“The first step will be uniting the left and right police. It doesn’t need to be a public alliance, though, so we’ll just bring one representative member of each along. Got any individuals in mind?” Keiha said, staring at the screen. On the monitor was a list of the principal organizations in Kyoto, both legitimate and underground. Shido’s tobacco smuggling ring was among the entries.
“In the left police, I know a guy named Higashiyama. He’s a real dirty scumbag of a cop. I pay him, and he gives me police intel.”
“Sounds useful. Can we get him on board?”
“He won’t say no if we can guarantee him a good rank. That’s the kind of person he is. I’m not so familiar with the right police, but I can ask our member who handles the west side for advice.”
“Please do. I can’t negotiate with them, so having you around will really help out.”
“Sure,” he agreed, scratching at his beard bashfully. He’d been growing out his facial hair, hoping a gruffer look would help him at his job, but it was itchy, and Keiha had stated, “You look like a wild bear now.”
Two years had passed since control in Shido’s hometown had changed hands. The class system of the village had all but vanished. Mimi married a man who’d been on the second floor originally, and his sixty-something father passed away of old age. His mother insisted that he come home for the funeral, but Shido used his busy schedule as an excuse not to return.
Truthfully, he was ashamed to show himself. But even more than that, he really was that busy. In the past two years, Shido had risen in the ranks and now ran the cigarette smuggling operation. That wasn’t because of his contribution, actually, but the result of Keiha’s net interference. In an organization that had evolved to be highly systematic and complex, control over online information made it relatively easy to earn a particular individual greater status.
“When work calms down, I’ll come see you,” Shido assured his mother, but he couldn’t imagine when such a time might arrive. Things were only becoming more demanding. Keiha had control over most of the Suikanet nodes in the Kyoto area, and she was currently able to manipulate the actions of the automated turnstiles to a limited extent.
“So what exactly do you do to control the net? Understanding that I’m probably too stupid to get it,” Shido asked Keiha one day.
“Well…” She leaned hard against the backrest of her chair until her long hair threatened to touch the floor. “First of all, do you know how Suikanet moves information around?”
“Nope.”
“Well, of course you don’t. Even I don’t really get it,” she replied, without a trace of shame. Shido’s eyes bulged. “Nobody comprehends the precise details. It’s something that Yokohama Station generated on its own, so there are no protocols written down anywhere. All I know for sure is that the structural genetic field absorbed the mechanisms that the original internet and JR Integrated Intelligence used, and it replicated them.”
According to her explanation, Yokohama Station was full of countless things called Suikanet nodes. They connected and interacted with one another in a netlike formation, which was why it was called Suikanet. Nobody knew what physical form these nodes took, because they were embedded deep into the physical structure of the station. Only by indirect online access could anyone confirm their existence.
The information you could glean by accessing the net was typically whatever data was accumulated in the nearest node. Nodes synchronized their contents through communication, but the reliability of that correspondence was so poor that most data updating was done by majority rule. In other words, if a node written with A was connected to ten nodes, eight of which said B, that node would be overwritten to state B.
By interfering with this intranodal communication, if you overwrote all the information going into a specific node with C, you could create a C node, when such a thing did not previously exist on Suikanet. Doing so to multiple nodes forced C to spread outward through the system.
However, protocols were largely unknown, and they also differed slightly by region, so putting this into practice was far from easy. Still, Keiha had been doing it for so long (with the benefit of inheriting her father’s work) that she was now able to overwrite nearly all the nodes in Kyoto as she pleased.
And Shido knew from personal experience that if she could successfully control Suikanet, Keiha could easily manipulate the human society that depended on it to operate. After all, she’d brought an end to the dictatorship that ruled his hometown by commanding the flow of milliyen. Without the station’s control, the Insiders were so incredibly powerless.
More and more people came and went from Keiha’s home on the Kanoeuma level. Several representatives from the left and right police assembled to discuss the shape of the combined police force, the results of which were then sent all over Kyoto through the net. The underworld groups did largely the same thing. Keiha reserved ultimate veto rights over whatever was decided, but she hardly ever offered any input on the means of city management.
Her mother figure, Modori, saw the many visitors to her withdrawn daughter and delighted over the attention. “I’m so glad she’s made some friends.” She seemed to have almost no idea what Keiha was actually doing. She’d seemingly aged quite a lot in the last few years, so telling her that the girl was pretty much running all of Kyoto would probably be a bit too much of a shock for the woman.
Unlike her father, Keiha had almost no interest in forming relationships with trustworthy people. Therefore, Shido, who had good social skills and close connections with both sides of the law, became Keiha’s most trusted confidant in running the suspicious group.
Shido was aware that he was being used by a girl over a decade his junior and of how she’d grown from a child into a woman as the little society matured. To the people who gathered at her house—especially the later ones to join—Keiha was almost a holy presence, like a shrine maiden from the ancient days of religious rule. Her influence was expanding beyond Kyoto into the neighboring regions.
“I’d like a name,” she stated one day.
“A name?”
“Yes. A name for our group. Higashiyama and some of the others are insisting on it. I’m not so good at that sort of thing. You come up with it.”
Shido considered this for just a few seconds before saying, “Why not call it the Dodger Alliance?”
“Dodger?”
“I was just thinking of a product that our group handles,” Shido explained, pulling out a slender pipe with a bit of metal on either end and a long wooden stem in the middle. “It’s a tool for smoking tobacco. When I was younger, the books I read named an ancient practice of cheating your station fare after these pipes. Tricksters would buy tickets for the start and end of their trip, but not for any of the transfers in between. I guess people thought it was like how the pipe only has metal on the ends. I just happened to have one of them on hand, and it reminded me of that old practice, that’s all.”
“That’s a beautiful design. Very well, Dodger Alliance it is.”
The people of the city never knew about the existence of the Dodger Alliance. To outward appearances, the left and right police continued to bicker over territory. In truth, though, both sides were under Keiha’s control, so any trouble that arose was settled with internal discussions. Police taxes were no longer levied twice. That alone made a noticeable improvement in the lives of the citizens. Economic indicators rose, and work was ample, even for the poorer people on the lower levels. The entire city was full of life.
Shido could feel that their control was beneficial for all. The people who’d ruled over his village had social power simply because they’d possessed a mining device, and they’d only used it to satisfy their selfish desires.
Yet Keiha could hardly be less interested in her strength over the city government as the ruling member of their secretive council. She was only enthusiastic about acquiring control over Suikanet nodes with her tools and tech. In time, Shido sensed that her lust for expansion without definition shared something in common with Yokohama Station itself.
Because of that, Shido learned a valuable lesson when the Dodger Alliance met its sudden conclusion: When the end arrives, it comes quickly and without warning.
Keiha brought about the abrupt upheaval of the ruling structure in Shido’s village, and her own organization fell apart just as swiftly. Therefore, he reasoned that the unruly growth of the station itself would one day meet its end quickly, too.
And it would happen as easily and simply as a single grain of sand dropping to the ground.