Chapter 5

5. Code of the Expander Hiroto’s vision was split between black and gray. Escalators covered the entire floor, and concrete formed the ceiling overhead. The endless number of black steps, some moving upward and some coming down, brought to mind the vitality of some giant, writhing organism. The Akaishi Mountains were one of the three ranges that made up the Japanese Alps, located to the west of the many-layered city of Kofu. The complex, rippling slopes of the mountains were virtually blanketed in inclining, moving staircases, with the occasional mega-wall or pillar supporting a mammoth roof structure. Sunlight peeked in here and there. Unlike Kofu, there was no structure blanketing the mountains. Keiha’s trick of fudging the altitude coordinates would not work on the automated turnstiles here. Hiroto had hoped to sit on one escalator step and ride it to the top, but that was quite obviously not an option. There were no lanes that proceeded all the way up the slopes. Ascending required a constant process of switching over. Traps were not uncommon, where an ascending stairwell would lead directly into a descending one. In such cases, Hiroto either had to run up the down escalator or hop over the railing to the next lane to escape. And jumping across lanes when the belts were moving was not child’s play. “While on the escalator, please hold onto the moving belts and stay within the yellow line.” “Playing on the escalators, leaning over the edge, and running against the flow of traffic is very dangerous. Please refrain from these activities for the safety of all visitors.” These two PA announcements repeated in every direction but with no consistent timing, creating an unintelligible fog of words that permeated the station interior. Hiroto used the device Keiha had given him to check his time and present location. It would soon be afternoon, but he was only halfway to the mountain ridge. That was significantly behind his initial schedule. On top of that, the temperature seemed to be rising as it got closer to noon. Solar heat was likely coming straight through because there was only a single wall separating Hiroto from the outside. Hiroto had left Kofu with Nepshamai’s electronic sign after eight o’clock in the morning. “I scanned the structure and tried to search for a match on Suikanet,” Keiha said as he woke up. “But I didn’t find anything. At the very least, this thing doesn’t resemble any kind of computer used in Yokohama Station.” “So that’s how advanced JR North Japan’s tech is?” “That would be the straightforward interpretation,” Keiha admitted, a far-off look in her eyes. She took a small rectangular object out of the scanner and stuck it into the electronic screen. It seemed that her view of the situation was very different. “First of all, the most practical solution will be to find the body he was in originally. His boot sequence may be in there,” she explained. Hiroto wondered what the Kamakura station employees were going to do with Nepshamai’s body after they’d hauled it away. Keiha requested that he leave the dormant electronic sign with her, but he refused. “I made him a promise. I’m going to give him the expired 18 Ticket when I’m done with it,” he said. Of course, that was impossible at present, but he figured that somewhere in the vast expanse of Yokohama Station, he could find a solution. Keiha looked disappointed, but she replied, “Take this device with you. It’s got Suika certification on it, so you can at least connect to Suikanet and make use of it,” and handed him a small box-shaped computer. It was about the size of the 18 Ticket. “It’s got an account belonging to one of my dead friends on it. Normally when a Suika user dies, the information is sent to Suikanet, and their account is deactivated, but I did some things to prevent the transmission this time. My address is saved in there, too, so you can contact me if anything happens.” “You sure? It seems like this thing is pretty important to you.” “Yes. It’s necessary for someone in your position, and I’d rather have it go to good use, strange as that is to say.” Hiroto took the device from her and left Kofu. In the day that he spent interacting with Keiha, Hiroto learned two things. First, Keiha resisted using the words “Exit 42” or even typing them in on her keyboard. And second, that she strongly wanted Hiroto to get there anyway. Hiroto’s journey took him across the mountains, so he chose the relatively lower parts of the ridge that connected peak to peak to get over to the other side. It took him to what some might’ve called “the station’s pass.” Yokohama Station’s paths through the mountains were not nearly as clear and straight as those on flat land. Because travelers used varying routes over the many escalators on the slopes, encountering others along the way was rare. At the pass, though, where nearly all the meandering routes gathered, people tended to congregate and set up rest areas. A lobby had been generated in what little flat ground there was, and some vendors brought goods up there to sell. Hiroto couldn’t buy anything without a Suika, but since drinking water was free, he topped off his bottle. Nearly all of the people at the station pass were travelers. Like Hiroto, they were just trying to get over the mountains. A few, however, were proper climbers. They would be climbing the escalators farther up the slope in the hopes of reaching the peak. “The peak? What’s at the peak?” Hiroto asked. He wanted to know because his destination, Exit 42, was also somewhere labeled as a peak. A thirty-something mountain-climber said, “You can see the blue sky.” The nearby mountaintop hadn’t been enclosed within Yokohama Station. For a several kilometer stretch, it was open to the natural surroundings, with no roof overhead. If the weather was good, you could see nothing but blue sky above. In other words, it was a giant station hollow. “When I was younger, I climbed Mt. Fuji, but it was boring; even the peak is Inside. But there are windows so you can see out. The real joy of mountaineering is getting to feel the outside air and gaze at the blue sky as you crack a beer. Have you ever seen the sky?” “Yeah,” replied Hiroto. “A lot.” The mountain-climber looked impressed. “Mt. Fuji’s got such simple slopes; there are a lot of escalators that will just take you straight to the top. It’s weak. And because some people calling themselves the Yokohama Station Tourism Board decided to label it a kind of sacred ground, it’s brought out a bunch more tourists, and they’re really wrecking the place. When I scaled Fuji, it hadn’t reached four thousand meters yet. There weren’t many climbers back then. It was nice and quiet,” the thirty-something man recalled. Hiroto ate one of his rations while the man talked. “Where did you come from?” the climber asked. “From Kofu. I’m passing through here, then over the Kiso Mountains, and on to Mt. Ontake,” Hiroto explained. That was where the map said Exit 42 was. “Hmmm. That’s a pretty long trip. When did you leave?” “This morning.” “This morning! And you got here in half a day? That’s some stamina. Do you play sports?” “A bit of