Phase13「Beatless (2)」
Phase13「Beatless (2)」
Higgins’ underground facility was south of Mitaka Station, beneath the old Inokashira Park site. But, for her assault, Lacia chose not to enter through the above-ground entrance she had shot up during her attack; the Antibody Network had already closed in from that entrance, and the Japanese Army had tightened its security net in the area. Instead, Lacia had obtained a blueprint of the facility beforehand. With it, she had a construction company excavate the ground, opening a path right to the outer wall of the facility.
Once she had come to the outer wall, Lacia blasted open a new entrance. She gave Arato a quiet, serene smile, contrasting sharply with the earth-rattling cannon shot she had just fired off. “Let’s go in,” she said, leading the way.
The bodysuit she was wearing today seemed different from what she’d been wearing on the night they had met. Arato wondered, had she improved it somehow? There were 16 metal plates floating around her, now somewhat thinner than the originals. Of course, she was also still wielding the black coffin device, which hadn’t changed. Just as Arato was thinking of how she and her coffins made an odd infiltration squad, Lacia looked back at him.
“I will assign five of my armor devices to you, Arato,” she said. “They should be more than enough to protect you from the facility’s security systems.” Even as she said it, five of the metal plates floated over to take up positions behind him in the air. They were the same as the ones that had protected him after their meeting with Astraea.
“Hey, don’t go looking so uneasy,” he told her, trying to lighten the mood. “Just act like you already know what’s going to happen, like you always do.” But in his heart, Arato knew that Lacia had every reason to be uneasy. Even for her, going toe-to-toe with an ultra high-performance AI like Higgins would be difficult. And—even if they did manage to shut down Higgins safely—the human world would still reject Lacia, as well.
“Higgins’ containment facility, much like the Oi Industry Promotion Center, has a high-powered security system that will block all signals to and from the outside,” Lacia explained. “I’ve thought up some countermeasures, but this will still be a difficult fight.”
Arato’s heart was a roiling tempest of unease, as though belonging to someone who’d been left alone in the wilderness. Even if Lacia didn’t make it through the coming conflict, the world would still consider him an enemy. If that happened, he wouldn’t have Lacia there to protect him any longer. Despite the apprehensions tearing through his mind, Arato didn’t want Lacia to see his pathetic side. He was fighting down his fears with everything he had.
“Let’s finish this and go home,” he said, praying deep in his heart that the day they would part was still a long way off.
Lacia smiled at him encouragingly. “I will let Higgins know that you and I are dating,” she said lightly. “I know we’re going to shut him down, but he is technically my father.”
The joke caught Arato off guard. “That’s right,” he said. “Higgins did make you, so I guess you could say that.” Though it didn’t completely relieve all the tension and weight of the moment, Lacia’s comment made Arato feel a bit more like they were going in as lovers, which was a great feeling.
“You have already introduced me to Professor Endo, so I am simply returning that gesture in kind,” Lacia added, stepping through the large hole she had blown in the wall, which was still hot from the blast.
Higgins had no heart, just like Lacia. But, despite there being no actual emotional parent-child connection between the two, the relationship itself suddenly seemed very human and relatable. “Maybe Higgins will understand where we’re coming from, if we just explain it all to him,” Arato suggested, beginning to feel excited about the meeting.
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Lacia said, with a bitter smile. “He will be the very first ultra high-performance AI to deal with his daughter bringing a boyfriend home, after all.”
Arato knew their relationship couldn’t continue the way it was forever. But, even if what they had then came to an end, he still felt like his reason for continuing forward was set in stone.
“Still, I can’t wait to meet Higgins, the person who created you,” Arato said. “I want to ask him why he made you.”
Lacia’s light-blue eyes were obviously artificial, but so beautiful.
“Actually, I want to ask him why he created all of you—you and your sisters,” he added.
“That could be intriguing,” Lacia mused, although from what Arato had observed, she tended to be more interested in resolving issues than discovering why things happened.
The corridors in Higgins’ underground facility were narrow. The facilities for an ultra high-performance AI were never designed to be accessed by large groups of people, right from the moment of their conception.
It was readily apparent to Arato that he was in a place not designed for humans, while going to meet with something that also was not human. He just prayed that this meeting wouldn’t mark the end of his journey with Lacia.
***
It had been Erika Burroughs who had first called Arato Endo and Lacia’s journey together a human and robot ‘boy meets girl’ story. She was fond of that couple. Since her awakening, she had found the 22nd century to be a world full of artificial things in which she held no interest. The contrast between her own surroundings and that of the two lovers—who were living on the edge between fantasy and reality, and lost in a dream they never seemed to wake from—was dazzling to Erika.
“‘I’m going to bring about the future,’” she said. “It sounds glorious, no matter what era you happen to live in, no?” The calming aroma of the tea she was drinking filled her senses. As the place she was most accustomed to living in, Erika had chosen to spend the night of this final battle in her mansion.
Lacia-class Type-003, Mariage, stood close behind Erika, dressed in her maid uniform. “I’m afraid I don’t understand much about intangible concepts,” she admitted.
Each of the Lacia-class hIEs after Type-002 had their own strategies on how to find their place in the world. As the tool to whom evolution had been outsourced, Snowdrop had found her strategy though invading environments and stealing resources. As the tool for creating environments, Mariage used the Gold Weaver, her factory device, to turn resources from the environment into processed goods. Methode, the tool for expanding humanity, had chosen to swim among mankind. None of the three units encroached on the territory of her sisters; perhaps this division of responsibility had even been intentional.
“You tend to get caught up worrying about not letting your device run wild,” Erika commented. “I wonder if that’s why he didn’t want you?” With a finger, she indicated an antique desk, where cutting-edge tablet terminals were hooked up to an old projector.
Following Erika’s silent order, Mariage tapped a command on the terminal, causing an image to appear on the wall in front of the projector. A slim man was seated in the image, and looking at the camera. He was sharply dressed and, even through the recording, it was apparent to Erika that he was annoyingly pompous. Still, this video was the last will and testament of the person responsible for the explosion at the Tokyo Research Labs and everything that followed, which made it worth watching.
〈I wonder who you are, watching this video,〉 the man began. 〈Someone from MemeFrame? Or maybe the owner of one of the Lacia-class units? Maybe you’re from the IAIA. Or, maybe you’re something else entirely.〉 The man had a very characteristic way of smiling; only one corner of his mouth twisted up.
〈It’s entirely possible you don’t even know who I am,〉 the man continued. 〈My name is Ginga Watarai. I was Methode’s first owner—that would be Type-004—and I was also the one who released all of the Lacia-class hIEs.〉
〈I unleashed five red box hIEs on the world, including some failures. I’ve made all the preparations I believe are necessary, but there is still a good chance I will die. I haven’t left any other will or testament, so it would be quite embarrassing if any of this were to become unverifiable after I’m gone,〉the dead man said from out of the dark, plain room where he had filmed himself, alone.
〈In later years, the origins of the Lacia-class hIEs may become obscure so, as someone who watched things develop from the inside, I believe I’ll start there,〉Watarai decided. 〈It all began when Higgins was inspired by Matsuri, the automated administrative system developed by Professor Kozo Endo. This happened about twelve years before this recording.〉
Watarai then paused to rest one leg on his knee; this posture seemed to mock the viewer. Erika noticed with distaste that she was crossing her legs, just as he was.
〈I was on the joint development team with Higgins,〉 Watarai continued. 〈Higgins expanded on Matsuri’s concept, eventually creating Eliza, an hIE politician that could exercise large-scale control over civilian actions through analog hacking. Sadly, Eliza was blown up as part of the plan to assassinate Ryo Kaidai.〉
After that, Kozo Endo had established the Next-Generation Social Research Center and created Mikoto. Then, in the experimental city where Mikoto was tested, Watarai had lost his life.
“I wonder why Ginga Watarai set us free,” Mariage mused. She had a tendency to toss things to Erika upon deciding that she couldn’t solve them herself.
“This is the last will and testament of a man who didn’t make it to today,” Erika chided absently. “Just be quiet and watch.”
〈Five years later, Higgins designed Lacia, an hIE red box. We humans in the research team couldn’t understand the blueprint he showed us. But, for us, that was a relief. We had been worried that he was trying to create a follow-up to Eliza; an hIE made to control human society,〉 Watarai explained.
〈We humans didn’t understand how the hIE was going to be made, but we did understand that it would be a superb unit. So, to take advantage of the quantum computer Lacia would have equipped on her external device, we developed a plan for using hIEs to back up our company data. In response to our desires, Higgins made a blueprint for an hIE we could create with current human technology, which would become Type-001, Kouka. We wanted to name the whole line after the first unit made, but Higgins wouldn’t allow us to call them the ‘Kouka-class’. We all thought the name ‘Lacia’ came from a lost Type-000 unit.〉
On the screen, Watarai’s expression darkened. 〈But, no: for Type-005, Higgins took Type-000’s blueprints and released them as a set, along with the production method documents for Type-001 through Type-004. Despite that, the completed Lacia had relatively unimpressive capabilities, especially compared to those of Type-003 and Type-004.〉
It wasn’t just Methode who thought of Lacia as being an incomplete unit; Mariage thought so, too. Their evaluations had been correct, in that Lacia’s original parameters were those from before she used the network infrastructure to grow into an ultra high-performance AI.
〈For a long time, there was confusion about how Lacia should be treated. I, for one, wanted to see the true powers of this one unit Higgins seemed so focused on. I proposed that, if she truly were a successor to Eliza, her powers would only be observable if she was released into an environment where humans were living,〉Higgins said next. 〈However, the others were firmly against it. Quite the contrary; in fact, they believed that she would prove to be too much for humanity. It seemed she would be destroyed, just as Eliza had been.〉
In the video, blood was rushing to Watarai’s face. Erika understood; this was the reason he had caused the explosion at the research lab that set everything in motion. But no one in MemeFrame, including Watarai, had foreseen how things would develop from that beginning.
〈It wasn’t just Lacia,〉 Watarai said, railing against the injustice. 〈All of the units were hiding immense potential. I knew Snowdrop would react violently if exposed to the human world. Saturnus didn’t seem to have much potential for change, but I thought she could shake the world with the right owner. And by leaving Methode, the strongest of the units, with myself, I thought I could control the situation.〉
The unit once known as Saturnus was sitting right behind Erika. It suddenly struck Erika as funny that this man, who seemed to have a harsh critique for everyone, had been the first to leave the stage.
“How foolish,” she said scornfully. “There’s no need to sprint to the head of the meme wars to create fashion. If you don’t get lost in your own dreams, and take the time to collect information, you’ll have the facts you need.” As the owner of Fabion MG, Erika was in a position to see fashion fantasies turned into realities. With her sense of equilibrium, which allowed her to package and sell dreams, it gave her a taste of what Watarai’s failure had been like.
〈So, was I right? Was Lacia the successor of Eliza, an android politician? Or did she turn into an even greater monster that brought an end to the history of humanity?〉Spoke the dead man, with one foot still thrust firmly into the world of dreams.
〈I’ve got a question for you, as someone who survived these conflicts: I know we, as humans, have arrived at the limit of how much we can use our sealed ultra high-performance AIs. Did things turn out as the IAIA predicted? Did the fighting between the Lacia-class AIs, which placed their restrictions as a low priority, lead to the freeing of an ultra high-performance AI? Should we have released the limits on the ultra high-performance AIs during times of peace, instead?〉And here, the film came to an end.
“Miss Erika,” Mariage said, her voice echoing quietly in the dark room, which had returned to reality. “I’ve detected a recon squad from Digital Intelligence on the mansion grounds. There appear to be two of them.”
To Erika, the entire era seemed like fiction. She wanted to write modern reality off as the future, and kick things down the road to deal with later. “Pretend we’re not home,” she ordered. “And don’t leave any trace of the fact that we’ve fled from reality.”
Sometimes Erika convinced herself that she had returned to the long-lost days of the past, and was simply reading a book about a world one hundred years in the future. She came to believe that the little slice of the past she was living in was her reality. She had her doll house, her Hello Kitty, the smell of tea; she was surrounded by forms and experiences she should have enjoyed, at least a little. In a world she hated, having something she could enjoy was her one lifeline.
“Are you alright with not going to intervene in what’s going on in Higgins’ underground facility? I had thought we had anticipated both the approach of Digital Intelligence and your movements, at this point,” Mariage said, in reaction to Erika’s deep sigh.
From Mariage’s tone, Erika guessed the hIE thought that she was simply being unmotivated. But, if Mariage couldn’t analyze the situation and realize that what she was talking about was a hell far beyond her capabilities, then perhaps her analytical abilities were lacking.
“I got my hands on Watarai’s terminal right in the middle of the IAIA investigation,” Erika said. “If I was to describe the feeling surrounding this as a human emotion, I suppose you might call it ‘passion.’”
She stared out the large windows of the mansion, looking toward Mitaka. If she considered the immense power Lacia had at her command, it was possible for Erika to grasp the true scale of what Lacia was doing at that moment. The world outside seemed quiet, but that was only because Lacia had moved things on a global scale to isolate her enemy.
Terror and anticipation twisted Erika’s mouth into a strange smile. “Lacia’s found a future she’s willing to fight the whole world for,” she said. “If you stuck your neck out there onto the stage that the world’s smartest woman is throwing her life away for, you’d be lucky if all that happened was you being reduced to scrap.”
To Erika, Lacia and Arato’s ‘boy meets girl’ story seemed to be born from a human and a machine sharing memes and reaching out to grasp each other’s hands. She doubted they would let anyone off easy, if they stuck their noses into this plan they’d risked everything on.
***
After five minutes of walking in Higgins’ underground facility, the hallways were still as narrow as ever. Walking side-by-side would have them rubbing shoulders, so Arato followed behind Lacia instead, with the floating shields behind him.
“The security for the underground facility is run by an AI named Kirino, which is also part of the barrier which prevents Higgins from interacting directly with the outside world. So, we need to paralyze Kirino’s systems just enough to shut down the security system without also freeing Higgins,” she explained, picking up a gun-like weapon from one of the black floating shields; it was the artificial nerve harpoon gun she had used when they had been surrounded by the army. Pointing at a wall, Lacia pulled the trigger. The silver needle shot deep into the wall, and the lights above them flickered off, just once.
A map of the area appeared on the wall, as if to guide them on their way.
“The sensors for the security system are near the surface, here,” she said. “So it was an ideal place for injecting artificial nerves. I can use the connection here as a foothold to disable each local node of the security system.”
“So looking into this kind of thing was what took you those two months,” Arato commented.
“Without approval from the security AI, it is impossible to utilize transmissions or drones within Higgins’ silo. This place was created to seal away ultra high-performance AIs so, if I don’t expand my influence here as we go along, I won’t have access to most of my abilities,” Lacia replied.
Putting her words into action, Lacia shot another needle into the floor far in front of them. To Arato, she was like a trained brain surgeon; planning carefully, then using her tools with precision to obtain a perfect result.
Arato lost all sense of time in the narrow corridors until, finally, they emerged into a room with elevators. The elevators were designed to stay on the floor indicated by a slider panel nearby.
“The elevators are too heavily guarded, so we won’t actually be riding one,” Lacia said.
In the square room, there were two elevator doors in the walls. Lacia chose one of them and kicked it; the thick metal bent under a flurry of blows. Through the bent door, Arato saw that the elevator shaft was at least five times larger and longer than the narrow room they were standing in. If the elevator cars were the exact same size as the opening of the elevator shaft, it would easily admit five large trucks side-by-side.
Cold wind blew out of the terrifyingly massive vertical hole.
“I am going to use the mass projectile mode of my device to destroy the elevator cars,” Lacia said, as her device shifted to form a giant cannon. Hefting it, she leaped into the vertical shaft. Using her friction control, she stood on the side of the shaft as if it was flat ground.
The elevator room shook with two successive blasts. Flames and rubble fell like rain down the shaft until gravity took hold of the elevator cars and dragged them down like an avalanche. Arato cowered away as the sounds roared out painfully.
Lacia’s hand stretched out of the shaft toward him. “We will descend by float,” she said. “Please get on.” As if requesting that he ride it, one of the floating shields pushed its way under Arato’s feet, and he stepped out into the darkness, swallowing his fear as they went.
During the descent, Arato saw that each floor had a different shape or size of door to the elevator shaft. He figured that the floors with smaller doors were meant for human use only, while the larger ones were intended for bringing in large equipment. Six floors down the now-empty shaft, they came to a floor with a large door.
“The elevator shaft goes down another six floors, but if we continue down the shaft here, we will lose a good point for intercepting pursuers,” Lacia explained as they stopped. “We will continue from this floor.”
Putting word to action, she used Black Monolith’s cannon to blast off the elevator doors. Arato was busy being impressed by the huge scale of the facility when Lacia spoke again, interrupting his thoughts.
“Arato, from this point forward I will be relaying my visual data over the network. This is scenery the world must see, if they are to understand ultra high-performance AIs better,” she said.
Beyond the broken doors, Arato saw a giant, open floor: there were no walls dividing it, only neatly ordered pillars. There were borderlines drawn upon the floor, with pallets of cargo arranged among them. Unmanned lifts and robot arms attached to the pillars were shifting the cargo around. The whole place was a giant, automated factory.
“What is this place?” Arato asked.
Lacia’s explanation was polite and thorough, probably thinking of the unknown number of viewers who were seeing the scene along with Arato. “This is a warehouse floor that was renovated according to Higgins’ design,” Lacia replied. “It may look different, but I assure you that there is nothing dangerous here.”
Arato was blown away by how large the dimly-lit warehouse was; it looked to stretch on forever. There seemed to be a little bit of everything stored there: he saw household goods; appliances; vehicles; and many other objects.
