Chaos in Kadoma Ward – Chapter 30

A shot of ammonia to the nose and I wake up in a UPN box as icy as a winter’s day at the top of Zenyama back home. Akikazé leans over me, smiling down as if he’s just received a cake instead of a half-knocked out girl. Or maybe the latter appeals to a man like him more.

Hard to say.

“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.” He reaches in and pulls me out by my left arm, the one I just injured. I cry out in pain, but that doesn’t stop him from chuckling and throwing me down on the hard, concrete floor. I shut my eyes against the pain and hide under my disheveled hair. If I can get a moment to recover, I may be able to make a run for it.

“On your feet,” Akikazé demands, grabbing my pants’ waistband and lifting me up. “I got a nice comfortable flight here, so I’m raring to go. We have a spot all set up for you upstairs.”

I sway as he puts me on my feet. I’ve passed out, been knocked out, or lost consciousness so many times the last few months that my body is protesting. How many more times can my head take the pounding before I succumb to unconsciousness and never wake up again?

Taking a look around, I examine my surroundings in case I find an opening to flee. Behind me is the UPN drop where I just came from, except it’s three times bigger than the one at K&G Noodles. It’s attached to a large empty depot. The building looks brand new or in the midst of construction. Some walls are shells of framing. Others are whole but dusted with the fine grit of saws or drills.

Akikazé leads me out of the depot and into a hallway to an open elevator waiting for us. I don’t call out or struggle. Wherever I am, it’s a lonely and unoccupied place. The building feels big before I’m even in the elevator and we’re being whisked off to the forty-fifth floor, high in the sky.

“I hope you enjoyed your little taste of freedom. Tamura and Aka Matsuba can’t help you now.” Akikazé sets his hand on my shoulder. “It’s Aoi Uma or a grave.” He angles to the side so he can look me in the eyes. These are eyes I do not trust. “Do you understand me?”

“Loud and clear.”

I understand, but I do not agree.

“Good,” he says, resting his arms back by his side.

The elevator door opens on an empty, half-constructed floor. Windows far off in front of us look out over Shin-Osaka to the north, and the grasslands are on the other side of the building. So, I’m somewhere in the southern part of the city, not far from the spaceport we came into from Kurai. I can’t even see Rin’s building from here, there are so many other buildings in the way.

Akikazé walks me across the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I take stock of the giant room. Men patrol along the windows, carrying large guns that look accurate and deadly. I could never outrun them. Unused desks clutter the open area, and a layer of dust covers everything we walk past.

Narumi is busy at the other end of the floor. She set up her desk not far from a window — an executive corner office suite. How nice for her. I stand in front of her desk for a long time, waiting while she handles other business.

“Must be hard coordinating a coup from your pretty office space up on high,” I say, reminding her I’m waiting. I expect Akikazé to give me a smack upside the head, but nothing comes.

“It’s not a coup. It’s a hostile takeover. And it’s going quite well, actually.” She sets down her tablet, smoothing out the front of her light blue kimono. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in street clothes. “Pretty much everyone in the higher castes has surrendered, and all the lower castes have stayed at their posts. Nothing will change for them.”

“Yeah, I suppose one crazy despotic ruler is just like the next crazy despotic ruler.”

Her lips twitch before she sighs. “I don’t expect you to understand. It’s not your world.”

“You got that right. My people would never act this way.” I wave to the window and the columns of smoke rising into the sky all over the city. “I may not have always agreed with our empress, but she would never turn an android population on innocent people.” I shudder, trying to imagine the same thing happening on Orihimé. Mass murder like this is unthinkable.

She waves her hand. “They will rebuild. I bet they rebound in a day or two. Business must go on.”

“I guess you don’t have a husband or children or pets,” I grumble because that is the biggest understatement I have ever heard. Most of the city will be in mourning for some time. Not only did people lose their lives, but many businesses are on fire, and I’m sure animals and children perished as well.

What are they all feeling right now?

I want to cry, and the tears build up behind my eyes. I wish I could grab a tablet, run into the streets, and talk with people who are grieving. The people back home need to see this.

“No. I’m not married, nor do I have kids or animals. I would never pay Aka Matsuba for anything so frivolous.” She huffs and stands up. “If it were up to me, I would’ve taken over Hikari two decades ago before this whole planet became a hedonist mess.”

She circles her desk around to me. “So I have a proposal for you, Miss Minamoto.” Out of her kimono’s obi sash, she pulls out the data drive Chiéko gave me, the one that has the animal chip technology from home and several other things worth a lot of credits to someone like her. I swallow hard, knowing where they got it from, under the mattress of my bed at Rin’s place. Shit. We can never go back there.

“This appears to be password protected.”

My stomach clenches, and my knees shake. I push them together to keep them still.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. You will give me the password to this device and a copy of everything on it. And I know there’s more to this than the animal chip technology.”

Lie, Yumi.

“You’re mistaken. The only thing on there is the animal chip technology, and now that you own Aka Matsuba, you can get it from them.”

The ghost of Rin’s fingers brushes against my chin, ‘I can always tell when you’re lying.’ I bet everyone can.

Narumi smiles, cold and piercing. I’m caught.

“Earlier today, Aka Matsuba employees wiped their company’s memory banks of all sensitive and proprietary data. I’m sure there are backups somewhere, but it’ll take me months, maybe even years to find them.” She steps closer, holding out the data drive. “But, if you give me this information now, I can bring peace to the people of Shin-Osaka and across the globe. I’ll stop the androids looting and killing, I’ll save any of the people and animals in peril, and I’ll reveal this technology that can make their lives more complete.

