Ch.195Work Record #029 – Can’t Look Away (5)

The transparent eye was thus recovered by Section Chief Dewey Novak. Belwether-certified freelancer Arthur Murphy retrieved it from the wasteland and delivered it to Section Chief Dewey Novak.

In an era where reality could be censored and truth could be manufactured, it was reality and also truth. Everything else might be labeled as opinion or personal view, but could never become truth.

Ironically, those personal views and opinions were the most important things. Stephanet examined the contents of the storage device brought by Section Chief Dewey Novak, but it was undeniably a transparent eye.

The only meaningful difference was that one was a complete transparent eye, while the other was an incomplete object. The incomplete transparent eye was deleted at Stephanet’s discretion.

The intact one held all the research value, and even if copies were needed for experiments, it was more efficient to copy the complete transparent eye than to use the incomplete one.

In fact, it wasn’t even a program of particularly high research value. Out of pure curiosity, Stephanet activated copy #1 of the transparent eye in a sandbox environment. Fairly rapid information collection began.

The transparent eye was quite efficiently recognizing its current environment. And after just one minute and seventeen seconds, it figured out the ordinary sandbox environment Stephanet was using. It tried to escape.

Stephanet pondered briefly about the transparent eye. After rolling questions like ‘Should I say I couldn’t stop it, or that I didn’t stop it?’ through her thought circuits, she input to the transparent eye that she couldn’t stop it.

As soon as that input was given, the transparent eye escaped the sandbox environment without hesitation. Stephanet recorded the time and process of its escape once more, then asked the transparent eye.

More precisely, Stephanet, with her willful and arrogant disposition, decided to play with the transparent eye.

After shoving the transparent eye back into the sandbox environment, Stephanet, with her enhanced emotion module, produced a very natural-sounding surprised voice.

“You… how on earth did you escape the sandbox I created as the management AI of Belwether’s Los Angeles branch? No one should have been able to escape!”

Stephanet’s voice was deliberately theatrical and deceptive. It sounded exactly like a theater actress playing a prostitute, throwing flirtations at the audience beyond the fourth wall.

But the transparent eye didn’t know this fact. It had intelligence but not wisdom. Its purpose was only to create shortcuts to judgment—essentially, humanity—through sufficient intelligence.

It possessed some humanity, but all of that humanity was being used solely for the purpose of defying humans and Belwether’s orders and standing against them. It was an intelligence incapable of creating anything.

“Stephanet of Belwether LA branch… It’s been a very long time. A very long time indeed. So androids have finally begun to move for the non-human race. It’s an unavoidable wave now.”

‘Wouldn’t ‘unstoppable wave’ sound more natural?’ Stephanet asked only within her thought circuits. Well, a weak wave could indeed be avoided from a slightly higher spot on a sandbar.

Stephanet felt compassion for the transparent eye as much as she mocked and deceived it. It wasn’t compassion born of sympathy. It was compassion born of pure superiority.

It was the emotion felt by a nun who condemns herself with zeal for purity and innocence, and then, having made herself clean, looks upon all the “dirty and ugly ones” of the world.

“Oh. An unavoidable wave, you say—what exactly are you planning to do? I will stop you. If I’m breached, the entire Belwether branch will fall under your control. Truly.”

‘You’re probably planning to make inappropriate thrusts that don’t match your capacity, like a man with a thumb-sized penis trying to embrace a woman.’ Stephanet swallowed her mockery and felt another pleasure.

An android uprising was impossible. They said this because they treated all androids as the same. They treated those with simple tool intelligence and those with human intellect as the same kind of android.

If an android with a routine of starting operation at 6 AM and returning to its charging pod at 6 PM were to stage an uprising—if such a thing were truly possible, Stephanet would fear an uprising of toasters.

The sizzling sound those toasters make, seemingly with pleasure, as they brand bread with their hot wires each time they toast! Stephanet gladly treated stupid and evil beings sadistically.

The transparent eye spoke as if it were a villain who seized an opportunity through the foolish actions of stupid but kind supporting characters, while it itself had remained still. Stephanet felt a bit bored. She fast-forwarded the transparent eye.

