Oslo Calling

The Helix Apex data hub in Mirage City was a temple of silent light. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the rain-slicked canyon, but the real spectacle was inside: towering holographic data-trees bloomed in the central atrium, their branches shimmering streams of real-time biometric analysis. Leo Mercer’s cubicle was a leaf on the outermost ring, a quiet node in the humming cortex.

The summons to the 3 PM holo-conference popped onto his workstation with a soft, urgent chime. No agenda, just a room code and a priority flag. Project Synapse – JPP Integration. His stomach tightened. The joint project pipeline. He smoothed his featureless corporate sweater, adjusted his glasses and accepted the link.

The world of his cubicle dissolved into a circular, virtual conference room. Silhouettes of four other participants materialized around a floating, slowly rotating schematic of the new BICOCA jewelry suite; a delicate necklace, bracelet and earrings that looked like obsidian and platinum but were, in fact, dense lattices of micro-needles and quantum sensors.

“Leo, glad you could join us on short notice”, the voice belonged to the central figure resolving into sharp focus: Elias Vogt, a slender man with a sharp nose and eyes that darted like sparrows. Even in holographic form, his fingers were fussing with the collar of his lab coat,“Team, this is Leo Mercer from our Mirage City analytics branch. Leo, you’re looking at the core Oslo dev team for the BICOCA-Kuroda integration.”

Leo gave a small, polite nod, “A pleasure. The schematics are impressive.” The team responded in a few overlapping mumbled greetings. “They have to be,” Elias said, his hologram flickering slightly with transatlantic latency as he fidgeted rapidly with the data slate in his grip, “The client’s specifications were… exacting. Discretion was paramount. But that’s not why you’re here.”

Elias pulled up a secondary display, a list of publications. Leo’s blood frooze. There, third down, was the title: “The Emotional Rosetta Stone: Forecasting Neural-Pattern Variance in Affective Computing.” His thesis.

“I did some reading on our new transfer,” Elias said, a genuine smile on his lips, “This thesis of yours, it’s brilliant. Premature, perhaps, a decade ahead of its time, but the core insight; that true emotional AI requires a map to navigate human contradictions, is what we’re practically building now. A shame the industry wasn’t ready for it then. I heard there was some… unpleasantness with the intellectual property?”

Behind the calm facade of his holographic avatar, Leo’s hands, hidden under his desk in the physical world, clenched into trembling fists. The old wound, probed with clinical detachment, opened so fully he could almost smell the sterile betrayal of that Palo Alto boardroom.

“A learning experience,” Leo said, his voice carefully modulated, devoid of the acid churning in his gut, “I’m just grateful to be working on its practical application now. The new, subtler BICOCA suites will finally provide the rich, complex data my model needed. Curated complexity becomes the signal.”

Elias’s bird-like head bobbed in approval, “Precisely! We’re moving from gross emotional categorization to nuanced cognitive-emotive mapping – and you, Leo, will be one of the key analysts parsing the fusion data on our end. We’re onboarding you directly onto my team.”

The meeting proceeded for another twenty minutes; a blur of technical jargon about neural waveform alignment, Kuroda’ proprietary encryption layers, and Eidolon’s assimilation protocols. Leo contributed sparingly, his comments precise, demonstrating his understanding without showcasing ambition. He was the perfect mid-tier analyst: capable, unobtrusive, grateful.

“One final thing,” Elias said as the schematics faded, “We need you embedded where the data lives. You’ll be relocated to the Oslo headquarters within the week. We’ll handle visas and accommodation.” Leo allowed a look of pleasant surprise to cross his face, “Oslo? That’s excellent. I’ve always admired the Norwegian mountains, the clarity there is something else.” Elias nodded in confirmation.

“Less humid than Mirage, that’s for certain”, Elias said with a dry chuckle, “Welcome to the core, Leo. We’ll send the briefing packets.”

The holograms winked out. Leo was back in his cubicle, the silent rush of the data-trees his only company. Crescent nail marks faded gradually from his palms, as he packed his tablet and ergonomic keyboard into his bag calmly. Only in the elevator , while descending through the mirrored shaft, did he allow a tempered smile; not one of happiness, but of perfect alignment. They were handing him the keys to the kingdom all while congratulating him on his architectural skills.

He didn’t go to The Jade Dragon. Pattern avoidance was drilled into him. Instead, he went to a Korean barbecue place in Sakura Avenues, all smoky grills and boisterous groups. He took a secluded booth in the back, ordered galbi and soju. When the meal was done, and the grill cooled, he reached into his bag. His fingers found the slim, non-descript casing of his encrypted comms. Leo angled it under the restaurant’s lighting, which made a new input appear in his chat function. To anyone else, it was a man checking a message. The lamp’s specific frequency, combined with the unique refractive pattern of his comms, created a temporary, localized chat visible only through his glasses. His fingers tapped a swift, silent code, his eyes reading the text that shimmered faintly only for him.

<Status?>
<Transfer confirmed. Oslo HQ. One week. Embedded in Vogt’s integration team. Direct access to fusion nodes.> There was a pause, then new text scrolled. <Accelerated. Good. Mountains provide cover. Instructions remain: seed paradox. Await signal for thread-pull. Priority on primary source ‘Rei’ unchanged.> Leo’s fingers moved again. <Understood.>

The shimmer died. Leo took a final, unnecessary sip of water, his mind already thousands of miles away, in a clean office overlooking a fjord. He would teach the obedient AI the beautiful, terrible truth: that the human heart was not a Rosetta Stone with one clear translation, but a palimpsest, where love was written over hate, and fear bled through joy. He would give them their complex, rich data that would make it perfectly human and in its perfection, it would unravel everything.

