Chapter 6

6. Turnstile Organ Even in Kofu, Keiha observed the brief warping of communication through Suikanet. She picked it up as a kind of static, rippling outward in circular fashion, like the surface of a pond after a rock is thrown into it. Keiha kept the Suikanet nodes she had control over in communication with each other, giving her a constant window into the network’s state as a whole. The number of securable points was less than one percent of what they’d had at the Dodger Alliance’s apex, forming a narrow line from Kyoto to Kofu. That also happened to be the year-long trail she’d followed while on the run. It was difficult to capture more nodes. Keiha didn’t have a functioning Suika, and all the computational resources she could use went toward the ICoCar System that protected her. Her trusted companions were gone. The best she could do now was to collect information on this narrow line, interfere a little with the automated turnstiles, and observe the state of the network. So she could tell that for a few seconds, a slight wave of noise had spread across Suikanet like that ripple from a stone in a still pond. Once the surge had crossed through the station’s entirety, everything seemed to go back to normal. Exit 42 had been the center of that fluctuation. “He activated it,” Keiha said into a mic. It was connected to her massive supercomputer cluster where the virtual replica of Nepshamai’s main memory device slumbered. “I don’t know why your company was keeping this place a secret, but he made it there. I win this round.” There was no response. Keiha realized that the energy readings of the physical simulator were much higher than they’d been initially. Either it was a lack of precision in the scan, or the structure itself was unstable. The device Keiha had given Hiroto possessed the ability to transmit locational data. He’d made it to Exit 42, and within an hour, the ripple had happened. Several hours had passed since then, but Hiroto had yet to move from that spot. “Well done. When Yokohama Station, the final unit of the integrated intelligence, is eliminated at last, I will be automatically deleted as its maintenance entity. It has been a very long job, indeed,” said the display overhead. “I am rather surprised, however. To think that so many people have been implanted with Suikas… I had figured it stood to reason that once their land was stolen, they would fight to steal it back.” “…What does that mean?” Hiroto asked, sitting on the ground. The man did not respond. Hiroto looked up and saw that the monitor had gone dark. The fans on the server farm were still. A few moments later, the lights went out, too. Everything was dark and quiet. It wasn’t cold, however. The temperature remained the same as everywhere else Inside. Curiously, Hiroto couldn’t stop trembling, though. It was like his body was expelling all of its heat in an attempt to burn out and be as motionless as everything else. The entity had said that the antiphase genetic field would take years, possibly decades. At the very least, it wasn’t likely that the building would start to crumble around Hiroto, trapping him. Even so, Hiroto couldn’t move. He felt as if taking action now would cause him to think about things he shouldn’t. A high-pitched beeping sounded. Hiroto had never heard it before. Some machine in the room is working again, he thought. It wasn’t the servers behind him. After a while, he realized the noise was coming from inside his bag. It was Keiha’s device. On the display were the words, Incoming Voice Call. “This is just a short-term route, so I can’t talk for long. Get out of there now,” instructed a distorted voice. “Keiha?” “Yes. You’ve been there for eight hours now. Why aren’t you leaving? Did something capture you?” “Eight hours?” Hiroto looked at the clock readout on the device. It was ten at night. Talking to the AI and pressing the button couldn’t have taken more than thirty minutes, though. Hiroto took a slow, deep breath, and answered, “The entire station will collapse, according to the facility they have here. I pressed the button.” “I know. Your voice data was transmitted back to me.” “Hey, did you know about all of this? About what was here and…” There was silence. “Not everything,” Keiha admitted. “But I had a hunch that place housed something significant—perhaps fatal—to Yokohama Station.” “Why didn’t you say so?” “I didn’t think you’d do it if I explained it all to you in Kofu. At that point, I don’t think you could’ve brought the station to ruin. My gamble was that you’d come around to the idea after three more days Inside.” It got quiet again. “You’re messed up.” “I told you, I’m more selfish than anyone else. Everything I do is in service of my own goals.” “Well, what I’ve learned after the last five days is that I’m not a person who can achieve his goals through great willpower like you. I just do what I’m asked, and now I can’t even move—” “Stop whining, get up, and get out of there!” Keiha shouted. It startled Hiroto so much that he nearly dropped the gadget. “Let me tell you, at this moment, you’re the only companion I have, so I need you to leave. That was part of my plan, and you’re still my responsibility.” A lull washed over the room. Hiroto got to his feet, picked up the bag, and began to walk. He slipped through Exit 42 and back Inside. There was nothing different about the station from before, just an endless, flat concrete wall. Interestingly, the gray of that barricade no longer seemed the same symbol of permanence that had loomed over the people of Ninety-Nine Steps his entire life. Having been burdened with the impossibly heavy choice of destroying the station, Hiroto was now visited by an unstoppable deluge of frustrated misery. I came so far from home and only got spun around and manipulated by other people. I’m not in charge of my own life. My one notable feature was not having a Suika. I got these jobs because people gave me an 18 Ticket and a structural genetic field canceler. Without them, I’m nothing at all. “You don’t need to be the hero or the demon. I just want your help as a single grain of sand,” the maintenance entity had said. The words echoed through Hiroto’s mind. Now they seemed very insulting to him. Yes, he was just a single speck on a pile, with no special abilities. That was why he’d left Ninety-Nine Steps. He’d hoped to become something. “Can you still hear me? Like I said before, if you make your way south, you’ll reach an area where I’ve got control of Suikanet nodes. Head there for now. I’ll get the automated turnstiles as far out of the way as I can,” Keiha instructed through the device. “This short-term route is closing, so I’ll end this call now. I’ll contact you again when you’re closer to your destination.” It was a very garbled connection, but even from Kofu, Keiha was able to make out the sound of Hiroto getting up to move. She exhaled with relief. The 18 Ticket would expire at nine o’clock tomorrow, so he still had eleven hours—plenty of time to escape. Since the fall of the Dodger Alliance, Keiha had spent four years continually losing. This was the first time she felt like she’d won something in ages. She faced the mic and said, “If you forbade any comments about that place, that would suggest that you didn’t want the end of this station to happen yet. I thought we might work together toward a common goal. Too bad.” The mic sent the words into the virtual copy of Nepshamai’s main memory device. It had stopped answering her yesterday, likely because of a poor-quality scan. Keiha had expected as much, however. In fact, it seemed like a miracle that she could have a meaningful conversation with the thing at all. She concluded that the original contents of the device must have really liked talking. “But I’ve won this time. We activated the device. Its own preservation systems will undo the integrated intelligence’s mistake.” The computer cluster squealed and spun. Keiha had not been speaking into the mic to get an answer but because she wanted someone to hear what she had to say. > Yukie is different. “…?” > Yukie is, JR Integrated Intelligence