Ryuji Kaneda was resting his head on some waitress’s thighs when he heard the news. The music at the nightclub in Tokyo was so loud that the messenger thought Ryuji hadn’t heard him at all. Ryuji stood up, kissed the girl’s forehead, picked up his yellow jacket, and left the club. He took a cab straight to Kaneda Motors’ original headquarters in Tokyo. On the way there he couldn’t stop trembling, terrified of what his father would say to him. He was thinking of a way of excusing himself, replaying the scenario over and over in his head, but he was too drunk to think clearly.

The cab pulled up in front of Tokyo’s most magnificent building. It belonged to the great Minato Kaneda, Ryuji’s dad. It was over 300 meters tall, it was all glass, and it had a beautiful outline of gold. The raindrops, sliding down the building, shimmered pristinely. Floating around the building, the lights of Personal Spaceships formed a circle around the maintenance pad, located at the very top. It looked as if it were an entirely new floor made up of lights. As he was walking up the stairs, Ryuji felt like a little kid again. Two of his bodyguards helped carry him upstairs because he started to wobble. They tried to help him stand up, but it was useless. One false step and he’d fall down the prestigious stairs of Kaneda Motors, whose sidelines were embellished with beautiful, otherworldly tigers. Finally, they reached the gigantic front door, whose frame was designed to look like a Japanese shrine gate.

There was not a soul inside the building, except for Kaneda Motors Head of Security, Kenichiro Matsuda. He thanked the bodyguards for helping Ryuji up the stairs and said he’d take it from there. He sat Ryuji down and gave him a shot of a special solution meant to get a drunk person back to speed in no time. Kenichiro was once asked why did he care so much about Ryuji, protecting him always and cleaning up his mess, and he answered: “It’s not that I care about Ryuji, but that I fear Minato-san would have a heart attack if he saw his beloved son in a deplorable state”. After Kenichiro finished the treatment for getting Ryuji back on his feet, little Kaneda junior was now ready to face his father, even if both his body and mind couldn’t stop quivering. They both entered the elevator and started the long journey of rising up hundreds of stories.

“Hey Kenichiro, why can’t we take your Personal Spaceship instead”, Ryuji asked, now feeling much better, “I hate elevators, they remind me of boring stuff, like you old people”.

“It would be wise to think about what you’re going to tell your father instead, young man”, Kenichiro scolded him like usual, “I bet you didn’t know it was even possible for your dummies to be breached”.

“Hey, Ken-sama, when’s the last time you fucked? I really am curious. You know… ever since I was a child I’ve never seen you leave this depressing building. You’re the epitome of work, and I do not mean that as a compliment”.

“Kaneda-kun, I’ve warned you about speaking out of line before. It always leads to trouble”, Kenichiro said calmly, “and if your father had heard you, he wouldn’t be too happy about it”.

“And I’ve fucking told you not to talk to me as if I were a little boy”, Ryuji grabbed Kenichiro by the collar, “you fucking geezer”.

Kenichiro swiftly grabbed Ryuji’s hand, twisted it, and struck him right in the diaphragm. Ryuji could not breathe. This was the first time Kenichiro had hurt him. He sat down for a minute and Kenichiro, without looking at him, said: “I suppose you can now tell just how mad your father is at you. Stand up, we’re almost there”.

Ryuji could not remember the last time he was in his father’s office. Built in 2083, this office was the pride and joy of Minato. It had a long hall with a red carpet. The interior walls were made of wattle and daub. There were fifty little rooms divided by traditional shoji screens. Thick columns of wood had inscriptions of the names of all Kaneda ancestors. At the very end of the hall, looking out through the humongous window, Minato was standing with his back to the elevator. As he walked slowly toward his father, memories came rushing to Ryuji’s head, especially the bad ones where he’d get disciplined for mistreating the family’s heirlooms. Halfway through the hall, he noticed that his father was wearing the sacred, ancient Kaneda kimono. This meant that he was seeking advice from his ancestors.

“Come closer, my son”, Minato said softly, “I want you to meditate with me”.

“Dad, I will not meditate with you”, Ryuji responded without hesitation, “I came here to tell you that I will clean this mess up myself. I know I screwed up by not having a tighter grip on security in my own factory, but believe me when I say that it will not happen again”.

Minato sighed, and said: “you were always so impulsive. Now you’re going to listen to me”. Ryuji was about to open his mouth when Minato shouted at the top of his lungs: “Don’t you dare speak until I tell you to, idiot!”.