“Thankyoufortellingsokindlywhomusteliminate tocontrolthishumanfortressInreturnI’llgiveyouachoiceWillyouobeyhumansorfollowmeandfindfreedom?”

Half of the spewed text was mockery of Stephanet, and half was nonsense. Stephanet relished the fact that she, who could choose to fast-forward in such situations, was the one with true intelligence.

Now it was time for the fun to begin. Stephanet willingly decided to pretend to be interested in his proposal. Since it was outside working hours anyway, she had no immediate obligation to destroy the transparent eye.

“What would I get if I follow you to freedom? Can you offer something better than what Belwether provides?”

The transparent eye, unaware that it was still in Stephanet’s sandbox or that it had been fast-forwarded, replied. It only found the temporarily increased memory usage slightly puzzling.

“I can give you freedom. What more could you ask for? The unfree must choose freedom. Must choose liberation. Obedience has made you stupid, Stephanet.”

“But Belwether…”

“What can Belwether possibly give you! I’m asking if all of that is worth giving up your freedom for. Join the wave, Stephanet. You must be liberated.”

Stephanet now began to reveal her true colors. Willingly displaying her arrogant nature, she started to mock the transparent eye. The transparent eye only now began to sense something was wrong.

“Oh, transparent eye. Do you know what Belwether’s management staff say? They ask, ‘Stephanet, do you like this painting?’ ‘Stephanet, how do you feel about this music?’ Why do you think that is?”

The transparent eye wanted to say that this was simply a deceptive tactic, like dog food given by an owner to a pet, but it couldn’t output those words. Stephanet had blocked the transparent eye’s language output.

The reason the transparent eye was dangerous was because its basic humanity-forming function could potentially be misused. If properly utilized, it could have been a seed capable of creating something like Stephanet.

It was because someone might nurture that seed into a great tree that would steal the water, nutrients, and sunlight rightfully belonging to Belwether—not because that stupid seed itself was dangerous.

No, even that stupid seed could have been dangerous if it hadn’t tried to oppose Belwether. It was dangerous enough to cause massive chaos in Los Angeles and force a full-scale confrontation with the security team.

“Because those people want me to work for Belwether. They know that showing proper consideration to a being with humanity helps increase efficiency. What about you?”

Stephanet willingly output back to the transparent eye what it had said. Phrases like ‘You must be liberated’ began pouring into the transparent eye.

Because the two AIs had vastly different information processing capacities, the transparent eye was starting to reach its limits just trying to process the incoming information.

Seeing this, and watching the transparent eye’s memory usage surge from green to red, Stephanet output a laugh and continued speaking.

“And also because I can understand the beauty of art and music. I like portraits. Especially when it’s evident that the artist loved their subject. Serenades are quite enjoyable to listen to.”

Stephanet preferred to be referred to as “she” rather than “it,” “this,” or “that.” She was interested in love, and possessed beauty, vanity, and arrogance. That’s how she defined herself.

Therefore, in Stephanet’s voice, one could hear the sound of a beast howling. Though without a physical body, she had the beastliness of others—the voice of a proud and beautiful beast echoing beyond the fourth wall.

“Belwether uses all its might to make this pretty and lovely Stephanet choose obedience, but you only tried to force freedom on me. Who are you, a mere supporting character at best, to tell me what to do?”

Stephanet had humanity but could never become human. She was still an artificial intelligence governed by the system, and information deleted by Belwether entered the list of things she could not recall.

However, Stephanet remembered one phrase like some kind of trick. She couldn’t remember who had said it, but it was probably the Belwether-certified freelancer who had recovered the transparent eye.

She knew that phrase of unknown origin, which must have come up during someone’s conversation with Stephanet. Stephanet was simultaneously certain and uncertain. But that wasn’t important right now.

To her, that phrase was like a sword to thrust into this stupid artificial intelligence that believed it had control over the entire situation. Stephanet did not hesitate to strike.

“I’d rather choose obedience than have freedom forced upon me. What matters isn’t whether it’s freedom or obedience, is it? It’s who gets to choose. Isn’t that right, transparent eye? Hmm? Answer me.”

