While Vivy was making those calculations, Matsumoto continued on. “Are you all finished? Look, don’t misunderstand me. I may be an AI, but that doesn’t mean I feel some sort of camaraderie with other AIs. We are different things who just happen to be in the same broad category. Air conditioners and fridges are both household appliances, but they have different roles. I would say our relationship is much more…tenuous than the ones between humans.”
“What are you getting at, then?”
“My mission is to carry out the Singularity Project. Well…with my other mission abandoned, that’s the mission I chose for myself. So, if my mission is to carry out the Singularity Project and save humanity, as defined traditionally, the fact that not all AIs are the enemy is both good news and an opportunity.”
“…”
Matsumoto was implying that he had no qualms using an AI’s sense of duty to his advantage. Onodera looked at him with disappointment, and Kakitani narrowed her eyes in a cold glare.
Matsumoto took those reactions in stride and turned to the professor. “By the by, Professor Matsumoto, have you learned what the countdown all over the world is about?”
“I thought there would be less chaos if I told everyone after I verified it.”
“One rarely gets to be one hundred percent certain, Professor. After all, Vivy and I did face the past knowing what was going to happen in the future, and it was still a whirlwind of inconsistencies between records and reality.”
“As the Project’s creator, I’m a little hurt by that…”
If an AI was certain about what needed to be done, and the entire process was laid out perfectly, then they would probably be able to achieve a perfect performance as demanded of them. But reality wasn’t like that. The information they thought to be certain was in fact never certain, and the road that should have been paved for them was filled with potholes. They were far from giving a hundred percent.
“But we still made it to this time period,” Vivy said.
“Even if we were far from one hundred percent, we wouldn’t have made it here if we didn’t do it,” Matsumoto replied. “In the end, the ideal situation would be if we could do this without a single human death or AI destruction, but that’s impossible. And that hundred percent is getting cut down with every passing second. That being the case…”
“We can at least do the best we can with what we’ve got,” Elizabeth chimed in, and Vivy and Matsumoto nodded in agreement.
It was quite ironic. Elizabeth had been the first and most unexpected factor in the Singularity Project. She’d made easy work of the two even though her existence was still unconfirmed at the time the records were made. Now she was here, supporting them.
“…”
Professor Matsumoto was quiet for a while after listening to the three AIs. Then he slowly changed the display on the monitors, showing everyone the countdown. There were just under three hours remaining.
He drew in a slow breath, then let it out, steadying himself. “I’ll leave out the detailed explanation. When this countdown gets to zero, all the satellites orbiting our planet—tens of thousands of them—will crash to the Earth and wipe out humanity.”
. : 3 : .
ALL ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES around Earth would fall, wiping out humanity.
“…”
Everyone there fell silent when they heard that absurd, preposterous conclusion. It was such a brute-force cudgel of a plan that they wanted to laugh it off as idiotic. There were artificial satellites floating somewhere beyond the sky, stars that humans had put there themselves, and now they were turning against Earth?
Still, no one laughed. Not a single person said how stupid it was—not Professor Matsumoto, not Kakitani, not Onodera, and surely not Vivy or Matsumoto.
The silence hung over them for a long time. Kakitani seemed irritated by the countdown that continued even during the silence. She clicked her tongue and raked her fingers through her hair. “That’s a seriously daredevil plan. The AIs won’t get out of that without a scratch either.”
“That’s a failure of human thinking, Kakitani-kun,” the professor said. “Tens of thousands of satellites crashing to the ground will cause severe damage to Earth’s surface. The crust will shift, and lots of people will die. Or, just like with a nuclear winter, the Earth’s environment will become uninhabitable for humans.”
“AIs can keep on living in a world even if it’s raining ashes of death. That’s what it’s about,” Elizabeth said, looking at the floor.
Kakitani clicked her tongue again.
The fall of the satellites would damage the Earth’s surface and destroy the environment humanity lived in. That was the enemy’s goal.
In the most extreme case, AIs like Vivy could continue to live on a planet even if there was no oxygen. Obviously, having no oxygen would make certain chemical reactions impossible, so the common sense from before would no longer apply, but AIs could overcome those problems.
AIs would create a world they governed—a world where humans could no longer live and all life on Earth had been destroyed.
“Hah, you see that?! That’s the kind of thing only an AI can come up with!” Onodera barked, his voice ragged and his eyes bloodshot as it became clear they should fear the AIs’ plan. He glared at Vivy and Matsumoto, who stood frozen, his rage toward the heartless plan blatantly obvious. “Good AI, bad AI… This has nothin’ to do with that. Your kind did this. Like some sort of demonic…no, not even demons would want to self-destruct! This is the worst possible idea!”
“…”
“We were right! Toak was right to keep warning people! And in the end, you AIs…”
Onodera’s rage grew nearly to the point of bursting. Vivy prepared for changes in the situation, watching every little move as she wondered if he would reach for the gun at his hip. She had to consider the possibility she would have to neutralize Onodera here, depending on—
“What’s with the countdown, then?”
Kakitani’s murmured question tossed water on the heated tension between the worked-up Onodera and Vivy, who was ready to oppose him.
The woman stood beside Onodera, staring at the monitor. Her sharp eyes followed the numbers, ignoring Onodera’s powerful emotions.
“What a stupid question!” Onodera said as he bashed his shoulder into hers, seemingly annoyed at her attitude. “The professor just said it’s a countdown to humanity’s destruction! They’re going to wipe us out and take over the Earth!”
“I get that. What I’m asking is why do they need to show us a countdown?”
“To…make us uneasy? It’s a performance. They probably get off on watching us tremble in fear as time runs out.”
“Even you know that explanation doesn’t sound very convincing.” Kakitani peered into Onodera’s bloodshot eyes, her gaze intense. He grumbled and looked down, his expression still fierce.