by Satoshi Hase
Thanks to strict information control that prevented any leaks to the public, most people in the world had no idea the war that might end their species had begun.
Phase12「Beatless (1)」
The flash of light from the south exit of the Kichijoji Station building left a trail of dust in its wake all the way to the ruins of Inokashira Park.
It only became apparent to the world a week after the siege of Mitaka and Kichijoji had lifted that the flash had been caused by an abnormally powerful railgun being fired straight out from the station building.
Snowdrop, the main AI unit that had been controlling all of the child units during the siege, had been found torn in half at the point of the railgun’s shot impact. The army had collected her remains and forwarded them on to a research lab for analysis.
Since it was the first place in which Snowdrop had been observed by the public, people referred to the whole event as ‘the Mitaka Incident.’ Between the civilians and the soldiers involved, there had been 530 dead and 2043 injured; the Mitaka Incident was one of the most catastrophic AI-related tragedies the world had seen.
Once network communications in the area had been restored, survivors had uploaded videos of stray bullets turning residences into Swiss cheese and other scenes of devastation. As a result, the army was the main target of backlash over the event, as they had refused to help citizens around them while the siege and assault had been ongoing.
Aside from the army, it was MemeFrame—the company that had leaked the powerful artificial neural network in the first place— that came under heavy fire, as well. CEO Tsuyoshi Kaidai was called to testify in front of the Japanese Diet. Afterward, four of MemeFrame’s chief officers were fired, which led to a sharp drop in the company’s stock price. They also had one of the largest class-action lawsuits against a single company to date, leveled against them by people who had suffered damages due to the incident. The massive, long-lasting decline in general public acceptance of hIEs that resulted from the incident almost seemed like an afterthought in comparison to the other effects.
The day after the end of the Japanese Bon Festival, Shiori Kaidai shielded her eyes from the harsh light of the sun. Two months had passed since June 10th, the date of the Mitaka Incident.
“Hey Shiori, things got pretty crazy there for a bit, huh?” one of Shiori’s high-school classmates asked, calling to her from in front of the school gates. The white cloth of the girl’s uniform was crisp and fresh, though with her short hair, it seemed to Shiori that the girl would have looked better in a suit and pants than a skirt.
It was still the middle of summer break, but Shiori and the other girl were going to school today to help out with some student council business. August was almost over and, with the new school year starting in September, new students were visiting the school with their parents to get things ready.
“True, there was that whole incident,” Shiori agreed. “But I was already about to be discharged when it happened, and the investigators took it easy on me when they asked me questions, so it wasn’t too bad of an ordeal.” Every member of the Kaidai household, Shiori included, had been made to undergo questioning by inspectors from the IAIA.
The IAIA investigation had been welcomed by the people of Japan. Public opinion was that, had the investigation been left in the hands of MemeFrame and the Japanese government, the truth of who was responsible for the incident and what measures were being taken to prevent a repeat occurrence would never be brought to light. People were worried that Japan’s governing bodies couldn’t safely handle the usage of the ultra high-performance AI, Higgins.
Shiori had been questioned about the use of Higgins, as well as the escape of the Lacia-class hIEs. After all, she had been one of Methode’s three owners. So, under the direction of Astraea, their own AI, the IAIA had asked her all sorts of specifics about what had happened. Shiori had honestly told them everything she’d known.
“It’s a load off my shoulders, to be honest,” Shiori said. “After the questioning, there were those who decided I was no longer on my way up the corporate ladder—which, considering the nightmare waiting for those who have to take responsibility—is preferable.” Her chances of being murdered by Methode had decreased, she hoped. With Shiori now marked by the IAIA, if Methode were to eliminate her, she would be classified as a Red Box incapable of living in harmony with humans.
“Responsibility?” the girl repeated. “There’s no way they could try to say that any of this was your fault.”
There had been discussion among the Higgins faction in MemeFrame about how to respond to the investigation. They had decided not to have Shiori tell any lies that might expose her, mainly because no one believed that she, who was not even a MemeFrame employee, had enough interests tied up in the company to go that far for them.
“Of course,” Shiori agreed. “And, I must say my parents are quite relieved that I’ll be able to just live a normal life, going forward.”
Her father had barely come home since June. Despite normally being a bundle of energy, recently Shiori had seen the exhaustion getting to him. It was her first time seeing him so haggard.
Ryo had been missing since the incident. The official story was that Ryo Kaidai had taken Methode and run.
Of course, Shiori doubted that there had been no contact between MemeFrame and her brother in the intervening two months. If Methode’s owner had changed once again, Shiori speculated that the hIE would probably be running wild by now, and there had been no signs of such goings on.
“I just think that if we had discussed things better as a family, everything could have turned out differently,” Shiori lamented. “But, we humans are such complicated things.”
The Kaidai family was in pieces. Crisis could bring families with good bonds closer together, but the Kaidais had never been close. With this series of disasters, it seemed that there was no longer a centripetal force pulling them toward a single, shared core.
