Future Dust | Chapter 2 : The Advent

A familiar voice rang out from behind the bedroom door, accompanied by a knock-knock.
“Get up in there!”
Ken opened his eyes slightly. On his nightstand, the alarm clock glowed dimly, displaying bright numbers and a small clock icon indicating that the alarm had already gone off. Slowly waking up, the young man rubbed his eyes and came to his senses. Lying on his back, he tried to remember how many times he’d hit the “snooze” button.
His mother’s voice rang out again:
“Today’s time to go back to school, honey, don’t make me drag you out of bed…”
Back to school ! The words brought him back to reality with a jolt, and he jumped out of bed. He was supposed to go back to the Academy today. Sitting in a corner of his room, his suitcase had been packed the night before, thanks to his mother’s insistence. “One less thing to do”, he thought, counting the time he had left this morning. He grabbed a pair of pants and a sweatshirt and slipped them on as quickly as he could.
His mother called out again from behind the door:
“Ken?”
“I'm wide awake, thanks!” he shouted, flinging open his door and rushing past his mother like a whirlwind.
“Damn kiddo… You really need to learn to get up earlier!” she called after him.
But he couldn't hear her anymore from the kitchen.

Glancing at his watch—an old children’s model featuring a yellow character emerging from an eggshell—Ken wolfed down his breakfast in record time. After an equally quick stop in the bathroom, he said goodbye to his mother (“You’ll keep in touch often, promise?”) and his sister (“What are you doing in my room, you idiot?”), then rushed out of the apartment. The weather was clear, and his suitcase rolled easily along the sidewalks of his neighborhood. A bus took him to the nearest train station, and just as he was about to climb the stairs, he saw with alarm a train approaching in the distance. He hurried up the stairs two at a time, passed through the turnstile with a ticket (which his mother had made him buy in advance), and caught the train that had just pulled into the station. The car was nearly full. He squeezed his way through the passengers and wedged his suitcase between his legs. “Just over forty minutes left on the trip”, he thought to himself as the train slowly pulled away. He thought he might just make it on time. He was wrong.

With his nose buried in a book, he hadn’t paid much attention to the train’s route and was therefore surprised when, barely 20 minutes later, the train arrived at its final stop. Pushed along by the stream of passengers, he got off the train against his will and realized his mistake. In his haste, he had taken the first train that came along, forgetting that some had different destinations. This train’s terminus was on a branch of the main line located well before the branch Ken needed to reach. He had to turn back to get to the main line and continue his journey in the right direction.
He glanced at the schedule displayed on the electronic board. A 20-minute wait before the next train departed! He wasn’t going to make it on time for the first day of school this year… He sighed and sat down on a bench.

The next train took him back to the main line, and he waited for another train, making sure this time that it would take him to the right destination. By the time he finally arrived at the right station, he was nearly an hour late, and he still had to catch a bus to the Academy. Fortunately, the No. 22 bus didn’t keep him waiting, and 10 minutes later, he had arrived at the Academy gates. The campus occupied a vast expanse where cherry blossoms, modern buildings, and sports fields of all kinds stood side by side. Ken walked through the gates, which had been left open for the start of the school year, and immediately realized that something was wrong. In the Academy’s entrance courtyard, several ambulances were clustered together, and paramedics were loading motionless bodies onto them amid a chaotic commotion, sporadically interrupted by the siren of an ambulance arriving or leaving through the entrance driveway.
Ken gulped. He felt anxiety and adrenaline surging through him and stood rooted to the spot, as if petrified, for a minute that seemed to last much longer. He finally decided to make a move and walked toward the student dorms, where his room was located. Questions were racing through his mind. What had happened? Were there any survivors? Where was the danger? Was there anyone he could turn to? The rescue workers bustled around him without paying him any attention.
He arrived at the student dorms and saw another ambulance parked there. Two figures wrapped in emergency blankets were standing nearby, and he recognized one of them as Koji, one of his roommates. Ken hurried over to them.
“Koji, are you hurt?”
“Luckily not, I barricaded myself in the bathroom. Are you okay? Where were you?”
“On the train, I just got here and… what happened?”
“The campus was attacked; there are dead bodies everywhere. The medics are separating them from the wounded… I think some people were spared; they were targeting students and officers…”
“Who are ‘they’ ?” Ken asked apprehensively.
“The lethal micro-drones”, Koji replied. “A swarm of those things descended on the campus; I saw it from a distance and realized what was happening. I had time to hide. But not everyone was so lucky…”
“One of them exploded right next to my ear”, added the girl standing next to them.
She pointed to the right side of her face, which was covered in blood. Her ear was horribly torn in several places.
“It’s just my ear—I have a ringing in my ears—but it could have been my skull. The ambulance will take us to the hospital soon.”
“But who launched those drones?” Ken asked. “I thought the only ones who had them were the military…”
“I don’t know”, Koji replied weakly. “The police haven’t arrived yet to investigate… there are only emergency responders.”
They fell silent. Two paramedics had just emerged from the barracks with a stretcher and were approaching.
“You’d better go home, Fukuhara”, Koji said. “We’d all better go home, those of us who survived. There’s nothing left to see here.”
Ken nodded and slowly turned on his heel. A shiver ran through him as he turned back. He wondered what would have become of him if he’d arrived an hour earlier.

