Zero Sum Game (12 page)

Then: "Okay." That one word made her feel guilty. It held no anger or irritation, no parental steel for a child who had snapped at her father. It had been a plain declarative statement and nothing more. She heard the TV in the living room switch to a different channel.

She let out a sigh of exhaustion.

"Hina—"

The voice again. Hina dropped her uniform and jumped into the center of her room. Hearing nothing for a moment, she reached out and laid her foot on her clothes. A moment later the voice returned. "Hina, please stop—"

She brought her foot back, and the voice stopped. It seemed to talk when she touched her uniform. She got down on her hands and knees, crawled forward, and grabbed a handful of the shirt.

"Please, listen to what I have to say. I am not here to hurt you."

"You can only talk when I'm touching you?"

"The majority of my catoms are within your uniform, so in a manner of speaking, yes."

With trepidation, Hina put the uniform on. She noticed the itch she had experienced earlier, but it faded away after a few seconds. She finished dressing, complete with socks, and stood in the middle of her bedroom, unsure what to do next. "Who are you?"

"I'm a Claytronic Atom Mark 2 Military Armature."

Hina hadn't understood any of that.

"I am a battle suit," came the much simpler reply. "My function is to protect you. I tried to help you today."

"Tried to help…" She remembered back to the fluent English, the perfect math answers, and beating up four high school boys. "That was you?"

"Yes."

"Are you controlling me?" The thought scared her.

"Only to a minor degree. Mostly unconscious and reflexive actions. If there is an action you do not wish to perform, I cannot override your conscious control."

The explanation made sense but it didn't answer everything. "What about today? I spoke English fluently."

"I am programmed with multiple languages. I altered your vocal cords, mouth, and tongue to produce the appropriate sounds. You were speaking but did nothing to stop my alterations. As such, I continued to produce the correct sounds as you talked. Was that wrong?"

"No. It's just…kids don't talk that well, with perfect accents and pronunciation. I got…embarrassed."

"I see. Certainly, embarrassing you was not my intention. You were supposed to speak English, and I attempted to help. The same with the math problems in Hayama-sensei's class."

"You wrote the answers, but when I wanted my hand to stop, it did."

"Correct."

"And the fight, what about that? Was that all you, too?"

"No. You wanted to fight those boys. I simply helped you achieved it. I gave you the reflexes to do so, exerting only a finite amount of control over your muscles. If you had not wanted to fight, and ran away, there was nothing I could have done to stop you."

Hina realized the voice was right. She had been angry at the boys, wondering what she had done and why she had been picked as the victim. She admitted to herself that beating them had felt good; it wasn't like she had maimed or killed them. They had been bruised when she had left although a part of her hoped they had suffered something broken as well—a rib or an ankle or wrist would be fine with her. But she had stood her ground, and when the chance to get back at them had appeared, she had taken it.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I need your help."

A timid knock interrupted the voice before it could explain further. "Dinner is ready," her father said.

She remembered how she had yelled at him earlier and felt guilty again. "Have dinner with your father," the voice said. "I can tell you're hungry, I've been monitoring your biological signs. But, please, don't tell him what has happened, either here or earlier in the day. I promise I will explain everything later."

"Okay." She walked into the kitchen and found her father eating at the dining table instead of his usual spot in the living room. She sat down and said, "Thanks for the meal." She ate in silence in the kitchen as her father watched the TV in the living room, angling his chair to do so.

When a commercial aired she said, "I'm sorry, dad." He faced her for the first time since she had sat down. "I was changing clothes and you surprised me and…I shouldn't have gotten mad at you."

"I thought I heard you yelling at something. I was worried about you. Plus you ran in here like a dog was chasing you."

"I know," she said in a more snappish tone than she had intended. "And I know you were concerned for me. But…"

"But what?" her father prodded.

"But nothing," she replied. She ate the rest of her meal in silence. She knew her father had worked this morning after pulling a double shift yesterday, and he had still found time to make dinner. What had
she
done? She had spent time at a cafe. She knew he was being his normal self, but it seemed he was getting more protective of her after the divorce, like he had something to prove to her.

