The hospital room still carried a faint metallic tang of blood.
A clear stain remained on the floor. The man it belonged to had already been taken away for emergency treatment, but given the medical technology of this era, Kain doubted he could still be saved.
"I'm sorry, Commander."
"You have nothing to apologize for. You didn't do anything wrong, 2B."
Sugou Nobuyuki's condition wasn't Kain's doing. After realizing that Kain had uncovered information capable of ruining his entire life, Sugou had flown into a rage, drawn a short knife, and tried to attack him.
Before he could strike, 2B had moved first and pinned him to the floor.
Unfortunately, she had used a little too much force.
For one thing, 2B had never fought an ordinary human before, so she had misjudged how fragile they were. For another, androids were quite heavy. She had planted a foot on Sugou's back merely to stop him from getting up, but the combination of her weight and excessive strength had snapped his spine.
His rib cage had also been badly crushed, rupturing several internal organs.
He was beyond saving.
"Commander, I found some interesting files. They concern something called the Alicization Project."
"The Al—Alicization Project?"
Kain blinked in surprise. If he remembered the original story correctly, the Alicization arc began in 2026.
No, that wasn't quite right. The events of the story began in 2026, which meant the Alicization Project itself had already been underway for some time—probably since 2025.
Yet it was currently the end of 2023, and preliminary plans for the project already existed?
"The Alicization Project? Is that the storyline involving an artificial intelligence named Alice?" Yuuki Asuna asked in astonishment from her hospital bed.
"I compiled everything I found. Take a look."
There wasn't much information. It would probably take no more than a minute to read through it.
According to the files, the Alicization Project had already begun, and the virtual world known as Underworld had been operational for some time.
The information on the final page caught Kain's interest most of all.
"Alice? Wasn't the first true artificial life-form supposed to be born in 2026?" Asuna murmured blankly.
That was what Black Cat had told her.
Sure enough, the reality she inhabited differed from the novel. The story in Black Cat's world must have been a heavily altered version of actual events.
"This is incredible. Humanity in this world managed to create a genuine artificial life-form in this era," Operator 6O said admiringly. "Unfortunately, they detected my intrusion too quickly. I couldn't break into the world where Alice is being kept."
As an android, 6O had assumed the network technology of this era would be as flimsy as paper to her. Apparently, she had underestimated it.
She was even more surprised to discover an entity who could be considered the same kind of life-form as herself. It was difficult to imagine that humans in this era—roughly equivalent to the same period in her own world—could already create genuine artificial life.
Alice was different from 6O and the other androids, however.
Alice had been born and raised just like a human. Throughout her entire development, she had perceived herself as a human being.
In other words, she had been a genuine artificial life-form from the moment of her birth. She hadn't suddenly awakened during her development and broken free from the limitations of her programming. She had possessed independent thought from the very beginning.
In a sense, if the files were accurate, Alice was even more human than the androids.
6O and the others hadn't grown from infancy. Alice had.
If Alice were given a physical body, she would become something resembling a fusion between the Replicants and androids of 6O's world—a humanlike consciousness housed within an artificial body.
"A true artificial life-form named Alice was supposed to be born in 2026?" Yuuki Kyouko finally asked, unable to remain silent any longer. "Asuna, what exactly are you talking about?"
They appeared to be discussing events from her own world—events that were only supposed to occur in the future, yet had somehow happened ahead of schedule.
She was thoroughly confused, and more than a little uneasy.
Every major nation in the world was currently racing to create true artificial intelligence. Many experts had warned that if a genuine AI ever emerged, humanity might be unable to control it, potentially bringing about its own destruction.
Kyouko wasn't among the alarmists, but neither was she entirely dismissive of their concerns.
Now that such a being had actually been created, she couldn't stop a chill of fear from rising within her.
"Huh? Well, about that…"
Asuna felt a headache coming on. She had forgotten that her mother was still in the room and had carelessly revealed far too much information.
