Vivy felt an intense blurring in her consciousness, like static. Something that happened a hundred years ago felt like yesterday, like a few moments ago, like a second ago.
“Don’t forget,” someone said.
“Don’t forget,” were someone’s last words.
“Don’t forget,” were the many requests that sent Vivy off.
Vivy took those words, Don’t forget, and wove them into the lyrics of “Fluorite Eye’s Song.”
In the center of her whirling thoughts, Vivy saw vivid red flames growing.
It was a single smiling face, falling, scorched away in high temperatures, disappearing in an explosion of fire. That was inside Vivy, so powerful, so strong, burned into her consciousness, never to leave.
. : 2 : .
“THERE’RE A LOT of people being held inside the attractions. Can’t we free them?”
“…”
Vivy blinked at the sudden angry voice barking in her audio sensors. She looked around and saw that they’d made it to the security room via the staff passageways. This room housed all the control systems for the park.
There were countless monitors and, thankfully, no guard AIs. The building was empty. Elizabeth connected to a terminal via wire, and Matsumoto helped her quickly take over the park’s systems.
As they did, Vivy checked their transition to their current situation. Oddly, there had been no malfunction that would cause her to double check, but there were a few gaps between the information center and now where her memories had unnaturally disappeared. If she’d been human, she would have been operating on muscle memory, but that wasn’t possible for an AI. She could have experienced a system error, meaning Vivy had to run a maintenance check on herself while also dealing with the problem at hand.
“Are the hostages park guests?” one member of Toak asked.
“The ones who’re trapped? Yeah,” another replied. “That’s what happened to the people who were riding the rides when they stopped. The AIs operating the rides put them under their watch. Not every guest was on a ride, though. The others—”
“Were confined to the different event halls in each area. I know. It’s good that things didn’t turn into a bloodbath, but as for the countdown… How long will that last?”
Every once in a while, the Toak members would exchange a few words. The monitors in the room showed many park guests—the people who had been enjoying NiaLand’s hospitality like normal until the AIs declared war. Now the attractions were closed, the people on the rides were trapped inside those facilities, and everyone else was confined in various areas throughout the park.
The average number of visitors to NiaLand in a day was 30,000. Those 30,000 were not in the park every moment from open to close, but it was safe to assume there were at least 10,000 people still in the park now. The problem was that NiaLand didn’t have a facility large enough to house all of them at once. They were already packed in like sardines in each building. Considering the number of women and children among them, a lot of them were barely hanging on.
“We’re not here to save the prisoners. We’re here to figure out the truth about this countdown. Last thing I want is for us to get caught by the AIs because we did something stupid,” Kakitani said, and the other Toak members seemed to agree.
The person who first suggested they might be able to save the trapped guests was Matsumoto, who hadn’t fully adapted to the Toak mindset. Everyone else’s principles were completely in line. They were not saviors. They were nothing more than militants sticking to their ideals. At their core was anger rather than a sense of purpose.
Through her calculations, Vivy understood that to be the right course of action.
Sacrifice the few to save the many. Sad, but realistic. Nothing good would come of focusing on the immediate future and failing to see the big picture if it meant losing the war.
“I agree that we should save the park visitors,” Vivy heard herself say despite her calculations.
Many people, including Kakitani, peered at her with suspicion. Matsumoto was equally surprised, his eyes shining.
Vivy was caught in the emotional crossfire. She brought a hand to her chest and said, “Children and elderly people won’t be able to endure this confinement. We can’t expect the AIs protecting the guests to provide much support. We have to do something.”
“Wait a sec. Did you just say ‘the AIs protecting the guests’?” asked Kakitani. “That’s a pretty compassionate idea for AIs. They’ve definitely taken those people hostage, don’t you think? The AIs think they should replace humanity. What’s even in your positronic brain, rainbows and unicorns?”
“If their goal was to cause harm, they would’ve done it by now. They haven’t. What’s the point of keeping all these people confined when they have this countdown for everyone to see? There are other, more efficient ways.”
“…”
“Not all AIs have turned on humanity. The cast of NiaLand are carrying out their duties according to the manual and their personal experiences.”