sea-swimming.” In Ninety-Nine Steps, when there wasn’t anything to do (which was most of the time), Hiroto would go swimming out into the sea alone. He’d never thought of it as a sport. It was more like a necessary life-skill and a good way for him to burn off some energy. “Seesweming? That something in Kofu?” the climber inquired, puzzled. After a bit of a break, Hiroto began descending toward the Ina Valley from the pass. It was more comfortable to walk down the descending escalators, which unfortunately allowed Hiroto to pick up too much speed. He lost his footing at one point, crashing and sending his bag flying onto another escalator lane. That was an ascending staircase, so recovering it cost him a lot of unnecessary time and energy. There was less sunlight coming through the windows in the concrete ceiling now. As he got closer to Ina Valley, Hiroto began to grasp the particular patterns of escalator movement on the slope. Eventually, the sun peering through the windows of the escalator highlands sank behind the concrete walls. It was his third night Inside. The screen of the 18 Ticket showed that he had two days and thirteen hours remaining. He took as much sleep as possible while moving on escalators to buy a bit of extra travel time. He would nap for a half-hour or so on a descending escalator that continued straight down for several kilometers so it woke him up when he reached the end. At which point, he would search for another long one. He kept his belongings wrapped tight against his stomach with his arms for protection. After midnight, Hiroto had made it into the Ina Valley. The directional signs hanging from the ceiling informed him that this was Yokohama Station, Nagano District, Komagane. In a larger thoroughfare that seemed like the city area, the stores and residences were shuttered, and no one was walking around. It was deathly quiet after the cacophony of endless safety announcements on the escalators. The lack of sound had a presence of its own in his ears. It left Hiroto feeling unsettled. Unlike Kofu’s spacious basin, the Ina Valley was a narrow strip of land running north and south between the Akaishi and Kiso Mountains. There was little open space, and Yokohama Station had built itself up on the sides of the valley in steps. For that reason, each layer was constructed around solar intake, and the residents all lived in sync with the sun’s rhythm. When it got dark, they all went right to sleep. It was a different kind of night Inside, one Hiroto hadn’t seen in the Kanto plains or Kofu. In any case, Hiroto wasn’t planning to stick around. His interrupted sleep on the descending escalators had left him feeling exhausted. He headed straight for the Kiso Mountains on the western side of the valley. He’d been descending for so long that just walking on the flat ground felt strange. The next day passed almost precisely the same way. Hiroto climbed the escalators, crossed at the station pass, then descended into the valley beyond. If there was any difference, it was that there were far fewer people here than in the Akaishi Mountains yesterday and that Yokohama Station covered less of it. Patches of natural ground and sky poked through in places as Hiroto marched onward. The sky looked contentious in his first view of it in days. Several times, he wound up traveling over rainy ground. Keiha’s device showed Hiroto that he’d come very far from Ninety-Nine Steps. He’d been walking ceaselessly across escalators this whole time, but the thrill of visiting a place he’d never been to before helped assuage his fatigue. Kiso Valley rested on the western side of the Kiso Mountains. It had a very peculiar shape when seen from a distance. It was even narrower than Ina Valley, but rather than nestling itself on the valley floor, Yokohama Station had grown massive connecting hallways that went straight across from slope to slope, like the sticky tendrils of natto. In one of the hallways leading toward Kiso Valley, automatic doors suddenly closed from either wall to block Hiroto’s path. They were glass barricades with a thick metal frame, adorned with stickers that read, DO NOT LEAN BELONGINGS AGAINST PLATFORM DOORS, and RUSHING TO PACK CARS IS DANGEROUS. He spun around on reflex, but it was too late; another door was behind him. Hiroto was trapped inside a ten-meter span of hallway. Then, a man who looked about thirty years old came around a corner on the other side of the door ahead of him. He was small and wore camouflage patterns that had been cobbled together from different sources. It was the first time Hiroto had seen anyone Inside who looked so shabby. It was the kind of thing people in Ninety-Nine Steps would wear. “Hey, we got someone!” the man shouted back toward the side corridor. “How many?” “Just one.” “Any weapons?” “Nope. Just a small bag.” Another man appeared. He was about fifty and had bulging eyes. Unlike the other person, he was garbed in an entirely blue uniform of waterproof fabric. What required waterproofing Inside? The elder of the pair had a long gun in his hands. It was the kind that’d been used to shoot Nepshamai in Kamakura—what they called an electric pump gun. “Just one isn’t going to do us any good,” said the blue uniform. “What do you want me to say? He just wandered in here alone. There’s got to be something we can do with him, like use him as bait to summon more of them,” said the camo. The blue uniform with the gun stared at Hiroto appraisingly. “Hang on. I’m just a traveler. I came from the east, and I’m only passing through,” explained Hiroto. “Passing through? Where to?” “To a place called Exit 42,” he said. Camo and Blue looked at each other. “This guy’s a Sabo. And look how far he’s gotten,” snarled Camo. It was like some kind of pestilence had been brought upon them. “Nah, it ain’t a Sabo. He’s alone and doesn’t have anything red.” “Probably hidin’ it. I’ll go ask the mayor. You keep an eye on him here,” said Camo, vanishing around the corner. He looked like he wanted to stay as far away as possible from Hiroto. Only the blue uniform with the gun was left. “Hey, I’m not Sabo or whatever you’re talking about. Whatever it is you think, you’re mistaken. Let me out of here,” insisted Hiroto, banging on the transparent door. It wasn’t glass, in fact, but some other clear, solid material. “I know that. Where’d you come from?” “From Kofu. I crossed two mountains to get here.” “Kofu? Which Kofu?” “It’s a big city to the east of here.” “And you crossed the mountains?” demanded Blue, whose already large eyes were bulging out even further. “If you crossed the mountains, you must have a hideout.” “Hideout?” Hiroto consulted his memory. There were a few places with livable areas on the vast escalator highlands along the way, to be sure. But in Yokohama Station, where rooms grew all on their own, it was difficult to say from appearance alone if they existed because there were people there or just from some quirk of the station. “What kind of hideout?” he asked. “For the bandits.” “Is that the Sabo you were talking about? Bandits?” “The hell you talkin’ about? Why would Sabo be bandits?” scoffed Blue, giving