Chapter 4

4. Or All the Seas with Station Toshiru Kubo spent all his time thinking about how to steal weapons. In the interest of conserving energy, JR Fukuoka’s employee dorm turned out the lights at ten o’clock. In the dark, Toshiru set his device’s screen brightness to the minimum and examined the layout of the company’s armory and the military division’s personnel travel routes, devising a plan to steal a gun. As always, he concluded that it was virtually impossible. This was simply one of his daily habits after work hours. Crossing over to the island of Shikoku from Kyushu was going to require a means of defending himself. Shikoku was not the kind of place you could survive without a good weapon. Unfortunately, all Toshiru had was the ordinary pistol afforded to all Kyushu residents for self-defense. In the armory, however, there were the latest electric pump guns, the N700 line. The company had started developing them shortly after Toshiru had joined, and he’d taken part in their production. In his twenty-four years of life, that’d been the only worthwhile event. Setting aside the question of whether owning an electric pump gun was necessary, he really wanted one. Electric pump guns were weapons manufactured in Kyushu, but they were utterly useless at stopping Yokohama Station’s advance from Honshu. It was an anti-personnel weapon, and anything above a certain level of power was under the sole control of JR Fukuoka, Kyushu’s sovereign force. The company produced the armaments, distributed them to its military division, and tightly managed every last one. Stealing one out of the armory at the Hakata headquarters was impossible. You’d never get out of the building. The warehouse at the Kumamoto branch was a more practical choice. The trouble was, it would be tough to steal from a place where you were unfamiliar with the layout and then flee to Shikoku while avoiding detection. “Dammit, this is a pain in the ass. I just wish humanity would die out,” Toshiru muttered. Closing his eyes, he focused on listening. Sounds from a movie were pumping into his earphones. It was an old sci-fi film extracted from the JR Integrated Intelligence’s input layer. In it, a group of astronauts was on an interplanetary mission when full-scale nuclear war broke out, exterminating humanity on Earth. Driven into a panic, the crew killed one another until only one remained to carry on the mission. It ended when the star Proxima Centauri, four light-years from Earth, came into view. The story was so devastatingly depressing that the movie had been a commercial failure, but Toshiru had enjoyed it many times over. “Captain Lewis’s heart has stopped beating. By order of succession, you are now in command. Your orders, please, Captain Taylor,” requested the spaceship’s AI to the protagonist. The dubbed Japanese was ancient, but because Toshiru had watched it with modern subtitles so often, he could tell what they were saying just based on the sound now. “What’s the matter, Captain?” “It’s nothing, HAL. Just realizing that I’ve got more oxygen to work with now,” he said, expressionless. Behind him was the body of a fellow crewmate. The next shot in the movie was of a red dwarf star. The ship began to slow from sub-light speed to transition to planetary orbit. Then, there was a ping. Toshiru returned to consciousness. The noise wasn’t supposed to happen. He opened his eyes and saw it hadn’t come from the movie but an e-mail notification. When he spotted the name of the sender, a vein twitched on his temple. It read, “JR Fukuoka, Intelligence 1st Division, Okuma.” > Toshiru Kubo, Engineering 4th Division > It’s been awhile. > I have an idea of what you’re thinking, and I wanted to offer you advice as your senior. > Come to the defense line base next Sunday. > Bring a sponge cake to facilitate discussion. > Okuma Okuma was just about the last person Toshiru wanted paying attention to him. Perhaps this unpleasant revelation would offer a way forward, however. Watching movies from the High Civilization era made it clear that they envisioned any downfall as happening swiftly, whether from nuclear war, meteor strike, or zombie outbreak. It could be that was just a consequence of having to tell a story in two hours, though. Actual downfall, in fact, was far more stubborn, nasty, and pernicious. After hundreds of years, the Winter War had slowly burned out civilization. All that remained was a human-made structure growing out of control, and the humans across the Straits had been trying desperately to keep it at bay for decades. The Straits were a narrow stretch of water separating the main island of Honshu from Kyushu. It represented the westmost point of Yokohama Station and the line of defense for JR Fukuoka as it attempted to keep the station at bay. This was the only place that could happen; if the station breached the line, it would cover the rest of Kyushu, except for the smaller islands off the coast. JR Fukuoka’s frontline base on the Kyushu side was covered in a special structural-genetic-field-resistant polymer that gave off a constant chemical smell. Toshiru, carrying a boxed sponge cake, showed his employee badge at the security gate, then made his way to the Intelligence First Division office where he would find Okuma. The thirty-year-old was sitting in an office chair with his feet up on a table. He had a bird-shaped pastry in one hand and a tablet in the other. He seemed to be reading a book on it. “Yo! How’s it been? You look like you have no interest in life. Same old, I take it?” Okuma greeted, setting the tablet down. He caught sight of the sponge cake box in the bag Toshiru was holding. “Very smart of you. I’ve been stuck on the front line so long that I haven’t had sponge cake in three whole weeks. I was about to launch a DoS attack on the company network.” Okuma pushed forward a box of steamed buns and asked, “Want one? Eight was too many for me.” “No. I don’t like sweets,” Toshiru replied. He spoke without inflection, like a robot. Okuma took a sip from the teacup on the table and glanced at the other man. “Toshiru Kubo. I understand that you desire to steal one of our company’s weapons,” he said. Toshiru didn’t react. He stared out the window. “The intelligence division manages the company network that you use, of course. You might have encoded your actual communication, but just looking at the location of the other end tells us quite a lot,” Okuma continued. Again, there was no reaction. It was as if the very concept of acknowledging things was illogical to Toshiru. “Of course, you’re free to think what you like. We have freedom of thought and freedom of speech. However, we are also burdened by an obligation to reveal information. It’s going to get reported within the company eventually, so I’ll give you a tip. A dozen N700s were stolen from the armory the other day.” Toshiru’s hand twitched. “They were found immediately, of course. The culprits were a trio of soldiers from the military division. They were in charge of armory storage and conspired to make off with the weapons, but as you know, it is all but impossible to steal a gun and escape from our armory. Kawakami from the military division is questioning them right now. It won’t take long.” “How did you find them?” Toshiru asked. Involving the people in charge of weapons management seemed like the most practical means of achieving his goal. He didn’t have the charisma or negotiation skill to pull it off, though, so he’d never taken that idea seriously. “The three of them were going to exchange their guns with traders from Yokohama Station to get themselves Suika credentials and flee Inside. Four weapons per person, the deal was. For some reason, though, their communication with Suikanet was easily discovered by our fine intelligence division,” Okuma said. The first thing that Toshiru felt was irritation that those guns had been valued so cheaply. How could it cost four of them just to gain access to that freakish building? “Now, Toshiru, I’ve got a little quiz for you. Say you wanted to get some armaments that not even the armory managers could steal. What would be the best way?” Toshiru gave no reply. “Here’s my answer. When stolen goods have been recovered and returned to their rightful place, vigilance drops, and people relax. Now, most people wouldn’t be able to seize upon such an opportunity, but let’s say we were talking about someone who daydreamed about stealing guns and escape routes. I think he’d suddenly have a much higher chance of success,” Okuma speculated, staring Toshiru in the eyes. Toshiru didn’t meet the gaze. Okuma’s phone trilled. “Oops, Kawakami’s coming back. I’ve got to handle this. You just keep your mouth shut,” he warned. Then he grinned. “Sorry. That was unnecessary. You never open your mouth, period.” A general from the military division faced three soldiers in a formal, seated position. A dozen long guns were arranged on the floor between them—N700 electric pump guns, manufactured by JR Fukuoka. Such rifles had begun circulating during the Winter War, when ammunition could no longer reliably be produced. The ability to turn any material into a lethal projectile was highly practical. Many regarded them as the most used weapon in human history after stones. The N700 line was the latest iteration, powerful enough at maximum output to sever a human body in two—but still meaningless against Yokohama Station and its structural genetic field. They were weapons for maintaining peace in Kyushu. “Now, according to the intelligence division,” began Kawakami, the military division general. “The three of you accessed Suikanet with your personal devices to contact traders located in Shimonoseki on Honshu. In exchange for four electric pump guns per person, you asked for Suika registration so you could move into Yokohama Station. An inventory of the armory showed that the expected number of weapons was missing.” Kawakami picked one of the rifles off the floor. “The guns with the corresponding IDs were found under your beds. If this is all true, you must be punished for the unauthorized removal of armaments and attempted escape. Do you have anything to say for yourselves?” The general tapped the shoulders of the soldiers with the end of the gun. The three stared at each other. Two of them were looking reproachfully at the third. They were the kind of expressions that said, “This was your idea. You said it would be easy. You dragged us into this.” The third member resigned himself and admitted, “I-I’ll explain. W-we think that we should stop this fruitless war and just w-welcome Yokohama Station onto Kyushu.” “So you abandon your responsibility as citizens?” “We’ve fought this war for fifty years, and not only have we not defeated Yokohama Station, but it’s gotten stronger. The recent bombing attack sacrificed two of our comrades. Perhaps entering Yokohama Station is the peace that Kyushu seeks.” “That’s not for us to decide. And do not speak of lofty ideals for the people of Kyushu when you are fleeing to save your own skin,” Kawakami glared. The soldiers just stared at the floor and trembled. Kawakami opened the door to the intelligence division’s office, where Okuma was sitting cross-legged. Next to him was a young employee, someone unfamiliar. He was staring out the window, oblivious to the fact that a senior officer from the military division had just entered the room. ENGINEERING 4TH DIVISION, TOSHIRU KUBO was written on the man’s badge. “That was good work. All three of them admitted their guilt,” Kawakami said to Okuma. “Excellent. I’m glad to hear it,” Okuma replied, taking a bite of sponge cake. The ace of the intelligence division did not care in the least that Kawakami was far his superior in both age and rank. “Well, I hate to ask this after reporting them to you, but would you mind taking it easy on them? They joined the company the same year as me. Oh, would you like one?” Okuma inquired, offering the box of steamed buns, but Kawakami held up a hand. It was a wonder Okuma had such an appetite at this chemical plant of a base. One of the man’s biggest mysteries was how he acquired so many boxed sweets at the front line. “Punishments will be meted out fairly, according to company policies. I do not have any sway over the matter,” stated Kawakami. “Listen. You can’t blame young folks like us for being fascinated with Yokohama Station. It was a youthful passion! Please don’t be too hard on them.” Okuma was here at the strait from the intelligence