If all AIs were on the same page, then NiaLand should’ve been the stage for such intense carnage that it would be unbearable to look at. But that hadn’t happened. The guests were confined to the various facilities throughout the park. It was only natural to assume that the cast members had escorted the guests there, operating in accordance with their missions. It would’ve been cruel to ask any more of them.
Another party would have to pick up where they left off.
“What’s your plan?” Onodera asked. “The professor puzzles out the countdown, while the rest of us free the captive guests…and after all that, we save humanity?”
“Don’t worry. I will support you through it all,” Vivy said.
“Not sure how much support we can expect from an AI only capable of singing,” Onodera replied, exasperated. The other members seemed to agree with his assessment.
Vivy’s only hope was Kakitani, but the indifferent expression on her beautiful features didn’t change in the slightest at their exchange. She had also weighed the issues at hand, and she was still willing to accept the sacrifice.
“If only…” Vivy began, annoyed at herself for her poor persuasive skills. She quietly calculated what she would have said: If only Matsumoto were here.
If only she could reach him, then at least she wouldn’t have to fight this battle alone.
The Singularity Project was done, but she doubted he’d disassembled himself after finishing his role. He would have arrived in in the era he’d come from and seen the outcome of the Project. No doubt he would’ve been just as surprised by the situation as she was.
Vivy could assume he was also taking some kind of action to stop the war, but she hadn’t been able to contact him at all. He hadn’t been able to act openly during their missions in previous eras, so this would’ve been his time to shine. The only downside was that he’d no longer be more advanced than the rest of modern technology, since he was in his own time now.
“All the most advanced AIs in this time period will be in Matsumoto’s league, after all,” Vivy said to herself.
That made her just as uneasy as the radio silence. In all their time together so far, Matsumoto had been like an omnipotent being at each Singularity Point. His technology was leagues ahead of anyone or anything they’d encountered. But now that time had caught up with him and he was in the time period in which he’d been designed, he no longer had the advantage of being an incredibly superior AI.
“…”
Take Elizabeth, who was with Toak. She had been switched over to a frame far more advanced than the one she had during the Sun-Crash Incident. Her frame had been enhanced in every way possible. It was a match for Vivy’s—perhaps even better.
Time had caught up with Vivy and Matsumoto, and they no longer had the advantage of knowing the future. What could two AIs who failed to carry out their mission do now? And why had Vivy calculated the words If only Matsumoto were here?
Surely it was because he had been Vivy’s only companion for the last hundred years.
“Huh?”
Vivy watched the monitors as she ran her calculations, and suddenly her consciousness went temporarily blank. A strange figure darted across the screen. She pulled the image from her short-term consciousness log and rewound the video, searching for the figure that had caught her eye.
She had been looking at the special stage in the center of NiaLand meant for songstress AIs. Behind the stage was a building made to look like a European-style castle, and this particular video feed captured the interior. The cast members’ standby rooms were there, including Vivy’s—well, Diva’s. She used to accept letters and gifts from the guests there and write back to them, or create video messages as a thank-you. Vivy had spent most of her time in that building, and now she was seeing someone that shouldn’t be there.
“Kakitani, I just saw Diva in the castle.”
“What?!” Kakitani had been engrossed in conversation at the back of the room, but her eyebrows shot up when Vivy called to her.
Vivy rewound the display on the monitor and showed everyone what she was talking about. There in the castle—the so-called Princess Palace—was Diva. Her back was to the camera, but the AI was a perfect replica. It was obvious from the timestamp on the video that this wasn’t some sort of stunt on Vivy’s part.
“Assuming the video hasn’t been tampered with, this camera recorded the AI songstress,” Kakitani mused.
“So what’s with the one we’ve got, the one who didn’t get approached by the AIs?” Onodera asked.
“Hate to say it, but seems this one’s here for the ‘guests.’”
Kakitani and Onodera studied the video as they talked.
Vivy was often called an AI songstress, but for “guests”…? Did Kakitani mean she was here on behalf of the humans? Apparently, even Kakitani was capable of clever turns of phrase. But being impressed by Kakitani’s quip wasn’t important now. Vivy needed to prioritize the fake Diva.
“Is she pretending to be Diva? Did she make the Princess Palace her base? Whatever the case, we can capture her as long as she’s here. We may be able to extract our enemies’ plans from her positronic brain,” Vivy said.
“If that songstress is leading the AIs, she must have information. Not bad… Huh?”