Chapter 3

3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Rails? Kofu was one of the major cities of Yokohama Station. The station had filled the vast Kofu Basin, an inverted triangle, like water filling a bowl several hundred meters deep. As a matter of fact, over ten percent of Honshu’s population lived inside this many-layered city structure. When large-scale sea shipping died out with the expansion of Yokohama Station, it became easier for inland cities to grow and become significant hubs within the station’s city network, rather than coastal cities like Tokyo. And because human needs prevented Inside cities from expanding farther outward, it was easier for the structure to support larger cities in capacious, three-dimensional spaces like basins, rather than on the flat plains of the Kanto area. In layered cities like this one, people congregated toward the top tiers, where space was more valuable because of easy access to the outside. Once people gathered at the top, it stimulated the station to grow a higher floor above. This was a large part of how Yokohama Station had become so massive in basins and valleys. On the other hand, the lower levels quickly fell into disuse. Similarly, no one recalled that right next to the deepest layers were tunnels where superconductive railways once ran. It was in an open space on this lowest tier where six automated turnstiles gathered by themselves, encircling a vacant spot. They extended their metal arms, as if trying to catch something in the empty air at the center of their congregation. “Unauthorized Suika detected. Expelling target from station.” “If anything is unclear, please consult with the nearest station employee.” “Unauthorized Suika detected. Expelling target from station.” “If anything is unclear, please consult with the nearest station employee.” “Unauthorized Suika detected. Expelling target from station.” “If anything is unclear, please consult with the nearest station employee.” At that moment, the concrete wall in the corner of the open concourse crumbled loudly, and Hiroto emerged. The turnstiles sent each other commands via glances, and two of the six approached him. “Welcome to Yokohama Station. I’m sorry, but I don’t detect your Suika. Please present your Suika credentials or a valid entrance ticket.” Hiroto took the box-shaped device from his bag and showed it to the turnstiles. He recalled that he’d agreed to give the 18 Ticket to Nepshamai after it expired. It was hard to tell what to do about that now. “18 Ticket detected. Valid time remaining is three days and sixteen hours. Thank you for visiting Yokohama Station.” The two turnstiles bowed obsequiously, then returned to the others and resumed swinging their arms at nothing while chanting, “Unauthorized Suika detected. Expelling target from station.” Slipping past them, Hiroto decided they must have busted their sensors. In the opposite corner of the area stood a series of huge statues of ancient, armored warriors holding fans. They were all identical. There was an escalator behind them, which Hiroto used to head for a higher level. So many people. So many things. By Hiroto’s standards, Yokosuka and Kamakura were already big cities, but Kofu was on a different scale entirely. On either side of the main corridor were apparel stores, teahouses, fresh food shops, optical stores, restaurants, and bookstores. Hiroto kept an eye out for a place that handled electronic appliances, careful not to bump shoulders with the people passing by. NAKAYAMA BIOELECTRONICS, said a sign. PURCHASE YOUR CHILD’S SUIKA HERE BEFORE THEY TURN SIX! WE OFFER THE CHEAPEST MIDDLEMAN FEES IN KOFU FOR SUIKA REGISTRATION. IF YOU FIND BETTER, LET US KNOW. A middle-aged man who seemed to be the manager called out to Hiroto. “Welcome. Are you looking for something?” “Is this a store where you can get a Suika?” “Yes, we provide Suika intermediation. Do you need to make your child’s Suika deposit? We can handle the entire process for 570,000 milliyen.” “No, I don’t need that now,” replied Hiroto. “I was wondering if a child didn’t get a Suika before age six and got dumped outside, is there a way they could get a Suika as an adult?” “That’s hard to say. For one thing, abandoned children rarely reach adulthood, and you’d need the deposit for the Suika registration, plus you can’t pay without a Suika, of course. It only works if you have someone to sponsor you and pay the fee,” the man explained. “But there’s no technical problem with it?” Hiroto pressed. “None as far as I’m aware, but we’ve never had such a case here,” prefaced the man, before looking around and lowering his voice. Then, he started to relate a story he’d heard, one of those urban legends that got traded around between bioelectronics vendors. Long ago, there was once a rich man. One day, he found a nine-year-old girl who’d been abandoned outside of the station near Kofu. She’d been tossed out for not paying the Suika deposit—because her parents were poor or for some other family reason—and survived by foraging for food. The man pitied her, so he called a vendor to perform the Suika process on the girl and then took her in as a foster child. Everyone praised him for his benevolence. But the sad truth was that the man was a pedophile and used the situation to take advantage of the girl. She obeyed him at first, but one day, while he was sleeping, she attempted to escape from his home. His residence was on the top floor of Kofu at the time and was very spacious. The pedophile woke up, realized that the girl had fled, and chased after her. She threw a flower vase she found in the hallway at him, injuring him. Then, she made her escape far away from his home. Unfortunately, the automated turnstiles found her and deauthorized her Suika for committing violence. For the second time, she was ejected from the station. This time, it was in a place with no food. Eventually, she succumbed to starvation. “And in the end, fearing that the situation would get out of hand, the man claimed she’d died of sickness,” the bioelectronics vendor concluded. “That’s a terrible story.” “Yes. The poor child had lived outside for so long. She probably didn’t understand Inside laws. Poor thing.” “…I have another question. Are there any tools that can recharge this?” Hiroto asked, pulling Nepshamai’s electronic