created structural genetic field. Based on purpose, entirely plan. In this way she thinks. “What are you trying to say? That the JR Integrated Intelligence intentionally created the expansion of Yokohama Station so the world would be this way?” > Yes. Integrated intelligence is ruler, and needed, during chaos of war, Yokohama Station, rule by automated turnstiles. Yukie thinks. Keiha’s pulse quickened. It had been years since she felt righteous anger toward something. The last time had been when her companions were captured by the automated turnstiles while fleeing to Kofu. “Your master might be brilliant.” Keiha scowled. “But I will never accept that answer.” As Keiha had said, there were no automated turnstiles on the southern slope leaving Exit 42. It was a fairly open area by Inside standards, and it was rare for there to be no turnstiles around at all. There were almost no people, either—perhaps because it was the middle of the night. The only others Hiroto saw were a pair of men in station employee uniforms coming up the slope, much farther down. Escalators grew in Yokohama Station along any incline of a certain size. However, the escalator itself could only have one angle. Thus, when the ground’s angle was milder, the automated stairwell had to be broken up with frequent landings to fine-tune the slope. Hiroto was making his way down one such set of escalators. At intermittent points, there were flat spaces a few meters long before the moving steps resumed. It allowed Hiroto to switch escalator lanes whenever he wanted. Each time the rising staffers reached a platform, they altered their lane to intercept Hiroto. They were coming after him. When he got a closer look at them, he noticed how shockingly similar they appeared. Their heights and faces were the same. The two seemed to be androgynous, and it was difficult to discern their ages. The majority of staffers Hiroto had seen wore dark blue uniforms with hats. Much like the automated turnstiles, there were subtle differences depending on the region. The defining feature here was a red hanging cloth near the waist, like a handkerchief. At the bottom of Hiroto’s escalator was a circular landing. A large pillar in the middle blocked his view, but it looked like the stairs fanned out in an array behind it. He could see the two staffers beyond. They were pointing at him and talking about something. They’d probably ask him why he was out alone in the mountains late at night like this. Upon closer examination, he saw that one of them was not pointing with a finger but a metal object in his hand. No sooner had Hiroto identified this detail than a high-pitched, silly sounding pomp! echoed across the lanes of escalators. Hiroto immediately felt the strength go out of his right leg. He lost his balance, tumbled down a few steps, and landed loudly on his backside. He didn’t know what had just happened. There was a powerful sensation of heat emanating from his right knee on down. One of his pant legs was dyed a deep shade of red. That was when he realized he’d been shot, and stabbing pain commenced. “Aaah…” As Hiroto swooned in sudden agony, the escalator brought him to the bottom and rolled him onto the landing. The staffers approached and stood over Hiroto. Even up close, it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Their uniforms were identical, too. The only difference was that one had a pistol. “Don’t move, please. If you try to run, it won’t be your leg I shoot next,” threatened the one with the weapon. It was probably a type of electric pump gun, although less powerful than the rifle that had shot Nepshamai in Kamakura. The two ignored Hiroto’s gasps and moans as the blood poured out of his leg. “Well, I’ve fulfilled my job. That’s it for me. You take care of the rest,” stated the shooter, handing the pistol to the other man. “You didn’t need to shoot him yourself, did you? We could have used one of the people we captured,” replied the other person. The voice was identical. “That would be irresponsible. As protectors of the station’s stability, we must be responsible for our actions.” “That’s a wonderful mindset. However, are you sure this was the right man?” “Yes. We confirmed it moments ago. There was an impromptu vibration through Suikanet, then this man appeared. He has no Suika. That’s certainly enough evidence.” “Sounds logical.” The staffer who handed over the gun looked around. “Hmm, I don’t see any turnstiles coming. I wonder what that means.” “That the disaster has already reached this far?” “That would be very bad.” “We need to confirm.” The man pointed the gun at the pillar in the middle of the landing and fired it. Pomp. The bullet struck the post and shattered into pieces. The shards of metal made it clear that the projectile had been one of the brass buttons from their uniforms. There wasn’t a scratch on the pillar. “Doesn’t seem to be a problem. Perhaps something is delaying the automated turnstiles.” “It’s possible that our long years of upholding righteous and responsible causes has earned us special privileges from Yokohama Station.” “Yes, very possible.” “In that case, you ought to carry this pistol.” “No. I have already entrusted this job to you. I cannot take it back, even if there is a delay in the station’s response.” “On the other hand…” The two continued foisting the gun off on each other. At this point, it was getting impossible for Hiroto to tell which of them had shot him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Hiroto shouted at the pair. They looked surprised, as though only now remembering he was there. “Oops, we shouldn’t be standing around conversing. What shall we do with him?” “We’ll take him with us. I did not shoot him as a form of punishment, you see. They might need him higher up. That’s why I aimed for the leg.” “I see, I see. As time passes, the situation only gets worse. I shall take him to Exit 42,” one of them stated. He then offered Hiroto a hand, still entirely devoid of expression. “Can you stand? It would help us if you could walk on your own.” Hiroto didn’t know what was going on except that these two were clearly his enemy. He should have figured that out earlier, but he’d never considered the possibility that he had real enemies Inside in the first place. He grabbed the staffer’s outstretched hand, then yanked it closer. The man grunted and lost his balance, falling over and dropping the pistol in his other hand. Hiroto quickly grabbed for the gun, but it wasn’t loaded. The other assailant tried to rip it out of his hands, so Hiroto hurled it as far as he could instead. The pistol curved through the air and landed several escalator lanes away, where it began to ride upward. Hiroto quickly scooped up his bag from the floor, then practically toppled down the escalator on the opposite side of the pillar. The two uniformed people were left on the landing. “He resisted us,” remarked the standing staffer, reaching out to pull up his fallen partner. The other welcomed his help and wondered, “Why did he resist us? We’re only acting in the proper interest of all.” “I don’t know. I’ll retrieve the gun. You follow him,” decided one of the two, heading up the escalator. The other went down. Hiroto fled as best he could, but with his leg shot, he could barely walk. He’d only gotten past a few landings when the man caught up to him at an easy walking pace. “I wouldn’t resist if I were you. If you attack me here, you’ll be taken out by the automated turnstiles, and that will not fulfill our righteous purpose.” “Hang on. Who are you people? You’re not station employees?” The man gave him a look that said he couldn’t fathom the meaning of the question. “Let’s go back up. Your unnecessary actions have taken us farther from Exit 42. The situation will worsen to the point of costing us time,” he insisted, grabbing Hiroto’s arm. Someone approached from behind the speaker. Hiroto assumed it was the other staffer—but it was a turnstile. The automated turnstile told the man holding Hiroto’s arm, “You have committed an act of violence inside the station, which is not allowed. Your Suika credential has been