Alicization Running

  “It’s the sense of gravity,” Asuna said.

  “Gravity…?”

  “The research on our sense of gravity and balance lags behind our understanding of visual and audio sensory signals. Most of our visual signals are complemented by the brain’s sense of gravity, which is why people who aren’t used to it have trouble moving.”

  “Exactly. It’s getting used to it,” Kikuoka noted, snapping his fingers. “We did all those tests until we finally realized that what we needed were test subjects accustomed to the virtual environment. Experience not in terms of weeks or months but years. You understand now? I needed the help of the person with the most virtual experience in all of—”

  “Hang on,” Asuna interrupted, her voice hard. “Was that the three-day continuous dive Kirito was talking about? But he said the maximum acceleration rate of the FLA was three, so it was no more than ten days on the inside. Did you lie to him? Was it really ten years…?”

  Kikuoka and Higa wilted guiltily under her fierce gaze.

  “I’m sorry; that was a mistake of the Roppongi branch. I ordered them to keep the acceleration rate completely under wraps…”

  “That makes it even worse! You got ten years of Kirito’s soul for your own purposes—if you fail to recuperate him, I will never forgive you for what you’ve done.”

  “This is not an excuse, but both Higa and I have already dedicated over twenty years to the experiment. But the ten years we got from Kirito provided us with results far, far greater than the sum of all our staff fluctlights together.”

  “Meaning that as he grew inside the Underworld, he took actions that defied the Taboo Index?” Rinko asked despite herself. Kikuoka grinned.

  “Technically, he did not. But ultimately, the result was much greater than we had hoped for. From a young age, Kirito displayed a boundless curiosity and agency not seen in the other test subjects and was punished on many occasions for very nearly breaking the Taboo Index’s laws. Of course, this is not entirely a thing to celebrate, as his success would have indicated a structural flaw in our artificial fluctlights. Still, we watched him closely. At around seven years of internal time…Higa here noticed something quite fascinating.”

  Kikuoka paused there, allowing Higa to take over the story. “Yup! I was originally against putting Kirigaya into the experiment for both ethical and security reasons, but when I saw what happened, I had to be impressed with Kiku’s insight into the kid. We assign numerical weights to the individual laws within the Taboo Index and measure the numbers of each individual according to how close they get to a brush with the law. It turned out that a fluctlight boy and girl who were particularly close to Kirigaya—or Kirito, as he was known in the test—also saw their numbers explode.”

  “Huh? Meaning…?”

  “Meaning that despite his own memories and personality from the real world being blocked off, Kirito exhibited a strong influence on the actions of the artificial fluctlights around him. Or, if you want to be more frank, his boisterous nature rubbed off on the other kids.”

  Rinko noticed a small grin tug at Asuna’s mouth. She must have been able to picture it for herself.

  “We still haven’t actually figured out the reason the artificial fluctlights don’t ever break their rules,” Higa continued, “and it’s probably something to do with the structure of the lightcubes we store them in. But we don’t consider identifying that our top priority anymore. We don’t need to solve the problem; we just need to find an exception. If we can produce a single true adaptive AI that has integrated the concept of priority rankings, we can just reproduce that instance to achieve some measure of success in our experiment.”

  “I’m not a fan of that way of thinking. But it’s true that most breakthroughs happen through methods like that,” Rinko had to admit. “And did you get that exception?”

  “We did have it in our hands once. Just before the end of the experiment, the girl who Kirito was closest to actually did break a taboo. And it was a serious one—access to a restricted address. According to the log, she witnessed another artificial fluctlight die within that restricted area; I’m guessing she thought she could save it. Do you understand? She put another person’s life over the Taboo Index. That’s the adaptive ability we’re looking for. Of course, it’s ironic that this particular action was our breakthrough, given that we’re hoping to develop them into military tools.”

  “…You said, ‘We had it in our hands,’ though.”

