The Fate of Shin-Osaka – Chapter 7

“Soooooo, you’re Yumi’s cousin. Is that so?”

Aimi pumps my hand up and down, her critical eyes taking in every detail of my face and body. I’m not sure what she suspects, but she’s keeping her thoughts to herself so far. She already has a terrible attitude towards androids from her Shiroi Nami youth, and I can’t blame her. Androids, in general, are a disastrous lot.

But I’m different.

I nod my head once as I let go of her hand. “That’s right. Kara Minamoto. I’m here in Yumi’s place since her death.”

“Uh, hmmm.” Ryoko lifts her finger into the air, pauses, and thinks hard, her lips screwed to one side. “I’ve never met you before. You weren’t on the mission from Orihimé.”

I smile. Yes, I was on the mission… in a different body.

Gesturing to the couch, I implore the two women to sit while I sink into a chair across from them. Rin appears from the kitchen with bottles of beer for everyone.

“You’ll have to take my word for it,” I say, grabbing the bottle as it’s handed to me.

Both of them look to Rin. He shrugs. “I believe her. Just take it at face value. This is the least of our worries.”

Aimi clears her throat and sits back on the couch. “Right. Well, I agree with that.” She sips the beer and smacks her lips. “I haven’t had a beer in weeks. Thanks. Things have been a little rough out on the streets.”

“I need a status update on everything before I move onto phase one of my mission.”

“And what’s that?” Ryoko asks, but I hold out my hand.

“We’ll get to it in a minute. Aimi, I’ve been watching your videos on the forums. You’re doing an amazing job of getting the word out about Kazenoho Corporation, Yumi, and everyone from Orihimé. Your work uncovering the stories of hardship from those with debt in the system has been enthralling.”

I’m not lying. Her series on the underprivileged could win awards back home. I’ll be sure to nominate her for something when we finally make it to Orihimé. Look at me being optimistic!

“I’ve had a lot of help from others in Shiroi Nami. A few other people my age that I trust. I put cameras in their hands and send them out to gather as many stories as possible.” She shakes her head. “I’ve had it good in life, despite not having parents. I didn’t realize how bad things were until we started digging.”

“People are talking about it all over,” I assure her. Her eyes avoid mine, too proud to take the praise. “It’s winning hearts and minds.”

I want to tell her about all my work at home, but it would blow my cover.

“What do you think people want the most? Out of life here on Hikari,” I ask her, leaning forward.

She shrugs. “Not much, actually. A roof over their heads. Families. Good food and drinks. Children, animals, and pets. Time off to enjoy what they’ve worked towards.”

Families. Children, animals, pets. Time off. Basically, they want a life outside of work.

Who could blame them?

“Okay,” I say, nodding. “That’s something I can work with.” I clear my throat. “In the meantime, I need any footage you may have of Gen Miyazawa and Narumi Ogawa. I know you’re following them, too.”

This catches her off guard. “How…?” Her eyes slip to Rin, standing in the corner. “Never mind. Yes. I have a few hours of footage.”

“Great. I’m going to send you an address on where to dump it all so I can watch it.”

Aimi shrugs. “It’s boring as shit, but be my guest.”

“Have you been watching them? Like, recently?”

“I have,” Ryoko pipes up. “Yes. They are boring as shit, but they’ve also fallen into a predictable routine, which is what I guess you’re after. Gen spends his days in the labs they’ve set up in Kadoma Ward. They have several throughout a few select neighborhoods.”

“Neighborhoods with lots of security?” I fill in.

Ryoko touches her nose. “Spot on. I dress like an office worker and wear glasses when I go there. No one bats an eye. I check in on Yumi’s body in Kadoma Ward General Hospital weekly. I have security clearance from the company that specializes in these frozen bodies. There are hundreds of them there.”

“Why don’t they use an offsite facility?” It would have been nice to just get the body shipped wherever I wanted it.

“This is the way the company, Inochi, operates. Permanent facilities in hospitals and care centers throughout Shin-Osaka. No one moves bodies. Hell, no one has ever been unfrozen. There are bodies in storage that have been there for over a hundred and fifty years. Most of them are forgotten about.”

So, moving a body out would be odd, I think. Okay. I’ll need some way to get my body out of there without rousing suspicion.

Aimi continues, “Narumi spends most of her time in and out of the Aoi Uma building in the southern Ohama Ward. The same building that Yumi and Ryoko were in, way back when.”

I glance at Ryoko. “I told her about it.”