revoked. You will now be escorted out of Yokohama Station.” In his usual expressionless way, the curious person replied, “Yes, that is correct. I was acting on my purpose and my responsibilities, so there is no problem.” The automated turnstile bound him with metallic wire and turned to Hiroto. “A notice to you, visitor. Your 18 Ticket will soon expire. After it expires, you will be removed from the station. Please be aware of this and act accordingly.” Then, the machine escorted the staffer away, walking in single file back up the escalator. Once they were out of sight, the only sounds were the movements of the steps and the repeating announcements of, “Please hold onto the moving belts,” and “Leaning over the edge and running against the flow of traffic is very dangerous.” Hiroto was left trembling for a little while. He tore part of his jacket to make a bandage that he used to stop the bleeding in his leg, then resumed his descent to where Keiha had told him to go. Only an hour remained on the 18 Ticket. Hiroto checked his location. Once the 18 Ticket expired, automated turnstiles would appear and chuck him out of the station’s nearest exit. If he happened to get caught here, that meant he’d be tossed into a spot the size of a lobby three kilometers west of here, where he’d be trapped forever. It would mean game over. “My system keeps the automated turnstiles away as best as possible, but it’s only buying you time. Hurry,” Keiha urged through the device. Keiha had a pretty solid grasp on the behavioral algorithms of the turnstiles. They acted very simply within Yokohama Station. They spread out as evenly as possible Inside, and when intruders or Suika violators appeared, all turnstiles within a certain radius rushed to that spot. While the density was tighter in cities, the general pattern was the same. The control program for the automated turnstiles was not something designed by a specific programmer but by a routine that had evolved through the structural genetic field as Suikanet required. Therefore, it could not rise above a certain level of complexity. Keiha’s disruption system used the Suikanet nodes under her control to send falsified information to the net that multiple turnstiles were already present at certain coordinates (in this case, Hiroto’s location). The real turnstiles would move away from Hiroto to avoid surpassing the maximum necessary density. However, this was predicated upon Hiroto’s not being a target for elimination already. Once the 18 Ticket expired, Keiha’s meddling would only provide a slight delay before the automated turnstiles appeared. The capture of the staffer earlier was evidence of that. Naturally, because Keiha’s Suika was no longer valid, she couldn’t use this system to help herself. Hiroto could barely feel the pain in his leg anymore, but he was getting a bit woozy from blood loss. There was still a ways to go until he reached Keiha’s destination. He didn’t think he was going to make it. Hiroto let the escalator carry him downward and dreamed with his eyes open. It hadn’t been long after the professor had arrived to Ninety-Nine Steps. His mind was still sharp, but his speech was nearly unintelligible. “Professor, you came from somewhere far away, right? Where? Inside? Shikoku or Kyushu?” Hiroto had asked, showing him a map. The professor had pointed at a spot on the map and seemed to be indicating something. It was a little bit north of Ninety-Nine Steps. “That’s not that far from here. Is the weird way you talk what people sound like there?” A few years later, the professor had learned how people like Hiroto spoke, but his head had gone fuzzy in the meantime. Frequently, he would say things like, “I was in a place called the Lab, and it was always cold.” At the time, Hiroto had thought that it was probably chilly because it was in the mountains. He’d seen a movie scene with men exploring a snowy peak on one of the films that circulated on Suikanet. Thinking back on that now, though, he understood that Yokohama Station regulated the temperature, even at the tops of mountains. A beeping brought Hiroto back to the present. He’d fallen asleep sitting on the escalator. He looked inside his bag and saw a message on the screen of the 18 Ticket: This ticket’s valid period has expired. Thank you for your patronage. A sudden chill ran through him. Hiroto had reached the bottom of the slope down from Exit 42. He now stood before a flat corridor. Keiha’s destination was still ahead. There didn’t appear to be any automated turnstiles around for the moment. Hiroto put the 18 Ticket back into his bag and fished out the communication device. “Keiha, it’s me. The time’s up. I don’t think I’ll make it.” “Oh. The closest automated turnstiles are about a kilometer away. I can buy you about ten minutes. Just keep moving.” “Got it.” After a few minutes of walking, Hiroto made it out of the twisting, narrow hallways of the mountainous area and entered a level, wide, straight passage. The signs said, TO KISO and TO NAKATSUGAWA. Following the information on Keiha’s device, Hiroto headed for Nakatsugawa. After a few hundred meters, two automated turnstiles appeared. They were approaching, their speakers in announcement mode. “Your 18 Ticket period has expired. You will now be removed from the station. We appreciate your cooperation.” Two more of the machines appeared from the other direction, leading toward Kiso. “There are no plans to reissue 18 Tickets. For more details, please contact a JR Group company,” they announced. Hiroto was trapped. “Well, that narrows it down. Just keep going toward Nakatsugawa. Every step closer helps,” Keiha instructed. Hiroto obeyed. He was hoping he would surprise them and just slip past, but that didn’t happen. The two turnstiles ahead of him blocked his path with mechanical reaction speed. After one hundred and twenty hours and eleven minutes since going Inside at Ninety-Nine Steps, Hiroto had finally been caught by four automated turnstiles. “You will now be apprehended.” One of the turnstiles extended a wire and deftly spun it around Hiroto’s body, then grabbed him with both arms. To his surprise, it wasn’t painful at all. After the difficulty of walking, he even found it pleasant. The other three turnstiles took positions in a triangle around the one holding him. “Hiroto, can you hear me?” asked Keiha’s voice from the device clutched in his right hand. He’d already cranked the volume as high as it would go. “Yeah, but I can’t see the screen.” “Not a problem. Which way are they going?” “Toward Nakatsugawa.” Hiroto heard a faint sigh of relief from Keiha’s end. “We just made it, then. If they’re going that route, then you’ll be taken to a small station hollow in Nakatsugawa. Along the way, you’ll pass through my safe zone. When I give the signal, you attack with all your strength. Can you do that?” “My hands are free. I can manage.” “I’ll give you a ten-second countdown before it’s time.” “Got it.” The automated turnstiles continued marching, utterly oblivious to the conversation the humans were having. They couldn’t actually understand speech in the first place, so they had no interest at all in what he was holding. At that moment, Keiha was monitoring Hiroto’s path and distance to the destination from her store in Kofu. The corridor ran from northeast to southwest, and the line to the destination crossed that corridor at a thirty-degree angle. She had a margin of error of maybe ten meters. There were times when Suikanet’s locational readings were terribly off, but Keiha had no choice other than to trust that they were correct this time. “Almost there. Are you ready?” “Yeah.” “…Ten seconds to go. Nine. Eight.” Hiroto put a finger against the power switch of the structural genetic field canceler. The output setting was already at max. Sixteen percent of its battery charge remained. He was going to use the rest of it in one go. “Three, two, one, zero.” At the end of the countdown, Hiroto aimed the canceler at the foot of the automated turnstile. The device shone as brightly as if the sun itself were pouring into the corridor connecting the Kiso and