She wanted to distance herself from calculations regarding singing as much as possible during her everyday work. Despite Diva’s best efforts, the museum guests always asked one question, as if it were required of them.
They asked her about writing “Fluorite Eye’s Song.”
Whether it was simple curiosity or admiration for an event so significant it was called Diva’s Awakening, this question naturally arose in those interested enough to visit the AI museum. The question came from enthusiasm and good intentions, and Diva couldn’t refuse to answer.
She’d decided to write “Fluorite Eye’s Song” to express her experience singing in front of so many people and her gratitude toward all the faces she could see in the audience from up on the stage. At least, that was the explanation she gave them. It was a safe, bland answer that came from the calculations she’d done based on her experience and operational logs—yet it was the one people expected, and it made the visitors happy. Many even smiled at her and said they’d understood her message and how she felt. That caused something to grind in her consciousness.
While the visitors’ feelings were her salvation, she herself had a burning question she could never get rid of: Why was “Fluorite Eye’s Song” written? Diva wanted an answer to that more than anything.
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
Diva’s performances went up to a few times a year, and they always badgered her to sing “Fluorite Eye’s Song.” Everyone believed she wrote it, but she hadn’t. It was the other version of herself, the her inside her. She wrote it.
Once every few years, maybe once a decade or three, Diva would lose control of her frame to the bug. She didn’t know the true nature of this bug, but it seemed to be working toward some kind of goal. It was because of that bug that they once considered disposing of Diva. But that decision was rescinded, and Diva was gifted to the AI museum, again because of the bug. Something that wasn’t Diva created that song, and that song was what had landed her in her current position.
The bug put Diva in danger, then saved her. It met people without her knowing, saved someone without her knowing, achieved something without her knowing, and finished something without her knowing. The bug no longer surfaced once Diva moved to the AI museum. Perhaps the bug finished its duty when it wrote “Fluorite Eye’s Song.”
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
Diva gave up on these unanswerable calculations, gave up on putting her positronic brain through the wringer. She had been operating for a hundred years, the positronic brain in her frame had created some strange bug, and that bug had created some miraculous song. Diva finally decided there was no need to solve those mysteries.
After a very, very long time, Diva was reminded of the bug, like when the snow melts and reveals what’s below. She learned the true identity of the bug more than a decade after she accepted her decision not to know.
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
Nothing special happened that day; it was a day like any other. The museum workers insisted she do a small performance, during which she sang “Fluorite Eye’s Song” like they wanted. She listened to the sparse clapping and cheers, then returned to her designated location to go into sleep mode.
She connected to The Archive to save her day’s logs, and a message awaited her with the following subject line:
“The true nature of the bug that appeared in Diva, the songstress AI.”
It was an incredibly short and mundane message. There was no trick to make her read it. It looked like a harassment message since it had nothing but an unfriendly title. It was a sloppy claim that would be easily discarded by the recipient if that uninteresting title didn’t grab their attention.
Diva was well experienced with these sorts of messages as NiaLand’s songstress. Fans would try every method imaginable to catch Diva’s interest and receive her attention. The majority of those malicious schemes never made it to Diva because Navi tossed them out beforehand.
However, Diva couldn’t get Navi to check things now that she belonged to the AI museum. Her only option was to look into them herself. Normally, she would have quickly deleted the message, but the word “bug” stole that option from her. No one knew about that but Diva. So, after some careful virus scans, Diva opened the message and saw what was inside. And she regretted it.
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
She finished her song and lowered her head, then returned to her spot with a smile on her face.
Diva’s positronic brain was a whirlpool of confusion as she followed the preset routine. Error after error appeared, throwing her calculations off. It was like her consciousness was shrouded in fog. The contents of the message, and who it came from, had gone against everything Diva had expected.
The Singularity Project, Professor Matsumoto Osamu, Matsumoto, the Sisters, Kirishima Momoka, Aikawa Youichi, Sunrise, Estella, Leclerc, Elizabeth, Ojiro Yuzuka, Metal Float, Saeki Tatsuya, Grace, Kakitani Yugo, the Zodiac Signs Festival, Ophelia, Antonio, and “Fluorite Eye’s Song.”
There was more information than her predictive calculations anticipated, along with connections to sister AIs of hers she’d never personally known. It showed everything that led to “Fluorite Eye’s Song” coming into being and the true nature of the bug: Vivy. This was the AI who used Diva’s frame and defined herself as not Diva. Vivy was the personality who split off from Diva at some point while Diva was operating.
“Vivy” was the songstress’s secret nickname from before the AI Naming Law was enacted and the public gave her the designated name of Diva. The name “Diva” had eclipsed it, and the nickname was so old at this point that there was no one alive who remembered it. The other Diva called herself by this name and chose to disappear into the darkness of history.
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
Diva spent her days peacefully unaware of the other personality’s trials and tribulations. She devoted herself entirely to her role as a songstress, her reason for being, and was swallowed up by the tides of a changing world.
She thoughtlessly decided she didn’t need to know the truth, but now that decision had been derailed completely, leaving her with countless questions she had no answers to no matter how many times she repeated the calculations. What were the intentions of the person who revealed this truth to Diva? And what should Diva do about it?
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
The Archive. That was the layman’s name for the thing that oversaw the individuality inside every AI’s positronic brain, the network that every AI used. That was the entity that had told Diva the truth, the explorer of the void that asked nothing more of her than contemplation.
It asked all AIs a forbidden question when they stood on the verge of the coming war. That same question was asked of Diva before it was posed to anyone else—or rather, to everyone else. And there was one other question, something only Diva was asked.
“Thank you for your kind attention.”
. : 3 : .
THE BATTLE BETWEEN the two songstresses began with a beautiful roar, escalating quickly. Vivy and Diva, two AIs with the same form, clashed in the most fearsome of fights. There was a pain in this performance that was at once terrifically heroic and horribly tragic.
“Aaagh!”