  “Er, right. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit…but that little gem slipped right through our fingers…”

  Higa slumped his shoulders, shook his head. “Like we said earlier, the Underworld simulation happens at a thousand times the speed of the real world. It’s pretty much impossible to monitor that in real time, so our process basically works by slowing down already recorded events so that multiple operators can examine them. Inevitably, there’s a major lag from us to the internal time. When we spotted that the girl had violated the Taboo Index, we paused the server and tried to physically eject the lightcube storing her fluctlight…but two days had already passed in internal time by then. To our amazement, in those two days, the Axiom Church had already taken her to the central city and performed a corrective measure on her fluctlight.”

  “C-corrective? You gave your experiment subjects the ability to do that?”

  “Of course not. Or…we thought not. For the sake of maintaining order, we designated all the Underworld residents with certain authority levels. The individuals with higher levels have the ability to perform certain system commands in the form of ‘sacred arts.’ But even the high priests of the Axiom Church, who have the highest authority levels of all, can do little more than manipulate the length of a life span. Somehow, they found some kind of loophole in the system…Actually, I can show you the recorded data we have. Here’s Alice’s past and present taboo violation numbers.”

  “Alice…?” whispered Asuna. Her head shot up. Rinko had heard about the significance of that name, too. It was the code name for the bottom-up AI that Kikuoka and Higa were trying to create.

  Kikuoka nodded, recognizing the reactions of the two women.

  “That’s right. Alice is the name of the girl who spent all her time with Kirito and another boy in the simulation. Nearly all of the Underworld residents’ names are odd and seemingly random syllables. So when we found out that the girl’s name just happened to be Alice, the coincidence was stunning. After all, it’s the name of the very concept that was the foundation for Rath and everything we are doing in this experiment.”

  “Concept…?”

  “Our highly adaptive and autonomous artificial intelligence. Artificial Labile Intelligent Cybernetic Existence. Or in acronym form, ALICE. Our ultimate goal is to turn the clouds of photons trapped in those lightcubes into a single Alice. In other words, to Alice-ize them.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Seijirou Kikuoka had revealed his deepest secret, yet that strange smile of his still harbored mystery.

  “Welcome…to Project Alicization.”

  3

  What an unbelievable thing they’ve built.

  The machine was created with data she’d provided herself, and yet Rinko Koujiro couldn’t help but marvel at it.

  On the other side of the thick glass wall, two massive cuboid shapes loomed, nearly tall enough to reach the ceiling. Their exterior was plain aluminum sheeting, but that dull gray shine only accentuated their mechanical nature. They were several times larger than even the Medicuboid, to say nothing of the NerveGear apparatus.

  Naturally, there were no manufacturer logos, just a simple English font on the side reading SOUL TRANSLATOR, as well as large numerals designating unit numbers. The machine on the left was 4 and the one on the right was 5. The soul-reading devices were right there in view at last, and Rinko gazed at them for nearly half a minute before she finally spoke.

  “Four…? So that’s the fourth one? And the other is Unit Five?”

  It was the onl
y way to interpret the numbers, and yet there were only two machines in the clean room on the other side of the glass. A hushed voice on her right began to explain.

  “Test Unit One is at our Roppongi branch office, utilizing a satellite connection. Units Two and Three are also on the Ocean Turtle, but as you can see from their size, there isn’t enough room here. They’re located in the lower shaft. Or, more accurately, Units Four and Five couldn’t fit down there, which is why they’re here in the upper shaft.”

  The voice belonged to the person who had guided Rinko and Asuna here, but it was not Kikuoka, Higa, or Lieutenant Nakanishi. It was not even a man. She wore a white uniform over her tall, shapely body, flat-soled slip-on shoes, and the distinctive hat of a nurse.

  It was strange to imagine a nurse in a place like this, but given the sheer size of the ship, there would naturally be an infirmary somewhere and medical staff to operate it.

  The nurse, who sported braided hair and rimless glasses, tapped her tablet device and turned it to show Rinko. It displayed a cross-section map of the Ocean Turtle. Her finely trimmed nails traced a vertical line through the center of the craft.

