If anyone was following along with the story I've been posting here, I've decided to move it to Royal Road for all future updates. If you're interested, head on over and take a look! It'll be under the name of Shadow City in the Mirror World, by Sebastian Luck.
I'm not sure if anyone was really following along here, but if you were, thank you so much, and I hope to see you over at Royal Road!
In the brilliant orange glow of the evening light, in a meadow on top of a small hill overlooking the huge, verdant park beside her apartment, Olivia surveyed Alice Underscore’s latest work. Although Alice had looked out to the park regularly while painting, the result didn’t match the scene in front of them at all. Rather than looking down on the park from the edge of a 20-meter rocky cliff, the painting looked across a level path. But even though the perspective was completely different, the details were familiar. The large spruce framing the left side of the painting was recognizable as the tree leaning off the edge of the cliff to their right. The path in the painting was formed of the same red bricks as the path winding through the park. The black metal lightposts and meticulous raised flower beds were also mirrors of the lightposts and flower beds visible in an open field in the park below them. Although it looked nothing like the view in front of them, all its elements had been pulled from their surroundings and remixed with the skill of an expert DJ. And of course, all the scenery was accented by the brilliant use of colour Justice Detective was famous for. The pine tree was outlined in a bright green, while details down to the individual needle were painted in dark, naturalistic shades. Likewise, the field was a muted brown-green, while the flowers throughout it practically popped out of the canvas in an explosion of colour. Among it all, the lightpost over the path cast a spotlight on the right side of the painting, providing a clear focus of attention. It struck Olivia that it was almost criminally wasteful that this painting would likely be used as a background for less than a minute of footage in the upcoming season of Justice Detective. The depth of detail was astonishing.
Perhaps equally astonishing was the string of coincidences that had led Olivia to this very spot. First, there was running into Alice in the first place – which had been unlikely since Alice kept to a normal sleep schedule, while Olivia usually went to bed at noon, then woke up at twilight and played games through the night. Then there was their second meeting, where Olivia had recognized the art style – which had been unlikely since Alice’s usual art style, while still defined by brilliant, almost glowing colour, was nowhere near as idiosyncratic as Justice Detective’s sharply stylized, neon-outlined backgrounds. Then there was their third meeting, where they had once again only chatted briefly, but they’d been able to share phone numbers – which had been unlikely since Olivia was certain she had come across as a cringey and obsessive and possibly insane fan during their first encounter. Then there was the lengthy text correspondence, where Olivia felt like she was walking an impossible line between ignoring her and inundating her with messages. Then they’d met at a nearby café, where Olivia had ordered her ‘morning’ coffee while Alice had ordered a chamomile tea in anticipation of going to bed soon after. All of which led Olivia to this: their second arranged meeting at the park.
Through this string of precarious coincidences, the more they talked, the more Olivia was certain she had found a kindred spirit. From their mutual love of Justice Detective, they also found they shared a similar obsession with the magical girl genre in general, to the point they both remembered an obscure, decade-old series called Blasting Artillery Witch Love-Love – which they both agreed was a masterpiece that never got the recognition it deserved. Finding someone who shared her interests so closely not online, but in her physical reality, was exhilarating, but also terrifying. Such a being was so impossibly rare that if she messed up this human friendship development project, she might never find someone on the same wavelength again.
After receiving the invitation to meet at the park, which Alice had described as her ‘favourite place in the world,’ Olivia had felt a dull nausea as she uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour and a half trying to figure out what to wear. Not that she’d had much choice – apart from a stuffy, dull suit she’d bought during the brief period she’d tried finding a “proper” job, the rest of her wardrobe prioritized comfort over style. In the end, she’d settle on warm, fuzzy pastel leggings and an oversized sweater. The leggings were technically tie-in merch for the magical girl series Hana Double Zeta, but the only giveaway was a small emblem emblazoned at the waist – which was neatly covered by her sweater. She figured that was the best she’d be able to manage, and after a brief staring contest with herself in the mirror she’d even convinced herself she was kind of cute.
Her meagre self-confidence had fallen away as soon as she had met Alice on the edge of the park. Alice was soooo elegant - a simple white blouse, a simple black skirt, and sensible shoes. Simply, sensibly, effortlessly elegant. Olivia also quickly discovered that Alice was also dressed for the weather, while Olivia was sweating well before she had made it up the narrow, crumbling, and overgrown old stairway that led from the common, well-travelled walking paths of the park to the secluded meadow where Alice had set up a full-size easel, canvas, and paints. Apparently further back from the meadow, in an even more overgrown corner of the hill, was an ancient shrine - apparently it was a big part of the reason there was such a big park in the middle of the city in the first place. In an overly baggy and overly warm sweater, and covered in a film of sweat, Olivia felt like a certified disaster next to the neatly dressed and decidedly not-sweaty Alice, but Olivia was also determined to not let that stop her. She would have a good time with Alice today, and she would make Alice her friend. Friendship is a battle of willpower, she thought, paraphrasing a line from Hana Double Zeta. Of course in that animated series, Friendship was a magical power that could save the world, but for Olivia real IRL friendship may as well have been just as magical and otherworldly. Nor was she going to let Shark stop her, who was now leaning back against a tree some distance away, looking for all the world like a grumpy chaperone.
“So do you paint here often? That painting’s freaking amazing, by the way.”
“Quite often, actually. Don’t tell anyone, but I sometimes leave my easel here overnight. Or I'll sometimes bring my drawing tablet with me if I want a change of pace. It’s a beautiful spot, and I can't stop coming back to it.”
“It really is – the view is spectacular, and there’s no one else nearby.” Olivia paused for a moment, admiring the view. Even though she lived right beside it, she had never explored all that much of the park, mostly owing to her usual waking hours leaving the park cloaked in a veil of darkness. There was the artificial moonlight, of course, and the main paths were all well-lit by lamps, but with all the trees and vegetation, at night the shadows were deep. During the day, though, with the sun shining overhead, Olivia couldn’t help but admit she had been missing out. The park was a verdant island of green in a city of grey concrete and shining glass. Even surrounded by the city, the only distinguishable sound in the park was the rustling of the trees in the light, warm wind. As long as you didn’t mind a substantial hike to bring your equipment to and from the meadow, it was perfect.
"Hey, how long have you been drawing? Like, not this drawing, but drawing in general. What age did you start? Did you go to an art school?” Was this too many questions? Regardless, Olvia really wanted to know. There was so much she wanted to know. “I draw sometimes, too, but I’ve never really taken it seriously. I mean, my stuff is really just scribbles. They’re cute, if I do say so myself, but if I posted them to the Justice Detective fan galleries, all I’d get would be mean comments and a moderator deleting them for being low-quality. But your stuff is some of the highest-rated on the site! I know you probably don’t pay attention to stuff like that, but you’ve had the number 2 AND the number 7 best-of-all-time spot for months!”
If there was one talent Olivia had cultivated during her live-streams, it was yapping – she could run her mouth off non-stop for hours. Of course, online, that was why people watched her. Here in reality, and opposite another, single human as opposed to a faceless chat, Olivia wondered if she was yapping too much. Alice didn’t take her eyes off her painting, and her brush kept working, adding countless tiny needles to a spruce branch, but she smiled wryly before responding, “Number 2, huh? And who was number one?”
“Uh, it was Mappatofu’s Finale Frame.”
“Ah, that’s fair. Mappatofu’s really good.” Alice paused, squinted at the details she had just painted in, then sat back to look over the whole piece. It looked like it was finished. “As for how long… I’ve basically been making art since I could hold a crayon. I haven’t been to an art school or anything fancy like that, but I did submit to a bunch of art contests when I was getting started, and the feedback from the judges helped me a lot. It was like getting art lessons for free, from a certain point of view. That was… a long time ago. The real secret to art is just to keep doing it. ‘Persistence is power,’” she quoted, chuckling.
Olivia recognized the quote, “Lyrical Gear, right?!” Smiling was another skill Olivia had cultivated, but she couldn’t think of the last time she had smiled this much away from her computer.
