Chapter 83
A senior executive in the External Relations Department of Veltech International Solutions—and a corporate spy for the Ryan Eliens Company at the same time─.
Paul Lucas had purchased an old van that blended naturally into the dilapidated streets around him, which looked like ruins.
With one wheel sunk deep into the ground, the van wheezed like a sick old man’s wheelchair every time it moved. It was so terrible that even Schumacher in his prime would have cursed, “Fick dich!” but.
That did not matter much to Paul Lucas, since he had not bought the van for driving in the first place.
Whoooosh….
The sound of the violent wind shook the vehicle’s body.
The inside of the van was so disorganized that looking anywhere made one’s eyes spin.
The tangled mess of wires was connected to a terminal resting on the inner seat.
Tap, tap-tap.
The reason people used mechanical keyboards instead of holographic ones in an age like this was to prevent malware-based hacking.
Paul Lucas began operating the simple mechanical keyboard, far removed from any ergonomic design, with great skill.
“…Hmm.”
A low murmur of concern echoed inside the van.
The terminal screen was densely filled with various pieces of information obtained by commissioning one of the web spider groups, ‘Redback.’
Founded around the black widow spider, this organization was separate from the white-hat hacker group Black Hornet and was famous for uncovering any information whatsoever as long as the client paid enough.
However….
───────────────
The headquarters of the [Homeless Clan], the [Grocery Store].
Further [investigation] is judged to be [impossible].
A highly [skilled], high-processing-rate [web spider] is estimated to be [stationed] inside.
Even with [additional payment], no definite answer can be provided.
According to the [contract terms], [refunds] are [not possible].
The [information] obtained so far will be delivered [enclosed with the data chip].
- Redback spider.
───────────────
This time, however, they seemed to have failed to meet his expectations.
The light leaking from the terminal screen dimly illuminated Paul Lucas’s face as he sighed.
If he contacted the Ryan Eliens Company, his true affiliation, he could find out more detailed information, but.
‘I suppose this is enough for now.’
To avoid leaving unnecessary traces, Paul Lucas decided to be satisfied with what he had.
With cold synthetic coffee in his mouth, he checked the contents of the terminal.
A data chip sent by Redback was plugged into the side of the terminal.
‘Abel Anderson. As expected, it was a forged identity.’
Even without the blurry photographic data, it had not been difficult to discover that fact.
His records were suspiciously clean, after all.
Anyone living in Risk City was bound to have at least one minor criminal record, such as a traffic violation.
But there was not a single such record in Abel Anderson’s personal information.
As though he had simply dropped out of the sky.
It was highly likely that the skilled web spider at the grocery store had created his identity for him.
‘Michael Dillon.’
A corporate executive formerly of the Astra Group’s secretarial office.
Currently being pursued by the Astra Group’s security team on suspicion of murdering a high-ranking corporate executive….
Paul Lucas continued examining the people connected to the grocery store.
‘…They really have gathered every kind of person here.’
A homeless man who had once been a corporate mercenary, a homeless criminal wanted for a bounty because of chrome-junkie symptoms, a homeless lunatic in a ninja costume who called himself a cat….
And among them, there were two people who particularly caught Paul Lucas’s attention.
They were Rivera and Nova.
‘Censored, censored, censored. I can’t see a single readable detail…. And all of this is data censored by various corporations. Did they assassinate the chairman of some megacorp or something? Huh.’
The short woman was suspicious beyond belief, with most of her information [redacted] under the names of not one but several megacorps.
‘…An android whose detailed model name can’t be found at all. Even if it was made for a special purpose, this complete lack of data is highly unusual. Did the chairman of some megacorp make it as a hobby?’
That was because he could not determine the cybernetic-body data of the other android at all.
He had not been unaware from the beginning that this was no ordinary grocery store.
But seeing so many suspicious people gathered in one place.
‘…Abel Anderson. As expected, he can’t be in his right mind.’
His prejudice only continued to grow.
Paul Lucas realized that he had been viewing this ‘mission’ rather optimistically.
He lifted the pitch-black blackout curtain installed over the van window ever so slightly.
He wanted to check the grocery store building.
“I didn’t expect it to be this unusual……”
Paul Lucas’s voice gradually grew quieter.
It was nothing in particular.
When he pulled back the curtain, a filthy-looking homeless man had his face pressed right against the van’s window.
How long had he been standing like that?
A thick layer of white snow had piled up on the head of the homeless man, who was built like a brown bear.
“……”
“……”
The window was covered with solar-control film, so the inside should not have been clearly visible from outside.
Why, then?
Paul Lucas found himself looking directly into the man’s eyes.
At the same time, the homeless man’s personal information from the terminal screen flashed through his mind.
Mikhail Romanov.
A homeless man and former corporate mercenary who idled around the entrance of the grocery store.
He surveyed the inside of the van with lifeless eyes, then.
“…Hoo.”
Soon, he turned around without saying a word.
There was no doubt that he had recognized Paul Lucas’s face as a ‘customer’ of the grocery store.
Apparently unaffected by the storm raging like a blizzard, the enormous man roughly brushed away the snow piled over one side of the alley, then collapsed onto the ground, using a hard box as a blanket.
But.
Paul Lucas still noticed that Mikhail Romanov’s gaze remained fixed on him.
Gulp.
Paul Lucas was a man who did not know the meaning of the word tension, but.
Even he found it difficult to remain calm in this situation.
For now.
It seemed best to move the van first.
* * *
Boredom was another expression of peace.
There had once been a time when I felt severe professional frustration because no customers came to the grocery store, but.
Now I was beginning to miss that boredom a little.
