I looked back. Nagato was staring at me, and after a brief moment, she nodded so imperceptibly, I doubted it was detectable on the micrometer scale. She then looked away.
Nobody should’ve noticed. Haruhi, Asahina, Sakanaka, and even Nagato were all focused on the exhausted Rousseau. But one sharp-eyed person had noticed Nagato’s actions.
“I believe we should retreat for the moment,” whispered Koizumi into my ear. “There’s nothing we can do by remaining here. Not you and not me.” Koizumi smiled quietly, then spoke again. I didn’t like him breathing on me. It felt weird. “There’s no hurry, but we mustn’t waste time. If nothing else, there’s Suzumiya’s state to consider. We need to deal with this before she takes some kind of disastrous action. And the only person who can do that is—”
I wanted to play dumb and ask him what the hell he was getting at, but for some reason, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Maybe I’m naturally smart. I didn’t know why it was so easy for me to read Nagato’s and Koizumi’s every tiny expression and still be so hopeless at exams, but this was no time to be worrying about that. And this wasn’t for Koizumi’s sake; this was for Rousseau.
It was time to get things done.
Having left Sakanaka’s house, Haruhi and Asahina were listless and absent, as though they’d left their souls back with the poor sick dog, and they remained silent on the train. Even when we got off at our station, it was like Sakanaka had been contagious and they’d caught her sadness.
As far as that went, I understood it perfectly well. It was hard seeing someone who’d once been healthy losing that health. I, too, wanted to see them running around the school, not lost in melancholy. Whether it was a person or an animal.
But it was Koizumi’s cold conclusion that as far as the dog went, there was currently nothing we laypeople could do for it.
“All we can do is watch and wait. But the animal hospital is not powerless. I expect even now they’re working on a treatment.”
I just hoped it was a sickness that could be researched and understood. But what if it wasn’t? I didn’t want to have to go to Rousseau’s funeral, I said.
“Fortunately, I know some veterinarians. I’ll do some asking around; they may have some leads.”
In spite of Koizumi’s forced attempt to cheer them up, Haruhi and Asahina had lukewarm reactions. All he got from them were murmured yeahs and okays.
We couldn’t very well sit around stewing in our own sadness forever, so eventually we decided to call it a day. Or should I say, we had to. If we hadn’t, who knows for how long we would’ve wound up staring dejectedly into space.
Haruhi and Asahina walked side-by-side down the road that paralleled the train tracks. By rights, Koizumi and I would’ve taken the same route, since it was the quickest way for us to get home, but Haruhi didn’t seem to notice our absence, and the two of them were soon out of sight.
I hate to say it, but they were in the way. It would’ve been nice if Asahina could have stayed, but the current situation was not her specialty.
Along with Koizumi and me, Nagato watched the two girls head home, then turned to return to her own apartment.
“Nagato.”
The small, short-haired girl looked back mechanically, smoothly, as though she’d expected me to call her name.
I saw her face and had a hunch. I knew it. Nagato did understand. I didn’t have to hesitate to ask her.
“What is it that Rousseau’s gotten?”
I wondered if she was going to think about it for a moment, but then Nagato spoke.
“A data life-form element.”
To that statement, I said:
“…”
Perhaps recognizing my silence as noncomprehension, Nagato amended her explanation. “A silicon-based, symbiotic data life-form element.”
“…”
In response to my continuing silence, Nagato opened her mouth to explain further, but then seemed to realize she had no other words of explanation, and so closed it.
While the two of us fell silent, Koizumi spoke.
“In other words, Rousseau has been infected by an invisible extraterrestrial life-form,” he offered.
Nagato seemed to pause for a moment, as though waiting for permission from someone. Then: “Yes.” She nodded.
“I see. So this data life-form element—may we consider it not as being invisible to the human eye, but rather having no physical form at all, instead being comprised of pure data?”
“You may.”
“Is it similar to the Data Overmind in that regard? Like the network infection that spread to the computer club president?”
“The Data Overmind is on a completely different level from this subspecies. It is far more primitive.”
“Are there any comparisons at all? If you compare the Data Overmind to a human, then what would be analogous to this silicon-based, symbiotic data life-form element?”
I was shocked he’d been able to remember that term, having only heard it once. In response to Koizumi’s question barrage, Nagato answered the same way she always did: simply.
“A virus.”
“Is that it, then? Is the reason the first dog’s body… no, its mind was infected, before the infection was passed on to Rousseau, because the data life-form elements are reproducing and spreading, like a virus?” Koizumi brushed a lock of hair back with his finger. “And what are these strange data life-forms doing on Earth? And what attracted them to the dogs?”
“It is possible,” said Nagato in a thin voice, “to surmise that the silicate bodies that act as hosts were drawn into Earth’s gravity well. Those silicate bodies were vaporized by the heat from atmospheric friction, but data life-forms can continue to exist when the physical matter that houses them is destroyed. The data remains. The data life-form elements made contact with the Earth’s surface.”
“Right where the dogs are being walked. That’s the area where they fell, is it not? And they happened to infect a dog that passed by.”