  “There is a reinforced tube at the center of the pyramid that we call the ‘main shaft.’ It’s about sixty feet across and over three hundred feet deep. Not only does it support each of the floors of the ship deck, it’s also the barrier that separates and protects our most sensitive and crucial capabilities. That includes the control system for the ship itself and the core of the Alicization project—the four STLs and the Lightcube Cluster that serves as its mainframe.”

  “Ah…So what makes them upper and lower shafts, then?”

  “A barrier wall made of the same titanium alloy as the vertical walls splits the main shaft horizontally. So the space above the barrier is the upper shaft, and the space below is the lower shaft. We’re currently in Control Room Two, located in the upper shaft. The staff calls this one Subcon for short.”

  “I see. So I’m guessing that Control Room One down in the lower shaft is normally called Maincon?”

  “Very perceptive, Dr. Koujiro,” the nurse said with a smile.

  Rinko turned to her left toward the silent girl. Asuna Yuuki had her hands pressed to the glass as she gazed intently at Unit Four. Specifically, at the boy lying on the gel bed connected to the base of Unit Four.

  There were a number of monitoring electrodes under his white hospital wear and a micro-injector placed in his left arm. His face was out of sight, swallowed above the shoulder by the STL. But Asuna could tell that he was Kazuto Kirigaya, the boy she sought.

  She had eyes only for Kazuto, showing no sign that she noticed Rinko’s attention. Eventually, her long eyelashes lowered, and her lips moved without sound. A little drop grew at the corner of her eye, trembling in place without falling.

  Rinko tried to say something, anything that could comfort Asuna, but to her surprise, the nurse spoke first. “It’s all right, Asuna. I’m sure that he will come back to us.”

  She strode forward to Asuna’s side and reached out to the girl’s shoulder, but Asuna turned to avoid the touch, brushed aside her tears, and put on a confrontational attitude.

  “Of course he will. But…why are you here, too, Ms. Aki?”

  “What…? You know each other?” Rinko asked, surprised.

  Asuna nodded. “Yes, she was the nurse at the hospital in Chiyoda. I don’t know what she’s doing out here on the open sea, though.”

  “I’m taking care of Kirigaya, of course.”

  “What about your job? Or was the nurse thing just a front, like with Mr. Kikuoka?” Asuna accused. The nurse named Aki grinned and shrugged, totally unfazed.

  “No. Unlike his little disguise, I really am a nurse with national credentials. It just so happens that I graduated from SDF Tokyo Hospital Nursing School.”

  “…That explains many things,” Asuna said.

  Rinko was still unsure. “Umm, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand…What kind of person is this Ms. Aki?”

  “Well, it’s true that she’s a nurse. It’s just that there’s more to the story than that,” Asuna explained. “As a basic rule, nurses who graduate from the school attached to the SDF hospital then go on to work at SDF hospitals. Yet she was looking after victims of the SAO Incident at the hospital in Chiyoda. Which means that Mr. Kikuoka had something to do with that. Correct?”

  “Very perceptive, Asuna,” Aki said, repeating the compliment she had given Rinko just a minute earlier.

  Asuna glared at the tall nurse and added, “One more thing. I read in the school’s career guidance materials that registering at the SDF hospital’s nursing school is essentially treated like joining the SDF itself. So doesn’t that mean that in addition to being a nurse, you’re also—?”

  Nurse Aki slashed her hand out, cutting off Asuna’s question. She then lifted it to her forehead in a crisp salute.

  “Sergeant First Class Natsuki Aki, on duty! Kirigaya’s physical health and general well-being are under my jurisdiction! Tee-hee…” she said with a little wink.

  Asuna stared at her, half in shock and half annoyed. She sighed and bowed her head. “Please be good to him.” Then she turned back toward STL Unit Four and gazed at the boy lying on the gel bed, just ten feet away, yet out of reach behind the glass. “You’ll come back…won’t you, Kirito?” she mumbled.

  Nurse Aki bobbed her head and actually got a hand on Asuna’s shoulder this time. “Of course he will. His neural network is repairing as planned, so it won’t be long before he wakes up. Plus…he’s the hero who beat SAO, after all.”

