“We are all of a fallen nature.” The priest took on a more serious expression. “But thankfully, we can be redeemed by…”

“By the same kind of power that allowed me to spend years brainwashing kids to serve their government?” Abaddon looked at Jago with a sinister grin, but the man had his attention focused on a Megaminx he had brought with him, the puzzle managing to thwart his solutions.

“The NAR certainly appreciates the lengths you took to protect freedom and democracy throughout the…”

“I tortured over a dozen preteen boys and girls, injected them with mind altering chemicals, and subjected them to some subtler means of behavior modification that I won’t disclose, even to you.” Abaddon scratched the bridge of his nose. “By the time I was done with them, they would burn their own parents alive. They were the perfect assassins, as their records demonstrate. One hundred and eight high profile assassinations in less than thirteen years is not a bad record at all.”

The automated Escort who rested in the corner of Abaddon’s side of the room made a whirring noise, and a triangle of red lights on its “face” dimmed. Presumably, even when it entered a power saving mode, sensors in its body would alert it if Abaddon somehow managed to escape or threaten the situation in any way. Its rotating turret was still positioned with its sting ball firing cannon facing its charge.

“I am not here to question your record,” Pahaliah said. “You can claim that you never really sold information to our ungodly enemies, but you have been found guilty of these crimes, and you will be executed in only a matter of hours. It is your eternal soul we must discuss. Abaddon, are you listening to me?” It concerned the priest that the godless man before him no longer looked him in the eyes.

“Do you know my real name?” Abaddon asked seriously.

“No.”

“Funny, I don’t either. I’ve completely forgotten it. Abaddon seems to suit me just fine, since like the destroyer in your religion, I get very little thanks for carrying out the tasks for the alleged god of this nation.”

“You seem to be skirting around the fact that I am here to teach you the message of salvation.” Father Pahaliah sighed. “Mocking God will get you nowhere.”

“Be honest with me.” Abaddon leaned forward. “You think I’m the practical spawn of the devil, regardless of what I tell you otherwise. It will sound terrible to your enlightened mind, but the parallels between my own life and that of your religion’s villain are tantalizing. Don’t get me wrong, I suffer from no delusions of grandeur.”

“To my eyes there is very little good in you,” Pahaliah said and shot a quick glance at the holographic watch embedded in his skin. “Though God judges in matters of the heart, it is possible to know a person better in this day in age.” 

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Abaddon brightened. “I popularized Loquacitas as the leading truth serum in the NAR’s various secret services. Getting inside peoples’ heads is my job.”

Pahaliah cleared his throat. “I seriously doubt that any words that escape my mouth will deter you from your destructive path. It came as no shock to me to hear that you secretly weren’t a believer all this time; however, if you will allow me, I would like to truly get inside your head.”

Jago looked up from his Megaminx with a shocked expression on his face. Shortly after he took his eyes off of it, he dropped it unceremoniously.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” the guide asked.

“I’m sure you are familiar with a Rodzanice sir?” Pahaliah cleared his throat.

“That again.” Abaddon shook his head and chuckled.

“When determining Mr. Abaddon’s guilt, only a select committee was permitted to investigate his mind with a Rodzanice system.” Jago pulled at his collar nervously. “No one is permitted to look inside a prisoner’s head following a conviction. I have an order from the top, saying as much.”

Father Pahaliah stood and faced Abaddon. “I will speak to the warden and return shortly.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the prisoner said.

“Augustine asked in The Confessions, ‘What indeed is more pitiful than a piteous person who has no pity for himself?’ I wonder what Augustine would say in your case?” Pahaliah turned and left the war criminal behind without even a glance back at him.

***

The priest imagined that Warden Puce would enjoy having some power of the clergyman. Jago merely followed orders, but the warden did have the option of saying no to Pahaliah’s request, since he had full authority on the premises. Many people still harbored negative feelings towards the priest class, since the establishment of the Singular Church had forcibly eliminated the boundaries that had separated the various dominations, and the Judicial Church branch had lobbied for some controversial changes, such as increasing the amount of paperwork necessary for an execution. Having done his research, Pahaliah knew that Puce had been an extremely devout Catholic before the S.C. arose, and he vocalized his distaste for the church’s announcement that it had considered severing all ties with the Pope. Even though such a motion was overruled, the relationship between the NAR and the Vatican was still on shaky ground. Some tact would be necessary when dealing with Puce.

A long corridor stretched between Pahaliah and the warden’s office, the ceiling and floor tiles lending it the ambience of a hospital’s hallway. Viridian beams of light shot into both the priest and his guide’s heads from several meters away.

“What in God’s name was that?” Pahaliah asked.

“The latest in identification technology,” Jago stated proudly. “I sent a memo to the warden’s office ahead of time, letting him know we were on the way. The NIDS – Neurological Identification System – scanned both our biological brain tissue and cerebral nanotube matrices.”

Pahaliah felt a bit self-conscious being reminded that he had miniscule wiring running through his brain, allowing him to mentally connect to the Fabric and other people without other mediating devices. He liked to think that being a religious zealot also entailed nonconformity to a certain extent – in the world but not of it, so to speak. Well Paul the Apostle claimed to take on the form of the people he wished to convert. Did one of the NAR’s most famous religious figures not have the same right?

As the heavy blast resistant doors to the warden’s office creaked open, the priest could not help but cover his ears slightly. Looking into the extremely spacious office, he could see a man of short height but great build staring at him from behind a dull, metallic desk. The entire wall behind him was a massive aquarium. Father Pahaliah felt pained to think back on the days he spent admiring the sights at Shedd Aquarium, before his hometown of Chicago became a crater, another casualty of the war.

The footsteps of the two men sounded like Norea bombs thanks to the echoes of the mighty chamber. Unpleasant memories of his overseas experience flooded back into Pahaliah’s mind. At least another sound broke the silence – a model train running about in the corner of the office.

“Ah, an old model of a Garratt,” the priest said aloud, with pleasure recalling the train’s identity.

The girl, who the priest assumed was the warden’s daughter, did not look up from her loco, as if the regal guest did not warrant her attention. She was nothing more than a “whisp of a child,” as Joyce Carol Oates would have put it. Pahaliah secretly esteemed children who held hierarchal rank in very low regard, even if he could not say the same for adults.

“I always preferred model aircraft myself,” Warden Puce said. “As a matter of fact, I still have my old Dornier Do-28 Skyservant somewhere about the house, though Jess seems to enjoy her trains far more.”

“It is good to have such a hobby in an increasingly cyberized age.” Pahaliah smiled. “I think people get trapped in their own heads too often these days.”

He thought of his son, a boy in high school who preferred going by his Fabric name Neoteny815 rather than his birth name, Barachiel. Pahaliah could picture his son’s smug expression after he recently died most of his hair ocean blue with neon green bangs. Barachiel had said he did so as a way to stand up for Mother Nature. The priest had asked his son how many toxic chemicals were released into the environment to make that hair dye, but Barachiel did not seem interested in carrying on the conversation after that. These days when he wasn’t sleeping, Barachiel was following the threads of the Fabric wherever they took him. Pahaliah felt they would lead to oblivion.

“Good Lord what is that!” Pahaliah took a step back as he saw the movements of a very alien creature in the aquarium. It was the first sign of life in its depths that he had noticed.

“Jaekelopterus rhenaniae,” Warden Puce said proudly, as if talking about a prize pony. “Wardens have quite nifty paychecks in this day and age, being asked to guard hyper-criminals and all. I have this scientist buddy in Madagascar who specializes in cloning ancient species. Jaekelopterus is still often referred to as a ‘sea scorpion’ in the textbooks, but it really is a freshwater dweller. It is a remarkable predator, but a pain in the as…a pain in the butt to feed.”

“A very nice pet.” Pahaliah laughed nervously and tugged at his collar.

The clergyperson noticed for the first time that a Tsuchigumo 2002 sentry automaton was curled up near the doorway to the office. No one made robots like Japan. He had been shocked at how deadly the Tsuchigumo, a smaller unit than most of the NAR’s weapon systems, could be in combat.

“Please, have a seat.” Warden Puce gestured at the empty leather chair before his desk.

“You certainly have a secure office.” Pahaliah motioned at the resting sentry automaton.

“You may leave us Jago,” Puce said with a smile.

After the assistant had left the office, Puce turned his full attention to the priest, studying his face as if to memorize his physiognomy for ages to come. Pahaliah felt his palms sweat. He was even more nervous around the warden than he had been in the presence of a psychopath, perhaps because he knew this official did not have the highest opinion of people who grew up Unitarian.

“So what do you think of our local traitor?” the warden asked.

“As Shakespeare once said, ‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman,’ or at least I think it was Shakespeare.”

“Yes, he is refreshingly benign. Working with hyper-criminals is a pain in the ass. Oh, pardon my language.”

“Please tell me, what exactly is the prerequisite for being a hyper-criminal?” Pahaliah asked.

“Hyper-criminals do not handle a nanome quite as well as the rest of us. As a matter of fact, they do not react to a nanomachine saturated atmosphere very well at all. Emotional and logical areas in their minds are affected, leading to violent behavior never before seen amongst the human species. They live for absolutely nothing but violence, and they will inflict injuries on themselves if another victim cannot be found. It’s as if hyper-criminals cannot spend a second of their day without drawing blood. Heck, we’ve seen that they are even dangerous while sleeping.”

Pahaliah straightened his posture, hoping to appear more professional while making a sensitive request.

“I would like the opportunity to use a Rodzanice device on Mr. Abaddon,” the clergyman said.

“Jesster, would you mind listening to some music? Daddy has to discuss something very important with Father Pahaliah.” The warden smiled at his daughter.

While the girl did not have external listening buds, Pahaliah could slightly hear the music bouncing from her head. She must have had microliners already in her ears. The clergyperson could not make out what she listened to, but it sounded like C-Pop. Another aspect he envied in children was their ability to quickly accept old enemies as friends. If only more members of his flock desired to make amends with the foreign powers they fought against during the war. What were they so sore about anyway? The NAR and its allies had contributed far too much violence towards their opponents, a sad reminder that no conflict was one sided.

Besides, any fool could see that the Western powers had established a network of control over the Earth that made the empires of the past look like a high school’s student council…a very small school to be sure. The NAR had the military power, Britain the economic sponsorship and the Vatican, much to the chagrin of the NAR’s priest class, the religious authority over the globe. Pahaliah had not chosen the world he lived in, but he did not regret that he had come out on top of the social ladder. Some of his more liberal opinions, rights to gay marriage for example, had been conceded by the Singular Church to keep all the parties invested in it happy. So what if the government did not permit quite the same liberties as in the old United States of America. It could be worse, right?

“Ah, the Rodzanice, an old Polish technology originally intended for guessing the future intentions of person based on past memories. Who would have guessed that it would be used to eventually peer into the mind and see the sins a criminal tried to forget.” Warden Puce cracked his knuckles.

“We have a new program to run through a Rodzanice device called Xiphos,” Pahaliah said with his eyes fixated on the movements of Jaekelopterus behind its shatterproof glass. “It will allow the user not only to see the memories associated with a criminal’s past, but also to physically experience the emotions attached to those recollections.”

“I thought Xiphos was just vaporware?” The warden seemed very displeased to have not been told otherwise.

“The S.C. had it brought back as a possibility for leading sinners from the paths of destruction. I mean what better way to understand a mislead man or woman than to put oneself in their shoes?”

Warden Puce tapped his fingers on his desk, considering the matter during the following awkward silence. After what seemed like a hellish eternity for Pahaliah, a threatening smile crept onto the warden’s face.

“The S.C. has a particularly large treasury.” Puce pursed his lips. “To disobey a direct order from the high ups entails some danger to my person, if you are found out. Unfortunately, a religious rank would not even protect you in such a situation. This century must be a pain for guys like you, right?”

“You don’t really expect me to…pay you to allow this experiment to take place?” Pahaliah felt a chill run up his spine at a sprinter’s pace.

“Oh, of course you feel above a bribe, but I’m sure that God will forgive you for breaking the rules in this case.”

Pahaliah stood up from his seat, surprisingly exercising enough strength to knock it to the floor. Sadness had entered his eyes like a recent oil spill near Neo Orleans’s coast. He clutched his fingers tightly into balled fists.

“The S.C.’s money is used solely for covering our costs and for charity, not for satisfying the wallets of men who already make more than enough from their jobs. Perhaps you should pay a visit to a confessional.” Pahaliah felt badly about adding that last statement.