As much as she wished she could stay longer, the sun was falling further in the sky, reaching down to touch the horizon. There were no lights near the meadow, and besides, to normal people dark meant it was time to get ready for sleep. “Hey, uh… how long until the painting is good to move?”
“As long as nothing rubs against any of the wet spots, it should be fine to move as it is. If I wait until the paint is fully dry, we’ll be here until tomorrow.”
“I can help carry your paints?” Carrying the painting while the paint was still wet felt like pure danger, but Olivia didn’t want to merrily saunter down from the meadow while Alice carried the painting and all her supplies down the treacherous, narrow stairs on her own.
With the division of labour settled, between the heavy paints and the awkward canvas, they were quiet as they navigated the trails that led out of the park. Safely back on level road, Alice slung the paints over her shoulder and repositioned the canvas slightly to accommodate. It was a precarious set up, much the same as the first night they had met. Slightly winded from unfamiliar exertion of hauling the heavy bag of paints, Olivia questioned, “Do you really need that many different paints? I’m sure you only used half of them.”
Too late, Olivia considered her choice of words was perhaps a bit blunt, but if Alice was bothered, she didn’t show it, “I don’t think I even used half. The problem is figuring out which half is the half I need and which is the half I can safely leave behind.”
“The struggles of an artist. I’ll text you later.”
“Of course. Well, good night.”
By this point, they had just passed Olivia’s familiar Square Mart. Alice kept walking aimed towards the nearest subway station, while Olivia considered how hungry she was. Once Alice was out of earshot, and verifying there was no one else nearby to see her conversing with empty air, Olivia turned to Shark.
“There, that wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
Shark seemed lost in thought, which was obvious not just from her slightly vacant expression, but also from the fact that she was slightly transparent and her outline was more blurred than usual. Olivia’s question snapped her back to reality and full opaqueness. “It’s so strange. There’s a human mind there, but there’s also a separate mass of consciousness fixed to the same body. Any human mind anchored that close to a consciousness mass that huge should be overwhelmed, yet here the consciousness mass is bizarrely passive, and the human mind is still there as if it were completely normal. It’s completely not normal, and I can’t make sense of it.”
Shark’s tone told Oliva she didn’t like things she couldn’t make sense of. “I didn’t feel any kind of massive consciousness. And for that matter, is that really that different from you and me?”
It was a bit of a challenge, but Shark didn’t take the bait. “I’m not overlapping your physical space. Since you love horror, consider it like the difference between haunting and possession. My consciousness is also a friendly and hospitable size. We’re like... Earth and Jupiter. I’m bigger, obviously, but we’re two different bodies merrily orbiting in the same neighbourhood. She’s like Venus orbiting at the edge of a black hole. There’s a world of difference.”
Olivia shivered slightly. She hated horror, but since her chat seemed to love seeing her terrified, she would occasionally, begrudgingly play horror games or watch horror movies on stream. Shark no doubt knew she hated horror, so if this was her idea of a joke, at least it meant she was less on-edge than she’d been the first few times they had run into Alice. The realization suddenly made Olivia realize how hungry she was.
A quick stop in the Square Mart, and a familiar friendly greeting to Friend, and she was back on the street, a familiar warm, brightly coloured paper package of delicious fried chicken in her hand. Striding off in the direction of her apartment, Olivia took a bite. And swallowed in disappointment. “Square Mart is off their game today, this chicken barely tastes like anything.”
She sniffed it. It didn’t smell like anything either.
“Olivia !!” Shark’s voice was quiet, distant. A creeping darkness started infiltrating the edges of her vision. What was going on? Was she sick, was she having some kind of medical emergency? As her vision slowly filled with empty blackness, she braced herself against a nearby wall. Even that felt distant. Her vision now was little more than outlines of black on black, but at the very edge, just as everything fully gave way to pitch black, she saw a glowing red halo in the distance. Panic was starting to set in. What was happening to her? She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t feel the wall she was leaning on, or even the ground under her feet. There was no up or down – or sense of physical reality at all. Fully cut off from the world, terror enveloped her. Was she dead? Dying? Was this what death was like? What was happening? What was happening!?!
*drip* *drip* A distant sound reached her ears. Her thoughts stopped. Was this reality? Or was this some phantasm her brain concocted to make up for the absence of reality? But no, there was a sliver of light creeping into her vision. Through that sliver, she could see Shark standing in front of her, her back turned. Her clothes were splattered with red. Her hands, clenched into fists, were drenched in a sickly red liquid that was dripping to the ground, a drop at a time. *drip* *drip* Then, as if a light switch had been flipped, all Olivia’s senses came rushing back. She could hear sirens coming closer. Her butt hurt – and she could feel the ground underneath it. And she could see Shark, now facing her with a look of worry on her face. Not a spot of red was visible anywhere on her. “Are things better? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Or…” ‘at least I’m here,’ Olivia was going to say, but she stopped. Her throat hurt. It hurt worse than when she had spent 3 hours screaming her way past every stupid jump-scare in the game Horror Hill. She shook her head, trying to reset her mental state, and a rush of sea-smell filled her nose as Shark threw herself into a hug. Olivia felt the subtle warmth of her body, the tickle of breath past her hair. She felt calmer. She hadn’t realized how not-calm she had been. As she reached out to return the hug, she caught glimpse of the street past Shark. A huge red smear lay across the road and sidewalk, as if a giant water balloon had been dropped there.
Olivia barely had time to register that the red smear looked oddly lumpy before her view was interrupted by a figure in an ill-fitting suit, with greasy, slicked back hair and a slightly asymmetrical moustache. An android came up beside him. “Mr. Cooper-Bullet is en-route, but I’ve informed him that containment is no longer needed, just clean up.”
“Thanks, Four,” the man intoned, before turning his attention back to Olivia. “Well miss, I dare say this hasn’t been a good day for you.”
“Hey Stocks, great job on the Eingopher report.”
William Stocks, known to his colleagues as Stocks and to his android assistant as William, felt a chill go down his spine as he heard those words. No one who had actually read his summary of Eingopher’s nonsensical, deranged, and borderline incoherent research papers could possibly say those words with a straight face. Ignoring the unsupported conclusions, increasingly dubious experimental methodology, and the occasional unhinged, raving rant sprinkled throughout the document, there were several sections where William had no choice but to concede and mark only ‘unintelligible.’ He had summarized Eingopher’s frantic writings as well as any human or android could be reasonably expected to, but William knew the report was a complete and unmitigated disaster none the less. And yet here was the mustachioed face of Damien Cash, his immediate supervisor and Manger of Sect. 7 Records, on his video-conferencing screen saying exactly those words with a beaming smile on his face.
“Er, you did read the report, right?”
“Mmm? Oh yes, I suppose it was a bit… colourful… in places, but by and large it meets expectations. Eingopher’s honestly been a bit of a problem case of late. Requisitions way over budget, erratic reporting, you know… between you and me, the man can’t keep to a schedule to save his life. We had quite a few questions about exactly what was going on there, and you’ve actually helped us shed some light on the situation. Some, you understand, there’s still a great deal that needs to be reconciled. In fact…” Cash pensively pulled at his mustache, making an exaggerated display of having just thought of something, “Now that I’m thinking of it, I’d appreciate it if you could meet our auditor at Eingopher’s lab facility. I’ve requested one of our staff to be on hand to assist with their audit, and you’ve been quite helpful on this case so far.”
So that was it. William groaned internally.
“The Audits crew have been kept quite busy lately, so unfortunately the inspection is going to be at 7:10pm. I realize that’s a bit out of your regular hours, but we can add an overtime premium to cover it off, so no worries there. Oh, and make sure to take an android as well – Audits will of course have their own records, but for posterity I’d like our own recording as well. You know what getting a file from Audits can be like.”
William quickly considered a dozen scenarios to justify refusing this sudden imposition of yet more overtime, but in the end reluctantly just said, “Understood…”
Cash didn’t wait for him to finish. “Splendid!” he exclaimed, and the video conferencing screen went dark.
William considered his entire vocabulary of profanity, before simply sighing loudly. There was no sense having a tantrum like a child. Besides, William didn’t want to be angry, he just wanted to sleep. His android assistant, Four, noticed the sigh and looked across the room from her computer terminal. “Is there a problem, William?”
