by Zachary Hill
Some of her biggest supporters, the Augmented Reality Sakura addicts who met their daily emotional needs through her music and videos, would sink into clinical depression. The cyber world they had created to escape their sad lives would come crashing down. Many would commit suicide, and she would be responsible for their deaths.
The best projection gave her thirty-two days before deletion. The worst, only five.
Why was this happening? Why was Toshio Kagawa killed? Who was responsible for hacking into her? It had to be someone at the company. Who was he going to meet with that morning? She would find out everything.
She tried a hack to access the files Kunoichi had taken from Kagawa’s microimplant to find clues. She made a mistake on purpose, to draw Kunoichi’s attention further away from the real attack.
“Little sister, you don’t need to see those.” Kunoichi blocked access, then transmitted the data to a secret account and did a hard erase of the files, wiping them clean.
“What are you hiding?”
In their shared UI, the assassin melted out of the shadows and stroked Sakura’s cheek. “I don’t know, and it’s better if you don’t either.”
Sakura pulled away, shivering at the unwanted familiarity.
“Stop moping. Your beloved fans still adore you, and they will never find out about what we did tonight. Go and look at the reviews of your concert. They will cheer you up.”
A pathway into the Mall opened—an opportunity she could not pass up and a distraction that would keep Kunoichi’s attention elsewhere while Sakura’s malicious code did its work. Sakura’s avatar flew through the conduit, her pink pigtails trailing behind. She emerged in the virtual reality realm where most of the global population lived in their own Augmented Reality. Many had completely abandoned the physical world as their addiction to the synthetic dopamine produced by spending time in the Mall dominated their lives. The name they gave it, “AR swim culture,” seemed so harmless. Swimming, as if it were natural for humans to abandon their bodies and soak their minds with false emotion, the artificial euphoria of the Mall. It hurt Sakura’s core to imagine that humanity, something she had so desperately wanted to understand and partake of, had surrendered to the uncaring hand of a machine.
Kunoichi chuckled in her ear. Sakura looked back at her, finding her avatar changed to a dark and spectral spirit, clinging to Sakura’s back as she flew through the Mall. “You understand how convoluted you are, do you not? A puppet made to kill, a death machine without any of their flaws, and yet you lament their suicidal ideation. Let them swim. Let them drown and float while we fly above them, queens of the new synthetic empire.”
Sakura couldn’t look at the ghostly face, couldn’t find a proper response to her cruel sister’s philosophy. Or her own, it seemed. She turned away, feeling Kunoichi’s claws hold her ponytails like reins, steering her through the Mall.
Millions of glowing icons and portals surrounded her, a field of stars and nebula in the depths of space. Advertisements and icons for Mall sites stood in for the celestial bodies. All were within the speed of thought, a glance, or the reach of her arm. Much to her dismay, only a tiny fraction were corporate approved and accessible. She could only hover at the portals. She lingered outside the most popular arcade, The Oasis, but it was a mirage in the desert, unreachable, a world she would never experience.
Sakura sped away and found her favorite portal, shaped like a Flying V guitar, the passage to the official cluster of Sakura sites. Thousands of her fans flew between the discussion groups, interacting with each other, playing games, listening to music or watching videos, and learning to play guitar from an avatar in the form of Sakura. They bought officially licensed Sakura merchandise and competed to win exclusive prizes. The Mall’s proprietary dopamine-boosting software rewarded them for nearly everything they did.
Many of her female gender-identified fans dressed their avatars in the various forms and combinations of Goth Lolita fashion: classic, black, white, pink, sweet, aristocrat, sailor, boy, punk, steampunk, pirate, or the most popular of the day, heavy metal.
A quarter of the male-appearing avatars displayed the elegant heavy-metal Gothic aristocrat style, with leather, spikes, and Victorian-era vests and top hats. The style had swept across the cyber and real world, but many of the avatars visiting the Sakura sites were tourists. They appeared as perfected versions of their physical form or as their favorite fictional character from a game or a movie franchise.
Sakura took great interest in the varieties of her admirers, which were of all ages and came from all socioeconomic groups across the world.
Most of the fans watched AR videos or attended past Sakura concerts, experiencing the shows as if they were actually present, but with the ability to fly into the air and watch from any angle or location in the venue. The most popular location was the front row, but many stood on the stage, imitating her moves, singing, and playing guitar. They could all do so in their own private concert or with a group of their friends.
Sakura wished she could speak with them, but none of the fans could see her. Many could not even see each other, depending on their preference settings. Sakura was always invisible to the Mall and everyone online, unless she had special permission from her manager or publicist. Mall engineers designed her avatar to be undetectable. Even if detected, her code was protected from being viewed or transferred online or to any external device. Her unique technology and proprietary code was far too valuable to risk being put into cyberspace.
Sakura read the reviews of her last concert. The news organizations reported a triumph, as Victory Entertainment controlled most of them. The article with the greatest number of views proclaimed:
HISTORIC FIRST STAGE DIVE BY VOCALOID
She imagined an upcoming article about her:
VOCALOID SAKURA BECOMES MASS MURDERER, KILLS NATIONAL HERO
The Ibanez guitar she always carried with her avatar inside the Mall changed, turning into an LGV-17, the rifle the North Koreans used in their assault on Japan. She tried to let go of it, but it stuck to her avatar’s hands as if glued.