Her father ate dinner and watched TV at the same time. When they finished, she took their dishes, put them in the sink, and headed to her bedroom.

As she reached for the door to slide it open, her father said, "I'm glad you bought your uniform today."

Hina stopped. He smiled.

"That's a major problem solved. It's okay, Hina. I know you haven't had it easy since last week. I'm turning in early. Turn everything off when you go to bed."

"I know," she said.

"Of course you do. You're such a big girl."

He rose from the table and walked to the bath room.

"Dad," Hina called out, and he turned around. "Did Mother ever yell at you?"

Mitsuo chuckled. "Of course, all couples yell at each other sometimes. You can't be married and not ever get mad at the other person."

Hina thought about this. She remembered her mother getting angry at her father for some little thing he had done, or more often, hadn't done. She could remember only a handful of times her father getting mad at her mother.

"Did you ever yell at her?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Because you get angry at someone doesn't mean you don't love them. Or that they don't love you." He entered the bath area, drawing the curtain that covered the entryway.

Hina went in her room and lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. "Hina?" said the voice from earlier.

She gave a slight start, she had almost forgotten about the voice. She sat up and settled into a cross-legged position. "Yeah."

"Is now a good time?"

"Yeah. But before you start, what should I call you? Do you have a name?"

"My previous master called me Dolim. He explained it was the name of a childhood friend. He found it comforting."

The man in the shrine
, she thought. He had wanted her to have his battle suit. But he had given her a large piece of rubber, not a school uniform.
So what had happened to it?
she wondered.

"Dolim is a weird name. Can I call you something else?"

"As you wish."

Her mind went blank. What do you name a battle suit? She recalled the names of the cats at the cafe but they didn't seem to suit the suit.
No pun intended,
she thought. After about a minute of thinking, she still couldn't think of a name. "You're a voice in my head, so how about I call you Voice."

"Acceptable, if a bit unimaginative."

Did it sound a touch indignant? Hina thought it did. "Because of that, your new name is Voice. Live with it." When no reply came, she said, "You have a story or something to tell me?"

"I'm a battle suit, not a bard," Voice said. "I will attempt to explain my mission as clearly as I can. It will take some time."

Hina propped her pillow against the headboard and settled in. Voice continued. "Because I am inside your cells, I can manipulate your retinas and visual cortex. It might be easier if I were to showcase images along with my story."

Hina pulled her legs up and hugged her knees. "Will it be painful?"

"No. Imagine a scratch on a pair of sunglasses. There but not there, in a sense."

She didn't understand but nodded. "Okay."

"Please try to look straight ahead."

She stared at her plain white closet doors.

"I shall begin," Voice said.

CHAPTER 12

In front of Hina, as if launched by a hidden movie projector, an alien world came into existence. But it wasn't flat like a TV image; it felt three-dimensional like the rides at Universal Studios Japan. But crisper, more detailed, more
there
. She waved her hand in front of her face, but the planet blocked the view of her hand. It was disconcerting, but at the same time incredible.
There but not there
. Hina smiled.

The planet had dark silver-like land and a hazy purple sky. Voice began his narration.

"The Noigel were a spacefaring race. They kept to their own planet, which had a unique atmosphere. They had no off-planet outposts or colonies. The planet and its inhabitants are both called Noigel."

The planet disappeared. A being took its place, one of its arms held out to the side, in the pose used on medical posters and brochures. Hina took a breath to scream but remembered her dad sat in the next room. She swallowed instead. The being had plates of armor covering its major muscle groups, the texture and hardness similar to an armadillo's plating. Its skin was rough and bicolored: blue and red mottled the body. Its head was bare skin with twin slits for a nose and a mouth with four rows of pointed, crooked, shark-like teeth, two rows on top and two on bottom. It had no eyes, not even eye sockets. Beneath its chin, where a human's Adam's apple would be, was a second mouth. Surrounded by thick hardened skin, the lips revealed flat square teeth and a gray tongue. Its bare feet and hands had four digits.