“Depends on how you look at it. You could call it mandated overtime. Or, if one was inclined to optimism, you could think of it as a vacation away from the office.”
“Vacation?” Four’s metal ears twitched slightly.
Was that insensitive, or would it actually pass as a vacation to the android? Four didn’t get to leave the office much – in fact, as an Android Processing Assistant assigned to this building, she really never got to leave the building – she worked within the walls of Office 87 twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Would leaving the office be an interesting and novel experience, or would her positronic brain register it much the same as strolling around the city in street-view? Although thinking of street-view, William had caught her idly scrolling past the colourful streets of Old Downtown in street-view once during a particularly quiet period a few months back. He remembered wondering if being essentially locked away in an office tower for her entire existence ever weighed on her. Did her programming even allow such thoughts in the first place? He was dreadfully curious, but he restrained himself. He imagined it would be quite insensitive to ask. It may have been insensitive enough even to mention vacations – after all, androids didn’t get vacation time included in their contract. Although come to think of it, even if it was in William’s contract, did it even matter if he never used it? He couldn’t think of the last time he’d taken any time off - he just seemed to keep banking more overtime. William shook his head, and asked Four to brew more coffee. His mind was already wandering and it wasn’t yet 4pm.
Two hours later, William and Four were in a company car speeding away from Central District. Four had been nonchalant as they had stepped into the car, and her face kept a perfectly neutral expression as she stared out the windows as the city sped past, but Williams couldn’t help but notice that a small red light at the base of her metal ear unit indicated she was recording the whole trip. There wasn’t any need to record until after they arrived at Eingopher’s lab – was Four actually excited by this trip? The red light held back William’s urge to ask, or otherwise make conversation. After all, if Four cared about this enough to archive it into permanent memory, the last thing he wanted her to archive was him making a clown of himself by asking inconsiderate questions. From the glistening towers of Central District, to the warm neon signs of commercial streets running alongside the highway, to the dark outlines of smaller buildings in the residential quarters interrupted by occasional streetlights and the beckoning signs of local convenience stores, they passed district after district. Gradually, the light from the artificial moon grew fainter behind them, replaced by the evenly-spaced glow of streetlights, and soon even that light was hard to come by. The streetlights began to space out, and more and more houses were only visible as dim silhouettes. Finally, over an hour out from the city center, barely one in ten streetlights were lit, and even those flickered ominously. In this derelict district, Eingopher’s lab finally came into view, a hulking two-story concrete slab of a building. Here, the steady red light at Four’s headphone unit finally blinked twice, indicating she had finished her recording, and almost immediately, the steady red light returned, indicating a new recording had just been started. William smiled wryly to himself – just as there was no need to record the highway trip, there was also no reason to separate it from their work at the lab. As he suspected, the recording of the car ride must have been purely for Four’s personal use.
As they stepped out from the car, a small beep from his phone brought William’s attention back to business. “Mr. Stocks, I presume.”
The small, crisp voice coming through the phone was identified on-screen as ‘Chloe Sharp, Inspector Auditor, Sect.13’. On the same screen, just above her name, a small glowing number read 6:47pm. They had been safely early for the arranged meeting time at 7:10, and the auditor had still managed to get ahead of them and get started early. As much as he resented the forced overtime, William couldn’t help but admit that it was probably a good idea for his department to keep their own records. Audits didn’t play nicely. Beside him, Four’s voice chimed in, “I’ve downloaded the floor plan and found the relevant sections for our inquiries. Shall we have Miss Sharp meet us there?”
The terse, crisp voice returned, “Audits has a few additional locations flagged, and Miss Sharp is currently following up. It has nothing to do with your department’s inspections, so please feel free to proceed as you like. I’ve created a group Team line - share your location there, and I’ll meet you once I’m finished.”
William nodded grimly, before realizing it wasn’t a video call and nodding communicated nothing. Working through his own list, and using his shared location to only meet up when it was convenient did made sense, but it also meant Sharp would have exact tracking of his every move, while he’d have no idea where she was and what she was looking into. He couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever Audits was looking for here, they didn’t want his department to get involved. Although, he reflected, cross-department squabbles weren’t his responsibility. William and Four had their list of locations to review for the audit, and as long as the Auditor didn’t get in the way, anything they wanted to hide was a problem for his supervisors. “Got it, we’ll share our location,” he nodded at Four to proceed, “And we can meet up once you’re done with your list. It’ll probably help both of us if we compare notes afterwards.”
There was a cold silence on the other side, then the voice returned, terse, crisp, and now positively icy, “Understood. We’ll share notes once we meet up. Do try not to take too long with your investigations.”
The line went dead. William allowed himself a brief smile. He was certain Auditor Sharp didn’t think too highly of his notes, but if there was something Audits didn’t want him to find here, she’d want to look over the data he’d collected. If he was going to put in overtime, at least the Auditor was now stuck staying just as late as he was. And if nothing else, any notes she shared would help him improve the details of his own report.
Following the still-lit headlights of the car, William and Four made their way over the broken asphalt to the ornate double doors of the front entrance. The automatic sensor was dead, and the hinge oil seemed to have been neglected, so it took bit of heaving to open the heavy brass doors. They also didn’t close properly behind them, leaving a small crack of light from the car spilling into the dark, unlit lobby. While it certainly wasn’t as impressive as the extravagant lobbies of the Central District’s skyscrapers, there had still obviously been some effort expended to make the space inviting, from the ornate wall trims to the well-padded chairs. However much care had been shown in the room’s original configuration, though, was mostly lost, as nearly half the room was now occupied by unceremoniously dumped garbage bags. The reception desk was almost entirely submerged, as were several of the ornate, well-padded chairs. Shining a flashlight over the mass of bags, Four seemed perplexed, “Do they not have cleaning androids here?”
William, after confirming with relief that there was a decently clear path through the garbage to the frosted-glass main doors, responded. “Oh, they definitely have cleaning androids. This garbage would still be sitting in the labs and blocking the hallways otherwise.” He’d seen enough of these sorts of research dens by now to recognize the pattern.
Past the reception area, inviting ornament quickly gave way to stark, drab business, with smooth concrete hallways interspersed with flat steel doors connecting the building’s various labs and offices. In contrast to the completely dark entrance, there was lighting here, but it was meagre – most lights were dim, and many were burnt out entirely. William wondered if the light bulbs here had ever been replaced, or if these were the originals left from the building’s construction. From this point, Four led the way, following the downloaded floorplan to the private studies and records rooms.
They didn’t have far to go to find the first stop, a small records room tucked behind the lobby’s reception, labelled ‘Receivi… Reco…’. The label was partially worn and peeling, and the condition of the room wasn’t much better. All manner of packing slips, receipts, and invoices had been jammed into over-full filing cabinets, with seemingly no attention paid to chronology. Given the dust, it was also clear the auditor hadn’t been here yet. William once again pushed away his curiosity about what Audits was really looking for here – after all, the receiving records were the bread and butter of any standard financial audit.
“What a bloody mess,” William grumbled quietly, grateful that all he needed to do was flip through each page so it could be isolated from Four’s 2000-frames-per-second video recording. A dedicated sorting AI would do the rest. He remembered the year he had started working in Office 87, one of his first jobs had been manually entering receipts from a similarly disorganized research lead. It had been slow, mind-numbing work. Back then, the sorting AI was still new, and quite prone to mistakes, so a full manual review was needed to make sure its figures were correct. These days it was far more trustworthy, and the days of meticulously sorting physical paper were largely behind them. Even so, it still took a good half-hour to flip through the various papers to make sure they were all captured in the video feed.
