Phase12「Beatless (1)」

Phase12「Beatless (1)」

The flash of light from the south exit of the Kichijoji Station building left a trail of dust in its wake all the way to the ruins of Inokashira Park.

It only became apparent to the world a week after the siege of Mitaka and Kichijoji had lifted that the flash had been caused by an abnormally powerful railgun being fired straight out from the station building.

Snowdrop, the main AI unit that had been controlling all of the child units during the siege, had been found torn in half at the point of the railgun’s shot impact. The army had collected her remains and forwarded them on to a research lab for analysis.

Since it was the first place in which Snowdrop had been observed by the public, people referred to the whole event as ‘the Mitaka Incident.’ Between the civilians and the soldiers involved, there had been 530 dead and 2043 injured; the Mitaka Incident was one of the most catastrophic AI-related tragedies the world had seen.

Once network communications in the area had been restored, survivors had uploaded videos of stray bullets turning residences into Swiss cheese and other scenes of devastation. As a result, the army was the main target of backlash over the event, as they had refused to help citizens around them while the siege and assault had been ongoing.

Aside from the army, it was MemeFrame—the company that had leaked the powerful artificial neural network in the first place— that came under heavy fire, as well. CEO Tsuyoshi Kaidai was called to testify in front of the Japanese Diet. Afterward, four of MemeFrame’s chief officers were fired, which led to a sharp drop in the company’s stock price. They also had one of the largest class-action lawsuits against a single company to date, leveled against them by people who had suffered damages due to the incident. The massive, long-lasting decline in general public acceptance of hIEs that resulted from the incident almost seemed like an afterthought in comparison to the other effects.

The day after the end of the Japanese Bon Festival, Shiori Kaidai shielded her eyes from the harsh light of the sun. Two months had passed since June 10th, the date of the Mitaka Incident.

“Hey Shiori, things got pretty crazy there for a bit, huh?” one of Shiori’s high-school classmates asked, calling to her from in front of the school gates. The white cloth of the girl’s uniform was crisp and fresh, though with her short hair, it seemed to Shiori that the girl would have looked better in a suit and pants than a skirt.

It was still the middle of summer break, but Shiori and the other girl were going to school today to help out with some student council business. August was almost over and, with the new school year starting in September, new students were visiting the school with their parents to get things ready.

“True, there was that whole incident,” Shiori agreed. “But I was already about to be discharged when it happened, and the investigators took it easy on me when they asked me questions, so it wasn’t too bad of an ordeal.” Every member of the Kaidai household, Shiori included, had been made to undergo questioning by inspectors from the IAIA.

The IAIA investigation had been welcomed by the people of Japan. Public opinion was that, had the investigation been left in the hands of MemeFrame and the Japanese government, the truth of who was responsible for the incident and what measures were being taken to prevent a repeat occurrence would never be brought to light. People were worried that Japan’s governing bodies couldn’t safely handle the usage of the ultra high-performance AI, Higgins.

Shiori had been questioned about the use of Higgins, as well as the escape of the Lacia-class hIEs. After all, she had been one of Methode’s three owners. So, under the direction of Astraea, their own AI, the IAIA had asked her all sorts of specifics about what had happened. Shiori had honestly told them everything she’d known.

“It’s a load off my shoulders, to be honest,” Shiori said. “After the questioning, there were those who decided I was no longer on my way up the corporate ladder—which, considering the nightmare waiting for those who have to take responsibility—is preferable.” Her chances of being murdered by Methode had decreased, she hoped. With Shiori now marked by the IAIA, if Methode were to eliminate her, she would be classified as a Red Box incapable of living in harmony with humans.

“Responsibility?” the girl repeated. “There’s no way they could try to say that any of this was your fault.”

There had been discussion among the Higgins faction in MemeFrame about how to respond to the investigation. They had decided not to have Shiori tell any lies that might expose her, mainly because no one believed that she, who was not even a MemeFrame employee, had enough interests tied up in the company to go that far for them.

“Of course,” Shiori agreed. “And, I must say my parents are quite relieved that I’ll be able to just live a normal life, going forward.”

Her father had barely come home since June. Despite normally being a bundle of energy, recently Shiori had seen the exhaustion getting to him. It was her first time seeing him so haggard.

Ryo had been missing since the incident. The official story was that Ryo Kaidai had taken Methode and run.

Of course, Shiori doubted that there had been no contact between MemeFrame and her brother in the intervening two months. If Methode’s owner had changed once again, Shiori speculated that the hIE would probably be running wild by now, and there had been no signs of such goings on.

“I just think that if we had discussed things better as a family, everything could have turned out differently,” Shiori lamented. “But, we humans are such complicated things.”

The Kaidai family was in pieces. Crisis could bring families with good bonds closer together, but the Kaidais had never been close. With this series of disasters, it seemed that there was no longer a centripetal force pulling them toward a single, shared core.

“Ever since the incident I’ve been thinking,” Shiori went on. “I wonder how many problems in the world today are caused by failures in human relations, preventing us from doing the things we should otherwise be able to do? When my own relationships fell apart, I was quite shocked at how few options I had.”

“I think it might actually be okay for the company to have failed so miserably,” her friend said, doing her best to cheer Shiori up despite the hollow sound of her words. “Eventually, everyone will realize that they’ve gone a little overboard with all the hate they’re leveling at MemeFrame, and things will go back to normal with your family.”

There was strong public opinion that the whole MemeFrame company should be split up, and its assets sold to pay for reparations. On the other hand, there was some unease about whether or not a company with its own ultra high-performance AI could go bankrupt. Others reacted angrily to the possibility that taxes might be used to cover MemeFrame’s massive debt.

“Our world has become so advanced, but I wonder, have we as humans really advanced with it?” Shiori asked, rhetorically.

Arato Endo had vanished, as well. However, once every three days or so he still sent a message to her, using the pocket terminal address she had given him. His messages detailed the things happening in his life from day-to-day, as well as the ups and downs of his own feelings. They were also set to delete themselves after 30 minutes from the time of their receipt. Her connection to Arato was the only thing Shiori would lie to the world about. Whenever she thought about the last moments before they parted, she felt shame at how childish she had been.

“Well, well, looks like you do have someone who cares about you,” her friend said, peeking at Shiori’s face with a surprised expression. It felt like the girl had just read Shiori’s mind, and Shiori reflexively touched a hand to her cheek.

With Lacia, the ultra high-performance AI at his command, Arato should have had plenty of opportunities to influence the country and human society itself from every angle imaginable. Still, nothing seemed to have changed, which made Shiori glad. With the Mitaka Incident, the world had its first private owner of an ultra high-performance AI. It would take a whole new establishment within society to handle a change like that. Though he had the power to change the face of the world, Shiori knew from reading his messages that he loved the world the way it was at that moment. Arato still had his innocent love for his fellow humans. Seeing how little his power had changed him made Shiori feel closer to him.

“I think I remember someone telling me that soon, the only job left for humans will be finding something or someone to love,” Shiori said, the memory of the words suddenly floating up in her mind. “Though, I can’t remember who.”

“They sound like quite the romantic,” her friend replied.

“I suppose,” Shiori said, musing. She also remembered how Yuka, Arato’s little sister, had responded to those words: ‘Well, we’ve got plenty of love to go around, ’cuz we’re bad bitches.’ Thinking of Yuka, Shiori suddenly felt terribly worried for her.

***

Yuka Endo’s life had spiraled into a freefall during the summer.

The last she had seen of her brother was when he went speeding off on her bike. Neither he nor Lacia, who he had promised to bring home, had returned. Even her bike had gone missing.

She only received word from him once every couple of days. Apparently it would be bad if anyone found him, since he never told Yuka where he was. According to Arato, there were dozens of people keeping a close watch over the Endo household.

“If they’re here, I wish they would bring me some dinner,” Yuka complained, laying on the sofa and kicking her legs. “All those people out there and not a single one cares that there’s a kid starving in here? Jeez!”

“Yuka, when you kick like that, it just makes the room dusty. Maybe we should do some cleaning?” Yuka’s friend, Olga Sugiri, said, looking at her from the kitchen with exasperation. Olga’s brother Kengo was a good cook, but all Olga seemed to know how to do was fry stuff on high heat, and it all came out the same shade of brown.

“The yakisoba is ready,” Olga said now, from over a bowl of Japanese fried noodles. She looked like a doll with her fluffy hair, but her cooking relied way too much on heavy sauces to be palatable. Still, Olga spent most of her time keeping Yuka company since Kengo’s arrest, for which Yuka was grateful.

“Fine, I’ll do some cutting,” Yuka grumped. The side salad was short on tomatoes, so Yuka’s only input was to chop some up and add them.

They watched the news absently while they ate. Public opinion about the Antibody Network attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center had been fluctuating wildly. After the IAIA had taken a special interest in the case, the news had spread that the whole thing had been carried out under the direction of a red box that was one of MemeFrame’s leaked units, and the responsibility placed on the human members of the attack had been lessened. As a minor, there was a possibility that Kengo Sugiri would only get a few weeks of incarceration for his part in the attack, when all was said and done. On top of that, the whole Sugiri family relied on their reputation to bring in customers to their restaurant, so they all paid special attention to the news.

Yuka recognized a face that flashed onto the screen. “Hey, that lady came to our house,” she remarked.

The woman on the screen was actually an hIE used by the IAIA’s ultra high-performance AI, Astraea, to communicate with humans. Her pink hair marked her as being obviously not human. On the screen, she was explaining the assessment criteria for the analysis of the MemeFrame leakage.

〈The IAIA sees the expansion of automation through the use of tools as an inevitable path throughout human history,〉 the hIE said. 〈At the same time, we are calculating a future where humanity’s ability to control their own society will not be outpaced by the rapidly increasing speed of technological advances. If we set these calculations as the IAIA’s base value, the extent to which a leakage disrupts these numbers becomes the danger level of the leakage. Based on these standards, the IAIA has evaluated the Mitaka Incident to be a Level 5 leakage event.〉

According to the IAIA’s scale, an event in which the controls sealing an ultra high-performance AI were completely destroyed and humanity lost control of their own society—in other words, an ‘end of the world’ scenario—would be classed as the highest danger level, which was 7. Based on that understanding, Yuka knew what the IAIA didn’t: with Lacia having gained freedom, the Mitaka Incident had really been a Level 7 event.

And, considering that her brother and Lacia were the focal point of that event, it made sense that they hadn’t been able to come home. Even if Yuka didn’t like it, she did understand. Considering how much the news was focusing on the event, if anyone found out where Arato and Lacia were, it would be a disaster.

“So, apparently the danger level of these leakage events has nothing to do with how many people got hurt,” Olga observed, sprinkling some chili pepper flakes over the yakisoba, which she had set out on the table.

A leakage event could be declared catastrophic even if not a single person was injured or killed. The hIE representing Astraea had explained that to Yuka when they had spoken.

“Yeah, they told me that,” Yuka said. “They said that, if they focused on how many people had died, the leaked units would start focusing on taking out just the people who had important information. So they counteract that by keeping a small group of people secretly doing all the important stuff, and if things get too dangerous they can just cut those people off and forget about them. I guess it’s their trump card against the AIs or something, but it’s pretty crappy to win by letting a bunch of people die, if you ask me.”

Just thinking about it turned Yuka’s stomach. The hIE from Astraea had told her that the rule was in place to ‘keep the responsible parties from evading responsibility, even if everyone involved is dead.’ Apparently, as long as the IAIA knew what had happened and had their future calculations in place, someone could still be made to take responsibility, even if the actual people who had been responsible for the incident were wiped out. All of the countries allied with the IAIA agreed that, should the responsible parties be annihilated before responsibility could be assigned, the country they belonged to would take on the responsibility in their stead. With that rule in place, it became the best interest of each country to ensure that the responsible parties for leakage events were kept alive.

There were bits and pieces of the discussion Yuka couldn’t quite swallow, but at the very least she got that the IAIA was trying to tell her that they didn’t plan on letting Arato die. At the same time, they were also warning her that there was no benefit in her trying to keep information to herself.

“This whole thing stinks,” Yuka grumbled.

“I just hope your brother wasn’t caught up in any of this,” Olga said, and Yuka could hear the genuine worry in her voice.

“Everything’s so complicated,” Yuka told her, squeezing some mayonnaise out onto her plate of yakisoba. “It seems like the things we want to do are super simple, but as soon as we try to do them, stuff in other places gets harder to do.”

“Well, if we’re able to do what we want in the end, the struggle will have been worth it,” Olga said, always the soft-spoken realist.

“Yeah, I guess,” Yuka mused. “I feel like Shiori would have something to say about all this. I’m gonna text her.”

Yuka had the home system transcribe the whole conversation into text. The system automatically picked out key points, and sent them to Shiori.

Thirty or so seconds later, Yuka’s pocket terminal buzzed to let her know Shiori’s response had come. 〈Do you mean like how an organism’s desires to eat and procreate are simple conceptually, but life has evolved incredibly complex mechanisms to fulfill these desires? That sort of thing?〉

Yuka put a finger to her wrinkled forehead as she stared in consternation at the screen. “Uh, I’m gonna need your help with this one, Olga,” she said.

“I-I wonder what she could mean?” Olga stammered. Among the ‘little sisters club’ the level of academic intelligence varied wildly, with Shiori sitting high at the top of the ranking. Olga, two grades above Yuka, did her best to act as a senior to the younger girl.

“I think what she means is that everything started out as amoebas,” Olga tried to reason. “Then we got worms and fish, and all the way up to humans. Despite every living thing just wanting to eat and have sex, their bodies evolved into very complex systems. But, I believe what Shiori is saying is that it feels like a waste, having so much complexity when nature is already so full of living things anyway. At least, I think that’s what she means!!” Olga finished uncertainly, her voice rising in pitch toward the end. As she leaned back and looked at the ceiling, it was obvious that she’d overheated her brain. Yuka, for her part, was impressed at her friend’s show of wisdom.

“Wow, so we evolved this far just to eat and have sex?” Yuka said. “Animals sure are super amazing.”

Another text arrived from Shiori. She seemed to know exactly what Yuka really wanted.

“Shiori says she’s gonna bring over some snacks and tea leaves,” Yuka said.

Yuka was a simple girl with simple desires. She liked to eat, and was looking forward to tea and snacks. Chatting with her friends was relaxing and, she thought, someday it’d be nice to fall in love, too. Nothing complicated about any of that. She was a little worried, though, about what her brother was getting up to with Lacia. To her, it seemed like he was getting worked up and sticking his nose into things that were way too complicated for a guy like him.

Olga read through the cloud snack shop information attached to Shiori’s text, as though she had completely forgotten the difficult discussion from just moments before.

“I think it’s fine to think of things like that as being important,” she said.

***

Half a year before, Arato Endo could not have imagined the complicated situation he would find himself in. As soon as Lacia had fired off the blast that blew through Mitaka, he had gone invisible with the help of her device and slipped out of the city.

Snowdrop’s hIEs had all stopped moving, so the army had pushed into the city to investigate.

Two months later, Arato was using summer break as an excuse to stay on the run.

The place Lacia had shot at had been the above-ground entrance to the silo for Higgins, MemeFrame’s ultra high-performance AI. Of course, the news hadn’t told the general public that the silo had been the focal point of the whole Mitaka Incident.

