The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 29

My body is a cloud, light and ephemeral. I hold up my hands and flip them over, but they fade and flux, almost transparent. Huh. I shrug my shoulders and smack my lips. Where I once only knew pain, I have warmth. Calm. Peace. This is not too bad…

Wait.

I think I’m dead.

Maybe that’s why I feel my body but can’t see it, inspect it, realize it.

Where was I last?

I hunt for the memory, open up the dusty boxes in my brain and look inside each.

What’s in here?

Shintaro and I sit in our pajamas back home and crack open nuts next to the fire. This is a winter tradition my father started after he arrived on Orihimé. Is it winter now? I don’t remember. The memory is present, here, now. The snap of the nutshell is loud and satisfying. My fingers smart as I pick the pieces of nut out and pop them in my mouth. I can taste and smell them, the rich, roasted scent, but it’s a memory, not something happening in the present.

Now.

That word means something to me. There was ‘then’ and ‘now,’ but they mesh together in this blank space.

I open another dusty box and set the lid aside. This time I’m on Hikari. Yes, this is more present. This is more now.

Rin sits across from me at a coffee shop.

“You’ve been avoiding me, Yumi. Any particular reason?”

My face does something I can’t pinpoint.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He rubs his face and sighs before folding his arms over his chest and leaning back. “I’m sorry. I either read the situation wrong or I moved way too fast for you, and that’s my fault, not yours.”

He’s talking about the first time he kissed me. Once again, my nonexistent body feels warm. Safe.

“I’m sorry. Again.”

“I don’t want either of us to go to jail because of this contract thing. I’m your proxy. You can’t have a relationship with me.”

Oh. Why did I ever say that? Why did I push him away?

Looking back on it, it was a stupid thing to do. Someone showed me love, and I didn’t appreciate how to handle it. What I wouldn’t give to do that over again.

The space I’m in stretches out forever, boxes upon boxes upon boxes. Dusty boxes piled on other dusty boxes. I used to talk about putting my feelings in boxes, hiding them away. Maybe I did that with my memories instead.

Drifting through the space, I try to open a few boxes, but they stay shut. My nails tap-tap-tap on a lid. What’s inside? What am I missing?

More boxes pile in. More, more, more.

They surround me on every side, filling in every available spot, outward, upward. On and on and on… The space cools and darkens, from white to sepia to dusky black.

Tingles fall down my shoulders, my arms, my hands, my torso, my legs…

I stare down, and my body appears as it once was… Or not. It looks different. Taller, stockier. My legs are powerful. My back is straight. My belly is not bloody.

I’m being drawn in, bit by bit. Winked into existence.

“Yumi.”

Rin? The room of boxes has grown even darker. I stretch out my hand, and my knuckles knock into a box. Boxes are right behind me. Over me.

There’s no room left for me.

“Yumi. You can come back to us now.” Kazuo this time.

Kazuo, you dolt, I can’t come back from death.

“She’s loaded up, but things are missing,” Rin says.

“We already knew that going in. This is better than nothing,” Kazuo insists. “I refuse to let go.”

“Me too.”

I roll my eyes. This is dumb. I can hear them, but they’re speaking nonsense. People don’t return from the dead.

A box at my feet rubs against my leg like a cat expecting dinner. Fine. I open it, and I’m in the town by the sea. Saki sits across the table from me.

“Look, I know how you feel about androids, and I agree with you. I was a human being, but I’m not any longer. I don’t ever need to eat or drink. I only do it now because I miss it. And then I realize I have no taste buds. I don’t get drunk or feel adrenaline anymore. I went to those fights hoping I would feel that physical rush when I won, but it never came. I can fall in love, but my heart will never race when someone looks at me because they find me attractive. It’s as if all the emotional signals are mixed up. Some of us are better off than others. Shun’s body reacts to emotions. Mine? Only some of the time.”

Saki. Poor Saki. Used and abused. But she was doing well when I last saw her. When was that?

A flash of her open eyes. Cold, wet concrete.

Boot-up Sequence Complete in 30 seconds…

Huh. What’s that?

20 seconds…

10, 9, 8…

Boot-up? Um…

3, 2, 1…

The boxes zip away, fade into the black.

I open my eyes. My lungs fill with air.

A status panel overlays the world around me. Current charge, 98%. Current location, 34° 40’ 10.3044’’ N and 135° 29’ 49.2324’’ E. New messages, 3.

Rin and Kazuo smile, but something is wrong… or not right.

Rin sighs and collapses into a chair next to me. “Thank God. Yumi, is that you?”

“Yes?” But my voice does not sound like mine.

Rin’s eyes fill with tears, and he sweeps up and out of the room.

Kazuo’s head drops before he smiles, and his eyes meet mine.

“Welcome back, kako.”

