6

Takeru Higa spent the better part of an hour racked with indecision.

An aged keyboard rested on his knees. The question was whether to hit the smooth, worn-down ENTER key at the end of it.

His apartment in the Higashi-Gotanda district was stuffed full of electronics that he’d been collecting since his student days. The room was miserably humid, the air conditioner unable to keep up with all the heat exhaust. He kept the lights off to limit whatever sources of heat he could, meaning that he sat in darkness, surrounded by red, green, and blue LEDs flickering in different patterns.

Across from Higa and his padded floor chair was a glowing thirty-two-inch monitor placed atop his kotatsu, a low table covered by a blanket with a heater underneath for the winter. Nothing was happening on the desktop—just a single plain window displaying nothing.

Higa sighed, something he’d done dozens of times without moving, and leaned back into the chair. Its rusty frame creaked.

He’d told his coworkers that he was going home to get a change of clothes, so he’d have to go back to the Roppongi office in thirty minutes. Dr. Koujiro was busy handling all the external business, now that Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka was officially “dead.” Higa was now, for all intents and purposes, the one in charge of Project Alicization.

But if anyone found out that he’d abused his position to take something out of the office, he would certainly be scolded, if not demoted entirely.

The thing he’d taken was now resting on the right end of the kotatsu, connected to an extremely complex and strange device. The device’s handmade frame was stuffed with boards and wires—and was easily the most expensive and advanced piece of tech in the room. It was something that could not be found anywhere outside of the Ocean Turtle, except in Alice’s machine body: a lightcube interface.

And the object connected to that device was a metal package two and a half inches to a side. Higa stared at its cold, gleaming surface and muttered, “Of course it’s not going to work.”

He withdrew his index finger from the space above the ENTER key.

“It’s going to fall apart at once, obviously. That’s what happened to the copies of Kiku and me. Human souls saved onto lightcubes cannot bear the knowledge that they are replicas. Even if…even if they’re…”

He couldn’t finish that sentence. Higa sucked in a deep breath, held it in—then stretched out his finger again and tapped the ENTER key.

A program sprang to life. The large fan in his PC tower picked up in intensity. In the middle of the dark window on the screen, a radiating circle of rainbow-gradient color appeared, like the birth of a star.

Many little spikes jabbed out into the darkness surrounding it. It shook, quivered, sparkled.

Eventually, out of the speakers to the sides of the monitor emerged a quiet, familiar voice.

“……Mr. Higa, I presume?”

He swallowed and replied, “Th…that’s right.”

“So you didn’t delete me. You just…copied me, I suppose.”

“I couldn’t…I couldn’t delete you!!” cried Higa, arguing in defense of his own actions. “You’re the first fluctlight to survive a span of two hundred years! I mean…you’re the longest-living person in human history! I couldn’t delete you…I couldn’t be the one to do that, Kirito!!”

Higa felt sweat dampen his palms. In the upper part of the window, a digital timer that measured the time from activation was spinning rapidly. Thirty-two seconds…thirty-three.

Kazuto Kirigaya—or at least, the copy of his fluctlight after awakening following a two-hundred-year stay in the Underworld during its maximum-acceleration phase—was aware that he was a replica.

In these experiments, every copy faced with that fact quickly lost rationality, falling into madness and emitting bizarre squeals as they collapsed. Without exception. Higa gritted his teeth and waited for an answer from the speakers.

Seconds later…

“…I had a feeling that something like this might happen…,” said the voice, almost muttering to itself. “Mr. Higa…was it only my fluctlight you copied?”

“Y…yeah. Yours was the only one I could sneak out from under Kikuoka’s and Dr. Koujiro’s noses while I was performing the memory-deleting operation…”

“I see…”

There was another silence. The replicated consciousness within the lightcube remained gentle and in control.

“I’ve talked to Her Majesty…to Asuna about this. About what we would do if something like this happened. Asuna said if it was just she who was replicated, she would want it deleted at once. If both of us were replicated, we would use our limited time remaining for the purpose of harmony between the real world and the Underworld…”

“And…if it was just you? What would you do then?” Higa asked, unable to stop himself. The answer chilled him.

“Then I would fight only for the Underworld. I am the protector of that world, after all.”

“F…fight…?”

“The Underworld is currently in an extremely precarious state. Isn’t that right?”

“Well…that’s true…”

“In the real world, it is tragically powerless. The energy costs, hardware, maintenance, network…It is utterly dependent on real-world people to keep its infrastructure intact. There is no way to ensure long-lasting stability and safety.”

The conversation had already lasted two minutes. But the replica’s manner was very calm and showed no hints of disaster.

Higa leaned back in the chair and, without really intending to, argued back, “There’s no way around that, though. The actual Underworld—the Lightcube Cluster—can’t even be moved out of the Ocean Turtle. The ship is under government supervision now. The government could order the power cut tomorrow and wipe the entire cluster clean…”

“How long will the reactor fuel last?” said the voice, rather unexpectedly. Higa blinked in surprise.

“Uh…well, that’s a pressurized water reactor for submarines, so…if it’s just maintaining the cluster, another four or five years, maybe…”

“Then roughly speaking, for that time, there is no need to replenish the fuel. In other words, as long as we prevent interference from the outside, the Underworld will continue to exist, correct?”

“P-prevent interference…? The Ocean Turtle doesn’t have any weapons systems to begin with!”

“I said that I would fight,” said the voice, quiet and gentle, but with a steel edge.

“F…fight…? But the satellite connection is down, and we can’t even contact the Ocean Turtle…”

“There is a line. There must be.”

“Wh-where?!” Higa said, leaning forward. The answer was not what he expected to hear.

“Heathcliff…Akihiko Kayaba. We need his power. First we must search for him. I trust…we’ll have your help?”

“K…Kayaba…?!”

That man was dead now…In fact, he’d died twice.

The first time was at the retreat in Nagano. The second time was in the engine room of the Ocean Turtle.

But Niemon’s mechanical body, where Akihiko Kayaba’s thought-mimicking program was lurking, had vanished from the ship.

“He’s still…alive…?” Higa gasped. He was in a daze—he had completely forgotten about checking on the timer at the top of the window.

What was going to happen?

Former archenemies, a copy of Akihiko Kayaba and a copy of Kazuto Kirigaya. If these two ever came into contact…what would happen?

Maybe…I’ve actually opened some kind of horrible Pandora’s box…

But the trepidation lasted for only a moment in his mind before it was pushed out by a cavalcade of excitement.

I want to see that. I want to know what will happen.

Higa inhaled deeply, exhaled, then said, “All right. I’ve got a few old contacts…I’ll try sending out some encrypted messages…”

There was no going back now.

Higa squeezed his eyes shut, wiped his sweaty palms on his T-shirt, then began to type furiously at his keyboard.

On the monitor, the massive glowing cloud that stretched beyond the boundary of the window frame flickered and pulsed periodically, gently observing the movements of Higa’s fingertips.