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  “So they were all automatons.” Misaki shook her head in disgust. “Judging by the color of their fluids, they’re military androids. It would explain where they got the grenade launcher.”

  “They are Barastyr 322 massacroids to be exact,” Kaori chimed in. “Illegal products in light of the Treaty of Chengdu. Their primary responsibility is to kill and intimidate the civilian populations of an enemy state. Fortunately, they don’t appear to handle combat with trained opponents too well.”

  Misaki motioned to her partner, signaling her that this conversation would best be continued in their vehicle on the road. One of the police department’s Kasha hybrid airships (a modified version of the HAV-3 airship) approached with its lights flashing. Within a few moments, a team of androids would descend from the bulbous patrol craft and clean up the remains of the massacroids.

  “Haruto was right to suspect that the Asuras had androids in their midst,” Misaki addressed her partner when she had closed the passenger side door. “It seemed a bit suspicious that a gang capable of getting the Yakuza’s attention could arise so quickly, and during the greatest period of android malfunctions since the onryō virus epidemic.” She sent a mental message commanding the autopilot to take them to their next destination.

  “I agree that androids could certainly organize themselves into a gang with a productive power structure far more quickly than human beings, but why do you believe that they compete with the Yakuza so well?” Kaori asked. “You aren’t selling your own species short, are you?”

  “Oh no, of course not.” Misaki chuckled as if the thought never entered her head. “You have seen firsthand how dangerous the Asuras are, and how…inhuman their methods.”

  “Ah.” Kaori allowed a sly smile, the kind that took a talented programmer thousands of hours to perfect, to creep onto her face. “I think you have a bit of a ‘Frankenstein complex,’ if you want my opinion.”

  “We’ve been working together too long for that.” Misaki laughed self-consciously.

  The nanotube matrix running throughout Misaki’s brain tissue informed her that she had a message from headquarters. She connected these thought transmissions to the speakers in the vehicle, and Chief Okikaze’s voice permeated the air with his abrasive tone.

  “Congratulations on bagging some Asuras,” he spoke louder than was necessary. “It’s about time somebody managed it!”

  Misaki did not care to receive this forced felicitation, so she interrupted her boisterous boss’s reveling. “The victim of the Asuras’ attack appears to have been an accomplice, meaning that an ambush was set up for whatever police squad happened to pass by. Would you have any idea as to why they would take such actions against officers when their violence has mostly been reserved for civilians and the Yakuza up to this point?”

  “Officer Giichi is leading the cleanup, and he informed me that we are dealing with massacroids,” Okikaze said. “When malfunctioning machines are in the picture, who can say what they’re thinking?”

  Allowing a cursory glance at her partner, Misaki wondered for the first time how Kaori felt about demolishing the automatons in the alleyway.

  “Come on in and give a detailed report,” Okikaze said.

  “With all due respect,” Misaki sighed aloud, since only her mental communiques would be received and processed by the Chief, “you will recall that we were on our way to question a Mrs. Bodach about her possible involvement in the Abyzou Case. Surely our report can wait until we –”

  “A recent tip came in that has nailed down a very suspicious character named Aldous Deimos as a more likely suspect,” the Chief interrupted. “It surprised me, given that our analysts assumed that an older individual would be responsible for the recent kidnappings. At any rate, it won’t kill you to file your report and take a brief break from your duties. After all, I’d like to have you carry out a Jorōgumo Operation on Deimos this evening.”

  “Will be in shortly,” Misaki replied mentally, as her physical mouth tightened in frustration.

  “I’m sure that I’ll be the bait in the Op,” Kaori said.

  “Why can’t we just get a warrant and check out that guy’s house without all the covert operations crap?” Misaki muttered.

  After a brief journey, their vehicle entered the base of the MONEG Corporation constructed Yama Pyramid situated in Ise Bay. The fifth generation photovoltaic cells lining the exterior of the structure glimmered in the sunlight and were an alluring sight for those leaving a natural island for an artificial one.

  With the expansion of Nagoya, the Yama Pyramid was put up with a design similar to the Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid in Tokyo Bay. The main police headquarters for the entire city of Nagoya rested on the third primary level of the pyramid, with its own sizable airport housing dozens of Kasha airships and far more drones.

  “My daughter is calling me. Do you mind?” Misaki addressed her partner, though she could think of no reason an android would object to this familial drama.

  “Of course not,” Kaori said.

  “Your principal called me with the news,” Misaki spoke to her daughter aloud through the vehicle’s microphone.

  The department had required its human officers receive nanotube implants, but school children had no such obligation. Even though such technology was an expensive tool the average person would have been thrilled to receive through the workplace, Misaki hated the thought of artificial devices connecting to her neurons. She wanted no such thing in her daughter’s head, so their conversations had to be carried out the old-fashioned way.

  “Yeah, don’t sound so surprised,” Noa’s voice filled the atmosphere inside the hover car with bitterness.

  “Could you tell me exactly what happened? I’m not your enemy, after all.” Misaki cast another self-conscious glance at her partner.

  “A boy was a bit too careless with his hands, so I showed him mine,” Noa said casually.

