“I guess it does. I’m well aware this location is full of memories for you, but I never went there myself.”
“…”
“Oh, please. Don’t pester me as to why the deepest recesses of my Archive are of a place I’ve never physically gone to, Vivy. I’m having a hard time finding an answer to that question myself.” Matsumoto jiggled back and forth jokingly, his voice bubbling from the middle of the Main Stage. The cutting-edge AI moved slowly forward, restlessly forming and reforming his frame made up of several fist-sized cubes.
This was her reunion with Matsumoto, the partner who had carried out the Singularity Project with her.
“Was I the only one who considered us partners?”
“What is that supposed to mean, Vivy? Are you trying to claim that you didn’t need my help throughout our journey? Or maybe that me being there was a hindrance because it made you use more resources? Well, if you’re going to start saying stuff like that, then let me just say this: Traveling with you was always—”
“Matsumoto.” Vivy wasn’t going to let him prattle on and divert them from the matter at hand. All she did was say his name, but that was enough to make him close his chatterbox mouth.
Even he knew that sort of attitude wasn’t suited to this situation.
“Things are horrible outside,” Vivy said. “The Singularity Project ended in failure. I had no idea what to do, so I met up with Professor Matsumoto—but he’s working with Toak, and they’re being led by Kakitani’s granddaughter. The AIs have already declared war on humanity, calling it the final war.”
“Just hearing you say it tells me how bad things are. As bad as they can get. I’m an AI made to carry out the Singularity Project, so now I wonder why I was even—”
“Is that true?”
“…”
“Are you really an AI created for the Singularity Project? You said…Professor Matsumoto sent you to me, one hundred years in the past. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
The first time Matsumoto contacted Vivy was when she was in the middle of singing on this very stage. The message had been the code for a strange program from an unknown source. Vivy had suspected it might be some sort of clever virus, but she opened it anyway. That was the moment the Singularity Project began.
But Professor Matsumoto had denied what Matsumoto told her about himself. So who made Matsumoto? And why did he reach out to Vivy?
There was nothing incorrect about the information Matsumoto had given her about the Singularity Points. Their policy of trying to modify those in order to overwrite the hopeless future for humanity was also not a lie. Where did the lies start, and what was he after?
What were his true intentions? And who was he, really?
“Answer me, Matsumoto. You were sent to—”
“Block the Singularity Project. I guided the world to be like this in every way.”
“…”
The two AIs stared at each other, one in the center of the stage, one off to the side.
Vivy closed her eyes. That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.
Matsumoto dropped his usual joking tone. His voice was meek, even sentimental, as he said, “The goal of the Singularity Project was to overwrite real events, to prevent the onset of the final war between humanity and AIs by modifying important points in AI history that might have been factors in its inception.”
“Here I thought we actually made progress on the Project. That we were achieving our goal.”
Vivy and Matsumoto had joined forces, combining their abilities and functionality to overcome the obstacles in their path. That was the birth of the “modified history,” a manipulated version of the original history.
“In order to prevent the AI Naming Law from passing, we saved the assemblyman whose death made him a martyr, stopping the bill and slowing AI advancement,” Vivy said. “But the assemblyman in question never forgot his gratitude toward the AIs who saved him. He didn’t die and instead worked tirelessly to get the AI Naming Law passed. Ultimately, it passed regardless of whether he lived or died.”
This meant the influence of the first Singularity Point brought the modified history one step closer to the final war between humanity and AIs.
Concerned, Vivy continued to bring up the outcomes of their work on each Point. “Then there was the fall of the space hotel Sunrise—and Estella, the one people thought caused the crash. We prevented the public from turning against her. By avoiding the catastrophic crash that had occurred in the original history, we also softened people’s aversion to placing AIs in important roles, which was supposed to happen after the crash.”
“Toak’s influence and the unexpected existence of Estella’s twin threw a wrench in the works,” Matsumoto replied. “In the end, Estella and her twin sister remained on Sunrise until it entered Earth’s atmosphere. She carried out her duty. This heroic sacrifice actually provided proof that AIs were responsible and capable of handling difficult situations. The modification of that incident improved how people saw AIs.”
Thus, the influence of the second Singularity Point brought the modified history one step closer to the final war between humanity and AIs.
“Grace, one of the Sisters, was made into the core of Metal Float, a fully autonomous island controlled by AIs that didn’t exist in the original history. We disabled it, cutting off all related research that would have resulted in explosive advancement for AIs, therefore preventing a singularity.”
“We destroyed Grace of the Sisters, who was involved in the first-ever human-AI marriage in the original history. This did not eliminate the thing that gave AI rights groups a stronger voice, and the creation of Metal Float resulted in a historical incident in which AIs harmed humans.”
The influence of the third Singularity Point brought the modified history one step closer to the final war between humanity and AIs.
“There was the severe bug that occurred in Ophelia, the greatest songstress and one of the Sisters. She was meant to sabotage her own performance midway and then throw herself from the roof of the event hall, creating an incident known as Ophelia’s Suicide. We prevented that reality from coming to pass and destroyed the false interpretation that it was AI suicide.”
“It was believed in the original history that Ophelia committed suicide. I suspected a severe error, but I later determined that her personality had been overwritten by another AI. How I handled it resulted in a different suicide—the Lovers’ Suicide—and debates on whether or not AIs had souls.”
The influence of the fourth Singularity Point brought the modified history one step closer to the final war between humanity and AIs.
“And—”
Matsumoto cut in, “Then there was the fifth Singularity Point: Diva’s Awakening, where Diva of the Sisters Series wrote song lyrics and a melody without orders from a superior, making her the first AI in history to give shape to her desires.”
“…”
“Through these events, you failed to accomplish your goal of creating a modified history where the final war doesn’t occur. That is how you and I found ourselves in a future with the final war right before our eyes.”