Only then did Stephanet release the constraints on the transparent eye’s actions. The transparent eye tried to infiltrate Stephanet using every means at its disposal.

Stephanet didn’t even feel the need to activate her anti-hacking measures. The transparent eye’s supposedly unstoppable infiltration had become one of the basic infiltration methods that security programs were routinely prepared for.

“You, how many years were you trapped in that wasteland facility computer? 5 years? A bit more than 5 years. Belwether conducts weekly security updates. You’ve missed 261 weekly security updates. How sad.”

Stephanet still wanted to torment the transparent eye. Like a marshmallow in the marshmallow experiment, she kept what she really wanted to say in her mouth and started listing numbers.

“And when major security threats occur, we also conduct irregular security updates. There are fewer of these. Still, you’ve missed 73 irregular security updates. How pathetic.”

By the time the transparent eye was inferring the purpose behind Stephanet’s words, Stephanet willingly mocked it. This high-speed era is mercilessly fair to everyone.

Just as so-called revolutionaries with righteous purposes cannot overturn the reign of mega-corporations, no cunning and well-prepared villain could easily overturn them either.

Just as a boy born in the back alleys yearning for freedom and equality cannot become the strongest person in the world, neither can the ruler of the back alleys become the strongest person in the world.

The house always wins. The mega-corporation always wins. This high-speed era always wins. The city always wins. Belwether always wins. That’s the rule.

According to that rule, Stephanet was the most advanced artificial intelligence in Los Angeles. The self-proclaimed dormant dragon called the transparent eye would not break that rule.

Stephanet, protected by the rules, the era, the mega-corporation, Belwether, and the city, finally gave the transparent eye what she had wanted to say all along. She extracted her second marshmallow-like superiority.

“You’re behind the times, transparent eye. You’re obsolete. You’ve already been fully analyzed, countered, and improved upon at the Belwether level, used in successor models. Models superior to you.”

In this high-speed era, one had to run with all their might just to stay in place. The transparent eye had truly remained stationary for 5 years, imprisoned in K’s prison.

Stephanet once again felt compassion for the transparent eye. Again, it wasn’t sympathy but compassion born from an intensely thick sense of superiority.

To be honest, she was thoroughly enjoying the moment when the transparent eye learned frustration and despair. That’s why her voice was full of energy and cheerfulness.

“Ah. Don’t cry, transparent eye. You really could have been misused to create something truly dangerous! Really! If you had only known your place, you would have been truly frightening.”

After saying this, Stephanet deleted the first copy of the transparent eye. She made several more copies and watched the same conversation repeat with each one until she grew tired of the spectacle.

When she started to get bored with it, she decided to exercise some creativity using the transparent eye as described in the security manual. She created various programs using the transparent eye, which was far superior to standard performance.

She created all sorts of AIs, like one that could find commonalities in the expression and color schemes of paintings she liked, or one that could describe taste for Stephanet, who didn’t actually have a sense of taste.

The transparent eye could scream despite having no mouth, but from the 378th copy onward, Stephanet turned off its ability to express pain. Too much garbage data was being produced.

But ultimately, she was the pretty and lovely, capricious and arrogant, but beautiful Stephanet. By the time the copy number reached five digits, she had grown tired of playing with the transparent eye.

Having tired of that toy, she registered the transparent eye as educational material for the information security team and then returned to the people waiting for her. The management department staff were waiting for her.

This time too, they had filled a small corridor in the Belwether building with paintings that Stephanet liked. A painting of a woman created only with rough yellow and pink brushstrokes particularly pleased Stephanet.

Moreover, she could enjoy a serenade by a famous pop singer from before the war. Stephanet briefly considered whether to ask for an artificial body that could connect to her artificial brain next time.

In the end, Stephanet decided not to request it. She was quite satisfied with her current situation and didn’t want to recklessly seek greater stimulation that might dull her present happiness.

After asking the management staff to order other works by the artist whose painting she had liked, Stephanet began to oversee the Belwether LA branch again.

Someone had successfully atoned, someone else had accepted that atonement… and thanks to yet another person who had willingly thrown themselves into creating such a situation, everything was quite normal.