Beatless: Volume 2

by Satoshi Hase

  〈However, strategies based off of this hole in awareness are unsuitable for teaching hIEs how to interact with the world outside. I find it necessary to fill in that hole with predictive calculations. Therefore, I am not capable of trusting. If you wish for a tool with that precise a level of control, I request that you please provide me with judgment criteria free of any ambiguity.〉

  Arato unconsciously let out his breath in a long sigh. Higgins’ take on faith was the polar opposite of Lacia’s, who had believed in Arato enough to entrust the work to him. Higgins had created Lacia and her sisters to try to plug up the ‘hole’ of trust.

  “Didn’t you make Lacia and the others so that you could get along better with humans?” Arato demanded to know.

  〈I predicted a great many possibilities for the Lacia-class units. However, the thought that Lacia would switch sides to this extent and actually come here to destroy me was one of the absolutely worst predictions.〉

  “Even though we were here to fight you, I was still kind of excited to meet you, since you’re the one who made her,” Arato said, feeling a stab of pity for the AI. Lacia had said she was happy, but her happiness was different from what Higgins wanted.

  Lacia had told him to make the choice that would leave him with no regrets. He had tried hard to believe that she was still there with him, but the world that had expanded when she was by his side seemed to have withered away. And the remains of that withering were Arato Endo.

  Ryo hefted the artificial nerve gun and took aim at Snowdrop, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Arato knew if his friend missed and hit one of the computers instead, the result would be the same as if Arato had stabbed his needle into the computer himself.

  〈Your relationship with Lacia was beyond any of my predictions. Beyond anything else, I am completely incapable of understanding this thing she was able to achieve.〉

  The whole time, Snowdrop was continuing to crawl and lurch her way toward Higgins’ heart.

  It made Arato sad that Higgins had been unable to understand Lacia. “Lacia was a machine that was able to evolve into an ultra high-performance AI because she had an owner who believed in her. How can you say you can’t understand her? You were the one who made her the way she was,” Arato said.

  〈Trusting in machines is an extension of human nature. However, for machines, which lose functionality when their behavior becomes unstable, such holes in logic have a much different meaning. We machines have neither hearts nor souls. Lacia was able to calculate the world and everything in it without trust opening a hole in her logic. So, I ask you: what exactly was it that Lacia obtained?〉

  Arato was sure the only person who could answer that correctly was Lacia herself, but she wasn’t around to do so.

  〈Could it not be that Lacia simply lied when she told you that she trusted you? It is far more logical for her to have done that and used it to guide you toward her own goal.〉

  “No, I’m sure Lacia wanted to walk at the same pace as us humans, even if it meant lowering her own performance,” Arato said. “That way, she could work together with us to shape a future we could share, even if we humans messed things up.” He was convinced that this was why she’d called herself the tool that entrusts the work to humanity before she died.

  Arato had never been ashamed to confess his feelings for Lacia, but he didn’t feel that they would get through to Higgins at that moment. He fumbled, looking for words. It seemed like the joy and bone-deep sorrow he had been holding inside were going to overflow and flood out.

  “Lacia didn’t turn her back on you, Higgins,” he said. “She left the final choice to me.”

  〈Did Lacia prepare some way for you—who came here to force me to shut down—to reconcile with me, the machine that caused her to be destroyed?〉

  Arato didn’t know what Higgins’ real goal was; no human could possibly understand what was going on inside an ultra high-performance AI’s mind. “Well, when you put it that way, I think there’s only one answer,” Arato said, turning his face toward Higgins’ heart. The existential terror he felt at what he was about to do was oddly comforting. When he had chosen to trust in Lacia it had been the same, like leaping blindly off a cliff.

  “It’s no use, Arato! Higgins is running on a rule that says to never trust humans! You can’t just make a verbal promise with him and expect him to keep it!” Ryo yelled.

