080. Obedience (1)
080. Obedience (1)
The next day.
I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was a vaguely familiar ceiling.
Which meant it was not the ceiling above the bed in my quarters. I knew that one far too well.
But it wasn't one I'd never seen before, either.
Exposed concrete like a factory ceiling, with pipes tangled overhead. I had definitely seen this ceiling somewhere before—often.
That would be...
The Manufactory, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Krädel's Manufactory ceiling looked exactly like this.
But there was no reason I'd be opening my eyes in the Manufactory.
It was not as if a massive Legion offensive had overrun Krädel, forced us out of the living quarters, and left us sleeping in the Manufactory.
Things had been peaceful just yesterday.
...Or had they?
I couldn't quite recall.
That is, I couldn't readily remember what had happened yesterday.
The memories were there, but they felt like something from the distant past.
For starters, I did remember that the day before, I'd caused a huge incident trying to get on Alicia's good side.
To apologize, I'd gone to meet Alicia while she was on her evening run and learned about her circumstances. Not that she'd simply lost the Telescope, but that she'd been falsely accused and it had been confiscated.
I had suggested clearing her name through a reconstruction experiment, and Alicia had worked up the courage to face the truth. Then—
...What happened after that?
I closed my eyes and tried to recall while still lying down.
"...Huh?"
How should I put this?
It felt like my already-heavy body was being wrapped and weighed down by something very squishy and warm.
What is this, I wondered, glancing downward.
A blanket was covering me.
Was a blanket normally this heavy and squishy? That was a bit strange, wasn't it?
And more to the point—wasn't there something bulging inside the blanket?
When I carefully pulled the blanket aside, I finally saw what the soft weight was.
"...Alicia?"
It was Alicia.
Alicia was under the blanket, straddling me.
The moment our eyes met in that state.
"You're awake."
She greeted me nonchalantly.
I could not tell whether I was still dreaming or whether we had somehow ended up together in a hell that merely looked like the Manufactory.
That was when Alicia, seeing my confusion, informed me in her characteristically husky voice.
"Please rest assured. This is the Manufactory's attached recovery room."
"Attached recovery room?"
"Yes. Normally, only we biodroids use it, but this case was an exception."
I see.
Outwardly I appeared to accept this, but in truth, I understood nothing at all.
I thought that if I spent three seconds thinking it over, I would understand the situation. No such luck.
I turned my gaze, which had been scanning the surroundings, back to Alicia and asked.
"What exactly happened?"
"Pardon?"
"Me. Why am I here? And you—why are you so... stuck to me like that?"
We were not that kind of close yet, were we?
When I asked with that expression, Alicia retorted in a slightly faster tone than usual.
"To answer the latter question first, it is not that I am clinging to you because I like you, Commander. I am merely following Sumire's instruction that maintaining physical contact while in phase resonance with you is more efficient in several respects."
"Efficient?"
Alicia continued, ignoring my parroting of the word.
"As for the former question—why you are here with me, Commander—I would first like to confirm something. Do you not remember?"
"What?"
"I am asking if you cannot remember what happened last night."
"...I'm asking because I can't remember."
At that, Alicia's lips pushed out in a small but unmistakable pout.
"...You're telling me your memory cut out after only two glasses?"
"Two glasses? My memory cut out?"
What on earth is she talking about—
"...Ah."
I remembered.
I'd remembered.
Right. Me and Alicia.
The two of us had drunk together under the pretext of needing courage or whatever.
The liquor was Apple Reminiscence. It had been specially processed to about 30 percent ABV, enough to get both human men and biodroids thoroughly drunk.
In that situation, I'd blacked out after just two glasses. Alicia had polished off the rest and was thoroughly intoxicated.
"Ugh..."
"Let's gooo... to the Manufactory~"
Drunk on alcohol and the mood, we had amicably made our way there.
After that, we had dragged Sumire away from cleaning up and getting ready for bed, announced that we had "finished all the convincing," and left the eye extraction and Telescope fabrication to her.
Oh, and of course we hadn't forgotten to request a cultured replacement eye be made and fitted. I couldn't exactly live the rest of my life as a one-eyed man.
So that was why.
"..."
"Yes. It was safely extracted and replaced with a cultured eye. That is why you were resting here."
...Sumire could even perform surgery on a human male?
Of course, biodroid manufacturing involved work on the brain and nervous system, so Sumire had some relevant knowledge and skills. Even so, fundamentally, was this not basically amateur surgery?
Seeing my dumbfounded expression, Alicia added.
"She said it was her first time, actually. Sumire warned that the failure rate was close to twenty percent, but you paid no attention, Commander."
You really did something you'd never have done sober, Han Si-hu.
...And Alicia had done the same.
As she still clung to me, I noticed something subtly different about Alicia's left eye.
That is, how to put it.
It had come to resemble my own eye as seen in a mirror.
The color had changed to an emerald shade that suited Alicia, but the outline of the iris and the overall texture resembled my own eye.
And the monocle she always wore was gone.
Which meant.
"You exchanged yours too?"
"Yes. Asterisk Green, made using your eyeball as the base, has been installed successfully, Commander."
I see.
She had put it in.
"...Then have you tried activating it?"
"Pardon?"
