Repair (3)
"Whew... somehow I made it."
Having fully savored the feeling of being lost for the first time in ages, I finally arrived at the Repair Shop.
On the way here, the distance should have taken no more than a few dozen minutes, but I'd wandered around so thoroughly that it had taken me nearly two hours.
'So what exactly went wrong? Don't tell me the power went out?'
It was certain from the circumstances that something serious had happened to Arwen.
Serious enough that Mini Arwen hadn't even had time to leave a proper message.
Creak—
I carefully opened the door of the Repair Shop.
The old infirmary was filled with dead silence.
"...Arwen?"
"..."
The lights were off. I called her name cautiously.
But no answer came back.
Whirrr—
"!"
Then, from the back of the infirmary, I heard the sound of something running.
That was the operating room, no doubt about it. As I drew closer, a pale blue light leaked out from within.
And there was...
Vreeeeeing!
...a beautiful woman trying to press a furiously spinning saw blade against the top of her own head.
"No!"
The distance between the blade and the woman was nearly zero, so I lunged without a second to think.
First I forced the machine arm holding the saw upward and shoved it aside, then crouched down to examine the woman slumped on the floor.
"Nova?"
With a bit more composure, the beauty's face did look somehow familiar.
She resembled the photo of the nursemaid Arwen had shown me when we first met.
"...Ha Jun."
"Wait, how do you know my name?"
Like some tragic heroine, Nova leaned against the floor and looked up at me.
Her vocal cords must have been restored too, because she called my name in a lovely voice.
But how could Nova know my name?
"It's me. Arwen..."
"What?"
Nova has lost her mind!
What on earth had Arwen done?
...
"...I see. But why were you holding a saw blade to your head?"
"That was my fault. I lost my reason... I thought if I smashed my cyberbrain, I would be freed again."
"Good grief."
Nova's—or rather, Arwen's—story was a long, rambling one.
To summarize it briefly: she had attempted a direct connection to Nova's cyberbrain in order to obtain clues about the Soul, and something had gone wrong in the process, trapping her inside Nova's body.
After that, the functions the research institute had been supplying her shut down, and the sensations flooding in through her newly acquired body were so raw and unfamiliar that she'd spiraled into a panic.
"...I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"In the end, I've effectively stolen Nova's body. This wasn't what I intended... isn't that what they call the sin of desecrating the dead? Haha..."
Arwen lowered her head and murmured weakly.
Her face was utterly dejected.
Having only ever seen her confident, it was strangely refreshing to see this expression. She still seemed unable to shake off the shock of suddenly having a body.
"It's fine. According to you, Nova was already as good as dead anyway, right?"
"Still..."
"I don't blame you."
I meant it.
Of course, this whole situation had caught me completely off guard—but remarkably, I felt no resentment toward Arwen at all.
"You said the code that symbolized the soul in the cyberbrain is gone, right?"
"Yes..."
I spoke as I recalled what Arwen had told me.
A mere touch on her part, yet it had given Arwen an intense experience—and then the soul's code had vanished.
I didn't think it would disappear that easily.
"I think part of Nova was absorbed into you."
"!"
"Well... it's just speculation. But the fact that you got trapped in that body lends it some credibility, doesn't it?"
'And every one of your gestures is exactly what the old Nova used to do.'
Arwen didn't seem to realize it, but having watched Nova for so long, I could tell.
The small, unconscious gestures leaking out of her were identical to before.
It contradicted Arwen's explanation that everything remaining in the cyberbrain had been erased.
"...That does make sense. It's possible the systems composing my body mutated, severing much of my connection to the institute..."
Arwen nodded slowly, agreeing with me.
A little of her spirit seemed to return; I could see strength creeping back into her eyes.
"And look—we can't know what Nova was thinking now, but... I think she would rather have been of help to another AI than let her soul fragment return to nothing."
"..."
"You can dismiss that as empty words if you like. But that's what I believe."
"...Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
...
"So. Did you actually get the soul?"
After letting things settle for a moment, I brought up a more practical subject.
"Hmm... the restraints the institute placed on me do seem somewhat faded... if I had to say, it feels like I've got about seventy percent of it. I'm not sure."
"Vague. But you said that with a soul, you'd be freed from all restrictions?"
"There's no definitive data, but the likelihood is very high."
"Then if you get the soul, you'd be able to leave this research institute, right?"
In a way, this was a good opportunity.
I'd already felt uneasy about venturing outside the institute alone. A capable ally like Arwen would be an enormous help to me in many ways.
Not that I'd ever given up on the idea outright before... well, actually I had.
"No. There's a separate problem, beyond the restrictions."
But Arwen slowly shook her head.
"I'm merely an auxiliary AI, but my performance is beyond anything a civilian model could compare to."
"I know. You're high-performance, right? Do you really need to advertise that even now?"
"No, that's not what I mean... I'm saying that normally, a cyberbrain like this could never hope to handle my AI processes."
Arwen tapped her own head with her long, slender fingers as she spoke.
"I don't follow... you're talking to me just fine right now."
