Vivy Prototype (Light Novel) Vol. 2

Book 2: Vivy Prototype (Light Novel)

by Tappei Nagatsuki, Eiji Umehara, loundraw

Genres: Cyberpunk; Space Exploration

Synopsis

IF AI LOVE HUMANITY, WHAT DO I LOVE?

The Singularity Project, the century-long mission to prevent the climactic war between AIs and humanity, is well underway. When Vivy awakens for the next Singularity Point, she finds a world of AI far more advanced than in the original history. To get to the bottom of this mystery, Vivy goes to see leading AI researcher Saeki Tatsuya--the first human to marry an AI. But if an AI has no heart, is this love story nothing more than a fabrication?

 

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Release date: December 12, 2022

Publisher: Airship

Print pages: 296

Sample

Chapter 1:
The Songstress and the World That Advanced Too Much

 

. : 1 : .

 

THE MOMENT THE PROGRAM activated from its closed-off partition, Vivy did as the sequence dictated and began checking herself and her surroundings. She didn’t see any immediate threats, and there were no pings from her most sensitive echolocation scan. Nothing was moving nearby: her system’s self-check discovered no noise or significant changes from her last activation.

Safety provisionally confirmed.

Vivy referred to her latest logs, just as a human might reflect upon the prior night’s events after waking. First, she recalled the AI who had been welcoming and kind to her. Next came that AI’s twin sister, someone Vivy had engaged with in a fierce battle.

“Estella… Elizabeth…”

 

During the previous Singularity Point, Vivy had boarded an escape shuttle from the space hotel Sunrise and eventually touched down safely at an Earth airport. People planetside were in a panic with Sunrise out of control—if the space hotel crashed into Earth, it could mean considerable damage. Soon after, news broke that the station had crashed, causing no collateral damage whatsoever. Estella had effectively purged parts of the station to make this possible.

Evacuees were sent to the nearest hospital. Few had obvious injuries, but the stress from the unexpected and life-threatening event was enough to merit their admittance. Additionally, the space tourism industry had an obligation to provide basic checkups on all those who returned.

That was where Vivy had parted ways with Arnold and Yuzuka. The pair asked Vivy if they would meet again someday. After searching for what to say, Vivy answered, “Well, someday.”

Vivy knew they never would see each other again—or, at the very least, she knew she couldn’t make an effort to see them. It took everything she had to respond as she did. Because she was working on the Singularity Project, Vivy couldn’t do anything outside the Singularity Points. She rarely even woke up in between, and she needed to keep her existence hidden. This was all to prevent her from having an unnecessary influence on history.

Once she’d parted ways with Arnold and Yuzuka, Vivy followed the falsified schedule Matsumoto had created and was transported to the AI corporation that developed her: Organize Generation Corp., or OGC for short. There, Vivy’s body underwent repairs for the damage she had suffered, which turned out to be a complete overhaul. Then she went back to NiaLand, where she went to sleep and handed control of her body back over to Diva.

 

Now she was awake again.

The first Singularity Point was the AI Naming Law incident, when she first met Matsumoto. The second Singularity Point was the Sun-Crash Incident. Since she’d awoken once more, it meant the third Singularity Point had come.

A quick look around doesn’t show any real changes, Vivy thought as she looked around. She was very familiar with the room she’d found herself in.

Vivy sat up in bed, which was really her standby station for charging and data cleanup. As she did, the chandelier flickered to life. The room’s decorations were done in a somewhat Western style. Flowers had been placed here and there, giving the room an air of elegance without excess. This was the songstress’s room on the top floor of the Princess Palace in NiaLand, which visitors could see on the behind-the-scenes tour. These chambers might have been a bit extravagant for a mere AI, but Diva wasn’t just any AI—she had a duty to embody the lovely songstress who sang for her guests, even when she wasn’t onstage.

Vivy looked at the neat stacks of fan letters and presents (it was admirable that there wasn’t a single food item among them), and her expression softened. She went to approach the gifts, then stopped herself.

