The Air Conditioner Steals the Ice Mages' Jobs (3)
Shhhhhk─
I pulled back the curtains to find a bright morning waiting for me.
It seemed I'd woken up earlier than usual, yet I didn't feel the least bit short on sleep. No doubt thanks to a night of genuinely deep rest—and that rest was thanks, in turn, to the air conditioner banishing the sleep-killing heat and sticky air.
I stepped into the kitchen and brewed a pot of black tea with briskly boiling water. The good tea leaves gave off an exceptional aroma even before the first sip.
Slurp.
The taste, too, was leagues better than what I'd been drinking before. It reminded me once again that expensive things are expensive for a reason.
"An morning of drinking hot tea while basking in the cold breeze of the air conditioner."
There's something decadently luxurious about switching the AC on and then burrowing back into a soft, cozy blanket. It's rather wonderful, honestly.
"Is this the life of a bourgeois?"
Once you've tasted this kind of life, there's no going back to leaner days. Just like our dear customers, who can never return to their saunas after experiencing the air conditioner.
Now that I had a bit of leisure, there were things I'd always wanted to try—things like discarding the pizza crust, or taking a single bite of a chicken drumstick and tossing the rest. Unfortunately, this world has neither pizza nor fried chicken as I know them, so that dream remains out of reach. A real shame.
With a cup of tea in one hand and bread in the other, I leaned against the window and gazed out at the distant mountains.
Mountains and ridgelines, and beside them, rice paddies stretching all the way to the horizon. From the very first light of morning, diligent farmers were already at work.
"I should start selling nitrogen fertilizer one of these days."
When it came to demonstrating the true value of the Haber-Bosch process, fertilizer was the way to go—far more so than air conditioner refrigerant. It was summer, and since fertilizer's effects couldn't be verified overnight, I'd put it off so far, but it would surely bring a revolution to agriculture all the same.
Anyway.
"I've got money to spare now, so I suppose it's time to get started."
First goal: the Iron Man Suit and a superintelligent AI assistant. I'd begin with whichever one's conditions were met first.
"You're up early today?"
It was Muriel, dressed in the water-drop-patterned pajamas we'd gotten as a matching set a while back.
"The reason I've been sleeping in until now wasn't laziness, you know. It was the heat."
I gave Muriel's cheek a light kiss—a morning kiss, doubling as a greeting.
Muriel smiled with her eyes and accepted the teacup I offered. "That excuse of yours."
It's not an excuse. It's the truth.
"Muriel, I have a favor to ask."
"What is it?"
"I need one of your dolls."
"Doll" was a generous word for what was essentially a person. The Muriel standing in front of me was in a doll's body too, but she breathed like a human, ate like a human, and had body heat besides—so convincing that no one could ever tell she wasn't a living, breathing woman.
"I'm going to build the artificial intelligence I mentioned before."
It goes without saying that this world has no computers capable of running an AI. But that doesn't mean an AI is impossible to create.
What is artificial intelligence, exactly?
Artificial: made by human hands. Intelligence: the faculty of thought and reason.
See? So even if the process differs a bit, as long as the result is an intelligence created by a person, it can rightfully be called artificial intelligence.
And here's the kicker: the dolls Muriel creates possess a brain that can stand in for a computer—and they can even be taught!
Yes, using a brain to replace a computer that was originally designed to replace a brain is a gloriously backwards arrangement... but that's beside the point.
I laid all this out for Muriel, and her response was:
"Oh dear."
"Hm?"
"Teaching knowledge to a child who knows nothing, raising and educating them. We don't call that artificial intelligence. We call it having a child. We call it parenthood."
Guh!
She had a point, damn it...
Artificial intelligence is, in the end, something completed by humans feeding it data to learn from—and humans, likewise, are beings who grow by learning from other people. There's the question of whether it's truly alive or not, but setting that aside, the two processes aren't so different.
"So if Muriel makes the body and I raise it... does that make the child ours?"
"I suppose it would."
"An illegitimate child, then."
"Thanks to your request, Owen, it looks like we're having one more."
"I'd prefer a girl. Let's make her a girl."
"Hehe, all right. I've raised one son already, so raising a daughter would be a wonderful new experience."
Then Muriel tilted her head, a question occurring to her. "Come to think of it, what would your relationship with this child be, exactly? Siblings? Father and daughter?"
Father and daughter, obviously.
Unfortunately, I couldn't say that so readily—Muriel and I seem to have somewhat different understandings of what our own relationship is. So, answering from within Muriel's frame of reference:
"That's... a good question."
I genuinely don't know. What a shame.