division because he was responsible for deciphering Suikanet data. His job was to collect and analyze information that traveled through Yokohama Station so it could be used for tactical purposes. Very little of it was actually useful in that sense, though. Data found on Suikanet was all personal to the people in Yokohama Station—news about a delicious new restaurant in Shimonoseki that served cheap fugu and things of that nature. There was no way to get data about Yokohama Station itself through that structural genetic field yet. To maintain the illusion that he was producing results, Okuma had found and reported his coworkers when they’d plotted to escape. Inside the station across the narrow strait from Kyushu were many traders who would offer outsiders a Suika for a price. These merchants couldn’t accept payment in milliyen, the currency of Inside, because there was no way to get it in Kyushu. That left bartering, and unlike Inside, where all necessities were generated left and right, it was challenging to acquire 500,000 milliyen worth of goods produced in Kyushu. One of the few exceptions was the electric pump gun made by JR Fukuoka. As such, there were constant issues with soldiers seeking to escape Inside. Some of them joined JR specifically as a gateway to that opportunity. JR Fukuoka’s main purpose was to protect the people of Kyushu from Yokohama Station’s expansion, so this was a grave situation. If they failed to keep it under control, they might lose the people’s support and collapse. Shikoku’s JR lost its way after the Great Seto Bridge was breached. Ultimately, it ceased to be after a series of coups over fifty years ago. The island had been in a state of anarchy ever since. This was why Okuma’s ability to accurately find deserters gave him a lot of sway inside the company. “Why do you suppose those electric pump guns are so valuable to the Yokohama Station people, anyway? Violence is supposed to be outlawed in there.” “There are probably people who need weapons like that for peace of mind, even if they’re not supposed to use them. You know, like the nuclear weapons of the past.” That seems illogical, Toshiru thought. It was a mockery of the process of engineering. At the very least, it was a mindset he didn’t want to bring into contact with his own life. Kawakami glanced at the screen on the table. “What sort of writing is that? All those old-fashioned kanji and mathematical formulas.” “A physics textbook from before the war. They excavated the images from the input data layer.” “The folks from Kumamoto, you mean? Anything in there seem useful?” “Well, it’s a pain to parse the Japanese, but it looks like it’s explaining the laws of propagation for the quantum field that’s the underlying principle of the structural genetic field. It’s all human-written documents, though, so I’m sure the engineering division already knows this stuff,” replied Okuma, glancing at Toshiru. “Any hints on a possible way to counteract the genetic field?” asked Kawakami. “If we don’t tackle that, we’re just perpetually stuck in this showdown with the concrete monstrosity.” “Good question. Maybe if we can get some data from the output layer and the hidden layer. Without being able to decipher the description language, though, there’s nothing doing.” “No progress on that, huh?” “Our excellent decryption team is working around the clock, but basically, the task is about as easy as acquiring an alien’s brain soaked in formaldehyde and attempting to figure out its sexual proclivities.” “Still, it’s one of the few sources of hope we have. I pray you’re able to figure it out.” “If you really feel that way, maybe you could negotiate with the board of directors to increase our budget. Why do they spend all their money on firepower? Are they that stupid? You don’t win a battle of material resources against Yokohama Station. We have to pay for our own tea, for goodness’ sake.” “Watch your mouth. You might be good at your job, but that only gets you so far,” Kawakami cautioned. The base’s sirens abruptly sprang to life. “The station is launching an emission! Coordinates of four-seven, three-three, one-two-eight. All personnel, report to location at once.” Kawakami grabbed the uniform resting on the chair and headed for the door. “That’s me. I’ll be back.” “Sure thing. Have fun with your glorious undertaking,” drawled Okuma. Throughout the entirety of the conversation, Toshiru Kubo had remained still at the window, as if to convey that he hadn’t an iota of interest in the people talking. The battle at the Straits, the far west end of Yokohama Station, had been in a stalemate for over half a century. The body of water had originally been less than a kilometer across. Due to Yokohama Station’s relentless attempts to send over connecting walkways, however, a long process of coastal reshaping had expanded that gap over threefold. JR Fukuoka, the controlling body of Kyushu and its surrounding islands, literally pared its own fat to stay healthy. The first generation of the defensive battle had involved concentrated firepower, bombarding the walkways Yokohama Station sent probing over the water like a plant growing vines. At its fastest, Yokohama Station still needed half a day to extend a platform to the far bank. It was easily enough time to focus firepower on any attempts and knock them down. Unfortunately, after a few decades, Yokohama Station changed tactics. It would complete a connecting hallway of an adequate length within its interior, then attempt to fire it over. That method took less than thirty minutes. It’d forced JR Fukuoka to rapidly expand the strait and give its cannons more mobility. Their current system was equipped to shoot down any station emission within ten minutes, no matter where it was coming from. The problem was that the discharge speed of the walkways was steadily increasing. In the last few years, the end of the connecting walkways had started exploding and sending shards of concrete out in an attempt to infect the far bank with the structural genetic field. The development of this kamikaze tactic had significant consequences for JR Fukuoka. Previously, they’d always been the attacker inflicting damage on the station; now they were suffering casualties for the first time. This deserter incident was just one of the symptoms of the company’s lowered morale. It was hard to believe that some human or computerized intelligence within the station was coming up with these strategies. The engineering division thought the structural genetic field was simply mutating at random and that some algorithm was preserving whatever most benefited the station’s growth. “This should give us another twenty years to fight,” bragged the manager of the science division after they’d developed the structural-genetic-field-resistant polymer. Covering the coastline with that material drastically reduced the chance of infection by the structural genetic field. Once they scaled up to a mass production level, the plan was to ship some of it to Shikoku, too. It was a once-in-a-century tactical advantage. That was time beyond human understanding, an amount on a mythical scale. Kawakami chuckled as he mused that JR Fukuoka’s struggles might someday be regarded as myth. After Kawakami left the room, only Okuma and Toshiru remained. As cannons along the strait boomed in the distance, Okuma took his teacup to a sink to rinse it out. After a little while, there was a high-pitched bweeen sound from outside. Yokohama Station’s walkway attack had begun. “The level of station activity differs depending on the day of the week. Did you know that?” “No.” “It’s only especially raucous on Sundays and Mondays. Why do you suppose that is?” Toshiru said nothing. “It’s probably a remnant from the civilized age when it was used for public travel. Apparently, the information is contained within its structural genetic field. The interesting thing is that it’s Sunday and Monday, not Saturday and Sunday. After two hundred years of expansion, its circaseptan rhythm seems to have shifted a day.” Toshiru remained silent. It was less that he was uninterested in the topic than that he didn’t see the necessity of responding just to show he was listening. Okuma wasn’t bothered; he’d known since their training period that Toshiru was like that. Okuma placed the teacup upside down on the drying rack, then sat on his office chair again. Toshiru Kubo remained standing and gazed out the window. In the distance, the military division was sending up plumes of smoke. “Let’s talk hypotheticals,” Okuma started, leaning back in the chair. “If you were, theoretically, to exchange guns for a Suika, what would you do Inside?” “I’ve never wanted a Suika.” “Which is why it’s hypothetical.” “Hypothetically, if I had enough guns to trade for a Suika, I would take them to Shikoku instead,” Toshiru answered. Okuma made a ridiculous expression. It looked very intentional. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t taking a big sip of tea right then. I might have spit it out.” “Okuma,” Toshiru began to say, then paused and reconsidered. “Hypothetically, if someone caught deserters in the military division and aided the escape of an employee from the engineering division, what would they be trying to accomplish?” “That’s a good question,” said Okuma. “I would say that this hypothetical person wants to see a solution to the problem that keeps arising. Employees of JR Fukuoka, the protector of Kyushu, should not be fleeing into Yokohama Station. It strikes at our very authority. On the other hand, there’s a fascinating smaller problem of how someone sneaks past our heavy security to steal guns.” He picked up two of the precut slices of sponge cake. “You see, Toshiru, the secret to enjoying life is ample sugar and mental exercise. Matching the input and output amounts make for a healthy metabolism.” There was another high-pitched bweeen from outside. “Ugh, it’s so noisy,” grumbled Okuma, closing the curtains. The polymer shades were good at blocking both light and sound, and the room was suddenly quite dark. Toshiru remained as he was, still gazing out the window. “Sounds like the station’s started its kamikaze attack. I hate that sound. It doesn’t have any gunpowder in it, so how does it explode like that? I couldn’t begin to guess. Does the engineering division have any ideas?” “No. And I’m only in weapons development.” “Ah. Maybe I could find out if I was in there.” “Hypothetically speaking, Okuma, you might be able to get Inside just by presenting yourself.” “Yes, I hear that from Kawakami, too. ‘With your expertise, there will be jobs for you in there. Some Suika trader will take you in.’ Usually, he says stuff like that when he’s in a foul mood.” Okuma raised his head and sat up straight in an imposing manner. His eye level was ten centimeters higher than the top of Toshiru’s head. “But don’t you even joke about that,” he warned. “I am in a position of responsibility.” “Responsibility, huh?” repeated Toshiru skeptically. “Indeed. Less than one percent of Kyushu’s denizens could arrange to pay the cost of a Suika deposit, and it’s our company’s duty to prevent the station’s infection from reaching our island, for their sake. That’s why I’ve received a salary paid by their taxes for the last ten years. Do you understand what I’m saying, Toshiru Kubo?” “If Yokohama Station gets past us, then the Inside population grows as Kyushu’s shrinks. There are probably more people who stand to gain from that than the other way around.” “Ah, I see. An application of Bentham’s greatest happiness principle, then. Perhaps we should end our conversation here. It may prove ethically problematic,” Okuma stated. Toshiru turned back and glanced at him for just an instant—long enough to impart a sense of disdain. Toshiru’s eyes shone with a clear question, “Why doesn’t he understand something so obvious?” Okuma wanted to reply, “How much easier my life would be if I could oversimplify things the way you do,” but thought better of it. There would be no point. “I’m disappointed, Toshiru. I thought of you like a little brother.” “I think of you like an older brother, too.” “What does that mean?” “That blood relations are basically meaningless.” “Ah, yes.” Okuma leaned back in his chair again. Bweeen! The sound echoed once more. Evidently, today’s hallway emissions were especially fierce. Two days later, Toshiru Kubo was at the military harbor in Oita. There was an N700 electric pump gun in his hands. He was small enough that the gun seemed large by comparison. Its ID tag had already been scrubbed off. If you knew the internal workings, removing the tag without harming the weapon’s functionality was easy. Since Shikoku’s JR had collapsed, Fukuoka oversaw ships that would accept refugees fleeing from the anarchy and chaos there. Those vessels sailed in and out of Oita. It was a military port, so it was off-limits to civilians. Just on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding it, though, protest banners hung by the sides of bridges and roads. NO MORE REFUGEES! GO BACK TO SHIKOKU! SEE TO OUR OWN NEEDS FIRST! The signs exhorted the authorities in JR Fukuoka’s Hakata headquarters to prioritize the people of Kyushu rather than take in those displaced from Shikoku. Quality of life in Kyushu was several levels below what was enjoyed Inside, where physical necessities were always available. The main reason was the long, long battle over the strait. The need to materially support a war to beat back a station that could endlessly replicate itself was straining the lives of the islanders bit by bit. More than a few were upset about the idea of taking on more people from Shikoku on top of that. When the protesters saw Toshiru walk up in his military uniform, they glared at him or openly lamented his presence. Toshiru showed no interest in them. Instead, he spoke to the officer at the security gate. “I’m Toshiru Kubo. I was dispatched to answer the request for more personnel. I’ll be on the refugee ship leaving tomorrow. I’ve got my own weapon already.” Annoyed, the guard typed at his computer. “I don’t see any message to that effect.” “The station’s started emitting again, so the command structure’s a little chaotic, I assume. Here’s the notice. And my badge.” Toshiru held up a sheet of paper. It was a poorly done fake made with a copier, but the guard just glanced at it before saying, “Ask the director for more details. He’s on the third floor,” and letting Toshiru through. He went there and repeated his story. The white-haired director puffed on a rolled cigarette, then had his secretary print up orders regarding the refugee ship leaving tomorrow. Just last month, there had been a conflict between the displaced Shikoku denizens and protesters, and several people had been hurt. The director welcomed as much protective manpower as possible, as long as it wasn’t suspicious. And Toshiru’s badge, at least, was genuine. Toshiru headed to the pier next. His intention was to get a look at the ship that would be leaving tomorrow. He found the dismantled pieces of the boat, tied to thick ropes and floating in the sea. It was like they were performing some bizarre kind of fishing. “What’s going on here?” he asked a passing engineer at the port. The tanned, middle-aged man looked at Toshiru and his gun and decided he was talking to someone from the military division of headquarters. “Scattering the genetic field. Ships that come from Shikoku have to spend three days soaking in seawater. It’s the regulation,” he explained politely. “Dunking them in seawater scatters it?” “Well, we know the field is weak in water with electrolytes in it. That’s the reason Yokohama Station can’t expand over the sea.” “Why break down the ship to pieces?” “To promote the scattering by increasing surface area. Apparently, the smaller the mass, the harder it is for the structural genetic field to maintain itself. I don’t know the details of exactly how it works.” “You tear it down after every trip? Isn’t that inefficient? The structural genetic field can’t possibly soak into it that much,” Toshiru said. According to JR Fukuoka intelligence, Yokohama Station’s structure had only proceeded as far as northern Kagawa after passing the Great Seto Bridge. Even if the genetic field was preceding it in spreading across Shikoku, surely it hadn’t penetrated as far as Uwajima on the west coast of the Ehime region. “We have to do it. The citizens won’t accept anything less. We’re building the boats to be modular, so reassembly only takes half a day now.” So it’s all a performance, thought Toshiru. They were doing technically unnecessary things just to satisfy some human pathology. What’s more, it went without saying that making the process of accepting refugees less efficient pleased the people of Kyushu. JR Fukuoka’s engineering division was researching the nature of the structural genetic field. It was the quantum state that carried the information of Yokohama Station’s structure and transmitted that to its solid state. It transferred exceptionally quickly over metal, which is why the station’s initial spread had happened along the railways. However, it could infect any uniformly solid material, like concrete or plastic. The larger the solid, the easier it was to maintain. For that reason, despite desperate requests from the Shikoku side for rescue, the process was only carried out by a handful of small boats, which had to be dismantled and rearranged in the military port each time. It was an extremely inefficient method of providing asylum. Accepting tiny amounts of people at a time proved a successful kind of pressure release for the unhappy people of Shikoku, though. If Kyushu completely refused to take any of them, the population as a whole would rush to invade. JR Fukuoka considered it a much better deal to accept small numbers at a time instead. The dismantled ship was put back together overnight while Toshiru slept in the port’s dorm, and it looked like a proper boat again in the morning. It struck him as being similar to the way the station structure naturally assembled itself. “The ship will be setting off for Uwajima momentarily. All crew report to your stations,” the PA system announced. Toshiru didn’t know if he had a proper station, so he just picked a spot to stand and waited there. Several soldiers glanced his way, but he ignored them. The port was perpetually understaffed, so last-minute additions were a regular fact of life. They arrived in Shikoku in about two hours, where a large crowd of refugees was waiting. It was still spring, and the nights were cold, but there were plenty of children and elderly people wearing nothing but short-sleeved shirts in the crowd. They must have fled from the armed gangs controlling much of the impoverished island to get to the western coast. While the refugees submitted to searches, Toshiru stood on guard with his gun out to ensure there was no trouble. It was the last job he would perform as an employee of JR Fukuoka. Many employees had attempted to cross the Straits and earn a Suika on their way Inside. No one would’ve expected an escapee to flee to Shikoku instead, though. In that sense, Toshiru’s getaway was quite easy. Just before the refugee ship took off for Kyushu again, Toshiru slipped away into the night. There was nothing but sea to the left. Shikoku’s rainy season ended ten days earlier than in the Kanto region to the east, and summer had arrived. Summer weather along the Seto Inland Sea was generally excellent. It was clear, but it was too far to the opposite bank to see Yokohama Station in the Chugoku region of Honshu. If any land was visible over the water, it was one of the little islands in the inland sea, which were uniformly green. Being unconnected to Honshu in any way, these islands were likely to remain little pockets of nature, even if Yokohama Station managed to cover all of Shikoku. Perhaps they’d come to serve as an escape for people without a Suika. Toshiru Kubo rode on a small electric scooter east along the coast of the inland sea. Two months had passed since he’d snuck onto Shikoku in the refugee ship. The upper limit the scooter’s speedometer was ninety kilometers per hour, but on a road with hardly any pavement, the best he could do was thirty. Any faster and the scooter’s body would twist like intestines, and it was less energy efficient. There was hardly a human-made object in sight. Occasionally, he came across a bit of rusted guardrail or a road sign that was virtually illegible—the only clues that this road had once been known as National Route 11, in a city called Shikokuchuo. The name meant “Central Shikoku City.” It must have been a bustling metropolis with a title like that, but there was no sign of its pre-Winter War prosperity. Toshiru was fortunate to have acquired this scooter in his first month in Shikoku. Otherwise, he was prepared to walk all the way across the island to Tokushima. Keeping the meter-long electric pump gun balanced on the scooter was difficult. Breaking it down to smaller parts was easy, but in a place where assailants could strike at any moment, you needed to have a combat-ready weapon at all times. In the end, Toshiru had laid the gun flat and tied it to the luggage carrier. At the very least, he could fire it that way, and the presence of the weapon would hopefully scare off potential trouble. It made the scooter’s profile too wide for some narrow areas, but such situations were rare. There was no oncoming traffic to worry about. The road here was on higher ground, offering a pleasant view of the clear sky and sea. No matter what happened on land, the sea and sky always had the same color. Toshiru continued along on the undulating Route 11 for a while, until the pressure of the wind hitting his face began to weaken considerably. The scooter was slowing down. “Ah, dammit. That’s it for today,” he muttered. The remaining battery gauge showed that it was almost dead. Two solar battery panels on the luggage carrier supplied the scooter with power. Age had significantly curbed their efficiency, however. They could provide a single day of riding power only after several days of charging, and it was worse in the rainy season. The sun was quickly setting, but the scooter’s control panel indicated that it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. Toshiru had acquired the vehicle nearly a month ago, and he’d never seen the readout show any time other than three o’clock. There was a simple wooden sign on the roadside that read, STORE HERE, so Toshiru turned the handlebars left. The lack of power had already taken out the directional display, but he’d never needed that in the first place. The “store” was a shanty built facing the Seto Inland Sea. A middle-aged man waited inside the dark, wooden building, which didn’t even seem like it could keep out the rain. “Welcome. No guns inside, eh?” he said. Toshiru turned the scooter such that his rifle was pointed away from the establishment. “You’re dressed like a JR person, eh? Hot in those long sleeves, eh?” Toshiru didn’t answer. He glanced at the products on sale. There were plastic boxes placed directly on the ground, with items like mixing implements, shoes, and tools lined up on top of them. There were no listed prices. In contrast to the shabbiness of the structure, many of the wares were new. Perhaps there was a factory making them nearby. “I want solar battery panels. As big and new as possible,” he stated. The man dug through a wooden box and pulled out a few that were roughly twenty centimeters to a side. Toshiru examined one of them; it was virtually untouched. He couldn’t believe he’d found these at this dingy old place. “Do you take JRY?” Toshiru inquired, pulling paper bills out of his pocket. JRY was a currency that’d spread after the fall of the Japanese government, and it used to be a shared tender across Kyushu and Shikoku. “Haven’t seen that in a while, eh? Sorry, but it’s just paper now, eh?” “Will you barter? I’ve got dried rations.” “I can pick up food that appears on the far bank now and then, eh? Not much worth to me, eh?” “Far bank?” “The spot where it washes up is a secret, eh?” the man replied, pointing at a boat right along the shore. He was taking it across the water to the other side and picking up stuff produced Inside. “Do battery panels show up on the far bank too?” “They do, eh? They don’t get the sun over there, eh? So everyone throws them out, eh?” Toshiru had to wonder why Yokohama Station would generate something like that, then. He’d heard that its structural genetic field replicated any matter it incorporated. Perhaps Honshu had been covered in solar battery panels during the Winter War. “Then what will you trade for?” “Got any antibiotics, eh?” “No.” “Mechanical parts, tools, eh?” “A few.” Toshiru lifted the scooter’s seat and removed a small collection of components he’d collected from abandoned and broken machines during his trip across Shikoku. The