The second room was Eingopher’s office at the far end of the building. Although less dusty than the Receiving Records room, it was no neater. Instead of filing cabinets, journals, logbooks, and loose paper had been crammed into a large bookshelf along one wall. More papers were strewn about the desk, many of which were splotched with dark stains – probably just coffee drips or old food splatter. William supposed the garbage bags in the lobby should have been enough of a tip-off, but he really should have brought gloves for this work. Mercifully, one of the two light strips was still working more or less properly, doing its level best to fill the office with warm yellow light, but the other was on the fritz, flickering on and off in a pale blue hue. William felt a headache coming on. Theoretically the material here had already been submitted for William’s first report, so theoretically there was nothing new to learn here, but it was still best to catalogue the room in full. Given the condition of the records and the clear lack of diligence in keeping things properly stored and sorted, William was certain something had been missed, but given the lack of lucidity in the writings that had been submitted, he very much doubted whatever was missed would do anyone any good.
After once again meticulously scanning through every piece of documentation in the room, William and Four were off the next room on their list, lab records in level B1. Whatever the Auditor was doing, she was sure taking her time with it. Just as well, as she’d seemed particularly unpleasant and William had no desire to pretend to be chummy with her. The elevator was still lit, but William didn’t trust it and elected to take the stairs down instead. There were 13 labs registered to the building, and all but one of them were found in the basement levels. Each of these labs would have their own, dedicated records room, usually just a small closet tucked in a corner, but fortunately only three labs were on William’s list.
The first of which was Lab 1, which was the largest lab of the building. Once through the heavy steel doors and glass airlock, William found himself in a gruesome menagerie of blood and body parts. Limbs and organs hung from the ceiling, several of which were still dripping. Four had instinctively stepped back in shock – William noted it as a curious but understandable emotive reaction from the android, but he was more preoccupied by practical concerns. Most of the assorted viscera had thoughtfully had drip-trays placed under them, but several of those trays were full to overflowing, and several more apparently had been missed altogether and looked as though they’d never had a tray in the first place. The floor was a hazard of stagnant puddles and streams meandering towards the floor’s drains, and William stood there silently puzzling how to get to the records room without getting blood on his shoes.
The contents of the room were hardly surprising, given Eingopher’s field of research. Like most of the research carried out by the corporation, it was focused on the field of immortality, and more specifically on the problem of bodily decay. Immortality of a sort had already been solved, but the problem was that the condition of the immortal would continue to degrade over time. Mentally, their memories, skills, and knowledge would gradually wear away. Physically their heart and lungs would stop, their muscles would atrophy, and their nerves would struggle to carry commands to the body. Getting the heart and lungs working was easy enough with mechanical pumps, atrophied muscles could be rebuilt, or augmented with exoskeletal supports, and the red halo system could amplify the weakened brainwaves and carry them through the body as needed. However, over time, the machinery of the body’s very cells would gradually grind to a halt, which proved a more difficult problem to address. The tiny, scattered scraps and fragments of demon consciousness that blew through to Earth on the interstellar wind could hold the spark of life firmly attached to the body, but the body would inevitably become an increasingly inhospitable home for that spark. The oldest specimens held by the corporation were well over 200 years old, and by that age there was little to do with them but leave them in suspended animation – the promise of immortality still a distant dream, while their immediate reality was a waking nightmare.
Research across the corporation touched on every aspect of this problem: the mental decline, the physical decline, the implantation process of the demon fragment, absolutely anything and everything that could possibly advance the project. Eingopher’s focus was the preservation of the body, hence the rather excessive study of anatomy found here in Lab 1. The options to get to his records room at the far end of the lab weren’t great, but William figured he had found the least messy path possible. “I figure we hug the far edge of the room, then we may have to climb the desk to avoid that puddle at the far end, there,” he gestured.
“…” Four’s mouth moved, but William heard nothing. Puzzled, he wondered if it was a mechanical fault. Then a moment later he realized it wasn’t a fault with Four - HE couldn’t hear any sound at all. Not the dripping from the blood hitting the drain-pans, nor the dull hum of distant ventilation fans, nor the low buzz of the faulty lights. With a chill of realization, he also realized that despite the bloody mess of the room, he wasn’t smelling anything. Casting his mind back, why hadn’t he been more bothered by the piles of garbage at the entrance? Had his smell failed that far back? He fought back the urge to panic. Something was still here, in the lab. And if his smell had stopped in the lobby, and sound had only deserted him in the basement, it could only mean they were getting closer to that something. As if to confirm his worst suspicions, William noticed a creeping darkness working its way inward from the corner of his vision. Was his sight next? William didn’t know what to do. Blast and damn, he was a records clerk, not a security commando!
A touch on his arm let him know Four was still beside him - she was still speaking silently, a look of concern on her face. He looked at her to steady himself, and to his relief the darkness at the edge of his vision began to retreat. Presently, he began to hear a distant drip, drip in the background, and then Four’s voice came through, quiet as though she was speaking from another room, “Mr. Stocks, can you hear me? Are you unwell?”
‘It’s William, not Mr. anything,’ he mentally retorted, but it was only when the horrid, metallic scent of blood finally tickled his nostrils that he felt he could trust his voice to stay steady. He took a shallow breath and turned to Four. “We need to make a call. Who’s on-call tonight?”
A smile of relief crossed Four’s face before she replied, “Mr. Davis Cooper-Bullet is currently up in the rotation.”
‘God-dammit’ William swore internally. His phone screen lit up, and Davis’s chiseled features leapt onto the screen. “Eyyy, Will! What’s happening?” Behind the familiar backdrop of Davis’s favourite pool hall, William couldn’t help but notice a scantily-clad android that hadn’t quite escaped off the edge of the call screen.
“Evnin’ Will, hope you’ve got an easy one for me this time.”
‘If it was easy, I wouldn’t be calling you.’ Williams garnished his mental rebuke with a cascade of silent profanity.
“So, do you have any special abilities or anything?”
Putting a sharp-toothed face to the shadow had quickly worn through Olivia’s reluctance to accept it as real. Either it was real, or she was having a total psychotic break – in either case, there wasn’t much point ignoring it and she may as well make the most of it.
“Uhhhhhh… well, my physical body is basically just a projection, so sometimes if my mind gets too far ahead, the body clips through reality to catch up. So that’s kind of like teleportation? Does that count?”
Shark, as Olivia had taken to calling her, spoke slowly and carefully – she had a strange, unplaceable accent and the fact she was self-conscious about it was one thing Olivia had learned about her. In fact, Olivia was somewhat surprised by how much she had learned about Shark over the last 2 weeks. She belonged to an ancient civilization that had sunk into the sea. They survived not by building boats, but by abandoning physical reality and moving the entire civilization into the plane of consciousness. Much like the space between people physically was large enough to fit bedrooms, apartments, houses, offices, shops, and highways between, the space between minds was large enough for an entire civilization to exist quite comfortably, mostly unnoticed by those that remained in the physical world. Of course, 1000s of years with the same, unchanging group of people got singularly boring, so they would occasionally slide into the physical world and watch over an individual, as if they were watching a tv series. It sounded like a video game plot, which was perhaps why Olivia wasn’t particularly surprised to hear Shark could teleport. “Teleportation, huh? Neat. Maybe SSR rarity? Doesn’t feel exciting enough to be SSSR, though.”
The two of them were walking towards the convenience store. When Olivia wanted peace and quiet, Shark would easily fade out of sight and out of mind, returning to a nondescript grey shadow, but more and more Olivia was finding herself starting conversations. It seemed Shark had never intended to be more than an easily ignored shadow, but something about the artist had spooked her enough that she had panicked and revealed herself. Now that Olivia could actually interact with her, she seemed uncertain and even a bit shy. Even if Shark had lived for millenia, Olivia wondered how long it had been since she’d actually had to talk with someone new. Dragging her into awkward conversation was not only revenge for treating Olivia’s life like passive entertainment, but against her better judgement, Olivia also found her awkwardness kind of cute. “So why do you look like a shark, but also like a human? Is this what the ancient civilization looked like, or do you just look however you want to?”
“Are you talking to yourself, Olivia?” Friend, behind the counter with not a stock box in sight, greeted her with his customary bright smile. Olivia had completely missed that they had passed through the automatic doors into the Square Mart.
“None of your business!” she retorted, louder than she intended, blushing furiously as she strode over to the fried chicken display. Savagely grabbing a still-hot package, then grabbing a banana from the fruit rack nearby, she moved with purpose over to the counter. She wanted to leave as quickly as possible. She was already imagining all the ‘imaginary friend’ jabs Friend was no doubt already processing in his positronic brain.
