Itoh, Project - Harmony

“Really?” I asked. “I always thought it was the other way around. That the soul was just a function of the body—a means to keep it alive. Once our bodies find something more suitable to propagate themselves and are able to trade in these old souls, then it’s we who become the dead media.”

That caught him off his guard. The professor sat with a blank expression on his face for a few moments. Then he laughed out loud. “True enough! A very radical idea at first blush, but from the perspective of evolution, I’d say yours is more correct. Perhaps it is I who was caught up in an antiquated notion of the human soul as something sacred and unique.”

“The question is, if someone developed the technology to control and change human will, what would they do with it?”

“Tuan.” The professor shook his head. “I think, and this is just my opinion, but I think that most scientists don’t do research like that with any kind of objective. They aren’t thinking what they want to do with it. The research itself is the goal. It’s a challenge. Like the mountain climber says, they do it because it’s there. If there is an issue of scientific interest, they’ll look into it. That’s all the motivation they need.”

I stood and strode toward the door, not even bothering to pick my way through the piles of printouts that scattered in my wake. I stopped just before I reached the door and said over my shoulder, “Professor, I’m looking for Miach Mihie. Finding my father is just a means to that end.”

I left the lab behind me, feeling like I was getting closer to the truth than I had ever been. I could feel it in my bones. I was on the right path.

I didn’t need bobbing AR arrows to find my way on this one.

≡

Prime Inspector Os Cara Stauffenberg was not pleased with my failure to report my findings either to the Japanese police or to my own Helix Inspection Agency branch. She was on my HeadPhone right now, criticizing me in sentences carefully worded to avoid any offensive language.

“Don’t worry, I’m making progress,” was all I could tell her, which she followed by asking for more details. Her persistence made me feel like I had somehow unconsciously uttered the shocking words It’s private and now she had it in for me. Of course, that was just my imagination working overtime. Os Cara had no idea of my growing personal involvement in the investigation.

I walked, letting my eyes wander along the ground, grunting noncommittal replies to her questions as I made my way down the white walkway that led past the pink trees on the way to the university parking lot.

“I’m going to Baghdad.”

“What?!”

Though her voice was as smooth as ever, it was clear she was fuming just beneath the surface. Still, she managed an almost civil “Why Baghdad?” to which I replied, “Because that’s where my investigation is leading me. Neither of us has a whole lot of options when it comes to what we can say, do we?” I added. That really rubbed her the wrong way.

“Don’t think you can keep playing the Niger card over and over again.”

“Oh,” I said, “I intend to use that one till it’s worn around the edges.” I stared at the alias graphic my AR displayed in place of Os Cara’s real face. It amused me that our aliases looked so calm while we were down in the trenches, lobbing verbal grenades at each other.

Most people had the habit of looking down at their feet while they were on their HeadPhone—probably because otherwise they would get too caught up in the conversation and trip on something. It was such a common sight these days that hardly anyone paid it a second thought, but if someone from a hundred years ago slipped into our time, they would see a bunch of people walking around staring down at the ground muttering to themselves and rightly determine we were all in need of therapy.

I’m sorry, Miach.

Those words tickled the back of my mind. Something about the way Cian had been staring down at her caprese . In all the other AR archive footage of the suicides I’d seen, the act had progressed smoothly from what came before. People were just doing whatever they normally did, then they were finding a way to kill themselves.

Cian was the only one who had taken any time before the act, her head bowed, as though she were reflecting on what she was about to do.

She had been the only one to look down, just as I was looking down right now while I talked to Prime Inspector Os Cara Stauffenberg. Just Cian Reikado. Just her.

“Prime, we’re going to have to continue this from the PassengerBird. Something really important’s just come up.”

I cut the call before Prime had time to really lose her shit, and drawing on the access to local police records we Helix agents had been given as part of this investigation, I called up Cian Reikado’s phone records.

The day of Cian’s death. 13:16.

Just before she died.

As she looked down at her plate.

My spine froze. That day, as Cian sat across from me staring at her caprese , she had been on the phone with someone else.

I didn’t have to think too hard to figure out who it was.Cian had said her name, after all.

It was just hard to accept.

It was terrifying to accept.

A dead person—or at least, someone I had believed to be dead—calling my friend just before her own death. The record of that call from 13:16 two days ago blinked in the corner of my AR, quietly yet steadily demanding that I play back this message from beyond the grave.

With trembling fingers, I reached out and pressed the blinking entry on the list.

A voice recording opened.

Hello, Cian.

Long time no see. Thirteen years, huh?

I’m calling because I wanted to talk to you about what it means to be “good.”

I’m talking Good with a capital G .

What do you think it means?

It’s not about helping people in need or making friends or not hurting others. Those are aspects of being good, but they’re really just details. If you get right down to it, Good is the will it takes to maintain a certain set of values over time.

That’s right, maintenance. Maintaining a family, maintaining happiness, maintaining peace. It doesn’t really matter what you’re maintaining. All you have to do is keep something going that people believe in. That’s the essence of Good.

But nothing goes on forever, does it?

That’s why you have to make a constant, conscious effort to be good. You have to keep those branches spreading toward the sun. Good has to be actively maintained. Put it another way, that which you consciously believe in and maintain is Good. Even though that could be all kinds of things.

Too bad our bodies aren’t built for the task. People grow, then grow old. People get sick. People die. There’s no good or bad in nature because everything always changes. Everything goes away in the end. That’s what’s kept Good from swallowing up the world so far. That’s what’s kept people from growing arrogant with all the Good they’ve done, though only just barely. But now, thanks to WatchMe and medicules, disease and even regular aging are in the process of being eliminated. The value we call health is trampling over everything else. What do you think that means? It means that the flood is coming. We’re about to drown.

If it isn’t all Good now, it soon will be.

It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Miach Mihie’s voice. It was also, beyond question, her thinking.

There’ve never been so many people governed by Good.

There’ve never been so many people giving themselves up to Good.