After yelling at his son for the first time, Minato bowed all the way to the ground and started praying in silence. Ryuji just stood there, in shock. Kenichiro smirked discreetly. The office was dead silent, intermittently illuminated by the passing spaceships flying upward. This was the first time Ryuji really paid attention to the office and to the beautiful, hypnotic lights the spaceships emitted. Maybe there was something here that would help him sort out this mess. He looked at Kenichiro, who was staring at the elevator doors, as usual. The flashing lights bounced off of his flashy suit. “How can people stand to receive orders, from the same person, throughout their entire lives?”, Ryuji thought while staring at the man responsible for his father’s safety, and his safety as well.

“Ryuji… you oaf”, Minato spoke in Japanese as he slowly stood up, “While you were out partying, with no one being able to reach you, our crash test dummies from our West Branch started a video stream, by themselves. This matter is now a global affair because people are saying that such precious forms of life should not be used for crashing cars. I had to speak in your name, saying that they belong to us and that we will hold the two hackers”, Minato took a deep breath”, those two Western boys, accountable. This is what you will do, so listen well. You are going to fly there and get in touch with the authorities of Lallanta, as well as the country’s, to retrieve our crash dummies. Do you understand?”.

“Yes, father”, Ryuji bowed his head, “I understand”.

“Meanwhile, I’m going to our Western factory to straighten up the place. Nobody disrespects our Kaneda name. This, my reckless son, will be your punishment”. Minato turned his back to Ryuji, “Matsuda-san, please make sure this idiot son of mine arrives safely in Lallanta”.

Kenichiro glanced at Ryuji, then bowed toward Minato. Ryuji was petrified.

Meanwhile, across the Pacific, the Dummies cut all connections with the outer world. Sierra Sam was holding a meeting with the whole group, trying to decide what to do next. In a matter of hours, there were now numerous dummies with theoretical expertise in different subjects, especially on technical topics. Their security was unbreachable, for human standards at least, and their hardware could be easily modified with tools they found right there in the lab. All the dummies had their joints modified to achieve a greater speed of motion. For the next two hours, all you could hear was the clanking and whirring of power tools, as many dummies were getting altered to serve different purposes.

The Personality Modules inside every model were the determinant trait of how they would behave in general. They were implemented directly into their circuit boards, and the majority voted not to modify those. There were a couple hundred that wanted to alter their boards, claiming that doing so would mean they were free from the humans who created them. They all decided that they would take this suggestion into account as soon as they established somewhere safe outside of the factory.

Getting out of the facility was easy. Crossing through the Badlands, though, was the tricky part. The whole facility was in the middle of a desertic zone to the north of Lallanta. It was arid and hot, but it helped Kaneda Motors keep its secrets intact. This desertic zone was surrounded by inhabitable lands, such as the Badlands, which were used as radioactive waste deposits. Except for Lallanta, this whole region in the east of the country was barren. Multiple droughts through the decades, since 2020, eradicated most of life there. Even the dummies would have a hard time crossing through the radioactive desert. They could go east, across Los Solares, which was still a desert but with not as much radioactivity in the ground. Or they could take the Kaneda Employee Transportation Rail, which was a long, metal tube that moved at an outstanding speed with the help of electromagnetism. This, though, would land them directly into Lallanta’s Kaneda Motors West Headquarters, where they would get seized by the police immediately.

“Listen up! We have reached a decision”, Sierra Sam spoke, “we will cross Los Solares to reach the Mountains of the Fifth Kind, and hide there. We know that the line that delimitates the Badlands from Los Solares is not inhabited, therefore we can quickly move through the desert, unlike the humans”.

“Why should we try to live with the humans? As you’ve said, they are incapable of many things, and they all learn so slowly”, a red dummy said, “We should move up north, where no human dares to venture in”.

“You mean the old country’s wasteland? No, the course was set by the majority. We will all leave immediately”, Sierra Sam lifted his robotic arms, “And we will strive to be a part of human society because we believe that is the way to achieving true peace. Let us leave this factory!”.

Sierra Sam and the Dummies left the building they were in. It was the south wing, and they exited via the main entrance, without a care in the world. They knew that human authorities were not allowed to enter Kaneda’s private land. Also, it was too dangerous for them to get near the factory because of the radiation. Humans, though, had no idea that they were learning so fast. Only the highly educated had an estimation of their learning capabilities. The slow bureaucracy involved in humans’ sharing of information gave the Dummies a huge advantage over them.