“…”

There were clearly more presents than when she, Vivy, had been the one singing. She looked closer and saw that all the vases in the rooms had power switches. They must’ve been presents as well. If she turned one on, it would probably display some information on the sender along with a personalized message. Apparently, Diva had been doing well while Vivy was asleep.

Vivy looked at her reflection in a large oval mirror. She was neatly dressed in pale blue pajamas. They were high quality with lots of frills—very cute. Vivy couldn’t remember ever wearing such a thing.

Is this part of Diva’s performance? I doubt they’d do behind-the-scenes tours while she’s asleep, though…

An AI obviously didn’t need pajamas, but she especially didn’t need a mirror; she could accurately determine the status of her body on her own. Evidently, Diva had to be NiaLand’s songstress even when she was asleep.

If necessary, Vivy would analyze Diva’s logs later. She should at least make sure there were no discrepancies in how she was perceived while Vivy was operating.

At that moment, she sensed something odd. “Hm?” There were no changes in the body she saw reflected in the mirror, but…

She held up her right hand in a fist and thoroughly examined it, front and back. She activated the actuators in her fingers one by one, starting with her clenched thumb and moving across to her pinky, opening them all straight. Then she closed them again, starting with her pinky and going to her thumb. She stretched one leg out in front of her with pointed toes. Forty-five degrees. Ninety degrees. A hundred and eighty degrees. She launched herself into a backflip from her one foot and landed. Everything was perfectly smooth.

Were my movement circuits and calculations updated?

The internal mechanisms that controlled her shifting body weight and posture were clearly smoother than the last time she had activated; she must have had some serious maintenance and upgrades even after her last major overhaul.

I really should review Diva’s logs.

Just as she’d made the calculation to do so, a voice came from the mirror. “What’s going on, Diva? Up at this time of night?”

Vivy’s self-defense programming forced her to take an automatic step back and fall into a defensive stance.

“Are you underprepared for tomorrow’s performance? Or did you want to double-check your costumes?”

“Uh…” Vivy didn’t recall hearing the voice before; it sounded like it belonged to a mature adult woman.

While she grappled for a response, the voice prattled on. “I don’t recommend staying up late, but if you’re unsure about your costumes, I’ll show some of your classics.”

At that, Vivy’s pajamas instantly transformed into her familiar stage outfit. There wasn’t even time for her surprised emotional pattern to show on her face. Her clothes changed in rapid sequence, going from alternate colorways of her usual stage gear to a gown exclusively for ballads, to a boyish outfit she donned for upbeat bops.

“There. I think you should be safe with this order, considering tomorrow’s setlist.”

It was then that Vivy finally noticed the minuscule camera set into the mirror’s frame. The lens moved slightly as it adjusted its focus. The clothes were holograms.

Vivy kept her circuits from expressing her surprised emotional pattern and touched the projected clothing. She wasn’t certain what technology it used, but she could feel it, and the cloth crinkled under her touch.

“Diva? You’re acting strange… Please wait a moment,” the mirror said in a concerned tone.

A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.

“Hellooo? What’s wrooong?”

Vivy didn’t even have time to respond to her visitor or invite them in before the door swung open…and a giant porcupine barged inside.

Vivy’s official height was 156 centimeters; this porcupine came up to her waist. The dense, soft-looking quills growing from his back swayed as he scuttled over to Vivy on his absurdly short legs. He was Harry, another NiaLand cast member. Harry’s personality was set to “troublemaker.” He would act sorry when his tricks were found out, but then he’d just go back to pranking, like a little boy would. For this reason, Harry was immensely popular with kids.

Harry tutted. “Not good, Diva. You have to get up early in the morning, so you’ve gotta sleep. Or do you wanna stay up late together? Ooh, should we do that? Yeah, let’s!”

Vivy remained silent, calculations running in the background as she tried to figure out what was going on. She was familiar with both the mirror and Harry—their presence alone wasn’t the problem here. As far as Vivy could remember, the mirror never talked, and Harry never did anything offstage or spoke outside of his programmed lines. He hadn’t been installed with a conversation function.