Hiroto a pitying gaze. They weren’t seeing eye to eye. On the other hand, it was a wonder that Hiroto, who grew up on the cape outside along the sea, could hold a conversation with these people from the central mountains of Yokohama Station at all. The blue uniform man refused to say anything after that, so Hiroto decided to go to sleep. If he wanted to, he could use the genetic field canceler to escape, but he wasn’t inclined to waste the batteries. Getting through the valley was probably going to be a hassle even if he did escape. It was Hiroto’s first time sleeping in captivity since being stuck in the holding cell in Yokosuka his first night Inside. That was only three days ago, but it felt like the distant past at this point. Crossing the two mountain ranges should have left him exhausted, but he found it hard to fall asleep in the brightly lit hallway. He could hear the men saying things like, “He’s asleep,” “Let’s get it over with now, while we have the chance.” Each time, Hiroto had to force his eyes open to prove he was still awake. The guards changed shifts every few hours, giving them the chance to rest, but Hiroto had to stay alert the whole time, sapping his mental strength. “At any rate, you’re lucky. You came alone,” stated the fourth escort as the dawn approached. He was a friendly looking thirty-something wearing an old, tattered suit. By this point, Hiroto had figured out that the residents here just wore whatever they had, regardless of its original purpose. He’d thought of Inside as a rich, abundant place, where things were provided in endless supply, but that wasn’t quite the case. This area had to be like Ninety-Nine Steps, where the only things the denizens got were whatever was discarded from elsewhere. “At first, we’d catch a bunch of ’em at once, then toss in enough food for one person and plenty of guns. Once they’d killed each other off, we’d let the holy turnstiles take the survivor away,” said the man in the suit. Compared to Camo and Blue, he was much more conversational. “Listen, this is all just a big mistake. I’m on a journey from the far east, and I have to get to a place called Exit 42 by tomorrow. Let me out of here. What are you guys fighting against, anyway?” Hiroto pressed. The man in the suit looked like he wasn’t sure whether to believe this or not. “Hmm, well, you don’t seem to be one of the bandits. I’ve never seen anyone as huge as you before,” he admitted. Then, at last, he began to explain. A group of mountain bandits nearby often came to attack the village, stealing goods and people. There was no violence allowed Inside, of course, but through lots of experience, these ruffians knew how to pillage without attracting the attention of the automated turnstiles. One of those tricks was not to inflict direct harm. If you set up a trap in a hallway, for example, then maintained a certain distance from it, the turnstiles wouldn’t be alarmed if a victim sprung the thing and got hurt. The villagers had been thinking up defensive countermeasures, and this door-capturing trap was one of them. “They took my wife away five years ago,” the man explained. The bandits would take their kidnapped victims outside the station to hold them captive. The automated turnstiles wouldn’t do anything if they couldn’t see you. Conditions outside were harsh, and the hostages didn’t survive long. The man in the suit had gone after his wife after discovering where she’d been taken, but he was too late. “I remember the face of the one who took my wife. As soon as I see him, I’ll shoot him with this,” the man snarled, brandishing the long gun. “If the holy turnstiles are angry with me, that’s a cost I’m willing to bear.” Learning about this new situation only made Hiroto worry about his remaining time. He was already on the morning of his fifth day, and Exit 42 would be close after he crossed the mountain ahead. “In any case, let me out of here. If you want, I’ll help you beat these—bandits?—in return.” “You can’t. For one thing, if you’re just a traveler, how could you possibly help us in a fight? If we let you out, you’ll only get lost.” It was true. The village was a maze of crisscrossing passageways. Hiroto was an outsider, and he’d undoubtedly lose his way quickly. While he was bigger and more athletic than the majority of Insiders, the inability to commit violence left him without any particularly useful skills in a conflict. So he’d have to do something else, although it wasn’t his strongest suit. Hiroto thought up a plan and got to his feet. “Oh, well. I didn’t want to have to use this,” he said. He then pulled out his structural genetic field canceler. The guard eyed it apprehensively. Hiroto switched it on and pointed it at the sidewall. A fist-sized chunk of concrete crumbled off its surface. “This is, uh, a new weapon. It’s powerful enough to easily destroy the station’s wall, and the best part is, the automated turnstiles won’t come after you. If I use this, I could wipe out your village. If you want to resolve this peacefully, open the door.” It was a bluff, of course. It sounded like such an obvious lie that Hiroto nearly chuckled while saying it. The man in the suit, however, was having trouble grasping the situation. He looked back and forth between Hiroto’s little tube and the broken wall, still clutching his gun. To people living Inside, seeing the station wall crumble had to be as unimaginable as seeing an object on the floor float into the air. He was almost there; just one more push. Hiroto pointed the canceler at the transparent part of the door. When he kicked it, the circle where he’d shone the device broke out and fell into the hallway beyond. Next, he pointed the canceler toward the man, who shrieked and got to his feet, pointed his gun at Hiroto, and fired. Bam, pam, two loud shots. The screws he’d used as bullets dug into the window between them, putting large cracks in the surface. Even fortified by the structural genetic field, the thin, transparent material could not hold up against the powerful pump gun. “Aaahahhh!” wailed Hiroto’s captor, falling to the floor. “H-help! He is a Sabo! Someone come quick!” Footsteps sounded from farther down the hallway. They didn’t belong to human beings, however, but a pair of automated turnstiles. They surrounded the man with the gun. “You have destroyed station property. Your Suika account is rendered null and void. You will now be escorted out of Yokohama Station,” came a woman’s voice. The turnstiles grabbed the person in the suit. One of them picked him up and zoomed away. Around the corner, Hiroto could hear the man screaming and someone else shouting something repeatedly, probably the unfortunate’s name. The other turnstile glanced at Hiroto, then at his bag. “18 Ticket detected. Thank you for visiting Yokohama Station,” it stated, then sat down on the spot and entered a resting state. The gun had been left on the ground. With that, all was silent. This seems pretty bad, Hiroto decided. He’d tricked someone from Inside into getting exiled. Or did this count as the other man’s mistake? In any case, Hiroto had intended to escape through intimidation. There