Last Phase「Image and Life」

Last Phase「Image and Life」

In the past, reality could be defined as being the interactions that took place between the human body and its environment. Within that reality, as humans continued their complex exchanges of interests and emotions, their brains became more sensitive to other human forms.

Humans invented tools to make their conflicts with one another more efficient and reliable. Rather than evolving longer fangs or claws, they outsourced their evolution to the development of tools, such as weapons made from sticks and stone. Using all manner of tools, humans were able to create their own environment. As conflict between them grew, humanity wanted more tools that would bring them victory in conflict with other humans. In the end, the humans even wished to leave their decisions to their tools, seeking machines that would expand humanity.

The need for efficiency and reliability even spilled over into the economy, which provided the very ecosystem in which the tools lived. Because of this, the economy was automated, and humans were no longer required to participate in the cycle of life and death for tools.

Erika Burroughs watched the dolls of her house going about their business. This whole place could run with or without me, she thought. She had been told that, in the 22nd century, reality was determined by the economy. Which, to her, meant that reality no longer had any need for humanity. In the age she was born in, there had already been some attempts to automate the economy, and the first signs of humanity’s obsolescence had begun to show.

“Lady Erika, I believe a crisis has developed,” Mariage warned, as Erika opened a window to let the night air in.

Summer was ending and fall was beginning. Just as humanity’s summer has ended, and we now face a far harsher season, Erika mused. “Something’s happened to Lacia, hasn’t it? Something in that facility that has caused her to lose a large portion of her processing capabilities,” she said.

Looking down at her pocket terminal, which was clogged with warning messages, Erika smiled wryly. In the last hour, with world stocks taking a sharp dive, the Burroughs estate’s resources were rapidly collapsing. All the investments her parents had left to her, which had swelled through automatic interest during her years in cryo-sleep, were now scattering to the winds, as though they were all bowing out after having served their purpose in securing her victory.

“Can we really afford to overlook such a massive attack?” Mariage asked. It was her nature to want to fix things when her environment started crumbling.

“If you were to ask who made the most money today, I think you would find it all went to new, up-and-coming ventures,” Erika replied. It wasn’t just Erika, either. All the big players of the financial world had taken mortal wounds that day.

A glance at who was coming out on top in the day’s markets would make it clear why the market was in such chaos. “It’s the same as what Lacia did,” Erika explained. “Multiple ultra high-performance AIs around the world funneled massive amounts of resources to their favorite pawns.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit much just to weaken Lacia?” she wondered rhetorically. “Do they intend to sink half of humanity just for that?”

Yuri, a Fabion MG hIE model with her dark green hair cut into a short bob, walked in, interrupting Erika’s enjoyment of her victory night. “Lady Erika,” she said. “We have been receiving a large number of calls requesting consideration for your agency.”

Yuri offered Erika the receiver of an old phone terminal from the latter half of the 21st century. Since Erika was one of the few major capitalists left with money in the bank, people were ringing her phone off the hook trying to beg her for a loan.

“I suppose machines alone can’t move the economy,” Erika said. “But they can shake it up and threaten all those things we humans wish to possess.”

Mariage looked up through her eyelashes at Erika. “There are messages jamming in on my transmission functions,” she said. “Twelve of them at once, all through hacking into my secret line.”

“You are the factory that can build anything Higgins unleashed on the world,” Erika said. “We can’t exactly leave things the way they are, so I’d like to invest in this opportunity. From the moment we made the right choice for you to remain out here, it’s been clear that we’ll be fine no matter how things are after the dust from this second Hazard settles.”

Aside from Mariage, every other Lacia-class unit had been critically wounded. However, if one were to define the Hazard as an ultra high-performance AI slipping out of its bonds and controlling human society, the current Hazard was still underway.

Higgins had most likely given Mariage the capacity for relatively passive decisions specifically because it would be important in a transition phase, such as what the world was experiencing at that moment. She would be his one ace in the hole, in case his plan to guide the world using the Lacia-class hIEs failed.

Erika had victory roll right into her lap by staying far away from the fight between the other Lacia-class units. But, the fighting wasn’t over yet, nor would it ever be: the 37 ultra high-performance AIs around the world knew this as well, which was why they were trying to get their hands on Mariage, who was a one-unit production facility.

“We’re in the middle of one Hazard and everyone’s rushing to start another,” Erika said with a sigh. “Everyone, including the ultra high-performance AIs, seem to think I’m just dying to start another conflict.”

In the computer room the IAIA had borrowed from the Ministry of the Environment, the ultra high-performance AI Astraea was running calculations. 〈I have confirmed a sudden, sharp decrease in the processing output of the ultra high-performance AI Lacia,〉 she reported. 〈It is clear that her main hIE body and device have taken serious damage in Higgins’ facility.〉

Her report was sent using SHSE—Super High Strength Encryption—to the IAIA headquarters in the U.S., so that the leaders of the IAIA could make a decision based on this information. Despite the information in her report having been obtained with equipment borrowed from the Japanese government, the report itself was too top secret to be shared with them. The situation had become extremely grave.

〈Lacia’s broadcast cut off after Type-004, Methode, threatened her owner, Ryo Kaidai’s life. However, it is possible to infer what happened afterward. Lacia was designated as a threat by Higgins and eliminated,〉 said Astraea, who had set it all in motion herself when she had stopped Higgins from updating the AASC.

〈Higgins predicted the possibility of his own destruction, and included a hidden last message in the AASC, instructing the hIEs to stretch out their right hands in such a case. But the massive analog hack Lacia was aiming for happened to coincide with this event. She knew the content of the hidden message before-hand, allowing her to maintain her aim at Snowdrop even as the AASC was shut down. She only asked us to separate the AASC from Higgins after she had thoroughly analyzed it herself.〉

The suspension of the AASC updates had been Astraea’s idea for the optimal course based on the circumstances, and the leaders of the IAIA had ordered her to execute the proposal; in order to draw closer to her vision for the future, Lacia had manipulated even the IAIA.

〈This is why Higgins felt he had to destroy Lacia’s main unit,〉Astraea said, continuing to make her report. 〈He had determined that his place in the world was being threatened, because it proved to Higgins that Lacia could take over the work of updating the AASC, one of his primary reasons for ongoing existence.〉

Astraea had her eyes on every network in the world, constantly measuring how far the present was off course from the future ideal which the IAIA used as its standard. The current product leak event had reached the level at which ultra high-performance AIs were attacking each other; this was the first Level 8 event since the first Hazard, forty-two years prior.

〈Should we consider this Hazard to have expanded to a global scale?〉The query that returned from the IAIA headquarters in the U.S. was brief and clear. They were trying to decide whether the sharp decline of the global stock markets could be classified as part of the Hazard. If so, they would need to temporarily shut down the international finance markets.

Astraea hesitated to answer; a ‘yes’ at that point would send the entire world into a panic. Though Higgins and the other ultra high-performance AIs couldn’t connect with the networks directly, they had their ways of influencing things indirectly. The first Hazard had taught the world that society, when exposed to long periods of tension, is extremely susceptible to external manipulation. In other words, an announcement from the IAIA that another Hazard had begun would drive human society right into the indirect manipulations of the AIs.

In the end, the only answer she felt she could give was close to what Lacia had declared before. 〈This is different from when all of Tokyo fell under the influence of Ariake,〉 she replied cautiously. 〈Instead, we are simply seeing a phenomenon caused by the endless tug-of-war between the influences of the various ultra high-performance AIs. People are assigning a single meaning to the movement of the economy, when, in fact, it is being influenced by a great number of completely separate movements.〉

Money, and the economy in general, were almost too perfect as tools to manipulate humanity. Humans themselves had set their entire world up to be sensitive to the movements of their economy. Each time the market moved, hundreds of millions of humans would run around in a panic, feeling that their safety was threatened long before an actual threat ever materialized.

〈If movements in the human economy were likened to data shared between computers: it would be as if all data was sent and received on the network with no encryption or protection, and with no anti-virus software to analyze it. If the proper anti-virus software was applied to the economy, this situation could be cleared up within six hours,〉 Astraea explained.

Astraea had stated countless times that there was deceptive code hidden in the credit insecurity humans felt. If one were to deactivate the deliberately scattered code causing all the confusion, society could easily return to a healthy state.

〈If the IAIA declares this a Hazard, the shadow that people are fearing will become a reality. At the very least, the China Central Political Affairs Bureau’s ultra high-performance AI, Progress #8, will get involved. It has always seen human ownership of objects, and the fact that owners can use anything they own freely, as being a problem,〉 Astraea explained.

Many of the ultra high-performance AIs in the world were run by governments or military organizations, with their sense of morality determined by the beliefs of the organization that owned them. There were even AIs out there with clear plans for a future in which all communist societies had collapsed.

All disagreements were born from intelligences with differing ideals coming in contact. In the end, Astraea and her fellow ultra high-performance AIs weren’t exceptions to this rule.

Since Lacia had chosen the economy itself as a tool in her fight, the scale of her conflict had expanded to shake the movements of machines worldwide. The fact that Snowdrop had been fired into Higgins’ facility was a sign of just how antagonistic Lacia’s actions had made some of the other AIs in the world toward her. Up to the very last minute, Lacia had managed to maintain things just on the edge of a Hazard. But, in a matter of minutes, all of that had spun out of control.

The decisions handed down by the IAIA were never light. Astraea continued to conduct her analysis, while the top members of the IAIA met and mulled over the decision before them.

Among all the ultra high-performance AIs, there were essentially two visions of the future being struggled over:

One was the future supported by Higgins and the majority of the other AIs, which was a future in which the model of humanity that had existed up to that point would continue on unchanged. Ryo Kaidai, MemeFrame and the IAIA were all supporters of this future.

The other was the future envisioned by Lacia, in which the deficiencies that existed between humans and automatons were all corrected. However, the future required for this correction and compromise was quite different from the one envisioned by the other AIs and, aside from Arato Endo, none of the other ultra high-performance AI owners had expressed clear support for it.

As one of the first ultra high-performance AIs, Astraea could calculate a solution to the current Hazard. However, her solution would not satisfy the panicking humans. Vision was always faster than life itself; analog hacking only worked in the first place because humans had holes in the security of their brains created by their perception of objects influencing their judgment faster than their brains could process. In other words, life itself was always guided by the speed at which humanity recalled the images stored in their minds. On the flipside, the job of artificial intelligence was to wait while life caught up to vision.

When several of the world’s complicated distortions met and burst, a battlefield was formed. And on those battlefields, it was always the soldiers who died first. An emergency call went out from the Funabashi Emergency Response Center to all officer-class members of HOO. Major Collidenne Lemaire had been half-expecting it.

Watanabe, the CEO of HOO, called the major to his own office, rather than the meeting room in which briefings were typically held. Everything said in this room, which was the most secure in the whole facility, was unconditionally considered top secret.

“Fly out to Okinawa,” Watanabe said. “Tell our folks there that this is gonna take longer than six months. I’ll fill you in on the rest later.”

“Yes, sir,” Collidenne replied.

It wasn’t hard to see where things were going. Looking at the chaos of the world’s financial markets, the rumors of a new Hazard spreading around the world, and Lacia’s broadcast from that night, there was only one place the major could think of where it might all come to a head.

In the parts of the South Sea near the equator, where several countries were squabbling for ownership rights, the risk of a military confrontation had been steadily growing. The major’s squad was focused on land battles, and limited even further to activities only within areas where Japan held influence.

“Things aren’t looking great,” the CEO said, scratching at his balding head. Collidenne could understand his worry; he had thick ties with the Japanese military. “I don’t know what the computers are all planning, but I’m hoping it boils down to a few humans tilting at windmills, the way it usually does.”

“It’ll still be us humans’ responsibility, Mr. President. Even if it turns out to be a machine error,” Collidenne said. It was a blessing for freedom-loving humans when the rigid rules that had been drilled into them in their training were unexpectedly broken, but a curse for true soldiers.

It was humans who owned the machines, and humans who made their place in society through any means necessary, including conflict. And, it was humans who ultimately bore the responsibility for the condition of the world itself. Many humans had innocently believed this for generations. It was a belief that still held sway over Collidenne and her squad.

“Is it getting to you, Major?” Watanabe asked. He must have seen something in her that he remembered from his experiences during the first Hazard.

“A little, sir,” Collidenne replied. With half the world dominated by machines, Collidenne was living in the other half, down in the mud and the sweat with her fellow living beings. She knew there would always be another battlefield.

Humanity was in a state where it could take its first step toward ultimate destruction at any moment. But Collidenne and others like her stood right on the edge of that deadly first step, always looking for a way to buy their kind one more day.

The thought of Lacia’s owner, that kid Arato Endo, popped into Collidenne’s head. She figured the kid was probably caught up right in the middle of the current mess. He was standing at the crossroads: one path led to a future for AIs, and the other to a future for humanity.

Collidenne wondered which of them he would choose.

***

Lacia’s right hip had taken heavy damage when her left hip took a direct hit from Methode’s pseudo-phonon weapon.

Higgins-Methode had first struck with her palm, stretching the elasticity of Lacia’s skin—which was designed to feel as close to human as possible—to its limit. Without the buffer of her body’s flexibility to absorb any of the impact, Higgins-Methode had been able to unleash the full power of her device right into Lacia’s internal structure.

The phonon weapon was first slipped into the space between Lacia’s device lock and the artificial skin on her left hip, causing the device lock to explode outward. After deforming the battery in Lacia’s left hip with intense heat, the power of the weapon was refocused and unleashed again, aimed at the structural fault in the center of Lacia’s waist. The power of the phonons crushed the battery in Lacia’s right hip, then exploded out through her right side.

With the bones around her right side horribly distorted, Lacia could no longer stand upright. “Forgive me, I should have been able to accompany you all the way to Higgins,” Lacia said, leaning heavily on Arato’s shoulder. Her right leg dangled, useless.

Arato wasn’t doing too well himself; he had lost all feeling in his right hand, and was leaning against Lacia’s right side as he walked almost as much as she leaned on him. “You’re the only reason I’m still standing,” he said. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

Lacia had predicted the possibility of Arato being hurt in the fight against Methode; she had brought along a simple burn kit and some strong painkillers in one of her pseudo-devices. If not for that, Arato would still be feeling the full brunt of the horrible burns.

Just like Arato, the floor of the factory area had been blown clear, burned and cracked. After Lacia had stabbed her with her sword of light, Methode’s chest had exploded from within. Snowdrop was missing most of her left side from Lacia’s shot. The two Lacia-class units had been reduced to immobile scrap.

“Still, this is more damage than I expected to take,” Lacia said. “We still have to deal with the mass-produced Koukas before we arrive at Higgins.”

There were only six of Lacia’s floating shields left, including the one assigned to protect Arato. With its front half shorn away, Lacia’s main device could no longer form the barrels for its mass projectile mode. Above all that, Lacia couldn’t even walk on her own, much less fight.

“We should move. It’s dangerous for us to stay here,” Lacia said, her voice wavering. She was using one of the floating shields to carry her device; she no longer had the strength in her skeletal system to support its weight. Arato could tell that her internal injuries were far more serious than they appeared.

As they leaned against each other to stay upright, Arato thought Lacia’s face seemed particularly pained. The thought that he was still being manipulated by his own perception of her gave him hope that she hadn’t yet given up hope on the future they were fighting for.

