The target took a pocket watch out of its breast pocket and checked its dial, measuring time. The AI saw the target’s eyes move along with the speed of the second hand. It was lining something up. It had the skill necessary to lay all those traps earlier, meaning it had probably prepared a trap with a bigger effect.
Undetermined source of sound detected.
The next moment, the AI’s unnecessarily enhanced, hypersensitive acoustic sensors reacted to a sound approaching from overhead. Something was falling from directly above.
Buckets of water poured onto the AI from a gash that appeared in the ceiling right above it, drenching its entire frame. It immediately ran through the possible outcomes and decided its greatest concern was the chance the enemy would attack it with electricity now that it was wet. However, it was equipped with electrical insulation, and the Princess Palace didn’t hold enough electricity to overwhelm it.
But the target was aiming for something else. No, not just the target. The targets.
“You were always coming into my Archive, but it was never the other way around.”
The other target, the AI, fell onto it, hidden among the fragments of ceiling that came tumbling down. The amalgamate AI referred to logs of when the other AI had disappeared and understood that it hadn’t been nonfunctional. It had put its frame into sleep mode and slipped into the water to hide its heat source. The pump room in the castle was used for the system of fountains in the moat. The target submerged itself there, restarted itself at a set time, and broke the pump room floor.
That was why the other target had been keeping track of time.
“…”
In an attempt to fling off the AI, the unit made of cubes whirled around. But just as it tried to move the cube parts that formed its pivot leg, three grenades came flying toward it and went off. It was a combination of a sound grenade, a flash grenade, and a smoke grenade. None of those portable weapons were capable of damaging the advanced AI, but that did not appear to be the goal.
“…”
Processing the huge amount of input slowed the AI’s movements by the slightest amount, and its opponent took advantage of that tiny opening.
It connected them with its earring-styled cable, joining their consciousnesses.
. : 4 : .
VIVY STEPPED INTO Matsumoto’s Archive for the first time ever. The look of an AI’s Archive was greatly influenced by the goal that individual was created for; their experiences as they operated; and their “individuality,” an uncertain variable created by the positronic brain.
Diva was created as a songstress and continued to engage with music throughout her operation, so her Archive looked like your average school’s music room. It was a composite scene based on a great number of images of similar music rooms, as she’d never stepped inside one herself.
Ophelia’s Archive had been an opera house; Estella’s a stage backed by the stars; and M’s a facility in Metal Float, where they had operated for a long time. Kakitani Yugo’s had been a reconstruction of the piano room deep within his memories. Each of their Archives had been very different.
As she materialized in the space, Vivy couldn’t help but wonder what sort of Archive Matsumoto had.
“This is…”
An entirely blank white room.
Vivy had an imaginary frame in The Archive, and it had footing, but the floor, walls, and ceiling were all stark white. She was taken aback by this space of nothingness.
Her strategy of accessing Matsumoto’s Archive had succeeded with Kakitani’s help. In all honesty, there was no way the plan would have worked without the Toak woman’s aid. It was the result of Kakitani’s ability to buy time with various skills, her knack for keeping herself alive, and the coordination between the two of them.
“All right. Since you’re saying it’s hard to physically destroy it, we’re going to switch up our tactics: we’ll infiltrate it and destroy it from the inside. Sounds good to me. I’m in,” she’d said, misunderstanding Vivy’s intentions, but neither Vivy nor Kakitani had the extra time necessary for corrections.
Thus, Vivy had trusted in Kakitani. She’d temporarily put her frame into sleep mode, rebooted it, then broken through the floor of the pump room at the agreed-upon time. Then she’d jumped down with the deluge so she could catch Matsumoto’s frame. There, she’d made a wired connection to him and entered his Archive. That much went exactly as planned. Now she had to go deeper while he was cut off from all external reactions. She calculated that if she could directly interact with his core system, she could at least learn what his true motives were.
But making a wired connection to Matsumoto was a gamble. An AI like Matsumoto would almost certainly have defenses in place to attack her. It was perfectly likely that Vivy’s positronic brain would get fried by a counterattack the moment she tried to invade his Archive.
She’d won the bet, at least. She just barely managed to make it in.
Honestly, she’d had no idea what to expect in terms of the appearance of Matsumoto’s Archive, as each AI’s Archive was shaped by the records of their work and their history. These were the elements that made up the AI, representing their true nature, and that couldn’t be hidden. Vivy thought peering into Matsumoto’s Archive would give her information that could help her make decisions.
However, that wasn’t the case.
“There’s nothing… It’s just white…”
Vivy stood in the pure, colorless Archive that appeared before her. This was the root of an AI; it couldn’t be faked. And it was an entirely blank sheet. The only possibilities Vivy could calculate for such an Archive were if the AI’s positronic brain had been completely bleached clean, or if they were under some restriction that prevented them from having any individuality at all.
“Matsumoto, you’re…”
Fading.
Vivy’s evaluation of him, his behavior as an AI that kept her in check, the times he came to save her. That was all fading. Everything, all of it, every last bit was just an action reached through a calculation. Obviously, that was exactly as it should be with AIs. Their actions were a program, a pattern, an imitation of how humans wanted them to be, nothing but the results of learning.
That didn’t mean she could simply accept this blank space.
“…”
There was no avatar of Matsumoto even though Vivy had broken into his Archive. Whenever they had gone into Vivy’s Archive, the music room, Matsumoto manifested as one of the cubes that made up his body. Vivy turned around, looking for it, but she didn’t see anything.
Right then, a door closed behind her.
“Who’s there?” she asked, spinning around.
There, she saw a door that hadn’t been there before. Just one little slice of the space had turned into a door just as white as everything else. It almost blended into the background completely, but it was there, suddenly sprouting from the ground. Nothing held it in place, and it clearly led nowhere—yet Vivy was oddly certain it would. She reached out and gently pushed it open.