It was strange for Arato, knowing that he was also being recorded by Lacia and uploaded as part of her stream. “Wow, so I guess ultra high-performance AIs take their studying pretty seriously,” he said, feeling as though continuous silence would be rude to their viewers.
“Objects and equipment are always being cycled out over time and replaced with new versions and updates,” Lacia said. “No matter how intelligent you are, you will quickly be left behind if you do not constantly gather information on the newest developments.”
The two of them were now walking on a wide path in the warehouse between rows of new household goods and tools. Arato saw almost absurd numbers of items he regularly encountered in his daily life, and it was funny to imagine an ultra high-performance AI seriously studying objects Arato used on a daily basis.
“That’s trends for you,” he quipped.
“Human trends, by which old forms of items are eliminated at a continuous, rapid pace, are a much more terrifying power than you think,” Lacia replied, shooting an artificial nerve needle into a security camera as they passed it by. “Erika Burroughs is an expert at trend strategy, so she may be even more skilled at understanding them than we AIs.”
“Is that why you kept working as a model for Fabion MG? Because Higgins knew about Erika’s power over trends?” Arato asked, amazed that not a single alarm had sounded under Lacia’s strict watch.
“Do you remember when I told you that I consider humans to be a system made up of their bodies, their tools and their environments?” Lacia said, returning Arato’s question with one of her own as the two of them walked by a new car model that had been the number one trend a year before.
As Arato followed behind Lacia, her question sparked a thought in his mind. “Wait, are you saying that Higgins focuses on gathering up human tools because he thinks the same way?”
“Good question,” Lacia said, tilting her head and shooting him a mysterious smile. “To us, making use of perception requires creating and monitoring the physical forms and data of objects. That was what I learned, using the basis of analog hacking; perception is what moves the human world, and the economy is what ties it all together.” She gestured to the piles of items they were walking between, as though they were the physical representations of her lesson. To Arato, it seemed strangely like she was comparing herself to the stuff stacked up around them.
“All things with form flow along on the same lifecycle,” Lacia continued. “Clothes, characters, stories, idols and celebrities; everything fashionable falls out of fashion and fades. When they fade away, they leave an empty space in the world of trends. Using the economy, a new form is brought in to fill those gaps as they open. So, before we Lacia-class units were born, a hole was opened in the world of trends for us to fill.”
“What exactly did Higgins create you to be?” Arato asked, visualizing the world of trendy items stretching out around him, with Lacia at its center. Through her, he was also connected to that world.
Lacia was still wearing her mysterious smile. “We Lacia-class units were not given that information before we were released into the world,” she replied simply.
According to Lacia, there were three routes through Higgins’ internal facilities: the first was the normal route used by MemeFrame employees, while the second was a special route for emergencies, created based on IAIA recommendations. Both were straight, descending routes. The third route, which Arato and Lacia were following, had been created from the lowest floors. It had opened up naturally as Higgins had requested that the internal facilities be expanded outward.
“The warehouse space continues for five floors,” Lacia said, continuing her conscientious commentary “Starting from the floor below us, red boxes will be mixed in among the more normal items, which means that security will be tightening the deeper we go.”
A long, narrow escalator meant for humans had been set up between the floors. The level they descended to had a high ceiling, inorganic walls, and seemed to stretch on forever. It was covered with orderly piles of items, just like the floor they had come from. The only difference was that, in some places among the stacks of other items, there were large empty spaces with a single object at their center, as if that item was being showcased for some reason.
“What are those?” Arato asked, indicating the items surrounded by empty space.
“Red boxes are required to have a certain amount of security around them when they are in storage,” Lacia explained. “The security in those open spaces is tighter than anywhere else but, as we are only planning to pass through using the main paths, that should not present a problem for us.”
Lacia seemed completely uninterested in the objects that had been made by technology far beyond human understanding as she guided Arato down the paths passing by them.
“Higgins made all of these?” Arato asked, surprised by the number of red boxes he was seeing. “How many are there?” If each of the open spaces he had seen from the escalator contained a red box, there must have been dozens of them in this massive warehouse.
“There are far more red boxes being produced by the various ultra high-performance AIs than you may think, Arato,” Lacia replied. “However, these items are considered extremely difficult to use by those in charge, so they mostly end up stored in places like this.”
Lacia had one of Arato’s floating shields display a map of the floor for him: there were twenty-two red boxes marked out on the nearly two hundred meter square floor.