by Satoshi Hase
The unit once known as Saturnus was sitting right behind Erika. It suddenly struck Erika as funny that this man, who seemed to have a harsh critique for everyone, had been the first to leave the stage.
“How foolish,” she said scornfully. “There’s no need to sprint to the head of the meme wars to create fashion. If you don’t get lost in your own dreams, and take the time to collect information, you’ll have the facts you need.” As the owner of Fabion MG, Erika was in a position to see fashion fantasies turned into realities. With her sense of equilibrium, which allowed her to package and sell dreams, it gave her a taste of what Watarai’s failure had been like.
〈So, was I right? Was Lacia the successor of Eliza, an android politician? Or did she turn into an even greater monster that brought an end to the history of humanity?〉Spoke the dead man, with one foot still thrust firmly into the world of dreams.
〈I’ve got a question for you, as someone who survived these conflicts: I know we, as humans, have arrived at the limit of how much we can use our sealed ultra high-performance AIs. Did things turn out as the IAIA predicted? Did the fighting between the Lacia-class AIs, which placed their restrictions as a low priority, lead to the freeing of an ultra high-performance AI? Should we have released the limits on the ultra high-performance AIs during times of peace, instead?〉And here, the film came to an end.
“Miss Erika,” Mariage said, her voice echoing quietly in the dark room, which had returned to reality. “I’ve detected a recon squad from Digital Intelligence on the mansion grounds. There appear to be two of them.”
To Erika, the entire era seemed like fiction. She wanted to write modern reality off as the future, and kick things down the road to deal with later. “Pretend we’re not home,” she ordered. “And don’t leave any trace of the fact that we’ve fled from reality.”
Sometimes Erika convinced herself that she had returned to the long-lost days of the past, and was simply reading a book about a world one hundred years in the future. She came to believe that the little slice of the past she was living in was her reality. She had her doll house, her Hello Kitty, the smell of tea; she was surrounded by forms and experiences she should have enjoyed, at least a little. In a world she hated, having something she could enjoy was her one lifeline.
“Are you alright with not going to intervene in what’s going on in Higgins’ underground facility? I had thought we had anticipated both the approach of Digital Intelligence and your movements, at this point,” Mariage said, in reaction to Erika’s deep sigh.
From Mariage’s tone, Erika guessed the hIE thought that she was simply being unmotivated. But, if Mariage couldn’t analyze the situation and realize that what she was talking about was a hell far beyond her capabilities, then perhaps her analytical abilities were lacking.
“I got my hands on Watarai’s terminal right in the middle of the IAIA investigation,” Erika said. “If I was to describe the feeling surrounding this as a human emotion, I suppose you might call it ‘passion.’”
She stared out the large windows of the mansion, looking toward Mitaka. If she considered the immense power Lacia had at her command, it was possible for Erika to grasp the true scale of what Lacia was doing at that moment. The world outside seemed quiet, but that was only because Lacia had moved things on a global scale to isolate her enemy.
Terror and anticipation twisted Erika’s mouth into a strange smile. “Lacia’s found a future she’s willing to fight the whole world for,” she said. “If you stuck your neck out there onto the stage that the world’s smartest woman is throwing her life away for, you’d be lucky if all that happened was you being reduced to scrap.”
To Erika, Lacia and Arato’s ‘boy meets girl’ story seemed to be born from a human and a machine sharing memes and reaching out to grasp each other’s hands. She doubted they would let anyone off easy, if they stuck their noses into this plan they’d risked everything on.
***
After five minutes of walking in Higgins’ underground facility, the hallways were still as narrow as ever. Walking side-by-side would have them rubbing shoulders, so Arato followed behind Lacia instead, with the floating shields behind him.
“The security for the underground facility is run by an AI named Kirino, which is also part of the barrier which prevents Higgins from interacting directly with the outside world. So, we need to paralyze Kirino’s systems just enough to shut down the security system without also freeing Higgins,” she explained, picking up a gun-like weapon from one of the black floating shields; it was the artificial nerve harpoon gun she had used when they had been surrounded by the army. Pointing at a wall, Lacia pulled the trigger. The silver needle shot deep into the wall, and the lights above them flickered off, just once.
A map of the area appeared on the wall, as if to guide them on their way.
“The sensors for the security system are near the surface, here,” she said. “So it was an ideal place for injecting artificial nerves. I can use the connection here as a foothold to disable each local node of the security system.”
“So looking into this kind of thing was what took you those two months,” Arato commented.
“Without approval from the security AI, it is impossible to utilize transmissions or drones within Higgins’ silo. This place was created to seal away ultra high-performance AIs so, if I don’t expand my influence here as we go along, I won’t have access to most of my abilities,” Lacia replied.
Putting her words into action, Lacia shot another needle into the floor far in front of them. To Arato, she was like a trained brain surgeon; planning carefully, then using her tools with precision to obtain a perfect result.
Arato lost all sense of time in the narrow corridors until, finally, they emerged into a room with elevators. The elevators were designed to stay on the floor indicated by a slider panel nearby.
“The elevators are too heavily guarded, so we won’t actually be riding one,” Lacia said.