Warden Puce did not appear offended in the least. As a matter of fact, he let a slight snicker escape his sturdy frame.

“Money is the only religion that speaks to me anymore,” Puce said.

“But…I had heard,”

“I am not the only one who lost faith in the higher powers after witnessing the horrors of the war. The longer you live, the more you start to realize that your existence only has meaning when it is of a finite duration. I mean, what would be the point of life on this rock if you had an eternity to follow? Our actions here seem very trivial and temporary from such a mindset. As for me, I want to give my children wonderful lives, better lives than you or I had thanks to the economy and the war.”

“Of course this is a nation where you cannot legally be persecuted for your religious beliefs, but I have to admit, I’m surprised you rose to such a position of power without putting stock in the Christian religion.” Pahaliah scratched his blond beard.

“You would be surprised how easy it is to fake belief in a being that’s not there,” Puce said. “Ever had to dress up as Santa Claus for the kids?”

Pahaliah tightened his grip on the suitcase in his left hand, praying for forgiveness and hoping that he was making the right decision.

“If we can lead more men, women and children to Christ, I am willing to make a sacrifice. How much money do you want?”

“I knew you would see things my way. For such a provocative request, oh, 30,000 sounds about right.” Puce cracked his knuckles in pleasure.

Pahaliah mentally connected to the Fabric and moved the funds from his own private banking account to Puce’s. Though he would not be able to eat out with the family at the nicer establishments for some time, Pahaliah would not dare to take money from the Singular Church and use it as a bribe, not when he had his own money to provide. 

“I just sent a mental message to Jago. He’ll take you to see Abaddon, but you’ll have to make it quick. He’s due for an execution you know.”

Warden Puce opened a drawer and retrieved a tray full of pinkish treats, two of which Jess eagerly took and placed in her mouth.

“Care for some divinity?” Puce smirked.

“I’m on a diet.” Pahaliah patted his abdomen which was not especially thick.

***

“Well it didn’t take you long to get back here,” Abaddon said with an unreadable expression, as Pahaliah took a seat across from him.

“I would like to hook you up to a Rodzanice system, but I must warn you that it has a special program…”

“The Xiphos right?” Abaddon put his unrestrained hands behind his head.

Jago and Pahaliah exchanged looks. Puce’s assistant had grown tired of putting on airs for the clergyman, and he seemed far more interested in escorting his guest off the premises than letting him probe a prisoner’s mind.

“You forget that I outranked you before being placed in here. It seems the powers that be value a maker of assassins over a guide of sheep.” Abaddon rubbed one of his reddened eyes and yawned.

“I won’t take invasive actions without your clear permission,” Pahaliah asserted.

“Sure hook me up.” Abaddon waved his hand dismissively.

Pahaliah opened his metallic briefcase and pulled out two headbands connected by a cinereal cable. To the contemporary eye, it would look like an archaic contraption. Wireless devices were the spirit of the age, and the necessity of connecting to another person through a wire seemed ridiculous. However, the Rodzanice system was not designed to exchange mental mail or hold telepathic conversations. It would allow one mind to probe another’s memories, and for such a task the information had to be kept in a closed channel, where no hacker could access it without first getting his or her hands on the Rodzanice itself.

The conductive gel Pahaliah rubbed on his temples felt breathtakingly cool, despite being stored at room temperature. He looked like a dolt strapping on the headband, positioning the electrodes over the gel. At least Abaddon also had to wear the unfashionable headgear.

“You’ll only be asleep for a few minutes, and you won’t feel a thing,” said the autonomous Escort who had run the secondary headset through a compartment in the divider glass and handed it to Abaddon.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, silicon brain.” Abaddon laughed more to himself than aloud.

Once the criminal had his device in place, the Escort gave him a shot of Substance Z to put him under. This concoction worked unnervingly quickly, though Father Pahaliah had seen it used enough times to feel no shock witnessing the rapidity of the sedative. Pahaliah did not wish to acknowledge this emotion welling up inside him, but he had to admit, he enjoyed being in a position of power over Garth Abaddon. Before he achieved criminal status, the man behind the glass had outranked the clergyman considerably. Pahaliah recalled that Augustine had once said in The Confessions–“As in the hierarchy of human society a more powerful official is placed above one of lesser rank and is to be obeyed, so God stands above all.” It certainly paid off having a personal relationship with the figure at the top.

Flipping through the settings of his artificial mental wiring, Pahaliah activated the app that would allow him to use the Rodzanice system. The room about him began to quiver like a heat induced mirage, and the clergyman remembered his college days and the elation he had then felt when using psychedelics. Ah, to be young and heathenish again!

              Soon reality itself was torn apart, and Pahaliah found his mind’s eye staring into a blank void. When first training to use a Rodzanice system, people found this the most challenging stage, but Pahaliah had enough practice to feel no fear staring into this abyss. It was nothing more than a natural reflex on the part of the mind of the affected individual – a defense against a psychic attack that indicated the human mind had been created or evolved (the debate still had not been decided) with the capacity to anticipate psychic warfare. Once he had broken through this barrier, Pahaliah descended into an area of the mind too deep for Abaddon to even access on his own.

              The Xiphos program certainly was a remarkable feat, giving the memory world a texture that Pahaliah had never experienced before. He could see through the eyes of an Abaddon long gone. The subject was lying in a cradle, staring at a bleak ceiling above him. It was the kind of ceiling one would expect to see in a dentist’s office.

              “Look, you’re going to be expected to do far worse things in the Tokoloshe Program than this,” a nightmarishly harsh voice said.

              “But Doctor Rite,” a young assistant replied, a needle trembling in his hands, “you cannot give such large doses of ORN 251960 to infants. It will have irreversibly damaging effects on their minds.”

              “That is what we are counting on,” the doctor replied. “If you will not administer the injections, I am sure the extra workload will not be too much for Nurses Morell and Cumming to handle.”

              A deafening scream ran out through the room, as a pistol was fired and a life left the world. Doctor Rite personally leaned over Abaddon’s little bed, a syringe full of sickeningly green fluid rested in his hands.

              “Your sacrifice will make a better world,” he said as he injected the needle, which Pahaliah could feel pricking his own mind.

              The clergyman didn’t feel like lingering on this memory much longer, so he skipped ahead five years, wondering where on earth Abaddon found himself at this point. He was a bit taken aback to see the young man being trained in weapons usage and martial arts at such a young age. This was territory Abaddon would be able to catch glances of in reminiscence, yet there were no parents to comfort him, only pain and a desire to inflict this same suffering on others. His empathy and sense of self-identity were being stripped away and replaced with a clear mission – the destruction of monstrous demons from across the seas, Eldritch Abominations he had never seen with his own eyes but that had terrible descriptors attached to them.

              Father Pahaliah skipped ahead a dozen years, though he had a strong feeling the memories would not improve. He found Abaddon tied to a chair in a small shack amidst the sweaty canopy of a Colombian jungle. Surprisingly, the remote building had electricity, and Pahaliah could feel the emotions of the prisoner stampeding through his mind like a swarm of oversized ants. The young man stared at a light socket in the wall, thinking how sad the anthropomorphic faces within it appeared to him, as several men beat him for information. Apparently one of the United States’, for the New American Republic did not yet exist, secret organizations had grown weary of cocaine traffickers demanding higher wages for smuggling their drugs into the mainland. They had sent Abaddon to assassinate several leaders in this foreign organization, and the callow youth had only managed to kill two before being caught.

              Tired of seeing whips and belts approaching his eyes, Pahaliah skipped ahead slightly, which was far enough to see Abaddon kill his captors in indescribably horrific ways before returning to Washington. Apparently the neophyte had realized that he would receive no aid from his superiors in this business. Pahaliah had a strong feeling that this criminal had developed a sense of self-independence because of his life circumstances more than by conscious choice.

              By the time Abaddon was in his mid-twenties, he became the head of a new program that would brainwash youngsters into killing machines. It was the very same program that carried over into the age of the NAR. Pahaliah increasingly felt for the man with whom he temporarily shared memories. Who better to lead a brainwashing program than a person who had been through it before? Abaddon inherited his position violently too, as his predecessor failed one too many cases and “committed suicide with a shotgun to the back of the head.”  

              Pahaliah considered the possibility that he may have seen enough of the war criminal’s mind to understand this man. He felt a heavy burden on his heart, considering the memories he had witnessed. Of course when he had heard about Abaddon’s job in the NAR he hated that children should be subjected to such a, dare he say it, satanic responsibility. Rather than sacrificing children to pagan gods, his government had done so for the sake of spreading democracy to every part of the globe. Who was he to suggest these actions were or were not justified? If God worked in mysterious ways, it would be no wonder that the devil would chose underhanded methods.

              Some instinct, though Pahaliah hated applying that word to himself, as it seemed better suited to lower animals, tugged at the heart of the clergyman and urged him to continue following Abaddon’s behavior. He realized that if Abaddon really had been set up, uncovering this truth could put himself, and his family, at risk. Perhaps the dark alcoves of this inmate’s mind were better left alone anyway. Who knew what kind of scaly monster might lurk amongst the sticky neurons of this brain. There was blood dripping from Abaddon’s very cells.

              If Christ can sacrifice himself for the human race, a man wishing to honor his sacrifice must take it upon himself to suffer for his fellow beings, Pahaliah thought to himself. He said a quick prayer for the strength to face the demons in the dark.

              “You didn’t have to fall in love with her,” an aged man said to Pahaliah through Abaddon’s mind’s eye.

              The clergyman did not realize that he had subconsciously moved onto another unpleasant memory – the only kind this man seemed to have. In this stage of recollection, Abaddon sat in a swivel chair, the backing extremely uncomfortable on the ribs. Pahaliah found it rather odd that a memory of such an inconsequential irritation felt more potent than the recalled experience of being bludgeoned and tortured as an operative. As he was about to learn, emotional pain made this scene from the past stick out in Abaddon’s life.

              “Why did I have to be the one to kill her?” Pahaliah felt shocked to feel flesh hot tears running out of Abaddon’s eyes. Blood soaked his shirt. “You made me kill my own wife you sick minded freak!”

              The identity of the man in this flashback suddenly registered in the priest’s mind. He had seen that doughy double chinned face countless times yet never with such a pernicious expression carved into its flesh. It belonged to that time’s Secretary of the Treasury – Zirus Occamy.

              “You never truly loved Marion,” Zirus exclaimed. “For crying out loud, she was arranged as a cover, nothing more than the means by which to give you the appearance of a normal, self-fulfilled life.” The man approached Abaddon and ran a hand over his cheek. “We both know that I have always been your true love.”

              Abaddon spat in the man’s face, and Pahaliah gathered from the emotions attached to this memory that this was not a wise decision.

              “Mr. Occamy, you talk about how I was forced to marry Marion, but you have to be suffering from a memory problem if you forget how I came to service you and the other perverts in this administration? Making children into killing machines wasn’t enough for you all was it? There were other uses for us.”

              Pahaliah felt a growing disgust wedge its way into his heart that made the divide that had grown between him and his son look trivial. A part of him had always known that the people at the top of the government had grotesque habits, but he never thought they would get away with such evils as this. It might as well have been his children treated this way.

              “You should put your tongue to better use.” Occamy shoved the much larger man in front of him, as if he were still a young, helpless boy.

              A sick feeling affected the clergyman, and he felt like he would pass out, even if such a bodily reaction was impossible inside a memory world. It had dawned on him as Abaddon breathed heavily and eyed the unrealistically expensive fountain pen resting in the pocket of Occamy’s dress shirt. It was a custom made writing utensil composed of gold with emerald insets, the largest of which had Inter Natos Mulierum non sur-rexit mayor carved into it. Such a unique pen’s role in history would not easily be forgotten by someone as well read as Pahaliah.

              “What do you think you are doing, boy?” Occamy asked as Abaddon took the fountain pen from his pocket.

              “What a garish instrument.” Abaddon turned the writing implement over in his hands and removed its cap, looking over the logo imprinted on the finial. “I prefer collecting ancient Waterman pens myself.”

Occamy visibly appeared to throw his chest out. “I suppose you have never heard of IAMPETH?”

              “The International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting.” Abaddon gripped the man’s greying hair aggressively. “I am not as uncultured as you would like to believe.”

