Ch.156Work Record No. 021 – The Sacred Rookie of the Industry (6)

Until the information processing team arrives, everyone has a chance. Not a chance to escape or somehow subdue the surrounding agents and flee. A chance to commit suicide.

The recruitment officer in Las Vegas Strip missed that chance and was captured by Belvedere’s information processing team agents, whose heads had been replaced with cybernetic parts as if to deny… or dull their humanity.

Their work was perhaps a desecration of life, a mockery of living beings, and an insult to the concept of humanity. However, doing it produced clearly better results than not doing it.

If they hadn’t opened the gray matter of the roadside kidnappers at Fitts & Morrison, it would have taken longer to find Farmers Company’s old research facility, and if they hadn’t done so at H-Enter, the defectors would have survived.

Both are things better not existing than existing. The Vegas recruitment officer is loaded into the car, screaming. The screams stop. Not because the will to scream has died, but because the means to do so has disappeared.

Now he will reveal why Vegas natives tried to recruit Belvedere’s traitors. No, more precisely, they will extract that information from him. The information processing team’s trailer disappears.

The work is done, but not properly finished yet. The most important task remained. President Yoon, having completed his report to Belvedere, nodded briefly with an expression even more serious than during work hours.

“Let’s return,” he said, sounding exactly like “Let’s move to the work site.” After returning to the office, we began loading boxes stacked in the fire escape into Tina’s car.

From one box came the sound of an irregular heartbeat beating rapidly. After carefully arranging that box so it wouldn’t be crushed, Ms. Mila got into the back seat, and I sat in the passenger seat.

President Yoon’s farewell and Ms. Eve’s greeting… honestly felt so solemn that I hoped the new recruits wouldn’t notice anything strange. I might have been tense myself.

The car didn’t drive far before arriving at the parking lot of my apartment building. There weren’t many reasons to use a car for walking distance. Now there was one.

Tina, with her headphones deliberately turned up so music leaked out… unlike usual, wasn’t wearing lightweight prosthetics, and personally embraced the box Nadia was holding.

Ms. Mila reached out her hands, but I carried the remaining four boxes, two at a time. Since they were just boxes filled with miscellaneous items to look like heavy luggage, it was better to minimize the effort.

In the elevator, Tina stood at the very back, with Ms. Mila and I standing in a formation that shielded her. It didn’t seem too artificial. It’s a common sight in elevators that fit about four people.

Not wanting to show a stiff face to the elevator’s surveillance camera, I deliberately relaxed my expression and asked in a friendly voice:

“Oh, what song are you listening to? I can faintly hear it leaking out, but I’m not very knowledgeable about cultural activities.”

Tina, who had jolted slightly, realized this was all to create a natural scene and answered with a somewhat cracking voice, adding to the pretense.

“Oh, umm? It’s, it’s a collection of 70s old metal. Yeah.”

Tina’s voice was just like a cheese stick that had been cooked and then cooled. Usually it stretched naturally, but this time it kept breaking off. If nothing else, those songs were definitely older than me.

Between songs from twenty years ago and hatred even older than twenty years, the elevator reached the 10th floor, and we quietly walked down the hallway and opened the door. I put down the boxes I was carrying first and reached out to Tina.

Tina, who had been looking at me somewhat anxiously, finally handed over the box. I took the box, which was too light to be a person’s weight, and carried it to my bedroom, placing it beside the bed.

Tina followed me in, and Ms. Mila secured the door and entered. My quiet and solitary home was becoming quite busy. It’s not a large home, but it’s enough to hide Nadia.

It was a joyful night, knowing that I could provide protection to someone, that all my efforts during that first month had earned me this small ability.

Tina fell asleep holding Nadia. She covered Nadia, who was trembling slightly due to her fragile body, with a thin blanket up to the top of her head, and fell asleep with the soft engine sound of an artificial heart playing.

Ms. Mila, in complete contrast, sat with me on the beanbag in the living room. Wide awake without showing any signs of drowsiness despite the early morning hour, she whispered as if worried about disturbing the two in the bedroom.