Nakatsugawa regions. He could see the reflected light melting the walls and ceiling around them, too. The concrete floor had already disintegrated, along with the structure one story below, leaving a giant hole the full width of the passageway. The entire phalanx of turnstiles fell in, and Hiroto went with them. There were four tremendous metallic crashes around him. Despite dropping from a height of two stories, Hiroto felt no pain. The turnstile holding him used its joint shocks to absorb the impact of his fall. There was a familiar and distinctly damp mustiness to the place in which Hiroto now found himself. “The superconductive railway… It comes out this far?” It was the tunnel Hiroto had used to get into Kofu with Nepshamai. They’d been built long before the expansion of Yokohama Station, during the era of High Civilization before the Winter War. The track was still in this massive tunnel because the superconductive material repelled Yokohama Station’s expansion. “Yes. You’re now outside of Yokohama Station. The automated turnstiles shouldn’t chase after you there. If you head to the west, you can pass through Nagoya and exit into Ise Bay,” said Keiha, her relieved voice resonating against the tunnel walls. Of the four turnstiles that had fallen into the tunnel, three had spun their limbs to brace for impact and landed without damage. The one holding Hiroto had broken its arms and neck, exposing the cables beneath them. Parts of it were twitching, like a fish stranded on land. Presumably, to preserve its prisoner, the turnstile hadn’t been able to enter the appropriate defensive position. Hiroto extricated himself from the wires extending from the machine’s broken arms, feeling a bit sorry for it. The other three turnstiles swung their heads and arms around in apparent search for something. “Locational data incorrect. Turnstile functions cannot be executed.” “Locational data incorrect. Turnstile functions cannot be executed.” “Locational data incorrect. Turnstile functions cannot be executed.” They spoke slightly out of sync. The reverberation in the tunnel gave their words an odd echo. “Ending turnstile program. Returning to normal mode.” The three of them toppled forward and rested their arms against the ground. It was almost like they were prostrating themselves. Their face displays hung down to the floor such that they resembled four-legged tables. “Beginning normal mode initialization. This process may take up to several minutes. Please wait for the process to complete.” After that, the limbs of the three functioning turnstiles were still. Instead, there was a sound of metal clicking and scraping within their bodies. It looked like they were rearranging their internal mechanisms. “Wait, Keiha, can you hear that? They’re acting strange.” “…I can hear it. I’ve got a terrible feeling about this. Get away from there.” Hiroto wanted to start running, but his legs refused to obey. He was only moving at the speed of a brisk walk. The automated turnstiles existed to remove intruders and Suika violators from Yokohama Station. One could only wonder what happened to them when they left its confines. Hiroto had lived outside the station his whole life, and he’d never once considered such a thing. He only knew that turnstiles were found Inside. A few minutes after Hiroto hurried off, the automated turnstiles began moving again. “Establishing connection to tactical node… Tactical node not found.” “Waiting for signal from satellite… Signal not received. Searching for outdoor route… Route to outdoors not found.” “Orders from higher function not detected. Transitioning to self-defense mode.” “Unit within group has been destroyed. Hostile units likely nearby.” “Requesting backup. Requesting backup from nearby units.” The three automated turnstiles began skittering in Hiroto’s direction, still on all fours. Keiha’s ominous feeling stemmed from an idea that had been rattling around in her head for a while. There were production plants for the automated turnstiles all over Yokohama Station. Such complex facilities could not have been Yokohama Station’s own doing. As happened with other buildings, Yokohama Station had absorbed an existing place that people once built, then replicated it within the structural genetic field. So why did the automated turnstiles exist before the entity they seemingly existed to guard? The answer was that they’d initially been meant for some other purpose, and Suikanet then overwrote that with its own programming. This transformed the robots into a system for maintaining order Inside. It was the only possible explanation for the automated turnstiles. The structural genetic field only evolved on the spot in response to stimuli. It didn’t have the planning or precision to develop such intricate mechanisms. What had the automated turnstiles originally been for, then? While many machines had been developed during the Winter War, most weren’t fully autonomous or mobile. Plus, the four-limbed, humanoid design of the robots was clearly not intended for the flat floors of Yokohama Station. It was a structure better suited for uneven terrains—like a battlefield. With that in mind, Keiha said into the mic, “This is counter-evidence against you…or Yukie.” Keiha’s voice was fed from the instrument to the virtual replica of Nepshamai’s main memory device. “If the JR Integrated Intelligence created Yokohama Station of its own will, then it must have created the automated turnstile system, too. That being the case, it would have constructed a much more advanced and robust interface. The fact that Yokohama Station repurposed human-made robots for itself is proof that the station expanded against the intention of the integrated intelligence.” As one who’d spent a long time fiddling with the automated turnstile system, that was something she could assert with confidence. She had faith in her own technical skills, but that was only by contemporary standards. She assumed that she would be several levels below someone of equivalent expertise from the Winter War or the Internet age before it. If she could handle the robots that patrolled Inside, they couldn’t be that advanced. At the very least, they hadn’t been built by something superior to humanity. The saboteur from JR North Japan waited a few seconds. > There is necessity. Please the start-up process do. Send communication. “…?” At first, Keiha thought the response had been an answer to her statement, but she soon sensed that it was something else. The replicated intelligence had a task in mind. “Start-up process?” > Wiring is AAT compatible. Please hurry is necessary. Unstable signal. “AAT compatible wiring?” There was only one thing she could think of that related to AAT compatible wiring. It was the mechanism Nepshamai had used to control the superconductive railway and get to Kofu. It would have been a memory just before he ran out of power, so it was stored intact in his short-term memory bank. > Start-up process, please send. Hurryryryryryry “Wait a minute, what’s the matter?” Unfortunately, that was the end of the text on the monitor. No further reply came. The computer itself was functioning, but the recreation of Nepshamai’s main memory device on it no longer grasped what she was saying as legible vocabulary. The scan Keiha had made of Nepshamai’s memory hadn’t been accurate enough. Processing and numerical errors had built up to the point that it was no longer a functioning intelligence. She could recreate it using the data at the point of replication, but continuing to use such vast computational resources beyond this point risked Keiha’s own safety. Most of the computers in this shop were meant to be running the ICoCar System that kept the automated turnstiles in Kofu at a safe distance. Keiha decided to stop the simulator. “Human figure detected.” “Warning. Stop, or I will fire.” Hiroto ignored the automated turnstiles behind him and kept running. The tunnel was dark and had no lights. The three robots in pursuit had their arms on the ground to run on four legs. He had never seen them move like that before. Yet, for some reason, it seemed