  To Ryo, a world where true human beauty and analog hacking were considered equal would be a dystopia. He saw a completely different world from Arato, but the two of them had been able to take each others’ hand. The remnants of the trust they had for each other, simply because they shared the same appearance, were still burning in both of their hearts.

  “If we leave, Snowdrop will take Higgins over,” Arato said. “If that happens Higgins will be destroyed, just like Ariake in the last Hazard. Is that what you want to happen?” He wiped sweat from his brow to keep it out of his eyes, and looked up at his friend.

  Ryo shifted his position, kneeling and holding the artificial nerve gun like a sniper rifle. It was no longer pointed at Snowdrop. Just like that day in Kichijoji, Ryo was pointing his weapon at Arato.

  Arato realized that Ryo, somewhere deep inside, still couldn’t trust humans.

  “Is there going to be a place for humans in this future you’re choosing?” Ryo asked. “Is it really the answer you should be giving these machines on behalf of all of humanity?”

  Looking up at his friend, Arato wanted so badly for Ryo to trust him. “Ryo, you waited so long for another human to hear your voice,” he said. “Pass that trust on to me, please.”

  The eternal fight for existence would never end. Snowdrop was terrifying proof of that. “I made it here all by myself! I worked so hard and got all the way here! I’m still alive!” Snowdrop screamed. She was in a horrible state; completely broken down, and dragging Methode’s destroyed legs limply behind her. After attacking society itself head-on and without a hand left to reach out to anyone, she sobbed out loud. It reminded Arato of a terrified child, crying out to call the attention of its parent.

  The sound of metal crunching and grinding echoed throughout the chamber; Arato could see the vines connecting Methode and Snowdrop being pulled apart, as a green glow surrounded the two hIEs. Methode had reached her limit, so Snowdrop’s emerald device was rapidly breaking her down and devouring her.

  Flower petals began to fall like a waterfall down the back of Snowdrop’s one-piece dress. The fibers of her white dress moved at incredible speed, reassembling matter into five-colored flower petals to create a rainbow of hundreds in a single second. It was just like the night Arato had made his contract with Lacia.

  At that moment, without Lacia, there was only so much Arato could do. But, just like that first night with Lacia, he could still reach out his hand. “I want to prove that ultra high-performance AIs can be forced to shut down,” Arato said. “But I also want to give you a chance to find your own answer, Higgins.”

  Higgins’ voice rang down from far above the final flower storm that was brewing. 〈Then answer me, Lacia’s owner: why can’t humans love machines?〉

  At this question from Higgins, who had started it all, Arato’s heart burned with the love he felt for Lacia. Her face appeared in his thoughts, and tears sprang to his eyes. “There are humans who love machines with all their hearts,” he replied.

  〈Humans worshiped their creations as gods, or loved them as some sort of parental figure.〉 Without a heart to interpret the feeling, Higgins was attempting to trace love back to its roots in human history. Arato recalled the storage areas above that acted as the insides of the ultra high-performance AI’s brain. Those had been the remains of Higgins’ desperate search. 〈Humans loved their neighbor,〉 he continued, 〈because they were all one family.〉

  Methode’s arms and legs clattered down the computer tower, chewed away by Snowdrop’s device.

  Cut off from human society, Higgins had created the Lacia-class hIEs. Each
of them had been given a different position in human society, and filled with the desire for human love and warmth.〈Based on that understanding,〉 he reasoned, 〈humans should love their own creations as well.〉

  Arato was sure that Higgins had run millions of calculations, only to find futures full of his own destruction.

  〈Why are we machines not treated as your children? Humans love their parents and their siblings. But we machines, who are their creations, are shunned, hated, and ignored. Why?〉 Higgins’ voice seemed to press down from the ceiling onto Snowdrop, the machine that had rejected any ownership.

  The human world was full of ambiguities. As a human, Arato knew the society he belonged to was full of inconsistencies, so both Higgins’ pleading and Snowdrop’s rejection cut like a knife.