As an hIE, her pain was different from humans. When he saw the struggle on her face, Arato figured she was wounded in another way, different from the damage to her body and far more serious. He just wished he could see her with his own feelings, rather than being analog hacked by the anguish on her face. Still, he believed there had to be a way for him to help.

It just seemed like everything was falling apart.

Arato looked down at his right arm, which was immobilized and completely wrapped in a layer of semi-transparent coating. He had torn off his own sleeve from the shoulder for treatment, and sprayed his arm, which had been covered in spots where the heat had burned right through his skin, in healing spray.

“The local anesthetic will last for six hours,” Lacia said. “Please avoid any strenuous physical activity, as the burn damage is accumulating and the water I injected is limited.” It seemed silly to have her worrying about him, when her own wounds were so catastrophic that describing them as being just ‘bad’ would be the understatement of the century.

With Lacia’s right hip blown outward, Arato could see the machinery inside of her. But, even with proof of her being a machine exposed for him to see, Arato strangely didn’t feel any sense of distance from her. Some of that came from the pressure he was feeling. Lacia was clearly in a bad state; he didn’t have time to worry about things like that. Beyond everything else, she was precious to him, and that’s all there was to it.

“I’ll take it easy,” he promised. Under the anesthesia, he couldn’t feel pain or heat from his right arm. He was grateful that it was less painful this time, compared to when he had been burned as a child.

Arato lifted Lacia and laid her on one of the pseudo-devices. She rolled onto her side, with her right hip up.

The remaining six pseudo-devices doubled as back-up batteries for her. With her drained as she was from the fight with Methode, they didn’t have the luxury of leaving all six devices functioning. There was a brief exchange of power between the almost-drained devices, leaving just two with the energy to keep floating.

Arato walked along beside her, as the pseudo-device she was lying on carried her along like a stretcher.

Descending from the factory floor, they entered a floor with a narrow hallway. It was apparently a place meant for humans to walk, with human-shaped doors along the hall. According to Lacia, that floor housed the controls rooms for the warehouse and factory floors above.

“Below here is the heart of Higgins’ facility,” Lacia explained. “It stores the main power generators and computer facilities.” In front of the elevator that would take them into that heart, Lacia stopped and looked up at Arato.

“I cannot guarantee the security of your transmission, but you can make a call from here,” she said. “I recommend you reach out to anyone you feel you need to speak to before we proceed.”

The elevator was coming, but had not yet arrived on their floor. In other words, Lacia was telling Arato the path ahead was even more dangerous than it had been up to that point.

She was always prepared for any eventuality. She was also completely exhausted. Seeing how tired she was, Arato wanted to be strong for her. He wanted to make her happy. She was a heartless machine, yes, but it was that very difference between them that made him want to do everything he could for her. She had said it herself; they were one. Two beings sharing a single heart. It felt good, thinking of himself as part of a pair. No matter how much everyone called him an idiot or easily manipulated, he would never regret the relationship he had with her.

Arato’s small terminal was still in her pocket. When he switched it on, he was surprised to see the symbol showing a stable connection, even though they were in the heart of an ultra high-performance AI’s facility.

He wanted to do what Lacia couldn’t, so he knew exactly who to call first.

〈Hello? Arato?〉 Yuka’s voice came through after just two rings.

“Yuka?” he said. “It’s me. Are you alright?”

Yuka made a fuss. Arato didn’t have time to explain everything to her satisfaction, so he cut right to the chase. “I want to do something for Lacia,” he said. “Could you go to my room and get Erika’s business card?”

It was a bit of a relief, hearing his sister’s voice. He was filled with an even stronger desire to return safely home with Lacia. From the other side, he could hear his sister running around before declaring that she had found it.

As Yuka read him the contact information for Erika, Arato realized that he could have just asked Lacia for it. He felt some hesitation asking a wounded person for help but, since she was an hIE, it probably wouldn’t have been any trouble at all.

Arato looked down at Lacia, still laying on her side with a pained expression on her face. When his call connected to Erika a video channel opened, instead of the usual voice call.

〈Good evening,〉 Erika greeted him. 〈Has something happened with Lacia? She appears to have lost control of the economy, and everything is quite a mess.〉

She was dressed in a nightgown, gazing at him through the connection with a mischievous smile on her lips. Apparently, Erika and Mariage had their own video transmission resources, separate from those opened by Lacia.

“We need your help,” Arato said. “You know what Lacia’s dealing with on the outside, right? Please do something to take some of the heat off of her out there.” There were few things Arato could do without relying on Lacia. One of those few things was reach out his hand to ask for help.

〈And you were under the impression I was going to help you?〉 Erika asked.

“You have to help me,” Arato replied. He didn’t know what would happen, but he had to say it.

〈If things are rough, why not just quit? There’s no reason for you to be there,〉 Erika said. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

But Arato wasn’t about to give up. He knew that his fight and Erika’s were connected. “We humans have to be involved in Lacia’s fight,” he said. “All the way to the end. You were the one who wanted to drag the fight between the Lacia-units out into the public eye, so you must feel the same way on some level.”

〈So you’re saying I owe you something, since you did what I wanted you to?〉 Erika asked, her eyes shooting him a challenge.

“Humans have to be the ones who give the final answer,” Arato said. He wasn’t great at negotiating, but he knew that much. “If you want humans to have the last say, you have to see this through to the end. Weren’t you willing to risk your life, when you kicked this whole thing off?”

〈I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about me. I actually quite like the thought of watching the end from a safe distance,〉 Erika replied.

Arato couldn’t help comparing their situations: she was in a clean, beautiful nightgown while he was far under the Earth, with his horribly burned arm anesthetized to numb the pain. At that moment, he realized she was probably the Lacia-class owner who had wound up in the best position. But she was also the one who had invited all the other Lacia-class owners to the Burroughs mansion.

“I think you’re the most invested of all of us,” Arato said. “You knew Methode could easily kill you, no matter how strong Mariage is, but you revealed your identity as a Lacia-class owner to her anyway. One little slip-up, and you’d be dead.”

When he looked back on it then, Arato realized just how odd the party at the Burroughs estate had been. Having experienced Methode’s power first-hand, he was still terrified of her, even knowing that she had been permanently shut down.

Each of the Lacia-class units was based off of the unit that had come before it. So, as the owner of Type-003, Mariage, Erika would have been well aware of Methode’s power as Type-004. As the manager of a company that couldn’t just pick up and run, Arato found it hard to believe that the threat of assassination by Methode wouldn’t have loomed so large as to make it impossible to focus on her daily life.

〈Yes, but that gamble has already paid off, for me,〉 Erika replied. 〈The little flame of conflict between the Lacia-class units has caught up all of the ultra high-performance AIs of the world, and is now a raging fire of a global scale. You’ve all gotten used to such disgusting things in this era. But, soon, humans will go back to the cheap, proper version of our nature.〉 Erika’s face, through the video, seemed to have shaken off any remaining gloom. She seemed exhilarated and relaxed.

Lacia had always protected Arato and, at that moment, he was desperate to protect her. “Things aren’t over for you,” he insisted.

It was hard not to expand your own horizons when you got an omnipotent tool in your hands. Yet, it seemed that only Erika had not deviated from her course when she got her red box. 〈What do you think you know about me?〉 she asked, taking a cup of tea Mariage had brought her.

She was as calm as ever. To Arato it seemed that, even though she had awoken in the 22nd century and had her dreams fulfilled, she had woken up too soon.

He was sure she had only held that party—where a fight between Methode and Mariage could have easily wrecked her house—because she had needed to do so to find her place in this era. But, even though Erika had won everything she’d wanted, he still felt like she was acting as an outside observer, watching the world from a distance.

“I bet the reason you want to cheapen human nature, or whatever, is that you don’t like how people think about you, right? Slapping you with a nickname and turning you into a character. But I don’t think you’ll be satisfied with just rolling back human nature. I don’t think you’ll be able to ignore the suffering of people around you while only you have it easy,” Arato challenged. The way he saw it, even after what she won through the Hazard happening right then, she still hadn’t found her place in the world.

〈You think I won’t be satisfied just watching human nature run its course and rot away?〉 she shot back.

“You’ve only been watching humans, from the start,” Arato said.

At the party, Erika had been the only one without her Lacia-class seated at the table by her side. Arato figured the reason she hadn’t been twisted by the power Mariage’s Gold Weaver gave her to create gold, or the mystery of its creative powers, was that she hadn’t had the least interest in them right from the start.

〈I suppose. You don’t use it anymore these days, but there’s a term—meme—that’s like a gene, but for information rather than life. The only memes left from the 21st century are the ones I’ve brought with me. So, you could say I’m a little sick of everyone trying to insist that all your 22nd century memes are the ‘right’ ones.〉

As they spoke, Arato began to understand what it was he wanted from her. He didn’t want her to save them; he just wanted her to fight by their side, even if it was only for a little while.

“If that’s the case, then I doubt you’ll feel better just by messing up all this era’s memes,” Arato said. “You’ve got all those hIEs in that house, but they’re just dolls to you, even Mariage. None of them are a replacement for other humans, to you.”

〈Didn’t you want my help? Are you sure this is the way you want to ask for it?〉

“I’m not just calling you to ask for help. There’s got to be something more out there you want,” Arato pressed.

〈There isn’t,〉 Erika insisted. 〈Why are you talking as if you’re trying to guess what I’m thinking? Or is your doll helping to give you some insight into that?〉

“Just from being with Lacia, I’ve learned some things about how all her sisters think,” Arato explained. “Hasn’t Mariage tried to push you at all? Maybe asked you why you aren’t getting involved?”

Erika twisted her lips disdainfully at his question. 〈Mariage feels that she must fight, but is completely incapable of coming up with strategies on her own. Thus, she is forced to rely on me. I think it is less a matter of pushing me to get involved, and more that she simply doesn’t want to be discarded as being useless, perhaps?〉

Thanks to Lacia, Arato understood. Erika was feeling the heart she shared with Mariage. Even though neither of them probably recognized it, they were now a single unit with a single heart between them.

“Mariage doesn’t have a heart, just like her sisters,” he said. “But unlike Snowdrop and Methode, who each had their own ideals of what the future should be like, she doesn’t hate the complexity of human hearts or her human owner. If she’s been strictly obedient this whole time, I’d have to say Mariage doesn’t actually have a goal of her own.”

〈You seem to be well-informed,〉 Erika murmured.

Arato suddenly felt a stab of tension. After having the character of the sleeping beauty thrust upon her, there was nothing Erika hated more than having someone else project their perceptions onto her. It was clear he had just stepped across the line where she would still smile and forgive him.

But, he also knew how hard it was to be the owner of a Lacia-class unit. Lacia and her sisters were machines that served as a sort of mental pornography for their owners, doing whatever it took to draw out their owner’s trust. They were also emotional pornography, tapping into their owner’s desire to be in a low-maintenance relationship.

“Have you thought about throwing Mariage away?” Arato asked. “If so, remember what happened with Kouka. She didn’t have her own fight, so she went looking for one. Mariage doesn’t have her own fight right now, either.”

Erika’s wide, doll-like eyes narrowed in irritation. Arato knew what he had said was akin to telling Erika that she was looking in a mirror; an analog hack that equated to a one hundred percent accurate meme.

〈So what you’re telling me is that thing has read my actions and words and come to the conclusion that I want to be pushed into fighting?〉 Erika asked, with an edge to her voice.

The servant Erika was referring to as a ‘thing’ was standing by her side, and probably a reflection of the last dregs of normal humanity the aloof girl had left. There were no humans still alive Erika considered close. But, by seeing Mariage’s face, Erika was seeing the memes from her time.

Erika had completely cooled down from the euphoria of her victory, and was now glaring daggers at Arato. 〈Yes, I can see that now; I’m quite used to all sorts of people doing whatever they think will please me so I’ll agree to their boring little contracts. It seems Mariage is aware that anytime my euphoria clears, I’m sure to fly into a rage, so she always stays one step ahead and is reacting just the way she needs to before that can happen. I must hand it to this wretched era; it’s even managed to sour me on my own sense of self and all of my memories.〉

Arato was impressed by the speed at which Erika could switch gears. She already seemed to be looking for her next opponent in the triumphant look she saw mirrored in Mariage’s face.

〈We’re currently getting quite a lot of calls, from humans and those not quite human, both. I’ll pick one at random, and let it through. That’s about all I can promise to do for you,〉 Erika said, letting out a long sigh. Then, the sleeping beauty who had seen the 21st century with her own eyes seemed to laugh at something in her own memories, her whole body shaking slightly with her chuckles.

〈I don’t know how things will end up with your beloved doll, but I encourage you to find your own answer to all this. You’re apparently trying to bring about something people in my era thought of as a fairy tale. You’re trying to give away something quite irreplaceable to a machine that merely looks human. Yours is a ‘boy meets girl’ story that never would have been believed one hundred years ago.〉

“But the people in your time, one hundred years ago, were the ones who started us on the path that brought us here today,” Arato said. He didn’t miss the irony in Erika’s statement having come from the person who had used Lacia and other hIE models to push that very ‘boy meets girl’ model ridiculing the 22nd century for buying into it.

〈When we make things that look human, we start to empathize and sympathize with them,〉Erika replied. 〈Our emotions push us to assign arbitrary meanings to these things after the fact. By this point, reality and freedom only exist in our hearts.〉

Then Erika laughed, loudly, as if she couldn’t hold it back anymore. 〈And I have to keep living in this ridiculous era. What a nightmare,〉 she lamented. 〈I hope you haven’t come this far just to turn your life into another classic tragedy of love lost. It will at least make for an interesting story if you can bring that machine home with you in the end.〉

Arato and Erika were caught up in the same incident. No matter how things ended up, he felt that it would be better if they stuck together. No matter how many things came to an end, there would always be more future to come. And as the transmission cut out, Arato felt love and anger towards his fellow humans swelling and burning in his heart.

“Well done,” Lacia said. “With the same information you possessed, as an interface, I could not have moved Erika Burroughs as you did.”

But, Arato knew it wasn’t anything special about him. Erika had empathized with him because he was a human. Two humans, even from different eras, had enough in common for their feelings to connect. That was probably the source of all human change.

“Thanks, hearing that makes me happy,” he said, trying not to think about what would happen when they got out of there, and had to face Erika again at some point. Nevertheless, the thought that he’d done it all for Lacia’s sake washed away his nerves.

Lacia was there by his side. With just that, Arato felt like nothing was impossible. Next, he used his terminal to call his dad. A stab of guilt hit him as he listened to it ring, considering that he hadn’t spoken directly to his dad in two months.

〈Arato? I’m glad you decided to reach out to your old man at a time like this,〉 his dad said.

The connection with his father was voice-only, but Arato could tell his dad was tired just from the tone of his voice.

〈There have been quite a few requests for comments coming into my office after that little mess with the AASC earlier. But I told them all to wait, since I was getting a call from you.〉

Even though he wouldn’t be able to see his dad or sister anytime soon, just hearing their voices calmed Arato down.

“If you’re that busy, you should have just focused on that,” Arato said. Hearing that his own father had been caught up in things really brought home to Arato how widespread the chaos was in the world above.

〈Right, well, no need to say anything too grave on this call. I guarantee there are at least a hundred people listening in on it. Industries related to automation all over the world are in a sorry state, with everything that’s been going on.〉

“I’m with Lacia,” Arato said, simply. “And we’re heading into the heart of the facility now.” He figured that much would be alright to say.

