173
I lived in Lapis’ maintenance room for a day. There were a lot of unused monitors, terminals, and computers there.
Knock, knock.
I gathered all the monitors with wires around one table. For long-term data collection, a monitor with a physical display was better than a hologram.
I printed out the data I had collected last night on several monitors. All that was left was repeated review and comparison.
The killer has been posting murder scenes consistently for the past few years. I have only selected the school calendars that match the date and time of the photos. Especially since the vacation period is a public notice, I was able to filter out many schools that did not match. This task can be left to the AI chip embedded in the computer.
I looked at the schools I had chosen.
‘It must be a strict private school for the upper class of Border City. The postings are posted on Sundays at the earliest, and Mondays and Tuesdays at the latest. They committed murders and posted them on the weekends. Children of the upper class or wealthy class of Bellato who attend dormitories with restricted movement. Judging from the frequency and dates of the murders, they must have let out all the pent-up desires they had been holding back during vacation.’
The outline of the killer appeared in my head.
He pursues his own aesthetic and is very vain. Even in the short sentences of his posts, neat grammar stands out, and the use of advanced vocabulary is also occasionally revealed.
Assuming it was a student’s schedule, the killing cycle was very regular. Just like eating at a set time. He must have his own rules.
Click.
My concentration was broken when the lights in the maintenance room came on. Lapis, who had gone to sleep, had come to work.
“You’ve been here all night, right? You should eat something. You’ll feel weak later.”
Lapis put the bag of Jafar Burgers down next to me.
“It’s almost the final stage of work. If I stop working in the middle, I won’t be able to sleep properly.”
I took out the burger and manipulated the monitor screen with one hand.
“Because of Akes Victima?”
Lapis also took out her burger and said. She also knew about Archie’s Victory. After all, I’m not the first Archie’s Victory user hired by Boss Japha.
“That’s true, but that’s just my temper.”
I ate the burger, munching on it. The bread was delicious and the meat was tender. The complex, entangled flavors thickly coated my tongue and went down my throat.
Even though I ate it quickly, I could still taste the flavor. It wasn’t for nothing that Jafar took over Border City with his food service business.
“I don’t know what the detectives hired by Lord Japa do… … but they all don’t end well.”
“I want to say that I am different, but I can’t guarantee everything in the world.”
I muttered and put the straw in my mouth. The taste was strange, so I looked at the packaging and saw that it said, “New Bam Bam Drink”. It was said to be a nutritious drink made by boiling snake for over 100 hours and diluting the juice.
“But of all the people here so far, I think you’re the most skilled. And what you’re doing now, too. It’s not something you can handle in one night.”
Lapis said, biting into a mini burger. She swung her legs around while sitting at the table.
Crispy.
I picked up one fried snake skin at a time and chewed it while looking at the monitor.
… … Annoying. The fried snake skin was delicious. The fried food itself was nothing special, but the seasoning powder had a great flavor.
I sucked my thumb and concentrated. As I was looking through the posts, the first thing that caught my eye was the one-year gap.
‘After a year-long hiatus, he started committing murders again. From this time on, the cycle and pattern were completely different. He became loose and free-spirited. It means he had more time for himself.’
The expected one is ‘graduation’. He graduated from a school in Border City, left for a year, and came back. He must have missed Border City, where it was easy to commit murder in other places.
In Border City, there is no one to investigate the death of a lower class citizen who does not have a ‘security contract’. However, it would be different in places other than Border City. For example, the police and security of Bellato City, the capital of the Federation, would not be as easy as in Border City.
I input the conditions and left the rest to the AI.
match!
I clapped my hands and regained consciousness. Now all that was left was to wait.
“How does the body feel?”
After finishing her meal, Lapis hung the goggles hanging on the wall around her neck. It seemed like she was going to start working too.
Lapis was in charge of custom-making and repairing various mechanical equipment required by Company Jafar. In terms of the Empire, she was like a ‘dedicated weapons workshop’. Even the Equsians would often visit her to have their weapons and equipment maintained.
“Excellent. The sensation is light. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful.”
“It’s a body that was made to be easy to use. However, it’s a body that’s difficult to handle. I was able to make it that way because I heard from Master Japha that it would be used by someone who was ‘very’ skilled at using the body.”
Lapis emphasized the word ‘very’.
“Surely, with this level of fast signal exchange and good responsiveness, and high output… … the nervous system of an ordinary person would be completely burned out.”
Humans sometimes send signals to their bodies that are strong enough to cause their muscles to burst in times of crisis, drawing out superhuman strength. High-powered prosthetics must constantly send and receive such high-intensity signals. This is something that the average human central nervous system cannot handle.
“Can I pull out the internal records of the body?”
I nodded willingly and opened the terminals on my wrist and ankle, taking out four chips. Since these are my prosthetic usage records, there is nothing particularly secure or secret about them. Rather, I should show this data to the mechanic so that he can optimize the prosthetic further.
Most cybernetic bodies have extremely closed security structures. They do not use radio signals, and are moved only by brain signals. At best, they leave a few wired terminals for maintenance.
‘Since physical interference itself is impossible, there is no need to update security on a daily basis, and no matter how good an electronic warfare expert is at flying and crawling, he cannot hack the body.’
While I was thinking about this and that, Lapis checked my body records through a hologram. I could see numbers and graphs fluctuating without me even knowing what they meant.