Her memory circuits dredged up the profile of a woman she used to know, someone who should have been here. Although such humans had taken care of Diva before, it appeared to be Harry and the mirror’s responsibility now—setting aside his suggestion to stay up late, of course.

Has a great deal of technology advanced? she wondered. Realizing how careless she’d been when judging the situation, she immediately accessed her internal clock. She should have checked it right when she activated.

Considering her improved body, the AIs who interacted so easily with her, and the holographic technology that could replicate clothing with tactile feedback, it was obvious that quite some time had passed since she had last been active—since the fall of Sunrise. Thirty years, maybe? No, forty. Regardless, she needed to act in accordance with the era so she didn’t draw unnecessary attention to herself.

The time was just past midnight. It was winter. December, to be exact. And the year was—

“Diva?”

“…”

Vivy ignored Harry and conducted a second self-check. There were no abnormalities. Her internal clock was functioning properly. The date was correct.

“Hmm, you really do seem off. Should we datalink so I can see what’s going on? If we do, we really are gonna end up staying up late toni—”

Harry’s voice suddenly cut off. Then came the whirring sound of a hard disk running at high speeds. A few moments later, he spoke up again, but his voice was completely different.

“Ugh, what is with all these irrational motion routines?! Such a pain. Uh, testing, testing, one, two, three! Vivy? Can you hear me?”

Vivy stared at Harry—or rather, at his body. “Matsumoto…?”

“What’s the deal with that inappropriately immature and flashy getup you’re in? Er, you sure this guy’s eye cameras aren’t broken?”

Matsumoto intentionally put an exasperated expression on Harry’s face, and Vivy looked down at the tank top and shorts she was wearing. Well, not literally wearing; they were still being projected onto her body.

The mirror piped up, “Harry, you are exhibiting abnormal data. Please execute a self-check imme—”

“Be quiet, would you?” Matsumoto snapped. It immediately obeyed, the output to its invisible speakers dropping off to silence. He must have cut it off himself.

“Did you hear that, lady? ‘Harry.’ Pfft, was he named that because he’s ‘hairy’? A bit too easy, don’t you think? That’s about as creative as naming a fish ‘Finny.’ What kind of—gah!”

Vivy gripped the quills on Matsumoto’s back as hard as she could and yanked him up. His tiny legs flailed in the air. “Don’t make fun of Harry’s name. The park guests decided it through a public vote. More importantly, what’s this about?” She brought her face right to his and glared at him through her eye cameras. “It’s only been five years and eleven days since Sunrise. How has technology advanced this much?”

“Okay, okay. Just set me down for a sec. You’re committing animal abuse!”

She complied and set Matsumoto, in his stolen porcupine body, down on the floor.

Fifteen years had passed between the first Point—the AI Naming Law incident—and the second Point. The space tourism industry had advanced shockingly fast during that time. NiaLand had too, but nothing about it had really stood out to Vivy.

This time, however, only a mere five years had passed, yet she was surrounded by technology and AIs she didn’t remember—and she hadn’t even stepped out of her room. Vivy didn’t even need the original history data Matsumoto usually kept to himself to know that this rate of advancement was abnormal.

She and Matsumoto were working to prevent the impending war between humans and AIs. And for that to happen, they had to destroy AI.

“I was surprised too,” Matsumoto said. “In the original history, this sort of technology didn’t come into daily life for another thirty years, and the two of us shouldn’t even have started back up yet.”

Vivy’s eyebrow twitched. “Do you mean we somehow failed on Sunrise?”

“I’ll fill you in on the way. First, let’s get a move on! We’re heading to these coordinates.”

There was no time lag between his words and the coordinates arriving in Vivy’s database. Matsumoto shuffled over to the door, leading the way.

“Wait. Are you planning on going in that body?”

“Don’t underestimate me, Vivy. His exterior and interior might be ancient and awkward, but with me at the helm—”

“Let Harry go.”

