Ghost in the Shell Read online

  The Major scrambled down a damp stone staircase, deeper and deeper into the club’s gloomy lower levels. Once more she felt that strange stab of alien recollection, a fragment of the geisha synthetic’s memory merging with her perception of the moment.

  The stairs opened out into a narrow, ill-lit basement corridor lined with rusty metal lockers. The Major recognized the closed door at the hallway’s end from her Deep Dive. It was stained dark with something that could have been old grease or dried blood.

  She kicked the door open, but was brought up short. The ground underfoot suddenly changed from old, cool concrete to something uneven and overly hot. She stumbled, thrown off her gait. In front of her was the pagoda she’d seen at the intersection, when she’d glitched earlier. Only now the pagoda was in flames, showering her with scraps of burning timber.

  The Major was disconcerted by the vision. It looked real. Worse, it felt real, like a terrible loss that she could not comprehend. The pagoda vanished.

  In the pagoda’s place, framed in the gloom, she saw a shrouded figure, a man perhaps, a hood rendering his face invisible in the dimness, the black fall of a cape coming off his shoulders and outlining the rest of him in vague lines of shadow. He almost blended in with the ashes and rubble. He rose to his feet and said to the Major what he’d previously said through the geisha bot. “Collaborate with Hanka Robotics and be destroyed.”

  It was Kuze. The Major unhesitatingly sent three bullets into his chest, but they had no effect. Kuze melted away into digital rectangles, before disappearing entirely. He hadn’t been there at all. She’d been fooled by a hologram. Frustrated, the Major lowered her gun.

  “Major?” Batou shouted from the hallway. He’d heard the shots and burst into the work room ready for combat, but saw she was alone. “Hey.”

  Seeing the dispirited look on her face, Batou put a comforting hand on the Major’s shoulder. She might have said something about Kuze, but she was distracted by a beeping noise, the kind made by a smoke alarm, or a timer.

  The Major looked around. A number of tall metal cylinders were mounted along one of the walls. On closer examination, the Major thought these might be oxygen canisters. Each cylinder was equipped with a red light that blinked in time with the beeps. And on each one of the cylinders was a high-explosive grenade on a timer, jerry-rigged and primed to explode.

  The Major’s first reaction was a gasp of dismay. She burst into motion, yelling and shoving Batou through the gloomy space back into the hallway, but it was too late. Inside the room, the grenades detonated with a massive concussion, obliterating everything within, bringing down the ceiling. A swirling rush of smoke and shrapnel mushroomed outward, blowing the Major and Batou down the corridor, the fire rolling over them. Batou screamed, clutching at his seared eyes. Then thundering darkness consumed them both.

  5

  HUMAN ERROR

  Another stark transition occurred, from choking blackness to bright, blazing white light.

  In one instant, the Major was being smothered by the dark, enveloping debris, and in the next, she was lying atop an operating table, bathed in the glow of sensor webs and scanning modules. She blinked, fatigue indicators flickering and dying at the edge of her vision. Her neural linkages cycled through their reboot sequence and she was aware once again of the world around her.

  She forced away her dismay at the abrupt sense of dislocation and refocused. She was in Dr. Ouelet’s biomimetic lab at Hanka, being repaired. Her first instinct was to rise up, but an apparatus exactly like a ten-times-larger copy of the one that had mended her wrist was arched over her, its tools steadily working on her entire body. Her torso was open chest to hips, most of the synthetic organs and implants damaged in some way and pulsing variously blood red, white and black. There was nothing left of her right leg except the metal pole that formed its core, and her left thigh was open to its foundation. She could see Dr. Ouelet through the observation glass in her office one room over, working at a console to direct the repair machinery.

  “Where’s Batou?” the Major asked. She dreaded what the answer might be.

  But Ouelet’s reply over the intercom was reassuring. “In Enhancement, next door. He’s doing well.” She added with motherly reproach, “You took most of the blast.”

