Living with Memory of Steel (Part 1)

by Masahiko Kimoto

  "Are you a friend of him?"

  "Y, yes! That's right, lady."

  Akari sniffs in wonder.

  "It's weird. You don't have to be polite."

  "I know, but you're a senior. Also, Ms. Nakazato, you're famous, and often talked about. Oh, no. My classmates were talking about you, but I'm not that type of guy who judges you by that kind of a rumor.

  "Akari."

  "Pardon?"

  "Call me Akari. It is fine for me. Ms. Nakazato sounds too unfamiliar."

  "Y, yes! Aka...ri-san."

  Akari strokes the backseat of Reji with her fingers, laughing.

  "Well, boy."

  "Yes!"

  "Can I hop on your motorbike?"

  "Hey, Nakazato."

  Akimichi warns her while putting on his helmet.

  "I don't think that's a good idea. You should go back home immediately. After we are gone, there would be normal vehicles coming in. Also, I've heard that there was a government organization making a scene."

  "You're not that flexible, Kasuga-kun."

  "Let's get going, Reji."

  "Okay, but.."

  "Hey, is your name Reji? Come on. Please?"

  "Help me, Akimichi."

  "Whatever."

  Akari grins at Reji and takes out a helmet under the seat and puts her legs around the bike. Her fingers stroke his back in a sexual way, and her hands are moved around his body.

  "Can you please go gentle?"

  "Oh, please don't give me that."

  Reji starts the motor, screaming by the soft feel on his back.

  *****

  "Come on, Nakazato. You don't have to try too hard just because our boss has given you the order. All you have to do is to take it back."

  Dr. Sekiba gives instructions to Dr. Nakazato in the state of psy-connect at his room.

  "I know. A-B-A-H-S isn't a tool for a fight."

  "You're right. You can ignore the noisy crowd outside. They wouldn't do any harm."

  An operator calls in.

  "The 3rd-G psy-connect is activated. Dr. Nakazato, you have control."

  "Ha! Maybe you've seen some kind of movie. We aren't the riot police or the troop. You don't have to use the formal language.

  "Sekiba-kun, I'm ready."

  "Okay. Please come out."

  There are various parameters as if they were surrounding Dr. Sekiba's sense. All parameters show green condition.

  "A-B-A-H-S activated."

  The voice of the operator echoes in the room.

  There is an elevator which is further back in the underground parking lot in the research center. It has a sign that says "Out of order". The door of the elevator opens quietly. There is no lightening inside. Only an emergency lump button glows. An unnatural human figure appears in the yellowish green light which resembles light of a firefly. It slowly moves its leg and steps forward one by one. The speed of the walk goes up gradually and the figure starts running with big strokes.

  It goes through between cars in the parking lot and sprints up the slope to above ground.

  As it gets the moon light, it takes a leap.

  *****

  Morihara's head is on the wheel of the armed vehicle. His desire to fight makes his body tremble and accidentally pushes the car horn. The members on the back seat look at him at the same time. He tut-tuts and flicks his chin, and the armed members look down again.

  Morihara doesn't need any stimulant. Wearing armed clothes kicks up adrenaline in his body.

  He's been waiting for his moment for a while now.

  He wishes that the crowd would stop giving a speech on the street and make more noise already.

  His right leg is tapping on the brake pedal without him noticing.

  He doesn't know how long it has been like this.

  Suddenly there is an explosion around 100 meters away from his spot.

  Someone's voice comes from the intercom.

  --- Earthlight has attacked area A and C!

  Morihara feels his blood pumping. Today is going to be a big festival.

  The explosion seems to be happening in Area C. He knows their usual tactic in a situation like this. A diversionary group is in the explosion area and the main group must have entered the life science research center in Area A.

  New information keeps on coming in. The bomb was caused by a long-range firing of a smoke shell. Many troops have been already heading for Area C to bring it under control. Meanwhile, backbone information is getting invaded in Area A instead of armed attack.

  Going through the Bayline gives the first troop the shortest distance from where they are to Area A.

  Morihara gives an order. The first troop starts moving to Area A. He starts the engine of the armed vehicle.

  There is voice coming into the intercom.

  --- Drag out Earthlight from the research center first! We should take control by force after that! There are too many people in the center.

  "Fucking Commanding Officers! They are always being too safe!"

  Morihara curses while driving.

  *****

  Akimichi raises his right hand and signals several things with hand sign. He gestures to keep on going ahead. Reji speeds up even more to respond.

  He can feel hot on the back from the body temperature of Akari.

  "This is amazing!"

  "Huh? What did you say?"

  "I said this is amazing."

  They don't have much to get to the ocean road.

  Flash light behind their, three, backs. The sound of explosion attacks them.

  The noise is absorbed from the helmets. It vibrates their eardrums a little. As they turn around, the physical shock conveys to their bikes through the surface of the ground.

  First, there is a shock, which shakes their bikes up and down, followed by continuous small vibration.

  Akimichi signals to stop, and they turn around.

  There is gray smoke coming up from some area of the research center from a distance. They can see fire waving in several spots among the smoke.