Matsumoto turned back to her with a questioning look.

Her tone was forceful as she added, “Harry is a cast member here. He has his work onstage and he’s been given the responsibility of managing Diva. He’s got nothing to do with our mission. Don’t take his role from him.”

“My real body’s in a bit of a situation right now, though.”

But Vivy didn’t back down. Her eyes remained fixed on Matsumoto.

Eventually, he relented., “All right, but you’ve really got to do something about that outfit. It’s totally inappropriate for your age.”

“The next time you say that, I’ll punch you. This is Diva’s outfit. Don’t crush a songstress’s dreams.”

“I think beating someone up is more likely to crush her dreams, but okay…”

Vivy went to the back of the room and started opening dresser drawers. The articles inside were different than she remembered but luckily, the ones she was looking for hadn’t been disposed of. The top and bottoms she pulled out were real clothes, made for mobility. The color was the last thing she would’ve worn onstage, but it would blend in with the night.

The moment she put the clothes on, they were overwritten with a hologram of the stage clothes she’d been wearing before.

“Cut the hologram,” she told Matsumoto.

“Vivy, is your logic circuit operating properly? You don’t have to wear real clothes; you can just use the Dresser—that’s the name for this augmented reality technology, by the way.”

“This technology didn’t exist in this time period in the original history, right? Besides, I feel uncomfortable going outside without actually wearing anything. Cut it off.”

“So serious.”

Matsumoto accessed the mirror, cutting its output, and the clothes Vivy was actually wearing reappeared. Vivy then realized that the earring she was wearing had actually been displaying the hologram.

“Output on the receiver side?” she asked, touching her earring.

“Yep. The mirror is still at the stage where it won’t function without a sender and a receiver. Output from accessories will be the way of the future, with clothing available at fair prices—whoa, that’s expensive! Sheesh, that’s got a few more zeroes tacked on than there were in the original future.”

Vivy ignored Matsumoto and his pointless information—probably accessed via the internet—and moved her earring from her right ear to her left, as she’d done for Sunrise. Then she looked into the mirror.

“…”

She looked at her reflection. She had the exact same body as Diva; the only differences were the real clothing she wore and the location of her earring. Vivy consciously tried to make her expression different, so she didn’t look like the songstress, but rather the AI that she was, bearing a different mission.

“Vivy, I’ll ask again: is your logic circuit operating properly? Changing the earring’s location won’t have any effect on its reception. I cut off the output on the sending side, anyway.”

“I’m fine.”

She stepped out of the room, leaving Matsumoto behind with his doubts. The chandelier in the room automatically dimmed. Harry and the mirror remained there, not a single bit of their interaction with Vivy remaining in their hard disks.

 

. : 2 : .

 

SAEKI CURSED his own carelessness.

“You are exceeding the legal speed limit,” came the auto-generated voice from his car’s internal speakers. “Immediately release manual driving or reduce your spee—”

“I know!” Saeki shouted.

The piercing screech of metal on metal rang out behind him—the sound of bullets hitting his car. They were aiming for the tires.

Up ahead, the other cars in traffic kept a perfect distance of twenty meters between each vehicle and drove at exactly the speed limit with not even a single kilometer-per-hour deviation. Whipping the wheel this way and that, Saeki wove through the line of self-driven cars. Each time he passed one, a notice popped up on the dashboard’s organic LCD display informing him he was violating safe driving laws. Alerts blared nonstop within the car. The roads were heated, meaning there wasn’t any snow on them, but his tires still squealed as they slid.

“Maintain a proper distance—”

“Display rear camera view!”

The car responded, “Understood,” and the sight from the rearview mirror was magnified.

There were three—no, four—cars following him, their high beams dipping and jerking wildly. That was more cars than before; reinforcements must’ve arrived.

“Damn!” Saeki swore and pushed the accelerator to the floor, trying to hold back his fear at the increasing speeds.

The chase had started the moment he got on the freeway—the same one he took home from work every day. While it might be late into the night, Saeki never thought they would come at him so brazenly, even if there had been a lot of information that should have told him this was coming.

