10. Music

"Hey, Anderson. Come on in."

Kobe, the Information Security Center director, leaned back in his plush office chair and looked up from his newspaper to greet his visitor. Kobe knew him well. Whenever he opened the office door and walked in, he came with questions quite different from what others would ask—questions that might even sound absurd—demanding information. Though his hunches didn't always pan out, his ideas still stimulated Kobe's enthusiasm like fresh sashimi flopping on a worn cutting board.

"Would you like a brandy?"

Kobe retrieved a round glass bottle filled with brown-colored liquor from the bookshelf at the back of his office and poured a full glass over ice. Anderson smiled with a lively expression and shook his head.

"About that recording of the kid's voice I mentioned before. Well, I tried transforming it into trumpet sounds and extending the length, but with just that, it's not easy to find similar music. The AI would have more chances to match it if the music had some repetitive elements. So far, we've found about 45,000 similar tracks. By the time we play them all for the kid one by one, his brother will already have turned into a monster."

Kobe stood up, brought over a gray binder from his office desk, and placed it in front of Anderson. Then he picked up the brandy glass he'd poured for his guest and drank, making the ice clink.

"Instead, I looked into the kid's father. Ewan McClain. He was a trumpet player. Been dead for over fifteen years now. He played in a band in Haltzburg. I'm not sure, but if you go there, you might be able to find out what that music is."

Kobe activated a satellite (spherical robot) and sent the files he'd been working on to Anderson's email address.

"As for the frequency, the time we can temporarily control it is about five minutes. Just enough for one song. The broadcasting station has an automatic recovery system that resets the system after five minutes. Even if we wanted to do more, we can't because the location would be traced. Hmm... if we just find the music, we should be able to create roughly the situation you're thinking of... but will that music really reveal where the kid is?"

Anderson closed the binder, looked at Kobe, and smiled without saying a word.