Mardock Scramble

“Well, I think I know how you feel, at least. Right now you’re angry. Very angry. And irritated and also embarrassed. Mortified. That’s what you smell of, anyway.”

–Smell?

“Body odor. A mouse like me can read emotions through body odor. Didn’t you know?”

Balot squeezed the crystal tightly and started prodding it with her fingertips. Violently. And full of grief.

And then Oeufcoque did indeed understand Balot’s feelings.

“Oh, sure, sorry. If I’m absolutely honest I can’t tell exactly how you’re feeling. I don’t really have the imagination to comprehend it. I’m not a woman, after all, or even a human.”

Balot found that her feelings were calmed down somewhat by Oeufcoque’s words.

–I think you’re kinder than a human, and more humble too.

Oeufcoque was now attuned to Balot’s change of heart, as if he were sniffing everything up. He noticed the chemicals secreted from her skin, the change in her pulse, and most of all the change in atmosphere.

“There’s a cafe just above us. We should be able to get some work done there.”

The Internet cafe that Oeufcoque was talking about was on the top floor of the department store.

They could see the harbor city sprawled out in a mess down below and farther in the distance the thin line of the sea.

The seats were set a comfortable distance apart, perfect for getting down to some work.

When the waiter came over to take her order, Balot ordered a cappuccino by pointing at the menu, and then opened up the laptop-style monitor embedded in the table.

She was about to connect to the net but then she stopped herself.

–Do you mind if we talk for a while about my new hobby?

They’d completely forgotten about this since the spy camera incident. Oeufcoque cheerfully agreed.

Balot took her PDA from her bag and lined up the six colors of markers alongside the instruction booklet for the CG fossils. She chose the yellow and marked one of the words in the heading of the manual.

Then she snarced the PDA and brought up the word that she had just highlighted. The name of a large spiral-shaped shell. As she read the manual she entered a rough commentary into the PDA, adding her personal impressions. The same color as agate, or If these were still alive I’d like one as a pet, that sort of thing.

–I’m going to make a dictionary. My own original.

“Brilliant. When you grow up you could become a linguist, or a poet.”

–Well, I always wanted to go to school and have a dictionary like everyone else. The sort of school that children like me go to. So this is instead of that. My own self-study classroom.

“And you could still go to school. As soon as this case is closed we’ll apply for re-enrollment.”

–Won’t work. You need both your parents’ signatures, Balot replied, bluntly.

–Children who don’t have any get put in the Welfare Institute. I don’t want to go back there.

“But aren’t both your parents still alive?”

–They don’t think of me as a child. Not their child, anyway.

She informed him of this without stopping her hand that was holding the marker. Wordlessly. As an electronic signal.

Balot stopped writing only when the young waiter came over to bring her the drink she’d ordered.

“Is it a report you’re working on, miss? For school?” the waiter asked. Balot nodded ambiguously. The waiter laughed, showing the whites of his teeth. He pointed at the monitor on the table.

“You can look up almost anything on this thing. This cafe has access rights to the library, you see. The official time limit is two hours. But if you want an extension, just let me know. I might be able to sneak you one.”

Balot touched her choker so that the young waiter could understand her next words:

–Thank you. If I need an extension I’ll be sure to ask.

The mechanical sound she produced to answer him caused the waiter’s face to stiffen very slightly.

At least the waiter was a straightforward enough young man. He wasn’t the sort to start thinking in terms of If you took the device on her throat away from her she wouldn’t be able to speak.

Instead, he inevitably came to a different conclusion. He shrugged his shoulders and stood there somewhat embarrassed, as if he had accidentally offended her in some way.

Balot put the things that were out on the table back into her bag. The waiter watched this before eventually being called away to attend to another customer. He wasn’t a bad youth. It was just a question of pride. The youth’s, and Balot’s.

–Let’s get down to some work, said Balot.

Oeufcoque turned with a squish into a mouse and jumped on top of the table. Checking that the waiter wasn’t looking his way he made another turn, this time into a plug-in adaptor device for a computer.

“Try me out.”

She took a cord from the side of the monitor that up until that moment had been showing a floor plan of the department store, and in a moment the screen went fuzzy.

Through Oeufcoque’s efforts they connected from the store’s secure net navigation to the much wider- ranging user services of the outside world.

“Through the Broilerhouse, we’ve managed to suppress your personal information that Shell-Septinos forged. In particular, any attempt to hack into your residential ID is now a serious crime. For access privileges you need thirteen different types of password combined with a physical key—in other words, we’ve made it so that no one has access to your personal data without me.”

As she watched the screen in front of her being decoded layer by layer, she suddenly remembered the rooms in the hideaway. The room that you could lock from the inside at night.

There were two locks on it. One was the electronic sort on the door knob, and the Doctor could also open this from the outside. The other was a chain, and this was purely Balot’s. Of course, both Balot and the Doctor knew too well how little use a chain on a door was in this city.

But this chain is made of a special alloy and a unique textile, the Doctor said. It can’t be broken easily. Definitely not. Because Oeufcoque made it himself. That comforted Balot. A chain that was Made by Oeufcoque. The chain caused the door to close perfectly, with no gaps or cracks.

“Right, I’m now about to check the entries one by one. Okay?”

Balot placed her hand on the adaptor. She thought she could feel Oeufcoque’s pulse in her palm.

–Okay.

She took a deep breath, then snarced Oeufcoque.

The truth was unbearable. She hadn’t realized just how much her life had been graffitied over.

Her birthplace, date of birth, names of her parents, family tree, personal history, address, telephone number, usage records for her cash card, log of her access to the net, questionnaires from department stores and online shops, mailing data, contents of letters to her friends.

All lies. She realized just how abnormal this Shell-Septinos must be to manipulate another person’s existence according to his whim in such precise, meticulous detail.

And moreover, this wasn’t just any old graffiti: it was beautifully done.

It was a cruel veneer, as if to emphasize the ugliness of the original, of what had gone before.

Oeufcoque highlighted certain entries on the monitor from various pages, and each time he did so Balot snarced Oeufcoque and made a separate copy—with her true details added—into individual reference files.

Like unearthing fossils from underneath a beautiful display of ostentation.

Balot tried to remember the first time—and indeed the last time—that she had accessed the data. The very act that triggered the events that caused Shell to burn her to death. Was she grateful to the man who had made