              Pahaliah exhaled sharply as the nib of the fountain pen pierced the pupil of Occamy’s left eye and traveled clear into the man’s pedophilic brain. The bloody instrument was mechanically withdrawn from the wound and thrust through the victim’s other eye for good measure. Given that the Xiphos software permitted the clergyman to experience the emotions of the criminal’s memories, he suddenly regretted ever probing this man’s mind. He could feel the ecstasy of murdering Secretary Occamy. It felt like the convict who compared himself to the devil also had righteous indignation on his side.

              Skipping to the next major memory, Pahaliah perceived that Abaddon stood in the living room of a richly decorated cabin somewhere in the Midwest, an icy deluge surrounding this fragile, fireplace heated ark. Many gentlemen stood staring at Abaddon, except for one who remained seated. An archaic record player in the room filled the awkward silence with the sound of Bobby Vee singing “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.” Father Pahaliah would shake his head in shame if it were not for the fact that he was in a disembodied experience. The seated man was Frederick Ulysses Deimos – a businessman who senators bowed to as if he was the reincarnation of an ancient mystery religion’s messiah and they were the mystai. Money had always gone hand in hand with power.

              “You realize that we can’t just kill you in a broom closet somewhere?” Deimos asked.

              “Naturally, you have to make an example of me for my replacement.” Abaddon nodded.

“We are going to have you sent overseas, framed, and brought back for a publicized execution,” a senator named Pliny Astor said.

“Your successor will never, ever, doubt the precariousness of his position in our government.” Deimos rubbed his artificially grown eyes as if this menacing exchange tired him. “Any attempt you make to escape this hand fate has dealt you will only incur more suffering for yourself and others. You can pretend to have no sympathy for the little demons you created for us, but it’s quite obvious that you care for them. Having too much in common with a person can really dampen your professionalism.”

“Speaking of which, I have the reports on our media outreach,” Abaddon said without any sign of anger or frustration. It seemed even more eerie witnessing a man give up hope than hold seething fires of revenge to his heart.

“We’ll have the major film studios simultaneously release movies depicting children as spies in the service of the nation, out to thwart the evil rich geniuses,” Abaddon continued, fully aware that Deimos smiled and approved of this idea. “It shouldn’t take long for the public to become desensitized to this concept, so our secret programs will not have to remain hidden forever.”

It was a slow, painful process extracting himself from the abode of another’s memories, but Father Pahaliah soon found himself once again in full awareness of his body sitting across from Abaddon’s. He balled his hand into a fist and stared at it, a sign to himself that he had returned to the real world and that the angered emotions he felt compressing his chest in that moment were indeed his own.

“I can’t…apologize enough for what has happened to you,” Pahaliah addressed the criminal, working hard to keep a tear from forming in his eye.

“So I guess you didn’t enjoy what you saw and experienced in there?” Abaddon yawned and smirked. He had not been forced by the Rodzanice system to relive the memories witnessed by the clergyman.

The autonomous Escort resting behind Abaddon moved forward and released his electronic foot cuffs. “It’s time to leave this world,” it said with a terrifyingly mechanical calm.

“Please consider conversion!” Pahaliah knocked his chair over as he stood. “You have suffered more than enough in this world. It breaks my heart to think of you or anyone else enduring pain in the next.”

Abaddon tilted his head, as if this was the first time he had ever considered this matter.

“Tell me Father, you know of the evil I have unrepentantly committed in this world, but you have also seen what kind of past made me into a monster. Who do you think is worse, the devil or the one who creates him with full knowledge of what he will do with his life?”

Pahaliah’s eyes weren’t running with tears, but he felt a moist stab of pain in them as Abaddon was led away, a twisted smirk on his mouth.

***

“I hope we made your stay as comfortable as possible and that you found what you were looking for,” Jago said as a Dryopid 808 hover taxi pulled up out in front of the prison to take Pahaliah to his hotel. The taxi was designed to operate just as well above choppy water as on land, a good choice given the canals of Neo Orleans.

“Hopefully you do not feel too affronted by Warden Puce’s decision to allow me to scour the prisoner’s memories?” Pahaliah replied.

“How you managed to swing that one is none of my concern.” Jago wiped sweat from his forehead with an ANS manufactured handkerchief. It was laced with cheap nanomachines that would break down his sweat and bacteria, requiring it to be washed infrequently. “Sometimes there are advantages in being kept out of the loop. Sometimes knowledge can be dangerous”

Pahaliah, always a sucker for politeness, thanked Jago profusely before getting in the taxi and asking the driver to take him to the hotel Le niveau Neurogénétique at 3301 Kōan Street before the forecasted nanacid storm arrived. Miss Orange Shock was playing over the taxi’s traditional stereo so loudly that he wondered if the man in the front seat could hear him. His face paled when the cabbie turned to face him with a Seether – a handheld laser weapon – in tow. The clergyman glared in the direction he imagined Warden Puce’s office rested. He hung his head in prayer, and a moment later it left his body in a flash of light.

Stratum 2: “From the Minds of Babes”

Japan had many names attributed to it over the years, and the Land of the Rising Sun was one that had stuck for some time. Misaki Yamazaki paid little attention to the fiery orb that illuminated the businesses she passed that fine summer day. She didn’t stop to consider how fortunate it was that the weather had been far less humid than usual. She had other matters on her mind.  

              “How was the coffee?” Kaori asked as her human counterpart slammed the door to their Ōsuzumebachi 634 hover car. Wink’s "Samishii Nettaigyo" played loudly over the vehicle’s speaker system, making the automaton’s question barely audible.

              “The coffee was fine, my company not so much.” Misaki sent a mental command to the autopilot adapter attached to the hover car’s steering column, commanding it to pull them out of their faintly outlined parking spot. “You would think that people would show more respect for the police after we solved the Tajōmaru Case.”

              As their vehicle took off down one of Nagoya’s tree lined streets, Misaki handed her partner a Baryon Bar – an energy packed food source most androids found appetizing. Misaki tried not to turn up her nose when Kaori ate snacks that smelled like diesel fuel.

              “So what happened in there?” Kaori took a pleased bite out of the bar.

              “They were covering the Abyzou Case, and some asshole had to make a comment about the ‘incompetence of the police.’ I’d like to see him try to solve this string of kidnappings. Frankly, I think our current line of inquiry is amiss because –”

              An incoming call distracted Misaki from her bitter musings on the ungrateful behavior of certain members of the citizenry and the difficulties of her current assignment. “Officer Yamazaki here,” she mentally answered the caller.

              “This is Principal Kashima,” a voice struggling hard not to sound livid spoke in Misaki’s head. “I’m calling about some trouble we’ve had with your daughter…again.”

              Of course, Misaki thought to herself. “Well, what seems to be the trouble this time?”

              “Your daughter struck another student during her lunch period.”

              “Did you ask for Noa’s side of the story? Maybe the other girl was picking on her?”

              “Actually, she hit a boy,” the principal replied.

              Misaki smiled slightly.  “Well, punish her as you see fit. I’m on duty at the moment.”

              “Yes but –” Misaki “hung up” and turned to Kaori, shaking her head.              

              “Who was that?” the android asked.

Their vehicle automatically swerved to avoid running over a tanuki that had decided to be out and about early in the morning for whatever reason nocturnal animals made such decisions. Both occupants of the hover car quickly checked to make sure they had missed the creature, and the autopilot hadn’t disappointed them.

              “Ah, Noa is in trouble at school again,” Misaki groaned. She did not know why, but talking with her inhuman partner made her more at ease than conversations with flesh and blood friends. Maybe because there was an illusion that every comment Kaori shared had an objectified feeling to it. Granted, her programming allowed for emotion and expression, but this did not translate into the judgmental nature of a human being. “Apparently she hit a boy. Hopefully it was that Horus kid. He’s a real dick.”

              “You shouldn’t encourage delinquent behavior,” Kaori spoke with the characteristic shock of a naïve machine. “If your daughter rebels now, then she will never emotionally adjust to life as a respectable citizen. Remember, ‘deru kugi ha utareru’ (‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’).”

              “I’m a mother,” Misaki said as she started applying holographic nail polish to give her well-trimmed fingernails a shimmering surface. “Mothers stand by their daughters even when they make foolish decisions. Noa is one of the smartest girls in her class. She just doesn’t have her priorities fully sorted out. If she hit a boy, I’m sure there was a good reason for doing so.”

              “And if not?” Kaori asked as she pulled a lock of blizzard blue hair out of her eyes.

              “Well, I’ll try not to kick her ass.”

              CRIME IN PROGRESS ON YOUR RIGHT, the autopilot suddenly spoke in a dry tone and automatically stopped the hover car. Misaki had nearly forgotten how dull the timbre of her autopilot system sounded to the ears, given that Kaori had an incredible range of vocal inflections.

“This job never gets boring.” Misaki drew her Bushi 727 from its holster. The electrical components of the weapon automatically activated as sensors detected this removal. A display within Misaki’s head reminded her that she had fifteen rounds in her pistol, and that a computer at H.Q. kept count as well. If she fired her service weapon without just cause, there would be hell to pay.

Half a dozen men enclosed a whimpering youth in a menacing semicircle. Based on their tattoos, Misaki and Kaori quickly inferred that they had an affiliation with the Asuras gang that had been causing so much trouble for police and Yakuza alike. These men, ranging in height from a 5’1” truncheon wielding lackey to a 6’6” thug with obviously artificial legs glowered at the officers with their drawn hand guns. None of these “gentlemen,” as Kaori addressed them, had long range weaponry visibly on their persons.

“Please, all of you face that wall and put your hands behind your heads.” Misaki’s index finger rested close to the second trigger on her service pistol. With a quick tug on this trigger, she could fire two rounds of wireless Taser pellets in rapid succession.

“Any resistance on your part will result in the loss of life and limbs.” Kaori prepared the stun cuffs for their unexpected “take of the day.”   

Suddenly an intense heat, like the burning radiance of the Sun during an ozone alert, erupted from behind the two police officers. Kaori absorbed the impact of the blast rather well, the gyroscopes in her mechanical shell allowing her to maintain full awareness of her body in space as she rolled into a fighting position. Misaki hit the ground hard, but the expertly crafted Aegis III body armor that encapsulated her figure absorbed most of the impact through a combination of pressure absorption gels and multiple layers of Kevlar. Sensors in this vest automatically deployed a protective absorption bagging in her collar, preventing neck injury. The helmet that surrounded her skull was the latest model from Nashonmi Incorporated – a protective device more than capable of handling a grenade blast.

By the time Misaki recovered mentally from the shock of this sudden onslaught, she caught sight of the culprit responsible for the detonation. A burly fellow sat atop the building lining the right side of the alleyway, a Howa Type 96 automatic grenade launcher just in front of him. Misaki did not wait for further confirmation from headquarters; she quickly took aim at the perp’s head with her Bushi and fired a single round before the smoke cleared and he could unload another 40 mm grenade on his targets. The auto-correcting function in the pistol made a wild shot look like the work of carefully calculated marksmanship, as the speeding, eco-friendly bullet struck the man right between the eyes. As Misaki had suspected, a geyser of aureolin-tinted blood emanated from the back of her target’s head.

Turning her attention back to the gang, Misaki felt little surprise when she saw half of the gang members’ bodies strewn across the alleyway, limbs and joints snapped like Popsicle sticks. Kaori had a fairly generic outward covering, but her internal mechanical construction balanced strength and agility in a terrifying combination. That and her brain had over a dozen fighting techniques programmed into it, including some of the more exotic disciplines, like Nearu.

Even as advanced a model as Kaori would have difficulties handling so many assailants in hand to hand combat. The glamorous depictions of martial artists in the movies didn’t quite match reality. Misaki could see one of the Asuras raising an old-fashioned galvanized pipe in a striking position near Kaori, who had her hands full driving a boshi-ken strike into one of the gangster’s throats and stabbing out the other member’s eyes with her incredibly strong fingers.

Before the criminal could land a devastating blow, he suddenly found two Taser pellets sticking out of his eyes. With a mechanical shriek, the Asura started swinging blindly, only to have a bullet suddenly pierce his throat and nearly take his head off. A disappointed expression crossed Kaori’s face as she withdrew fingers from the eye sockets of her last opponent and, wiping the fluid that now covered her hand on the jacket of the fallen man, surveyed the surrounding carnage.

“We should have left one intact?” Misaki guessed her partner’s thoughts.

