Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 2 Part 1

The dead feel no emotion

My name is Adam Frankenstein. I am a piece of equipment owned by Europole—and a computer who can sing and dance. Really. I could show you, even.
It was a fine-weather day. The sunlight pierced the vast blue sky and drenched the earth below. Visible light reflected off the windows of the buildings along the street, making them sparkle like jewelry display cases. The rays of light were arranged in an inorganic, systematic manner as if they’d been programmed that way. Only a computer such as I could fully appreciate its beauty.
I was walking down the street with a paper bag held to my chest. Inside were chocolates, hard candies, and colorful gummy bears. Everything here was purchased as rations for my partner, Chuuya, who I was on my way to meet. Humans need sugar to function just like how I need to be recharged. More importantly, ingesting sugar increases feelings of happiness. I am an extremely exceptional investigator. Showing concern for my partner’s degree of happiness is proof of that. I am far more extraordinary than any human.
I watched the local people come and go with great interest as I headed toward my destination. When I passed a food stall on the street en route, I had an amazing idea. If the human brain needs an efficient method to acquire sugar—namely, glucose—then Chuuya could simply ingest granulated sugar directly from his mouth. That would be far more efficient. Therefore, I purchased a bag of sugar at the food stall. I happened to witness another customer nearby purchasing something I had no knowledge of at all.
“What is this?” I asked the shop owner. “You being serious? It’s gum.”
My education module was fully equipped with information that pertained to my investigation, but I still lacked knowledge on things outside my area of expertise. So I decided to purchase said product in order to learn of its properties.
While I was walking down the stone pavement, I passed through a residential neighborhood of Western-style brick houses. There was a refreshing breeze. My regeneration tank had already restored my skin layer’s functions after the fire damage from yesterday. I had replaced my damaged parts with my spares as well. In other words, I was no different from a brand-new computer, and I felt great. I would probably have started humming if I were a human.
I tossed a piece of gum into my mouth and immediately felt my experience gauge increase exponentially. It was wonderful. An unfamiliar flavor. After chewing the gum for a few more seconds, I swallowed it.
I took another piece. There were eight tabular pieces of gum left neatly lined up in the package. I was quickly going to run out of it at this rate.
The small quantity of gum per package was this product’s drawback. I swallowed my second piece, and when I reached for my third, I arrived at my destination. I opened the door to the building and said in a loud voice:
“Greetings!”
It was a church. There were over a hundred attendants seated among the aisles. They were wearing black clothing and had their heads down in silence. Children in the choir wearing red robes were singing in sonorous but gentle voices as they mourned the dead. The wavelengths produced by their singing voices resonated as they bounced off the high ceiling. Perhaps that was why the inside of the church appeared to not be of this world but somewhere in between the heavens and earth.
In the center of this vast, somber church were five coffins. They were unadorned yet very high quality; each coffin was draped with a black cloth. Next to the coffins were a few sobbing family members of the departed, also dressed in black with their heads hanging low. I looked around until I found Chuuya sitting on a bench with several other people. I approached him.
“I have come to get you, Chuuya,” I announced loudly so he could hear me over the choir.
“Keep it down, damn it. This is a funeral,” Chuuya quietly replied without taking his eyes off the coffins.
“I know,” I said after thinking about it for a few moments. Then I continued. “I have new information on Verlaine.”
“Save it for later,” he spat, still facing forward. His expression was stiff, and the skin on his forehead and eyebrows was squeezing together.
I’m familiar with humans’ emotional reactions. This was the expression of someone who was stressed. Appropriate measures needed to be taken.
“Would you like some chocolate?”
“I said save it for later, damn it!” The floor trembled when Chuuya shouted. A few mourners looked this way. Chuuya was silently glaring at me.
After closely reflecting on this order, I replied, “Very well, sir. How many minutes later is “later,’ if I may ask?”
Chuuya took in a deep breath as if he was about to shout again but almost immediately stopped himself. Then, keeping his voice down, he answered:
“This is exactly why I didn’t wanna work with you. Don’t you get it? This is a funeral. My friends’ funeral. It took the mortician eight whole hours to clean up their bodies and make ’em presentable,” he told me. “And it’s my fault. That’s why I have to see them off. They’d never forgive me otherwise.”