  The three of them hold up their visors and look at each other. Akari opens her mouth first.

  "Boys, let's go check it out."

  "Why? A fire station will take care of the fire, don't you think?"

  "But, it's explosion."

  "It's a research center. They might be using some dangerous chemicals. We better stay away from it."

  "Don't worry, boys. We don't want to miss out any fire. It's a shame to sit by and not do anything if this is some interesting case."

  Akari urges Reji with tapping his back. Reji lowers his visor and turns around his bike. He goes back the way he came from with the wheels.

  Akimichi gives up and decides to follow after him.

  When they get closer to the site, it becomes clear that there are several floors on fire in one building, which is not far away from the road.

  They are looking up blind mindedly without realizing an approaching object.

  As soon as the light of their motorbikes catch the square shadow of black iron, the shadow zips past right next to the bikes. There was only a few inches gap between them. It was so close. The person didn't have any light on.

  Twice as large shadow follows after that. The motorbikes lean to one side due to the air pressure.

  They speed down, wondering what's going on. No, no, it looks like there is no time to think now.

  Countless number of spinning red light is coming from the direction of their motorbikes, in other words, where the two shadows came from. The red light isn't the one for usual police cars. It's for those special vehicles of the Riot Police w/ P.E. Normal people rarely get to see them in real.

  These cars are armed vehicles of Morihara.

  Akimichi takes a swift reaction.

  He signals Reji with hand and spins around to run away from the Riot Police.

  "Akari-san, hold tight, please."

  Reji follows after Akimichi.

  Among the siren, there
is cracked voice that is asking to stop and cut off the fighting back. No matter what kind of reason they have, it's natural to try to escape from whatever chasing you.

  "What should we do?"

  The voice of Akimichi echoes inside the helmets. This is first time for Reji to see Akimichi use voice speech device.

  "Let's run away. This is the only choice we've got."

  "I'm not sure if we can."

  "They might cut the linear magnet and force us to stop."

  "Don't worry. The control of the system is in our hands. --- Oops, this isn't good. This can give a reason for them to arrest us."

  "They will suspend our licenses once they catch us. But...., we will win if we can get away from them."

  "Let's risk it."

  He presses down the accelerator instead of replying.

  There are two small shadows ahead of their light. These are the cars that overtook them.

  They can see a sedan style car and a large wagon. Both of them are dark black coated. Their bodies are surrounded by fat pipes in a latticed pattern. All of their windows seem to have black lightproof. They are most likely bulletproof considering the overall protection measures.

  That's what they can see from the distance. The two special customized cars keep on moving ahead.

  In addition, there are robust riot police coming from behind.

  They seem to have stopped convincing the cars through the speaker, but instead, their guns are firing into the air as if they were screaming them to stop.

  "We might get shot before getting caught."

  "It'd be worse than losing our licenses if they catch us."

  "I know."

  "Hold on, boys. The Riot Police is chasing after the proceeding special cars, right?"

  Akari jumps in the talk.

  "I guess so."

  "If we get caught, we would be giving them time to run away."

  "I guess so."

  "That's kind of weird."

  "...... Yeah."

  "...... Shall we do it?"

  "...... Sure."

  "Yes, boys! I don't really know what we are doing, but let's do it!"

  The speed of the linear drive depends on the frequency of shifting polarity of the electric magnet. Once they get the control of the lane, it's easy to catch up. However, they can only drive on lanes, so it becomes difficult to overtake proceeding cars.

  "Akari-san, hold on tight."

  They speed up their bikes and drive right behind the special cars. Their distance comes shorter and shorter.

  "Three..., two..., one..., Go!"

  Get down the linear magnet of one side, slight after that, get down the other side. The gap of time make motorbikes jump diagonally forward. It's the same mechanism as linear rail-gun.

  The two motorbikes get separated to the right and left, overtaking the special cars near the side rails.

  They steal the control of linear magnet right underneath them to match the speed of the following special cars. The distance from the cars shortens from 10 meters to 5 meters. They change the frequency of the fluctuation in order to minimize the acceleration. Still, the speed they feel on their body is fairly significant.

  The overtaking program is installed in their motorbikes. All the complicated calculation is done by the embedded control computer. The human riders focus on not losing their balance and also consciousness.

  They are ahead of them now. All they have to do is to corner those mysterious guys.

  They throw the delay-program into the control system of linear magnet module to slow processing. The slightly dull linear module under the motorbikes flow behind them and drive the special cars.

  While keeping the distance between the proceeding and the following cars, they gradually speed down. Of course, they don't forget to put pressure on the drivers of the modified vehicles by changing the speed at random occasionally.

  Their plan is to corner the modified vehicles to further back and leave them behind just when the distance becomes short enough for the riot police to catch them.

  Thump!

  With the sound of something slamming to the ground, SOMETHING flies past their heads.

  There are four limbs from a narrow triangle figure.

  SOMETHING lands on the head of the motorbikes and ride on the flow of the linear magnet, as the same way of two motorbikes.

  SOMETHING is human figure object, but is larger and harder than a human body.