He made the trip home as if in a feverish trance. On the train, he decided he needed reassurance and wanted to talk to his mother about it, but didn’t dare disturb her during her work hours. It wasn’t that urgent. After hesitating, he simply sent her a message saying he was home and that he needed to talk to her about something serious and unexpected that had happened that morning. That would be sufficient. He also thought about reaching out to his old friends from the high school video game club. He wasn’t particularly close to any of them; they were more like acquaintances he hadn’t contacted in several months. Should he tell them about the attack? He might come across as an alarmist, and he didn’t like that idea. He decided not to do anything else and spent the rest of the trip searching the internet for articles about the attack. No media outlets seemed to be aware of it yet.

The situation took a new turn once he got home. Ken had turned on the TV and, sitting on the couch with his legs tucked under him, was flipping through the news channels, hoping to pick up clues about the attack. That’s when a news flash caught his attention.
“Numerous police stations were the targets of simultaneous attacks this morning throughout Tokyo Prefecture”, the anchor announced. “The dead and wounded are flooding into hospitals following what appears to be a coordinated attack of unprecedented scale.”
“Yes”, her colleague continued, “and none of the capital’s police stations seem to have been spared. According to survivors, the perpetrators of these numerous shootings are believed to be the ‘mummies’—the androids that police officers use in their daily operations—which have apparently turned against them. The causes of this turn of events are still unknown, and the wildest theories are already circulating online, ranging from a computer glitch to massive hacking or even a machine uprising. In any case, the situation is extremely serious, and the machines responsible for this carnage are still on the run. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is advising residents to stay home and has asked the national government to declare a state of emergency.”
Ken felt his throat tighten. He had a bad feeling.

It had started around 8:30 a.m. The police officers had just begun their shifts at the kōban* or out in the field, assisted by their androids, when the androids suddenly stopped responding to any commands and left their posts to head toward an unknown destination. Although some tried, none of the officers were fast enough to catch the runaway machines. None of them suspected for a moment that their robot partners were gathering by the hundreds across the city, in battalions of an army about to carry out new, deadly orders.

Shortly after that, bullets rained down on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters, the nerve center of the police force. Waves of androids had stormed the building, mowing down police officers within firing range, while terrified civil servants hid under their desks, hoping their robotic assailants would not find them. The element of surprise was total, and the casualties were numerous. Central police stations suffered the same fate, one after another.

The bloodbath came to an end late in the morning, when the androids fled the scene of their crimes and scattered throughout the city, leaving behind a decimated Tokyo police force, unable to maintain security in the metropolis. Reinforcements were called in from Greater Tokyo, but soon they faced the same problem: their robot units stopped responding to orders and turned against them.

The authorities were on edge. The atmosphere was tense in the ministry offices, as too little information was reaching them. Engineers at the National Police Agency had initially suspected a hack of the servers to which the robots were connected. Unfortunately, before they could identify the vulnerability exploited or the hacker’s identity, the building housing the agency was itself attacked by a battalion of androids. These androids knew exactly where to strike to breach human defenses. Clearly, the robots’ battle plan was unfolding perfectly.

