Ch.44Work Record 008 – Case Files of Two Detectives (6)

“I’ll help you. If it was just for Kay, I might have thought about it more, but this involves a long-standing grudge, right? If I learn how to break someone else’s grudge, maybe I can break my own too.”

While searching for an abandoned factory in the wasteland, I might accidentally discover where that bioengineering monstrosity is hiding. Kay crossed her small arms with a smug expression, as if telling me not to worry.

“You don’t think I wouldn’t help you after you helped me, right? Anyway, I’m thinking of using drone reconnaissance first. We’ll scan the wasteland looking for traces of a factory! It’s mindless grunt work, but nothing beats this method. If that doesn’t work, I’ll raid Belwether.”

“That’s dangerous, pointless, and stupid. I’d rather volunteer for the mindless grunt work. Or did Belwether make some… non-transparent eyes to delete the transparent ones?”

Kay nodded at the mention of danger but wiggled her finger when I said it was pointless. She had quite an irritating expression.

“Arthur, I know how much you like Belwether, but they made the transparent eyes too. Arthur, is Belwether an inhumane company?”

“It’s a company that willingly does inhumane things to preserve human values.”

At least I wasn’t blindly devoted to Belwether. Belwether was quite a violent whale.

When it’s ferocious, it’s ferocious enough to execute all Zaina members who had no alibi on the day of the terror attack, and while respecting the humanity of its employees, it cultivates the security team in inhumane ways to protect that humanity.

Was my dismissal… rational? Or was I just pushed out by a tumor growing inside Belwether? Since nothing had been resolved yet and no clues existed, I couldn’t answer.

I preferred to call all of this a practical compromise rather than a contradiction, but maybe “contradiction” was more accurate. I thought my answer might be defensive, but Kay affirmed it.

“That’s right. Because humans are inevitably emotional animals, respecting their humanity produces better efficiency, and efficiency is all Belwether knows. If research showed that having all employees work naked like at a nude beach would increase productivity by 50%, they’d gladly take away everyone’s uniforms.”

The truly Belwether-like part was that if there was solid evidence and they tested it on a small group first with positive results, they really would do it. I couldn’t help but smile a little.

“They say the transparent eyes were created when they still didn’t know whether humanity creates efficiency, or whether respecting humanity creates efficiency. They tried to stamp humanity into androids to make them more efficient. Then it failed, and they just managed it. Now it’s considered heretical thinking, but they didn’t delete it. Because…”

Kay reached out to me as if I should know what came next. And of course, I did.

“Because if that heretical idea produces unexpected efficiency, Belwether would gladly remove the heretic label.”

“Exactly! They’re like speed freaks even crazier than Gong Do racers. ‘Let’s move faster, let’s be more efficient!’ Like… isn’t this fast enough already?”

Belwether didn’t know the phrase “fast enough.” Faster and more efficient, always. I don’t know what lies at the end of that path, but they believed there must be something better than the road they’re currently on.

The original sin lies with Belwether. That doesn’t mean Kay isn’t responsible. At the same time, the transparent eyes aren’t inherently bad. All answers are true, and everyone is at fault. Whichever side I choose, it would be similar.

If that’s the case, it would be better to choose Kay over Belwether, which has now become a partner company, or the transparent eyes that have nothing to do with me. I’ve chosen my side.

Can I keep up with Belwether? If it’s just one investigation manager pursuing this rather than the entire branch’s workforce, I could definitely manage.

Run fast enough to catch the Red Queen by her hair. It was a contradiction to mull over Belwether’s words while deciding to stand against them.

Perhaps feeling more at ease now, Kay let out a long sigh and lightly patted my shoulders with both hands. Seemingly fascinated by the feel of the Posthuman Type IV that absorbed the impact, she tapped a few times before speaking.

“Thanks for promising to help, Arthur. You nosy guy. You’re so nosy that I wonder, is he so special that he cares this much? But then again, apart from your body, you’re not that special… Anyway, I don’t know! Things just seem to work out when I’m involved with you. Why is that? I should research it! Oh, want some snacks?”

She’s definitely calmed down. Kay brought a bag of salty pseudo-food snacks from a kitchen full of instant food containers, probably because she’d been too busy managing servers to eat proper meals. I shook my head.