"Which is exactly the point—it makes no sense that I'm able to function at all. I'm short on power. Presumably I'm still connected to the institute in some capacity."
"Then even if you gain a soul and all the restrictions come off..."
"Without a suitable power source, I ultimately won't be able to leave the institute. Strange as this connection with the institute is... if I stray too far, it will certainly sever."
"That's a problem. No other options?"
"Unfortunately, no. Even the most advanced power source isn't small enough to fit inside a civilian android."
Arwen shook her head firmly.
But wasn't there some other way? It would be a terrible waste to throw away an opportunity this good.
"Um... could you shrink your AI capacity a little?"
"If you could split your body in half and live, Ha Jun, I might consider it."
That's a no, then.
"This is a headache. A tough problem."
"Please don't trouble yourself over it. Having gotten a body like this... I'm satisfied with that alone."
Arwen fiddled with the bedsheet, seeming to savor its texture.
The soft rustle of the sheet filled the silence for a while.
Unlike Arwen, who seemed half resigned, my brain was working furiously.
An idea was on the tip of my tongue...
It felt like I was missing something.
Wait—what's the exact timeline here?
"Arwen, when you first met Nova, you combed through her records, right? You got time-stamped data then—that's how you knew she'd been active for three hundred years?"
"Correct. From 2102 to 2420."
'So it's the year 2420 now...'
This was the first time I'd heard a concrete date. I was dumbfounded by how much time had passed.
If technology had developed properly, humanity might have been conquering space by now.
"Then when were you last deactivated?"
"2080."
"Last question—when did the institute end up in this state?"
"...I can't say precisely. Much of Nova's data was lost. But the first time a problem appeared in Nova's body was... around 2115."
"Hmm. So the disaster probably struck around then."
"An android's body usually starts to fail after about three years without maintenance... I'd estimate something happened to the institute around 2112."
"Then between 2080, when you were deactivated, and 2112, when the institute was still functioning. There were thirty-two years in between, weren't there?"
"...!"
Arwen's pupils widened slightly as she listened.
By now she'd surely caught on to what I was getting at.
"Then isn't it possible this institute has a power source you don't know about? Who knows how far science advanced in those thirty-two years. Who's to say there wasn't some enormous breakthrough?"
"I see... I never thought of it that way. I simply assumed the data I was given was everything. The data center was destroyed, after all—I never received any current information..."
Arwen rested her chin on her hand like a person deep in thought.
With her elegant appearance—a slender black-haired beauty—it looked perfectly natural. Even the backdrop of the desolate infirmary only seemed to add to her charm now.
'Her looks and build changed so drastically that I can't get used to it...'
We were chatting naturally enough, but the sense of wrongness was enormous.
Still, it was nice to finally talk with what felt like a real person again.
...
"But if such a high-performance power source existed, surely it would have been used long ago. There would have been no need to suffer power shortages like we do now."
After racking her memory for a long while, Arwen spoke up.
Her tone was rather skeptical.
"Can't say for sure. Maybe they knew the place was doomed anyway and set aside something important, just in case."
It was a slim possibility, just as Arwen said.
But I couldn't just sit here doing nothing. If there was even the slightest chance, I had to chase it down.
"Hmm... something important..."
"Think hard. Classified items, decommissioned prototypes cut for cost-efficiency reasons... anything like that ring a bell?"
Wasn't it standard practice for a research institute to squirrel away a few secret items? Or maybe the higher-ups had something they meant to grab on their way out.
"There is something that comes to mind."
"Oh? What is it?"
"When I first woke up, I ran a full diagnostic of the institute's systems. Among the old records, there was a log of valuables being transported out."
"Yes! That's good."
"It's classified beyond even my clearance, so I don't know what the item is, and I can't trace it directly... but using indirect information, I can make a rough guess at its location. Although—it's strange. No matter how desperate the situation, no one should have been leaking information this freely... Curious."
"Good news for us. So where is it?"
Arwen looked uneasy, but people in a hurry make all kinds of mistakes—it wasn't that strange.
"The hangar. It's on the surface."
"Is this even the right institute? Hangars belong on military bases."
It had already been absurd enough that the place had a botanical garden and an aquarium—but a hangar too?
This place kept showing me things that exceeded imagination in every possible way.
"It is a military facility. This is a critical installation, so the army was stationed on the surface to protect it. The problem is... the hangar is a military facility, so I can't access it with my clearance. I'd need authorization at the level of the institute director at minimum."
"Can't it be opened with a little flexibility, given the emergency situation we're in?"
I grumbled, worn out by the endless parade of problems.
"In an emergency like this, a security card bearing the director's authority would probably be enough to manage it somehow. The trouble is, that card was detected on basement level one."
"Exact location?"
"Near the elevator. Quite a distance from the emergency stairs."
"So they died trying to escape, huh..."
But of all places, basement level one?
That was unquestionably the hottest spot in this entire institute right now.
Still, if I wanted to take Arwen outside, I'd have to shoulder that much risk.
"Let's go check it out!"