"No, you must have tried. Common sense says so."
It was her first Telescope in five years.
Even just for performance testing, Alicia would have activated her sniping skill overnight.
And as had been mentioned multiple times, when the sniping skill was activated with the Commander's eyeball inserted—causing excessive stimulation of the sensory system—the biodroid would feel an intense sexual euphoria bordering on pain.
In short, she would feel as if she were giving her body to the Commander.
In that sense, last night, during the process of testing her sniping skill, Alicia had undergone a "(pseudo) first experience."
...The first experience was significant for biodroids.
Not merely because their brains were those of human women.
Of course, even for human women, the first experience was deeply, profoundly precious, and probably something they carried for a lifetime—but for biodroids, it was truly something else entirely.
When a biodroid had her first experience, she underwent a permanent change in her phase pattern.
Part of a biodroid's phase pattern would be overwritten by her partner's and would never fully revert.
Because of that irreversible change, a biodroid who had undergone the experience could no longer synchronize above a certain level with another male Commander.
Additionally, various psychological and emotional changes would follow.
...Well, I didn't know to what extent indirectly experiencing it through the Telescope would mirror an actual first experience.
Still, it couldn't be called completely meaningless.
In other words, she could not simply leave me for another man afterward.
"I'll take responsibility."
"Pardon?"
"I said I'll take responsibility. As your first man...!"
I said it with a cool face.
But Alicia made a truly fed-up expression.
"It seems you are under some mistaken illusion.
"To clarify that point, I have not yet activated the sniping skill."
"...Huh?"
Ah—maybe she wanted to try it sober, while we were together?
When I ventured that guess, Alicia scrunched up her face to the same degree she had when I'd barged in on her bath.
"Would that make sense? By common sense?"
"I think common sense says you would have."
"Then let me be clear. I have absolutely no intention of treating a mental experience with you, Commander, as something precious. If possible, I would rather get it over with while completely drunk so that not a single memory of it remains in my brain."
"...Then why didn't you just get it over with yesterday?"
I wasn't sure if she'd been as thoroughly blacked out as I had, but she'd been quite intoxicated herself, hadn't she? Alicia too.
To my puzzled look, Alicia answered with a sigh.
"I did attempt it, but Sumire canceled the attempt, so I could not."
"Why?"
"Because the tuning process for the Telescope was not yet complete."
...Tuning process?
"Sumire explained all of this yesterday... but it seems you have forgotten everything."
I'm somewhat sorry.
As I apologized with my eyes, Alicia explained.
"In short, it is the process of customizing the Telescope to my brainwaves, phase pattern, and other physical and mental characteristics."
"How?"
"Essentially, by engaging in various activities with the Telescope equipped."
With the Telescope installed, its precision would increase by roughly one percent per day.
Once the precision reached 100% in that manner, the tuning process would be complete.
After that, the Telescope would enter its normal "active" state and it would be safe for her to activate her sniping skill.
"So you can't use it at all before then? The Telescope?"
"The telescopic function is usable even now. Moreover, strictly speaking, it can be forcibly activated before the tuning process is complete. However, in that case, severe side effects will occur."
"Severe side effects... for example?"
"According to Sumire, sensory and emotional functions become excessively suppressed, producing a psychopathic state. Various other neurological and psychological problems can also occur."
I see.
So there was no choice but to wait a little over three months, then.
"Basically, yes. However, it appears that precision accumulates somewhat faster while I remain in physical contact with you like this, Commander."
"...Ah. So that's why you were stuck to me?"
"No. I would rather take the long way around than stay stuck to you, Commander. I am only doing this because Sumire instructed me to remain in close contact with you for about six hours to suppress the Telescope's phase-immune response.
"In that sense, it is just about time for it to end...."
The moment she finished speaking, something like an alarm rang out.
Alicia's PDA displayed the words "Time to Be Liberated from the Commander."
Having turned off the alarm, Alicia slipped out from under the blanket—truly as if finally liberated.
Yet even so, she didn't immediately hurry out of the recovery room.
Instead, still sitting on the bed, she asked with the expectant air of a large dog waiting for its owner to wake up.
"So, what shall we do?"
"Huh?"
"The re-enactment experiment."
...Ah.
That's right.
Alicia's decision to equip the Telescope was, naturally, not for my sake.
Whether the accident had truly been her fault.
Whether the death of that girl had truly been caused by her own negligence. Or whether it had stemmed from a conspiracy by the military, including her former Commander.
She wanted to turn that one-to-ninety-nine uncertainty into a definite answer.
To do that, of course, we needed to proceed with the "re-enactment experiment," as Alicia had said.
And for that re-enactment experiment, we needed to modify Alicia to be "in the same state as five years ago."
Of course, Alicia herself didn't know the method. She had only resolved to learn the truth.
In that sense, Alicia added in a sulky tone.
"...I recounted a long list of memories I would rather not revisit. I also accepted your body solely because I trusted your promise that you would handle it somehow. After all that, if you cannot recreate it properly, I will desert with my weapon."
Hmm.
If I said, "For you, Alicia, that was almost cute," the Phase Resonance Rate—which had probably only just begun to recover—would plummet, would it not?
Therefore.
"Want to come with me?"