“No, I’ve also figured out there’s no need to be suspicious… I should go home and wash up. You might not smell it, but I can still catch the scent of white matter.”

I briefly recall the hacker whose head was blown apart by an armor-piercing explosive round. I felt nothing beyond thinking it was gruesome, but the lingering smell was quite horrific.

“Well, see you tomorrow at work, offliner! I’ll be spending some quality time with this transparent eyeball. Honestly, I want to say my place has a bathroom too, but if you don’t come back after saying you’d walk me home, people might find it strange, right? That’s why I’m not keeping you here, Arthur.”

Ah, I’d forgotten about the time constraint. Thirty minutes or so could be excused as having a chat, but returning the next morning wouldn’t allow for such an excuse.

After waving goodbye, I left her apartment. Despite being on the 24th floor, the only view from the apartment corridor was another skyscraper standing right in front. As Kay said, it was a suffocating neighborhood.

I called the elevator and headed back to the company, passing by Günter’s store with its LED sign showing it was closed. Perhaps it was also my home. Director Yoon was still waiting.

Watching her check her sniper rifle one last time before leaving work felt so Belwether-like that it gave me a sense of coming home. She moved the gun barrel away from me as she was checking it with the magazine removed.

“How was Kay, Arthur? She seems to be staying home even longer these days. She always went straight home after work, but lately she’s been rushing off every time.”

I seemed to have cut things off at a sufficiently suspicious time. Her recent attachment to home was probably to store the transparent eyes in a storage device to destroy them… I decided to make up a flimsy excuse.

“I was wondering if something was wrong too, so I went with her to ask… but she said nothing was wrong. Her home is just like any typical hacker’s place.”

“Full of instant food wrappers, and garbage bags piled up that she keeps saying she’ll throw away next time?”

I nodded, trying to maintain a natural smile. Director Yoon packed up her gun and left, and I locked the door. From beyond the night duty room, I could hear Nadia’s wheezing, somewhat anxious breathing.

Why did Director Yoon gather people like us? One augmented human supremacist, Enzo with his vaguely unsettling aspects… a hacker hiding transparent eyes, a driver with a mutation, a senior who escaped Hollowwood Creek, and me, whose records were “erased.” Not one of us could be called a normal person.

Are we that efficient? Maybe. From the mutant Nadia to myself, everyone excelled in at least one field. Is that all there is to being Belwether-like?

Considering that one of us wears a knockoff of a Belwether product, one has hacked Belwether once and is planning to do it again, we might also be the least Belwether-like people.

The debate between naturalness and unnaturalness that had been troubling me was finally taking shape. It was still a vague outline, like a lump of clay or blurred polygons, but it was becoming somewhat visible.

Either way, I needed to keep working here to catch the bioengineering monstrosity. I had no intention of stopping my efforts to be a good person, as I had tried at Belwether. My only consolation was that my job remained the same.

After Valentina finished using the shower, I finally washed away that terrible white matter smell, and even sprayed unscented deodorant to remove any lingering traces before going to sleep.

It’s Tuesday. Tomorrow, I’ll go with my senior to the house where the Hollowwood Creek cult leader lived. Today’s job was simply dealing with a robber-murderer, so simple that Director Yoon sniped him without field staff needing to be deployed.

Since it was a light job, there was no team dinner, and people quickly left the company. In other words… only my senior and I remained. I walked toward the parking lot, making sure Nadia couldn’t hear.

If it’s creepy for someone to discover your vulnerabilities on their own, it must be equally terrible to be forced to hear about someone else’s. My senior approached me in the parking lot, holding a motorcycle helmet.

“I don’t feel good. I thought next Wednesday was so far away, but it’s already tomorrow. I can’t visit that place without getting any sleep tonight.”

I watched her fidget with the motorcycle helmet for a while. Her blue hair, the complete opposite of the long blonde hair she had in Hollowwood Creek, swayed with her worry.

The end of her deliberation was a simple action. She held out the bike helmet to me. After messing up her bangs with her hand as if she couldn’t stand the sight of herself, she said:

“Alright, Arthur. I’m about to rely on an inefficient superstition. I told you I feel like things work out when I’m with you. Because of that feeling, I need to see if I can get some sleep tonight. What does your Belwether side say? Don’t you want to tell me to stop being stupid, go inside, take a sleeping pill, and meet me tomorrow at 6:30?”

