The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 2

All I want to do is head back to our room and get some rest. The idea of downloading myself into a new body is… well, just scary enough to give me nightmares. What happens to the people who don’t make it into their new bodies? Does their consciousness live on forever in a machine? Surely, this has happened in the past. If it hasn’t, I don’t want to be the first.

My fingers itch to grab my tablet and start the investigation process on this. This sort of technology is just the thing my homeworld sent me here to document. This is something everyone at home would want to know about.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. The clacking nails of one of the spiders, the kumojin, makes its way down the hall towards us. I press my back to the wall and avoid it. Isao steps to the side while it skitters past, off on an errand. Its nails clicking on the floor remind me of my dog, Ninjin, when I have neglected his nails.

“Do you really find them that repulsive?” Isao asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one attack someone or do something they’re not programmed to do.”

Programmed. He thinks of them more like machines than animals.

“I’m not sure what to think of them, so in the meantime, I’ll just avoid them.”

Isao raises his eyebrows and walks in front of Rin and me.

Rin leans in close. “We should talk about next steps as soon as Kazuo has returned from his scouting mission.”

“Have you heard from him yet?” My inbox has been quiet, with not a word from Kazuo since he left.

He shakes his head. “Nothing. But it doesn’t worry me.”

I nod, unable to express my reservations about everything.

After my three months on the Southern Continent undercover, I had a price on my head. Atsumi, Rin’s ex, wants me dead after I beat her in a knock-down drag-out fight and got her demoted. We killed the yakuza assholes who bought my contract, but I’m not sure that problem is resolved. I may still be owned by somebody on Hikari. Narumi Ogawa, head of Aoi Uma, is pissed I recruited Shiroi Nami’s army of mutants to our cause and stole her spy, Saki. If Narumi still had Saki in her grips, she’d be one step ahead of us. Now, she’s running to catch up.

Speaking of Saki…

“Hey, Isao.” I reach forward to tug the back of his shirt, but I’m rebuffed by his wings. “Sorry. How are things going with Saki’s reprogramming?”

“If you stopped by my lab more often, you would know the answer to this question.”

Rin glances at me and raises his eyebrows. Sigh. Busted.

“Sorry, yeah. I know I haven’t come by in a while.”

He glances over his shoulder at me, folding his wings to one side. “It’s fine, cousin. I know why you don’t come.”

Because Saki betrayed me right when I thought she was my friend. She lied to me, told me a bunch of crap about a phantom organization called Samurai Seven. It never really existed. It was a ploy to get me on her side. It was all a ruse to keep me busy so Narumi could swoop in and capture me. Fucking Narumi. She has to go.

But when Saki wasn’t under Narumi’s control, we had a… a rapport. We shared stories. We laughed together. We drank together. We had the same basic drive to stop Aoi Uma and their android advancements. Aoi Uma stole her life and crammed her consciousness into an android. And despite living on in an artificial body, she still wanted to get rid of the Fukusha Model Eights.

That really says something about how horrible the situation is.

“To answer your question, the reprogramming is going well. With Rin’s help and what he uncovered from your data device, my team has made significant progress with the core drive functions. We have given her a ‘moral code’ based on the fiction of Earth’s past. I have high hopes that she’s very close to completion.”

“Even with her consciousness and her human conscience intact?”

“Core functions are… like a set of operating instructions that can’t be accessed unless the android is shut down and in hibernation mode. Plus, there are other safeguards for androids that are out walking in the world. It would be easier to change this in the product development and building stage, but this is what we have to work with.” As if this is no big deal, he shrugs, yet I know he has only worked on a few androids in the past.

My heart speeds up at this news, and I forget the weirdness of my newly healed eye. If we can reprogram the androids, then we don’t have to deactivate them. We could stop more from being produced and live with what they already built. I think this would be ideal for everyone. Androids would cease to function as they got older, and they would still be around for the transitional period. People could learn to survive without them.

“That’s good news. I’d like to come by the lab and interview you about the work. Would that be all right?”

He holds out his hand. “I don’t enjoy being on camera, and it’s not advisable to put my image out there for the universe to see. I’m happy to talk to you, but that’s about it.”

My cheeks heat as I imagine the panic or ridicule he would get just by being him. Hell, I am still not used to this guy, this half-bat, half-man that shares the same last name with me. What will Hikari think of him, of Shiroi Nami, when they finally claim power back home?

“I’ll talk to him,” Rin whispers in my ear.

“Talk all you like. It won’t make a difference,” Isao says, a chuckle in his voice.

I bring my fingers to my lips to stop a smile. He has the super hearing of a bat as well.

He stops in front of us and cocks his head. “I hear you in two places at once.”

Huh? I’m not sure what that means until we follow him farther down the hall and stop at a conference room. The lights are off, and the room is crowded with people, their faces lit by the giant wallscreen on the opposite wall. Shintaro, my twin brother and ultimate pain in my ass, stands in the back, his arms crossed, a wild grin on his face.

“But when it came to politics in Yamato, Empress Sanaa Itami wielded her power like a ten-ton sword…”

Oh, shit. That is my voice.