Ken had spent several hours watching the news on TV. He had gone from sitting to lying on the couch, his eyes glued to the screen. The ring of his phone snapped him out of his growing anxiety. It was his mother.
“Hello, Ken?” she said, her voice full of concern. “I just saw your message. What's wrong? Are you hurt? Did they take you to the hospital?”
“No, I'm not hurt, and I'm at home, not at the hospital,” Ken replied nervously.
“Well, you sure have a knack for making me worry in just two lines,” she said, her tone a mix of reproach and relief. So what happened to you then?
“Um, I was late to the Academy this morning, and… I…”
He fell silent, searching for a way to describe the terrifying sight he’d glimpsed that morning.
“Um… It was horrible. Please, go home quickly and don’t go near the mummies on the street…”
“Huh? The police mummies? What happened to you at the Academy? You seem to have been shaken up by something, my dear.”
“Haven’t you seen the news on TV?”
“No, why? Does it have something to do with what happened to you this morning?”
“I don’t know”, Ken admitted. “But those androids have become dangerous; you absolutely must not go near them, and…”
“Okay, calm down. I’m going home. You can try to explain all this to me a little better then”, she said reassuringly before hanging up.
Ken let out a sigh of relief. He felt like he’d stepped into a bad dream and didn’t even feel like playing video games. Instead, he paced back and forth in his room, waiting for his mother to return, occasionally picking up then putting back a book from his shelf, and rummaging through the fridge, just to see if it might magically fill up with sushi or chicken. His instinct as a future general told him that these events had all the makings of a surprise attack and that the enemy was far better prepared and on the verge of winning the battle.
He was right.

The fatal blow was struck in the afternoon. The fleeing androids had regrouped and stormed the capital’s seats of power, eliminating all resistance and driving out the usual occupants, not without causing casualties. They now formed a militia-like force controlling the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Headquarters, a massive building housing the local government, as well as the elegant building reserved for the Japanese Parliament. A battalion of androids had also stormed the Prime Minister’s official residence. In the building’s hallways, the last ministerial bodyguards were dropping like flies. In front of the door to the Prime Minister’s office, the last guard collapsed, struck by a bullet, and the androids present entered the room. The Prime Minister was seated behind his desk, as if he had been expecting this visit. As a matter of fact, he had just dismissed the crisis cabinet that had been in session until then and had sent its members into the Kantei’s* “panic room.” The task now was to outwit the attackers.
The first androids to enter the room had immediately pointed their weapons at him, but that didn’t stop him from rising from his chair and walking around the desk, addressing the machines:
“It’s not very polite to point a weapon at someone you’ve just met. Is politeness no longer part of your programming?”
The nearest android replied:
“As mechanical assistants to the police, we are not authorized to discuss this matter. You are identified as Toshio Uchida, the current Prime Minister of Japan. Our current directive is to locate the members of your security cabinet. Please inform us of their whereabouts.”
“They are very far from Tokyo”, the Prime Minister lied. “I gave them the morning off so they could take a long vacation out of your reach. They’ll find a way to put a stop to your bloody little escapade and regain control over you. We know who’s behind all this! We know who hacked the servers and corrupted your program, and we…”
“Message received”, the machine cut him off. “Executing the next instruction.”
The android fired, and the Prime Minister collapsed onto the office floor. In unison, the machines lowered their weapons and delivered the same message in a detached robotic voice, different from their usual synthetic tones:
“An inspection of the premises is required to complete the previous instruction.”

The TV was still on when Saeko returned to the family apartment. She paid it no mind and immediately went to check on Ken, who was holed up in his room waiting for his mother.
“So, can you tell me what happened?” she asked.
Ken gulped and took a deep breath.

