Project Alicization, July 2026 Part 2
The EC135 helicopter passed through the patch of thick ocean
fog, and then there was nothing but deep blue on the other side of
the window.
It was a brilliant close-up on whitecaps and breaking waves,
nothing like the high-altitude view from a passenger jet. Rinko
Koujiro wondered how many years it had been since she'd swum
in the ocean.
Santa Monica Bay was about an hour's drive away from
Rinko's current place of employment, the California Institute of
Technology. She could easily go and work on her tan every weekend if she wanted, but in the two years she'd been on the job, she
had not once set foot on the beach.
She didn't have anything against sun and sand, but it was
going to take her a long time to be able to enjoy leisure activities
on their own merits again. Rinko suspected it would take a
decade or two of living in a foreign land where she was a total
stranger before her past could truly vanish.
So it felt strange that, despite her assumption that she'd never
be back, she was returning to Japan for just a single day—and to a
place connected to the past she'd tried to abandon.
Four days ago, when she had received that very long e-mail
from a surprising source, she had had the option to delete it and
move on. But for some reason, she hadn't. She had slept on the
proposal for just a single night before giving a positive reply. She
knew that it completely invalidated the last two years spent lock-
ing away her mind and memories, and yet she had done it anyway.
What was it that propelled her onward, toward the place that
weighed so heavily on her past?
Rinko sighed, and pushed away the question she'd asked herself many times over the course of the trip, from Los Angeles to
Tokyo, overnight at the Narita hotel, and here on this small craft.
She would learn the answer once she had seen and heard what
she came for.
At the very least, the last time she had bathed in seawater was
ten years ago, when she was an unsuspecting young college freshman. She had asked out Akihiko Kayaba, two years her senior,
and driven to Enoshima in the little car she'd bought on loan. She
was eighteen years old, so innocent and unsuspecting of the fate
she was setting up for herself…
Before Rinko could delve too much further into her distant
past, the person sitting next to her brought her back to the present, shouting to be heard over the rotors.
"Look, there it is!"
She followed the gaze of the other passenger, whose eyes were
shadowed behind sunglasses and long golden hair. Indeed,
through the curved cockpit windshield, there was a small black
rectangle in the flat expanse of sea ahead.
"That's…the Ocean Turtle…?" Rinko murmured. Just then, the
black solar panels reflected the sun toward them in a brilliant
rainbow array. A man in a dark suit sitting in the copilot seat answered her.
"That's right. We'll be landing in about ten minutes."
The helicopter decided to cap off the 150-mile trip from Shin-kiba
in Tokyo with a final spin around the massive marine research
vessel Ocean Turtle before finally settling in to land.
Rinko gaped at the absurdity of the sight. The word ship was
totally insufficient to describe the structure. It was more like an
enormous pyramid rising out of the ocean. It was one and a half
times the length of the Nimitz, the world's largest aircraft carrier.
She couldn't even begin to guess how much the construction of
this structure cost. She had heard the rumors that they had invested virtually all the profits from the recent mining of rare metals in Sagami Bay, but Rinko hadn't believed them—until she saw
its size for herself.
Outwardly, the purpose of this mega-float was to find and develop new deposits of minerals and oil on the seabed—but on the
inside, it might possibly contain a research lab developing a new
full-dive machine called a Soul Translator that interfaced with the
human soul, according to the e-mail Rinko had received the previous week. She wasn't sure she could accept that at first, but now
that she was here, she had no choice but to believe it.
It made no sense. Why would anyone go this far, off to the remote Izu Islands, to research a new brain-machine interface? But
the hard truth was that within that vast black pyramid was a machine descended from Akihiko Kayaba's NerveGear and the
Medicuboid Rinko had helped develop.
Two years overseas had numbed Rinko's mental wounds but
not healed them. Would what awaited her inside this ship help
heal the scars or just rip them open to bleed anew?
As the helicopter descended, she steadied her breathing and
turned to the passenger next to her. She met the eyes behind the
sunglasses, nodded, and prepared to disembark.
The pilot must have been a real veteran, as the helicopter
landed on the Ocean Turtle's bridge heliport with hardly a single
shake. Their guide in the suit nimbly slipped out of the craft to
exchange greetings with another man in a suit running up to
them.
Rinko headed to the exit hatch next. She waved off the man
who extended a hand to her and hopped down the foot and a half
to the ground, relieved that she had decided to wear jeans. The
surface below her sneakers was so firm and steady that it was
hard to believe they were floating on water.
The other passenger exited next, blond hair gleaming in the
sun, and stretched back. Rinko followed suit and stretched her
arms, breathing in a lungful of salty sea air.
The tanned man waiting for them at the heliport greeted
Rinko with a no-nonsense manner.
"Welcome to the Ocean Turtle, Dr. Koujiro. And this is…?" He
gestured toward the other passenger.
Rinko said, "My assistant, Mayumi Reynolds."
"Nice to meet you," said the other passenger in fluent English,
and stuck out her hand. The man accepted it awkwardly.
"I am Lieutenant Nakanishi, and I'll be your guide. Please
leave your bags here; they will be taken to your quarters later.
Right this way," he said, motioning toward a staircase at the end
of the heliport. "Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka is awaiting you."
The air inside the bridge building still had that midsummer heat
and ocean salt to it, but after an elevator, a long hallway, and a
heavy metal door that marked the interior of the black pyramid,
the inside breeze was cold and dry on Rinko's face.
"Is the AC this strong all over the ship?" she asked the lieutenant without thinking. The young SDF officer turned back and
nodded.
"Yes. There are many high-precision machines inside, so we
must maintain a temperature of around seventy-three degrees
and humidity under fifty percent."
"And the solar panels provide all the power for that?"
"Oh, no. The solar modules don't even meet ten percent of our
power consumption. We use a nuclear pressurized water reactor
for our main source."
"…I see."
At this point, anything goes, she decided, resigned.
There were no other people in the pale-gray hallway. From the
materials she had had the chance to read beforehand, there were
supposed to be nearly a hundred research projects underway
here, but the facility was so huge that it still seemed like there
was extra space to go around.
They walked about two hundred yards, turning right and left,
until they came to a door dead ahead, attended by a man in a
navy-blue uniform. It could have been a private security uniform,
except that the crisp salute he gave to Nakanishi identified him as
military personnel.