“Ever since the incident I’ve been thinking,” Shiori went on. “I wonder how many problems in the world today are caused by failures in human relations, preventing us from doing the things we should otherwise be able to do? When my own relationships fell apart, I was quite shocked at how few options I had.”
“I think it might actually be okay for the company to have failed so miserably,” her friend said, doing her best to cheer Shiori up despite the hollow sound of her words. “Eventually, everyone will realize that they’ve gone a little overboard with all the hate they’re leveling at MemeFrame, and things will go back to normal with your family.”
There was strong public opinion that the whole MemeFrame company should be split up, and its assets sold to pay for reparations. On the other hand, there was some unease about whether or not a company with its own ultra high-performance AI could go bankrupt. Others reacted angrily to the possibility that taxes might be used to cover MemeFrame’s massive debt.
“Our world has become so advanced, but I wonder, have we as humans really advanced with it?” Shiori asked, rhetorically.
Arato Endo had vanished, as well. However, once every three days or so he still sent a message to her, using the pocket terminal address she had given him. His messages detailed the things happening in his life from day-to-day, as well as the ups and downs of his own feelings. They were also set to delete themselves after 30 minutes from the time of their receipt. Her connection to Arato was the only thing Shiori would lie to the world about. Whenever she thought about the last moments before they parted, she felt shame at how childish she had been.
“Well, well, looks like you do have someone who cares about you,” her friend said, peeking at Shiori’s face with a surprised expression. It felt like the girl had just read Shiori’s mind, and Shiori reflexively touched a hand to her cheek.
With Lacia, the ultra high-performance AI at his command, Arato should have had plenty of opportunities to influence the country and human society itself from every angle imaginable. Still, nothing s
eemed to have changed, which made Shiori glad. With the Mitaka Incident, the world had its first private owner of an ultra high-performance AI. It would take a whole new establishment within society to handle a change like that. Though he had the power to change the face of the world, Shiori knew from reading his messages that he loved the world the way it was at that moment. Arato still had his innocent love for his fellow humans. Seeing how little his power had changed him made Shiori feel closer to him.
“I think I remember someone telling me that soon, the only job left for humans will be finding something or someone to love,” Shiori said, the memory of the words suddenly floating up in her mind. “Though, I can’t remember who.”
“They sound like quite the romantic,” her friend replied.
“I suppose,” Shiori said, musing. She also remembered how Yuka, Arato’s little sister, had responded to those words: ‘Well, we’ve got plenty of love to go around, ’cuz we’re bad bitches.’ Thinking of Yuka, Shiori suddenly felt terribly worried for her.
***
Yuka Endo’s life had spiraled into a freefall during the summer.
The last she had seen of her brother was when he went speeding off on her bike. Neither he nor Lacia, who he had promised to bring home, had returned. Even her bike had gone missing.
She only received word from him once every couple of days. Apparently it would be bad if anyone found him, since he never told Yuka where he was. According to Arato, there were dozens of people keeping a close watch over the Endo household.
“If they’re here, I wish they would bring me some dinner,” Yuka complained, laying on the sofa and kicking her legs. “All those people out there and not a single one cares that there’s a kid starving in here? Jeez!”
“Yuka, when you kick like that, it just makes the room dusty. Maybe we should do some cleaning?” Yuka’s friend, Olga Sugiri, said, looking at her from the kitchen with exasperation. Olga’s brother Kengo was a good cook, but all Olga seemed to know how to do was fry stuff on high heat, and it all came out the same shade of brown.
“The yakisoba is ready,” Olga said now, from over a bowl of Japanese fried noodles. She looked like a doll with her fluffy hair, but her cooking relied way too much on heavy sauces to be palatable. Still, Olga spent most of her time keeping Yuka company since Kengo’s arrest, for which Yuka was grateful.
“Fine, I’ll do some cutting,” Yuka grumped. The side salad was short on tomatoes, so Yuka’s only input was to chop some up and add them.
They watched the news absently while they ate. Public opinion about the Antibody Network attack on the Oi Industry Promotion Center had been fluctuating wildly. After the IAIA had taken a special interest in the case, the news had spread that the whole thing had been carried out under the direction of a red box that was one of MemeFrame’s leaked units, and the responsibility placed on the human members of the attack had been lessened. As a minor, there was a possibility that Kengo Sugiri would only get a few weeks of incarceration for his part in the attack, when all was said and done. On top of that, the whole Sugiri family relied on their reputation to bring in customers to their restaurant, so they all paid special attention to the news.
Yuka recognized a face that flashed onto the screen. “Hey, that lady came to our house,” she remarked.
The woman on the screen was actually an hIE used by the IAIA’s ultra high-performance AI, Astraea, to communicate with humans. Her pink hair marked her as being obviously not human. On the screen, she was explaining the assessment criteria for the analysis of the MemeFrame leakage.