“Is the scanner being slow tod…?”
Olivia was cut off. “One Square Mart deluxe fried chicken, one banana. Confirm?”
“Confirm.” Olivia responded hastily. Absent the small blip on her phone, Olivia slowly repeated:
“C o n f i r m.”
This time, the small beep from her phone confirmed the charge had gone through. All the while, Friend was smiling. “Have a great evening, Olivia.”
Olivia’s cheeks were burning, and was certain she must have been beet red as she left the store – she couldn’t even muster a response. Once safely outside, and away from the doors of the Square Mart, Olivia turned to Shark and sharply demanded, “Why can’t anyone else see you? It’s not like you’re all that strange, and it would make things a lot more convenient!”
“That’s an interesting friend you have there.” Olivia hadn’t even noticed the familiar figure in front of her. With long, black, silk-straight hair, thin features, and a canvas under her arm, it was the artist from several nights prior, wearing a somewhat awkward smile. Olivia could feel warmth flooding back into her cheeks. She felt ready to cry; Friend was bad enough, but here she was having animated conversations with thin air in front of perfect strangers! It was a moment later that she realized the artist was staring directly at Shark. “Wait, you can see her?”
“Was she supposed to be hiding?”
“Waitwaitwait,” Olivia was sure her brain must be overheating at this point. “Wait, is that Magical Girl Justice Detective?”
“Eh? Oh, yes it is. Are you a fan?”
In contrast to the stunning landscape on the huge canvas she’d been carrying the first night they’d met, the artist was now holding a much smaller canvas, with similarly vibrant colours this time applied to a more familiar cartoon subject. Also in contrast to the small watercolour palette from the first night, this time she was toting a large gym bag that was nearly overflowing with tubes of acrylic paints.
“I’ve, uh, heard of the series…” Olivia said, trying to walk back her earlier enthusiasm, while helplessly aware she was still blushing furiously.
“I know the Justice Detective has a sizable fanbase online, but this is my first time running into a fan in the wild. As it were.” She adjusted the heavy bag of paints on her shoulder slightly before continuing. “Are you looking forward to the new season? I get a few early spoilers, but I still want to see how they resolve last season’s cliffhanger ending.”
She gets early spoilers… Olivia took a second, more detailed look at the painting. The pink ribbon around her deerstalker hat and the longer cape meant the picture was set after season 2’s penultimate episode, and the style was definitely familiar. “That’s… that’s not going to be official art, by any chance?”
The artist didn’t offer an answer, but she chuckled softly at the suggestion, smiling conspiratorially. Olivia was convinced. The image on the artist’s canvas was a perfect match for the aesthetic of Justice Detective, which contrasted the bright and vibrant against the dark and dour, not only in the design of the title character, but also in the background art, which was most usually a neon-drenched night-time cityscape. It was way too good to just be fan art. Olivia resolved to check through all the splash art and concept illustrations she could find to try and match the style when she got home, but for the moment, only one thought was dominating her mind. I want to be friends with this person. I want to be friends with her. I want to be friends with her!
“Uhhhh…” Olivia began awkwardly. It hung in the air as the artist politely waited for Olivia to continue, while Olivia’s brain stubbornly refused to put any words together. How did you make someone your friend, again? Where was the dialogue box? Option a, b, or c – if only she had some lines to choose from, she’d make the right choice 100%. But this was a human person in front of her! There was no dialogue box, and no time to look up a playthrough to see which choice leads to the best ending. Olivia cast her mind back to the last time she made a new friend. What had she said? Want to come over to my house after school? My mom can make us cupcakes! Olivia was 29! No way in hell she could use that line now!
A soft chiptune alarm interrupted Olivia’s spiraling thoughts. “Oh, sorry, I really do need to get this scanned off to the publisher. This one was a last-minute commission, and the timelines are a bit tight. It was lovely meeting you and your friend.”
The artist waved politely, before turning to leave. She was escaping! “Uh, I hope we run into each other again some time!”
Olivia couldn’t see how red she was, but her cheeks were positively burning. She also belatedly realized she was smiling her usual, over-exaggerated smile. She was definitely not presenting herself like a normal, well adjusted Justice Detective fan. But to her relief, the artist turned, and said lightly, “That could be nice. Hopefully when there’s a bit more time to talk. I do apologize, I really must be going.”
Then she again turned and resumed her walk towards the station, moving as quickly and lightly as her overfull bag of paints would allow, which was to say, rather slowly and heavily. Olivia watched her go, realized she was staring, and quickly spun to finish her return to her apartment. She found Shark was there behind her with a dark look on her face. Was it concern, fear, frustration? It was difficult to read the expressions on her sharky face. “I get it, you don’t like her.”
“You can’t see her.” Shark stated simply.
“I can see her well enough.”
Shark shook her head. “You can’t see her mind. It’s like a… web? A really big web, all focusing at a single point. If you’re a pale spark and I’m a glowing ember, she’s like looking up at the night sky. You shouldn’t get closer to her. She’s dangerous.”
Olivia’s smile had faded. “I’ll get closer to whomever I feel like. And you’re hardly one to talk about strange minds – how do I even know you’re not dangerous, huh?”
Whatever emotion had been on Shark’s face before, it now just looked sad. And slightly transparent – maybe Olivia had been a bit harsh. “Look, I’m not worried about you being dangerous because I feel safe with you. I didn’t feel anything dangerous from her either, so I’m sure she’s fine too, no matter how big her mind is.”
Shark seemed lost for words, but nodded her head slightly.
“If anything does happen, you can say ‘I told you so.’ Okay?’
Shark seemed conflicted, but in the end just nodded again. Olivia figured that was good enough, and again set off for her apartment. Shark followed silently. By the time she had gone back up the stairs and passed through the door into her room, she had finished with the fried chicken and her enthusiasm was starting to return. Leaving her banana on the counter as a snack for later, she eagerly woke up her computer and started diving into the fan-collected Justice Detective image galleries. Far beyond the official image galleries, fan galleries were far more comprehensive, drawing in art from not just the show and its promotional material, but art also from art books, ads and promotions, posters, blu-ray covers, tie-in novels, video games, card games, and even fan art. Very quickly, with the image filter for ‘Official Art Only’ still on, she found what she was looking for. The same brilliant use of swirling colours, the same sharp contrast between light and shadow. A few of them even looked to be physical media, painted onto a canvas and then scanned in after the fact, rather than drawn on a computer from start to finish. Olivia grinned to herself, “Found you, Alice_. Mwa ha ha.”
Her evil laugh was completely deadpan, but she did feel satisfied with her detective work. As an added bonus, she had also saved a dozen new art images to her digital collection, tipping her folder of Justice Detective art, screenshots, and memes to just over 4000 files. Still buzzing with excitement over who she’d just met, she switched to her streaming platform, loaded her virtual avatar, then cheerfully hit the bright red “Go Live” button. “Hello everyone! It’s your shining star in the dark of night, KiraKira☆Kiara! How are you all this fine evening?”
Replies flooded into her chat window:
“Early stream?”
“Not late?”
“Someone’s excited”
Olivia began her story, “You’ll never guess what happened to me today. I was walking out of the convenience store…”
“Just another normal Kiara night”
“Oh no, is this another fried chicken story?”
“Please eat healthier 
”
Olivia was undaunted, “And I ran into one of the main artists working on Justice Detective! She had painting supplies and everything, it was so cool! It was Alice – she had to keep things quiet, but I’m sure she was working on key art for the new season!”
“It’s Alice underscore”
“Oh, not fried chicken. Justice Detective, your other addiction”
“Kiara socializing in real life :o”
“It’s Alice underscore – you pronounce the _”
“It’s Alice underscore”
“Alice ‘underscore’ – and you call yourself a fan /s”
“Fake fan SMH LMAO”
“LMAO”
Chat was being their usual, belligerent self, but Olivia was too excited to care. She spent another hour enthusiastically yapping about Justice Detective, before remembering she had scheduled Night Souls II gameplay for this evening. She fired up the game, loaded her save file, and proceeded to yap about Justice Detective for the rest of the night.