“I feel happy and sad at the same time. Such family love is a beautiful part of humanity… They didn’t hunt each other just because of slightly contaminated gene sequences even in my parents’ time!”

My parents’ time. Sensing an opportunity to learn about the artificial intelligence that raised her, I just nodded briefly. She began speaking as if retracing a dream.

“You know, when the wasteland wasn’t called a wasteland. When there was green vegetation around Los Angeles, and beautiful natural parks. Not everything was beautiful, but still.”

The night of listening to Mila, who had been thinking deeply, comfortably laughing and pouring out stories was quite… enjoyable. She seemed to have artificial intelligence created before that war as her parents.

She told many trivial stories about the era before that war. When pseudo-food was for “preparing for possible future food shortages,” and cultured meat was a matter of preference.

I listened to stories from before the war, when advice people gave to others was not “don’t let witches live” but trivial things like “read more books,” things that could have been trivial.

Nevertheless, it was difficult to imagine an era of excess. Mila kept telling stories as if she wanted me to understand something. I fell asleep at three in the morning. Probably.

Waking up to the morning sunlight and a sky with slightly less smog than yesterday, I found Mila still sitting on the beanbag next to me with wide-open eyes.

“Um, didn’t you sleep?”

The sight of her even clapping her hands when she saw me wake up was quite childish but also quite pleasant to see.

“I couldn’t sleep! Well, I couldn’t have had human friends in the wasteland, right? It would be strange to sleep on the night I made a friend who understands me so well!”

Mila, who had nodded proudly, swayed as she stood up. Though she had been energetic until now, she would probably fall asleep around noon and wake up around work time. The two in the bedroom were still sleeping.

As I got up, watching her standing as if she might flap her arms, someone rang the doorbell. Chance’s connected household drone closed the bedroom door.

Connecting to the camera at the front door, I saw it was the North American Postal Service delivery person I had met before. Ms. Mila naturally followed me. A vigilance for those in the bedroom.

Instead of telling her it was okay, I decided to open the door together. This time I wasn’t carrying a gun. Timothy, still with his warm impression, smiled and said:

“At least you’re not one to break promises. To see you without a gun this time. May I ask who the person beside you is?”

An excruciatingly corporate aristocratic remark. He was still bothered by my greeting him with a gun the first time. I responded with just a relaxed tone to his almost deliberately provocative words.

“She’s a colleague from my company. And obviously, if someone wasn’t discreet enough about a freelancer’s personal mail, I wouldn’t have them in my company or my home.”

I clearly established that even pointing out someone’s presence was an insult to me and my company. He, with his warm impression but thorny manner, courteous yet mocking, retorted:

“‘Ah, how shameless. Mortals do not know that their reckless actions make them suffer more than their due share, and they say all misfortune comes from us.’ Well, I see.”

Another one of those tiresome quotations. He was twisting and turning his corporate aristocratic attitude to mock me for unnecessarily bringing a colleague home as a freelancer, making both workplace and home insecure.

Judging by his talk of “mortals,” it was clearly more classical than the Macbeth he had quoted last time, but literature didn’t occupy that significant a place in the life of someone from Belvedere.

The problem was that they were also business partners. In this situation, I should respond with their kind of neatly tailored words, but what I could think of was limited.

As Chance would say, a total lack of ability. Sometimes, eloquence alone isn’t enough for verbal disputes.

However, Mila, standing beside me, giggled as if finding it amusing. She calmly retorted:

“‘One who has gone through bitter experiences and a long journey comes to enjoy even suffering.’ But conversely, does someone who lives a life unrelated to adventure, challenge, and adversity come to enjoy inflicting pain on others?”

Among the things she told me yesterday was that the house outside the wasteland where she lived had a huge library. Perhaps it’s the same book that the North American Postal Service courier quoted.

“And, quoting a book that shows virtue in tolerance, patience, and indomitable will, while mocking someone who showed mercy to colleagues who had nowhere to go due to a corporate audit—it seems you haven’t read it properly?”