  The brief surge of fear that had threatened to well up in the Major’s chest fell back and faded away. She had been in this place and this situation before, more than once, and Ouelet was always there to put her back together. Still, she frowned, looking inward as her internal systems diagnostics brought up a dozen error readings. Her dermal plates were visible, much of the artificial skin badly shredded, torn ragged as if by the claws of some great beast. Internal circuitry in her limbs and torso showed in many places, exposed to the air. She wanted to get back to work at once, but it was going to take hours to apply a new layer of skin and for the hardware to reset.

  “I saw him down there.” The Major needed Ouelet to understand how Kuze had toyed with her and that it was essential she be back on the case as soon as possible, even though it was hard to put definite meaning to the events in the club’s basement. “It was like…” she paused momentarily, “he waited to see me.”

  “We synaptic-scanned you,” Ouelet said over the intercom, anticipating the Major’s concern. “Everything you witnessed went to Section Nine to evaluate.” She paused before adding, “You know, the scan… also turned up a number of glitches.”

  “They’ve been getting worse,” the Major admitted.

  “Since when?”

  “Since the Deep Dive.”

  Ouelet left her office and entered the operating room to stand by the Major’s bedside. “Do any of the glitches mean something to you?”

  “No,” the Major said, with more surety than she felt. “They don’t.”

  Ouelet took a moment before speaking again. “You’ve been inside the same shell as he has.” The Major’s Deep Dive had been within the geisha’s cyber-consciousness, which had also been entered and probed previously by Kuze. “That could have… very serious consequences.”

  The Major could hardly argue with this, so she said nothing.

  “You were not authorized to Deep Dive the geisha,” Ouelet reproved.

  “You’re disappointed.” The Major felt regret. There were few people whose opinions she valued, but Ouelet was one of them.

  “No,” Ouelet corrected her, “I’m worried.” She swallowed. “You’re not invulnerable. I can repair your body, but I can’t protect your mind.”

  This didn’t make sense. “Why not?” the Major queried. “You can see all my thoughts, so you should be able to secure them.”

  Rather than answering directly, Ouelet turned the conversation to a theme she often visited—that the Major had a responsibility to exercise self-preservation. “Try and understand your importance, Mira.” Ouelet paused, then added, “You’re what everyone will become one day.”

  The Major didn’t wish that day on anyone. Meanwhile, Ouelet’s words simply reinforced that there were no others like the Major, that there might never be others in her lifetime. “You don’t know how alone that makes me feel.”

  * * *

  Eventually, Ouelet released her and the Major dressed stiffly in her spare clothes, the surface of her mended skin still pale and moist where it was setting into place. Fluid link replacements in her joint servos repaired the damage she had suffered from the electroshocks and, as much as was possible, she felt whole again. The visions in the murky room, the explosion and the engulfing wave of dust—those things were fading already, as if they were someone else’s memories that she had only heard about.

  She made her way across the hall to the Enhancement Department, slowing as she approached, a fraction of doubt forcing its way into her thoughts.

  He lost his eyes? Batou had come down to that basement looking for her, and if he had been badly wounded, she bore some responsibility for it.

  She saw Batou through the window of a recovery room
. He was sitting up, his left shoulder and arm secured by a speed-heal wrap that held broken bones in place and allowed the replacement skin to take hold without risk of infection. His eyes were covered by a protective VR headset.

  “I can see you out there, you know.” Batou raised his voice to make sure the Major heard him.

  She raised her middle finger in response, her voice dry. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Batou smacked his lips. “Funny.” His tone was sarcastic, as if the Major had done something childish, but they both knew how glad he was that she was there.

  The Major entered the recovery room, and Batou opened up the headset to reveal what was underneath. After what she’d been told, she was expecting it, but it was still a shock when the medical module around his face folded open and Batou looked up at her. His kind eyes were gone, and she stifled a small gasp of dismay. From the side, it looked as though two short, flesh-colored gun barrels had been implanted in his eye sockets. Moving to look at him straight on, the Major saw that Batou’s implants contained multilayered cyber-mech lenses; the inside workings of each new eye bore a resemblance to a telescope, and had the function to match. They rotated and focused on her as she approached. The technicians had managed to replicate the blue of his original irises in the optical discs that now sat at the end of his eye barrels, which just made his appearance more unsettling.

