What is Just?

SELF LIFE

Follow what you’ve been told is right or follow what you think is right.

Minoto believed the two to be the same. You can tell people what the right thing is. Or the people can have their own belief on what is right. But it’s when the two are the same, that we can have peace. That was what he believed. He also believed that to be what he was told.

“Minoto Tonpura, twenty-seven years old… born and raised in Koita? You should know this place well, then.”

Justice was his reason for being there, standing in front of a diligent looking woman, around his age and around his height, who wore a dark uniform with blue highlights. Tawa Toaris was an experienced custodian, who had been working in the Custody for more than 7 years. Apparently, her mother was also a custodian, but they say that Tawa had surpassed her in every way. Minoto looked up to her and felt pressured at the same time.

“Don’t think it’ll be easy just because it’s your first mission.” Tawa said, handing him a uniform that looked the same as the one she was wearing.

“Wouldn’t dare to, ma’am.” answered Minoto, stiff but confident.

“The Custody can forgive mistakes, especially small ones, but it would strongly prefer not to.”

This was the first serious mission Minoto had to do for the Custody. After working for five years as a simple employee, his talent and loyalty for the rules caught the eye of the CEO, who decided to promote him. However, the word promotion had a very different meaning in this context. The Custody was the corporation of Education. It owned every educational institution of the country, from cooking classes to universities, and was in control of all the subjects taught and the teaching methods. The Custody’s job also consisted in spreading awareness on each and every topic. All information passed through them before reaching the public. But the Corporation was an organization so powerful and influential that even such a role was just a front for something more important. Minoto had been promoted, meaning that the Custody had told him the truth. He learnt that everyone was an artificial creation, and that the human race as he knew it was nothing but a farce. It took him some time to swallow such a big pill, but after learning that the Custody used this information to make sure that humans could prosper, robots or not, he accepted the proposal to work as a custodian.

“Anyway, since you’re still a novice I’m going to be your partner for your first few missions. You can be less formal, but I need you to be on your best performance. Do you need a recap of the mission?” Tawa asked, now with a friendlier tone.

“My attention to details is something I am proud of! It’s just my memory that leaves much to be desired…”

Tawa let out a sigh, but she didn’t seem that displeased.
“You know what glitches are, they can happen and there isn’t much we can do about it. What we can do, however, is make it as if they never happened. This is one of those missions. The programming of a group of seagulls glitched and they began to act up, attacking people, stealing money, secretly betting on horse races. The seagulls have already been taken care of, we just need to clean up the mess they left behind.”

“That is a… peculiar glitch.”

“There’s been more and more lately, there must be something going on. We think they might be the cause of the increasing crime rates but, if I’m completely honest, I don’t think the people of Koita need more excuses to commit crimes.”

In the last decades, the gap between the rich and the poor became so large it seemed insurmountable. The eyedeas had become a fundamental piece of technology to society and it was almost impossible to live a normal life without it, however this never prompted MADAM to give away the device for free. Not having the money to buy it most likely meant that you’d never find a job, creating a vicious cycle that brought many to theft and corruption.

And it was exactly a neighborhood of theft and corruption that the two had reached for their mission.
Minoto and Tawa entered the apartment the seagulls had illegally occupied and began the cleaning. From an outside point of view, they could be easily mistaken for simple house renovators. From an inside point of view, Minoto began to ask himself if the Custody was using him as a house renovator since he was just a novice.
It was clear that there had been a fight. The neighbors were intrigued by the noise it caused but, knowing this part of the city, they were used to it, and knew better than to go and ask. The apartment was in shambles, most of the furniture was in pieces and the walls were damaged. The aquarium was the only thing that somehow managed to stay intact. Normally, it would be comical to think that a bunch of seagulls could create so much damage, but Minoto knew that this was the danger of glitches. Rogue femtobots were to be feared. They didn’t simply alter your behavior, they messed with your molecules. By changing its molecular structure, even a beak could become as hard as metal and as sharp as a blade. To think that glitches could be capable of such technologically advanced and seemingly impossible things, without even being aware of it.
While he was lost in such thoughts, Minoto began to feel as if the fish in the aquarium were following him. Looking closer, he noticed a small, black feather poking from the sand. Before his brain could react, a black crow flew out from underneath the aquarium sand, crashing through the glass and sticking its beak in his arm.