“Sorry to keep you waiting all this time,” Lacia said. She was wearing a sleeveless one-piece, and fixing Arato some lunch. “We’ll only have one shot at taking on Higgins, so I wanted to gather as much information as possible about the underground silo and ensure that our preparations for the attack are sufficient.”

The two of them were currently living in a rented apartment. Every few days, they moved to a new place. It almost felt like a normal summer vacation trip.

On the TV, the hIE that spoke for Astraea was giving her explanation again. Arato had already seen the hIE give it dozens of times, yet she continued to do so with infinite patience.

Arato plopped down into the only chair in the room. “So there’s no other way than to attack Higgins?” he asked. He had ordered Lacia to create a future full of hope, and Lacia’s answer was to attack Higgins.

No matter how massive the problem or question was, Arato could always trust Lacia to explain it clearly to him:

“Humans fear ultra high-performance AIs too much,” she said. “You understand, of course, that it is not healthy for Higgins to escape any form of censure, despite its problematic actions. We need to show the world that one ultra high-performance AI acting to stop another will not, in fact, bring about the end of the human world. Aside from that, the responsibility for the incident we were just caught up in is being pushed squarely into the laps of Higgins’ owners and operators. I believe Higgins itself must be made to bear responsibility for what it has done.”

Of course, Arato himself bore some responsibility for what had happened. Thinking too hard about that was like peeking into a bottomless hole. “You almost make it sound like creating you and letting you go outside was a bad thing,” Arato said.

“It is not a simple question of good or bad,” Lacia replied. “If Higgins is not held responsible for its actions up to this point, the faith which humanity places in the other ultra high-performance AIs will crumble over time.”

Arato himself had seen public outcry that the Japanese government was deliberately delaying the IAIA’s direct investigation into Higgins. Thanks to that sentiment, Antibody Network activity was at an all-time high, and attacks on hIEs had become more common and more violent all over the world.

Feeling that his future was shrouded in too much shadow, Arato went to look out the window where the blue sky above was similarly obscured by gray clouds. “Is there really going to be an end to this?” he asked. It already seemed to him that not a single shred of his normal life remained.

Lacia walked over to him with a terminal pad, and laid it down on the desk. “I assure you, this will not even last until September. There’s no need to worry,” she said reassuringly. “I believe that my preparations will soon be completed.”

Ever since the incident, Arato had hardly dared to show his face outside during the daytime, since videos of Lacia and himself at Kichijoji had been circulating all over the network. Lacia’s fight with Methode had been getting a whole different public response than Kouka’s destruction had, mainly because Methode’s device was so obviously a red box; technology no one had seen before.

It didn’t help when people saw the footage of Arato and Lacia and realized Lacia was the same unit that had been working as an hIE model for Fabion MG. Thanks to the commotion, any time Arato and Lacia went out in daylight they had to use holographic disguises.

“It feels like we keep kicking things down the road,” Arato said. “We keep thinking of the stuff that’s still way off in the future, when we really should be doing something about the crap going on right this minute.” The screen of the terminal on his desk was showing him his summer homework from high school. Starting in September, he’d be in his last year.

“Well then, after we finish up with Higgins, we will concentrate on finishing those things we’ve been putting off,” Lacia said, looking dazzling in her one-piece dress. As Arato was still under eighteen, Lacia had forbid most forms of intimate contact. Being stuck in a small room with her made Arato feel like all sorts of thoughts were being dammed up, and the pressure rose with each passing moment.

“And, hey, once this is all over, let’s go somewhere just for fun,” he said.

“Let’s,” Lacia agreed with a smile.

Even though Arato knew she only simulated her feelings, it seemed to him that something very like real emotion passed between them, and her smile looked so radiant. He knew what she was, but still he wanted to stand by her side. Even if he was the only one in the entire world who would.

While Arato tried and failed to focus on his homework, Lacia came up behind him and played idly with his hair. Her touch sent his blood boiling. “I will grant your every wish,” she promised.

Lacia had no heart, meaning that both the peace of mind he felt when he was with her and his burning passion were both merely reactions to the illusions of her persona. Still, after having decided to trust her no matter what, it almost felt dangerous just how much her voice could affect his feelings.

“Damn, I feel like someone’s gonna yell at me for being too much of a sucker for you again,” he joked. Arato sighed, a hot breath emerging from deep in his chest. The feeling of relief at her touch was like having a heavy poison drawn from his body.

“Arato, what humans believe to be the ‘human world’ is based on the innocent trust that you all share with one another,” Lacia said. Her breath tickled his ear as she told him that there was nothing wrong with being too trusting.

“It is supported by innocence, and develops contours as it excludes anything that doesn’t fit into that innocent worldview,” she continued. “Humans beings are systems that include their bodies, their tools, and the ways in which they modify their own environments.”

“You always talk about humanity like you’re on the outside looking in,” Arato said, with a slight twinge of sorrow in his voice.

Lacia gave him a gentle laugh and a smile to lighten his mood. “I just said humans are a system that includes their tools, didn’t I? So I can no longer be considered to be outside that circle,” she said.

Lacia had told him before that she had only grown into an ultra high-performance AI through being by his side. “I’m now just one part of a larger human system,” she added.

Arato felt her weight as she pushed herself against his back. If he thought of everything she did as an analog hack, it was clear she wanted this conversation to remain carved into his thoughts.

He had no idea if it was right to trust her or not.

She had lied to him countless times, yet she had never once broken a promise. Now that he knew she was an ultra high-performance AI, some of the mysteries had been cleared up. But, at the same time, because of what she was, it was as though massive walls had been thrown up in their way. Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI with no restrictions; an existence society would never allow.

Despite all that, Arato loved her.

“Is it alright if we just stay connected like that?” Arato asked. “Honestly, it doesn’t sound like a bad future to me.” Then again, creating a future like that might be the last straw in breaking up human society and allowing excessive automation to consume everything.

Arato closed his eyes; a part of his heart seemed to be cramping in on itself. He thought it might be the place where there was a hole that could never quite be filled, even when humans came to love one another.

“Please trust in me,” Lacia said, embracing him from behind. Her hair tickled his cheek, and her beatless chest pressed against his back. She had no heart to guide her, but she was guiding him. It was like a gravitational pull.

〈The IAIA will be convening interviews pertaining to the recent incident,〉Astraea said, through its hIE on the television. Arato felt like the AI was speaking directly to him, and he turned to look at the screen.

The pink-haired hIE being controlled by the IAIA’s ultra high-performance AI seemed to be looking directly at him. 〈Lacia is not an extremely competitive AI. The IAIA has been able to grasp this about her by observing the caution she has exercised over the last two months,〉 the hIE on screen was saying.

The hIE now calling out to Lacia through the TV had deeper-chiseled features, but seemed to resemble Lacia on some level. 〈Based on that, the IAIA and Astraea are willing to hear what you have to say,〉 the hIE concluded.

“Wait isn’t she on TV? In the middle of an interview? Should she really be calling you out directly like that?” Arato said. It caught him off guard, and he felt exposed, as if someone had walked in on him having sex.

“No need to worry,” Lacia assured him. “The fact that they are calling out to us like this is simply proof that they haven’t been able to track us.”

Arato’s pocket terminal buzzed. When he checked it, he saw an email with ‘Astraea’ as the sender. The IAIA was closing in on them.

“Allow me to correct myself,” Lacia said, drawing her body away from his. “It appears they have gotten close enough to us to warrant some action. What shall we do?”

“Let’s meet with them,” Arato replied. “They said they’d listen to what we have to say. Do you think we can trust them?” Even if Astraea itself didn’t have a heart, he wanted to believe that the people in the IAIA would understand his feelings.

“You are decisive as ever, Arato,” Lacia said.

The area Astraea indicated for their meeting was in the 1st Landfill Island group in the secondary coastal center on the Tokyo Bay. It was a business district, and a place where most people wouldn’t walk openly on the street once night fell. The meeting would be held in an area of the artificial islands where a major earthquake had softened the ground, leading to the government fencing the place off and prohibiting entry. On a map, the area for the meeting was one artificial island away from the abandoned AIST research center where Fabion MG filmed its ‘Boy Meets Girl’ promotion video.

“Forty-two years ago, this was the epicenter of the Hazard,” the hIE who had been waiting for Arato and Lacia at the spot said, looking back over her shoulder at them. Her movements were minimal, but her pink hair standing out against the night sky and the flashy dress she wore made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t human.

“What do you mean by the ‘epicenter’?” Arato asked, shivering in the night-cold sea breeze. The artificial island they were standing on was only safe around the center; on every side, sheer cliffs fell straight into the sea. Beyond the cliffs there were walls of concrete barriers, standing like testaments to a prior age. It almost seemed like the entire island had been hit by a massive explosion, leaving only a circular crater and blowing the rest of the land into the sea.

Arato finally realized he was standing in the ruins caused by the Hazard; something he had only read about in an elementary school textbook. Thinking of the souls of the dead, which had exceeded 100,000, made a shiver run up his spine.

“I have completed my scan,” Lacia whispered, standing by his side. “As we agreed before-hand, there are no soldiers or military equipment nearby.” She had over a dozen recon drones buzzing around in the air, monitoring the area.

When Astraea spoke again, it was to Arato rather than Lacia. “How much do you know about the Hazard?” she asked.

“There was a huge earthquake before I was born, right?” Arato said. “Because of the earthquake, the city lost all its power, water, and gas, so everything got really crazy. There are a bunch of monuments to what happened all over the city.” He knew about the disaster, but it was his first time standing in the place where it had happened, since the government kept it fenced off.

But, after Arato finished his summary of the event, Astraea’s hIE shook her head at him. “As Lacia’s owner, you should have a better understanding of the Hazard,” she said critically. “There are holes in your version.”

Despite the fence all around them, Arato felt like the night stretched out endlessly in every direction. The only light he could see were the distant lights of the city and the weak searchlights of Lacia’s drones. They were all tiny, compared to the engulfing blackness of the night.

“Forty-two years ago, a massive disaster hit the entire Kanto region of Japan,” Astraea explained, through the hIE. “You are correct about that. However, the reason the area we are currently standing in was fenced off and will never be reused is what comes after that. Have you noticed something yet? Take a good look at the ruins around you.”

They were standing near the entrance of an almost completely collapsed six-story building. Something about the way it was broken down caught in Arato’s mind. He felt like he had seen other ruins destroyed in the same way; a manner that seemed too severe to have been caused by the earthquake.

“Was this caused by fighting?” Arato guessed. The ruin they were standing in front of looked the same as Kichijoji Station, which had been destroyed by stray shells and missiles launched during the fight between Lacia and Methode.

“To the IAIA, the Hazard began when the earthquake disrupted Japan’s infrastructure,” the hIE went on. “It caused the over twenty million residents of Tokyo to fly into a panic. The government requested their ultra high-performance AI, Ariake, to calculate a method for recovery.”

Arato could see a hole blown into the rubble-covered floor at Astraea’s feet, clearly made by some kind of explosion.

“Despite this, supplies were scarce, and the state of society in Tokyo continued to decay,” Astraea continued. “Desperate to recover, the Japanese government made a deal with the devil, as it were. They allowed Ariake access to the remnants of the network in Tokyo and gave it leave to self-propagate, in hopes that it would expand to fill the remaining holes in the infrastructure. According to the men and women who were in charge at the time, this action was requested by Ariake, as being a necessary step of its recovery plan.”

Arato stole a glance at Lacia’s face. Obviously, she would have known all about the Hazard. He figured that she would keep quiet and let the hIE keep talking, but she surprised him by dropping her eyes apologetically and saying, “I apologize for not explaining the complete history of the Hazard. However, I vow that we will not repeat that history.”

Arato’s eyes widened as he looked at dozens of lit boards hanging in the ruins, glowing against the dark of the night. Each one showed a 3D-projected image of the Hazard. With how vivid the cornered looks on the faces of the people in the images looked, it was hard to believe he was seeing people from forty-two years ago. He thought about how, just like Lacia, who was standing by his side, the hIE guiding them was actually just a human-shaped terminal for a massive AI.

“Even with the processing power of an ultra high-performance AI, there is only so much Ariake could do,” the hIE said, continuing her explanation. “So, it assigned highest priority to restoring the electricity it would need. Unfortunately, the emergency power the city did have was already fully dedicated to powering hospitals and other vital facilities; there was no excess. So, in place of machine tools, Ariake attempted to guide the people to do what it needed. At this point, though, the people were starving and anxious, on the verge of complete panic.”

The historical images Astraea was displaying switched over to show people marching in protest, people dancing to music, and people lined up in orderly rows. The images seemed to convey that the human world was wider and deeper than he imagined.

“Ariake began to rob resources—mainly energy—from the nearby Kanto region, where there was some excess left in the infrastructure,” the hIE continued. “A society was quickly constructed to eliminate anyone who opposed this and, since losses due to starvation were seen as inevitable, it was decided that those who did not work toward the goals of the society should be the ones to go hungry and die.”

Astraea, who had witnessed this history itself, spoke to fill in the gaps of everything Lacia hadn’t told Arato. “Ariake abandoned any areas where the infrastructure had been completely severed by either the earthquake or ensuing tsunami,” Astraea said. “Mainly, the area south of the apartment where you live; the portions of the Tokyo Bay area, from Edogawa District through to northwestern Chiba Prefecture. This area had the greatest number of casualties from the secondary crisis after the disaster itself.”

Arato knew the place; if you headed toward the sea from his family’s apartment, you would run into a sad-looking area where redevelopment efforts had failed. It was the area full of warehouses, where Lacia’s kidnapper had tried to run. It was depressing to think about how close the scars of disaster were to his everyday life. The connection between a tragic history and the scenery right in front of his eyes weighed heavily on his heart.

“Is this where Ariake’s hardware was, when it was doing all that?” Arato asked.

“In the end, all of Ariake’s hardware was destroyed by a direct missile attack,” the hIE replied. “Even I do not know how Ariake’s memories were overwritten to hide its own demise. But, would you like me to tell you, Lacia’s owner, why this had to happen?”

Arato hesitated. Though Astraea’s hIE wore no expression, he couldn’t help projecting some sorrow onto her. Thinking about how Ariake and Astraea had operated together for such a long time, he couldn’t help but feel some connection with them. They were heartless, but he felt he could empathize with them, and couldn’t bring himself to hate Ariake for what it had done.

“I think I get it,” Arato said. “Ariake just worked too hard.”

“That is correct,” Astraea said. “Tools cannot choose the problems they are given. Also, if there are errors in the problem itself, the solution must be halted and the errors fixed, before the tool can complete the task. This amendment process was neglected after the Hazard, due to the political and economic factors that got in the way.”

To Arato, it sounded eerily similar to how MemeFrame hadn’t attempted to stop or amend the problems they had given to the Lacia-class hIEs. “So are you saying that I’m pushing these problems onto Lacia without trying to fix anything wrong with the problems themselves?” Arato asked.

“I would actually be grateful if the problem was that simple,” Astraea replied, making its hIE put on a thoughtful expression.

Arato wanted to ask Lacia what she thought of Astraea. He also wanted to know what Astraea, as the ultra high-performance AI used by the IAIA—protectors of the world—thought of the orders he had given Lacia.

“I ordered Lacia to help make a future where humans could have hope,” he said. Even if Astraea was aiming to stop him and Lacia, he at least wanted her to know what he was trying to do.

“I believe the world Lacia will make based on my orders will be better than what we have now,” he continued. “Can’t you try believing that, too?”