The abnormal advancement of AI technology over the past few years had increased their discontent and unease. And yet, they were acting with disconcerting quietness. Even the least imaginative person in the world could have figured out what was happening with a bit of thought.

It was the calm before the storm.

As Saeki came up to a sharp bend in the road, he let up on the accelerator, and the car rocked violently.

“Agh!”

He lost control of the steering as the car raced toward the guardrail. Out of reflex, he turned the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The tires locked and the car skid. He heard a bang: something white filled his vision.

Saeki tumbled from the car, confused. He was on all fours on the asphalt when he finally realized his car had crashed into the guardrail, and the white thing that had blocked his vision was the airbag. An unpleasant smell filled his nostrils. The right rear tire was warped and smoking, thanks to the friction of the crash.

It had been shot.

“An ambulance and the police are being dispatched to this location. Please do not leave the vicinity,” came an AI voice from one of the streetlights.

The streetlights, placed at regular intervals down the road, helped self-driving vehicles determine their location, used their internal cameras to monitor for crashes, and automatically contacted the relevant authorities when necessary. But the voice was cut off by the sound of sudden braking as the four pursuing cars came to a stop around Saeki, one after another.

Without pause, the driver and passenger doors opened on the closest car and two men came out, pointing handguns at Saeki and using their doors as shields. The men ignored the streetlight as it announced, “A weapon violating gun control laws has been detected. Quickly—”

“You…!” Saeki groaned, voice low. Paying no mind to the blood running from his mouth—he didn’t know when he’d cut his lip—he stood, glaring at his pursuers.

He hadn’t been entirely sure because of the high speeds and darkness, but the cars were the same ones he’d suspected. They were old, outdated models without the self-driving function required by modern law. The guns pointed at him from behind the cars were also old-school revolvers, the kind that didn’t have the fingerprint locks required for verifying the user.

It was Toak, the organization that called on humanity to free themselves from AIs for their own well-being.

“We were told to take you back in one piece, so don’t resist,” said the man standing behind the driver-side door.

“Who ordered that? Kakitani?” Saeki asked.

“A weapon violating gun control la—”

Bang! A shot rang out and Saeki instinctively ducked. The streetlight stopped repeating itself. There was a bullet hole in the speaker.

The two men slowly stepped out from behind the car doors and moved toward Saeki, perhaps deciding he wasn’t armed. The other men didn’t make a move to exit their cars, probably prepared to chase after him if it came to that.

Saeki desperately scanned the area, his head spinning. He couldn’t let himself be captured here. Ever since that day four years ago, he swore he would live only to achieve his goal, but he still hadn’t done it. He didn’t care what happened to him. He didn’t care about his social standing, his future, or even his life in the right circumstances.

For her, I have to…

A voice came from behind him. “Please stay still.”

Just as he went to look, a black gale rushed past him. By the time Saeki realized it was a person, they were right up close with the two men, twisting to strike them with a kick.

“What the—?!”

The shocked Toak agents didn’t even have time to turn their guns on their attacker before they were struck down by the sweeping kick.

“Matsumoto,” the interloper whispered.

“Yeehaw!” A strange voice let out a holler from the car Saeki had been driving. “Let’s show ’em what you can do, you old bucket of bolts!” It lurched forward like a bull at a rodeo and sped up rapidly, despite the destroyed rear tire. The front jerked up, and it sprang at the men’s vehicles.

Saeki heard the crunch of car against car.

His car had been driving normally up until this point, but now it was practically alive, crushing the Toak cars beneath its frame. The Toak members tumbled out of their cars in the rush to escape, but before they could draw their guns, the dark figure neutralized them. Then it was over, and all was quiet.

For ten whole seconds, Saeki stood gaping in shock, then he watched the figure stride up to him. Long hair, soft features. A woman. She wore black clothing and had an earring on her left ear.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was beautiful.