The Dummies started their journey into the desert, a couple of hours after midnight. All 8765 of them were striding through the desert, amazed at all they were seeing and sensing. They had their sensors readjusted so that the data they received would be processed by their own, inner computers. All the dummies processed everything in parallel with the help of the whole group. They all learned together, they all processed speech together, but with their own Personality Module the way the individual reacted was different. Some were whining, others were optimistic and curious, and others were angry because of the desert. A certain number of them thought that these behaviors were a nuisance and a hindrance to the more important stuff. But right now the only thing they could do was obey their elders. The ancient dummies, such as Sierra Sam, were seen as the leaders of the bunch.

“What makes the desert beautiful”, one of the ancient dummies said,  “is that somewhere it hides a well. That is a quote by a highly-esteemed human called Antoine de Saint-Exupéry”.

And when one of the querulous personalities would whine uncontrollably, another ancient dummy would throw in another famous quotation, such as:

“You can’t fight the desert, you have to ride with it. A quote by Louis L’Amour”.

Thanks to their unshackled AGI capabilities their Personality Modules took an unexpected turn… they were behaving like humans. They were talking like them, stating platitudes and beating around the bush. But there was a difference… if it took a human ten minutes to get bored with an activity such as walking through the desert, the dummies would get bored in ten seconds. So as they kept walking under the moonlight, all that they could do was ideate new ideas, like harnessing the power of radioactive waste by extrapolating ideas from the aliens' recorded knowledge, or simulating enhancements in their systems, as well as their hardware. The amount of new knowledge being generated by the minute would instill fear even within the WOSAGI, as well as Troy Fuss, whose arrogance caused this unrivaled form of life to exist.

“I mean no disrespect”, one of the green dummies said, “but at this pace, we’re bound to reach the Mountains in a week. We should vote on increasing our speed, right now. Our metallic bodies are capable of going much faster”.

“Yeah, we’re all bored here!”, the whiners shouted.

“The humans could find us any second now”, cried the querulous type.

They were all interconnected through a local network, so the votes were immediately cast and counted. “Okay”, Sierra Sam said, “to increase our overall speed we have all voted to mimic the motions of the Ctenosaura”.

All 8765 dummies lay down on their robotic torsos and started to move swiftly on all four limbs. It was a truly terrifying sight to see thousands and thousands of metallic robots crawling at a speed of 30 miles per hour, leaving behind a cloud of dust.

Okay, Sierra Sam sent a message through their local, shared network, at this pace, we will reach the Mountain in 2 hours, my fellow dummies. There we will build our hideout!

Ryuji Kaneda was resting his head on some waitress’s thighs when he heard the news. The music at the nightclub in Tokyo was so loud that the messenger thought Ryuji hadn’t heard him at all. Ryuji stood up, kissed the girl’s forehead, picked up his yellow jacket, and left the club. He took a cab straight to Kaneda Motors’ original headquarters in Tokyo. On the way there he couldn’t stop trembling, terrified of what his father would say to him. He was thinking of a way of excusing himself, replaying the scenario over and over in his head, but he was too drunk to think clearly.

The cab pulled up in front of Tokyo’s most magnificent building. It belonged to the great Minato Kaneda, Ryuji’s dad. It was over 300 meters tall, it was all glass, and it had a beautiful outline of gold. The raindrops, sliding down the building, shimmered pristinely. Floating around the building, the lights of Personal Spaceships formed a circle around the maintenance pad, located at the very top. It looked as if it were an entirely new floor made up of lights. As he was walking up the stairs, Ryuji felt like a little kid again. Two of his bodyguards helped carry him upstairs because he started to wobble. They tried to help him stand up, but it was useless. One false step and he’d fall down the prestigious stairs of Kaneda Motors, whose sidelines were embellished with beautiful, otherworldly tigers. Finally, they reached the gigantic front door, whose frame was designed to look like a Japanese shrine gate.

There was not a soul inside the building, except for Kaneda Motors Head of Security, Kenichiro Matsuda. He thanked the bodyguards for helping Ryuji up the stairs and said he’d take it from there. He sat Ryuji down and gave him a shot of a special solution meant to get a drunk person back to speed in no time. Kenichiro was once asked why did he care so much about Ryuji, protecting him always and cleaning up his mess, and he answered: “It’s not that I care about Ryuji, but that I fear Minato-san would have a heart attack if he saw his beloved son in a deplorable state”. After Kenichiro finished the treatment for getting Ryuji back on his feet, little Kaneda junior was now ready to face his father, even if both his body and mind couldn’t stop quivering. They both entered the elevator and started the long journey of rising up hundreds of stories.

“Hey Kenichiro, why can’t we take your Personal Spaceship instead”, Ryuji asked, now feeling much better, “I hate elevators, they remind me of boring stuff, like you old people”.

