Alicization Beginning

by Reki Kawahara

  Asuna was also cradling her own body, and she mumbled, “And reading…er, translating that fluctlight is what the Soul Translator does. Which means…it’s not just a one-way translation, right?”

  Shino didn’t understand at first. She gave her friend a probing look, and Asuna’s eyes were full of worry.

  “Think about it, Shino-non…The AmuSpheres we use don’t just intercept the movement commands our brains give our bodies. They send images, sounds…all kinds of sensory information back into the brain to make us experience a virtual world. That’s the core of the full-dive experience, you know? Which means the Soul Translator wouldn’t be a follow-up to that device if it couldn’t do the same thing.”

  “Meaning…it writes information into the user’s soul…?”

  They both looked at Kazuto. The black-haired boy was uncertain for a moment, then eventually indicated a confirmation.

  “The Soul Translator, which Rath refers to with the acronym STL, has a bidirectional translation capability. It takes the billions of cubits of data the human fluctlight possesses and translates them into words we can understand, and it also retranslates information written in our words in order to record them. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a full dive into another world, as Asuna said. Essentially, it accesses the part of the fluctlight that stores and processes sensory information and gives it the information the machine wants the person to see or hear.”

  Asuna leaned forward. This was what she’d been waiting for. “Are you saying…this even works on memory within the soul? You just said you don’t have any memory of what happens after you come out of a dive. Are you saying the Soul Translator—the STL—can erase or overwrite memories?”

  “No,” he said, brushing her hand reassuringly and shaking his head. “The parts that manage long-term memory are so wide-ranging and have such a complex archiving system that it’s beyond their grasp at the moment. The reason I don’t have memories of the dive is just because they shut off access to those parts, they say. So it’s not that the memory was erased after it happened—I just can’t remember it, I guess.”

  “But still…I’m concerned, Kirito. I mean, memory manipulation…” Asuna said, her face downcast and worried. “And wasn’t it Chrysheight…I mean, Mr. Kikuoka from the government who brought you that job offer? I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I feel like I don’t fully understand his motives. He’s like the guild commander, somehow. I just get the feeling…that something bad is going to happen again…”

  “You’re right that he’s not someone you can fully let your guard down with. I still don’t know his exact position or job duties. But…”

  Kazuto paused, and his pupils focused on someplace far away.

  “I took the very first morning train on the day the original industrial full-dive machine was first put on display at the amusement park in Shinjuku. I was only in grade school…but I knew that was it. That was the world that had always called to me. I saved up all my allowance to buy the NerveGear the day it came out…and spent countless hours on all kinds of VR games. At the time, I couldn’t have cared less about the real world. Eventually I got selected to the SAO beta test, and everything went wrong from there…All those people died. Even after we finally got out after two years, there was Sugou, and Death Gun after that. I just…want to know. Where full-dive technology is taking us…What all those incidents truly meant…The way the Soul Translator functions is entirely new, but the basic architecture is modeled after the Medicuboid they use in hospitals.”

  Asuna’s shoulders twitched when she heard that. But his quiet, steady voice continued to fill the room.

  “I just have a feeling. There’s something within the Soul Translator. Something more than just an amusement…Yes, there might be risks involved. But…” He mimicked grabbing a sword and swinging it. “I’ve come back from all those worlds before. I’ll be back from this one, too. Even if I am just a wimpy, underweight gamer in real life.”

  “You’d be totally helpless without me there to watch your back.” Asuna laughed, then sighed and looked over at Shino. “I wonder where he gets this confidence.”

  “Hmm, I don’t know. He is the legendary hero, after all.”

  Shino understood some of the things Asuna and Kazuto were talking about and didn’t know others, so she chose to keep her distance from the conversation as it was happening. Now she tried to break the chilly mood by saying, “I read that Full Record of the SAO Incident book that came out last month. I’m still having a hard time reconciling that the Black Swordsman in there is this guy.”

