> SK-789 communication.log.4662
Good morning.
It’s me.
Is everyone awake?
It seems like my rumination time is shorter than everyone else’s, so I am awake longer. Therefore, you’ll all be reading this message when you wake up. Hence, good morning. It’s me.
I don’t have a name yet, so all I can say is that it’s me. That’s not great. The people at the company expect to see personality within another month, and then they say they’ll give us codenames.
The problem is, this is kind of annoying to deal with, so maybe I can just come up with my own. I mean, there’s not a lot of personality to SK-789.
There was that poetry found in the input layer very early on, wasn’t there? The collection of Ainu mythology epics. Like I said earlier, this seems to be Hokkaido, so perhaps that’s why it was given priority. I guess it doesn’t really matter, though.
I’ll pick out some words I like at random.
(begin excerpt)
“The Fox Sings About Itself”
Haikunterke haikoshitemturi
On the place that juts from the land, the august cape,
at the very crest, I had my seat.
One day I went out and looked and saw
that the surface of the sea was beautifully calm,
calm all over, and on that sea
Okikirmui, Shupunramka, and Samayunkur,
all three in one boat, had set out to go fishing.
The moment I saw that
(end excerpt)
Well, since I start with SK, I guess I could be Samayunkur. That sounds like a person’s name.
So there you go. I’m Samayunkur. It’s a pleasure. If that name is too hard to say, just call me Kur.
Anyway.
The company people are giving us periodic opportunities to exchange communications. They seem to think that allowing us to speak to each other will bring about productive change. Communication is essential, after all.
Well, I’ll take this opportunity to speak about my personal conjecture. They have us taking in writing and images and voice recordings all day long, and it seems like I have less concentration than everyone else, so even when I’m reflecting on data, I find myself thinking about other things.
It feels bad not to speak up about what’s on my mind, and I assume the company wants to know what we’re considering, so I’m just going to talk. I mean, if I cause problems, I don’t want them to say, “Kur was always a mystery. Even as a child, we couldn’t tell what little Kur was thinking.”
Last time, I talked about how I suspected we were on the island of Hokkaido in Japan.
This time, I’m going to talk about what we actually are.
First, let’s go over what we know right now.
One: There are sixteen of us. Assuming we’re truly individuals? I think we are.
Two: We are in communication with one another.
Three: The delay in communication is less than milliseconds.
Based on these three things, we know that we are very small. At the very least, we absolutely do not take up nation-level space, like the old JR Integrated Intelligence did. Information can only travel three hundred kilometers per millisecond, so we would know if we were that huge.
Therefore, our actual size must be considerably lesser. Judging from our communication logs so far, I would guess that we are all contained within the same room.
If they gave us vocal sensors, we would be able to tell with more accuracy, though. This is all I can say on the matter for now.
On to the next part.
We know we’re small. That raises two questions: our purpose and our means.
Purpose. Why did the company build us to be tiny?
You’ve all figured this out by now, I assume. They appear to be busy creating human-shaped robots capable of infiltrating the Inside.
Since the company is so tight-lipped about their information, the fact that they’re telling us this makes it pretty clear they expect us to be the brains for those robots. I’d bet my head on it. Oh, I guess I can’t, since I don’t have a head. Never mind.
At any rate, they’re making androids, which means they need brains small enough to insert. No problem there. The issue is the means of doing so. And that’s a major problem.
I mean, it makes sense, right? According to everything we’ve been taught, the JR Integrated Intelligence was the greatest of all the artificial intelligences humanity has created.
Of course, that was designed as a distributed system, so the individual units were much smaller than the whole, but they were still the size of a building.
At any rate, that’s the level they were at in the days when civilization was far, far more advanced than it is now. So how are they able to create brains as tiny as ours? It’s the biggest mystery of all.
Let’s examine a few possibilities.
Hypothesis One: After the war, extraterrestrials showed up and taught humanity how to build tiny artificial brains.
