Editing City Series:Volume8a Chapter5 (section)

===Aoe’s Sight Mode: In DT Yard===

'''<Aoe’s Over Reload>

Aoe saw a large room.

This was the machine force command center on the Yard HQ’s 3rd floor.

The machine force command center was made of wood, but it provided the HQ’s central data, chain of command, and virtual armament management. The Yard was made up of the machine force, the strike force, and the gun force, but the machine force acted as the foundation that held it all together.

The same was true during the office work. All data was centralized in the machine force command center.

The command center was 30yds long and wide and had a single wooden pillar in the center, but a commotion was underway there.

The green uniformed Yard members were giving each other instructions, asking for data, and sending handwritten memos when Word Mail wouldn’t be fast enough. It was faster to circumvent the entire mail program and instead send all the memos flying around with a small floating object program. White paper flew rapidly around and people called out names.

But despite calling names, they spoke with their windows. They completed their work with a focus on speed.

They all had a single goal: exchange information on the yesterday’s NPC Body and determine who had modified him.

The center point of the voices and action was the desk on the south side of the central pillar.

The desk contained an ultra-thin monitor, a foot-long white testing device carrying a data trigon, and lots of documents and memos.

Telyb sat at the desk. Aoe stood by his side.

The monitor showed them footage of yesterday’s explosion.

The data trigon in the testing device contained the explosion Yuo had shrunk down within the shield.

Telyb watched the looping explosion footage with a hand on his chin.

“The data Yuo took during the battle tells us the knight caught in this explosion was an NPC body. But you said last night he Downloaded, didn’t you?”

“Mh.”

“And…you heard what she said in that Word Mail, didn’t you?”

Aoe nodded toward Monkey on his shoulder. Monkey nodded back and opened the message he had just received from Yuo.

She had already told him what it said.

She was asking about what she had discussed last night. However…

<The attached program is awfully big.>

The pie graph indicating the transmission percentage was still only at around 60%. The program would temporarily remove the restrictions on his attacks. She said she had sent it to him “just in case”.

He wasn’t just going to wait around.

So he asked Telyb.

“Hey.”

“Yes? Do you have some thoughts on this matter?”

Telyb looked back toward him, so he answered.

“What do you think that giant knight’s Download really was?”

Telyb adjusted his position in the chair and folded his hands atop his fat belly.

“That knight must have had the complexity of his subprograms boosted to something close to the level of someone’s real Lives. That made them too big to use under ordinary circumstances, so a Download was necessary.” He nodded. “You could call it a Pseudo Download.”

“How could someone modify an NPC Body like that?”

“It would be possible with Suedomsa’s Demigod Program. But…we have no proof.”

Telyb’s eyes turned to the wall clock. Aoe checked it too.

<So it’s already 10.>

“Time for the audience to begin. Which means Suedomsa has entered Akalabeth Bubezleeb’s castle.”

“Has the Yard station there said anything?”

“That Suedomsa and his bodyguards passed through castle security without issue.”

“If there will be an issue later, what would happen?” Telyb turned toward Aoe and Aoe gave a snort. “Hmph. Yuo said she thinks Suedomsa might be her father.”

“Can’t you wait until the open release for these questions?”

“Waiting isn’t going to solve this problem, you fool. Who are these bodyguards who entered the castle with Suedomsa? I bet one was a man in a white robe.” Aoe sat on Telyb’s desk and crossed his arms. “Not telling us the truth doesn’t make it any less true. What will happen if Algo and Suedomsa have met?”

Telyb sighed.

He slowly let out the breath and then spoke quietly.

“Then Suedomsa’s memory was probably restored.”

“Is it possible to restore his or Yuo’s memories?”

“It is. It just isn’t easy. Because their memories were only sealed away,” stated Telyb. He looked up, but not at Aoe. But when he spoke, there was no hesitation in his voice. “We sealed away his memories after he was badly injured. We felt guilty erasing his past, but we knew the Archon would be trouble if he kept his memories and turned against us again.”

His tone was plain and emotionless.

<Is this what will be revealed in the open release?>

“It isn’t just this. It includes Yuo as well.”

Telyb smiled bitterly.

“Probably shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered, scratching his head.

Just then, the command center door opened and a small figure rushed in.



'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

It was Fooblicky.

Several windows floated around her while she ran over with a piece of paper in hand.

“I’ve found it! I was just looking through the Lives data salvaged by the science team.”

A mouse raised its front paw on her shoulder.

A window opened in front of the pillar behind Telyb.

A lengthy character string appeared in the window.

Several pages’ worth of text were scrolling across the screen.

Some of the characters in the string were colored purple.

“These are the inserted diseased portion. It was hard to locate because it was distributed and networked together. And…”

She kept talking while the mouse on her shoulder raised its front paw and displayed the very end of the string on the window.

“Check the bottom line of the string!”

'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

Aoe saw a lot of text appear in the window.

The patterns of some Lives data were written out in 0s and 1s.

But some actual letters were tacked onto the very end of the binary. A message had been attached after a comment symbol.

The message was emphasized by its altered color:

'''It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! (Matthew 10:25)

Fooblicky nodded in the now silent command center.

“This is a distinctive trait of Suedomsa’s Demigod Program, Alter Ego. It attaches a bible verse to the created NPC Body as a form of divine protection. It’s been a while since I last saw it, though,” she spat out. “Beelzebul is also known as Beelzebub. Spelled backwards, that’s Bubezleeb, Akalabeth’s last name.”

Aoe considered what that meant for a second before clicking his tongue.

Without warning, Monkey raised a front paw on his shoulder.

The opened mail window had frozen. The program transfer had been cut off and a “receipt failed” message had appeared.

“The message from the castle was cut off? What does that mean?”

'''<Aoe’s Sight Mode has updated>