“As expected, it’s excellent. It seems like it’s been used for several years, so the output control is natural, and the signal increase/decrease graph curve is particularly interesting. Even before cognitively increasing the output, the signal is strong and the bandwidth is being used widely. That’s why the signal is gentle despite the sudden output, so the load on the nervous system and the body is small. It’s as if it has the ability to predict 0.2 seconds ahead.”
“It’s not like I have precognition or anything. I don’t have any superpowers like the Force.”
“That’s why I said ‘as if’. Before you consciously realize that you have to fight, you interpret the situation in the realm of instinct and intuition and send the battle signals to the body. That means you treat the body as if it were an innate organism. The Empire is terrible in many ways. I’ve never been there.”
Lapis squinted her large eyes. There were no whites in her eyes, only black pupils, but her face was dense and there was no creepy feeling.
“The Empire is a better place than you think. If you’re a person who lives well in Border City, there’ll be no problem.”
My twisted patriotism came out of my mouth. It seems that my birth and environment are unavoidable.
“At Luca’s age, this level of prosthetic adaptation means that his limbs were removed and replaced with machines during his growth period. Furthermore, he discarded his perfectly healthy body and replaced it with a full-body prosthesis… … .”
Lapis, despite being a prosthetic creator herself, has expressed her aversion to full-body prosthetics. This is generally the case outside of the Empire.
“It’s a difference in perspective.”
“One day, the Empire will pay the price for so carelessly discarding the flesh it was born with.”
“It’s already happening. The Empire knows better than anyone how a full-body implant can ruin the mind.”
I smiled, my lips twisting. I know the nobility of the Empire well.
The Imperial Nobles, who are full-body, live twice their natural lifespan. However, they are not vital. As they age, their emotions become dull and their humanity becomes dry.
I have clearly seen what they do to maintain their humanity and emotions. They crave endless stimulation, and they are jealous of the flesh and blood they have discarded. Even those who seem normal have an excessive obsession with humanity. In a word… … humans are distorted.
“Don’t you regret it?”
“If I could go back in time, I would have made the same choice. If my personality had been weak, I would have become one of the corpses strewn about in the back alleys. My body was born with it, and I was weak… … When I die, it’s over. I have to live to regret or do anything. Only those who can afford it should feel shallow moral superiority.”
“Is this a shallow sense of moral superiority… … .”
Lapis bit her lip.
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“I don’t blame you. I was just saying what I thought. I have no intention of lecturing anyone, nor am I in a position to do so. I haven’t lived a good life.”
“There’s no need to blame yourself like that.”
Lapis comforted me. I wish I could laugh sadly at her comfort here. But I’m not that kind of person.
“I kill people lightly. I don’t feel guilty. If necessary, I kill innocent people, and I kill people who don’t like me. I have committed countless unnecessary killings. And I will continue to do so. What I have learned in life is violence, and I also know that it is the fastest and easiest. I have no intention of changing my way of life.”
“Then, if I don’t help you, will you be violent towards me too?”
“If it’s more effective, I’d be happy to do it.”
Lapis’s brisk movements stopped. She stared at me intently.
“Do you keep repeating mistakes even though you know they are wrong?”
“Lapis Lazuli of the Tarpa tribe. I’m sick of this kind of talk. Let’s not pretend to be innocent. You’re a body maker. You make high-performance combat bodies. This is a weapon that kills people. You can tear people apart with your bare hands.”
I turned up the power, gripping the edge of the table with my fingers.
Squeak!
The iron table creaked with a terrible scream.
“I am……!”
I stood up from my seat. The AI’s data collection on the monitor was just about finished.
“I’ll kill people while pretending to have a reasonable conscience, and you can sleep soundly, forgetting that the machine you created is killing people. That’s the trick to living in this world.”
The monitor displayed the personal information of a young man who had just become an adult. I focused on it.
“… … I have to go to work now, so let’s talk later, Luca.”
Lapis was looking at me with a gloomy face.
“Yeah, I’ll kill the human here with the body you made for me. Well, at least this time he deserves to die.”
I took the chip out and put it in my pocket. The monitor turned off.
I felt Lapis’ gaze on my back. She watched me until I left the maintenance room. I greeted her by showing only the back of my hand.
thud.
The door closed. I closed my eyes and opened them.
Damn it, fu*king Luca. You did it again.
I feel a sense of guilt. Did I really have to say something like that? I don’t know where I’ve sold all the sociability I’ve acquired by force. I think my personality has gotten more eccentric since I woke up in Border City. Maybe it’s because I have no one to control me.
Moreover, negative emotions like anxiety, nervousness, and depression never left me like a sticky shadow. But even without that, I, damn it, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.
Let’s be honest. I don’t like people who pretend to be nice. I don’t care if they’re really nice. I feel like a worse person when I’m around kind and nice people.
I wish everyone in the world were selfish and evil. A place where only those who deserve to die are scattered is heaven to me. It would give justification to my ugly desire for violence.
It would have been easier if Lapis had tried to use me instead. But it was more uncomfortable for me that she showed kindness and then worried and fell down.
… … I am also a person who is really twisted to the point of being delusional.
Thud, thud.
My pace quickened. I want to kill someone. The more trash the better. I would have no desire to kill anyone except my own mother, a human scumbag who would unanimously sentence her to death.