“It is possible that there are similarities between the networks of silicon-based life-forms and canine neural circuitry.”
“But they’re not the same. Which means the result is that the dogs begin to weaken.”
Nagato had been answering Koizumi’s questions rapidly, but she closed her mouth for a moment to consider.
“It is not a contagion. A unified data element is planning to expand its cognitive memory.”
What was she talking about—
Whatever it was, Koizumi seemed to understand. “So a single dog doesn’t contain sufficient resources. But I can’t imagine it will stop, having spread to two dogs. How many dogs would it take for this silicon-based life-form to rebuild its network?”
“Based on the minimum estimate derived from silicon life-forms already known to my database… infecting every dog on the planet would be insufficient—”
“Now wait just a second,” I interrupted, deeply disturbed. “I understand that Rousseau and one other dog have gotten some kind of space virus. And I kind of get that it got here on a meteorite. But what—in space, there are these… uh, how did you put it, Nagato, ‘organic life-forms,’ but also other life-forms, ones not made out of organic matter?”
Nagato considered her answer for a moment. “The answer to that question depends on how you define the concept of life.” She looked at me with eyes so clear I thought I might fall into them. “If you are referring to entities whose consciousnesses are contained within silicate constructions, such entities exist.”
She said it like it was no big deal, but hearing something so intense at this particular moment put me in a bad place. She should’ve told the Project Cyclops extraterrestrial investigators when they were putting together SETI; they would’ve done a happy dance and run off to get funding, I bet.
“And by the way,” I said, even though it was a little late to ask, “what’s this ‘silicon’ you keep talking about?”
Unfortunately I’d never been overly fond
of either chemistry class or its teacher.
“It’s the chemical element, silicon,” said Koizumi. “It’s an excellent semiconductor.” He directed an interested smile at Nagato. “What Nagato is talking about is essentially a machine consciousness. It’s a level of technology we humans have not yet achieved. She’s saying that elsewhere in the universe, there are inorganic, machine entities that have gained consciousness on their own. Or perhaps in all of space, such entities are the norm, and we humans are the exception.”
Nagato ignored Koizumi and kept looking at me. As though she were entrusting me with the answer to everything.
I thought back—back to the first book I’d borrowed from Nagato. Guided by a note left on a bookmark in it, I’d gone to her house for the first time, where she’d told me something.
—Because it was previously assumed that organic life-forms, which possess absolute limits on their data accumulation and transmission capabilities, could never develop intelligence—
Koizumi unconsciously stroked his chin.
“Is it possible that these silicon compositions are merely raw matter, and only gained consciousness upon being inhabited by the data elements?”
Nagato looked up, seeming again as though she were asking someone for permission, then looked back down.
“Intelligence,” she said after a short pause, “is determined by an entity’s ability to collect data, then independently process that stored data.”
Nagato was very talkative—no, more talkative than she’d been since the conversation in which she’d revealed her true nature to me. Maybe the fact that our problem was in her area of expertise made her chattier.
“The data life-form element parasitizes the silicon life-forms, augmenting their cognitive abilities. Originally the data life-form was no more than an isolated clump of information. In order to harvest and process more data, it required physical network circuitry. Each entity benefits the other.”
But what were these silicon-based life-forms? Were they so astoundingly lazy and disconnected that they’d just let themselves fall into Earth’s gravity well and burned up in the atmosphere? I asked.
“Their activities as life-forms are limited to cognition,” said Nagato. “They do nothing other than cogitate. Space is vast. The probability that they would fall into a gravity well is near zero. Thus they have no will to live nor self-preservation concepts.”
What did they think about, just floating around in space? I asked.
“It is impossible to explain their cognitive framework to an organic life-form. Their logical foundations are too different.”
So communication was impossible, huh. I guess we didn’t have to alert NASA then. Making first contact would only end in frustration.
“Geez.”
We’d gone from Sakanaka talking about ghosts to the far reaches of the universe—a leap too far, if you asked me. And given that I could barely understand any of Nagato’s hard SF novels, all this talk of intelligence and cognitive capability was totally beyond me.
It was hard to know whether it fell in the purview of chemistry, philosophy, or religion. Invisible data life-forms and the intelligent balls of silicon that housed them… it would’ve been a lot more understandable to just call them ghosts and be done with it.
“Wait—,” I said, as something weird occurred to me. That’s right—Sakanaka had come to us talking about ghosts. And a ghost was just a soul, right? “So, do souls exist?”
This formless data life-element, or whatever it was, was the source of extraterrestrial intelligence. Its former physical body had been destroyed, and its incorporeal part had fallen to Earth—didn’t that make it basically a ghost?
“What about humans? We have brains that think, which means there’s a consciousness in there somewhere. Are you saying even if our body is destroyed, the spirit remains?”
This was a fairly important question—no, there was no “fairly” about it. Depending on the answer, it could completely change the path of a human life.
Nagato did not answer, a queer look passing across her face. I mean, her standard lack of expression was the same as ever, but something about her aura was different, I could tell. Even if nobody else noticed, I could tell. I would soon have known her for an entire year. That was plenty of time to develop a certain amount of insight, and there’d been several incidents where it would’ve been impossible not to learn something about her. Trust me, I’d know.
