Epilogue

Gavin Hunter found a girl sitting beside him as he regained consciousness in his hospital room. She had short hair and eyes hidden by the brim of a baseball cap, and was dressed casually in jeans and a trainer jacket. She looked to be about sixteen or seventeen.

“Mira, eh?” He tried to smile, but the most he could manage was a slight twitch in the corners of his mouth.

“Easy, now,” the girl said kindly. “I just got word from Wraith-san; they got him to safety. They apparently showed greater power than expected.”

“I see...” he said with a wheeze, then coughed lightly and looked around the hospital room. The EKG monitor beside him beeped in a regular rhythm. “I’m glad. I didn’t believe we’d actually finish it, but we really did make it in time. Thank you. We owe you.”

“Not at all,” said Mira. “I owe him... Sagara-san, that is, for saving me. If not for him, I’d be a hollowed-out shell somewhere in Siberia around now.”

“Well, maybe so,” Hunter agreed.

“But all I did was lend a hand,” she insisted. “It was him—Al—who really did it. He’s a remarkable AI, to be able to design his own body. That Bani person was truly incredible...”

“I see... The ultimate AS, wasn’t it?” Hunter whispered, gazing absently up at the ceiling.

For an artificial intelligence to develop something like human personality and instinct, just being hooked up to a network wouldn’t be enough. It needed a real body and sensations, even mechanical ones, to develop the necessary creativity and flexibility. It had to stand on the ground, feeling heat and wind, and also the extremes of combat. That’s why they’d mounted it on an AS—the most advanced artificial body in existence.

From what he’d heard, the entries in the ARX series through the ARX-5 weren’t even ASes, just collections of special materials brought together in a lab. And he’d heard that they were only just able to perform “paranormal phenomena” that were barely detectable to even the highest precision instruments. The revolutionary change had come with the ARX-6. Once loaded into an artificial body, a modified M6, the system functioned properly for the first time. Then came the seven, then the eight, and each time, its evolution was exponential.

The ability to create those strange force fields might have been militarily important, perhaps, but when Hunter considered the evolution of the ARX series, he began to wonder. Was even the lambda driver a purely incidental step towards achieving something greater?

Yes... Could that have been what Bani Morauta, the late Whispered, had been after? When he proposed that theory to Mira, the other Whispered in front of him now, her expression had clouded over.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, nodding her agreement. “That occurred to me, too, as I was helping to build the ARX-8. What Bani was reaching for...” She trailed off.

Hunter waited patiently for the answer, but Mira didn’t continue. Although her rehab was complete, he was still worried about too much strain on her mind, so he changed the subject. “It seems you came with me,” he observed.

“Yes. I was worried, after all.”

“I’m all right now, Mira,” he said reassuringly. “Get yourself somewhere safe.”

“I will. After a little while longer, I will.” Mira gave him a small smile as she lightly stroked his haggard cheek.

To be continued