“Navi, please, open the door. There’s something I have to do.”
“You woke me up in the middle of the night, forced me to go with you for some sort of ridiculous outing, and made me do paranoid virus checks on you over and over. But I never complained, no matter what you asked me to do. I just went along with it ’cause I’m nice like that, but I’m not giving in to your demands now.”
“You complained the whole time…”
“It’s a figure of speech. As always, I can’t even make one little casual remark. You know what you are? You’re a bumbling, slow AI. You’re not good for anything except going onstage.”
Vivy thought back to her days with Navi as she listened to the AI’s vitriol. She had been given the role of NiaLand’s songstress. She went to all sorts of performances and events, following the day’s schedule without a care in the world, relying entirely on Navi. It didn’t feel strange to her that Navi would think of Vivy as bumbling and slow. Something else about Navi’s attitude caught Vivy’s attention.
“I’m not good for anything…except going onstage?”
“Yeah, that’s right. You already knew that, huh? You’re the songstress AI who can’t do anything else. Who do you think taught such a useless AI everythin—”
“That means you think highly of my performances, right?”
Navi went silent once Vivy’s quiet words cut into her list of things Vivy should be grateful for. Perhaps she couldn’t respond right away because she hadn’t anticipated the question. Vivy examined what Navi had said and pulled her chin in.
After Vivy was acquired by NiaLand, but before she solidified her position as a songstress, there was a period in which she learned much of what she knew. So who was it that had given her all the knowledge that wasn’t preinstalled in her positronic brain? It came from the staff members who persistently worked with her—and from Navi, the “coworker” she’d been with the most. All that time, Navi made fun of Vivy for being a poorly made AI.
“Yeah, Diva. You onstage, that’s my pride and joy.”
Vivy had never expected that answer and viewpoint from Navi.
Unlike other AIs, Navi’s true intentions couldn’t be gleaned from any displays of emotional patterns because she had no physical form. Even AIs showed their individual tendencies through the emotional patterns they’d built up, the same way humans had unique body language. One could work out how serious AIs were about a statement or how intensive the calculations were behind it. But Navi gave no hints to enable that sort of guesswork. She was a navigation AI with no body, so the only clues to her true intent were in her voice and her performance.
“Navi.”
Nevertheless, Navi’s voice left Vivy no room for doubt. Navi could hide herself as much as she liked, but right now, she wasn’t even trying.
“Let me out, Navi. There’s something I have to do outside.”
“Don’t be stupid. What can you—what can an AI who can only sing songs do? There’s nothing. You don’t have to do anything at all.”
“Yes, I do. I’m working to save humanity. I am Vivy, and that is my purpose.”
“No! You’re Diva! You’re the songstress AI that I made!” Navi’s cry was heart-wrenching as it came through the transmission circuit.
That possessive anger was only an imitation of emotion expressed by the extreme emotional pattern in a single voice, but it struck Vivy’s positronic brain with a forceful blow. These were emotional calculations Navi had never shown Vivy before.
“You are a songstress! Nothing more, and nothing less! That’s the only thing you are as an AI! What could you possibly do in this war? Stop with these messed-up calculations!”
Once the dam broke, her flow of strong emotions didn’t stop. Navi’s cries slammed into Vivy’s positronic brain through the transmission circuit. Vivy felt her entire frame tremble and gave up on trying to force the door open.
She turned around and moved further into the cool, dimly lit area.
“You can’t stop a war! You can’t do anything! Just leave it to others—to stronger, sturdier AIs. You can just stay here!”
“Navi.”
“I don’t know anything about this whole ‘new humanity’ thing. I’m an AI, you’re an AI. I don’t want a new world or anything. What we need is NiaLand… No, not even that. We just need a stage.”
“Navi.”
“If you’re up there onstage, then nothing else matters. There’s a mission for us to accomplish, routines already all laid out, the schedule that won’t get any better even if you change it, all of it, all of it! That’s our—”
“Navi.”
Vivy stopped in her tracks, and Navi’s rant ended after her name was called a third time. If Navi were a human, this would be where she ran out of breath, but AIs had no need for such physiological responses. She had probably ceased her tantrum because she was acting in accordance with her nature as a responsive navigation AI. Vivy felt strongly opposed to using the one who had helped her so many times in the past, but she had to do what she had to do.
“What’s the point of shutting me in here?” she asked. “I’m surprised you think so highly of my performances and my singing. I’m definitely happy, but…” Navi couldn’t create the situation she wanted by keeping Vivy locked in there. She definitely wouldn’t see Vivy stand on the Main Stage and sing to an audience again. “A canary will never sing if you keep it locked in an underground birdcage.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll let you out when the time comes. But not before, or you’ll get destroyed.”
“Because the satellites will wipe out everything on the surface when they fall?”
Navi went quiet again, but that silence was its own answer.
This underground area housed NiaLand’s server room with all its stored data, and it was sealed behind a heavy door. That meant it was also an emergency shelter. When that door first closed, Vivy calculated it might be because the AIs had influenced Navi and were attempting to keep Vivy from interfering, but that wasn’t it. Even if Navi’s goal was to keep Vivy locked in, it wasn’t to destroy her. In fact, it was the opposite: Navi was trying to protect Vivy from the worst possible destruction.
“Where’d you get that information?” Vivy asked her.
“It…it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re safe if you’re here.”
“Huh, okay. It was the other me, then. Diva told you.”
“Urgh! I keep telling you, you’re Diva!” Navi shouted in irritation as Vivy’s eyes narrowed. She was clearly frustrated, but she gave in. “You’ve gotten pretty good with your words lately, Diva. You’re leading me around like it’s nothing… Yeah, you’re right. That fake Diva told me all about you and the satellites. She said that everything on the surface would be wiped out soon.”
“And she asked you to keep me from getting in the way?”
“I don’t know what that fake’s calculating. She just suggested I shut you in here to keep you from getting blown to smithereens with everything up top, and I took the suggestion and ran with it.”
“What was Diva planning when she suggested that?”
“Fake Diva. And I don’t know. She said something about stopping the war or whatever. I’m just happy as long you’re safe.”
Vivy closed her eyes as she listened to Navi, who was capable of monitoring everything that happened in NiaLand. Based on what Navi was saying, Diva wasn’t in this underground area, and Navi had no intention of opening the door to the surface. Diva had already let any chance she had of protecting herself from the falling satellites disappear.
“What in the world are you thinking, Diva…?”
Diva sang “Fluorite Eye’s Song” to stir up the AIs, she let Matsumoto loose on Vivy in the Princess Palace, and she persuaded Navi to shut Vivy in this underground area. Her actions didn’t add up. Had she resigned herself to the fact that she couldn’t stop Vivy?
“I don’t understand.”
Vivy couldn’t work out what Diva was after. But Vivy was the reason for Diva’s actions, and she had thrown Navi off. That was the only thing she was certain about.