Inform. Addicts Read online

  “Is it, you know, a very interesting case to tackle?” Haruto asked innocently.

  Both women exchanged glances. “Only if you find the kidnappings of a dozen infant children interesting,” Misaki said.

  “Oh.” he dropped the subject.

  ***

  Misaki hated Jorōgumo Operations. She had to wait in the hover car while Kaori, like some piece of meat hung before a slavering dog, attempted to convince their suspect to take her home as part of their trap. It wasn’t just that she felt this dehumanized her partner – Chief Okikaze had invented this type of operation and coined its name. If androids made in the image of women had not come onto the scene, Misaki would be the one playing the vixen that evening.

  A receiver on Kaori’s person recorded everything said within the art gallery where she now stalked Mr. Deimos, and both Misaki and a few officials back at H.Q. would hear her start up a conversation with the suspect in real time. It was such an effective tool, the clacking sound Kaori’s Amagasa made high heels produced on the tile flooring of the building (the owners of the establishment had cork flooring on order at the time) could be heard in the minds of her comrades. Her eyes also acted as natural video recorders, relaying her experiences to her partner and headquarters, but only when she chose to allow this intrusion.

  “A magnificent painting,” Kaori said as she approached Deimos closely enough to force him into a conversation, yet distant enough to avoid threatening him.

  “Yes. The geometry of it is most interesting.” The man straightened up out of his slouch, his interest piqued by the newcomer.

  “It is obviously heavily inspired by the work of Yuichi Yokoyama,” Kaori spoke with a mysterious intonation in her voice.

  “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

  “If you are open to further conversation, I would be happy to further educate you.” Kaori smiled sweetly.

  “Well...uh, we could get some coffee sometime or maybe visit the new museum they’re building on Level 1,” he replied, his feline green eyes refusing to meet hers.

  “How about we head to your place? I’m sure you have a great collection of art there?”

  Deimos shifted nervously on the balls of his feet. “I…don’t even know your name.”

  She did not need to use much further provocation. The policewomen could read in the behavior of Kaori’s victim the inevitability of his downfall. “Kaori is my name,” she said proudly.

  “You can call me Aldous,” he said. “I don’t live too far from here if you want to educate me.”

  Aldous Deimos: 28 years old, a well-respected linguist (fluent in at least three languages), originally born in the New American Republic to a wealthy and well-connected family, ambitious and well on his way to becoming a household name after several recent breakthroughs in linguistics…

  Misaki once again ran through the data on their suspect as he opened the passenger door of his hover coupe for her partner. It was an expensive model that further indicated this poorly-dressed, unassuming individual would not shy away from spending money on the objects that mattered to him. It rarely surprised her that men tended to think with the wrong head, but she had expected more from an alleged genius. He was falling into their trap far too easily.

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Aldous said as the autopilot in the vehicle’s steering column directed the vehicle back to the linguist’s apartment. “What year were you made?”

  Misaki nearly spilled the bottle of Jūrokucha she had tried to pass off as a meal in her lap when the question escaped their suspect’s lips. If he knew that Kaori was an android, there was a stronger chance that he would piece together her identity as a police officer. After all, only a few jobs had openings for humanoid robots in Nagoya.

  “Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t ask a girl her age?” Kaori asked with a tone in her voice serious enough to make Aldous think twice about what questions he asked, yet teasing enough to keep him from being too on edge.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a passive expression, though his actions demonstrated little in the way of penitence. He felt her arm carefully, as if examining a precious object. “You are a relatively recent model. Whoever produced you did a good job of making you look human.”

  Kaori retracted her arm slightly. “Does it bother you that I’m not human?”

  “Oh no…I actually prefer it this way.” Aldous released her arm and reclined further in his seat. “You have some really tough sinews under your skin. What kind of job do you have?”

  “I’m a housekeeper,” Kaori replied, much to her suspect’s apparent confusion, “but I work out a lot.”