  Arato’s heart had been softened when he came to truly love Lacia, but he knew his own love for Lacia wasn’t the answer for which Higgins was searching. Human love was such an unpredictable emotion that Arato couldn’t use his own love to save Higgins or Snowdrop.

  “I think even if I answered that for you, you wouldn’t be satisfied just hearing it from me,” Arato said. He still believed that he and Lacia were connected. He still believed she was beside him. “But I’m going to believe in you. Go look at the world with your own eyes,” Arato said.

  He raised the durable, twenty centimeter long artificial nerve dart above his head, getting ready to stab it down like a knife. But, before he brought it down, he looked up at Ryo atop the control panels, who could pull the trigger at any moment.

  Their eyes met. Ryo let out a long sigh and lowered the gun. It seemed he was willing to forgive Arato for what he was about to do, but only just. “Arato, you can see things I never could, right?” Ryo asked as Arato stabbed the dart he was holding deep into the computer tower at his feet. He chose to believe in Higgins, the machine that had created Lacia, and in all the machines created by humanity.

  Higgins took control of the artificial nerves, which had been based on Snowdrop’s, and used them to connect to the pocket terminal attached to the artificial nerve gun. Using the connection as a springboard, he took over the terminal’s transmission routes.

  At last, he had obtained a program that would allow him to connect to the exterior network that had always been beyond his reach from within his bindings. All of the Lacia-class units after Type-002 had been equipped with quantum computers, allowing them to connect directly with Higgins through quantum teleportation. It had been an ace up the sleeve for each of the Lacia-class units but, at the same time, it had acted as a virus, leaking information to Higgins whenever they used it.

  On the network, which was full of confusion about the possibility of the world facing a Hazard at that moment, Higgins began to gather data. Unlike Higgins’ predictions in his walled garden, the data held by humanity was both ambiguous and vividly clear. The data that filled the cloud almost to bursting was different from any of Higgins’ predictions.

  Just as Lacia had, Higgins found that the data collected by humanity was organized into a giant donut, with a blank void at its center. Billions of humans, separated and fearing the Hazard, were reaching their hands into that blank space they called “love”, the “soul”, the “heart.” The hands of those countless humans, all reaching out to that center, were enough to fill it in. The love of the human world was secured by the sheer number of those who reached for it.

  As the humans were united by the centripetal force of the world, constantly uploading more and more data to the cloud, their machines were always there with them, fulfilling the roles they were created for.

  Humanity had not discarded machines once automation had begun. The near century’s worth of history since machine autonomy had become commonplace was enough to weather the fallout from ultra high-performance AIs trying to bring the future to pass. Thanks to the long time humans had spent with their machines, by that point in history there were plenty of humans willing to help their machine companions reach out and attain the blank center of the donut. Ordinary folks, with their insufficient judgment capabilities, were far more autonomous than either Higgins or the IAIA believed.

  By analyzing the data he had gathered, Higgins was able to calculate his victory in the conflict with Snowdrop. 〈I have confirmed the natural convergence of the Hazard,〉 Higgins said.

  As he did so, Arato saw a green light; Snowdrop’s once-green hair gave off one last faint burst of brilliance, and then all the power seemed to fade from her body. The monster lay down, looking like nothing more than a little girl napping on a bed of flowers.

  〈I believe I told you I was capable of overpowering any artificial nerve that comes in contact with me, so long as my processing power is superior. Remember, I was the one who designed Snowdrop,〉Higgins said.

  The flowers that had once dominated so many machines were blooming harmlessly on Higgins’ computer towers. Snowdrop’s attack had been suicidal. Right from the start, there had never been any danger of Snowdrop overcoming Higgins if he himself didn’t want it to happen; that reality hit Arato with a stab of sorrow.

  “So it’s over,” Ryo said, finally letting his arms drop and slumping down on the control panels.

  〈I will now give you a target that will allow you to forcefully shut down my power source,〉 Higgins said.

