“I didn’t know they had these for the employees in the holding area,” Okuma said before laughing from behind the bars.
The young man from the conduct division proudly read off the document calling for Okuma’s apprehension, and they smoothly took him to the holding area on campus. After they described the state of Instructor Yokoi’s murder, his smoking-room loquaciousness evaporated entirely, and he maintained total silence on the trip.
When he was left in the holding area with only Miika for company, he finally began to talk again while seated on the tatami.
“This is quite comfortable. The bedding’s clean enough, and I don’t have to work. If there’s any problem, it’s that I can’t smoke here.”
“Ah, I see,” Miika replied.
Miika had seen the cells for regular civilians. They were structured the same way as the employee cells, but each contained more people and was much busier. Nearly all of the imprisoned citizens were those who’d committed theft out of desperation, so there was a perpetual whiff of misery in there. Compared to that environment, Okuma’s room had seen much less use and was cleaner.
“I figured I’d get imprisoned sooner or later for slacking off at work. I didn’t expect it’d be on suspicion of murder. I’ve been working here for four years, but that’s one I didn’t see coming.”
“You didn’t see it coming? You weren’t arguing your case, so I assumed you were giving up and admitting your guilt.”
“Well, I don’t want to say anything that the conduct division might use against me. And I have no idea why I’m a suspect in the first place.”
“Because we have information that you improperly deleted your record of entering the dormitory.”
“Huh?”
“So you didn’t delete the record?”
“That’s weird. There shouldn’t have been any record of the log being edited,” Okuma said suspiciously. “And I’m the manager of that database, so I should know.”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is why you were erasing your tracks,” Miika replied accusingly.
Okuma went quiet for a bit, then clapped his hands. “Oh! There was a witness. That’s where I screwed up. That’s my fault. Well, damn. It’s true that I tweaked the entry history, but I didn’t kill that guy. I can tell you that much.”
“Then what did you do?” Miika pressed. She already had a guess, however. The dormitory was a five-story building, and the top floor was reserved for women.
“I was meeting with Mr. Togo.”
“Togo?”
“The round fella I was with in the smoking room. He’s a coworker in the intelligence division. He lives in the dorm.”
“What were you doing?”
“Playing poker.”
“Poker?”
“It’s a card game. You try to make the best hand possible out of five cards.”
“I know what poker is. Why did you need to delete your entry history for that? Leisure time outside of work hours isn’t prohibited. As long as you weren’t gambling.”
“Oh, you’re a goodie two-shoes, huh?” Okuma chuckled. “Anyway, you can ask Mr. Togo, and he’ll tell you. I was playing poker in his room from ten to midnight.”
“The estimated time of the murder was around two o’clock.”
“I went back after midnight. That’s the thing about us knowledge specialists: We have to sleep at a good hour.”
“Do you have a record of when you left?”
“Uh…there’s a backup, yes, but the fact that I’m the one who manages it doesn’t make it admissible evidence, does it?” Okuma said. “By that logic, though, everyone living in the dormitory and everyone else who entered or left is a suspect, too. There are a hundred possible killers. Why am I the only one in here?”
“Obviously, it’s because you were illicitly erasing the building’s entry history.”
“Well, you got me there,” he admitted, and he bit his nails. Okuma seemed to be unable to relax without something in his mouth. It was a common phenomenon among heavy smokers.
“Okay, I understand why I’m in here. But why are you, uh, Shimabara? You’re with the chemistry team.”
“I’m not entirely sure, either. For some reason, the chemistry team is conducting an investigation of the murder.”
“Ah. So our distribution of duties is breaking down. That’s a common feature in companies experiencing institutional fatigue,” Okuma remarked, as though it wasn’t his problem.
“Yes, the kind of company where a member of the intelligence division deletes information improperly,” Miika shot back.
Evidently delighted at the way she talked back to him, Okuma stated, “Let me be clear. Our job isn’t to falsify company data or ponder the root of the name Kumamoto in our smoking room.”
It was an excuse without a shred of believability, she thought. “What sort of work do you do, then?”
“Data excavation on the JR Integrated Intelligence.”
“…?”
“It’s an artificial intelligence that used all of Japan’s networks back during the war. They say that was the start of Yokohama Station’s expansion. But because of the station, it’s not functioning anymore.”
“I already know that.” It was something Miika had learned during history lessons at school.
“We’re extracting information from the station units left in Kyushu to see what we might be able to use.”
“That actually sounds like a very worthwhile job,” said Miika, surprised. That would mean the materials Foreman Sugimoto gave her to read from before the war had been recovered by the intelligence division.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot. I do do my job.”
“Yet you admitted that you slack off at work.”
“Well, I don’t. I am actively engaged in making it more logically sound.”
Internally, Miika grappled with the idea that adults like Okuma actually existed. She cleared her throat. “So if there’s leftover data from the JR Integrated Intelligence, then is it possible you might find a way of counteracting the station?”
“If only,” Okuma answered with a sigh. “There are multiple layers to the information. Basically, the things humans taught the intelligence and things it thought based on those teachings. The former is just digital data, so all we need to do is convert it to a modern format. But the latter is impossible to figure out. Even though it has a physical structure, it does not take any form that is intelligible to a human being.”