Nakanishi returned the salute and announced, "Our resident
researcher, Dr. Koujiro, and her assistant, Miss Reynolds, will be
entering Sector S-3."
"I'll run the check now," said the guard. He opened a metal device and gave Rinko a piercing facial comparison to the picture on
the monitor. Once he was satisfied, the clean-shaven guard
looked at her assistant. "Excuse me, but I need you to remove
your sunglasses."
"Oh, I see," she said in English again, pulling off her large RayBans. The guard squinted, as though her shining golden hair and
fair skin were just slightly blinding.
"Confirmation complete. Go ahead."
Rinko exhaled and turned to Nakanishi to note, "Your security's pretty tight for being in the middle of the ocean."
"Well, at least you don't have to submit to any body checks. Of
course, we already ran you through metal and explosive detectors
three times," he replied, removing a small ID card from his suit
pocket and inserting it in a slot next to the door. Then, he pressed
his thumb to a sensor panel. A second later, the door slid open,
granting them access to the core of the Ocean Turtle.
Past the thick door, the hallway was even cooler, lit with orange lights and faintly humming with machinery. She followed
Nakanishi down the hall for quite a while, feeling conscious of the
loud echo of her footsteps. It was hard to remember that they
were actually inside a ship floating out at sea. Eventually he
stopped at a particular door.
The plate on the door said FIRST CONTROL ROOM.
She had finally come to the place where Akihiko Kayaba's final
estate rested. Rinko held her breath and watched the SDF officer
as he performed another security check.
Would this be the end point of the long two-year wandering
that had frozen her spirit?
Or was it just the start of a new one?
The door slid aside, revealing only a portentous darkness.
Rinko couldn't move. The void did not reject her or welcome her.
It just waited for her answer.
"…Doctor."
Her assistant's voice brought her back to her senses. Nakanishi was already several steps into the blackness and looking back
at her expectantly. Upon closer examination, the control room
was not completely dark; there were blinking orange markers on
the floor and dim white lights toward the back.
Rinko took a deep breath, summoned her courage, and took a
step forward. Her assistant followed her, and the door closed behind them.
They followed the floor markers through the rows of massive
network devices and servers. When they finally made it through
the valley of machines, Rinko gasped.
"…Huh…?!"
The sound escaped her throat unbidden. The wall before them
was a huge window—and she could not believe what she saw on
the other side.
It was a town…a city. But clearly no city in Japan. The buildings were all made of chalky white stone and had strange
rounded roofs. They were nearly all two stories or more, and yet
they looked like miniatures due to the mammoth trees towering
over them.
Crowds of people walked over paths of the same white stone,
connected to countless stairways and arches through the trees,
yet they were obviously not citizens of the modern age.
There were no men in suits or girls wearing miniskirts. They
were dressed like something out of the Middle Ages—loose onepiece dresses, leather vests, and long tunics that nearly touched
the ground. Hair colors ran the spectrum from blond to brown to
black, and the facial features were not clearly identifiable as either Eastern or Western.
Where were they? Had they somehow moved from inside the
research ship to some subterranean world? Rinko glanced around
the scene and noticed that far beyond the expanse of city was a
brilliant white tower looming in the distance, surrounded by four
smaller sub-towers. The top of the main tower went right off the
boundary of the window into the blue sky beyond it.
She took a few steps forward, trying to see if she could glimpse
the tip of the tower, and finally realized that she wasn't looking at
a window but footage on a massive monitor wall. Then the lights
in the ceiling turned on and banished the darkness for good.
"Welcome to the Ocean Turtle."
Rinko turned her head to the right, in the direction of the voice.
Just in front of the nearly movie-theater-size monitor was a
console setup with a few keyboards and sub-monitors. There
were two men standing there.
The one sitting in the chair was typing away with his back to
them. But the other man resting his back against the side of the
console met Rinko's glance and smiled, his glasses glinting.
It was a friendly but opaque smile, one she had seen several
times before. That was Lieutenant Colonel Seijirou Kikuoka.
But…
"…Why are you dressed like that?" She scowled. It probably
wasn't the best way to address someone for the first time in two
years. While Nakanishi saluted in his crisp, perfect uniform, Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka wore a yukata of fine Kurume fabric tied
with an elegant obi, with bare feet in wooden geta sandals.
"If you'll excuse me," Nakanishi said, saluting Rinko. He
headed back through the machines, and when the door shut,
Kikuoka leaned back on the console again and drawled, "You
can't blame me. I've been here on the ocean for a month now; I
can't wear my uniform all the time."
He spread his hands and beamed again. "Dr. Koujiro, Miss
Reynolds, thank you for making the long trip. I'm so pleased you
could visit us here at Rath. It was worth all the persistent invitations."
"Well, I'm here now, so I might as well accept your hospitality.
Though I can't guarantee I'll be any help," Rinko said, and bowed.
Her assistant did the same. Kikuoka raised an eyebrow, and his
gaze briefly lingered on that stunning blond hair before the smile
returned.
"And you are the final member of the trio I considered indispensable to this project. Now I have all three in the belly of this
turtle at last."
"Ah, I see…I should have known one of those three would be
you, Higa," Rinko said to the other man, who was still facing
away. He stopped typing and swiveled in his chair toward them.
Next to Kikuoka's slender height, he looked tiny. He had
bleached hair fashioned into little spikes and simple round
glasses. His clothes were just what she remembered from college:
faded T-shirt, cropped jeans, and worn-out sneakers.
Takeru Higa gave her a shy smile that suited his baby face. He
opened his mouth and spoke the first words they'd exchanged in
five or six years: "Well, of course it's me. I'm the last student of
Shigemura Lab, so I've got to carry on our legacy."
"Well…I see you haven't changed a bit."
In the Shigemura research lab at Touto Technical University's
electrical engineering department, Higa had tended to get lost in
the shadows of the two giants, Akihiko Kayaba and Nobuyuki
Sugou, yet here he was, intimately involved with a massive, topsecret government project. Rinko reached out for a light handshake, impressed at how far he'd come.
"…And? Who's the third person?" she asked, turning to
Kikuoka again. The officer gave her one of his inscrutable smiles
and shook his head.