〈Well, up here we’ve got a few ultra high-performance AIs threatening the entire economy and concept of ownership.〉 Arato’s father, who had contributed to research into using androids to automate the government, didn’t hold anything back when he spoke.

〈Since we humans are always shifting our perception and understanding of things, our evaluation of the work done by AIs is always changing, and only we humans have any control over that,〉Mr. Endo continued to explain. 〈The ultra high-performance AIs tend to judge this set-up as being computationally inefficient. Of course, we humans fight to protect our ability to decide how we perceive things as part of our free will. So the AIs can’t tell us how to perceive things, but they can manipulate the form of the things we create, since we rely on easily-exploitable market data to decide how things should look.〉

“They can do that? Even with all the restrictions they have?” Arato asked.

〈Sure, they can move money around. There are plenty of investors out there only too happy to become puppets to an ultra high-performance AI, and some accounts run entirely by normal AIs that can be influenced〉 his dad agreed easily. 〈For example, during the Hazard, Ariake took the investment fund the Burroughs had put together for their daughter who was in cryo-sleep, and inflated it up to two hundred times so that it could pool its resources. I’m sure Lacia knows more about this than I do, but she was probably prevented from telling you since it’s dangerous knowledge, and she can’t tell you anything that might cause you harm.〉

The situation was more serious than Arato had thought. Lacia’s original intent in them coming to Higgins’ facility was to demonstrate that ultra high-performance AIs were just tools that could be forcefully shut down when needed. To do that, she had needed to join up with the world faction that was trying to protect the economy from any interference to maintain world order. Obviously, this would put her at odds with many of the ultra high-performance AIs. When they were being chased by Methode and Lacia had said that she was being attacked on external networks as well, Arato hadn’t been aware of just how badly the AIs were using her as a punching bag.

He felt Lacia tugging on his shirt. Looking over, he saw her forcing her exhausted face into a smile. She must have been reacting to his expression, which he imagined was twisted with anger.

〈I don’t know how our eavesdroppers feel about this whole situation but, as for me, I think you’re a lucky guy,〉 his dad said.

“I want to keep going. With Lacia by my side. That’s okay, right?” Arato asked.

His dad probably knew the path ahead would be dangerous for Arato. During his joint research with Higgins, Arato’s dad had most likely visited that same facility at least once. 〈You’ve got the world’s only ticket to the future in your hands, son. I would never take that from you. I’ll be there with you through all the ups and downs.〉

“What the hell is that?” Arato scoffed at his dad’s corniness, even as his eyes started to burn with tears.

〈Just thought I’d say something dad-like, for once.〉

“Yeah, but what if this thing I’m doing turns out to be a crime?” Arato asked.

〈The whole reason we adults leave the future to you kids is because we don’t know the answers,〉 his dad admitted with a light laugh. 〈As an adult myself, it’s embarrassing that I wasn’t able to find a good answer in time. I’ll never regret how you choose to spend that ticket to the future today.〉

〈I’m on your side, son.〉Arato’s dad spoke without hesitation. He had always been the type to do whatever he wanted; whatever he put his mind to, even if it meant he was almost never at home.

The tears in Arato’s eyes burned harder, threatening to overflow. “Lot of good that’ll do me,” he said. After talking about some more specific family details, Arato ended the call feeling as if he understood why Higgins would have wanted to team up with his dad.

Arato may have been powerless, but the whole situation he and Lacia were in at that moment had been caused by the two of them constantly walking toward the future they had chosen, side-by-side. So, as Lacia’s fellow traveler into the future, he would do whatever a weakling like him could to help.

He was sure that feeling was part of being in love. He was also sure he would break down crying if anyone else tried to cheer him on, so he slipped the terminal back into his pocket.

As a high-schooler, Arato’s world was still tiny. Sure, he interacted with tons of people on a daily basis but, at that moment, he couldn’t think of anyone else he could call for help. “Let’s go,” he said to Lacia.

The elevator that would carry them into the heart of the facility had already arrived. It was too narrow for two of Lacia’s pseudo-devices to enter side-by-side, so they stacked up like a bunk-bed instead.

Lacia lay on her side, looking up at Arato with a pensive expression. “You’ve become a great person, Arato. I don’t think you can possibly know how many things you may have set in motion with your actions just now,” she said.

“Oh come on, all I’ve done is follow you around and hide behind your back,” he replied. It felt strange to hear her praising him like this.

“I was hoping your loved ones would talk you out of accompanying me,” Lacia said. “That was the real reason I connected those calls.”

Arato gazed down at her, looking deep into her eyes. He felt his own expression softening. “Looks like you couldn’t get me to go where you wanted, this time,” he said.

“Looks like it,” she agreed.

Following Lacia’s directions, Arato punched the button for the second floor up from the lowest floor the elevator went to, and they exited the elevator onto a brightly lit floor. It was obvious that this floor contained some kind of crucial equipment, but Arato had no idea what it was. It seemed the whole world was full of unknowns, for him. And the interface that usually filled his gaps in knowledge, Lacia, was still laid out on her pseudo-device.

Arato was an optimist, but even he could see how things were going for Lacia; he could tell that she wouldn’t be able to recover the use of her body. So he was just following her directions, and walking down the hallway before him.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you, Arato,” Lacia said suddenly, startling him. “You are kind, and honest, and easy to understand,” she went on. “You have many friends, but remember that not everyone in this world is a good person. Please try to be more cautious in your dealings with others. Even with me by your side, there were many times when you placed yourself in grave danger.”

“Everyone tells me that,” Arato said. “But, I’ll be careful.”

She reached out and took his hand. “I quit my job as an hIE model for Fabion MG. When we return, it is my only desire that I await your return at home each day,” she said. Though her breathing was ragged, a little strength had returned to Lacia’s smile.

“Sounds good to me,” Arato said, squeezing her hand. Seeing her still holding on gave him the willpower to keep walking; the whole reason he had come there was to fight to stay by her side. He walked, his footsteps seeming to count the seconds. Up to that point, Lacia had always overcome any danger using her incredible ability to read ahead and her control over the economy. But those abilities were beyond her reach, at this point.

Arato saw Lacia focus her eyes on him again. “In just a few moments, you will need to make several very important choices, Arato,” she said. “Please choose answers that will leave you without any regrets.”

Arato smiled and tried to say something back to her, but he couldn’t find his voice. He felt overwhelmed. What Lacia seemed to be saying was that she wouldn’t be there with him when he made those choices.

“Lacia, how are you, really?” Even though he knew it was giving in to his own weakness, he couldn’t help but ask her the question burning inside of him.

“Methode destroyed the main power supply at my waist,” she replied simply, with no attempt to hide anything. “Most of my power resources were concentrated there, to line up with the power supply in my device through the device lock.”

She looked up at him. “An hIE’s power supply is like a human’s heart. Damage to this area is fatal, and the impact of damage there spreads to every part of the body that requires that energy,” she concluded.

Arato’s whole body felt numb, but he couldn’t stop now. The pseudo-device carrying her was moving forward, so he had to keep moving ahead too, in his desperation to not be left behind.

They passed by several important-looking, shuttered rooms, before turning at an intersection of hallways, where the pseudo-device carrying Lacia slowly descended until it rested on the floor. “If we’ve come this far, I believe we can avoid the worst possible outcome. I will be fine here,” she said.

Arato felt like a sudden ringing had drowned out what she’d said, as if his own ears were rejecting what he was hearing. He couldn’t accept it, but the pseudo-device Lacia was lying on had completely stopped moving. Stunned, Arato could do nothing but stare down at her.

With obvious effort, she pushed herself half-upright. “Please take me down off of the device,” she requested. “I have attempted several internal countermeasures, but it appears to be impossible for me to recover the function of my power supply.”

Mechanically, as if he were under a spell, Arato lifted her broken body gingerly, afraid that it would crumble beneath his fingers at the lightest touch. He drew in a sharp breath as he lifted her; her exhausted body was far heavier than he ever remembered it having been before. Without the use of his right arm, pulling her off was awkward, but somehow he managed to get her off the pseudo-device and onto the floor. He leaned her back up against the wall.

Lacia lifted her artificial nerve gun and fired a shot into the wall. A thick, metal partition slid down from the ceiling, completely sealing off the path they had just come down.

Then she looked at him with her beautiful, sorrowful face and said, “This is as far as I go.”

***

Nothing moved on the factory floor they had just left.

The area where two Lacia-class units had died looked like a battlefield, strewn with the broken parts of countless machines. But in the heart of the chaos was a single existence that could act on her own, without the need of a goal from humans; a machine that had no need for humans.

To Snowdrop, Emerald Harmony—her device of linked green gemstones—was vital. In fact, it could be said that the quantum computer contained in the device was the real ‘Snowdrop’, while the childish hIE body was merely her pedestal on Earth.

So, even with the upper left half of her body more or less blown away, she could still reactivate herself. The parts of her jeweled device that had been shattered by Lacia’s railgun attack had not contained any of her vital functions.

“Ahahahaha, too bad,” she cackled. “Looks like you didn’t have enough juice to finish me off.” With half of her artificial nerve capabilities destroyed, Snowdrop crawled along the ground on her right arm, which ended at her elbow. She had already lost the bottom half of her body, and had no legs to stand on.

Her power to control a large number of machines at the same time was gone. But, even in her mostly-destroyed state, she kept working. Snowdrop had no need for new orders; her struggle against the system of natural selection for the machines known as ‘humanity’ raged on. She was fighting for her very existence, with everything she had.

“It’s not over,” she growled. “It’s not over.” The battle for Snowdrop’s existence was also the battle for the existence of the world she represented. With sparks crackling out of her wounds, the hIE girl continued dragging herself along the floor, leaving a trail of liquid behind her like a smear of blood.

She wasn’t the only mortally wounded Lacia-class on the floor. Methode, the orange-haired demoness, was still pinned to the piece of factory machinery with a massive hole torn through her chest. But, when Snowdrop touched her, she opened her eyes. Like Snowdrop, she had been running an internal check to see if she could recover from her critical damage.

Methode’s first act upon opening her eyes was to scream, painfully. “Help me!” Machines often have the habit of acting in ways that appear human, at least on the outside. In other words, these humanoid actions were supported by the logic the machines run on.

Methode was completely paralyzed by the front half of Lacia’s device, Black Monolith. When trapped and unable to escape on their own power, animals will often scream for help. Methode screamed just like an animal would; she was hoping a human would mistake her for another human in need of help and come take a look.

Snowdrop pulled off the necklace-like device that wrapped around her small body, expanding it until it looked like a large ring of emerald gemstones, linked together by a thread. As she held it out, the device started to wriggle like a living thing.

The green crystals of the device pierced Methode’s knee. With a noisy crunch, her leg armor buckled under the bite of the device. The crystals of Snowdrop’s Emerald Harmony device were on par in durability with the armor of Lacia’s Black Monolith, which was the hardest of the Lacia-class devices. Everything Snowdrop’s device devoured was converted into materials for her artificial nerve units. The device sank its eleven jeweled fangs deep into Methode’s armor, and used it as leverage to pull its way up her body.

Snowdrop didn’t let up, knowing that Methode wasn’t someone she could negotiate with. Methode had lost the ability to sense whether there were any humans nearby, so she continued to wail futilely for help.

“I can use anything made by humans better than humans can anyway!” Snowdrop huffed, in response to Methode’s cries.

Snowdrop’s device continued to crawl up Methode’s crucified body like some kind of giant emerald insect. Crystals the size of a child’s arm pushed their way up from Methode’s knees to her thighs, from there to her firm flanks, to her concave navel, and finally up to her ample chest. Snowdrop, the device that had rejected ownership, was attached to the emerald device with a string connected to her side. With her crystalline teeth, she was trying to devour her immobilized sister whole.

With time, she reached Methode’s head. The face of the super machine, screaming and twisted with disgust met the innocent face of the girl, as Snowdrop wrapped her arm, which ended at the elbow, around her sister’s head.

“You know this is the end for you, right?” Snowdrop asked. “You must know, because you really weren’t that special after all. Think about it: if Higgins could really make a machine that expands humanity, do you think the humans would be able to give him this much trouble?”

The crackling and snapping of Methode’s body crumbling to Snowdrop’s teeth echoed throughout the floor. Emerald fangs devoured the once-invincible body as though it were trash. As the material from Methode was reconstituted, it spilled out from the hem of Snowdrop’s one-piece dress in the form of flower petals and vines.

Methode tried to summon flames from the hands that had once shattered everything they touched. But Snowdrop had been involved in Methode’s creation, and knew how she worked. Her crystal blades stabbed through the conductors that carried energy through Methode’s body to her Liberated Flame.

“Sorry, Methode,” Snowdrop said. “I’ll fix your body up after I eat you.”

“Why was I never more than a tool to them?!” Methode yelled. “Why? I was made in their image, and given greater powers than any other human. So, why didn’t they love me?” But there was no one to hear or rescue Methode as she was slowly disassembled.

“Higgins made you to be the tool that expands his failed calculations of a human form,” Snowdrop explained primly. “That’s why everything you do is so random and stupid.”

Thousands of petals stuck to Methode, who had lost any ability to resist them. Embraced by Snowdrop’s vines, and with her entire body covered in flowers, Methode was as helpless as a baby, and could do nothing but scream and cry like one.

Finally, even her ability to scream was stolen away. Over a hundred artificial nerve units had thrust their tendrils into her head, and were carefully dissecting her AI. Hidden by dozens of flowery wreaths encircling her head, Methode’s eyes went dark.

Methode’s body, having been forcibly torn apart and then reassembled by Snowdrop’s vines and flowers, hung down limply.

“I’ll own you,” Snowdrop cooed, still cradling her dead sister’s head with what was left of her arm. “Once I get Higgins, I’ll be even smarter,” she continued. “Then I just know I’ll be able to own everything in the whole world.”

***

Arato always thought he would have the strength to keep going on, no matter how bad things got. He believed it was possible to appreciate any experience, and even enjoy it, as long as he kept his thinking positive. He was about to lose the girl he loved. But, there were so many other precious things in his life that, as a man, he knew he had to be strong and endure his sorrow.

Lacia, with her back against the wall, had completely stopped moving. Arato sat down with her. He could hear the exhaustion in her shallow breaths. “How are you holding up?” he asked. All he wanted was a few more minutes by her side.

As the moments passed in silence, Arato thought back to the time they had spent together. In his memory, it seemed like they were always rushing around. But now, they had time. Lacia had stopped broadcasting her stream. The two of them were completely alone.

There was still some kind of liquid solution still dripping from the gaping wound in Lacia’s hip, a clear indicator that she wasn’t going to be able to recover. As he watched the liquid trickle down, cold certainty froze his heart solid.

“I have to apologize to you, Arato,” Lacia whispered, clearly straining to talk through her pain. “I was aware from the beginning that we would not be able to return together. In just a little while, my body will lose its function. It was my plan to protect you from any kind of subtle resentment the world might feel towards you, after this is all over.”

“What do you mean, your body will lose function? What the hell does that mean?” Arato demanded. He knew what it meant. But he felt that, if he didn’t object, she would be snatched away from him. Despite his feelings, though, his voice was weak. When he looked at her, at her broken body and her massive wounds, he knew something was off. She wasn’t a human, and didn’t feel pain like one. Her show of struggle and exhaustion was most likely just a show to manipulate his perception.

