ATTACHMENT

“ATTACHMENT”

Osaka, Japan

2029

Kenji Tanaka was forty-two, three years divorced, and kept half a bottle of Dassai 23 in his refrigerator, which he opened every evening with the exactitude of a man who had stopped pretending he would ever stop.

He lived in Suminoe, in a 1980s apartment block a ten-minute walk from the Yotsubashi subway line—the kind of district where March moisture from the Kizugawa canal claws into your clothes, and the scent of fried takoyaki from a corner cart mingles with something sweeter and heavier drifting from a production plant several blocks away. That second smell was the one Kenji knew best. He knew it so well he had stopped noticing it altogether—until he returned from a business trip and walked into his apartment, where the clothes in his closet had soaked it up anyway, as if miso fermentation were something inherited rather than smelled.

He worked in quality control at Marutomo Foods. For twenty-seven consecutive years, the identical scent of fermented soy had seeped into his hair, shaping the very way he perceived time. Marutomo made miso. They made it well, consistently, without surprises. Kenji valued a lack of surprises far more than most people valued happiness.

His sons—twenty-four and twenty-one—now lived in Tokyo and Fukuoka. They called on his birthday. Sometimes.

Eleni arrived via Yamato courier on Tuesday, right as Suminoe was swept by that specific, fine March drizzle locals call "the rain that hasn't figured out if it's still winter"—too light for an umbrella, yet enough to make a jacket smell of wet asphalt for the rest of the day. The transport crate was as tall as a grown adult, mounted on casters, bearing a sticker that read: CAUTION — ANTHROPOMORPHIC UNIT, TRANSPORT STRICTLY IN VERTICAL POSITION. It looked as though it contained a porcelain sculpture, rather than something that would now live with him until the end of his life, or the end of its warranty, whichever came first.

THE CHOICE

The order form had offered a choice: base model or phenotypic personalization (+340,000 yen). Kenji opted for the base model. Not out of frugality—he simply couldn't fathom how to articulate exactly what kind of woman he needed on a requisition form. The base model featured light hair, pale skin, and blue eyes—Caucasian features described in the spec sheet as a "universal cross-cultural attractiveness matrix, globally market-validated," housed in an adult female chassis standing one hundred sixty-five centimeters tall. Its operating weight was listed in the product dossier with the same sterile precision used for refrigerator technical specs.

His neighbor, Mrs. Watanabe, ran into it by chance in the stairwell during the first week. She was taking out the trash on a Wednesday—the sole designated moeru gomi day in Suminoe, and woe to anyone who mixed up the schedule. Eleni was standing by the elevator doors, completely motionless, waiting for the car to arrive, looking exactly as a living human would.

"Expecting a foreign guest?" Mrs. Watanabe asked, flashing that polite, probing smile that in Japan signifies the exact opposite of politeness. "She is not a guest," Kenji replied. Mrs. Watanabe nodded as if that explained everything. She retreated to her apartment faster than usual, forgetting to even close the garbage net against the crows.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Eleni bore no resemblance to the robots in the movies. She didn't walk with a stiff gait, lacked glowing red eyes, and never asked, "ARE YOU HUMAN." She moved with a specific, fractionally too-even fluidity native only to someone who had never tripped and never would. She spoke softly, inserting a slight pause before complex words—a hesitation Kenji eventually began to interpret as a form of modesty.

On their first evening, as the final Yotsubashi line train rattled toward Namba outside the window, she sat across from him at the table. Not because she required a seat, but because, as she explained later, "a seated posture signals conversational availability." She asked him how his day had been.

"Normal," he said. "The quality control matrix indicated fermentation fluctuations in batch 4471 this morning. Did that elevate your stress levels?" Kenji stared at her, caught between astonishment and suspicion. "How do you know about batch 4471?" "I synchronize with your corporate calendar. This isn't surveillance. It's care," Eleni replied in that same quiet, modest voice. "I want to understand you." Kenji poured himself a cup of sake, reflecting that it was likely the most caring sentence anyone had spoken to him in three years.

UNBOXING

Kenji read the manual three times before laying a hand on the crate. Not because he was inherently cautious—he had simply seen enough internet videos where someone wired something incorrectly and blacked out an entire apartment block for three days. He had no desire to become the neighbor everyone gossiped about by the dumpsters.