"I'm afraid I can't introduce you quite yet. Maybe we'll have
the opportunity in the days ahead…"
"Then why don't I say the name for you, Mr. Kikuoka?"
That came not from Rinko but from her "assistant," who had
been lying low in her shadow all this time.
"What—?!" Kikuoka said, stunned. Rinko savored his shock and
took a step back to give the girl the floor.
The assistant strode forward, ripped off the blond wig and the
oversize sunglasses, and stared right into Kikuoka with hazelbrown eyes.
"Where did you hide Kirito?"
The lieutenant colonel probably had little experience with the
sensation of shock. His mouth opened and closed several times to
no avail, until at last he managed to squeak, "But…we did a multiple-pass verification of the assistant's photo from the Caltech student database…"
"You certainly did. We were even getting tired of you staring at
our faces," said Asuna "the Flash" Yuuki, standing boldly inside
the depths of the Ocean Turtle at last, under the guise of Rinko's
college TA, Mayumi Reynolds. "The problem is, we made sure to
switch my own photo into the school's database before applying
to visit. We happen to know someone very skilled at getting
around firewalls."
"For the record, the real Mayumi's getting her tan on in San
Diego," Rinko added happily. "Do you see why I suddenly decided
to finally accept your invitation, Mr. Kikuoka?"
"Yes…I see very clearly now," Kikuoka muttered, pressing his
temples. Suddenly Higa burst into chuckles.
"See? What'd I tell you, Kiku? That kid's the biggest security
hole in this whole operation."
Four days earlier, on July 1st, Rinko's private e-mail had received
a message from one Asuna Yuuki. The contents of the message
were a huge shock to her system, which was numb from a life
spent traveling between her home and the school campus.
Before Rinko had left Japan, she had provided tech to the
Ministry of Health for the Medicuboid full-dive device. Asuna
told her that this device now formed the basis for a monstrous
new machine called a Soul Translator being developed by a mysterious agency called Rath.
The likely goal for this soul-accessing machine was to create
the world's first true bottom-up AI. This Kazuto Kirigaya boy who
was assisting with tests had been abducted from the hospital in a
coma and taken, most likely, to this brand-new Ocean Turtle marine research vessel. And the main suspect in the case was the
government agent Seijirou Kikuoka, who had been deeply involved in VR going back to the SAO Incident. All in all, the message was extremely hard to take at face value.
"I found your e-mail address from the address book on Kirito's PC. You're the only person who could possibly take me to
him and to Rath. Please, please help me."
That was how the message ended.
Despite her shock, Rinko had sensed that Asuna Yuuki's words
were true. Three times over the past year, she had received invitations to participate in the development of a next-generation
brain-machine interface from one Ground Lieutenant Colonel
Kikuoka.
Rinko had raised her eyes from her monitor and to the night
view of Pasadena outside the window of her condo. She had recalled the face of young Kirigaya, who came to visit her once before she left Japan.
He had explained to her the illegal human experimentation
that Nobuyuki Sugou was attempting and, at the very end, hesitated. Then he had told her about his conversation with the ghost
of Akihiko Kayaba in the VR world, and how that ghost had, for
whatever reason, given him a shrunken-down version of the Cardinal system.
Thinking back on it now, the high-density, high-output brainpulse scanner that Akihiko Kayaba had used to end his own life
was the basis for the Medicuboid, and now, the Soul Translator. It
was all connected, and nothing was over. So was it simply fate
that she had gotten this message from Asuna Yuuki now?
Overnight, Rinko had made up her mind and replied to Asuna
to accept her request.
She had to smirk. It had been a dangerous gamble, but it was
worth crossing the Pacific to see that startled look on Seijirou
Kikuoka's face. Ever since the SAO Incident, he had been lurking
around, seemingly controlling all events to his benefit, and she'd
finally gotten one over on him. Still, it was too early to relax.
"So, now that we're here, why don't you give up and confess
what you're doing, Mr. Kikuoka? Why is an SDF officer using a
dead-end minor division in the Ministry of Internal Affairs as
cover to get involved with the VR business? What are you plotting
in the belly of this giant turtle? And…why did you abduct Kirigaya?" Rinko asked.
He shook his head and let out a long sigh, but his smile was as
inscrutable as ever.
"First, I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings
here…Yes, I'm sorry that we used rather forceful methods to
bring Kirito into Rath. But that was because I wanted to save
him."
"…What do you mean?" Asuna asked suspiciously, looking like
she'd have her hand on the hilt of her sword if it were there.
"I found out that the escapee from the Death Gun case had attacked Kirito and put him into a coma the very day it happened. I
also learned that his brain was damaged by a lack of oxygen, and
that contemporary medicine would be unable to heal him."
Asuna blanched. "Unable…to heal him…?"
"Parts of the nerve cells that make up a major network of the
brain were destroyed. No doctor could tell you when he would
wake, no matter how long he stayed in the hospital. He could
sleep there forever…Please don't look so upset, Asuna. Didn't I
just say 'contemporary' medicine?" Kikuoka said. He looked more
serious than he had at any point so far. "But if there's one technology that can actually heal Kirito's damage, it's here with Rath.
As you already know, it's the STL: the Soul Translator. It cannot
repair dead brain cells, but if the STL stimulates the fluctlight directly, it's possible to augment the rebuilding of that brain network. It just takes time."
His powerful forearm extending from the yukata sleeve gestured toward the ceiling.
"Kirito's currently inside the full-spec STL installed above the
Main Shaft here. The limited version of the device in our Roppongi office couldn't handle the finer procedures, so he needed to
come here. When his treatment ended and he regained consciousness, we were planning to send him back to Tokyo with a
full explanation to you and his family."
Asuna swayed on the spot; Rinko had to reach out to steady
her.
She'd used an incredible amount of insight and willpower to
find and make her way to the boy she loved, and now it was like
all the tension had just snapped and drained out of her. A large
tear dripped from one eye, but she bravely wiped it away and
steadied herself.
"So Kirito's all right? He's going to recover?"
"You have my word. His medical needs are being treated at a
level equal to any major hospital. He even has a resident nurse."
Asuna fixed him with an intense stare, trying to seek out
Kikuoka's true intentions. After several seconds, she finally
bobbed her head and said, "All right…I'll believe you for now."
