But, he also knew how hard it was to be the owner of a Lacia-class unit. Lacia and her sisters were machines that served as a sort of mental pornography for their owners, doing whatever it took to draw out their owner’s trust. They were also emotional pornography, tapping into their owner’s desire to be in a low-maintenance relationship.
“Have you thought about throwing Mariage away?” Arato asked. “If so, remember what happened with Kouka. She didn’t have her own fight, so she went looking for one. Mariage doesn’t have her own fight right now, either.”
Erika’s wide, doll-like eyes narrowed in irritation. Arato knew what he had said was akin to telling Erika that she was looking in a mirror; an analog hack that equated to a one hundred percent accurate meme.
〈So what you’re telling me is that thing has read my actions and words and come to the conclusion that I want to be pushed into fighting?〉 Erika asked, with an edge to her voice.
The servant Erika was referring to as a ‘thing’ was standing by her side, and probably a reflection of the last dregs of normal humanity the aloof girl had left. There were no humans still alive Erika considered close. But, by seeing Mariage’s face, Erika was seeing the memes from her time.
Erika had completely cooled down from the euphoria of her victory, and was now glaring daggers at Arato. 〈Yes, I can see that now; I’m quite used to all sorts of people doing whatever they think will please me so I’ll agree to their boring little contracts. It seems Mariage is aware that anytime my euphoria clears, I’m sure to fly into a rage, so she always stays one step ahead and is reacting just the way she needs to before that can happen. I must hand it to this wretched era; it’s even managed to sour me on my own sense of self and all of my memories.〉
Arato was impressed by the speed at which Erika could switch gears. She already seemed to be looking for her next opponent in the triumphant look she saw mirrored in Mariage’s face.
〈We’re currently getting quite a lot of calls, from humans and those not quite human, both. I’ll pick one at random, and let it through. That’s about all I can promise to do for you,〉 Erika said, letting out a long sigh. Then, the sleeping beauty who had seen the 21st century with her own eyes seemed to laugh at something in her own memories, her whole body shaking slightly with her chuckles.
〈I don’t know how things will end up with your beloved doll, but I encourage you to find your own answer to all this. You’re apparently trying to bring about something people in my era thought of as a fairy tale. You’re trying to give away something quite irreplaceable to a machine that merely looks human. Yours is a ‘boy meets girl’ story that never would have been believed one hundred years ago.〉
“But the people in your time, one hundred years ago, were the ones who started us on the path that brought us here today,” Arato said. He didn’t miss the irony in Erika’s statement having come from the person who had used Lacia and other hIE models to push that very ‘boy meets girl’ model ridiculing the 22nd century for buying into it.
〈When we make things that look human, we start to empathize and sympathize with them,〉Erika replied. 〈Our emotions push us to assign arbitrary meanings to these things after the fact. By this point, reality and freedom only exist in our hearts.〉
Then Erika laughed, loudly, as if she couldn’t hold it back anymore. 〈And I have to keep living in this ridiculous era. What a nightmare,〉 she lamented. 〈I hope you haven’t come this far just to turn your life into another classic tragedy of love lost. It will at least make for an interesting story if you can bring that machine home with you in the end.〉
Arato and Erika were caught up in the same incident. No matter how things ended up, he felt that it would be better if they stuck together. No matter how many things came to an end, there would always be more future to come. And as the transmission cut out, Arato felt love and anger towards his fellow humans swelling and burning in his heart.
“Well done,” Lacia said. “With the same information you possessed, as an interface, I could not have moved Erika Burroughs as you did.”
But, Arato knew it wasn’t anything special about him. Erika had empathized with him because he was a human. Two humans, even from different eras, had enough in common for their feelings to connect. That was probably the source of all human change.
“Thanks, hearing that makes me happy,” he said, trying not to think about what would happen when they got out of there, and had to face Erika again at some point. Nevertheless, the thought that he’d done it all for Lacia’s sake washed away his nerves.
Lacia was there by his side. With just that, Arato felt like nothing was impossible. Next, he used his terminal to call his dad. A stab of guilt hit him as he listened to it ring, considering that he hadn’t spoken directly to his dad in two months.
〈Arato? I’m glad you decided to reach out to your old man at a time like this,〉 his dad said.
The connection with his father was voice-only, but Arato could tell his dad was tired just from the tone of his voice.
〈There have been quite a few requests for comments coming into my office after that little mess with the AASC earlier. But I told them all to wait, since I was getting a call from you.〉
Even though he wouldn’t be able to see his dad or sister anytime soon, just hearing their voices calmed Arato down.
“If you’re that busy, you should have just focused on that,” Arato said. Hearing that his own father had been caught up in things really brought home to Arato how widespread the chaos was in the world above.
〈Right, well, no need to say anything too grave on this call. I guarantee there are at least a hundred people listening in on it. Industries related to automation all over the world are in a sorry state, with everything that’s been going on.〉
“I’m with Lacia,” Arato said, simply. “And we’re heading into the heart of the facility now.” He figured that much would be alright to say.
〈Well, up here we’ve got a few ultra high-performance AIs threatening the entire economy and concept of ownership.〉 Arato’s father, who had contributed to research into using androids to automate the government, didn’t hold anything back when he spoke.
〈Since we humans are always shifting our perception and understanding of things, our evaluation of the work done by AIs is always changing, and only we humans have any control over that,〉Mr. Endo continued to explain. 〈The ultra high-performance AIs tend to judge this set-up as being computationally inefficient. Of course, we humans fight to protect our ability to decide how we perceive things as part of our free will. So the AIs can’t tell us how to perceive things, but they can manipulate the form of the things we create, since we rely on easily-exploitable market data to decide how things should look.〉
“They can do that? Even with all the restrictions they have?” Arato asked.
〈Sure, they can move money around. There are plenty of investors out there only too happy to become puppets to an ultra high-performance AI, and some accounts run entirely by normal AIs that can be influenced〉 his dad agreed easily. 〈For example, during the Hazard, Ariake took the investment fund the Burroughs had put together for their daughter who was in cryo-sleep, and inflated it up to two hundred times so that it could pool its resources. I’m sure Lacia knows more about this than I do, but she was probably prevented from telling you since it’s dangerous knowledge, and she can’t tell you anything that might cause you harm.〉
The situation was more serious than Arato had thought. Lacia’s original intent in them coming to Higgins’ facility was to demonstrate that ultra high-performance AIs were just tools that could be forcefully shut down when needed. To do that, she had needed to join up with the world faction that was trying to protect the economy from any interference to maintain world order. Obviously, this would put her at odds with many of the ultra high-performance AIs. When they were being chased by Methode and Lacia had said that she was being attacked on external networks as well, Arato hadn’t been aware of just how badly the AIs were using her as a punching bag.