Jingle-jingle.
“Good morning.”
“…Welcome.”
Was this how someone who had made a strange wish to the Monkey’s Paw felt?
I watched sharply as the person responsible for a considerable portion of my stress approached.
“Brr, it’s cold.”
The person who casually muttered the words that winter convenience-store part-timers hated hearing.
Paul Lucas.
For the past week, he had come to our grocery store every single day, without fail, exactly three times a day.
Morning, noon, and night.
Sometimes even in the middle of the night.
‘What on earth is he thinking….’
If he had realized that I was the culprit, he should have brought the megacorp security team and smashed through the ceiling─ (the rest omitted).
Yet the grocery store’s entrance and ceiling were still intact.
He was simply coming by so often that it was getting tiresome.
A grocery store employee could not exactly tell a customer to get lost.
Even though I knew he was suspicious, I had no choice but to serve him as conscientiously as possible.
As usual, Paul Lucas set various kinds of snacks down on the counter.
“Please ring these up.”
“…Yes.”
That cheerful smile of his was truly suspicious.
Since there were so many items, checking them out took a long time, and Paul Lucas spent that time noisily chattering about this and that.
“Oh, right. Have you heard the news?”
“What?”
Since we had been seeing each other so often, my manner of speaking had naturally become curt.
Beep, beep─.
Amid the sounds of scanning the item barcodes, Paul Lucas casually added,
For the record, this guy.
“I hear the protests by extreme technopolists in the districts in the twenties have grown quite fierce lately. When I think about that, life in District 49 doesn’t seem to have only bad points. If I were at the headquarters building, I’d have to keep heading out to suppress protests. Haha.”
He talked a lot.
Seriously, a lot.
“Ah, I see….”
“It’s widely known that our chairman at Veltech considers instrumentalist technopoly ideology important. Honestly, people are strange. Apparently, not creating or employing androids is such a problem in this day and age. And since I’m the senior executive in External Relations, I often have to give interviews on RBC 365 or CBS Channel News. Every time, they chatter away so noisily…….”
They say Aldous Huxley, the author of 《Brave New World》, warned that a dystopian world would arrive in which an excess of unnecessary information prevented people from obtaining proper information.
That was precisely why I fell for Paul Lucas’s ploy while replying without much thought with things like, “Ah-ha,” “Oh-ho…,” and “I see.”
“Come to think of it, androids these days really do look like actual people. A model identical to a famous actress was even released recently, causing quite a controversy….”
“Huh, that certainly sounds like a problem.”
“Well, you employ androids at the grocery store, too, Boss. Though I suppose you already know that.”
“No, it’s not employment, it’s just……”
My words stopped halfway through.
When I slowly raised my head, Paul Lucas was staring straight at me.
The small pupils visible through his narrowed eyes.
When the conversation abruptly stopped, the air inside the grocery store sank heavily.
I tried to determine Paul Lucas’s true intentions in bringing up the androids.
It was too simple to be a probe, but the timing was far too apt for it to be nothing.
Could this question be the reason he had visited our grocery store every day for a week?
Since allowing the silence to drag on would be bad in several ways.
I corrected what he had said first.
“Not the boss. An employee.”
“…Pardon?”
Paul Lucas wore a bewildered expression.
Looking at him, I shrugged.
“I’m not the owner. I’m just an ordinary employee.”
Then I continued with the rest of my excuse.
“And if you consider the order of events, that android was here at the grocery store before I was. So it’s my senior.”
It wasn’t technically an android, but a turret.
In any case, there was no lie in what I had said.
This was a world where people could read physical signals and determine the true intent behind another person’s words.
A way of speaking that hid a lie inside the truth flowed out naturally.
“…Oh, is that so?”
“Why? Does it happen to look like an android you know?”
“Haha, no, that’s not it.”
Along with his awkward reaction,
the conversation quickly moved on to the next topic.
And at that moment.
I became certain that Paul Lucas did not know everything about the ‘contents of the megacorp truck.’
If he knew about Nova’s existence, there was no other reason for him to continue pretending to be a customer at the grocery store.
A paradoxical situation in which the pursuer did not even properly know the identity of the object he was looking for….
‘There might be a real pursuer separate from him.’
If so, what was Paul Lucas’s objective?
Why was he interested in the grocery store?
It couldn’t be mere curiosity.
‘…Tsk.’
There were too few clues to judge the situation.
The checkout, which had felt so long, finally came to an end.
“Oh, thank you.”
“See you next time……”
If possible, don’t come again.
I said it silently to Paul Lucas.
A customer like this was better off not existing at all….
I gave a small bow and sighed as I watched Paul Lucas’s back disappear.
Nova….
‘More precisely, I’ll have to find out later what the android containing Nova really is.’
In any case, my head hurt.
* * *
Paul Lucas was well aware that Abel Anderson’s breathing had slowed by several beats for a moment.
It happened while they were discussing the topic of ‘the android at the grocery store.’
He had merely prodded the suspicious android whose model could not be identified.
‘…There really is something there.’
That reaction.
It was the reaction of someone hiding something.
But….
‘The chairman of Veltech and an android….’
The information did not connect at all.
The man was known to hate androids intensely, after all.
‘…Could it be?’
Of course, Paul Lucas had instinctively come quite close to the answer.
‘No, that can’t be.’
But he soon shook the thought from his head.
The idea that a megacorp chairman had sent a corporate security team to District 49 just to hide and find his own custom android was absurd even to him.
Sometimes the truth was more ridiculous than a lie.
‘…Hot Dog Man.’
What on earth are you hiding?
Paul Lucas frowned.