Ch.55Work Record #010 – Routine Corporate Dispute (6)

After unwinding a bit at Günter’s shop, I walk through the apartment complex where the building winds howl. Thinking it would be strange to visit without saying anything, I pick up my phone.

This is one of those moments when I desperately wish I had a neural computing implant. After a few rings, Kay’s voice comes through. Back to everyday life.

“What’s this, Offliner! Didn’t you say you had work today? That’s why I didn’t bother you, and now you’re just calling out of nowhere! Or wait, do you need my help with something after all? Well, being an Offliner, I guess you would need my help sometimes. Just say the word if you do!”

It was nice to see someone trying to take at least minimal responsibility. Still, this wasn’t something I wanted to discuss under street CCTV cameras that might be monitoring our conversation.

“Would it be alright if I came over now? I can’t exactly suggest meeting outside, and someone without a neural implant can’t suggest meeting online either.”

The Net is an isolated space. It’s a public place everyone uses, yet also incredibly personal. Someone with Kay’s abilities would have no trouble maintaining security. The problem was on my end.

I heard the sound of plastic bags rustling across the floor through the call, then Kay’s voice returned.

“If you need to discuss something, you can come over… but could you buy a few large garbage bags on your way? Please? You know what state my place is in!”

She can’t keep going like this forever. Swallowing a sigh that threatened to escape, I bought some large garbage bags and headed to Kay’s place. The street CCTVs had audio recording capabilities, but the ones inside buildings didn’t.

I reached the 24th floor, let the drone from the doorknob scan my mercenary license, and entered. The apartment was still practically a landfill. The heat from server computers mixed with the air conditioning.

Kay was sitting on a beanbag in front of her server computer as usual. Dark circles hung heavily under her hollow eyes, suggesting she’d been awake all day after finishing work in the morning.

Sitting before her server, Kay shifted her consciousness from the Net back to reality, then stretched out one hand and waved it.

“Yaaawn… You’re here? So, what did you want to talk about that made you come all this way? Did you come up with some brilliant plan to smash the Transparent Eye? That would be great!”

She tried to sound energetic as usual, but I could hear the fatigue in her voice without needing enhanced perception. Anyone would notice it.

“If I could come up with such genius ideas, I probably wouldn’t be here. I came to tell you I agree with what we discussed last time. About breaking into Bellwether.”

If I had been in Information Security, I could have helped Kay dig into Bellwether, but my expertise was in direct combat with a gun in hand. A mischievous smile played across Kay’s lips.

“Don’t feel guilty, Arthur! You’re a security vulnerability they created themselves. Who told them to delete ex-employee names from their servers?”

She held out her palm with the hologram projector and displayed what looked like a mind map. Bellwether’s Los Angeles branch was in the center, surrounded by numerous partner companies.

Nightwatch was among those partners, but our company wasn’t directly connected to Bellwether—we were doubly connected through the Mercenary Personnel Management Department, making it difficult to infiltrate using Nightwatch’s access codes.

It shouldn’t be a major problem. Bellwether had many partner companies, with quite a few directly connected. If we could forge their access codes, we might be able to extract information.

“If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to go steal it in person. Even I can’t infiltrate paper documents in envelopes, you know? And you know how thorough those Bellwether bastards are, right?”

“Let’s keep that as a last resort. I can handle risking myself, but I’d rather not cause trouble for Nightwatch because of me. And it would be dangerous for you too.”

She shook her fluffy hair once and smiled brightly again. The reason for her light attitude was simple.

“I’m already in danger, so what! If this gets caught, I’m the one who’s screwed. You’re just helping, so you’ll have an escape route, and I don’t think you’d fail to escape. So don’t worry! But I don’t think you came all this way just to say that one thing? ‘I’m okay with infiltrating Bellwether!’ That’s right so far. What comes next?”

“I need information too. If you can really access Bellwether, gather all the information you can… and let me know if there’s anything with the name Walter in it. I need to find him.”

Kay tilted her head slightly after seeing my expression. She stared at my face, then lightly poked my cheek with the tip of her prosthetic hand.

“Don’t make that face, Arthur. It’s not like you. Or is it? If you’ve been holding back that expression all this time, feel free to show it!”

Only after hearing her words did I touch my face, but I didn’t feel anything special about my expression. My face was just my face as usual. Kay burst into laughter watching my reaction.

“I didn’t mean you had something on your face, idiot. You just had an uncharacteristically scary expression. You say you need to find him, but…”

What follows is personal territory. A damp, dark place piled with vengeful thoughts like garbage. Should I reveal it? Kay was showing me a server room with the Transparent Eye.

If the Transparent Eye is discovered, you go to brain prison, but if vengeful thoughts are discovered, they’re just discovered. What I’ve received from her is much greater. I sighed and nodded. I spoke honestly.

“I want to kill him. Without weapons—I’ll beat him to death with this posthuman body he forced on me. That’s my rock bottom.”

Kay lightly patted my shoulder with her prosthetic hand, as if to say it was okay. She spoke as if she understood somewhat.

“It feels different from killing people for work, right? Not ‘I’m executing him because he committed certain crimes and deserves certain punishment,’ but literally just wanting to kill him. Right?”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I nodded. This was unproductive vengefulness.

“What person could lose their entire life overnight and say, ‘Well, I’ll just start fresh tomorrow’? No one can. To find strength for tomorrow, I need to settle this.”

I didn’t explicitly affirm it, and that was enough. It was shameful to treat someone as if they couldn’t live with others and had to kill someone.

But Kay didn’t seem to see it that way. After staring at my expression for a while, she crossed her arms and shook her head.

“It’s okay if you don’t have strength for tomorrow. Did anyone take responsibility for you when you were kicked out? If no one took responsibility for you, why should you be responsible? Don’t let that hold you back, Arthur.”

I shook my head at her words, which sounded like she was getting angry on my behalf. My situation must have seemed worse to her than it actually was.

“You don’t know how many people helped me. You don’t know that someone said they would remember even though Bellwether decided to forget. So, shameful vengefulness is enough.”

I still missed Security Team 4. But I also knew I couldn’t go back. I was gradually moving away from the name Shepherd Six.

Do I regret that? I don’t think so. It’s not sad, nor is it refreshing or liberating. I just know it’s happening.

Kay, who had been staring at my expression, spoke without uncrossing her arms. She looked like she might puff her cheeks, but she didn’t.

“You know what’s really strange to me? That someone could actually dislike you! Anyway! If someone dislikes you, it’s probably their fault. That’s what I think.”

She fidgeted with her legs as if feeling a bit embarrassed about complimenting someone, then continued.

“So, we need to infiltrate on a high-traffic day. That way we’ll draw less suspicion. When do people start flooding Bellwether LA’s network?”

It wasn’t the smoothest change of subject, but I decided to go along with it. Thanksgiving was next week, followed immediately by the Christmas season. The timing didn’t seem bad.

“Want to aim for Black Friday? Bellwether isn’t a company that sells their guns at special discount prices, but when the city gets crowded, they’ll have more security maintenance work to process. Stephanet will have to work overtime too.”

It felt a bit strange to be looking for ways to target Stephanet, who had been such a reliable ally until now. It wasn’t guilt. Finding Walter would help Stephanet.

Kay nodded with a bright smile. Only Kay could smile while discussing infiltrating Bellwether’s network under the guise of a partner company employee.

“That’s a good idea! So, we’ll need about another week. If that doesn’t work, we can aim for Christmas. Perfect! I’ll prepare things carefully… Who are you looking for again?”

“Walter. I only know his name, but he must be someone high up at Bellwether Los Angeles. He’s able to send requests directly to partner companies, usually wears a closed-type exosuit, and… he sent two regular Legal Assassination Team employees after me. He seems to be trying to hide his affiliation. Thanks to that, I have no idea what’s going on.”

Anyone at team leader level could wear a closed-type exosuit, but the first and last points were concerning.

Many people could assign work to either Legal Assassination Team agents or mercenaries under Personnel Management, but only the Administrative Team Leader and Branch Director could assign work to both.

The Administrative Team Leader could exert some influence over other departments to resolve issues within Los Angeles, and the Branch Director was, well, the Branch Director—the Chairman’s proxy.

“Seems like we’re dealing with someone pretty high up… Well, I’d be happy to crush the nose of some arrogant bastard! So, is that all for business talk?”

At Kay’s words, I looked around. The room had disposable containers stacked for easy disposal. There was some semblance of organization, but only barely.

“I might feel like sitting down for a while if we finish cleaning up together.”

“You sound just like Manager Yoon…. Fine, fine. Let’s clean up and you can stay a bit longer. I haven’t seen a human face or breathed outside air since I got off work at lunch.”

Cleaning the house with Kay felt somewhat ordinary. It was pleasant to see a place that had been nothing but a Transparent Eye prison gradually taking on the appearance of a home.

We filled one of the garbage bags I’d brought, and the cleaning was complete once Kay’s drones, following her eye movements, finished mopping the floor. Kay threw herself onto the beanbag sofa and let out a deep sigh.

“Living like this, I forget what it feels like to live like a normal person. Sit down too, Offliner! I want to relax a little. Just a little…”

I sat next to her on the beanbag. Due to our size difference, it wasn’t very large for me, but it was comfortable. Seeing her completely slumped form, I asked:

“Isn’t the Transparent Eye supposed to be docile? Last time I heard, it sounded like you were managing it stably.”

