Mardock Scramble

–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 café 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.