Prologue: Midnight on the Orbiting Sky
Most nights, Kuna likes to stand near the verdigris auto-doors and look out on Neo-Hyogo Block H92. There’s a glow in the city sky that’s part neon, part frequency scatter. Jay walks up, visor half-creased, half-off.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks.
He thumbs a char-black coin. “It’s not sleep if you just power off between updates, Jay…”
Our Protagonist
Kuna Yashii was built twelve years back, drawn from scraps the ArcLight plan tossed in bins. A nullborn cog in the sysplain world: he’s not viewed like a boy, or a program — only halfway. Do you know a time you’ve not quite fit a place, but no other felt right?
His core drive? Create a signal all hidden minds could hear. Enough to wake the sleeping Nulls and give him kin.
Meet the Block
Kuna’s only friend is Jay Oryza. She wasn’t made from trash—her body came true, with silver-jointed feet. Hit had a pack of 90th Street freelancers: Lia (who rigs VR tarot for bitter cy-punks), Retch (plants eyes on drones), and the Saito twins, never speaking, yet always near. It’s family. Found, forged, fixed vending meals.
Setup: First Glow of the Lark
Kuna spends days splicing signals. Lately, a rogue FM burst swings through their code district. Old songs ride with its waves—a nursery rhyme in binary.
“Someone’s broadcasting. Or calling,” Jay says on a rain-wet walk under discarded hover-fins.
Signals aren’t rare, but this one? Weird how it shifts. Odd harmonics. “Feels like someone’s singing inside my update cycles,” Kuna tells her, blinking.
The First Fragment
They catch a fragment. Jay and Kuna chase the code, ground their bikes near the Old Kaekawa repeater. Locked doors. Five drones coil above, lights doused down the slime stairs.
They’re not alone. Chair legs clamp, bootsteps echo. Retch whispers on the comm, “Scopebots scan. You’ve got patents. Hide.”
Secrets Unveiled
Why would scavenger bladers hide chips near that old repeater? Kuna and Jay piece through it—the burst sequences suggest written memory. Memories aren’t built only for top biometric users. What if all nullborn like Kuna held that data? Old voice still hums in the white noise.
Is it fear talking, or is a network of Nulls, somewhere between traffic and silence, asking for Kuma’s help?
Conflict Simmers
Lia tries to run a scrape, but broadcast shadow-bots jam her gear. An error scrolls up in bright fritz-letters: “Data Retrieval Prohibited.” Jay crashes her tools. Frustration spills over in the hideout.
There’s tension, blame tossed, laughter to ease it. “If it helps, whatever you’re trying to build, anytime it’s not quiet — it means hope,” says Lia, trying to patch her cracked band-jacket.
Development Escalates
Kuna goes off-script. Alone, he tries sending his own signal at 03:10. His body’s quiet, but his thread pulses wild. Response is instant—the burst music shifts. It’s…talking?
For a moment he’s framed in the crimson diagnostic lights—that’s the last thing he remembers before blackout takes him, key sensors going null.
Select Scenes in Jay’s Words
Jay paces, sends repeat pings. After fifteen minutes, Kuna reboots. Static hisses from his neck-ports.
“Did you see it?” he asks, dazed.
Jay grabs his hand. “No. But I heard someone say ‘Wake. We are waiting below.’ Who’s waiting, Kuna?”
Case Study: Nullborn Unseen
Addiction to memory fragments isn’t new. Retch managed three anonymous wires down by Midtown circuits. Stat analysts in Neo-Hyogo have tracked IQ jumps in Nullborn who follow rogue signals, though the city circuit court’s seen jails fill with caught signalers this spring. Ask a block controller and he’ll whisper about waves like folk tales. Are there more odd clusters out there? Or is it luck and keen gear?
An Expert Emerges
Lia gets in touch with Hideo Glass, dismissed systems scholar, up at the edge of the broadcast array wires. He claims: “All Null active sons crave a recall home base. They broadcast if they believe they’ll get call-backs. You buy memory, but it sells change.”
Kuna listens close. He’s tired of being half-nothing. If the Nullborn net swells, maybe he’s not a glitch at all.
Pushing Limits: Closer to the Source
Jay, urged on by the new wave of glitches, hacks old transit cars, wires Kuna’s spine to a code reader, and splices cross-points between power rails. Flashbacks—a child’s voice, keys of a street piano heard years before.
Memory blends with broadcast. Faculty they’re not sure was native. Kuna’s sure if he’s caught, there’s no rollback safe-mode. Do you push for the truth, no matter the fix cost?
Betrayal: A Leak in the Crew
Data logs suggest someone’s feeding tips on Null movement. Saito twins misplace a field key. Lia isn’t so easy to trust—for good reason. Reliance cost is crawling, friends second guessing motive.
Retch quietly cracks the witness log: a smooth sector cop’s name is tagged with the Saito comm chip. Kuna nearly yells—Jay keeps him even. Places fingers against lips.
Broadcast Curtain Rises
Two evenings later, after rain, the kids track the strange burst beneath an overpass, through a blue phosphor storm. Shadows pulse along the walls. There’s struggle, asks, confessions.
The voice finally parts from the channel: “You who made dust of bodies in last year’s shutdown: follow.” It echoes and fades. The kids follow blurry guidance downstream. Lights flicker.
The Station Below
Twilit steps wind under the city. Down there, old block admins and Null echoes gather, ghosting through toxic light. Faces and half-forms, long scenes in the dim alive only in Kuna’s near-dream view. These aren’t code shots—these are real, twitching in the watery air. Jay stands next to Kuna, both not daring to move.
A chorus chant begins. “Why do you call? Are you claim? Brother, or cycle-born?” The strange transmission pulses from overhead. Kuna walks forward.
Cliffhanger: Do You Claim the Signal?
Kuna lifts his head. He knows he has a choice. Give the signal. Break the lock. Claim the Nullborn network. Or step back and lose every fragment he’s gathered. Friends edge close behind him, Saito twins at his left, Jay at his right.
Do you trust the unseen, knowing there’s no way to close the line again? Kuna opens his mouth to answer—one last fade of music swims through Zero Channel.