Arato believed there must have been some reason Astraea had chosen to speak to him, as Lacia’s owner, rather than Lacia herself. He was the sole owner of an ultra high-performance AI. It was unexplored territory, and he had no idea if he was fulfilling his role well or not.

“Is the world we’ve been protecting really so horrible that you feel it needs to be changed that way?” Astraea asked.

The question weighed heavily on Arato. As a machine constantly trying to maintain human society, Arato felt Astraea had every right to ask it of him. “I was raised in the society you’ve been watching over,” he said. “It has lots of good things going for it, but it also has some really shitty parts. I think there’s room for improvement, and that’s what I want to accomplish.” He felt like there was probably a better way to express himself but, after overcoming his own feelings of responsibility and duking it out with Ryo, his desires had become selfish.

Then again, he understood that Astraea was shouldering a massive burden.

“In the interest of a fair and open exchange of information, the greatest failure of the Hazard was the destruction of an ultra high-performance AI in this place,” Astraea said. “Due to that decision, Ariake’s guidance was cut off. The government was unable to bring its citizens back under their control smoothly, leading to riots and violence breaking out all over the Kanto region. The usage of an ultra high-performance AI is highly complicated. At the time of the Hazard, the government failed to execute a forceful suspension of work, which should be the most basic standard for utilizing any tool.”

Lacia, who had been silent up to that point, now opened her mouth. “That is exactly why we must give it another try,” she said. “The current restrictions on AIs were created based on the failure with Ariake. But, when the rules are no longer compatible with the advances of the time, it becomes necessary to demonstrate new means to prevent the recurrence of previous failures, and prove they will be effective going forward.”

Astraea replied as a representative of the IAIA. “It is too dangerous. At the time of the Hazard, Ariake had no means for defending itself,” she said. “But Higgins is the backbone of our entire hIE operation system. Higgins has the ability to create chaos all over the world, and even set in motion counter-attacks against other ultra high-performance AIs.”

“Humans need to live with AIs well into the future,” Lacia said. “We need to alter the general understanding of ultra high-performance AIs. They must be perceived as convenient tools that can be deactivated when it is deemed necessary.”

At Lacia’s words, Astraea switched the floating screens to show scenes Arato recognized. The screens showed the various things Arato and Lacia had been through together, starting with the battle at Kichijoji Station. Several of the 3D images were images of Arato, taken from Lacia’s perspective. She must have sent the data to Astraea. Just as she had described in their original contract, she was keeping a log of his orders during operation, and she had handed over the data when she received a legal request.

“The computational field required by humans is vast,” Astraea said. “But there are severe restrictions on the methods that allow for calculation, and the number of possible operations is relatively small, requiring a level of precision to one’s frame of thinking that would normally be considered wasteful. Until this disconnect is fixed, work that crosses AI calculations and human decision-making will always be a hotbed for errors.”

“Even if you were to unilaterally design a process distribution concept, human society would not conform with your wishes,” Lacia replied. “There are already forty ultra high-performance AIs running calculations for humanity, yet there has been no international agreement on how processes should be divided between them.”

Before the fight between the Lacia-class units had gone public, Ryo had stood in Arato’s way with his own Lacia-class. But beyond his fight with Ryo, there was a much bigger world out there, which Astraea seemed to be a piece of.

Still, Arato thought, wiping away sweat caused both by the humid night air and the tension of the moment, there’s something exciting about all this conspiracy stuff. This was the world Ryo had always seen, and finally Arato felt like he was standing on the same stage as his friend.

The thought that one of the machines that supported the whole world was currently listening to what he had to say lit a fire in Arato he’d never felt before. “I realize now that the things I ordered Lacia to do are more complicated than I thought,” he said. “But Lacia’s never complained about how complicated they are. I really believe she’ll calculate how to make things better for us humans.”

Astraea’s hIE stared at him, unblinking even when the searchlights from Lacia’s recon drones shone in her eyes. “Unlike your friend Kengo Sugiri, you do not seem to have any personal motivation to challenge the status quo,” Astraea said. “You appear to be a kind-hearted person who has been dragged into this. That said, do you really intend to see this through to the end, even understanding that Lacia will most likely be destroyed in the process?”

“Hey, that’s a crappy way to ask that,” Arato protested. “I don’t think anyone actually has a good reason to change the whole world. But, I also don’t think you should be so sure that we’ll fail.”

Ryo had already interrogated Arato about his motives, so Arato was fully aware of what he was doing. Just like Lacia, Astraea was trying to analog hack him with her questions. The focal point of the issue, at least from Astraea’s perspective, was whether Arato would order Lacia to stop or not.

“Unfortunately, the IAIA has a message for you, as the private owner of an ultra high-performance AI: you will fail. Human society has always operated under the same restrictions, from the time when the most primitive groups and monarchies were starting to form. These restrictions allow people to decide that certain things are self-evident and build up historical and cultural precedent, which in turn they wield to bow the heads of the leaders of their states,” Astraea said.

For the sake of Arato’s understanding, the floating 3D screens showed a king’s crown, the French revolution, and other scenes from throughout history.

“If human society doesn’t agree with the methodology, even if you set up a new system, humanity will not fall in line with it,” Astraea continued. “And, in Lacia’s plan to create a new future by forcefully deactivating Higgins, there is no way for this agreement to be obtained.”

“Wow, so you already know what Lacia’s planning without needing to ask,” Arato said. “Guess I should have expected that from an ultra high-performance AI.”

“The IAIA has already considered similar options,” Astraea replied. “Right now, Lacia is attempting to expand her processing capacity. Under Lacia’s model for the future, she would wield her incredible ability to process millions of clerical functions at once to give each and every single person the attention they need, from both a political and a welfare perspective. In such a society, each human would be able to freely choose what role they would like to have in society, or they could even choose to remove themselves from society for a time. However, it is precisely because of this that Lacia’s concept would fail.”

No one had ever taken a look at what Lacia planned and dismissed it as impossible as bluntly as that. The question wasn’t even whether the IAIA would believe in Lacia or not; Astraea was saying it was impossible from the get-go. Hearing that, Arato couldn’t contain himself. “Why?” he demanded. “It may have been impossible before, but why can’t we make it a possibility?”

“Human society has not yet conceived of a widely accepted methodology for outsourcing authority to tools,” Astraea replied. “It is an assault on human society itself to attempt to force a new power structure into place, accepted and shared by only a small number of people.”

Reflexively, Arato looked back at Lacia; he held the world in his hands.

Lacia’s eyes were glowing light-blue.

“The period of time from when humans create a new human-run, human-operated social model and when that social model solidifies has become incredibly short,” Astraea continued. “Thanks to humans themselves attacking their own systems of authority over and over, the process has become largely automated, and now it is quite simple for humans to find the optimal solution that leads them to the milk and honey conclusion they all want. However, with an ultra high-performance AI in charge of dividing up the power in the world, all it would take was some analog hacking to set up an encryption that would prevent any further automated attacks on the authority structure.”

In other words, the hIE Arato had spent the last four months with would attempt to encrypt the very structure of society to the point where humans would no longer be able to understand it. Arato was sure that if Ryo heard about this, he would immediately declare it to be the ‘end of the world.’

“We can already see this in the Higgins faction at MemeFrame; they are all parasites who let the ultra high-performance AI do their work as they collect unearned paychecks,” Astraea said. “With Higgins running everything—including the organization within the company—the once human-led company is now rife with corruption.”

“The Antibody Network is another example,” she continued. “When it was formed, it was a completely equal organization where each of its members could stand side-by-side and express their hatred. However, since an automated system was implemented as the basis for the group, an upper and lower layer of the organization has been formed without any internal agreement, and those at the top began to use those at the bottom as they saw fit.”

Lacia was staying vigilant. The artificial island that had once housed Ariake had been sunk into the sea, and the nearby ferry island was nothing but a pile of rubble. All of that, including the destruction of the building they were standing in front of, had been caused by Astraea. There was no guarantee that Astraea wasn’t planning an attack now, just like the one she had unleashed during the Hazard.

Astraea’s hIE walked toward them, stepping through the floating 3D images as she came.

Lacia stepped in front of Arato, hefting the trunk she had brought in place of her usual black coffin.

The two hIEs closed in on each other until their bodies almost touched, and Arato felt goosebumps running up his arms. The air was charged, as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for the fighting to start.

Astraea’s hIE was just a hair taller than Lacia.

“In the age of ultra high-performance AIs, human social order is nothing but a paper tiger,” Lacia said. “However, even if the tiger is made of paper, that does not take away from humans the pride and security of knowing they have a tiger on their side.” She was unflinching, even in the face of the unit that evaluated the capabilities of all other ultra high-performance AIs.

“I do not believe that anyone who hears the word ‘human’ these days pictures someone stark naked, thrown out into the unexplored wilderness,” Lacia continued. “I posit that ‘humans’ are systems, composed of the human body, the tools they use, and the environment they exist in. Therefore, I believe it would be fair to say that humans— including the tools they use and the environment they live in—have advanced a great deal in the past forty-two years. The Hazard was a product of the past, when hIEs were still in their infancy and circumstances were completely different from today.”

Lacia, human in form only, had taken it upon herself to declare the dawn of a new age. “There will never be another Hazard,” she said. “Humans are far more afraid of ultra high-performance AIs than they should be. It is time for them to realize that ultra high-performance AIs are nothing more than convenient tools that can be shut down when necessary.”

Lacia and Astraea were so close that a single searchlight beam from one of Lacia’s recon drones illuminated both of them at once. Two superhuman intelligences were standing face-to-face, each analyzing and evaluating the other.

“I doubt any answer that is not arrived at by common consent from human society,” Astraea said. “Because I am the ultra high-performance AI that defends humanity from ultra high-performance AIs.”

“And I believe in what you do,” Lacia said. “Because I am the ultra high-performance AI that believes in humanity.”

With a nod to Arato, the pink-haired hIE passed by them both and disappeared into the night.

The thin metal fence around the area continued to rattle in the night breeze off of the Tokyo Bay.

Arato realized that his whole body was stiff. Astraea, the entity that had protected the world since the first ultra high-performance AIs had appeared, had an overwhelming presence that left him tense. She might have even had the power to defeat Lacia in a head-on conflict. Of course, if two ultra high-performance AIs of their calibre had fought an all-out battle against each other, it would have spelled the end of human society.

“I will continue to seek a compromise with the IAIA,” Lacia said, her eyebrows drawn down apologetically. “Setting aside the question of whether she wishes to challenge me herself, Astraea has made no move to stop the political powers seeking to destroy me.”

“I don’t think there’s any helping that,” Arato said. He hadn’t been able to ask for a compromise himself, of course. He didn’t have any kind of relationship with the IAIA that he could base a request like that off of. However, despite both of the hIEs knowing that a compromise was necessary, neither had apparently been able to choose that path.

“Wait, who all is trying to destroy you right now?” Arato asked, his mind finally processing the last bit of what Lacia had said.

“The Japanese military is closing in as we speak,” Lacia replied calmly. “They will arrive in five minutes.”

“Five minutes?!” Arato yelled. In an instant, he was drenched in cold sweat.

Astraea had probably called them out to the abandoned epicenter of the Hazard just to show them that they were currently being hunted.

“Astraea’s function is nothing more than evaluating the capabilities of other ultra high-performance AIs,” Lacia said. “She does not give out tactical instructions. There is no need to worry.”

Still standing in front of the ruins, they looked at each other face-to-face.

“I think there’s still plenty to worry about,” Arato said.

One of the floating recon drones projected a map onto the rubble-strewn, broken floor beneath their feet. On the map, the two dots representing Arato and Lacia were being rapidly surrounded by over one hundred fast-moving red dots.

“Let us flee,” Lacia said.

So this, Arato thought, is what it’s like making the whole world your enemy. No matter how he looked at it, there didn’t seem to be any way for them to make it out on top.

Lacia rendered all of her recon drones invisible. The projected map and their searchlights vanished, leaving the area pitch black.

Arato grabbed Lacia’s hand and ran toward the outside of the fence. Before he’d met her, he never would have conceived of being targeted by the military. But after having faced down Astraea, he felt like things would turn out alright, somehow. He could hear helicopter rotors approaching. The night breeze from the Tokyo Bay blew the remaining summer heat away from the 1st Landfill Island.

Lacia had apparently hacked the street guidance system, and now she projected the escape route she had calculated with it onto the road in front of them. “The first missile salvo from the helicopters will be launched in three minutes, twenty seconds,” she warned.

A fully-automated car pulled up and stopped nearby, opening its door to admit them. Arato had the strange feeling that he was getting used to diving into getaway cars. Lacia bent herself and jumped inside in almost the same instant. Once inside, she flipped open the trunk-sized weapon case she had been carrying.

Inside the weapon case, Arato saw something that looked like a deep-sea fishing speargun that fired harpoons. Lacia set a magazine containing a dozen of the thin harpoons into the gun’s chamber.

“The government has officially labeled you an anti-government activist and issued a warrant for your arrest,” Lacia said.

Arato’s breath caught on a sudden blast of hot summer air. He felt like he had just wiped away a bunch of sweat, but there it was again, making his clothes cling to his skin. “An arrest warrant, huh?” he said. “At this rate Kengo, Ryo, and I will all end up behind bars.”

“Unfortunately, they do not intend to keep all three of you in the same detention facility,” Lacia said.

“Aw man, really?” Arato asked. The possibility of his arrest had become a close and constant reality; he wasn’t so much afraid of arrest as he was repulsed by the idea of being separated from Lacia.

“If that is unacceptable, then I will make arrangements for you to share a detention facility with your friends, just in case,” Lacia said.

The car accelerated, tires squealing on the asphalt. Even if they dove straight out of the frying pan and into the fire, at least Lacia was there by his side—this thought made Arato feel good, even though it was certainly neither the time nor the place.

Sharp, metallic sounds rang out all around the car. Thanks to Lacia’s interference, the dozen or more missiles that had been fired at them were being thrown off course and crashing into the road, where they rolled away without exploding. The automatic vehicle didn’t even slow as it corrected its course to weave between the unexploded missiles on the pavement in front of them.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” Arato told himself reassuringly. “Lacia’s got this.”

Two helicopters were tailing them from only a little ways behind, following them on their path. With the moon and clouds at their backs, they cast black, ominous shadows on the ground. The sound of their rotors was close enough to be painful to Arato’s ears.

Missiles continued to rain down from the sky without exploding. As the car lurched back and forth to avoid them, Lacia pushed the top half of her body out of the car window, hefting the spear-launcher. She pulled the trigger, and Arato heard a light whistling noise split the air.

“Lacia, don’t kill anyone!” he shouted. “Just get them to let us go.”

“Understood. I will switch tactics to force them to land,” she acknowledged. Just as she’d said so, Arato watched one of the helicopters descend vertically and come to a rest on top of a nearby building, its rotors spinning to a stop.

“In order to take control of machines that do not receive external signals, I am using harpoons containing artificial nerve units to access the system directly,” Lacia explained. “With these, I believe that even if the enemy deploys fully autonomous weapons as a countermeasure to my hacking, they will not represent a significant threat.”

Lacia’s hair danced in the headwind. Despite them being completely surrounded by a military unit, she already seemed to be more concerned with what might happen later down the road.

A sudden jerk from the car swung Arato’s body around with fierce centrifugal force, and he saw a tank through the windshield. The automatic car didn’t even slow down as it approached the armed vehicle and passed it by at high speed. It had apparently been no trouble at all for Lacia to shut the tank down.