I remember the building all too well. From the UPN, where Akikazé pulled me out to face Narumi, to the firefight and my leap from the forty-fifth floor, my memories of that place are terrifying.

“Narumi leaves to show her face on the front lines of the fighting. She likes people to know it’s her leading the charge. But she lives there now, with Gen. He comes home to her every night.” Aimi pantomimes puking and then shivers. “They give me the creeps. It’s like watching two psycho-killers in love and wondering which will snap first.”

“See, that sounds entertaining to me,” I declare.

Rin huffs a laugh, his only contribution to the conversation.

“Me too,” Ryoko says, draining her beer bottle. “Anyway, Gen doesn’t do much except work. Narumi is always out and about. She comes down to the street level to welcome people, meet a shipment of androids, or go to the front lines. She displays little in the way of fear.” She rolls her eyes. “I always thought she was as dumb as a box of rocks, and it shows.”

“Sounds like her,” I say deadpan. It’s nice to be able to regulate my emotions again.

“Trust me,” Aimi says, draining her bottle. “Despite everything, they have it easy, and their employees have noticed. The grumblings in the forums increase every day. There have been several attempts on Narumi’s life in the last three months.”

I turn to Rin, and he shrugs. “This is news to me.”

“They kept it off the news, and we only found out about the attempts two weeks ago when we hacked into more surveillance footage in Kadoma Ward. There was the report from this week. We’ve been considering leaking clips in the forums…” She raises her eyebrows at me.

“Do it. Let’s make Narumi uncomfortable and let the populace know she’s fallible.”

She’s not indestructible, even if she’s an android now.

“You got it.” She slaps her knees and stands up, stretching her neck and groaning. “I have to go. I’ve got four hours’ worth of editing in front of me tonight.”

“Oh,” I say, popping to my feet. “I was hoping we could get dinner together. There’s a Thai place down the street I like.”

She leans over and pokes me in the chest. “You mean, there’s a Thai place down the street that Yumi likes.” She slings her bag over her head and rests the strap on one shoulder. “You’re not fooling anyone with this Kara business, but I respect the need for distance.” She turns to walk down the hall backwards. “Night! See you soon in my newsfeeds!”

Ryoko chuckles and follows her out.

—-

A summer breeze ruffles the hood of my coat as I inch closer to the edge of the building’s roof. I made sure to disable the security cameras, and the guard downstairs is on a break. No one knows I’m spying on Narumi and Gen in their apartment at the top of the Aoi Uma building, and I want to keep it that way.

Lying down on my front, I prop myself on my elbows and pull the digital binoculars from my bag. The traitors are right there, and I need to see what their lives are like. I pretend I’m behind the camera, getting ready for a big revealing shot, zooming in and focusing on their living room. Once a journalist, always a journalist. And those instincts can serve me well now.

Before this, I always thought of instincts as a part of an organic body. But it’s clear our intuition comes from a deep part of our consciousness, something that can be copied, enhanced, and repeated. In Yoshi’s words, “It’s all there. I just have to sweep the dust off.”

What do we have here?

I focus on the movement coming from the hallway into the living room. Gen sets his tablet on a charge spot, rolls his head from side to side, and crosses the room to flop onto the couch with a sigh. He looks… the same. If I had to put my finger on it, his scowl and messy hair would tell me he was tired and frustrated, but those are the only indications. He’s an android now, and I know from experience that my body doesn’t get tired. It can run low on energy, but it doesn’t get tired. My mind, on the other hand, can become exhausted. I’m still a human consciousness, and I want to turn my brain off pretty frequently. Humans solve this by sleeping, drinking, or doing whatever they need to do to shut down; some need it more than others.

Gen is bouncing his leg and drumming his fingers as he sits on the couch like he’s impatiently waiting for something. My guess is he doesn’t shut down or rest at all. That’s something he would do. He would see being an android as a release from all that ‘human stuff.’ He doesn’t realize his brain, even if it’s in a synthetic body, still needs rest.

Gen pops up from the couch and paces back and forth. What’s going on here?

“I think you picked the right night to spy on them.”

I nearly jump out of my skin and fall to my death over the side of the building.

Rin dissolves out of the shadows, a cocky grin on his face.

“Sorry. I followed you. And my ninja skills get better every day. You didn’t even hear me approach.”

I roll over on my side and look up at him, rewinding through my logs. Okay, yeah, there were some auditory anomalies a few minutes ago, but my brain attributed them to the wind. I file that away for later.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper.