It was an irrational statement.
“There is no need to worry, Chuuya,” I replied. “Humans cannot bear grudges once their biological functions cease. This is without exception.”
“Excuse me?!”
Chuuya stood up and grabbed my collar, which created a stir among those around us.
“That’s enough, Chuuya,” the man sitting next to him suddenly chided. He was a tall, lanky individual with slicked-back black hair. His legs were gently crossed. He appeared to be in his thirties and was wearing the most expensive clothing out of anyone in the church.
“The detective is correct. The dead feel no emotion. Funerals, revenge— all these things are for the living,” added the man, not turning to face us. His voice was quiet yet overpowering like a ruler. “Go, Chuuya. Act now before any more people die. You said you had information on Verlaine, right?”
The last sentence was directed at me.
“Yes, I have information concerning Verlaine’s hideout. It could possibly help us uncover his next objective. However, I cannot do anything further without Chuuya’s cooperation, so I must ask again how long I should wait. Would you say around five more minutes?”
Chuuya looked up at me and grimaced.
“Not even that long. Right, Chuuya?” the man next to him gently suggested.
“…Yeah.”
Chuuya grabbed my arm.
“C’mon. Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” he instructed, then got up and started leaving. I followed my orders.

Chuuya strode briskly through an alleyway, and I followed, matching his pace. After a ten-minute walk from the church, Chuuya turned around.
“Let’s get one thing straight, tin man. I don’t like you. I’m fine with lettin’ you tag along ’cause you’ve got a lot of useful functions, but in return, you’re gonna need to follow my every command. You need to prioritize my orders even over the ones you get from your detective headquarters or whatever it’s called. Otherwise I’m not goin’ with you.”
“You’re asking me to override the current authority to command?” “Yep.”
I considered the situation logically. The highest in command was the investigation team, followed by Dr. Wollstonecraft. If I made Chuuya the highest in command and overwrote the investigation team’s current position, that could possibly cancel out the purpose of my existence, which was to prioritize the mission. But if I didn’t follow Chuuya’s orders, then I would not be able to continue said mission.
The situation was highly contradictory. It was as if someone in charge said, “I order you not to follow my orders.” The average AI would cease to function due to the infinite loop of resources necessary to compute the contradiction. I, on the other hand, am the latest model of AI. The doctor predicted something like this might happen and integrated a subroutine within me to help me solve contradicting orders. The solution was extremely simple:
Follow your heart.
“Order acknowledged. I will now override the line of command protocol.”
After getting down on one knee, I respectfully bowed my head.
“I have reset the line of command with Master Chuuya at the highest ranking. Your wish is my command.”
He looked at me, flabbergasted. “You sure?” he asked.
“I am. I determined that you would never order me to do anything unwise.”
His eyes opened wide for a few moments before he placed a hand over his face and heaved an exaggerated sigh.
“Haaah… Am I being tested by a damn machine? ’Cause that’s what it sounds like. And “Master’? Seriously?”
“I am programmed to call the highest in command Master by default.” “You can’t change it?”
“I can, but doing so would remove you from highest in command. Is that okay?”
“What? No. Of course not.” Master Chuuya grimaced. “Ah, whatever. We’re wastin’ our time. Just tell me what you learned. You have info on Verlaine, right?”
“Yes. Allow me to explain. But before that, would you like a piece of gum?”
I stood up and took out the gum from earlier. I decided that a light meal could relieve some of his stress before my long explanation. Master Chuuya looked at the gum, then at me, then at the gum once more.
“No,” he eventually replied with a bewildered gaze. That was unfortunate.
“Very well.”
After unwrapping the gum, I tossed it into my mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed. Gulp. Delicious. He stared at me as if he found the sight peculiar.
“Now, allow me to explain,” I began. “I will start from the beginning. Verlaine is an assassin, so he wouldn’t have gone on a killing spree at the airport to force his way into this country. That would make it harder for him to move around freely once he was inside. He likely used a fake passport and a disguise just like any other criminal. Verlaine, however, is a lone wolf; he does not work with anyone. He doesn’t have anyone he trusts who could have made him a passport or provided some way for him to enter the country. In other words, he needed to pay a smuggler to sneak him in. So far, so good?”