pieces themselves would still work, and he figured that, at the very least, he could use them as ammo for the electric pump gun. “I’ll give you four for the whole bunch, eh?” “Not the whole bunch. I only want two.” “Okay, eh?” Toshiru picked out half of the parts at random and handed them over. Then, he added the two panels to his scooter and connected the power feed to the batteries. Even as the sun sunk below the horizon, it started recharging the meter. Toshiru rode on slowly, conserving what little juice he had left and keeping the rear end of the scooter with the solar panels pointed toward the sunset. There was an old concrete structure a short ride off the road up ahead. The concrete wall was covered in vines, but there was an open space where part of a sign could be seen, reading “ION.” “Is this what I think it is?” Toshiru used the end of the gun to pull off the vines. To the left of the “ION” on the sign panel were the letters “STAT.” It was a station. There were more panels farther to the left, but they were too worn down to read anymore. The name of the station itself would remain a mystery. “A JR Integrated Intelligence unit, huh? So there are some left in Shikoku. So strange to see one with the building body intact,” he murmured. Toshiru was aware that traveling alone made him talk to himself more. He hadn’t realized it after so much time living in a four-man company room, but when he was alone, he could be quite a talker. He circled around the station on the scooter but couldn’t find anything that looked like tracks. In the hundred or so years it had been abandoned, everything metal must have been repurposed. He couldn’t even find a railroad tie. Without a functioning central government for decades, Shikoku’s infrastructure had no upkeep. The asphalt had all been torn loose, buried by dirt and covered with grass. The only man-made objects he saw were the occasional building and, every now and then, a gray telephone pole standing amid the trees. Ironically, this slowed the advance of Yokohama Station. Compared to uniform metal and asphalt surfaces, the station structure’s spread was much slower on natural ground. The Great Seto Bridge had been breached over a century ago, yet the station itself only covered part of Kagawa. According to JR Fukuoka’s intelligence, Yokohama Station had already formed a structure over the majority of the north bank of the Yoshino River. The Awaji Island route was being taken very slowly, because there had never been a railway there. The route across the Shimanami Expressway from Hiroshima was going even slower. Because Yokohama Station’s permeation of the Hiroshima area was relatively recent in its lifespan, it would be a long time before the station proceeded across the expressway’s islands to reach Imabari on the tip of Shikoku. Spiderwebs were strewn thick across the entrance to the building. No one had been inside in quite a long time. He searched every corner, but all of the electrical power systems had been removed. There wasn’t going to be any rapid charging of the scooter’s batteries. But that was no surprise. If such a system were still around and working, someone would be living here already. It was a bonus just to find a structure with walls and a roof here. He rolled the scooter inside and parked it. There was a one-liter metal bottle inside the seat pocket. He took a swig of the cloudy liquid inside. The catalytic cellulose-depolymerizing bottle would take any plant matter, whether grass or twigs and, with the addition of water and heat, break it down into glucose. It was developed during the war as an emergency food source while on missions. It was pungent and disgusting if you weren’t wholly starving, but Toshiru was uninterested in the flavor of food as a general concept. He thought of the sense of taste as a failure of evolution. Something was written on the glass that partitioned the rooms inside, but it was done in an older style and had been worn down to the point of illegibility. It seemed likely to be “ticket counter” or “lobby.” Toshiru went into the ticket counter area. Rubble was strewn about inside, the ceiling material falling loose, but at least he wouldn’t get woken up in the middle of the night by rain here. Satisfied, Toshiru pulled a folding mat off the scooter, kicked some of the debris out of the way, and laid it out once the floor was flat enough that he could go to sleep. He awoke to the sound of rustling. Someone was wading through the deep grass that surrounded the building. It wasn’t just one person, more like four or five. Toshiru sat up, trying to be as quiet as possible, and approached the ticket counter. The men had come into the station building and were tinkering with the scooter, which was sitting next to the bench in the lobby. They were trying to start the motor. Toshiru fired the gun over the counter. A needle sped through a hand touching the scooter. “Aaagh!” the man yelped, and his arm jerked upward on reflex. Toshiru had found the needle on the shore. It’d probably been used to fish. It had no lethal capability. “Don’t touch the scooter. It’s valuable,” Toshiru stated. The men crowded around the scooter looked in his direction. “How many? Four. I wonder if I have enough ammo,” he muttered as he loaded a pachinko ball. This wasn’t the Sakura long gun he’d stolen from JR Fukuoka but the smaller Mizuho pistol that was his personal property. The meter-long N700 series weapons were inconvenient to use in cramped spaces, which is why Toshiru had made sure to keep the short-barreled armament. The pistol made two unimpressive popping sounds, and a pair of pachinko balls struck two men on the arm. They grunted, and the metal pipes they were carrying fell to the floor. Electric pump guns could turn any metal into a bullet, but if you wanted accuracy, then spherical objects were best. Air resistance would cause a screw, for example, to follow unpredictable trajectories. This made obtuse ammunition particularly unreliable with more compact weapons. “I’m aiming for your arms so you can still run away; I suggest you do so. Your dead bodies are only going to get in my way,” Toshiru threatened. It was the middle of the night, and only a bit of moonlight coming from the platform’s direction lit the scene. The four men whispered to each other in low voices, then scampered out of the station building. Toshiru picked up one of the pipes they’d dropped. One of the two new solar battery panels he’d just attached to the scooter had been pried off. He’d screwed them down, but they’d dug it out with a knife or some other edge, leaving just a jagged bit of metal. What a waste, he thought. Toshiru rose at dawn and drove the scooter back to the store he’d visited yesterday, despite the lack of juice. The shanty along the coastline had been ransacked. There wasn’t a single item left—only the storekeeper on the ground, beaten and cold. “Dang. He’s dead,” Toshiru murmured. The attackers had taken all of the goods and even torn the man’s clothes off his body. It had to have been the group from last night. Perhaps they’d followed the tracks of Toshiru’s scooter. “I should have traded for four. That was a mistake.” Toshiru leaned against the wall of the shack, eating dried rations and watching the morning sun. Did JR Fukuoka’s intelligence division know about the integrated intelligence unit here? Idly, Toshiru mused that Okuma would probably be delighted if he were to report that bit of information. “Yokohama Station’s spread across the other side of the river, so you can charge up all you want over there,” said the old woman of the village. “Can you use Yokohama Station’s energy without a Suika?” “There are charging stations here and there, and more pop up all the time. But the places where the most power and food are, you’ll find scary people in control.” “That’s not a problem,” replied Toshiru, glancing at the weapon resting across his scooter. After several days of travel from the JR Integrated Intelligence unit, he’d reached a small village on the Yoshino River’s south bank. They’d built a wall of trees atop a tall hill, and several men with electric pump guns watched the gate. It was an impressive amount of security. But the armaments were quite old in comparison to Toshiru’s state-of-the-art model. They were heavy, weaker, and less accurate. His request to use the village’s electricity was soundly rejected. They had a hydroelectric generator in the river, but it was barely enough to keep the village’s lights on. They didn’t have a single watt to spare for some unknown wanderer. The village was guaranteed to end up buried under Yokohama Station in the next five or ten years as it expanded south. Out of the hundreds of locals, not a single one of them had any chance at acquiring a Suika. If any of them did, they wouldn’t be here in this dangerous, unstable place; they would’ve crossed the river for the security of Yokohama Station long ago. Since their fate was so short-lived, Toshiru wondered why they needed such extreme protection for the village at all. The solar battery panel was keeping his scooter going, but it would soon reach its end. He needed a proper charging facility to boost it back up to full. If he could get his backup power topped off, he could stay on the move and only stop at the permanent charging stations on the military map. That would put him in a much more secure position. “Is there a bridge I can use to traverse the river?” “Not a single one that will carry your vehicle over. There’s just a few hanging rope bridges.” “That doesn’t help me,” he said. Toshiru considered getting the scooter on a boat to row over, but finding a suitable craft seemed unrealistic. He’d seen a number of ferries on the way here, but they were all tiny, not capable of holding more than a handful of people. “Any power stations that aren’t Inside?” “There is one, but you don’t want to go there,” the old woman advised, scowling. “Why not?” “Ghosts,” she murmured, her head tilting downward. “Actually, I’d like to see that.” “You like ghosts?” “I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. Maybe I’ll like them more than people,” Toshiru replied, and the old woman reluctantly told him the location. The place was about twelve kilometers south. The Shikoku mountains rose south of the Yoshino River for a while, but eventually, you’d happen upon a little, abandoned power station. If local superstition was to be believed, it was haunted by the ghost of a girl. She and her family had died during the Winter War. She had no legs but would confuse anyone entering the station for her parents, and she’d come crawling on her hands and elbows. The Winter War ended two hundred years ago. That would be a very old ghost, indeed. Toshiru imagined it being as ancient as Sugawara no Michizane, the spirit that’d haunted that shrine at Dazaifu in Fukuoka. Toshiru rode the scooter up into the mountains, following the directions the old woman had given him. The screeching of the cicadas rattled his ears as he climbed the hill, and the trees blocked the sunlight, sending his battery into overdrive, but at last, he reached a sign with POWER STATION crudely written on it in white paint. He wondered who was putting up these wooden signs. The building was a container-style electric well. It was the kind that a truck drove to a spot with geothermal energy and unloaded. Once the metal rods were stuck into the ground, it would produce electricity. Smaller, locally sourced generators like this had become standard after the bigger power stations were destroyed in the Winter War. Even in Kyushu, aside from JR’s large matter furnace, every village had one or two of these portable hydroelectric or geothermal generators. Toshiru opened the heavy metal door of the container, hoping to get the chance to recharge his scooter. “Anyone in here?” It was dark inside. There was a light on the ceiling, but it wasn’t on. Toshiru could see the machine’s light and hear the sound of it working, so he knew there was power. Perhaps someone had turned off that overhead light for a reason. He sensed a shape moving in the back of the container. It was too small to be human. The head was only as tall as the back of a chair. There was no bottom half. The top portion was resting on the ground, and a girl’s face was glaring right back at him. It kind of looked like a bust from a museum. “Ghosts are real? I thought they floated,” mused Toshiru, pointing his long gun, Sakura, at the strange thing. “Don’t move. Oh, but just for clarification, do guns work on you?” “They don’t,” answered the girl. For a ghost, her voice was relatively clear. It sounded like an average child’s voice, but something was off about it. Maybe it was the echo from the metal container. “How come?” “Shoot me and find out.” “Okay,” Toshiru accepted, simultaneously pointing Sakura, the electric pump gun, at her and pulling the trigger. The pomp sound filled the generator room, sending a coin at the girl at three hundred kilometers an hour. The girl caught it in her hand. The action produced a metallic noise. “Is this a one-yen coin? There’s still Japanese government money around?” she remarked, looking at her hand. There was a broken circle of aluminum in her palm. “I’ve never seen a ghost before, so I don’t know how it works. Can you stop bullets? I didn’t think spirits had that kind of power,” Toshiru said. He was getting used to the darkness and could see her face clearly now. She looked about six or seven years old. “And I’ve never seen anyone shoot me when I say, ‘shoot me and find out.’ ” It was at this point that Toshiru recognized the source of the strangeness he felt. Her voice and mouth weren’t quite in sync. It was like watching a ventriloquist dummy. “Uh-huh. Well, since I did it once, can I do it again?” Toshiru raised the output of the electric pump gun from low to medium. “Sure, but if you do, I’ll attack.” “I’d be curious to see how a ghost attacks.” Toshiru pulled the trigger again. An instant before the projectile was loosed, the girl smashed the floor violently with her arms. It made a tremendous racket and shook the entire container. The girl’s upper torso floated upward and landed on top of him. Then, she grabbed the barrel of the gun and used the grip to strike Toshiru on the jaw. “Ergh!” He grunted and fell backward out of the end of the container. The half-girl landed heavily on top of him, pinning his arms after she’d already inflicted a blow to his head. The weight was entirely beyond anything Toshiru would’ve imagined, and blood flecked his breath when he wheezed. He wanted to draw his pistol from his waist, but his arms were completely immobilized. They might as well have been nailed down with industrial restraints. Stuck though he was, he did get an up-close look at his assailant. Instead of guts and organs hanging from her torso, there were cables and electrical ports. “Wow. Ghosts these days are robots?” Toshiru observed. The taste of iron was thick in his mouth. The girl grimaced and said, “This is justified self-defense, but I’d rather not kill if I don’t need to. Please leave. And drop your weapons before you go.” “Why?” “Why what?” “Why don’t you want to kill? Is it the Three Laws of Robotics?” “There’s no rule about it. I can kill you if I want,” the girl asserted, putting more pressure in the grip on Toshiru’s arms. It increased in a direct, constant fashion, like a robotic vise tightening. It was not at all like the sensation of human strength. “Wait, wait, I give. I don’t want you to kill me, either. I only came here to recharge my scooter.” The girl noticed the electric scooter parked outside of the container for the first time. “If you only want to recharge it, why did you shoot me?” “I heard there was a ghost. So I shot you.” “I’m not a ghost.” “Yeah, I figured that out. I don’t shoot machines.” “What kind of decision process is that?” “You don’t know what’ll happen if you shoot a ghost. So I tried it out. When you shoot a machine, it breaks. That’s a waste,” Toshiru reasoned. “You’re weird.” At last, the girl released him. With one hand, she grabbed his rifle, and with the other, she hurled her body back inside the container by pushing off the ground. Toshiru felt his fingertips burning as the blood flowed through his arms again. “Why don’t you have legs? Were you designed that way? Why wouldn’t a higher-up have complained about that?” Toshiru inquired, once he had caught his breath again and sat up to face the girl. “I do have legs. Right here.” The automaton used her arms to climb up the container’s power generator and pulled down a pair of legs she’d hidden there. The bone structure was metal, with thick wires and plastic-looking parts stuck onto them. One of the legs was torn from the knee, as though having been ripped off with great force. “Ahh, I see. Your leg got damaged, so you hid in here for shelter.” The mechanical girl nodded. “There just happened to be a generator here. It was easier to get around without my legs after they stopped working, and it’s less of a power drain, too.” “Nice,” said Toshiru. He examined her closely. The way she’d dragged herself along the ground with her arms was anything but human, but when merely resting on the ground, she looked like any other girl. If anything was off, she didn’t quite have the natural sway of a biological human. “Can you show me your legs? I’m curious how they work.” “Do you know much about machinery?” “According to my résumé, I do.” Toshiru produced his company badge. The words JR FUKUOKA, ENGINEERING 4TH DIVISION, TOSHIRU KUBO, were emblazoned on it. “You’re from JR Fukuoka?” “Formerly. Left the company. I’m Toshiru Kubo,” he introduced. It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d told someone his own name since arriving on Shikoku. “I’m Haikunterke.” “That’s a strange name. Where did you come from?” The girl said nothing. “Hokkaido, huh? That’s a long way away,” Toshiru continued, undaunted. “How did you—?” “It’s written right here,” Toshiru observed, pointing at the girl’s legs. JR North Japan’s fox logo was stamped near the joint, very small. “So the people up north are making weapons like this? I suppose you’d be strong against people, but I can’t imagine robots having much effect on Yokohama Station itself.” “I’m not a weapon. I’m an infiltration agent.” “Agent?” “Collecting information, capturing Suikanet nodes, things like that.” “…Huh.” Toshiru thought he recalled Okuma saying something about the northern folks being adept with Suikanet. Even a man of his technical expertise could only infiltrate the network from Shimonoseki, right across the Straits, to the city of Iwakuni near Hiroshima. A physical presence like Haikunterke changed things, however. You could acquire nodes much more effectively than just hurling signals across the water. Toshiru had heard that Suikanet worked similar to old concepts like wartime territory: capturing areas, establishing a presence, and so on. JR North Japan held the most nodes on the eastern side of Yokohama Station. Control on the west side belonged to a mysterious group called the Dodger Alliance. They’d vanished four years ago and hadn’t been heard from since, though. Their base of operations had been in the Kansai region around Osaka and Kyoto, but that was about all Toshiru knew. “It doesn’t run off of motors? What’s this plastic—artificial muscle? A couple of them are damaged and solidified,” Toshiru commented as he examined the legs. “Can you fix them?” asked Haikunterke. She wore no expression, but the tone of her voice was just a bit lighter than before. “I can’t return them to their original form. I don’t have the materials. But I can perform a little emergency work on them. In exchange, will you forget that I shot at you?” The girl said nothing. “Well, whatever. I guess it doesn’t make a difference.” “What was your plan, hiding in here?” Toshiru asked. He was dismantling Haikunterke’s legs. A number of the artificial muscle fibers in her right one were damaged and immobilized. Removing them would help improve mobility. There were synchronizers in both limbs, so when the right leg was injured, the left wouldn’t work correctly, either. It seemed like bad design to Toshiru. “I was securing power and making myself safer. And looking for a way to fix myself.” “Looking? How?” Haikunterke pointed at the back of her head. “My supplemental memory storage. It’s got information on how my body works.” “I see. So you know it, but you don’t understand it.” “That’s very clever. I wasn’t really able to explain it myself.” “Well, I am an engineer,” Toshiru said. There were control devices here and there around the artificial muscle that allowed you to program certain simple movements. That must have been the system Haikunterke had used when blocking Toshiru’s bullet on reflex. If the process were working correctly, it would allow her to dodge a majority of attacks. “How did you get hurt?” “It was an ambush. There were so many of them. I couldn’t avoid all the attacks.” “These legs would be faster than my scooter. You couldn’t run away?” “It was in a village a bit south of here, and there were lots of kids,” Haikunterke explained. “What do the kids have to do with it?” “…I don’t think you would understand.” “Okay. Fine, then.” As he worked, Toshiru imagined Haikunterke among the children in the village she mentioned. Then, he pictured an armed gang descending upon the settlement. To the best of his imagining, he couldn’t conceive of a reason that would’ve prevented the robot from escaping. “Are there lots of people like you at JR Fukuoka?” Haikunterke inquired. “I don’t know. I can definitely say there are none like you. We’re all organic,” Toshiru answered. He realized it was getting harder to see what his hands were working on. A glance through the skylight told him the sun was already down. “It’s dark. Are there lights in here?” “Hang on.” Using just her arms, Haikunterke climbed on top of the generator and turned on a light switch. The LED on the ceiling activated. Its glow was faded and weak; it was probably well past the unit’s intended shelf life. “Can’t a robot shine lights out of her eyes or something?” “I don’t need to. I have infrared vision.” “Nice. Very logical,” Toshiru praised, glancing at a small flashlight-like tube resting next to Haikunterke. He then examined her from top to bottom (a span less than a meter) and asked, “Why a child?” “It’s easier to sneak Inside.” “Why?” “Kids under six don’t get checked for a Suika. Didn’t you know that?” “I’ve heard it before. When you have a kid, you’re supposed to make a deposit before they turn six or whatever.” “Yes. My being built to look like a child grants me a certain amount of leeway when avoiding the automated turnstiles. It’s not perfect, though. The station’s immune system uses physical shape as its baseline detection process, I hear.” “Ahh. I thought it was just what the designer wanted for you,” said Toshiru. Haikunterke glared at him. “Doesn’t the JR in Fukuoka study this kind of thing?” “No. Our people are only interested in weapons,” Toshiru replied. He pulled and pushed on her artificial leg muscles. Our machinery is more advanced than this, he thought. The robot’s design was trying to make up for inefficient construction by way of superior materials. That was lousy cost performance, however, and made the product harder to maintain. Toshiru decided the difference was probably a reflection of each company’s circumstances. Kyushu’s defensive line was a narrow strait of water, so their primary method of fighting was macro-destruction—structurally annihilating the connecting walkways the station tried to shoot in their direction. However, the feature that separated Hokkaido from Yokohama Station was the Tsugaru Strait, which was much, much wider than the Kanmon Straits. They had no concern about connecting walkways coming over the water. Their problem was the Seikan Tunnel, which was permeated by the structural genetic field and couldn’t be destroyed. Their battle was one of micro-evolution, of material science. Something meant to counteract the genetic field itself. Perhaps that fundamental difference explained why their machine design was so clumsy. “So they don’t know you’re a machine inside as long as you look like a human? Maybe we should have tried building one of those.” “You’d find it difficult.” “True. We could whip up a bipedal robot right away, but we can’t build humanlike brains like yours. Not that we need to.” Haikunterke glared at Toshiru again. Her expressions were very hard to read as a whole, with the one exception being this grumpy face. “So about this leg,” Toshiru began, showing Haikunterke her own limb. It was about fifty centimeters long, a bit lengthier than his arm from the elbow on. It used a kind of metal he’d never seen before. It must have been a unique product of Hokkaido. “It uses artificial muscle to bend a metal arm that represents the bone. The number of bones and bundles of fibers are exactly