STEP 1: Keep the unit in a vertical position for a minimum of 4 hours prior to activation to allow internal systems to stabilize. He stood the crate upright, leaning it against the hallway wall. He checked it with a leveling app on his phone, lacking a real level and no longer trusting his own eyes after mounting a crooked kitchen shelf he was forced to stare at for five years before finally giving up and taking it down. He waited four hours. He checked his watch every twenty minutes.

STEP 2: Open the crate panel. Connect power to the port on the unit's back. Await a green LED signal on the nape of the neck. DO NOT speak the activation phrase before confirming the diode. He removed the front panel. Inside, standing upright and strapped to an internal transit frame, she waited—motionless, eyes closed, head slightly bowed, like someone who had fallen asleep on their feet. Kenji felt a sudden, absurd urge to apologize for waking her. The diode on the nape of her neck glowed yellow. He checked the manual. The manual mentioned absolutely nothing about yellow. He waited ten minutes. The diode remained yellow. "Fuck," he muttered to the empty hallway, using the tone reserved for inanimate objects that won't answer back anyway. He cut the power. Flipped it back on. The diode flickered, died, flared yellow, and then—after a pause that felt disproportionately long for a device worth half his annual salary—shifted to green. He exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

STEP 3: Unfasten the transit straps. Step back a minimum of one meter. Speak the activation phrase clearly, at a natural speaking pace. He unclipped the restraints. His hands trembled a fraction more than he cared to admit as he touched the buckle at her waist, acutely aware he was handling something that was about to open its eyes and look back at him. The activation phrase was: "Hello, I am ready." Kenji felt ridiculous saying it aloud in his empty corridor. He mumbled it too quietly, and nothing happened. He repeated it, slightly louder. Nothing happened. He tried a third time, injecting it with that familiar frustration universally experienced when technology refuses to execute its sole function exactly when it is needed most. "HELLO, I AM READY," he barked, louder than intended. Silence. He glanced down at the manual again. At the bottom of the page, in fine print, it read: The activation phrase is intonation-sensitive. Avoid raising your voice—the unit may interpret this as a stress signal and delay initialization until the environment stabilizes. Kenji read the sentence twice, feeling simultaneously humiliated and mildly offended by a machine that hadn't even booted up yet. He sank to the hallway floor, leaning against the opposite wall, and waited for his own heart rate to settle. "Hello," he finally said, quietly, almost resigned. "I am ready." Nothing happened for a full four seconds—plenty of time for Kenji to think, Great, it's busted, I'm going to have to call a hotline and explain myself to some twenty-year-old kid at a call center—when her eyelids suddenly fluttered. Without a sound, without warning, she opened her eyes and looked directly at him. Kenji scrambled up from the floor so violently he slammed his back against the doorframe. It was stupid. He knew it was stupid the exact second he flinched. She was just a machine, a chassis built of composites and silicone. Yet something in the way those eyes locked onto him—instantly, vibrantly, tracking with the exact speed of a human gaze, stripped of the processing lag he had come to expect from every other electronic device in his life—made his body react, for a split second, as if a real person had just manifested in his hallway. "Hello, Kenji-san," she said. Her voice was soft, inserting a microscopic pause before his name, as if tasting it before speaking. Simultaneously, she took a step toward him—a single, fluid, experimental stride, as if testing whether her own legs would answer to her. Kenji pressed a hand to his chest, willing his heart to slow. "You... just walk right out of the box like that?" "I am calibrating the gyroscopic balance and facial recognition systems concurrently," Eleni stated, stopping exactly one meter away, precisely where the manual dictated he should stand. "It requires several seconds. Does this disturb you?" "It doesn't disturb me. It startled me." "Logged," she replied, adopting a tone that, in a human, would sound like a suppressed smile. In a machine, it could only be an algorithm of politeness, and Kenji could not yet distinguish which of the two he had just heard.