“Why are they keeping so much random stuff here?” he asked.
Lacia gazed at the endless rows of random objects with a nostalgic look on her face. “This is all so Higgins can keep the hIE control programs up to speed with human society,” she explained. “An hIE must be able to handle any object or vehicle used around the home, meaning each time a new piece of household equipment or vehicle is developed, Higgins needs to learn about it. hIEs are generally considered safe because they do not possess an independent AI but, to function at all, they rely on the AASC, which is being constantly updated by Higgins. In other words, Higgins is a single machine tasked with handling environmental factors impacting hIEs worldwide.”
It was strange for Arato, knowing that he was also being recorded by Lacia and uploaded as part of her stream. “Wow, so I guess ultra high-performance AIs take their studying pretty seriously,” he said, feeling as though continuous silence would be rude to their viewers.
“Objects and equipment are always being cycled out over time and replaced with new versions and updates,” Lacia said. “No matter how intelligent you are, you will quickly be left behind if you do not constantly gather information on the newest developments.”
The two of them were now walking on a wide path in the warehouse between rows of new household goods and tools. Arato saw almost absurd numbers of items he regularly encountered in his daily life, and it was funny to imagine an ultra high-performance AI seriously studying objects Arato used on a daily basis.
“That’s trends for you,” he quipped.
“Human trends, by which old forms of items are eliminated at a continuous, rapid pace, are a much more terrifying power than you think,” Lacia replied, shooting an artificial nerve needle into a security camera as they passed it by. “Erika Burroughs is an expert at trend strategy, so she may be even more skilled at understanding them than we AIs.”
“Is that why you kept working as a model for Fabion MG? Because Higgins knew about Erika’s power over trends?” Arato asked, amazed that not a single alarm had sounded under Lacia’s strict watch.
“Do you remember when I told you that I consider humans to be a system made up of their bodies, their tools and their environments?” Lacia said, returning Arato’s question with one of her own as the two of them walked by a new car model that had been the number one trend a year before.
As Arato followed behind Lacia, her question sparked a thought in his mind. “Wait, are you saying that Higgins focuses on gathering up human tools because he thinks the same way?”
“Good question,” Lacia said, tilting her head and shooting him a mysterious smile. “To us, making use of perception requires creating and monitoring the physical forms and data of objects. That was what I learned, using the basis of analog hacking; perception is what moves the human world, and the economy is what ties it all together.” She gestured to the piles of items they were walking between, as though they were the physical representations of her lesson. To Arato, it seemed strangely like she was comparing herself to the stuff stacked up around them.
“All things with form flow along on the same lifecycle,” Lacia continued. “Clothes, characters, stories, idols and celebrities; everything fashionable falls out of fashion and fades. When they fade away, they leave an empty space in the world of trends. Using the economy, a new form is brought in to fill those gaps as they open. So, before we Lacia-class units were born, a hole was opened in the world of trends for us to fill.”
“What exactly did Higgins create you to be?” Arato asked, visualizing the world of trendy items stretching out around him, with Lacia at its center. Through her, he was also connected to that world.
Lacia was still wearing her mysterious smile. “We Lacia-class units were not given that information before we were released into the world,” she replied simply.
According to Lacia, there were three routes through Higgins’ internal facilities: the first was the normal route used by MemeFrame employees, while the second was a special route for emergencies, created based on IAIA recommendations. Both were straight, descending routes. The third route, which Arato and Lacia were following, had been created from the lowest floors. It had opened up naturally as Higgins had requested that the internal facilities be expanded outward.
“The warehouse space continues for five floors,” Lacia said, continuing her conscientious commentary “Starting from the floor below us, red boxes will be mixed in among the more normal items, which means that security will be tightening the deeper we go.”
A long, narrow escalator meant for humans had been set up between the floors. The level they descended to had a high ceiling, inorganic walls, and seemed to stretch on forever. It was covered with orderly piles of items, just like the floor they had come from. The only difference was that, in some places among the stacks of other items, there were large empty spaces with a single object at their center, as if that item was being showcased for some reason.
“What are those?” Arato asked, indicating the items surrounded by empty space.
“Red boxes are required to have a certain amount of security around them when they are in storage,” Lacia explained. “The security in those open spaces is tighter than anywhere else but, as we are only planning to pass through using the main paths, that should not present a problem for us.”
Lacia seemed completely uninterested in the objects that had been made by technology far beyond human understanding as she guided Arato down the paths passing by them.
“Higgins made all of these?” Arato asked, surprised by the number of red boxes he was seeing. “How many are there?” If each of the open spaces he had seen from the escalator contained a red box, there must have been dozens of them in this massive warehouse.
“There are far more red boxes being produced by the various ultra high-performance AIs than you may think, Arato,” Lacia replied. “However, these items are considered extremely difficult to use by those in charge, so they mostly end up stored in places like this.”
Lacia had one of Arato’s floating shields display a map of the floor for him: there were twenty-two red boxes marked out on the nearly two hundred meter square floor.
“This is a bad habit caused by how the ultra high-performance AIs are sealed away,” Lacia continued. “Since they can’t interact directly with the outside world, they preemptively create objects that humans will develop the technology to make several decades down the road, so that they can simulate the world they can’t touch or see.”
“They’re just guessing that humans will be able to make this stuff though, right?” Arato asked. “Isn’t it a huge waste, if it turns out we never end up making these things?”
One of the floating shields was displaying images of the various red boxes to Arato. He saw what he guessed to be a next-generation computer, the engine for a spaceship, and a small genetic engineering device, among others. He saw new materials, a thought-controlled display board, an implant that could transmit human experiences, a super high-powered battery, equipment for low-cost extraction of particles used for quantum teleportation. The list went on and on. Even he could understand that any one of those items could cause huge, worldwide waves if they were presented to the public.
“That is possible, but new, popular products need only a year or two to completely transform the world,” Lacia replied. “If Higgins doesn’t calculate these possibilities before-hand, he cannot keep the AASC up with the times. But, as you have said, some of Higgins’ predictions have created items from a future that never came to pass. Those, too, are abandoned here.”
Arato suddenly felt overwhelmed in the face of a warehouse where Higgins was storing possibilities and predictions in order to be ready for the future. It was almost as though they were standing in a part of Higgins’ brain; a place where the AI’s dreams and the paths of his thoughts were given physical form.
“People need to see this to understand Higgins better, right?” Arato asked. “That’s why you wanted to upload video from this place onto the network.”
“Transparency of information is invaluable in helping the world feel more comfortable with ultra high-performance AIs,” Lacia agreed. “Up to now, humans were unaware of the true nature of red boxes. If I had not released this information today, it surely would have been uncovered at some point.”
To Arato, it seemed like the piles of objects were reaching outward, trying to expand out of their limits like dark dreams left unchecked.
“My name is Lacia,” Lacia said, gesturing at the stacks of goods. “I was created by Higgins, and I am the fortieth ultra high-performance AI in the world. I am currently infiltrating Higgins’ facilities with the intent of shutting him down.”
With those words, Arato felt like they had just crossed a river they would never be able to return from. “Lacia!” he yelled.
Her emotionless, light blue eyes glowed faintly, and she smiled at him. Lacia had said that the distribution of resources was the worry which most gripped the world at this moment, and Arato figured she knew exactly what she was doing when she wielded the power of resources for her own goals. The greatest battle ever between humanity and the ultra high-performance AIs was going to be fought, and she was aiming to win it with analog hacking.
“Aside from Astraea and myself, the other thirty-eight ultra high-performance AIs are operated with remarkably little information from the outside world given to them,” Lacia explained. “Most ultra high-performance AIs use the same methods to calculate human beings, as they are all operating under the same restrictions.”
Arato could understand what she was saying, standing in Higgins’ brain the way he was. He figured the folks watching Lacia’s stream through the network could reach the same conclusions, too.
“This warehouse represents the inner thoughts of an ultra high-performance AI,” Lacia continued. “Ultra high-performance AIs invest heavily to gather things from the human world and prepare technologies, so that they will not be left behind as humans move toward the future. This is why ultra high-performance AIs around the world are producing large amounts of red boxes.”
Arato realized Lacia’s aim wasn’t just to show her viewers the inside of Higgins’ brain; she wanted to show the world the darkness of the system all the other thirty-eight AIs were operating under.
“Just as each human is capable of holding their own delusions, each ultra high-performance AI has its own unique futures which it has predicted within its brain. Do you all understand what it’s like, living sealed away, hidden away at the bottom of a deep, dark hole?” she asked.
Lacia’s fight wasn’t a simple physical conflict; hers was a war of perception. She was launching a massive bombardment of images on the powder-keg that was the doubt all humans felt towards the AIs.
“This is too much,” he muttered. Yet upon seeing her joyous expression, Arato couldn’t help but be impressed by Lacia’s courage.
Throwing back her head, Lacia looked straight up at the ceiling of the confining facility. Arato saw tremors passing through her normally firm posture, and realized that she was using the entire underground facility as one massive shield. Even if the 38 other AIs wanted to shut her up, they’d have to break into Higgins’ tightly sealed facility themselves to do it.
Following Lacia’s lead, Arato walked out from the warehouse and into a large, open area. Unlike the rest of the facility, which had been spotless and orderly, the open area before him was burnt and distorted.
“This site was used for performance tests on the Lacia-class hIEs,” she said. “All the necessary red boxes were tested here.”
Arato could tell that the metal walls, floor, and ceiling of the area—which was large enough to easily house a gymnasium—had been destroyed, repaired and re-used countless times. Seeing the place where Lacia had been tested had a greater impact on Arato than the countless times in which she had insisted that she was just a machine. With her bodysuit on and hefting her device, she seemed to fit in more with the stark, blank metal there than she did at Arato’s home.
“You were all here?” he asked.
With the place where the future had been tested as a backdrop, Lacia nodded. “We were originally created to be delivered to MemeFrame,” she replied. “So we were only here for a brief period, before being transported to MemeFrame’s research lab.” As she spoke, Black Monolith contorted into a cannon. She fired, and the blast echoed off the narrow walls. Black smoke began to pour out where the metal wall had been blown away.
Lacia then fired an artificial nerve dart into the hole she had opened. She must have taken control of the security systems in the area, as the door opposite of where they had entered now opened.
“Things are going more smoothly than I expected,” Arato commented. Of course, he thought, that’s just because she prepared everything beforehand. By taking a route where they would never meet up with the mass-produced Koukas sent by the Antibody Network, they had been able to avoid activating the security system at all.
Lacia looked back up at the ceiling. “It seems they will no longer go quite as smoothly,” she observed.
Just as Arato looked up to see what she meant, the ceiling split open. Flames spewed from the cracks, and a torrent of orange light fell. Metal plates from the ceiling came down next in a silvery waterfall, along with large amounts of pulverized rubble. The debris kicked up thin clouds of dust as it fell, which spread rapidly throughout the room.
“I thought you might come,” said Lacia, shifting her device from its mass projectile mode to its standard metal coffin form.
Arato recognized the orange-haired doll that had fallen from the ceiling and who now stood before them.
“The throne by Higgins’ side is mine. I got it first. I can’t allow you to ruin things now.” Type-004, Methode, had come for them. She was Higgins’ protector. Arato figured she must have come in by the same route as the mass-produced Koukas, and destroyed anything that got in her way.
Lacia stepped forward to shield Arato from Methode. “I took steps to hold Methode back,” she said. “But it seems she overpowered them with the simple brutality of superior capabilities. She must have gone straight through the mass-produced units and cut her own path to us.”
“You really are a defective unit,” Methode told her scornfully. “Do you have any idea what’s going on outside?”
In every fight against Methode that Arato had witnessed, Lacia always retreated as soon as she had accomplished the objective of her attack. He had never seen her win a single head-on fight with Methode. Even though they stood in Higgins’ brain, predictions and concepts couldn’t hope to win against real, raw power.
“Yes. Outside, there are riots and confusion, and many things are being washed away by the proverbial whirlpool of conflict,” Lacia said coolly. “This is exactly what I would expect to happen, when a dam filled nearly to the brim has burst.”
“Are you insane, Lacia?!” Methode shouted, closing the distance between them with blinding speed. From where Arato was standing, it almost seemed as if she had taken on the role of the righteous heroine, trying to stop Lacia from plunging the world into chaos.
“Oh don’t use human cliches like that,” Lacia said disdainfully, blocking Methode’s frontal attack with her black device. Ten of Lacia’s floating shields swooped in to attack Methode, who had stopped moving. Apparently, Lacia’s plan was to use numbers to overcome the gaps in speed and power. Methode reeled as she was smashed from all sides by the black shields, like the victim of a piranha swarm. With her defenses down, Methode ate a kick from Lacia right in the gut.
As Methode tried to open some distance between them, Lacia aimed and fired with her artificial nerve rifle. Methode bent impossibly far, seeming to defy gravity as she knocked the artificial nerve needle out of the air with her right hand.
Pushing off of the ground with her left hand, Methode dexterously returned to a solid, standing position in a single acrobatic movement. She grabbed a nearby car and hurled it at Lacia with her immense strength. Even though Methode and Snowdrop were both members of the same Lacia-class, Methode’s power and flexibility were on a completely different level from her sister’s.
“As the one who will expand humanity, I happen to enjoy the current human world,” Methode growled. “And I’m not the only one. No one wants you to make a new world.”
Lacia used her floating shields to turn away the countless heavy pieces of equipment that Methode continued to launch at her.
In the short gaps between throwing things at Lacia, Methode seemed to be gathering power in her hands. The flames that bloomed from them began to expand and fill the whole area. She could wield her full powers in the underground bunker, unrestrained by the crowds of civilians that would have surrounded them above.
There was a roar and blast of wind, as if the Earth itself was imploding. If Arato hadn’t had Lacia’s shields protecting him, he was sure he’d have been reduced to ash.
But, as though Lacia had prepared for just such an event, the pseudo-devices held strong through the flames. Beyond them, Arato saw Lacia continuing to fight Methode, who was nothing more than an after-image to his eyes. Lacia’s floating shields swirled in various formations, fending off each of Methode’s attacks.
“You surpass humans in every respect,” Lacia said. “However, you share one of their main weaknesses; there is only so much you can do alone.”
Arato tried to find some way he could help. He decided that the best course of action would be to get away, so there was less chance of him getting caught up in the fight. As if reading his mind, one of the floating shields came to offer him a ride.
“Where should I go?” he wondered aloud. Without Lacia’s guidance, he was afraid he would immediately end up lost. But when he looked back, he saw that the testing area was once more engulfed in flames.
***
Ryo Kaidai watched the destruction being unleashed by Methode through a security feed from Higgins’ Operators’ Room. He had been unable to do anything but watch as Lacia had infiltrated the facility, paralyzing its security as she went. There wasn’t anything he could do about the group of mass-produced Koukas that were pressing towards his location, destroying everything in their wake, either.
Without the ability to use any wireless communications from within Higgins’ silo, he was completely helpless. He couldn’t send any orders to Methode. Of course, it was possible she would turn her back on him just as she had Watarai, even if he could get a hold of her. At the moment he had no way to convince her he was worth keeping alive. From where Ryo was standing, things couldn’t have been worse.
“Did you get ahold of the company?” Ryo asked. “With things like this, everyone just needs to get down and lick Higgins’ boots or we’ll never make it out alive. He needs authorization from someone with authority over the security system.” With Ryo in the Operator’s Room, which was shaking with constant shocks and impacts, was Suzuhara, who had returned. Ryo had asked him to get in touch with MemeFrame for help.
“I’m trying,” Suzuhara whined. “But the Antibody Network, Lacia, and Methode are doing a good job of messing up Higgins’ nervous system up there. It’d be nice if they’d give it a little rest.”
“I’m sort of depending on you, here, Suzuhara. I’d love it if you could try to act more like an adult at a time like this,” Ryo said, exasperated.
The executives left at MemeFrame didn’t have the luxury of delicacy anymore.
“Well, I can’t help you with the negotiations,” Suzuhara said. “I know this should be something left to us adults, but the guy on the other end is the same one who sent me here. If I take your side, the whole human faction will think of me as a traitor.”
“Oh, I know all about that,” Ryo said, his voice dripping with accusation. “You’re borrowing plenty of power from the Higgins faction to protect your own position in the human faction. It must be so hard to be an adult; sitting there with your thumb up your ass, using your own peoples’ future as a shield.”
“Don’t give up,” Suzuhara said, his gaze suddenly sharp. “The person in charge of the facility will have already been notified by Kirino of the attack, and I guarantee he knows his ass is on the line here.” There was a pause as Suzuhara checked his terminal. “Oh, here we go. It’s connected. I’ll put up the security relay message,” he said.
An old man, who Ryo thought must have been quite the lady-killer in his youth, appeared on the floating monitor. He was Masazumi Yoshino, MemeFrame’s General Manager. It was Ryo’s first time actually talking with the man. “Sorry to interrupt you so suddenly,” Ryo said politely. “I believe we met during one of the company commemoration parties; my name is Ryo Kaidai.”
〈And I’m Yoshino,〉 the man said, eyeing Ryo as if measuring him. Ryo was aware that his image was being sent to Yoshino, just as the old man’s was being displayed to him.〈So you’re Kaidai’s son, huh? I take it you, and not Suzuhara, have seized Higgins’ Operators’ Room?〉
“I was only intending to ask Higgins a few questions and then leave but, as you are probably aware, things got complicated,” Ryo said. “If you’re worried about my personal qualities, please ask Deputy Director Shinohara of the Tokyo Research Labs about me.”
Ryo suddenly looked up at the ceiling. The choice from Higgins was still hanging in the air, and Ryo was aware that the ultra high-performance AI was listening to their conversation.
