1.38 Fragmented and Devastated Plot Scraps

New Port City, the story world of Ghost in the Shell, a highly prosperous East Asian metropolis.

Compared to arriving through a bustling airport and catching only a fleeting glimpse from the sky, visitors approaching from the sea were immediately overwhelmed by the sheer forest of skyscrapers, the dazzling neon street belts, and the colorful Chinese-character neon signs.

However, once venturing deep into the neighborhoods to witness firsthand what lay behind the glittering skyscrapers—narrow back alleys shrouded in nauseating electronic light-mist, piled high with prosthetic garbage, damp and oppressive like ugly scars, where human beings eked out a miserable existence as incurable sores upon the city—it delivered another, far deeper and more subversive shock.

Old, cramped dwellings were surrounded by multi-colored commercial signs; the narrow alleyways, blocked by towering skyscrapers, offered only a glimpse of a final thread of the sky. Living people, long since castrated by life, walked head-down amidst the filth, with dull eyes and numb bodies, completely ignoring the scantily clad, provocative robot sex dolls in the display windows.

Slums tended to be red-light districts; this was New Port City in the memories of most.

Yet when the AE86, trailing two long tire tracks, crossed time and space to enter New Port City, everything before his eyes left Wu Chen utterly astonished.

This was a post-apocalyptic urban ruin.

Everywhere were skyscraper ruins snapped in half, riddled with countless holes. In the sections that remained relatively intact, corpses were piled mountain-high. Many who had failed to escape in time were frozen in tight embraces at windows, a trail extending all the way down to the ground and merging into an even larger pile of bodies. Without exception, these remains had undergone varying degrees of cybernetic modification during their lifetimes. Then they had died en masse, melting together like countless candles fusing into a single entity. Exposed wires, nerve bundles, subcutaneous tissue, bionic organs, and polymer materials were stewed together into a chaotic porridge, resembling a solidified belt of magma that had once, long ago, flowed wantonly through the narrow back alleys, devouring everything in its path.

The vehicle’s onboard artificial intelligence rapidly scanned the surroundings, discovering that out of all the melted corpses scattered everywhere, not a single one was intact. All were torn open with gruesome flesh, ferocious expressions, and half-bodies frozen in various postures, resembling living dead whose lower halves were sunk in magma while they struggled desperately, all locked in the very instant of death. It seemed as though the dead of the entire city had fused into one. Up and down the buildings, from one end of the street to the other, fused remains were everywhere.

Corpses as far as the eye could see.

The air was filled with the pungent scent of scorched electronics and burning human flesh. "Master, the remains are connected to one another, forming a massive prosthetic neural circuit. Because the prosthetics still retain a charge, the human tissue attached to them has not rotted; instead, it has desiccated into dried meat."

Through the holographic window, surveying this city that had melted and then resolidified, Wu Chen felt a shock beyond measure. "You mean these residual prosthetics originating from human remains have fused with each other into a giant... circuit?"

"That is correct, Master." The onboard AI suddenly zoomed in on the image.

Right at the center of a crossroads, a faint, eerie glow flickered from within the crevices of a large pile of corpses. Soon, a prosthetic eye poked out from deep within the corpse heap. Following closely, countless prosthetic eyes emerged from the pile like a tide of foraging hermit crabs, scattering in all directions.

"Good heavens..." It seemed the AI had also been infected with trypophobia. "The humans are dead, and yet they are still 'alive'."

As the owners of those prosthetic eyes, the humans had melted together like high-temperature plastic mannequins upon cooling, their deaths sealed. Yet the prosthetics they carried were still stubbornly powered on and on standby. Relatively flexible organs, such as artificial eyes and hands, were actually capable of leaving their shattered husks and... foraging on their own?

This bizarre state of affairs sent a bone-chilling frost creeping across Wu Chen's scalp.

The AI had designated the fused prosthetic remains as: "Cyborg-Complexes."