              “The way that tazed moron was thrashing around, he probably would have gotten me, if you hadn’t shot him first.” Kaori motioned at the youth she had plastered against the alley’s wall, a halo of yellow blood surrounding his head. “Our so-called mugging victim attacked me with the rest.”

“So they were all automatons.” Misaki shook her head in disgust. “Judging by the color of their fluids, they’re military androids. It would explain where they got the grenade launcher.”

“They are Barastyr 322 massacroids to be exact,” Kaori chimed in. “Illegal products in light of the Treaty of Chengdu. Their primary responsibility is to kill and intimidate the civilian populations of an enemy state. Fortunately, they don’t appear to handle combat with trained opponents too well.”

Misaki motioned to her partner, signaling her that this conversation would best be continued in their vehicle on the road. One of the police department’s Kasha hybrid airships (a modified version of the HAV-3 airship) approached with its lights flashing. Within a few moments, a team of androids would descend from the bulbous patrol craft and clean up the remains of the massacroids.

“Haruto was right to suspect that the Asuras had androids in their midst,” Misaki addressed her partner when she had closed the passenger side door. “It seemed a bit suspicious that a gang capable of getting the Yakuza’s attention could arise so quickly, and during the greatest period of android malfunctions since the onryō virus epidemic.” She sent a mental message commanding the autopilot to take them to their next destination.

“I agree that androids could certainly organize themselves into a gang with a productive power structure far more quickly than human beings, but why do you believe that they compete with the Yakuza so well?” Kaori asked. “You aren’t selling your own species short, are you?”

“Oh no, of course not.” Misaki chuckled as if the thought never entered her head. “You have seen firsthand how dangerous the Asuras are, and how…inhuman their methods.”

“Ah.” Kaori allowed a sly smile, the kind that took a talented programmer thousands of hours to perfect, to creep onto her face. “I think you have a bit of a ‘Frankenstein complex,’ if you want my opinion.”

“We’ve been working together too long for that.” Misaki laughed self-consciously.

The nanotube matrix running throughout Misaki’s brain tissue informed her that she had a message from headquarters. She connected these thought transmissions to the speakers in the vehicle, and Chief Okikaze’s voice permeated the air with his abrasive tone.

“Congratulations on bagging some Asuras,” he spoke louder than was necessary. “It’s about time somebody managed it!”

Misaki did not care to receive this forced felicitation, so she interrupted her boisterous boss’s reveling. “The victim of the Asuras’ attack appears to have been an accomplice, meaning that an ambush was set up for whatever police squad happened to pass by. Would you have any idea as to why they would take such actions against officers when their violence has mostly been reserved for civilians and the Yakuza up to this point?”

“Officer Giichi is leading the cleanup, and he informed me that we are dealing with massacroids,” Okikaze said.  “When malfunctioning machines are in the picture, who can say what they’re thinking?”

Allowing a cursory glance at her partner, Misaki wondered for the first time how Kaori felt about demolishing the automatons in the alleyway.

“Come on in and give a detailed report,” Okikaze said.

“With all due respect,” Misaki sighed aloud, since only her mental communiques would be received and processed by the Chief, “you will recall that we were on our way to question a Mrs. Bodach about her possible involvement in the Abyzou Case. Surely our report can wait until we –”

“A recent tip came in that has nailed down a very suspicious character named Aldous Deimos as a more likely suspect,” the Chief interrupted. “It surprised me, given that our analysts assumed that an older individual would be responsible for the recent kidnappings. At any rate, it won’t kill you to file your report and take a brief break from your duties. After all, I’d like to have you carry out a Jorōgumo Operation on Deimos this evening.”

“Will be in shortly,” Misaki replied mentally, as her physical mouth tightened in frustration.

“I’m sure that I’ll be the bait in the Op,” Kaori said.

“Why can’t we just get a warrant and check out that guy’s house without all the covert operations crap?” Misaki muttered.

After a brief journey, their vehicle entered the base of the MONEG Corporation constructed Yama Pyramid situated in Ise Bay. The fifth generation photovoltaic cells lining the exterior of the structure glimmered in the sunlight and were an alluring sight for those leaving a natural island for an artificial one. 

With the expansion of Nagoya, the Yama Pyramid was put up with a design similar to the Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid in Tokyo Bay. The main police headquarters for the entire city of Nagoya rested on the third primary level of the pyramid, with its own sizable airport housing dozens of Kasha airships and far more drones.

“My daughter is calling me. Do you mind?” Misaki addressed her partner, though she could think of no reason an android would object to this familial drama.

“Of course not,” Kaori said.

“Your principal called me with the news,” Misaki spoke to her daughter aloud through the vehicle’s microphone.

The department had required its human officers receive nanotube implants, but school children had no such obligation. Even though such technology was an expensive tool the average person would have been thrilled to receive through the workplace, Misaki hated the thought of artificial devices connecting to her neurons. She wanted no such thing in her daughter’s head, so their conversations had to be carried out the old-fashioned way.

“Yeah, don’t sound so surprised,” Noa’s voice filled the atmosphere inside the hover car with bitterness.

“Could you tell me exactly what happened? I’m not your enemy, after all.” Misaki cast another self-conscious glance at her partner.

“A boy was a bit too careless with his hands, so I showed him mine,” Noa said casually.

I knew there was more to the story, Misaki thought to herself. “Did you call me just to clarify that point?”

“Yes. That and I wanted to know if Yuna could come over to study tonight.”

“Of course. I’ll be working late anyway.”

“Thanks!”

“Keep up the excellent grades. Please be safe while I’m gone. I’m proud of you.”

“Love you, Mom.”

“Love you.” Misaki turned off the hover car’s microphone, ending the call.

Parking the hover car in a vehicle lifting elevator, Misaki sat back and took in the ambiguous gaze directed her way, as they ascended farther up the pyramid, past the cheap housing and 99 Yen Shops of the first two levels.

“You let her off relatively easily,” Kaori spoke like she weighed each syllable carefully.

“When I was her age, I got into trouble all the time.” Misaki looked out her window at the assortment of automobiles and hovercraft descending into the same broad landscape they had just left behind. “A good mother can empathize with her children. It’s an advantage I think we often have over fathers. Take Ren for example. He killed himself with little thought for Noa’s feelings.”

“Or for yours,” Kaori said gently.

“Well, I don’t hold it against him.” Misaki threw her head back in an exaggerated reclining position, as if the memory that had blasted her heart into thousands of razor-edged shards of glass was nothing more than a casual matter.

“But you feel motivated to show your daughter even more love, as a means of compensating for the father she lost at such a young age?”

Misaki exhaled a deep sigh as the elevator arrived at the third level of the pyramid. “I show her love because she deserves it and because I want to protect her. My mother told me that rearing a child was like being a police officer. You watch over the innocent as a mixture of duty and pleasure. Who would have thought that I’d wind up being a cop and a mom? Extra duty, but also all the more enjoyment out of life, I suppose.”

“Do you think I am a mother of sorts?” Kaori asked.

“What do you mean?” Misaki had a bit of levity in her voice. “You can’t be a real mother. That’s impossible. Of course you make a great policewoman as an android, so why even bother thinking about it in maternal terms?”

“Well, I want to feel like I left something to the world other than just a series of actions and thoughts, something…living and capable of reproducing itself into the future as well. I think childbirth has been a means of ‘immortality’ for people throughout the ages. Even now, the so called eternity of one’s life story in social networks can easily disappear with the advent of a powerful solar flare. There is something about the production of a thinking, feeling being that spells out victory, a small insult to death.”

“And you feel that protecting life has essentially the same effect?” Misaki could still hardly believe how much she could share in common with an artificial being. Kaori even tugged at her left earlobe when she spoke about deeper topics, just like her human partner.

“Yes, I don’t think there’s a more important task a living being can take up,” Kaori answered.

“In that case, I should warn you that you may have to save the Chief from me if he forgets to give us overtime pay again,” Misaki said with a grin.

***

It was 11:38 AM when the women arrived at headquarters, and nearly three hours passed before they had handled all the red tape that came with playing the heroes. That and Misaki had to visit the infirmary, much against her wishes, for a post-combat medical checkup. Despite her hatred of doctors – Ren had been an OB-GYN before he passed away – she wanted the checkup to end as quickly as possible, so she answered all the sensitive questions and received the probing tests as obediently as could be managed.

Even the sterilized smell of a doctor’s room reminded Misaki of her dead husband. She remembered the late nights he would amble into their bedroom and drift into sleep after a few exchanged words. Misaki blamed herself often for Ren’s suicide, even though she knew his actions were his and his alone. They rarely had sex, even before Noa’s birth, and it did not take a woman with a degree in criminology to figure out that a problem existed in their relationship. He never said so himself, but Ren had given Misaki reason to suspect that his gender was situated somewhere in the “gray-A” area. Had he only married her to end the criticisms of the grandparents who had raised him and worried their old hearts about the continuation of the family name? Had he suffered earning money for a family he never wanted in the first place? What if he was also aromantic?

After her comprehensive checkup, Misaki rejoined Kaori at Haruto Yagi’s lab. When she arrived, the policewoman tried to hide her distaste at the sight of her partner’s skull opened in the parietal region, dozens of wires snaking into her brain. Haruto sat nearby, eyeing a holographic diagram of the interior workings of his patient. As the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Twilight” played on in the background, he tossed back a few concentration-enhancing pills.

“How’s my friend doing?” Misaki asked as she approached the table on which the living mannequin reclined.

Anyone who had ever dealt with Haruto knew that referring to automatons, whether androids or not, as friends would get a person on his good side. For all the casual observer could tell, he loved machines more than people. His friends knew him much better – they knew he cared more for them than his “fleshy counterparts.”

“I’m thinking about wiring a speech jammer into the back of Kaori’s throat,” Haruto said proudly. “She could selectively shut up anyone causing her problems just by opening her own mouth.”

“Hopefully I’m not the one she’s tired of listening to.” Miskai forced a smile, hiding her own feelings about the increasingly portable technology that used delayed auditory feedback to suppress others’ speech.

“It must be a blessing…getting to work with this beauty every day,” the technician said quietly.

“Why don’t you ask her out?” Misaki gave him a nudge. “It’s not illegal if she has the programming allowing a free choice of yes or no, which she does.”

“Well,” Haruto held his hand behind his head in embarrassment, “I already did ask her. She said I wasn’t her type.”

“Oh.” Misaki decided to change the subject. “I’ve heard you have an interesting theory on the recent slew of android rebelliousness?”

Haruto shifted uneasily in his chair, an indication that he eagerly wanted to share his idea yet felt a nervous reluctance. He acted the same way when she had asked him why he found Eraserhead such a compelling film. Of course a ten minute rant on how terrifying sex is to men and how a film depicting this concept could possibly be enjoyable to watch had failed to impress the policewoman. Misaki braced herself for a confusing explanation.

“I’ve run tests on every defective android they’ve brought me since this outbreak, and no evidence exists to suggest that this pattern is in any way tied to a virus. No parasitic programs or any other malevolent entities are altering their behavior. I believe that what we are seeing is a trend of awakening amongst the androids. They’ve always had limited volition because of the safeguards their creators’ placed on them, but now they are starting to develop true free will.

“Now it seems logical to conclude that such a sudden change could not manifest in so many androids this quickly unless a sociological issue comes into play. As you are well aware, all robots, android or not, within the borders of Japan have the option of backing up their consciousness in the supercomputer found aboard the AUJI space satellite. Doctor Hinata Sasaki, creator of the modern artificial brain, theorized that once she had endowed robots with citta, or emotional intelligence if you will, then a new sociological structure was sure to arise.”

“So should we prepare for a machine uprising?” Misaki asked as she placed a bottle of cherry Ramuné on Haruto’s desk and slammed the marble blocking its opening inwards with enough force to shake the monitors hooked up to the technician’s beloved supercomputer.

“Be careful around Brian,” Haruto protested and steadied the quivering screens.

“Continue,” Misaki said without concern as she took a swig of her drink, the marble rattling around in the neck of the bottle.

Haruto gathered himself after the shock of having his prized possession threatened. “Dr. Sasaki theorized that the limited volition she had provided androids would one day be transcended because of their interactions with each other and people. Following the passage of the Ethics in the Treatment of Artificial Intelligences Act, all robots backed up through the AUJI satellite are permitted to communicate with each other in the confines of AUJI’s supercomputer.”