was no time to dwell on it, though. He shone the genetic field canceler at the door, kicked the glass through, and exited. The automated turnstile remained inactive and did not react as Hiroto walked past it. Hiroto briefly considered picking up the rifle but decided to let it be. Even here, where the corridors stretched over the valley like a gigantic spiderweb, Keiha’s device continued to update its map with accurate information. Despite the early morning hour, many of the villagers were up and about. It was a small settlement, so the outsider stuck out. Hiroto avoided the center of the town and took a roundabout path to the other side of the valley to continue in the direction of Exit 42. Following the route laid out on the chart of the surrounding area, Hiroto stopped to peer around a corner and saw only a single automated turnstile. Once he was past that, he’d be out of the village and on the slope leading toward Exit 42. There was no one around. Hiroto started walking. “Who’s there?” called a child’s voice coming from the automated turnstile. It wasn’t the turnstile that’d spoken, however. There was a boy, about ten years old, sitting behind it. “Who are you? A bad guy?” asked the kid. He was wearing what looked like an adult-sized T-shirt cut down to fit him. It was extremely baggy. “No. I’m not a bad guy. I’m just a traveler passing through.” At the foot of the automated turnstile was a cup full of water and a small piece of thick, light blue paper. Hiroto crouched to take a closer look and saw it bore location names and numbers written in dense, small writing. It seemed to be some kind of charm. “What are you doing?” Hiroto inquired. “What do you mean? I’m praying.” “Praying?” “A bad guy took my mom away, so I’m praying to the holy turnstile to beat up the bad guy and give my mom back,” the boy explained. His face looked familiar. It slightly resembled the man in the suit who’d been hauled off by the turnstiles earlier. “Are you a station staffer?” the child questioned. “Staffer?” “The mayor said that he asked the staffers in Matsumoto to get rid of all the bad guys.” Like Kofu, Matsumoto was a basin city that Yokohama Station had turned into a many-layered metropolis. Going by the map on Keiha’s device, it was huge and probably had a robust staffing organization. It was far away, however. “There aren’t any staffers here?” “There used to be. But then the bad guys came, and now they’re gone. But if I listen to what the grown-ups say and be a good boy, Daddy says the holy turnstile will kick all the bad guys out of Yokohama Station.” Hiroto looked up at the turnstile’s face. Its body was quite faded, and its joints were losing paint. It was quite old; he couldn’t tell if it would even move. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the body, but that was clearly because the villagers were tending to it, not because it was operational. These people had been living Inside for ages. Why did they believe in the righteousness of the automated turnstiles so fervently? One of their own had just been tossed out of the station by the things. It was just a machine. A robot that mechanically followed its own rules. Whatever it did, it wasn’t going to answer their prayers. Hiroto thought he should say as much out loud, but after looking at the boy and the turnstile some more, he said, “Hey…these bandits. Where’s the bad guys’ hideout? Is it close?” “Are you gonna beat the bad guys?” the child asked. “Yeah. I’ll get rid of ’em.” The raiders had initially lived in the Matsumoto area. They attacked travelers trying to cross through the station pass, but as the staffer faction in Matsumoto grew stronger, they’d been chased out to this more remote valley. They had one hideout Inside and one outside. The group moved between the two as needed. From what Hiroto learned, they were currently outside. The Inside spot was located in a long passageway that crossed the mountains from east to west for several kilometers without supports. Only the structural genetic field made this possible. Hiroto took out his genetic field canceler. He’d gotten quite used to breaking down concrete with it, but this task would require much more precision than anything he’d done prior. First, he shone the canceler at the passageway floor—the full width of it, and one meter long. “What are you doing?” asked the boy, who was watching from the end of the corridor. “This is dangerous, so keep your distance. Stay right there.” After a bit more application, the ground grew brittle and ceased to function as a support. It was only the walls and ceiling propping up the hallway, a fact that could be detected in the way the passage wobbled as you walked through it. Hiroto had chosen to erase a meter’s worth in anticipation of the speed of the genetic field’s recovery over the next few days. It was just a guess, though. He had no idea if it was enough. After using the canceler so much, he’d run down its battery to below thirty percent. “That should be good. Now tell the people of the village to stay away from here for a while. Don’t come in, no matter what. Got that?” “What will happen?” “If it works, the next time they come to this hideout, the ground won’t be able to support their weight, and it’ll break.” “The hallway? Break?” The boy clearly didn’t understand what that meant. Hiroto didn’t have a clear vision in his head of how this would work, either. He just knew that Nepshamai had told him about how Yokohama Station tried to send corridors over the Tsugaru Strait that eventually collapsed from their own weight. “The point is, it’ll snap. Then, the passage will fall down to the bottom of the valley. Yokohama Station might be tough, but from that height, it’s bound to at least break some windows. It’ll be the bandits’ fault that they damaged the station, and the turnstiles will pounce on them and beat them up…or maybe the punishment is different if it’s considered an accident. I don’t know if it’ll actually destroy anything, either. The point is, it’s a gamble. Even if we don’t win, though, we won’t lose anything from it.” The child was clearly at a complete loss. “Anyway, to reiterate, don’t come near this hideout until the bad guys try to come back. Warn the other villagers as well. Can you do that?” “Yeah. I can.” “See, if you’re a good boy, the holy turnstiles will beat up the bad guys. I’ve got to get going now. Hang in there, kid,” Hiroto said, and he left the child behind. As he walked, his mind found a host of things to worry about. What if he hadn’t shone the canceler enough? What if he’d done it too much, and the passage crumbled on its own? What if the chunk that collapsed landed on the part of Yokohama Station in the valley where people lived and they got hurt? Unfortunately, his concerns would change nothing at this point. The last hill to climb before Exit 42 was narrow and cramped—quite unlike the mountain ranges that Hiroto had crossed already. There was virtually no choice of routes. The peak, once known as Mt. Ontake, like Mt. Fuji, was covered with layers of escalators and roofing, pushing the apex higher than the mountain’s natural tip. Hiroto’s destination