He knew he shouldn’t. He knew knowing would only bring him pain. But Mr Stocks, known to his parents affectionately as Bill and literally everyone else as William, couldn’t help himself. He peeked at the small number at the bottom right of his computer screen, and discovered it was 7:37pm – and that only 6 minutes had passed from the last time he’d checked. ‘Damn and blast,’ he thought to himself miserably. He was quite certain today had been the longest day of his life. It had started at 6:30 am, in the artificial moonlight before the sun rose. After abusing the snooze on his alarm no fewer than 3 times, he had nearly missed his train going from his restive residential block to the Central District. Miraculously, he had managed to arrive on time, starting his work day in Office 87 neatly at 7:55am. Through a seemingly endless haze of meetings, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, another unproductive meeting, followed by more paperwork and paperwork, it was nearly 12 hours later. The sun was again gone beyond the horizon, and the artificial moonlight he had awoken to was back, glowing though the office windows.
The still-formidable stack of papers on his desk and the still-formidable stack of glowing blue ‘unread’ emails in his inbox both promised his night was still far from over. In some ways, he reflected, he had no one to blame but himself. After all, hadn’t he always dreamed of wearing a sharp suit and working in the Central District, the miraculous place where humans and androids worked side by side? Of course, by the time he had actually started his career in the central district, androids were a common sight throughout the city, and as it turned out most of what people in sharp suits actually did in their glass offices was just poring over endless documents, reports, summaries, evaluations, statements, reviews, and records. In a word: boring. In two words: dreadfully boring.
Interrupting his self-pity, Four cordially asked, “You’re looking tired, would you care for some coffee, William?”
“Don’t bother – I do intend to go home at some point tonight, so coffee at this hour will only ruin what little sleep I may still have time for.”
“Ah…” Four’s antennas – sharp, polished triangular units mounted onto circular, headphone-like bases - twitched slightly. The pointed antennas, mounted over her ears, and her thin, graceful features combined to give her an oddly elven profile. William wondered if he was being insensitive by mentioning sleep. After all, androids put in full 24-hour days – they kept working long after the human staff had left for the night. He still wasn’t quite sure what was polite around androids. “I appreciate the offer, though, Four.”
William supposed misunderstandings about politeness went both ways, since it had taken quite some time to convince Four she needn’t address him as Mr Stocks, or worse, Mr William Stocks. He was quite fond of his name, but there was no sense repeating it in full for every little thing, and he had been emphatic with Four on that point. For her part, Four was emphatic on very little.
“These are just low-priority approvals, why haven’t you gone home?” Four was now looking over his shoulder.
"It hardly seems fair to leave these all to you.”
“I’m not sure I understand, that’s quite literally what I’m here for.”
“Either way, they still need human sign-off at the end. I reckon it’s best to finish them off tonight, so we’ll have a clean start tomorrow for the Eingopher Report.”
“I suppose that is tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“For an android, you sometimes forget the strangest things.”
“Ah…” Four’s antennas twitched. William wondered if he was being insensitive again – after all, android memory was significantly more complex than the neatly sorted filing system of his computer terminal. Was it strange that he expected her to have a picture-perfect memory for dates? Or was it stranger that she could be forgetful about something perfectly simple like that? Was it a personality quirk, or a symptom of a problem in her circuitry? Williams was interrupted in his musings by a red light at his desk – subtle, quiet, and intensely worrying. William’s pulse quickened. Four had noticed it as well. “That’s the Special Projects alarm, isn’t it?”
William nodded, “Sure is – you recall who’s on call for tonight?”
“Mr. Davis Cooper-Bullet is currently up in the rotation.”
William groaned, then stood up and started walking hurriedly in the direction of the emergency response coordination center. Of course it was Davis. Most of the time when there was a Special Projects emergency, all he had to do was call the on-call manager. They would come in, lead the response, and William would have little more to do than man an auxiliary surveillance station. But with Davis…
“What’s happening, Will?” Four held the phone screen steady as they walked. Davis was at his most serious, which still wasn’t particularly serious, and William couldn’t help but notice the whisky glass and pool cue that hadn’t quite escaped off the edge of the call screen.
“Not much info yet, but seems like a containment break.”
“Damn… Roger, I’ll get the team together and head on site. You’re good to lead the response center, right Will? Why can’t you ever call with an easy one, huh?”
‘If it was easy it wouldn’t be an emergency,’ William mentally retorted. There was also no need for Davis to head on site: the role of the on-call manager was to direct the response to an after-hours emergency. Other managers would sensibly do that from the response center, but Davis insisted on going to the emergency personally, leaving William in charge of the response center. After the first time Davis had thrust him into that role, William had read through his contract to see if that was even allowed, but unfortunately, ‘other duties as assigned’ covered a lot of ground. And so, William’s long day was set to get even longer.
The response center was embedded in the very center of the tower, surrounded by a maze of offices, but separated from them by heavily reinforced concrete walls. The single entrance featured an armored steel door that would put a bank vault to shame. Inside it looked much like any of the other common office areas in the building, with a few exceptions. For one, there was a row of computers off to one side that was raised above the others as the primary command and control hub. And there was a huge screen taking up the entirety of one wall, which at the moment showed a map of the city, with a conspicuous red dot a few blocks away from the office tower. The center was staffed mainly by androids, who of course didn’t have to worry about shifts and would always be ready to respond to any emergency at any time of day.
“We have Mr. Cooper-Bullet en-route with a response team. What’s the alarm situation?” William had been at nearly a dozen emergency control calls, and although he had only led one (also when Davis had been on-call), he could at least act the part decently at this point.
“Subject 9ALPHA has gone rouge and departed Special Projects without authorization. GPS tags have ceased transmission, so current location is an approximation. Drones have been deployed to verify location and support the response team as needed.”
William felt a chill at the android’s report. ALPHA projects were top-line stuff – way past his pay grade. “Put out a call to the Executive Council – I don’t care who.”
“Talk to me Will – what’s going on?” Davis’s blue dot was now also showing on the map, his vehicle closing in on the hostile red dot.
“We’ve got an ALPHA project on the run. Drones are on the way – probably best to hold back until we have more info.”
Davis responded with a string of casual profanity, followed by, “Roger, we’ll hold off until the drones get eyes on the situation.”
Just before signing off with a final profanity, another screen flickered on over the master screen. “Lisa Overrent here.”
Her voice, icier than usual, was the only indication the CFO had perhaps been winding down for the evening – otherwise, every detail of her appearance was immaculately neat, with not a wrinkle to be seen from the collar to the cuffs of her pressed formal suit. The Chief Financial Officer may not have been William’s first choice of executive to take charge, but he was still grateful he wasn’t going to be the one left calling the shots. “Project 9ALPHA has breached containment. On-call manager Davis Cooper-Bullet is on standby with a response team, and drones should be at the target momentarily.”
As if to reinforce his summary, several images of streetscapes appeared one after the other on the main monitor – the drones were nearly there. William began to breathe a little easier; now he just needed to sit back and act as a liaison between the Executive and the manager. A job so easy even an android could do it. The video feeds from the first drones had caught up with the subject, bringing into view a dilapidated, gray-skinned figure. A strong metal exoskeleton supported its decrepit limbs, and a red light glowed in a halo around its head, boosting its brains weakened signals to enable it to still command its declining body. It wasn’t dead, but it was also a stretch to call it truly alive. William only caught a glimpse, though, since one after another, the video feeds cut out as they brought the subject into view.
“It’s disrupting the drones, switch to satellite.” Overrent’s voice cooly and calmly directed the situation.
As the video feeds from the drones continued to fail, an overhead image swam into focus. It took Williams a moment to realize what he was looking at – the drones they had sent were all circling idly above the subject, almost like a school of fish. A moment later, and the satellite feed, too, vanished. “Surveillance satellite Polaris 10 is rapidly deorbiting on a collision course with Office 87.”