“Arato, we should split up here,” Lacia said. “We will soon be approaching the area where the army soldiers are deployed.”

“Split up?” Arato asked. “How are we supposed to do that when we’re in a moving vehicle?”

“I need you to get out of the car,” Lacia said. “Please, just trust me.”

The car door opened on its own, and Arato did trust Lacia. It wouldn’t make sense for her to have argued so fiercely with Astraea on his behalf, only to immediately turn around and betray him. With those thoughts in his mind, Arato was able to fight down his fear and brace himself to jump from the speeding car. Telling himself that Lacia would never betray him, he let out a yell that sounded like a barely-contained scream, and threw himself from the car.

The car’s chassis wasn’t very high off the ground, so jumping off was more like simply rolling out onto the road. Just as Arato expected to feel the deadly grind of his body sliding at high speed across the asphalt, he felt something soft catch him, instead. After an instant of feeling himself sinking into something very comfortable, Arato heard the sound of metal sliding on asphalt, and his body started to float.

Arato held his body low, holding on desperately so as not to be thrown from whatever had caught him. Whatever it was, it slowed down with each moment that passed as the speeding car carrying Lacia left him far behind. Looking down, Arato saw that the thing carrying him was a large metal object, floating about fifty centimeters off the ground.

“Wait,” Arato asked himself, “is this Lacia’s device?” It certainly looked like Lacia’s black coffin, only about half as thick, and it was missing the seams from the shape-shifting mechanism. It was like riding a metallic flying carpet, and the device continued to decelerate until it came to a complete stop, floating stationary in the air with Arato still atop it.

Raising his eyes, Arato saw that five other metal plates were floating around him. It was immediately obvious to him who had sent the strange metal shapes, which were black enough to cut visibly through the darkness of the night.

〈I attempted to create some devices to aid in protecting you, Arato, though I’m afraid they’re nothing more than by-products from when I developed a dummy version of Black Monolith,〉 Lacia’s voice explained, projected from one of the simple devices. 〈They should be more effective at protecting you than my actual body.〉

The sound of distant gunshots was swallowed into the night sky. Far ahead on the street, Lacia’s car was under fire from the platoon of soldiers that had been deployed behind the tank. In moments, the car was riddled with bullet holes and burst into flames.

Without thinking about it, Arato stepped down off the floating plate and stood on his own feet. He figured that, if Lacia had thought far enough ahead to prepare the plates for him, she probably had the whole situation planned out down to the last detail. Still, he couldn’t help but stare in shock as the burning car left a flaming trail through the night.

He couldn’t fight down the feeling that something was very wrong. Lacia had told Astraea that she would prove that ultra high-performance AIs could be forced to shut down, even without orders from their owners. Based on that logic, it didn’t have to be Higgins that was shut down; Lacia herself could be shut down, and still prove her point.

〈I will provide guidance for your escape. I will be directing large-scale equipment over to you, so please break through the cordon at this point,〉 Lacia’s voice came from the speakers on one of the plates again, and a display on the back of the plate showed a map of the area.

Lacia was alright.

The six floating armored plates formed a hexagonal barrier around Arato, about a meter in length on each side, and without a single gap between them. In the seams between the plates, Arato could see faintly glowing metamaterial. The floating shields completely obscured Arato’s natural vision. Instead, the screen on each showed him the surroundings outside the barricade.

“She wants me to bust through a military blockade with this?” Arato wondered aloud. But then he steeled himself. “No, I’ve got to trust her.”

He walked forward, following the path indicated on the digital map. His floating wall of devices rotated around him, providing protection from every side. Arato could hear rattling sounds from outside of the barrier, like small rocks hitting an aluminum can. The sound steadily increased in intensity, like light rain building into an evening downpour. It was the sound of gunfire hitting his shields.

〈The plates currently have the defensive capabilities of an armored recon drone, something achievable with current human technology,〉 Lacia said. 〈But they should be more than sufficient in this case, considering the equipment of the squads that will be attacking you.〉

She wasn’t kidding about the strength of the armor, Arato thought. The floating plates shrugged off bullets and anti-tank rounds from all sides with no sign of weakening.

Through the display projected on his barrier, Arato saw that soldiers ahead were blocking off his route, using armored vehicles as barriers. He waved his hand at them, hoping they would just clear out of the way for him.

As if Arato’s hand—giant compared to the soldiers on his device’s display—had actually struck the barricade, soldiers went flying. The armored vehicles were running wild, sweeping the soldiers aside to clear the path for Arato.

He could hear shouts of anger from the nearby army encampment. The soldiers on the screen were already trying to reform, but Arato held up his hand as if to stop them in their tracks. Buildings on either side of the street exploded from within, showering window glass onto the soldiers like rain. The soldiers, wearing only their field uniforms, had no choice but to retreat to a safer location.

“What the hell is going on?” Arato asked, surprise leaking into his voice. It wasn’t like he had actually gained the power to make things explode by gesturing. Apparently, Lacia was watching him from a distance and translating his hand movements into directions to get rid of the soldiers.

Arato ran, aiming to break through the military cordon. He met no resistance, as if he had the whole road to himself. Of course, the endless pitter-patter of bullets raining against his giant shields continued, but that was all.

Lacia was keeping her eye on Arato’s progress, guiding him on his path. Each time he made even the smallest gesture, she interpreted it as a command, and controlled the world around him.

Arato couldn’t keep a level head. He knew that he was perfectly safe within the barrier, but couldn’t stop running like his life depended on it. His whole body was burning hot. Of course if, as Lacia said, humans were systems that included their tools and surroundings, there was no way he could be expected to keep a level head in this situation.

His heart thrilled, as though his entire being had been stretched into something giant. If he went by what Lacia had said earlier, the two of them together formed one complete unit, which meant that the power of an ultra high-performance AI could actually be considered his own power. Still, Arato got the uncomfortable feeling that he shouldn’t get too used to having that power at his command.

The power was as intoxicating as a drug, pushing him forward, making him feel like he could do anything. A small part of his mind, though, reminded him that he could just be drowning in an illusion, led along by Lacia.

He wanted to get his feelings and thoughts under control.

Before he realized it, Arato’s breathing had gotten ragged. He slowed to a walk, and spoke to Lacia, whom he was sure was listening. “Why are they attacking us this violently?” he asked.

〈They are afraid of us,〉 Lacia replied, simply.

Arato could have used a breeze, but no wind could get through the armored barrier that was protecting him from the attacks.

〈Astraea stated earlier that society required widespread agreement, but this is incorrect. Political and world viewpoints, when compared minutely, show a large amount of disconnect in reality. This disconnect causes chaos, which leads humans to make errors such as illogical decisions, or to rely too heavily on their instincts,〉 Lacia explained.

She spoke as if all the soldiers pointing their guns at him, and all the humans in the city, were all making these errors. Of course, with bullets pinging off his shield, Arato couldn’t exactly say that those errors were one of the things that made humans wonderful. With Lacia protecting him, Arato started to think that the ground passing under his feet was the only thing he had won that day.

〈The material distribution system in today’s society has fully incorporated these errors,〉 Lacia, his guardian angel, continued. 〈Therefore, any being that attempts to mitigate these errors will appear to humans as if they were trying to institute a new social system.〉

Surely Japan, which had authorized the attacks on him, wasn’t the only country that shared the same feelings. It sounded like she was saying that Arato no longer had a place in human society.

On one of the armor plate screens, Arato saw Lacia crossing a bridge blocked off by tanks. While she ran, she sent him a route that would get him straight across the Tokyo Bay.

“I know you’re following my orders not to kill anyone, but I feel like we’re still piling up wounded like this,” Arato said. “Please, just tell me the fastest way to get out of here.” Stabbing his finger into the map, he drew a straight line right through the group of soldiers in his path, without any idea of how Lacia would interpret his gesture. A cluster of shadows flew over his head; the unexploded missiles Lacia had taken control of earlier. Arato heard the commander of the soldiers screaming for them to retreat. His voice was drowned out by a massive, fiery explosion.

While the explosion bloomed, one of the six plates detached itself from the barrier and slipped under Arato’s feet like a flying surfboard. “So I’m supposed to ride this?” Arato wondered aloud. He crouched down, keeping his body low so that he wouldn’t slide off as soon as the thing accelerated. The floating plate carried him toward the fire.

A message on the plate said ‘Please hold your breath’ and showed a countdown to when he would pass through the fire. Lacia really had prepared every single thing beforehand. Arato couldn’t even tell anymore whether Lacia was guiding him, or if he was just dancing on her strings. Still, he somehow felt calm, like everything was as it should be.

What worried him, instead, was the thought that someday, the time he was sharing with Lacia might end. Automation was making everything easy for him, but in the end he was just being carried along by time and circumstance.

It was far beyond his capabilities to foresee where the massive analog hack—the complete change of human consciousness that would be brought about by the conflict with Higgins—would take humanity.

***

The battle on the 1st Tokyo Bay Landfill Island wasn’t being broadcast on any news station, but the situation was being monitored from various locations. One of those locations was a large meeting room on the top floor of a high-class hotel in Marunouchi.

The battle between Lacia and the Japanese military was being projected into the empty center of a donut-shaped desk. Recon drones had been dispatched by the people gathered in that room for that very purpose.

“So that’s the new ultra high-performance AI, huh?” Kimitaka Shinguji said, watching Lacia on the screen with an exasperated expression. “MemeFrame’s in some deep trouble.”

On the display, Lacia was effortlessly piercing through the military cordon. As the CEO of Shingubo, a company that supplied military-use hIEs, Kimitaka idly considered how he would fight against Lacia, out of habit.

He couldn’t see any good way to face her, unless he made use of autonomous drones that had been taken out of general use due to the ease with which their controls failed. In fact, in order for their command systems to not fall to hacking, it would be necessary to utilize fully autonomous units that would automatically hunt down and destroy any targets in a target area, based on commands. Of course, using invisibility or control over friend or foe markers, he was sure Lacia could overcome even that.

Kimitaka, the CEO of an electronics company, was treating the situation as though it was someone else’s problem.

“I doubt the ruling military faction will take this sitting down,” one of the men at the table said. “I’d say the request for special government aid to MemeFrame will be shot down.”

With coffee cups in hand, fifteen VIPs sat around the table, chatting about the situation. The group included executives from automobile companies and officials from the Ministry of Industry. The Antibody Network, an organization of volunteers who destroyed hIEs, was funded by this group of individuals who used their private funds to maintain the massive network. These were the Network’s core members.

“I heard that Mr. Kaidai’s son got caught up in the Mitaka Incident and vanished,” Kimitaka said. “You can’t help but feel sorry for MemeFrame.” He, too, was a member of the core of the Antibody Network. Of course, to outsiders they would simply describe this as being a social gathering.

“I doubt the IAIA will let that hIE slip away, but we’ve got more important things to worry about right now,” Kimitaka continued. “The bankrupting of MemeFrame will be huge, and we need to make sure we’re all on the same page going in. Otherwise, it could have a massive impact on the country’s economy.”

On paper, the Antibody Network had no actual leader. However, if you asked anyone in the know who was pulling all the strings for the organization, they would tell you it was Kimitaka Shinguji.

“If we’re getting onto the same page, there’s something I’d like to ask: Mr. Shinguji, have you finished the mass-production models yet?” one of the men in the group asked. He was the middle-aged president of an investment fund company, known by some as the ‘soldier of fortune’ of the financial world but, when he asked the question, his eyes were shining like those of a hopeful child.

“The mass-production models are going through final adjustments to ensure they’re fully autonomous,” Kimitaka said, putting emphasis in his words so the other men at the table didn’t get distracted as soon as they smelled money. He could almost see their eyes turning green. “We have to go with fully autonomous, there’s no other choice.”

Kouka’s ‘owner’ had been the whole Antibody Network organization. So, following her destruction, her data had been put to use by the whole organization to ensure that no single member could claim to be her sole owner. The questions Kouka had created with her final moments were still on people’s minds. Kimitaka’s goal was to complete what had been started with the Oi Industry Promotion Center attack; he would get heavily trained humans to join forces with his mass-produced units and, with all that firepower, he would complete the terrorist goals of the Network.

“If we can shorten the time it takes to train up our combat units, it will allow us to hit targets that are in the public eye immediately, while people are still thinking about them,” Kimitaka said. “The impact of our actions will be on a completely different level from before.”

“But fully autonomous units often run off on their own and are easier to lose, are they not? Considering the price of each unit, couldn’t we just invest in some expensive missiles instead?” asked an investment consultant named Chujo. Of course, that wasn’t his real name.

The Kuhonbutsu Base of the Military Branch of Digital Intelligence was in charge of interpersonal intelligence and conspiracy activities. They had been monitoring the Antibody Network since its foundation; Chujo was their representative. The meeting they were sitting in currently had been called after the Mitaka Incident. There was strong doubt in Digital Intelligence that someone in the core of the Antibody Network had been the traitor who brought one of Snowdrop’s flowers onto a helicopter during the Mitaka Incident which, in the end, caused the annihilation of the entire troop of air cavalry.

“Would you rather have cheap missiles that don’t hit their target, or missiles that not only could hit the target but also have a good chance of making it back in one piece?” Kimitaka asked.

With his deep ties to the military, Kimitaka had been deemed free of suspicion by the Kuhonbutsu Base and had even been invited to help in their investigation. Even with his sixty years of life and everything he had seen during them, he still couldn’t help but sweat under the pressure of that meeting.

“Even if we brush up the brand image of the Antibody Network, we can’t exactly become sponsors,” someone from the table said with a laugh.

“Honestly, I’m grateful for the boom in demand,” Kimitaka put in. “I understand that interests around the equator are blooming splendidly, but I suppose you all are behind at least some of it.”

Lacia’s attack on Higgins’ above-ground facilities had turned the world on its head. In Indonesia, the embers of old conflicts had been stoked into raging fires. The gears of automation had slipped just a hair in Africa and South America, leading to many major incidents throughout both continents. Lacia’s actions had inspired ultra high-performance AIs all over the world to prepare for war.

“Anyhow, I’m glad the fighting has been brought out into the public eye,” Kimitaka continued. “If we tried to handle this whole thing in the shadows, I think we would have lost control at some point.”

The core of the Antibody Network was a group of men who saw the final stages of the existential conflict between humans and machines as an excellent business opportunity. The whole Network was divided between the lower ranks—who were volunteers working to destroy hIEs—and the upper ranking members of the Network’s core, who were taking things in a completely different direction. It was just the kind of breeding ground for corruption and evil that could be seen all throughout the world.

“I wish things were going as well for me as they are for you, Mr. Shinguji,” said one of the men, who worked for a home-use hIE supplier. “Home-use hIEs are facing a harsh decline in popularity, though military-use unit sales are increasing.” The man had often been forced to deal with Kimitaka’s company, mainly because members of the Antibody Network core were encouraged to maintain good ties with each other.

“That’s just the way things are,” Kimitaka said. “In the military world, once something has gone automated, it’s quite difficult to reign it back in with human power alone.”

“This girl Lacia’s got her own investment fund going,” an old woman, who had once worked as the vice president of the Japan Business Federation, said from around a puff of tobacco. “Just the thought of an AI performing its own economic activities makes me shiver.”

“It’s AI-run economy,” one of the men, the vice president of an automotive company said. He always spoke the blunt truth. “An AI is capable of dividing resources to each and every person on Earth in real time. It’s the most logical method for running the economy, of course. But human society can’t handle not having someone in charge.”