  Batou had a notion of how he looked. “Say something nice,” he requested.

  The Major liked him too much to lie, so she went with an insult and a smirk. “You chose those?”

  Batou grinned. “They’re tactical.” This was true—there was no such thing as too much enhancement for a Section Nine agent.

  “Always for the job,” the Major teased.

  Batou shrugged and then winced. “What else I got?”

  She didn’t want to discuss the fact that neither of them had lives outside of their work. So she said something nice after all. “They suit you.”

  “Yeah?” Batou sounded hopeful. He’d gone for the full military package. “I got night vision, mile-zoom… and X-ray.” He gave the Major a sly grin. “I guess I see like you now.”

  If that was true, the Major thought, Batou was in for a hell of a learning curve. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

  Batou swallowed. He knew it would make her uncomfortable, but he still had to say it. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  He didn’t expect a reaction, nor did he get one. What the Major really wanted to ask was whether he’d seen anything strange in the club—a burning pagoda, perhaps, or Kuze’s cloaked image. But surely he’d say so if he had, and she didn’t want to bring up anything that might make a colleague, even Batou, think there might be something wrong with her perceptions.

  “Glad to see you’re okay,” the Major said, and headed for the door.

  “Major?” Batou called. She stopped. “Could you feed the dogs for me? I don’t want to scare them.”

  So underneath the bluster, Batou was afraid his new look was disturbing. The Major didn’t know how to counter that, so she just nodded and said, “Any time.”

  Batou’s self-doubt was sincere but contained. After the Major left, he spotted a pretty worker seated at a console in the recovery room. He zoomed in on her with his new eyes, delighted by how well they worked and what they were showing him.

  * * *

  That night, the Major went to the alley where Batou had taken her previously. She had a bag full of butcher’s scraps, but this time, the only dog to come out of the shadows was the basset hound mix Gabriel. He trotted up to her, tail wagging, and whined to be petted even after she’d put the meat down for him.

  The Major knelt. At first, she wore the frown that was her usual resting expression. The little dog was happy with the attention. He didn’t care whether she was fully biological or in a synthetic shell, he just wanted the touch of a friendly hand, a friendly face to look into. That, she supposed, was what it meant to be human. Or in this instance, canine. She put her hand on Gabriel and smiled at him. The dog wagged his tail again.

  * * *

  A much less pleasant interaction was taking place in Aramaki’s office at Section Nine headquarters. The chief was alone with Cutter, who wore an expensive dark green silk suit; Aramaki was dressed in a grey three-piece ensemble that made him look frailer than he was.

  For the most part, Section Nine was Aramaki’s kingdom, but the reality was that Cutter pulled many of the strings that kept the unit in operation. The Hanka CEO was the living juncture where police work and public security intersected with commerce and politics. His presence in Aramaki’s office was significant.

  Cutter’s words were measured, but there was no disguising the fury behind them. “Are you insufficiently funded, Mr. Aramaki? Is Section Nine missing some critical resource?”

  The CEO knew exactly how well funded Section Nine was. Aramaki did not rise to the bait. He replied in Japanese, “We have everything that we require.”

  “Major is our most sophisticated weapon…” Cutter allowed himself a brief smile of admiration, “only if she’s intact.” In the next instant, he became accusatory, glaring at Aramaki. “And Dr. Ouelet informed me that you let her dive into a corrupted geisha.” Cutter still couldn’t believe that something so irresponsible, so foolhardy, so potentially disastrous had been done. Aramaki could have risked anyone on the team and spared Hanka’s single most valuable asset.

  She’d been connected to work, malware, viruses, trapdoors, glitches, and implants. If she was compromised, if Kuze had put code inside her, that would change everything. The Major was the prototype of the perfect soldier. If she was vulnerable to hacking and it got out, the reputation of Hanka Robotics might never recover.