was near the peak, beneath the many stacked layers of Yokohama Station, buried out of human sight over the many years. He’d slept a fair amount in the settlement and hoped to have enough stamina to finish his journey but found himself running short of breath. It was an unpleasant feeling the likes of which he’d never experienced before. His muscles weren’t tired; he just couldn’t get enough oxygen into his lungs, no matter how hard he worked them. It was as if something inside was punishing him for what he’d just done. Hiroto had to stop walking, sat down on the escalator, and waited for it to carry him upward. If the hallway collapsed as planned, all of those bandits were likely to die in the fall. He’d consigned a group of people he’d never met or seen before to death. The structural genetic field canceler in his hand wasn’t a lethal weapon by itself, but it had far more frightening powers. He’d used it to exile someone from the station and create a trap meant to plunge an unsuspecting group to their deaths in the valley below. Hiroto hadn’t even been punished or pursued by the turnstiles for it. Here he was, still free to move about Inside. Of course, the automated turnstiles were just machines following their fixed routines. However, it seemed to Hiroto like they were malicious agents that existed to discipline and torment him and others. It was the first time he’d ever felt that way. When he’d lived in Ninety-Nine Steps, the automated turnstiles were just part of the background. They blocked him out and kept his world small, but they were only a part of the life Hiroto had been dealt, another piece of the station’s outer wall. The map on Keiha’s device showed that the red dot marked EXIT 42 was slowly growing closer. Like a machine resting on a factory assembly line, Hiroto trundled automatically toward his goal. It was much too strange to be called an exit. A concrete wall continued to the vanishing point, with yellow braille blocks arranged in front of it. There wasn’t a single poster on the wall, but it had been exposed to the light for so long that the surface was discolored. Hiroto couldn’t see the entirety of it from where he stood, but according to the map on the device Keiha gave him, this wall surrounded a roughly three-kilometer circle of space. Inside of it was Exit 42. It was as if Yokohama Station itself had sealed off the area around it, hiding something unpleasant. The PA voice warned, “For your own safety, please stay inside the yellow line.” However, with things as they were, it was impossible to know which side was “inside” the line. In geometric terms, the space beyond the wall was the inside part of the line. On the other hand, he was already Inside on this side of the line. Hiroto circled the wall, approaching the spot marked EXIT 42 on the map. Then, he shone the genetic field canceler at the wall to make a small hole. The remaining battery readout was down to sixteen percent. He probably had one good use left. On the other side of the wall was an illuminated yellow sign with a bordered 42, the word EXIT, and an arrow pointing right. Below that was the phrase, TO JR INTEGRATED INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT LAB. “A lab…? Up on top of a mountain?” Hiroto muttered. He went through the hole, and the floor soon went from concrete to exposed earth. So it seemed there was a hollow outdoor space about a kilometer in radius covered up under Yokohama Station like a giant bubble. The ceiling was about ten meters tall overhead and had no lights. It was very dark, with the only illumination coming from the space between the walls and the ceiling. As Hiroto’s eyes adjusted, he could see natural rocks everywhere on the ground around him. The backlight of the 18 Ticket was his source of luminescence as he carefully made his way forward. Just as he was getting used to the low light, he arrived at a room. It was less of a building and more a single enclosure placed directly on top of the ground. The door had been designed for use inside a structure, and there were corkboards and whiteboards on the wall. The place hadn’t been meant to be exposed to the elements. Overall, it gave the impression of a room that had been lifted from somewhere else and dumped into the mountains, then covered with walls and a ceiling to hide it. It reminded Hiroto of how the superconductive railway had been concealed. Nepshamai said the structural genetic field disliked superconductive material, and that was why it put up walls to wrap the tunnels. Third Development Division, Ichinomiya Lab was written on a metal plate next to the door. Beneath it hung a plastic board with the word Absent. Hiroto carefully opened the door to Ichinomiya Lab. The lights were on inside. As he squinted against the sudden brightness, the first thing he noticed was a giant server rack. A number of thin computers were inserted into it, with wires running out of them in a spaghetti tangle. With a sonorous booong, the server machines booted. Red and green lights flickered rapidly, and exhaust fans spun up. Opening the door must have activated a sensor and restored power to the room. The scene reminded Hiroto of Keiha’s place in Kofu, though there were some differences. Upon a closer examination, the computers were covered in choking dust, and a mysterious, slimy substance spread across the floor. The machines must have lain dormant for quite a long time. In the center of the room stood a large pillar about a meter across with four display monitors affixed to it in vertical portrait mode. On the back wall was a steel set of shelves. Inside a glass compartment resting on one of the rungs was a set of book spines written in old-fashioned letters with titles like: Distributed Intelligence Society, April ’84 Bulletin Theory and Practice of Network Intelligence Developments in Modern Information Science JR Timetable, March ’84 The Collected Dostoyevsky Machiavelli’s The Prince, A New Translation A screen displayed a spinning start-up logo, which eventually changed to read, “synchronizing data.” Sometime later, there was a voice. “Is someone there?” It was coming from the room’s speakers. A man wearing a suit seated at a desk appeared on the four monitors installed on the central pillar. He looked just like a newscaster in a studio. Surprisingly, Hiroto recognized him. “…Professor?” “Oh, you know me?” the man asked. “No. You look like him, but you’re much younger than the professor I know. And your voice is different.” “Ah. Well, this appearance is based on when he was duplicated. The voice you hear is being automatically translated to contemporary pronunciation according to what was just downloaded. It might seem unnatural, but I have not been awake in a while. You’ll have to be patient for all the updates to permeate my system.” The man on the screens yawned. “I have been asleep here for quite a while. For some reason, my power supply was cut off, so I had to shut down to avoid wasting my battery store. What year is it by the Gregorian calendar?” “Gregoria-what?” “Hmm. It would seem it’s been quite a long time, then. Ah, well. I must say, you seem to be rather