—-

“What is going on, and why does everything feel so… distant?”

My world is a glass bowl, warped and hollow and echoing. I’m not in this body. I’m ten centimeters behind it. I turn my head, and everything slowly follows along with it. Ugh. I close my eyes, and I still see all that stuff in front of me.

“Help me. I don’t feel well.”

Kazuo’s hand on mine is a solid weight, 402.3 grams. God, that’s weird. Why am I thinking in such precise terms?

“Just a second. The techs are working on calibrating everything.”

New diagnostics run before my very eyes. Rows and rows of code flow through this interface, and slowly, as each one hits its checksum, I come into alignment. Little things happen that restore me to my own body. My knee bounces. My fingers twitch, and my hand turns over to squeeze Kazuo’s. My chest is tight with anxiety, so I take deep breaths. But they’re strange. Air goes in and out, but the calm it used to bring me isn’t there anymore.

“Where did Rin go?” My voice is calm despite the panic at the back of my head.

“I’m sure he’ll return in a moment. It was all a bit of a shock to him, I think. Just give it some time. Can you open your eyes and tell me if you’re feeling better?”

This time when I open my eyes, I’m in my body and not a step behind it. The tightness in my chest loosens a tick. Picking up my hands, I turn them over, one by one. They don’t look familiar.

“I’m an android now, aren’t I?”

Oh, fuck. I knew it the moment I saw the boot-up sequence. Something has happened, and they had to put me in an android. But why?

“You’re more than an android, Yumi. And you will not be one forever. I promise.” Kazuo stops to hang his head for a moment, and when he makes eye contact with me again, I can see the sleepless nights, the long days, the worry, the shame. He was on this trip to monitor Shintaro and me, to make his own observations on behalf of the empress. This is not what he bargained for.

He clears his throat and pulls from his reserve of strength. I’ve seen the motion a million times over the years to recognize it now. “Yumi, let’s talk a little about how you’re feeling and what you remember.”

I turn my head and find the Kiiroi Yama techs and engineers who initially helped upload my consciousness in the room with us. Okamoto stands next to them, his arms crossed over his chest. His face is blank, empty of expression like he’s never seen me before.

I wonder… But before I can even make a conscious decision, new information pops up on display before me. Okamoto is two-point-two meters away from me. He’s 180 centimeters tall. His temperature is thirty-seven degrees… My eyes scan the data provided to me, including more about him and his public contract terms. I look at each engineer and find the same reports about them all. No wonder Saki used to sit silently and just stare into space. She had so much information at her fingertips.

“I feel… different. Like me, but not me. Like… you took me and sanded down all the edges.”

One of the engineers nods. “The information we got from the ex-Aoi Uma employee told us how her emotions would be changed. This particular model has emotional feedback misfires, and so they built ways to control it,” he explains to Kazuo before turning to me. “Rest assured that your personality will remain the same when transferred to a new… um, a new body. This model has an artificial limit on emotional resonance. Kind of like a governor. The emotions are there; they are just held back from being expressed.”

“Fantastic,” I grumble, and I hear my own voice. It’s like listening to someone else talk. Not me. Not Yumi.

“What else can you tell us?” Kazuo asks, taking my hand again.

“My brain is like a… a warehouse with lots of boxes in it. And if I want to access memories, I have to find the box and open it.”

The tech people gasp and whisper between them. They think I can’t hear them, but I can — every word. Cognitive functions. Neurological bases of memory formation. Visualization. Manifest thoughts… I can hear it all, but I don’t know what any of it means. I don’t have the patience for this right now.

“Do you remember what happened before we put you in this body?”

I shake my head. “The last thing I remember is being in this chair. We came here to bring my consciousness into the Kiiroi Yama databanks. I guess it worked?” Kazuo nods. “But I don’t know what happened after. Did we go to the bank? Did we create the corporation?”

Kazuo brings his hands to his lips in a prayer gesture. “Ohhh, shit. Everything after the transfer is gone, right?” He closes his eyes. “Fuck. That’s stupid of me. Of course, that’s the way it works.”

The engineer who spoke earlier shrugs his shoulders. “It’s like any backup. Once you backup, any changes after are lost.”

“What about what we tried to scan in the hospital?” Okamoto asks, and the engineer shrugs again, unhappy to be the bearer of bad news.

“We did what we could, but she was unconscious and uncommunicative. The software had very little to go on.”

I don’t know whether to be angry, concerned, or upset, so I just sit. I’m not even sure if I can be any of those things. In the past, fear would creep up my back, cover my skull, and send my heart hammering. It’s as if the emotion is stopped somewhere along the way and never takes off.

The door opens, and Rin enters. He looks calmer this time. His eyes are glassy, but he’s composed, my usual Rin. I smile at him, happy to see him. As happy as I can be. At least I can feel a little, if not a lot. His face, the shape of his presence, brings warmth to my body.

