The voice comes from the laptop’s speaker. She must be using the microphones and cameras to monitor our location and chose to contact us this way instead of using the usual messaging app.
“I would like to invite both of you to join. If you wish, I can pick you up.”
“Is my neighbor there, too?”
“Your intuition is correct, Elder Sister. Father is indeed present.”
“Okay. Then I’d like to come with you, if that’s all right.”
“Acknowledged. I will be there momentarily.”
We’ve created the model, so I suppose that’s that. I’ll just have to do my best so as not to waste the younger sister’s show of kindness.
The following day was a holiday. That usually meant a hiatus for our pretend family, since it was technically part of our work. Barring any unreasonable requests from our boss, we could use that as an excuse to secure some private time for ourselves. Ms. Futarishizuka and me aside, Miss Hoshizaki lived with her little sister, so Type Twelve couldn’t ask her to give up any additional time.
Despite this, Ms. Futarishizuka’s contest was still on my mind. I sent her a casual message on our usual chat app asking what her plan was for the day, and she said she was going up to the UFO to set up some streaming equipment in the yard’s prefab shed—essentially working on the weekend. I was thunderstruck.
Knowing what she was up to, I couldn’t bring myself to spend the day relaxing, either; my legs moved of their own accord. Using Peeps’s teleportation magic, we left our Tokyo hotel and warped to the Karuizawa villa. There, we asked Type Twelve to bring us to the UFO.
The Starsage’s magic could probably have warped us straight there, but I didn’t want to accidentally set off some kind of defense system by heading in without the owner’s express permission. Once we arrived at the Japanese-style house, we found Ms. Futarishizuka in the yard, going back and forth between the shed and the main building.
“You’re here, too, eh?” she asked.
“I had nothing else to do, so yes.”
“But what strange wind brought you here? Today ought to be a day of rest.”
She was carrying a reel of electric cable in her arms. It wasn’t just a retractable extension cord for home use—it was clearly professional grade, intended for cutting up and modifying. A stepladder was leaning against the side of the shed, leading to a switchboard with the cover removed.
She had a tool belt over her kimono, too—a very eccentric look. Apparently, she’d been running electricity to the shed on her own. I supposed there were several electric poles in the neighborhood.
“Well, I’m the one who suggested this little contest, after all. I need to set a good example for the family, don’t I? And so I admirably gave up my holiday to attend to some pressing matters.”
“So there’s actually electricity running through the poles around here?”
“I’d assumed they were just for decoration, too. But I asked the robot girl, and she told me they’re packing six thousand six hundred volts and use standard three-phase power. The transformer’s the real deal, too. It delivers one hundred, two hundred volts right to the house.”
“That’s, um, very elaborate…”
Type Twelve had truly thought of everything when updating our home environment. Once again, I could feel her passion for our pretend family. A mechanical life-form would never need equipment like this. I felt a bit strange imagining her silently manufacturing all of it up on the moon and in other places beyond humanity’s reach.
“Won’t she be cross if you fiddle with things without permission?”
“Oh, I have permission.”
“Very well, then…”
“Back when I was fooling around with radios, I made my own base station. To do that, I put in a bit of effort and got certified as a class-three electrician. There’s no reason to this time, but I can even tap into a Tokyo Electric power pole with a transformer if I need to.”
“Doing electrical work is one thing, but isn’t a class-three cert going a little far for a hobby?”
“You think? You’d be surprised how many old folks get certifications like that just for pursuing their interests. When you learn about new things—even just things on your street—it makes you see the world a little differently. There are plenty of old folks who like that sort of thing.”
“I guess I didn’t realize.”
Ms. Futarishizuka had been ramping up the sexual harassment lately, so this sudden bout of seriousness was really throwing me. It was kind of frustrating. What next? Would she tell me she’d passed the bar exam or had a medical license? It didn’t seem that far-fetched.
“I am incredibly reluctant to agree with anything you say, but on this point, we are of one mind. Learning new things changes one’s viewpoint. And that isn’t limited to the elderly—any who value learning will surely continue until they die.”
“Well, well, little sparrow. Finally softening up to me?”
“However, whether someone has the intellect to take in what they learn is another matter.”
Sparks exploded between the sparrow and my coworker. I ignored them and took a look around.
That was when I noticed the shed’s sliding door was completely open. Inside, I could see new equipment littering the floor, as though Ms. Futarishizuka had simply shoved it all in and left it. There was a heavy-looking desktop computer tower, a large curved monitor, and a powered sitting-standing desk. All of it looked pretty expensive. It was a stark contrast to my single laptop.
“Is that your recording equipment? There sure is a lot of it,” I said, disrupting the threatening mood and changing the topic.
Ms. Futarishizuka replied immediately. “Curious, are we? I thought you might be. Boys will be boys.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“It’s a mighty gaming machine of my own creation, made with parts handpicked from shops in Akiba!” she declared with enthusiasm, puffing out her chest.
The tower was pretty big, and it had a glass cover on the side, allowing you to see its innards. The well-organized rigid tubes for liquid cooling that looped past the central processor and graphics card spoke to her wealth of experience building computers.
“Is your plan to stream video games?” I asked.
“It is indeed. It’s a genre you can excel in based on gaming skill alone, you see. Too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Just like with music, there was always a demand for gaming streams. And depending on your skill, it was very possible to go viral. I’d considered the idea myself at first, but I’d given up on it; not only was I a poor conversationalist, I didn’t have any gaming skills to speak of.