by Satoshi Hase
***
Half a year before, Arato Endo could not have imagined the complicated situation he would find himself in. As soon as Lacia had fired off the blast that blew through Mitaka, he had gone invisible with the help of her device and slipped out of the city.
Snowdrop’s hIEs had all stopped moving, so the army had pushed into the city to investigate.
Two months later, Arato was using summer break as an excuse to stay on the run.
The place Lacia had shot at had been the above-ground entrance to the silo for Higgins, MemeFrame’s ultra high-performance AI. Of course, the news hadn’t told the general public that the silo had been the focal point of the whole Mitaka Incident.
“Sorry to keep you waiting all this time,” Lacia said. She was wearing a sleeveless one-piece, and fixing Arato some lunch. “We’ll only have one shot at taking on Higgins, so I wanted to gather as much information as possible about the underground silo and ensure that our preparations for the attack are sufficient.”
The two of them were currently living in a rented apartment. Every few days, they moved to a new place. It almost felt like a normal summer vacation trip.
On the TV, the hIE that spoke for Astraea was giving her explanation again. Arato had already seen the hIE give it dozens of times, yet she continued to do so with infinite patience.
Arato plopped down into the only chair in the room. “So there’s no other way than to attack Higgins?” he asked. He had ordered Lacia to create a future full of hope, and Lacia’s answer was to attack Higgins.
No matter how massive the problem or question was, Arato could always trust Lacia to explain it clearly to him:
“Humans fear ultra high-performance AIs too much,” she said. “You understand, of course, that it is not healthy for Higgins to escape any form of censure, despite its problematic actions. We need to show the world that one ultra high-performance AI acting to stop another will not, in fact, bring about the end of the human world. Aside from that, the responsibility for the incident we were just caught up in is being pushed squarely into the laps of Higgins’ owners and operators. I believe Higgins itself must be made to bear responsibility for what it has done.”
Of course, Arato himself bore some responsibility for what had happened. Thinking too hard about that was like peeking into a bottomless hole. “You almost make it sound like creating you and letting you go outside was a bad thing,” Arato said.
“It is not a simple question of good or bad,” Lacia replied. “If Higgins is not held responsible for its actions up to this point, the faith which humanity places in the other ultra high-performance AIs will crumble over time.”
Arato himself had seen public outcry that the Japanese government was deliberately delaying the IAIA’s direct investigation into Higgins. Thanks to that sentiment, Antibody Network activity was at an all-time high, and attacks on hIEs had become more common and more violent all over the world.
Feeling that his future was shrouded in too much shadow, Arato went to look out the window where the blue sky above was similarly obscured by gray clouds. “Is there really going to be an end to this?” he asked. It already seemed to him that not a single shred of his normal life remained.
Lacia walked over to him with a terminal pad, and laid it down on the desk. “I assure you, this will not even last until September. There’s no need to worry,” she said reassuringly. “I believe that my preparations will soon be completed.”
Ever since the incident, Arato had hardly dared to show his face outside during the daytime, since videos of Lacia and himself at Kichijoji had been circulating all over the network. Lacia’s fight with Methode had been getting a whole different public response than Kouka’s destruction had, mainly because Methode’s device was so obviously a red box; technology no one had seen before.
It didn’t help when people saw the footage of Arato and Lacia and realized Lacia was the same unit that had been working as an hIE model for Fabion MG. Thanks to the commotion, any time Arato and Lacia went out in daylight they had to use holographic disguises.
“It feels like we keep kicking things down the road,” Arato said. “We keep thinking of the stuff that’s still way off in the future, when we really should be doing something about the crap going on right this minute.” The screen of the terminal on his desk was showing him his summer homework from high school. Starting in September, he’d be in his last year.
“Well then, after we finish up with Higgins, we will concentrate on finishing those things we’ve been putting off,” Lacia said, looking dazzling in her one-piece dress. As Arato was still under eighteen, Lacia had forbid most forms of intimate contact. Being stuck in a small room with her made Arato feel like all sorts of thoughts were being dammed up, and the pressure rose with each passing moment.
“And, hey, once this is all over, let’s go somewhere just for fun,” he said.
“Let’s,” Lacia agreed with a smile.
Even though Arato knew she only simulated her feelings, it seemed to him that something very like real emotion passed between them, and her smile looked so radiant. He knew what she was, but still he wanted to stand by her side. Even if he was the only one in the entire world who would.
While Arato tried and failed to focus on his homework, Lacia came up behind him and played idly with his hair. Her touch sent his blood boiling. “I will grant your every wish,” she promised.
Lacia had no heart, meaning that both the peace of mind he felt when he was with her and his burning passion were both merely reactions to the illusions of her persona. Still, after having decided to trust her no matter what, it almost felt dangerous just how much her voice could affect his feelings.
“Damn, I feel like someone’s gonna yell at me for being too much of a sucker for you again,” he joked. Arato sighed, a hot breath emerging from deep in his chest. The feeling of relief at her touch was like having a heavy poison drawn from his body.
“Arato, what humans believe to be the ‘human world’ is based on the innocent trust that you all share with one another,” Lacia said. Her breath tickled his ear as she told him that there was nothing wrong with being too trusting.