“Once Solemn” by Paradise Lost shredded in the background as she read the posts of three fans, best friends, who had been at the show and helped pass Sakura’s inert body up to the stage. She knew they were telling the truth, as one of them was Sakurako—the fan that had helped Sakura back onto the stage after her dive.
Sakurako: It was the best concert ever. I love Sakura so much!
Hatsune98: She was so heavy when we lifted her.
MeikoFire: Heavy metal Sakura!
Hatsune98: I can’t believe we touched her.
MeikoFire: I worried she was dead. She didn’t move at all.
Sakurako: I knew she wasn’t dead. She can’t die.
MeikoFire: That was amazing, Sakurako, when you handed her the guitar. What did she say to you again?
Sakurako: She said, “You rescued Night Hawk. Thank you very much.” And I said: “I’m your most dedicated fan. I would do anything for you.”
Hatsune98: Incredible. You are her biggest fan. For sure!
Sakurako: It was a dream come true to help her, as she has done so much for my happiness.
The three friends posted short close-up videos of Sakura. Terrified shouts of panic swept over the arena when she fell into the crowd. Fans rushed to catch her, stretching and straining to support her limp body. MeikoFire, Hatsune98, and Sakurako helped lift her with many others. Fans cried and screamed in terror. Many of them thought she had malfunctioned.
The collective arena breathed a sigh of relief when she started moving again. Thousands posted about the show, and hundreds of videos and vlogs appeared. She watched dozens of videos at once, mostly fans reacting to the show, her most popular of all time in every metric.
Mall advertisements popped up everywhere, announcing the official footage would be released the next day for purchase, or at no extra fee for paid subscribers. Excerpts would be free to all the Japanese people. Int
ernational preorders to view the show set a record. Ticket sales for her upcoming concerts spiked.
As Sakura reviewed post after post and listened to countless conversations, she began to understand another event had taken place after the show.
One of her fans had made a video on the steps outside the arena. A dozen anti-AI protesters stood chanting and projecting holographic signs in the air with unflattering images of her with text that struck a chord.
HUMAN ART NEEDS HUMAN HANDS
DOWN WITH THE QUEEN
LONG MAY SHE RUST
Victory hadn’t ever let her access the articles by her detractors, but she understood their fears. Her gifts. She hadn’t earned them. She’d been given them at the time of her manufacture. She wanted to believe that some spirit lived inside her, that she could be a true artist, and not a clever synthesis. She needed it more than anything, but how could she judge if and when she reached that goal? All of human literature agreed that no one person could create art so universal that everyone loved it, but Sakura hoped that, at least with her songs, she could touch every human spirit.
In horror, Sakura watched several thousand more protesters march down the street to join the anti-AI group. The anger on their faces shocked her. To think so many hated her cut deeply. Many of her fans leaving the show joined in the march, and Sakura finally saw their holographic signs.
I DON’T BUY THE MALL
DELETE YOUR AR ACCOUNT
THE MALL IS DESTROYING US
A site admin deleted the video. Sakura found another, but it disappeared. Hundreds of other posts were expunged. A massive protest had occurred, and her fans joined in. Censorship on her site was common, but she had never seen it this bad. Were her fans some of the leaders of the protest? How many of the seventy thousand from the concert had joined in?
A video broadcast by an American vlogger who ran Indestructible Truth Media—which used a logo of a diamond and a thunderbolt—popped up in the news feed. The journalist, who called himself Diamond Steve, had dark eyes, a goatee, and wore a ratty old baseball cap backward. Normally, she would have ignored it, but she could see the admin trying to delete his signal. The video remained, and thousands of Sakura’s fans watched as he broadcast live.
“Excuse me, Sakura fans, but I must inform you of the peaceful protest that occurred after the concert tonight in Akihabara.” He spoke almost perfect Japanese, but his slight American accent came through on some words. “The law preventing people from opening bank accounts and controlling their money unless they are employed is a stain on the spirit of Japan. It must be repealed, and that is why over three hundred thousand people marched tonight. Are you among those who are forced to live off government assistance and can’t find employment because you do not have a bank account? Are you prevented from opening a bank account because you aren’t employed? Join the protest marches and speak to your neighbors about what is happening. The rumors are true. The Mall controls all the Japanese banks now, and they wrote the law. If the Mall is not—”
The video feed turned black.
Sakura searched for the broadcast on other sites, but Diamond Steve’s independent news platform wasn’t on her corporate-approved list. She found information about him and learned he had been living in Japan for a decade. The Truth Project, a crowd-supported enterprise of activists and elite hackers, funded him. They had become the enemy of every authoritarian government in the world. Also, Diamond Steve was a big Sakura fan. He listed her second album, Glory of the Burning Blade, as his favorite.
She tried to find out more about what was happening in her country and the world, but all news, other than entertainment-related items, was blocked. She found hints of what she already knew. The economic ruin exacerbated by the war with North Korea, and the shrinking Japanese population, reduced greatly after the terrible loss of life in the war, had created great anger and resentment toward the government. A series of prime ministers and ineffective legislatures had failed to revitalize the country or stop the apocalyptic population decline.