I consumed another piece of gum.
“Ew,” Master Chuuya groaned weakly. Perhaps he had a stomachache? “However, the number of smugglers he could have used this time is
extremely small. Because for the most part, criminals—the brains of operations—are usually cowards who value horizontal relationships with their peers. In other words, most smugglers here either work under the protection of the Port Mafia or, at the very least, have some sort of mutually beneficial connection with them.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a point. I guess that means Verlaine couldn’t use anyone who might betray him and rat him out to the Mafia,” agreed Master Chuuya. “You sure understand a lot about what goes on around here.”
“Well, machines do make far better investigators than humans,” I replied after swallowing another piece of gum. “Then I compared the Japanese police force’s list of smugglers with the list of smugglers who work under the Port Mafia and cross-checked until I found several people who were not in the Mafia’s database.”
“The Mafia’s and police’s lists? How’d ya get your hands on those?”
“I hacked into their databases,” I replied. I could even hack into a moving car’s GPS if I wanted. Browsing a database was easier than breathing to me. I had never breathed before, so I was only guessing, though. “There were four possible smugglers. I went down the list and started investigating them this morning until I found the one who snuck Verlaine into the country.”
“Ha-ha. Looks like you’re good at more than just pool. What a relief.” Master Chuuya raised his eyebrows. “So? What’d you do? Hang him upside down and strangle the information out of him?”
“No, I do not possess such functions. Hurting the smuggler would only draw Verlaine’s attention.” I shook my head. “Instead, I used the smuggler’s pay statements to uncover what exactly Verlaine ordered from him. I imagine you must know that these sorts of smugglers usually deliver supplies as well,” I explained while finishing off the second to last piece of gum. “These criminals provide hideouts, cars, guns, and even underground doctors for a price. Verlaine paid this particular individual for three separate items.”
“Like a hideout?”
“Unfortunately not.” I shook my head again. “But I found a clue during my investigation. First, this.”
I showed Master Chuuya a photograph of a tree branch around the same thickness and length of a human wrist.
“What is it?”
“A white birch branch. Whenever Verlaine assassinates someone, he leaves a cross carved from a locally grown white birch. That is his calling card; there have been no exceptions so far. He asked the smuggler to find him four white birch branches. And…”
I took out another photo.
“…I found one of them at the pool hall.”
A roughly made hand-carved cross was lying on the floor. The cross was among strewn fragments of the wooden floor, making it difficult to distinguish, but it was clearly a different type of wood.
Master Chuuya furrowed his brow. “And there’s three more to come, huh?”
“Yes. There is a high chance he has three more targets.”
“I’m going to kill every human who matters to you.”
Those were Verlaine’s words. I didn’t know how he selected the people who he believed meant something to Master Chuuya. Perhaps a Mafia insider helped him out. Nevertheless, Verlaine still had three more people he planned to kill in this country.
“But this is also a good opportunity for us,” I assured Master Chuuya. “Verlaine is an elusive individual with an unparalleled competitive edge in battle. There is no way to defeat him by attacking head-on. However, he follows a ritualistic system with his assassinations. He will appear before his next target without fail. Therefore, we should be able to set up a trap for him as long as we know who that next target is.”
“Good point,” agreed Master Chuuya. “So got any idea who it is?”
“It is still too early to tell.” I took out one more photograph. “There are two more things Verlaine asked the smuggler to get him. Have a look at these.”
The photograph showed an admission pass for an automobile assembly plant and a slightly outdated blue clamshell phone.
“These most likely have something to do with his next assassination,” I said. “However, this is where I need your help. Verlaine is going after someone you are close with. Do you have any idea who that could be?”
Master Chuuya quietly glared at the photo without answering my question. It was as if someone dear to him was carved into it.
“A factory, eh?” he spat. “Tsk. I know who his next target is.”
He angrily crushed the photograph in his hand, then began to stride off. “Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
He ignored my question, instead swiping the last piece of gum out of my hand and tossing it into his mouth. As he walked away, he inflated the gum and created a balloon-like bubble.
I couldn’t possibly describe the surprise I felt at that moment. That was how you were supposed to eat it?!