“This is kinda fun!”
Ijuin was having the time of his life. Debatably he shouldn’t have been, because he was supposed to be working.
Floor twenty-five of Central Tower was a research facility for autonomous droids, and Ijuin currently occupied the testing room. It was a wide-open area, mostly illuminated by sunlight and completely barren save for the next-gen drones, two laptops courtesy of Shiba (technically Ijuin’s direct superior), and a touch pad control device. Several tiny droids were flying around the room—three of each in the shapes of a housefly, ladybug, and antlion.
They moved according to Ijuin’s will in complete silence. Left, right, up, down, in loops, fast, slow... Watching them was kind of addictive.
“These are way easier than some helicopter drone!” A ring of light shone in his right hand.
Sitting a good distance away, the militia’s executive officer, Jurota Shiba, had his eyes fixed intently on the boy’s skill. “Man, those augmentations,” he said, impressed. “How many are you controlling at once right now? Eight? Nine?”
“Honestly, I think we could bump it up to ten. Prob’ly more.”
“We’ll have to test that next time! Now if you can do the same with mid- or large-sized droids, you’d really be saving my bacon.”
Shiba fiddled with the touch pad on his laptop, and a portion of one of the white walls slid away. Inside stood an upright, anthropomorphic robot and a quadrupedal doglike one. The very same droids they had seen patrolling the fields on their first ride to Central Tower.
Ijuin held out his right palm to them, and the link was established. At once the two droids marched forward, a quiet whirring coming from their limbs as they moved. He was pleased with the simplicity of the controls.
“Oh, I can remotely operate the Mark III’s auxiliary droids too,” he said.
“Perfect,” Shiba replied. “We’ve got all these machines here, and they do the jobs we give them well enough on their own, but some things just need a human touch.” He let out a subtle groan. “I’m in charge of operating them, since I used to fly old-gen drones. Problem is there’s only so much I can do with old laptops. We were really hurting for someone with the right augmentations.”
“Yeah, you gotta get ’em while you’re a kid or they don’t stick.”
“That, and you need to have the right aptitude,” Shiba added. “Not many do. I sure as hell don’t, and they put me in charge of the unmanned droid division.”
“I mean...” Next to Shiba’s laptop was a wireless apparatus very much like a video game controller, only bigger and with more buttons. Just earlier he had been using it to demonstrate operating the mechs. “You can fly these little bug things pretty well, can’t you? You sneaked them onto that Defense Force ship at the harbor, after all. I’d say that’s pretty dang impressive.”
“Maybe, but it’s mentally exhausting,” Shiba replied.
The bug-shaped machines flew about the room, powered by solar batteries and nano-motors. They were modern marvels and testaments to the power of nanotechnology.
Ijuin used the touch pad to replay the videos they had captured with their onboard cameras and microphones. The following footage showed a quiet meeting behind closed doors. The voices in the recording spoke about droid patrol routes, the elves’ combat capabilities and resources, as well as dates for the day of action.
The audio the high-tech drones had intercepted seemed highly confidential, and Ijuin wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with it.
“You positive I’m allowed to hear all this?” he asked. “I’m just a middle schooler, y’know.”
“More than positive. You and your friends are with the Asura Frame and Devicer Three. You’re also in extremely high demand with those nanomachines of yours. Plus, I’d be an idiot to treat any of you like children at this point. After the things you must’ve seen? In this day and age?”
That last bit hit close to home. For being ex-military, Shiba was surprisingly humble and down-to-earth. Nothing like the officers Ijuin had known personally. Shiba wasn’t the most confidence-inducing guy around, but he was decent and occasionally demonstrated a remarkable level of professional knowledge.
“I saw the numbers on your friend Ichinose. They were really incredible,” he said. “He blew the last Devicer out of the water in every respect. With him around, we may really get to see the full extent of the Mark III’s droid complement. The fifty thousand could be a reality.”
“I heard about that online! And on some action figure promo text and stuff!” Ijuin shouted excitedly. “They’re the Mark III’s own elite legion!”
“Something like that. But only assuming its adaptive nanofactors can be utilized to their fullest extent. Mizuki—the last Devicer Three—never managed to pull it off.”
“You’re saying the media lied to me?!”
Shiba gave a humorless laugh. “Blatantly. Advertising agencies had a whole lot more say in the Mark III’s marketing than truth or facts did. They cherry-picked what they needed to sell Devicer Three as a real-life Superman.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember them selling some special CD albums or something for fans.”
Every Japanese soccer enthusiast knew the artists behind them—the band had been on good terms with a few athletes who’d made it to the World Cup—and the lyrics were about as cheesy as could be. Complete with such obligatory phrases as: “be yourself,” and “never give up.”
“Right,” Shiba said with a tired smile. “Anyway, the other issue was that there weren’t nearly enough hands in the ground operator support team. Long story short, the fifty thousand was a pipe dream.”
“Ground operator?” Ijuin repeated.
“Think of it like this. The Mark III is the commander, ruler of the skies and the air droid division. But armies are made of more than commanders, right? Every general needs a tactician or lieutenant or two.”
Just when things were getting good, a pleasant pinging noise sounded and particles of light shimmered from the ring in Ijuin’s palm. The particles floated into the air, where they stopped and twinkled. Shiba gave him the okay with a nod, and Ijuin visualized the message opening. When he did, the particles projected a text window displaying a commlink from Aliya in a soft, rounded font.
“I’m heading into town. Want to come along?”
“Still at work,” Ijuin voiced his reply. “Aren’t you the speaker’s assistant? Where are you getting all this free time?”
His words appeared on the screen as text before being sent back to Aliya. Central Tower’s own proprietary messenger application allowed for direct and instant communication. Indeed, Aliya’s next message came a second later.
“Uncle’s busy playing with blocks, which according to him is a very important meditative exercise. So he gave me the rest of the day off.”
Ijuin looked at the attached image. “Where the hell’d he find a Mechagodzilla Lego set?”
Shiba smiled and grimaced at the same time. “Apparently before the Evacuation his room was filled with distractions like that. Some people make a living off of scavenging goods and rare items from the sunken city too.”
“Treasure hunting. Sounds fun!”
“Where is his niece living? In the tower?”
“Yeah, too dangerous for elves on the outer block. She’s not very happy about it, though.”
Ijuin had found work as the militia executive’s assistant, while Aliya tended to secretarial duties for her uncle.
“Then are you sure she should be going out there alone?” Shiba asked.
“Good point. Lady Ein and Ichinose are away right now, so I’ll shoot Natsuki a DM.”
The electric-powered scooter hummed across the seaside road at a brisk pace. It was a twenty-minute trip from Central Tower to the outer block, but it was time well spent to Aliya. She had replaced her characteristic beret with a helmet.
She shouted over the whipping wind and purring of the engine, “I am an animal, and I will have MEAT!”
Aliya didn’t have to make the commute every morning like Shiba and Ijuin did. She lived in Central Tower, which, after she’d become accustomed to the stringent rules and acquired her own room—away from the idiosyncrasies of her peculiar uncle—wasn’t all that bad. Still, though, she found herself making this trip at least once a day for a chance to unwind.