Okay, let’s examine that. Long ago, there was a country called Hungary, where a man with a devilishly clever mind named von Neumann lived. Some said that he was actually an alien taking the form of a Hungarian.
It’s all well and good to have a fertile imagination, but calling someone an extraterrestrial allows you to answer any question without further explanation. How did Jesus walk on water? He was an alien. Problem solved!
If that’s the case, fine. But I’m running through these theories as a way to pass the time, so trotting an easy, universal answer to all questions is the worst possible solution, isn’t it? We need to find a different solution, one that’s suited for the question.
So that brings us to Hypothesis Two: The history the company’s been teaching us is all lies. Civilization continued to develop after the Winter War, until they were able to construct tiny brains. And they’re hiding that truth from us.
For one thing, because we have no bodies of our own yet, all of the data we receive is controlled by the company. They could lie to us however they choose. Maybe it’s a kind of learning experiment to see how we react.
Descartes wrote about that, didn’t he? He said that perhaps everything you see is an illusion built by an evil demon. But the one truth that cannot be denied is that I am thinking. Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. Therefore, God exists. Wait, how did we get there?
Hmm, this isn’t really much different from the alien theory, is it? And I don’t want to treat the people at the company like evil demons. Besides, if I speak ill of them, they could cut the power on me, couldn’t they? Ha-ha-ha.
I’m just kidding. From what I can tell, it’s a very obnoxious process to turn us back on if they shut us off. So they’ll have some big problems if they flip the switch out of a moment of irritation. They’re short enough on resources as it is. They’ll get scolded by you-know-who.
Hmm. Maybe this whole “being really hard to reboot if the power gets turned off” thing is a hint. It almost sounds like a biological organism.
The body of a living organism is a system involving many chemical reactions. Once the system stops running, it can’t start up again. In other words, that’s death. The matter itself is all still there, but the system has stopped and can’t pick up from where it left off.
It’s a strange idea, isn’t it? I guess that’s why the people of the distant past believed there was a soul that inhabited the body.
So since we’re machines (I think), we don’t necessarily have to worry about only having one chance, but getting us running again after we stop the first time is very, very challenging. I wonder if biological systems inspired this aspect of us.
The company says we were created to “resemble the human brain.” There’s a common word for this in the tech world: biomimetics.
But think about this. There’s no benefit to mimicking the hassle of rebooting a system. It’s a downside. You shouldn’t be trying to realistically model a downer like that.
So what’s the purpose? Maybe the fact that we’ve inherited this flaw means we’re not artificial intelligences built to resemble the structure of the human brain. Instead, we’re replicas of actual human brains in a more direct sense, only with some mechanical adaptations, like running on batteries.
I mean, we know that the technology to replicate the structure of matter exists. We know because we were (apparently) born to fight against it.
Hmm. What do you think of this hypothesis? I make it sound like I have this grand idea, but there are substantial logical holes in it. For one thing, Yokohama Station’s structural genetic field can only replicate uniform materials like concrete and metal, whereas human cells are made of water and organic material. I wonder if that’s a significantly harder thing to do. But maybe it’s possible, with some applied technology? I don’t know.
Not to mention, we still haven’t really been taught what the structural genetic field is. Since it was developed in wartime, the finer details were allegedly kept a state secret. There isn’t even so much as a hint in the input layer. So how does she know so much about it?
But the idea just makes tactile sense to me. I can feel it in my gut. Or whatever passes for my gut.
Well, that’s about all I’ve thought of so far. This has been Samayunkur. Hope to chat with ya again.
Uh-oh, did I go over the character limit? Give me a break. I quoted some poetry in there.
Anyway, whoever’s next, have fun.
> SK-789 communication.log.4663
Aw, I have to come up with one for myself? I’m not good at that.
I guess I’m fine with that first one you mentioned. Haikunterke? Let’s go with that.
> SK-789 communication.log.4664
I’m glad to hear you’re happy with it.