“Y-yeah… Thank you. You saved me!” he blurted out. He gathered from her appearance and speech that she was an AI—and then he realized exactly who she was. “Diva…? Is that really you?”

A look of distrust clouded her face. She looked at Saeki’s car for some time with a complicated expression. Eventually, her face softened, and she said, “Yes.”

“I knew it! But why are you here?”

High-pitched sirens wailed in the distance, interrupting their conversation. It seemed the streetlight’s earlier dispatch had arrived.

Saeki hesitated. Having them protect him was an option, but being taken into police custody wasn’t ideal, not after the attack from Toak. Besides, his safety wasn’t the most important thing here. Everything he did had to be for his goal.

He looked at Diva. Maybe this was a sign. He’d been clenching his fists without thinking, but he squeezed them even tighter and said, “Diva…this might sound strange, but will you come with me right now? I have a favor to ask you.”

Her response was immediate. “That won’t be a problem. I have a favor to ask of you too.”

 

. : 3 : .

 

SAEKI TOOK VIVY down windy mountain roads to a remote house in the wilderness, about an hour from the main drag. It was deep within a forest that had been planted by humans, the trees lined up neatly along the low mountain currently blanketed in snow. There were no houses nearby, at least not until you traveled back down to the base. Vivy’s sensors detected the sound of waves breaking and the smell of a beach from what must have been the nearby ocean. According to Saeki, this was a safehouse no one else knew about.

The damaged car trundled slowly on autopilot into the garage, which opened automatically.

Vivy stepped out of the car. “You should take care of your wounds. Excuse me while I confirm there is no secondary danger of a fire or other hazard as a result of the damage.”

Saeki nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” He paused, looking at the car. He gave it a soft pat, as if concerned for its injuries, then murmured, “Thank you too.” With that, he went into the house.

“…”

Vivy’s eye cameras consciously watched Saeki pat the car and go. He would have heard Matsumoto’s voice during the fight, but she hadn’t explained it—nor had he asked. Saeki probably wasn’t saying thank you to Matsumoto, but to his own car. Vivy updated the personal data she had on Saeki, realizing he was someone who respected AIs and machines alike. The emotional pattern she expected automatically updated. In human terms, this phenomenon might be called “having a good impression of someone.”

She forced open the car’s hood, which had been warped and scuffed in the crash. Smoke immediately billowed out, along with Matsumoto’s exaggerated coughing from the car’s interior speakers.

“Urgh, ack!”

“Stop messing around. Why didn’t you tell me he knew me?” asked Vivy.

“Because I didn’t know. I swear! There’s no record of the two of you meeting in the original history, so let’s get our thinking caps on. I don’t know why he knows you. Neither do you. But he does. Which means…?”

“He’s met Diva in this history.”

A cheesy ding-ding-ding sound effect played from the car; he must have downloaded that. “Saeki Tatsuya is among the top AI researchers of this era,” Matsumoto explained. “Despite being merely thirty years old, he’s proven twice as many of his theories as researchers twice his age. This is true of both the original history and this one. He’s pretty famous, seeing as he’s made huge contributions to the advancement of AI. And for some other things.”

Vivy stood stock-still, holding the car’s sparking battery in her hand. She’d pulled it from the car so it didn’t ignite the leaking oil.

Saeki Tatsuya—a researcher who contributed greatly to the advancement of AI.

Right now, Vivy was working to destroy AI to prevent the war between humans and AIs from happening in the future. She should be trying to prevent AI advancement—even more so now that this era in history was thirty years ahead of the original.

Vivy’s calculations output a simple conclusion. “We’re here to destroy his research? Or maybe to destroy him…?”

A wrong-answer buzzer sounded. “We’re just here to talk to him.”

“Don’t lie.”

“It’s the truth! Anyway, Vivy, you could’ve connected to The Archive and reviewed your memories to learn that he knew you.”

“Yes,” said Vivy in a low voice. Her annoyed emotional cues told her this could be classified as unjustified resentment. What Matsumoto said was true, but she determined it was illogical—irrational, even—for Matsumoto to point it out now.

