Episode 032| Shadow_001

???

That scattered heap of data restacked itself into a shape in front of Lika.

Still the outline of that thing — the three-fingered claw, the deep green scales edged in blue, those eyes. But something was different. A moment ago, when it stood there, the Instance had drawn it first, and even the grid under Lika's feet had to give way to it. Now it stood in place, a grade dimmer than Lika, like an image someone had turned the resolution down on, quiet, waiting.

It no longer pressed down on him.

Lika swept it with his Triggerer sense of direction.

[Object · status]
[Original identity: the contact target · terminated]
[Current status: retainable data body]
[Render priority: below Observer]
[Ownership: you]
[Awaiting: naming]

Ownership: you.

Lika stared at those words for a good while.

He'd written programs that obeyed, scripts that ran his errands. But those things had no eyes, wouldn't stand in front of him waiting for a name — least of all in the few seconds after it had tried to cut him open.

His legs were going numb from crouching, his breathing not yet fully settled. Rationally the whole thing was absurd enough to make him want to laugh: a man who'd never once been in a fight, in a space under a slab of ice that he didn't know counted as real, had just, with his own hand, turned a thing that wanted to kill him into his own.

But he didn't laugh.

Because those eyes were looking at him. There was no hostility in them; there was something he was even less used to ——

It was waiting for his order.

---

Lika suddenly paused.

When the system threw up that line a moment ago, the word it used was "Shadow."

The Instance could just as well have called it "data body" or "residual object," any cold engineering term. But the word it picked was "Shadow" — a word with a flavor to it, as if someone had named this kind of thing long ago and left it waiting for someone to come claim it.

Lika had never taught the Instance this word.

But this Instance, from the root directory to the walls to that .lks module a moment ago, was all written by the past him.

Which meant that on some day long ago, he'd already been planning this — keeping dead things, binding them to himself as his own — and had even thought to set the names in advance. So long ago that the present him had no memory of it at all.

His throat moved once; he pressed the thought back down for now. Later. The one in front of him had to be dealt with first.

---

Those words, "naming," blinked on and off on the interface.

Lika thought about just tapping in a few characters to be done with it. But his habit wouldn't let him — give a thing that's going to stick around a careless name, and three months later even you won't recognize who it is or what it's for.

Naming needed a rule.

He looked at it. It was the first thing this "Data Retention" had produced. What if there was a second, a third? He didn't know. But whenever he wrote something, he'd always left room for what came after.

Under the ice-crystal dome it was quiet enough that only his own breathing was left. His fingers moved once at his side, as if setting type on a keyboard that wasn't there.

In his head he tapped out a string of characters.

That wasn't a name; it was a definition.

Shadow_001 = snapshot(the contact target)

A shadow. The first. The numbering starting from 001 — that long string of positions after it, he left blank for now.

He pressed that string into that blinking line, "naming."

---

The interface lit up once.

[Name confirmed: Shadow_001]
[Data Retention · binding complete]
[Shadow_001 added to your shadow sequence]
[Current sequence: 1 / ∞]

1 / ∞.

Lika looked at the 8 lying on its side. The Instance had given him no ceiling.

Just then, the thing called Shadow_001 moved.

It didn't walk toward him, and it made no sound. The head that a moment ago had raised its claw to cut him down ——

it lowered.

The deep green scales edged in blue caught the light once as it bent its head. The three-fingered claw hung at its side, with no sign at all of meaning to rise. Toward Lika, it bent that back that a moment ago had pressed the whole Instance into giving way.

A bow.

---

The back of Lika's neck prickled again. But this time it was different from the chill a moment ago, looking at that light in the crack.

A moment ago this thing wanted his life. Now it bowed to him.

All that lay between was one line of characters he'd pressed in.

He'd copied, taken over, made his own more things in front of a screen than he could count. But not once had the thing taken over lowered a living head in front of him.

He suddenly understood a little — the fight he'd won down beneath the Rift a moment ago wasn't only a win. It was a taking.

He'd been alone too long; the people around him came and went, not one of them staying. Now this thing he'd just taken under the ice had become, of all things, the first companion who couldn't get away. Absurd. But standing there, somewhere in his chest that had been empty a long time grew dully warm.

---

Since it was his now, Lika wanted to see what was inside it.

He probed his sense of direction into Shadow_001's body — layer by layer downward, the structures the past him had written he could all read through: the resolution, the actions, that attack module read out from the root directory. Reading to the deepest part, he hit a wall.

It was those few fragments that had jumped out during the snapshot. The row of bent backs under the ice, that mark turned half around the wrong way, that syllable intoned by a woman's voice that he couldn't read.

He tried to open it.

[Fragment · read request]
[Privilege: owner]
[Result: cannot read · source unauthorized]

Cannot read.

He was this shadow's owner; even its raising its head, its bowing, answered to him. But those few stretches deepest in its body were locked even to him, the owner.

Lika's temple throbbed again, the same pain as before.

He drew back his sense of direction. This thing he'd hold for now. Usable, but not read through — he didn't like the feeling, but he'd spent more time living alongside things he hadn't read through than ones he had.

---

Lika pushed up off his knees and stood, his legs prickling.

He wanted to try something.

He made no sound; in his Triggerer sense of direction alone, he gave Shadow_001 the simplest command ——

Lift your head.

The head lifted.

Those eyes met his again, docile, obedient, without a trace of the killing intent from before.

Lika's heart sped up a little again. This time it had nothing to do with fear; it was a "this actually works" excitement he couldn't press down at all.

He was about to try another when a very faint line surfaced on the Instance's wall.

[Trial · Contact —— Passed]

Passed. That word the thing had thrown him before it swung its claw, the Instance had now stamped it itself.

Before Lika could think it through, Shadow_001 moved on its own.

It didn't wait for his order. It turned its head toward that split crack in the ice-crystal dome — the very direction it had looked, past Lika, before it went down a moment ago.

It stared at that crack. Stared for a long time.

Lika followed its line of sight. In that crack, there was still only a sliver of light that didn't belong to this layer coming through. Nothing.

But Shadow_001 kept watching there. The head that a moment ago had bowed to him, this time when he called it, didn't answer at once.

【Ch. 032 End · Inside the Instance · Rift Memory Layer 1, beneath the ice-crystal dome】