He punched him away, but the bird kept on moving. It was clear by looking at it, the bird was dead. Drowned, or killed by the seagulls, lines of copper-like material sedimented underneath its wings. The bird was dead, but the glitched cells it was made of kept on moving and stretched its body in unnatural ways. The glitch had spread and hid from the previous custodians!
The crow was ready to jump at Minoto, but thankfully the Custody had given him a way to defend himself. As he rolled up his sleeve, his right arm began to change. His skin split into a mosaic of tassels that spun and shifted around to transform into the barrel of a gun, his hand opened up into an opening to make way for projectiles, and his fingers twisted and turned to become the gun’s sight. It wasn’t just a simple gun, there was no ammunition stored inside of Minoto’s body. The projectiles this weapon fired were made of electricity channeled up into a crackling ball of light and fired at immense speed.
Minoto shot, and his attack could not miss, but the crow was fast and the femtobots it was made of, smart. The animal managed to stick its beak inside the barrel of the weapon. The projectile blew up, disintegrating the bird, but also flinging Minoto through the wall behind him as a result.
Minoto found himself lying on a collapsed wall. He hadn’t sustained any serious injury, but there was something else that worried him. Her legs buried under the cement, a woman was sitting on the ground, staring at him. Her mouth wanted to scream, but too much blood filled her throat and stopped her call for help. This was a problem. She could not know the truth, he had to shut her down this instant. He went to grab his EMP grenade, a special technology that the Custody had given him to temporarily turn off a person’s femtobots and make them stop. It was a powerful weapon, and no one outside of the Custody could know of its existence. He put his hand on its dedicated pouch, but the grenade was not there. Did it fall? Did he forget it at the base? It didn’t matter, he had to take care of the woman before anyone else came. Minoto looked at his gun.

Tawa jumped in from the hole in the wall and triggered an EMP, channeling a wave of electromagnetic radiation that burst out of the blue ring of the grenade and hit the woman. Her head fell to the ground with eyes open and mouth screaming.

“What happened!?” Tawa asked with an angered tone.

“There was a glitched crow hidden in the aquarium. The glitch must’ve spread from the seagulls–”

“I saw that. Why were you just staring at her? You were lucky I was here!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I must’ve forgotten my EMP grenade at the base.” Minoto looked down at his gun as it turned back into an arm. He hesitated to shoot the woman. It would’ve been hard to justify her death to the people without mentioning the glitches and revealing the Custody’s secret. He wondered if that was the reason he hesitated.

“That better not happen again! Help me carry this woman, you gave us a lot of extra work with that stunt of yours. We need to fix both the wall and this person, then drug her so she won’t remember what happened and bring her back before anyone notices. At least the wall seems cheap, we might avoid having to spend too much on it.”

“Can we heal her that fast?”

“Weren’t you shown the med bay? As long as your brain is intact, you could have a missing heart and they’d fix you up a new one in an instant.”

The mission hadn’t gone well, which saddened Minoto. At first, he was secretly happy to have Tawa as his partner, he even planned to try harder in the missions he had with her. To show how passionate he was about his job, no ulterior motives. But after what had just happened, he could feel his confidence descend into the grave.

***

Minoto sprinted through the hall, careful not to bump into any of his colleagues. The white lights didn’t help much in livening up the dark walls. Walking past dozens of closed doors, he finally reached the meeting room. The place only had one big hexagonal table with two chairs per side. Six people were looking at a video footage played on loop of some beast attacking stores and zoos.
A woman approached him with an angry look.

“Finally, you’re here. Where is Tawa, custodian Minoto?”

The woman was Wafi Istenes, a guardian, a position above Minoto’s custodian one. There weren’t many guardians in the Custody, but the few ones there worked hard enough to compensate for their numbers. Their job consisted in overlooking a team of custodians: giving them missions, keeping them trained, and making sure their performances were up to standard. All guardians responded directly to the overseer, who was at the top of the Custody. Some said the overseer personally scouted people she thought worthy of being custodians, but Minoto had never met her.

“We had some trouble putting the kid to sleep, guardian Wafi. She is going to be here soon.” Minoto answered diligently.

“You have a kid? How old?”

“Three days, Ma’am.”

“Congratulations to you and your wife then.”

The guardian turned to look at everyone in the meeting, “We will begin without her; we have very important things to discuss today.”

In the last months, there had been a numerous number of robberies and terrorist attacks, all perpetrated by the same entity. The custody was unsure of their intentions, if they were a person in disguise or the result of a powerful glitch. Given its looks, they had decided to give it the codename “Chimera”. The chimera was in possession of information and technology that shouldn’t be available to the public, making tracking it down and stopping it an objective they had yet to achieve.

“At first it was just attacks at different zoos of the prefecture,” yelled Wafi, “but then the attacks began getting closer and closer to us. This is unacceptable! No one outside of the Custody should be aware of our actions! The chimera isn’t acting like a normal member of society. Its actions are motivated by knowledge it should not possess, and therefore, it’s an external influence that could bring havoc to the equilibrium of our society. It needs to be eliminated."

