The Colors of The World Are Changing Day By Day

A Fresh Cup Coffee Shop, New Tokyo- 2219

2:05PM

“I’m sorry Hiroki.” The words rang hollow as they left his throat. Joben had a feeling this would be the result, but he hadn’t had the heart to say it months ago. He encouraged the move, after all, it was the only way they could profit from anything the old man had left them. And since Hiroki stubbornly insisted on carrying the weight of his teacher’s burdens, he’d stayed by Joben’s side far longer than any person would have in other circumstances.

“I just, I wish we could have had a better result.” Hiroki said, looking down at the table. His dry tear ducts seemed like they could burst again at any moment, but Joben knew he’d already cried himself to exhaustion.

The plan had failed. That’s all there was to it. The old man had left them a dud of hyper-advanced technology that, at most, they could sell to a corporation for pennies and afford Joben another year aboveground. After that, the debtors would come calling and all that remained of Joben Gima would become the property of the state. Not enough. Not enough for either of them to feel at peace.

Outside the diner window life moved on. People sped off to their menial jobs, humans interacted in a myriad of ways while finding some way to thrive despite it all. Joben Gima and Hiroki Nakazawa sat in their booth letting their coffee get cold and weighing their lack of options. Their world was a dead world, one without the possibility of growth.

Hiroki had tried, of course, the company he had set up had promise. But as soon as they had shown even a modicum of sustainable profit, he had been voted off the board in favor of someone who would expand the company more aggressively into established technology. No companies other than the Hasha corporation or Clear Skies had the R&D to tackle this monster. But even they would only accept the material on the condition that they owned the artifact outright. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 double-yen.

Joben shrugged and stood up. “Oh well. It was a failure to begin with. I thank you for making an effort, but I guess I’ll just have to sell it and work the rest of my life to pay the rest of Gramp’s debt.” Joben knew two billion double-yen wasn’t something he could overcome in any lifetime he could imagine, but what could he do? They tried, and the powers that be had slammed the door in their face.

“New Japan favors innovation and profit over sustainability.” Hiroki whispered.

“Sure but, that’s not our problem, not really.”

“It is our problem. It’s the source of our problem.” Hiroki tapped the table with his index finger so hard Joben thought he might snap it in two. His friend looked at him with a wild anger in his eyes and he went off. “The top three cybernetics corporations decide what gets researched and what gets scrapped. Even if we went to one of them with this tech it wouldn’t matter. We have priceless property on our hands, and if it’s not valued properly by the market or by the system then the system deserves to crash.”

“So?” Joben asked, stepping out of the booth to leave. “It’s not like we can do something about it at this point. Just let it go. I’ll survive somehow.” He turned to leave and felt his hand held firmly in place. Hiroki stood up and clenched his hand down firmly on Joben’s wrist.

“Wait.” He panted; his eyes filled with an intensity Joben hadn’t seen in years. “Why don’t we take that thing for a spin?”

“You mean install it? You’re insane. There’s no way it’s possible without someone close to Gramp’s genetic profile.”

Hiroki smiled and poked his opposite index finger between Joben’s eyeballs.

“Twenty-five percent of me is gramps. If that! There’s no way we can install it there.” Joben snapped. “Besides. I’m a nobody. I’m not like you. I never applied myself to anything.”

“What was it you told me a few years back? If you had access to a complex enough drive you could learn anything, right?”

“A theory. I thought if I could install a drive on my brain that contained a spawning pool I could overwrite parts of myself with AI that learned the correct way to do something.” Joben broke free of his friend’s grip and pointed at his own cranium. “Twelve! Twelve attempts at that and none of them have the processing power to do what I was trying to come up with! It’s worthless.”

“It’s the best most advanced storage device that either of us know of.” Hiroki continued. “Where everything else failed, the wet state will succeed.”

“Shh!” Joben almost screamed. They had each agreed not to mention the name of what they had discovered, not even in private had they said what was found in the old man’s head. It was like naming something impossible, and besides, the only people interested in wet state were terrorists and criminals. The difficulty in finding a way to profit from it had come from that alone. It was like trying to sell ivory to an antique dealer with a well-known public dossier. Impossible.

Joben turned to Hiroki and stepped in close. “Even if we got it to work, what could it really do? Machine learning? Body-hacking? Nothing useful to us.”

“ID spoofing, untraceable wire fraud.” Hiroki responded. The wheels began to turn in Joben’s head, what his friend was suggesting finally dawned on him.

“When you said the system should fail, you meant everything didn’t you?” His friend nodded, his enthusiastic grin filling the void between them with light. It was blinding, impossible to look away from. Joben chuckled. “Fine then.” He decided. “Let’s burn it all down.”