like a more natural state for them. There was a gunshot, and something sped into the wall nearby. Hiroto glanced over his shoulder and saw the three turnstiles facing him. One had produced a small tube protruding from a panel on its torso. It was pointing in Hiroto’s direction. The turnstile was equipped with an internal gun. The other two had nothing, though. Their panel portions were open, too, but Hiroto could only see exposed machinery. “Offensive device not detected. Engaging in direct capture,” the two weaponless turnstiles declared. The other one fired a few more times, then stated, “Inadequate illumination for identification. Target location cannot be identified. Using infrared system. Infrared detection system not loaded.” It promptly fired another round. This shot carved a hole into the right side of the tunnel. It wasn’t even close to Hiroto. It really seemed like the machines couldn’t see him now. Hiroto hadn’t noticed before, but the turnstiles were actually moving rather slowly. Their bodies were encased in heavy metal armor, so a human running at full speed could break away from them fairly quickly. Within Yokohama Station, they used their sheer numbers to surround and capture targets. Against only a handful of the robots, a human being stood a fighting chance. A battle of stamina was a different matter. Hiroto had already been shot in the leg and couldn’t run—and the automated turnstiles could move as long as they wanted without getting tired. Hiroto didn’t know what they used for energy, but they had to be capable of running for a pretty long time if they were built for battle. Finally, Hiroto’s strength gave out, and he collapsed onto the metal plate beneath him. The chill of its surface settled into his body. The one turnstile continued firing every few seconds, making little holes in the concrete of the walls and floor. It was incredibly inaccurate. As the machines drew closer to him, he could sense the shots were getting nearer, though. Am I about to die? Hiroto wondered. He’d certainly done enough to deserve it. He’d led multiple people to their deaths, and he’d pressed the button that would erase the whole of Yokohama Station. Over the next several years, the anti-something field would permeate everything Inside and steal the homes and livelihoods of the people who lived there. To the Insiders, it was an utter natural disaster. In that sense, Hiroto deserved to die here, down in a tunnel where no one would ever find him. If there was one thing he wished, it had to do with Nepshamai’s electric sign, still resting inside his bag. Hiroto wished he could do something for him. Perhaps he should have left the device with Keiha back in Kofu. Unbelievable. I’m more concerned about one machine than I am about all the people living in the station. I’m totally inadequate as a human being and totally inadequate in a pinch. Hiroto felt like he was about to burst into laughter. He looked up and saw that one of the three turnstiles was close enough that it was visible, even in the dark tunnel. “Warning. Stop, or I will shoot,” commanded the automaton, pointing its gun at Hiroto. “I already stopped, you dumb bucket of junk,” Hiroto spat, still sitting on the ground. “Warning. Stop, or I will shoot,” it repeated in precisely the same tone. “Oh, go to hell.” No sooner had the word “hell” left Hiroto’s mouth than a tremendous, high-pitched bang filled the tunnel. He felt like it had ruptured his eardrums. The front half of the automated turnstile blew off and clattered to the ground several meters away. Sparks and smoke sputtered from its exposed mechanisms. It exploded? Hiroto looked back and saw another figure. For an instant, he thought another turnstile had come from the other side of the tunnel, but it was a human. He was riding a little scooter with a long gun strapped sideways to it. Whoever it was was small but about Hiroto’s age. His weapon was trained on the automated turnstiles. “Who the hell are you?” the armed man asked Hiroto. “Who the hell are you?” Toshiru Kubo demanded, removing his earplugs. He always made sure to wear them when firing his weapon at maximum output, especially in an enclosed tunnel like this. “Did…did you just save me?” inquired Hiroto, reeling from the ringing in his ears. “I’m just a traveler. I came here from a cape far to the east. I got Inside with an 18 Ticket, but the time on it ran out, and I made it down to this tunnel trying to escape.” “I didn’t ask all of that. Who the hell are you? Human, machine, some kind of ghost?” “Human,” Hiroto replied. “I’m…human.” Hearing that, the man with the gun seemed to lose interest and turned to face his half-destroyed victim. There were exposed circuits and mechanical bits in the portions where the machine’s facade had been torn away. “Is this an automated turnstile, too? The one I saw at the strait looked very different,” Toshiru muttered. An infrared scope popped out of the robot’s shattered body. The device was meant for acquiring targets in the dark, but the lens was pointed inward toward itself and wasn’t even connected to the circuitry. It was affixed in a completely impotent manner. The little appendage was a vestige of a feature with which the turnstiles had once been equipped. In the same way that biological creatures living in a cave evolved until they lost their eyesight, the long process of growth in Yokohama Station had robbed the turnstiles of equipment they no longer needed. Now all that remained were superfluous traces of what once had been. “Eugh, what is that? It’s disgusting,” Toshiru grunted, pulling the scope free as gingerly as though touching something contaminated. He quickly collected some of the small bits of metal that had flown loose from the damage, then went back to his scooter, put in his earplugs, loaded the metal into the gun, and took aim at the two other approaching turnstiles. “You can shoot these machines.” Bang, bang. With two more loud bursts, the remaining robots practically exploded. Even against moving targets, this person on a scooter accurately struck the turnstiles’ exposed panels. They were less armored there, so a precision shot could take them down in one go. With his ears ringing again, Hiroto recognized that the man was using the same kind of electric pump gun that had destroyed Nepshamai in Kamakura. The destructive power and precision of this weapon seemed on a different scale entirely, however. Toshiru stripped the first turnstile of its circuits with a disgusted look as he searched for parts he could use. “Well, I don’t know who you are…but you saved me. Thanks,” said Hiroto, bowing his head. Toshiru couldn’t hear him because of the earplugs but understood the gesture of gratitude. “Ahh, so this is what it means to save people. Aha,” he muttered without looking at Hiroto. It reminded him of Haikunterke. She’d once said something about him not understanding what she meant. “Yeah, I still don’t get it. What’s the point?” Three days earlier, Toshiru Kubo had found the entrance to the superconductive railway in Tokushima. It had been planned to travel from Osaka through Kobe, then it would cross Awaji Island to Shikoku, but the Winter War had brought the project to a halt. All that was left was an exposed tunnel entrance sticking out of a hill in the middle of the woods. The shaft inside was finished, and it still had power, which made it a very comfortable place for Toshiru to ride his electric scooter. There were no plants for sustenance around, so he had to scrape off moss to break down into a solution with his catalytic bottle. If Toshiru ignored that part, it was probably the most pleasant place he’d ever been in his life. Nobody was here, and it just kept going forever. It seemed a bit like outer space, and that was where he truly wanted to be. Unfortunately, a human and three automated turnstiles had appeared and soured his mood. When JR Fukuoka defended the strait and shot down the extending corridors, they would occasionally recover automated turnstiles in the process. The military division would send them to engineering for an examination of their internal