  Aramaki didn’t bother to point out that he had not authorized the Major’s Deep Dive. He took full responsibility for any actions undertaken by his subordinates, whether he’d sanctioned them or not. Also, it would be shameful of him to do or say anything that might cause Cutter to take it upon himself to chastise the Major directly. That was not Cutter’s place, but he would not see it that way. Men like Cutter never did.

  Oblivious to what Aramaki was thinking, Cutter continued with his lecture. “You realize the supreme importance that Hanka represents to this government. Major is the future of my company. If you compromise her systems again, I will burn this section.”

  Aramaki gave Cutter the formal bow that a subordinate gave to a man of greater social stature. “Yes, sir. Mr. Cutter.” He paused. “But be careful who you threaten. I answer to the prime minister, not to Hanka.”

  * * *

  The giant digital ads continued to rule the skies of New Port City, even at night. “Digital democracy,” one proclaimed. “Enjoy your life again.”

  A male sports announcer revealed, “And in Contouren ball today, the Mangorea continue their quest for their third Contouren cup in…”

  A commercial jingle, an earworm that was the bane of all who heard it, sang out, “Playpod time, Playpod time…”

  In her apartment, the Major examined herself in a holographic mirror, running her fingers over her cheek and lips, trying to feel whether she could distinguish them from normal flesh, whether she could recall if the sensations she experienced now were different from those she had known before the shell. But she couldn’t remember.

  The Major had been to the city’s red light district dozens of times on missions. Now, though, she was here as a civilian. She wandered through the teeming bazaars and the alleys of the night market. The activity there never ended, only changed, with one set of vendors and hawkers moving on for the day and a different crowd coming in for the hours after sunset.

  A chill ran through her, and even though she knew it was only an emulation running from her biological brain to her machine-form body, it felt real. Suddenly, all that the Major wanted was to remember and to experience a connection.

  The holographic ads in this neighborhood promised every kind of sexual
experience possible. “No matter what your interest,” a female voice announced seductively over a billboard, “we have it all. Virtual to real, all partner robots are anatomically sound, sterile, and can be customized to your liking.”

  On the ground, a human prostitute shouted obscenities at a geisha bot, trying to get her to relinquish her patch of sidewalk turf.

  A male announcer promised, “Perform when the time comes—we’ll kill all your worries goodbye. New triozide bull formula gives you a natural…”

  A corner prostitute noticed the Major and beckoned. “Come here! With me!”

  The Major continued on, moving further into the night. Overhead, another talking holo-ad suggested, “Create your own beauty. Beauty enhanced.”

  And there, in a doorway, was beauty. A particularly exotic-looking prostitute was leaning there, tall and athletic, in her early twenties. The Major could see how she was attempting to compete for clients with the synthetics by adopting the same style of clothes, the same kind of elaborate shiny make-up that recalled the circular face of a porcelain doll.

  But something about her made the Major stop and walk over to her.

  “You human?” the Major asked.

  The prostitute was not offended. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  The woman’s name was Lia and she had no objection to going to the Major’s apartment. The two women sat down between the corrugated walls of the sleeping alcove, facing each other. Weak illumination played over their features. Their gestures were halting and tentative. The Major felt as if she was being carried along by a need that had long been buried in her, awakened now by something distant and bright. She understood that she was hardly the kind of client Lia catered to usually, but Lia seemed to have all the patience in the world.

  “Can you take that off?” The Major indicated the decorative rounded make-up patterned over Lia’s face, the fake aspect that made her appear less human and more synthetic. “So I can see your face.”

  Lia’s expression suggested that this was a request she had not heard before, but she was happy to comply. The Major watched in silent fascination as the make-up peeled from the other woman in a second, dead plastic skin. Lia detached the round, slick patch that encircled the lower portion of her face. Her glossy, over-colored lips faded back to their normal shade, looking much softer without their lipstick shield. Lia reached up and stripped away false, cartoonishly long eyelashes, self-consciously running a hand over her shorn scalp, smoky with a fuzz of hair. Moment by moment, the other woman brought herself back to her essential human nature.