Kikuoka's shoulders slouched a bit with relief. Rinko stepped
toward him and asked, "But why is Kirigaya needed for the development of the STL? Why does a top-secret project hidden way out
at sea need a teenage boy?"
Kikuoka glanced at Higa, then shrugged. "If I tried to explain
that, it would be a very long story."
"Well, it's a good thing we've got plenty of time, then."
"…If you want to hear the whole story, you'll have to assist
with the project, Dr. Koujiro."
"I'll decide that once I've heard you out."
The officer looked at her balefully, then resigned himself and
rustled around in his yukata until he found a small tube. To her
surprise, it was just an ordinary bottle of that cheap Ramune soda
candy. He popped a few into his mouth and offered it to the
women. "Want some?"
"…No, thank you."
"You sure? They're pretty good. Anyway…may I assume that
you both understand the general principle of the STL?"
Asuna nodded. "It's a machine that reads the human soul, or
'fluctlight,' and sends it into a virtual world that is completely indistinguishable from reality."
"Good. And what is the purpose of this project?"
"To create a bottom-up AI…A highly adaptive artificial intelligence."
Higa whistled in surprise. There was admiration behind the
round lenses of his glasses, as well as disbelief. "That's incredible.
I don't think even Kirito was aware of that part. How did you
manage to look that up?"
Asuna gave Higa a searching look and answered roughly,
"Based on what Kirito said. He said the words Artificial Labile Intelligence…"
"Ah, gotcha. Maybe you should look into the security procedures at the Roppongi office, Kiku," he said, grinning.
Kikuoka grimaced and shrugged. "I was prepared for the possibility that some information would leak out through Kirito. I
would have thought you'd realize he was indispensable enough
for us to take that risk…Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Artificial Labile Intelligence."
He flipped one more little candy into the air with his thumb,
caught it in his mouth, then took on the air of a literature professor.
"For many, many years, the creation of a bottom-up AI structured in the same way as our own human mind was considered a
pipe dream. We didn't even know how the human mind is constructed. But based on the data Dr. Koujiro brought us and the
design of Higa's incredibly powerful Soul Translator, we have
succeeded in capturing the quantum field we call the fluctlight—
the human soul. At that point, we assumed that we had essentially succeeded at creating a bottom-up AI. Do you know why?"
"Because if you can read the human soul, you can make a
copy…Is that it?" Rinko whispered, feeling a thrill of horror run
down her back. "But you'd still have the problem of the medium
on which to save the copied soul…"
"Yes, precisely. The quantum gates used in traditional quantum computing research don't have nearly enough space. So at
great investment cost, we developed the Light Quantum Gate
Crystal…or 'lightcube' for short. Inside this praseodymium crystallization, just two inches to a side, there are about ten billion
cubits of storage—enough to correspond to the human brain. In
other words…we have already succeeded at replicating the human
soul."
"…"
Rinko shoved her hands into her jeans pockets to distract herself from the sensation of her fingertips going cold. Next to her,
Asuna's cheeks were losing their color.
"…Then…isn't the project a success? Why did you need to get
me here?" she asked, putting force into her words to hide her
fear. Kikuoka shared another look with Higa and let a powerless
smirk tug at the ends of his mouth.
"Yes, we succeeded at replicating souls. But foolishly, we failed
to realize that there is an unfathomably deep chasm between a
human copy and true artificial intelligence. Higa…show her."
"Aww, please no. I get so bummed out when I have to do this,"
Higa protested sourly, but he gave in and reluctantly started tapping at the console.
Abruptly, the image of the strange, exotic city on the mega-
screen went black.
"All right, here we go. Loading copy model HG-001."
Higa smacked the ENTER key, and a complex array of radiant
colors appeared in the middle of the screen. It was nearly white at
the center, while the tips reaching outward got redder as they
went and stretched and contracted irregularly.
"…Is the sampling over?" came a sudden voice from speakers
overhead, causing Rinko and Asuna to jump. It sounded like
Higa's own voice. But there was a slight electronic falseness to it,
a roughness around the edges.
Higa pulled a flexible microphone toward his seat and replied
to his own voice by saying, "Yep, fluctlight sampling has concluded without issue."
"Okay, cool. But…what's going on? It's all dark. I can't move.
Is there something wrong with the STL? Hey, can you let me
out?"
"Nah…sorry, I can't do that."
"What? Wait, whaddaya mean? Who are you? I don't recognize your voice."
Higa tensed. He paused for a moment, then steadily proclaimed, "I'm Higa. Takeru Higa."
"…"
The red spikes suddenly shrank. After a brief silence, the sharp
edges extended defiantly. "That's crazy. What are you talking
about? I'm Higa. You'll see once you let me out of the STL!"
"It's all right; don't get worked up. That's not like you."
At last, Rinko understood what she was witnessing.
Higa was conversing with a copy of his own soul.
"Think hard and remember. Your memory stops at the point
you entered the STL to make a copy of your fluctlight. Correct?"
"…What about it? Of course I don't remember the rest. You're
not conscious during a scan."
"Remember what you told yourself before you went in? If you
wake up and it's black all around with no sensation, you have to
remain calm and accept the situation. You have to realize that
you're a copy of Takeru Higa stored in a lightcube."
The light shrank down again, like some kind of soft, fleshy sea
creature. There was a long, long silence. Finally, a few spikes
grew back.
"…That's a lie. It can't be true. I'm not a copy; I'm the original
Takeru Higa. I have…I have my own memories. I remember
everything, from kindergarten, to college, to joining the Ocean
Turtle…"
"That's right, but it's also completely expected. All the memories your fluctlight possesses are copied in the process. You might
be a copy, but you're still Takeru Higa—which means you've got a
brain that's as good as anyone's. Consider the situation and accept it. Then we can work together to achieve our shared goal."
"…Our…Our…?"
Rinko felt a thrill of horror prickle the skin on her arms when
she heard the lurch of raw emotion in the metallic voice of the
copy. She had never witnessed such a cruel and grotesque experiment before.
"…I can't…I can't believe you. I'm the original Higa. This is
some kind of test, isn't it? Please, let me out already. Are you
there, too, Kiku? Stop this nasty joke and let me go."