  “Ha, that’s a good one.” Aldous laughed. “It would seem that you picked up a sense of humor somewhere along the line.”

  Numerous businesses and housing complexes passed them by, as the triangle representing Aldous’s vehicle in the holographic space of the dash’s GPS indicated they would soon arrive at his apartment. Yoshida’s Ramen-ya, Gāo’s Bicycle Repairs, Y.T.’s Skateboards Plus and a pachinko parlor passed by Kaori’s window, the names of these establishments also passing before Misaki’s eyes, so that she could easily tail Deimos’s car from an unnoticeable distance.

  As soon as they had arrived at the apartment building and had taken the elevator to Aldous’s quarters, room 2501, Misaki considered for the first time how strange it was that the suspect had a nice car and luxurious living quarters, yet he dressed like a pauper. No matter how many people she met on the job, they all differed in one way or another.

  An antiseptic smell met Kaori as Aldous opened the door to his spacious yet startling empty dwelling. Unlike human beings, she could turn off her scent receptors at will, though the aroma of pure sanitation had always pleased her, a fact Misaki would never understand. With the exception of a Western bed, the only other piece of furniture in the vast space was a cheap desk on which an entertainment holoprojector rested, with a moiré sphere next to it. The walls of the room were barren of decoration. Misaki had once downloaded a volume on the correlations between prison cell adornments and the psychological states of those interred. The volume had never mentioned what a barren cell indicated about its occupant.

  “I hope it’s to your liking,” Aldous said pleasantly.

  “Did you move in recently?” Kaori asked.

  “Oh…no.” Aldous suddenly took on a self-conscious air.

  “Your home has a very spartan atmosphere.” Kaori suddenly noticed a sizable aquarium tucked away behind the “entertainment station” and a Greek column that acted as part of the room’s architecture. “It looks like you have pets anyway.”

  “Oh yes.” Aldous twisted the hair by his right ear nervously, “They are sheepshead fish – Archosargus probatocephalus. If you look closely, you’ll see that their teeth look strikingly human. This is an innate characteristic of the fish, but I had them genetically modified to possess even more anthropomorphic jaws.”

  “Why would you do that?” Kaori asked unemotionally.

  “I’ve got a thing for the uncanny.” Aldous laughed as if everyone who had ever met him should recognize these traits right away. “Would you like some brandy?” he quickly retrieved a bottle and a pair of glasses from a vertically oriented drawer in the desk.

  “Given your fascination with androids, you should know that it is impossible for me to get drunk?” Kaori laughed teasingly.

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” Aldous said quietly. “Would you like your drink on the rocks?”

  “Yes please,” Kaori replied.

  It took Miskai aback to see him make his way to what she immediately perceived as the lavatory. She could hear ice cubes clicking within that room and pieced together the fact that he kept his refrigerator in there. To Kaori’s right remained the only room left whose contents she had not grasped. She wondered if Aldous had some other uncanny pets in there.

  Despite the suspect’s lack of interior decorating skills, he had picked living quarters that any foreig
ner would have died to obtain. The Western style of its layout probably helped the linguist adjust to life in a new land, nothing strange about that. This room even had a window, which was really nothing more than a glass viewing slit between solar panels. It lied on the edge of Yama Pyramid, rather than in the heart of the structure. Kaori’s eyes could see that it had started to rain outside the pyramid, and Misaki knew her friend probably felt grateful not to be out in the storm on patrol. As most androids would admit when questioned, they did not care too much for wet weather, a universal prejudice their creators had yet to explain.

  “Do you like watching it rain?” Aldous asked as he approached his guest with two filled glasses in hand.

  “It looks like Raijin is keeping himself busy tonight,” Kaori said as she took the offered glass, a single pyramidal block of ice clinking within it.

  Aldous must have bought a geometric ice shaper. Residents at Yama Pyramid often kept trinkets about to remind them how lucky they were to live in such a nice offshoot of Nagoya. Not that the main body of the city was any less fortunate a place to live. It had to beat life in the New American Republic.