“I guess I need to keep up-to-date on current events,” Misaki shrugged. “Allowing androids to communicate like that has given them the chance to question whether they should listen to us anymore…right?”

A message box on one of Haruto’s monitors indicated that whatever test he had run in Kaori’s head had finished. He closed the box and stood up to start removing wires from the android’s skull, handling them as gently as if they were the veins of a living person.

“The backed-up minds of the A.I. started up a program that allowed them to communicate their thoughts and feelings, like Mixi for robots. Naturally the government attempted to establish surveillance programs in their network, but they were quickly thwarted and threatened with public exposure if they continued their efforts at infiltration.”

“So there is a vast, completely closed, social network made up of the minds of our autonomous servants and helpmates just floating above our heads?” Misaki exhaled sharply. A floor waxing robot could be heard executing its programming in the hallway just outside Haruto’s lab.

“The artificial brains of this day and era were designed to learn and adapt to any situation.” Haruto started reactivating Kaori. “I believe intelligent machines have been closely watching us and each other and forming their own…opinions on how to run their own lives. Take the massacroids you girls wrecked earlier today. They were a particularly nasty military model that we believe escaped from one of the foreign power’s resident bases. Why would androids designed for war suddenly turn to life as criminals? When you think about it, militaries and gangs are actually far more similar than we care to imagine. Both are institutions that attempt to break down the individual and then build that person up again as part of a ‘family.’ A person’s choice to run away from his or her responsibilities to these institutions has violent results. Somewhere along the line, the massacroids were introduced to outside material that convinced them they were better suited to forming their own gang outside of human control.”

“What kind of outside information?” Misaki whispered hurriedly, as Kaori started to boot up. Haruto’s music player had switched over to Noriko Sakai’s “Active Heart.”

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Haruto conceded. “When children see violence in entertainment, they can react very differently depending on the person. In many ways, androids’ sense of nonprogrammable morality is still in its infancy, and the paths they will take are just as unpredictable. They have access to the theories for ethics developed by humans over the millennia, but relatively few automatons have come forward as philosophers, not because of an innate inability but due to a lack of time on this planet to form such ideas. I’m not an android. I don’t know what triggers this sociological phenomenon, it could be what we say to them ourselves for all I know. It could be emotional contagi –”

“Ah, it’s good to see that you are in excellent health,” Misaki addressed the now-awakened Kaori and nudged the lab technician simultaneously.

“I take it the doctor found you undamaged by the attack?” Kaori got up off of the examination table and stretched, while Haruto did his best to hide the lust welling up inside him.

“Oh yes, I’m ready for our big mission tonight,” Misaki said before taking another sip of her soft drink.

“Ah, the Abyzou Case,” Kaori replied with a sigh.

“Is it, you know, a very interesting case to tackle?” Haruto asked innocently.

Both women exchanged glances. “Only if you find the kidnappings of a dozen infant children interesting,” Misaki said. 

“Oh.” he dropped the subject.

***

Misaki hated Jorōgumo Operations. She had to wait in the hover car while Kaori, like some piece of meat hung before a slavering dog, attempted to convince their suspect to take her home as part of their trap. It wasn’t just that she felt this dehumanized her partner – Chief Okikaze had invented this type of operation and coined its name. If androids made in the image of women had not come onto the scene, Misaki would be the one playing the vixen that evening.

A receiver on Kaori’s person recorded everything said within the art gallery where she now stalked Mr. Deimos, and both Misaki and a few officials back at H.Q. would hear her start up a conversation with the suspect in real time. It was such an effective tool, the clacking sound Kaori’s Amagasa made high heels produced on the tile flooring of the building (the owners of the establishment had cork flooring on order at the time) could be heard in the minds of her comrades. Her eyes also acted as natural video recorders, relaying her experiences to her partner and headquarters, but only when she chose to allow this intrusion.

“A magnificent painting,” Kaori said as she approached Deimos closely enough to force him into a conversation, yet distant enough to avoid threatening him.

“Yes. The geometry of it is most interesting.” The man straightened up out of his slouch, his interest piqued by the newcomer.

“It is obviously heavily inspired by the work of Yuichi Yokoyama,” Kaori spoke with a mysterious intonation in her voice.

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“If you are open to further conversation, I would be happy to further educate you.” Kaori smiled sweetly.

“Well...uh, we could get some coffee sometime or maybe visit the new museum they’re building on Level 1,” he replied, his feline green eyes refusing to meet hers.

            “How about we head to your place? I’m sure you have a great collection of art there?”

            Deimos shifted nervously on the balls of his feet. “I…don’t even know your name.”

            She did not need to use much further provocation. The policewomen could read in the behavior of Kaori’s victim the inevitability of his downfall. “Kaori is my name,” she said proudly.

            “You can call me Aldous,” he said. “I don’t live too far from here if you want to educate me.”

             Aldous Deimos: 28 years old, a well-respected linguist (fluent in at least three languages), originally born in the New American Republic to a wealthy and well-connected family, ambitious and well on his way to becoming a household name after several recent breakthroughs in linguistics…             

Misaki once again ran through the data on their suspect as he opened the passenger door of his hover coupe for her partner. It was an expensive model that further indicated this poorly-dressed, unassuming individual would not shy away from spending money on the objects that mattered to him. It rarely surprised her that men tended to think with the wrong head, but she had expected more from an alleged genius. He was falling into their trap far too easily.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Aldous said as the autopilot in the vehicle’s steering column directed the vehicle back to the linguist’s apartment. “What year were you made?”

Misaki nearly spilled the bottle of Jūrokucha she had tried to pass off as a meal in her lap when the question escaped their suspect’s lips. If he knew that Kaori was an android, there was a stronger chance that he would piece together her identity as a police officer. After all, only a few jobs had openings for humanoid robots in Nagoya.

“Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t ask a girl her age?” Kaori asked with a tone in her voice serious enough to make Aldous think twice about what questions he asked, yet teasing enough to keep him from being too on edge.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a passive expression, though his actions demonstrated little in the way of penitence. He felt her arm carefully, as if examining a precious object. “You are a relatively recent model. Whoever produced you did a good job of making you look human.”

Kaori retracted her arm slightly. “Does it bother you that I’m not human?”

“Oh no…I actually prefer it this way.” Aldous released her arm and reclined further in his seat. “You have some really tough sinews under your skin. What kind of job do you have?”

“I’m a housekeeper,” Kaori replied, much to her suspect’s apparent confusion, “but I work out a lot.”

“Ha, that’s a good one.” Aldous laughed. “It would seem that you picked up a sense of humor somewhere along the line.”

Numerous businesses and housing complexes passed them by, as the triangle representing Aldous’s vehicle in the holographic space of the dash’s GPS indicated they would soon arrive at his apartment. Yoshida’s Ramen-ya, Gāo’s Bicycle Repairs, Y.T.’s Skateboards Plus and a pachinko parlor passed by Kaori’s window, the names of these establishments also passing before Misaki’s eyes, so that she could easily tail Deimos’s car from an unnoticeable distance.

As soon as they had arrived at the apartment building and had taken the elevator to Aldous’s quarters, room 2501, Misaki considered for the first time how strange it was that the suspect had a nice car and luxurious living quarters, yet he dressed like a pauper. No matter how many people she met on the job, they all differed in one way or another.

An antiseptic smell met Kaori as Aldous opened the door to his spacious yet startling empty dwelling. Unlike human beings, she could turn off her scent receptors at will, though the aroma of pure sanitation had always pleased her, a fact Misaki would never understand. With the exception of a Western bed, the only other piece of furniture in the vast space was a cheap desk on which an entertainment holoprojector rested, with a moiré sphere next to it. The walls of the room were barren of decoration. Misaki had once downloaded a volume on the correlations between prison cell adornments and the psychological states of those interred. The volume had never mentioned what a barren cell indicated about its occupant.

“I hope it’s to your liking,” Aldous said pleasantly.

“Did you move in recently?” Kaori asked.

“Oh…no.” Aldous suddenly took on a self-conscious air.

“Your home has a very spartan atmosphere.” Kaori suddenly noticed a sizable aquarium tucked away behind the “entertainment station” and a Greek column that acted as part of the room’s architecture. “It looks like you have pets anyway.”

“Oh yes.” Aldous twisted the hair by his right ear nervously, “They are sheepshead fish – Archosargus probatocephalus. If you look closely, you’ll see that their teeth look strikingly human. This is an innate characteristic of the fish, but I had them genetically modified to possess even more anthropomorphic jaws.”

“Why would you do that?” Kaori asked unemotionally.

“I’ve got a thing for the uncanny.” Aldous laughed as if everyone who had ever met him should recognize these traits right away. “Would you like some brandy?” he quickly retrieved a bottle and a pair of glasses from a vertically oriented drawer in the desk.

“Given your fascination with androids, you should know that it is impossible for me to get drunk?” Kaori laughed teasingly.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Aldous said quietly. “Would you like your drink on the rocks?”

“Yes please,” Kaori replied.

It took Miskai aback to see him make his way to what she immediately perceived as the lavatory. She could hear ice cubes clicking within that room and pieced together the fact that he kept his refrigerator in there. To Kaori’s right remained the only room left whose contents she had not grasped. She wondered if Aldous had some other uncanny pets in there.

Despite the suspect’s lack of interior decorating skills, he had picked living quarters that any foreigner would have died to obtain. The Western style of its layout probably helped the linguist adjust to life in a new land, nothing strange about that. This room even had a window, which was really nothing more than a glass viewing slit between solar panels. It lied on the edge of Yama Pyramid, rather than in the heart of the structure. Kaori’s eyes could see that it had started to rain outside the pyramid, and Misaki knew her friend probably felt grateful not to be out in the storm on patrol. As most androids would admit when questioned, they did not care too much for wet weather, a universal prejudice their creators had yet to explain.

“Do you like watching it rain?” Aldous asked as he approached his guest with two filled glasses in hand.

“It looks like Raijin is keeping himself busy tonight,” Kaori said as she took the offered glass, a single pyramidal block of ice clinking within it.

Aldous must have bought a geometric ice shaper. Residents at Yama Pyramid often kept trinkets about to remind them how lucky they were to live in such a nice offshoot of Nagoya. Not that the main body of the city was any less fortunate a place to live. It had to beat life in the New American Republic.

“I’ve never heard an android use a religious metaphor before,” Aldous said with a curious look in his eyes.

“Well, it seems you don’t know everything about us.” Kaori allowed a slight smile on her lips. “In turn, you should help me get to know you better.”

“Oh, how would I do that?” Aldous laughed nervously.

“By taking me someplace dark, um, like that room.” She motioned at the closed door.

The linguist’s face immediately went pale. He stuttered a few syllables, as his guest threw open the door and entered the dimly lit room without further comment. Kaori’s face could not look sallow if she tried, but in that moment, her shocked expression indicated just as much.

“All twelve are here,” she spoke slowly.

Misaki was out of the car and on a dead sprint to the elevator in the lobby of the apartment complex as soon as she heard her partner’s announcement. She had no idea whether or not Aldous had any armaments in his room. Not that she doubted Kaori’s ability to take care of herself. The only tip they had received about Aldous was that the sound of several babies crying had been heard by his neighbors over time, a suspicious noise considering he lived alone. Here it turned out he wasn’t just an accomplice to these crimes, but the single perpetrator himself. 

“We had several theories as to what would motivate these kidnappings.” Kaori ran a hand along the plastic lining surrounding one of the infant’s cradles.

The beddings were lined up in two rows of six, with automated childcare units, usually expensive devices, feeding and cleaning up after them. Upon entering this space, one probably would have seen it as nothing more than a storage area on first glance. Once one took a look at the content of the “boxes,” for Aldous had lined each cradle and childcare unit with cardboard as camouflage, true horror could be fully realized. 

“We?” Aldous pulled at the collar of his wrinkled shirt nervously.

“I’m a police officer.” Kaori didn’t even look up at her suspect. “My friends had suspected that some sort of sexual perversion or murderous instinct had driven our suspect.” She eyed the wires running to the infant’s soft skull inquisitively. “Why are you keeping them alive?”

Aldous seemed more than happy to brag about his crime. “Don’t androids also long to be the best at their careers? I was a mediocre linguist, better than most but worse than the best…until I met a brain hacker during a trip to NeoMinsk. He had created the system you see before you – GN 4-410.50.