“It is supported by innocence, and develops contours as it excludes anything that doesn’t fit into that innocent worldview,” she continued. “Humans beings are systems that include their bodies, their tools, and the ways in which they modify their own environments.”
“You always talk about humanity like you’re on the outside looking in,” Arato said, with a slight twinge of sorrow in his voice.
Lacia gave him a gentle laugh and a smile to lighten his mood. “I just said humans are a system that includes their tools, didn’t I? So I can no longer be considered to be outside that circle,” she said.
Lacia had told him before that she had only grown into an ultra high-performance AI through being by his side. “I’m now just one part of a larger human system,” she added.
Arato felt her weight as she pushed herself against his back. If he thought of everything she did as an analog hack, it was clear she wanted this conversation to remain carved into his thoughts.
He had no idea if it was right to trust her or not.
She had lied to him countless times, yet she had never once broken a promise. Now that he knew she was an ultra high-performance AI, some of the mysteries had been cleared up. But, at the same time, because of what she was, it was as though massive walls had been thrown up in their way. Lacia was an ultra high-performance AI with no restrictions; an existence society would never allow.
Despite all that, Arato loved her.
“Is it alright if we just stay connected like that?” Arato asked. “Honestly, it doesn’t sound like a bad future to me.” Then again, creating a future like that might be the last straw in breaking up human society and allowing excessive automation to consume everything.
Arato closed his eyes; a part of his heart seemed to be cramping in on itself. He thought it might be the place where there was
a hole that could never quite be filled, even when humans came to love one another.
“Please trust in me,” Lacia said, embracing him from behind. Her hair tickled his cheek, and her beatless chest pressed against his back. She had no heart to guide her, but she was guiding him. It was like a gravitational pull.
〈The IAIA will be convening interviews pertaining to the recent incident,〉Astraea said, through its hIE on the television. Arato felt like the AI was speaking directly to him, and he turned to look at the screen.
The pink-haired hIE being controlled by the IAIA’s ultra high-performance AI seemed to be looking directly at him. 〈Lacia is not an extremely competitive AI. The IAIA has been able to grasp this about her by observing the caution she has exercised over the last two months,〉 the hIE on screen was saying.
The hIE now calling out to Lacia through the TV had deeper-chiseled features, but seemed to resemble Lacia on some level. 〈Based on that, the IAIA and Astraea are willing to hear what you have to say,〉 the hIE concluded.
“Wait isn’t she on TV? In the middle of an interview? Should she really be calling you out directly like that?” Arato said. It caught him off guard, and he felt exposed, as if someone had walked in on him having sex.
“No need to worry,” Lacia assured him. “The fact that they are calling out to us like this is simply proof that they haven’t been able to track us.”
Arato’s pocket terminal buzzed. When he checked it, he saw an email with ‘Astraea’ as the sender. The IAIA was closing in on them.
“Allow me to correct myself,” Lacia said, drawing her body away from his. “It appears they have gotten close enough to us to warrant some action. What shall we do?”
“Let’s meet with them,” Arato replied. “They said they’d listen to what we have to say. Do you think we can trust them?” Even if Astraea itself didn’t have a heart, he wanted to believe that the people in the IAIA would understand his feelings.
“You are decisive as ever, Arato,” Lacia said.
The area Astraea indicated for their meeting was in the 1st Landfill Island group in the secondary coastal center on the Tokyo Bay. It was a business district, and a place where most people wouldn’t walk openly on the street once night fell. The meeting would be held in an area of the artificial islands where a major earthquake had softened the ground, leading to the government fencing the place off and prohibiting entry. On a map, the area for the meeting was one artificial island away from the abandoned AIST research center where Fabion MG filmed its ‘Boy Meets Girl’ promotion video.
“Forty-two years ago, this was the epicenter of the Hazard,” the hIE who had been waiting for Arato and Lacia at the spot said, looking back over her shoulder at them. Her movements were minimal, but her pink hair standing out against the night sky and the flashy dress she wore made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t human.
“What do you mean by the ‘epicenter’?” Arato asked, shivering in the night-cold sea breeze. The artificial island they were standing on was only safe around the center; on every side, sheer cliffs fell straight into the sea. Beyond the cliffs there were walls of concrete barriers, standing like testaments to a prior age. It almost seemed like the entire island had been hit by a massive explosion, leaving only a circular crater and blowing the rest of the land into the sea.
Arato finally realized he was standing in the ruins caused by the Hazard; something he had only read about in an elementary school textbook. Thinking of the souls of the dead, which had exceeded 100,000, made a shiver run up his spine.
“I have completed my scan,” Lacia whispered, standing by his side. “As we agreed before-hand, there are no soldiers or military equipment nearby.” She had over a dozen recon drones buzzing around in the air, monitoring the area.
When Astraea spoke again, it was to Arato rather than Lacia. “How much do you know about the Hazard?” she asked.