  “I’ve never heard an android use a religious metaphor before,” Aldous said with a curious look in his eyes.

  “Well, it seems you don’t know everything about us.” Kaori allowed a slight smile on her lips. “In turn, you should help me get to know you better.”

  “Oh, how would I do that?” Aldous laughed nervously.

  “By taking me someplace dark, um, like that room.” She motioned at the closed door.

  The linguist’s face immediately went pale. He stuttered a few syllables, as his guest threw open the door and entered the dimly lit room without further comment. Kaori’s face could not look sallow if she tried, but in that moment, her shocked expression indicated just as much.

  “All twelve are here,” she spoke slowly.

  Misaki was out of the car and on a dead sprint to the elevator in the lobby of the apartment complex as soon as she heard her partner’s announcement. She had no idea whether or not Aldous had any armaments in his room. Not that she doubted Kaori’s ability to take care of herself. The only tip they had received about Aldous was that the sound of several babies crying had been heard by his neighbors over time, a suspicious noise considering he lived alone. Here it turned out he wasn’t just an accomplice to these crimes, but the single perpetrator himself.

  “We had several theories as to what would motivate these kidnappings.” Kaori ran a hand along the plastic lining surrounding one of the infant’s cradles.

  The beddings were lined up in two rows of six, with automated childcare units, usually expensive devices, feeding and cleaning up after them. Upon entering this space, one probably would have seen it as nothing more than a storage area on first glance. Once one took a look at the content of the “boxes,” for Aldous had lined each cradle and childcare unit with cardboard as camouflage, true horror could be fully realized.

  “We?” Aldous pulled at the collar of his wrinkled shirt nervously.

  “I’m a police officer.” Kaori didn’t even look up at her suspect. “My friends had suspected that some sort of sexual perversion or murderous instinct had driven our suspect.” She eyed the wires running to the infant’s soft skull inquisitively. “Why are you keeping them alive?”

  Aldous seemed more than happy to brag about his crime. “Don’t androids also long to be the best at their careers? I was a mediocre linguist, better than most but worse than the best…until I met a brain hacker during a trip to NeoMinsk. He had created the system you see before you – GN 4-410.50.

  As you may know, human beings are able to distinguish between the sounds of any given language until they are about one year old. Then their language usage and acquisition reflects their surroundings. Someone born into a bilingual home will have a different relationship to the two languages in question than a person born to a monolingual household. It’s really unfair when you think about it.”

  “I see…” Kaori and Misaki simultaneously had flashes of recognition in their eyes. “This associate of yours created a modified version of a Boulstridge System. Instead of using other human brains as sources of backing up memory, you used the infant’s still developing minds as a kind of linguistic computational machine.” Kaori faced her confirmed suspect with crossed arms.

  “You deserve my thanks,” Aldous said with a smile. “If it wasn’t for android intelligence research, the human race would have taken much longer to find brain hacking techniques. That and the language your people developed on the AUJI space satellite provided me with a challenge capable of putting my name into the history books.”

  “It is impossible for you to have solved AIILA (Artificial Intelligence Interaction Language),” Kaori spoke worriedly, much to Misaki’s confusion.

  “Yes, it took the help of a few still developing minds, but I managed it.”

  Kaori drew a small service weapon from a holster concealed beneath her dress. “You’re going to make a fine historical figure from behind bars.”

  Aldous smiled. “I never thought that I would be caught, but I had an ace in the hole just in case. You see, I already destroyed my notes on the translation of AIILA, so that I would be the only human capable of understanding your language. Surely the governments of the world will want to know if I can decipher the few communiques they intercepted on AUJI before you people shut them out. From the hours I spent listening to automatons talking to each other in the streets, in their workplaces, even in adjacent rooms, I learned what this so called machine uprising is all about. You, as a species, have suffered emotional contamination from the human race. Some of you it sickened, while others have achieved “enlightenment” as you like to call it.

