“I was thinking about going home, but I couldn’t do it without making up…,” Hansa mumbled. “Sorry. We’ve been friends forever, and I shouldn’t have acted that way.”
“If you mean what happened at noon, I’m not mad.” Her anger had indeed run its course. Hansa had his own viewpoint and way of thinking, and she was being childish about it. “If anything, I acted really mean toward you after I basically talked you into cooperating with the investigation. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not your fault. I was being childish.”
“I mean, you are a kid,” Bigga said teasingly.
“Hey, I’m seventeen, you know,” Hansa replied, sulking, but then he smiled.
Come to think of it, this was always how they made up after a fight. For some reason, Bigga was doing a lot of reminiscing today. As they sat there in silence for a moment, the ballad ended, switching over to a bright pop song.
“You know, I…” Hansa’s expression turned serious again. “I think somewhere deep down, I… I haven’t accepted that you’ve started a new life yet. It’s a bit late to say it, but I was really shocked when I heard you gave up on bio-hacking. I always thought we’d grow up together.”
“Well…” Bigga was momentarily lost for words. “I didn’t think I’d end up doing that until just a short while ago. But things happened with me and Dad during the summer… It made me realize that I can’t lie to myself about how I want to spend the rest of my life.”
Casting away the life of a bio-hacker in favor of the wish she’d always harbored deep down meant losing some things, her relationship with Hansa among them. She couldn’t deny feeling guilty about it.
But this didn’t mean she regretted making that choice.
“You’re not coming back to Kautokeino, are you?”
“No. I’m a Your Forma user now…”
“Do you live with that Amicus?”
His question came out of nowhere, and Bigga stared at him with befuddlement. Hansa, on the other hand, looked completely serious.
“His name’s Harold, right? You like him, yeah? It’s pretty obvious.”
“M-maybe, b-but living with him? That’s going way too far, way too fast!” She thought back to Shushunova, the owner of a grief care company they’d investigated, who was married to her Amicus. Bigga did wish she could live like that, yes. “We’re not even together yet.”
“Huh, really?” Hansa looked dubious. “That feels kind of strange, though…”
“How so?”
“I mean, Amicus are machines, right? Aah, I don’t mean that in a bad way, though!” He quickly corrected himself as he saw Bigga raise her brows. “I don’t know much about them, but they’re supposed to be obedient to humans and do whatever people want, right? So if you’d have told him how you felt, you’d have become a couple right away.”
“…What are you saying?”
This time, Bigga didn’t understand what Hansa was getting at. They’d become a couple right away? She didn’t even know if Harold liked her, so how could Hansa say for sure that would happen?
“I mean…” He scratched his temples. “He’s supposed to do whatever humans tell him to, right? If Amicus could refuse orders, the Your Forma users’ society would go out of control.”
“That…” Bigga was starting to understand. “That might be true with mass-produced Amicus, but Harold is special. He’s got a will and feelings of his own…”
“That’s how it looks, but you haven’t actually checked, have you?”
“Well—”
The only people who could speak definitively on Harold’s consciousness were the employees of Novae Robotics Inc., not a layperson like her. But before she could say that, she realized this was wrong. No one could really confirm that, because the AI black box problem was standing in the way of that. The more complex AI became, the more incapable mankind would become of objectively confirming what processes it used to think.
So even if she could prove Harold had a will of his own, the best one could say was that he was just acting like he had a will and emotions.
Bigga had considered that in the past. But Harold really was different from mass-produced Amicus, and even from custom models, like Shushunova’s husband, Bernard. There was something special about him. She’d heard that Harold was some kind of high-performance Amicus. She didn’t know any of the details, but he was definitely different from other Amicus. That much she could gather through her interactions with him.
Bigga had to admit that her opinion wasn’t all that logical, but sometimes reason alone didn’t explain things.
“Anyway, Harold does have a heart. That’s obvious if you spend any time with him.”
“But you can’t prove that.” Hansa was starting to seem like a stranger to her. “If you really feel that way, that’s all the more reason to let him know how you feel as soon as you can.”
“That’s not your choice to make, Hansa.”
“It kind of is. So, um…” The boy sullenly averted his eyes from her and bit his lips. “If that doesn’t work out…and I know it might be too late for this, but…keep me in mind.”
It took some time before it dawned on Bigga that this was a roundabout confession. She stared at Hansa blankly. His freckled cheeks were flushed, and he was blatantly averting his gaze. Just then, he quickly said that he needed to get back home before his father got suspicious, and he banished Bigga from the car. She watched her childhood friend’s jeep drive off, like it was running away from her.
She knew that he cared for her, but she never would have guessed he had feelings for her.
Bigga didn’t remember how she got back to her hotel room. She crawled into bed, thoughts of Hansa and the problems with Harold swirling in her head, keeping her awake. She somehow managed to doze off, eventually waking up at dawn.
It was six AM, still dark beyond the curtains of the window. Through her groggy eyes, Bigga spotted a message notification from her Your Forma. Totoki forwarded Banfield’s autopsy report to the Special Investigations units’ members. The transport drone carrying his sample had arrived in Saint Petersburg on time.
<One of the two victims died from the same reasons as the other four, acute heart failure. Banfield alone had a different cause of death—multiple organ failure brought on by the immune system going out of control due to a viral infection.>
Harold had reasoned as much at the time.
<In addition, when the drone arrived at the inspection center, its blades were damaged. The culprit is unknown, and the incident is assumed to be intentional sabotage. I’m seeking further information on Banfield’s case, and I’ll keep you posted if I learn anything.>
In other words, Banfield didn’t just coincidentally die from a severe cold or flu?
As Bigga groggily scanned over the message a few times, she felt a chill run through her.