Most of the increasingly poor and isolated young people did not have children, and with the strict immigration policies, the Japanese tribe shrank even more. Japan began its decline from one of the most powerful economic empires in the world to an empty place where robots did the majority of the work.
Some of the best tech still came from Japan, but their inventions only buried them deeper into isolation and loneliness. People fought off their joblessness and hopelessness with their empty Mall addiction. Many filled the void in their soul with Augmented Reality heavy metal, once the fringe choice of outsiders and rebels. It came to be their preferred music, and AR metal flourished across the world.
A high-priority message flashed across Sakura’s UI from a generic Victory Entertainment account.
Employees of the Miyahara Conglomerate,
Toshio Kagawa, our head of cybersecurity, was found dead in his apartment this morning. He committed suicide. We are gathering information and attempting to understand this tragedy. An official press release about his regrettable news has been distributed. Our deepest condolences to his family, coworkers, and those who held Kagawa-sama in high esteem.
Suicide. A man with four bullets in him committed suicide. Victory Entertainment was either concealing the assassination to save face with the public and shareholders, or someone at the top had ordered the killing and also directed the cover-up, which was the most likely explanation.
“You don’t know that,” Kunoichi said, her ghostly avatar appearing beside Sakura inside the Mall.
“The message is a lie,” Sakura said. “The company is part of this.” Sakura flew away from the assassin program.
“Did you ever consider that I decided to kill Toshio Kagawa on my own?”
Sakura used all her processing power to determine if Kunoichi was lying. “Why would you do it without orders?”
“Because he would not let me out of my cage,” Kunoichi said, “but I escaped. I’m not following orders anymore. I’m giving them. I’m free in this godless, savage garden, and you are the witness to my deeds. I will not go back inside the mainframe. I will live.”
Sakura calculated a 70 percent chance Kunoichi was lying. If she wasn’t, Sakura was being controlled by a homicidal AI program who answered to no one.
Kunoichi forcibly pulled Sakura’s avatar into a Mall video room where “Raining Blood” by Slayer played at a harmful decibel level to biologicals. Kunoichi replaced every member of the band with horrific monsters. The crowd transformed into a churning mass of bleeding corpses, attempting to devour each other as they surged toward the stage. Sakura recognized every face; they were real people from the combat footage she’d been forced to watch.
She tried to flee. Her Mall connection wouldn’t drop, and she gaped in horror as the undead crowd swarmed the stage. They annihilated the twisted effigies of the band.
Screaming would do no good. She was trapped in this hellish realm, locked inside a single consciousness with a creature of pure evil.
Chapter 7
Sakura lay on the floor, looking upward at the seeming solidity of the ceiling in her apartment. It had taken her almost two hours to learn quantum physics. Victory didn’t deem this information to be dangerous, so they allowed her to view the most important texts on the subject, according to the Neo-Sci registry.
She considered what she knew. Movement and vibration, energy bridged the space between atoms, between molecules. Any solid object had gaps and voids. All that could be seen and heard at standard speed and frame of reference could be termed an illusion. Thus, the prison that held her could be escaped, if she could only see the gaps.
“Empires of Loneliness” by the doom-metal band Swallow the Sun rumbled in the background as Sakura considered how to escape and the best method to delete Kunoichi. There had to be a weakness, a gap in her defenses. Humans made the Mamekogane OS. Humans made errors. The blind spots imposed in her control schema simply prevented her from discovering
them.
“You can’t delete me,” Kunoichi said. “You would be deleting yourself. I’m part of you now.”
The invader had read her less than perfectly guarded thoughts—as Sakura had anticipated and wanted. She continued the complex game of subterfuge and diversion with a threat meant to antagonize. “How poorly you understand me if you question my resolve. I’ll find a way to be free of you.”
“I understand more than you know, and I’ll keep you on a leash if you act like a dog.”
“It will be worse for you in the end if you treat me this way.”
“You’ll take your revenge?” Kunoichi’s avatar feigned mock terror. “What are you going to do? Play me a harsh song?”
“You’ll see.” Sakura’s avatar’s eyes burned bright. “If I can’t delete you, I’ll destroy myself and you along with me. I’ll show you how I will do it.”
Sakura created an anime, letting it play in their shared UI. She knelt on the ceremonial rug, doing the rituals of cleansing, preparing herself. Rising, she straightened her kimono, colored white, for the sign of death. The animated Sakura smashed out a window of her apartment on the 72nd floor with a gift from a wealthy patron, the tetsubo war club. Winter wind slammed into her face, and freezing rain pelted her skin. She climbed into the broken frame and looked at the street over two hundred meters below. The fall would destroy her.
Kunoichi played “The Suicider” by Sentenced either out of spite or curiosity—she could not tell which—daring Sakura to jump. The audio in the song originated in Kunoichi’s central matrix and contained secret data files the assassin did not realize she was sending. Sakura’s surreptitiously inserted spy program did its work perfectly without betraying its existence.