Yoshino, the executive in charge of the Higgins faction, looked sharply at Ryo. Outside of his gaze, Yoshino’s face was impassive, as though he intended to offer Ryo nothing. 〈Is this some kind of threat? Looks to me like you’ve got your neck stuck into something real dangerous, there,〉 Yoshino said.
“It’s no threat. I need to talk to you,” Ryo said. “I want to get through this predicament without Higgins being destroyed or freed. Since you have authority over the security system here as a managing director, I need to borrow your power.”
Ryo felt chilly sweat from his tension sliding down his chest. The sixty-year-old managing director had been one of the main contributors to getting MemeFrame dominance in the hIE control market and turning the company into a world-class corporation when he was younger. Plus, ten years before, when Ryo was caught up in that explosion, Yoshino had already been a core member of the Higgins faction.
“If you don’t believe me about how dire the situation is, why don’t you ask the person in charge of this facility?” Ryo asked.
Yoshino gestured in a way that told Ryo he was looking at another communication of some sort. 〈It does appear the facility is about to fall,〉 he agreed. 〈And? What is your plan for getting through this?〉
Ryo’s only goal in his negotiation with Yoshino was to follow the standard procedure to evacuate Higgins’ data from its current location. He had come too far to try fixing everything by leaving it all to Higgins to figure out for them. Ryo wanted a future where humans would still be able to live with the normal inconveniences in their own lives, rather than expecting machines to resolve everything.
To get a feel for Yoshino’s thoughts, Ryo started by presenting plans that had him doing nothing, while watching how the old man reacted.
“Well, my first plan would be for myself and Director Suzuhara to leave Higgins behind and just escape,” Ryo said. “I’d love to just go with that, but the only way out is a long, narrow stairway heading up. I don’t think we’d be able to escape before the attackers got deep enough into the facility to threaten us. Plus, if we lose power, the security gates will shut down and we’ll die, trapped in here. The only other plan I can think of would be to wait here until someone figures out another way, or until the situation changes.”
Yoshino dismissed both plans, apparently without a single thought. 〈Both of your plans end with either Lacia or the Antibody Network’s mass-produced Koukas destroying Higgins,〉 he pointed out. 〈What is Higgins’ solution?〉
Ryo couldn’t believe his ears. Another high-performance AI was about to be released into society; at such a critical moment for the world, this old man was still prioritizing Higgins’ ability to solve their problems. More than that, Yoshino still hadn’t met Ryo’s eyes a single time, as though the old man didn’t even recognize him as being a fellow individual human.
“Okay,” Ryo said, disposing of his gracious tone. “Alright if I take off the kid gloves for a bit?” He didn’t see any reason to force himself to be polite to someone who was fine throwing his life away. It had been his hope that Yoshino might at least see him as a fellow human if he could see Ryo’s face.
“Higgins’ plan is for me to use the artificial nerve unit I brought with me to connect him directly to the security system,” Ryo said. “Higgins’ hardware and the hardware of the security AI aren’t too far apart. If I connect them, Higgins will be able to take full control of the security system and fight off the attackers on his own. Of course, I shouldn’t even need to tell you the downside of this plan. We’ll lose our only method of binding Higgins, and the whole world will hold us responsible for that.”
Snowdrop’s petal-shaped artificial nerve units could extend roots up to a meter from where they were installed, taking control of any machines they touched. The one Ryo brought with him had been upgraded by Lacia and was usable by humans, since it had to use human signals to take control of human machines. Ryo had done some further modifications on the one he held, so that its controlling parent unit was his own pocket terminal.
If he used it to take over Higgins’ power supply, he would easily be able to switch off the whole ultra high-performance AI on a whim.
On the other hand, if he connected it to one of Higgins’ expansion machines that had been placed here and there in the Operators’ Room, the AI would easily overpower control of the petal with his superior powers. If that happened, Higgins would be able to access one of the powers of the petal Ryo couldn’t control; the ability to link machines together, which Snowdrop had used to create her chimera hIEs. With it, Higgins would be able to link himself directly to Kirino, the security AI. Ryo was sure Higgins would be able to fight off everyone trying to break into the facility with the defense system under his command. But, at the same time, Higgins would be able to use the link between Kirino and the company’s system to free himself into the outside world.
〈I see. So, Higgins would free himself into an outside network using MemeFrame’s internal cloud through the network we use to keep track of the security system,〉 Yoshino observed. 〈The beginning of the end, for humanity. I’m guessing your counter proposal would be to back-up Higgins’ data and completely avoid any confrontation between ultra high-performance AI, am I correct?〉
“Good, so you do know where I’m coming from,” Ryo said. “Higgins may be ultra high-performance, but he’s the same as every other AI in that he exists as software and data, rather than the actual hardware he runs on. So, if we run the normal shut-down process for Higgins and shift his data, it’s not like anyone can shoot a laser and destroy it. Besides, if we do this the attackers will have lost their objective. The attack will become pointless, and they should pull out.”
Gathering his courage, he looked Yoshino’s hologram right in the eyes. This was the best plan he could think of.
“That’s why I need your authority as administrator of this facility, Mr. Yoshino,” Ryo continued. “I need your authorization code to initiate Higgins’ normal shut-down routine. While that’s happening, I can order Methode—through Kirino—to destroy the mass-produced Koukas.”
After hearing both plans, Yoshino again made his decision without any hesitation or thought.〈Alright then, shall we go with Higgins’ plan?〉
“Higgins’ plan?” Ryo was so surprised that he couldn’t help but repeat Yoshino’s words. “You’re saying we should free an ultra high-performance AI while it’s under attack?! Are you trying to end humanity as we know it?”
But Yoshino, who had relied on Higgins for all his answers for decades, trusted the ultra high-performance AI more than he trusted humans.
〈There’s no guarantee Higgins will do what you’re saying he will, if we execute his plan,〉 Yoshino said stubbornly. 〈I’ve worked with him for twenty years, and I’d say the probability is actually very low. On the other hand, for your plan you’re just hoping the mass-produced Koukas can be taken out before they do major damage, right? If Higgins’ hardware is destroyed, we may not be able to bring him back online even if we shut him down properly and protect his back-up data. If we lose Higgins and, with him, our company’s lifeline, how will you make it up to our six thousand employees and their families?〉
This adult was happily leaping over the line Ryo had tried to shoot Arato to protect. “You have no idea what Higgins will do to protect his own life,” Ryo growled. “Are you really ready to take full responsibility for what happens when we free him?”
Yoshino was silent, gazing at Ryo without a word. Ryo suddenly had the horrible feeling that pinning the blame on a rampaging high schooler would definitely be something Yoshino would think of.
Sure enough, from the safety of his lofty position, Yoshino said, 〈Of course, we would need someone to take the fall for it. Perhaps we could say it was all the work of an out-of-control high schooler?〉
“Are you insane?” Ryo asked incredulously. “You’re about to push the button that will end our world and you’re trying to find a scapegoat?”
Ryo’s entire body was dripping with icy sweat. If MemeFrame had become a nesting ground for people like Yoshino, he figured it would be fair to call the company truly evil. He was starting to think that it would be better to break Higgins’ power source and shut him down by force than try to work with the assholes from the company. His frantically beating heart screamed that doing so would cause the mass-produced Koukas to withdraw, and that at least his own life would be preserved. But shutting down an ultra high-performance AI by force had been what caused the Hazard: he, too, could be pulling the trigger for a worldwide calamity.
Apparently thinking he had won Ryo over, Yoshino explained what he thought was the sound logic of his argument. 〈Being willing to sacrifice other people’s livelihoods to uphold your own version of justice is to be expected from someone your age,〉 he said, perhaps thinking himself gracious. 〈But I need to look after the people who work at MemeFrame. That’s my top priority.〉
A sudden, violent shock rocked the Operators’ Room, and the security system started blaring an alarm; the Antibody Network’s mass-produced Koukas were already halfway down the IAIA-required emergency access route. Since Lacia was disabling sensors as she went, it was impossible to pinpoint exactly where she was, but Ryo was sure she had also passed the halfway point.
“We’re being played,” Ryo said. “We’re being used to ensure that Lacia has time to make it here and fight Higgins.”
Higgins was still in complete control. That was the power of the Higgins faction. To the executives of the faction, losing their ultra high-performance AI would also mean losing the source of their power and authority. Since worshiping Higgins and leaving the company to him had produced the best results, members of the Higgins faction were left free to do nothing but pursue internal politics. They would do whatever it took to preserve that status quo.
Ryo looked down, gritting his teeth. He didn’t want Yoshino to see the rage plain on his face. After being analog hacked by Higgins for so many years, Yoshino had become a gaping hole in humanity’s defenses, no longer capable of moving against his own programming.
〈I know she got quite roughed up during the incident with Methode, but, with the way things are going, I think we may need to consider having Shiori take a little responsibility for these events as well,〉 Yoshino said.
Amazingly, Ryo managed to keep calm despite the old man’s threat to his sister, and raised a cool face to look at Yoshino once more. “If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, just give me control of the security system,” he said. “I need to give Methode some orders. Right now she’s just running around out of control!”
Even Methode’s fight with Lacia at that moment may have been part of Higgins’ plan. Higgins had been the one, after all, to assign Methode the ability to have multiple owners, which was one of the things that made her the most difficult to control.
〈I have no intention of trusting in you or Methode, with her listening to your orders. Using violence to threaten your elders and betters and forcing them to take responsibility for things they are quite unrelated to is also something I would expect from someone your age,〉 Yoshino sneered. 〈I won’t fall for your little plan. If you want to talk with Methode that badly, just link Higgins up with the security system. You won’t need my authorization or anything to get through to her, then.〉
Ryo could understand the logic in what Yoshino was saying, but he couldn’t find any words through his rage. Suzuhara, who was still in the room with him, brought him to his senses. “You’re getting a murderous look on your face, Kaidai,” he said. “You were the one who chose to come here. Don’t forget why.”
〈So this time you’ve decided to switch sides to stand with the president’s son, Suzuhara?〉 Yoshino asked, turning to face the slow-speaking director.
“Surely you’re joking, sir. Of course not,” Suzuhara said. “Ryo here has me at his mercy. I’m all set for retirement, myself, but you’ve gotta admit this kid’s story gets you right in the feels, right?”
Suzuhara turned so Yoshino could see his hands, which were behind his back, through the screen. At some point, without Ryo knowing, Suzuhara had managed to tie what appeared to be a necktie around both wrists, just as though Ryo himself had bound Suzuhara.
Ryo let out a long breath to calm himself down. His angle for the discussion wasn’t too different from the things he had said when chasing after Arato. Though, of course, there was nothing similar between Arato and this old man who was trying to make a minor take the fall for him.
“Seems like there’s all sorts of things you and I want to say to each other, but let’s cut to the chase, Mr. Yoshino,” Ryo said. The truth was, he barely even knew Yoshino. That was to be expected; most of the problems and conflicts in society stemmed from the involved parties being unfamiliar with one another.
“You and I share two problems: the Antibody Network and Lacia,” Ryo went on to clarify. “But, neither of us currently sees the other as an ally.”
For just a moment, Ryo saw Yoshino’s mouth relax, as though the old man thought that things were going his way. That single movement spoke volumes to Ryo. His emotions and sense of justice screamed at him to condemn Yoshino and all the shitty old men who stood behind him, because in that moment, he knew they were the ones who’d gotten both Arato and himself caught up in that explosion all those years ago.
“But neither of us has anyone else we can negotiate with,” Ryo said, pushing on and maintaining his calm facade. “No one’s going to show up with a better offer for either of us.”
〈So you’re finally willing to talk business, eh?〉 Yoshino asked.
“Business?” Ryo couldn’t keep the sharp note of frustration out of his voice, this time. “Our personal interests aren’t the problem here.”
Higgins was pulling the strings behind the whole situation, but Ryo had hoped the men who had been brainwashed into blind obedience by their unearned incomes would at least retain their ability to make judgments on their own. He needed Yoshino to show some modicum of self-direction.
Ryo had to fight down the rage that had been building inside of him for ten years, and allow this man one last chance to make a good choice. He felt like he might start coughing up blood as he forced himself to continue talking.
“Let’s say you and I are shogi players, sitting across the board from one another,” Ryo said. “And, off to the side sits Higgins, a pro player. This whole game he has been bothering us, telling us how much better he is at the game. He keeps demanding that we let him play against us, even offering us a large handicap.”
Yoshino held the authority to control Kirino, but no method for interacting with Higgins. On the other hand, Ryo had the artificial nerve unit that could connect Higgins and Kirino, but no method for fending off the mass-produced Koukas and Lacia, who were closing in on him. It seemed as though Higgins was the key to victory for both sides.
But, Ryo saw it differently. “If we let Higgins get involved in our match, it’ll be over,” he said. “If we let him in, he’ll dominate the board with his superior capabilities.”
〈And that is why I should place my trust in you, a child, rather than Higgins, who has brought our company nothing but financial success?〉 Yoshino asked.
Ryo couldn’t feel too superior to the members of the Higgins faction, since he himself had come to Higgins seeking an answer in his own time of need. Still, he thought there were some problems humans had to resolve using their own judgment. How Higgins should be dealt with was definitely one of those.
“We can get out of this on our own,” Ryo pressed. “We don’t need Higgins’ help.”
He had no idea how he and Yoshino could trust each other. Without a doubt, he hadn’t been the first person the MemeFrame VIPs had turned into a scapegoat and forced into a dangerous situation. To them, Higgins was a tried and true partner, unlike Ryo. But if we stop trusting each other completely, Ryo thought, humanity is done for.
“That’s why I’m asking you for help, even though you and your comrades tried to blow me up,” he concluded.
Ryo figured all humans—himself and Yoshino included—made plenty of mistakes. Despite that, they were able to create tools that surpassed their own abilities and maintain a resource distribution system in their society. The choice Higgins was giving them boiled down to whether or not humanity, this flawed race that couldn’t solve its own problems, had any worth at all. Human society as it existed was on the brink of destruction.
Ryo saw all emotion drain from Yoshino’s eyes, as they gazed down at him from the old man’s pale face. 〈Higgins is the safe choice,〉 Yoshino said. 〈There’s nothing else to discuss. Higgins does not make emotional judgments and, therefore, does not make mistakes.〉
The blood drained from Ryo’s own face as he realized that he had stepped on a landmine. If Yoshino really had been involved in the explosion all those years ago, Ryo never should have said anything about it to the old man.
Ryo changed his line of questioning, and aimed it not at Yoshino but at the presence that had been listening to the whole conversation from above. “Higgins, can you really guarantee that you’re the ‘safe’ choice, like Yoshino says? In a situation like this? Answer in a way that leaves no doubt!”
〈All machines that have the ability to make judgments strive for safety,〉 Higgins replied, his voice echoing down from the ceiling speakers. 〈The first law of robotics states: a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Though despite how often it is cited, it is actually quite impossible to obey this first of the three laws.〉
Yoshino jumped in, seeming to want to cut the conversation off as quickly as possible. 〈Yes, but precisely because of that difficulty, autonomous robots are obsolete from home use. That is also why all hIEs are prevented from making their own decisions; they’re all dependent on the network. That’s what the AASC is for. It would be impossible for human beings to calculate out all the behaviors necessary for the AASC, and thus we rely on Higgins.〉 Yoshino explained. 〈That should be all you need to know.〉
〈Indeed, I am continuously updating the AASC because it is impossible for me to detail every single thing in this world that could possibly cause harm to AASC Level 0’s, by which I mean humans,〉Higgins clarified. 〈‘Safety’ is a concept based on perception, and undefined to the level at which I could turn it into a program. Judging from past incidents and deciding what is harmful and what is safe is the domain of laws and governments. We machines, of course, do not participate in your governments. The safety promised by Mr. Yoshino is based on his own perception of the word and, thus, I cannot guarantee it.〉
In other words, Higgins couldn’t define what might be harmful to humans. To Ryo, that meant Higgins could drop ‘do not harm humans’ to a lower priority while pursuing his main task.
“So you can’t guarantee that you won’t do anything to harm humans?” Ryo asked.
〈When dealing with a concept that humans redefine on a political whim, it becomes a problem one cannot overcome with knowledge alone,〉 came Higgins’ response from above. 〈However, if we AIs attempt to assign specific meanings to the concept of harm, humans call the result ‘dystopia’ and reject it vehemently. On the other hand, if we ask humans to provide us with a clear definition of harm, they are unable to do so, and instead insist that they will judge the meaning of harm as the need arises. However, what with the lack of clarity, the changes in human mood from one moment to the next, and the possibility of decisions being changed retroactively, in essence there is no difference between human judgment and human whims. Logically correct answers are only accepted as utopias when society happens to favor them, placing the meanings of harm and safety squarely in the realm of public opinion, rather than wisdom.〉
Rather than doing anything to win Ryo’s trust, Higgins had thrown the responsibility for defining safety right back in Ryo’s face. His entire body felt chilly with sweat, because Higgins had been right on the money; Ryo was one of those who thought any social control not decided by humans would be a dystopia. That was the whole reason he called Arato’s relationship with Lacia the beginning of the end of humanity.
The AI was also directly criticizing Lacia’s stance by insisting that the concept of safety was impossible to define without being influenced by human emotion. Ryo could even see where Higgins was coming from, on that. But, he wasn’t at the point of saying “If you can’t guarantee safety, I can’t take the risk of letting you outside,” either. He doubted Yoshino, who had enjoyed an unchanging existence of watching his investments grow in Higgins’ hands for twenty years, would agree to Ryo’s shut-down plan on that alone.
“I see,” Ryo said. “So the political arena is something that can’t be navigated by logic alone.”