She turned her body, laying sideways on the beanbag with her legs across my lap. Her prosthetic eyes entered rest mode, their light disappearing as she closed her eyes.

“It used to be! But ever since I tried to move it to an offline storage device to destroy it and failed, it’s been going crazy. I don’t know if my setup for ‘failed during transfer due to fierce resistance’ was inadequate, or if it gained confidence after one successful attempt… Ugh, my head hurts.”

The fact that she could still openly complain meant she could handle it for now. But it wouldn’t be okay for long. The simulation Kay created was ultimately just a simulation.

The Transparent Eye would figure it out, and while worrying about that, Dewey Novak or the Non-Human Liberation Front might find this place. I looked at Kay for a moment as she pondered these things with her prosthetic eyes turned off.

“You don’t seem to be sleeping well. Would you like to borrow my knee for a while? Even if you sleep for an hour, it shouldn’t be a problem, and I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Without saying anything, she turned her body and used my thigh as a pillow. With her prosthetic eyes turned off to prevent neural fatigue, she looked quite comical as she felt around the beanbag with her hands to turn over.

“No! Sleep is… well, whatever. It would be better to have the drones keep watch, but I am tired… Just one hour… Mmm.”

She looked like she would fall asleep the moment she lay down on anything soft, and judging by how her voice started to drag the moment she used my thigh as a pillow, I could tell how tired she was.

After gently stroking the head resting on my knee, I spoke. With the fingertips of my Posthuman Type IV—Bellwether’s final gift to me, which I both love and hate as much as I love—I lightly pressed her forehead.

“If alarms start going off because something happens, I’ll start smashing this server computer with my fist, so don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen just because you get some sleep.”

“Something always happens when you let your guard down, silly.”

I shrugged at her words. Kay had already turned off her prosthetic eyes, so she wouldn’t have seen my gesture.

“Only Kay would call it letting your guard down when there’s a guard with a Posthuman Type IV enhanced body wearing bulletproof armor and carrying a gun standing in front of a dangerous facility.”

“Letting an Offliner watch over an AI is stupid, right? But, well, the Transparent Eye is usually docile, and I’ve made it look like it’s under maintenance now…”

Her voice cut off after that. The sound of her prosthetic hand stopped, and the neural computing implant attached to the back of her neck ceased its subtle vibration. When the brain enters rest mode, the implants turn off too.

I had originally come just to discuss methods, but now I was substituting as someone else’s guard. A Posthuman doesn’t need much sleep. I waited patiently.

Green and red dots blinked intermittently on the server in front of me with remarkable regularity. Without a neural implant or UI in my vision, there was no way to determine what each one meant.

After about an hour, her neural implant suddenly activated. Her prosthetic hands clenched tightly, and she got up, writhing.

Did she have a nightmare? No, that’s not it. For her, every moment of relaxation was a nightmare. She seemed to have gotten up to check. Her prosthetic eyes powered on.

After checking the Transparent Eye with almost convulsive movements, Kay finally realized I was there and blushed. Since only her cheeks hadn’t been replaced with prosthetics, her reddening face was clearly visible.

I shrugged once, as if understanding it couldn’t be helped, then said:

“Eight more wake-ups like that and you’ll have slept as much as normal people. Oh, and don’t think you showed me something embarrassing. I’m scared of waking up like that too, which is why I sleep at dawn.”

“What do you do when you wake up like that?”

She sat back on the beanbag and looked up slightly at me, who had been waiting in a rigid posture. After considering her answer, she said something half-joking, half-serious.

“I go back to sleep. Minimizing the inefficiency created by waking up in the middle of sleep. Very Bellwether-like.”

Fortunately, I held back my laughter until she finished speaking, but afterward, laughter escaped. Kay also chuckled as if finding it absurd, then said:

“Ugh, you efficiency disease carrier! But… it’s a good method. Don’t you need to sleep?”

“According to specs, Type IV can maintain average performance for up to 72 hours without sleep. I do sleep every day to live more like a human… but when I shouldn’t sleep, I can gladly stay awake. Get some more rest.”

She lay back on my knee but looked up at me with a somewhat suspicious expression. As if it felt unreal, she lightly poked my cheek with the tip of her prosthetic hand. This was reality.

“Is this a time when you shouldn’t sleep?”

“Every hour I sleep less means you sleep an hour more, right? It makes more sense for me not to sleep when I don’t really need to…”

“Stop! If I hear that a few more times, I’ll start dreaming about efficiency. Well, thanks, Arthur.”

Kay fell asleep again using my knee as a pillow, and despite waking up every hour or two, she got a full eight hours of sleep until morning came.

I decided not to imagine how long it had been since she’d had such a long sleep. I suspected reality was worse than my imagination.