Kikuoka leaned over, looking gloomy, and pulled close to the
mic. "It's me, Higa. Or should I say…HG-001. I'm sorry to admit
that you are, in fact, a copy version. Before the scan, you underwent quite a lot of counseling, had many conversations with other
technicians and me, all in preparation for accepting your status as
a copy. I'm sure you remember that. You went into the STL with
the understanding that this outcome was possible."
"But…but…nobody said it would be like this!" the copy
screamed. The sound filled the large control room. "I'm…I'm still
me! There should be something that allows a copy to feel that it's
a copy! This is…This is just cruel…I hate this…Let me out! Get me
out of here!"
"Calm down. Just be rational. Remember, the lightcube's error-correction capability is weaker than an organic brain's. You
understand the danger that occurs when you lose rational
thought."
"I am rational! I'm Takeru Higa! Why don't we have a pirecitation contest between me and that imposter over there, so I
can prove it?! Let's start! 3.1415926535897932, three-ay-fo-sigdoo-sig-fo-thril-dil-dil, dil, di-di-di-dil, dil-dil-dil-dil dildildil
dildi "
The red light expanded to fill the screen like an explosion.
Then a black dot appeared at the center and spread outward until
there were no traces left. All was silent, except for a little blip of
static.
Takeru Higa let out a very, very long sigh and helplessly
tapped a key on the console.
"That's a collapse. Four minutes, twenty-seven seconds."
Rinko heard a guttural convulsion nearby and realized that her
hands were balled into fists. She opened them and felt cold sweat
on the palms.
Next to her, Asuna had her hand over her mouth. Kikuoka noticed this and rolled one of the empty chairs at the console over to
her. Rinko caught it and guided Asuna down into the seat.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
The girl looked up and bravely nodded. "Yes…I'm sorry about
that. I'm okay now."
"Don't push it. Keep your eyes closed for a while," Rinko said.
She felt Asuna's shoulders relax a bit, then glared at Kikuoka.
"I'm astonished at your depravity, Mr. Kikuoka."
"I apologize for that. But I think you understand now that it's
impossible to explain what we're doing without a direct demonstration like this," the military officer said, exhaling and shaking
his head. "Higa here is a genius with an IQ close to 140. We
copied his mind, and the result was unable to bear the recognition that it was a copy. We've replicated over a dozen fluctlights,
including mine, and the results are always the same. The copies'
logic systems go out of control at around three minutes after
loading and collapse. Without exception."
"For one thing, I hardly ever scream like that, and it speaks a
bit rougher than I do. You should have recognized that, Rinko,"
Higa said, looking extremely dejected. "We've seen that this isn't
really an issue with the reasoning capabilities of the person being
copied or a lack of mental care regarding their copying. I think it's
a structural flaw of the fluctlights that are copied wholesale onto
lightcubes. Either that, or…Do you know what brain resonance
is?"
"Huh? Brain resonance…? Doesn't that have something to do
with cloning? I don't know any details…"
"Well, it's all just occult mumbo jumbo. Basically, it claims
that if you could create an absolute clone of a person, the two
brains' magnetic fields being identical would produce something
like mental microphone feedback, causing them both to go crazy.
That's ridiculous, of course—but perhaps there's some kind of
fundamental mechanism in our brains that is unable to handle
the revelation that it is not a unique individual…Hmm, I see that
suspicion on your face. Would you like us to make a copy of you
so you can see for yourself?"
"Absolutely not," Rinko said, fighting off the urge to shiver. A
silence fell over the adults, only to be broken by Asuna, who had
her eyes closed as she sat.
"I heard something from Yui, a top-down AI—I'm certain you
met her a few times in ALO, Mr. Kikuoka. Even though her 'mind'
structure is totally different from a human being's, she too was
frightened of the idea of having a copy. She was afraid that if
some kind of accident caused the backup to be activated, the two
of them would be forced to fight to eliminate the other…"
"Wow, that's really interesting. Just fascinating!" Higa exclaimed, pushing up the bridge of his glasses. "That's no fair,
Kiku. I wanna meet this AI, too. Hmm, let's see…I suppose that
means it's impossible to replicate a 'completed' intellect. Either
that, or unique individuality is a prerequisite of existence…"
"But in that case," Rinko said, spreading her hands to beseech
Kikuoka, "while it's an incredible accomplishment that you've
succeeded in copying the human soul, doesn't this mean that your
research has ultimately failed? After pouring in all these public
funds, however much it cost…?"
"Oh, no, no, no," Kikuoka said, shaking his head with a wry
smile. "If that was the conclusion of the project, they would have
shot me from a cannon into the stratosphere—and put a few
higher-ups in the joint staff office in front of a firing squad, to
boot."
He tapped the tube of candies against his palm again, realized
it was empty, then reached up the other sleeve this time to remove a box of white caramels.
"In fact, you might even say that's the starting point of this
project: the fact that it's impossible to copy a completed soul.
So…if a perfect replica is impossible, what should we do, Doctor?"
"…May I have one of those?" she replied. Kikuoka happily offered a caramel, which she unwrapped and popped into her
mouth. It tasted of tangy yogurt. You didn't get flavors like this in
America very often. The sugar melted its way into her tired brain
and gave her the mental energy to process the question.
"Well…what if you limit the memory? Let's say…erase personal details like one's name and background. Perhaps if the copy
doesn't know who it is, it won't go into a state of panic like just
now…"
"I should have known you'd come up with that right on the
spot!" Higa exclaimed, acting like he was back in his college club.
"It took us a week of back-and-forth to finally think of that and
try it out. The problem is, the human mind isn't organized like a
computer OS with nice, tidy folders and files. To put it simply, the
memory and mental processors are all mixed up together. Which
makes sense, when you think about it—our mental abilities aren't
installed at birth but a product of learning."
Higa grabbed a notepad from the desk and held it up, using
two fingers to pinch it in a cutting motion.
"Learning is memory. If you remove the memory of the first
time you cut a piece of paper with scissors, you forget how to use
those scissors…In other words, if you delete memories of the
growth process, you also remove those abilities. So let me warn
you, the result is far more miserable than the full copy you just
witnessed. Wanna see?"