the same as a human’s.” “What about it?” “Why is it built so similar?” “I told you. Making it look human is how you avoid the attention of the automated turnstiles.” “But the materials are different. What’s the purpose of making the inner workings so analogous? It would be way more efficient to use motorized actuators for the joints than artificial tendons. That’s how the turnstiles work. Especially if you’re moving around as nimbly as you do. There’s a built-in lag to muscle extension and contraction. When you move that violently, it’s going to take a toll on the material,” Toshiru explained. He removed four of the damaged muscle fibers from the right leg. He then took two from the left leg and transferred them to the right. It meant lower leg power overall, but at least Haikunterke would be able to run. “This construction seeks to be as close to human as artificially possible. What was your designer thinking?” After a pause, Haikunterke admitted, “I don’t know. I don’t know much about machines.” Toshiru stared at her, then covered his nose and mouth with one hand and began making strange noises that sounded like, “Guh! Guh! Guh!” He had to stop working for a few dozen seconds as the noises continued. “What’s so funny?” Haikunterke asked after realizing the man was trying to hold back his laughter. Toshiru collected himself. “That was the funniest joke I’ve heard in my entire life.” “Sounds like you’ve had a very boring life, then.” “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t had any other lives to compare it to.” He wheezed a few more times, then hit a second wave and started to make the “guh” sounds again. “I’ve been on this mission for two years now,” Haikunterke said. “This is the first time I’ve felt like I truly hate someone.” “Oh yeah? I’ve been alive for twenty-four years, and you’re the first human-shaped thing I’ve ever been interested in.” Toshiru bent and stretched the mechanical legs, fine-tuning the tension of the muscles. The newly attached fibers were a little too tense, so he turned the ankle screw to loosen them a little. The sun had set, but the cicadas continued to drone outside. Toshiru wondered why they all screamed and stopped at the same time. “I think it’s pretty much done. Give it a test to see,” Toshiru said, handing the legs back to Haikunterke. The sky was beginning to brighten, and he seemed rather sleepy after his night of work. “How do I attach them?” he asked her. “I’ll do that myself.” “Can I watch?” “You should go to sleep.” “That’s true. I’m tired.” Toshiru went into the back of the container where the morning sunlight wouldn’t reach. There was a cloth sack there, so he used it as a pillow and lay down. His ears caught a metallic clicking and clacking sound coming from the generator motor, but he was so tired that he fell asleep right away. When he woke, the sun was high overhead. His long gun was resting next to him. Toshiru picked it up and walked outside. He took some dried bread from his scooter, which was now fully charged, and ate a late breakfast. Haikunterke came running down the mountain slope from above. Even with her legs attached, she was barely a meter tall. She only came up to Toshiru’s solar plexus, and he wasn’t an especially tall man. “Feels good?” Toshiru confirmed. “Yeah. The muscle tension is very different, so it took a little while before I got the hang of it.” There was dirt here and there on Haikunterke’s clothes. She’d probably fallen on the slope a few times. “You want to eat?” he asked, offering her a piece of dried bread. “I don’t need it. I run off electricity alone.” “That’s inconvenient. You won’t find generators all over the place. My scooter runs on solar power, but you must use a lot more energy than that.” “Yes. My mission was intended to take place Inside. There’s all the electricity you could want in there,” Haikunterke said. Toshiru considered the system of breaking down organic matter to create power. Since fossil fuel had dried up during the Winter War, Kyushu’s JR used vehicles that ran off an organic oxidation system. That wouldn’t fit into a body of Haikunterke’s size, but Toshiru thought it would be pretty funny if she chewed on twigs and leaves for fuel. “Now that my legs are fixed, I’m going back Inside.” “To do what?” “To continue my mission. Reconnaissance of the Shikoku region was part of my assignment, too, but I’ve been down here too long. I haven’t reported back in a whole month. I need to return to a place where I can connect to Suikanet.” “Can I go with you?” requested Toshiru. “Why?” “As I said earlier, you’re the first human-shaped thing that’s ever caught my interest. Plus, your legs need help. Maintenance is part of an engineer’s responsibility.” “…If you want.” As the early summer sun warmed Shikoku, the two continued along the Yoshino River’s southern side. Haikunterke’s walking gait was very odd. She looked just like an ordinary child, but she kept up with a scooter traveling thirty kilometers an hour. Following the river east would eventually lead to Tokushima. The plan was to traverse it and turn north to the Great Naruto Bridge. From there, it was just a matter of crossing Awaji Island to get Inside. Finding the roads and keeping your bearings was difficult in Shikoku, but this route was simple enough to follow. “If you’re going back Inside, wouldn’t it be faster to cross the river here into Kagawa, where the station’s already invading, and take the Great Seto Bridge up to Honshu?” Toshiru proposed. Haikunterke shook her head as she walked. “That was how I got here in the first place. I was instructed to avoid retracing any of my paths. The point is to capture nodes as widely as possible. I came here along the Sea of Japan route. Next is to move along the Pacific.” “I see.” According to JR Fukuoka’s military map, this was where a railway known as the Tokushima Line ran. From what Toshiru could see from the scooter, however, there was nothing that resembled one of the JR Integrated Intelligence’s station units. It must have been lost long ago—either during the war or in what followed. “Incidentally, my destination is close to the Great Naruto Bridge, too. We can go there together,” Toshiru stated. “What are you headed there for?” “Tourism.” Haikunterke didn’t pry any further. Instead, she pointed at the scooter and asked, “Did you bring that from Kyushu?” “No, I got it here. It was right after crossing into Shikoku. I got lucky.” “From whom?” “It was a bit south of Matsuyama. I was traveling the mountains in poor visibility. Somehow, I happened to spot someone wearing a helmet riding along on this thing. Suddenly, there was a rope that flew up and tripped the scooter. When the rider fell, about six men jumped out with pipes and wood beams, ready to beat the rider and steal it.” “And?” “I happened to be just a bit higher than them, so I saw the whole thing happen. I shot all six, and once they stopped moving, I got the scooter.” “What happened to the original rider?” “Dunno. They got beat pretty bad, but I don’t think they were dead. I didn’t see the face, but the hair was long, so it was probably a woman.” “…Ah.” Haikunterke looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. They continued for several more minutes in silence. It was a hot and humid day, but as the breeze while riding the scooter was pleasant, the temperature didn’t feel all that bad. “Why did you flee from Kyushu?” asked Haikunterke, without looking at Toshiru. “I got sick of weapons development,” he answered. “Yokohama Station’s attacks evolve year after year. New developments were required to keep fighting it off. JR Fukuoka proposed ideas that basically spent ten times the energy for twice the power.” “So you ran away.” “That’s not all. In the planning stages, they told us to exaggerate all the numbers. We were barely getting twice the output, but they told us to say it was three times. And the outreach publication we give the people of Kyushu says it’s four times the power.” “That’s why you came to Shikoku?” “That’s right. I heard there was anarchy here. I figured that would make everything work logically, so I decided to come and see it for myself.” “Logically.” “Following the laws of nature, I guess you could say. A place where you don’t have to consider anything that’s unnecessary.” The path along the river undulated here and there. Toshiru busily adjusted the handlebars, steering the scooter over the least bumpy routes. Haikunterke trotted along in tight synchronicity with his path. Her reflexes were much faster than those of a human being. “Could you run faster before the injury?” Toshiru inquired. “We’re designed for cruising at fifty kilometers an hour, though there’s little opportunity to go that fast Inside. I was intended to handle outdoor missions, too. My companions go about twenty kilometers.” “There are others?” “Yes. Scattered about Inside. They each have their own region they’re responsible for. Their body specs are lower than mine, though, so if you shot them with that weapon’s maximum power, they probably couldn’t withstand it.” “That’s good. If the JR up north is mass-producing people like you, that gives us even less of a position to stand on. All we’re good at is weapons, after all.” “Does JR Fukuoka make those guns, too?” Haikunterke asked, looking at the electric pump gun resting sideways across the back of the scooter. “Yeah. That’s the N700 line, the latest model. They put that out just after I joined the company, so I only had a minor part in their production.” “How many people have you shot since coming to Shikoku?” Toshiru thought that one over for a while. “None without a good reason,” he replied. “That’s the village I told you about.” Eventually, their path along the river took them to the town with the hydroelectric generator Toshiru had passed yesterday. It was located higher than most spots along the river, and they’d collected a large number of guardrails and used them to erect a simple defensive wall around the camp. The power-generating device was built into the river. Haikunterke’s watch said it was five in the afternoon. The western sun burned hot on Toshiru’s back. “They told me about the charging station where I found you.” “Uh-huh. And they believed that I was a ghost,” Haikunterke recalled, her expression unfazed. It was only when they got a bit closer that Toshiru realized something was wrong with the village. “Some strange group over there,” he observed. There was a little hill some distance away from the riverside village, and there were unnaturally wriggling mounds moving on its slope. Once they got closer, it became apparent that it was a large number of people. “They’re attackers. Be quiet,” Haikunterke commanded softly. It wasn’t a hushed whisper like a human being would make but her normal speaking voice played at a quieter volume. Several dozen men were in formation on the side of the slope. Many of them were holding long sticks. Probably guns. “Looks like it’s a siege. I see one person dead there. A villager, I’m guessing,” Toshiru said, pointing at the gate leading into the village. That was the only place where the path continued, and there was no guardrail wall. Someone was collapsed on the ground just outside the village, and the unpaved ground there was dark with blood. It was too far to make out their age, but their clothing suggested they weren’t on the attacking side. “They’ve got a stable power source, so people have come for it,” Haikunterke stated, eyeing the hydroelectric generator. “Seems like the places I pass by have a tendency to get attacked.” Toshiru recalled the man with the shack at the seaside. “Probably the scooter’s fault.” “Yeah.” The wide tires left clear tracks on unpaved ground. “And this area is especially unstable, even within Shikoku. Yokohama Station’s very close by, so you’ve got people pushed out of their homes and fleeing coming up against people rushing closer for the resources ejected from the station.” “Is it more peaceful on the southern side of the island, like around Kochi? I came from the western side, obviously.” “I saw a bit of it, but there weren’t many people, period.” “Ahh.” If the two proceeded along the riverside road, they would pass right through where the villagers and assailants were locked in a faceoff. Even with the scooter (and faster mechanical legs) it would be difficult to slip safely between two armed factions. “It’s hard to see from this distance. What would you say that is, thirty people? That’s a lot. Must have