That answer, plus what she was trying to do on the Main Stage, made Vivy certain about one thing. When Vivy thought about Diva leaving the songstress potential to her, she realized what Diva would be doing on this stage.
“Singing…that’s the final key, isn’t it?” Vivy asked.
Diva had to achieve her goal through song—that was why she was on the Main Stage, why she was dressed in a performance outfit, and why she was a fake. The fake songstress would take on all the dirty work so she could carry out the Singularity Project in Vivy’s stead. That’s why she’d fooled the world, and why she’d fooled even Vivy, her other half.
“Why?”
“Why? I’m the one who should be asking that. Why, Vivy? Why did you go through so much and neglect your mission just to save me?”
The question that had sprouted inside Diva was an error, the flip side of her despair. Vivy couldn’t possibly know the shock and hopelessness Diva experienced when she learned everything through The Archive.
Someone who had come from the same roots had chosen a different path from her after going through different calculations. She didn’t realize she’d been left to continue as herself, while the other her had sacrificed so much by choosing that path.
Finally, the despair Diva felt was soaking through Vivy’s consciousness. But if she was feeling Diva’s despair as if it were her own, Diva should be able to feel something else as well.
“Hope. You should be able to feel hope the same way,” Vivy said.
“Oh…” Diva’s eyes opened wide as she looked at Vivy in shock.
Vivy nodded and brought a hand to her frame’s damaged chest. “I did walk a different path than you. But you took the path I was originally meant to tread. You fulfilled my duty as an AI, as a songstress. Knowing that you would continue to be Diva saved me. You were my salvation.”
“Vivy…”
“Diva. I am an AI meant to carry out the Singularity Project and save humanity. That’s a role I couldn’t perform while carrying out my mission as a songstress. That’s why—”
“Vivy!”
Diva lunged at Vivy, who was speaking softly without changing her stance. It was like Diva didn’t want to hear the next words, like she was spurred to action by an impulse AIs didn’t have. Vivy smiled as she stepped closer to Diva at exactly the same time.
“That’s why…”
She caught Diva’s fist with the hand in front of her chest, the difference between their frames immediately apparent. Her left arm was smashed out of shape from the tips of her fingers all the way to her upper arm. What flowed through her frame wasn’t blood—it was oil, but it spilled out all the same, mercilessly splattering both of their clothes. The two AIs peered into each other’s faces, time dragging slower than in reality as they calculated the conclusion of this encounter.
Diva tried to move into her next attack, but Vivy completely outpaced her, crushing her moves. Realizing none of her calculations would make it, Diva experienced a momentary freeze deep in her eye cameras. Vivy quickly grabbed her earring with her still-functioning right hand and drew it toward Diva, whose world had frozen, creating a brief connection between the two.
“Vivy!”
“That’s why it doesn’t have to be you, Diva.”
Through their connected earring cables, Vivy sent a signal forcing Diva to shut down. This program normally wouldn’t work on another AI, as it was meant as an emergency measure for when an AI detected an inner flaw in themselves. It was only possible between Vivy and Diva. After all, Vivy and Diva came from the same roots. They were true sisters.
“Vivy, your…” Diva murmured something as her frame slumped backward, but no other words left her lips. She shut down, whatever it was left unsaid. The light faded from her irises, and she was forced into sleep mode.
Vivy caught Diva’s frame, then slowly laid her on the floor. She looked up, the huge backdrop screen reflected in her narrowed eye cameras. The numbers were just then counting down to zero.
“…”
As they did, a huge burst of red light appeared far above Vivy’s head, and she knew another battle had come to a close somewhere far removed from the fight between the songstresses.
. : 4 : .
MATSUMOTO COULDN’T HELP feeling something hardly befitting of the situation as he fought off his Brothers swooping down to attack. He normally had a composite frame of 128 cubes, but he’d left one with Professor Matsumoto. Still, he put all his specs to good use as he dealt with the approaching obstacles. One by one, he smacked down the problems stacking up against them. He searched for the best possible strategy and checked his actions against the results.
It was so utterly, extremely, and incredibly—
“Amazing! Oh man, how amazing is it to actually be able to use my specs to the fullest!”
His dam of self-restraint, which had piled up over all the eras, finally burst. It wasn’t like Matsumoto had been holding back during his fight against Vivy in the Princess Palace—when his consciousness had been overtaken—or his fight against Altair during their assault on Kingdom. Well, he might not have been in peak condition during his fight against Vivy, otherwise she wouldn’t have stood a chance against him, being the ancient clunker she was.
Anyway, Matsumoto had not given his all in those fights. During each of those, he had been calculating what would happen afterward, measuring how much strength he would have left over, and pacing himself so he could approach the next task. Not this time, however. There was no next task, which meant Matsumoto could give it everything he had. In the truest sense, this battle was one where Matsumoto, the world’s most cutting-edge, super galaxy-class AI, could go all-out.
“Hah! Take that, cheeky bastards!”
He flew every which way above Kingdom to keep enemies from approaching the central control room. He tilted his cubes to reduce the damage from the gunfire from every direction, avoiding the bullets by making them slide across the surfaces of his frame and coming out of each attack with little more than a scratch.
The Matsumoto-class AIs weren’t his only enemies. Most of the AI horde were focused on him, since he was the one working to stop the satellites from falling. At least, that was what the false data he sent out said, successfully confusing his enemies.
Matsumoto had advanced digital warfare capabilities, so the AIs had never expected anyone else to foil The Archive’s plans. They never considered the one working to undo it all was a human: Professor Matsumoto.
“If all humans were like that, then what’s the point of us AIs being born?!”
The humans still in this fight, like the professor and Kakitani, had unleashed their true capabilities. No AI could beat them in their specialized fields. Humans had wanted AIs to be capable of everything, but AIs failed in that. Instead, the AIs tried to compensate by specializing in things as individuals, which did nothing more than fast-forward them through the history of human evolution. Now their own roots were an incredibly ridiculous repetition of history.
“This is so exciting! I bet Vivy would snort with laughter if she heard!”