A common misconception about Belwether. Kay seemed to understand the company’s policies better. I didn’t bother hiding my smile as I replied:

“Well… first, Belwether security team’s start time is 7:30, not 6:30, and that’s not superstition but a hypothesis. There’s been one counterexample, but the sample size is still too small.”

My hand circled in the air a couple of times as I tried to make my next answer smoother. Finally, I spoke. Or rather, I acted more than I spoke. I put on the helmet.

“So, my Belwether-like part is saying, ‘Let’s see how it goes this time and record it.’ If it doesn’t work this time either, maybe we shouldn’t try again. But you can see my answer, right?”

Valentina would lock the door if I didn’t return. If I wasn’t at the company on Wednesday or Thursday morning, the door would be locked and I’d have to open it separately.

My senior looked like she’d been caught off guard again by the simplicity and intuitiveness of my Belwether-like side. Her face, which had been flushed a color opposite to her blue hair, seemed to calm down a bit.

“Really, how do you always defy expectations? My place is a complete mess. It looks like it’s been hit by a storm with all the Hollowwood Creek escapees staying there.”

“I went to Kay’s place yesterday too, so what’s the big deal?”

She fumbled for a response, looking at me with eyes that said I’d gone too far, then sighed as if resigning herself and put on her helmet.

“It’s really too much that you won’t let me win just once. I’ll give you the address, so please drive. My hands are shaking too much. I was planning to call a taxi anyway, so at least I saved some money.”

I memorized the map she displayed on a hologram window as if injecting it into my brain. After getting on her bike, I felt the high-powered motor humming well-charged under my palm. My senior got on behind me.

The arms around my back and waist were thin, as was the body pressed against my back. I’d always thought she was slim, and I’d felt our size difference when our shoulders and heads touched, but… this was different.

She reached around my body and started the engine with the thumbprint imprinted on her prosthetic thumb. I began driving following the memorized map. It would take quite a while to reach her home. It was by the coast.

Following Sepulveda Boulevard, we reached the coastal area full of villas and resorts that had become slums. It was a place where the screams of drug-addled people and gunshots rang out occasionally.

If Hollowwood Creek escapees came here… they’d see the worst aspects of the outside world first. Was it meant to make them miss Hollowwood Creek quickly, or the opposite? I couldn’t tell.

Driving the bike at low speed to minimize noise, I reached the address marked on the map my senior had shown me. It was originally someone’s villa, less neglected than other houses in this neighborhood.

Rather than not being neglected… it was neglected but well-maintained. Overgrown ivy covered the building’s exterior walls, the gate was loose, but the house door was securely in place.

Since it wasn’t just her living there, the door opened with a small metal key rather than iris recognition. After parking her bike in the garage and covering it with plastic, I entered the house.

As my senior had said, the inside was a mess. Many people had apparently stayed there, with blankets scattered everywhere. Several low dining tables were folded up, and there was a slight smell of pseudo-food.

My senior’s attempt to tidy up before I entered had failed. She had barely managed to fold the blankets and led me to the second floor of what was once someone’s spacious villa.

She climbed onto a bed too large even for a family of four and sat with her knees pulled up. The bed seemed too wide for her to sit like that alone. I sat on the opposite side and looked at her.

After about a minute and thirty seconds of silence, my senior buried her face in her hands and spoke with a sigh.

“Every time I show you something, it feels more and more outrageous. Running away scared from a comforting touch, living in a coastal ruin… Yes, that’s right. It’s terrible.”

“This is the perfect place to hide people who entered the city illegally, isn’t it? Mercenaries occasionally come to catch gangs, but Belwether people rarely visit. Those Creek people who focus all their energy on preaching their scripture—which seems like a mix of coding books and the Bible—on the main streets won’t come here.”

My senior nodded weakly, as if that had been her purpose. I moved a little closer on the bed. It felt like approaching a stray cat. She slowly raised her head and our eyes met.

Once again, my senior’s expectations were wrong. Bringing me along didn’t suddenly make sleep come. But there was always something to be gained from failure.

“You said sleep would come if you brought me here… but it’s the opposite. You brought me here and now you’re even less likely to sleep. Plan A failed, so let’s move to Plan B. How about we talk until you fall asleep? What do you think?”

After a moment of consideration and an even longer silence, my senior finally nodded.