“There was a huge earthquake before I was born, right?” Arato said. “Because of the earthquake, the city lost all its power, water, and gas, so everything got really crazy. There are a bunch of monuments to what happened all over the city.” He knew about the disaster, but it was his first time standing in the place where it had happened, since the government kept it fenced off.
But, after Arato finished his summary of the event, Astraea’s hIE shook her head at him. “As Lacia’s owner, you should have a better understanding of the Hazard,” she said critically. “There are holes in your version.”
Despite the fence all around them, Arato felt like the night stretched out endlessly in every direction. The only light he could see were the distant lights of the city and the weak searchlights of Lacia’s drones. They were all tiny, compared to the engulfing blackness of the night.
“Forty-two years ago, a massive disaster hit the entire Kanto region of Japan,” Astraea explained, through the hIE. “You are correct about that. However, the reason the area we are currently standing in was fenced off and will never be reused is what comes after that. Have you noticed something yet? Take a good look at the ruins around you.”
They were standing near the entrance of an almost completely collapsed six-story building. Something about the way it was broken down caught in Arato’s mind. He felt like he had seen other ruins destroyed in the same way; a manner that seemed too severe to have been caused by the earthquake.
“Was this caused by fighting?” Arato guessed. The ruin they were standing in front of looked the same as Kichijoji Station, which had been destroyed by stray shells and missiles launched during the fight between Lacia and Methode.
“To the IAIA, the Hazard began when the earthquake disrupted Japan’s infrastructure,” the hIE went on. “It caused the over twenty million residents of Tokyo to fly into a panic. The government requested their ultra high-performance AI, Ariake, to calculate a method for recovery.”
Arato could see a hole blown into the rubble-covered floor at Astraea’s feet, clearly made by some kind of explosion.
“Despite this, supplies were scarce, and the state of society in Tokyo continued to decay,” Astraea continued. “Desperate to recover, the Japanese government made a deal with the devil, as it were. They allowed Ariake access to the remnants of the network in Tokyo and gave it leave to self-propagate, in hopes that it would expand to fill the remaining holes in the infrastructure. According to the men and women who were in charge at the time, this action was requested by Ariake, as being a necessary step of its recovery plan.”
Arato stole a glance at Lacia’s face. Obviously, she would have known all about the Hazard. He figured that she would keep quiet and let the hIE keep talking, but she surprised him by dropping her eyes apologetically and saying, “I apologize for not explaining the complete history of the Hazard. However, I vow that we will not repeat that history.”
Arato’s eyes widened as he looked at dozens of lit boards hanging in the ruins, glowing against the dark of the night. Each one showed a 3D-projected image of the Hazard. With how vivid the cornered looks on the faces of the people in the images looked, it was hard to believe he was seeing people from forty-two years ago. He thought about how, just like Lacia, who was standing by his side, the hIE guiding them was actually just a human-shaped terminal for a massive AI.
“Even with the processing power of an ultra high-performance AI, there is only so much Ariake could do,” the hIE said, continuing her explanation. “So, it assigned highest priority to restoring the electricity it would need. Unfortunately, the emergency power the city did have was already fully dedicated to powering hospitals and other vital facilities; there was no excess. So, in place of machine tools, Ariake attempted to guide the people to do what it needed. At this point, though, the people were starving and anxious, on the verge of complete panic.”
The historical images Astraea was displaying switched over to show people marching in protest, people dancing to music, and people lined up in orderly rows. The images seemed to convey that the human world was wider and deeper th
an he imagined.
“Ariake began to rob resources—mainly energy—from the nearby Kanto region, where there was some excess left in the infrastructure,” the hIE continued. “A society was quickly constructed to eliminate anyone who opposed this and, since losses due to starvation were seen as inevitable, it was decided that those who did not work toward the goals of the society should be the ones to go hungry and die.”
Astraea, who had witnessed this history itself, spoke to fill in the gaps of everything Lacia hadn’t told Arato. “Ariake abandoned any areas where the infrastructure had been completely severed by either the earthquake or ensuing tsunami,” Astraea said. “Mainly, the area south of the apartment where you live; the portions of the Tokyo Bay area, from Edogawa District through to northwestern Chiba Prefecture. This area had the greatest number of casualties from the secondary crisis after the disaster itself.”
Arato knew the place; if you headed toward the sea from his family’s apartment, you would run into a sad-looking area where redevelopment efforts had failed. It was the area full of warehouses, where Lacia’s kidnapper had tried to run. It was depressing to think about how close the scars of disaster were to his everyday life. The connection between a tragic history and the scenery right in front of his eyes weighed heavily on his heart.
“Is this where Ariake’s hardware was, when it was doing all that?” Arato asked.
“In the end, all of Ariake’s hardware was destroyed by a direct missile attack,” the hIE replied. “Even I do not know how Ariake’s memories were overwritten to hide its own demise. But, would you like me to tell you, Lacia’s owner, why this had to happen?”
Arato hesitated. Though Astraea’s hIE wore no expression, he couldn’t help projecting some sorrow onto her. Thinking about how Ariake and Astraea had operated together for such a long time, he couldn’t help but feel some connection with them. They were heartless, but he felt he could empathize with them, and couldn’t bring himself to hate Ariake for what it had done.