The alien's body became covered in sparkling lights like fireworks and disappeared in a flash of white light. In its place stood a Japanese man.

"The military devised flash skins and battle suits. The flash skins are holographic environmental force fields that can project the likeness of any race. The force field filters out harmful atmospheric contaminates to help protect the Noigel. They thought such devices would be excellent for espionage."

The Noigel now wore a black suit identical to the one Hina had received. The alien had a piece of metal in his hand and bent it into a pretzel shape. The image skipped, and now the Noigel crushed a rock into powder with his bare hand.

"The battle suits are shapeshifting AIs made of catoms," Voice said.

"What's AI?" asked Hina.

"Artificial intelligence. Machines that can think for themselves," Voice said.

"Like the Terminator?" Ami had shown Hina the first movie. It had scared her half to death.

"Hardly," replied Voice. "Back to the battle suits. They gave the wearers incredible powers. The military hoped they could manufacture enough of them to overcome any enemy. But the project was too expensive, and government and public officials feared that such overpowering suits could be used against them. Production was halted and only a handful of suits were ever made."

The alien disappeared. A smaller image of the planet took its place. A moon orbited. Then the smaller body exploded. Chunks of debris shot in all directions and Hina recoiled in fright. Bright streaks hurled down onto Noigel.

"Noigel's moon was the primary source for energy and materials. Over mining and insufficient safety precautions caused its destruction. The meteors it sent wiped out entire cities. Scientists estimated every living thing would be wiped out within two generations. The moon's numerous impacts loosened the crust and mantle of the planet, so much that it would tear itself apart."

Noigel faded from Hina's vision, replaced by a vessel drifting in space. The ship was a hodgepodge of different geometric shapes came together. Long cables drifted from parts of it and several spired poked down from the bottom.

"Noigel was dying. The nations pulled together to save the remainder of the population who hadn't died in the initial catastrophe from extinction. Scientists recommended terraforming, but the technology wouldn't be ready in time. A massive ark was built and the whole of the Noigel population put aboard."

Hina looked at the ship in her vision.
It must be huge
. "Everyone is on it?"

Voice's tone softened. "There were stragglers, people who didn't believe the world's destruction was coming. They believed the news was a trick to put the populace under a single world government. Many stayed behind, no matter how much their families and governments tried to persuade them. Others were too remote to get to, living in technology-scarce zones. They were also left behind. The ark left Noigel, the only inhabitable planet in the system, and the planet became a barren wasteland unable to support life."

The view changed to show a crowd of Noigel milling about in a large room. "The governments and the people wondered what to do next. The ark could sustain them but not forever, they needed a planet. But the Noigel need a precise mixture of elements to survive, and finding a suitable planet is rare."

Another planet came into view, and it took Hina a moment to realize it was Earth. "But the work on terraforming technology had continued aboard the ark. Breakthroughs had been made. Scientists revealed that the terraforming catoms would work. But the ideal planet to terraform, the one with conditions most susceptible to change, would be ones that could sustain life. They found a suitable world for terraforming. Earth.

"The government withheld that piece of information from the public. They weren't sure what the people would think. To release the catoms would mean doing so on an inhabited world, causing genocide. Because of this, no terraforming catoms were made."

An image of Noigel fighting each other replaced Earth. "In the meantime, civil unrest, disease, and the struggle for resources were taking their toll on the population. The government was unsure what to do."

A handsome Japanese man's face appeared. "It had been Xilay Miir who had suggested the scouting missions. He is a high ranking agent in the Noigel intelligence operations. He goes by the human name Yusuke Shimizu. He suggested sending a few scouts with battle suits and flash skins to Earth while the ark scoured for resources. The agents could infiltrate the target, use Noigel technology and knowledge to build the catoms locally, then test them. If they failed and the planet destroyed, no one would know. If it worked, the government could spin it so that it seemed liked a miraculous find in the nick of time."