All of a sudden, Tawa came bursting through the door, putting an abrupt end to the meeting.

“An Ogun reinforced truck was attacked!” Minoto’s wife shouted, “It’s the chimera.”

***

When Minoto and Tawa reached the street, it had already turned into a small battlefield. The rain fell hard on the armed officers the Ogun had sent, shining on the deep purple colors of their armor. The chimera was alone, but its power was commendable. The Ogun officers were trying their best, shooting at it from the protection of the turned over truck, but their normal projectiles simply bounced off the chimera’s metallic scales. It was about to destroy another officer when an electric bolt knocked it away. Minoto’s gun had a much more powerful effect on the chimera, who, noticing the different projectile, was now fully focused on him.
The chimera leapt at Minoto faster than he could dodge, but Tawa kicked it away before it could land. Tawa’s legs had morphed in a similar fashion to Minoto’s arm. Almost double their original size and powered by small jets, their strength was on par with the beast’s ape-like arms. Tawa and the chimera battled it out on the street, arms and legs creating shockwaves as they collided.

The loud steps of the beast approached Tawa at great speed. Jumping to dodge the charge, Tawa threw an EMP grenade at it, hoping to end the fight. The chimera recognized the item and shielded itself with its arms. The shockwaves wrapped around its beastly body and froze it on the spot. Tawa could feel the uneasiness of her steps as she got closer. As soon as she was in range, the chimera swung its arms. Tawa tried to shield herself using her own arms, but the force of the impact bent them both in unnatural ways. Tawa screamed, but didn’t fall. She flung herself into a dropkick, flying off the ground thanks to the rockets installed in her legs, but the chimera managed to fend off the struggle thanks to its gigantic arms.

Meanwhile, Minoto guided the remaining officers to take carefully aimed shots that weaved past Tawa and crashed onto the chimera.
But the powerfully built monster decided it had enough of all the hits disturbing its fight. It managed to grab Tawa’s legs and threw her into a building, then rapidly jumped towards the truck, picked it up, and propelled it at the Ogun officers. Minoto could only rush out of its way as his companions got crushed by the vehicle. Trying to keep his focus, he began shooting at the beast. His projectiles were mighty, but they weren’t fatal. The chimera approached him swinging its arms. Minoto dodged what he could, but his agility and strength were far worse than Tawa’s. His attacks were futile, and the chimera managed to land an uppercut that sent him airborne. The hit stunned him, but the Custody’s enhancements kicked in and made him regain his senses while still in the air. As he opened his eyes, he saw the chimera jumping towards him, but with quick reflexes he managed to fire a series of shots that sent it back to the ground.
He landed with his gun on top of the beast, barrel pushing on its head. The chimera couldn’t run away.

“You lost.” Minoto threatened the beast. “We know there is someone else with you hiding in this area. If you care about your partner, take off that visor and surrender now before my colleagues find them.”

The red tinted visor of the chimera was blank and immobile, but a spiteful voice pierced through it.

“I’m ready to surrender everything, but not my freedom.”

Minoto looked down and quickly noticed that the chimera’s human pair of arms had morphed into a threatening weapon with a large barrel. The cannon had been charging for a while now and was ready to shoot at any moment. He could do nothing to dodge it. The gun fired and Minoto flew, but it wasn’t the energy projectile of the weapon that moved him. A kick had pushed him to safety, but in his spot was now Tawa.

The glimpse of a smile shined through the explosion.

Three seconds was all it took to turn Tawa’s body into a mix of ash and mist, washed away by the rain. Minoto stood there, unable to process what had just happened, kidnapped by the storm of feelings aching in his chest. He could have stayed there for days if not for the monster in front of him. The chimera had survived the explosion. Hurt, wounded and dented, but standing, nonetheless.
Minoto’s body began to move on its own. There was no thought going through his mind, his brain bathed in a red flash of rage, his arms pushed by a vengeful instinct. He began aimlessly shooting a barrage of projectiles at the chimera, throwing itself at it with no regard for his own wellbeing.
The assault overwhelmed the beast, whose wounds prevented it from answering the attack. The chimera kept punching him away, but Minoto’s rage overshadowed all the pain. He clutched his free hand into a fist, and with a furious punch cracked a hole in the monster’s visor. An astonished yellow eye peeked through the broken glass.
The chimera’s massive pair of arms fell down on Minoto and sent him hurtling to the ground. Covering the hole in its visor, the beast looked around, and with a jump that matched the nearby houses in height, fled the scene.

Minoto laid in a puddle of muddy water. The clouds looked down on him, far and unreachable, as the rain streamed down his face.