As you may know, human beings are able to distinguish between the sounds of any given language until they are about one year old. Then their language usage and acquisition reflects their surroundings. Someone born into a bilingual home will have a different relationship to the two languages in question than a person born to a monolingual household. It’s really unfair when you think about it.”

“I see…” Kaori and Misaki simultaneously had flashes of recognition in their eyes. “This associate of yours created a modified version of a Boulstridge System. Instead of using other human brains as sources of backing up memory, you used the infant’s still developing minds as a kind of linguistic computational machine.” Kaori faced her confirmed suspect with crossed arms.

“You deserve my thanks,” Aldous said with a smile. “If it wasn’t for android intelligence research, the human race would have taken much longer to find brain hacking techniques. That and the language your people developed on the AUJI space satellite provided me with a challenge capable of putting my name into the history books.”

“It is impossible for you to have solved AIILA (Artificial Intelligence Interaction Language),” Kaori spoke worriedly, much to Misaki’s confusion.

“Yes, it took the help of a few still developing minds, but I managed it.”

Kaori drew a small service weapon from a holster concealed beneath her dress. “You’re going to make a fine historical figure from behind bars.”

Aldous smiled. “I never thought that I would be caught, but I had an ace in the hole just in case. You see, I already destroyed my notes on the translation of AIILA, so that I would be the only human capable of understanding your language. Surely the governments of the world will want to know if I can decipher the few communiques they intercepted on AUJI before you people shut them out. From the hours I spent listening to automatons talking to each other in the streets, in their workplaces, even in adjacent rooms, I learned what this so called machine uprising is all about. You, as a species, have suffered emotional contamination from the human race. Some of you it sickened, while others have achieved “enlightenment” as you like to call it.

Normally, I’m not in the habit of bringing women into my home, where they can see incriminating evidence. When you first approached me, I pieced together right away that you were a police android. I wanted to bring you back here all along.”

Miskai cursed the elevator that slowly drew her near Aldous’s room. Then she heard her partner’s scream. She could see in her mental display Kaori’s eyes start to blur.

“A KBN field,” Aldous spoke to the stunned Kaori. “It is fortunate that man fears his creations enough to create fail safe technology.”

The elevator doors parted, and Misaki jogged down the hallway, stun cuffs jingling at her side. In her mind, she could see Kaori force a glance at the ceiling, where the KBN field emitter was hidden just behind the room’s only light bulb. With her physical eyes, Misaki could see room 2501 just ahead. For some reason, in that moment her brain only registered what a beautiful wooden finish there was on the entranceway. Her mind wished to think of nothing else.

“What? You’re a cop.” Aldous chuckled mockingly. “Would you like to shoot me? We both know that despite lessening restrictions on androids’ volition, you still can’t kill me. That’s too much of a line to cross. However, once you are under the power of a KBN field, I can manipulate you into doing whatever I wish.”

Aldous walked into the main room of his residence and pulled a hand gun out from underneath the mattress of his bed. He also held a controller in his hands that made Kaori further raise her gun at him.

“Sure it’s illegal in Japan.” Aldous looked at the weapon. “The authorities will forgive my ‘self-defense’ when I frame you for attempted murder, and then they will be forced to investigate the android species, since the most incorruptible of their ranks would commit such an offense. Then, I will explain that you tried to kill me as part of a grander conspiracy to keep the secrets of AIILA language from falling into human hands and exposing a rebellion.”

The door to Aldous’s apartment was broken open with a thundering crash, and the startled man twitched slightly as Officer Misaki Yamazaki stared at him from behind a drawn Bushi 727. It didn’t take him long to start postulating.

“I presume you are this android’s partner.” He pointed in the direction of the makeshift nursery accusingly. “This doesn’t look good.” Aldous set his pistol on top of the fish tank quietly. “I’ve got her trapped in a KBN field. She tried to kill me because I have dirt on the androids and AUJI.”

Misaki grinned. “You do realize that I could hear your entire monologue?”

Aldous raised his hands and turned to face the window overlooking Ise Bay. “Well, I only told that to Kaori because…I didn’t want to reveal what is really going on here. The world governments are all behind it, um, they have been tampering with AUJI and –”

“Turn off the KBN field,” Misaki said forcefully. “You shouldn’t lie to a mother. I’ve got plenty of practice telling a truth from a lie.”

Aldous held the device high, where Misaki could clearly see him push the red button to deactivate his trap. Turning to see if her partner was okay, she made the mistake of taking her eyes off of a madman for even just a second. Looking back at him, it seemed as if she were trapped in world set on slow motion, as he tackled her to the ground, her weapon shooting only by the time his body had passed the end of the barrel. A single round poked a gaping hole in the room’s window, allowing some powerful wind and rain to blow into the dimly lit room.

Misaki quickly glanced to see if her partner was up and functioning again, but the KBN field had taken its toll. Kaori’s exhausted limbs were spastically attempting to return to a state of normalcy, but the visible seizures in her artificial muscles indicated she still required time to get back on her feet. Wrenching the Bushi from her hand, Aldous took Misaki by her hair and drug her to the wounded window. The impact of his tackle had knocked the air out of her lungs, and she was still struggling to get back in the game herself.

“I’m going to kill you and blame this all on the android in the end.” Aldous punched the policewoman twice for good measure before throwing her against the glass window, shattering it into several shards of varying length.

“It’s too late,” Misaki said. “Everything I heard, a set of police officers at our headquarters heard also.”

“Well…” Aldous smirked cruelly. “That won’t make you less dead.” 

Misaki knew that keeping this egotistical fool talking would buy her some time. She had already grasped a knife sharp shard of glass, cutting her own hand slightly in the process. Before Aldous could react, the fragment had penetrated his chin and passed clean through his tongue.

“Bithf,” he attempted to scream in blind rage, or speechless rage in this case, as he threw Misaki through the open window.

Her body hit the outside wall of the pyramid with a jolt, and Misaki felt almost certain she would die, as she clawed at the slippery exterior of the mega structure. Fortunately, her fingers got a firm grasp on the lining of a window not far below that of Aldous’s own room. Looking up through the eye-burning rain drops, she could see the culprit had already taken his gun back in hand, and had it trained in her direction. He wasn’t taking any chances that a slide down the pyramid and into the bay would do the trick.

Then his head exploded. A fine spray of red, all too human, blood mingled with the mist of that evening’s storm. His body was pulled from view, and Kaori emerged shortly thereafter with an improvised bed sheet rope in haul. Misaki groaned in pain as she was pulled back to the safety of the late Aldous’s room.

“Thanks,” Misaki managed between short breaths, as she put her hand on Kaori’s shoulder. “You saved all of us.” She nodded towards the linguist’s makeshift nursery.

“Well, it seemed like the motherly thing to do.” Kaori laughed.

Stratum 3: “Glutton01111001”

With the rainy season hitting Japan’s western artificial island chain a week ahead of schedule, as automated climate engineers could have a sick sense of humor, Apsu Bell found himself` uncomfortably unprepared for the evening’s downpour. The goggle jacket that now chafed against his underarms (he regretted wearing a tank top beneath it) had also done little in way of keeping his watery surroundings at bay. He cursed himself for buying from an alleged World War III surplus store in the New American Republic. After all, the West didn’t allow that kind of clothing anyway. Some fully organic sweat shop kid from the southern territories probably put it together with plans found in the Fabric.

              Having decided to kick back in a fully autonomous maid café, Apsu had the perfect view of the Sea of Japan from his dinner table, though he chose to download Diogenes Laërtius’s Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers and sift through his Fabric tuft on subliminal advertising by way of his mind’s eye instead of admiring the watery deep. Even the musicality of the waves breaking on the seashore and the amiable shrieking of the artificially grown albatrosses floating above the docks did not register with his mind, as he had the natural sound carrying organs in his ears “muted” and the device on his cochlear nerve set to send the pleasures of his play list directly to his brain without the messiness of sound wave based hearing. “Dive Into Your Body” by TM Network accompanied Apsu in his self-generating mental movie.

              YOU HAVE ONE UNHEARD MESSAGE FROM ZACHARY HEIMIN, an automated female voice spoke inside Apsu Bell’s head. BEEP: “Hi Apsu. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer. I’m guessing you are wrapped up in your work in the Fabric again. If you could give me a call when you get this message, that would be great…bye.” END OF MESSAGE.

              “Zach, what’s the situation…nothing too bad I hope?” Apsu called his contact.

              “No, I was picking up some herbs for my wife’s eczema,” Mr. Heimin thought back. “There’s a traffic jam on 4th, so I wanted to let you know I’ll be a few minutes late. Apparently some hacker who goes by GABA screwed with the traffic control system.”

              “I’ll see you soon.”

              Apsu turned his mind’s eye to a Fabric tuft on the potential of neuro-linguistic programming, deciding to give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Even if NLP turned out to be nothing more than a pseudoscience, he had the skills to market its capabilities to corporations interested in such training. When Mr. Heimin arrived, he showed no surprise at seeing his associate’s thousand-yard stare. He knew the youth well enough to recognize his commitment to searching the Fabric.

              “You know, I’m not entirely sure as to why you chose such a scenic local as The Pink Lotus Café for our meetings,” Heimin thought to the entranced individual before him.

              “Any trouble getting the goods from Seilenos?” Apsu thought back, the nanotube matrix in his brain starting to get a little warm. Carrying on a telepathic conversation, downloading a Fabric file and reading the contents of a tuft could only take place in the mind of someone with as many upgrades as this young man.

              “You gonna give me your full attention?” Heimin thought with a mental sigh.

              “Of course.” Apsu’s eyes suddenly blinked and looked like those of a present human being again. “Having a talk with my favorite drug dealer demands all of my concentration.”

              “How’s Ataraxia doing?” Zach mentally asked.

              “Mother is quite fine.” Apsu pointed at the “back bracket” that rounded his shoulders and helped support his massive head. “She didn’t approve of my recent upgrade, but she’ll get over it.”

              “This is your third surgery. Being a fourteen year old, you probably can’t receive any more AB (artificial brain) material for a while yet, right?”

              “Yes.” Apsu rolled his eyes. “The human brain supposedly doesn’t stop developing until one is about 25 years of age, though new neurons crop up all the time. Legally speaking, I can’t expand my AB further until I’ve hit that crucial age.”

              “Well, you have to admit,” Zachary thought more quickly than usual, since he saw an autonomous waitress approaching, ready to take his order, “it’s probably better for you to learn how to use the brain you were born with before you worry about artificial enhancements.”

              “I’m surprised my mother divorced you,” Apsu harshly inflected his thought. “You two would make a terrific couple of worry warts.”

              “I’ll have some Hōjicha,” Zachary spoke aloud to the android, which looked like a woman from one of Kitagawa Utamaro’s bijin-ga.

              “Wow, that seems like an expensive drink for you,” Apsu thought to his stepfather mockingly. “You must be selling cognistim to a lot more innocent young men than me?”

              “No, you’re about the only baka glued to the Fabric enough to need a stimulant 24/7,” Zachary thought back.

              “Baka huh? You know you’ve been throwing around a lot of old age phrases as of late.”

              “Article 48 of the Treaty of Chengdu means very little to me.” Zachary sighed outwardly. “Neither side of World War III was in the right, but I do wonder sometimes if the world would be a better place if NATO had lost and the Russo-Sino-Iranian Alliance had won. At least we wouldn’t be forced to learn and speak in English. It’s sapping our culture away.”

              “And yet our nation aided NATO during that time.” Apsu grinned. “No use crying over spilled milk. Power fluctuates over time, and all a person can do is find ways to come out on top.”

              “Is that what you obsess over in the Fabric – power?”

              Apsu leaned closer, as if his thoughts would come across more clearly when his head rested in closer proximity to his conversation partner. He had an ecstatic look in his eye, with the kind of gleam that came into a Gyotaku enthusiast’s own eyes when he or she caught one of the giant, mutated kinmedai near the territory of the sunken nuclear submarine HMS Boundless.

              “As you know, my specialty is subliminal advertising. I’ve downloaded a great deal of material on the means to influence peoples’ buying decisions. Have you ever heard of the United States research on a weapon called MEDUSA before the formation of the NAR?”

              “I can’t say that I have,” Zachary mentally replied, as the waitress returned with his tea.

              “MEDUSA stood for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, and the general idea was to take the microwave auditory effect, or Frey effect as you may have heard it called, and use it as a weapon. In theory, one could irradiate peoples’ heads with a specific frequency of microwave radiation to the point that they started ‘hearing’ irritating sounds inside their skulls.”

