Mère

Three

Kosei Mori sat at his desk, staring intently at a holoscreen. His office was a mess, dimly lit with papers scattered around the floor and furniture, buckets of flash drives and CDs pushed against the wall, accompanied by a cardboard box of electrical cords that hid in the corner of the room. Dust had settled into the area long ago, and continued to pile up as days and months went on. 

He was intently gazing at actions between the two Mère, Jitsuko and Hiroka, who chatted together, all of their actions unprogrammed and unexpected. With a sudden swift movement, he stood, his arm swiping the holoscreen off the desk, and it crumpled to the floor, its translucent images flickering away as Kosei let out a howl of frustration. Immediately he was pacing the room, his mind busy with ways that he could fix this error. 

It had been alright when it was only the two flaws that had occurred, the two odd  Mères out who had somehow escaped. They meant nothing, they could be forgotten. But three now? Three?! This meant that the error that was causing the consciousness was repeating himself. He had been hired because he was the best of the best when it came to such issues as this, but he no longer knew how to fix it. These characters were no longer just programmed role models, they were people.

He was positive that he could not fix these errors, and he was positive he didn't want to. But at these thoughts came the matter of his job, and of his daughter, Eiko, who he loved more than anything. He needed money to support her, to protect her, and if he didn't keep his job he'd have to give her back to the orphanage, a place that she had been returned to far too many times by other neglectful and cruel guardians. 

Kosei could not lose Eiko. That was not an option. 

He sat back down at his desk, picked up his holoscreen, tapping it several times to make it turn on, and began entering several codes into his computer. They were simple tests to make sure it would function properly after being swiped to the floor, and they all immediately proved positive: the device would function properly. At this, he frowned, as he had been hoping that breaking the computer would allow him to skip the problem at hand, and procrastinate as he fixed the holoscreen. Instead, he steadily began to fade into a stream of work, messaging the council of the errors, programming in precautionary codes to the rest of the Mère to avoid any more mistakes, checking in on Jitsuko and Hiroka to be sure that they would not cause any new issues. 

A brief memory of Atsumi flashed through his mind, of the day that she had came up to him, begging him not to hurt Hiroka. She had only been five, and Hiroka had been her favorite Mère of all, so she had screamed and thrown fits because she didn't want Hiroka to be deleted. Kosei flinched at the memory, telling himself like he often had to that he must not think of Atsumi, who had died only a year later, a punishment from the government for Kosei's own misbehavior. 

'Perhaps,' he thought, his mind tuning out of his work, 'Ariza is not as good of a place as people think. The system is fragile, and some morals of the government are questionable. Children are often considered items, and not people...'

He sighed, tapping his holoscreen to turn it off, and rising from his chair, the one that spun around so that Eiko could play with it whenever she spent a day with her father. She loved that chair so much, and Kosei had enjoyed spending hours just watching her as she twirled, made herself dizzy, and then beginning to twirl some more. 

With a look around the dusty office, Kosei walked to the door, and headed out, taking an elevator to the exit of the building, quickly heading to the streets once he had reached the lobby. He called for a cab, and gave the man thirteen dollars to take him home, listening to old music from the twentieth century, his favorite era of time, with his outdated headphones. 

The cab driver turned to him when a stoplight appeared, "I find it kinda odd, ya'  know," he said, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, "that some guy just came outta one of them fancy buildings in a real nice business suit, and he only got these real big, millennium-old earphones."

"Headphones."

"There ain't no difference!" He nearly spit out his cigarette, "and that ain't what matterin' here, is it?"

"Well if you're curious about the headphones, then you must know that I find they are far more comfortable then today's brands, and have about the same quality. But if you want to question something, think about the fact that the people of this world have been using taxi cabs for over a thousand years now, and the design for them has not changed one bit, nor has traffic laws. Is that not at all worth a bit of thought?"

The cab driver frowned, "I'm just sayin'," he mumbled, and turned back around in his seat.

"Also," Kosei added, "I do believe it's illegal to be smoking in a public vehicle."

"Bah, it's an electronic cigarette. Don't go gettin' yourself in a big panic."

"Ahh," Kosei nodded, "alright then. Just take me home, my friend, and I will be out of your hair for today."

"Only for today than, huh?"

"Well it seems that I tend to reappear quite frequently in front of several individuals who see me as a token of bad luck."

"Bad luck? Whatcha' do to be known as bad luck?"

Kosei smiled, "I killed my wife."