Overrent responded to the calm voice of the android with equal calm, “It’ll burn up in the atmosphere probably. Subject 9ALPHA is hijacking any digital systems that directly observe it. I want a Code Black shutdown on the surrounding 3 blocks from its last know location. Mr. Cooper-Bullet, you are cleared to engage, but do not bring any combat androids. Switch off all augmented observation systems – I trust you can point and shoot without computer assistance?”
“You got it, boss. Humans only, weapons free.”
Davis and Ms. Overrent seemed to be on the same wavelength, which left William rather awkwardly as the only person who seemed concerned by her ‘probably.’ The surveillance satellite would ‘probably’ burn up in the atmosphere. William grimly reflected even if he was safe in the reinforced response center, the fragile paper documents he’d spent the last 12 hours working through were not. ‘Probably’? It better burn up in the atmosphere! Almost as an afterthought, he also realized that typical response teams were made up of 5 human staff, two dozen combat androids and a small fleet of support drones. With the drones under the control of the escaped subject, and without being able to deploy the combat androids, Davis wasn’t left with a lot of support. Although that was Davis’s department – it wasn’t a problem Williams really had to worry about.
What followed was a long 60 seconds of chaos – frantic radio bursts about the drones being used as kamikazes to dive at the human squad like airborne piranhas, punctuated with loud bursts of gunfire. From previous emergencies with Special Projects, William gathered that with these subjects, it wasn’t so much a matter of killing them, as you couldn’t really kill an undead. It was more a matter of accumulating enough physical damage until they could no longer function. Less than a minute later, it seemed that threshold had been met, as a tired-voiced Davis called in, “Target down. Bring in the clean-up crew, and we’ll need a medic as well – we got pretty busted up here. Suggesting we keep up the Code Black until disposal is confirmed."
“Very good – I’ll transfer authority for ending the Code Black shutdown to you. Please look after clean up and disposal. Thank you for your good work tonight, everyone.” Lisa Overrent’s image vanished from the central monitor.
Chances are, she was heading off to sleep – by this point, William was very much looking forward to doing the same. “Four, if you could please prepare the write-up for tonight’s incident – the Eingopher report will have to wait. I’ll look over it tomorrow, but for now, I’m going to clock out for the day. I will take you up on that coffee tomorrow morning – at this rate I’ll need it.”
“Of course, William. I’ll have coffee waiting for you tomorrow. Have a good night.” Four’s voice was gentle.
William’s usual subway route home was shut down thanks to the Code Black, so he had to hail a taxi. The neon lights of the Central District flashed past the autonomous vehicle, before fading behind him as the taxi drove from the main freeway into a restive residential district. Out the corner of his eye, Willim caught the bright meteor of the descending satellite. Given the lack of a loud impact boom, it seemed Overrent had been correct and it had indeed burned up in the atmosphere. Continuing down a quiet street with a large, verdant park on one side, the taxi drew up to the door of his cheap apartment, just past a glowing green Square Mart sign. William climbed up the tight, narrow stairs, no longer caring the building was so narrow he could nearly touch the walls on either side just by stretching out his arms. The apartment had his bed, his bed was soft, and William badly needed to sleep. As his head touched the pillow, he drifted off almost immediately, and was only awoken when his alarm started ringing the next morning. In the dim glow of the artificial moonlight, he fumbled for the snooze button.
Olivia Craft, known online as KiraKira☆Kiara, groggily tried to rub the sleep from her eyes. Her eyes, however, were having none of it. They wanted to close, to go back to sleep, but it was no good – her mind was wide awake, and the accursed artificial moonlight streaming through her window from Central Tower ensured any further rest would have to wait until daylight. The Local Council had insisted the artificial lights were tuned to the same hue as the natural moon, and would provide a clear, but unobtrusive light over the entirety of the Central district. The Local Council, Olivia reflected, were idiots. For whatever reason, she found it impossible to sleep through the damnable blue-white light – even if she had no issue sleeping through the exponentially brighter light of the daytime sun. Her sleep schedule was already hopelessly messed up from spending far too much time at night in front of her computer, so sleeping through the day was hardly abnormal for her, even before the insipid lamp had been installed, but still! Being forced to wakefulness, even with the curtains fully drawn, even if her body cried out for more sleep – how could anyone have approved such a monstrosity? Ah, but she had ranted about this online many times already, for all the good it did.
A familiar blur caught the corner of her vision. Turning toward it and winking her left eye, a shadow sprang sharply into focus. Or as in focus as a shadow could, she supposed – it was still little more than a dark, murky outline of a roughly human-shaped figure, of a similar height and stature as her own, normal shadow, except her own shadow remained properly on the ground as it should, this one stood straight and tall in the kitchen section of her one-room apartment, ignoring all rules of light and dark. For some reason, it could only be seen with one eye open. When Olivia looked at it normally with both eyes open, it was near invisible – just a small patch of indistinct haze in the corner of her vision, as if there were a smudged fingerprint on her glasses. “So you’re still here, are you?” Olivia nearly said, before reminding herself that she was still not convinced it was even real, and that in either case she was resolute she was not the kind of person who made a habit of conversing with shadows. So, much the same as she had done in the past three weeks since she had noticed the shadow, she ignored it and turned her attention to what she needed for the day. Or night, as it were. She futilely directed another curse to the artificial moonlight.
She had a live broadcast scheduled for 11:30pm, so even though she wasn’t particularly hungry now, it was best to make sure she had her food for tonight sorted sooner rather than later. Her fridge, as usual, was empty. With Square Mart, a well-stocked 24/7 convenience store, 4 buildings down the road, keeping food in her apartment seemed pointless. Why plan meals when she was a short walk away from whatever her whims suggested for the day? The downside, of course, was that she did need to get dressed, but since it was already well into the night, the standards were very low. Olivia briefly sniffed the sweatpants she’d worn yesterday, and decided they were still fine. Her pajama shirt featured a brightly-coloured cartoon character, emblazoned with the words “Fight for Justice”. Even at this time of night, she didn’t particularly feel like broadcasting her love for Magical Girl Justice Detective – so even though it wasn’t yet particularly cool outside, she pulled on a light jacket over her pajama shirt to complete her low-effort ensemble. As she set off for the stairs, she noticed from the corner of her eye that the shadow was following. There was, of course, the option of the elevator (recently renovated), but she was only on the third floor, and besides, the shadow seemed to dislike the elevator. She didn’t make a habit of listening to shadows, she reminded herself, but as someone whose job was to sit at a computer and be interesting, going up and down the stairs of her building made up a substantial portion of her meagre daily physical exercise.
As much as Olivia resented being forced awake by the artificial moonlight, once she was up and moving, she did love being out in the city at night. The road in front of her apartment was a small, local one-way, so it rarely got much traffic, and directly across from the row of apartments was a park – dark and quiet, the old, tall trees blocking out much of the artificial moonlight, and the younger, smaller bushes and hedges blocking out much of the noise from the rest of the city. Following the gentle curve of the local road, just barely visible over the horizon of 3 and 4 storey apartment blocks lining the street, was the mass of neon-bathed skyscrapers of the Central district. Towering over even these skyscrapers was the Central Tower, with its artificial moon-hued lights reaching out to the rest of the city below. Olivia’s apartment was small and a bit cramped, but Olivia loved where she lived: it was close to the buzz of the city, yet uniquely quiet and tranquil owing to the nearby park. Subway connectivity was a minus, since the nearest station was nearly 5 blocks down, but on the plus side, net connectivity in the area was blisteringly fast. Separated from her apartment by three other apartment buildings, the gentle green light of Square Mart’s illuminated sign provided a glowing waypoint for her nighttime outing. Really, it was closer to two and a half buildings: the two buildings closest to her own were near-identical blocky and uninteresting apartments, but the final building before the store was uncannily narrow – scarcely as wide as Olivia was tall. As she passed it, she noticed the seemingly omni present “Apt for Rent” sign had vanished from the front door. She shuddered briefly as she contemplated what living there must be like. The mere thought was suffocating.