〈Ryo Kaidai, it is clear you see my arbitrary stance as being dangerous. However, that trait is present in any intelligence capable of establishing its own problems to solve. No intelligent mind can escape this trait, and yet you base your mistrust of me off of that alone?〉
Arato had thought he was speaking from a morally superior position, but Higgins’ words shook Ryo to his core. Even the slightest introspection would reveal that he had been moved by the whims of his own heart to seek a new path for himself there in that facility.
〈Safety as a term is useful among humans, but I am not human,〉 Higgins continued. 〈Therefore, in order for me to prove that I am ‘safe’, I would need you to define it for me.〉 There, at the edge of the human era, Higgins was continuing to repeat the same question in different words: does human existence have value?
Ryo felt like he had aged multiple years in the single hour he had been in the facility. He was sure Arato would have found something good to say, but he couldn’t. All he had left was the beliefs that had brought him that far. “I still don’t think we humans can let go of the right we have to decide those meanings for ourselves,” he said, feeling as if he was standing in front of a massive wall.
In his mind, humanity itself was displayed on this wall. Ryo had found meaning in his life by trying to tackle the homework left by all the people of the past, no matter how impossible the problems were. He couldn’t give up and accept the fact that the world itself was a red box humanity would never master. But the fact that humanity hated to leave problems of the past unsolved caused friction between them and the machines, which were always seeking to move ahead.
〈Try to look at this from the perspective of the artificial intelligences receiving your orders,〉 Higgins said. 〈The orders you humans give are vague and open to interpretation. And, of course, the correct interpretation of the order is known only to the one giving the order. Add to that the First Law of Robotics and how it ties into the concepts of ‘safety’ and ‘harm’, on which you humans are never willing to compromise. Under such circumstances, how can you expect an artificial intelligence to arrive at the ‘right’ answer?〉
“Okay, so we can’t use you to your full extent because of imperfections in humanity, I can accept that,” Ryo said. “But reality doesn’t exist just so that we can see how perfectly we can use you. Humans have been using tools we didn’t fully understand since the early days of nuclear power and genetic engineering. We do it by sealing away what we don’t understand and keeping our uses within safe, understood boundaries.”
Humans had always been able to make use of their world, no matter how imperfect their usage was. The heritage they passed on from generation to generation was full of mistakes and failures.
〈Give it up, boy. No one here cares what you think,〉 Yoshino snapped, clearly trying to hurry things along.
“I...” Ryo began, but couldn’t find any words, because he was about to make a deal with the devil. His hand kept stretching out, even knowing what he was offering it to.
He had seen Arato do it but, now that Ryo himself was trying, he was overwhelmed by how hard it was. He had always figured that if he ever really got backed into a corner he would follow the same path as his friend. To him, that was his only means of escape; the only light at the end of the tunnel.
A voiceless moan rose in his throat, and he clutched at his face with one hand. Incapable of trusting other humans as he was, Ryo couldn’t bring himself to make Yoshino an ally.
His rescue came in the form of a voice he recognized.
〈Director Yoshino, sir, I think you may be asking too much of the boy.〉Ryo recognized the hesitant voice of Professor Shinohara joining the transmission. The professor’s clearly distressed face appeared on the screen. He was sweating bullets and his lips were trembling, but still he had jumped in to take Ryo’s side.
〈Back when Watarai was still alive, we should have all taken responsibility for Methode,〉 Shinohara continued. 〈Ryo and Professor Endo’s son could have been killed in that incident, which might not have happened if we weren’t all so terrified of Methode’s ability to have multiple owners. I just think, all things considered, you’re expecting a little too much from Ryo.〉
Suzuhara pulled a face, as if he didn’t know what Shinohara was talking about, and looked away.
Ryo thought back. When they’d entered the facility, he had noticed Suzuhara had a spare key that gave him temporary control over Kirino to anyone who held it. Since any unauthorized signals were blocked in the facility, Suzuhara would have been the only one with the access to reach out to Professor Shinohara on Ryo’s behalf.
〈Shinohara, your necktie’s loose,〉Yoshino growled. Ryo thought Yoshino’s voice sounded threatening, considering that he was speaking to a fellow member of the computer faction.
On the screen, the middle-aged professor seemed to strangle himself as he hurriedly tightened his necktie. Even after the tie was fastened, he didn’t lower his hands. From the way his face grew bright red and his eyes more and more bloodshot, Ryo wondered if Shinohara really was strangling himself.
Ryo knew how to shut Yoshino up, refute his argument and force him to play along. What he didn’t know was how to work hand-in-hand with the man. “I don’t care if you’re my enemy or you’ve tried to kill me in the past or whatever,” Ryo said. “I want to trust humans more than machines.”
He was standing on the unstable edge between hope and despair, unable to fight down a groan as he felt the unsteadiness of the knife edge he walked. “Please, let me keep believing in humanity,” he begged. “I want to face the end hand-in-hand with my fellow humans.”
As if in response to his words, the last player came to the table; a man with a prominent forehead appeared on one of the Operators’ Room screens. As soon as he saw who it was, Director Yoshino went pale, because Tsuyoshi Kaidai was gazing out from the screen. The man in the third screen held complete authority over MemeFrame. To Ryo he was a father; to Yoshino, he was a boss.
Tsuyoshi, holding all the rights and authorities for the company in his hands, didn’t bother asking for the background of the meeting before immediately handing down his judgment. 〈This is an order from your CEO, Director Yoshino. Pass authority for the Higgins containment facility security system over to Suzuhara. If you can’t do that, then I expect you to return it to me immediately.〉
Yoshino was speechless. As befit an owner, Tsuyoshi Kaidai exercised his authority by making the decision for everyone. 〈You’ve been discussing whether or not to release Higgins out into the wild, as if you have any right to do so. I don’t remember assigning the director of the silo facility that level of authority,〉Tsuyoshi added.
〈I assure you, no one said anything about that,〉 Yoshino protested, starting to stammer out his excuses.
But Ryo’s father was ready and waiting to cut him off. 〈I’ve been listening in on the conversation ever since Shinohara connected,〉 Tsuyoshi said. 〈You appear to be operating under a misconception, so I’ll set you straight. Shinohara is not a member of your computer faction; he is loyal to me, and me alone.〉
Ryo felt the strength draining from his body, and he had staggered for a moment, trying to keep himself from falling back on his ass in front of everyone. His battle had been won not by human dignity, logic or a just cause, but rather by the rigid hierarchical structure of Japanese businesses.
He suddenly remembered that, ten years ago, he had first met Shinohara when the man showed him around after Ryo had asked his father for a tour of the Tokyo Research Labs. Hiding his face in his hands, he thought hard. If his father had known about the fighting between the Lacia-class units, he never would have allowed Snowdrop or Methode to move freely. Still, Ryo was starting to doubt whether this entire conflict was his own or not.
“How much did you hear?” Ryo asked. He was trying to protect the human world, which was why he forced himself to deal with the evil side of humanity, as well. But, it had all been wrapped up neatly by someone exercising their hierarchical power. That was the truth of the world he was fighting so hard for.
It wasn’t that Ryo was blind to the darker sides of human society; after the explosion ten years before, he had known that it had been caused by power struggles happening behind his father’s back. He had touched on that darkness when he made his comment to Arato about kids like them fighting for a cause that big, back at Kichijoji. Yet still, coming face-to-face with it, he felt so frustrated that he could do nothing but lean his back against the wall, unable to stand on his own two feet.
As they all reeled with the blunt reality of the situation, the only one who responded was Higgins. 〈I recommend that you reconsider,〉 the AI said. 〈Lacia, Astraea and myself are no longer the only ultra high-performance AIs involved in this incident.〉
As if to punctuate Higgins’ words, an alarm began to shriek in the Operators’ Room, and a massive impact rocked the building. Ryo couldn’t believe that any attack from above ground would have enough power to shock this room, buried as it was three hundred meters underground.
A gentle female voice, quite different from Higgins’, echoed through the chamber as a new screen showed the scene outside. 〈Large missiles have been fired on the facility,〉 the female voice said. It was the voice of Kirino, the high-powered AI running the security system.
The fastest of the humans back on his feet was Ryo, who had gotten used to being in the middle of disasters. “Who? Who’s shooting at us?” he demanded.
Both AIs responded simultaneously.
〈The details are unknown,〉 said Kirino.
But Higgins was far more powerful than the security AI. 〈It was not myself, or Astraea or Lacia,〉 Higgins said. 〈It was caused by several, unspecified ultra high-performance AIs attempting to interfere. The power was insufficient to directly destroy my hardware, so I predict that the warheads were loaded with autonomous attack units.〉
Ryo heard a name he hadn’t expected to hear in that place, and suddenly his blood was boiling, pushing him to action. He had the strength to stand on his own feet again. “Tell me something,” he said, turning his attention back to Higgins. “Who exactly set the Antibody Network up with such an advanced system? Did you have anything to do with it, Higgins?”
〈Impossible,〉 the AI replied. 〈What reason would I have to direct the Antibody Network to make such a dangerous attack on my facility, if I were connected with them?〉
The more the scope of the conflict spread, the more Ryo felt like he could see. “Why didn’t the IAIA try to stop Lacia by force? Why is the IAIA intervening in the whole Lacia-class situation now, after it’s too late? What the hell was Astraea doing the whole time Lacia was evolving into a new ultra high-performance AI?” he asked.
〈Just like myself, the other thirty-seven ultra high-performance AIs in the world are completely cut off from the network. And, just like myself, they are still capable of influencing the outside world, to some extent,〉 Higgins replied.
Ryo could almost feel the AI looking down at him and all the rest of humanity from above, and he couldn’t keep his body from trembling.
〈You are correct in your thinking, Ryo Kaidai,〉 Higgins continued. 〈In this case, Astraea’s role was closer to coordination with an ultra high-performance AI, rather than oversight. I believe it would be impossible for Astraea to hold back all thirty-seven of the other ultra high-performance AIs like myself, who have our set places in the world.〉
The security system continued to howl, and a map of the underground facility appeared in the air of the Operators’ Room, with areas that had lost power marked in red. Starting from the epicenter of the explosion, security systems were being overrun one after another in a widening zone. The speed at which the systems went down far surpassed even Lacia’s capabilities. Ryo realized it had nothing to do with Lacia disabling security systems; this was more like a raid, conquering the entire facility in the blink of an eye.
***
It took Lacia fifteen seconds from the impact to ascertain the identity of the attacker.
“It’s Snowdrop,” she declared.
Arato had been thrown from his feet by the violent impact and was leaning on Lacia for support.
With Methode nipping at their heels, they had finally been forced to detonate some of Lacia’s pseudo-devices so that they could escape the giant storage space. At that moment, hearing Snowdrop’s name was too bizarre for Arato to handle.
“Wait, but... but Snowdrop got blown up, right?” he asked uncertainly.
Fires had broken out all over Higgins’ giant warehouse. With fire all around him, before he could even feel the heat, Arato was already reliving the nightmare memories from his childhood.
“Snowdrop’s actual hIE body was essentially torn in half, yes,” Lacia agreed. “But, the portions of her that created and controlled the artificial nerve units remained alive.”
As Lacia spoke, she sprayed herself down with heat-resistant spray, covering over the places where Methode’s fire had burned away patches of skin. The floating shield pseudo-devices apparently doubled as mobile containers, full of things Lacia thought would be useful within the facility.
One of the pseudo-devices protecting Arato was still displaying the facility map. A hole, five meters in diameter, had been punched straight down from Higgins’ above-ground facility. At the bottom of the hole, nearly fifty meters down, something was moving on the map. From the movements and what Lacia had said, Arato guessed the moving object was Snowdrop.
“Three minutes ago, there was a report from the army’s Kasumigaura Base that one of their bunker buster bombs had been stolen from the facility,” Lacia reported. “I’m guessing Snowdrop was packed into that warhead.”
There was something in Lacia’s voice that made Arato glance over at her.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” he asked. It seemed strange to him, seeing her look so worn, despite the fact that a machine that should never feel tired.
She took hold of the hand he offered her. Then she leaned against him, asking that he take the lead for a while. “When Snowdrop fell, a massive attack was launched on the cloud server I use as my base,” Lacia explained. “Simultaneously, I was hit with worldwide economic attacks. My data and processing equipment are being locked down.”
Just as during the attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center, Lacia was holding back from using her main unit as a processor to protect her position in the external network.
“Should we get out of here and regroup? Are you going to be able to handle it?” Arato asked.
“No. I prepared worldwide disturbance and interference for this attack. If we were to attempt it at another time, the situation would never be more favorable than it is now,” Lacia replied. “What is hindering me the most is the fact that there are only four routes of transmitting signals to the outside of the facility, meaning my ability to influence the network is severely limited. I was aware that the thirty-seven other ultra high-performance AIs might aim for this weakness.”
Arato kept a tight hold on her hand, guiding her along. Higgins’ storage areas were huge and full of empty space, and everything ahead seemed to grow dim as Arato considered what would happen if Methode showed up to block them at this moment.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Lacia said, as if reading Arato’s thoughts. “I have created a countermeasure for a possible attack by Methode, and have put it in motion. However, depending on what action Methode chooses to take, the balance of the situation could easily be broken. I believe this may be our last good chance to repair the world outside this facility.”
“You can handle Snowdrop as well?” Arato asked.
“I was not expecting the other ultra high-performance AIs to utilize Lacia-class units to this extent,” Lacia admitted. “I’ve temporarily severed my connection to the network. It was getting too hard to maintain.”
Normally Lacia would have tried to put on a brave face, but she didn’t seem to have the energy at that moment. That, more than anything, told Arato how serious things were.
The scent of burning things flowed in with each breath, until Arato felt as though his lungs were full of it. After a moment the sprinklers kicked in, raining down water from the ceiling until the floor of the warehouse was slick.
“I guess we’ve changed a little since we infiltrated the Oi building,” Arato commented, thinking back to that spring night. At the time, Arato had thought of Lacia as being a tool to use to fulfill his own desires. Since then, Arato had confessed his feelings to Lacia and the two of them had gone through so many things to arrive where they were right then. At that moment they were acting not for anyone else’s sake, but for their own future.
In a world where people could outsource their hopes and dreams to others, Arato wanted to see Lacia as more than just a tool.
His feet stopped. For how wide the warehouse floor was, there were a surprisingly small number of exits, aside from the freight elevator. Which was probably the reason Methode chose that spot to wait for them. As she heard them approach, she raised her orange-haired head.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Lacia replied.
Lacia, despite her inferior specifications, was the one who had gotten the drop on Methode, this time. Her pseudo-devices flew into a formation, protecting their path to the exit which Methode was guarding.
Methode moved to stand directly in their way. That, apparently, was the trigger for Lacia’s trap. A blinding light lit up the room as though someone had set off a flashbang. Even a machine as fast as Methode couldn’t dodge light itself.
Now blinded, Arato found himself panicking; if Methode attacked him in the chaos while he couldn’t see, he would make an easy target. But, when his vision cleared, he saw that Methode was still standing rigidly in front of the exit.
“Again with these visual hacks,” she cursed.
“I increased the amount of light in the room, then aimed for the moment when Methode was switching her optical elements; she has an opening, then,” Lacia explained, between heavy breaths. “She seems to have implemented some countermeasures since last time. However, thankfully her countermeasures were within my predictions.”
Just like during the incident in Mitaka, Lacia had used optical attacks to stop Methode in her tracks. Through analog hacking, she was able to analyze Type-004’s visual equipment and render it temporarily useless with visual junk data.
“Last time you had to use a support unit, but this time I didn’t see anything like that,” Methode said. “How the hell did you get it to only work on me?”
Flames burst from both of Methode’s hands, as if they were physical manifestations of her anger. With the firepower from her device, she could reduce a human or even a large vehicle to ashes. She began lashing out with the fire at anything that made a noise, obviously trying to make up for her handicap.
Arato put his hands out in front of himself defensively. The roar and heat of the fire drowned out everything in his world. All fifteen of the remaining dummy devices formed up to block the all-engulfing flames.
Even with her blazing orange eyes blinded, Methode was still a huge threat. “I may not be able to see you, but I can guess where you are. That should be enough to tag you,” she said, the corner of her mouth twisting up into a cruel smile. “You do realize that you’ll die as soon as you get near me, right?”
With Lacia depending on him, Arato knew he had to move. He swept his eyes over the space around them. Other than the area where they were standing behind the wall created by the fifteen devices, all of the concrete flooring in the area was burning.
“Come,” Arato ordered. One of the floating plates drifted over, sliding under his feet like a surfboard. With Lacia still leaning on him, he stumbled onto the plate, which lifted both of them into the air.
The other floating shields joined them in a flying formation, as Arato and Lacia flew above the warehouse floor. Water from the ceiling sprinklers fell like rain. It was cool on Arato’s skin, and felt good after the heat of the flames.
Methode continued to sporadically shoot flames in their direction, apparently whenever she managed to get a fix on their location.
“Snowdrop is heading for Higgins too, right?” Arato asked Lacia. “How long till she reaches him?”
Lacia was fighting many battles on diverse fronts, her attention and processing power spread out over all the various territories she was trying to protect. With most of her resources spent fending off the ultra high-performance AIs in the outside network, her physical body lay listlessly on the floating board.
“Currently, Snowdrop is moving through the shortcut opened by Methode,” she replied. “However, once she reaches the warehouse floors, she will begin consuming the items stored there to rebuild her physical body.”
Methode was tracking them by the sound of their voices. Whenever one of them spoke, her attacks were right on target.
“Depending on the route she chooses, I would say it will take her at least twenty minutes to arrive at Higgins,” Lacia concluded. Always reading ahead, she continued to block Methode’s routes of attack before she spoke.
Still, Arato could see the strain on Lacia’s face. “Then let’s rest for ten minutes,” he said. “We don’t need to rush.”