I must have been quite a good person by Mila’s standards. Her tone had an underlying attitude that clearly revealed ‘Or perhaps you’re just too arrogant.’

Timothy closed his mouth, quietly handed me the mail with a neat salute, and turned to leave. I didn’t slam the door either. I acted with dignity.

The letter was from H-Enter. It wasn’t already crying out for help again, but a thank-you letter written directly by the executive producer of the Call Sign Gardner series.

Of course, there wasn’t a word about the Gardner series. It was a letter of gratitude for protecting people who had lost their families and fallen into despair. I feel nostalgia for memories of Detroit that never existed.

After reading it alone, I pushed the letter back into the envelope. Ms. Mila, who had said she would be in the kitchen, came trotting over, and I smiled and said:

“That corporate aristocrat from North American Postal Service couldn’t say a word, huh?”

“Of course! Both for quoting ‘don’t be arrogant’ so arrogantly, and for bothering people just because he’s read some classics when he doesn’t even show signs of having properly read the Odyssey!”

Mila was a unique person. Childlike but knowledgeable and capable. For reasons unknown, the way she used her knowledge and skills clearly showed she was a good person. I couldn’t help but smile.

“And, definitely… I should ask to be invited to Ms. Mila’s home sometime. Reading and devouring everything in that attached library would prevent embarrassing situations like just now.”

“Really? Ah, um, it’s in the wasteland so it’s in terrible shape! There’s a lot to clean up inside, and many broken drone remains… But I’ll definitely invite you next time!”

Seeing her jumping up and down as if it was a very joyful thing naturally made my smile grow. She whistled cheerfully and said:

“My parents were skeptical about people! I was the only one who said someday more post-war people would come to that huge library in the mansion where we live. I was right, wasn’t I?”

It would be strange if artificial intelligence from the war era wasn’t skeptical of humans. Honestly, I was more drawn to that skepticism, but the world needed Mila more than skeptics.

“The moment I visit, Ms. Mila’s parents will lose the argument. They might have a little hope…”

Just as I said that, I heard Chance’s voice in my head. He whispered, as if only for me to hear:

“Hope is highly toxic, Agent Arthur Murphy. Especially the hope spoken of by Mila’s parents, who are likely pre-war artificial intelligence… one way or another, likely something from before that war.”

I decided to multitask again. In my head, I responded to Chance, while verbally speaking to Mila in front of me. Doing both simultaneously wasn’t that difficult.

‘I’ve never not listened to you, Chance. Meeting Mila’s parents she mentioned could be helpful in a situation where we need information about pre-war drones or artificial minds.’

“…too, right?”

Mila was about the same height as Half & Half Company’s Bella model, so even though she was standing and I was sitting on a beanbag, the difference in eye level didn’t feel that extreme.

Ms. Mila was still that person full of hope. I could feel why Chance didn’t like me talking with her.

“That’s right! Hope is a good thing. There’s no reason to lose hope. The war took away many things, but the greatest loss was hope!”

Chance made a sound as if displeased again, but it didn’t last long. He clearly recognized that Mila and pre-war artificial intelligence were different.

Fortunately, Nadia was able to stay safely at my home until work time that day. All three of us waited with guns even inside the house, but all that came for us was work time.

The audit ended so simply that our worries seemed like overreactions. Nightscape was a company without much to hide, and what Nightscape had to hide were only things Belvedere had decided to forget, to treat as if they never happened.

It didn’t seem like the audit was targeting Nightscape or the anomaly formers. The number of partner companies receiving public announcement work decreased from 107 to 104, then increased again to 112.

It seemed that the Shepherd, who was still acting as branch manager, had clearly eliminated the mercenary companies related to the coup and replaced them with mercenary companies that had helped suppress the coup.

This was because there were too many confidential matters in the work and the reporting system was unstable. Gunter and I were people who shouldn’t have been there, and the Lone Star Rangers voluntarily dealt with the coup’s mercenaries.

At least today passed safely. What should have made me happy was that Ms. Nadia wasn’t discovered and that Nightscape was safe, but strangely, what I learned most about was Ms. Mila.