exhausted. Aren’t you thirsty? There should be a stock of food and water in the adjacent room. You may help yourself,” the man stated. There were no other rooms. “Hey, who are you? Where are you talking to me from? I came here because the professor said I would find all the answers here. What are you, a relative of his or something?” “Not so fast with the questions. My parallel processing ability is limited,” the man replied. A cup of tea appeared on the screen, and he took a sip. “Allow me to answer in order. As for the question of where I am, I’m speaking to you from here. From the server rack behind you.” He pointed over Hiroto’s back. The fans of the stacked computers whirred and buzzed. The exhaust had a peculiar smell that suggested old age. “You’re an artificial intelligence?” “In a broad sense, yes. But the question of what ‘artificial’ means is rather tricky. You were born of human parents, for example. Does that make you artificial or natural? You’re undoubtedly man-made. Your mind was cultivated by speaking with others and learning from them. Does that make your intelligence artificial?” These odd questions reminded Hiroto of the professor. The difference was that the words were much more straightforward than those of the man he knew. “I’ve gotten off-topic—next, the question of my identity. I am the entity in charge of maintaining the JR Integrated Intelligence. Or I should say, I was. The professor you speak of is most likely my origin. He was the lead developer on the JR Integrated Intelligence.” “Lead developer…? Wait a minute. I thought the integrated intelligence was created hundreds of years ago, right?” said Hiroto, recalling what Keiha told him. “Hundreds? Oh dear, it’s been a very long time, then. What has our lab been doing? At any rate, it might have taken time, but it seems it’s been a success. Just a moment, please. I’d like to pull up the present conditions of… Hmm? Something’s wrong.” The man on the screen swiveled his head around, searching for something. “I should see Tokyo Bay just to the east of here…but I’m missing locational data. Have the GPS satellites stopped working? Atmospheric pressure is too low. Are we at a high altitude? Where are we?” A small map promptly appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. It was a map of Japan. All of Honshu and the northeast edge of Shikoku were covered in black. A red blip indicated the lab’s current position. “What is this? All of Honshu is now Yokohama Station?” the AI professor queried, eyes wide. “I’d heard it was theoretically possible…and now it’s true? Ha…ha-ha-ha. It’s like a bad joke.” He covered his eyes with a hand and grimaced with mirth. Hiroto didn’t understand what made it funny. “Regardless of how far the station has expanded, the outcome will be the same. Listen, I’m sure you have many questions for me, but I need to sum up the situation for you first. We’re going to erase Yokohama Station off the face of the earth. And I need your help to do it.” On the 117th floor of Kofu, in the back room of a place called the Trinket Shop, was a computer with possibly the highest processing capability in the entire city. Keiha had scrounged together all the resources she could find into this cluster. The machine’s electrical consumption far exceeded the cost any person could pay, but Keiha had fiddled with the power utility’s meter to eliminate the excess. The station’s power utility basically existed only to ensure that energy moved along from the matter furnaces in the depths of Yokohama Station, and there was no professional pride among the people who worked there. They would never discover what Keiha had done. Her monster of a computer was running a circuit simulator that had been passed around on Suikanet for ages. She would physically scan a machine to input its circuit structure as information, then feed virtual power through the virtual circuit data. It would run a ghost of the circuit and display the output on the monitor. > Booting Kitaka OS 4.2… > Loading complete. > Multiple hardware not recognized. Serious error may have occurred to body. After several messages passed, a command prompt appeared on the screen. Keiha leaned over to her mic and spoke into it. “Hello. I’m Keiha Nijo. Can you understand what’s happening?” When she turned off the mic, the system sent the voice data into the circuits, the computer’s cooling system ran faster, and white exhaust poured out of the machine. After three minutes of silence, letters appeared on the monitor. > I understand your speech. I do not recognize myself. “Your name is Nepshamai. You’re an agent sent from JR North Japan.” More time passed with no answer. It was concerning that the cooling system’s nitrogen was filling the room, since the stuff was only vented from the chamber in small bursts. Managing exhaust vapors in the middle of the stratified Yokohama Station without drawing attention was one of the trickier aspects of Keiha’s work. One time, Keiha had even blacked out from a lack of oxygen. She’d only survived because one of the local electronics handlers had spotted her. Living on a higher floor would have afforded her better conditions, but being among the wealthier citizens would draw attention from the station staffers. Keiha’s ICoCar System fooled the automated turnstiles, so it was the staffers who frightened her the most. > I understand JR North Japan. I do not recognize my individual. Concern for major error in main memory device. “Is there anything you do remember? Do you recall the token you used to connect to the communication port with JR North Japan in Hokkaido?” A few moments went by with no response. Keiha refreshed her tea while waiting for the machine to reply. > Token existed in main memory device. Cannot be recalled due to major error in repair. Confirming problem cause currently. Keiha’s shoulders slumped. She’d hoped to extract enough of his data to make contact with JR North Japan, but it wasn’t going to work out. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t understand the formatting of your main memory, so I scanned the entire physical structure. It’s all simulated, so it’s taking at least ten times as long to run. I’m just amazed we can have a conversation at all. Your system must be very robust. Do you have any information on the format of your main memory device?” Keiha had to wait nearly twenty minutes for the answer. Maybe talking to it too much at once confused its circuits. > I have format no information from the start. It is possessed by the engineering division for classified. “Is there a way for you to contact the engineering division? I want to get in touch with your organization. I think it will help both of us.” > In my knowledge you fragments exist. The engineering division however requires secret clear reason. Keiha realized that her scan of Nepshamai’s language center was probably inadequate, but it would take too long to ask again. What’s more, if she taxed it to the point that it shut down, it would be hours before she could get it running again. She needed to ask everything she could now, while she had the chance. “If possible, I’d like for