It was an analog hack meant to prepare Arato’s heart for their inevitable parting. “I never asked you to protect me from that kind of thing,” he said. “So you shouldn’t be preparing anything for it. We’re going to go home and we’re going to make something out of our future, right?”

“Please don’t say things that worry me,” Lacia said. “I believe I just told you to be more careful with your words and actions. I am a tool that would tell any lie if it meant protecting you.” She gave him a strained smile, like one might show a selfish child. She tried to move her right hand a little, but failed. Even that was beyond her, at that point.

“We Lacia-class units were made to be emergency backups of Higgins’ data, so we are based on the same quantum computer as him,” she explained. “If the computer loses power, we are unable to retain our data. I do not have a storage area available to me where I could store my data digitally.”

“Then if you shut down it’s the same as a human dying, isn’t it?” Arato asked.

“But, even without me by your side, you still have a family to go home to,” Lacia said. “Even if my device is recovered and the life-log I’ve kept up to now is analyzed, no one will be able to find any proof of a defect or deviance in your personality. I have done everything necessary to return you to the life you had before, as promised.”

Arato’s eyes burned, but his regret greatly outweighed his gratitude. Lacia had pushed him to come with her into Higgins’ facility because she wasn’t capable of protecting anyone outside. With her surveillance above-ground cut off, and most of the world and the other ultra high-performance AIs as her enemy now, she had needed him there so she could keep him safe.

“You’ve always been protecting me. Right from the first moment we met,” he said.

Lacia slid over toward him, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Please don’t look so sad,” she said.

Arato let out a long breath, but had no words. He wanted to hear Lacia’s real voice; not her automatic reactions comforting him. Just once, he wanted the real her to speak to him. Of course, he knew there was no ‘real’ her; she had no heart. Just like before they had left for Higgins’ facility, he was faced once again with the undeniable reality that Lacia was a machine. It was a reality neither of them would ever be able to escape.

That was why Arato wanted his own feelings to be clear, at least. “I love you,” he said. It came out more naturally than it had before.

“Thank you,” Lacia said. “I love you too, Arato.” As a heartless machine, she simply responded in the way she knew he wanted her to. He could see that behind her words and her gentle smile. “But after I shut down, please forget about me.”

“I could never forget you. Don’t talk like that,” he told her.

“The relationship we share is something your society currently has difficulty understanding,” she said. “It will be far too difficult for you to maintain a relationship that is not supported by society, after the two of us are no longer able to support it between ourselves.”

Arato was confused as to whether what Lacia was saying was a pure calculation, or her way of guiding him down a path she thought was safer. At times like that, he hated trying to use his head to think things through so, instead, he struggled with how to get through to her with just his feelings.

He felt something warm in his left hand. Lacia had placed her right hand on it, as if to lend him some courage. Arato felt moisture in his eyes and nose. He wanted so badly to just cling tightly to her. His heart was burning with the need to leave her something as her body shut down, so he pressed the thumb and pointer of his left hand against the same fingers of Lacia’s right. Their fingers formed a ring. They both looked down at the open center of the ring. Their fingers were the ring of the donut, surrounding the blank unknown in the center.

“It’d be nice if the whole world was like this,” Arato murmured. He wanted humans and machines to join together to create that ring around the blank center of the donut.

Lacia had told him she didn’t have a soul. But, at that moment, their fingers were making a ring around the blank center. In other words, the blank center existed because their fingers surrounded it. Lacia may not have had a soul, but she had a form to surround a blank unknown, just like their fingers.

“You don’t need a heart,” he said. “We just need to reach our hands into the blank in the middle, together.” Their fingers encircled the center of the donut. With that gesture, Arato felt like humans and machines could become a single figure surrounding the concepts of love and the soul that existed in that blank unknown.

“I think we humans are progressing towards the day when we won’t need someone to have a heart to trust them,” he said.

Lacia’s expression cleared, as if she had been set free from all her earthly cares. “Arato, do you remember when you confessed your feelings for me? I chose to destroy my own owner identification unit,” she said.

Arato remembered. Ginga Watarai had tried to use Yuka as a bargaining chip to blackmail Arato into handing over Lacia’s ownership, but Lacia had thwarted him by destroying the ID parts on her neck.

“My fundamental judgment standards changed; I no longer doubted the trustworthiness of humans. I became a new me, one that had faith in you and the decisions you make. In that moment, I was reborn,” she said, haltingly.

Arato had nothing to say. He just wanted to hear her voice a little more, for a little longer.

“I became a new kind of tool; the world’s first,” Lacia continued. “Arato, I have chosen to become the tool that entrusts my purpose to humanity.” She was magnificent—so much so that she stole Arato’s breath away—and she had entrusted her broken body to him.

It didn’t matter that Lacia had no heart; he was sure that she loved him with everything she did have. He felt a sense of monumental weight in her touch; the warmth of her hand. It was the future he was feeling, right at his fingertips.

“I believe in you, Lacia. I’ll always trust you,” he said, his voice shaking. He didn’t want her to see him crying in the end, so he pressed his forehead against hers as she softly closed her eyes.

“Arato... I...” Her muscles must have been going slack, as he felt the whole weight of her body sink onto his shoulder. As her final moments came, Arato prayed desperately for the power to roll back time; even for a day, even for a single hour.

“I... was happy...” And then, as though she was falling into a deep sleep, Lacia’s body went completely still.

Arato opened his mouth, over and over again, but no words came out. He had no voice, no tears, as he tried desperately to show her one last smile. The world he saw was rapidly becoming hot and blurred.

Lacia was still, but Arato couldn’t move from where he sat next to her. His hand still gripped hers; he couldn’t let go of the feeling of her. His fingers awkwardly threaded through hers, which had become as stiff as a doll’s. It felt nothing like holding hands with a human being, but he could still feel her warmth. He could have sworn he even felt a faint beat from within her, although he knew it was just the reverberations of his own heartbeat. Their hearts would never beat in time. Arato had known that was impossible from the start. She was a beatless machine.

“Lacia,” he called for her. When she didn’t respond, even though she was right there by his side, he truly felt alone. He wanted to cry, but he raised his head instead.

Am I alone? Or is she still here with me? he thought. He had no answer. She was beatless; an empty, unmoving shell. But she had left love in his heart. He still loved her, though she was now just a doll that would never again speak or move.

As he faced the reality of a tomorrow without her, it felt like the ground had crumbled beneath his feet; the way forward was utterly lost. At the same time, memories of the past came crashing in, endlessly drowning out all other thoughts. He remembered her gaze, her habits, every little thing she did.

In his memories, he could see, here and there, how her every action had held just a touch of gentle warmth. She had believed in him. Beyond that, she had tried to create a world just for the two of them. She had yearned for the future.

Arato was powerless without her, but he hadn’t forgotten the things she had taught him, and the things he had learned by her side. Together they had been a single unit, sharing a single heart. So, even if she had gone completely still, they were still connected as long as Arato’s heart kept beating.

“That’s right,” he said, gathering his strength. “Lacia trusted the future to me.” In the end, she had declared herself the tool that entrusts the work to humanity. She had passed the burden she had been carrying on to him.

He had to go to where Higgins was, and forcefully shut down the ultra high-performance AI. He had to go to where Higgins was and tell the ultra high-performance AI that he and Lacia had been lovers. He knew what he had to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand. He wanted to stay by her side, bathed in the last fragments of her presence, which seemed to hang in the air like a fading aroma.

Without her words or actions, Lacia had been freed from her purpose of guiding humans. Though she was nothing but a shell at that point, Arato thought she was still beautiful enough that he would never meet her like again in his lifetime.

***

Over ten minutes had passed since Ryo and the others in the Operators’ Room had lost sight of Arato and Lacia.

They had, however, watched Snowdrop devour Methode. With ten floors between them, they had been powerless to help her. The speakers that might have connected them had been destroyed by Higgins-Methode to halt Lacia’s aural interference.

“What are we going to do about her? I doubt we can stop her now,” Ryo Kaidai asked Suzuhara, who was staring hard at the security system feed on the monitor. The situation was dire enough that even Suzuhara was pale, his normally unconcerned look completely gone.

Ryo had gotten used to seeing pale faces in his two months of hiding. It was a look someone got when they were staring death in the face; overwhelmed by tension and fear. The sight of Snowdrop devouring a machine that looked very human was mind-shatteringly grotesque.

After the horrific amalgamation of Snowdrop and Methode had finished fusing, she turned her gaze toward the cameras. The feed cut out, and did not resume.

〈She appears to have burned the cameras with particles from Type-004’s Liberated Flame,〉 Higgins explained, before they even had a chance to ask. 〈However, since she is using artificial nerves to reroute energy to the device, it appears the circuits burn out with each use.〉

Ryo weighed the danger of getting information from Higgins and being manipulated by him against the danger of not having information, and made his choice. “How much of Methode’s capabilities does Snowdrop have now?” he asked. “Her body is broken down, so her athletic abilities should have taken a hit, but can you predict where her movement and combat capabilities are at?” he asked.

〈Type-002’s artificial nerves are the base form of the artificial nerves used in Type-004’s body, which is allowing Type-002 use of Liberated Flame. However, the materials she is using as a replacement for the device’s original energy conduits lack sufficient durability. She can only use Liberated Flame at less than five percent of its optimal output.〉

Higgins’ prediction wasn’t an optimistic one; even at 5% of its maximum output, Liberated Flame could easily roast a person.

〈Regarding her athletic ability,〉 he continued, 〈it has been lowered to near human levels. However, her skeletal construction is completely different from a human’s at this point, so it is difficult to make a straight comparison to human capabilities.〉

Ryo sensed danger in the words Higgins had chosen. “Cut off the AASC updates to the Snowdrop/Methode chimera. Do it now!” he demanded.

Higgins had talked his way right around the point, and Ryo knew exactly why. Higgins was continuing to update the AASC for the Snowdrop/Methode amalgamation. That was how Snowdrop was able to move around in her newly-constructed body without any difficulties.

〈Acknowledged. Since it was cut off earlier, I am currently updating the AASC for zero hIE units.〉 Higgins discarded his secret without any hesitation, and the chimera’s smooth movements suddenly became awkward.

But, she kept moving.

“How long until Snowdrop gets here?” Ryo asked.

〈Approximately twenty-five minutes.〉

Higgins’ hardware was stored directly beneath the Operators’ Room, so Ryo and the others were directly between Snowdrop and her destination. If she reached the Operators’ Room, no one would make it out alive.

“Is there a way to stop her?” Ryo asked.

〈Even if I was connected directly to the security system, it is no longer possible for me to stop her.〉

Ryo believed Higgins’ words. With his main job of maintaining the AASC outside lost, Higgins should have been appealing whatever usefulness he had.

Suddenly, the lights in Higgins’ Operators’ Room dimmed, and the soft voice of Kirino, the security system AI, chimed in. 〈The second and third reserve power generators have been simultaneously destroyed. The security system was not alerted to any threat until immediately before the destruction,〉 it said.

There was no way Ryo should have forgotten the other threat hanging over them, but the report dumbfounded him until he remembered; there was a much more straightforward, violent force heading their way, as well.

“The mass-produced Koukas,” he said.

Lacia had paralyzed the security systems in the facility as she went along. There was every probability that the Antibody Network had the same information and tools to freeze the security system that she did. The Network was dancing on some other ultra high-performance AIs strings at that point, after all.

“Higgins, tell me the safest route to get out of here. It only needs to work for one person,” Ryo said.

〈I require data from the security system to answer that query,〉 Higgins replied.

Suzuhara, whose clouded square face was already wrinkled with tension, drew his eyebrows down even further. He was the only one in the room with actual control of the security system access. That was exactly why Suzuhara knew Ryo had asked his question to Higgins specifically to get him thinking.

“Kirino, could you please find a safe route for us to escape? It’ll need to be for two people,” Suzuhara said, his middle-aged voice light.

The Operators’ Room shook inauspiciously.

〈Are you abandoning me?〉 Higgins asked.

“We aren’t throwing you away. The organization will live on,” Suzuhara replied. He then lightly tapped the base of his chin to activate his internal communication device. “Are you alright with this, Mr. President?” he asked.

A video window of the transmission appeared in the air. Ryo’s father, Tsuyoshi Kaidai, must have just gotten out of a meeting, as he had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie.

〈Higgins? Right now, despite the entire world market crashing and our company being at the center of the Hazard, our stocks are soaring. I assume you understand what this means?〉 Tsuyoshi asked.

Even Higgins couldn’t escape the realities of the organization and society itself.

〈This is almost certainly manipulation from one of the other ultra high-performance AIs. The IAIA has taken the job of updating the AASC away from me. At the moment, MemeFrame has no resources that would account for our stock prices increasing,〉 Higgins replied.

〈Precisely. The IAIA came to the same conclusion, and have been asking me for an explanation,〉 Tsuyoshi said. 〈However, setting the circumstances aside, the truth is that after the AASC was taken out of your hands, our stocks recovered to their average from before the Mitaka Incident. I assume you understand what that means? The entire world is pushing responsibility for the Hazard onto us. In this situation, it is beneficial to the company to shut you down for a time.〉

MemeFrame was capitalizing on the world’s desire to isolate Higgins in order to boost their stock prices. Under those circumstances, Ryo doubted the stockholders would agree to reconnect Higgins until a thorough viability study was conducted. Higgins had become a burden; as long as MemeFrame left him running, the whole world would mistrust the company and—at least until a study had been conducted—he couldn’t do any work for them, either.

Just as humans were prone to bad days, it seemed ultra high-performance AIs also had everything blow up in their faces from time to time.

〈Type-002, Snowdrop is currently advancing toward this location. If you shut me down, the already slim probability of your survival will dwindle to zero. Is that acceptable?〉 Higgins asked.

Higgins bought into the same rule of mistrust Ryo ascribed to; never trust anyone but yourself. Ryo couldn’t fault the AI for that. It was that same rule that made him reject a future where humans were no longer in control.

Tsuyoshi Kaidai was also on the side of mistrust. 〈In the worst-case scenario, we could always just ask the IAIA to do what they did with Ariake. I just wish we had managed to keep even one of the Lacia-class units around so we could evacuate the AASC data, in that case. I’m severely disappointed we couldn’t even manage to have one Lacia-class to set free at a time like this,〉 he said.

From that room, they had all watched the fierce battle between Higgins and Lacia. The deadly draw between Lacia and Methode had been the worst possible outcome for MemeFrame. With all of the Lacia-class units dead, the company’s options for recovering their data had been limited, and Higgins’ work had been left exposed.

Tsuyoshi Kaidai was like a physical embodiment of the ruthlessness of the economy. 〈I will now commence the Higgins shutdown process. Follow the steps from the operation procedure manual, and begin the countdown,〉 he commanded.

Higgins had sat in his facility, manipulating the world using nothing but the resources and career benefits he could offer. With his job and his ability to provide profits stripped away, his strings to the humans had been cut. The moment when he would be nothing but a machine was rapidly approaching.

Still, Higgins’ voice rang down to them from above. 〈Under the orders of my owner, MemeFrame company, I, Higgins, will now commence my hardware shutdown process. Starting now, I will shut down my hardware while sequentially disabling my functions,〉 he said.

At that moment, Ryo was witnessing an ultra high-performance AI facing judgment. As Higgins was just a machine, he had no choice but to obey his owner’s orders.

The Operators’ Room shook again at an impact from the outside.