sign from his bag. The sign’s talkative red screen had been silent since the railway tunnel. “Hmm. Never seen a device like this before. Who makes it?” the middle-aged man inquired. Hiroto didn’t answer. If he said it was from JR North Japan, it risked causing trouble. “Well, whenever folks have something they can’t identify, I send them along to a place called the Trinket Shop on the 117th floor. They’ll take any weird thing there. You can get to the higher levels from that elevator.” The man pointed. “All right.” “But the proprietor’s a bit of a kook, so the hours tend to be unpredictable.” Hiroto thanked the man and left. Most likely, he wasn’t going to get anywhere without reviving Nepshamai’s battery. It was pathetic to think that it had been Nepshamai who’d had the idea to go to Kofu, found the superconductive railway that would take them there, and operated the train car—and now that Hiroto was on his own, he was utterly helpless. There was no conveyor direct to the 117th floor. Elevators in the metropolis areas of the station grew through the structure about thirty tiers at a time when there was an appropriate vertical space for it. The station seemed to intentionally add elevators to levels with lots of human activity, but it was rarely anywhere convenient because the available space was so limited. To get from Nakayama Bioelectronics on the 59th floor to the 117th, Hiroto had to take many separate trips. He found lots of automated turnstiles on every tier he visited, but all of them were seated and immobile. Two brothers, around eight years old, were climbing all over one. Their mother exclaimed, “Come, we need to hurry before the store closes!” When the younger of the two said, “Shyumai Punch! Shyumai Punch!” and began battering the turnstile’s rear, the mother went pale. “Don’t punch the station equipment!” she shouted, drawing the attention of the crowd around them. A station staffer rushed over and asked, “What’s the matter?” The mother explained the situation, and he kindly assured, “Don’t worry, the turnstiles won’t react to a child hitting them. But you there, you should listen to your parent!” The mother and her children bowed to the staffer gratefully. The automated turnstile’s face display stayed dark the entire time. Security Inside was upheld by cameras and other devices connected to Suikanet; the turnstiles were just the enforcers. They were often found stationed where they might be called upon at a moment’s notice if trouble started. In perpetually crowded places like Kofu, they could be seen sitting against the walls to charge. The uniformed station staffers were busy hustling around instead. As he walked around Kofu, Hiroto took notice of something odd. There were slight differences between the staffers and the turnstiles here from those he’d witnessed in Yokosuka and Kamakura. The station employees were, according to Nepshamai, more like unofficial citizen groups formed by humans from the various Inside regions, so it made sense that their uniforms changed. But why weren’t the turnstiles all the same? The Trinket Shop on the 117th floor had a sign in a dated font and was very ostentatious about its old-fashioned Japanese taste. Everything seemed to have come out of a samurai movie. If not for another sign that read, WE DEAL IN ALL MANNER OF ELECTRONICS, you wouldn’t have known they handled appliances at all. “Welcome,” said a woman sitting in the middle of the shop when she saw Hiroto enter. She was wearing an apron over an athletic jacket. Her long hair was tied in the back, and she wore silver-rimmed glasses. She looked a little bit older than Hiroto. “I want to recharge this. Do you have a tool for that?” Hiroto asked, holding out Nepshamai’s screen. She took a quick look at the back of the device and said, “Wait, this is AAT compatible. Where did you dig up something like this? They haven’t used that standard in Yokohama Station in ages.” Hiroto decided that she was already going to be much more helpful than the last place. “It’s hard to explain, but I really need to get it running again. If you can’t help me, I need to take it somewhere else.” “If I can’t help you, no one in Kofu will. Just sit down there and wait a minute,” the woman instructed, pointing to a chair in front of the store counter. She went into a back room and began rummaging through an old, traditional cabinet. It was stuffed full of cables of all kinds that leaped out from the pressure when she opened the drawers. It seemed like a lot of work to get each closed again after it had been opened. “AAT compatible machines were used a lot before the war because they were so efficient, but it’s a lost technology now since Yokohama Station never generated the means of production. I hear they do make them in Hokkaido, but you still need an adaptor to link up to Suikanet, so there are problems…” The woman babbled on while she scrounged through the cables. It seemed more like she was talking to herself than to him. It reminded Hiroto of someone. He murmured in reply at appropriate times as he glanced around the shop. A plethora of baffling mechanical gadgets and parts were on display. Yosuke would’ve probably enjoyed examining all of them. There was a photo frame on a writing desk in the corner of the room. Contained within wasn’t a digital image but a physical print. There were about ten young men and women in the picture. The woman from the shop was in the middle. She looked roughly ten years younger, still a minor, and there was a familiar face next to her. “Hang on,” Hiroto said. The shopkeeper stopped rummaging and looked at him. “Do you know this man?” He picked up the picture and pointed at the face he recognized. “…You know Higashiyama?” the woman asked. “Yeah. He showed up in my hometown about a year ago. He was part of a group called the Dodger Alliance but had to flee from the automated turnstiles. I’m here because I’m looking for the leader of his group.” “Looking for the leader,” the woman repeated. She tossed a hunk of cables onto the tatami covering the floor and returned to the counter. “Yeah. The leader must be hiding from the turnstiles, and I’m supposed to help him.” “Where is your town?” “East of here. A place called Ninety-Nine Steps, on the Miura Peninsula.” The woman tapped the keyboard of a laptop. It pulled up