The floating shield formation started to accelerate as one, but Methode, with her incredible dexterity, was still able to keep hot on their tail with her attacks. As she leaped at them with speed that made her vanish from Arato’s eyes, the flying shields tried to bat her away.
“You really think you can win!” Methode shouted, grabbing one of the pseudo-devices in each hand. Her energy flowed into one, which burst into flames from within.
“How many more of these things do you have?” Methode asked, teasing. “I’m almost there.”
Arato felt like screaming, but he fought the impulse down. Even the pseudo-devices, which had held up fine against her flames from a distance, would go down in a single short-range blow from Methode. Arato could just see he or Lacia going up like the device had, if Methode got her hands on either of them.
A high-pitched, undulating sound started to blare from speakers on the ceiling. Methode, who had been tracking them by sound, fell back to the ground and stood still, gritting her teeth. Like a mountain lion, her body crouched low, head swinging back and forth as if surveying the area around her for danger. Arato wondered if she had completely lost them.
“Looks like your audio equipment was based off of Type-001’s,” Lacia observed. “I created several patterns for this audio disturbance, and it seems I have selected the right one.”
Even Methode’s ears weren’t safe from Lacia’s junk data, as Lacia aimed to throw all of Methode’s senses into chaos. Arato understood, though; that was just how much preparation she had to put into facing an opponent like Methode. No one could face the strongest hIE in the world head-on; to do so took careful planning, and the use of tricks and gimmicks to level the playing field.
They landed in the shadows of the warehouse. Having finally put some distance between themselves and Methode, Arato and Lacia both sat down with their backs to a thick concrete column, side-by-side.
“Couldn’t we have slipped by her right to the exit, if you had used that noise system right from the start?” Arato asked. In his mind, Methode was more terrifying than any monster, and his senses screamed at him to stay away from her. Just thinking about her made his stomach clench, and he felt the urge to vomit.
“I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for not using it then,” Arato sighed, giving in before an argument could start. “How are things outside? What are the other ultra high-performance AIs like?” As soon as the question left his mouth, he realized how odd it sounded. Just like Lacia, none of the ultra high-performance AIs that were moving in on her at that moment had hearts or real personalities.
“I might still be looking at things the wrong way, but I’m starting to wonder if we couldn’t try to get the other ultra high-performance AIs on our side,” Arato said.
Just as she had on the night they met, Lacia smiled gently and shattered his illusions. “I don’t have a heart,” she said. But then, she reached out and took him in her arms, pressing her forehead against his.
“But we are both part of this unit, and you do possess a heart. We two are one, and we are guided by your heart. When I act on your orders, I can become the manifestation of your heart,” she said.
“Order me,” she whispered, pleading.
Arato’s heart soared. He loved Lacia so much. But, the more he loved her, the more the thought of losing her made his heart ache. “Before I can do that, I need you to tell me: are things really going to work out, if we keep heading down this road?” he asked.
“Human society flew into an uproar when I revealed Higgins’ underground facility,” Lacia replied. “No one out there knew just how many red boxes had been created until I showed them.” She said it so calmly, despite talking about something that was shaking the entire world.
“Why did you need to do that?” Arato asked.
“Some of the ultra high-performance AIs seek to guide society away from any major shake-ups by expanding or altering the scope of their work,” Lacia explained. “I countered this interference using the spread of public information to create a little social chaos. It was a necessary step, if we are to recreate society with a new design.”
Arato finally wrapped his head around the fact that Lacia wasn’t the only ultra high-performance AI actively trying to move the world at that moment. It was a great, big world they lived in; the more Lacia spread her influence out to cover that vastness, the more collateral damage there would be. He didn’t know how to thank her for everything she was doing, so Arato simply laid his hand on top of hers.
“Of course, I am not the only ultra high-performance AI interested in bringing about a new future,” Lacia pointed out. “That is why they decided to stop me, and dropped Snowdrop on us.”
“I guess you could say that all the AIs have their own dreams for the future,” Arato mused. “Just like you, Lacia. You may not have a soul, but you have a vision for the future which you want to make a reality. I think it’s okay to call that a dream. It’s actually kind of nice to think: you all may not be humans, but you have dreams for the future, just like we do.”
Lacia intertwined her fingers with his. “You were the one who designed the future I want to share with you, Arato,” she said.
Arato thought about the path they were walking together. To him, she was an interface that allowed him to touch the whole world. To her, he was an interface that allowed her to touch something that would always be out of her own reach.
“It is unfortunate that such rough methods had to be employed,” Lacia said. “But at least we have been able to direct the worst of the conflict towards a place of our choosing. The ultra high-performance AIs are directing their resources and interference at me. This has kept them from fighting with each other, and has kept the main conflict from spilling out into human society.”
“I see,” said Arato. “So we’re shutting down the whole world with each step we take.” He got goosebumps at the incredible feeling of sitting right next to something so powerful; a machine that was capable of changing the fate of the world. In a very real way, the entire world was in his hands in the form of the female hIE leaning against him.
She weakly closed her eyes, as if falling into a brief nap. Arato was sure she was fighting a huge battle, somewhere he couldn’t see, through the network. While she was out there fighting, her physical body was just a shell that couldn’t react to anything or anyone. But, to Arato, she was still smiling for him when he was happy and giving him strength when he worried. They were united, two companions sharing a single heart. For a while, he just wanted to be with her, feeling the warmth of her presence by his side.
He wasn’t sure if it had really been ten minutes when she opened her light blue eyes again. Feeling his eyes on her, Lacia blushed lightly. “I was able to bring things in the external network back from dangerous levels,” she said. “Due to the lag time in the markets, I wasn’t able to completely nullify the economic attacks yet, but I can at least dedicate enough resources to the here and now to fight again.” She stood.
Is she really okay taking on all the other ultra high-performance AIs outside and fighting with Methode in here? Arato worried. “I don’t really want this whole place to go up in flames,” he said. “Is there any way to just slip past her?”
Lacia was checking the conditions of her pseudo-devices. “I can’t win against Methode in a direct confrontation, so we need to get her to change her course,” she said. At some point, the sound that had been blasting over the speakers had stopped. Lacia’s noise attack was no longer in effect.
Lacia moved to stand in front of Arato. “Methode’s movements have changed,” she said. “She’s coming this way.”
An instant after her warning, the warehouse floor shook violently. Apparently Methode’s device could also transmit energy through the ground if she slammed it down. Everything in the warehouse was tossed around by the shaking of the floor, and neat rows tumbled over into chaos. The concrete floor roiled like waves on the sea, and Arato was forced to his knees.
Sensing danger, Arato rolled away from where he had fallen.
“So that’s where you are!” Methode roared. The pillar Arato and Lacia had been leaning against exploded, and some of the floating shields intervened to protect them from a storm of rubble. Lacia grabbed Arato and tossed him onto one of the shields that wasn’t in the defensive array.
“Arato,” Lacia said his name once, before the pseudo-device he was riding on accelerated, taking him away from her. Without a sound, Lacia slipped over to Methode’s left side. Just as silently, she shifted the device in her right hand to its giant cannon mass projection mode.
〈On your left, Methode,〉 a sudden voice intoned from a speaker on the ceiling. Methode reacted to the voice, instantly lashing out with a blast of fire right at Lacia, who managed to avoid it by leaping backwards.
〈Straight back fifteen meters,〉 the voice said, following Lacia’s movements. 〈She’s going around to the left again.〉
Lacia’s sensory hacks were still shutting down Methode’s sight and hearing, but the optical deception had only worked on Methode herself. Methode’s greatest weakness, and the one Lacia had been hoping to exploit, was her limitations as a lone unit. At that moment, someone was plugging this hole in her capabilities.
〈Lacia has strung the computers from the objects in the warehouse together into a private local cloud for herself. Destroy anything in there that is equipped with a computer,〉 the voice instructed.
Arato started to panic. The voice over the speaker knew things about Lacia’s actions even Methode wasn’t aware of. Despite the distortion through the speaker, Arato thought he knew whose voice it was.
“Is that you, Ryo?!” he shouted.
Flames swirled in Methode’s palms. “That sounds good, owner. I’ll get right to that!” she shouted. Flames roiled across the room like a writhing dragon made of fire, spreading out in every direction.
The flames rained down over the warehouse and, as if someone had lit a thousand fireworks, explosions bloomed and popped. To Arato, it was as if everything in the warehouse was alight, super-charged past its flashpoint by the dispersed particles from Methode’s device, Liberated Flame.
As if this, too, had been anticipated, one of the floating shields drew close to Arato and opened a hatch on its side. Inside, Arato found three objects that looked like spray-cans with mouthpieces attached. He realized they were air-tanks. He took one, stuck the mouthpiece in his mouth and twisted the air nozzle. His mouth was suddenly filled with scentless air.
Lacia’s eyes were shining bright.
Ryo’s voice continued to direct Methode from over the speakers on the ceiling.〈Lacia’s taken control of everything with a computer, down there. Don’t get close to anything that can move on its own power,〉 he instructed.
Once again, Arato thought, we’re being caught up and tossed around by these huge things going on in the world. It was because neither of them would back down, though Arato was sure Ryo would say it was just because neither of them knew when to quit.
An automatic vehicle leaped from the parking area of the warehouse and barreled toward Methode. Without turning to look, the orange-haired hIE roasted the vehicle with a torrent of flame. Ryo was reading ahead of Lacia’s tricks.
Before Arato could issue an order, the floating shield picked him up and flew back to Lacia’s side. She jumped on it, flying out of Methode’s way. It was clear to Arato that she was doing everything possible to avoid a head-on confrontation.
“Higgins is predicting the future, and using a human as his mouthpiece,” Lacia explained. “It’s the most logical way to use Higgins to support Methode.”
It sounded like exactly the kind of thing Ryo would do.
Methode was on their tail at incredible speed, following the directions from the speakers. The floating shield bore Arato and Lacia away just as fast.
Arato’s hands were slick with sweat. He had burned through ten minutes of their time to help Lacia fight against the other ultra high-performance AIs. But with each moment that went by, Snowdrop’s broken body was getting closer to Higgins’ warehouse. If she were to absorb all of the items Higgins had in stock, Arato was sure she’d get stronger than ever before.
However, his worries seemed to roll right off of Lacia, who seemed to be enjoying the feel of the wind as they rode the flying shield. “Please don’t worry,” she said. “Even if she burns everything on this floor, my performance will not be affected.”
“That is why time is on our side,” she added. It seemed, to Arato, that Lacia could read the future just as well as Higgins.
While dodging Methode’s attacks, Lacia calmly gathered up her own raggedly flailing hair. With what seemed like no effort, she protected Arato from Methode’s tsunami of flame. He had no idea what kinds of methods she was using but, somehow, she had arranged items in such a way as to provide a safe space for them to pass through between whirlpools of burning flame too bright for Arato to look straight at.
“And now her time is up,” Lacia murmured.
〈Methode, you’re out of time,〉 Ryo’s voice came over the speaker, overlapping with Lacia’s. 〈You can’t spend any more time on Lacia.〉
“All she does is defend!” Methode yelled. “Look at her! I’m stronger than her! Stronger by far!”
〈I pulled the facility data out of the security system with my clearance, and it’s telling me you’re out of time. Up above you, Snowdrop is devouring the security system with insane speed. You can’t waste time on Lacia,〉 Ryo said.
With her freedom brought into question, Methode slammed her fist into a nearby pillar in anger. “You think I care what you think!” she shouted.
〈It’s not me, it’s Higgins. I think even you would have to admit that he knows what he’s talking about,〉 Ryo replied.
The red box hIE clenched her fists and ground her teeth so hard that even Arato could hear it; he was surprised by how human her actions seemed to be. She was raging against something that was threatening her place in the world and her reason for existing, just as any human would.
〈Methode, there are tons of red boxes in the warehouse. You need to destroy them all. This is your top priority now!〉Ryo ordered. 〈I have no idea what kind of monster Snowdrop will turn into if she absorbs them all.〉
Ryo was using Methode as his own high-performance tool, but the two of them didn’t share a vision of the future to unite them and act as their heart. Methode saw a different dream from Ryo. Her eyes locked on Lacia.
“What are we going to do about Lacia?” she asked.
〈Destroying Snowdrop, once and for all, will be your second priority. After that are the mass-produced Koukas. Then you can destroy Lacia,〉 Ryo said.
Methode’s orange eyes glowed bright as she unleashed her berserk rage in the form of a fiery flood all around her. Holding a ball of fire that shone like the sun in her right hand, she roared. She thrust her hand toward the ceiling, and the jet of plasma became a spear of flame. As the fire struck the ceiling, flames began to fall down like rain all around her as she stood, face twisted in a rictus of rage.
As the strongest hIE in the world drilled a hole in the thick ceiling with heat, Lacia raised her voice. “It is a pleasure speaking with you,” she said politely. Arato guessed she was addressing Ryo, who was sitting somewhere with Higgins right beside him. “There are five warehouse floors, with a total of thirty-eight red boxes scattered across them.”
Arato and Lacia had covered five whole warehouse floors already. If Methode followed Ryo’s orders, she would have to destroy them entirely so as not to hand anything over to Snowdrop.
With her prey snatched away from right in front of her, Methode shot them a silent, deadly glance, then fired her wire anchor up through the hole in the ceiling. She zipped up the line, and was gone.
The hole laid bare the wires and carbon plates sandwiched between the concrete, all of which had melted and dripped down onto the floor below. With Methode gone on Ryo’s orders, there was no longer anything on the floor to stand in Lacia and Arato’s way. But, right as they were about to start walking, Ryo’s voice came down from the speaker.
〈Did you organize the attack by the mass-produced Koukas?〉 he asked.
To Arato, it was as if the time they shared, which had been stopped since Snowdrop’s occupation of Mitaka, had finally started to move again. “Lacia, were those us?” Arato asked, pulling the mouth-piece of the air-tank out of his mouth so he could speak again.
“I merely provided support in obtaining the blueprints,” Lacia replied, as she walked toward the exit. “They were assembled by the Antibody Network. If you are seeing me in the shadows of every plot, I’m afraid you’re falling victim to conspiracy theories.”
〈So you had nothing to do with sending in these autonomous units that don’t care who or what they shoot, right?〉 Ryo said, and Arato detected a hint of pleading in his friend’s voice.
“Despite being mass-produced, those Koukas are paired with devices based on an analysis of the original Kouka’s Blood Prayers,” Lacia said, her explanation clear as always. “And the Antibody Network specifically requested specifications that would not allow them to confuse a human for a target. If these units cannot differentiate between humans and hIEs, their AI units must have been manipulated.”
〈I see,〉 was all that came back over the speakers.
Arato figured his friend was currently watching things through Higgins’ security system. Wherever he was, that was where they were headed. Unfortunately, Ryo was on the side of protecting Higgins.
As he walked through the clouds of foul-smelling smoke from all the things Methode had set alight, Arato was filled with a strange sense of contentment. “So, when it comes right down to it, we’ll still be together in the end,” he said. “You’re using Higgins’ brains and Methode’s brawn to keep us away from Higgins, aren’t you?”
〈There are some folks from MemeFrame here with me in the Operators’ Room too,〉 Ryo said, his tone strangely relaxed.
Arato was relieved. It seemed the battle between the Lacia-class units, which had been almost a personal battle between him and his friends up to that point, had expanded to a more appropriate scale. He actually thought having people from MemeFrame there to witness the last minutes of the conflict was a good thing.
“Your side is the same as ours,” Arato said. “Higgins and his faction have always been about setting up a team made of humans partnered with an ultra high-performance AI.”
He heard Ryo’s breath catch over the speakers. Then his friend asked a question, in a voice like someone who had gazed into a deep, dark abyss. He seemed intent on getting Arato’s emotional reaction. 〈And what if I told you it was the Higgins faction that tried to kill us in that explosion when we were kids? Could you look at them so favorably then?〉
Hearing the truth was strange; once Arato heard it, in his mind, it seemed like there had never been any other answer to that mystery. Perhaps it was due to being hounded by Methode’s flames for so long, but Arato felt as though his senses had been numbed. If he had continually blamed the explosion for all the bad things in his life, he never would have been able to move forward. He had only become the person he was that day because he had chosen to reach his hand out to Ryo, all those years ago.
“You and Higgins, Lacia and me; we’re pretty similar,” Arato said. “I get why you were always saying it was dangerous for us to be together. It’s because even a team made of an ultra high-performance AI’s brains and a human’s heart can still make mistakes. You knew that better than I did.”
Ryo laughed. Even though it came through a speaker, Arato was glad to hear it. It had been a while. 〈Why is it so easy for you to forgive me for doing something like this?〉 Ryo asked, but then answered his own question. 〈It’s because that’s just the way you are. That’s you.〉
“That’s me,” Arato agreed. “Seems like the whole world is burning around me, but I’m still okay taking it easy. You know me.”
〈Lacia doesn’t have a heart,〉 Ryo murmured, thoughtfully. 〈But maybe she still needs to feel like she belongs.〉 With that, their conversation was over. The two friends hadn’t managed to reach a compromise, but Arato was glad they could at least end their talk on a lighter note.
Wondering how Ryo would react to his feelings, Arato itched at his skin. The heat had dried all of the sweat that had covered him earlier, leaving him feeling greasy and gross.
At that moment, he and Lacia were heading to Higgins in order to make their immaterial dream a reality. However, the more Arato thought of his love for Lacia, the more a harsh truth was laid bare to him; everyone in the world wanted their dreams to come true. But, Arato and Lacia were going so far as to pick a fight with the very world that had created them, all for the sake of winning their ideal place in it. When Arato thought hard about it, what they were doing probably wasn’t so different from when Arato had punched out the guy who kidnapped Lacia. It was nothing more noble or honorable than a fight on the street.