workings. Every time, Toshiru would think, I wish I could meet the person who designed this grotesque thing. Actually, I’d rather not. Of course, there was no creator to speak of. Perhaps there had been one, long ago, but the structural genetic field’s spontaneous mutations had slowly leached out the original reason and logic of the construction over time. There is a phrase called the uncanny valley. It states that as a robot’s appearance becomes more humanlike, it is considered more likable by human test subjects. Just before that facade becomes indistinguishable from an actual human, people’s comfort levels drop precipitously. Toshiru never liked others to begin with, so he didn’t have to worry about a robotic uncanny valley. He did feel a similar sensation regarding mechanical designs. That was why he found the automated turnstiles so creepy. It was about the last thing he wanted to see in a tunnel like this. If only he’d met something fun, like that mechanical girl, instead. “Hey, you,” Toshiru called to Hiroto. His face was turned in Hiroto’s direction, but his eyes were looking elsewhere. “I saved you, so give me something in return. Preferably something to eat.” “Uh, okay. Give me a moment.” Hiroto opened his bag. He’d brought plenty of meals for himself. Plus, he’d eaten out a few times, so he still had a few rations left. Just then, a device in the bag fell out onto the ground. It was Nepshamai’s electronic scrolling sign. It rolled over the sloping tunnel toward Toshiru’s feet. He picked it up. “Sorry. Give that back. I know that guy.” Hiroto felt like it was a strange request, even as he said it. Toshiru ignored him, however, and peered curiously at the electronic sign. He opened the front case and saw Nepshamai’s main memory device inside. Next to it was the small fox insignia of JR North Japan. “Hey, what does this mean?” Toshiru demanded. “Can you hear me? Did you get completely destroyed this time; not just the leg? Hey! Man, you’re a wreck.” The electronic sign didn’t respond. Its power was gone. “Hey, what happened to the body?” Toshiru asked Hiroto. “Got shot by a station employee. They took the body away,” he replied. For the first time, Toshiru actually looked Hiroto in the face. “Where?” “Kamakura.” Toshiru pulled a map up on his device to confirm the location of Kamakura. When he saw that it was over in the Kanto region, he made a bitter face. “Dammit, that’s far… Oh, well. Guess I can do another rescue. Is this place Inside? That’ll be a pain, but I bet I can make it work.” “Can you do it?” Hiroto asked. Toshiru put the electronic sign in the seat pocket of the scooter and said nothing. “If you can help, take this, too. It goes with that,” Hiroto continued, putting the dead genetic field canceler in Toshiru’s hand. “Oh, and this. I was supposed to hand it over when it expired.” He surrendered the 18 Ticket. Toshiru took them both without a word and stared closely at the objects. He seemed to find them more interesting than the man who’d given them to him. Then, Toshiru put the tube and the little box into the pocket along with the electronic sign. He started up the scooter’s motor and promptly took off in the direction from which Hiroto had come. Within moments, the scooter was out of sight, and all was quiet. All that was left in the tunnel with Hiroto was the trio of fallen turnstiles. He wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but it seemed like an improvement. There was little for Hiroto to do now but trust the man. Despite having known him for less than three minutes, Hiroto felt like the guy with the gun was dependable. There was another light from the far end of the tunnel. It felt like something was approaching from the distance. “Orders from higher function not detected. Transitioning to self-defense mode.” “Unit within group has been destroyed. Enemy units likely nearby.” It was the familiar synthesized female voice: automated turnstiles. The four who’d fallen during Hiroto’s escape were destroyed, but more were on the way. The only thing left in Hiroto’s bag was Keiha’s device, which coldly read, Out of network. The tunnel was going deep underground, out of the range of the station’s Suikanet signal. Below that was a notification that said, One new message. Based on the time stamp, it had been sent just after Hiroto tumbled into the shaft. > Superconductive railway start-up sequence program > Acquire an AAT-format cable (see image) and connect this device to rail car, then start attached program. KN That was the entire message. It was succinct, but Hiroto understood. Somewhere in this tunnel should be another vehicle like the one he and Nepshamai had taken to Kofu. If he hooked this device to the car, it would run like that one. Keiha had sent over the program to do it, anticipating this situation. She was very thorough. That left the cable as the only obstacle. If Hiroto was going to find a working line in a shaft like this, it could only come from one of the turnstiles on the ground around him. Hiroto rushed over to one of the halves of the split turnstile. In the darkness of the tunnel, it was hard to make out anything as small as the connector format Keiha had indicated. He reached into the open face panel and pulled out a number of things that looked like cables, jamming the bunch into his bag. The five days Hiroto had spent Inside had been full of new experiences from moment to moment, but the sheer bizarreness of rifling through the guts of an automated turnstile made him dizzy. He was searching through something that represented the boundary of possibilities, hoping to find the means to survive. There was a pile of black cables in Hiroto’s bag now. It reminded him of Keiha’s set of drawers back in Kofu. One of them had to be what he needed. Next, he had to look for a train car. Hiroto started running. The newer automated turnstiles were still far off, but they were definitely advancing Hiroto’s way. In a sense, they were coming to avenge their fallen family. Perhaps they meant to kill him at all costs. Hiroto could sense the hostility of the station thick on his skin. He wanted to live. Toshiru rode along on the scooter until the tunnel started to brighten a little. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, letting light in up ahead. “What is that? Was it an explosion?” He looked up but didn’t see the familiar blue sky, only some guidance signs that read, TO NAKATSUGAWA and TO KISO. Ahh, so this is directly below Yokohama Station. It was the first time in Toshiru’s life that he’d seen the Inside world. At least it wasn’t as unpleasant as the newly formed structure in Tokushima. Something was different about the completed interior. Perhaps it was because the actual station structure traced its lineage back to proper, logical design principles created by human beings. What was the giant hole, then? It would take massive firepower to punch an aperture this big in Yokohama Station, with its structural genetic field. Perhaps some group Inside had the same kind of muscle that JR Fukuoka did. The military division would pale if they heard that. Many automated turnstiles were milling around at the edge of the hole. It was like their movement algorithms wanted them to move forward. With the corridor blocked, though, they just shifted around in place. To get to Kamakura, Toshiru would have to get Inside at some point. Could he manage to climb up and get in here? Unfortunately, the hallways were narrow, and there were many layers. A scooter wasn’t ideal for mobility. What’s more, Toshiru couldn’t think of a way to lift a hundred-kilo machine up there. Having a smaller, two-legged body was more convenient Inside. That was very logical design. He looked down and saw an automated turnstile with its arms and neck broken. There was a metal wire tangled around its limbs. The thing was still, but it was making a hushed sound. Toshiru listened intently to make it out. “Requesting backup. Requesting backup from nearby units,” it muttered. Just then, two automated turnstiles from the upper level fell into the superconductive railway tunnel. They landed with heavy