He approaches and sits beside me on his knees. “Making sure you’re not getting into any trouble. If you’re anything like Yumi, then you take chances and hope for the best.” He bounces his head from side to side. “It’s incredibly charming, but ultimately it’s what got her killed.”

I sigh and roll back over. “Yumi just wanted to live her life.”

“And that’s exactly what she did.” He lies beside me and focuses his eyes on Gen and Narumi’s apartment. “She’ll be back soon enough.”

I concentrate on watching Gen pace. “And how do you feel about that?”

“I’m not sure. I miss her, and I want her back. But I also know it may not feel like her. I guess we’ll see. Can I?” He motions to the binoculars, and I hand them over.

It’s always been a possibility that Rin might not form an attachment to the new Yumi in her enhanced body. But what can be done about it now? This is the path she set in motion, and the body is almost here. I suppose I could decide not to transfer over when the time comes… I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later.

“Look,” Rin whispers, handing the binoculars back to me.

I focus and zoom in as fast as I can. The door to the apartment opens, and a large man enters with an unconscious Narumi cradled in his arms. Gen gestures to the couch, and the man crosses the room to lay her on the cushions.

“What the fuck is happening here?” I whisper.

Gen is in panic mode. He’s talking rapidly and gesturing with his hands as a few more men stream into the room behind them. They cluster around the couch, hovering over unconscious Narumi like they’re going to battle each other for the right to kiss the sleeping princess and wake her. Several of them are on tablets, their brows furrowed and lips set in strict lines. Gen kneels at her side and holds her hand while he answers questions and nods.

“Here,” I say, handing the binoculars to Rin. “Keep an eye on them.”

I sit up and pull my tablet from my bag. I can do a forum search from my head, but then I can’t share anything with Rin, so I only do that when I’m looking to keep information to myself.

There’s no need to dig deep.

“Breaking news. Narumi Ogawa attacked and possibly killed in a riot just inside the Matsubara Ward border.”

The accompanying photos are pretty brutal. One shows her being beaten with a baseball bat. If she were human, she would be dead. At the very least, her android body would have sustained enough damage to make her look badly injured.

This makes the fifth attempt on her life.

“Look,” I say, handing the tablet to Rin. He gives me the binoculars.

The Narumi lying on the couch looks untouched. Just asleep.

I gasp and sit up. “She’s in another new body. How many of those do you think they have?”

Rin looks up from the tablet, its light casting a blue glow over his face. He shrugs.

“Several, probably. The real question is, why isn’t she waking up? Wouldn’t they just download her to a new body, and boom, she’s up and running?”

We both turn to watch the living room without the binoculars. One man turns around, looks at the windows, and waves to Gen. He stands up, grabs his tablet from the charge point, and the windows fade to opaque.

“Yeah, yeah. But that’s not happening. Something’s wrong. I can feel it,” I mumble, pressing my fingers to my mouth.

Rin sighs, and I catch my heart from leaping. I love his sighs and the meanings behind them all.

“I guess we’ll have to watch them a little more closely, huh?” he asks, standing up. “What do you think of the building? Looks pretty good now since we last tried to destroy it.”

I tap into a fuzzy memory of this place blowing up floor by floor and Yumi suspended in the air. When I try to examine the memory closer, it all falls apart. Yoshi did a great job, but it looks like he couldn’t fix everything.

“I thought we did destroy it,” I say, a wash of dread falling over me.

He shrugs. “Well, we tried. But they have an army of free labor, and they renovated the place over the course of a few months. It took longer to sweep the glass from the streets.”

“I don’t have the best memories of Yumi’s time in that building.”

“Probably for a good reason.”

He hesitates a moment before reaching out his hand to me. With my fingers in his, he pulls me up to stand. I’m reluctant to let go, but hello! I’m Kara now, not lovesick Yumi. I let my hand fall to my side even though I want to hold on forever. Okay, maybe I’m still lovesick.

“You’ll have to watch them more closely,” I say, returning my heartbeat to normal, “because I’m going to retrieve Yumi’s body in two days.”

His head tilts to the side. “Are you ready?”

I nod. “Are you and Ryoko ready?”

“Yes. After they were at the apartment last night, she spent today getting everything set.”

“Okay then.” I jerk my head to the side. “You head home. I won’t be there tonight.” I need some space from him and time to think independently.

He takes a step back. “Be careful, Kara.”

I raise my hand in a wave and turn to look out at the city.

Time to get on with this mission.