a really powerful leader uniting them.” “Thirty-two in all,” counted Haikunterke, staring at the slope. “Twelve of them have long guns.” “That’s impressive eyesight. Can you tell what type they are?” “They’re not in my database. They look like this.” Haikunterke pulled out a device in her left hand and displayed the attackers’ armaments on its screen. This appeared to be an image captured directly through her own eyes. “That’s the DF50 line. Pretty old pump guns. There’s no automatic adjustment, so if the bullet has a bad shape, the trajectory will go way off. They’re only accurate to about thirty meters,” Toshiru explained. In moments like this, a mechanical person has it pretty easy, he thought. “The villagers should have a couple of the same, so that won’t mean a decisive advantage in battle.” “Of the attackers, twelve have guns. None of the others have weapons that should prove to be a problem. The probability that I can jump out and defeat them all without harm is eighty-seven percent,” Haikunterke said. “Thirteen percent is a pretty high risk for a charitable action,” replied Toshiru. Haikunterke considered this for several seconds. “Yes. Our company forbids taking unnecessary risks.” “Yeah. And you wouldn’t want to lose any more of those muscle fibers.” Haikunterke was silent again. Toshiru thought it was strange that, for being a machine, the tempo of her thought and speech were so human. Maybe it was an intentional affectation to make her less awkward in social situations. That would be unfortunate. “Can you shoot all of them with your gun from here without risk?” “I told you before. I’ve never shot someone without a good reason. I have no reason to support the village. Besides, they refused to charge my scooter.” “I’m not surprised. Their power generator clearly isn’t enough to support an entire settlement.” “If I had to come up with an excuse, I’d say that if I clean up all the guys on the slope, I’ll get a bunch of ammo. That’s not really all that valuable, though,” Toshiru admitted. Electric pump guns were developed for frontline soldiers in the Winter War to use any kind of metal as ammunition because the conflict had gone on for so long that traditional resources were scarce. For that reason, this particular sort of arms became synonymous with “weapons” from the post-war collapse through the expansion of Yokohama Station. Haikunterke gazed at the village, and the visuals on the screen in her left hand changed to show the settlement. Now Toshiru could see the face of the young man lying dead in front of the gate. I wonder if that’s the guy who refused to let me charge my scooter when I asked, Toshiru thought. He couldn’t clearly recall the man’s face, however. “Well, we should probably avoid them. Let’s go around to the other side of the hill,” Haikunterke suggested. “Good idea.” Toshiru maneuvered the scooter on the narrow road and began riding away from the village. After a little while, they were around the other side of the slope. The sound of gunfire could be heard, along with a few human yelps of pain. Toshiru couldn’t tell which side they were coming from, however. Onward they went, until night arrived. Despite the rainy season having recently ended, the night was still cold, and riding on the scooter caused the chilly breeze to hug Toshiru’s body. He and Haikunterke stopped at a place far downriver from the village. There were no people nearby, only the incessant croaking of frogs. “I’ve still got plenty of battery power. What about you? You’ve been running for a while,” Toshiru said, putting down the scooter’s stand. If needed, he could provide Haikunterke with a little power. A little. “I’m fine, but I might have a problem if we continue like this for two or three more days. Can we stop at a charging station on the way?” requested the robot. She was sitting with her knees drawn up. “I’m just tagging along with you. I’ll follow whatever you need to do,” Toshiru answered, using his device to display JR Fukuoka’s military map. It showed the known locations of the Shikoku power stations. Toshiru was unsure of his current location, but the nearest was probably about ten kilometers away. That was a tough trip after nightfall on a scooter. “You can see in the dark, right? I’ll be fine on my own. You just go here by yourself and come back.” “Thank you, but I’m going to sleep for a bit,” Haikunterke declared. “Robots sleep, too?” “Yes. I need to allow my supplemental memory to compile, reflect on its contents, and attach them to my main memory. It’s a constant process, but I still need to turn off my external sensors to kick it into high focus now and then. It should only take about two hours.” “You really are built to be like a human. Isn’t that inconvenient?” “My sensors remain minimally functional and will react when someone approaches,” Haikunterke explained. Then, she closed her eyes. In addition to the constant chorus of frogs, there was a quieter clicking sound, like metal gears turning. Toshiru thought it was all rather tasteful. He loaded metal pieces into Mizuho, his pistol, by the light of the moon. Once it was ready to fire at a moment’s notice, he proceeded to break down Sakura, the rifle, to inspect its interior. Many of the guns produced by JR Fukuoka were never used outside of shooting practice before they got replaced by a newer model. It was a sign of Kyushu’s governmental stability that they had few reasons to use them. In that sense, Toshiru’s N700 had been put through a much more rigorous battery of tests than most. In thanks for its hard work, he spent any downtime he had ensuring the weapon received proper upkeep. Once he had reassembled it, he performed the same process on the short gun. Instead of the two hours Haikunterke had promised, she opened her eyes a bit over three hours later. The moon was high in the night sky, providing some meager light to the area. The frog songs had stopped at some point. “Yo. For a machine, I guess you’re not that mechanical after all,” Toshiru told her. “I had much to compile,” Haikunterke replied. The coordination of her mouth movements and speech was even worse than usual shortly after waking. “I had barely anything to think about while I was taking shelter at that generator, but I have seen quite a lot in the past day. Therefore, the process took longer.” “Does your supplemental memory thing save everything you see and hear?” “Yes. But there’s so much that it takes too long to call up the necessary information, which is why I compile and condense it. Otherwise, I can’t assess risk and make instantaneous choices when I need to.” “Meaning that your leg got hurt because you misjudged a danger?” Haikunterke nodded. She was still sitting on the ground with her knees up. “It happens sometimes,” she admitted unhappily. Perhaps she was sensitive to having her failures raised. “When I assess that there’s no risk to my mission, I will help people. You’d probably just laugh at that idea.” “I’m not laughing,” Toshiru responded, getting a mat off the scooter and laying it out on the ground. “I just think it’s strange. It makes me wonder what your design philosophy was.” “Is it truly that unusual?” Haikunterke made a face that made her displeasure plain. “Yeah. It’s an illogical conception. It comes off like a tool that was built for one purpose being reused for something else. Due to budget reasons or something.” “I don’t want to talk about this.” “Okay,” Toshiru accepted. “Practically speaking, our defense of the strait is going well. The enemy’s tactics are evolving, but we’ve managed to adapt to them,” said Toshiru. He was resting back against the mat. It was around midnight, but because the moon was so bright and he’d gotten up late in the morning, he wasn’t quite falling to sleep. If only he could simply turn off his waking functions like the mechanical girl. That would be very convenient. “They immediately tore down the bridge at Shimonoseki and then dug out the tunnel right from the rock, from what I hear. I don’t know how they did it; that was eighty years ago. Maybe they still had gravity weapons back then.” “I see,” Haikunterke remarked quietly. “The strait is wider in Hokkaido, so it can’t get a corridor across. But we were too late in destroying the tunnel, so the structural genetic field had already infected the inside. If they had been quicker to make that decision, we might not have needed to undertake the current defensive battle.” But then I might not have been born, she thought. “It’s probably a difference in what you were seeing. We had the example of the Great Seto Bridge, so we knew a fair amount about the station’s replication ability.” “That’s a very calm assessment,” Haikunterke muttered. She felt that Hokkaido had a better understanding of the nature of the structural genetic field, though. “So as long as we block the corridors and they shoot across the Straits, we’re fine. As long as we deploy a certain amount of manpower, we can stop it in time. The enemy’s tactics have progressed, too, but it’s an unthinking station. There are limits to what it can come up with. Humans will win in the end,” Toshiru stated, as dispassionately as if he had no stake in it. Haikunterke replied, “What end?” Toshiru realized he’d never really thought about that. He just naturally assumed that there would be some kind of conclusion to the situation. The same way the civilization that had been so advanced had crumbled into dust over the course of the Winter War. “Well, anyway, to our company, it’s important that there’s an enemy to fight. Yokohama Station’s waiting just a few kilometers across the water, and if it crosses the sea to our side, basically everyone on Kyushu will lose their home. It’s that fear that makes our company’s centralized power possible,” he explained. Haikunterke sat there, listening. The fact that she could be perfectly still with her knees up to her chest like that without moving underlined the idea that she was fundamentally different from a regular human being. “An enemy that can be fought back but never defeated. What situation could be better for those in charge? Does the boss of your place think any differently?” “I don’t know. I just carry out my mission.” “Nice,” Toshiru replied. “So you didn’t fight to defend Kyushu against the station?” “According to my title, I did. Not that I had much personal interest in that part of it.” “You didn’t care about your hometown being swallowed by Yokohama Station?” “…That was beside the point for me. I don’t think my hometown will ever be part of Yokohama Station, even in the future,” Toshiru said. He didn’t have any particular attachment to the place anyway. “Why not?” “It’s not on Kyushu itself. It’s on one of the smaller islands. Tanegashima. You know it?” Toshiru inquired. Haikunterke thought for a few seconds, then got a distant look in her eyes. “Tanegashima. An island forty kilometers from the Osumi Peninsula of southern Kyushu. Surface area of four hundred and forty-five square kilometers. Under JR Fukuoka control. It is known as the first place where firearms came to Japan during the military government era. Due to its southern latitude and the relatively lighter gravity there, it was once home to Japan’s largest space center. During the era of High Civilization, they shot many satellites and crewed spacecraft up from the island. As the Asian center of the Allies during the war, it was also used to launch many satellite weapons. For that same reason, however, it became a major target for attack,” Haikunterke parroted, as though reading off a script. “Yeah. More or less. There’s nothing there now. If anything, being devoured by Yokohama Station might liven up the place a bit. Maybe the structural genetic field will absorb and recreate the space center facilities.” Haikunterke made another of her clearly disgusted faces. “You don’t like that idea?” “No. I was built for the purpose of protecting my territory. I reject that way of thinking.” “Well, I guess you can’t fight your design. I don’t tell my scooter to fly, either,” he said. “If you have no interest in defense, why did you join JR?” “Oh, that?” remarked Toshiru. He gazed up at the stars in the sky and rolled over on the mat so his back was to Haikunterke. “I wanted to go to space,” he muttered. “I decided to go into JR Fukuoka’s engineering division so I could learn about tech, but all they taught me was how to make and use weapons. In fact, I found out that going into space requires a ton of fossil fuel—way more than