I should have asked back when I was grilling the Countess. When your son mixed his flesh with a woman and fathered a daughter—what is that daughter to your son? She wrestled with this exact problem years before we did, so maybe she'd actually reached a conclusion.
"I know someone who'd know the answer. I'll ask them sometime."
"Oh? Then that's settled. And one more thing."
"Yes, what is it?"
"If we want a doll that learns on its own, as you described, it will need a soul."
"A soul?"
Muriel nodded. "I'm able to live like this because I share a soul and memories with my sealed original body. But if we used that method, the result wouldn't be a new life—it would simply become another extension of me."
"Ah..."
That was news to me. I'd known for a long time that Muriel was the Witch, sealed long ago by the Hero, the Saintess, and the former Sage, and that her current body was a doll—but I'd never given much thought to exactly how she lived.
"So if you want a child with an independent self, separate from me—just like you planned, Owen—we'll need to find a way to grant it a soul."
"I see..."
So whether it was the Iron Man Suit or the AI assistant, it seemed I'd need outside help to create either one. I'd have to make a few rounds, then.
While I was out, I stopped by the Count's estate as well.
The Countess—still wrapped in bandages from the beating her husband had given her—flew into a convulsive rage the moment she laid eyes on me. I genuinely cannot fathom why she's throwing a fit at me when she's the one at fault.
Eventually, the exertion of her lion's roar must have taken its toll, because she quieted down—and that was when I asked her. Whether her son and daughter were siblings, or father and daughter.
She called me a madman.
Hah. Unbelievable.
I'm not the one who's insane here. She is.
Heat shimmered off the ground below, yet even in the swelter that could melt a person, the tower made of ice held its cool, crisp chill within its walls.
The Cold Magic Tower, home to mages who wielded ice and frost.
Because so many of them had personalities as cold as the spells they cast, the tower was always a place of hushed stillness—but today, remarkably, it was abuzz with commotion.
"Our business is drying up."
A mage spoke gravely to the crowd gathered around the round table.
"From high-end shops to the nobility themselves. The summons we used to receive every summer have dwindled to almost nothing."
The mages of the Cold Magic Tower typically earned a full year's living from a single season of summer work. While everyone else broke their backs year-round for twelve months of wages, these were souls with a wicked streak of cunning who worked hard for just three months and lounged for the rest of the year.
For such people, a collapse in summer demand for frost magic was a crisis of the highest order. It was a calamity severe enough that even the Tower Master, no less than his own disciples, needed to worry.
"Why on earth has business dropped? Is this summer a cool one?"
"By all accounts it feels even hotter than last year."
"Then why the decline? Don't tell me people adapted to the heat in a single year?"
"The cause is—!"
SLAM!
A mage slammed his palm down on the round table and rose to his feet. The murmuring rippling through the room fell silent at once, and every gaze converged on him.
"It is the fault of an artifact called the air conditioner."
Crack. Crack.
White ice began spreading out from the table beneath his hand. It surged upward, crystallizing into a distinct, boxy shape.
An air conditioner.
"Upon investigation, I was able to discover that a certain mage has been supplying these air conditioners to the Morne Merchant Guild, spreading them across the market."
"What an outrageous mage!"
"The Morne Merchant Guild? Never heard of them."
"An artifact that emits cold—surely the mage behind it must belong to our tower?"
"That cursed frost magic traitor is clearly pulling tricks behind our backs to destroy us from within!"
"Enough! Enough! I understand everyone's feelings perfectly. But please, hear me out first."
The mages settled their fury, and silence returned to the chamber. The presenting mage continued.
"There is a shop clerk who has been feeding me information. And that wretch claims to know—oh, the audacity!—the name of the very mage who stole the work from our Cold Magic Tower."
The tight-lipped mages' expressions pressed the speaker onward. Spit it out. Give us the name.
"The name of that mage is..."
The mage, pausing deliberately for dramatic effect, slowly opened his mouth.
"Owen. A mage called Owen."
The mages exchanged glances among themselves. These were people whose communication skills barely qualified as functional, so entrenched was each in the belief that his own enlightenment came first—but faced now with a common enemy, they could read one another's intentions through their eyes alone.
"I shall inquire whether the other towers know anything of this man. And while I'm at it, I'll request their aid as well."
"Then I'll pay a visit to this merchant guild. We must put pressure on the Morne Merchant Guild that's selling these so-called air conditioners."
"In that case, I shall surveil the guild. If I spot Owen delivering his air conditioners, I'll give chase. And once we learn where he dwells—"
Every mage in the room spoke as one. A dozen-odd voices merged into a single cold declaration.
"We dispose of him."