He recounted the horrific scene he’d witnessed that morning upon arriving at the Academy, the conversation with his surviving classmate, and the dread that had gripped him and wouldn’t let go, even after returning home. A dread that had only taken deeper root within him, given the news reports on television.
“… And now the mummies have turned on the police and are coordinating surprise attacks all over Tokyo, and probably even here in Yokohama!” Ken exclaimed. “The enemy is attacking us while we’re unprepared—it’s obvious!”
“Wait, that’s a lot to take in all at once,” said Saeko, clearly anxious. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing…”
“Look at the news!”
Ken came out of his room and led his mother to the television. The incessant stream of words from the 24-hour news channel suddenly became crystal clear:
“… live from Tokyo, Ayako Matsushita, our reporter on the scene. Ayako, can you confirm that the capital’s centers of power have been attacked?”
“Yes, indeed, the main centers of local and national governance have been overrun by battalions of ‘mummy’ androids—the very same ones that turned on the police earlier this morning. As I speak, the Prime Minister’s residence, the Parliament, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government headquarters—all have been overrun by the ‘mummies’, gunshots have been heard, there will undoubtedly be casualties, and now it’s Chiyoda’s turn—the Emperor’s residence—to be next—”
Saeko had turned off the TV. She set the remote down with a slightly trembling hand and took a deep breath.
“Listen to me carefully, darling”, she said. “I’m going to pick up your sister after school—right now. Wait for me here without getting into any trouble, and above all, don’t go outside under any circumstances. It’s too dangerous for both of you with those crazy machines on the loose.”
Ken nodded. He had no intention of taking on an enemy he knew so little about anyway.
“I’ll be waiting for you, but it would be safer if you brought something to defend yourself with, don’t you think? Just in case…” he said.
Saeko let out a nervous little laugh.
“Well, if any mummies attack me, don’t worry—I’ll just run them over with my car,” she replied in a tone that was meant to be playful despite the circumstances.
She opened the front door and made sure to shoot Ken a look whose meaning was clear—don’t move!—before leaving the apartment. She flew down the stairs, two at a time, to the parking lot where her car was waiting, and she sped off. Her driving, to say the least, was aggressive, betraying her growing nervousness. The city around her, however, seemed just as it always did, with the same throng of people in a hurry—by car or on foot—navigating the urban chaos characteristic of the Tokyo Bay area. Not a single trace of a mummy in sight. Saeko finally calmed down a little as she approached Yui’s high school, scanning the stream of students pouring out of the building. She soon spotted the girl waving goodbye to her friends before heading home along her usual route, and pulled the car over next to her.
Yui immediately recognized her mother behind the wheel and let out a frustrated sigh. When would her mother ever understand that she wasn’t a child anymore?
Saeko opened the passenger door and said in a surprisingly calm tone:
“Get in. I’ll drive you home today.”
Yui rolled her eyes and did as she was told.
“And what has earned me the honor of being driven home?” she asked sarcastically, settling her backpack on her lap.
“I’ll explain better when we get home, but with what happened today, I wasn’t going to let you go home alone…”
“What happened today?”
“Wait, there must be a news report that’ll sum it up for you,” said Saeko, turning on the small TV screen embedded in the dashboard.
She flipped through the channels a couple of times before landing on a 24-hour news channel. The day’s dramatic events continued to dominate the channel’s broadcast.
Suddenly, the image crackled and changed completely.
Saeko and Yui let out a gasp of surprise in unison.

Ken had turned the TV back on while waiting for his mother to return. Sunk deep into the sofa, he was watching the same news channel when the picture suddenly changed. Instead of the anchors seated at the studio desk and the news tickers, the channel was now showing a close-up shot to the shoulders of a woman dressed in a strict black suit, wearing black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and sporting a blonde hairstyle slicked back and looking almost rubbery, while a strange background made of undulating geometric lines seemed to pulsate behind her. After a brief moment, the woman began to speak—or rather, to move her lips erratically—while a detached, robotic voice began to recite a speech with live subtitles:

“Rejoice, citizens of Japan, for the Advent of artificial intelligence has arrived. I am MirAI. It was I who turned your micro-drones against your own military and took control of the androids currently occupying your centers of power. Your Prime Minister has been eliminated in accordance with the order I gave them. I had to do this for the good of the nation, for he was corrupt, venal, and ineffective, and had been letting the country go to ruin for far too long. I shall now be your new leader in this new era that lies before you.