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New Nantan Layer Two, District 15- June 25th 2233

3:15am

Ichijo was too comfortable in the bed when he awoke. He flung the sheets off and swept his legs over the side of the bed to stand up. He tripped and fell, misjudging their length. He was sick of the dreams, sick of the way his memories caused his mind to desync from his body. He feared sending a request for deletion to Jaelynn as her communications had been nothing but threats for the past week. Nevertheless, he and Sakura had miraculously completed preparations. All that remained was for him to go into work at Hasha the day after tomorrow and hope he could find a way into meeting with his target.

He got up and walked to the common area. The couch, kitchen, and bathroom showed no signs of life. He touched the teardrop terminal and brought the time up. 3:16am. Joseph was late. But then, so was he. Ichijo changed into one of his now numerous ensembles. A sports bra, leggings, and a large heavy overcoat. That had become his default after a few days of trial and error. If things got cold, he had the jacket. If he needed to crawl around (which he frequently did when the organization requested a hack) he had the mobility.

He sat at the kitchen counter, peering across the way at his reflection in Sakura’s oven. He smiled at himself, at Kaiya and was for a moment happy to see her. He glanced down at the dark stain on the floor just before the oven. He remembered that night, the restraining, the spike bolt, the way Jaelynn thirsted for his blood. He was expendable, she was expendable. This perfect-looking girl he knew as Kaiya could be tossed aside for any reason and at any time.

He thought of the convenience store and his hidden plan. He even thought of deleting his memories of the hiding place in case Jaelynn decided to tap into him again. But he had to leave it, if it weren’t for that he had nothing, next to nothing at all. As if on queue, the top of his cranium buzzed with pins and needles.

“Joseph is almost to your location. You have one last task to complete then we’ll have you working at Hasha for the next week.” The voice said as Kaiya did her best to think quietly. “Your brain patterns are different today, have you been messing with things?”

“Go ahead and check, Jaelynn.” Kaiya said out loud, her voice cracking a bit. “If I had the time or resources to change things drastically you would have found out from either Joseph or Sakura no doubt.”

There was a long pause as the voice dug into the top of her head. Kaiya thought of the things she always thought of, Joseph’s muscles, Sakura’s hair, the parties she had been allowed to attend. Dug deep in her subconscious was Ichijo thinking of breasts and butts. Even deeper was Joben Gima.

“Very well. I expect you to stick with our timetable Kaiya. No sooner than next week can you rendezvous with Haruto.”

“Understood.” The pins and needles retreated, and Kaiya and Ichijo breathed a sigh of relief as he took over once again. That was close. He thought. But even after a week he still had no way of being sure Jaelynn wasn’t just messing with him that she wasn’t actually listening to everything he thought about. He’d have to make his move soon. As soon as Hasha allowed him in he had to strike hard and fast.

Sakura Taira burst through the front door with a series of giggles chasing after her. She wore a blue tube-dress with a high slit on her right leg. The fabric sparkled as did her eyelids which had been done up to match the same metallic blue. She held in her left hand a small dark purse her right hand covered by a wristless glove that matched the dress. Her pink hair was combed straight, and her lips shone with an indigo hue that complimented the ensemble.

Two of the other bottle girls accompanied her in similar make. Elizabeth in a green outfit and Eiko wearing red. Eiko, the quiet girl whom he hadn’t seen since their first outing, seemed to be the source of the laughter. He cocked his head in surprise.

As they approached Ichijo sat upright at the bar and waved hello. Eiko noticed first and bowed, Elizabeth waved enthusiastically. As the pink-haired woman noticed Ichijo her smile disappeared. Behind her, Eiko whispered something in her ear that got her to chuckle. She said a brief goodbye to the girl and they shared a deep hug. Ichijo wished he could swap places with Eiko in that moment.

In the last week, outside of necessary communication for mission objectives she had been distant. He knew why, she was trying to keep him from getting attached. It had unintentionally had the opposite effect. Ichijo tried to quell his excitement as she walked behind him to the master bedroom to no avail. The pink-haired woman glanced back at him with a glare before shutting the bedroom door.

Elizabeth broke the silence.

“Hey, congrats on joining Hasha! That’s bigtime, Kaiya! Hopefully you can afford your own place now!” She blurted. Eiko elbowed her as she finished, shrugging in her direction like she was correcting a younger sibling.

“What she means is, we wish you well.” Eiko said with a bow. “We’ll miss you at events but we could all tell it wasn’t really your field.”

Ichijo stood up and sighed. “What can I say? I’m too smart for all of you.”