you to tell me as much as you know.” > As much as I know not recognized. Suggesting a specified request. “Okay, how about this. Who is Yukie, your creator?” > Yukie is the developer of the Corpocker series which is us. “I know that. What I’m asking is how she was able to gain such advanced tech. My guess is that she extracted data from a surviving JR Integrated Intelligence unit in Hokkaido while looking for information to use against Yokohama Station. Then, she deciphered the system language. It’s the only way I can think of that someone could create AI as advanced as you, not to mention the genetic field canceler. Am I right?” > In regard to Yukie, by the company I can say it is forbidden. “So that subject is classified. Have you ever met Yukie directly before?” > Directly meaning is undefined. Memory exists within main memory device of data existing within supplemental memory device. Supplemental memory device not recognized. “All right. Next question: Do you remember the person you were traveling with for the last few days? It was a guy called Hiroto Mishima.” > There is no information regarding name. The person is 18 Ticket. “Yes, that’s him.” Keiha brought up a map on another screen. It displayed the location of the machine she’d given Hiroto as a blue dot. He’d crossed the Kiso Valley and was approaching the red blip that marked Exit 42. “He’s heading here now,” Keiha said, pointing at the spot. “Do you know anything about this place?” > In regard to Exit 42, by the company I can say it is forbidden. “…What does that mean? Did JR North Japan forbid you android agents from talking about the place?” Keiha took a deep breath, then made an effort to speak slower. “I want to work with your organization. If my guess is correct, something deadly to Yokohama Station is dormant there. My goal is to get it, and it should be yours, too. Sharing information will be of mutual benefit.” She waited for minutes and minutes, but there was no response. Either it didn’t understand what she was saying or was keeping mum. Keiha didn’t understand enough about how this intelligence worked to tell the difference. Keiha’s laptop beeped. There was an alert on the screen. “Looks like he’s made it there,” Keiha muttered. The location of Hiroto’s device overlapped with Exit 42 on the map. It had the ability to transmit both locational and voice data. Keiha could hear someone at Exit 42 talking. It was not Hiroto’s voice; it sounded more like a man in the prime of his life. Unfortunately, because Hiroto was so far removed from any of Keiha’s captured Suikanet nodes, she did not have immediate communication with him. Given the physical distance, there would be about an hour’s delay in reaching him. “This all began with a mistake by JR Integrated Intelligence,” admitted the man on the screen, who called himself the maintenance entity of JR Integrated Intelligence. He talked about the long, long Winter War, the birth of the integrated intelligence based on the railway network, and how, despite the human government in charge, it was the integrated intelligence that did the ultimate decision-making for the country. Still, Japan had continued to collapse. The JR Integrated Intelligence was far more intelligent than any human being, but it was still just a brain. It had no powerful means of defense. Satellite weapons steadily destroyed the train stations that were its individual units. The various JR companies, like advisors to a king, attempted to defend and repair. However, there were too many spread out all across the country to maintain, and the war showed no signs of letting up. This state of affairs lasted for decades. At some point, the integrated intelligence came to a decision. It concluded that human reconstruction could not maintain it, and the AI resolved to implement an autonomous rehabilitation system in its units. “This gave birth to the intelligence network’s self-repair system, using memory and replication of physical structure, and a quantum field to propagate it. Nowadays, they call it the structural genetic field.” Yokohama Station was chosen as the test case for this new function. The place had been in a constant state of development ever since it’d first been built. The simple initial structural genetic field would take in the memory of the many years of renovation and renew it as an autonomous entity capable of rebuilding itself. The genetic field would then be transferred to other units, rendering the integrated intelligence immortal as a whole. That was the plan. “I suppose it’s the nature of a ruler to seek immortality eventually. In the distant past, the first emperor to unify all of vast China sought an elixir of immortality and ingested mercury, which ironically shortened his life. Even a creation as smart as the JR Integrated Intelligence was not immune from this fixation on life.” But that was a mistake. Immortal life to a biological creature—cells that repeatedly replicate without growing old and dying—is nothing more than cancer. Once injected with the seed of the structural genetic field, Yokohama Station exhibited the memory of its many additions to its fullest extent. It did not stop at repairing damaged sections. It grew along the neighboring train lines until it had covered all of Japan’s railways, and eventually, the land itself. Like a malignant growth devouring its biological host, Yokohama Station ate up the country it called home. Yokohama Station swallowed up the other stations that were fellow units of the intelligence. At the point that the growing network’s complexity made it impossible to maintain conscious thought, the integrated intelligence simply stopped acting rationally. Yokohama Station continued to expand, covering the entire island of Honshu, until the present day. “The integrated intelligence’s immortality project had plenty of dissent within the lab itself. It was wartime, though, and the AI always held the deciding vote. By that point, the Japanese government was nothing more than a spokesperson for the computerized mind. So our lab prepared a countermeasure, in case it went out of control…but I couldn’t have guessed that it would come around so very late.” “Countermeasure?” inquired Hiroto. “Yes. The integrated intelligence was planning to remove the genetic field from the station interior once its test using Yokohama Station was complete. This lab still contains the means to do that. Look on the other side of this support.” Hiroto walked around to the back side of the pillar and saw a yellow box about the size of his 18 Ticket. There was a red button in the middle, with a sticker that said EMERGENCY STOP. “That’s an antiphase genetic field oscillator. If activated while in contact with Yokohama Station, it will fluctuate and deploy a genetic field with the reverse structural genetic field phase. Ultimately, the antiphase genetic field will permeate every corner of Yokohama Station, and all of the structural genetic field will be eliminated. In other words, Yokohama Station will die.” Hiroto understood this as a gigantic version of the structural genetic field canceler. “No one expected the place to get this