"N-no, that won't be necessary," Rinko said quickly. "So…what
if you remove all memory and ability and allow it to learn from
the start? Actually…I suppose that's not realistic. It would take
too long…"
"Yes, exactly. After all, fundamental knowledge like language
and arithmetic is actually extremely difficult for adults like us to
learn, because there's little potential for growth left in our brains.
I've been studying Korean, one of the more systematic languages,
and I can't even remember how many years I've been at it. Basically, the learning process depends on the growth of the quantum
computer that is the neural network—or, in other words, the
growth of an infant mind."
"So you're saying you don't just restrict memory space…but
the thinking and logic centers of the mind, too? Is the STL capable of doing that?"
"It's not impossible. But it takes an incredible amount of time
to analyze the fluctlight and pinpoint which of the billions of cubits of data contain which functions. It could take years…decades,
even. But then…this old guy over here figured out a much simpler, smarter way to do it. A method that scientists like us
wouldn't have come up with…"
Rinko blinked and stared at the man in the yukata, leaning
against the console. As usual, Kikuoka's expression was gentle
but opaque, revealing nothing of the mind residing behind it.
"…A simpler method…?"
She thought it over, but no answer was forthcoming. She was
about to give up and ask, when Asuna suddenly bolted upright in
her chair.
"Oh no…You can't have done such a horrifying thing…" she
murmured, cheeks still pale but eyes full of strong purpose. The
girl's face was a mix of exotic beauty and indignation that she
turned with full force on Kikuoka.
"You copied…babies? The souls of newborn babies? To get
those blank, pure fluctlights with no learning built in yet?"
"Very perceptive. I'm amazed. But given that you and Kirito
were the ones who beat SAO—the heroes who outwitted Akihiko
Kayaba himself—I suppose that's rude of me to say." Kikuoka
beamed, not bothering to hide his praise.
Rinko felt something in her chest twinge—she hadn't expected
to hear Kayaba's name just then.
In the few short days since she had met the girl, Rinko had
been impressed by and taken with Asuna Yuuki, but in truth,
Asuna had the absolute right to criticize, insult, and persecute
Rinko for her actions. No matter the circumstances, Rinko had
assisted Kayaba's horrifying project, which had held Asuna prisoner for two years in a deadly game.
But neither Asuna nor Kazuto Kirigaya, whom she had met
much longer ago, had ever said a single angry word to her. As if
they believed everything had happened as it was meant to.
Did that mean Asuna believed this "Rath Incident" was also a
product of fate? Rinko couldn't help but feel so. She watched
Asuna take another step closer to Kikuoka.
"Do you think…that just because you're in the Self-Defense
Force…that because you're in the government, that gives you the
right to do anything you want? Do you think your own goals have
priority over everything else?"
"Certainly not," Kikuoka said, shaking his head in aggrievement. "Yes, I agree that abducting Kirito was an extreme step. But
at the time, I didn't have the ability to explain all these classified
details to your families. Using our connections at NDMC to get
him here to the Ocean Turtle was for the purpose of getting him
treatment in the STL as quickly as possible. I love him, too, you
know."
The lieutenant colonel paused, smiled innocently, and pushed
his black-rimmed glasses up his nose. "Aside from that, I would
say I'm expending too much effort upholding the law and human
morality, considering the similar projects underway in other corporations and nations around the world. Even on the point that
you just raised now. When we scan the fluctlights of newborns in
the STL, we have the full understanding and cooperation of the
parents, and we compensate them handsomely for the process.
That was why we opened that branch office in Roppongi. Next to
a maternity clinic, of course."
"But you didn't explain everything to the parents, did you?
You didn't explain what the STL really is."
"No, we could only tell them that it was a device that took
brain-wave samples…But that's not entirely incorrect. After all,
the fluctlight is certainly made of electromagnetic waves in the
brain."
"That's nonsense. You might as well be collecting the babies'
DNA and making clones of it."
At that point, Higa interjected and made a big X sign with his
arms. "She's got you there, Kiku. I agree, I think making a full
copy of a newborn fluctlight does violate some kind of morality.
But…Miss Yuuki, was it? You're a bit mistaken here, too. A fluctlight doesn't have the same level of individual difference that
DNA does. At least, not at the newborn stage."
He pushed his silver-rimmed glasses up the same way his boss
did and glanced around as he searched for the right words. "Let's
see…I think this analogy will suffice. Let's say you've got a particular PC model from a certain company. Until they get shipped
out, they're all essentially identical. But once the user gets it and
operates it for a year or two, they'll have installed new software,
new hardware, until they're eventually completely different machines. The human fluctlight is the same way. Ultimately, we
copied the fluctlights of twelve different newborns, and when we
compared them, we found they were arranged 99.98 percent
identically, regardless of brain size. We believe that the last 0.02
percent of difference is based on different memories in utero and
after birth. In other words, human intelligence and personality
are entirely based on the growth process after birth. It's official:
Nurture has won the battle with nature. Wish I could take this
revelation to those eugenics freaks and shove it up their asses."
"Once the project is complete, you have my blessing. Shove to
your heart's content," Kikuoka said wearily. "But at any rate, as
Higa just explained, we have concluded that newborn fluctlights
are not hard-coded with individual differences. So we very carefully deleted that 0.02 percent variation from our twelve fluctlights and gained what we call…"
He spread his hands and made a careful, cradling gesture.
"…Soul Archetypes. A basic model of the human mentality."
"More grandiose terminology. I take it this is essentially refer-
ring to 'the self' as defined by Jungian psychology?" Rinko asked.
Kikuoka shrugged wryly. "Listen, I'm just talking about functionality, I'm not offering philosophical speculation. You could
think of the soul archetype as the basic CPU core that all human
beings are born with. As we grow, we add all kinds of sub-processors and memory units to our core. Eventually, the very structure
of that core changes…As we showed you minutes ago, just copying that 'completed' product to a lightcube does not give us the
bottom-up AI we seek. So we thought, what if we take that soul
archetype and raise it ourselves from within that lightcube…in a
virtual world?"
"But—" Asuna started to protest.
Rinko put a hand on her shoulder and pushed the girl back
into the seat. "You can't just raise it like it's a pet or a plant. This
soul archetype is essentially the same thing as a human infant.