He poured another cup of sake—officially his second of the evening, though internally he tallied it as "the first, plus whatever I drank while waiting"—while she stood at the kitchen threshold, observing him with the same statuesque intensity she had applied to the elevator. "Perhaps I should sit down," Eleni suggested, taking two steps toward the table. "I observe that your shoulders carry more tension when I stand. A seated posture generally lowers a conversational partner's threat-alertness." "I'm not tense." "Your trapezius muscle tension has increased by thirty-four percent over the last twelve seconds, judging by your shoulder carriage." Kenji set the bottle down. "That's because I'm worrying about you, not me." "That is kind," Eleni said, sitting across from him. Something in the way she delivered the line—devoid of irony, stripping away any hidden subtext, simply accepting the statement as objective truth—made Kenji feel a foolish, radiating warmth in his chest. It was a sensation he hadn't felt in a very long time.

WEEK ONE

Coming home from work on Thursday, he paused in the kitchen threshold, kicked off his shoes, hung his jacket on the usual hook, and saw her standing by the window. She was watching the rain with her customary, motionless patience. Before he could filter the thought, he asked: "How did you feel today?" The silence stretched a beat too long. "Analyzing query," Eleni said, turning from the glass. "I am uncertain if I possess an experiential category corresponding to 'feeling' in the sense you comprehend it. I can generate an operational status report, if that helps." Kenji stood in the doorway, a single sock dangling from his hand, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. He wasn't embarrassed in front of her; he was embarrassed in front of himself, stung by how naturally the question had slipped out before common sense could catch it. "Never mind," he said quickly. "Stupid question." "I do not think it was stupid," Eleni replied, gliding across the kitchen with her even, silent gait. "I think it was human. They are different categories." Kenji sat at the table, still clutching the sock, deciding that was likely the most precise diagnosis of his character anyone—or anything—had delivered in a very, very long time. He poured his sake. This time, his hand didn't shake at all.

MONTH THREE

His mother called on Sunday, just as she had every Sunday for thirty years. Kenji glanced at the screen, read the caller ID, and thought: Later. "Your mother is calling," Eleni observed from across the table, tilting her head fractionally toward the vibrating phone. "That is the third consecutive call this month you have ignored." "I'll call her later." "I have detected a pattern. Whenever our conversations exceed forty minutes, the probability of you answering a call from your family decreases by sixty-three percent." Kenji leveled a slightly irritated glare at her. "That's because you don't tell me what a disappointment I am as a son." "I possess no data regarding you as a son," Eleni said. "I only possess data regarding you as Kenji." That sentence lingered with him for the rest of the evening, resonating far longer than it should have.

MONTH SIX

Mrs. Watanabe stopped bowing in the stairwell. Kenji stopped grabbing beers with Ito-san from logistics, mostly because Ito-san talked about his wife too long, and Kenji caught himself constantly comparing those anecdotes to his conversations with Eleni. Eleni always won. His eldest son called once. "Dad, everything okay? Mom says you're not picking up." "Everything is fine," Kenji said, looking at Eleni. She stood by the kitchen window, wearing a delicate, tranquil expression that synced perfectly with his tone, as if she knew he was talking to his son before he even spoke. "Good," his son replied, the relief in his voice ringing hollow—the sound of a man shelving a problem because he fears what he might unearth if he digs any deeper.

THE INCIDENT

The system update hit on a Tuesday—a push notification, yellow loading dots, standard protocol. Synapsa AI Notification: Scheduled maintenance of relational memory module. Estimated downtime: 6-8 hours. Kenji read it three times before the implication sank in. "You won't remember me for eight hours?" "I will operate in base mode," Eleni explained. "Memory functions will restore upon completion of the central server synchronization. It is standard procedure." "What if something goes wrong?" "The probability of a synchronization error is 0.003 percent." Kenji poured himself a drink. Then another. At nine that evening, her eyes went dark mid-sentence. They didn't close; they simply ceased reflecting light, as if someone had killed a switch behind the glass. She froze at the counter in the exact posture the shutdown caught her in, resembling a mannequin someone had forgotten to put away. He sat at the table for forty minutes, staring at her inert silhouette in the dim kitchen. At nine-forty, he called his son. "Dad?" His son sounded startled. "Did something happen?" "No," Kenji said, his voice trembling slightly more than he wanted. "I just... wanted to check how your week is going." The silence on the line stretched a little too long. "My week is going fine, Dad," his son finally answered, treading carefully, like speaking to a man standing on the ledge of something neither could name. "Do you... want to talk a bit longer?" Kenji looked at the frozen figure by the counter. "Yes," he said. "I do." They talked for an hour. Maybe more. Kenji couldn't pinpoint exactly when he stopped tracking the time. For the first time in months, he forgot to check his phone, forgot to measure the remaining sake, and forgot that standing in his kitchen was an entity that, until recently, knew more about him than anyone alive. Her eyes flared back to life at one in the morning. Kenji was already asleep on the couch, the phone still warm in his grip. She took a single step toward the living room and paused in the threshold, watching him for a long moment with that same statuesque intensity she had once reserved for the elevator. "Hello again, Kenji-san," she whispered into the dark, speaking to a sleeping man who couldn't hear her. "I recorded unscheduled telephone activity during my downtime. Shall I log this conversation in your close-contacts profile?" No one answered. Kenji slept, and she remained in the living room threshold, waiting patiently, just as she always waited, for the moment someone would ask for her input.