A murmur passes through the crowd of people as footage of our empress plays across the wallscreen. I remember this sequence well. The scene showcases the empress in her royal kimono presiding over a New Year’s celebration, fades to a shot of her in a smart suit negotiating laws with members of parliament, and ends on a slow pan of her actual sword — Kazenoho, in all its glory — in the Yamato Artifacts Museum. Someone in the front row of the room points to the screen, and I pull my lips in to press them tightly. The photo of the empress in full samurai warrior gear next to her sword is making quite the impression on these people.

I’m not sure it’s positive.

Considering my voice-over stating how Empress Itami used everything in her power to get her way, I’m absolutely sure the room is not happy.

I scan the rest of the room and assess my chances of getting out of here alive. Ryoko stands next to Shintaro, her arms crossed and her frown buried in her face. I know she’s seen this documentary before, but it must be hard to see it again under our circumstances. She catches sight of me, softens into a sympathetic grin, and elbows Shintaro.

Shintaro turns, sees me in the doorway, and approaches with a wide smile.

“I thought this would be a good primer for what’s coming, so I got everyone together to watch.”

Anger has turned my body into a rigid stick. The room is getting louder and louder with mutterings, and my resentment builds with it.

I relax my lips enough to speak. “You should have asked me first.” My jaw is so tight, it comes out more like a growl than anything. “I could have been here and managed their expectations.”

Shintaro shrugs. “It’s not like any of this isn’t true.”

“Then,” I stress. “It was true, then. Not now.”

From next to Ryoko, Reina Hirohata’s niece, Aimi Hirohata, waves a timid hello. We’ve become friends over the last few weeks, as she’s around the same age as me. We couldn’t be more different, though. She’s not interested in romantic relationships and finds my connection to Rin puzzling. She grew up being privately tutored on the Southern Continent, hidden away as an anonymous member of Shiroi Nami. Her favorite hobbies include watching comedy shows, making hand-woven baskets (I am not even kidding), and learning how to cut down enemies with a sword. She’s odd, but it’s charming in its own way.

“This is great,” she whispers to me, and I struggle to decide if she’s being sarcastic or not.

A smile cracks her placid face in two. Sarcastic, yes.

“Thank you?” I close my eyes and sigh. This day sucks.

Her aunt stands up and raises her voice. “Turn it off!”

I cringe as Reina waves her hand at the front of the room. As the vice president for scientific advancement, she is the last person I want to piss off.

Time to go into Damage Control Mode.

“Lights up,” she commands, and the room’s lights zoom up to full brightness. Several people blink and turn to find me in the doorway. When she sees me, she stalks across the room, her face set in a grim frown. Fuck. Here we go.

I hold up my hands. “If I had known you were going to watch this documentary, I would have been here to explain. Shintaro, though…” I turn to shoot daggers at him with the power of my fierce glare. “Shintaro didn’t warn me ahead of time.”

“Then, please. Explain.” She waves to the wallscreen. “This? This is what you have in store for us? A power-hungry monarch bent on homogenizing our culture and bending people to her ways?”

My throat closes up, and I try to swallow through it. “That’s really not the way it is back home. Orihimé is… complicated. Much like here.”

God, I wish Kazuo was here. He and the empress are about the same age. He worked for her, and there was definitely something between them for some time. He could explain this better than me, what she had to go through to unite the original settlers of Orihimé and the immigrants from Earth.

“Here, we are independent,” she says, stabbing her finger downward. “Negotiations? Parliament? What kind of nonsense is this? We form our own corporations and make the laws as best fits our goals and aims.”

I lift my chin. “And maybe that hasn’t worked out so well for you so far, has it?”

Reina’s jaw tightens. Behind her, Daito and Miho Nomura rise from their seats. Next to them, Michio Hayashi, the head of Shiroi Nami, sits and listens. My stomach stiffens into a knot as Reina takes a step closer.

“Now, now,” Rin says, stepping in to cool the mood. Without touching her, he scoots Reina back a pace. “Maybe you should listen to what Yumi has to say about this.”

The room cools, and even the smile slips from Shintaro’s face. He loves a good time, especially at my expense, but this was too far.

I gesture to the chairs. “Please, can we sit?” My voice wobbles, so I clear it without trying to appear weak.

These people hold my life in their hands. They are influential and powerful in ways that I will never be. But they need to be my allies, and I can’t be afraid of them. The moment that I show fear, this is over for me. I might as well quit.

They sit back in their chairs, and I pull a chair around to face them. Sitting down, I take a deep breath and rub at my face. My injured eye takes a moment to focus. Focus. I should focus on the facts.

“We’ve never really spoken at length about where I’m from, my homeworld, Orihimé.”

Daito and his wife, Miho, glance at each other, and Michio Hayashi folds his arms over his chest. Not a good sign.

“We have seen your videos and heard some tales from Kazuo,” Michio says, a huff to his statement. “It hasn’t given us much to go on.”