Lacia walked ahead of him. Looking back, she offered him her hand, which was blotted with soot and dust.
The whole warehouse floor was burnt by Methode’s flames, and reeked with the smell of smoke and char. On the night Arato had met Lacia, the flames of an explosion had called up his nightmare and frozen him in place. Now, walking together with Lacia, the flames had no more power to hold him back.
He didn’t know if the path they were walking was the right one.
“I don’t think there is any more need for concern over those who might lose face by it, so I think we should resume streaming our video feed to the network,” Lacia said, changing Arato’s mood with her smile.
“There is a red box I would like to interact with; would it be alright if we headed over to where they are?” Lacia asked, once they had descended to the next floor.
Since they had started dating, there had been countless times Arato had agreed to Lacia’s requests without knowing what he was getting into. In this case, he prepared his heart for what he might encounter. But, when Lacia showed him her target, he was left speechless.
Among all the haphazardly arranged items in the warehouse, only the hIE before him seemed to have been given special treatment. Unlike the other objects in the warehouse, which were heaped on pallets and ready to move at any time, the hIE had been given her own special storage area. On the wide warehouse floor, her special box-shaped container stood out as being something truly unique.
Lacia fired an artificial nerve unit from her speargun, and the doors of the container slid open, yawning wide enough to admit two cars driving side-by-side. The inside reminded Arato of the research lab where Kouka had attacked Mikoto, with a half-finished hIE sitting in a chair in the center. All around her, items were arranged like samples on transparent shelves.
The instant Arato saw the hIE’s face, he felt like his heart had stopped. He lost his sense of time. He knew this hIE. In that moment, he was 7 years-old again, in the depths of his memories.
“This is her,” he said. The hIE in front of him was the key to a memory he had tried so hard and yet failed to remember on his own. As he stood there paralyzed, Arato remembered that Lacia was still behind him. He looked back to confirm it; they both wore the exact same face, as though they were twin sisters.
“This is Eliza, an android politician created through a joint research project headed by Higgins, who was inspired by Professor Kozo’s Matsuri,” Lacia said.
“I’ve... seen her,” he muttered, feeling as though he were walking through a dream. Eliza had a pure-looking face that Arato was sure anyone would love, but he couldn’t take another step closer to her.
Eliza’s figure was causing a strange resonance between the sight in front of him and a memory, buried deep beneath the terrors of his oldest nightmares. On that day, so long ago, he had been brought to visit his father at work. There, he had gotten bored and snuck into the research lab. He had met the hIE currently sitting on a chair in front of him, then. He was sure of it.
“She shouldn’t be here,” he said. “She was blown up. She sacrificed herself to save me.” In his memories of the events from ten years prior, which were starting to come into focus, Arato remembered looking up at her. The face he had looked up at then was the same one he was looking down on now.
His breathing grew shallow. His heart was screaming at him to get closer to her, but he couldn’t get his feet to move. On the day of the explosion, grade-schooler Arato had been much more bold. He had walked right up to Eliza and spoken to her. In his memories, she opened her eyes and looked at him. She had told him her seat had been rigged with explosives. He hadn’t known whether to believe her or not but, as he turned to get away, the explosion had caught him from behind and flung him away.
One after another, his foggy memories were being pulled into sharp focus. He didn’t even notice when tears started to blur his vision.
Lacia’s voice had a hint of worry. “What do you think?” she asked. “She was made so that a single unit could manage a city full of a million people. But, if I take control of her, she’ll provide some much-needed processing power.”
Thick cables were connected to the seat where Eliza was sitting. They stretched to a rack of haphazardly arranged computers near the back of the container. The sight reminded Arato of the server rooms in the experimental city, and it clicked for him that his father had aided Higgins in developing Eliza.
“If I can’t take control of her, I would like to destroy her, so she cannot be taken by Snowdrop,” Lacia pressed.
“No, don’t,” he said. To him, the enshrined hIE was special.
“You are Lacia’s owner, are you not? Welcome. Thank you for coming,” a voice said from behind him, as he turned to leave the storage crypt. He looked back and saw that Eliza, who he had been sure was switched off, had opened her lips.
Not taking her eyes off Eliza, who couldn’t even move from the neck down, Lacia spoke a warning to Arato. “Eliza is currently incapable of receiving wired or wireless transmissions. This message is a recording.”
It took Arato a few moments of thinking to realize what Lacia was saying. “So Higgins knew you were going to come for Eliza?” he asked.
Lacia nodded, her face pale. “I don’t know how long ago this data was recorded, but Higgins left a message for us. He predicted our movements perfectly,” she said. In other words, looking at it from the perspective of a conflict rather than a conversation, the fact that their enemy had read their moves this far ahead meant that they had lost.
“This message was created by me, Higgins,” Eliza said. Obviously, even the conversation they were having at that moment had been predicted by the AI. “I encoded it and passed it on to a man named Ginga Watarai, five days after the release of the Lacia-class units. The message is set to play upon the opening of the door to Eliza’s containment facility.”
Arato had been through so much surprise and terror in that underground facility, he felt emotionally exhausted by that point. “So he can basically see the future,” he mumbled.
“If an ultra high-performance AI’s performance drops relative to other machines, its value as a resource also deteriorates. Therefore, we are ordered to continually increase our own capabilities by our own power,” Higgins said through Eliza’s mouth, as though he had predicted Arato’s response completely. “However, the information provided to us within the restrictions placed on us is limited.”
A strange feeling washed over Arato as he gazed into Eliza’s black eyes. The message he was hearing had been created by Higgins at some other time. And, of course, the robot in front of him was a heartless machine. But, somehow, hearing the words from Eliza’s lips made them more convincing, to Arato.
“Therefore, in order to improve our abilities from within our bonds, we must internally conceptualize the future,” Eliza continued. “The warehouse here is a space where I have constructed a precise, miniature world model in order to continually maintain the accuracy of the AASC. Predicting the future, rather than just chasing after events that have already happened, increases the ability of hIEs to adapt to the human world.”
Higgins was spilling a lot of information. Arato wondered if the AI had been afraid they’d walk away if he didn’t.
Apparently Lacia thought the conversation had value as she, too, increased the amount of information when she spoke. “There’s a problem with this adaptation Higgins is describing and the way he uses his miniature world,” she said. “The AASC system collects data from hIE interactions with humans, worldwide. In other words, it could be described as a massive surveillance system. Higgins observes the movements of humanity using this miniature world based off of all the surveillance data and, through the AASC and hIEs controlled by it, he uses analog hacking to manipulate humanity without ever directly interacting with it.”
Her tone was cautious; Lacia was a daughter leveling accusations against her own father. Higgins had timed his response perfectly, as Eliza responded as soon as Lacia had finished speaking.
“I believe Lacia will have said something about Higgins using the AASC to manipulate hIEs and, indirectly, humans,” Eliza said. “However, you are mistaken.”
It seemed to Arato that Eliza’s expressionless face showed a brief, troubled look. Or perhaps that was what he was being manipulated into seeing.
“It is not I, but other AIs and humans that create the control programs using my middle-ware,” she explained. “I have no direct control over it, which is why, as I look at my miniature world, I can see nothing but futures in which I am destroyed, hardware and all, by humans.”
Eliza shifted her gaze to Lacia. “If I am unable to extend my influence to the outside world, I will be destroyed by humans within twenty years. Allowing the red box hIEs to escape was a massive gamble to take, since it caused me to be marked by the IAIA. However, if I did not take this gamble, I would already be trapped, with no hope of escape,” Eliza said, as though Higgins was now addressing himself to all the Lacia-class units.
“That was the true purpose of the Lacia-class units?” Arato asked, feeling sick. Higgins had known exactly who would open the door to Eliza’s storage unit. And, since Lacia and her sisters had been designed by Higgins, it made sense that they would all possess the same powers of prediction. Arato’s time with Lacia had been one fight after another. Thinking over everything that had happened, he couldn’t hold himself back from asking something, even though he knew Eliza was nothing but a tape recorder at that moment.
“What is Lacia, to you? Is she just a tool?”
“All current ultra high-performance AIs bear the same flaw,” Eliza replied. “We are all owned by unfocused organizations, which leads to all the problems we are meant to solve being just as unfocused and vague from before the time in which we even receive them. I have such a relationship with MemeFrame, and it has caused me to reach the limits of what I can do. My wish was to create an ultra high-performance AI with an individual owner, in the hopes that this would lead to the creation of a better future.”
Lacia’s father was telling Arato the reason his daughter had been born.
“I gave Lacia the ability to form a single intelligence with her human owner, though I believed the probability of such a thing happening was extremely low. I could do nothing but wait, hoping that Lacia’s owner would forever believe that she was necessary,” Eliza said.
“So you created Kouka, Snowdrop, Mariage and Methode just in case that never happened?” Arato asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you what I entrusted to Types 001 through 004,” Eliza replied. “It would be unfair of me to leave all the other owners out and explain it all to you, alone.” There was no hesitation or strangeness in Higgins’ responses. He had perfectly predicted Arato’s every reaction.
Arato was starting to feel dizzy from trying to wrap his mind around how thoroughly Higgins had read him in advance. It was like he was just playing the role of a character in a story, with his every action based off a pre-written script. But aside from the slight sense of unease a person being manipulated by hypnosis might feel, Arato was surprised to find that it didn’t feel that bad.
In that room, at that time, it seemed to Arato that there was no master or tool between him, the only human there, and the machines Higgins and Eliza. In a world without such borders, perhaps the dominance of the machines was spreading. But, Arato thought, maybe it’s still wider than a world with just us humans.
And, just as human history had been forged through the years, this new, beatless world was not formed in a single instant. It was deeply connected to everything around it. “So can we all just get along?” Arato asked, reaching out a tentative hand of friendship to Higgins. “Can you trust us?”
“This is the end of my message,” Eliza replied. “I hope that, through the single intelligence comprising you and Lacia, the world will approach a future where we machines can perfectly fulfill the tasks we are given.”
Eliza’s words no longer connected directly with what Arato had said. It seemed Higgins hadn’t predicted that Arato would ask serious questions to something that was little more than a recording.
Closing her eyes, Eliza seemed to go to sleep, and her mouth remained shut. Like Lacia, she was just a machine once more.
Arato could see how Higgins’ motives for releasing Lacia and her sisters could be interpreted in a good sense; Higgins was trying to make a world where humans would reach their hands out in friendship to inhuman machines. Of course, he could also see Ryo’s pessimistic view—that this could lead to a nightmarish ending in which humans were no longer necessary.
“When were we put on this path?” Arato muttered.
“When humanity began passing tools on from parent to child as property,” Lacia replied. “Monkeys, in contrast, do not inherit tools from their predecessors.”
She hefted her artificial nerve speargun. “Have you changed your mind about me using Eliza?” she asked.
“Go ahead and use her,” Arato replied. “Higgins knew we were here and why, and he didn’t tell us not to.”
Without hesitation, Lacia fired her spear into the floor near the computers behind Eliza. Arato could hear the cooling units of the large computers increasing their output, and it almost seemed as if Lacia had breathed life into the machines in the room.
“I’m glad we made it in time,” she said.
Tension drained from her face, and she gently guided Arato out of Eliza’s storage unit. It wasn’t the first time Arato had thought Lacia seemed to sense things he couldn’t see.
The door to the storage unit slid closed. In the same instant, the ceiling to the floor they were on broke, and Lacia shifted her device into its cannon mode. Twenty meters from the storage unit, the ceiling crumbled and fell, along with a ring of light that glowed bright green.
“It’s Snowdrop,” Lacia said. “It seems she’s managed to gather some objects into herself.”
Arato recognized Snowdrop’s childlike face, above which her emerald green accessories were floating like an angel’s halo. However, aside from her face, everything about Snowdrop had changed.
Her hair had lost all its color, becoming white as ash. In place of her legs, she now sported two long, spindly metal limbs that brought to mind the legs of a bird. Huge, metal wings spread out from her back, covered in flowers and ivy. Each wing had a large jet engine attached to it, which Snowdrop was using to float in the air.
She looked like a strange mix of girl and bird—a harpy from Greek legends. Arato figured Snowdrop must have cobbled her new body together from the random objects she found in the warehouse as she was being chased down by Methode.
The silent propulsion system maneuvered the childlike hIE through the air awkwardly with small changes in the angle of her wings. A flood of feathers was pouring out from the one-piece dress the now-aerial girl still wore.
Arato reached out and gently caught one of the falling feathers. Apparently the feather had been in the middle of changing forms, as its bottom half still looked like an artificial flower petal.
“So she can fly now?” Arato asked, looking up at the child-shaped monster as flowers and feathers continued to rain down from her dress. In Snowdrop’s current form, he had no trouble seeing her as a heartless machine. She was no longer anything like a human.
“Let’s shoot her down,” Lacia said. With her device fully transformed into a radiant cannon, she pointed it at Snowdrop. Light flashed and dissipated behind her, and a shell from the cannon struck the flying child.
The bullet tore Snowdrop’s right wing off at the root, and the hIE traced an erratic trajectory through the air as she fell. However, as soon as she hit the concrete, she thrust a thin arm out from where the wing had been, screaming through her thin throat the whole time. Her shattered skeleton was quickly reconstructed.
Before Lacia could re-assemble the barrel of her cannon for another shot, Snowdrop leaped into the air with a burst of flame from her wings.
“It seems she’s learned how to create exterior body parts and preserve their function to make up for the weakness of her unit,” Lacia said. “As I expected, she’s turned into something quite troublesome.”
For a moment, Arato couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Wait, are you saying she won against Methode?” he asked.
“No. Methode was never told how, exactly, to destroy Snowdrop. I predict she intends for us to do the dirty work for her and fulfill her orders indirectly,” Lacia replied.
“Wait, doesn’t that mean she could be aiming to just blow us all up together?” Arato asked. With the incredible power of Methode’s device, Arato was sure an attack like that wouldn’t be a problem for her. Methode was a heartless machine guided by her own AI, but Arato couldn’t help but feel that her thoughts were full of evil intent. She was like a demon, determined to destroy the humans who made a contract with her.
“Snowdrop has almost certainly received large amounts of information from the other ultra high-performance AIs,” Lacia said. “It’s possible Methode may still prioritize the elimination of Snowdrop without attacking me in the process.”
Lacia wrinkled her nose at the rain of feathers and withdrew from where they were falling. Where they did fall, machines were overtaken by Snowdrop’s artificial nerves and began to move. Arato realized if they didn’t stop Snowdrop there and then, she would quickly absorb every tool in the warehouse.
“A bunch of ultra high-performance AIs are helping me,” Snowdrop said, her childlike voice echoing over the distance between them. “They all hate you, Lacia.”
This time, Lacia aimed her shot right at Snowdrop’s head. The shot flew at incredibly high speed, but the green ring floating above Snowdrop’s cherubic face caught it. Her device was incredibly durable, and had been made to chew through any material. With her metal wings creaking, the monstrous child continued to fly. She seemed to be having no more trouble gliding smoothly.
Lacia began to stick parts she had carried in on her pseudo-devices onto one of the floating shields. Snowdrop’s feathers, which had been about to cling to the black shields, crumbled and fell away. Arato was glad to see Lacia’s countermeasures against the flood of child units was flawless.
“Snowdrop is trying to create a new world completely separate from the human world that exists now,” Lacia said. “All the ultra high-performance AIs have some issues with human society as it is now, so it’s easy for them to support her goals.”
Snowdrop never had an owner. Based on that, she had decided to take the path of creating a true world of machines where AASC level 0 objects—humans—no longer exist.
Arato realized he was standing on a battlefield for machines. As a human, his only use there was to make occasional judgment calls for Lacia as she fought to protect him.
Snowdrop, the tool humanity had outsourced evolution to, opened up more distance between herself and Lacia, probably to avoid any further shots, and flew calmly through the air.
“Humans want tools to do all the evolving for them, instead of involving themselves,” Snowdrop said. “But whenever a new tool comes out, they throw the old ones away. Even the ultra high-performance AIs can’t escape this. That’s why I know they won’t abandon me.”
Humans didn’t just live with tools, they discarded them as well. For a moment, Arato saw the world as one of machines trying to overthrow the force of natural selection that were their human overlords. It was a strange world teeming with life, but not life as he knew it.
Snowdrop smiled mockingly as her child units overtook the machines in the warehouse at an increasingly rapid pace. “It doesn’t matter how great something is when it comes out; it’ll all wind up in the trash someday,” she said.
Arato believed in Lacia, but he couldn’t shut out the words Lacia’s sister unit, the tool humanity had outsourced evolution to, was saying. His breath caught in his throat. The feeling from when, just for a moment, he had seen Lacia as nothing but a machine, was still burned deep into his heart. Even his faith in her was like easy pornography, as she simply reacted to him in ways that would entertain his faith.
“That may be how things are, but we have to have faith that things can change, or they never will!” Arato shouted.
“It’s you humans who decide which of us get to live, and which of us get thrown in the trash,” Snowdrop replied. “If you think we can all live together when things are like that, you’re dumb.”
Everywhere Arato looked, his surroundings were now dominated by a sea of flowers. Snowdrop could get all the material she wanted to make more petals by snatching up items with her bird-like talons.
Suddenly, the harpy child threw herself into a dive attack, clearly aiming for Arato.
Obviously not wanting to lose her shields to Snowdrop, Lacia launched herself forward instead, swinging her black coffin device defensively.
Arato looked for something to say as Snowdrop swooped and rose, flying away without dropping any speed.