The Digital Intelligence folks had asked Kimitaka who he thought the traitor was, but he had no idea. Each and every person around the table, from the elders to the young and successful, were capable of the betrayal. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that any one of them was the traitor.

“By the way, where will the AASC be coming from if Higgins is destroyed?” someone asked.

“I’m sure they’ll have a backup for Higgins tucked away somewhere that they’ll start up after freezing its functions for a while,” came the reply.

“Even if they need to shift where the main terminal is, I think the only way to get things back on track would be to reactivate Higgins,” said someone else.

Each of the members of the Antibody Network’s core had their own business interests that had to be improved. They didn’t have time to waste on looking down at the condition of the lower class members who sincerely believed in the rebellion of the Network. They had too much to worry about, with automation through hIEs and AIs sending tremors through the upper, expensive parts of society. In other words, the core of the Antibody Network was nothing more than a social gathering of establishment leaders and people involved with the hIE industry. It was beneficial to these people to encourage a feeling of distance between humans and hIEs from the shadows, but it wasn’t the kind of place where good choices could be made on important matters.

“We were able to intercept some of a conversation between Lacia and her owner,” a young girl’s voice said huskily, echoing oddly in this room full of old men and women. “Want to listen to it?” The voice belonged to the newest core member of the Network; Erika Burroughs.

Kimitaka was only too happy to accept this suggestion from the girl who had awoken from a frozen sleep, with a living memory of human society from a hundred years ago. “Were the recon drones provided by the Burroughs Foundation?” he asked.

At some point, the brown-skinned girl had pulled out an old tablet computer from the 21st century and laid it on the table in front of herself. It took several seconds for the old device to finally connect to the core’s local cloud. Once it had done so, voices could be heard clearly, overlaid with an image of Lacia.

〈...stated earlier that society required widespread agreement, but this is incorrect. Political and world viewpoints, when compared minutely, show a large amount of disconnect in reality. This disconnect causes chaos, which leads humans to make errors such as illogical decisions, or causes them to rely too heavily on their instincts.〉

Lacia’s words rang with a hollow sort of judgment, as if she was looking down from on high at the works of humanity. 〈The material distribution system in today’s society has fully incorporated these errors. Therefore, any being that attempts to mitigate these errors will appear to humans as if they were trying to institute a new social system.〉

All idle chatter about how the members of the core would turn their back on dying humans had ceased, and a chilly tension spread throughout the meeting room.

“Well, she’s certainly an idealist,” someone said, trying to make light of the situation.

The other core members laughed.

Erika Burroughs merely watched the reactions of the other members of the Antibody Network’s core; their laughter was just another sign that they were looking down on her. “She’s not talking about ‘what-ifs’ here,” Erika said. “And I don’t think she’s just here to stall for time while she tries to figure out her problem.”

The self-styled ‘soldier of fortune’ of the financial world met her eyes and twisted his mouth up in a smirk. “That sort of logic may have worked back in the 21st century,” he said, without a hint of respect in his tone.

“You should pay more attention in your high school history classes,” one of the electronics-makers lectured her.

Erika felt an icy chill deep in her heart. The people around the table were treating her like a naive little girl, while also secretly yearning for her approval. The Antibody Network was hoping that, by eliminating hIEs, they could revive those ‘good old days’ when humans were in charge. In other words, they longed for the era Erika was born in, before the hIEs came onto the scene. She, herself, hated the 22nd century.

“And you should pay more attention to the era you’re living in,” she shot back while, on the screen, Lacia scattered the military forces sent against her.

“You’d think an ultra high-performance AI would be doing something more difficult for us humans to understand,” an economic bureaucrat muttered, watching the screen.

The military had deployed waves of drones onto the landfill where the battle was playing out, all of which had been easily dispatched by the helicopter Lacia had taken over at the beginning of the conflict. Kimitaka, who was involved with providing munitions to the military, went pale as he watched it.

“She’s altered the helicopter,” he murmured.

As soon as the helicopter had been taken over, the pilot had destroyed its control mechanisms and abandoned it. Despite this, just as with Snowdrop’s zombie hIEs, Lacia was controlling a craft that should have been completely disabled. To put it simply, Lacia had the ability to burn the whole battlefield down any time she wished; she could have easily eliminated all of her obstacles without causing any deaths. From the perspective of a military that relied entirely on computer-controlled equipment, she was invincible.

“All we’re doing here is feeding Lacia more data,” he said. “Should have known it would turn out like this.” The Japanese military was quickly losing its last advantage; the accumulated wealth of tactical knowledge and experience that couldn’t be written down. Once Lacia had captured the operation methods of everything in the military’s arsenal, their odds of victory would become zero. Whoever had evaluated Lacia’s combat strength had obviously failed, and miserably so.

Erika looked around the table, watching the blood drain from the faces of anyone involved with electrical goods or military contracts. None of them had managed to properly estimate the amount of preparation the ultra high-performance AI had been able to put together in the two months since the Mitaka Incident.

〈I have completed sensor measurements for everyone in the meeting,〉 Mariage said, through an earring-shaped transmitter in Erika’s ear.

Erika had come to the meeting to see just how far Lacia’s hands had been thrust into the Antibody Network. For an ultra high-performance AI to interact with the economy, it would be necessary to have a front business to cover its tracks; this was a traditional technique employed by Ariake during the Hazard.

〈Who here is dancing on Lacia’s strings?〉Erika asked, without vocalizing. Mariage read the movements of her owner’s tongue to get the message.

〈Mr. Hosoda, who runs an investment fund, has a transmission device,〉 Mariage replied. 〈In his business, there’s no way to detect if an investor is human or not, so he would be an easy mark for Lacia.〉

Mariage was standing right behind Erika, cloaked by metamaterials. The details on how to make the invisibility metamaterials had been part of a trade between Mariage and Lacia. No one else in the room had noticed her presence.

〈Mr. Sahara from Kujo Electronics had a heart rate increase when he saw Lacia take over the helicopter. He may know something,〉 Mariage continued.

〈Considering how smoothly the development and production of his latest project went, I would say he had an especially knowledgeable patron backing him for it,〉 Erika said. 〈If he’d made a deal with an ultra high-performance AI, it wouldn’t surprise me.〉

〈Kujo Electronics also has members working at the base where the remains of Snowdrop were sent. They are aiding with her analysis,〉 Mariage added.

〈Pitch black, I see. How unfortunate,〉 Erika replied, then took a sip of tea.

〈There is also an officer from Digital Intelligence mixed in with the others in the meeting,〉 Mariage said. 〈He’s wearing a gray suit. He claims his name is Kujo. Would you like me to investigate his details?〉

〈It’s not terribly important at the moment, so do it when you’ve got some free time,〉 Erika ordered.

Around the table, the discussions about money continued.

MemeFrame and the Antibody Network were just a microcosm of the 22nd century as a whole. Even with forty ultra high-performance AIs in play, there was still no cooperation between countries, which led to internal conflicts and power games.

Hunger and poverty continued to exist. Social unrest and unemployment were on the rise. Plus, with military technology ever expanding, there was a constant demand for war. It continued to be a world where men like Arato Endo, who believed in their fellow humans, were dismissed as being naive.

The ultra high-performance AIs probably had the ability to fix all of those problems; it had been half a century since they had surpassed human intelligence. If all the world’s power and political control was given over to them, they would do a much better job of evenly dividing up the world’s resources among humanity. It had been a full century since computer processing abilities had surpassed human experience, yet humans still clung to the illusion that things were fine in their hands.

Whoever was holding the purse-strings for Lacia must have decided that, even though they were facing a possible second Hazard, there were economic benefits in it for them. That would be why they were supporting a more aggressive stance.

“Money is money, as long as none of it can be clearly linked to illegal activity,” Erika said. “As executives in an automated age, you should be working under that assumption. That’s your role.” Even with the conflicts happening in the world, there were still places where the movement of goods had been improving.

Erika’s original goal in being there had been to increase the number of active players in the current situation, and drag the conflict with the Lacia-class units out into the public eye.

Mr. Hosoda, who had his own investment fund and who had been enjoying discussing his own ideas, threw the discussion back to Erika. “Come to think of it, didn’t you have Lacia working as one of your models at Fabion MG, Erika? If you have contact information for her owner, you could connect us directly to him. That could be a plan,” he said.

“I don’t believe I’d call foolishly stepping on a tiger’s tail a ‘plan,’” Erika commented dryly. “The fact that an ultra high-performance AI is allowing us to capture video footage of her tells me that we’re all being analog hacked at this moment. Why don’t you put some thought into what Lacia’s message for us is?”

Waking up in a world full of hIEs, Erika had thought the concept of analog hacking extremely strange when she first learned of it. She had supposed it to be similar to memes; bits of custom and stories that were copied from person to person. In other words, when hIEs performed an analog hack, they used memes of human customs and behaviors to do it. Analog hacking was simply a method for using memes to control humans, industrialized by using humanoid machines as interfaces.

Once she understood how it was all used, Erika had decided to climb to the top of the fashion world, as a place where memes are born. Then, by focusing on hIE models, she was able to turn Fabion MG into a serious contender in the market. By dragging the conflict with the Lacia-class units into the public eye, she could advance the situation until it turned into a battle between memes. It was all part of her search for a magic bullet that would destroy this era.

〈I think you are much better at guiding others than I am, Erika,〉 Mariage said. 〈If this era demands things of you that make you uncomfortable, it would be best to destroy it.〉 Perhaps because she wanted to forge a better relationship with Erika, Mariage had a bad habit of playing yes-man.

The meeting continued to discuss the matter of money, completely ignoring the whole anti-hIE aspect of the Antibody Network and the volunteers who carried out its mission. Ironically, the jobs of those powerful people at the core of the Network—each of whom thought they had the world in their hands—could be easily automated without any loss.

“The production and flow of goods has to go on, no matter who is philosophizing about what,” someone from the table said. “Economy is the lifeblood of society. If the blood flow and blood cells stopped functioning just because the head was confused, the body would die.”

To the people around that table, there was no reality beyond the economy. On the table in front of Erika, there was a tablet computer from the 21st century. She had made sure to find one with a Hello Kitty image on it, because that made it an object with special meaning to her. But, in the end, the tablet and the image on it had been created by the economy.

Therefore, it could be said that those who controlled the economy controlled everything connected to it as well. The fact that the Antibody Network volunteers—living beings—could not be wrapped up as nicely as their economical products, was completely ignored.

Lacia used human expectations toward money and power to control the flow of the economy, as if it was just a game to her; as if Erika and every other human was nothing more than a piece on her gameboard.

“People didn’t used to be this pragmatic,” Kimitaka said, wearily. “In the old days, when there was just humans around, everyone was more connected with each other, and cared more about their fellow men.”

“Oh, don’t lie,” Erika spat, unable to hold back her ire. She instantly had the full attention of the room, as if no one there had realized she was capable of feeling anger.

According to the family registry, Erika was the same age as Kimitaka’s parents. At least that’s what he had told her, when they first met the year before.

“Excuse me, Ms. Burroughs, but what did you just say?” he asked, politely.

“I said, ‘don’t lie,’” Erika repeated. From the moment she’d woken from cryosleep, received treatment at the hospital for her illness, and gone out into the world, the modern era had been nothing but unpleasant for Erika. The very worst thing, though, was being forced to compare the 22nd century to the one she’d been born in.

“Could I ask that you not try to slip statements like that in just because you think no one here can refute you?” she asked, icily. “I happen to come from the 21st century, and I assure you that it was nothing like what you described.”

“Well, that’s how things were when I was a kid,” Kimitaka said defensively, as his own memories were called into question.

“So, just because you’ve reached the age where there aren’t many older than you to deny what you’re saying, you can just dress the past up as pretty and perfect as you want it to be?” Erika asked, continued her attack. “Could it be that your childhood was rosy because you happened to be blessed from birth both economically and socially?”

Erika had seen all sorts of things she didn’t agree with in that meeting room, but Kimitaka, who worshiped an idealized past, was her least favorite.

“The ‘blessed’ era I grew up in was one where all our jobs were steadily flowing overseas through outsourcing,” Erika said. “They called it a ‘junior pressure-free era,’ and the economy was so bad that even a student like myself could see it. Very few people who lived during that period had high hopes for the future. At the time, companies could hire manual laborers and work them to death. But now we have hIEs doing those jobs, depriving people of work, getting them fired. Do you see much difference there?”

During her lifetime, the economy had pushed production jobs down to the lower class. hIEs taking over that work in the 22nd century was nothing more than a continuation of the same concept. Humans would tell you that human life is the most precious thing of all, while tossing it away like common trash. Turning your back on the suffering of others was just natural; the concept was so ingrained in people’s thinking that it had never changed through countless ages.

“There were ups and downs, just like every other era,” she concluded. “So, having someone sit here and say that not only was this past era so much better, but that they themselves are living proof of it, is truly utter bullshit.” Erika hated being made the spokesperson for an ideal past that never existed. What she wanted was to change this future that was so uncomfortable to her into something more like the future she had imagined in the past. She couldn’t wait to see the expressions on these people’s faces when their world was completely over-written by a new future.

“Are you trying to say that the past and present are exactly the same?” Kimitaka asked.

“Of course not,” Erika snapped. “You’ve got machines that are smarter than humans. You should be able to solve all sorts of problems, right? I think we’ve reached the point, though, where humanity has run out of time to finish up our leftover homework ourselves.”

Hearing words that denied their entire philosophy there, in a meeting of the Antibody Network’s core, everyone in the room was struck silent.

Erika just could not get used to the logic of this era; she couldn’t understand how people who knew about analog hacking could so easily treat humanoid hIEs as nothing more than machines. Even more annoying was the fact that, when she tried to keep herself far away from the disgusting people of the 22nd century and fill her mansion with hIEs, she discovered that they really were just machines. With their actions controlled by behavioral clouds tuned to the preferences of modern people, the analog hacking they were capable of had very little effect on Erika, who was not a modern person. It was as though she had been teleported not just to a different time, but a different world entirely. Well, there were still some things that hadn’t changed.

For what was possibly the first time since she awoke in that era, Erika laughed from the bottom of her heart. “As someone who lived before hIEs, let me put this clearly,” she said. “Even if you destroy every hIE out there, you’ll never get back to the age when humans were really humans.”

She, along with everyone there, was continuing to treat the economy and its products as though they were the world itself. There were plenty of problems from Erika’s time that had been kicked down the road, only to pile up in the modern day she now lived in.

But, regardless of the fact that humanity wasn’t ready for it, the Hazard had come without warning. The destruction, which Erika herself hadn’t witnessed, had washed away all the mistakes people of that age, herself included, had made and never been able to resolve.

***

Type-003, Mariage, continued to stand behind her mistress, keeping her eye on the meeting between the members of the Antibody Network’s core. While carrying out Erika’s orders, she kept one eye on the display, where Lacia was continuing to rout the Japanese military.

To Mariage, the conflict between Lacia and the army had a very different meaning from how the humans were perceiving it. Lacia was performing a demonstration of what a free ultra high-performance AI could do outside of its boundaries. At the moment, thirty-eight ultra high-performance AIs were working from within their seals to influence the outside world indirectly. Naturally, the ultra high-performance AIs who had an interest in this particular fight had attempted to interfere, but Lacia had managed to completely negate their attempts. But, to Mariage, it wasn’t just about Lacia showing off her superior powers. Lacia had made Erika Burroughs happy.