  "A-B-A-H-S, why did you come out here..."

  Akari whispers.

  There is a red beam light on its round head. It doesn't seem good at actual fights with its narrow arms. There are linear rifles around his hips side. It has thick legs, but they look weird since the joints are set in the opposite way as humans.

  It has the same equipment as humans, Type-2 armed outfit. However, the front and the back of the bottom are reversed.

  "Akimichi-san, what is it? That thing."

  "Listen, boys. Maybe it came here, looking for me. Can you psy-connect here?"

  "I can't, on my motorbike."

  "Bad situation. It looks as if I got kidnapped."

  Reji and Akimichi look like they were kidnapping Akari. There are special customized cars of Earthlight right behind them, which are chased after by the Riot Police w/ P.E.

  A-B-A-H-S might look at this situation as ...

  There is no time given to syllogize.

  A-B-A-H-S kicks the ground lightly and spins its body in the air. Touching the ground, its body is already moving toward their back. It has its hands on his hip side with its back slightly tiled backward. 50 cm length gun strapped to its hip side. A-B-A-H-S spins it around and fix it in the vertical position to the body. The gun is facing two boys.

  Muzzle flash on head of hip side gun. The two bullets --- heavy metal particles to be precise --- brush against the driver of the two motorbikes.

  Reji feels his right check go warm. Reaching out to his helmet, the right side gets melt and disfigured.

  A-B-A-H-S gets illuminated by a muzzle flash. It looks like a carnival insect that is going after its pry.

  The second fire is repeatedly sent from its hip side. It has changed the target to lower and gouge the ground ahead of the motorbikes. The crushed plastic and particles of coils go underneath of the motorbikes and hit the bottom of their motorbikes.

  "It's a threat, I hope."

  A message comes from Akimichi.

  "I suppose if it's after Akari Nakazato, it wouldn't shoot us."

  Front or back, Reji wonders whether they should escape to. He usually relies on Akimichi about complicated issues like this. However, it's not the case now. Reji understands that he should get away from it on his own.

  It's easy to escape backward. He can do the reverse procedure that they did when they overtook the special cars. However, if he does, he has to face the Riot Police w/ P.E. Still, there is A-B-A-H-S ahead of him. It seems almost impossible to get through it.

  He wonders if A-B-A-H-S is SOMETHING he can convince. It seems more likely to start up a fight before having a conversation. If so, it's better to escape first before planning what to do.

  Think again, front or back.

  Continuous sound of explosion. The special customized cars have started shooting. When Reji turns his eyes to the monitor, he can see muzzles of their guns flashing from the back windows of the wagon and the car. Judging from the intensity of the sounds of gun and ricochet, they seem to be using real bullets.

  A curtain of fire by A-B-A-H-S is coming from the front and the bullets from the special cars are targeting them from the behind.

  "Give me a break."

  Reji hears Akimichi mumbles into the intercom.

  Reji completely agrees. Maybe Akimichi understands what Reji is thinking. The alert goes off, which shows that the link between the Akimichi's motorbike and his get cut off. This means we have to go separate ways.

  He needs to find a way to escape.

  He's made up his mind.

&
nbsp; Reji flickers the direction indicator on the right back several times.

  (Akimichi-san, please notice my signal...)

  Reji lowers his body so that he wouldn't get covered by the sparks of the gun shoot. He shuts down the linear magnet when the shooting target move to the center. He jumps toward the right back.

  As if A-B-A-H-S expected this to happen, it jumps off.

  It looks like A-B-A-H-S slowly floats up in a strange way. A-B-A-H-S targets the motorbikes and the special customized cars from the above. The gun continuously fires.

  Reji can't tell, but one of the bullets --- or maybe several of them shoot through the front part of the motorbike. The momentum pushes only the back of the motorbike and the whole motorbike gets bent backward. Reji and Akari are thrown away from their seats.

  Reji looks for Akari to hold, but two of their bodies are flying in the air in a weirdly slow motion. His hands are scratching the air. He feels he's gradually falling down.

  Reji's body hits the front window of the wagon that is running right next to him and rolls on the top of the car to the back. Reji flails his hands and laces his arm with one of the protective pipes.

  Akari's body flies above his head. He reaches out his hand, but her body is several inches away.

  Broken motorbike is thrown backward. Several fragments of the motorbike hit his helmet.

  He gets hold of pipe on wagon with the both hands. He looks left to find Akimichi's bike thrown backward as well.

  Also Akimichi himself gets thrown away together.

  Screaming voice from Akimichi from the voice transfer network reverberates the helmet among other noises.

  Reji looks back to find A-B-A-H-S land on the ground with Akari in its hands. A-B-A-H-S jumps again and spins around 180 degrees toward the wagon that Reji has grabbed on.

  The gun on the hip side targets Reji on the wagon.

  Lamps on the head of A-B-A-H-S looks like eyes of a beast that is after its pry. It has an enchanted expression on its face as if it has caught a pry.

  (Laughing. It's trying to kill me with a laugh, on its face.)

  Reji is terrified. He is truly scared in front of SOMETHING --- the mysterious human figured machine.