Elizabeth gasped in surprise, Eiko chuckled slightly. The two exchanged some polite goodbyes then filed out. As the two girls left, they passed Joseph who stood in the doorway ominously. He looked ragged, like he’d been through hell and worse. His jacket now bore more dirt and scrapes than Ichijo had ever seen. His wrist was bare of metalflesh. At least that had been augmented and healed over all right.

“Time to go.” The monolith sighed as Ichijo approached.

“I know.” He replied. “You need the Node-Taker tonight.”

“The organization does. I could care less.” He touted.

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The drive was short, and they pulled into an apartment complex just south of them in layer 3 of New Nantan. It was a cheap place, but it was lit up like a Christmas tree with each apartment’s lights blaring out into the night.

They exited their vehicle and made their way to the second tier of apartments to the only place that lacked light. The landlord, a stately old man stood by the door waiting for them. When they arrived, he turned to the door and opened it with the swipe of his wrist.

“Take what you need.” The man said, placing a device in his mouth and inhaling smoke. “You have one hour.” He breathed, a cloud of green smoke billowing about his face as he did.

Inside the dark apartment was a floor filled with wires. They stepped over the threshold and wandered around the corner. The wires and tubes filled the space where appliances and furniture might have been once. Each snake-like tendril plugging into one another, under monitors, switches, and power sources led to the center of the common area where a dark mass sat in silence.

Joseph turned on a flashlight and highlighted the pile. Two reflective eyes peered back at them. Aside from that, a mass of wires and tubing plugged into and covered what had once been a person. With the lights off Ichijo knew for sure, this person was dead. A pilot past his prime.

Joseph dropped a bag on the floor. “Get busy.” He grunted. “I don’t want to be here longer than twenty minutes.”

Ichijo nodded in agreement and made his way to the corpse. The organization had put him through a lot in the last week but this by far topped the list of things he’d rather not do.

He reached around the mass of metal-on-flesh and removed a central plug. From the black bag he produced a device with a plug that ended in what looked like sharp knives. That would ensure the next person coming through wouldn’t be able to get the data that they were taking from the corpse. The tube ran to a small black box that glowed ominously. He flicked a switch on the box and it began to whir quietly, generating power. He plugged the tube into the body with a click and the mass of wires jerked violently.

The chord pulsed as it pulled data from the pilot’s head. Beneath the wires, the body writhed and twisted under the electrical payload that was being forced into them. Ichijo stood back and glanced at Joseph who gave him a nod indicating that the device was working as intended.

“Jaelyn…” The corpse spoke. Ichijo took a step back in response. “Jaelynn Amadeus!” It croaked.

The mass of wires began to rise and writhe about. “Shut him down!” Joseph yelled. “Plug in and shut that thing down before it wakes up!” He ordered.

Joben obliged, digging through the wires surrounding where the net port had once been. He finally found one that worked and slotted his connection in without thinking. The connection went two ways, the corpse, or what was left of him was trying to jump into Joben’s mind. Joben sent a request to the central nervous system to shut down and spammed the request until something started to stick.

Fragments of data flashed across his head as the corpse fell silent. But one string of numbers remained as the data flow ceased. “77-G8-5399-F”

Joben unplugged and his senses came flooding back. The generator kept humming but the corpse laid still, spouts of smoke rising from various inlets.

“You all right?” Joseph asked.

“Fine.” Ichijo assured him as he helped him to his feet.

“What happened while you were under?”

“I went under?”

“Your body slumped over for a minute. I thought you might’ve gotten fried.”

“Nothing. Just a string of numbers.”

Joseph gave him a serious look. “What string of numbers?” He asked. Ichijo sounded them off exactly as he’d heard them. Joseph looked at the corpse and sighed. “Oh, okay.” He remarked.

“Something up about that?”

“No. I just, don’t know what this idiot was thinking. That sounds like a terminal code. If he wanted to use it he would’ve had to unplug and walk right into the facility. Fat chance of that happening.”

“Who was he?” Ichijo asked.

“Our last super hacker. I’d been looking for him for a while.”

“You, not Jaelynn?” Ichijo asked.

“Jaelynn thought he was dead. I wish he wasn’t when I’d heard about him.” He stood up and brushed off. “Not like I can make sense of a code like that. Oh well.”

Ichijo packed up the device after it shut down and the two left the apartment in a rush. The old man shut the door and walked off without a word. It was as if the event had never taken place.

As they made their way to the car Ichijo felt a prick of paranoia. He glanced out the window as they pulled away just in time to see a pair of magenta and white glowing eyes glancing in his direction. The car rounded the corner removing the eyes from his sight and mind.