Nagato, she—
“…”
She was silent, she was blank, and yet I felt that there was some kind of a look to her. And so long as my perception wasn’t indicating “zero”—
“…”
It was like she was trying to avoid smiling at her own joke.
Then, finally, Nagato’s answer came. It was short and sweet.
“That is classified.”
There was a loud, exaggerated sigh. I was its source. Classified, huh? Someday I wanted to be able to use that word when somebody had asked me a question I didn’t want to answer. Maybe I’d try it in class the next time a teacher put me on the spot.
I was struck by the deep question of whether Nagato had just cracked the first joke she’d ever made in her entire life, but that wasn’t important. Right now, Rousseau was the top priority. The problem was what to do about that space-virus thing.
“We’ll have to do something. Nagato, is it possible?”
“It is possible,” said Nagato. You could always count on her. “We must gain control of the relevant data life-form elements and compress them into an archive, halting its activity. However, we will need a biological network to contain the archived data.”
I didn’t really understand, but it sounded like a pain. Couldn’t we just wipe it out? I asked.
“Deletion is not possible.”
Why not?
“Permission has not been given.”
From her boss?
“Yes.”
Had they been designated an endangered species in this galaxy or something?
“It is a beneficial being.”
I supposed they were something like lactobacilli or E. coli to us humans, then.
I’d let Koizumi take over. He seemed amused at something. “Can’t we stick this thing in some silicon and send it back to space in a rocket or something? Couldn’t your Agency handle something like that?”
Koizumi shrugged lightly. “I could get as many ingots as you want from Silicon Valley, and it wouldn’t be impossible to manipulate political and economic conditions to get access to a hydrogen rocket, but it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to prepare silicon-based life-forms.”
No good, huh? No… wait.
In my mind appeared an image of a beautifully patterned metal rod. It was a Genroku-era relic that had been excavated from Tsuruya’s mountain, which the family had then put in storage. Had it been prepared for the eventuality we now faced? Was this out-of-place artifact a gift from the past?
“No, it’s not.”
According to what Tsuruya had said, the metal rod in the picture was composed of a titanium-cesium alloy. If news of it reached the academic world, they’d have something crazier to debate than the location of the Yamatai Kingdom, but it was unrelated to some bone-dry, fossilized silicon life-form. It was part of some other machine, or was something that had to be sealed away for eternity, or had been left by some traveler from the future. I never wanted to see it again, if I could avoid it, even if I had been the reason it had been discovered.
I was lost in my own musing when Koizumi’s voice brought me back around.
“Fortunately, it does not seem as though haste is necessary. There were several days between the first dog’s health failing and Rousseau being affected. If we can do something about it today or tomorrow, we should be able to avoid having any other victims.”
There was a huge difference in the time scales here on Earth, compared with the cosmos. I supposed I should be grateful that this virus thing seemed to ha
ve stayed on cosmic time.
“We’ll visit Sakanaka again tomorrow. There’s no school. But we should think hard about the reason for our visit. It may not be strange to check in on the dog’s health two days running, but we’re actually going to treat it. And we’ll need to do the same thing with Higuchi’s dog too.”
I was only half listening to Koizumi. I didn’t care if he couldn’t think of a pretext. Nagato was going to be the one doing the actual treatment.
“Tomorrow, then. Sorry, Nagato—we’re gonna be counting on you.”
Not unlike the way Haruhi and Asahina had left their hearts at Sakanaka’s house, I couldn’t stop my own heart from flying out into the cosmos. I was totally spaced out, and as I went to leave, something slowed my exiting body. What the?
I looked behind me. Nagato had grabbed my belt and stopped me. I didn’t really mind, but she should’ve raised her voice, or at least tugged on my sleeve or something. Come to think of it, I would’ve preferred the latter.
Her face blank, Nagato moved her lips and spoke. “There is something we need.”
“What?”
“A cat.”
I was totally taken aback; Nagato spoke as if choosing her words carefully.
“The cat at your house would be ideal.”
A little while after Koizumi, Nagato, and I had finished strategizing, I made a phone call as I walked home.
“Haruhi? Yeah, it’s me. I want to talk about Rousseau. She was talking about this on the way back, but it turns out that Nagato once read a book that had a dog with a sickness a lot like Rousseau’s… Yeah, the treatment was in there too. I can’t say for sure it’ll go well, but… yeah, I know. It’s worth trying, right? Nagato knows how to do it. So tomorrow we’re going to go back to Sakanaka’s place and… what, now? Can’t do it. There’s stuff to get ready, so we’ll meet up tomorrow. Don’t rush things. According to Koizum—I mean, Nagato—it’s not something that’s going to suddenly get worse… Yeah, why don’t you go ahead and tell Sakanaka. Oh, and there was another dog, right? Higuchi’s dog Mike or whatever. They’ll need to bring him over to Sakanaka’s place too. I’ll tell Asahina. Okay, see you tomorrow…. Yeah, nine o’clock. Okay? At the usual station.”
The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 16