“Plus I know the DNA sequence for your empress and her entire family is on this device. Just thinking of how I can use that is…” Closing her eyes, she lets out a long breath. “Thrilling.”

What a nutcase.

I cannot let this woman have anything. She can’t have this city, the data, her corporation, none of it.

Time to stall.

“You don’t say,” I deadpan. “You do realize our empress is alive and well, and when she gets here and finds out you tried to clone or manufacture her likeness, she’ll rain a hell of destruction down upon you, right? Because she has a temper, and she doesn’t let people get away with murder. She’d hate this world and the way it works.” The caste system here makes my skin crawl, and I’m tired of watching people with little means suffer.

“She would grow to love it like anyone would. And this is where you come in.”

Narumi moves to the window, gazing out over her newly conquered land.

“We can go one of two ways. We can manufacture a Fukusha Model Eight android in her likeness, which won’t be hard, mind you. You’ve seen my Ryoko and a few other androids. But without a transferred consciousness, they perform rather poorly.”

Ryoko. I had almost forgotten about her. No wonder she didn’t respond when I called after her. They manufactured her and sent her out to lure me to Gen.

And then my thoughts stop and my mouth becomes a desert in the height of summer. “Transferred consciousness?”

I think I’m going to be sick.

Narumi raises her finger into the air. “It’s a trade secret! Isn’t it, Akikazé?”

“One of your better ideas, Miss Narumi.”

She smiles, the broad grin of a child who just learned how to sneak candy from the cupboard. “We’ve come so far! We can transfer consciousness from people to android, no problem.” She snaps her fingers, and I jump. “We can even scrub their consciousness down to the basic elements. Walk, talk, eat, basic skills, and no memories. But we can’t manufacture consciousness from nothing. Not yet.”

Not yet? This is something they want to do. Did the wars on Earth not have any impact on them? At all? The population exploded, artificial intelligence went on the rise and made horrible decisions, and then the Environmental Decline and wars eventually drove everyone but a few to the Exodus. That’s why they’re here. That’s why I’m here!

And yet, history is buried, and no one learns their lesson.

I want to smack her and shake her. Make her see sense!

I can’t do anything.

“So you have two choices. You can either give me the password to this device so we can get our way, and you’ll live an easy life raising the clone of your empress. Or…” She opens the drawer of her desk and extracts my old tablet, the one I lost in the burning temple on Kurai. I thought it was gone forever! “We take all your footage and photos from this, manufacture an empress in her likeness, and we’ll use your consciousness as a base for the android.”

All the blood leaves my head and pools in my feet.

No.

“Honestly, I think it would be easier to take someone from my staff to be the empress’s consciousness, but there’s something sweet and poetic about making you do it. And I’m a poetic person at heart. You should hear my haikus sometime. Maybe you’d enjoy them.”

I can’t talk, and at this point, I don’t think Narumi wants to hear from me, anyway. It’s an impossible choice, and I can’t choose either of them. Both are beyond wrong. I lick my lips and consider my options, and still, my only way out is to stall and await possible rescue. Rin’s out there somewhere, hopefully. I have to believe he found my brother and Kazuo, and they’ll be coming for me.

“You get a few hours to make your decision. If you don’t make any choice, one will be made for you. The hard way out is your second option, and it’ll take my people a long time to sanitize your consciousness, so I’d prefer the first option. Now Akikazé will take you to sit with the others. I need to go take control of my world. My meeting with Tamura is in less than an hour.”

Akikazé grabs my arm and tugs me away from Narumi. I stumble, uncomprehending the task I’ve been given.

Why me?

I’m stupid. So, so stupid.

Because I spent time with the empress. I know her backwards and forwards. I grew up around her family, played with her kids. I’ve even seen her tattoos, which no one outside of her immediate family knows about. My memories are crowded with her. My documentary on her life, the one that got me kicked out of the imperial estate as a teen, sits on my tablet. I’m sure they all watched it.

What will they do with an empress once they have her? Abolish the corporations? Or use her as a puppet to keep everyone in line?

That’s what has me the most confused. There has to be a reason.

“I hope you’re thinking hard about your answer to Miss Narumi. This is a better deal than you would’ve had as a sex slave. You could be ushering in the next generation of royalty here. What do you think of that?”

He directs me around a half wall and toward a room with a door down the hall, one of only a few on the whole floor.

“I would think you’d be fine without royalty.” Delay, Yumi. Stall. “It seems such an antiquated idea, right?”

I stop walking and channel my inner journalist.

“Royal lines, noble families, one person ruling over another just because of their genes. Why would you want something like that?”

He grabs my arm. “Keep moving. Miss Narumi has her reasons.”

“Don’t you think for yourself? Come on. Think! This is the dumbest idea.”

He jerks my arm up and pulls me to him, staring down into my eyes.

“Our civilization is lost. We’ve gone down the wrong path. The people here are weak. They work too much, don’t have kids, don’t innovate. They stagnate. Everything you see here has been the norm for hundreds of years. We will die out in a few generations if things don’t change.”

He lets me go, and I rub my sore arm. Akikazé may be a brutal, sadistic bastard, but he’s not dumb. He understands the problems and wants to fix them. I don’t agree with his solutions though.

“Time to try something new. Get your feet moving, Miss Minamoto. I have work to do.”