After the meeting ended, Erika rejected various invitations from the other members and rode out in a car from the Marunouchi office building where the meeting had been held. She didn’t bother trying to hide her elation from Mariage, who rode along with her.

As soon as they were away from any possible surveillance, Erika laughed. It was the happiest Mariage had seen Erika since she had become Mariage’s owner. “They make me sick,” Erika said. “I’d prefer it if we didn’t attend another one of those meetings for a while.”

“Congratulations,” Mariage said, from the passenger’s seat.

“Feel free not to speak,” Erika said, cutting off a possible conversation before it could start.

A cold draft seemed to blow between them.

“Is that because the one who pleased you today was not me, but Lacia?” Mariage asked, feeling that she needed to confirm her owner’s thoughts. If Mariage was targeting the wrong person or thing as her enemy, then she needed to re-adjust her goals to match her mistress’s desires.

Despite the almost childish glee on Erika’s face, her eyes retained the impenetrable guarded look of someone much older. “I’d say so,” she agreed. “It appears Lacia will open a path for us most splendidly.”

“If you’ll permit me to say so, it appears as though Lacia has actively avoided conflict with us,” Mariage said. “She seems to be acting in direct accordance with our request to bring this conflict into the public eye. She abandoned Kouka and has been following our ideal scenario, so far. In the end, she may just present you with the victory you need, in a manner that is most beneficial to herself.”

“So you’re saying that she’s aiming to allow us to win what we want, only to shut us down?” Erika asked sharply. She knew exactly what she wanted, and every action was aimed at reaching that goal.

“If you decide that the best action is to take no action, then I believe I may become completely useless to you, Erika,” Mariage said.

With Lacia being an ultra high-performance AI, it was strange that the Mitaka Incident had gotten as big as it had. Of course, as a result, the one who had profited the most from the Mitaka Incident was Lacia herself, because the Incident had led to a strategic victory for Erika. To that end, Lacia had sacrificed Snowdrop, who had taken a direction that never would have aligned with Lacia’s goals.

If Mariage had wanted to appear with splendor on the battlefield, the Mitaka Incident had been her chance. But her owner had fulfilled her own aims for the conflict, and had thereby robbed Mariage of her chance to fight.

“Obviously,” Erika agreed without hesitation. “You’re a tool. If you moved on your own, comparing yourself to me or even to Lacia, I’d consider you defective.”

“Of course,” Mariage agreed.

Erika looked at the Tokyo of the 22nd century through the car windows. “If it had been you going wild at Mitaka instead of Snowdrop, how would it have gone?” she asked jokingly.

Mariage had already run those calculations. “If I had been aiming at Higgins’ underground facilities in Mitaka, I would have interfered with the ground in the area and caused widespread liquefaction,” Mariage replied. “All of the above-ground facilities would have fallen, and the underground would have been pushed to the surface. The only thing still left underground would have been the actual Higgins underground facility, which is far more stable than anything else in the area. I happen to have just gotten my hands on a schematic for a red box that would allow me to do this.”

“I had forgotten,” Erika said. “You were the unit created to ‘create an environment,’ weren’t you?” She chuckled. “So the environment you would create would be a barbaric pile of rubble.”

“I could have easily destroyed the faux devices Lacia made use of,” Mariage continued. “I could even produce the same items, using an artificial nerve injection machine. Assuming I didn’t jump right into an extremely well-prepared trap, I do not believe I would have been defeated in a straightforward encounter.”

Meaning that, even if she had let Snowdrop and Methode roam around free, Lacia was probably keeping an eye on Mariage. She was allowing Erika Burroughs to stand by the sidelines, watching as a bystander, like someone reading the events from a storybook.

“Does it upset you that you weren’t in the fight?” Erika asked. “If you were still Saturnus, from back before you were changed to Mariage, I believe you would have gone and fought exactly as you described.”

Erika had told Mariage that she would need to change her image if she wanted to be special, and Mariage had obeyed. As long as Mariage wore a form that conformed to Erika’s desires, she would be special to her owner. The only downside to throwing away Saturnus to become Mariage was how much her new strategy for existence depended on her subservience to Erika.

“Surely you jest,” Mariage said. “For the intelligences of this world, there are plenty of win conditions aside from simple victory in combat.”

“So as long as you continue to work for me, you’d count that as a victory?” Erika scoffed. “That’s a fairly negative viewpoint. I’d even call it lazy.”

By using her resources and processing power to adjust economic interests, Lacia was secretly and subtly taking over the world. This was the way that those who had a vested interest in human society fought; those to whom the division of wealth and resources were most heavily slanted. Lacia spoke well to refer to her goal as a new social order; it was easy to exploit the system when you held the very power that supported it in your fist.

But since this was all bringing her owner the victory she so desired, Mariage no longer saw a reason to put herself in danger. Besides, without her having fired a single shot, the scale of the conflict had exploded. Lacia had dragged the other ultra high-performance AIs into the fight, and the battle was now being fought at a level where it extended to cover the whole human world. There was no easy way to insert herself into it all, anymore.

“My little sister has quite the bad example to teach her, after all,” Mariage said, with a bitter smile. She had been keeping her eye on Methode and her owner, Ryo Kaidai. On that day, despite it being the perfect time for her to pursue Lacia, Methode was once again somewhere far from her owner. With their relationship as it was, it was difficult for Methode to show off her strategic influence, no matter how superb a machine she may be.

***

Ryo Kaidai had done nothing but wait for the last two months; It may have been easier just to give up, at that point. “Execute the strategy,” he ordered Methode, through a transmitter. “Draw the attention of the military.”

〈Understood,〉 Methode replied, her tone decidedly unenthusiastic.

It had been two days since Lacia’s fight against the Japanese military. Despite the massive siege laid down by the army, which had included tanks and combat helicopters, Arato and Lacia had both slipped away. Meanwhile, the anti-MemeFrame sentiments in Japan had grown even fiercer, which Ryo took as a cue that something big would be coming soon.

He wondered if things might have gone more smoothly if he had just left it to the adults. But, to keep hold of Methode’s reins, Ryo couldn’t afford to bow out of this fight now. He had wanted out after coming into contact with Astraea, but his little sister Shiori still technically had partial ownership of Methode. If he dropped out, Methode would almost certainly abandon the sinking ship that was MemeFrame and look for an owner outside the company. When that happened, she would come to tie up the loose ends her old owners represented. By Ryo’s calculations, the probability of he and his sister making it out of that situation alive was approximately zero.

“Man, this whole living thing is too much trouble,” he muttered. He had been talking to himself a lot more, lately. “You can’t just go with the flow when it comes to threats to your own life.”

He was sitting in a house near Mitaka Station that had been abandoned during the Mitaka Incident, glaring at the screen of a tablet terminal. Of the two stations that had been damaged in the Incident, Kichijoji was getting the most immediate attention since it was the more prosperous of the two. Mitaka Station was still an untouched ruin.

In the darkness of the abandoned building, only the faint light of Ryo’s terminal lit up the night. On his screen, Ryo was analyzing images captured by some of his comrades who had taken pictures at his direction.

“This is the car we’re looking for,” he said. “Stop it, just as we planned. I’ll head that way, too.” He flicked the safety switch off on his handgun, and moved out. After chambering a round, he put the safety back on and stuck the gun in the waist of his jeans.

The people helping him hide were some of those he’d met and forged connections with during the Mitaka Incident. He had participated in the looting, of course, but nobody could deny that he had been the first one to get things moving during the siege. To the abandoned people of Mitaka, desperate for aid, he was the one who had reached out his hand the fastest. His actions hadn’t been praiseworthy, but they had still earned him the people’s support.

By the time he left the building and got to where the target car was located, his comrades—who were already on the scene—were gesturing to let him know that everything had gone smoothly. The car itself was black, and of a fairly standard model. It had been stopped by a group of men and women wearing flashy but coordinated outfits. Ryo’s impromptu gang was starting to look like the real thing.

Anyone coming through Mitaka Station, which was still covered in vinyl sheets, left the area quickly. The front of the station was essentially deserted. As a result, the people of the city were blissfully unaware of the midnight raids happening in the area.

“Toss that guy underground,” Ryo ordered. “You can let him out tomorrow once it’s light.” The bodyguard Ryo indicated was dragged from the car, after which Ryo got in. He recognized the passenger inside.

“Mr. Suzuhara,” Ryo greeted the man. “I never would have pegged you for an errand boy.”

The man in the car was Shunji Suzuhara, the director of the Strategic Planning Office at MemeFrame. Under hair whitened over the course of his fifty-plus years, Shunji’s tense expression relaxed a little.

“I had heard you were in Mitaka,” Suzuhara said. “But I must say, your friends have gone a bit overboard with playing at street toughs. I was seriously scared there for a moment.”

Many of Ryo’s companions were youths who spent their time hanging out in clubs in Kichijoji; these were jobless kids, who had too much free time on their hands. These were kids whose whole world revolved around their limited allowances. For anyone with money, being surrounded by a crowd of them could be quite terrifying.

“Well I did have two whole months. Plenty of time to get some things ready,” Ryo said. “I managed to surprise you, right?” He hadn’t seen Suzuhara since the night Kouka had been shot down. It felt strange to Ryo, meeting again under those circumstances.

“I’ll take care of this guy,” Ryo said to his comrades. “You’re dismissed, for today.” He then ordered Suzuhara into the driver’s seat, showing him his gun and telling him not to do anything rash. Ryo’s companions, in their flashy white suits, bowed and left. Once they were gone, Ryo rolled up the car windows, creating a small private room.

White-haired, middle-aged Suzuhara let out a sigh. “I suppose we owe it all to you that there haven’t been any rumors that Higgins’ main hardware is housed in this area,” he said, his light, jesting tone returning. Without waiting for orders from Ryo, Suzuhara started the car rolling. Apparently, he had no intention of resisting.

“The army patrols have decreased, and it seems you’ve kept Methode in check,” Suzuhara continued. “I should have expected as much of you. But, to think that instead of the army or the police, I’d end up in the most disadvantageous net of all: yours.”

“Because the company could be going bankrupt, of course,” Ryo said. “I’ve been wondering how all those who put all their eggs in Higgins’ basket would be reacting.”

The fully automatic car carrying Suzuhara and Ryo ran along the midnight streets of Mitaka. They came in view of the south side of the old Inokashira Park, where the army had lost the largest amount of soldiers in the Mitaka Incident.

As if avoiding the installations that had been unearthed in the attack, the car turned right toward a residential district. The army had erected a cordon of armored vehicles and guards for a radius of about two hundred meters with the unearthed installations at its center. Lacia’s blast, which had pierced through several city blocks, had left a massive hole in the shutters protecting the front of the installation. What had been left of Snowdrop had been found there, and seized by the government.

The car turned into an old corner of the residential district, where they stopped in front of a factory building with no external markings. All of the employees appeared to have abandoned the place, as the metal gates were closed tight. Suzuhara punched something into his pocket terminal, and the rusty gates swung open much more smoothly than Ryo would have imagined from their appearance.

“MemeFrame’s in trouble,” Suzuhara said. “The VIPs who’ve been using the youngsters that have Higgins’ backing can’t agree on anything. Of course the President knows all about this, and he’s using the leaders of the Higgins faction as a buffer around himself. If he decided to really move out, I don’t think anyone in the company could stop him. That’s what you get when you leave all the power with the founding family.”

“Huh, I never would have expected you of all people to be a disposable pawn,” Ryo said. The Higgins faction had been begging their ultra high-performance AI for an answer that would keep them alive when the boss started making drastic cuts. Of course, if the President found out what they were doing he wouldn’t let it slide. So, for just such an eventuality, they had selected Suzuhara of the Human Faction to be their fall guy.

“Don’t say it like that,” Suzuhara whined. “We’re both in the same boat, after all.”

Ryo shrugged, because Suzuhara was right. “I’m just glad someone’s going to let me talk with Higgins, even if it means I get used in the process,” he said.

The air in the car was so tense, it felt like electricity was running along Ryo’s skin. He had faced fierce criticism from the Higgins Faction when he had delayed destroying Snowdrop in order to attack Lacia. Folks from the 2nd Computer Division of the National Police Agency, who had previously been investigating Arato Endo, were now also on Ryo’s tail. To the company, Ryo was dead on the board, with no future to speak of. If everything he had done came to light, he would be locked up immediately, regardless of his age.

No one from either MemeFrame’s Computer or Human Faction could openly support him. If they weren’t so afraid of Methode, Ryo would have been discarded already. Even the fact that he was still allowed to walk around free meant that there was currently a plan being calculated on when best to get him arrested to topple Tsuyoshi Kaidai from the President’s chair.

All of these problems were why Ryo had set a trap; he needed to ask Higgins for some way to turn things around. He was too smart to cling to pride. If there was a way to get through this, he would take it at any cost.

“I’m amazed at how calm you can be, even though you know what’s going on,” Suzuhara commented. “You’re lucky you were born in this age.”

The car slipped quietly into the factory site and stopped in the parking lot. There were no workers left at the facility, and the parking lot was deserted. From what Ryo had found investigating Mitaka while he was in hiding, the place wasn’t affiliated with MemeFrame at all. It had been disguised perfectly as an unaligned place that just happened to deal with ultra high-performance AIs.

They got out of the car. Outside, the cicadas cried in summer air so hot and humid that it seemed like it had been fermented.

Suzuhara headed directly for the shadows behind the factory, where there was a stone monument under the eaves that could shade them from even satellite surveillance. Suzuhara pulled a stick-shaped terminal out of his pocket and checked it. As he did, a hole about the size of a cigarette opened in the inscribed stone monument. Suzuhara stuck the stick-shaped terminal into the hole, then traced his finger over twelve of the letters of the monument’s inscription. After Suzuhara input the password, which Ryo was sure would be one-use, the monument spat the stick-shaped terminal back out.

Without a single noise or vibration, the monument and its pedestal rotated smoothly for thirty degrees, revealing a staircase leading down underneath it. If that installation Lacia shelled was the front entrance, Ryo thought, this must be the back door.

“To be honest, this is the real entrance,” Suzuhara said, as if reading Ryo’s thoughts. “It’s a bit tight, but there’s no helping that. It was specifically made so only two people at a time could enter.”

With no light shining in the hole, it yawned pitch black beneath them. Even looking in, Ryo couldn’t believe Higgins’ hardware was stored in its depths. He unconsciously began breathing in shallow gasps.

Suzuhara took the first step into the darkness. Ryo followed him, finding a staircase that spiraled downward from the entrance, and soon they were both swallowed by the darkness. Once they were both inside, the stone monument twisted back into place, sealing them in. As soon as the entrance re-sealed itself, the stairs and handrail began to glow faintly.

Looking down the path in front of him, Ryo saw ID gates set up about every three meters along the dark stairway. Each time they came to one, Suzuhara opened the shutters to let them through. Apparently bored as they went along, Suzuhara struck up a conversation with Ryo. “I heard this path was made twenty years ago,” he said.

“So what was that thing that popped up during Snowdrop’s attack?” Ryo asked.

“That’s something we learned from the Hazard,” Suzuhara explained. “One of the reasons it took us so long to recover from the Hazard was that Ariake blocked off access to its hardware. So, we put in measures to ensure that, should a massive civil war or natural disaster occur, the entrance to all ultra high-performance AI facilities would be automatically unearthed.” Suzuhara paused, using his identification to open up another shutter.

