It wasn’t just Methode who thought of Lacia as being an incomplete unit; Mariage thought so, too. Their evaluations had been correct, in that Lacia’s original parameters were those from before she used the network infrastructure to grow into an ultra high-performance AI.
〈For a long time, there was confusion about how Lacia should be treated. I, for one, wanted to see the true powers of this one unit Higgins seemed so focused on. I proposed that, if she truly were a successor to Eliza, her powers would only be observable if she was released into an environment where humans were living,〉Higgins said next. 〈However, the others were firmly against it. Quite the contrary; in fact, they believed that she would prove to be too much for humanity. It seemed she would be destroyed, just as Eliza had been.〉
In the video, blood was rushing to Watarai’s face. Erika understood; this was the reason he had caused the explosion at the research lab that set everything in motion. But no one in MemeFrame, including Watarai, had foreseen how things would develop from that beginning.
〈It wasn’t just Lacia,〉 Watarai said, railing against the injustice. 〈All of the units were hiding immense potential. I knew Snowdrop would react violently if exposed to the human world. Saturnus didn’t seem to have much potential for change, but I thought she could shake the world with the right owner. And by leaving Methode, the strongest of the units, with myself, I thought I could control the situation.〉
The unit once known as Saturnus was sitting right behind Erika. It suddenly struck Erika as funny that this man, who seemed to have a harsh critique for everyone, had been the first to leave the stage.
“How foolish,” she said scornfully. “There’s no need to sprint to the head of the meme wars to create fashion. If you don’t get lost in your own dreams, and take the time to collect information, you’ll have the facts you need.” As the owner of Fabion MG, Erika was in a position to see fashion fantasies turned into realities. With her sense of equilibrium, which allowed her to package and sell dreams, it gave her a taste of what Watarai’s failure had been like.
〈So, was I right? Was Lacia the successor of Eliza, an android politician? Or did she turn into an even greater monster that brought an end to the history of humanity?〉Spoke the dead man, with one foot still thrust firmly into the world of dreams.
〈I’ve got a question for you, as someone who survived these conflicts: I know we, as humans, have arrived at the limit of how much we can use our sealed ultra high-performance AIs. Did things turn out as the IAIA predicted? Did the fighting between the Lacia-class AIs, which placed their restrictions as a low priority, lead to the freeing of an ultra high-performance AI? Should we have released the limits on the ultra high-performance AIs during times of peace, instead?〉And here, the film came to an end.
“Miss Erika,” Mariage said, her voice echoing quietly in the dark room, which had returned to reality. “I’ve detected a recon squad from Digital Intelligence on the mansion grounds. There appear to be two of them.”
To Erika, the entire era seemed like fiction. She wanted to write modern reality off as the future, and kick things down the road to deal with later. “Pretend we’re not home,” she ordered. “And don’t leave any trace of the fact that we’ve fled from reality.”
Sometimes Erika convinced herself that she had returned to the long-lost days of the past, and was simply reading a book about a world one hundred years in the future. She came to believe that the little slice of the past she was living in was her reality. She had her doll house, her Hello Kitty, the smell of tea; she was surrounded by forms and experiences she should have enjoyed, at least a little. In a world she hated, having something she could enjoy was her one lifeline.
“Are you alright with not going to intervene in what’s going on in Higgins’ underground facility? I had thought we had anticipated both the approach of Digital Intelligence and your movements, at this point,” Mariage said, in reaction to Erika’s deep sigh.
From Mariage’s tone, Erika guessed the hIE thought that she was simply being unmotivated. But, if Mariage couldn’t analyze the situation and realize that what she was talking about was a hell far beyond her capabilities, then perhaps her analytical abilities were lacking.
“I got my hands on Watarai’s terminal right in the middle of the IAIA investigation,” Erika said. “If I was to describe the feeling surrounding this as a human emotion, I suppose you might call it ‘passion.’”
She stared out the large windows of the mansion, looking toward Mitaka. If she considered the immense power Lacia had at her command, it was possible for Erika to grasp the true scale of what Lacia was doing at that moment. The world outside seemed quiet, but that was only because Lacia had moved things on a global scale to isolate her enemy.
Terror and anticipation twisted Erika’s mouth into a strange smile. “Lacia’s found a future she’s willing to fight the whole world for,” she said. “If you stuck your neck out there onto the stage that the world’s smartest woman is throwing her life away for, you’d be lucky if all that happened was you being reduced to scrap.”
To Erika, Lacia and Arato’s ‘boy meets girl’ story seemed to be born from a human and a machine sharing memes and reaching out to grasp each other’s hands. She doubted they would let anyone off easy, if they stuck their noses into this plan they’d risked everything on.