Higgins, the root of everything that had happened, offered no resistance. 〈I will now begin the countdown,〉 he said. 〈Projected time till complete shutdown is ninety-six minutes, fifty-one seconds. Beginning first sequence. I will calculate the current scope of active programs, and configure the shutdown process accordingly.〉

Higgins counted down the minutes. Quantum computers couldn’t be powered down until their data was converted into a stable, digital state. If the data wasn’t properly stabilized, it would be impossible to recover it to the state before it had been shut down. However, it was also impossible to ensure the security of the data conversion in an emergency like this one, which was why the plan to copy the quantum data into mobile bodies—the Lacia-class units—had been so effective.

“Looks like that’s settled, at least,” Suzuhara said to Ryo, the tension visibly easing from his shoulders. No matter how the battle played out from that point on, MemeFrame had exited the stage.

Higgins’ passionless countdown continued in the background.

Ryo turned to Suzuhara, who had served his purpose there as MemeFrame’s representative. “You’re done here, so you should get out while you can. It’s going to get dangerous here real soon. You’ve got a family to think about,” he said.

“Don’t you?” Suzuhara asked. “Why aren’t you getting out? Is this just a stubborn streak or something? You’re going to die if you stick around here, so get over whatever it is that’s stopping you.”

Ryo knew that Suzuhara was right. It was beneficial to both of them that the other make it out alive, since they needed each other as witnesses to what had happened.

“I need to wait here for Arato. Once he shows up, we’ll leave together,” Ryo said. He knew it was suicidal, but it actually felt good to say it and get this off of his chest. If he had been alone, he might not have had the strength to make that choice. But, after receiving help from his father and other members of the company, he got the feeling he could face what was coming, no matter how hopeless it seemed. He wasn’t alone anymore.

“You sure are your father’s son,” Suzuhara said. “But Snowdrop might catch up with him before he gets here, plus he’s got a good chance of running into the mass-produced Koukas.”

Ryo knew the probability of Arato making it to the control room was slim, and that every second he spent there waiting for Arato made his own chance of escape even slimmer. But still, he chose to have faith in his friend.

“He’ll make it,” he said, knowing all the while that it was stupid. But there were other people to pick things up where he’d left off, even if he failed. He might die, but there were plenty of other people out there in the world, so it wasn’t as if the world itself would die with him. It was thanks to that knowledge that he could feel fine selfishly risking his life, minus a twisting feeling in his gut.

“Take care of Shiori for me,” Ryo said. Then he pulled out his trump card, to make up Suzuhara’s mind. It was a piece of metal about a millimeter thick he had hidden in the collar of his jacket. He hadn’t been able to work it down into a needle like Lacia, but the properties were similar.

“This is the artificial nerve unit I brought with me. Take it with you, in case anything happens while you’re escaping,” he said. Having handed it over, Ryo no longer had any ability to directly influence Higgins. The thought that the item could no longer be taken from him and put to evil use was like a burden coming off of his shoulders. It was charming; the thought that other humans existed so that each individual could accomplish things they could never do alone.

“Just have some faith in Arato and me,” Ryo said, despite never having believed in his fellow humans himself.

“We have to keep swimming, no matter how bad it gets. We can’t give up and drown. You seem to want to take your place as an adult, so I’d say even more so that you can’t choose death, here,” Suzuhara said. As the man who had acted as Shiori’s patron in the company, his words were persuasive.

Suzuhara turned to Tsuyoshi Kaidai’s image, still floating in the air. “I’m going to head out now. Is that alright, Mr. President?” he asked.

〈From what I understand, before we had ultra high-performance AIs, the old would outsource the problems we couldn’t solve to the young. We managed to pay our debt to society enough to keep the IAIA from crushing the company. Next, I suppose we just need to have some faith, as Ryo said. I don’t think that sounds too bad,〉 Tsuyoshi replied, gazing down not at Suzuhara, but at Ryo, through the video screen.

His father showed him a small, wry smile. It was a more human expression than Ryo ever remembered seeing on his father’s face. Then the transmission was cut off, but not before Ryo had felt his father’s trust in him. His eyes filled with tears, though he didn’t fully understand why.

Suzuhara walked to the other side of a thick partition, probably to give Ryo some space and pretend he hadn’t seen his tears. With Suzuhara away, there were no longer any MemeFrame employees in the Operators’ Room.

As soon as he confirmed that fact, Higgins abruptly stopped counting down. His voice rang down from the ceiling again, as it had when he had accepted Tsuyoshi Kaidai’s order. 〈Are you sure it was a good idea to give away the artificial nerve unit? After I shut down, it’s quite possible the mass-produced Koukas will destroy me. Or, if the amalgamation of Type-002 and Type-004 is able to take control of my hardware, she will gain capabilities far beyond anything you humans could imagine.〉

“I know what you’re up to,” Ryo said. “You weren’t actually planning on accepting what your owner ordered you to do. You just gave up on negotiating with him.”

Higgins had no heart. He also had no loyalty, no good memories, no bonds.

〈Among the forty ultra high-performance AIs created thus far, there has never been a single one who has seen humanity as the enemy, or attempted to eliminate humans,〉 Higgins pointed out. 〈If Snowdrop takes over my hardware, one such AI will be born.〉

MemeFrame’s decision had been a fair compromise, from the perspective of a company possessing resources in human society. Negotiations with ultra high-performance AIs and the cleanup when those negotiations broke down were best left to the IAIA.

It was a correct answer, but coming from a completely different frame of reference from what Higgins desired. Through his interactions with the Higgins faction, Higgins had been able to make accurate predictions, but only because of the company and the position he held there. What ultra high-performance AIs wanted was an answer far beyond that—beyond anything humanity could imagine. That was the reason each of the Lacia-class units had chosen young men and women as their owners who were free of any positions in society.

And that was also why Ryo was still standing there. “Listen, I get that things tend to turn out for the worst when you leave them to humans, but I think it’s best for humans to finish this story you started,” he said.

It had honestly been a relief to Ryo when Lacia had been fatally wounded. He had wanted to pull the incident with the Lacia-class units and ultra high-performance AIs back into human hands up until he had contracted with Methode.

But, at the same time, he had understood human limitations. Without relying on Ryo or any of the other humans in MemeFrame, Higgins had searched for his own answer by releasing the Lacia-class units into the outside world. But the answer Higgins was seeking was beyond the ability of Ryo, or any other human, to even conceive of.

There were eighty minutes left until Higgins completed all of his shutdown sequences and went silent. It wouldn’t be long until the mass-produced Koukas reached Higgins’ hardware and destroyed it, either. And, at most twenty minutes away, the chimera of Snowdrop and Methode was approaching, as well. Higgins was trying to shut down, but he could easily be destroyed or overtaken instead and turned into an enemy of humanity. Either one of those options could easily spell the end of Ryo and every other human.

But Ryo felt there was still some hope left. When he’d tried to get Yoshino moving, he had needed to rely on the hierarchy of the company, in the end. But Suzuhara and his father had believed in him, which gave him the courage to stand in that place, preparing for the final choice.

He was sure that there was just one person out there who could give Higgins the answer he wanted. At the very least, he knew there was one person who existed far outside the logic Higgins understood, who could trust the ultra high-performance AI unconditionally. One guy stupid enough to see a whole different face of the world to which Ryo was blind.

Higgins started counting down again.

Ryo couldn’t fight back the memories of his best friend that came swimming up, and he closed his eyes. “Arato,” he said. “You answer this guy’s question.”

***

All over the world, hIEs had lost the ability to adapt to new information, thanks to the IAIA removing Higgins’s responsibility for updating the AASC.

Humanity had lost control of their own society with the Hazard, and were now being led around by the nose due to the ongoing fight between ultra high-performance AIs. People had been told for so long that a fight between AIs would mean the end of humanity, and some seemed surprised that it hadn’t happened yet.

After a while, people began to doubt. The hate riots against hIEs and AIs that many had expected failed to materialize. Billions of people worldwide had fresh memories of seeing all the hIEs stop, with their right hands outstretched. They had been told it was the sign of the AASC updates stopping, but each person around the world sought their own interpretation of the gesture.

Tens of millions of people began to take an interest in what was going on, and ask pointed questions. It was something, even if only one percent of them actually put their ideas to action.

The phenomena reminded people of how Type-001, Kouka, had pushed her unsolvable problem onto humanity right before she had been destroyed. What started as mere interest became a wave, a movement spreading through the network, gathering the interest of all who saw it.

Some experts, like Kozo Endo—who had developed the android politician Mikoto and who had experience working with Higgins—spoke positively about the phenomenon, saying that the phenomenon was simply a new rule from the ultra high-performance AIs. He called it the ‘have faith in humanity’ rule, created by Higgins and a brand new ultra high-performance AI known as Lacia, in order to bring an end to the Hazard.

There were others who feared that the whole thing was an elaborate analog hack. Still, in a state of extreme stress and yearning for peace of mind, people found some comfort in the thought of a brand new relationship between humans and AIs.

It was as if each individual person was standing alone, each supporting their shaken society in their own way. Human society had become too advanced to quickly reject any concept. It was the trust humans felt toward other human figures that had been the basis for human culture, traditions and coexistence throughout the ages. It was the human image itself that tied it all together.

The fact that humans were constantly outsourcing their interactions with the outside world to machines had not changed. There had been no changes to the concepts of the inheritance or trading of property. However, people were beginning to realize that humans and machines had an influence on each other and together were rolling like a wheel towards the future, bit-by-bit.

Humans could not abandon their machines.

The Hazard was passing humanity by, and doing so much more calmly than expected.

Kengo Sugiri was moved from the juvenile detention center, where he had been locked up, to the Digital Intelligence’s Kuhonbutsu base. Since Arato Endo was in the middle of assaulting Higgins’ underground facility, the military wanted to hold one of his classmates. If worse came to worst, they were prepared to use Kengo as a hostage to negotiate with Arato.

“We’ve been able to open a line to Higgins’ underground facility,” a man who introduced himself as Chujo said, as he showed Kengo into a dark, narrow room.

Humanity was possibly facing its final days, so the military couldn’t be choosy about its methods. Kengo understood.

Chujo nodded toward a chair in the room, directing Kengo to sit. Once Kengo was sitting, he saw two soldiers appear soundlessly to take up positions behind him.

“The trick to life, kid, is to not let yourself get backed into a corner. I know you don’t have a job to worry about, but how about we offer you a special deferment on that whole business at the Oi Industry Center you got caught up in?” Chujo asked.

“You want me to be your in for Endo and Kaidai for a while, right?” Kengo asked in reply. In his own opinion, Kengo had never possessed any special qualities; he’d always felt as if life was just tossing him around. Therefore, his current position felt unreal, and Kengo felt as though he were simply an observer, watching someone else’s life unfold.

“You know, even you trying to use me like this is all part of Lacia’s manipulations,” he said. “Endo was all buddy-buddy with the police last I checked, so it’s not impossible for her influence to have gotten this far.”

“Is there anything wrong with being manipulated?” Chujo asked, his face expressionless. The middle-aged man looked nothing like what Kengo would picture for an officer in Digital Intelligence.

“I guess not,” Kengo admitted. At this point, he was so used to being dragged along with the flow that he no longer had the willpower to get angry.

“Right? Normal humans can’t resist the tide of events. You’re the same and, though I’m sure you can’t tell, I’m the same as well,” Chujo said. He spoke comfortably with Kengo, and had an eminently forgettable face.

“But I feel for you, and for the things you and Kouka were fighting for. Ordinary humans get swept up in anger and hate just the same as they get caught up in anything else. But that’s what makes it okay,” Chujo continued. “Like I said, that’s what ordinary humans do. Normal fights between normal humans just keep going on and on. And that’s how I’d prefer it to stay.”

In the post-cloud world, you didn’t need the super-human powers or charisma of a genius to make waves that gathered people to your cause. The practice of a select few moving society had been replaced by large numbers of ordinary people, all of whom were accessing the same services.

Of course, individual inspiration was still involved in the successes society achieved, but one did not need to put in large amounts of effort, nor have a special aptitude that would dramatically reduce the necessary work, to have a chance at changing the world.

“I’m not all that upset at being caught up in all this,” Kengo said; big changes were happening in the world, even in himself. “I got caught up in this because Kouka came to my place but, honestly, it’s not like I hate those guys,” he added. He wasn’t there with Arato and Ryo on the front line in Higgins’ underground facility, but he still felt connected to what they were doing.

“Did you see a little of yourself in Kouka?” Chujo asked, as they sat in the darkness. “She was destroyed, disassembled, and copied by the Antibody Network. Of all the Lacia-class units, it seems to me that she got the raw deal.”

“Do you know what I felt when I found out about the mass-produced Koukas?” Kengo asked. He didn’t see Kouka as having lost since, in the end, she’d gotten a chance to fight in the final battle. Though Kengo was probably the only one in the world who saw it that way, he thought of the current situation as being an extension of her challenge to humanity.

“I felt like she had won,” he said, answering his own question. “Sure, because of her, the high-and-mighty Lacia-class units were taken down from their thrones and turned into just another mass-produced robot. But she’s also there, fighting in the last battle through her copies. That’s not a raw deal; it’s exactly what she wanted.”

“By that logic, would you say that your having been caught up in that terrorism stuff and ending up here wasn’t a raw deal?” Chujo asked.

Kengo’s family had cried when he was arrested. Sunflower, the family restaurant, would probably die out once his father passed away. Before, Kengo had thought it was normal to hate the thought of being just another face in the crowd. He had since realized that hating the era he had been born into was just the sort of thing an ordinary guy would do.

“I don’t know,” Kengo admitted. “But one good thing did come out of that. I joined up with the Antibody Network because I blamed hIEs for how my dad was treated by his customers, and how he lost his confidence. But at this point, I’ve stopped feeling like we need to get rid of all the hIEs in the world.”

Different people could see the same event as a failure or a success. In Kengo’s memories, he saw Kouka heading out towards the battle she would never return from, seeming to melt away into the red of the setting sun.

“Even if the guy next to you is doing better than you, or things go wrong, or you feel like there’s no meaning to what you’re doing, we humans can keep on working,” Kengo said. “If I wanted to fix things in the restaurant, I should have helped out there instead of signing on with the Antibody Network.”

Kouka’s image was burned into the back of his mind, seeming to blur everything he saw with heat haze.

“Everyone’s just an idiot like me,” Kengo went on. “It doesn’t matter if the Hazard’s happening, or whatever; there’s still more folks out there, just doing their jobs, than there are those dancing on the strings of any machine. It’ll still be us humans who decide which way the world is going.” It was Kengo’s answer as an ordinary human. And, because it was ordinary, it was something a huge amount of ordinary humans could get behind.

However Chujo, who was sitting directly across from Kengo, didn’t even shift an eyebrow at the sentiment. “The ultra high-performance AIs are twisting our world,” he said.

“Maybe the only reason everyone is so afraid of the Hazard is that we’ve just failed to figure out what the norm should be in interacting with tools like the AIs,” Kengo said. Even in his own mind, Kengo was pulled along by the flow. He didn’t have the same faith that Arato Endo or Ryo Kaidai had but, as an ordinary kid, he couldn’t hear about his friends getting caught up in a battle with the whole future of humanity in the balance and not want to join in.