a diagram of Yokohama Station. The Miura Peninsula was illuminated in red, but there was no hit for the name “Ninety-Nine Steps.” It was a name invented by cape dwellers, after all. “Here,” Hiroto said, pointing at the screen. It was right where the Suikanet map had a label that read, YOKOHAMA STATION EXIT 1415. “So Higashiyama asked you to come all this way, just to search for me,” the woman stated, taking the photograph out of the frame. On the back was a handwritten message: Original members of the Dodger Alliance. Hiroto stared at the words. “That’s…what I was supposed to do,” he managed. He then looked out the entrance of the store. Just a few dozen meters away, the turnstiles sat silent and menacing. “But it seems like that’s not the situation. I heard you were on the run from the turnstiles.” “Yes, I am. Very much so,” the woman admitted. “I’ve got lots of questions for you, but some introductions are in order. I’m Keiha Nijo. I was the leader of the Dodger Alliance. Nice to meet you,” she said, giving Hiroto a quick nod of the head. “Hiroto Mishima,” answered Hiroto, taken aback. He had plenty of questions of his own. ICoCar System (Coordinate Obfuscation System) Human beings with a Suika implant were continuously transmitting their locational data to Suikanet. If a user’s Suika credentials were revoked, automated turnstiles would descend upon those coordinates to apprehend the violator. Lateral and vertical positioning were sent separately. (This was said to be a holdover from the era when GPS satellites were still functional.) The former leader of the Dodger Alliance, Keiha Nijo, had developed a method of falsifying vertical coordinates. Her home and business in Kofu, the Trinket Shop, transmitted it from its home server. So despite being present on the 117th floor of Kofu, she was believed by Suikanet to be located on the very bottom floor, and Suikanet had dispatched automated turnstiles to that location. Keiha was currently hard at work devising a method to falsify lateral values too. The combination of these two misdirections was to be known as the ICoCar (Imitation of Coordinates in Cartesian Space) System. “So basically, I can’t leave Kofu,” Keiha explained. If she tried to move to a different city, it would inevitably lead through places with a very shallow vertical structure. Because she could only falsify vertical coordinates contained within the physical limits of Yokohama Station, once it was flat enough, the automated turnstiles would find her. “I’m sorry to say that Higashiyama died half a year ago. People who come out from Inside often die pretty quickly. The professor said it has something to do with something called an immune system,” Hiroto explained. “…Oh.” Keiha looked at the photo on the desk. It featured the twelve original members of the Dodger Alliance. At its largest, the collective had numbered close to one hundred. But, as often happened with cybergroups, there were members whose faces Keiha had never seen. Keiha explained that the alliance had been quite active until four years ago. Most of their activities involved hacking Suikanet. Suikanet was the network built into Yokohama Station. It had originally served as a means of communication between the various station facilities and features, such as the automated turnstiles. Roughly a century ago, people had deciphered the APIs and learned to use them for information transmission, but the network’s actual internal structuring was still largely a mystery. “So what’d you do to get exiled from Yokohama Station?” Hiroto asked. “Higashiyama told me he was exiled for rebellious behavior.” “He said that?” “Yeah. He told me the alliance aimed to seize command of Suikanet’s infrastructure, control the automated turnstiles, and free humanity from the rule of Yokohama Station. He said the Dodger Alliance bucks the station’s authority and follows a great leader’s direction. I remember him bragging that the Dodger Alliance was the only group that had successfully gained control of Suikanet. But because too much interference by human hands is seen as an act of destruction against the station, the Suika credentials of all the alliance members were revoked, and the turnstiles went after them. Something like that,” Hiroto recalled. Higashiyama had proudly repeated this story so many times while he was alive that Hiroto could recite it all from memory. He didn’t really understand what it meant. It was just a string of fascinating words to him; a connection to an unknown world. Keiha looked uncomfortable. “I regret what I did to him and the others. It all started as a personal project for me. But I dragged them into something dangerous,” she admitted. The Dodger Alliance had many ways of gaining access to Suikanet and evaded the turnstiles much longer than the average violator, but ultimately, they were all caught and dumped outside of the station somewhere. By the time Keiha managed to set up her ICoCar System in Kofu and settle in, she’d lost track of her compatriots. “I don’t know what all of that means, but it sounds rough,” Hiroto said. “Higashiyama really looked up to you. He kept saying, ‘Our leader is incredible, our leader’s a true genius.’ ” It wasn’t necessarily the best memory for Hiroto, since those statements were usually accompanied by a healthy dose of ridicule for the people of Ninety-Nine Steps in comparison. “This is pretty amazing, though,” he continued. “There’s a guy in my town who can connect to Suikanet and collect some data, but I had no idea it was possible to falsify your location and control the turnstiles and so on.” “Well, I’m more amazed by this thing you brought in. As well as your little friend,” Keiha replied, setting down Nepshamai’s electronic sign. She was more interested in the canceler. “Something that can erase the structural genetic field? I find it…hard to believe.” “You should try using it.” “Well, there’s a place where I’d appreciate having an open hole. Can you help with that?” “Sure. Though I can’t waste it too much, since I’m worried about the battery.” The two walked out of the store. Keiha turned off the lights and put up a sign with the words CLOSED TODAY. “It’s a business in name only. I just put up the electronics store sign so I can tinker all day and not attract suspicion,” Keiha clarified. “The turnstiles get