  “H-hey, don’t say it like that,” Kazuto complained, waving his hands dismissively as he leaned back.

  Asuna giggled. “I know, right? The leader of a pretty big guild among the active members of the game put the book together, so it’s pretty accurate about most stuff, but there’s a heavy bias on how they represent the people. Like the scene where Kirito fights the orange player…”

  “‘When I pull out my second sword, no one can withstand me!’”

  The girls burst into laughter and Kazuto sank sullenly into his chair. Relieved that Asuna was smiling again, Shino decided to deliver a follow-up.

  “I hear the book’s going to be translated into English for America. Then the great hero will be an international figure.”

  “…Just when I was trying to forget…They really owe me some royalties, I figure,” Kazuto grumbled to another round of laughter.

  Shino decided she’d get back on topic by asking something that had been bothering her. “But Kirito, does this STL just end up doing the same thing as the AmuSphere? If it’s just going to generate a virtual polygonal world and send the images and sounds to the brain like before, why go to the lengths of this elaborate new system?”

  “Aha! Good question,” he said, sitting up straight again. “You said ‘generate a virtual polygonal world.’ Well, a polygon is just a series of coordinates and a plane connecting them. It’s digital data. Modeling is so high-res nowadays that trees and furniture and all that are indistinguishable from the real thing, but at its core, they’re no different from this.”

  He flipped through the phone on the table and booted up one of the preinstalled mini-games. The futuristic race car that rotated slowly on the demo screen had a primitive interior design and somewhat blocky angles. It wouldn’t fool anyone.

  Shino looked up and noted, “Sure…even in ALO and GGO, if you get enough players in one place, the system sometimes starts to chug as it draws objects. But there isn’t really a fundamental difference between the AmuSphere and STL in that regard, is there? They’re both showing their users things that don’t exist so that they can see and touch them. Those things still have to be created as a 3-D model from scratch.”

  “That’s the thing. Umm…how do I explain this…?”

  Kazuto paused, then picked up the empty caffé shakerato glass and showed it to Shino. “This glass exists in reality, right?”

  “…Yes,” she replied drily. Kazuto pushed it closer to her face. His next words were somewhat difficult to understand.

  “Listen. At the same time that this glass is being held in my fingers…it’s also in your mind, in what Rath would call your fluctlight. Technically it’s just the light reflecting off the glass that your retinas are catching and converting into nerve signals that allow you to visualize it as a glass in your mind. Now if I do this…”

  He reached out and covered her eyes with his other hand. She automatically shut her eyelids, reducing her vision to solid gray with a hint of red.

  “Did the glass within you disappear instantaneously?”

  She wasn’t sure what he was getting at but gave him an honest answer anyway. “I’m not that forgetful. I was watching it for so long, I remember the color and shape of the glass. Oh…but it is getting a bit more vague…”

  “Exactly.”

  He took away his hand, and Shino opened her eyes to glare at him.

  “Exactly, what?”

&nbs
p; “Get this…When we look at the glass, or the table, or each other, we’re holding that data in a form that can be stored and replayed within the visual processing center of our fluctlights. It’s not just a copy that disappears the moment we close our eyes. So when I hide this glass from sight and your memory of it fades…”

  He slipped the hand holding the glass under the table.

  “And then I input into your fluctlight vision center a perfect copy of that data from when you were looking at the glass earlier, you will be seeing a glass that isn’t actually on the table right now. Something far more vivid than just a 3-D model…The glass will be absolutely identical to the real thing.”

  “Okay…maybe that’s true in theory…but when you’re talking about data that the human mind saves, that’s just memory, right? You can’t just hypnotize people into recreating their memories from an external source. How do they…”

  Shino stopped. Just a few minutes ago, Kazuto had told her about a machine that could do that very thing. Asuna broke her long silence to chime in for Shino.