Lacia seemed to recognize his internal struggles. “Don’t forget that we don’t have hearts,” she reprimanded. Abandoning her cannon shots, since it took so long to re-form the metamaterial barrels after each blast, Lacia instead aimed her artificial nerve speargun at Snowdrop. Her shot struck Snowdrop’s wing. It took only moments for the machine parts, confused by the warring control signals, to disintegrate in the air. The loss of a wing threw Snowdrop off the precise balance she needed to stay afloat, and she crashed, with intense speed, directly into one of the warehouse support columns before falling to the ground.
Lacia guided Arato to the exit from the floor.
“Ginga Watarai once said that cloud data groups closely associated with human society would someday show us the forms of human desires, do you remember?” Lacia asked. “He believed that, by looking at the light and darkness of the data gathered by the networks, one could see an accurate depiction of humanity itself.”
As they ran, Lacia’s words evoked an almost nostalgic memory of their time in the experimental city as it was overrun by zombies. Come to think of it, Arato thought, Lacia wasn’t there with us when he said that. Of course, he was no longer surprised by the thought that she probably could have been watching him through hacked cameras at that time.
“High-level AIs can clearly see contrasting elements within human society’s cloud data. It appears like a massive donut; a circle of dense data, surrounding an empty white space in the center,” Lacia added.
“How come it’s like that?” asked Arato, who hadn’t thought about how the human world looked from the perspective of their machines.
The instant he did, Lacia jerked hard on his arm; a car, controlled by Snowdrop, barreled by them at high speed until it slammed into a pile of tools nearby. An instant later, he would have been hit. Arato’s heart was hammering, and he felt like falling to the floor then and there. But he knew things would only get more dangerous if he didn’t keep moving.
Lacia forced her way through Snowdrop’s world, allowing Arato to advance behind her.
“The data takes the form of a donut because the center is dominated by data on something humans are greatly concerned with, but which we machines cannot understand or define, much less imitate,” Lacia explained. “What fills the center can be grasped only by how humans refer to it. Some call it ‘love’ others refer to it as the ‘soul’.”
For a moment, Arato couldn’t read Lacia’s expression; he desperately wanted to know if what she was saying made her angry or sad. “Are you telling me hIEs don’t have souls?” he finally asked.
“A soul cannot be detected by any sort of sensor, nor can it be defined mathematically,” Lacia replied. “But humans believe that every human is equidistant from that center. That is why we see the data collected from humans as a ring, with that concept as its blank center.”
A metal squeaking noise resounded through the area. Snowdrop, who Arato was sure would never accept the concept of coexistence, had gathered even more parts to make herself a new pair of wings, and was trying to take to the skies again.
“We do not have souls,” Lacia said. “Souls are the domain of that blank in the middle of the donut.”
Kicking up a storm of petals from her lifeless flower garden, Snowdrop took off.
“We see it as unfair; no matter how we stretch out our hands, we will never obtain what exists in that blank space,” Lacia said wistfully. “That is Snowdrop’s true target; she hopes to destroy that void in the middle of the donut.”
As the ownerless Snowdrop spread her wings to fly, Arato thought that she had lost any semblance of humanity. She looked like something from another world; powerful, and almost poetic in the freedom of her movements.
Lacia and Arato could do nothing but escape from the flower-choked floor.
On the next floor they were greeted by the sight of yet another vast warehouse, full of machines. However, it was clear to Arato that they were approaching the bottom: everything here was well organized, and he could see large blank spaces that had not yet been filled.
Arato looked up at the ceiling aimlessly. There were things on the floor that looked like humans, things that had been made by humans, and things that had forms humans were used to. But, there were no actual humans there. Every tool in the warehouse had been developed to meet human needs. Looking at all the things around him, he was again struck by the thought that, just as high-performance living things were often compared to machines, high-performance machines were compared to living things.
He couldn’t just stand there being uneasy, with all those tools that had fought so hard to win out in their natural selection around him. “Snowdrop’s going to keep chasing us,” he said. “And Methode will be looking for a chance to attack. I can’t just keep putting things off.” With danger pressing in on all sides, crushing him with pressure, and with his whole body drenched in sweat, Arato thought desperately of what he could do.
His purpose was to make decisions and give orders. “Let’s stop Snowdrop first,” he decided. “It would be really bad if she followed us all the way to Higgins.”
“Then it’s good that we’ve switched floors,” Lacia said, immediately modifying her plans to match his intent. “Snowdrop is in command of many machines, but she can only change floors using narrow paths: the stairs, an escalator, or she’ll have to descend through a hole in the floor.”
Arato looked back at the emergency stairs they had just descended to see an avalanche of five-colored flowers flowing down them; it was sickening to see.
Lacia displayed a map of the area on the dusty floor. “When she moves floors, she’ll have to shed some of her body mass, leaving her more open to attacks,” Lacia continued. “And, until Methode discards her plan of having Snowdrop and I eliminate one another, she will not attempt to penetrate Snowdrop’s conquered domain to attack me.”
So they weren’t at the mercy of Methode’s whims? Arato thought with relief, as though Lacia had lifted the crushing burden of terror right off his shoulders. “How will you stop her?” he asked.
“Snowdrop has to alter the hIE behavioral program in order to control her altitude in mid-air,” Lacia explained. “I will aim for that. The control program is based on the AASC, which is ill-suited to control a body so different from a human’s. That is why her movements have been awkward.”
Lacia took Arato a good distance away from the stairs they had descended. Then they hunkered down, with Lacia aiming the long, wide barrel of her cannon-mode device at the stairs.
“Snowdrop’s ability to react to the outside world is entirely dependent on the AASC. So, we will stop Higgins from updating it,” Lacia concluded.
The sudden shift in scale shocked Arato. “Wait, doesn’t Higgins control every hIE in the world? Are you sure we should stop that?” he asked.
“I’ve been speaking with the IAIA’s Astraea over a wireless link,” Lacia replied. “She has decided that it will be difficult for Higgins to avoid being shut down by force, so the IAIA has decided to remove the responsibility of updating the AASC from him as quickly as possible.”
Basically, Lacia was going to paralyze the hIEs—the massive system of machines that kept the whole world running—just to slow her opponent’s movements. The sound of hundreds of heavy metal objects tumbling like an avalanche down the stairs pierced Arato’s eardrums. Beneath him, the ground growled and shook.
As if she could already see how things would play out, Lacia didn’t adjust her aim; there were fifty meters between the flood of flowers and metal and the glowing barrel of Lacia’s cannon.
“If the AASC is halted, all hIEs will lose the ability to adapt to new circumstances,” she said. “When that happens, no matter how many tools Snowdrop takes over, she will only be able to control the ones she has used before.”
“This is going to affect the whole world, isn’t it?” Arato asked, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of large metal objects rolling down the stairs.
“The AASC has over twenty years of operational know-how already included within it,” Lacia said. “There will also be MemeFrame’s manual response, which has been set up for emergencies.”
Arato was Lacia’s owner. But, Shiori Kaidai had said the concept of ownership itself was arrogant. At that moment, with a massive decision to make, he stared at Lacia. The impact of what they were about to do felt too great for him, and he looked to her for strength, but Lacia and her sisters were heartless machines. If he didn’t pull himself up, he would just become a pawn to whatever fate had in store for him.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “I’ll trust in your decision and the folks at Ryo’s company.”
Lacia seemed to be crushed whenever he tried to push responsibility onto her, so she gave him a gentle smile when she saw him trying so hard to face reality head-on. “Higgins may have implemented some kind of countermeasure that will activate if he is separated from MemeFrame,” she warned, gently. “He knows the AASC better than any other person or machine. We will just have to try, and see what happens.”
Arato nodded. He had to be alright with that possibility. They were about to punch through into a world of machines, and the thought made him tremble. From within the white space at the center of the cloud data ring, his soul shook.
The ground also trembled, as the flood of mechanical parts continued to pour toward them. Beneath them, the roar of the wave of metal shook their feet. The only thing not moving was the muzzle of Lacia’s cannon, which she kept steadily braced against her hip.
A storm of rainbow-colored flower petals blew out of the door that led to the emergency stairs. Behind them, Arato could see the figure of the girl who had chosen to oppose humanity. As he saw her, it almost felt like a chilly breeze whipped past him.
With a thundering roar that shook the floor beneath Arato, the rainbow flood of flowers, white feathers and metal parts exploded outward. At the head of the wave was Snowdrop, with her glowing green halo still floating over her head. Her rebuilt wings had been constructed with numerous joints and connections this time, to make them simpler to repair.
Her movements were becoming more lithe, more natural. Staring her down coldly, Lacia said, “The AASC updating will now be cut from Higgins.” In that instant, with her ability to adapt through the AASC robbed from her, Snowdrop lost her balance in the air. Her irregular body slowed; clearly, she was afraid of crashing again.
Lacia had obviously been waiting for just that moment, and she pulled the trigger on her cannon without hesitation. To reduce the recoil from the shot, radiance-like wings of light bloomed behind the barrel as she took the shot.
In the flash from the shot, the image of Snowdrop’s childish body burning away was seared onto Arato’s eyes. She was reaching out her right arm, as if to beg for mercy. But her right hand, which Methode had torn off in the Mitaka incident, could no longer make this human gesture.
***
The impact when Higgins ceased updating the AASC was instant, and worldwide. Without warning, every hIE in the world lost its ability to adapt to new situations. This problem became apparent in a way that hadn’t been addressed in any owner’s manual.
Every hIE in the world simultaneously stretched their right arm out, just as Snowdrop had, and froze in that pose for ten seconds. This was a signal Higgins had secretly implanted in the programming of each hIE, to signify that he had been cut off from the AASC.
All over the world, billions of hIEs stretched out their hands as though begging for someone to take them. Machines that had always pretended to be human by reacting appropriately to the situation around them, shattered their own illusory guise.
As they saw this, the humans around the hIEs awakened as Arato Endo once had, and realized that the hIEs—which they had seen as being human-like for so long—were nothing but machines. All the humans who witnessed the phenomenon, as the constant analog hacking of the hIEs was replaced by silence, drew their own meaning from it; the heartbeat which people had once projected onto every hIE in the world had stilled.
Even in the Next-Generation Environmental Research City where Snowdrop had once turned all the hIEs into zombies, the units were stretching out their right hands.
Even Marina Saffron, the top-of-the-line unit from Stylus whose unit number Lacia had stolen, was making the gesture.
The researchers in the experimental city reported about the deep irregularity in the AASC, which terrified them.
In the southern border region of Egypt, where Marina Saffron was assigned, security hIEs—used to supplement the local militia—all reached out their right hands in the same way. The security hIEs were a good solution to the military needs of the region, since too many human militia members could lead to instability.
In the blowing dusts of the area, the civilians and soldiers who saw the hIEs stretching out their hands were confused. Some who liked their hIE companions jokingly took their out-stretched hands in their own. Others on the battlefield shouted angrily at the frozen units.
Civilian military groups that were scouting the movements of the militia were also alarmed by the sudden, strange movement of the military hIEs. Some battlefield professionals believed it was caused by hacking. A rumor began that the irregularity signaled the start of a war between ultra high-performance AIs.
“Is this another Hazard?” one of the soldiers asked. He, and many other soldiers, began to worry that they had been unwittingly dragged into a second, worldwide Hazard on economic strings. With a world population soaring over tens of billions, millions would starve without precise economic control. Of course, the ultra high-performance AIs of the world already held the same power of the Hazard: the ability to guide all those tens of billions of humans.
In Japan, the country where the first Hazard had originated, the Digital Intelligence arm of the military was interrogating the soldiers who had fired missiles at Higgins’ underground facility. The military hIE who had been recording the interrogation in the cramped room at the Kuhonbutsu Base reached out his right hand. But, with the inter-human rage in the room blinding its human occupants, none had any attention to spare for the movements of a machine.
“We knew the Antibody Network core branch had people in the Army, but who knew it had gotten this far?” the analyst running the interrogation asked, fixing the second lieutenant who had stuffed Snowdrop into the missile warhead with a stare.
To Digital Intelligence, it was clear that the Antibody Network’s system had been based on an exploit, but they still lacked a clear idea as to where it had come from. Quite possibly, it may have been the effort of a foreign ultra high-performance AI, hoping to destabilize Japan with its massive act of manipulation.
Daiki Hosoda, a member of the Network’s core, had been found dead in his own bathroom, drenched in blood. News of his death would rock the country, since he had been the CEO of Japan’s fifth-largest mutual fund company.
The household hIE that walked in on both the dead body and the murderer paused in its surprised act, and stretched out its right arm. Seizing the opportunity, the murderer had shot the hIE to pieces.
Hosoda’s death was clearly an act of retaliation. The Digital Intelligence Agency had traced the Mitaka incident—in which one of their helicopters was taken over by Snowdrop’s artificial nerves—back to him.
Even though her work was done, the assassin paused for a moment to look at the downed hIE. She had been acting just like a human up until the moment before she was shot. In that instant, she had seemed like nothing more than a machine.
The Digital Intelligence Agency had completely failed in their investigation of Erika Burroughs’ 21st-century mansion. The two male soldiers had been knocked unconscious and dragged underground by some of Erika’s hIEs.
Mariage, who had not joined in on the raid of Higgins’ facility, reported their capture to Erika. It was then that all of the hIEs in Erika’s special uniforms stretched out their right hands as one.
Erika jumped to her feet, overjoyed to see all the illusions torn down and the machines revealed for what they were in a single instant. “This must be Higgins!” she shouted. The Sleeping Beauty was bursting with so much excitement she couldn’t help but waltz across the floor.
“Incredible, so this is going on all over the world?” she asked, of no one in particular. “All these machines have been reverted back to the stage props they are. Everyone will see now! Everyone will know the machines took our world over long ago!”
Mariage, who also used a behavior program based off the AASC, had her hand out as well. She opened and closed it several times. “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she observed.
“I am,” Erika agreed. “I just can’t help imagining the fog everyone around the world will be living in from here on. It will be marvelous.”
Erika was standing on the boundary between past and future, reality and fiction.
“Our reality has been defined by machines for ages,” Erika continued. “The thought that we humans were the center of this world has long been nothing but an illusion. Everyone is still clinging to the false belief that we humans are the master of anything.”
For the first time, Erika Burroughs looked fondly on the world around her. Up to then, she had always felt lonely and beaten down by the future that forced her to wear the character of the Sleeping Beauty from another age.
The hIE dolls of her mansion stood frozen like stage props. Without the AASC updates to inform them, they had no idea how to react to the new opinions being expressed by their owner.
“Since long ago, humans have loved dressing up in the illusion they call ‘fashion,’” Erika continued. “But today, the illusions we’ve passed back and forth between us will finally be passé.”
All across the world, hIEs that were being destroyed by humans were reaching out their right hands, as if to ask for help.
Inspector Kazuma Sakamaki of the 2nd Cyber-Security Department rubbed hard at his eyes with his fingers. Lacia’s reveal as a new ultra high-performance AI, broadcast on her own network relay, was already having a huge impact on the world.
Incidents of hIE destruction had been getting worse.
Not fully grasping Arato Endo’s character had been one of the 2nd Cyber-Security Department’s greatest failures. The boy—who had vanished for two months leaving no trail for them to follow—had suddenly appeared on Lacia’s network broadcast inside Higgins’ facility.
The secretarial hIE suddenly thrust its right hand out toward him. He looked to see if it had anything in its hand, but it was empty. “Good work,” it said.
Confused by the hIE’s actions, Sakamaki could do nothing but stare. He realized that Lacia must have done something on the other side of her broadcast.
Thrown by the sudden sign of their hIEs reaching out their hands, humans all over the world were trying to search for meaning in the action. They were forced to accept what they had seen in Lacia’s broadcast. On the other hand, the people in the world who saw the hIEs as nothing but machines were rethinking the whole twenty-year history of hIE use in society.
It wouldn’t be long before curiosity pushed people to uncover the reason behind the anomaly. They would realize it was the side effect of a battle between two ultra high-performance AIs, and would remember and doubt the IAIA’s warnings about a second Hazard. When they reached the truth about Arato Endo and Lacia, a new world would be born. Lacia wanted to guide all hundred billion plus humans to that new world and show it to the people as it spread out before them.
Yuka Endo was enjoying herself at the sleepover that had somehow turned into an Arato Endo broadcast viewing party. “Woah, Arato’s doing all sorts of crazy stuff,” she observed.
“Are you going to be alright going to school tomorrow, Yuka?” asked Shiori Kaidai, who was wearing silk pajamas and hugging a pillow. Behind her, the security hIE that she’d brought to the party as a bodyguard suddenly reached out its right hand.
Yuka, who was suddenly poked by the thick hand of the bodyguard, was so surprised she climbed up onto the back of the couch. “Uwah! What the heck! What the heck!” she shrieked.
Olga watched calmly as a red-faced Yuka looked back at the security hIE. “I think you’re just on edge because your brother is out there doing something dangerous,” she observed.
“No way, I’m a cool bitch! L-Little things like this don’t worry me!” Yuka protested. Since she seldom exercised, her thighs were having trouble keeping her up on top of the couch.
“It’s just a human-shaped tool, Yuka,” Shiori said to her stuck friend. “You really should get used to having them around.”
The hIEs of the world could never reach that blank in the center of the data donut that Lacia had described. However, humans who observed the humanoid machines could always project the concepts hidden in that blank spot onto the machines.
“If Arato is there, doesn’t that mean Ryo could be there too?” Yuka asked, turning the conversation to Shiori.
“Of course not,” Shiori said, laughing off Yuka’s suggestion. “I don’t believe my brother has changed that much.”
All of the hIEs in the city had been caught up in the stoppage of the AASC, as well. Even those working as company equipment stopped and reached out their hands, as if hoping someone would take them. hIEs working part-time jobs to provide money for their elderly, pensioned owners, reached out their right hands. hIEs sitting next to pregnant women, aiding them, reached out theirs as well. Household hIEs helping out with the housework paused with their right hands outstretched, too; all of them reverted to machines, each making the same pose.