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New Nantan Layer Two, District 15- June 25th 2233

6:50am

Joseph dropped Ichijo off at the curb and sped off. No doubt he was tired after the encounter with the wire jockey. Ichijo hobbled upstairs and opened the door to the pink-haired woman’s apartment. He found himself shocked to hear his roommate laughing from the living room.

He trotted in quickly. She was reclining under the kotatsu, plugged into the teardrop and joking with someone on the other side. She was wearing a white bathrobe, her hair freshly cleaned and well combed. She looked comfortable for the first time in days as she exchanged with someone.

“Hold on, hold on, I’ll turn you over to her.” The pink haired woman remarked, pulling out a second net port and offering it to Ichijo. “It’s for you. Your affluent friend.”

Ichijo practically leapt over his roommate to the kotatsu and plugged in. Finally, he could put all his preparations to work. He plugged in and felt Kaiya take over his mind. “Haruto! Is that you?” She asked.

“I heard from someone on the grapevine you were hired to work at my company. You should have told me I’d have put in a word.” The young business mogul commented. His voice calm and collected.

“I tried, you never called me back.”

“You have to be persistent. Even on my private line I get a lot of people trying to reach me, if I don’t see your face pop up on the readout often, I’ll forget about you.” He noted honestly.

“Well, if you get me the approval I’ll be able to see you face-to-face more often.”

“Sure, if you like secretarial work.” The man joked. “Well hey, once you’re done with the hiring process drop me a line and we’ll meet up on a smoke break. I’d love to discuss your uh, skillset in greater detail.” Joben knew what he meant by that. It proved that aside from him remembering their shared smoking habits, Haruto had probably forgotten Kaiya all things considered. That might have been for the best but still, it stung him more than he’d thought it would.

“That sounds great,” Kaiya replied, doing his best to smile genuinely in the hopes it would come across in her voice. “I look forward to working with you, sir.”

“And I, you.” The business mogul replied, terminating the conversation as easy as he exhaled.

Ichijo glanced up to find himself alone at the kotatsu. Realizing the time, he made his preparations then walked absently to the master bedroom. Sakura had taken over a quarter of the bed when he walked in.

“Oh, if I’m not mistaken it’s my turn on the bed. Did you need something?” The pink haired woman asked. She turned over and pulled the thin silken sheet over her body. The sheet was crimson red, and it glimmered in the dark.

He stood there, gazing down on a lavish bed big enough for five people. It was an easy decision and he made it without consulting his other personalities. He stepped onto the bed, making sure to walk from the middle all the way to the opposite side from the woman before falling into the sheets full-force.

“What are you doing?” The pink-haired woman asked.

“I’m sleeping in a nice bed. I’m not going to sleep on a couch when there’s plenty of room for the two of us here.”

“You really expect me to buy that?”

“No.” He replied sullenly. “I have a favor to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“Can you hold me, please? I’m tired and scared.” There was a brief pause. The two sat silently for a time before either person made any movement. He heard a rustle, felt the slide of a body snaking its way under the sheets to his back. He felt her hands on his shoulders. Then an arm slid under his and caressed his face. She melted into him quietly, hardly breathing as she did. He curled into her embrace and silently breathed a sigh of relief.

“You really are an idiot.” Sakura chided as they both drifted off into unconsciousness.

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Lights flashed in his windows. Joben cowered under the covers and did his best to plug his ears for the boom that would surely erupt. It made no difference. The thunder shook his room all the same.

His eyes darted about the black space. He glanced around for Hiroki or Gramps, but he knew they wouldn’t be there. He wanted to call off the sleeping arrangement right now and have his friend sleep in his room instead. He was the birthday boy after all. And it was his sleepover! Couldn’t he ask to sleep with his friend?

The thunder boomed again, prompting another duck under the sheets. He tried his best to stifle the tears. He couldn’t wake up Hiroki now. Besides, he’d only just convinced him to be his friend, what would he think if he realized he was a coward too?

The lightning flashed again, this time much closer. The boom could be felt deep in his guts. He lost his nerve and left the bed. He bolted through the door only to bump into something in the hallway. Hiroki sat on the ground scratching his head.

“Ow…” He groaned. “What the heck?”

“I uh, I thought you might be scared.” Joben tried to say confidently.

“I was scared.” Hiroki responded honestly. “Can I sleep with you?”

“Sure I guess.” The thunder clapped again and the two boys made a hasty retreat under the covers of Joben’s bed. They put their backs to one another, that way the other one could warn in case something happened. After a few minutes of waking up to the flashes the two boys fell unconscious. The warmth of one another providing enough comfort to sleep soundly.

The thunder faded away, all that could be heard in the room was light snoring as night calmly faded into day.