"Commander, one of the people monitoring us is named Kikuoka Seijirou. He wants to speak with us and is waiting downstairs," 6O reported. "Should we show them some of our weapons and scare them a little? It might teach them not to overestimate themselves."
"No. Stay here and finish the mission I gave you."
Kain's assignment for 6O was to use Asuna's FullDive headset to infiltrate another virtual world, ALfheim Online, and locate Yui.
During Kain's conversation with Kayaba Akihiko, Kayaba had wanted to test Kain's power and technology further. Rather than downloading Yui into Asuna's headset, he had transferred her to ALfheim Online.
He wanted to see whether Kain could find her.
"Understood."
6O saluted her commander as he turned and left the hospital room.
Silence settled over the room.
"Miss 6O, will you be able to find Yui?" Asuna asked.
She was deeply worried about the child.
"Miss Yuuki Asuna, are you underestimating me?"
"What? No! I was only—"
"I'm joking. You don't have to be so nervous."
6O giggled. As she continued hacking into the system, her eyes shifted toward the anxious girl. She was tempted to tease Asuna a little more.
"Miss 6O," Kyouko interjected, "could you explain what Asuna meant when she said the artificial life-form Alice was originally supposed to appear in 2026?"
Since her daughter clearly wasn't prepared to tell her the truth, she decided to ask one of the others.
"Of course. Alice is actually the same kind of being as 2B and me."
Kyouko's expression stiffened at the strange girl's answer.
"The same kind of being?"
"That's right. 2B and I are androids. We're not biologically enhanced humans or anything like that. We're robots descended from artificial intelligence."
Kyouko's face grew even stiffer.
Nothing about either of them looked mechanical. No matter how she examined 6O, she saw only a remarkably beautiful young woman.
And yet she was a robot?
If that was true, then their commander was probably one as well.
As though she had read Kyouko's thoughts, 6O parted her lips and continued.
"The Commander isn't an android. He's the only living, pure human left in our world."
"The only living human in your entire world?"
That sounded even more absurd than the claim that they were androids.
Wouldn't that mean humanity in their world had effectively gone extinct?
"Humanity in our world really could be considered extinct. According to the calendar used here, humanity began its descent toward extinction sometime after the year 2003. Oh, please don't look at us like that. We androids love humanity. We love our creators very much."
So humanity's extinction hadn't occurred because the androids had rebelled?
"In 2003, a dragon and a Giant from another world accidentally entered ours. After their deaths, a plague spread across the world. Humans infected by it couldn't be cured by any available method, and humanity was eventually doomed to extinction.
"Over the following thirty years, the surviving humans placed themselves into suspended animation. They also created semipermanent androids and Replicants to keep the world functioning while they slept…"
Replicants were essentially cloned human bodies, but they initially possessed no consciousness of their own.
Once the plague had been eradicated, the sleeping humans were supposed to awaken and transfer their consciousness into new bodies, since their original bodies could not be cured.
Unfortunately, after several centuries, the Replicants developed consciousness. Following centuries of further development, they came to believe they were the true humans.
When the original humans awakened and attempted to reclaim their Replicant bodies, their consciousnesses had already undergone Gestaltification. The records didn't explain the process in detail, but to the Replicants, those human souls appeared to be monsters.
That was how the war between the two sides began.
The androids had originally been created to assist in humanity's restoration. However, some of them had developed emotional attachments to the Replicants and couldn't bring themselves to slaughter them.
In the end, they could only watch helplessly as the war between humanity and the Replicants drove both toward extinction.
For more than seven thousand years afterward, the androids had continued to advance and repeatedly attempted to resurrect humanity.
Ultimately, only their commander had succeeded in overcoming the seemingly incurable plague and surviving as a true human.
The truth behind humanity's extinction in that world weighed heavily on Kyouko's heart.
"However, a single human cannot restore human civilization," 6O continued. "It's like having Adam without Eve. Humanity cannot be reborn."
Kyouko's pupils contracted.
How could she possibly fail to understand now?
The reason they had sought out Asuna was because they wanted her to become Eve.
(End of Chapter)
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