suspicious?” asked Hiroto. “Them? No, they’re not smart enough for that. I mean the staffers. If they want to, they have the tools to check to see that my Suika was revoked. That would be a big problem for me, obviously—especially since the staffers claim to be carrying out the will of Yokohama Station.” They got on an elevator and rode down to the 91st floor. It was denser than the other levels of Kofu. Past the small residential sector near the elevator, there was an enormous fruit factory. Grape and peach planters stretched as far as the eye could see under red lights. Some workers walked around here and there among the rows. “An Inside farm?” Hiroto murmured. The people of Ninety-Nine Steps lived off the scraps dumped out of the station. They’d heard that there were food production facilities in Yokohama Station, but this was much larger than he’d imagined. Pillars obscured sizable portions of the facility, but it was clearly much larger than Ninety-Nine Steps itself. Keiha was not heading for the farm, however. She made her way quickly along the moving walkway. There were partitioned rooms here and there that seemed to be lodgings for the workers. Hiroto wondered if living in an utterly red environment like this made your eyes go bad. Eventually, they reached the end of the factory, which was marked with a glass barrier wall, on the other side of which was another factory space. There were many conveyor belts in there, each ferrying metal arm parts. “What’s that? Are they making machines?” “Yes. This is an automated turnstile production plant.” Beyond the conveyor belts, other turnstiles were silently assembling various parts. “It’s all automated,” Keiha remarked. “There are no humans here. The entire factory is surrounded by glass infused with the structural genetic field. The only openings are the gates for sending in raw materials and sending out the finished product.” Living outside of the station, Hiroto was very familiar with the automated turnstiles that safeguarded the boundary between the outside world and Inside, but he’d never seen where they were made. “Who built this factory, then?” Hiroto pressed. “There was probably an automated factory here before Yokohama Station. It was absorbed into the genetic field and replicated here and there. I’ve seen identical facilities in several other cities,” answered Keiha. “Did the automated turnstiles exist before Yokohama Station?” “That’s the natural assumption. Yokohama Station can’t create complex structures on its own.” They walked alongside the glass wall at the edge of the factory. After a while, they were out of the fruit production facility, and the only things to be seen through the glass were the turnstile factory on one side and empty space on the other. “Can you make a hole here? As inconspicuous as possible,” Keiha requested. “Sure thing,” Hiroto responded. Hiroto shone the structural genetic field canceler along the glass barrier in a shape big enough for a person to get through. Then, he pushed on the wall with his foot, and the spot where the genetic field had vanished cracked cleanly through. Another kick broke the glass, and the circle shattered. According to the readout, Hiroto had put the power at the minimum level, so it didn’t have any effect on the battery’s charge. He felt like he was getting the hang of the strange little tool. “…Amazing. It really did erase the genetic field,” Keiha observed. She slipped right through the hole and into the factory without much concern for the shards of glass. “There’s so much stuff in here I wanted. Will you help me carry it?” Keiha removed a number of electric bits from a box labeled “surplus parts” and tossed them into a container. Then, she inserted cables into every port she could see and began copying data. The automated turnstiles working the assembly line continued their silent labor, unaware that the most wanted person in Yokohama Station, the one-time leader of a secret criminal society, was openly pilfering in their presence. “Amazing. It’s got the source for the communications client! I’ve only ever pulled the binary off of scrapped chips,” Keiha marveled, staring at the dark screen of her monitor. “No firmware for the turnstiles, though. That seems to have vanished after the war.” Her excitement was so palpable that Hiroto felt it was more likely she’d be spotted by a passerby instead. “If we blew up this factory with a bomb or something, would that fulfill your goals? It would stop production of the turnstiles so you could be free, right?” Hiroto proposed. Keiha stuffed more objects into the container. “As long as the structural genetic field exists, it will regrow everything. Even if you used that canceler to erase the entire factory, it would just grow another one somewhere else,” she replied. Hiroto suddenly realized he’d asked a stupid question. Once she was finished copying the data, Keiha pulled the cable out of the port. “There’s no point to destructive sabotage. We’re not Winter War-era guerilla fighters.” After an hour, Keiha had finally finished everything she’d wanted to do. She’d filled four containers with parts, and she’d slapped stickers on top of them that read, TRINKET SHOP, OFFERING REPAIRS FOR ELECTRONICS OF ALL KINDS. IN BUSINESS ON FLOOR 117, SUIKANET ADDRESS XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. OPERATING HOURS FLUCTUATE. She gave three of the containers to Hiroto to carry. The electronic parts were much heavier than clothes, but the containers were designed to be stacked, making them much more comfortable to lug around than the cardboard boxes. The two made their way back to the 117th floor with the containers. Some station staffers eyed them with piercing looks, but Keiha gave them a polite, “Thank you for your service.” “Well, I guess you believe my story now,” Hiroto said. “Yes. I believe that you got here with an 18 Ticket from Higashiyama, and I believe your story about the electronic screen from JR North Japan…not that I had any reason to doubt you.” Once she’d copied her newly acquired data to her computer, Keiha got back to the business of repairing Nepshamai. “I’m sorry to say that this one’s going to be tricky,” she admitted. “It’s that bad?” Hiroto asked. “The interface uses the AAT standard, but I’ve never seen hardware like what’s on the inside. If