large, so it’s hard to guess exactly how much time purging it will take. If we extrapolate from the data performed on a lab-sized scale, the station should be entirely gone in the span of a few years to a few decades.” “If you’ve got that, why didn’t you use it before now?” Hiroto asked. “That is exactly the reason I want your help. You see, the developer of the JR Integrated Intelligence implemented a major taboo in the system.” “Taboo?” “A taboo against self-destruction. It was made so that no unit within it could actively destroy another one. Yokohama Station may have consumed everything, but this still holds true.” The maintenance entity was a partition of the integrated intelligence, so it was essentially a sibling of Yokohama Station, which was one of the intelligence’s units. Because their parent forbade the brothers to fight, the maintenance entity could not activate the system that would destroy the cancerous growth. “So you were waiting for a human being to come along and press the button for you?” “That’s not all. No one with a Suika can press the switch, either. The Suika is an organ that identifies humans as part of Yokohama Station’s structure, allowing them to escape its immune system that purges everything foreign. There’s a force that cracks down on humans without a Suika trying to sneak Inside, isn’t there? And if someone with a Suika tries to destroy part of Yokohama Station or commits violence against another person, the immune system removes them, too.” Hiroto recognized that the younger professor was talking about the automated turnstiles. “This device was originally installed outside of Yokohama Station, but it seems the entire lab was swallowed up before it could be deployed. No wonder it took so long for a response. That’s why I had to wait for someone like you to come along—someone without a Suika who could reach this place and activate the antiphase genetic field oscillator.” “You needed me to come here?” “That’s right. I don’t know how it happened, but because you used a temporary pass and were able to reach this far inland, it’s solved our paradox. A human being without a Suika can press the button. You’ve saved the nation. I am deeply indebted to you. I shall report directly to the prime minister.” Hiroto didn’t know what a nation or a prime minister was. He keenly felt that he’d been given some very crucial role to play, though. “The station will disappear?” Hiroto inquired. “I never considered that outcome.” He’d never seen its existence as something that blocked his possibilities or limited his life. No matter where you were in Ninety-Nine Steps, the ocean was on one side and Yokohama Station was on the other. That was where they lived and how they supported themselves. Those two things were Hiroto’s givens, his environment, facts that had been set in stone since he was born. One push of this button could undo all of that. “Do you really want me to decide that?” Hiroto asked. “I do. If you do not press that switch, it will never activate. Or, to be more explicit, the device will not initiate if pressed by the volition of anything related to the integrated intelligence, myself included. You must move your body of your own will and physically depress the button.” “My own will,” repeated Hiroto. He realized then that the corners of his mouth were raised. Either his facial muscles were fatigued, or he was subconsciously grinning from the folly of it all, but he couldn’t tell which. “It’s true that I’ve felt like the world Inside is wrong somehow. Not that I can really explain why. But I’m just a traveler. I’ve only been here for five days. Getting the 18 Ticket, getting the canceler, and coming this far was all just a series of coincidences.” Breathing was getting more challenging again. It was like all the air in the room was being sucked up by the crowd of computers behind him. “Maybe you don’t realize it because you’re stuck here in the middle of the mountains, but there are tons and tons of people living in Yokohama Station. They’ve been living there for way over a century. What right do I have to steal the lives they’ve built for themselves? What does that make me?” “What you are does not concern me,” the maintenance entity retorted coldly. “But there is one thing I can say. You used the word ‘right,’ but that does not apply here. I am not asking you to decide the fate of Yokohama Station. If you do not press that button, I will have to wait for my next visitor. That might be tomorrow, or it might be a hundred years from now. Either way, the end will come eventually. That much is certain. Columbus did not have the right to determine the fate of the Native Americans. Their destiny was already decided at the point that two civilizations differed in strength.” The face on the screen was frigid. Hiroto didn’t know what Columbus was, but he got the impression that it was supposed to be a significant moment in human history. “Allow me to make an analogy: You have a pile of sand sitting on top of a table, and you are dropping the grains from above, one at a time,” began the calm, relaxing voice from the monitor. The man looked like a father patiently teaching his child how to do their homework. The maintenance entity used his hands to mimic the outline of the sand pile, and an actual heap appeared on the screen. At first, it was small, the size of a rice ball, but as the stuff sprinkled down, it got bigger and bigger. “Initially, it is just a little mound, but in time, it will become an enormous mountain.” The pile grew until it engulfed the desk, concealing the man behind it. “However, the process will never end. Eventually, there will be a collapse. One of those grains of sand will cause the mountain to topple.” An avalanche rolled over the right side of the little sediment mountain, spilling a great deal off the desk. “Why does the sand mound collapse? It’s simple. Because this desk cannot support an infinitely growing mountain. Eventually, something will give way. It is not some special granule with great power and will that does it. As long as the pile cannot exist infinitely, there will inevitably be an ordinary bit of sand that causes it to collapse. It is that simple. You do not need to be a special person. You don’t need to be the hero who saves the world or the demon that destroys the station. I just want your help as a single grain coming down onto the pile,” the man stated. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying,” Hiroto admitted. “But I’ve lived my whole life on a tiny cape called Ninety-Nine Steps. It’s like a little blank margin between worlds. I just want to know what everything beyond is like so I can bring about a little change to the world I know and move it forward just a small amount. That’s what brought me here.” After a brief silence, Hiroto’s hand moved over the button, as smoothly as water flowing downhill, and pressed it. Bzzz, bzzz. Bzzzzzz. A sound like thrumming insects’ wings filled the entire room, to the point that it even shook a little. The bug noise slowly began fusing with Hiroto’s breathing and heartbeat. He sat down at the foot of the table beneath the button.