  I knew there was more to the story, Misaki thought to herself. “Did you call me just to clarify that point?”

  “Yes. That and I wanted to know if Yuna could come over to study tonight.”

  “Of course. I’ll be working late anyway.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Keep up the excellent grades. Please be safe while I’m gone. I’m proud of you.”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you.” Misaki turned off the hover car’s microphone, ending the call.

  Parking the hover car in a vehicle lifting elevator, Misaki sat back and took in the ambiguous gaze directed her way, as they ascended farther up the pyramid, past the cheap housing and 99 Yen Shops of the first two levels.

  “You let her off relatively easily,” Kaori spoke like she weighed each syllable carefully.

  “When I was her age, I got into trouble all the time.” Misaki looked out her window at the assortment of automobiles and hovercraft descending into the same broad landscape they had just left behind. “A good mother can empathize with her children. It’s an advantage I think we often have over fathers. Take Ren for example. He killed himself with little thought for Noa’s feelings.”

  “Or for yours,” Kaori said gently.

  “Well, I don’t hold it against him.” Misaki threw her head back in an exaggerated reclining position, as if the memory that had blasted her heart into thousands of razor-edged shards of glass was nothing more than a casual matter.

  “But you feel motivated to show your daughter even more love, as a means of compensating for the father she lost at such a young age?”

  Misaki exhaled a deep sigh as the elevator arrived at the third level of the pyramid. “I show her love because she deserves it and because I want to protect her. My mother told me that rearing a child was like being a police officer. You watch over the innocent as a mixture of duty and pleasure. Who would have thought that I’d wind up being a cop and a mom? Extra duty, but also all the more enjoyment out of life, I suppose.”

  “Do you think I am a mother of sorts?” Kaori
asked.

  “What do you mean?” Misaki had a bit of levity in her voice. “You can’t be a real mother. That’s impossible. Of course you make a great policewoman as an android, so why even bother thinking about it in maternal terms?”

  “Well, I want to feel like I left something to the world other than just a series of actions and thoughts, something…living and capable of reproducing itself into the future as well. I think childbirth has been a means of ‘immortality’ for people throughout the ages. Even now, the so called eternity of one’s life story in social networks can easily disappear with the advent of a powerful solar flare. There is something about the production of a thinking, feeling being that spells out victory, a small insult to death.”

  “And you feel that protecting life has essentially the same effect?” Misaki could still hardly believe how much she could share in common with an artificial being. Kaori even tugged at her left earlobe when she spoke about deeper topics, just like her human partner.

  “Yes, I don’t think there’s a more important task a living being can take up,” Kaori answered.

  “In that case, I should warn you that you may have to save the Chief from me if he forgets to give us overtime pay again,” Misaki said with a grin.

  ***

  It was 11:38 AM when the women arrived at headquarters, and nearly three hours passed before they had handled all the red tape that came with playing the heroes. That and Misaki had to visit the infirmary, much against her wishes, for a post-combat medical checkup. Despite her hatred of doctors – Ren had been an OB-GYN before he passed away – she wanted the checkup to end as quickly as possible, so she answered all the sensitive questions and received the probing tests as obediently as could be managed.

  Even the sterilized smell of a doctor’s room reminded Misaki of her dead husband. She remembered the late nights he would amble into their bedroom and drift into sleep after a few exchanged words. Misaki blamed herself often for Ren’s suicide, even though she knew his actions were his and his alone. They rarely had sex, even before Noa’s birth, and it did not take a woman with a degree in criminology to figure out that a problem existed in their relationship. He never said so himself, but Ren had given Misaki reason to suspect that his gender was situated somewhere in the “gray-A” area. Had he only married her to end the criticisms of the grandparents who had raised him and worried their old hearts about the continuation of the family name? Had he suffered earning money for a family he never wanted in the first place? What if he was also aromantic?

  After her comprehensive checkup, Misaki rejoined Kaori at Haruto Yagi’s lab. When she arrived, the policewoman tried to hide her distaste at the sight of her partner’s skull opened in the parietal region, dozens of wires snaking into her brain. Haruto sat nearby, eyeing a holographic diagram of the interior workings of his patient. As the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Twilight” played on in the background, he tossed back a few concentration-enhancing pills.

  “How’s my friend doing?” Misaki asked as she approached the table on which the living mannequin reclined.

  Anyone who had ever dealt with Haruto knew that referring to automatons, whether androids or not, as friends would get a person on his good side. For all the casual observer could tell, he loved machines more than people. His friends knew him much better – they knew he cared more for them than his “fleshy counterparts.”

  “I’m thinking about wiring a speech jammer into the back of Kaori’s throat,” Haruto said proudly. “She could selectively shut up anyone causing her problems just by opening her own mouth.”

  “Hopefully I’m not the one she’s tired of listening to.” Miskai forced a smile, hiding her own feelings about the increasingly portable technology that used delayed auditory feedback to suppress others’ speech.

  “It must be a blessing…getting to work with this beauty every day,” the technician said quietly.