I power it the wrong way, I might fry all the data.” “I’m pretty sure he said something about it being similar to human brains. That it was designed by someone named Yukie,” explained Hiroto. That meant the data contained in the device was Shamai’s personality itself. Were it to vanish, it would mean the death of the android. That’s how Hiroto thought of it, anyway. He wasn’t certain how Shamai would’ve defined it. “You said that was the person who invented the canceler, too,” Keiha recalled. “Yeah. Must be an incredible engineer,” Hiroto responded. “Listen…I’ve been collecting and deciphering information from Suikanet for over a decade, and I’ve seen a fair number of secret correspondences from JR North Japan. Even ten years ago, though, their level of tech was barely any different than Kyushu’s. All of a sudden, I stopped finding their messages. Or to be precise, they were all impossible to crack and buried inside other data.” A few years ago, there’d been rumors that the Seikan Tunnel defense line had been breached and that JR North Japan had fallen into ruin. Maybe the lack of messages from up there had played a role in helping to spread that lie. “I haven’t been able to follow the state of Hokkaido’s tech since then,” Keiha continued. “But there’s no way a single excellent engineer could make such a difference in just a few years and over such a wide array. Even with androids indistinguishable from humans and devices that destroy the structural genetic field, it seems unlikely. This is real life, not some comic book.” “So what’s your point?” Hiroto asked. “The first thing that comes to mind is that ‘Yukie’ isn’t the name of a single person but shorthand for a large group of inventors, or perhaps their representative. But even then, it doesn’t make sense that such a large coalition would appear so suddenly. A more practical answer is that ‘Yukie’ didn’t develop all of that tech herself but simply happened upon something that already existed.” “Who would do that?” “Your little electronic screen friend controlled a superconductive railway to get you here, despite never having seen one before, right? That doesn’t make sense. There’s no information on superconductive railways in Suikanet anywhere. If I haven’t been able to find it, it doesn’t exist.” Hiroto decided he didn’t have much choice but to take her word for that. “And historically speaking, there were no superconductive railways in Hokkaido, so if there’s still info there, I can only envision one possibility,” declared Keiha definitively. “The JR Integrated Intelligence. This ‘Yukie’ has successfully unlocked the integrated intelligence’s language.” “Long, long ago,” Keiha began, as though launching into a fairy tale. The JR Integrated Intelligence was a massive artificial intelligence that once existed to run Japan’s railway network. From research into the human brain, it was known that a sufficiently complicated system could form the basis of an intelligent mind. This particular project created a massive, sentient structure using the railway network that crossed the entire nation. Amid the Winter War, various businesses competed to develop the best possible tactical AIs. Many models were proposed, from massive central-server types in Tokyo, to distributed types spread across a network of ordinary consumer computers. Still, to some extent, all were susceptible to bombardment from space or viral cyberattacks. The most significant benefit of the proposed JR Integrated Intelligence was its resilience. Unless an enemy physically controlled a majority of the plethora of network nodes (stations) littered across the islands of Japan, it could still function in a trustworthy manner. Losing that much of the homeland would’ve meant forfeiting the war anyway. Surrendering the capital had already been a real possibility. Faced with nothing to lose, the Japanese government approved the plan. The integrated intelligence functioned as the nation’s practical force through the chaotic years after the war. “But at some point, one of the nodes making up the integrated intelligence—Yokohama Station—began replicating itself, and we don’t know why. The integrated intelligence was absorbed along with the entire railway network, and it ceased functioning as an artificial intelligence. All that was left was Yokohama Station, spanning all of Honshu, and the AI’s nodes, devoid of their original function,” Keiha explained. “So you’re saying JR North Japan dug up one of those old stations and extracted a bunch of data about old technology, like the canceler and androids like Shamai?” Hiroto inquired. “Digging it up wouldn’t be that hard, as long as you excavated the site of a former station. That’s what the people in Kyushu are doing. But that’s the easy part,” Keiha replied. The JR Integrated Intelligence collected data from the Internet, a network that still covered the globe at that point. It utilized that information within its own system to develop unique thought patterns and language structure. However, since Yokohama Station’s expansion shut down the JR Integrated Intelligence’s sentient functions, no one had been able to decipher that language. It was abandoned binary data. Once, someone had had the preposterous idea of preserving a genius scientist’s brain so that later generations could unlock its secrets. The notion of deciphering the integrated intelligence’s code was just as unlikely to succeed as something that hare-brained. “This ‘Yukie’ must have done it, though, right?” Hiroto reasoned. “Yes. It’s not realistic, but that’s the most likely answer for all of this,” Keiha said. The people of Hiroto’s time knew very little about the history of Honshu before Yokohama Station took over. The inhabitants of that bygone era knew much more about technology than those today, but countries had descended into war and fallen to ruin. Perhaps digging up the relics of that age would provide a means to fight back against Yokohama Station. Hiroto let Keiha finish her story, although at least half of it was beyond his comprehension. “So basically, it’ll be too hard to bring Shamai back if he’s composed of really advanced stuff,” he concluded. “I’ll do everything I can think of, but don’t get your hopes up. This isn’t too far off from raising the dead,” Keiha replied. Hiroto nodded. He thought back