Chartreuse || ONC 2022

▪︎ Digi Log 8 ▪︎

The Chartreuse Factory
Micro-Oz, Neo-York
07:42

Saito hummed a melody from his native country while the line supervisor paged the factory floor for the employee named Trip.

"Should just be a minute," the supervisor promised.

"Mmm," was the serene reply.

Saito waited with practiced calm, surveying the production floor from the large elevated window in the supervisor's office. He paid no mind to the workers who stared shamelessly up at him as they walked by.

A young man entered the office. He was tall, lanky, and seemed almost brittle in the way he hunched his shoulders and wrung his hands. Blackish soot stained the cuffs of his uniform coveralls and his nailbeds. With a look of awe mixed with apprehension, he glanced at the supervisor, then at Saito, then back again.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," the supervisor said. He grabbed his hard hat and a metal clipboard and made for the door. "Take as long as you like. No one will interrupt you. I'll see to that."

The door clicked shut behind him.

"Very accomdating," Saito remarked.

"Yeah, well, he ain't no fan of Big Sister," the lanky man said. "He wants her gone, same as the rest of us. Even if he won't say so out loud."

"Ah. Sou desu ka. You must be Trip-san," Saito said. He appraised his interviewee's considerable height and tidy cropped black hair. "My client, Ms. Herdeem, said you would be expecting me."

"Yeah. Yeah, I was," Trip said. He seemed to be just as enthralled by the samurai as were the other workers Saito had observed. "She said you'd want to ask me about Big Sis 'n Co."

Saito almost smiled. "Yes, I do."

Trip nodded slowly. His eyes roamed Saito's traditional hakama and kimono and came to rest on his pair of swords. "Galactic. Yep. 'Course... But, uh, can I ask you somethin' first?"

"By all means."

"How are you still alive?"

Saito laughed. He received this question often.

"I'm serious, though!" Trip insisted. "You were fighting in a war during the First Forgotten Era. There are scraps of history books — actual books — that tell your story. Body mods didn't even exist back then, but here you are, lookin' twenty-five, if that! How? How are you still alive?"

"Well, technically, I'm not."

Trip blanched. "Say what now? You ain't no ghost."

"No, I have a physical body," Saito confirmed. "But the devil's in the details. I am not, as you said, 'still' alive. It would be more accurate to say I am alive again. You see, about ten years after the war you mentioned, I was mortally wounded in a battle with a ronin. A rogue samurai. A Buddhist monk said the universe was not finished with me, and he transferred my spirit into a Dogū."

"A dough-gooo?"

"Close enough. It is a humanoid clay figurine, created for the purpose of housing a mortal spirit. For a time. When the monk found a suitable replacement body, he transcended my spirit from the Dogū, and I, Saito Haijime, was born again."

"So...you're a reincarnation?"

"An oversimplification, but yes."

"Fried gigs," Trip murmured. "That's cray, man. Hashtag cray."

The disembodied voice of Alniscient sang out all around them. "Cray. Not trending."

"I didn't mean to say that!" Trip snapped at the OS. "Damn, Al! Relax."