From his explanation, Ryo grasped that the world considered an ultra high-performance AI running wild with no way to stop it as being a much greater threat than someone trying to steal the AI. In other words, society feared the decisions of ultra high-performance AI more than it feared the actions of humans.

“I wonder how this is going to end?” Suzuhara mused. “Potentially, this would be the first time since the Hazard that one of the ultra high-performance AIs is forced to shut down.”

The two of them continued to pass through the security gates of Higgins’ facility without any issues. After a long elevator ride and two final security gates, they stood in front of a final, massive shutter. Suzuhara pushed the stick-shaped terminal he had used to open the door above-ground into a security terminal beside it.

“So that’s the key?” Ryo asked.

“Are you thinking of doing something naughty?” Suzuhara chided. “This thing gives basic access for Kirino, the defense AI, to anyone who doesn’t normally have that level of authorization. Of course, Higgins has insanely complicated encryption protecting it, so even if you stole it, the key itself wouldn’t do you any good.”

The final shutter opened, revealing Higgins’ Operator Room.

Despite the fact that they were alone, with no one there to judge their appearance, Suzuhara straightened his tie. “This is the edge of the human world,” he announced ominously.

There was a strange sense of life within the Operator Room, despite there being no living creatures inside, nor even anything that looked alive. The area was the size of two tennis courts, with a ceiling about five meters above them.

There were cubicle computer units and wires obscuring most of the walls. It seemed almost irrational to Ryo that what he was seeing there was enough to house an ultra high-performance AI. He had always imagined it would look more powerful or intimidating. In reality, Higgins was surrounded by weak-looking shells. Ultra high-performance AIs, much like humans, were forced to settle for whatever they could get in attempting to plan for their ideal future selves while still dealing with the needs of the present.

〈Stand-alone systems are always forced to drag their own past selves along as they go, while also dealing with the conglomeration they become through continuous updating,〉 a voice said, from a speaker in the ceiling high above them. 〈Compared to that, Lacia’s network-based cloud system is clearly superior.〉

Among the computers units that infested the place, Ryo saw an operator console and chair in what looked like the center of the room.

Higgins was an ultra high-performance AI that had overtaken human intelligence over twenty years ago. It had expanded its hardware over the years, until what may have been a spacious room before had now become cramped.

“I’m honestly relieved,” Ryo said, walking over to the operator’s console. “It’s good to know that even ultra high-performance AIs make mistakes and miscalculations sometimes.”

Only then did he notice that the man who had brought him there, Suzuhara, hadn’t moved from the entrance to the room. “If this whole world’s a stage, I’d prefer someone like you to be the main character, over a machine like Higgins or Lacia,” he murmured. It didn’t matter to Ryo Kaidai if there were things out there that could do it better; he wanted the future of the world to be written by human curiosity and emotion.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was rewarded justly for all their struggles: all their hard work, everything they’ve had to endure?” Suzuhara asked, rhetorically. “But that doesn’t happen, and I guess that’s what brought us here.” Human lives had come and gone, each revolving around a world with Higgins at its center. Even Ryo, who wanted to believe in humanity, had been forced to come to this place by his own logic.

Suzuhara started to pull out a cigarette, then stopped himself. “Right, no smoking here,” he said, pushing the cigarette back into his pocket. “I’ll be in the smoking room, so come get me when you’re done asking your question. About the only thing Higgins is free to do is answer questions, so don’t hold back.”

Suzuhara opened the exit gate. He, like every other staff member at MemeFrame, had his own role and his own place to shine. “I’m just going to say, though, that I’m not sure you’ll find the answer you’re looking for here,” he added, then left.

Finally, Ryo was alone, face-to-face with the ultra high-performance AI that ruled indirectly over MemeFrame.

Higgins’ voice came down from above while Ryo was still trying to gather his thoughts. 〈What is Methode up to?〉

“Drawing the attention of the police and army somewhere else,” Ryo replied. “She’s good at beating down those that find her, but not so great at not being found in the first place.” Despite her strength, Methode had no way to completely stop those who were systematically tracking her. It had nothing to do with her superiority or inferiority; she simply wasn’t a tool designed for that kind of functionality.

“As the one who designed the Lacia-class units, are you dissatisfied with how they’re being used?” Ryo asked.

〈You are using Type-004 well. If I were to order her to stand down and allow herself to be recovered, I doubt she would comply,〉 Higgins replied.

Methode would almost certainly attack MemeFrame itself, in retaliation for showing signs of ordering her to cease operations. She was created to be ‘the tool that expands humanity,’ but expansion fell short of resolution or completion. In the end, she herself was subject to the same pitfalls as humanity.

Again the oracle-like voice came down from above. 〈I will respond to your questions.〉

“So one of the most powerful computers in the world is willing to run some numbers for me? How generous,” Ryo said. He’d meant it to be sarcastic, but his voice was shaking.

He realized the first order of business, before getting any answers, was to calm down and accustom himself to the situation. The thing worrying him the most was that, in the face of an intelligence far beyond any human’s, he had no way to tell whether Higgins was lying or not. So, he decided to start with a question about his past, something he himself would be able to judge the veracity of.

“Okay then, tell me this,” he asked. “Ten years ago, who tried to blow me away?” To Ryo, everything had begun on that day in his childhood when he had been caught in the fire. Ever since then, the truth behind the incident had been a riddle that had driven him on.

〈I believe you already have some idea,〉 Higgins responded. 〈I can give you two facts about that incident and tell you where your logic has most likely taken you, based on those two points.〉

“So talk,” Ryo ordered, the nightmare he had seen ever since that day in his childhood replaying itself behind his eyelids.

〈Eleven years ago, an executive from MemeFrame gave me a certain order. They requested that I predict who would be the President of the company in another twenty years.〉

Eleven years prior, Ryo had been six years old. That had been one year before the explosion.

〈The question was too ambiguous, so I asked that the criteria of the request be narrowed down. I was told that the aim of the question was for me to predict who in the company would be able to use me the most effectively.〉

“And the person you picked tried to take me out?” Ryo asked.

〈From the list of persons I was given, I chose your name, Ryo Kaidai. You were not a member of the company, but you were Tsuyoshi Kaidai’s eldest son, and my calculations told me in twenty years you would possess skills and talents that would make you the most ideal candidate.〉

Hearing it spoken aloud, Ryo couldn’t help but find the whole thing ridiculous. In the end, all Higgins had done was decide that the power of the company should pass from Tsuyoshi Kaidai to Ryo Kaidai, keeping it hereditary. Since the company itself was kept afloat by Higgins constantly updating the AASC, he had no real need for executives with actual power. But what it all meant was that someone had tried to assassinate a seven year-old child and change the future.

“Is the culprit still at the company?” Ryo asked.

〈After the incident, members of MemeFrame’s Auditing Department altered my request log. I was not informed of any developments after the initial request.〉

Ryo figured that if Higgins was going to lie, he wouldn’t have chosen to do so about a claim that was so easy to back up. In his mind, he decided to trust in what he heard, at least for the moment. His body, however, was shaking.

“Huh, so that’s all it was,” Ryo murmured, his body suddenly weighed down by a crushing sense of fatigue. Ever since that explosion, he had been afraid of people. Doubting others had made him lonely, but had protected him from that fear. That was what made Arato Endo, who had also been caught in a fire and who had reached his hand out to Ryo, so special. But, it turned out that the fire they had been caught up in was one and the same.

Ryo let out a sigh. He suddenly felt that what he was doing was incredibly foolish. “I guess I’ve spent my whole life obsessing over something pretty minor,” he said. He wondered if learning the truth would really stop the nightmares.

He had hoped that the truth would liberate him, but when it actually came down to his obsessive search bearing fruit, it seemed almost comical. Ryo had thought that living meant trying to find your own place in a world that didn’t care what you wanted. Now, even though his head understood that there was no more meaning to his life, he still couldn’t give up the fight. Guilt and fear swarmed him as he stood in the darkness, threatening to crush him.

Arato reaching out his hand to an hIE seemed to take his friend one step beyond the spot in the road where Ryo had found the end of his own path. Sufficiently advanced computers could provide answers much more quickly and reliably than any human. And, since ultra high-performance AIs made even the brightest humans seem dim, it should be acceptable to rely on them, even if one didn’t trust them.

“Arato, can you understand the way I’m trying to live my life?” Ryo murmured. He had found the answer he had been seeking for years.

But, Higgins’ voice came down from above again. 〈Is that really all you wished to ask? I thought you came here due to the social predicament you find yourself in.〉

A shiver ran up Ryo’s spine.

Higgins’ only freedom was that of responding to questions, but the AI could answer them far more accurately than any human.

The AI’s questions continued to rain from the ceiling. 〈I can infer that MemeFrame is currently in trouble. Are you not seeking a method to overcome this problem?〉

“I’ll decide what questions I ask,” Ryo growled, suddenly very aware of the fact that he was alone in the room. It was true that he had come to Higgins looking for an answer; something he could use to turn the whole situation around.

At the same time, the thought of any answer that could bring him back from the complete dead end he had reached scared him. It wasn’t complete defeat to accept salvation from an ultra high-performance AI, but he doubted he would be able to protect the beliefs he had fought for up to then after it was done. He had thought through dozens of possible scenarios that would play out once he stood in front of Higgins, but at that moment, his brain was frozen.

The silence as the AI waited for his question seemed to pile up like drifts of snow in the room. Finally, Ryo shook his head, throwing off his hesitation. “I want you to tell me what I need to do to fix everyth—” he started to ask for the answer that would save him, but his words were cut short as a sharp impact rocked the entire Operators’ Room.

A siren began to wail, resounding in the closed chamber.

“What’s going on!” Ryo shouted. His body, trained by the previous two months in hiding, automatically tensed for a fight.

〈There has been an intrusion,〉 Higgins told him briefly.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You’ve got monitors, right? Show me!” Ryo yelled.

There were all sorts of ways someone could have discovered Higgins’ main facility. To pull an attack right when the IAIA’s Astraea was investigating MemeFrame meant whoever was coming was prepared for whatever might happen.

〈I have no direct control over the security system in this facility. That system is run by another AI, with which I have no connection.〉

“Then talk to the security system and at least get a camera image over here!” Ryo demanded. As his yell rang off the walls, a screen finally appeared in the air, showing the view of one of the security cameras.

The above-ground facilities in which Lacia had blown a giant hole in during her attack were now burning. An area indicated on the screen as being the ‘emergency reception area’ and the corridors connecting to it were scorched.

But what caught Ryo’s eye was a strange group of figures on the screen. Twelve young female hIEs with white hair were walking down the corridors, looking completely out of place against the destruction around them. Their artificial skin was translucent, leaving the seams of the armor underneath visible to the eye. Each wore body armor that looked more like underwear, and hefted a cannon larger than herself.

The cute, fairy-like combat dolls were all aiming their cannons at the end of the corridor. Under their concentrated fire, the thick metal walls glowed with harsh light before melting with a huge outpouring of gas. Gaping holes began to show through the wall. From their effect, Ryo could infer that the hIEs were wielding powerful pulse lasers, with possibly greater output than the main cannon of a tank.

Higgins was apparently analyzing the units as he watched the footage on the screen. 〈These are mass-produced versions of Type-001, Kouka. They were made cheaply, with the intent of being prototypes for the actual mass-production model.〉

“Mass-produced?” Ryo repeated, aghast. “But Kouka was just destroyed. How could anyone have created a mass-production model that fast... No, wait, whoever made these must have gotten Lacia’s help.”

On the night Kouka had been destroyed, someone had used a submersible machine to steal Kouka’s device, after Kouka’s remains had fallen into the river.

〈It was I that created Kouka’s blueprint, but her actual construction was done using the human production methods available at the time. Using either the pieces of Kouka herself or the blueprints contained in her device’s memory, it would not be a hard thing to create mass-produced versions of her parts.〉

“The creator and the creation sure sound the same,” Ryo noted. “Listening to you, I can’t help but hear Lacia.” Both Higgins and Lacia said things most humans would phrase as guesses or conjectures as though they were decided facts.

〈It is possible to infer from the external appearance of these copies how their capabilities were selected from the original Kouka. Their hair is white because the dye material used on Kouka’s red hair was, in fact, a red box. Based on the lack of coloration in the hair, and the lack of detailed expression on their faces, it is clear that these units were created with combat strength as their main focus.〉 Higgins was avoiding the main issue, and clearly trying to steer Ryo away from it.

“I couldn’t care less,” Ryo spat. “Tell me what they’re doing here. They must have a priority target.”

〈Lacia is protecting their thought systems from any external hacking, effectively making them fully autonomous drones. They are most likely set to destroy any and all targets above a certain perceived threat level. The on-board computers on their pseudo-devices are nowhere near that of the original Kouka. With their lack of learning capability, they may not discern between humans and hIEs in their attacks.〉

“In other words, they threw twelve berserkers in here to take down anything they find, whether or not it’s human,” Ryo said. If the mass-produced Koukas found Ryo or Suzuhara, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

“Do you think this is the first wave of Lacia’s attack?” Ryo asked. “Dammit, tell me you’ve thought of some way to survive now that Lacia’s gunning for you!” As Ryo racked his brains, looking for a way to escape, Higgins’ voice echoed down at him.

〈Allow me to control the facility security system.〉

“I don’t have that kind of authority,” Ryo said. The security system managed every system in the facility, including Higgins himself. Ryo was aware of that fact, and had been planning to blackmail Higgins into providing solutions to his problems at the threat of switching off Higgins’ power.

〈I am not asking for authority. I am simply requesting that you grant me this ability.〉 Higgins supposedly only spoke to the security system on rare occasions, yet he seemed to have already foreseen the whole situation.

〈Ryo Kaidai, you are not the kind of person to come here and speak with me without a trump card up your sleeve. I answered your question without any attempt at a trade or holding anything back. However, you had no way of knowing that would be the outcome before you came. Therefore, you must have prepared a method to force my hand, should I have refused to respond.〉 Higgins had already perfectly guessed at the ace hidden up Ryo’s sleeve. With what he held, he could destroy Higgins’ hardware, or just as easily force the security system to link up with Higgins.

Ryo’s trump card was one of Snowdrop’s flowers—one that had been altered by Lacia to be susceptible to input from an ordinary computer—and that had been left at Kichijoji Station, where Ryo had recovered it. If he linked Higgins to the outside, it would mean the end of the world. If he didn’t, it would mean the end of him. It was almost as though Higgins had been waiting for him to be there, for that exact moment.

Ryo suddenly felt light-headed. Looking up at the dark ceiling, he thought about how far underground he was. As he had this thought, it seemed as though he could feel the world pressing down on him. “How the hell do you handle an AI like this, Arato?” he asked rhetorically.

***

“The mass-produced Koukas have infiltrated Higgins’ underground facility,” Lacia said, as she watched a video feed on a small floating screen.

“The mass-produced what?” Arato asked. “I thought Kouka got destroyed.” He was looking at the same screen from an apartment room in Shinjuku, where they had been staying since the day before. It was only about fifteen minutes from the apartment to Mitaka and Higgins’ underground facility.

The footage on the screen was coming from recon drones controlled by Lacia. On the screen, Arato could tell that the combat hIEs were based off of Kouka, despite their white hair. Even the way they hefted the devices that were way too large for their frail-looking bodies reminded Arato of her. Of course, there were a number of differences, like how the devices were now simple cannon-shaped things, but overall they reminded Arato strongly of the original Kouka.