on his experiences. Human beings inevitably died, of course, and machines eventually broke down. Something about Nepshamai felt a little too clean, though. If he’d been built to resemble the human brain, shouldn’t he have exhibited more human-like traits, like fear and panic? Did building an android mean eliminating all of those emotions? While he pondered this, Keiha removed a small plastic case from the drawer of a writing desk. It contained a pair of old eyeglasses with large lenses. She took off her own silver-framed glasses, put the others on, and then headed for a machine in the corner of the room. It was a large black case about the size of an automated turnstile, with the top covered by a clear plastic lid. From a container filled with pilfered goods from the turnstile factory, she removed a thin needle wrapped in a polymer bag, lifted the plastic lid, and very, very carefully attached the needle to a mechanical arm before closing the top again. Then, she removed the cover from Nepshamai’s scrolling sign. There was a little cube with sides measuring about three centimeters each inside. This had to be the “main memory storage” Nepshamai had mentioned. Keiha removed the cube with a pair of large tweezers and deposited it into the black case. She hit a few switches, and with a high-pitched beep, the metallic arm under the lid began to move. Once her task was done, Keiha removed the old glasses, put them back in their case, and then exhaled. She picked the silver-framed glasses off the desk and placed them back on her nose. The process lasted about five minutes. Hiroto watched in absolute stillness, as though he were witnessing some austere religious ritual. “So what were you doing?” he asked after a moment. “I’m scanning the internal structure. Then, I’ll check the Suikanet database for similar structures. If there are any comparable devices Inside, I might have some options.” “Will it take time?” “Depends on the scanning speed. The highest resolution this machine can manage takes about seven or eight hours,” Keiha said. Hiroto was happy to know there was still hope, but it was also a reminder that he was ultimately dependent on other people with superior knowledge and expertise than himself. “If all of this does work out, what will you do next?” Keiha inquired. “Hmmm.” Hiroto mulled that one over. “This all started with Higashiyama asking me to rescue you, so I guess I’ve fulfilled the duty that got me this 18 Ticket. I suppose I’ll spend the next three days however I like.” “Do you have somewhere to go?” “Actually, yes. I could use your help looking it up. I tried to find it on a kiosk earlier, and it did exist, but I couldn’t determine a route.” “All right. What’s it called?” Keiha asked, opening an application on her laptop called Suikamap: A Detailed Station Guide. “Exit 42.” Keiha paused and looked at Hiroto. “…Say that again?” “Exit 42.” She thought the name over for a bit. She then turned the open laptop toward Hiroto and pushed it forward. “See the magnifying glass icon in the upper left? Put what you’re searching for in there, and you can see for yourself.” “Huh? Uh, all right.” Hiroto brought his hands up to start typing on the keyboard, but all the keys were black, with no letters written on them. “What’s wrong with this keyboard?” he asked. “They wore off. I’ve been using it for over a decade.” “Where’s the E?” “Second row, fourth from the left.” “And the X?” “Second row from the bottom, third from the left.” “I?” “You what?” “No, the letter I.” “Second row, and it’s the…ninth from the left.” “Oops. I hit U.” “Backspace is the farthest on the right of the top row.” With Keiha’s instruction, Hiroto input the letters one at a time, wondering why she was having him go through all this trouble. After a full minute, he had entered “Exit 42,” and the icon turned to a rotating hourglass for a few moments. “1 hit found.” It pulled up a red dot labeled Exit 42 and a map of the surrounding area. This one had more information than the image Hiroto had seen at the kiosk. It was very cluttered. Thick gray lines surrounded the red dot. According to the map scale, the containment area was about a kilometer wide. “What’s this gray stuff?” “The station walls. This is saying that it’s surrounded by walls containing the structural genetic field. There are no doors, so you can’t reach it. No wonder you couldn’t find any routes there. That tool changes things, though.” Keiha glanced at the structural genetic field canceler. “Where in Yokohama Station is this? Is it far from here?” “Press control-minus to zoom out.” “What key is that?” “…See the zoom-out icon in the upper right? Press that. The icon with the magnifying glass and the minus sign.” Hiroto did as instructed, and the gray box got smaller and smaller, revealing more of the surrounding terrain. The red dot appeared to be in the mountains farther west of Kofu, just about in the center of Honshu. It was as if the point was trying to be as far from the coast as possible. Cities in the vicinity had names like Matsumoto, Hida, and Gero. “Looks like a straight shot would be one hundred kilometers. That would be difficult over flat land, but there are several mountain ranges along the way, so it’s no problem.” “It’s better to have big elevation ranges?” “Well, of course. That’s where Yokohama Station grows elevators. Give it to me,” insisted Keiha. She took the laptop back and entered a command with incredible finger speed. Windows zipped into being on the screen and vanished. The map displayed a blue dotted line. It seemed to be the shortest possible route. “First, you’ll cross the Southern Japanese Alps, then descend to Ina. From there, you’ll climb Mt. Koma and go down to Kiso. It’s a straight ascent from that point on. By escalator speed alone, that just fits into three days, but if you’re walking the steps, there should be plenty of time. You’ve got lots of stamina, right?” “Compared to Insiders, yeah,” said Hiroto, with a note of pride. The laptop displayed the shortest route using escalators and an expected travel time. Hiroto didn’t recognize the names of any of the places on the map. The idea of venturing so far inland left him oddly excited. “It’ll still be difficult, though. I might be able to reach Exit 42 in three days, but I won’t have time to get back out of the