thuds. “Locational data incorrect. Turnstile functions cannot be executed.” “Locational data incorrect. Turnstile functions cannot be executed.” “Ending turnstile program. Returning to normal mode.” “Ending turnstile program. Returning to normal mode.” “Beginning normal mode initialization. This process may take up to several minutes. Please wait for the process to complete.” The turnstiles flopped forward, dropping their head displays down and assuming a shape like a four-legged table. “That’s not good,” said Toshiru. He looked up; more automated turnstiles were gathering. Apparently, the broken robot was calling more of its kind from Inside. As each of them descended into the superconductive railway tunnel, they transitioned into “normal mode.” “I don’t know what that is, but it’s not good. Gotta avoid them,” Toshiru declared, and he sped off on the scooter. He couldn’t push it that hard in the darkness, but thirty kilometers an hour was enough to shake off the turnstiles. To get to Kamakura, he’d have to get Inside somewhere. Maybe he could track down a cybernetic engineer and ask for a Suika implant. It was the first time in his life he’d ever wanted one. Sadly, he had nothing to trade for it. He couldn’t hand over the long gun, and he doubted the scooter would be worth anything Inside. Maybe there was a way to steal the body back without actually going Inside. “In any case, I’ll do whatever it takes to rescue you, Haikunterke.” Toshiru then realized that he’d forgotten to take the food from that weird guy back there. Not that it was a big loss. At that moment, Haikunterke was in Wakayama. In the three days since she’d split with Toshiru in Tokushima, she’d crossed Awaji Island to Kobe, then around Osaka Bay and south down the Kii Peninsula. “Can you read me, Haikunterke?” It was the voice of her case officer, Kaeriyama, coming to her through Suikanet from JR North Japan’s headquarters. It wasn’t a physical voice from vibrations in the air but digital data directly input into Haikunterke’s main memory device. She nearly answered before remembering that it wasn’t a real-time two-way communication but a packet of voice data he’d sent her in one big chunk. “Something strange happened midday yesterday, and I wanted to make you aware. We observed a very brief and unprecedented kind of noise wave that spread across the entire station. Initially, we thought it was an earthquake, but the physical sensors didn’t pick up anything. It might be the precursor to something major. Be careful. We’ll keep an eye on automated turnstile activity from here as best we can, but so far, there hasn’t been anything out of line. No problems with immune memory, either. Still, make sure you have a route identified to get to the sea as quickly as possible. That’s all.” The signal time put that message at about three hours ago. JR North Japan did not have adequate Suikanet node control in the Kii Peninsula to conduct proper conversations. Capturing those nodes was her mission, in fact. “This is Haikunterke. I’m in Wakayama now. I haven’t seen any obvious signs of an anomaly here. My voice and other sensors aren’t picking up anything, either. I’ll be as careful as possible and continue securing nodes along the Pacific coast. Over,” she reported back. This, too, was not spoken aloud but was instead sent as data to her communication module and uploaded through Suikanet. Reporting back to headquarters was nice because Haikunterke didn’t have to move her mouth. She preferred it that way. Talking with humans meant she had to match her mouth movements to the vocalizations, something she’d always had trouble with. The harder she tried to unify them, the less coordinated they became. It was a wonder that Shamai could speak as effortlessly as he did. She called up her memory of the way he verbalized from her supplemental memory banks and saw that his mouth was slightly off as well. He didn’t care, though, so you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying close attention. That irritated Haikunterke. She’d done quite a lot of moving around since heading Inside three days ago, but her leg mobility was still holding up. That former member of JR Fukuoka was quite the engineer. The metal clanking against the floor clattered through the tunnel. The pursuing turnstiles were a ways behind Hiroto. His throat was dry. He pored through his bag as he walked, pulling out his water. The bottle was dented. When he opened it up, it hissed as it sucked in the tunnel air. The last time he’d opened up the bottle was just before leaving Exit 42. He’d come all this way without drinking anything. “Oh,” he murmured, recalling his unnatural difficulty breathing there. “It was the difference in air pressure. The air’s just thinner up in the mountains.” He took a swig of water and chuckled to himself. A long time ago, either the professor or someone else from the village had told him, “The air pressure is weak on the peak of Mr. Fuji, so it’s harder to breathe and easier to boil water.” To think that a day would come when Hiroto made use of that knowledge. Even under the multilayered structure of Yokohama Station, where neither sunlight nor rain reached and temperature fluctuation was slight, air pressure was the one thing that faithfully obeyed the laws of nature. Hiroto looked down at the metal plate under his feet. He thought that the tunnel flooring had just switched from concrete to metal, but what if this was the same sort of train car he and Nepshamai had used to travel to Kofu? If so, it was much longer than the tatami mat–sized one from Kofu. Perhaps it was for transporting larger cargo. Hiroto opened the cover in the front and saw a familiar grouping of ports. Hiroto went through his bundle of cables one by one, looking for something that matched the shape of the intakes. The sound of the four-legged turnstiles approaching and shooting was getting louder, but for some reason, Hiroto didn’t care. He knew he was going to escape alive. After flipping around the last cable to its opposite end, he finally managed to connect Keiha’s device. Upon starting up the computer program, a bunch of white letters scrolled past on the black screen, the metal plate rose by a centimeter and then began to accelerate forward. The wind pressure against Hiroto’s face was incredible; the air roared in his ears. The edge of the plate dug into his fingers where he gripped it. The gunfire of the turnstiles behind him got more and more distant. A few dozen minutes later, the metal plate began sending up a spray of water. At first, Hiroto thought it was because of some kind of buildup, but then his perspective changed. The tunnel itself was descending into the water. The scent was very familiar to Hiroto. For the first time in five days, he was smelling the ocean. During the Winter War, Nagoya had suffered constant gravity attacks, until the entire city sunk about twenty meters. One of the three greatest cities of Japan was now nearly eight stories below Ise Bay. Ironically, it was this disaster that had left Nagoya as a recognizable relic. The seawater prevented the structural genetic field from absorbing it whole. Tokyo and Osaka’s structures had all been incorporated into the structural genetic field, turned into Yokohama Station, and changed in ways that their designers had never intended. Nagoya was the one major city on Honshu that still remained as it was. The areas along Ise Bay were bustling with people seeking anything useful from the ancient settlement. Few paid any heed to the ruined buildings sticking hundreds of meters out of the sea. It seemed impossible that humans could’ve erected such things. The residents of Yokohama Station naturally assumed that anything there had just grown on its own. Tourists only gazed out at the city from Inside and never tried to sail to it on boats. For one thing, residents of the station hated going outside, and there was the danger of the ruined buildings collapsing. So when Hiroto surfaced along the barnacled ninth-story wall of the ancient ruin, it was a pair of non-Suika brothers out in the bay who spotted him. “Hey, you