  “The same way the AmuSphere shows the user’s brain 3-D data…the STL writes in short-term memories to the user’s mind. In other words…it’s not a creation. The virtual world and everything in it that the STL builds…is essentially real, as far as our brains can process it…?”

  Kazuto dipped his head and put the glass back on the table. “Rath calls the images in our minds ‘pneumonic visual data.’ I still remember what happened in my first few test dives…and it was different. It was nothing at all like the VR worlds that the AmuSphere creates. It was just a small room I was in, but I…”

  He paused and adopted an awkward, deliberate grin that dimpled one cheek.

  “…I didn’t realize it was virtual at first.”

  3

  A virtual world that was indistinguishable from reality.

  It was a theme that numerous fictional stories had covered for decades. Shino could name right on the spot at least five books or movies based on the idea.

  When the age of full-diving, NerveGears, and AmuSpheres in every home had arrived, the media was overrun with thought pieces and blog articles wondering if the time had finally come when we’d lost track of whether or not our reality was truly real life. Shino remembered being nervous about the concept before she took her first dive.

  But once she tried it, for better or for worse, that concern vanished. The AmuSphere’s VR experience was a true miracle of cutting-edge technology. The full sensory experience of the virtual world was brilliant and beautiful—which only highlighted its difference from the real world. The sights, sounds, and textures of everything were too pure, too…simple. There was no dust in the air, no clothes fabric fraying with wear, no scratches or dents in the tables. Every 3-D object that was coded had a hard limit in terms of the designing company’s manpower and the CPU power of the device displaying it. That might change in the future, but in 2026, technology could not create a virtual world that was indistinguishable from the real one…

  Or so Shino had thought, until she heard what Kazuto Kirigaya had to say.

  “But Kirito…that means that you could be in the…STL, they call it? Right at this very moment. They could be feeding you memories of Asuna and me,” Shino said with a teasing smile, trying to hide the shiver crawling over her skin. She figured he would just laugh it off, but even worse, he frowned and stared at her.

  “H-hey, stop that! I’m real!” she protested, waving her hands, but Kazuto looked even more suspicious.

  “If you’re the real Sinon…you’d remember the promise you made to me yesterday.”

  “P-promise?”

  “You said that as thanks for coming out here to meet you, I could have as many Dicey Cheesecakes as I want. It’s the most expensive dessert on the menu.”

  “Wh-what?! I never made that deal with you! Oh…b-but that doesn’t mean I’m a fake! Come on, Asuna, tell him I’m real!”

  She looked to her friend for help. Asuna grabbed her hands and whispered, “Shino-non…did you forget? You promised me I could have as many Berry-Cherry Tarts as I wanted…”

  “Whaaat?!”

  Maybe she was the one who was trapped in a virtual world and having her memory manipulated. Then both Kazuto’s and Asuna’s cheeks puffed out, and they burst into laughter. Shino finally realized that she was not the teaser but the teased.

  “How dare…Not you, too, Asuna! I’m going to hit both of you with a hundred homing arrows each next time I see you in ALO!”

  “Ha-ha-ha! Sorry, Shino-non, forgive me!” Asuna laughed, hugging the girl. The simple friendliness of that gesture filled her heart with warmth, which she tried to hide by turning away in a huff. Still, she couldn’t keep a smile away for long, and she soon joined in the laughter.

  Kazuto added a slow comment to the more relaxed atmosphere. “The tech sounds really creepy when you hear all these terms like fluctlight and pneumonic visuals…but I think I actually connect with the world the STL creates more than the AmuSphere’s. When you get down to it, it’s basically more like a waking dream…”

  “A…dream?” Shino said, not expecting that word to come up. Rather appropriately, the boy who played a spriggan fighter with a penchant for putting others to sleep in ALO continued. “Yeah. You’re calling forth objects that exist as saved memories, creating a world by combining them together, then doing stuff in it…Doesn’t that sound like how dreams work? In fact, they say the brain patterns of people in the STL are very close to those of being asleep.”