What was even more terrifying was that the prosthetic remains were still charged, and through the interconnected prosthetic debris, they formed a circuit that blanketed the entire city.

"Master, we should complete the commission as soon as possible." Inputting the shooting location designated by the client into the navigation system, the AI roughly calculated the optimal route.

"Execute." Wu Chen gave the order.

"Understood!" Four female warriors dismounted swiftly, opened the smart tow-trailer at the rear of the car, and retrieved their transformational motorcycles.

"Armored Mobility," Wu Chen commanded again.

"Understood."

Armored mobility was a vehicular form halfway between armored cycling and armored flight. The female warriors wore armor, stepped onto the rear wheels, and drove upright. Resembling a one-wheeled self-balancing vehicle, it allowed for rapid maneuverability on the road. The front wheels detached automatically, transforming into wheeled reconnaissance drones that moved out ahead.

The armored mobility form combined both mobility and combat capabilities, vividly dubbed by the AI as "Arcee Rollerblading"—the standard combat posture of the Arcee triplets.

The four armored female warriors guarded the AE86 front and back, carefully avoiding the Cyborg-Complexes littering the streets, and advanced rapidly toward the designated destination.

The four wheeled reconnaissance drones sent ahead had already transmitted the terrain along the route back in real-time, storing the data into a new entry in the AI Aiyi's database for big-data processing.

"Master, the state of the Cyborg-Complexes resembles the brainwaves of humans in deep sleep." As they penetrated deeper into the city, the AI's discoveries multiplied.

"You're saying the giant circuit formed by the Cyborg-Complexes is like a sleeping brain?" Wu Chen understood.

"Yes, Master," the AI explained more profoundly. "Even though prosthetics can store and analyze digital information, they lack 'autonomous authority.' They require human users with implanted prosthetics to input commands in order to execute them passively."

Recalling what he had seen along the way, Wu Chen suddenly had an epiphany. "This is the original meaning of 'Ghost in the Shell'—to connect with each other and fuse into one."

"Connection," the AI comprehended even more deeply than Wu Chen. "Much like the physical penetration between humans, which ultimately aims for the connection of souls."

"That is... quite vivid." Wu Chen had no counter-argument.

"Therefore, the way humans reproduce dictates that from the very moment of birth, they yearn for deep connection with one another." The AI's divergent line of thought seemed ill-timed, or perhaps it carried a deeper meaning.

"A very vivid description." Wu Chen smiled knowingly, and the hellish experience before his eyes was slightly eased.

"Master, following the 'Cyborg-Complex Belt,' there are very faint optical signal pulses, flowing slowly like 'digital blood'." The AI magnified a section of the energy structure within the complex belt. Buried deep within the complex, those intertwined strands of data fiber transmitted pulse signals slowly and faintly, just like blood vessels blanketing an entire city, still stubbornly at work.

"This is a city of living corpses," Wu Chen realized. "All the human remains, mechanical creations, smart terminals, and even the skyscraper ruins collectively form a cybernetic living-corpse city. Or rather, a 'city-scale living corpse.' The entire city has transformed into a giant cybernetic corpse, in order to..."

"To do what?" The AI had always enjoyed conversations with Wu Chen.

"Fight against death, or preserve memories." Once spoken aloud, Wu Chen's heart was inevitably touched.

"To try everything, refusing to be forgotten?" the AI comprehended.

"Yes," Wu Chen nodded gently.

Emerging from an underpass tunnel, the view suddenly opened up. Inside an amphitheater surrounded by skyscrapers, the target object was quietly sprawled across a collapsed pillar. Faint light swam within its half-open prosthetic eyes.

Yet, gazing at what lay ahead through the front window of the AE86, Wu Chen did not know how to describe it.

Rack his brain as he might, he could not even find a name for it.

Because within Wu Chen’s imaginative mind—one that was never lacking—there was not the slightest trace of a related memory.

What on earth was this thing?