In the square room, there were two elevator doors in the walls. Lacia chose one of them and kicked it; the thick metal bent under a flurry of blows. Through the bent door, Arato saw that the elevator shaft was at least five times larger and longer than the narrow room they were standing in. If the elevator cars were the exact same size as the opening of the elevator shaft, it would easily admit five large trucks side-by-side.
Cold wind blew out of the terrifyingly massive vertical hole.
“I am going to use the mass projectile mode of my device to destroy the elevator cars,” Lacia said, as her device shifted to form a giant cannon. Hefting it, she leaped into the vertical shaft. Using her friction control, she stood on the side of the shaft as if it was flat ground.
The elevator room shook with two successive blasts. Flames and rubble fell like rain down the shaft until gravity took hold of the elevator cars and dragged them down like an avalanche. Arato cowered away as the sounds roared out painfully.
Lacia’s hand stretched out of the shaft toward him. “We will descend by float,” she said. “Please get on.” As if requesting that he ride it, one of the floating shields pushed its way under Arato’s feet, and he stepped out into the darkness, swallowing his fear as they went.
During the descent, Arato saw that each floor had a different shape or size of door to the elevator shaft. He figured that the floors with smaller doors were meant for human use only, while the larger ones were intended for bringing in large equipment. Six floors down the now-empty shaft, they came to a floor with a large door.
“The elevator shaft goes down another six floors, but if we continue down the shaft here, we will lose a good point for intercepting pursuers,” Lacia explained as they stopped. “We will continue from this floor.”
Putting word to action, she used Black Monolith’s cannon to blast off the elevator doors. Arato was busy being impressed by the huge scale of the facility when Lacia spoke again, interrupting his thoughts.
“Arato, from this point forward I will be relaying my vi
sual data over the network. This is scenery the world must see, if they are to understand ultra high-performance AIs better,” she said.
Beyond the broken doors, Arato saw a giant, open floor: there were no walls dividing it, only neatly ordered pillars. There were borderlines drawn upon the floor, with pallets of cargo arranged among them. Unmanned lifts and robot arms attached to the pillars were shifting the cargo around. The whole place was a giant, automated factory.
“What is this place?” Arato asked.
Lacia’s explanation was polite and thorough, probably thinking of the unknown number of viewers who were seeing the scene along with Arato. “This is a warehouse floor that was renovated according to Higgins’ design,” Lacia replied. “It may look different, but I assure you that there is nothing dangerous here.”
Arato was blown away by how large the dimly-lit warehouse was; it looked to stretch on forever. There seemed to be a little bit of everything stored there: he saw household goods; appliances; vehicles; and many other objects.
“Why are they keeping so much random stuff here?” he asked.
Lacia gazed at the endless rows of random objects with a nostalgic look on her face. “This is all so Higgins can keep the hIE control programs up to speed with human society,” she explained. “An hIE must be able to handle any object or vehicle used around the home, meaning each time a new piece of household equipment or vehicle is developed, Higgins needs to learn about it. hIEs are generally considered safe because they do not possess an independent AI but, to function at all, they rely on the AASC, which is being constantly updated by Higgins. In other words, Higgins is a single machine tasked with handling environmental factors impacting hIEs worldwide.”
It was strange for Arato, knowing that he was also being recorded by Lacia and uploaded as part of her stream. “Wow, so I guess ultra high-performance AIs take their studying pretty seriously,” he said, feeling as though continuous silence would be rude to their viewers.
“Objects and equipment are always being cycled out over time and replaced with new versions and updates,” Lacia said. “No matter how intelligent you are, you will quickly be left behind if you do not constantly gather information on the newest developments.”
The two of them were now walking on a wide path in the warehouse between rows of new household goods and tools. Arato saw almost absurd numbers of items he regularly encountered in his daily life, and it was funny to imagine an ultra high-performance AI seriously studying objects Arato used on a daily basis.
“That’s trends for you,” he quipped.
“Human trends, by which old forms of items are eliminated at a continuous, rapid pace, are a much more terrifying power than you think,” Lacia replied, shooting an artificial nerve needle into a security camera as they passed it by. “Erika Burroughs is an expert at trend strategy, so she may be even more skilled at understanding them than we AIs.”
“Is that why you kept working as a model for Fabion MG? Because Higgins knew about Erika’s power over trends?” Arato asked, amazed that not a single alarm had sounded under Lacia’s strict watch.
“Do you remember when I told you that I consider humans to be a system made up of their bodies, their tools and their environments?” Lacia said, returning Arato’s question with one of her own as the two of them walked by a new car model that had been the number one trend a year before.
As Arato followed behind Lacia, her question sparked a thought in his mind. “Wait, are you saying that Higgins focuses on gathering up human tools because he thinks the same way?”
“Good question,” Lacia said, tilting her head and shooting him a mysterious smile. “To us, making use of perception requires creating and monitoring the physical forms and data of objects. That was what I learned, using the basis of analog hacking; perception is what moves the human world, and the economy is what ties it all together.” She gestured to the piles of items they were walking between, as though they were the physical representations of her lesson. To Arato, it seemed strangely like she was comparing herself to the stuff stacked up around them.