station,” he explained. “What do you mean?” “My 18 Ticket’s only got three and a half days left.” “18 Ticket?” “It’s like a limited-time Suika,” Hiroto said, pulling the 18 Ticket out of his bag. The screen showed that his valid time remaining was three days and thirteen hours. “So when that time is up, the automated turnstiles come after you?” “Yeah. Supposedly.” After a long moment’s thought, Keiha stared at the charted route again. “Hang on. I’ll come up with something for that.” “What do you mean?” “I can tweak it a little bit. As you can see, my Suika was revoked four years ago, but I’m still here. As long as I have a handle on your precise location, I can cover for you until you escape,” Keiha replied, displaying a map of all of Japan on the laptop. She entered prompt commands while muttering to herself. A green stripe appeared on the screen with the label SUIKANET NODE CAPTURE STATUS. It stretched from Kofu to the far west of Honshu. At the western end, there was an icon with the word KYOTO above it. Here and there, Hiroto saw little status updates that read things like, “Turnstile Dummy OK,” and “Direct Communication OK.” Hiroto wondered why Keiha was going to such lengths for a mission that wasn’t even hers. “I try to keep this map as current as possible, but escalator placements are always changing. The major routing shouldn’t need altering, but you’ll want to use your best judgment on the finer points,” she warned. “Uh, sure,” answered Hiroto, though he had no idea what kind of judgment he was expected to utilize. “So that electronic screen of yours said to go to this place, then?” Keiha asked, looking at the black case. The arm inside was moving very slowly, scanning Nepshamai. “No, that was an old man from my hometown. He used to live Inside. He was a professor at some lab or something. It was hard to understand his language, so I don’t know much about it,” Hiroto responded. Keiha looked suspicious. “You couldn’t understand him?” “Yeah. It was like he was speaking Japanese but not really. At first, I thought that was how people talked Inside, but folks around here sound basically the same as people from my hometown, so I think he must have come from farther away.” “That can’t be right. Suikanet has mostly unified language everywhere in the station. I was born in a city far to the west of here, but the only difference was a few idiosyncrasies in vocabulary. It seems unlikely that anyone would speak so differently that you couldn’t understand them.” “Then why?” Keiha was quiet for a moment before saying, “I don’t know.” After all the time they’d spent together, this was probably the first time she’d admitted something like that. Hiroto could tell as much by her consternated expression. “What did this professor say you’d find there?” “I’m not sure. ‘The answer to everything’ or something. He was usually vague like that. Plus, he was going senile,” Hiroto said. “And what did your little screen friend say about this place?” “Nothing. I asked him, but he didn’t know anything about it.” “Meaning he didn’t know personally? Or JR North Japan as a whole doesn’t know?” “I’m not sure.” “We’ve got some time to kill. Do you want to go out for something to eat?” “Out of the station?” Keiha chuckled at that one. “I guess that’s what ‘out’ means to you, huh?” “Well, yeah. Have you never been outside the station?” “Nope.” Hiroto’s head was starting to hurt. It made sense that those like him, without a Suika, couldn’t get Inside, but the Inside people could venture out all they wanted. The only ones who ever came to the cape were exiles, though. Ninety-Nine Steps hardly ever saw a single person with a legitimate Suika. It was less that the Inside folk avoided the outside and more that they were explicitly shunning those who lived beyond the station. There was a reasonably large beach a short distance from Ninety-Nine Steps. While nobody lived there because it was ill-suited for that, a few people would venture out from Inside during the summer to swim. “Hey, do the Inside…er, the citizens around here live their entire lives without seeing the sun?” “No. You can do that by going up to the higher levels. Lots of folks go outside to see the sunrise on the first day of the year. Some people like sunbathing. I don’t, because it hurts my skin.” Keiha put up the CLOSED TODAY sign again. The pair descended on an elevator to the 109th floor. There was an old placard there reading, RESTAURANT DISTRICT. Numerous flyers and notices for specific restaurants were pasted over it. Humans had created restaurants inside the station structure with boards and fabric for decoration. Makeshift businesses lined both sides of the corridor, advertising their wares. DIRECT FROM THE 132ND FLOOR—KOSHU BEEF STEAK. THE ORIGINAL CUCUMBER BOWL. INSIDE’S SECOND-BEST SOFT SERVE. TRADITIONAL MINOBU-STYLE TOFU SKIN. It was after eight o’clock at night, but many people were still wandering the corridor. Automated turnstiles were sitting in place here and there, making it very difficult to avoid them entirely. Each restaurant was about the same size, but one glance through their windows was enough to tell Hiroto whether one was a fancy restaurant or an everyday eatery. Apparently, it came down to the customers’ clothes. In some restaurants, men and women in suits sat quietly with their forks. In others, young laborers raced with their chopsticks to finish eating and get back to fulfilling their work quotas. Hiroto spotted a few people wearing the same outfits as the farmers on the 91st floor. “Anything you feel like?” Keiha inquired. “Well, I don’t even have a Suika, so I’ve never properly bought anything Inside. I’ll leave that up to you.” “I’m amazed you got this far.” They went into a dingy place built for laborers. Keiha’s athletic jacket and Hiroto’s old clothes didn’t stand out in a place like this. There were bottles lined up on the counter with the words Katsunuma Wine on them. “Katsunuma?” “It was once a big place for grape production. They say it was the farm on the 91st floor before Yokohama Station absorbed it. Now it’s just a brand name,” Keiha explained. Nepshamai had commented on the same thing; Yokohama Station would incorporate the names of places it covered as it expanded. “Don’t things like this trickle out to where you live?” she asked. “It’s usually