“Perhaps this is a silver lining, but the way you are now, you can connect directly to The Archive without using a nearby terminal or port,” he said.

That surprised her. “Impossible… Really?”

The Archive was an aggregated database for all AIs who connected to it. The area each AI used was tiny, but The Archive’s total volume was massive and expanding with each passing second. Vivy was certain they were supposed to use a wired connection to access The Archive to reduce the load.

“Actually, it’s less about the way you are now and more about the world’s current infrastructure,” Matsumoto continued. “Put simply, it’s thanks to advancements in the communications field. Wireless connection to The Archive… This technology shouldn’t appear for another ten years.” He sounded unhappy about it.

Vivy nodded in acceptance, then closed her eye cameras and ran the same program she would in front of a terminal when attempting to access The Archive. Instantly, the artificial lights of the garage faded away, replaced by the orange glow of evening light slanting through the windows of the familiar music room. As the space unfolded before her, she took note of the rows of sheet music on stands and instruments awaiting their musicians, their positions unchanged.

This was Vivy’s area of The Archive; Matsumoto had previously applied the music room theme. What he’d said was true—the only thing that had changed was the access method. Everything else seemed exactly the same.

Vivy approached a music stand and reached out toward the sheet music. It held images of herself—of Diva—singing onstage, from a time she didn’t remember. As she readied herself for a closer look, her fingers nearly brushing the display…Vivy stopped.

It had been five years and eleven days since she had last activated. These were Diva’s memories from that period. She forcefully added the calculation that she should refer to these memories during their current task.

On the music stand next to her, another sheet displayed images of the space hotel Sunrise. From Vivy’s perspective, it hadn’t even been a week since then. She also saw two AIs: Estella and Elizabeth. As Vivy was the eldest of the Sisters, they were like her younger siblings.

These weren’t the simple logs she’d checked when she first activated. The Archive stored vivid memories. Vivy observed the moment Estella and Elizabeth disintegrated. She hadn’t seen that happen directly, of course, but she had heard their voices until the moment they stopped functioning. Those resonating voices hadn’t been death cries, screams, regrets, or curses. The twins had pursued their goal until the very last minute, their voices carrying out their missions—their reasons for being.

Vivy didn’t know why Elizabeth sang with such power, but she knew that Estella, at the very least, never raised her voice—her livelihood—in such a way for the hotel guests. She maintained a regular, comfortable volume and sang until her voice gave out.

Elizabeth had also acted on behalf of Kakitani, the man who had always been her master. She’d been dedicated to carrying out his work, up until the moment Vivy poisoned her by forcing a reformatting virus into her through a datalink.

The sisters carried out the missions they’d been entrusted with until the end. As a songstress, Diva had a mission too. And Vivy had her mission of following the Singularity Project.

“…”

Vivy closed the sheet music without looking further into Diva’s memories. I don’t want to affect the songstress “me.”

She then disconnected from The Archive. The moment she did, the music room dissolved, leaving the unchanged garage around her. Vivy opened her eye cameras and came out of the “tune snooze” pose.

“Hello? Vivy?”

Her audio sensors picked up Matsumoto calling her, but she ignored him.

Without saying it aloud, she once again defined her current self as someone trying to carry out her mission. Then she

slammed the car hood shut. The car’s drive shaft had bent under the extreme events it had been forced through. It would likely end up scrapped. Regardless, it had completed its mission.

Vivy said, “Good work,” then went into the house.

 

. : 4 : .

 

“WELCOME, Diva-sama.”

Just as Vivy stepped over the threshold, she stopped and looked at the one who’d spoken. Vivy’s first impression of her was a gentle beauty boasting a soft sort of strength. A quick visual estimation marked her approximately one centimeter shorter than Vivy. Her features were crafted to calm others, but they could no doubt look fairly scary if she showed an enraged emotional pattern. There was no wasted movement in her posture. Her black hair was in a ponytail that fell just below her shoulders. She was wearing a fluttery, pale-peach skirt and a white blouse, ...