“All hands! Choices!” Kotori commanded, and the crew on the lower deck of the bridge all tapped at their consoles in unison to make their selections.
In mere seconds, the aggregate results were displayed.
“Two comes out on top, followed by one, hmm?” she said. “Who picked three?”
“Sir! I did, sir!” On standby next to her captain’s chair, Kannazuki threw his arm into the air with gusto.
“I do like an honest subordinate,” she said approvingly. “As a reward, I’ll let you sit on an air chair for thirty minutes.”
“What?! Do you mean it?!” Delight beamed across Kannazuki’s face. He crouched down, bent his knees at a ninety-degree angle, and froze in place.
The rest of the crew watched with lifeless smiles.
“Honestly. What were you thinking?” Kotori shook her head, exasperated. “Oh, hey, Maria?”
“Yes? What is it, Kotori?” When Kotori called her name, the letters M-A-R-I-A were displayed on the sub monitors, and the voice of the Fraxinus’s AI came from the speakers.
“You came up these options, yes?”
“That does depend on how you define the personality and thought of artificial intelligence, but because the options are automatically derived from the Spirit values and the data collected up to this point, it is not the case that I deliberately and purposefully created them. Although it is possible for me to infer and explain, in a fashion, the intention behind the choices.”
“…Oh yeah?” Kotori raised a skeptical eyebrow. “This is something I’ve been curious about for a while now. There’s always one risky or over-the-top option, isn’t there?”
“I see your concern. Looking at the patterns thus far, I would assume that the selection is based on the Spirit’s emotional index and composed of ‘likely winner,’ ‘antagonism,’ and ‘long shot.’ ”
“Long shot?” Kotori couldn’t help but smile at this all-too-human expression. It sounded like Maria was suddenly talking about gambling.
“Yes. There would be no meaning in having options if they resembled each other too closely.”
“I can get behind that. And these adventurous choices have saved our bacon before. But isn’t this one a bit too…creepy?”
“It’s all right. You might lose once, but if you double down, a single win can clean the slate.”
“None of you are using Maria’s calculation functions to predict horse races, right?!” Kotori shouted. She couldn’t help but feel like the machine had learned some unnecessary concepts.
She was pretty sure she saw more than a few shoulders jump up among her crew members, but she couldn’t tell if this was because they were simply surprised by her yelling, or if they had some questionable dealings with the AI. She made a note to herself to check the control logs later.
Tmp, tmp, tmp. Tapping came over the speakers. Shido was asking for an answer.
“Ah, sorry,” she said. “It’s two, Shido. Leaving it to a professional’s not a bad idea, but since this is an unsealed Spirit, it’s best if you handle this yourself.”
Shido nodded on the monitor to indicate his understanding.