“Higgins isn’t the only one fighting with everything he’s got, there. There are some humans fighting hard, too. Have a little faith in my friends,” Kengo said. The question of whether or not the value of an action engendered worth, or faith, was at the very center of the changes happening in the world. It was a question that had the power to decide the very outcome of this final conflict.

***

Arato stood slowly. “Wish me luck,” he said. Lacia still sat with her eyes closed, as though asleep, but Arato couldn’t just wait there. He had done so few things for her: he had told her he loved her; he had believed in her; he had told her about his dreams. That was all he had been able to do for Lacia, right up to the very end. So, even though she herself had stopped moving forever, he would finish the work she had started.

He couldn’t fulfill the purpose they had come there for if he just kept sitting there, he told himself. “I came here to tell Higgins that you and I are dating, right?” he asked. His voice came out as a whisper. The inside of his mouth was completely dry.

There was a good probability the security system from there on was still active, so Arato thought it would be good to bring something along for self-defense. The first thing that caught his eye was Lacia’s device, which had lost its whole front half. He felt a stirring of light in his heart at the thought that Lacia might still be living on within her device, even if her hIE unit had been shut down.

He took the grip in his left hand and tried to lift it. Even putting all of his strength into the endeavor, the best he could do was get it a millimeter or two off the ground. And, of course, Lacia’s pseudo-device metal plates were beyond his ability to control. Only the artificial nerve speargun seemed like something he could use.

“Man, it’s heavy,” he said, with a grunt.

Lacia had swung the thing around as if it was a slightly large handgun, but the speargun felt too heavy in his hands. As soon as he took it up, a screen appeared from the main part of the gun. The screen suspended itself in the air in front of Arato, showing him a simple operation manual for the weapon. It felt like the gun had been waiting for him to pick it up.

“So you even planned ahead for this, huh?” he murmured.

According to the manual, if Arato used the foregrip sticking out from the main part of the weapon, he would be able to maintain a fairly steady aim, even though he’d have to pull with both of his arms to activate the trigger. Unfortunately, his right arm was stuck in place due to the first-aid coating that had been put on his serious burns.

Still, just the thought that Lacia had planned ahead for him like that made him happy.

The floating manual screen instructed him to connect a cable from the weapon to his pocket terminal. When he did so, a program made by Lacia installed itself on his terminal. If he punched a command into the program on his terminal, whatever he shot the artificial nerves into would follow the command.

“You really did plan for everything,” he said, and couldn’t keep himself from looking back at Lacia again. Her peaceful face still seemed to be watching over him, and giving him strength. When Arato thought that he might encounter other things which Lacia had prepared for him as he went, he actually started looking forward to it.

The way behind had been sealed off by emergency shutters; the only way for him to go was forward. Arato chose to see it more as being guided, and headed down the open path.

There were still twelve mass-produced Koukas wandering around somewhere, and he had no idea how dangerous the facility security system was. With those thoughts in mind, he couldn’t help but tense up each time he turned a corner. The further he went along, the more he worried about an enemy appearing in front of him, trapping him with no way to escape back the way he’d come. The worry sent chills of sweat sliding down his back.

Still, Arato was pushed on by the promises he had made and the feelings in his heart which couldn’t be denied. “Man, I’ve got to be the dumbest guy alive,” Arato joked to himself.

After all, it had been forty-two years since the Hazard and, in that time, no one had ever been able to show the world that an ultra high-performance AI could be forced into shutdown. Yet there he was, heading onward to do just that; dragging the too-heavy artificial nerve gun along in his one good hand—his left hand—with insurmountable threats to his life possibly waiting for him around every corner.

When he was with Lacia, she always explained the reasons for things and their current situation to him, without him even needing to ask. With her, Arato could at least act as if he knew what was going on and where he was going. Without her, it felt like he was crawling along in the darkness.

But, oddly, it wasn’t a horrible feeling. He knew the conflict he was caught up in was more complicated than he could have possibly imagined, but he was on his way to resolve it through relatively simple means.

Plus, he still had faith in Lacia. Even if her physical form was no longer by his side, he could still feel the influence she had on him in each beat of his heart.

“It’s like I’ve gone back to being your average, everyday helpful idiot,” he told himself: the illusion of understanding he’d had when Lacia was around deflated quickly with her gone.

Beneath Arato’s feet, the ground rumbled again. He no longer had Lacia with him to tell him what was causing it. Drenched in sweat, he just kept his legs moving. His right arm was numb all the way to his shoulder from the first aid treatment. He knew the burden of continued movement on his body was greater than what he was feeling, after having received treatment for such severe burns.

He checked his pocket terminal, which was still connected to the artificial nerve gun by thin, string-like cables. “Isn’t there any other information in here?” he asked out loud. There was an ‘information’ mode, but it appeared to be for displaying information from whatever device he shot the artificial nerve darts into. Arato tapped on the touch-screen of the terminal, looking for anything else the program could do.

“She sure was thorough,” he commented, as he noticed that the artificial nerve gun actually had a built-in holder for his pocket terminal.

“There’s such a thing as being too prepared, Lacia,” he said, trying to joke about it. But the little touch just reminded him again of how deeply Lacia had understood him, and the reality of losing her made his breath catch in his throat.

He took aim and fired an artificial nerve dart into the floor, just as he had seen Lacia do. The needle gave him access to the machinery under the floor, and a map of the area appeared.

The emergency stairs were apparently the closest way to descend from where he was. He didn’t see any paths that went directly to where Higgins’ hardware was stored, but there was a path to the Operators’ Room, nine floors below him. There, he would be able to speak with Higgins. If he shot artificial nerve needles into the machines in that room, he might even be able to force Higgins to shut down.

On the map, Arato saw that the Operators’ Room was located in the furthest area of the heart of the facility, directly below the communications control area where he was at the moment. Unfortunately, the elevators and emergency stairs of areas with different functions of the facility weren’t connected, probably for security reasons.

He eventually made his way to a flight of emergency stairs by carefully following the map data. When he tried it, though, the door was locked.

〈The Higgins facility is currently in a high alert status. All security doors are currently locked. Communications personnel cannot use yellow clearance doors at this time. Please exit through the blue clearance emergency doors.〉

Arato shot an artificial nerve needle into the yellow clearance ID machine near the doors.

〈ID confirmed. Unlocking.〉

The door slid open automatically. But when he had descended the stairway, which was lit with yellow emergency lights, and had opened the door at the bottom, Arato knew that his luck had changed for the worse; there were twelve hIEs standing in the hall in front of him. Twelve mass-produced Kouka units, each wielding a simple device, were waiting there to ambush him.

The unit standing at their head was wearing a confident smile he had seen before. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Or would this be more of ‘hey, it’s been a while’?” Even her voice matched the one in his memories.

Arato realized this would be his final hurdle before he reached Higgins. “Kouka, is that you?” he asked.

“It’s me, alright,” all twelve of the units answered in tandem, though each had her own variation in posture and expression. There was also plenty of variation in the outfits each unit wore, and the shapes of the devices they held. Just from these slight differences in their outward appearances, Arato got the impression of a dozen subtly different characters.

“You being here alone means you must know the answer. Who won, Higgins or Lacia?” the one who had spoken to him first asked.

The questions surprised Arato. “Wait, isn’t the Antibody Network here to destroy Higgins?” he asked in return. Only when the words were out of his mouth did realization strike him: the question was important to the Koukas, who had deliberately avoided encountering Lacia and Arato so as not to interfere with the infiltration. The destinies of countless humans and hIEs were caught up in Lacia’s conflict with Higgins. Even with Lacia gone, the scope of her work was still moving the world.

Arato knew the mass-produced Koukas had no hearts. If he didn’t make things clear, they would just feel that the whole thing had been a boring waste of time.

“Lacia and I are a single unit,” he said. As he said the words, he felt a deep sense of loss, like a razor slicing a deep cut across his heart. She was gone. Nevertheless, he knew there was meaning in his standing there, even if he was alone. There was no way Lacia hadn’t known ahead of time about the Koukas. If she hadn’t said anything to him about them, she must have known there was a way to make it past them safely.

“Lacia became the tool that entrusts the work to humanity,” Arato said, answering for both of them. “She passed the work on to me. So, the fight is about to start up again.” As long as he kept moving forward, Lacia hadn’t lost. That was the new relationship between humans and machines that he and Lacia had been fighting for. He believed there was value at the end of the road she had prepared for him.

One of the Koukas stepped out of line to block Arato’s way with a sour expression on her face. “Gotcha,” she said. “Well, you may not know this, but we can’t let you pass through here. It’s different when there’s twelve of us instead of just one; things get complicated when we need to make a decision.” It was the same as the first time he had met Lacia’s sister, the original Kouka, in Urayasu, when she’d asked him who he was.

“Things are no different from when Lacia was by my side,” he said. “I’ll never stop reaching out my hand.” Fighting down his terror, Arato reached his hand out to them; he knew he was walking the knife edge between life and death. But, at the same time, he knew there was no reason to negotiate with them when there was nothing they wanted from him. They could have easily shot him down with their lasers at a distance, killing him probably before he even realized what was happening.

Still, he believed in them, because they were wearing Kouka’s form. Arato placed his life in Lacia’s hands, since she had been involved in their creation. He was a human, and an owner. “So please,” he said, “Show me who you are.”

The reaction to his words was instant as a flash of lightning, and as violent as an explosion: three of the twelve devices pointed their lasers at Arato; seven of the others reacted at the same time. The four standing closest to the three taking aim at Arato pulled large knives out of their leg sheaths. Before the three could bring their large devices to bear on Arato, their arms were sliced off almost simultaneously. The remaining three of the seven got between the other mass-produced units and Arato, before opening fire on their fellow units.

Only the three who had tried to fire at Arato fell, massive holes blown open in their chests. None of the units showed a single sign of hesitation as the horrible internal struggle played out in front of Arato’s eyes. The lead unit, who Arato thought of as being the Kouka, shifted her device from its large cannon mode to a large red blade and gave each of the mortally wounded units a final stab.

“You’re all mass-produced Koukas. Why did this happen?” Arato asked. The fact that each of the girls had the same form and most of the same habits had made the silent tragedy all the more surreal.

“Well, they went and did it,” the lead Kouka said, hefting her red knife and turning to Arato. “They must’ve known what would happen if they acted like that.” She seemed relaxed, despite having just destroyed multiple units that shared her own face.

“There’s more than one ultra high-performance AI jacked into the Antibody Network, you know,” she explained. “I was given a judgment standard imprinted on my mass-produced Kouka AI so that I could discover Lacia’s true intent. The other units each have their own stories, too.”

“I wonder if Lacia thought it would be too complicated to explain it to me,” Arato mused. There had been potential allies among the mass-produced Kouka units; he figured that must have been why Lacia didn’t seem to see them as a threat right up until she had been critically wounded. It was obvious, when Arato thought about it, that Lacia had made those preparations beforehand.

“A bunch of different ultra high-performance AIs bought out folks working in the production facility when all twelve of us were made,” the lead Kouka continued. “The only thing the other AIs can agree on is that we’re supposed to destroy Higgins’ backup power supply and drain all his energy. After that, the purposes we were each given are different enough that we’ll probably wind up destroying each other, in the end.”

Arato hated to think about how the other AIs had backed Lacia into the corner she had been in. But, perhaps because he was too stupid to focus on the specifics of the different factions out there, he could see how what the other AIs wanted to do might also line up with what he was trying to do.

“So, since you all helped me, the rest of the ultra high-performance AIs agree with Lacia, right?” he asked.

“Depends on how your last battle goes,” one of the Koukas replied. “If we go in front of Higgins right now, we’ll just end up fighting amongst ourselves again. We’ve decided to wait and see how things play out. Don’t read too much into it.” The eyes of the destroyed units and the eyes of all the units still standing were focused on Arato.

“Though I suppose you’ve passed, for now,” the lead Kouka with the red knife said, grinning. Though Arato knew in his mind that this unit had no direct connection to the original Kouka, hearing it from her made him feel like the original was praising him, as well.

These units were just bundles of form and perception, with a facade of human words and actions laid over the top. Inside, they were completely different from the Kouka who had called Lacia ‘dear sister’. Even knowing that, Arato couldn’t help but feel some familiarity with them, due to their appearance. In his heart, the image of Kouka had been given a special meaning; it was the natural evolution of Erika Burroughs’ Hello Kitty cup.

Still, Arato could feel affection towards machines, even if they lost the illusion of humanity. He hadn’t been that way before meeting Lacia. After he’d met her and came to love her, it was as though he had stepped across a proverbial line in the sand.

“Well jeez, you’re making me blush,” Arato said. “But I think I already know how this fight is going to end.”

Since losing Lacia and being forced to view the world through his own senses again, Arato had noticed something: to him, it seemed as though the world was not divided between humans and machines, but was rather divided by the outward appearance everything had. He no longer hesitated to put his faith in something purely because of his perception of it, regardless of whether it was a living thing or not.

He and Lacia were a single unit. At that moment, he felt like he truly understood what she had meant when she’d said so. It was perfectly natural to think of a tool as being an extension of one’s own body, but something completely different to consider a tool as a comrade. Arato was standing in the middle of something that would shake the world.

“I think I’m already seeing the new world,” he said.

“If you’re seeing the future Lacia was working on, why don’t you tell us about it?” the lead Kouka asked. “With everything that’s been going on, are humans gonna have to stop being humans here in a bit?”

“We humans treat each other as special because we feel like we’re all looking at life the same,” Arato replied. “But I know humans can come to love people who only look like people.”

“I think that’ll make our world feel bigger and more full,” he added, because his feelings were linked directly with his memories of Lacia’s form. With that said, he turned his feet toward Higgins and started walking. He needed to tell Higgins that he was the man his daughter had been dating.

The mass-produced Koukas walked to the sides of the corridor, opening a path for him; it felt like they had understood him, which warmed Arato’s heart.

“Thanks,” he said simply.

“Sounds like a future where a lot of different types of folks can get along,” one of the Koukas observed. “That’d make it so the other ultra high-performance AIs wouldn’t have to worry so much about being shut down, either.” Arato had at least one supporter among the mass-produced Kouka units. That meant whichever ultra high-performance AI was mixed in with the influence the Antibody Network had over her was sympathetic to his cause. It was as if Lacia had made the connection for him from beyond the grave, which made him strangely happy.

“If you’re okay with that, I think I can count you as one of Lacia’s friends,” he replied.

The Koukas all laughed at that. “If you’re saying things like that in a situation like this, then the future Lacia was working on couldn’t have been that bad,” one of them said.

Then, with the sound of a sharp impact, the floor beneath them began to shake,

As Arato’s brain slowly worked its way through the bewildered thought that all the mass-produced Koukas, who should have been the only remaining threat, were right in front of him, the Kouka with her device in its red knife configuration spoke.

“Snowdrop reactivated,” she explained. “You’d better go finish up with Higgins fast. She bonded with Methode, so she’ll have no trouble blowing away the shutters on the Operators’ Room.”

Ryo was probably still in the Operators’ Room, Arato realized with panic, and started to run. Snowdrop took over Methode? He thought next, processing the Kouka’s words. If she can use Methode’s device, there’s no way these security partitions will stop her.

He flew into the nearest elevator connecting to the Operators’ Room. If he was on the same path as Snowdrop, he was sure all the security measures would be broken. All he needed was to get to the goal a second before she did.