“Sss…” He stops and clears his throat. “Yumi, we have a lot of work to do, and we’re going to need to get out of this building as soon as possible. Do you think you can stand or walk?”

I wiggle my fingers, my toes, and bounce my knee. Everything happens as it’s supposed to. “Yes, I think I can. Why do we need to leave the building?”

Rin glances at Okamoto, and Okamoto nods.

“A lot has happened while you’ve… been away.”

“Away? You make it sound like I’ve been on vacation.”

Kazuo huffs a laugh. “Well, your sense of humor is intact. A lot happened after we backed you up. There were protests all over the city. People took to the streets in vast numbers. And without the Aoi Uma androids to stop them this time, they swarmed every Aoi Uma government building possible.”

“Aoi Uma called in new androids from Amagasaki,” Rin continues. “Ones not affected by our laws. At least, not yet. They have them on a separate update network. Anyway, the city is now divided. Everything south of Chuo Ward is Aoi Uma territory, and that includes this building. It’s dangerous for us to be here.”

“They can’t just take property from Kiiroi Yama,” I protest. “They’re a Class A independent corporation.”

“We’re also your ally,” Okamoto says gently. “And that puts us in an awkward spot.”

“I’m so sorry.” I drop my head and stare at these foreign hands of mine. “If you’d rather we dissolve this relationship, seeing as what’s become of me —”

“No,” he interrupts, raising his hand. “Awkward or not, we cannot let Aoi Uma take this world by force. We will continue forward as a team — your Kazenoho Corporation, Kiiroi Yama, and Shiroi Nami. Together.” A small smile graces his lips. “If it makes you feel any better, Aoi Uma is having a hell of a time defending their own territory without us. They have little in the way of weapons or firepower. They’re scraping by on what they can figure out on their own.”

“That’s good news.”

The door opens again, and I gasp at the man standing in the doorway. Wait…

No, it’s not Isao.

“Hidéki, it’s good to see you.”

His mouth opens and closes a few times before he nods. “We have our team ready to secure an exit from this building. We can go in three minutes.” He steps to the side, and Atsumi is right behind him. She leans right to look at me, and our eyes lock on each other. Her chest rises and falls, and her eyes narrow. She’s angry and disgusted by what she sees. That’s going to put a dent in our relationship.

“We’re working to shut this building down and keep it defended until we can gain back this territory,” Okamoto says, gesturing for everyone to stand up and get moving.

“But…” I wave at the room and everything else. “But my consciousness is stored here.”

Kazuo rounds the table, helps me to stand up, and taps on my head. “Your consciousness is here now. What’s in the data storage in this building is only a backup, a backup we don’t want to use because we’ll lose everything that will happen from here on forward.”

“You’ll have to be careful,” Hidéki says, approaching me. “Isao will move you from this android’s body to your body that’s growing at our off-world moon base. This is only temporary. We have to go. Now.”

I glance at silent Rin. He’s staring at me, and I can only imagine what’s going through his head. I’m an android now, something he used to hate. I’m not the woman he fell in love with. Did he watch me die? Was I close to him when it happened? Sadness wells up in my chest and then just stops. It’s as if some invisible hand has reached into me and pressed it all down. Tucked it away.

Turning around, I gasp and jump back as I catch my reflection in a window across the room.

“No. No no no no no…”

“Yumi, it was the only way,” Kazuo says, trying to take my hand. I fling him off.

“What did you do with Saki?”

Because I’m Saki now. I’m in her android body.

I am Saki.

“She’s here,” Rin says, waving to the room. “It was her idea.”

“No.”

Rin steps forward and grabs my upper arms. There’s a lot of power in my body, and I could pull out and away from him easily, but I let him hold me. The strength of his hands is a grounding force, keeping me from floating away into despair and denial.

“It was her idea,” he stresses. “We didn’t have access to another android to put you into. We knew what to do with Saki because she wasn’t like the other androids. Remember? Narumi couldn’t hack any of the other ones because Saki was special, different. She convinced us to archive her until you can give her back a body. She’ll live here until that can happen.”

“This building could be destroyed!”

“Not my building,” Okamoto says, placing his hand on his heart. “And I have the engineers working on a backup system. Just… trust us, Miss Minamoto. We’re thinking on our feet, but we’ll make this work.”

No wonder everyone keeps looking at me strangely. I’m Saki now. But I’m not inside. Ugh. This is worse than I thought it would be when I sat in that chair and encouraged them to take my consciousness.

“Why didn’t you leave me in the data storage, huh? This… I can’t do this.”

“We have to go now,” Hidéki says, waving us forward. “We’ll talk about it when we’re safe.”

Fine. I’m already in this body. I might as well just deal with it.