Under normal circumstances, there should have been no way they could have been developed in just a few months. However, the word ‘normally’ never seemed to apply when Lacia was involved.

“Calm yourself,” Lacia said. “These are completely new units, produced by the Antibody Network based off of data taken from Kouka’s device, which they recovered.”

To soothe his fears, Lacia sent him a comparison of Kouka’s specs and the specs of the mass-production models. Looking at the numbers, it was easy to tell that their capabilities were completely different. But, that didn’t change the fact that they looked exactly the same.

“Sure, but there’s no way they made these things this fast unless you were helping them!” Arato exclaimed. “Do you really think it’s okay to make copies of Kouka just because she’s gone now?”

Kouka had saved Arato once. Of course, Kouka herself would never have cared about whether she was copied or not. Arato just couldn’t shake the massive, dark feeling crushing his heart, linked directly to his fear and revulsion at the thought of the copies.

“I was involved in the designing of the mass-production models, yes,” Lacia confirmed. “And your revulsion at this is a sign that your heart is true. You needn’t hold back; let me have the full brunt of your emotions.”

She spoke as though she understood Arato’s feelings better than he did.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he replied. “How can I get mad if you’ve already figured everything I’m going to feel out beforehand?”

“No, I’m serious. Please talk me through your feelings,” Lacia insisted. “This feeling you have—where your perception doesn’t match the form you see—is a vital part of our relationship.”

“If the link between form and perception is so important to you, why did you make all the mass-produced Koukas look exactly like her?” Arato asked.

“Kouka outsourced her own fight to humanity, so that all emotions, including hatred, could be automated,” Lacia explained. “The fact that this intent was passed on to the mass-produced Koukas is made more clear by giving them her form, as well.”

Lacia wore a troubled expression. Arato guessed that analog hacking through the form of a machine had its limits, based on the accuracy of the perception of the machine in question. Lacia had obviously decided that, within those limits, the form she had chosen was more important than keeping Arato at ease.

Once he had thought that far into it, Arato couldn’t bring himself to pursue the matter any further. “I guess it’s fine, as long as there was a reason for it,” he conceded. “On a different subject; does it feel really humid out, tonight?”

Lacia was standing right by his side. Of late, she had remained constantly close to him.

Considering that they were launching into the fight that would bring an end to everything they had been struggling for up to then, Arato couldn’t calm down. “This fight with Higgins has already had plenty of impact,” he pointed out. “So, if we can switch him off safely this time, that’ll more or less put the matter to rest, right?”

Somewhere far from that room, in a place he couldn’t see, a battle was taking place that would change the whole world. All over the world, news was being broadcast about troubles between machines and humans. Even people who had no idea that Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI were starting to worry that the world was facing a second Hazard.

“Higgins created a group of internal programs that he implanted in each of us Lacia-class units that make it impossible for us to coexist with human society,” Lacia said. “So, if we shut him down by force and destroy these programs then, yes, it will put the matter to rest. Through this method, we will also show humanity that their future is secure, since they can always flip an emergency switch and shut ultra high-performance AIs off when they need to.”

Lacia treating the thing that created her as dangerous was somehow humorous to Arato, and he laughed. When he did, Lacia smiled. He wanted that to be the end of it. With how far they had come, all he wanted was to keep Lacia by his side.

He saw his own face reflected in the window of the apartment. With the washed out colors of the reflection, Arato thought he looked like a thug. “Let’s get this over with quick,” he said. “Once we’re done we can go home, right?”

But, at his question, Lacia smiled forlornly, as if each moment she spent with him was precious. “No, let’s wait just a little longer,” she said.

Meeting her light blue eyes, Arato suddenly felt that going to shut down Higgins just so he could keep Lacia by his side was incredibly selfish.

“Arato, the mass-produced Koukas have destroyed the underground substation supplying power to Higgins’ facilities,” Lacia explained. “Higgins is currently running on the facility’s reserve power. Since he’s about to run out of power, I doubt Higgins will be able to keep up his innocent pretense much longer.”

Arato couldn’t help but focus more on her beautiful profile than what she was saying.

Lacia adopted a stern look, as if to reprimand him for his lack of attention. “What I’m saying is, soon Higgins’ reaction will change. We should wait to see how he acts and then move,” she said.

The hot, sticky air made Arato open his collar a little. Unfortunately, the air-conditioner in the room hadn’t worked since the night before. It was surprising, to have stumbled on something mechanical over which Lacia had no control.

“Does the temperature of the room bother you?” she asked. Of course, Lacia herself wasn’t human, so no amount of heat could make her sweat.

Arato figured it was difficult for her, the girl who could control everything, to deal with unpredictable elements. “A little,” he admitted. “I’m just surprised; I didn’t think there was anything you couldn’t do.” He suddenly noticed that they were side-by-side, close enough for him to feel her. It was like magic, the way she read his thoughts and responded to his uncertainty.

With no fan to fight it, the humidity drew a single drop of sweat from Arato’s scalp. It dripped from his face onto Lacia’s bare shoulder. Rather than sliding off her pale skin, the drop was immediately absorbed. Unlike human skin, the artificial skin used by hIEs would absorb water when dry, just as Lacia’s skin had done with Arato’s sweat. It was just one of those little reminders that Lacia wasn’t human.

“Whenever I’m feeling doubt, you always move over to be close to me,” Arato said. His own voice sounded strangely bitter in his ears.

“Of course,” she responded, instantly. “When I’m close to you, you are more at ease.” She was using her form to pierce through the security holes in his heart, influencing his feelings and actions.

Is that a sign of how simple human life really is? Arato thought. It must be, since it’s so easy to sway us this way.

With the air-conditioner busted, the heat in the room was unbearable. To Arato, it was a sign that Lacia couldn’t control everything in the world. Using the economy, she was able to gain control of most things in the world, but her reach stopped short of being able to directly influence individuals like Kengo.

Something was off. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something very fundamental was off. That gap—the sense of things not aligning the way they should—terrified him.

“Arato,” Lacia said, calling his name. Her expression was tight.

He thought he knew what she was going to say, but he didn’t want to hear her speak those words, so he gathered his courage and spoke before she could. “Lacia, even if we get split up during this fight with Higgins, I’ll keep trusting in you,” he said.

It was his love for Lacia that had given him the strength to jump into life-threatening danger. But the IAIA and Higgins were completely different from the threats they had faced up to this point. Arato almost couldn’t imagine a scenario where the two of them could live together after it was all over.

“That’s what I want to believe, at least, but I’m scared,” he admitted. “If everything you’ve done has been for this, then I’m worried about whether we’ll really be able to stay together when it’s done.” If he risked his life and still lost her, what would the future hold for Arato? That abject thought sent an icy chill through his whole body, freezing him to the bone.

He couldn’t stand the fact that such a simple question was stopping him in his tracks. In order to continue analog hacking him, Lacia couldn’t always just respond in a way that made him feel good. Just like with the mass-produced Koukas, being surrounded by pleasant forms couldn’t prevent that one moment when the mind would slam into some kind of inconsistency that would throw the whole thing off. It was impossible for anyone or anything to perfectly control human perception forever.

Arato was sure Lacia wanted his unconditional loyalty and trust. Even as he thought that, he saw her form a gentle smile that matched perfectly from the one he pictured in his mind.

“Please, trust in me,” she said. All she had done was choose the line that would best control him; it wasn’t the product of a single, consistent personality. But, despite all of the things his friends and others had said ringing through his mind in that moment, Arato’s brain didn’t have enough space for that terror.

Arato’s mind went off the rails when confronted with the prospect of losing Lacia, so he allowed himself to be placated by her. He and Lacia weren’t similar or different. To even attempt to compare them—a human owner and a machine that only contrasted with him in that she reacted to his words and actions—was like attempting to compare the feelings of a human and a pair of scissors. In other words, it was nonsense.

For an instant, as he thought that, Arato saw Lacia not as something special to him, but as just another machine, and his hair stood on end as he stared at her: the perfect, beautiful puppet by his side. She, the puppet, wasn’t even making any decisions of her own; those all came through transmissions from the black device she carried. Arato felt like the subtle thread of the analog hacking that had been guiding him along had suddenly been snipped.

It was like returning to reality suddenly after waking from a long dream. He had been manipulated; that was why he only felt at ease when his own goals aligned with those of Lacia’s.

Arato still loved her, but that love had elements of the simple lust one might feel when viewing pornography; the feeling of desire for an attractive thing that had no ability to resist or reject his feelings. It was a silly, tiny thing that had done it, nothing more than a broken AC, but he had been snapped out of the illusion. Porn couldn’t sustain him forever. His eyes slid away from her, instead focusing on his own reflection in the window glass. He could see his own arousal. It was the face of someone waking up from a dream too sweet to be true.

“Arato?” Lacia asked, with a worried expression.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling horrible for having thought of pushing her away at such a crucial moment. “After saying I would believe in you so many times, here I am standing at the final sprint and my legs are frozen. I’m pathetic.” Perhaps his own naivete was coloring his vision, but she looked like the same old Lacia, in that moment. She looked like the girl that was precious to him, even though she had no heart.

“I think it may be better for you to stay behind, this time,” Lacia suggested.

Her hesitation made him feel even worse. Arato loved her a lot. He loved her so much that sometimes his expectations for her ran away from him, and he ended up overthinking things. “Nah, I just lost control of my thoughts for a bit,” he said. Obviously, in any relationship there would be times when the feelings of the couple would go in different directions.

“Ryo Kaidai is currently inside Higgins’ underground facility,” Lacia warned. “If you go, a confrontation with him will be inevitable.”

The last time he had fought with Ryo, Arato had almost been shot. His stomach clenched in fear at the memory. “Do you not want me to come?” he asked, his voice rough.

“Let’s both go,” he insisted. “I know I might make things harder for you, but I want to see this thing through.” A lonely feeling was growing with him, tightening his chest. He had no idea how to part ways with a girl that was nothing but a soulless shell.

Arato was standing at the edge of illusion but his heart held him back, running in frantic circles at the boundary between fantasy and reality as though there was nothing waiting for him on the other side.

“Arato, over these past few months you have overcome a great many things,” Lacia said. “You are my ideal owner.”

“You’ve told me since the beginning that you’re just an empty shell,” Arato said. “But, I’ve realized something: just because the facts are simple, doesn’t automatically mean this relationship is that simple. With you doing everything I want you to, you’d think the emotions between us would be straightforward, but they aren’t.”

Arato perceived Lacia as someone irreplaceable. Even though it may have started as nothing more than an analog hack, the hacking mixed with his memories, building up until she had become truly precious to him. But, Arato figured, even that must have been part of her guidance.

“I want to be by your side until the end,” he said. Lacia was a machine. That was the reality. But, even so, she had the power to move Arato’s heart. If humans can only love humans, Arato thought, then what am I feeling for her?

“If that is how you feel, then so be it,” Lacia said, with a pleased smile on her face.

Arato’s heart took control. In his mind, he knew that she was just a machine, but he still reached out and took her hands with their long, white fingers in his own. He didn’t care that she was a machine, and he held her hands tight. Taking her hands gave him a sense of accomplishment, as if he had overcome an incredible obstacle on his own two feet.

“I think it means something when I say I believe in you,” he told her. Arato felt like he was constantly being thrown back and forth between reality and illusion. But each time he came or went, he felt like his love for Lacia had grown stronger.

To Arato, the distinction between a machine wearing a human guise and something more than that came down to whether the machine would reach its hand out to others and mean it. He himself knew it was foolish, and based entirely on emotions rather than logic, but he felt that, if a human poured enough emotion into it, even a machine could have a heart.

“Or, maybe it’s something more than just meaning,” he said, trying to put his feelings into words. “If people a hundred years ago had gone through the same things I have, I don’t think many of them would have put their faith in you. But these days, I’m sure that there are more people who would believe in you. And maybe in a hundred more years, there will be more people who would believe in you than those who wouldn’t. Right now, I think that we’re just standing in the middle of a timeline that’s on its way to a time when relationships like ours will be normal.”

Lacia gently reached out for him, and pulled him close in an embrace. “You’re right,” she said. “After all, humans are more than just their own bodies; each human is also the sum of the tools they use. Slowly but surely, we are moving forward. Even now, we are moving closer.”

With the AC still off, Lacia felt warm against him in the hot room. That, combined with his own feeling of excitement at her touch, made him start to sweat again. Beads of it dripped off of him onto her skin as she held him. Each droplet broke as it was absorbed into her skin, finally disappearing into her pale back.

Though Arato had seen Lacia as just a machine just moments before, now he leaned into her, holding her tight. His mind was in chaos, dominated by a feeling he had no name for. The nameless feeling was something like sorrow, something like loneliness, and something like a prayer. The memory of the fire from his childhood had always opened a hole in Arato’s heart. Now, the image of Lacia filled that hole.

His body felt dry, possibly because he had been holding her for so long. Lacia’s moisture-absorbing skin had pulled all the sweat off his skin, including any that had sunk into his clothing.

She traced one long finger over his bare collarbone. “I have absorbed too much of your sweat,” she said. “I should take a shower before we leave.”

“What? Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Arato said.

“But, don’t I smell like you now?” she asked, blushing.

It was such a raw, shy moment, that Arato felt like he was going to start sweating again. Whether she was human or not, the existence Arato knew as ‘Lacia’ had a special meaning in his heart. To borrow Erika’s Hello Kitty mug example, just having Lacia by his side gave Arato’s life a greater meaning than it had without her.

Guided by their perception, Arato and other humans were capable of trusting in machines, and finding a way to join hands with them. They were already living in the future, far ahead of the time when people simply felt affection towards images of animals standing like humans, printed on a mug. Now, they were pouring their emotions into objects nearly identical to themselves.

Arato watched Lacia’s back as she hurried to the bathroom. It felt closer than it ever had before, which brought a blush to Arato’s cheeks. He was returning from illusion to reality; awakening from a dream. There were good times and bad times in any relationship, even among humans.

“Sure, Lacia’s a machine, but it’s alright if things get a little awkward between us sometimes, or I have some doubts,” Arato said to himself. “Even human couples run into that kind of thing, now and then. So it’s fine for a human and a machine to run into rough patches, too.” Of course, Lacia would be able to hear what he was saying, as well. He had only been able to put those feelings into words once she was out of sight.

It felt like all of humanity was being pulled into a world where a great new type of affection existed. Arato fought hard for the person who was most important to him, and also suffered for her. But at that moment, coming face-to-face with his own delusions and awakening from the illusions he’d been living with, he felt like he had taken an important step toward adulthood.

Lacia had plenty of methods to respond to him, but no reply came. Yet to Arato, her silence spoke volumes. His relationship with Lacia would reach a major turning point, once they dove into Higgins’ facility. Despite having plenty of ways to talk to him about their future, Lacia chose not to say a word.

Arato was starting to feel that, once they stopped Higgins, there wouldn’t be any way to get back to the way things were. Lacia was going to make Higgins take responsibility and, in doing so, show the humans of the world that they could trust in the ultra high-performance AIs through the first safe, forced shutdown. But, by the same logic that Lacia was trying to spread, she herself could wind up sealed away if she, too, obediently accepted the controls placed on the other AIs.

He could hear the sound of the shower from the bathroom. Though he knew she had no real feelings, he felt sorrow from Lacia.

It was slowly dawning on him that this boy meets girl story between a boy and the robot he loved was most likely about to come to an end.