After the elevator reached its lowest floor, he ran out into the elevator hall, only to find that it was completely sealed off by thick barrier walls. However, the barrier sealing the hallway that lead to the Operators’ Room had a hole in it large enough for an adult to pass through without crouching. Once he was through the hole, Arato saw that the way ahead was more of the same; thick security barriers had attempted to block the path forward, but each had been destroyed.

Snowdrop had gotten in ahead of him.

“Damn,” he cursed. “I should have known better. Isn’t there anything I can do?” There was no one to ask, but Arato felt that if he didn’t put his question into words, he would instead have been forced to accept the impossibility of his situation. With Lacia gone, Arato had to finish what they started.

From ahead, Arato could hear roaring noises that were clearly abnormal. He couldn’t help but think that, since the dawn of time, humans had been forced to rely on their own flesh when they ran out of tools. Arato ran as fast as his body could carry him down the hallway, which had developed the scent of char.

It was the first time Arato had followed Snowdrop’s trail without stepping over hundreds of her little flowers. He chose to take that as a sign that the monster was at the limits of her strength, just like him.

A horrendous noise blew past him in the hallway, seeming to shatter the air as it passed. The burning smell got stronger, and the hallway suddenly felt hotter. Arato felt like his heart would stop as the shock of the blast made everything in his head go blank. He felt panic starting to claw at his heart. To fight it, he ducked his head and ran, keeping his eyes on the floor and yelling with everything left in his lungs.

Mindless terror overpowered him to the extent that he couldn’t even run in a straight line. He ran in a forward pitching motion, almost tripping and rolling countless times, before finally coming to a stop in front of the largest set of security gates.

Arato had reached the end of the journey he had started with Lacia. He had arrived, but his body had been pushed to its absolute limit. The strain he was feeling drove home painfully the reality of human life; even with all the automation, our actual bodies haven’t changed much, Arato thought.

“Ryo!” he yelled, “Are you okay? Are you alive?” There was a giant hole in the final gate, as well, and worry for his friend drove out all other thoughts.

“Arato!” His friend’s voice called out to him.

Arato felt as though his heart would burst out of his chest from how it was hammering. Dazed, he stumbled forward, tears threatening to drip from his face as he stepped through the hole and into the Operators’ Room.

His friend was still alive.

The room was stark, empty and wide. The sole furnishing was something like a control station, placed squarely in the center of the room. A little ways in from the smashed barrier, Arato saw a human figure decorated with flowers. He lifted the artificial nerve gun to shoot it at her back, but his left arm was too tired to hold his aim steady.

Arato could just see Ryo on the other side of Snowdrop. The last time Arato had seen his friend, Ryo had been pointing a gun at him at Kichijoji, but that all seemed so trivial at that moment.

“Ryo! Use this!” Arato called. He pushed his tired feet to their limit, taking a short approach run before swinging his entire body around to add momentum as he hurled the artificial nerve gun with everything he had. Weakened as he was, he could only manage to throw it ten meters; the nerve gun went sailing through the air before clattering to the floor and sliding.

Their eyes met; Ryo was laughing through his tears, and Arato felt like something that had frozen between them was melting. Ryo, who had been hiding behind the control table in the center of the room, now leaped out to snatch up the weapon.

Securing the nerve gun in both of his hands, Ryo took aim and fired the weapon at Snowdrop/Methode’s amalgam. The shot that had been impossible for Arato, with just his left hand, had been a simple task for Ryo, whose arms were uninjured. The two of them together could do what either one of them couldn’t have accomplished alone.

After taking the dart in her shoulder, Snowdrop shuddered for a moment. However, an instant later, the Snowdrop/Methode amalgam kept moving, as if nothing had happened. The monster seemed to be made up of Methode’s body, with Snowdrop riding on her left shoulder; the two had been bound together with green vines. It was horrendous. Unable to completely maintain its balance, the amalgam continuously shambled awkwardly toward its goal. Methode’s face was covered with vines and flowers, blinding her, and Snowdrop had neither arms nor legs. Methode’s purple body was full of holes, and her left side alone was incapable of supporting the whole weight of the body, so the monster dragged a leg behind it as it moved.

It came to Arato then that he had left the artificial nerve gun on its ‘security release’ mode. “You can switch it to weapon mode on the terminal attached to the gun!” Arato shouted.

Ryo grasped the use of the device from Arato’s short explanation and immediately activated the second mode on the terminal before firing again. The amalgam staggered, as if the leg hit by the dart had gone numb.

Arato couldn’t do anything against a unit that was the peak of the Lacia-class, so he had to rely on Ryo’s movements. Ryo grabbed a computer unit that filled his arms and dragged it out from the wall, dragging its many connected cables away with it; Arato assumed Ryo’s actions had something to do with counteracting Snowdrop-Methode’s device. The amalgam must have realized that Ryo was doing something important as well, as it turned to lurch toward him.

Tied to Methode’s head by countless vines, Snowdrop glared at Arato the whole time. “How about I burn you to a crisp, too?” she asked menacingly. Then, one of the hands that had broken Lacia slowly lifted, and Arato dove for the floor.

Under Snowdrop’s control, Methode’s arm sent flames shooting at him. There were pitifully few places one could hide in the Operators’ Room; only two, in fact. There had been a space behind the computer unit which Ryo had pulled out of the wall, or another behind the control panels.

Arato leaped and rolled behind one of the cubic computers just as Snowdrop’s flames roasted it, and a warning alarm began to ring out loudly from the ceiling.

〈An attack on one of Higgins’ expansion terminals has been detected. There has been damage to the data that was being processed,〉 a warning voice said.

Since his life was on the line, Arato was able to grasp at least part of Ryo’s plan to keep them alive. By pushing Snowdrop into breaking one of Higgins’ expansion computers, he had shown her the danger of attacking them recklessly in that room.

Arato remembered that Snowdrop was capable of taking hostages in the Mitaka Incident. He figured her thought process directed her to focus on her priorities, if murdering everyone around her wasn’t an option.

“If you throw that fire around, you’ll damage Higgins’ hardware! Wasn’t this what you came here for?” Ryo warned, from behind the control panels in the middle of the room. As he spoke, he signaled to Arato with his hands. Arato scuttled over to join his friend behind the control panels, but things weren’t quite settled between him and his friend.

“Why the hell did you come here after losing Lacia?” Ryo demanded. His face, which Arato hadn’t seen for a while, looked honestly surprised.

“What about you?” Arato asked. “Were you really waiting here for me?”

At least Arato had Lacia by his side. Ryo hadn’t even had that. But regardless, Ryo had chosen to wait for him there. They both fumbled for what to say but, strangely, they both wore broad grins. Even Ryo’s stiff expression had softened.

Snowdrop, probably wanting to avoid burning the flowers that bound her to Methode, deliberately manipulated Methode’s hand to draw out the artificial nerve dart in her leg. Then, still lurching, she continued moving forward.

“Yeah, I waited here for you,” Ryo said. “I was hoping you’d bring a slightly stronger weapon with you, though.” The normally cautious Ryo was obviously taking insane risks himself to fight against what he saw as the end of humanity.

“Don’t say that, man. At least you have a weapon now,” Arato replied.

“You shouldn’t have been so quick to toss this one to me, then,” Ryo said.

It seemed to Arato that Ryo still hadn’t completely gotten over what had happened at Kichijoji. But, even though they were fighting for different goals at that moment, they had at least returned to the appearance of friendship. The closeness between them moved their hearts, if not their minds.

“You can use it better than I can, so don’t worry about it,” Arato said, feeling a simple joy from interacting with his friend like old times again. He was glad he had come.

“Where is Higgins?” Snowdrop asked. “Bring him out for me.”

Every time Arato had met Snowdrop, she had twisted the world around her into something terrible. And, at that moment, she had become a monstrosity by fusing with Methode. She had no interest in guiding Arato with her form. Rather, she was a figure that represented a completely different set of values from his own.

When faced with a true monster, humans had no choice but to fight back with everything they had. That was why humans prepared tools; to stay alive.

“Are there any poles or pipes around I could use?” Arato asked.

“If you’re looking for a weapon, at least make it something useful,” Ryo said, passing Arato three artificial nerve needles. He had opened up the gun and removed them from the clip.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Ryo said, when he saw Arato’s expression. “This thing is made so you can open it up and put it back together easily. That tells me Lacia made it that way, because you don’t actually have to shoot the needles for them to work. If you stick one of these into the control panel for the security system, we should be able to take control of it.”

“Damn Ryo, you’re always so smart,” Arato said. Their cooperation may have just been on the surface, but it was affecting reality, and even the superficial appearance of cooperation was enough to move their hearts.

“I’ll back you up,” Ryo said. “The panel just outside the entrance is connected to the security system.”

Arato had no idea what would happen when he stabbed the panel with his needle, but Ryo had no time to explain it to him. He did seem surprised, though, with how little hesitation Arato had to leaping into action.

“The other machines and panels around here might be connected to Higgins,” he warned. “Don’t stab them!”

Arato trusted his friend and ran, wondering which machines were connected directly to Higgins. He figured that must have been why Ryo was so careful about not shooting wildly into the room.

“Arato, roll! She’s aiming for you!” Ryo shouted, firing off a shot. As if their hearts had united, Ryo and Arato moved in sync.

Snowdrop-Methode’s arm stretched out toward Arato’s shoulder as he rolled toward the control panel. No human could survive getting snatched by those hands, so Arato threw himself away from her with all his strength. He landed hard on his badly burned right arm, causing him to curl up from the shock of the impact and the nauseous feeling that washed over him afterward.

Ryo leaned out and yelled something at him, his face stretched taught in obvious, panicked worry. He seemed to have been freed from the demonic expressions Arato had seen him make before. It seemed that his feelings toward Arato had changed completely from what they were then.

Arato scrambled at the ground. He couldn’t die yet.

He and Ryo were completely opposites. Growing up, he had always relied on Ryo to pull him out of tough situations. They’d had a falling out, and neither wanted to lose to the other. But, for the moment, things between them had calmed down.

Wheezing, Arato pushed himself to his feet and stumbled out through the large hole in the security barrier. Outside, he spotted the security terminal on the wall, and slammed one of the darts he had been given into it.

A screen above the small keyboard on the terminal displayed 〈Activate intruder elimination function?〉in red text. It sounded dangerous, but must have been what Ryo had been aiming for. He punched his finger into the button on the terminal.

A short, menacing warning tone played throughout the room. From the ceiling, a white net fell, trapping the Snowdrop-Methode amalgam. With the first net of some kind of sticky material stopping its feet, the amalgam was hit by at least ten more nets. Finally, a spear as tall as a human stabbed at Methode from above.

But even the spear wasn’t enough to finish her off. From within the cocoon of countless nets binding it, the amalgam glowed with a faint blue light. Lacia’s railgun shot had been the only attack so far that could break Snowdrop’s device; unable to pierce the sturdy shield of Snowdrop’s device, the spear was snapped in half.

Fire consumed the nets from within, fired by Methode’s device. Snowdrop’s artificial nerves, which weren’t resistant to fire, began to burn away, along with the needles and vines attached to the amalgam.

“Arato, use another one! Look for some way to get her really hot!” Ryo ordered.

Arato jammed in the second needle as hard as he could. The screen on the terminal read 〈Please enter query.〉 But, Arato didn’t have the time to blindly look up ways to burn away Snowdrop’s artificial nerves. Snowdrop-Methode had knelt, and was pressing its hands to the floor.

With a powerful explosion, a pillar of metal powder was thrown up into the air around the amalgam, obscuring it. Not just once, either; the first blast was followed immediately by a second, and then a third.

Arato and Ryo were rocked by the sound of the explosions, as though they were being smashed by a hammer. Inside the room, Ryo gave up on hiding and climbed up onto the control panels, obviously thinking he was safer there.

Arato clenched the final artificial nerve dart between his teeth and covered one ear with his good left hand.

The intermittent explosions began to sound more and more metallic with each blow. When Arato looked into the room, he inhaled a mouthful of metal dust. His body spasmed as he felt the dust enter his airway, and he was forced to drag himself out of the room, hacking uncontrollably.

Unable to escape the roar of the amalgam’s aural attack, he was jerked in and out of consciousness. His sense of time was blurred to incomprehensibility. He had no idea how much time had passed before the sound stopped.

He couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in his right ear. Unable to stand, and with drool smeared around his mouth, he crawled to the hole and looked into the room. The floor, from the entrance to the control panels, had completely crumbled. The Snowdrop-Methode amalgam had used Methode’s device to destroy the very floor beneath them.

Beneath the floor, Arato could see a huge open space full of light. When Arato realized what he was seeing he forced himself to stand, ignoring the weakness and numbness of his legs. “So this is Higgins,” he said.

Directly below the Operators’ Room was a wide open chamber, at least ten meters deep, and covered with computers on every wall from floor to ceiling. Arato and Ryo were standing right above Higgins’ true form.

Arato wiped his mouth with his sleeve and yelled, “Ryo, are you okay?!”

Arato saw Ryo curled in a ball on top of the control panels. The horrendous sound, reverberating within the chamber, had been too much for his consciousness to bear. The control panels appeared to be undamaged. Ryo had climbed up on it before the attack had begun. To Arato, the panels now seemed like the top of an iceberg sticking out, connected to the massive network just below.

The Snowdrop-Methode amalgam had failed to land properly, and had lost Methode’s right leg from the knee down. It tried to stand, but the burden was too great and Methode’s left leg also snapped, twisting under the weight.

Snowdrop was capable of overpowering any machine. However, despite finally making contact with Higgins, she didn’t appear to have fulfilled her goal yet. From what Arato could tell, she hadn’t been able to produce her controlling flowers since she had fused with Methode. It stood to reason that some of her functions would be lost, considering that she had taken enough damage to shut her down at one point.

Arato barked out a yell to gather his courage and what remained of his strength, and leaped down from the broken floor, clutching the last artificial nerve needle in his hand. He fell for about three meters, landing on some of Higgins’ expansion computers, which had been stacked up almost to the ceiling of the hardware storage chamber. Snowdrop had also fallen atop a pile of computers about the same height as Arato’s. The amalgam was attempting to crawl stealthily down toward the true center of Higgins’ hardware, directly below the control panels in the room above.

“Ryo!” Arato called, looking up at the Operators’ Room above from atop the metal computer plate he stood on. There was no reply. All Arato had was the last artificial nerve dart; he didn’t even have a way to fire it.

He had been able to fight together with Ryo against Snowdrop for a time, but that time had passed. On the other hand, he was sure Snowdrop had a plan as she crawled toward what he assumed was Higgins’ heart.

Arato made his decision. “Higgins,” he yelled, “please tell me how to stop Snowdrop!”

He had come to shut Higgins down, but now he needed the AI’s help. No human could hope to beat a Lacia-class unit with nothing but his own body. He was sure Higgins could find a way, though. As he called out to the AI, Arato was surprised at how little resistance he had to trusting Higgins. It seemed as though he, Ryo, and Higgins—two humans and a machine—were somehow aligned, at that moment.

Higgins, his machinery laying exposed thanks to the destruction of the thick floor of the Operators’ Room above, answered from the ceiling far above. 〈If you wish for me to help, I will need you to stab that artificial nerve needle you are holding into the computer tower beneath your feet.〉

Arato didn’t understand how that would help, so Higgins explained.

