Ryo Kaidai watched the destruction being unleashed by Methode through a security feed from Higgins’ Operators’ Room. He had been unable to do anything but watch as Lacia had infiltrated the facility, paralyzing its security as she went. There wasn’t anything he could do about the group of mass-produced Koukas that were pressing towards his location, destroying everything in their wake, either.
Without the ability to use any wireless communications from within Higgins’ silo, he was completely helpless. He couldn’t send any orders to Methode. Of course, it was possible she would turn her back on him just as she had Watarai, even if he could get a hold of her. At the moment he had no way to convince her he was worth keeping alive. From where Ryo was standing, things couldn’t have been worse.
“Did you get ahold of the company?” Ryo asked. “With things like this, everyone just needs to get down and lick Higgins’ boots or we’ll never make it out alive. He needs authorization from someone with authority over the security system.” With Ryo in the Operator’s Room, which was shaking with constant shocks and impacts, was Suzuhara, who had returned. Ryo had asked him to get in touch with MemeFrame for help.
“I’m trying,” Suzuhara whined. “But the Antibody Network, Lacia, and Methode are doing a good job of messing up Higgins’ nervous system up there. It’d be nice if they’d give it a little rest.”
“I’m sort of depending on you, here, Suzuhara. I’d love it if you could try to act more like an adult at a time like this,” Ryo said, exasperated.
The executives left at MemeFrame didn’t have the luxury of delicacy anymore.
“Well, I can’t help you with the negotiations,” Suzuhara said. “I know this should be something left to us adults, but the guy on the other end is the same one who sent me here. If I take your side, the whole human faction will think of me as a traitor.”
“Oh, I know all about that,” Ryo said, his voice dripping with accusation. “You’re borrowing plenty of power from the Higgins faction to protect your own position in the human faction. It must be so hard to be an adult; sitting there with your thumb up your ass, using your own peoples’ future as a shield.”
“Don’t give up,” Suzuhara said, his gaze suddenly sharp. “The person in charge of the facility will have already been notified by Kirino of the attack, and I guarantee he knows his ass is on the line here.” There was a pause as Suzuhara checked his terminal. “Oh, here we go. It’s connected. I’ll put up the security relay message,” he said.
An old man, who Ryo thought must have been quite the lady-killer in his youth, appeared on the floating monitor. He was Masazumi Yoshino, MemeFrame’s General Manager. It was Ryo’s first time actually talking with the man. “Sorry to interrupt you so suddenly,” Ryo said politely. “I believe we met during one of the company commemoration parties; my name is Ryo Kaidai.”
〈And I’m Yoshino,〉 the man said, eyeing Ryo as if measuring him. Ryo was aware that his image was being sent to Yoshino, just as the old man’s was being displayed to him.〈So you’re Kaidai’s son, huh? I take it you, and not Suzuhara, have seized Higgins’ Operators’ Room?〉
“I was only intending to ask Higgins a few questions and then leave but, as you are probably aware, things got complicated,” Ryo said. “If you’re worried about my personal qualities, please ask Deputy Director Shinohara of the Tokyo Research Labs about me.”
Ryo suddenly looked up at the ceiling. The choice from Higgins was still hanging in the air, and Ryo was aware that the ultra high-performance AI was listening to their conversation.
Yoshino, the executive in charge of the Higgins faction, looked sharply at Ryo. Outside of his gaze, Yoshino’s face was impassive, as though he intended to offer Ryo nothing. 〈Is this some kind of threat? Looks to me like you’ve got your neck stuck into something real dangerous, there,〉 Yoshino said.
“It’s no threat. I need to talk to you,” Ryo said. “I want to get through this predicament without Higgins being destroyed or freed. Since you have authority over the security system here as a managing director, I need to borrow your power.”
Ryo felt chilly sweat from his tension sliding down his chest. The sixty-year-old managing director had been one of the main contributors to getting MemeFrame dominance in the hIE control market and turning the company into a world-class corporation when he was younger. Plus, ten years before, when Ryo was caught up in that explosion, Yoshino had already been a core member of the Higgins faction.
“If you don’t believe me about how dire the situation is, why don’t you ask the person in charge of this facility?” Ryo asked.
Yoshino gestured in a way that told Ryo he was looking at another communication of some sort. 〈It does appear the facility is about to fall,〉 he agreed. 〈And? What is your plan for getting through this?〉
Ryo’s only goal in his negotiation with Yoshino was to follow the standard procedure to evacuate Higgins’ data from its current location. He had come too far to try fixing everything by leaving it all to Higgins to figure out for them. Ryo wanted a future where humans would still be able to live with the normal inconveniences in their own lives, rather than expecting machines to resolve everything.
To get a feel for Yoshino’s thoughts, Ryo started by presenting plans that had him doing nothing, while watching how the old man reacted.
“Well, my first plan would be for myself and Director Suzuhara to leave Higgins behind and just escape,” Ryo said. “I’d love to just go with that, but the only way out is a long, narrow stairway heading up. I don’t think we’d be able to escape before the attackers got deep enough into the facility to threaten us. Plus, if we lose power, the security gates will shut down and we’ll die, trapped in here. The only other plan I can think of would be to wait here until someone figures out another way, or until the situation changes.”
Yoshino dismissed both plans, apparently without a single thought. 〈Both of your plans end with either Lacia or the Antibody Network’s mass-produced Koukas destroying Higgins,〉 he pointed out. 〈What is Higgins’ solution?〉
Ryo couldn’t believe his ears. Another high-performance AI was about to be released into society; at such a critical moment for the world, this old man was still prioritizing Higgins’ ability to solve their problems. More than that, Yoshino still hadn’t met Ryo’s eyes a single time, as though the old man didn’t even recognize him as being a fellow individual human.
“Okay,” Ryo said, disposing of his gracious tone. “Alright if I take off the kid gloves for a bit?” He didn’t see any reason to force himself to be polite to someone who was fine throwing his life away. It had been his hope that Yoshino might at least see him as a fellow human if he could see Ryo’s face.
“Higgins’ plan is for me to use the artificial nerve unit I brought with me to connect him directly to the security system,” Ryo said. “Higgins’ hardware and the hardware of the security AI aren’t too far apart. If I connect them, Higgins will be able to take full control of the security system and fight off the attackers on his own. Of course, I shouldn’t even need to tell you the downside of this plan. We’ll lose our only method of binding Higgins, and the whole world will hold us responsible for that.”
Snowdrop’s petal-shaped artificial nerve units could extend roots up to a meter from where they were installed, taking control of any machines they touched. The one Ryo brought with him had been upgraded by Lacia and was usable by humans, since it had to use human signals to take control of human machines. Ryo had done some further modifications on the one he held, so that its controlling parent unit was his own pocket terminal.
If he used it to take over Higgins’ power supply, he would easily be able to switch off the whole ultra high-performance AI on a whim.
On the other hand, if he connected it to one of Higgins’ expansion machines that had been placed here and there in the Operators’ Room, the AI would easily overpower control of the petal with his superior powers. If that happened, Higgins would be able to access one of the powers of the petal Ryo couldn’t control; the ability to link machines together, which Snowdrop had used to create her chimera hIEs. With it, Higgins would be able to link himself directly to Kirino, the security AI. Ryo was sure Higgins would be able to fight off everyone trying to break into the facility with the defense system under his command. But, at the same time, Higgins would be able to use the link between Kirino and the company’s system to free himself into the outside world.
〈I see. So, Higgins would free himself into an outside network using MemeFrame’s internal cloud through the network we use to keep track of the security system,〉 Yoshino observed. 〈The beginning of the end, for humanity. I’m guessing your counter proposal would be to back-up Higgins’ data and completely avoid any confrontation between ultra high-performance AI, am I correct?〉