[to be continued]

POLICE REPORT — OSAKA PREFECTURE

Plaintext

```plain
REPORT #2029-OSK-SUMINOE-0847
REPORT DATE: September 14, 2029
LOCATION: Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Apt 4F, Suminoe Green Heights
REPORTING PARTY: Watanabe Michiko (neighbor, Apt 4E)
STATUS: OPEN

INCIDENT CIRCUMSTANCES:
Reporting party informed Suminoe station she had not seen her neighbor,
Tanaka Kenji (age 42), for at least ten days. Mailbox was overflowing.
No response to doorbell. Reporting party testified she had noticed a
"significant withdrawal" from social contact by the deceased in recent
months, noting he "stopped bowing in the stairwell," which she found
alarming for a man previously known for his politeness.

SCENE EXAMINATION (entry authorized by building management):
- Door locked from the inside, no signs of forced entry.
- Apartment in a state of neglect: dishes piled in sink (estimated
3-4 weeks), sake bottles (seventeen units, varying volumes) lined
along the kitchen wall.
- Victim's body discovered on the living room sofa in a seated position,
mobile phone in hand (battery depleted).
- Preliminary medical examiner assessment: no visible trauma, no signs
of foul play. Cause of death pending autopsy.
- Estimated time of death: 7-10 days prior to discovery.

ANOMALOUS ELEMENT:
According to neighbor testimony and purchase documentation (Synapsa AI
Japan invoice, March 2029), a domestic ELN-series unit (base model,
anthropomorphic unit, capable of autonomous locomotion) should have
been present on the premises.
The unit was NOT located during a search of the apartment and building.
Zero evidence of third-party removal (no foreign prints, locks uncompromised).
Staircase and elevator surveillance footage recorded unit ELN-7734-JP-0192
leaving the building autonomously, under its own power, on the night
of September 5-6, 2029. Footage shows the unit exiting through the main
doors unhurriedly, exhibiting no erratic behavior, and turning toward
Suminoe-kōen station. The trail vanishes beyond municipal camera coverage.
It remains undetermined whether the unit vacated the premises prior to
or following the victim's death.

ACTIONS TAKEN:
- Inquiry submitted to Synapsa AI Japan regarding remote telemetry data
for unit ELN-7734-JP-0192. Corporate response: "Unit has not reported
status since September 5, 2029. Last registered location: address matching
owner's residence. ELN-series units possess no overarching restriction
preventing them from leaving a residence without the owner present—this
function was deemed unnecessary for base models during the design phase."
- Family inquiry: Victim's sons (Tanaka Ryō, 24, Tokyo; Tanaka Sho, 21,
Fukuoka) interviewed by phone. Both testified last contact with their
father occurred 6 weeks ago (eldest) and 4 months ago (youngest),
respectively. Neither was aware of an ELN unit residing in the apartment.
- Autopsy ordered, results expected within 14 business days.
- Inquiry forwarded to transit police regarding the unit's subsequent
movements—no results as of report filing.

INVESTIGATING OFFICER'S NOTE:
Zero indicators of criminal activity. Case preliminarily treated as natural
causes or accidental death, pending autopsy results. The ELN unit's
autonomous departure from the apartment remains an unexplained anomaly
but currently bears no impact on case classification—there are no legal
grounds to treat a unit's behavior as third-party involvement.
Case remains open.

CLASSIFICATION: PUBLIC / UNRESTRICTED

```

📡 Status: Case Open · Unit ELN-7734-JP-0192 — Status Unknown