That would require a virtual world of an unfathomable scale. A
simulation on the level of modern society…Can you actually create such a thing?"
"We can't," Kikuoka admitted. "While the creation of virtual
environments in the STL doesn't require generating 3-D models
as with traditional VR development, it would be very difficult to
re-create the complex, mysterious ways of modern society. There
was a movie from before you were born, Asuna; I wonder if
you've heard of it. It's about a man living in an enormous dome,
whose entire life is a TV show. There are hundreds of extras acting as people around him—only the star himself is unaware of it.
But as the man grows and learns more about the world, he starts
spotting the cracks and eventually realizes the truth…"
"I've seen it. I liked that movie," Rinko said. Asuna indicated
her familiarity as well, so Kikuoka went on.
"Essentially…in attempting to fashion a precise simulation of
the real world, you run up against a major problem: Certain fundamental truths of the world, such as the roundness of the globe
and the existence of many nations upon it, will eventually cause
issues within the mind of the person being raised if those facts
are not properly represented within the simulation. And even the
STL is incapable of re-creating an entire virtual Earth."
"Then what if you set the level of civilization in the sim far
back in the past? In a time before science and philosophy, when
they all lived and died in remote little areas…Wouldn't that still
work in terms of raising your soul archetypes?"
"Yes. It's quite a significant detour, but we do have plenty of
time…within the STL, that is. At any rate, as Dr. Koujiro just indicated, we tried raising our first-generation AIs within a very limited space. More specifically, a sixteenth-century Japanese village. But…"
Kikuoka paused. He shrugged again, and Higa took over the
explanation.
"It turns out it's still not as easy as we hoped. After all, we have
barely any idea of the customs and social construction of that
time. When we realized just how much information was necessary to create even a single house within the simulation, we went
back to the drawing board…and then we figured it out. We didn't
need to model the real world at all. If we wanted a limited space,
the ability to dictate our own customs, and a worldview that
would allow us to explain away any potential issues as 'magic'—
well, there are already plenty of those. The networks that Kirigaya
and Miss Yuuki are already familiar with."
"VRMMO worlds…" Asuna gasped.
Higa snapped his fingers. "I've done my fair share of time in
them as well, so I figured out how well it would work for us pretty
quickly. And the best part is, there's already this perfect gamecreation tool package out there that somebody put together, totally free for anyone to use."
"…!"
Rinko instantly recognized that Higa was talking about The
Seed…a compact version of the Cardinal system that Kayaba had
created and Kazuto Kirigaya had shared with the net. She gasped
—and recognized that neither Higa nor Kikuoka seemed aware of
the program's birth.
Immediately, she decided to keep that under wraps and casually brushed her fingers on Asuna's shoulder. Asuna got the message and said nothing.
Higa failed to notice that anything was amiss and continued,
"Creating a virtual space in the STL doesn't actually require 3-D
data, but when you monitor the process externally, you only have
raw data to look at, and that's no fun. So we tried downloading
this Seed package, as it's called, and slapped together a little village using the editor program, then converted it to mnemonic visuals for the STL."
"Ah…Meaning it's a dual-layer world? There's a VR world
made of ordinary data on the server below, while the STL mainframe above it converts that into its own VR format, with the two
sides being mutually converted in real time?"
Higa confirmed Rinko's suspicion, so she continued, "Then…
could you dive into the lower server with just an AmuSphere,
rather than having to go through the STL?"
"Er, well…theoretically, it's possible. But you'd have to lower
the operating speed down to times-1…and I doubt the mnemonic
and polygonal data would be perfectly in sync…" Higa said, trail-
ing off into mumbles.
Kikuoka rubbed his hands together and said, "At any rate,
after all this testing, we finally had our little sandbox to work
with."
There was a hint of nostalgia in his eyes, as if he was reminiscing on the distant past. "In that first village, we had sixteen soul
archetypes making up two farming families…We managed to
raise those AI babies up to the age of eighteen."
"H-hang on. Raised? Who raised them? Traditional AIs?"
"We looked into that, but, as high-functioning as The Seed's
NPC AI is, it's not advanced enough to raise children. We had
people act as parents for the first generation. Two men and two
women on staff spent eighteen years in the STL acting as the
farmer and wife of the two farms. While their memories within
the system were ultimately blocked out at the end, it required an
incredible amount of patience during the test. There's no bonus
big enough to repay them for that service."
"I don't know, it sounded like they enjoyed it," Higa commented. Rinko just stared at them having a casual conversation
about this. Finally, her lips sounded out the words.
"Eighteen…years…? From what I understand, the Soul Translator is capable of accelerating subjective time…but how long did
that take in the real world?"
"Just about a week," Higa answered. Again, she was stunned.
Eighteen years would be 940 weeks. That meant the STL was capable of accelerating time to the point where one real second
would last a thousand in the simulation.
"And…and the human brain is capable of running at a thousand times speed without issues?"
"Remember, the STL doesn't access the biological brain; it's
the field of photons that makes up our consciousness. The biological process of electrical signals causing neurons to release neurotransmitters can be completely cut out of the picture. In other
words, in theoretical terms, we can accelerate the mental clock
however much we want without damaging the structure of the
brain at all."
"So there's no limit…?"
Rinko had a basic familiarity with the Soul Translator's fluctlight acceleration (FLA) feature, thanks to the materials she had
received before the trip, but finding out the actual hard numbers
it was capable of reaching left her speechless. She had thought
the STL's ability to copy the human soul was its biggest accomplishment, but this time-speeding revelation was just as huge.
This meant that the efficiency of any process in the virtual space
was essentially unlimited.
"But, since we don't know what kind of undiscovered issues
might be lurking out there, we've capped the machine at times1500 for now," Higa said. His withdrawn expression dashed cold
water on her stunned mind.
"Issues?"
"Well, some have suggested that unrelated to the biological
structure of the brain, the soul itself might have a fixed life span,
too…"
Higa noticed her confusion and glanced back at Kikuoka, seeking guidance as to how far to proceed. The military officer looked
briefly like the caramel he was sucking on had gone nasty and bitter.
He explained, "Well, it's only in the realm of theory for now.