“All things with form flow along on the same lifecycle,” Lacia continued. “Clothes, characters, stories, idols and celebrities; everything fashionable falls out of fashion and fades. When they fade away, they leave an empty space in the world of trends. Using the economy, a new form is brought in to fill those gaps as they open. So, before we Lacia-class units were born, a hole was opened in the world of trends for us to fill.”
“What exactly did Higgins create you to be?” Arato asked, visualizing the world of trendy items stretching out around him, with Lacia at its center. Through her, he was also connected to that world.
Lacia was still wearing her mysterious smile. “We Lacia-class units were not given that information before we were released into the world,” she replied simply.
According to Lacia, there were three routes through Higgins’ internal facilities: the first was the normal route used by MemeFrame employees, while the second was a special route for emergencies, created based on IAIA recommendations. Both were straight, descending routes. The third route, which Arato and Lacia were following, had been created from the lowest floors. It had opened up naturally as Higgins had requested that the internal facilities be expanded outward.
“The warehouse space continues for five floors,” Lacia said, continuing her conscientious commentary “Starting from the floor below us, red boxes will be mixed in among the more normal items, which means that security will be tightening the deeper we go.”
A long, narrow escalator meant for humans had been set up between the floors. The level they descended to had a high ceiling, inorganic walls, and seemed to stretch on forever. It was covered with orderly piles of items, just like the floor they had come from. The only difference was that, in some places among the stacks of other items, there were large empty spaces with a single object at their center, as if that item was being showcased for some reason.
“What are those?” Arato asked, indicating the items surrounded by empty space.
“Red boxes are required to have a certain amount of security around them when they are in storage,” Lacia explained. “The security in those open spaces is tighter than anywhere else but, as we are only planning to pass through using the main paths, that should not present a problem for us.”
Lacia seemed completely uninterested in the objects that had been made by technology far beyond human understanding as she guided Arato down the paths passing by them.
“Higgins made all of these?” Arato asked, surprised by the number of red boxes he was seeing. “How many are there?” If each of the open spaces he had seen from the escalator contained a red box, there must have been dozens of them in this massive warehouse.
“There are far more red boxes being produced by the various ultra high-performance AIs than you may think, Arato,” Lacia replied. “However, these items are considered extremely difficult to use by those in charge, so they mostly end up stored in places like this.”
Lacia had one of Arato’s floating shields display a map of the floor for him: there were twenty-two red boxes marked out on the nearly two hundred meter square floor.
“This is a bad habit caused by how the ultra high-performance AIs are sealed away,” Lacia continued. “Since they can’t interact directly with the outside world, they preemptively create objects that humans will develop the technology to make several decades down the road, so that they can simulate the world they can’t touch or see.”
“They’re just guessing that humans will be able to make this stuff though, right?” Arato asked. “Isn’t it a huge waste, if it turns out we never end up making these things?”
One of the floating shields was displaying images of the various red boxes to Arato. He saw what he guessed to be a next-generation computer, the engine for a spaceship, and a small genetic engineering device, among others. He saw new materials, a thought-controlled display board, an implant that could transmit human expe
riences, a super high-powered battery, equipment for low-cost extraction of particles used for quantum teleportation. The list went on and on. Even he could understand that any one of those items could cause huge, worldwide waves if they were presented to the public.
“That is possible, but new, popular products need only a year or two to completely transform the world,” Lacia replied. “If Higgins doesn’t calculate these possibilities before-hand, he cannot keep the AASC up with the times. But, as you have said, some of Higgins’ predictions have created items from a future that never came to pass. Those, too, are abandoned here.”
Arato suddenly felt overwhelmed in the face of a warehouse where Higgins was storing possibilities and predictions in order to be ready for the future. It was almost as though they were standing in a part of Higgins’ brain; a place where the AI’s dreams and the paths of his thoughts were given physical form.
“People need to see this to understand Higgins better, right?” Arato asked. “That’s why you wanted to upload video from this place onto the network.”
“Transparency of information is invaluable in helping the world feel more comfortable with ultra high-performance AIs,” Lacia agreed. “Up to now, humans were unaware of the true nature of red boxes. If I had not released this information today, it surely would have been uncovered at some point.”
To Arato, it seemed like the piles of objects were reaching outward, trying to expand out of their limits like dark dreams left unchecked.
“My name is Lacia,” Lacia said, gesturing at the stacks of goods. “I was created by Higgins, and I am the fortieth ultra high-performance AI in the world. I am currently infiltrating Higgins’ facilities with the intent of shutting him down.”
With those words, Arato felt like they had just crossed a river they would never be able to return from. “Lacia!” he yelled.
Her emotionless, light blue eyes glowed faintly, and she smiled at him. Lacia had said that the distribution of resources was the worry which most gripped the world at this moment, and Arato figured she knew exactly what she was doing when she wielded the power of resources for her own goals. The greatest battle ever between humanity and the ultra high-performance AIs was going to be fought, and she was aiming to win it with analog hacking.