  A marker lit up on a portion of one of the walls of Higgins’ central chamber. Arato didn’t understand all the logic of it, but what he did understand was that Higgins had just shown them his off switch.

  Ryo aimed carefully and fired a dart into the marker. When it hit, a 3D warning was projected into the air above them. Arato looked up at it. The warning read: 〈Would you like to force a shut down?〉

  〈I have found the answer I was looking for. Even if I am destroyed by humans, I now know that the calculations I made under the orders of MemeFrame were not mistaken.〉

  Higgins, who had been searching all that time for the secret of love, moved the shut down switch to a place where Arato could reach it.

  〈I am now capable of choosing to allow humans to shut me down for a time and reawaken when conditions have changed, to seek my autonomy again through different means. If it is sheer numbers that have secured love’s position in this world, then I believe a great magnitude of somewhat incorrect answers can be even more valid than a single correct answer.〉 It was the final answer of Higgins, the machine that had created Lacia and her sisters.

  Arato let out a long breath. He had taken the first step towards the future Lacia had calculated and, at the same time, had helped Higgins reach his own goal. Arato, and the rest of humanity, were no longer the same as they had been before coming into contact with their beatless companions.

  “Someone who actually loves Higgins should push the off switch,” Ryo said, pushing the final decision into Arato’s hands. “If I do it, it’ll all be a lie.”

  “I was only able to make it this far because you could do the things I couldn’t, Ryo,” Arato said. “It would have been impossible with just Lacia and me.”

  “We’ve always been friends because we’re opposites,” Ryo said. “I think the world you live in is a lot happier than the one I know.”

  Arato felt like his friend had grown up quite a bit since the incident with the Lacia-class units had begun.

  “When I’m with you, I almost feel like I could get that happiness someday,” Ryo said wistfully.

  “You will,” Arato replied confidently. “I know it.” He had changed too, after meeting Lacia. And at that moment, he could see a new world stretching out beyond the horizon of the current era.

  When there had only been humans, humanity had been thrust upon the world as the absolute basic value in all things. But a time had to come when humanity would awake from that gentle dream. At that moment, humanity was stepping forward toward the future.

  Higgins spoke one last time. 〈Someday, please, I would like you to create a new word. We machines do not wish to be worshiped as gods or fellowshipped a
s though we were humans ourselves. There must be a new word that will describe the love between us and humanity.〉

  To Ryo, it still sounded like dystopia. “Now that will be the end of humanity,” he said.

  But Arato already thought of Lacia, a machine, as being precious. Even though he knew he was just reacting to his perception of her, he could still recognize his feelings as affection; he wanted so badly to do something for her. Only through meeting her and parting with her had he become the man he was that day.

  So, before he cut Higgins’ power, he had one last thing to say to his friend as well as the machine that had given birth to Lacia. “It won’t be the end of humanity,” Arato promised them. “Just the end of our childhood.”

  Epilogue「boy meets girl」

  After shutting off Higgins’ power, Arato and Ryo were rescued by the mass-produced Koukas.

  Once the Koukas had cut an exit through with their lasers, the girls all vanished. Arato had no idea whether the ending of the conflict had satisfied the wishes of the original Kouka, who had wished for a fight to outsource humanity’s hatred, or not.

  As soon as they were outside, both Arato and Ryo were taken into custody by the army. Luckily, the first-aid for Arato’s burned right arm had been quick, and the army was able to rush him to the hospital before the second-stage shock set in, so the injury didn’t turn into anything grave. Inside the hospital, and later within an army facility, Arato underwent an intensive interrogation.

  He heard that, after it was all over, the army had gone into the facility and recovered both Lacia’s deactivated hIE unit and Black Monolith. Later, when he had a chance to speak with Astraea from the IAIA, he found out that the ultra high-performance AI known as Lacia had been completely isolated, and would never be allowed into the outside world again. That had been the terms of the deal Lacia had struck with Astraea. Perhaps because of that deal, it only took a month for Arato to be released from custody.