Stepping past the uncanny, claustrophobic building, Olivia caught her breath before stepping into the store. “Good evening, Olivia. Welcome back, it’s wonderful to see you again!” The friendly shopkeeper waved from between a row of shelves. Coming around the end of the row to greet his familiar customer, a large case of single-serving cereal boxes in hand, Friend had a bright smile, and even brighter eyes that cycled excitedly through red, green, and blue, before settling on their customary lavender purple. It was a law that all androids must be easily identified as such, and Correl Corp had decided the best way to do that was with brightly coloured, unblinking eyes. Veda Corp, their rival in the lifelike android market, instead elected for metal antennas that covered the ears, looking like a combination of headphones and cat ears. Beltson Inc, a distant third in the market, went all out with candy-coloured skin tones. Friend had clearly been stocking shelves, but as soon as he had noticed Olivia enter the store, he immediately turned his full attention towards her, setting the case aside near the cash register.
“You’re earlier than usual,” Friend said casually. Olivia noticed the case of cereal boxes was nearly empty, he must have been close to finishing his restock before she had come in. Most days she came in, he was already waiting at the cash register. She suspected he timed his restocking to avoid the times his regular customers stopped in. Rather than being a demonstration of customer service, Friend seemed to make a game of it. Olivia supposed that sort of thing passed as excitement when you were an android who worked a single store 24/7/365. “I have work this evening – just making sure I have something to eat later,” Olivia said, factually.
“Why do you always start by looking at the sandwich section? You never buy sandwiches.”
“Starting with sandwiches makes everything else seem more appealing.”
“You could just go straight to the fried chicken section and get your usual.”
Olivia somewhat resented being thought of as someone for whom fried chicken was ‘her usual’. “I don’t always buy fried chicken.”
“If you’re feeling guilty about all the fired chicken, is this one of your chickpea salad days, then?”
Olivia briefly considered the salad, before responding, irritably, “Shut up, no, it’s a fried chicken day.”
She hated being so predictable, but she really did like the convenience store’s fried chicken. Swiping a package from the hot counter, she paused, before hostiley grabbing an apple on her way to the checkout counter. She wondered if Friend had been programmed to be so annoying, or if he had come upon it by accident.
The store OBServer system, which had been watching every item she had taken from a shelf, read out her receipt passively, “One Square Mart deluxe fried chicken, one apple (assorted varieties). Confirm?”
“Confirm.” Olivia responded flatly. A small beep from her phone confirmed the charge had gone through.
“Good call on the apple. It’s important to look after your health!” Olivia was convinced Friend was being more annoying than usual today – probably out of spite since she had interrupted the careful timing of his shelf-stocking. Despite feeling quite hotly about his behaviour this evening, she still gave him a small wave on her way out the front doors. “Catch you later.”
“Of course, Olivia. See you next time.” Friend was a pain in the ass, but he was still a friend.
Walking past the narrow building, Olivia found her gaze again drawn to it, and again shivered as she passed. There really was something wrong with whoever decided it was a good idea to squeeze a building onto that tiny plot of land. Her gaze distracted, she only noticed there was another person coming up the sidewalk once she had passed the narrow building and was coming up on her own apartment. The person was small, thin, and delicate, and had a large canvas tucked under one arm and a watercolour tray held in the other. She was balancing the two of them rather poorly, and as Olivia watched, the canvas started to slip from beneath her arm in slow motion. Turning awkwardly to try and stop it from hitting the ground, she ended up in a twisted pose, with the canvas three quarters out of her grasp, and its corner coming to a rest on the sidewalk with a muted bonk. She struggled to reposition the canvas under her arm again, but her watercolours were getting in the way, and she couldn’t set down the watercolours without dropping the canvas. Olivia started off to help, only to feel a strong grip on her arm pull her from the sidewalk into the alley between apartments.
“Don’T gO. ThaT onE is dAngerous.” The figure that had grabbed her spoke in an accent that was decidedly foreign, although Olivia couldn’t quite place it – it was almost like multiple accents jumbled together. Perhaps the pointed, shark-like teeth had something to do with it. Sufficiently recovered from the sudden shock of being pulled off her regular route home, Olivia looked over the figure. Its eyes were an abyssal blue like the deep ocean, and its skin was not merely pale, it was pure white, at least on the face – even in the shadows cast by the artificial moonlight overhanging the alley, some parts also looked distinctly grey, such as the forearms and back of the neck.
Rationally, this could be a shark-themed custom android, but Olivia had felt a lingering warmth from where it had grabbed her arm, and couldn’t help but notice a subtle seaside-scent to its breath. Androids didn’t breathe - this was a living being. An impossible living being. An oddly familiar impossible living being. In fact, much like the shadow in her room, Olivia was only surprised by how unsurprising this shark-like figure was. Although she had never seen something like it before, it felt peculiarly everyday. It was like a sibling, or a roommate – not always welcome, possibly irritating, but hardly hostile or unusual.
“In what way is she dangerous?” Olivia could see nothing dangerous-looking about the artist. Being objective, she sharp-toothed shark figure seemed more dangerous.
The shark opened its mouth, then paused, as if at a loss for words. Olivia didn’t give it time to get a sentence together. “If you can’t give me a good reason, I’m helping her. Hold this.”
Olivia shoved her chicken and apple from the convenience store into the shark’s hands, then strode over to the artist still struggling with her canvas, and held on to it as the artist steadied herself. As she repositioned it under her arm, Olivia caught a glimpse of the other side. It was breathtaking beautiful, a scene of some of the old ruins deep in the park across the road, with the aethereal strokes of the watercolours perfectly capturing the ambiance of dusk. After what felt like a small eternity of awe appreciating the skill that had gone into the painting, Olivia was suddenly awkwardly aware neither of them had yet said anything to the other. “How far are you carrying this? If it’s not far I can give you a hand.”
In her haste to say something, Olivia was smiling perhaps a bit too broadly. It was a force of habit to exaggerate her expression to make sure her digital avatar picked it up during broadcasts, but sometimes she worried it made her look like a psychopath in real life. Fortunately, the artist seemed unfazed, and she responded with a small, blissfully normal smile of her own. “Thank you. I really appreciate the offer, but I’m not much further past here. I should be fine the rest of the way. Probably…”
Her voice was easygoing yet polite, and utterly without a hint of malice. Olivia had no idea what her shark-shadow was worried about. A solid grasp on the canvas restored, Olivia stepped back and the artist started off walking again. Olivia kept an eye on her for a minute, but the canvas showed no signs of sliding away again, so she turned and completed the last few steps back to her apartment. The usual shadow was there, and it had considerately left her convenience store food on her kitchen counter. Confirming her suspicions, when she closed one eye to look at it, the shark snapped into focus. Olivia had some words for it. “Well? Care to explain what was so dangerous back there?”
The shark hesitantly opened its mouth to speak, but Olivia had just noticed the time glowing on her computer monitor. “Hold that thought!” she interrupted, and ran over to the computer. Hastily logging in, she noticed the starting screen for her live steam had already been running for 4 minutes. Not catastrophic, but definitely enough to be embarrassing. She fumbled to switch on her digital avatar and microphone, then took a deep breath. “Hello everyone! Your shining star in the dark of night, I’m KiraKira☆Kiara! How are you all this fine evening?”
Replies flooded into her chat window:
“Sleepy AF”
“I’m great, how are you?”
“You’re late today 
lol”
“Can’t sleep as usual”
“Better now that you’re here UwU”
Olvia briefly checked her view count: over 5000 live viewers. Not bad numbers – although she wasn’t sure how many of them were bots. Or androids for that matter. Olivia smiled, making sure to exaggerate her expressions so the digital avatar read them properly.
“Say UwU again and I’ll ban you. Today was open-room Smash, right? You’ll all go easy on me, I hope.”
“Not a chance UwU”
“Don’t worry, we’ll go easy on you UwU”
“Nah, I’ll win UwU”
“Bullying you is more fun though UwU”
“Come on everyone, play nice UwU”
Olivia sighed as, precisely contrary to her threat, her chat was flooded in a rain of UwUs – chat could be so predictable sometimes. Still, whether they were bots, androids, humans, or shark-people, she had enough viewers to make a living, which was good enough for her.