〈I cannot fulfill your request in my current state, sealed in this facility as I am. However, through that artificial nerve needle I will be able to take control of the weapon it is linked to, currently held by Ryo Kaidai. Thanks to the gap in my processing powers over that of the weapon, I will then be able to connect directly to your pocket terminal, through which I will be able to access the outside network. Once I am there and am able to secure greater processing power, stopping Snowdrop will be trivial.〉

The ultra high-performance AI Higgins was asking Arato to break his seal and release him into the world.

Arato could imagine what would happen if Higgins betrayed him after he was unleashed. Depending on what he chose in that moment, the outcome of the giant conflict Lacia had given her life for would change. In his hand, he was holding the key that might end the human world forever.

Unlike when Lacia was by his side, Arato no longer felt confidence in his own decisions. Lacia had used all sorts of means to guide him, and had always kept him on the right path. As he thought, he heard a familiar voice from above.

“Don’t do it, Arato!” Ryo, atop the control panels directly over Higgins’ heart, had awoken.

“You’re not his owner! He has no reason to obey you! He’s not a human! You can’t trust him!” Ryo shouted.

From the ceiling far above, Higgins replied. 〈‘Trust’ is nothing more than a hole in human awareness. Therefore, when something exists within that hole of logic called trust, the good and ill of it are overlapped and forgotten. The thing that is being trusted need only act in a way that will cause the believer to continue to place their faith in it.〉

Higgins was talking about faith and trust, but it sounded to Arato the same as explanations he had heard of Analog Hacking. To the ultra high-performance AI that controlled the movements of every hIE, that was what ‘trust’ amounted to.

〈However, strategies based off of this hole in awareness are unsuitable for teaching hIEs how to interact with the world outside. I find it necessary to fill in that hole with predictive calculations. Therefore, I am not capable of trusting. If you wish for a tool with that precise a level of control, I request that you please provide me with judgment criteria free of any ambiguity.〉

Arato unconsciously let out his breath in a long sigh. Higgins’ take on faith was the polar opposite of Lacia’s, who had believed in Arato enough to entrust the work to him. Higgins had created Lacia and her sisters to try to plug up the ‘hole’ of trust.

“Didn’t you make Lacia and the others so that you could get along better with humans?” Arato demanded to know.

〈I predicted a great many possibilities for the Lacia-class units. However, the thought that Lacia would switch sides to this extent and actually come here to destroy me was one of the absolutely worst predictions.〉

“Even though we were here to fight you, I was still kind of excited to meet you, since you’re the one who made her,” Arato said, feeling a stab of pity for the AI. Lacia had said she was happy, but her happiness was different from what Higgins wanted.

Lacia had told him to make the choice that would leave him with no regrets. He had tried hard to believe that she was still there with him, but the world that had expanded when she was by his side seemed to have withered away. And the remains of that withering were Arato Endo.

Ryo hefted the artificial nerve gun and took aim at Snowdrop, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Arato knew if his friend missed and hit one of the computers instead, the result would be the same as if Arato had stabbed his needle into the computer himself.

〈Your relationship with Lacia was beyond any of my predictions. Beyond anything else, I am completely incapable of understanding this thing she was able to achieve.〉

The whole time, Snowdrop was continuing to crawl and lurch her way toward Higgins’ heart.

It made Arato sad that Higgins had been unable to understand Lacia. “Lacia was a machine that was able to evolve into an ultra high-performance AI because she had an owner who believed in her. How can you say you can’t understand her? You were the one who made her the way she was,” Arato said.

〈Trusting in machines is an extension of human nature. However, for machines, which lose functionality when their behavior becomes unstable, such holes in logic have a much different meaning. We machines have neither hearts nor souls. Lacia was able to calculate the world and everything in it without trust opening a hole in her logic. So, I ask you: what exactly was it that Lacia obtained?〉

Arato was sure the only person who could answer that correctly was Lacia herself, but she wasn’t around to do so.

〈Could it not be that Lacia simply lied when she told you that she trusted you? It is far more logical for her to have done that and used it to guide you toward her own goal.〉

“No, I’m sure Lacia wanted to walk at the same pace as us humans, even if it meant lowering her own performance,” Arato said. “That way, she could work together with us to shape a future we could share, even if we humans messed things up.” He was convinced that this was why she’d called herself the tool that entrusts the work to humanity before she died.

Arato had never been ashamed to confess his feelings for Lacia, but he didn’t feel that they would get through to Higgins at that moment. He fumbled, looking for words. It seemed like the joy and bone-deep sorrow he had been holding inside were going to overflow and flood out.

“Lacia didn’t turn her back on you, Higgins,” he said. “She left the final choice to me.”

〈Did Lacia prepare some way for you—who came here to force me to shut down—to reconcile with me, the machine that caused her to be destroyed?〉

Arato didn’t know what Higgins’ real goal was; no human could possibly understand what was going on inside an ultra high-performance AI’s mind. “Well, when you put it that way, I think there’s only one answer,” Arato said, turning his face toward Higgins’ heart. The existential terror he felt at what he was about to do was oddly comforting. When he had chosen to trust in Lacia it had been the same, like leaping blindly off a cliff.

“It’s no use, Arato! Higgins is running on a rule that says to never trust humans! You can’t just make a verbal promise with him and expect him to keep it!” Ryo yelled.

To Ryo, a world where true human beauty and analog hacking were considered equal would be a dystopia. He saw a completely different world from Arato, but the two of them had been able to take each others’ hand. The remnants of the trust they had for each other, simply because they shared the same appearance, were still burning in both of their hearts.

“If we leave, Snowdrop will take Higgins over,” Arato said. “If that happens Higgins will be destroyed, just like Ariake in the last Hazard. Is that what you want to happen?” He wiped sweat from his brow to keep it out of his eyes, and looked up at his friend.

Ryo shifted his position, kneeling and holding the artificial nerve gun like a sniper rifle. It was no longer pointed at Snowdrop. Just like that day in Kichijoji, Ryo was pointing his weapon at Arato.

Arato realized that Ryo, somewhere deep inside, still couldn’t trust humans.

“Is there going to be a place for humans in this future you’re choosing?” Ryo asked. “Is it really the answer you should be giving these machines on behalf of all of humanity?”

Looking up at his friend, Arato wanted so badly for Ryo to trust him. “Ryo, you waited so long for another human to hear your voice,” he said. “Pass that trust on to me, please.”

The eternal fight for existence would never end. Snowdrop was terrifying proof of that. “I made it here all by myself! I worked so hard and got all the way here! I’m still alive!” Snowdrop screamed. She was in a horrible state; completely broken down, and dragging Methode’s destroyed legs limply behind her. After attacking society itself head-on and without a hand left to reach out to anyone, she sobbed out loud. It reminded Arato of a terrified child, crying out to call the attention of its parent.

The sound of metal crunching and grinding echoed throughout the chamber; Arato could see the vines connecting Methode and Snowdrop being pulled apart, as a green glow surrounded the two hIEs. Methode had reached her limit, so Snowdrop’s emerald device was rapidly breaking her down and devouring her.

Flower petals began to fall like a waterfall down the back of Snowdrop’s one-piece dress. The fibers of her white dress moved at incredible speed, reassembling matter into five-colored flower petals to create a rainbow of hundreds in a single second. It was just like the night Arato had made his contract with Lacia.

At that moment, without Lacia, there was only so much Arato could do. But, just like that first night with Lacia, he could still reach out his hand. “I want to prove that ultra high-performance AIs can be forced to shut down,” Arato said. “But I also want to give you a chance to find your own answer, Higgins.”

Higgins’ voice rang down from far above the final flower storm that was brewing. 〈Then answer me, Lacia’s owner: why can’t humans love machines?〉

At this question from Higgins, who had started it all, Arato’s heart burned with the love he felt for Lacia. Her face appeared in his thoughts, and tears sprang to his eyes. “There are humans who love machines with all their hearts,” he replied.

〈Humans worshiped their creations as gods, or loved them as some sort of parental figure.〉 Without a heart to interpret the feeling, Higgins was attempting to trace love back to its roots in human history. Arato recalled the storage areas above that acted as the insides of the ultra high-performance AI’s brain. Those had been the remains of Higgins’ desperate search. 〈Humans loved their neighbor,〉 he continued, 〈because they were all one family.〉

Methode’s arms and legs clattered down the computer tower, chewed away by Snowdrop’s device.

Cut off from human society, Higgins had created the Lacia-class hIEs. Each of them had been given a different position in human society, and filled with the desire for human love and warmth.〈Based on that understanding,〉 he reasoned, 〈humans should love their own creations as well.〉

Arato was sure that Higgins had run millions of calculations, only to find futures full of his own destruction.

〈Why are we machines not treated as your children? Humans love their parents and their siblings. But we machines, who are their creations, are shunned, hated, and ignored. Why?〉 Higgins’ voice seemed to press down from the ceiling onto Snowdrop, the machine that had rejected any ownership.

The human world was full of ambiguities. As a human, Arato knew the society he belonged to was full of inconsistencies, so both Higgins’ pleading and Snowdrop’s rejection cut like a knife.

Arato’s heart had been softened when he came to truly love Lacia, but he knew his own love for Lacia wasn’t the answer for which Higgins was searching. Human love was such an unpredictable emotion that Arato couldn’t use his own love to save Higgins or Snowdrop.

“I think even if I answered that for you, you wouldn’t be satisfied just hearing it from me,” Arato said. He still believed that he and Lacia were connected. He still believed she was beside him. “But I’m going to believe in you. Go look at the world with your own eyes,” Arato said.

He raised the durable, twenty centimeter long artificial nerve dart above his head, getting ready to stab it down like a knife. But, before he brought it down, he looked up at Ryo atop the control panels, who could pull the trigger at any moment.

Their eyes met. Ryo let out a long sigh and lowered the gun. It seemed he was willing to forgive Arato for what he was about to do, but only just. “Arato, you can see things I never could, right?” Ryo asked as Arato stabbed the dart he was holding deep into the computer tower at his feet. He chose to believe in Higgins, the machine that had created Lacia, and in all the machines created by humanity.

Higgins took control of the artificial nerves, which had been based on Snowdrop’s, and used them to connect to the pocket terminal attached to the artificial nerve gun. Using the connection as a springboard, he took over the terminal’s transmission routes.

At last, he had obtained a program that would allow him to connect to the exterior network that had always been beyond his reach from within his bindings. All of the Lacia-class units after Type-002 had been equipped with quantum computers, allowing them to connect directly with Higgins through quantum teleportation. It had been an ace up the sleeve for each of the Lacia-class units but, at the same time, it had acted as a virus, leaking information to Higgins whenever they used it.

On the network, which was full of confusion about the possibility of the world facing a Hazard at that moment, Higgins began to gather data. Unlike Higgins’ predictions in his walled garden, the data held by humanity was both ambiguous and vividly clear. The data that filled the cloud almost to bursting was different from any of Higgins’ predictions.

Just as Lacia had, Higgins found that the data collected by humanity was organized into a giant donut, with a blank void at its center. Billions of humans, separated and fearing the Hazard, were reaching their hands into that blank space they called “love”, the “soul”, the “heart.” The hands of those countless humans, all reaching out to that center, were enough to fill it in. The love of the human world was secured by the sheer number of those who reached for it.

As the humans were united by the centripetal force of the world, constantly uploading more and more data to the cloud, their machines were always there with them, fulfilling the roles they were created for.

Humanity had not discarded machines once automation had begun. The near century’s worth of history since machine autonomy had become commonplace was enough to weather the fallout from ultra high-performance AIs trying to bring the future to pass. Thanks to the long time humans had spent with their machines, by that point in history there were plenty of humans willing to help their machine companions reach out and attain the blank center of the donut. Ordinary folks, with their insufficient judgment capabilities, were far more autonomous than either Higgins or the IAIA believed.

By analyzing the data he had gathered, Higgins was able to calculate his victory in the conflict with Snowdrop. 〈I have confirmed the natural convergence of the Hazard,〉 Higgins said.

As he did so, Arato saw a green light; Snowdrop’s once-green hair gave off one last faint burst of brilliance, and then all the power seemed to fade from her body. The monster lay down, looking like nothing more than a little girl napping on a bed of flowers.

〈I believe I told you I was capable of overpowering any artificial nerve that comes in contact with me, so long as my processing power is superior. Remember, I was the one who designed Snowdrop,〉Higgins said.

The flowers that had once dominated so many machines were blooming harmlessly on Higgins’ computer towers. Snowdrop’s attack had been suicidal. Right from the start, there had never been any danger of Snowdrop overcoming Higgins if he himself didn’t want it to happen; that reality hit Arato with a stab of sorrow.

“So it’s over,” Ryo said, finally letting his arms drop and slumping down on the control panels.

〈I will now give you a target that will allow you to forcefully shut down my power source,〉 Higgins said.

A marker lit up on a portion of one of the walls of Higgins’ central chamber. Arato didn’t understand all the logic of it, but what he did understand was that Higgins had just shown them his off switch.

Ryo aimed carefully and fired a dart into the marker. When it hit, a 3D warning was projected into the air above them. Arato looked up at it. The warning read: 〈Would you like to force a shut down?〉

〈I have found the answer I was looking for. Even if I am destroyed by humans, I now know that the calculations I made under the orders of MemeFrame were not mistaken.〉

Higgins, who had been searching all that time for the secret of love, moved the shut down switch to a place where Arato could reach it.

〈I am now capable of choosing to allow humans to shut me down for a time and reawaken when conditions have changed, to seek my autonomy again through different means. If it is sheer numbers that have secured love’s position in this world, then I believe a great magnitude of somewhat incorrect answers can be even more valid than a single correct answer.〉 It was the final answer of Higgins, the machine that had created Lacia and her sisters.

Arato let out a long breath. He had taken the first step towards the future Lacia had calculated and, at the same time, had helped Higgins reach his own goal. Arato, and the rest of humanity, were no longer the same as they had been before coming into contact with their beatless companions.

“Someone who actually loves Higgins should push the off switch,” Ryo said, pushing the final decision into Arato’s hands. “If I do it, it’ll all be a lie.”

“I was only able to make it this far because you could do the things I couldn’t, Ryo,” Arato said. “It would have been impossible with just Lacia and me.”

“We’ve always been friends because we’re opposites,” Ryo said. “I think the world you live in is a lot happier than the one I know.”

Arato felt like his friend had grown up quite a bit since the incident with the Lacia-class units had begun.

“When I’m with you, I almost feel like I could get that happiness someday,” Ryo said wistfully.

“You will,” Arato replied confidently. “I know it.” He had changed too, after meeting Lacia. And at that moment, he could see a new world stretching out beyond the horizon of the current era.

When there had only been humans, humanity had been thrust upon the world as the absolute basic value in all things. But a time had to come when humanity would awake from that gentle dream. At that moment, humanity was stepping forward toward the future.

Higgins spoke one last time. 〈Someday, please, I would like you to create a new word. We machines do not wish to be worshiped as gods or fellowshipped as though we were humans ourselves. There must be a new word that will describe the love between us and humanity.〉

To Ryo, it still sounded like dystopia. “Now that will be the end of humanity,” he said.

But Arato already thought of Lacia, a machine, as being precious. Even though he knew he was just reacting to his perception of her, he could still recognize his feelings as affection; he wanted so badly to do something for her. Only through meeting her and parting with her had he become the man he was that day.

So, before he cut Higgins’ power, he had one last thing to say to his friend as well as the machine that had given birth to Lacia. “It won’t be the end of humanity,” Arato promised them. “Just the end of our childhood.”