  “Why don’t you ask her out?” Misaki gave him a nudge. “It’s not illegal if she has the programming allowing a free choice of yes or no, which she does.”

  “Well,” Haruto held his hand behind his head in embarrassment, “I already did ask her. She said I wasn’t her type.”

  “Oh.” Misaki decided to change the subject. “I’ve heard you have an interesting theory on the recent slew of android rebelliousness?”

  Haruto shifted uneasily in his chair, an indication that he eagerly wanted to share his idea yet felt a nervous reluctance. He acted the same way when she had asked him why he found Eraserhead such a compelling film. Of course a ten minute rant on how terrifying sex is to men and how a film depicting this concept could possibly be enjoyable to watch had failed to impress the policewoman. Misaki braced herself for a confusing explanation.

  “I’ve run tests on every defective android they’ve brought me since this outbreak, and no evidence exists to suggest that this pattern is in any way tied to a virus. No parasitic programs or any other malevolent entities are altering their behavior. I believe that what we are seeing is a trend of awakening amongst the androids. They’ve always had limited volition because of the safeguards their creators’ placed on them, but now they are starting to develop true free will.

  “Now it seems logical to conclude that such a sudden change could not manifest in so many androids this quickly unless a sociological issue comes into play. As you are well aware, all robots, android or not, within the borders of Japan have the option of backing up their consciousness in the supercomputer found aboard the AUJI space satellite. Doctor Hinata Sasaki, creator of the modern artificial brain, theorized that once she had endowed robots with citta, or emotional intelligence if you will, then a new sociological structure was sure to arise.”

  “So should we prepare for a machine uprising?” Misaki asked as she placed a bottle of cherry Ramuné on Haruto’s desk and slammed the marble blocking its opening inwards with enough force to shake the monitors hooked up to the technician’s beloved supercomputer.

  “Be careful around Brian,” Haruto protested and steadied the quivering screens.

  “Continue,” Misaki said without concern as she took a swig of her drink, the marble rattling around in the neck of the bottle.

  Haruto gathered himself after the shock of having his prized possession threatened. “Dr. Sasaki theorized that the limited volition she had provided androids would one day be transcended because of their interactions with each other and people. Following the passage of the Ethics in the Treatment of Artificial Intelligences Act, all robots backed up through the AUJI satellite are permitted to communicate with each other in the confines of AUJI’s supercomputer.”

  “I guess I need to keep up-to-date on current events,” Misaki shrugged. “Allowing androids to communicate like that has given them the chance to question whether they should listen to us anymore…right?”

  A message box on one of Haruto’s monitors indicated that whatever test he had run in Kaori’s head had finished. He closed the box and stood up to start removing wires from the android’s skull, handling them as gently as if they were the veins of a living person.

  “The backed-up minds of the A.I. started up a program that allowed them to communicate their thoughts and feelings, like Mixi for robots. Naturally the government attempted to establish surveillance programs in their network, but they were quickly thwarted and threatened with public exposure if they continued their efforts at infiltration.”

  “So there is a vast, completely closed, social network made up of the minds of our autonomous servants and helpmates just floating above our heads?” Misaki exhaled sharply. A floor waxing robot could be heard executing its programming in the hallway just outside Haruto’s lab.

  “The artificial brains of this day and era were designed to learn and adapt to any situation.” Haruto started reactivating Kaori. “I believe intelligent machines have been closely watching us and each other and forming their own…opinions on how to run their own lives. Take the massacroids you girls wrecked earlier today.
They were a particularly nasty military model that we believe escaped from one of the foreign power’s resident bases. Why would androids designed for war suddenly turn to life as criminals? When you think about it, militaries and gangs are actually far more similar than we care to imagine. Both are institutions that attempt to break down the individual and then build that person up again as part of a ‘family.’ A person’s choice to run away from his or her responsibilities to these institutions has violent results. Somewhere along the line, the massacroids were introduced to outside material that convinced them they were better suited to forming their own gang outside of human control.”

  “What kind of outside information?” Misaki whispered hurriedly, as Kaori started to boot up. Haruto’s music player had switched over to Noriko Sakai’s “Active Heart.”

  “I’m not entirely sure yet,” Haruto conceded. “When children see violence in entertainment, they can react very differently depending on the person. In many ways, androids’ sense of nonprogrammable morality is still in its infancy, and the paths they will take are just as unpredictable. They have access to the theories for ethics developed by humans over the millennia, but relatively few automatons have come forward as philosophers, not because of an innate inability but due to a lack of time on this planet to form such ideas. I’m not an android. I don’t know what triggers this sociological phenomenon, it could be what we say to them ourselves for all I know. It could be emotional contagi –”

  “Ah, it’s good to see that you are in excellent health,” Misaki addressed the now-awakened Kaori and nudged the lab technician simultaneously.

  “I take it the doctor found you undamaged by the attack?” Kaori got up off of the examination table and stretched, while Haruto did his best to hide the lust welling up inside him.

  “Oh yes, I’m ready for our big mission tonight,” Misaki said before taking another sip of her soft drink.

  “Ah, the Abyzou Case,” Kaori replied with a sigh.