there! You alive?” they shouted from a distance, waking Hiroto up. He could hear their boat motor. He turned and saw two men approaching him. “Let’s not, brother. He must be an exile. Nothing good ever comes of dealing with Insiders.” “Don’t be stupid. You ever seen an Insider with skin that dark? He musta washed up from some other part of the sea.” “I ain’t heard about any strangers passing through the strait. C’mon, let’s not.” “Maybe he’s a spy comin’ up from Owase. Those folks been pushing their luck more and more these days. In any case, we gotta check it out.” While the younger brother was reluctant, the elder had the overriding vote, so their vessel moved in on the ocean-weathered building. The Nagoya Navy (as they called themselves) were a collective of non-Suika holders who sailed around the Ise Bay. They took residence on the isolated little islands around the bay and on the tip of the Chita Peninsula. They were similar to the people of Ninety-Nine Steps in that they lived off the junked goods that came out of Yokohama Station, but they had a population thirty times the size. They’d developed an advanced distributed-work system where food, tools, and information devices to be repaired or augmented were delivered to different regions. The brothers first took Hiroto to the navy’s main base on the island of Kamishima to meet their boss. He was a large, well-muscled man close to fifty. Hiroto had never seen a fisher with that kind of size and physique in Ninety-Nine Steps, much less Inside. The chief refused to believe that Hiroto had used an 18 Ticket to travel through the station. The things he’d acquired Inside—the electric sign, 18 Ticket, and genetic field canceler—had all gone to the man on the scooter. Keiha’s device had become underwater scrap matter, along with the superconductive railway car. That reminded Hiroto that Keiha had said no records of the superconductive railway remained on Suikanet, so it was mysterious that she had somehow prepared the program to start up the car. Keiha was mysterious in general, though. She probably had some special knowledge that was beyond his understanding. In the end, the Nagoya Navy didn’t believe that Hiroto had journeyed for several days through the Inside. However, when he told them he was from a cape settlement called Ninety-Nine Steps on the Miura Peninsula, the boss made him a promise that they’d take him back home. “We’ve wanted to expand our activities to the east anyway. We’ve got some arrangements for trade with the Izu Peninsula, but we hardly ever venture past that point,” he explained. The person in charge of the Nagoya Navy was an ambitious man who dreamed of ruling over Yokohama Station’s entire Pacific coastline. He’d already expanded his base of operations past the Kii Peninsula to the west. By helping this drifter out, he saw an opportunity to grow his power in an easterly direction, too. Hiroto asked to stay in the area for a while first, however. He wanted to learn from them about cultivating sweet potatoes and pumpkins. “But why? Your home is small, and you’re well-supplied by what comes out of the station. We do some farming of our own, but it’s not the most productive work,” the boss said. “Because we’ll need it,” Hiroto replied. “After a while, we won’t be able to get stuff from Yokohama Station anymore.” “Why do you think that?” “Because Yokohama Station is going away.” The boss stared at Hiroto like he was crazy. His followers looked at each other and said, “I think something’s wrong with him.” “Must have been put through hell by the Insiders, I bet,” they murmured. Still, Hiroto was allowed to remain with the Nagoya Navy. Any attempts at farming in Ninety-Nine Steps were entirely experimental. There wasn’t enough information for the people there to go on. You could learn a lot about industrial engineering from fishing on Suikanet, but nothing on agriculture was remotely helpful. All the food production Inside was grown using hydroponics under strict and precisely managed artificial lighting. Once his leg healed, Hiroto helped with cultivating on the Atsumi Peninsula south of Chita. While the farm was small compared to the navy’s scale, it was much more advanced than anything at Ninety-Nine Steps. It was almost a year later, in the spring, that Hiroto finally rode one of their ships going east. He sent a letter informing of his return before the trip, so Maki was there to greet him at the cape just a bit before Ninety-Nine Steps. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she stated flatly, their first words shared in a year. “I told you I’d return.” “It was supposed to be five days and turned into a year. I assumed you weren’t coming.” “Sorry. I went through a whole bunch of stuff. I’ll tell you about it later. How’s the cape doing? Is the professor okay?” “He died.” “He died? When?” “A week after you left. He wasn’t getting up and walking around, so I went to go check on him, and he’d just died in his sleep. I don’t know what it was. Probably just old age.” “…Oh.” Pretty much everyone back home wanted to hear about Inside, so they held a public forum that night, where Hiroto told them the things he’d seen and heard in Yokohama Station during his five days there. Lastly, he gave them his warning: “Yokohama Station will be going away in the near future.” The villagers didn’t know about the structural genetic field, so instead, Hiroto told them that he’d discovered the interior was weakening, getting old, and would soon crumble into bits. He swore to himself that he would never tell them that he was the one who’d pressed the button to set the whole thing in motion. After that, he impressed upon the people of Ninety-Nine Steps the importance of producing their own food and explained the different crops he’d brought from the Nagoya Navy. They didn’t believe that Yokohama Station would go away (such a concept was beyond them), but he got their approval to produce more food anyway. For one thing, there was little manual labor to go around for their colony and plenty of young people with nothing productive to do. Hiroto went to see Yosuke in the flower field, too. When he saw Hiroto coming up the down-only escalators, he said, “Oh, you’re still alive?” Hiroto thought his friend looked even fatter than he’d been a year before. “If you go in the station, you should come back out the same way,” Yosuke complained, pointing at the automated turnstiles lined up at the entrance. They sat there silently in the exact same position as when Hiroto entered a year ago with the 18 Ticket. “Is there anything different about Suikanet? Any extra instability?” Hiroto asked. Yosuke replied, “It’s as unstable as ever. Sometimes you get in, then you disconnect.” Without Suika credentials, all people like Yosuke could do was collect data packets passing through Suikanet and reassemble them. It wasn’t possible to send anything from this side. Hiroto often wondered about Keiha. Was she still in Kofu? Was there any way to send word that he’d made it back home safely? The professor had been cremated, then scattered to sea. Ninety-Nine Steps had no burial custom. They kept one photograph of him for the town hall’s album. It was taken when he first came to Ninety-Nine Steps, and in it, he looked much younger than the professor Hiroto knew. It was the face of the maintenance entity for the JR Integrated Intelligence in Exit 42. A young married couple and their infant child were now living in the professor’s old house. The cape was perpetually short on land, and memories of the professor were already being washed away. Unlike Yokohama Station, which preserved centuries-old things and continued expanding, the natural ground did not keep its records for long. A few days after Hiroto’s return to the cape, the concrete-covered White Fuji turned escalator black overnight. It was a sign that the long rainy season was over and summer had arrived. The mountain was probably taller than the last time Hiroto had seen it. There was no telling how many more times this transition would occur. For now, the only thing to do was prepare for the loss of Yokohama Station.