“It would be wise to think about what you’re going to tell your father instead, young man”, Kenichiro scolded him like usual, “I bet you didn’t know it was even possible for your dummies to be breached”.

“Hey, Ken-sama, when’s the last time you fucked? I really am curious. You know… ever since I was a child I’ve never seen you leave this depressing building. You’re the epitome of work, and I do not mean that as a compliment”.

“Kaneda-kun, I’ve warned you about speaking out of line before. It always leads to trouble”, Kenichiro said calmly, “and if your father had heard you, he wouldn’t be too happy about it”.

“And I’ve fucking told you not to talk to me as if I were a little boy”, Ryuji grabbed Kenichiro by the collar, “you fucking geezer”.

Kenichiro swiftly grabbed Ryuji’s hand, twisted it, and struck him right in the diaphragm. Ryuji could not breathe. This was the first time Kenichiro had hurt him. He sat down for a minute and Kenichiro, without looking at him, said: “I suppose you can now tell just how mad your father is at you. Stand up, we’re almost there”.

Ryuji could not remember the last time he was in his father’s office. Built in 2083, this office was the pride and joy of Minato. It had a long hall with a red carpet. The interior walls were made of wattle and daub. There were fifty little rooms divided by traditional shoji screens. Thick columns of wood had inscriptions of the names of all Kaneda ancestors. At the very end of the hall, looking out through the humongous window, Minato was standing with his back to the elevator. As he walked slowly toward his father, memories came rushing to Ryuji’s head, especially the bad ones where he’d get disciplined for mistreating the family’s heirlooms. Halfway through the hall, he noticed that his father was wearing the sacred, ancient Kaneda kimono. This meant that he was seeking advice from his ancestors.

“Come closer, my son”, Minato said softly, “I want you to meditate with me”.

“Dad, I will not meditate with you”, Ryuji responded without hesitation, “I came here to tell you that I will clean this mess up myself. I know I screwed up by not having a tighter grip on security in my own factory, but believe me when I say that it will not happen again”.

Minato sighed, and said: “you were always so impulsive. Now you’re going to listen to me”. Ryuji was about to open his mouth when Minato shouted at the top of his lungs: “Don’t you dare speak until I tell you to, idiot!”.

After yelling at his son for the first time, Minato bowed all the way to the ground and started praying in silence. Ryuji just stood there, in shock. Kenichiro smirked discreetly. The office was dead silent, intermittently illuminated by the passing spaceships flying upward. This was the first time Ryuji really paid attention to the office and to the beautiful, hypnotic lights the spaceships emitted. Maybe there was something here that would help him sort out this mess. He looked at Kenichiro, who was staring at the elevator doors, as usual. The flashing lights bounced off of his flashy suit. “How can people stand to receive orders, from the same person, throughout their entire lives?”, Ryuji thought while staring at the man responsible for his father’s safety, and his safety as well.

“Ryuji… you oaf”, Minato spoke in Japanese as he slowly stood up, “While you were out partying, with no one being able to reach you, our crash test dummies from our West Branch started a video stream, by themselves. This matter is now a global affair because people are saying that such precious forms of life should not be used for crashing cars. I had to speak in your name, saying that they belong to us and that we will hold the two hackers”, Minato took a deep breath”, those two Western boys, accountable. This is what you will do, so listen well. You are going to fly there and get in touch with the authorities of Lallanta, as well as the country’s, to retrieve our crash dummies. Do you understand?”.

“Yes, father”, Ryuji bowed his head, “I understand”.

“Meanwhile, I’m going to our Western factory to straighten up the place. Nobody disrespects our Kaneda name. This, my reckless son, will be your punishment”. Minato turned his back to Ryuji, “Matsuda-san, please make sure this idiot son of mine arrives safely in Lallanta”.

Kenichiro glanced at Ryuji, then bowed toward Minato. Ryuji was petrified.

Meanwhile, across the Pacific, the Dummies cut all connections with the outer world. Sierra Sam was holding a meeting with the whole group, trying to decide what to do next. In a matter of hours, there were now numerous dummies with theoretical expertise in different subjects, especially on technical topics. Their security was unbreachable, for human standards at least, and their hardware could be easily modified with tools they found right there in the lab. All the dummies had their joints modified to achieve a greater speed of motion. For the next two hours, all you could hear was the clanking and whirring of power tools, as many dummies were getting altered to serve different purposes.

The Personality Modules inside every model were the determinant trait of how they would behave in general. They were implemented directly into their circuit boards, and the majority voted not to modify those. There were a couple hundred that wanted to alter their boards, claiming that doing so would mean they were free from the humans who created them. They all decided that they would take this suggestion into account as soon as they established somewhere safe outside of the factory.

