Étude of Humanity

Chapter Eighteen

Sayre always thought that home is where the heart is. It's something that will be unchanged for as long as my heart will be strong—like you can always come back to it even when you're at shambles than shambles itself.

That's not the case now.

The "home" that was in Sapporo is no longer.

My home's now this little bubble free of anything obnoxious—I'm talking about my little house unit on the outskirts of Nevada. But even I only have less than an hour worth of time here in a single day since I have to report myself to MAME in a rather punctual time.

Unlike my varying routines exchanging with mama back then, my routine from here on out is straightforward and unchanging: taking a bath, wearing a black dress (as always), a classic breakfast, and driving away with a stylish muted red Bond Minicar Mark F that I happened to loaned from MAME. Actually, I secretly modded it to take automatic transmission instead of manual and tinkered the gearbox.

Sayre originally wanted to loan a motorcycle, but goodness it would be funny to see a childlike figure maneuvering a motorcycle in a highway.

But anywho, that's that for Sayre's routine everyday. In fact, I don't know if I deserve calling this little bubble of mine my "home." I barely feel intimate about it compared to what was my home back in Sapporo with mama and papa while here, it's as if I'm forced to live. If any pessimistic yet smart person would look at my everyday routine, they'd call it a linear constant.

Mr. Killer was supposed to be the one picking me up from home and all the way to the facility, but his whereabouts are unknown—even Enterprise doesn't have an idea nor any of the people in the Skeletal Division. Okay to be honest, Sayre is scaredy-scared interacting with everyone there.

Later, Sayre arrived once again at this metropolis out in the desert and parked inside. From the lobby, I headed for the East Atrium. It's still very early in the morning, so there's little to no people around the East Wing. As usual, I went to our place.

"Morning..."

Perhaps Sayre hadn't described how the room looked like. From the door on the bottom-left corner is a little living room of some sorts with couches and a coffee table. To the top-left is a kitchen with a dining table. On the bottom-right is a single computer set with a TV. And lastly, the top-right corner of the room has a door linking to our workplace of some sorts.

I walk to the kitchen corner of the room and brew some coffee. While that's that, I walk ahead to the door linking to our workplace. I was surprised when I glance at the long and dark room noticing something was off the hooks!

"Brbrbrbrr..."

"Wha—Yukki-chan! Wake up, wake up! Are you okie-dokie?"

"Mmm..." she raises her head from using her arms as a sort of pillow, looking at me drowsily, "O-oh, good morning Miss Sayre..."

"Wha...? You're unusually early or did you stay up this whole time?"

Yukki-chan sits up straight and properly, "Ah! Well, news got out from the HR Division that there's an occurring incidence of software incompatibility across machines. I-It's like a domino effect!"

"Software incompatibility..."

This looks like a familiar incident.

"Here's the thing, I looked out to the debugging console of each of the machines, they all simply printed out an error about architecture compatibility, ranging from database applications to IRC and critical-company ones. Perhaps you can take a look for yourself, Miss Sayre."

Sayre went ahead and took over her seat, scanning through the logs to see if it's anything out of the ordinary, until I eyed at one particular log line: