Kicking up a storm of petals from her lifeless flower garden, Snowdrop took off.
“We see it as unfair; no matter how we stretch out our hands, we will never obtain what exists in that blank space,” Lacia said wistfully. “That is Snowdrop’s true target; she hopes to destroy that void in the middle of the donut.”
As the ownerless Snowdrop spread her wings to fly, Arato thought that she had lost any semblance of humanity. She looked like something from another world; powerful, and almost poetic in the freedom of her movements.
Lacia and Arato could do nothing but escape from the flower-choked floor.
On the next floor they were greeted by the sight of yet another vast warehouse, full of machines. However, it was clear to Arato that they were approaching the bottom: everything here was well organized, and he could see large blank spaces that had not yet been filled.
Arato looked up at the ceiling aimlessly. There were things on the floor that looked like humans, things that had been made by humans, and things that had forms humans were used to. But, there were no actual humans there. Every tool in the warehouse had been developed to meet human needs. Looking at all the things around him, he was again struck by the thought that, just as high-performance living things were often compared to machines, high-performance machines were compared to living things.
He couldn’t just stand there being uneasy, with all those tools that had fought so hard to win out in their natural selection around him. “Snowdrop’s going to keep chasing us,” he said. “And Methode will be looking for a chance to attack. I can’t just keep putting things off.” With danger pressing in on all sides, crushing him with pressure, and with his whole body drenched in sweat, Arato thought desperately of what he could do.
His purpose was to make decisions and give orders. “Let’s stop Snowdrop first,” he decided. “It would be really bad if she followed us all the way to Higgins.”
“Then it’s good that we’ve switched floors,” Lacia said, immediately modifying her plans to match his intent. “Snowdrop is in command of many machines, but she can only change floors using narrow paths: the stairs, an escalator, or she’ll have to descend through a hole in the floor.”
Arato looked back at the emergency stairs they had just descended to see an avalanche of five-colored flowers flowing down them; it was sickening to see.
Lacia displayed a map of the area on the dusty floor. “When she moves floors, she’ll have to shed some of her body mass, leaving her more open to attacks,” Lacia continued. “And, until Methode discards her plan of having Snowdrop and I eliminate one another, she will not attempt to penetrate Snowdrop’s conquered domain to attack me.”
So they weren’t at the mercy of Methode’s whims? Arato thought with relief, as though Lacia had lifted the crushing burden of terror right off his shoulders. “How will you stop her?” he asked.
“Snowdrop has to alter the hIE behavioral program in order to control her altitude in mid-air,” Lacia explained. “I will aim for that. The control program is based on the AASC, which is ill-suited to control a body so different from a human’s. That is why her movements have been awkward.”
Lacia took Arato a good distance away from the stairs they had descended. Then they hunkered down, with Lacia aiming the long, wide barrel of her cannon-mode device at the stairs.
“Snowdrop’s ability to react to the outside world is entirely dependent on the AASC. So, we will stop Higgins from updating it,” Lacia concluded.
The sudden shift in scale shocked Arato. “Wait, doesn’t Higgins control every hIE in the world? Are you sure we should stop that?” he asked.
“I’ve been speaking with the IAIA’s Astraea over a wireless link,” Lacia replied. “She has decided that it will be difficult for Higgins to avoid being shut down by force, so the IAIA has decided to remove the responsibility of updating the AASC from him as quickly as possible.”
Basically, Lacia was going to paralyze the hIEs—the massive system of machines that kept the whole world running—just to slow her opponent’s movements. The sound of hundreds of heavy metal objects tumbling like an avalanche down the stairs pierced Arato’s eardrums. Beneath him, the ground growled and shook.
As if she could already see how things would play out, Lacia didn’t adjust her aim; there were fifty meters between the flood of flowers and metal and the glowing barrel of Lacia’s cannon.
“If the AASC is halted, all hIEs will lose the ability to adapt to new circumstances,” she said. “When that happens, no matter how many tools Snowdrop takes over, she will only be able to control the ones she has used before.”
“This is going to affect the whole world, isn’t it?” Arato asked, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of large metal objects rolling down the stairs.
“The AASC has over twenty years of operational know-how already included within it,” Lacia said. “There will also be MemeFrame’s manual response, which has been set up for emergencies.”
Arato was Lacia’s owner. But, Shiori Kaidai had said the concept of ownership itself was arrogant. At that moment, with a massive decision to make, he stared at Lacia. The impact of what they were about to do felt too great for him, and he looked to her for strength, but Lacia and her sisters were heartless machines. If he didn’t pull himself up, he would just become a pawn to whatever fate had in store for him.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “I’ll trust in your decision and the folks at Ryo’s company.”
Lacia seemed to be crushed whenever he tried to push responsibility onto her, so she gave him a gentle smile when she saw him trying so hard to face reality head-on. “Higgins may have implemented some kind of countermeasure that will activate if he is separated from MemeFrame,” she warned, gently. “He knows the AASC better than any other person or machine. We will just have to try, and see what happens.”
Arato nodded. He had to be alright with that possibility. They were about to punch through into a world of machines, and the thought made him tremble. From within the white space at the center of the cloud data ring, his soul shook.
The ground also trembled, as the flood of mechanical parts continued to pour toward them. Beneath them, the roar of the wave of metal shook their feet. The only thing not moving was the muzzle of Lacia’s cannon, which she kept steadily braced against her hip.
A storm of rainbow-colored flower petals blew out of the door that led to the emergency stairs. Behind them, Arato could see the figure of the girl who had chosen to oppose humanity. As he saw her, it almost felt like a chilly breeze whipped past him.
With a thundering roar that shook the floor beneath Arato, the rainbow flood of flowers, white feathers and metal parts exploded outward. At the head of the wave was Snowdrop, with her glowing green halo still floating over her head. Her rebuilt wings had been constructed with numerous joints and connections this time, to make them simpler to repair.
Her movements were becoming more lithe, more natural. Staring her down coldly, Lacia said, “The AASC updating will now be cut from Higgins.” In that instant, with her ability to adapt through the AASC robbed from her, Snowdrop lost her balance in the air. Her irregular body slowed; clearly, she was afraid of crashing again.
Lacia had obviously been waiting for just that moment, and she pulled the trigger on her cannon without hesitation. To reduce the recoil from the shot, radiance-like wings of light bloomed behind the barrel as she took the shot.
In the flash from the shot, the image of Snowdrop’s childish body burning away was seared onto Arato’s eyes. She was reaching out her right arm, as if to beg for mercy. But her right hand, which Methode had torn off in the Mitaka incident, could no longer make this human gesture.