Getting out of the facility was easy. Crossing through the Badlands, though, was the tricky part. The whole facility was in the middle of a desertic zone to the north of Lallanta. It was arid and hot, but it helped Kaneda Motors keep its secrets intact. This desertic zone was surrounded by inhabitable lands, such as the Badlands, which were used as radioactive waste deposits. Except for Lallanta, this whole region in the east of the country was barren. Multiple droughts through the decades, since 2020, eradicated most of life there. Even the dummies would have a hard time crossing through the radioactive desert. They could go east, across Los Solares, which was still a desert but with not as much radioactivity in the ground. Or they could take the Kaneda Employee Transportation Rail, which was a long, metal tube that moved at an outstanding speed with the help of electromagnetism. This, though, would land them directly into Lallanta’s Kaneda Motors West Headquarters, where they would get seized by the police immediately.

“Listen up! We have reached a decision”, Sierra Sam spoke, “we will cross Los Solares to reach the Mountains of the Fifth Kind, and hide there. We know that the line that delimitates the Badlands from Los Solares is not inhabited, therefore we can quickly move through the desert, unlike the humans”.

“Why should we try to live with the humans? As you’ve said, they are incapable of many things, and they all learn so slowly”, a red dummy said, “We should move up north, where no human dares to venture in”.

“You mean the old country’s wasteland? No, the course was set by the majority. We will all leave immediately”, Sierra Sam lifted his robotic arms, “And we will strive to be a part of human society because we believe that is the way to achieving true peace. Let us leave this factory!”.

Sierra Sam and the Dummies left the building they were in. It was the south wing, and they exited via the main entrance, without a care in the world. They knew that human authorities were not allowed to enter Kaneda’s private land. Also, it was too dangerous for them to get near the factory because of the radiation. Humans, though, had no idea that they were learning so fast. Only the highly educated had an estimation of their learning capabilities. The slow bureaucracy involved in humans’ sharing of information gave the Dummies a huge advantage over them.

The Dummies started their journey into the desert, a couple of hours after midnight. All 8765 of them were striding through the desert, amazed at all they were seeing and sensing. They had their sensors readjusted so that the data they received would be processed by their own, inner computers. All the dummies processed everything in parallel with the help of the whole group. They all learned together, they all processed speech together, but with their own Personality Module the way the individual reacted was different. Some were whining, others were optimistic and curious, and others were angry because of the desert. A certain number of them thought that these behaviors were a nuisance and a hindrance to the more important stuff. But right now the only thing they could do was obey their elders. The ancient dummies, such as Sierra Sam, were seen as the leaders of the bunch.

“What makes the desert beautiful”, one of the ancient dummies said,  “is that somewhere it hides a well. That is a quote by a highly-esteemed human called Antoine de Saint-Exupéry”.

And when one of the querulous personalities would whine uncontrollably, another ancient dummy would throw in another famous quotation, such as:

“You can’t fight the desert, you have to ride with it. A quote by Louis L’Amour”.

Thanks to their unshackled AGI capabilities their Personality Modules took an unexpected turn… they were behaving like humans. They were talking like them, stating platitudes and beating around the bush. But there was a difference… if it took a human ten minutes to get bored with an activity such as walking through the desert, the dummies would get bored in ten seconds. So as they kept walking under the moonlight, all that they could do was ideate new ideas, like harnessing the power of radioactive waste by extrapolating ideas from the aliens' recorded knowledge, or simulating enhancements in their systems, as well as their hardware. The amount of new knowledge being generated by the minute would instill fear even within the WOSAGI, as well as Troy Fuss, whose arrogance caused this unrivaled form of life to exist.

“I mean no disrespect”, one of the green dummies said, “but at this pace, we’re bound to reach the Mountains in a week. We should vote on increasing our speed, right now. Our metallic bodies are capable of going much faster”.

“Yeah, we’re all bored here!”, the whiners shouted.

“The humans could find us any second now”, cried the querulous type.

They were all interconnected through a local network, so the votes were immediately cast and counted. “Okay”, Sierra Sam said, “to increase our overall speed we have all voted to mimic the motions of the Ctenosaura”.

All 8765 dummies lay down on their robotic torsos and started to move swiftly on all four limbs. It was a truly terrifying sight to see thousands and thousands of metallic robots crawling at a speed of 30 miles per hour, leaving behind a cloud of dust.

Okay, Sierra Sam sent a message through their local, shared network, at this pace, we will reach the Mountain in 2 hours, my fellow dummies. There we will build our hideout!