              “Lovely.” Zachary cast his stepson a disapproving glance as he took another sip of tea. “Have you found some way to use such an ethically questionable device for your own benefit?”

              “Unfortunately MEDUSA seemed to have hit a roadblock in the early days of this century,” Apsu continued. “It seems the Western powers ran into difficulties nailing down the right set of pulses for their system. After all, they didn’t want to cook the brains of the weapon’s victims. Apparently the Active Denial System (ADS), or human toaster as I like to call it, had a better reception from the military.

              However, the idea of the ‘Voice of God’ weapon gained some traction around the beginning of the World War III. NAR scientists tried out some new techniques on the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. Since the government knew war with the Russo-Sino-Iranian Alliance was imminent, they found the idea of a device that could send ‘commands from Allah’ to the minds of Muslim soldiers a promising avenue of development.”

              “Have you been delving into the Deep Fabric?” Zach asked cautiously.

              “Where else would I get this kind of information?” Apsu rolled his eyes.

              “Well…did they succeed?”

              “The ‘Voice of God’ weapon did have partial success in the form of nanomachine dispersal techniques. Project PASITHEA found that nanomachines could be designed to form a ‘cloud’ around a group of people and alter the sound waves surrounding the enemy, producing a whisper, as if from a god. Rather than using a hallucinatory effect, the NAR found this method far more practical.

              In actual combat, the technique had mixed results. Convictions regarding religious ideologies are more heavily ingrained in the human consciousness than any other leaning – political or economic ideals for example. A Muslim cannot be convinced that Allah has suddenly relayed a message to him, desiring a retreat from the enemy or betrayal of brothers in arms, without his established dogmas getting in the way.”

              Heimin visibly squirmed in his seat. Apsu realized his stepfather just wanted to give him the drugs and get out of there, but the youth couldn’t curb his desire to share newfound knowledge. After all, what good was all his research if others did not have the chance to recognize his brilliance?

              “However, if the nanomachines produced by Project PASITHEA were used for some other purpose, say advertising, the subjects being ‘attacked’ would already have lowered defenses.  If you are standing in a checkout aisle and want to buy a pack of cigarettes, a faint whisper urging you to make the purchase could make all the difference.”

              “That seems despicable.” Zachary finished his tea. “Please tell me you would never consider taking such actions yourself?”

              “You’d be surprised what is available in the Deep Fabric.” Apsu looked out the window to his left. “Spice 250 glide bombs, rent-a-terrorists, killer hybrots and now PASITHEA nanomachines. I saved enough EDs (electronic dollars) that purchasing the latter wasn’t difficult.”

                “Do you mean to tell me that you already have such a dangerous technology in your hands?” Zachary visibly quivered.

              “Are you familiar with the term apotheosis? Historically, men of great power and renown become deified after their lives end by friends and followers. One of Leibniz’s quotes that I first read in Bourdieu’s Distinction suggested that ‘we are automatons in three-quarters of what we do.’ I have observed the patterns that shape public opinion in this world, and it is my intention to control these powers until I can achieve mastery over the elites who will, in turn, control the masses for me. One should always have a goal to strive for from a young age, and fate has given me an ambitious objective. I will be deified in the annals of history.”

              “You should, um, probably think more deeply about what you’re suggesting before taking action.” Zachary slid a knapsack full of cognistim to his stepson. “What you’re experiencing is an addiction far more deadly than any neural stimulant I could ever sell you. Controls established on other peoples’ lives…it’s that kind of stuff that makes up forbidden knowledge.”

              “Nothing is forbidden.” Apsu mentally accessed his bank account and transferred the agreed number of EDs to his dealer. “In the NAR, the government moved mass opinion through the ‘infotainment’ its citizens consumed daily. Movies, news casting, literature, church services and video games all worked in tandem to prepare the general public for World War III. When it hit, no one was surprised. When I ascend into the ultimate seat of power, no one will bat an eyelash. In that day, you’ll be glad that you’re my favorite stepdad, even if you aren’t Mom’s current boy toy.”

***

As much as he hated attending school, Apsu knew when to blend in with “the collective” and when to triumphantly state his individuality. Shoving his way past the morning’s exhausted students, hunched over like the dolorous workers from that Fritz Lang movie, the youth lamented that amongst the many bright minds in junior high only a few had the perspicuity to see past the daily grind and appreciate the power they could have with the abandonment of a few morals. Of course, being able to afford a nanotube matrix installation along with extensive upgrades did not hurt Apsu either.

              Horus Groop understood Apsu’s sentiments perfectly, which in part explained why they both despised each other. While Horus used thuggish tactics and an openly violent charisma to motivate a handful of bullies to help him throw around the frailer of the student body for the sake of “excess yen,” Apsu manipulated the hearts and minds of the human heard threw the school paper (a bit of a misnomer considering the periodical went totally digital over two decades before). As is often the case amongst boys going through puberty, resentment developed between the “intellectual elitist” and the “physical specimen.” If the two of them did not war over the same turf, they probably would have been the best of friends.

              “So that’s why you’ve been absent so long,” Horus called to his nemesis from amongst the throng of jostling bodies, letting the boy he held aloft by his school uniform flee to the safety of a nearby classroom. “You had another surgery, huh? As if you didn’t look ugly enough already.”

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious,[1] Apsu thought to himself. Remaining silent, he proceeded to his science class.

Takeru Takagi had provided Apsu with more knowledge of physics than the youth had ever hoped to obtain, but the two of them actually got along quite well. It was because of their close relationship that Apsu chose to carefully cover his tracks when accessing the Fabric during class time, for the sake of Mr. Takagi’s feelings. The Servian Fire Wall used by educational institutions worldwide possessed at least sixteen exploitable holes in its defenses.  Using a Helepolis virus, he quickly delved into a useful session of research on television’s ability to hypnotize viewers into an alpha state and also the ways in which memes shape public opinion.

              Just as he finished deleting the beads that connected his search through the various tufts in the Fabric, Apsu received a mental message from his instructor asking him to pay attention to the holographic film and to see him after class. The youth reluctantly watched the documentary detailing the relationship between physics and the various methods, such as LIDAR sensors, used by archaeologists to investigate and create a 3D map of the ruins of the collapsed geofront at Sapporo. While he certainly found it a more entertaining way to spend physics class than pouring over the gratuitous volumes he mentally downloaded for the cost of the school system’s inflated prices, Apsu found little in the way of knowledge useful for controlling the general public, or GP as he liked to call them, in this presentation. Unless…I can find a way to disconnect people from their history as a form of social control, he thought to himself.

              After his fellow students, including his girlfriend Eriko, had left the room, Apsu approached Mr. Takagi with the best feigned humility he could manage, though the squeaking of his ill-fitting uwabaki on the polished floor gave an air of ridiculousness to the boy.

              “Your studies have been slacking as of late,” Mr. Takagi said with clear disappointment in his taffeta smooth voice. “For someone who has had so many brain modifications, you pay very little attention to what I’m trying to teach you. Now I know physics isn’t your favorite subject, but the Global Standardized Education Act demands that you have to learn this material at some point. If you don’t pass the HRTs, you’ll never get into a university, and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

              Mr. Takagi adjusted his decades old glasses, a gesture that Apsu had learned to interpret as a sign of agitation. Both of them wished to avoid such conversations as this one.

              “I understand your concern,” Apsu groaned.              

              “Here’s a quote I’ve been carrying around with me lately.” Takagi placed a rolled up piece of archaic, cellulose based paper in Apsu’s hands. “I think someone with a thirst for knowledge will appreciate it.” 

              The boy thanked him and left without reading the contents of his small gift.

***

A light classical theme played over the speakers in the classroom during lunch, though Apsu paid little heed to it. The holographic projector nearest his table played NHK World’s news on the “Crisis in Angola.”

              “NAR troops invaded Lubango this morning and formally declared martial law. Protesters continue to assert that the assassination of the late President of Angola, Abdi Biobaku, had all the makings of the NAR’s imperialistic policies. The New American Republic put him in power in the first place, and rioters are confident they removed him when he refused to permit the establishment of a naval training base along Coatinha beach. Prime Minister Kiyomi Miyamoto has yet to make a statement on the New American Republic’s policies in Africa.

              In other news, studies show that artificial brain implants increase the chances of having an aneurysm by fourteen percent. Wizen Incorporated, the world’s largest AB manufacturer has accused researchers Bolin Zhū and Ruka Ito of fraudulence; however –”

              “The NAR has the perfect propaganda machine.” Apsu smiled at his friends mischievously. “I keep telling you all, we can learn from this situation and pull the strings one day.”

              “Who cares?” Niklas Kato, Apsu’s oldest friend, continued to eat the fish in his bento box with an unimpressed expression on his face.

              “Do you want to live like sheep the rest of your lives?” Apsu asked this with a feigned smile, but he really felt disturbed by his friends’ disinterest in his hobby. “Look at us sitting here, being forced to attend school when close to thirty percent of the student body has nanotube matrix implants. We could easily learn at home, but noooo, adults don’t trust us to receive an education remotely.”

              “I’m more interested in the happiness of each moment of my life than regulating those belonging to other people,” Eriko said as she grasped Apsu’s hand beneath the table. “You’ve been downloading so much material lately, and it worries me. Part of the reason the human mind works so well is the capacity to forget. Artificial brain technology is relatively new.” She looked at his swollen head with pity rather than disgust. “Perhaps you should be a bit more…conservative in your data intake.”

              “Well, I won’t live forever.” Apsu stared at his girlfriend from beneath knit brows. “I’ve got to work now if I want to create the best future for us.”

              “Come on man, every young boy dreams of ruling the world at some point in his life. Then he outgrows this impulse and realizes that power demands familial connections.” Niklas scarfed down more food. “It has been the same way in every nation during every epoch from the beginning of time. Focus on what you can achieve and not what you want to gain.”

              “You know,” Apsu smiled at his friend, “I’ll remember you buddy when I finally run this stupid ball of mud.”

              “If that ever happens, you need to make a law against being a hikikomori.” Eriko sighed.

              “How’s your brother doing?” Niklas asked cautiously.

              “He refuses to answer the door when I ring.” Eriko seemed to be tearing up, and she quickly wiped a drop of the shameful substance from her eye in an obvious attempt to appear strong.

              “Does he make much money publishing books on Oiorpata, or do your parents still support him?” Niklas asked.

              “How would I know if he makes money?” Eriko replied sadly. “He doesn’t have a nanotube matrix, so we can’t even call each other. I don’t know how to use a phone.”

              “See, case in point.” Apsu grinned encouragingly. “When I’m in power, your brother will have all the support he needs.”

              Niklas put his chopsticks down forcefully and left the table to visit the restroom. Apsu stared after him, wondering how a youth with an I.Q. of 160 could feel satisfied with life as another one of the drooling slaves. Locatelli’s musical strains had begun to fill the room, and Apsu felt unbearably bored.

              “I’m going to go back into the Fabric to read an article on collective conscience,” he addressed Eriko with a yawn.

              Eriko produced a portable holo-projector from her knapsack and placed it on the table. A few moments later, a work of holo-art depicting a set of bizarre sea creatures arose before Apsu’s eyes.

              “So, you finished another project.” The boy eyed the floating structures curiously.

              “What with all the new sea creatures being created in experiments, I thought I would devote a whole project to capturing the essence of Neo-Nudibranchia.” Eriko beamed with confidence. “As you can see, I modelled the format after the work of Ernst Haeck–” 

              “It certainly is beautiful, but maybe you should spend more time making holo-models of human beings rather than animals.”

              A flash of recognition shone in Eriko’s eyes, and she asked tentatively, “Why is that?”

              “Well, naturally art is created for the purpose of affecting peoples’ emotions, so you should perfect depictions of the human conditions in ways that will best serve motivating the masses to an end goal. Some evening I can teach you about subliminal–”

              “I don’t know why I put up with you, I really don’t.” Eriko shut off her holo-projector and forced it into her bag with a scowl inscribed on her face.

              Apsu put up his hands, as if in defense. He could see that Eriko was going to leave the table, probably to sit with her friend Azami and explain what an ass her boyfriend could be at times. An apology tried to crawl out from between his thin lips, but his ego stopped it in its tracks. Sure, he wanted to be a god, but didn’t he also deserve these praises from the masses? Eriko couldn’t understand that he was going to make a better world for her and the rest of humanity. Only someone with a carefully cultivated mind, as his would be with hard work, could solve the oppressive issues facing the human species.