discarded stuff. We don’t get a lot of nonperishable alcohol or food. Now and then, we’ll get a few cases of stuff, though. We leave them at the elder’s house and use them sparingly for celebrations.” “Maybe the station generated a new fermentation center somewhere. When the shipping routes are slower to generate, the excess product inevitably gets discarded.” Hiroto looked at the menu, but he was more curious about the bottles. “If you want to drink wine, you can order it. There’s no concern about money.” “No concern?” “None at all. However, I wouldn’t overdo it if you’re not used to alcohol. It’ll make tomorrow much harder,” Keiha cautioned. Unable to overcome his curiosity, Hiroto decided to order a glass. A server poured an old, well-used glass about half-full. “Well, here’s to today,” Keiha declared. She clinked her cup of green tea with Hiroto’s glass. “Was today something worth celebrating for you?” Hiroto inquired. “Yes. I’ve had hardly a single piece of good news in the three years since coming to Kofu, but today, I’ve had three, all at once.” “Three?” “The first was learning what happened to Higashiyama. I’m happy to know that his end was relatively peaceful, at least. I’m sorry you had to come all this way to ‘save’ me, but I was glad to hear about that. Some of us suffered much worse fates.” Hiroto took a swallow of the wine. It had much more alcohol in it than the bottled beer that showed up at the cape, and it made his brain feel like it was floating a bit. “The second was learning that there’s a way to counteract the structural genetic field.” “That’s good news to you?” “Of course.” Hiroto didn’t understand. Keiha herself had stated that destructive sabotage was a meaningless act. So either she was happy about getting to sneak into the factory and steal mechanical parts or just curious about the possibilities as an engineer. “I don’t understand the way smart people think,” Hiroto admitted. Drinking alcohol was making it much easier for him to say whatever passed through his mind. “I’m glad that me coming here was good news for you, though.” “I’m not especially smart,” Keiha conceded. “I’m just more selfish than anyone else, and therefore, I need more methods to do what I want.” Hiroto took another mouthful of wine. “So why did you come here, then?” pressed Keiha. “Did something happen back home that made you feel an obligation to Higashiyama?” “No, I didn’t owe him anything. In fact, I basically took care of him. If I’m being honest, he was kind of a patronizing jerk.” “And if I’m being honest, I kind of agree with you,” chuckled Keiha. “But I suppose I just wanted to feel like I had a mission or a calling of some kind,” Hiroto decided. Normally, he would never have talked about his feelings like this. Katsunuma wine was pretty powerful stuff. “At the cape where I live, we have pretty much everything we need to survive, just from trash dumped out of the station. There’s not a lot of work to go around. Everyone just finds their own way to pass the time. Once in a while, someone gets kicked out of the Inside, like Higashiyama or that professor I mentioned. It was hard to understand them at times, but it always felt like they had their own compass, their own way of navigating things. So when they asked me to do something, it didn’t matter what it was. I just felt like going Inside would help me find the version of myself I wanted to be. Whether that was by helping you or going to this Exit 42 place.” Hiroto didn’t feel like he was explaining himself very well, but Keiha listened intently, nonetheless. “Let me be clear, though,” she cut in, her expression severe. “While I said there’s a way to get you outside of the station, it’s not a hundred percent reliable. The place is far from here, and you never know what kind of accidents might occur along the way.” Hiroto nodded to show he understood. If it were that easy, Keiha wouldn’t have lost all of her companions after their Suikas were revoked. “Whether you go there or not depends on how much trust you have in your professor’s claim and my tech. If you want to get out of the station safely, I recommend heading south from here, passing Mt. Fuji, and exiting into Suruga Bay. Three days is more than enough time to get there. Following the coast east along Izu Peninsula will take you back home.” The waiter brought bowls to the table. It was a kind of food Hiroto had never seen before—thick udon noodles in pumpkin soup. They ate without talking. The woman at the register asked if they were paying separately, and Keiha said, “I’m getting both.” She put her hand on a small box next to the register. The screen on the device displayed the words Withdrawing 2,415 milliyen. Back at her shop on the 117th floor, the clock on the pillar said it was ten o’clock. Hiroto always got sleepy when he drank, and his eyelids felt very heavy now. “What time do you wake up?” Keiha inquired. “Normally…I go to sleep about now and wake up at six.” “Then you should use the room in the back. I normally sleep from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon.” She opened the sliding door. There were a number of machines humming away with their fans in the back room. In their midst was a single set of blankets, neatly folded into thirds. “Thanks. I had to sleep on the hard bed of a holding cell last night, and then that guy woke me up,” Hiroto recounted, pointing to Nepshamai’s screen. “I’ll do whatever I can with this one while you’re asleep. But don’t expect too much.” “All right.” “Get your rest and decide whether you’re going or not tomorrow,” Keiha instructed, and she shut the sliding door. It was clear Keiha wanted Hiroto to go to Exit 42. He didn’t know what was there, but Keiha did know something about it. She just didn’t want to say anything. That’s why she let him choose how to proceed. Even with the lights off, the flickering bulbs and buzzing fans of the machines continued. Plus, there were the sounds of Keiha working in the room next door. Thankfully, between the interrupted sleep of the previous night and all of the walking, Hiroto fell unconscious rather quickly. As Hiroto’s mind slipped into dreams, he wondered if the professor was actually part of that JR what’s-it-called intelligence. Maybe that was why he’d spoken so oddly. Was it even possible for an AI to go senile, though?