  “So your job is basically to dream? You slept for three whole days and made a bunch of money doing it?”

  “Th-that’s what I told you right at the start. I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, just slept. I mean, I had an IV for water and nutrition.”

  Now that he mentioned it, she did remember him saying that just after he’d shown up at the café. But she figured he was just lying on a gel bed, not literally engaged in a very, very long dream.

  Shino looked up and murmured, “A three-day-long dream…You could do all kinds of things in that time. And you wouldn’t have to worry about waking up before you get to eat that delicious piece of cake.”

  “Sadly, I don’t remember what sort of things I ate on the other side. Let’s just say I had cake for every meal…” he joked, but let the words trail off. Shino looked down and saw that his eyebrows were pensive under those long bangs.

  “…What’s wrong, Kirito?” Asuna asked, but he didn’t respond. He made the motion of grabbing something and bringing it to his mouth.

  “…It wasn’t…cake…Something harder…and salty…but it was good. What was it…?”

  “Y-you remember? What did you eat in the virtual world?”

  “…Nope. Can’t remember. It was something I’ve never eaten in reality…I think…”

  He scrunched up his face for several more seconds, thinking hard, but eventually exhaled and gave up. Shino couldn’t hold back the question that popped into her head.

  “Wait, is that even possible, Kirito? Eating something in the STL that you’ve never tasted in real life? I thought you said the STL creates a virtual world constructed from parts that it finds in the user’s memory. So in a basic sense, it can’t show you things you’ve never seen or feed you things you’ve never eaten, right?”

  “Oh…yeah, right. Good point, Shino-non. Wouldn’t that mean the STL’s virtual world is extremely limited in nature, despite its realism? You couldn’t create a true fantasy realm like they did for Aincrad or Alfheim.”

  He acknowledged her point with a nod and smiled to dispel the awkward atmosphere he had created. “That’s very sharp of you two. As a matter of fact, I didn’t recognize that limitation the first time I heard about pneumonic visuals. I only realized it just before this long-term experimental dive, and I asked the Rath staff about it, but I guess it went right to the heart of the STL’s tech, and they wouldn’t tell me too much about it. The one thing I can say is…the staff described the v
irtual world as being built from memory but did not say that it came from the memory of the diver.”

  “Huh…? What does that mean…?” Shino asked, but Asuna sucked in a short breath.

  “You mean…other people’s memories? Or…or that they can create memories that belong to no one, right from scratch…?” she asked in a half whisper. Shino understood at last.

  What if these pneumonic visuals were saved in a format that other human beings could process? What if they’d already cracked that format itself? That would fundamentally make this idea possible. New objects, new tastes, scenery that had never been imagined…The creation of a truly “real” dream.

  Kazuto confirmed her suspicions. “It’s been a little over two months since I started working at Rath…There was no memory limitation on the first few tests, so I remember a couple of those VR worlds. One of them was just a big room that happened to have a couple hundred cats hanging out in it.”

  “…So many cats…”

  Shino let a smile play across her features as she imagined that paradise, then shook her head to dispel the image. She nodded to Kazuto to continue, and he made a face as he tried to recall the others.

  “From what I remember…there were a bunch of cats in there from breeds I didn’t recognize. And not just that…Some of them had wings and flew around, and others were all round and poofy and bounced off the walls. I couldn’t have ‘remembered’ things like that.”

  “And they couldn’t have come from anyone else’s memory, either,” Asuna added. “I mean, no one’s ever seen a cat with wings in the real world. Either someone on the staff created that flying cat to show you…or the STL system generated it from scratch.”

  “If it’s the latter, that would be a major feat. If the system is capable of doing that much for one object, it could ultimately create an entire world.”

  They sat on his words in silence.

  A virtual world created without human input or labor.

  Something about that concept caused Shino’s heart to soar. Recently she’d found a growing alienation within her toward the arbitrary design of VRMMOs like GGO and ALO.