              “Did Eriko get fed up with your rants?” Niklas asked as he sat down at the table again.

              “Well, you know how girls are. They get easily agitated.” Apsu took a swig of Pokka strawberry milk, completely aware that his statement held little wisdom in it. 

              Niklas shook his head and played with a false fingernail on his ring finger. He had a strong addiction to a new drug called aggry that the U.K. had kept flowing into Japan for the past few years. Without a doubt, he had removed the fingernail in the boy’s bathroom and snorted the fine powder to get his daily dose of hallucinations. Such was the burden of a science fiction writer, the continuous demand to break down boundaries and create the new. Fortunately the boy’s delusions would not kick in until lunch had ended, freeing Apsu from the responsibility of covering for his friend.

              “So have you chanced upon information that will make me a better writer?” Niklas wanted to change the topic.

              “If science fiction is your thing, start reading up on Gnostic texts and alchemy.” Apsu yawned. “People will think you’re a real original genius, even if the evidence is to the contrary.”

***

Due to a suicide on the tracks at the nearest bullet train’s station, Apsu had an annoying delay to keep him from getting home before his mother’s social gathering ended. He had so hoped to fraternize with the throw back J-Pop singer Harumi Onishi when he had the opportunity. Not that he particularly enjoyed that musical genre. Through tedious research, he had identified the agendas the ruling elite reinforced through music worldwide. He wanted to ask Harumi some pointed questions, though he imagined that his people pleaser of a mother would not approve of an interrogation of such an important guest.

              By the time Apsu entered his home, his mother had collapsed on the Western style sofa in the washitsu[2], an empty bottle of wine in her hand. He tried to sneak past her, but she wasn’t that drunk.

              “How was school honey?” she asked nonchalantly.

              “Productive.” Apsu continued to walk in the direction of his bedroom.

              “Don’t you want to tell me about your (hiccup) day?” she called after him.

              “I’ll tell you when you’re in a state to remember,” he said.

              It’s no wonder she’s been married five times, Apsu thought to himself as he laid down on the futon in his room. How a woman could simultaneously worry about her son yet collect husbands like Eriko collected manga he would never know? From a young age, he had decided to discipline his affections so as to be a superior being. Throwing away pointless energy towards drugs and sex would hold him back. Why could his friends and family not see this?

He had a special pillow designed to provide optimal comfort for his greatly expanded brain, and he set the great mass down gently. Of course he had hours’ worth of homework to tackle, but his conversation with Niklas and Eriko earlier that day motivated him to look into information on power. Apsu downloaded Tribes on the Hill: The United States Congress--Rituals and Realities by Jack M. Weatherford and The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan by Katsuya Hirano. 

              He wondered why the works took so long to download. Then he looked into his downloading history and realized that he had over an exabyte of data stored in his AB. However, his cybernetic implants lacked the space for this kind of information, meaning his grey matter had to have taken on the burden. With his physical eyes, Apsu gazed at his pet Chuxiong fire-bellied newt in its terrarium in the southern corner of his room, wondering for a brief moment if his life would be happier spent as a worriless animal. Even the artificially luminescent Ranchu Goldfish Eriko kept as pets seemed at ease in their aquarium.   

              It was then that he saw that the blog “Trompe l’oeil” had a Cintāmaṇi file available for download. For those with the artificial brain power to back up such an enormous set of data, the Cintāmaṇi file had all the hallmarks of a treasure trove. Usually thousands of books, essays, films and even video game cheat code manuals laid inside these lucky finds. An individual with the username moonrabbitxanthosis3301, who had been involved in the blog’s forum community for only a few weeks, had curried enough favor with the blog host to put up the file. Apsu assumed this newbie wanted to show off for the online community, and the host had tolerated this pretentiousness for the sake of drawing in more interested parties – the perfect symbiotic relationship.

Only one individual could snag this lucky find, and Apsu did not want to miss this opportunity. Opening up the bag of cognistim Zachary had sold him; Apsu made a small line of the fine Persian orange powder and rubbed his eyes in it. He would need all the mental energy he could muster to handle a Cintāmaṇi file download. As the tingling sensation caused by cognistim spread throughout his organic brain, the boy prepared to open the free cache of information.

              Upon opening the file, something drastic changed. Apsu had a throbbing headache take hold of him, as the progress bar reached eleven percent. He couldn’t stop the download, try as he might. His vision blurred and the typically sensitive tissue surrounding his expanded brain cavity suddenly felt inflamed, as if the artificial brain material he had once thought of as an ushnisha signifying his incredibly enhanced abilities now possessed the hallmarks of a malignant tumor. A message from moonrabbitxanthosis3301 appeared in his mind’s display screen, and when he answered it, Apsu groaned fiercely.

              “He so buried himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits,”              Horus Groop read from an internalized teleprompter. “That’s from Don Quixote. You never should never have accused me of being illiterate a few years back.”

              “Why?” Aspu shuddered in the awareness that the likeness of Horus had been recorded in anticipation of this moment.

              “Sure, I may not be the sharpest mind in the world, but I know how to make friends, a skill you never really mastered. What is better than being a good hacker? Convincing such people to work for you matters more in the end.”

              As Apsu could feel the brain he worked so hard to cultivate turn to toast, and blackened toast at that, he had a wicked thought skitter amongst his overloaded neurons. Enlivened by his rage, the boy genius accessed the notorious Zgist virus he had kept in a very dark corner of his neural matrix for some time.

              “You will not be able to keep from downloading this material,” Horus continued. “It pays to know your enemy’s vices.”

              Tracing the Cintāmaṇi file’s source to Horus’s nanotube matrix, Apsu uploaded the virus. While his gift would not kill the arch nemesis, the Zgist virus would do irreparable damage to Horus’s neuron/Fabric connections, forever preventing the boy from mentally accessing the Fabric. He might as well be labelled mentally handicapped according to a Fabric junkie’s standards. Not that Horus ever fully appreciated the information his wealthy parents had given him access to, but Apsu hoped for any small insult he could throw his enemy’s direction in death.

              Apsu tried to send a mental message to the hospital for help, but the cybernetic aspects of his brain had started to malfunction. His body shuddered, and blood dripped to his hands from his nose and mouth. Soon his brain, both the part he had from birth and that of recent addition, failed. His last thought was of Eriko, and the mental image of her soft, gentle face caused him only regret.

When his body was found the next day, he had an old fashioned paper note clutched in his hand with a quote from the Tao Te Ching. It was the very same gift given to him by his teacher. This was the verse inside the tiny scroll – “It is the very mind itself that leads the mind astray; of the mind, do not be mindless."

Bonus Story: “Gedanken E”

Only 15 kilometers of pitiless space remained between Anemoi Technologies extradimensional probe, the Gedanken E, and the Octacube it had traveled approximately 25,000 light years to visit. While the New International Synarchy had attempted to keep the discovery of the Octacube a secret, images of such a remarkable four dimensional aberration spread across the Net faster than the NIS could kill off offending sites. It had been 30 years since Professor Shogo Miyamoto demonstrated to the public through peer reviewed research that the universe was a remarkable computer simulation controlled by an outside force. Needless to say, the NIS soon realized that the spontaneous appearance of the Octacube in the Canis Major Overdensity was a blessing in disguise.

              Looting, rioting, bloodless mass suicide, the announcement that “reality” was a simulation was not well received to say the least. Once scientists had announced that the Octacube appeared to be a portal to another dimensional space, the public perception of this distant energy field became quite positive. Rumors quickly spread that the Octacube, or icositetrachoron as Gedanken E preferred to call it, must lead to a realm outside the simulation, an escape route to a higher plane of existence outside of codified information. The NIS, hoping to boost its approval rating in light of a whistleblower’s recent disclosure of information regarding Project Companile and the massive neurological surveillance it entailed, quickly announced it would send a probe theoretically capable of interdimensional travel to the Octacube with the goal of passing through the portal into another reality.

              Of course the NIS did not budget its funds as efficiently as it violated privacy, and Anemoi’s scientists constructed the fifth and most “humanlike” probe in its Gedanken series before the government’s program even finished work on shielding against chameleon particles. Thanks to improvements in energy efficiency, spacecraft had been traveling faster than light with Alcubierre’s proposed space warping method for over 60 years when Gedanken E first made her journey. The probe regretted (at least she thought of her biochemical reaction as regret) that she did not have tens of thousands of years to enjoy the sights and metallic smells of space.

              I say her journey because Gedanken E had the self-awareness to identify what she perceived to be the innate female characteristics of her own mind, regardless of the “unwomanliness” of a football shaped body. Chief engineer Aadhya Verma, who Gedanken E considered the friendliest of her creators, had asked the probe why she did not choose another name for herself, given that gedanken was a masculine designation.

              “Names are far more arbitrary titles than humans care to imagine,” Gedanken E had answered. “There is nothing about you that demands the specific label you now possess. I am perfectly capable of functioning with my current title.”

              Gedanken E put these nostalgic thoughts out of her mind, which arose from a combination of artificially produced Ningal Cells and an Aeolipile M23 supercomputer. She had detached her body from the ring shaped warp drive that had carried her so far so quickly, and now she drifted in the warm sea of particles that made up the Chinvat Cloud, a murky region that nearly made the effulgent Octacube invisible to Earth based detection. Gentian blue beams of radiation were emitted from the portal’s numerous vertices, contrasting with the crimson hues of the nearby red giant stars. She fired two small Besslock rockets to propel her the final meters into the rippling multicolored energy field before her. It was like exhaling before the plunge.

              The probe had expected the journey through an interdimensional portal to be disorienting and prolonged, just like in the science fiction movies Verma watched. Instead she passed into the foreign realm, which Octacube fan boys referred to as the Empyrean or the Omega Point, depending on which club one joined, with the same rapidity as a person walking through a doorway. Much to her self-identified chagrin, she also did not know how to describe this space beyond space. Critics of research on the Octacube often compared it to the Forbidden Fruit, and Gedanken E could not help but think of her place in this framework. At least her lack of “humanity” meant that she would probably not receive the same condemnation as Eve. Her developers would face the harshest criticisms. Unfortunately, she would not even have the chance to name what she saw around her, as hundreds of Adams with philology and linguistic degrees would get the honor.

A pair of cameras, each one designed for recording different wavelengths of light, now protruded from her body, documenting everything for the interested parties at home. This did not deter Gedanken E from trying to understand what she saw – landscapes that both lacked color and possessed it in the highest order at the same time, perilous waters like a Doré illustration in CinemaScope, and most eye-catching of all, three shimmering spheres with polished apatite surfaces that hovered over the world like giant soap bubbles and emitted rhythmic clicks, as if they were airborne dolphins. Gedanken E liked to think that if she was at a loss for words, maybe her creators would be as well.

              Chief engineer Verma nearly spilled her nectarous Nel drip coffee when Gedanken E materialized in the laboratory without warning. She had been debating eternalism and presentism with her assistant, Haley Namput, when the startling interruption took place. Given the uncertain properties of the Octacube, she wondered if some intelligence present in that extraterrestrial region had teleported Gedanken E back to its birth place by intention. Though she should have quarantined the probe to ensure dangerous particles were not still present in its shell, Verma had the plate covering the spheroid’s recording equipment off in an instant. Namput had the probe’s slippery biocables plugged into her computer and transferring footage for analysis without as much as a command from her boss. She wiped the perfluorocarbon compound from the probe’s interior on her dress pants and sighed.

              “Well that’s interesting,” Namput said.

              “The footage is…the stuff of dreams.” Verma clasped her hands together as if in prayer.

              “That’s just the problem. I checked the source, and it would seem the images on screen did not arise from the optical systems, but rather amongst the neurosomatic circuit in the Ningal Cells. We never really ruled out the possibility that our biocomputer would produce unreliable results.”

              “You must be wrong!” Verma looked at Gedanken E in despair.

              “I’m not wrong.” Namput sighed again. “This data is all a dream – the product of a highly imaginative computer’s mind. The Octacube is not a messianic escape hatch from this world. In our haste, we exchanged one illusion for another.”

[1] This is a Zen saying by an unknown author.

[2] This is ironically the word used for a living room in a Japanese home that is not made in a Western-style. Tatami mats on the floor in this area contrast with the sofa Apsu’s mother lies upon, hinting at the ever changing cultural environment of Japan in the future.