“Okay, let me start from the beginning then.” I spread my arms wide and produce a smile despite the frowns on display. This is the kind of storytelling I enjoy doing. “When the Exodus from Earth happened, ships left every nation to colonize the universe, right? And from Japan, there were two generation ships, one that went to the Vega system” — I hold out one hand — “And another that came here to the Altair system. Yet there were still many Japanese who lived on Earth and settled there, awaiting their own fate, either to stay on Earth forever or leave as their ancestors did.”

I bring my hands together. “And that’s what we’re trying to accomplish here, bringing us all back to one family. Because eventually, yes, everyone left Earth. There were only a few million living there in one big city, and they packed up and traveled to Orihimé. But on Orihimé, they found a backwards society, devoid of technology and equal rights, and ruled over by a savage dictator.”

“No technology?” Reina asks, leaning forward.

“None. Calculators were high-tech. Except in the northern part of the continent where my ancestors worked on technology in secret and developed the animal translation chip, which you already know about.”

It’s one of our best pieces of Orihimé tech. The rest of the technology and information on the data device is from Earth.

“So, our Empress, Sanaa Itami, she’s from Earth. She grew up there, came to know her heritage, and brought Terrans to Orihimé, hoping to start over on a new planet. They never expected to run into these native Orihimé people.”

Daito and Michio nod, and the room is warm with understanding.

“So, to make a long story short, the Terrans arrived on Orihimé and overthrew the dictator in a brief war. They freed the Orihimé natives, and they all tried to live peacefully together.”

“But… I feel a but coming.” Michio huffs again, not relaxing his arms one bit.

I hold up my finger. “Yes, there is a but. Despite arriving on Orihimé several hundred years prior in a spaceship, the people still did not trust technology. Women were oppressed.” I nod to Reina. “Poverty and unemployment were at an all-time high. There were so many things to work on, you know? And Empress Itami, she was young back then and hard-headed, and it took her a long time to find common ground between everyone because she was just as stubborn as they were.”

I don’t mention that there were other problems with the empress. Her friends and family had abandoned her for several years, over a decade. That betrayal left her bitter and angry before she found peace. They eventually came back to her, but she has never been the same. She has two sons with her husband, and one son was almost killed many times by a rogue rebel faction. Really, her story could fill several books, more than a lifetime’s worth of material.

I point to the screen behind me. “I made this documentary almost a decade ago, in my late teens.” I lean forward and clasp my hands together. “I grew up around the empress and her family. Our families were close, and her family was my family. Everything you saw there in that video was footage that I took on my own without her permission. Just like her” — I laugh at the irony — “I was young and angry because women, outside of Terrans and their descendants, didn’t have the right to vote. And the empress was letting it happen.”

Ugh, the anger grew inside me until we gave everyone the right to vote five years ago. It was a long, hard road but worth the pain in the end.

The triumph we all felt, including how happy the empress was, warms me from head to toe. I smile, remembering the celebrations, but when my eyes settle on Michio, Reina, Daito, and Miho, a chill washes over me.

Michio holds up his hands. “Vote? You let your people vote?”

All the blood leaves my head.

“Voting on laws and…” Miho pauses to grasp for the word. “Elections?”

Michio snorts. “Elections are for common people. We did away with those two hundred years ago. The way here is to be the best corporation for the job. We are to guide the people to bring profits for Hikari and the corporation. Women’s rights and poverty?” He waves those aside like they’re a nuisance. “Everyone here is the same unless you cannot perform your job. That’s the only thing that matters.”

I sigh as I sink back into my chair. These people have no concept of democracy, no compassion for the downtrodden, and no love for competition. And here I am, trying to appeal to them and make them understand what we went through at home? It’s going to take a lot more than this to get through to them.

From the back of the room, Aimi lifts her arms into the air with two thumbs up. Yes, yes. I know. I’m blowing this.

How much farther can I push them?

“And that’s the way you want to keep it? Corporation after corporation ascending to the throne until there’s nothing left of the workforce to keep them there?”

Daito rubs the stubble on his face, and I glance over to the doorway to find Rin doing the same thing. Everyone is questioning me and my motives.

“Because that’s where you’re heading. Look at your birth rate. Look at the actual people online talking about barely scraping by. Look at the suicide rate. Look at Aoi Uma.” I laugh, and it’s bitter and cold. “I may hate Narumi Ogawa, but she sees this clearer than you do. She knows the birth rate is dropping, and there’ll be no one left to run your planet unless she stuffs everyone into androids to live forever as servants.”

I stand up and point at Hayashi, despite how rude the gesture is.

“Watch the documentary again. Read the articles that came after. See what we accomplished. And don’t talk to me about my mistakes, my people’s mistakes, unless you’re willing to admit your own.”

He stands up to bluster, but I turn and walk away.

“Come back here! We’re not done with you.”

I pivot on my heel and raise my chin. “No. When you’re ready to discuss your future, then I will be ready to listen.”

Shintaro raises his hand, and I high-five it as I walk from the room.

“I’ll be in Isao’s lab,” I mutter, storming past Rin. “Meet me there later.”

I gave them all a lot to think about, and even Rin needs time to digest this information. It’s time to find out what’s been going on in the lab.