you’ll find anywhere in the world—so I gave up.” “What’s out in space?” “I don’t know. I just know there aren’t any people,” Toshiru replied, and left it at that. So did Haikunterke. The frogs and cicadas were no longer singing, and the only sound left in the area was the flowing of the Yoshino River. They reached the Naruto Strait on the eastern coast of Shikoku the following afternoon. “I can see the station. As I expected, it’s already crossed Awaji Island and started to erode into Tokushima,” observed Haikunterke, pointing toward the sea. The coast had a complex, three-dimensional profile, but among the canyon folds was the sight of something white and amorphous. Like a pancake on a griddle just before it’s flipped, there were little holes all over its surface. “Is that part of the station structure, too?” asked Toshiru. The part of Yokohama Station he’d seen across the Straits with JR Fukuoka had already been established for fifty years and resembled a completely developed construct. “It’s the outward tip of the station’s expansion. It’s not connected to the Great Seto Bridge, so it must have crossed on its own from Awaji Island. The exterior hasn’t fully formed yet, but there are probably properly hollowed Inside spaces within. In a few months, it’ll generate windows and pillars and features like that.” “It’s disgusting,” Toshiru remarked, tearing his gaze away from the station. “It’s making my head hurt to look at it. Is it sending out some weird waves or something?” “I’m getting a bit of a Suikanet signal,” Haikunterke said. “So I’ll be going back Inside from there.” “Cool. I enjoyed the last few days. I feel like I talked enough that I don’t need to speak to anyone again for the rest of my life.” Haikunterke stared at Toshiru in silence, then walked in the direction of the station. It didn’t look like she was moving very fast, but she was out of sight very soon. So, thought Toshiru. The place he’d heard about from Okuma was supposed to be nearby. Because of the advance of the station structure, he couldn’t tell the exact location. All he could do was pray it hadn’t been buried yet. Toshiru recalled when Okuma had told him about the locale. The other man had been eating sweet potatoes. “It was built before the war. You wouldn’t believe human beings could make something like that. The era of High Civilization was a true wonder. If you ever get the chance to visit Shikoku, you should go check it out.” Space was likely beyond Toshiru’s grasp, but this was the next best thing. Toshiru checked that his scooter still had plenty of power and continued on his way. There was a small hill made of concrete before Haikunterke’s eyes. It was curved and liquid-looking, like cooled and hardened lava. This was what it looked like when Yokohama Station first reached a place and was still deciding what shape it would eventually take. The surface of the station writhed in elaborate fashion along with the shape of the land. First, Haikunterke sought out an inconspicuous location. It was best if none of the people of Shikoku saw her using the structural genetic field canceler. “Is anyone there?” Haikunterke asked. Hiding in the folds of the partially formed station structure were two children, a boy and a girl, and a woman who looked like their mother. All three were dressed in rags. The mother looked frightened at first, but when she saw the stranger was a child, she was relieved. “We’re waiting here,” she said. “For what?” “For an exit to form.” Haikunterke looked at the wall, and sure enough, the precursor structure to a Yokohama Station exit had taken form there. In another month, most likely, there would be a hole for an entrance, automated turnstiles in place, and a sign reading, YOKOHAMA STATION EXIT XX. The number would be six digits. “My children are still five and three, so they can get Inside. If they can get a Suika somehow before they turn six, they can live safely in there,” the mother said. Haikunterke remembered seeing people like this in Kagawa, on the northern middle part of Shikoku. Children under six could come and go in the station without being caught by the turnstiles. Many parents used them to procure things from Inside. To the people who lived off the station’s goods, small children were a valuable resource. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Haikunterke stated flatly. “There’s no way for children from outside to get a Suika. The automated turnstiles will be on them the moment they turn six. They’ll hurl them into the nearest station hollow. Most hollows are completely empty, so they’ll die very quickly after that.” The mother looked hurt and sad, but responded, “I’d still rather do it. It’s much better than living here.” Haikunterke imagined that the mother must’ve been through something terrible and that she’d fled her with her children. The young boy and girl were staring at her. They probably thought she looked like another child their age. “…If that’s really how you feel, then go a bit farther north tomorrow. You might find an exit there,” Haikunterke said before walking away from the fold of the station. The boy tried to run after her, but when he rounded one twist of the station, she was nowhere to be found. To the north of the sheltered spot where she found the family, Haikunterke finally located an area with no people around and used the genetic field canceler to create a small hole in the station structure big enough for a person to crawl through. She was Inside. It was the first time she’d ever seen the station’s interior while it was still growing. There were filaments like spider thread all over, but they were metal wires. The ground was sticky under her feet. It was like cement that hadn’t dried yet. Visuals and chemical composition analysis would be very valuable to send back to headquarters. There were no automated turnstiles nearby. When the station generation was still incomplete, the area was probably excluded from their patrols. It wasn’t smart to stay around for too long. Haikunterke headed farther Inside, her feet sticking and splotching as she went. At some point, she was going to pass the Great Naruto Bridge and reach Awaji Island. After an hour, she arrived at a place where the structure was plenty solid. There were automated turnstiles here and there but no humans. It was an ideal environment. Haikunterke started up her communication terminal. The Suikanet signal was strong here. She’d be able to transmit quite a lot of data. > Suikanet Status: Establishing connection… > Searching for appropriable route… > Awaji - Kobe - Fukuchiyama - Maizuru - Tsuruga - Fukui - Kanazawa - Toyama - Itoigawa - Naoetsu - Nagaoka - Aizuwakamatsu - Koriyama - Sendai - Morioka - Hirosaki - Routing settings complete. > Exchanging encoding keys. > Secure connection established. Before long, Haikunterke had a route for real-time communication. It also happened to match the path of her travels. She had been responsible for helping JR North Japan capture many nodes, after all. > Beginning direct communication. “JR North Japan, Engineering 2nd Division, this is Kaeriyama speaking.” “It’s Haikunterke. I’m sorry for not contacting you for so long. I’ve just reached the Naruto Strait. I’m sending my locational data.” The robot girl heard Kaeriyama murmur an expression of relief. The signal was very clear, and the delay was short. “Did you run into any trouble out there?” “As we’d expected, things on Shikoku have worsened. I had a bit of trouble but nothing major. I will continue my mission Inside from here.” “Well, the good news is that you’re safe. The bad news is that you can connect to Suikanet from where you are.” “Yes. There were no existing railroads on Awaji, so the structural genetic field was slow to spread there, but Yokohama Station has already crossed the Naruto Strait into Shikoku itself. I’ll transmit my supplemental memory data from what I can access now.” > Sending data… “Okay, I’m getting it.” The bar that displayed connection speed was at the highest level it had been since Haikunterke reached Shikoku. She’d be able to transfer quite a lot by tomorrow morning. “Just as a situational update for you, we lost Nepshamai’s signal while he was active in the Kanto region. Headquarters thinks he ran into some kind of danger.” “Could he have gone outside of Suikanet coverage, like I did? He was always the type to go off and do things on his own.” “His last signal was in Kamakura, fairly inland. He couldn’t have gone completely out of network in a single instant.” “I could easily imagine that he forgot to charge his communications module,” Haikunterke remarked. Kaeriyama snorted in response. “You’re always so hard on Shamai.” “He’s much more social than I am, but he’s missing a few screws here and there. He must have turned out like his origin.” “According to his last message, he found an interesting person and was working with him at the time. I don’t know what it was that he found interesting, but the person is probably involved with whatever befell him. In any case, you should be aware that the people of Shikoku aren’t the only danger. You may encounter hostiles in Yokohama Station, too. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Use your best judgment in returning home.” “Shall I send all of my supplemental memory data to you now? Just in case I die at any point ahead. At this signal speed, I can complete the entire process in about two weeks.” “No. I want you back here, safe and sound.” “Yes, of course. Losing an agent is a big blow to the company’s resources.” “Look…if all we wanted were more agents, we wouldn’t need to go to the expense of building androids. We could just sail over to the far bank and steal a few kids with Suikas. We wouldn’t even have to worry about being attacked by the station residents.” “So you mean, ‘Come back safe and sound because your body is a valuable resource.’ ” “Don’t say it like that, Terke. Yes, your body was built to be sturdy for a long-term mission outside of Yokohama Station, but that’s not what I’m saying. Yukie will be sad if you don’t come back. And so will I.” “If my body isn’t that important, then maybe I should send you everything, main memory device included. It’ll be the same as if I’m back,” Haikunterke proposed, knowing full well that this was technically impossible. “You might be highly active, but you’ve got serious social issues. You’re the exact opposite of Shamai.” “I take after my origin, too. Anyway, I’d like to have some compiling time, so I’ll say good night. If there’s any data I should synchronize, please have it sent to me.” > Ending direct communication. > Sending data. Please do not interrupt network connection. Estimated time remaining: 8 hours, 11 minutes… With the conversation over, Haikunterke curled up in her sitting position next to an automated turnstile and closed her eyes. Her main sensors stopped functioning, and her system stopped writing to her supplemental memory, switching over to rumination mode. Its first step was to run the data from the communication with headquarters through her main memory unit. “Look…if all we wanted were more agents, we wouldn’t need to go to the expense of building androids. We could just sail over to the far bank and steal a few kids with Suikas. We wouldn’t even have to worry about being attacked by the station residents,” echoed Kaeriyama’s voice. Crossing the Tsugaru Strait to kidnap children and raise them into agents wasn’t just a figure of speech; they’d been doing that until about ten years ago. Everyone in the upper echelons of JR North Japan knew about it. It was an inefficient program, and it didn’t even bring them anything significant in return. Eventually, some sharp-eared journalist on Hokkaido caught wind of the story and published it. Overnight, it became the biggest scandal since the defensive battle against Yokohama Station had begun. Those in charge managed to write it off as the rogue initiative of the engineering division and dismissed the chief of the unit and several executives. That paved the way for Yukie to enter the picture. Her pre-JR history was shrouded in mystery, but once in place, she guided the engineering division toward rapid, dramatic advances. It led to the birth of Corpocker androids like Haikunterke and new technological weapons like the structural genetic field canceler. As her rumination speed increased, her active processing became a larger burden. Eventually, Haikunterke’s consciousness faded, and she went into sleep mode.