〈The IAIA sees the expansion of automation through the use of tools as an inevitable path throughout human history,〉 the hIE said. 〈At the same time, we are calculating a future where humanity’s ability to control their own society will not be outpaced by the rapidly increasing speed of technological advances. If we set these calculations as the IAIA’s base value, the extent to which a leakage disrupts these numbers becomes the danger level of the leakage. Based on these standards, the IAIA has evaluated the Mitaka Incident to be a Level 5 leakage event.〉
According to the IAIA’s scale, an event in which the controls sealing an ultra high-performance AI were completely destroyed and humanity lost control of their own society—in other words, an ‘end of the world’ scenario—would be classed as the highest danger level, which was 7. Based on that understanding, Yuka knew what the IAIA didn’t: with Lacia having gained freedom, the Mitaka Incident had really been a Level 7 event.
And, considering that her brother and Lacia were the focal point of that event, it made sense that they hadn’t been able to come home. Even if Yuka didn’t like it, she did understand. Considering how much the news was focusing on the event, if anyone found out where Arato and Lacia were, it would be a disaster.
“So, apparently the danger level of these leakage events has nothing to do with how many people got hurt,” Olga observed, sprinkling some chili pepper flakes over the yakisoba, which she had set out on the table.
A leakage event could be declared catastrophic even if not a single person was injured or killed. The hIE representing Astraea had explained that to Yuka when they had spoken.
“Yeah, they told me that,” Yuka said. “They said that, if they focused on how many people had died, the leaked units would start focusing on taking out just the people who had important information. So they counteract that by keeping a small group of people secretly doing all the important stuff, and if things get too dangerous they can just cut those people off and forget about them. I guess it’s their trump card against the AIs or something, but it’s pretty crappy to win by letting a bunch of people die, if you ask me.”
Just thinking about it turned Yuka’s stomach. The hIE from Astraea had told her that the rule was in place to ‘keep the responsible parties from evading responsibility, even if everyone involved is dead.’ Apparently, as long as the IAIA knew what had happened and had their future calculations in place, someone could still be made to take responsibility, even if the actual people who had been responsible for the incident were wiped out. All of the countries allied with the IAIA agreed that, should the responsible parties be annihilated before responsibility could be assigned, the country they belonged to would take on the responsibility in their stead. With that rule in place, it became the best interest of each country to ensure that the responsible parties for leakage events were kept alive.
There were bits and pieces of the discussion Yuka couldn’t quite swallow, but at the very least she got that the IAIA was trying to tell her that they didn’t plan on letting Arato die. At the same time, they were also warning her that there was no benefit in her trying to keep information to herself.
“This whole thing stinks,” Yuka grumbled.
“I just hope your brother wasn’t caught up in any of this,” Olga said, and Yuka could hear the genuine worry in her voice.
“Everything’s so complicated,” Yuka told her, squeezing some mayonnaise out onto her plate of yakisoba. “It seems like the things we want to do are super simple, but as soon as we try to do them, stuff in other places gets harder to do.”
“Well, if we’re able to do what we want in the end, the struggle will have been worth it,” Olga said, always the soft-spoken realist.
“Yeah, I guess,” Yuka mused. “I feel like Shiori would have something to say about all this. I’m gonna text her.”
Yuka had the home system transcribe the whole conversation into text. The system automatically picked out key points, and sent them to Shiori.
Thirty or so seconds later, Yuka’s pocket terminal buzzed to let her know Shiori’s response had come. 〈Do you mean like how an organism’s desires to eat and procreate are simple conceptually, but life has evolved incredibly complex mechanisms to fulfill these desires? That sort of thing?〉
Yuka put a finger to her wrinkled forehead as she stared in consternation at the screen. “Uh, I’m gonna need your help with this one, Olga,” she said.
�
��I-I wonder what she could mean?” Olga stammered. Among the ‘little sisters club’ the level of academic intelligence varied wildly, with Shiori sitting high at the top of the ranking. Olga, two grades above Yuka, did her best to act as a senior to the younger girl.
“I think what she means is that everything started out as amoebas,” Olga tried to reason. “Then we got worms and fish, and all the way up to humans. Despite every living thing just wanting to eat and have sex, their bodies evolved into very complex systems. But, I believe what Shiori is saying is that it feels like a waste, having so much complexity when nature is already so full of living things anyway. At least, I think that’s what she means!!” Olga finished uncertainly, her voice rising in pitch toward the end. As she leaned back and looked at the ceiling, it was obvious that she’d overheated her brain. Yuka, for her part, was impressed at her friend’s show of wisdom.
“Wow, so we evolved this far just to eat and have sex?” Yuka said. “Animals sure are super amazing.”
Another text arrived from Shiori. She seemed to know exactly what Yuka really wanted.
“Shiori says she’s gonna bring over some snacks and tea leaves,” Yuka said.
Yuka was a simple girl with simple desires. She liked to eat, and was looking forward to tea and snacks. Chatting with her friends was relaxing and, she thought, someday it’d be nice to fall in love, too. Nothing complicated about any of that. She was a little worried, though, about what her brother was getting up to with Lacia. To her, it seemed like he was getting worked up and sticking his nose into things that were way too complicated for a guy like him.
Olga read through the cloud snack shop information attached to Shiori’s text, as though she had completely forgotten the difficult discussion from just moments before.
“I think it’s fine to think of things like that as being important,” she said.