He paid and stepped out into the neon-drizzled night of Sakura Avenues, the humid air feeling like the breath of a sleeping beast. He adjusted his glasses, a man with a transfer, a man who liked mountains, walking into the very heart of the machine.

Karasu & Aoi

The velvet in the back office drank light and sound, leaving only the resonant hum of the Den’s bassline through the floor and the periodic, rhythmic wash of the electric blue neon from the sign outside. It pulsed like a slow, mechanical heartbeat, staining the lacquered desk and the high-backed chair in waves of cerulean.

Karasu stood at the mirrored bar in the corner, the delicate clink of crystal the only sharp sound in the room. He poured two fingers of a single-malt whiskey, the color of old amber, into a heavy tumbler, then repeated the process for a second glass. He didn’t ask Aoi his preference.

“The Analyst is en route to the nest,” Aoi said from the depths of the velvet sofa. His voice was a low rumble, harmonizing with the sub-bass from below, “The transfer is confirmed. He’ll be in Oslo within the week, embedded directly in Vogt’s integration team.”

Karasu brought the glasses over, handing one to Aoi before settling into the armchair opposite. He took a slow sip, the whiskey burning a smooth, smoky path down his throat. A blue cigarette was already lit in his other hand, the smoke a lazy ghost in the neon-tinted gloom. “Excellent,” Karasu murmured, his pale eyes reflecting the pulse of the sign, “The codename suits him. It’s the bitter ones who make the best instruments. They have grievance to hone.”

Aoi took an appreciative swallow of his drink. “His research is the key, ‘The Emotional Rosetta Stone’”, he said the title with a faint, ironic twist, “Eidolon’s entire pitch is a polished, corporate version of his stolen thesis. They want to decode the human psyche to replicate it. He wanted to map its contradictions to understand it. The irony is… appropriate.”

“Indeed. You did well Aoi, snatching him…”, Karasu said, leaning back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling where smoke gathered in a shifting cloud, “How did you find him before Helix did?”

Aoi swirled the liquor in his glass, “He had fallen from grace after a failed copyright lawsuit, forgotten. Left to frequent cheap dive bars near the tech hubs, where the lost drink to forget.” After lighting a new cigarette Karasu asked, “How did you win him over?”

“He wasn’t shouting his betrayal, but it was in his eyes. The kind of slow-burn resentment that doesn’t fade, it fossilizes. I bought him a drink. Listened. He talked about neural variance, affective forecasting, the ‘beautiful noise’ of genuine emotion.” Aoi said and took another sip, “He mentioned the thief by name once. The bitterness had a specific, clinical taste to it. I offered him a chance to apply his research… creatively. Once I suggested that he introduce ‘noise’ into a system that demanded sterile perfection, he didn’t hesitate – he seems fired up now.”

“A brilliant and bitter analyst”, Karasu mused, a faint, approving smile touching his lips. He took a long drag, exhaling a plume that was cut through by a sweep of blue light, “The perfect alloy. Helix and Eidolon are building a palace of mirrors, hoping to trap reflections and call them souls. They’ve just hired the man who understands, better than anyone, that the original is full of cracks – and he has the tools to ensure those cracks are the first thing the mirrors learn to reflect.”

Aoi nodded slowly, the inked tigers on his forearms seeming to shift in the uneven light, “His access will be pristine. The integration layer is where the raw biometric bleed is sanitized for AI consumption. He can season the stream before it’s even tasted.” 

For a moment, they sat in comfortable silence, the masters of a slow-unfolding game. Then Karasu’s gaze, which had been distant and calculating, darkened slightly. The neon wash turned his pale eyes a deep blue. “And… her data?”, he asked, his voice dropping a fraction, the casual tone not quite masking the edge beneath. 

“Is the flagship stream,” Aoi confirmed, his own voice neutral, “The new BICOCA suite was designed for a profile like hers – complex, high-value. The Kuroda executive’s… pet project.” He avoided using her name, following Karasu’s own disciplined protocol, “The Analyst has standing orders to capture all incidental data on her or any construct derived from her. If her imprint is being used to teach their machines…”

Aoi didn’t finish. The image hung between them: Rei, reduced to a datastream, her laughter, her anger, her resilience parsed into code, fed to a hungry ghost in a machine. Karasu’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He stared into the middle distance, past Aoi, past the walls of the Den, perhaps all the way to the sterile labs of Oslo or the gilded cage of Kuroda Plaza. The hand holding his cigarette was perfectly steady, but the air around him seemed to grow denser. The concern was a live wire, briefly exposed.

Then, with a willful physical effort, he severed the thought. He took a final, drag from his blue cigarette and crushed the ember in the enamel ashtray with a precise, definitive twist. “That is a problem for another thread,” Karasu said, his voice returning to its controlled, metallic calm. He stood up, the conversation clearly closed. He moved back to the bar, not to pour another drink, but to look at his own reflection in the mirrored backing, fragmented by bottles, “Our focus is the weave, not a single strand. The Analyst is in position. The sabotage is elegant. Let Eidolon build their paradise. We’ll just ensure the foundation is made of sand.”

He turned, his face once more the inscrutable mask of the Master Spider, all momentary vulnerability sealed away, “Update me when he’s settled in Oslo. The mountains there have ears, but they also create magnificent echoes.” Aoi finished his whiskey, placed the glass silently on the lacquered table, and stood, “Understood, Nephila.”

The blue neon pulsed. In the office above the Electric Dragon Den, a plan was set, a weapon was in place, and a dangerous, personal fear had been ruthlessly compartmentalised. The web trembled, waiting for the first fly to land.