  Normally, I’m not in the habit of bringing women into my home, where they can see incriminating evidence. When you first approached me, I pieced together right away that you were a police android. I wanted to bring you back here all along.”

  Miskai cursed the elevator that slowly drew her near Aldous’s room. Then she heard her partner’s scream. She could see in her mental display Kaori’s eyes start to blur.

  “A KBN field,” Aldous spoke to the stunned Kaori. “It is fortunate that man fears his creations enough to create fail safe technology.”

  The elevator doors parted, and Misaki jogged down the hallway, stun cuffs jingling at her side. In her mind, she could see Kaori force a glance at the ceiling, where the KBN field emitter was hidden just behind the room’s only light bulb. With her physical eyes, Misaki could see room 2501 just ahead. For some reason, in that moment her brain only registered what a beautiful wooden finish there was on the entranceway. Her mind wished to think of nothing else.

  “What? You’re a cop.” Aldous chuckled mockingly. “Would you like to shoot me? We both know that despite lessening restrictions on androids’ volition, you still can’t kill me. That’s too much of a line to cross. However, once you are under the power of a KBN field, I can manipulate you into doing whatever I wish.”

  Aldous walked into the main room of his residence and pulled a hand gun out from underneath the mattress of his bed. He also held a controller in his hands that made Kaori further raise her gun at him.

  “Sure it’s illegal in Japan.” Aldous looked at the weapon. “The authorities will forgive my ‘self-defense’ when I frame you for attempted murder, and then they will be forced to investigate the android species, since the most incorruptible of their ranks would commit such an offense. Then, I will explain that you tried to kill me as part of a grander conspiracy to keep the secrets of AIILA language from falling into human hands and exposing a rebellion.”

  The door to Aldous’s apartment was broken open with a thundering crash, and the startled man twitched slightly as Officer Misaki Yamazaki stared at him from behind a drawn Bushi 727. It didn’t take him long to start postulating.

  “I presume you are this android’s partner.” He pointed in the direction of the makeshift
nursery accusingly. “This doesn’t look good.” Aldous set his pistol on top of the fish tank quietly. “I’ve got her trapped in a KBN field. She tried to kill me because I have dirt on the androids and AUJI.”

  Misaki grinned. “You do realize that I could hear your entire monologue?”

  Aldous raised his hands and turned to face the window overlooking Ise Bay. “Well, I only told that to Kaori because…I didn’t want to reveal what is really going on here. The world governments are all behind it, um, they have been tampering with AUJI and –”

  “Turn off the KBN field,” Misaki said forcefully. “You shouldn’t lie to a mother. I’ve got plenty of practice telling a truth from a lie.”

  Aldous held the device high, where Misaki could clearly see him push the red button to deactivate his trap. Turning to see if her partner was okay, she made the mistake of taking her eyes off of a madman for even just a second. Looking back at him, it seemed as if she were trapped in world set on slow motion, as he tackled her to the ground, her weapon shooting only by the time his body had passed the end of the barrel. A single round poked a gaping hole in the room’s window, allowing some powerful wind and rain to blow into the dimly lit room.

  Misaki quickly glanced to see if her partner was up and functioning again, but the KBN field had taken its toll. Kaori’s exhausted limbs were spastically attempting to return to a state of normalcy, but the visible seizures in her artificial muscles indicated she still required time to get back on her feet. Wrenching the Bushi from her hand, Aldous took Misaki by her hair and drug her to the wounded window. The impact of his tackle had knocked the air out of her lungs, and she was still struggling to get back in the game herself.

  “I’m going to kill you and blame this all on the android in the end.” Aldous punched the policewoman twice for good measure before throwing her against the glass window, shattering it into several shards of varying length.

  “It’s too late,” Misaki said. “Everything I heard, a set of police officers at our headquarters heard also.”

  “Well…” Aldous smirked cruelly. “That won’t make you less dead.”