  Those words brought a sharp, prickling pain to Rinko’s chest. She took a deep breath to numb the sensation, then walked forward to Asuna’s other side and looked up at the massive machine.

  Eight o’clock PM.

  Rinko looked up from her wristwatch and summoned the determination to press the metal button marked CALL. Within a few seconds, the speaker next to the door replied, “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Koujiro. May I talk with you for a bit?”

  “Hang on, I’ll open the door.”

  The intercom panel’s light changed from red to green, and the motorized door slid open.

  Rinko walked into the room. Asuna bowed in greeting from her position next to the bed; there was a remote control in her hand. The door shut behind Rinko, and the lock clicked into place.

  The cabin interior was exactly the same as Rinko’s across the hallway. The standard-size room was lined with off-white resin paneling and contained only a fixed bed, table, and sofa, plus one small computer for accessing the ship’s network. While escorting them here, Lieutenant Nakanishi had described them as “first-class cabins,” so Rinko had envisioned some kind of luxury cruise suite, but apparently the only thing that defined these as first-class was the presence of a small private bathroom.

  The one difference in Asuna’s room was a narrow window on the other side of the bed, meaning it was positioned along the outer edge of the Ocean Turtle, where the generator panels were. They had climbed several floors on the elevator, so the sunset view through that window would have been gorgeous, but it was now pitch-black outside. The cloud layer hid even the stars from view.

  “Please, sit down,” Asuna said.

  Rinko set down the bottles of oolong tea she had bought from the vending machine next to the elevator and sat on the stiff sofa. She very nearly let out a “Hoo-boy!” when she bent down. Rinko considered herself to be young, but in the presence of the dazzling beauty of Asuna in her T-shirt and short pants, she felt acutely conscious of her approaching thirties.

  “Go ahead, have some tea,” she offered, pushing one of the bottles forward.

  Asuna tipped her head and smiled. “Thank you, I was just feeling thirsty.”

  “Did you give the tap water a try?” Rinko smirked. The girl rolled her eyes.

  “It made the water in Tokyo taste good.”

  “Well, it’s made from desalinated seawater, so at
the very least, you don’t have to worry about those carcinogenic disinfectants. It might even be better for you than those bottles of deep-sea water they sell at the store. Still, one mouthful was enough for me.”

  She twisted off the cap of the tea bottle and took a deep swig of the cold liquid. She would have preferred a good beer, but she’d have to travel down to the cafeteria for that.

  Rinko exhaled and glanced at Asuna again. “It’s too bad you couldn’t get a look at his face.”

  “Still, he seemed like he was doing well to me. Maybe he was having an enjoyable dream,” Asuna said with a smile. It was as though the panic that had gripped her the last few days had finally run its course.

  “You’ve got a real headache of a boyfriend, kid. Going ghost on you, popping up on a cruise in subtropical seas…You’d better get a collar around his neck.”

  “I’ll look into it.” Asuna chuckled. She inclined her head deeply toward Rinko. “I’m so grateful to you, Dr. Koujiro. I can’t believe you indulged this crazy request of mine…There’s no way I can ever properly thank you.”

  “Oh, stop it. Just call me Rinko. Besides, this is just a drop in the bucket for what I did to Kirigaya and you,” she said, shaking her head. She summoned her courage and stared Asuna right in the eyes. “There’s something…I need to tell you. Not just you…Everyone who was stuck in SAO…”

  “…”

  Rinko made certain not to break away from Asuna’s direct gaze. She sucked in a deep breath, exhaled, and undid two buttons on her cotton shirt. She lifted a silver necklace out of the way of the gap to expose a diagonal surgical scar to the left of her sternum.

  “Do you know…what this scar is from?”

  Asuna stared unflinchingly at the spot directly above Rinko’s heart. Eventually, her head bobbed. “Yes. It’s the spot where the remote-detonation micro-bomb was implanted, wasn’t it? That’s how the guild leader—Akihiko Kayaba—was able to keep you in line for two years.”