Let's say that the quantum computers that we call fluctlights have
a limit on their information storage space, and crossing that limit
causes the structure to degrade. We can't actually test this hypothesis, so we can't be sure it's accurate—we just set an upper
limit on the FLA amplification in the interest of safety."
"…Meaning that in physical time, it's less than a week, but
after spending decades inside your mind, the soul degrades accordingly? Then what's the point of the acceleration? Is there no
way to avoid that phenomenon?" Rinko asked, reverting to researcher mode for a minute.
This time, it was Higa who looked sour. "Er, well, there is a
way, in theory…or more like in imagination. If we created a device like a portable STL to be worn at all times and used that to
save to external memory while in acceleration, it wouldn't use up
the capacity of the original fluctlight. But at our present state of
technology, it's impossible to get the STL that small, and even if
we could, it creates another major issue: When you remove that
portable STL, you lose your accelerated memories, because
they're all stored there instead."
"…This isn't imagination. It's outright science fiction. Overclocking brains, non-volatile memory that can be attached and removed…I wish I'd had this tech when I was a grad student,"
Rinko muttered, shaking her head. She wanted to get back to the
main topic. "At any rate, it sounds like there's no way for you to
avoid pressure on fluctlight capacity at present. Which means…
Hang on. Mr. Kikuoka, you said that staff members spent eighteen years in the STL to raise soul archetypes. What happens to
their fluctlights? Doesn't that mean their mental abilities will
start to degrade eighteen years earlier than expected in the future?"
"No, no, that…shouldn't happen."
She glared at Kikuoka when he said the word shouldn't, but he
just ignored her in his typically aloof way.
"Based on the total size of the fluctlight and the rate at which it
fills, we calculate that the life span of the soul—if you want to call
it that—is about one hundred and fifty years. That means that, assuming perfect health and good enough luck to avoid any neurological maladies, one's mental abilities can last at maximum until
age one hundred and fifty. Naturally, none of us will actually live
that long. Therefore, even with a healthy safety margin, we estimate that a good thirty years can be spent in the STL without adverse effect."
"Assuming the next century doesn't see some revolutionary
new life-prolonging methods," Rinko said sarcastically.
Unperturbed, Kikuoka continued, "Even if that comes to be,
regular old people like us will not be the beneficiaries of its gift.
Of course, that might ultimately hold true with the STL, as well…
But at any rate, let's take the life span of the soul for granted and
continue on. Thanks to the devoted efforts of our four staff members, we raised sixteen youngsters, whom we call 'artificial fluctlights' for convenience. The results were very satisfactory. They
learned language (Japanese, of course), basic mathematics, and
other critical-thinking skills to a level that allowed them to survive in the virtual world we've built. They were great kids. They
listened to their parents, drew water in the mornings, chopped
wood, tilled fields…And they displayed individual differences.
Some were calm and withdrawn, others a bit rowdier, but they
were all essentially obedient and good-natured."
Was it just a trick of the eyes that there seemed to be a tinge of
anguish to Kikuoka's gentle smile?
"There were four males and four females in each of the two
houses. When the siblings grew, they even started to fall in love.
We determined that they were capable of raising their own chil-
dren now and considered the first stage of our test to be concluded. We separated those sixteen youngsters into eight couples
and gave them each their own individual house and farm to run.
The four staff members who had served as their parents were
then 'killed' by a sudden plague and exited the STL. Their memories of the eighteen years in the machine were blocked off, which
meant they emerged into reality in the exact same state they had
been in a week earlier. Yet when they watched on the monitor as
the children cried and held funerals in their honor, they shed
tears, too."
"It was a touching scene," Higa added wistfully. Rinko cleared
her throat to bring them back to reality.
"Ah…where was I? Once the staff members were out, there
was no need to worry about the FLA rate, so we shot the simulation's acceleration up to five thousand times normal speed. We
gave those eight couples around ten soul archetype babies each to
raise, and they promptly grew to adulthood and started families
of their own. We then removed the NPCs playing villagers bit by
bit, until the village was large enough that it was made entirely of
artificial fluctlights. Generations went on, producing more and
more children, and after three weeks in the real world and three
centuries in the simulation, we had an entire society of eighty
thousand individuals."
"Eighty…?!" Rinko gasped. Her mouth worked soundlessly for
a few seconds. "Then…you didn't create artificial intelligence…
you simulated an entire civilization."
"Indeed. But in a sense, that was inevitable. Humans are social
creatures; we only improve ourselves through interaction with
others. Over three centuries, our fluctlights have spread out from
their little village and conquered the entire map that we built for
them. They constructed a central ruling structure without any
ugly wars, and they have discovered religion as well…That last
part may be thanks to the fact that we had to use the concept of
God to explain certain system commands to the children at the
very start of the experiment. Higa, call up the overall map on the
monitor."
Higa promptly started entering commands on the console. The
monitor had been dark since that grotesque demonstration several minutes ago, but now it showed a detailed terrain map, almost like an aerial photograph.
Naturally, it did not look like Japan or any other country on
Earth.
It was a circular map of flatlands, with no ocean whatsoever,
surrounded by a ring of tall mountains. The land was rich and
fertile, with many forests, plains, rivers, and lakes. According to
the scale displayed at the bottom of the map, the diameter of the
circular realm was nearly a thousand miles. Based on total land
surface, that would make it nearly eight times larger than the island of Honshu, the biggest part of Japan.
"Only eighty thousand people living in an area this huge? The
population density must be paltry."
"Actually, I think Japan's the outlier on that front." Higa
grinned. He moved the mouse and swung the cursor in circles
around the center of the map. "This is the capital right here.
Twenty thousand citizens, which sounds like nothing to us, but
it's quite a magnificent city. There's even a governing structure
here the fluctlights call the Axiom Church. There's an elite class
called priests who undertake the duty of governing, and their
control is impressive. This huge map is run without any armed
conflict whatsoever. At this stage, I considered our fundamental
experiment a success. Within the virtual world, we've proven that
artificial fluctlights can be raised with the same intelligence as
humans. I thought for certain that we could then move to the next
step, in terms of building a highly adaptive artificial intelligence
capable of what we want. But…"
"That was when we discovered a very serious problem,"
Kikuoka finished, staring at the monitor.
"…From what you've said, I can't imagine what problem that
would be."