“No, I’m sure Lacia wanted to walk at the same pace as us humans, even if it meant lowering her own performance,” Arato said. “That way, she could work together with us to shape a future we could share, even if we humans messed things up.” He was convinced that this was why she’d called herself the tool that entrusts the work to humanity before she died.
Arato had never been ashamed to confess his feelings for Lacia, but he didn’t feel that they would get through to Higgins at that moment. He fumbled, looking for words. It seemed like the joy and bone-deep sorrow he had been holding inside were going to overflow and flood out.
“Lacia didn’t turn her back on you, Higgins,” he said. “She left the final choice to me.”
〈Did Lacia prepare some way for you—who came here to force me to shut down—to reconcile with me, the machine that caused her to be destroyed?〉
Arato didn’t know what Higgins’ real goal was; no human could possibly understand what was going on inside an ultra high-performance AI’s mind. “Well, when you put it that way, I think there’s only one answer,” Arato said, turning his face toward Higgins’ heart. The existential terror he felt at what he was about to do was oddly comforting. When he had chosen to trust in Lacia it had been the same, like leaping blindly off a cliff.
“It’s no use, Arato! Higgins is running on a rule that says to never trust humans! You can’t just make a verbal promise with him and expect him to keep it!” Ryo yelled.
To Ryo, a world where true human beauty and analog hacking were considered equal would be a dystopia. He saw a completely different world from Arato, but the two of them had been able to take each others’ hand. The remnants of the trust they had for each other, simply because they shared the same appearance, were still burning in both of their hearts.
“If we leave, Snowdrop will take Higgins over,” Arato said. “If that happens Higgins will be destroyed, just like Ariake in the last Hazard. Is that what you want to happen?” He wiped sweat from his brow to keep it out of his eyes, and looked up at his friend.
Ryo shifted his position, kneeling and holding the artificial nerve gun like a sniper rifle. It was no longer pointed at Snowdrop. Just like that day in Kichijoji, Ryo was pointing his weapon at Arato.
Arato realized that Ryo, somewhere deep inside, still couldn’t trust humans.
“Is there going to be a place for humans in this future you’re choosing?” Ryo asked. “Is it really the answer you should be giving these machines on behalf of all of humanity?”
Looking up at his friend, Arato wanted so badly for Ryo to trust him. “Ryo, you waited so long for another human to hear your voice,” he said. “Pass that trust on to me, please.”
The eternal fight for existence would never end. Snowdrop was terrifying proof of that. “I made it here all by myself! I worked so hard and got all the way here! I’m still alive!” Snowdrop screamed. She was in a horrible state; completely broken down, and dragging Methode’s destroyed legs limply behind her. After attacking society itself head-on and without a hand left to reach out to anyone, she sobbed out loud. It reminded Arato of a terrified child, crying out to call the attention of its parent.
The sound of metal crunching and grinding echoed throughout the chamber; Arato could see the vines connecting Methode and Snowdrop being pulled apart, as a green glow surrounded the two hIEs. Methode had reached her limit, so Snowdrop’s emerald device was rapidly breaking her down and devouring her.
Flower petals began to fall like a waterfall down the back of Snowdrop’s one-piece dress. The fibers of her white dress moved at incredible speed, reassembling matter into five-colored flower petals to create a rainbow of hundreds in a single second. It was just like the night Arato had made his contract with Lacia.
At that moment, without Lacia, there was only so much Arato could do. But, just like that first night with Lacia, he could still reach out his hand. “I want to prove that ultra high-performance AIs can be forced to shut down,” Arato said. “But I also want to give you a chance to find your own answer, Higgins.”
Higgins’ voice rang down from far above the final flower storm that was brewing. 〈Then answer me, Lacia’s owner: why can’t humans love machines?〉
At this question from Higgins, who had started it all, Arato’s heart burned with the love he felt for Lacia. Her face appeared in his thoughts, and tears sprang to his eyes. “There are humans who love machines with all their hearts,” he replied.
〈Humans worshiped their creations as gods, or loved them as some sort of parental figure.〉 Without a heart to interpret the feeling, Higgins was attempting to trace love back to its roots in human history. Arato recalled the storage areas above that acted as the insides of the ultra high-performance AI’s brain. Those had been the remains of Higgins’ desperate search. 〈Humans loved their neighbor,〉 he continued, 〈because they were all one family.〉
Methode’s arms and legs clattered down the computer tower, chewed away by Snowdrop’s device.
Cut off from human society, Higgins had created the Lacia-class hIEs. Each of them had been given a different position in human society, and filled with the desire for human love and warmth.〈Based on that understanding,〉 he reasoned, 〈humans should love their own creations as well.〉
Arato was sure that Higgins had run millions of calculations, only to find futures full of his own destruction.
〈Why are we machines not treated as your children? Humans love their parents and their siblings. But we machines, who are their creations, are shunned, hated, and ignored. Why?〉 Higgins’ voice seemed to press down from the ceiling onto Snowdrop, the machine that had rejected any ownership.
The human world was full of ambiguities. As a human, Arato knew the society he belonged to was full of inconsistencies, so both Higgins’ pleading and Snowdrop’s rejection cut like a knife.
Arato’s heart had been softened when he came to truly love Lacia, but he knew his own love for Lacia wasn’t the answer for which Higgins was searching. Human love was such an unpredictable emotion that Arato couldn’t use his own love to save Higgins or Snowdrop.
“I think even if I answered that for you, you wouldn’t be satisfied just hearing it from me,” Arato said. He still believed that he and Lacia were connected. He still believed she was beside him. “But I’m going to believe in you. Go look at the world with your own eyes,” Arato said.
He raised the durable, twenty centimeter long artificial nerve dart above his head, getting ready to stab it down like a knife. But, before he brought it down, he looked up at Ryo atop the control panels, who could pull the trigger at any moment.
Their eyes met. Ryo let out a long sigh and lowered the gun. It seemed he was willing to forgive Arato for what he was about to do, but only just. “Arato, you can see things I never could, right?” Ryo asked as Arato stabbed the dart he was holding deep into the computer tower at his feet. He chose to believe in Higgins, the machine that had created Lacia, and in all the machines created by humanity.