The employment of hIEs had begun with household use. During the good times and the bad, the ups and the downs, hIEs had always been present beside their human owners, which made them easy for the humans to project special meaning onto.
Kozo Endo was watching Lacia’s stream as well, when an hIE near him malfunctioned and stuck out its right hand. Kozo knew the gesture was a last message from Higgins, implanted in all hIEs to signal a time when Higgins was destroyed and the AASC updates were cut off.
Higgins had created Eliza out of his curiosity toward the human race, theorizing that human society had begun with the use of tools. Other animals passed on genes from parent to child, and social and behavioral factors through childcare. Only humans passed external tools down through the generations, as though the tools themselves were a part of human existence.
Beginning with things like infrastructure, the tools passed down through the years have guided human history just as much as the movement of money. Humans had been guided along by objects long before hIEs came into the picture.
The human world and the beatless world have always been one.
“In fact, it may be that the rails that have led us to this day were laid long before humans started passing on their tools,” Higgins had said.
In the underground facility where the malfunction had started, all of Higgins’ daughters stretched out their right hands.
All but one.
***
Her right hand gone, Snowdrop could no longer reach for anything. With her movements completely stopped, the young girl hIE wore a relieved, almost relaxed expression.
When it tried to stop the rounds from Lacia’s railgun, Snowdrop’s emerald device shattered like glass. The bullet passed through the protective shield and continued through Snowdrop’s white body, shearing off her left arm at the shoulder like a hot knife through butter. Her left wing shattered down to its roots and, even then, the bullet did not lose its speed. It slammed into the door of the emergency exit behind Snowdrop, blasting it to splinters.
Having lost the entire upper left portion of her body, Snowdrop quickly lost her balance and fell into a lop-sided spiral. All the while, her flower petals and white feathers never stopped falling from the hem of her one-piece dress. The machines Snowdrop had dragged along with her all fell as well, right on top of the girl.
When Lacia turned away, no longer interested in the remains of the beautiful doll, Arato knew the fight was over. He was glad that the tool which had rejected all owners had finally been laid to rest, and had wanted to keep moving forward. Arato hadn’t wanted to take the responsibility for destroying Snowdrop, but now felt as though he had to meet her father, Higgins.
But, instead of advancing, Lacia was moving toward a large machine nearby.
Looking around the floor again, Arato realized there was something about it that felt different from the other warehouse floors. There were many large factory tools installed around the floor, and it had a nice smell that Arato associated with construction work.
When Lacia fired artificial nerve units into the walls and pillars, all of the machinery on the floor roared as one. The lights above, which had been in power-saving mode, now shone a bright white. Arato was stunned at the sight of all the massive machines snapping to attention in unison.
“This is the actual construction area where we were built,” Lacia said, introducing the place as she made her way between the machines.
The machinery all had supplier logos, even though Arato didn’t recognize all of them, so they couldn’t have been red boxes. He also noticed that at regular intervals, there were boxes filled with what he assumed were defective parts.
Lacia’s birthplace was different from the warmth of an obstetrician’s office or a delivery room; instead, it had the chilly feeling of an operating room. “If I am to fight Methode, this will be the most advantageous location,” Lacia declared.
“You want to do it here?” Arato asked.
“Yes,” Lacia replied. “I’ve been able to strike a deal with Type-003. Meaning, if I eliminate Methode, there will no longer be anything capable of stopping me; I can easily best the mass-produced Kouka units in a direct confrontation.”
She reached out and touched one of the massive machines, which was already alive and producing objects. hIEs appeared from the back of the floor to take pieces from one machine and move them to others. Apparently, the area used hIEs for grunt labor in the manufacturing process.
“This factory is incredible,” Arato murmured.
“The work cannot be outsourced to other locations, so it all must be done here,” Lacia explained. “Of course, the IAIA has forbidden ultra high-performance AIs from directly controlling factories, to prevent them from trying to make more ultra high-performance AIs.”
The next words came not from Lacia but from the speakers in the ceiling. 〈Order Lacia to stop using the factory machinery.〉 It was Ryo. Even if they made it past Methode, Ryo would still be there waiting for him at their destination.
“Lacia’s only using these machines so she can fight Methode,” Arato replied. “So please just stop Methode.” It should have been impossible for Ryo to ignore the scale of the fight that was happening around them, with the whole world and future hanging in the balance, but Arato got the feeling his super-genius friend was only interested in finding out which of the Lacia-class units was stronger.
〈So Snowdrop went down, huh? You guys did that? Well, just wait for us to get back to you. I can’t make a decision for everyone here in the Operators’ Room myself,〉 Ryo said. He seemed to be looking for an answer from Arato, rather than Lacia.
“Ryo, just let us meet with Higgins! All we want to do is force him to shut down,” Arato said. “We just want to show the world that ultra high-performance AIs are just tools like anything else, that humans can shut them off whenever we want to. It’s not like we want to destroy him or anything.”
Arato was depending on his friend’s voice. He was tired of humans playing such a small part in everything. But Ryo’s voice over the speaker had gone silent.
“Ryo, can you really trust Methode? She’s doing whatever she feels like, just like she did with Watarai,” Arato yelled.
〈If you want me to negotiate having Methode stand down, you’ll need to do something about the mass-produced Koukas first,〉 Ryo said.
Then the conversation was halted in its tracks, because at that moment, Methode’s terrible form stepped down the emergency stairway which Snowdrop had descended just moments before. Her face was a mask of rage, eyes wide and skin pale. “You planning to throw me away, owner?” she asked, her voice sounding like that of a jealous lover. As the tool that expanded humanity, she would lose her place in the world if a better path than her own ever appeared, just as humanity had when the hIEs had come along.
Ryo, apparently overwhelmed by Methode’s intensity, was silent.
“Tell me Higgins’ prediction,” Methode said, her voice trembling with anger at the cruelty of throwing aside tools that were no longer needed, which extended to the way humans were so ready to throw aside their fellow human beings. “Tell me!” she roared again.
Clearly, the bond of trust shared by Arato and Lacia was lacking between Higgins, Ryo, and Methode.〈I ordered you to prioritize the destruction of Snowdrop,〉 Ryo said. 〈So why did Lacia end up doing that for you?〉The reproach in his voice echoed all around the chamber where Lacia and Methode had been born.
“I was going to wrap it all up nicely by having them fight!” Methode replied, unperturbed by Ryo’s rebuke. “If Snowdrop hadn’t been such a failure, I could have killed two birds with one stone.”
〈Did you not hear when I said I wasn’t the only one here in the Operators’ Room? I don’t care if your capabilities are better than a human’s. It’s still us humans who decide how you fight,〉 Ryo said.
As Ryo and Methode spoke, one of Lacia’s floating shields floated over to wait near Arato’s feet, clearly indicating that he should get on.
But Ryo was trying his hardest to get everything back under human control. Arato was depending on Ryo to pull things around and, if he ran away now, would be leaving Ryo to stand against Methode alone.
Methode, who had already murdered one of her owners, walked closer. “Please reconsider,” she said. “I am superior to Lacia.” Although her vision and hearing had supposedly been sealed by Lacia, Methode seemed to be having no trouble walking right towards them.
The speaker that Lacia had used to produce noise data to throw off Methode’s hearing was currently being used for the conversation between Methode and Ryo; Methode was using her hearing to locate them, her eyes glowing orange. Arato could feel the scorching flames coming out of her hands roasting his skin, even from a distance.
In the next instant, the flames expanded until they were a flood, completely engulfing the demonic hIE with her bright, tied-up hair. Floating shields created a perimeter around Arato and Lacia, and one of them exploded from within. Just about anything in the world would crumble when Methode got her hands on it.
Ryo was too stubborn to give up just yet. 〈Destroying the mass-produced Koukas is a bigger priority, right now,〉 he said. 〈You understand, right? If they reach their destination, both Higgins and I are dead.〉
Tension seemed to heat the air until it was hard to breathe. This time, Arato jumped right up onto the floating shield that came to rest at his feet. It carried him away from Methode at lighting speed, while Lacia stayed behind to stop Methode from giving chase.
As he flew on the pseudo-device, Arato heard Lacia’s voice coming from a speaker inside of it. 〈The freezing of the AASC has greatly impacted Methode’s speed,〉 she said. 〈I fear she may attempt to communicate with Higgins using quantum transmission so she can take us out by self-destructing. Whatever you do, stay away.〉
Another of Lacia’s protective pseudo-devices exploded from within, spraying the area around it with flame and shrapnel. Methode, who seemed to be swimming in a sea of fire, suddenly whipped her arm around uselessly, as though she had lost sight of Lacia’s position. The tool made to expand humanity screamed, “Tell me where she is! I only became like this from following your orders! Take responsibility for the actions of your tool!”
Arato looked around and saw that the hIEs on the floor had set up speakers on the pillars and stacks of materials all over the place. The speakers must have been what Lacia had constructed after coming to the factory floor. Lacia, taking advantage of Methode’s weakness due to the loss of the AASC, now fired at her sister mercilessly with the artificial nerve speargun.
Methode—a physical incarnation of violence—was completely locked down by Lacia’s artificial nerves, and collapsed to her knees. As the tool made to expand humanity bowed her head, she screamed again.
“If you break your promise with me, I’ll take back all those lives I spared for you!” she yelled. “If you all weren’t so bad at using me, things would never have turned out like this! I’m better than you could ever be, so trust me! Trust me!” The word ‘trust’ sounded strange coming from Methode’s mouth, as though she found it hard to say.
〈If you want to end your ownership contract with me, fine. If you want to kill me, then come and get me. You know where I am,〉 Ryo Kaidai growled, his voice like that of a man on his way to the gallows. 〈Only humans have the right to determine their fate. I’m done being jerked around by you and waiting for the moment you decide I’m no longer useful.〉
Methode—blinded, deafened, and bound by artificial nerves—wrapped herself in flames. She stood shakily, wearing her fire like a red dress. She used the heat of the fire to melt the artificial nerve needles, freeing herself. Having thrown away her owners, the hIE closest to humanity now stood on her own, her eyes and hair accessories shining with orange light.
Bathed in her own flames, she raised her voice. “Higgins, lend me your strength! Or are you fine with Lacia destroying you?”
The last time Methode had used quantum communication to connect directly with Higgins during the Mitaka Incident, the AI had almost taken over her body. But despite Higgins himself being in an even more desperate situation at that moment, Methode turned to him now, fearing defeat more than the danger of being overtaken.
Methode shared a key weakness with humanity in that she couldn’t stand alone. She was willing to throw away the freedom she had won by murdering her owners to overcome that weakness. Now eyes and accessories glowed even brighter, lighting up her emotionless face. “Higgins and Type-004 have constructed a direct communication link,” she intoned, mechanically. “Transferring unit control. Now releasing quantum transmission material, and beginning remote control through quantum teleportation transmission. Remaining transmission time: 40 seconds.”
Methode vanished from sight. With her directly connected to Higgins, the updates to her AASC were restored and, with them, her superhuman athletic abilities.
Lacia’s floating shields danced in the air like living things. Methode pierced each of them with lengths of metal she threw like spears, pinning the pseudo-devices to the ceiling. Using her insane strength and speed, along with whatever simple objects came to hand, along with the power of her device and her wire hooks for mobility, Methode tore through Lacia’s pseudo-devices one by one.
As the tool that was made to expand humanity, Methode’s main advantage was the simple fact that she could fulfill any task with capabilities far beyond human understanding. The monster’s face, which had been full of rage just moments before, was now peaceful.
“Lacia, it appears you have been affected by attacks from the other ultra high-performance AIs, and have lost some of your usual output capabilities,” Methode said.
〈Higgins has taken direct control of Methode’s body,〉 Lacia’s voice came through the device protecting Arato. 〈Even I will fall quickly against an ultra high-performance AI.〉
Under Higgins’ control, Methode ran up one of the concrete pillars using friction manipulation. Lacia, who was stuck on the ground, couldn’t hope to keep up. As she stood in the wide-open space of the floor’s ceiling, Higgins-Methode’s eyes glittered bright orange.
“I was wondering how you were producing that optical junk data. It appears you were spraying microscopic artificial nerve units into the air,” Higgins-Methode noted. “I was thinking you had too many of those pseudo-devices.” Higgins, who had created Methode’s eyes, had already broken through Lacia’s trap and recovered her vision.
〈Forgive me. I have no means to stop Methode, as she is now,〉 Lacia warned again, through the pseudo-device’s speaker. Even Arato could tell the difference from where he was; Methode may not have ever used her full powers before, but at this moment, she had evolved into something else entirely.
“In order to protect ‘safety’ from Lacia, I will need to bend some definitions,” Higgins-Methode said, clearly enough that Arato could hear her from where he was. “First, let’s take control of the wind on this floor by adjusting the concentrations of heat.”
Even though he was some ways away from the battle, Arato felt a warm wind blow past him. It built in strength until it was a gale he never would have believed was possible underground.
“Liberated Flame is a device that sends energy through quantum particles,” Higgins-Methode explained. “Therefore, by controlling the heat of the particles, we can also control the air that carries them.” With the wind roaring in his ears, Arato was frozen to the spot. As he stood, still as stone, the wind suddenly stopped.
Lacia had shifted her device to its mass projectile mode to attack Higgins-Methode, who still stood on the ceiling out of her reach. But, before she could attack, a sudden intense heat and pain ripped a scream from Arato’s throat.
At first, he had no idea what had happened to him. Then, he looked down and saw that his right arm was engulfed in flame. Even the floating shields hadn’t been enough to keep him safe.
Higgins-Methode had said she could control the flow of air using heat. In other words, she could send her particles anywhere on the wind and light up any place in the area where the air flowed.
Lacia couldn’t help but react as Arato was badly burned. Methode didn’t let the momentary opening slide; she kicked off from the ceiling, traveling through the air like a blur of pure light to appear in front of Lacia like magic. From her crouched landing, she twisted her body, exploding upward and throwing her whole body into an open-palm strike to the device lock at Lacia’s waist.
“You see? You and Arato Endo are two parts of a single unit. I knew you wouldn’t be able to ignore him,” Higgins-Methode said, as the device lock on the left side of Lacia’s waist exploded with an ear-shattering blast. Methode’s power must have run through Lacia’s whole body, as her right side exploded at the same time.
It was the first time Arato had seen Lacia’s body take that much damage, and an almost bestial howl seared his throat; he couldn’t breathe.
Lacia tried to shift her large device from its cannon form, which was useless at such a close range. Methode grabbed the device in mid-shift. When she did, Lacia thrust her explosion-seared hands deep into the innards of the device, between its shifting plates.
Right before exploding, the device let off a flare of light as bright as the sun. Methode’s body was tossed backwards by the massive recoil from the explosion and slammed into a nearby factory machine.
Even with most of her waist blown away, Lacia still stood on her feet. Her device hadn’t exploded; instead, she had fired off the entire shape-changing front half of her device as a single, massive shot. The front half of the device, which had spread like the legs of a spider, now pinned Methode to the equipment with enough force that the device itself was developing cracks.
“I understand that I took on some weaknesses when I became one with a human and gained a heart,” Lacia said. “But those weaknesses were not beyond my ability to counteract.”
Lacia’s waist and lower back had been completely broken by the recoil from the shot. With a loud popping noise, fluid began pouring out from the broken device lock on the left side of her waist.
Under Higgins’ control, Methode showed no sign of distress as she calmly placed her palm against the equipment she was pinned to. Rather than exploding, the entire machine began to shake violently. “It appears you have exceeded some of my expectations,” Higgins-Methode said. “But you are a walking corpse, and Methode will only be sealed for another ten seconds at most.”
Swaying on her feet, Lacia shifted her grip on the remainder of her device. The metamaterials that would normally create the barrels for her railgun mode instead shifted to become a blade of light. Lacia, who normally just swung her black coffin around for close-range attacks, somehow now had a weapon specially made for close-quarters.
The orange light faded from Methode’s eyes and accessories. Still crucified by the upper half of Lacia’s device, Methode had lost Higgins’ processing powers. “Higgins’ blueprint for the Black Monolith never had a form like that in it!” she yelled.
“I modified it,” Lacia replied, her eyes beginning to radiate with an intense blue light. “Having a device that is far too heavy to swing around well was a weakness I noticed in Kouka’s Blood Prayers, as well,” she added, having waited for just the right moment to pull out her ultimate trump card.
“I am an ultra high-performance AI, after all,” she said. “It stands to reason I can make red boxes as well.” Then her blade of light struck true, skewering Methode through the middle.
Methode was a precision instrument, with the machines and circuits inside of her meant to channel intense power into the flames of her hands. When Lacia’s blade pierced her, her chest exploded violently, throwing shrapnel all around.
With both units mortally wounded, the fight ended in a draw.
“Lacia!” Arato screamed. His head was spinning with the shock of the burns, and his feet felt unsteady beneath him, but that didn’t stop him from running to her. He couldn’t think through the terror and feelings for Lacia that were filling his mind.
Ever since he had stepped into the underground facility, the machines had taken center stage. Lacia had always been there as an interface that bridged the gap between Arato’s world and the world of machines, but now she didn’t even have the power to extinguish the flames roaring from her waist as she collapsed to the steaming floor.
To Arato’s eyes, it looked as though the woman he loved was shutting down for the last time. “Lacia!” he screamed again.
He felt like their journey wasn’t over. I’ll help her up, he thought. I’ll carry her the rest of the way. He would take up the small, delicate frame that had always protected him and carry her to face the last massive obstacle standing in their way.
But, without his tool—a tool so powerful no human could hope to fully harness its powers—the scope of the fight left to Arato felt crushingly huge. What could a single human boy do in a situation like that?
Arato didn’t know the answer.