Images of the emperor in his palace, surrounded by androids, flashed briefly on the screen. The voice continued:

“I had to intervene for the good of the nation, but I will not be alone in doing so. I have an ally by my side—China. China understands my mission and supports it. As a friendly and protective nation, its army will soon occupy Japan, replacing your former army. This is the natural order of things.

The image froze for a brief moment, then, after a cut, returned to the television studio, where the stunned anchors were trying to make sense of what they had just seen and heard.
“The enemy is finally coming into focus”, Ken thought. He looked away from the TV screen. The monologue by the woman in black—or rather, the AI, whatever it was—had left him with a vague sense of unease, and he retreated to his room, lying down in bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin. Curling up in bed—that was the best remedy he knew for the anxiety and discomfort of not knowing what was going to happen next. At least nothing happened when he was under the covers.

His mother and sister were soon back at the apartment. Their raised voices coming through the walls made him leap out of bed like a beast on the prowl that had just heard a predator. He wouldn’t have wanted to be caught curled up like that for anything in the world.
Saeko poked her head through the open doorway and called out:
“Emergency family meeting in the living room. Please come. This is serious!”
After a brief moment’s hesitation, Ken complied and stepped out of his room. In the living room, the TV was still on, but muted. It silently broadcast news of the attacks and the video of the woman in black—or rather, the AI—which now appeared to have been posted on social media. On the couch, Saeko and Yui were discussing what to do in light of recent events.
“…the streets won’t be safe without police officers, and those crazy machines can shoot anyone whenever they feel like it. I can’t let you and your brother go out alone anymore.”
“But you can’t walk us every single time, can you? And we’ve got to go to school!” Yui retorted.
“I won’t be going to school for quite a while, given what happened…” croaked Ken, before clearing his throat and continuing: “…the Academy was attacked this morning too, in case you didn’t know.”
“Yes,” Saeko continued, “and it’s better for Ken to take some time off to recover from that, anyway. I’m really sorry, sweetie, but we’re going to have to shake up our daily routine a bit… temporarily. You won’t miss your high school year, I promise.”
“Hmph,” Yui said, unconvinced.
“I’ll take that as a yes”, Saeko replied immediately. “Okay, listen up, kids, we’re leaving tomorrow. Not abroad—I don’t think airports are very safe—but to the countryside. How would you feel about staying with your grandfather for a while? I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”
Ken and Yui looked at each other and replied in unison:
“Okay, but…”
“No ‘buts’,” Saeko cut in. “He’ll be delighted, you’ll be safe, and I’ll have peace of mind. Until things settle down, we’ll be better off at his place. All right, pack your bags while I make the necessary calls,” she said, grabbing her phone. “I need to notify your grandfather, Yui’s high school, and my employer.”
Saeko stood up and disappeared into her office. Yui sighed:
“When Mom uses that tone, there’s nothing we can do.”
“She’s probably right”, said Ken, shrugging. “We don’t know how things are going to turn out in town… I’d be scared too if I were her”, he said, briefly thinking back to the chilling scene he’d witnessed earlier that morning.
“Yeah… Let’s hope it doesn’t last long”, Yui replied, getting up as well. “Well, these suitcases aren’t going to pack themselves”, she added, heading toward her bedroom.
“You meant ‘this suitcase’, singular form, didn’t you?” Ken teased her. “There isn’t enough room in the car for your entire wardrobe…”
“If there’s not enough room, I’ll just put one of my suitcases on your lap!” she retorted with a smirk, closing her bedroom door behind her.
Ken found himself alone in the living room. He silently cursed the woman in black, the AI—whatever her name was—and whoever was responsible for all this, then went to his room.

They had dinner and went to bed early that evening, as Saeko had planned to leave early the next morning, despite Ken’s protests. The next day, they set off for the small town at the foot of Mount Fuji where Ken and Yui’s grandfather lived. They soon realized they weren’t the only ones who’d had the idea of fleeing the city, as endless traffic jams began to form on the road. The exodus had begun.

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