NOVEL WEB vol. 4 chapter 18 - Machine-Gun-Talk Girl
Commander Eve, Ringo, and the six sisters were gathered in the lounge.
“Commander Sis-ter, the engagement that concerns me is that bout against the gigantic scorpion, Serqet.”
Asahi had deliberately called everyone together to raise the situation where they had glared down one Serqet—Tefen.
“Oh? Something about it stuck with you, Asahi?”
“Yes, Commander Sis-ter! I checked the logs, and I thought additional countermeasures might be necessary, so I wanted your view too!”
Seated to Commander Sis-ter’s right with Ringo on the far side and in a fine mood, Asahi chattered on. For the record: Akane had taken the seat on Eve’s left, opposite Asahi. Ichigo sat facing Eve; Utsugi and Erika had plastered themselves together and commandeered a sofa; Olive stood behind Eve, fiddling with an airborne console with her back turned.
Everyone had gathered, but not in the cuddled scrum from that one time. They were all, more or less, doing as they pleased.
“So then, Commander Sis-ter: that thought-wave Tefen sent—telepathy—no, in magic-fantasy terms it would be far-speech magic? In any case, our response to that!”
“Ah, that. We parsed the logs, but in the end we wrote it off as nonsense…”
As Commander Eve recalled it, Ringo and Olive had pored over the multi-legged tank’s AI logs, only to conclude cause unknown—scientific explanation impossible—for the Isolation Mode incident.
“If it’s magical action, then ‘unknown cause’ is unavoidable, isn’t it? More important is what we do after! You said you added an auditor-jailer function to the on-site AI, but do we have countermeasures for me, for you sisters, and for Ringo?”
“…Hm? Do we need them?”
“Asahi. Given this separation in distance, countermeasures are unnecessary. For me perhaps, but Akane and the others’ Brain Units do not have that much slack in resources. Installing measures that impair daily performance just to cover an exceedingly low-probability event is irrational—nonsensical.”
The problem had occurred more than 1,000 km from The Tree. The far-speech issue had manifested only in the on-site AI; even the Strategic AI at Oil Port, which had been in tactical-link state, suffered no effect. The range of the thought-speech was limited; the fact that a Strategic AI at a distance had not been affected led them to forgo mounting the auditor-jailer function on resident AIs at The Tree.
“I see. Well, if it’s Ringo, that sort of judgment… might be unavoidable.”
And Asahi lodged a protest against that judgment.
“Listen, Ringo! Magic is a force that cannot be measured by common sense! At the very least, considering the phenomena we’ve observed so far, grounding our suppositions on scientific rationales like simple distance or effect radius is dangerous! Likely to miss! We must always assume the worst!”
“…Proceed.”
Pressed by Asahi’s shout, Ringo leaned back a hair and urged her on.
“Why did the effect strike only AIs in the local area? Perhaps Tefen merely limited the recipients! Because it intended to address only the forward-deployed units, it ended there, # Nоvеlight # did it not? If that Tefen—if the queen of the swarm—had intended to send thought-speech to the Strategic AI at Oil Port, then wouldn’t it have affected that one as well?”
“The ordinary conclusion is that it was simply out of range.”
“Ordinary! You’re applying ordinary sense to magic, Ringo! No—you’re not wrong; of course you aren’t. And precisely because you aren’t wrong, I was raised to correct for you!”
Rarely—truly rarely—Ringo knit her brow.
That Ringo might be making an erroneous judgment—having that pointed out tugged an unconscious twitch in her facial muscles.
From Commander Eve’s side, seeing a Ringo with emotions showing was delightful, but ill-suited to the moment, so she kept her mouth shut.
A wise decision indeed.
“Why you are ignoring this possibility is unclear, but Tefen first—at the very beginning—sent its own underling to recon! Yes, the first engagement! Subsequent aerial footage confirms Tefen was far away—beyond the horizon itself. In other words, Tefen surmounted the great wall of the horizon by some means and communicated with its subordinate little scorpions!”
“You posit a relay rather than direct communication.”
“‘Posit’! That possibility only appeared because you first assumed there was a range limit based on the recent thought-speech incident! Isn’t your order reversed? You are not wrong that it is a likely possibility, but that possibility comes from scientific rationale! If you posit magic, then posit the worst!”
And Asahi’s point did, in fact, hit home.
You could not use science-based foundations when modeling magic. Put that way, it was obvious.
Ringo’s thought carried a bias grounded in scientific knowledge. Given that she was the overarching AI of The Tree, sustained by science and technology, it could hardly be otherwise.
It also meant their experience was overwhelmingly insufficient.
And precisely because that was worrisome, Asahi had been brought into being.
“We must assume that Tefen—and by extension Serqet—possesses a means of communication over considerable distances. Assume the worst! That would put not only the on-site Strategic AIs in Serqet’s sights, but also Ringo and you sisters, linked by data-link, at risk!”
Whatever Ringo felt inside, Asahi’s opinion should be heard.
That said, unlike Asahi—whose Brain Unit had resources to spare—the initial five sisters were running at full utilization. Adding an auditor-jailer function on top would predictably degrade processing speed severely.
Therefore Ringo elected to use The Core’s ample resources to monitor from outside. So long as they remained within The Tree, the sisters would be continuously under audit at least.
“Magic exerting effects through a data-link—doesn’t that sound exactly like the sort of thing it would do? Whether this world’s magic is to some degree systematic or merely conceptual, we don’t know yet—but there’s no harm in caution!”
“Asahi, you tend to be a rapid-fire talker. Take it down a notch.”
“Yes, Commander Sis-ter!”
“Good answer, but still…”
Whether from inexperience or because her personality was already fixed that way, Asahi had become that troublesome nerd who unleashes a torrent when it’s her specialty.
“I do not regard this as a particularly meaningful measure.”
Even so, the measure did not seem to please Ringo. And, truth be told, Commander Eve privately suspected it might be pointless. Understandable.
“What are you babbling about, Ringo! In defense, it is only natural to go beyond full power! If, by some one-in-a-million, any of us were seized, this place would be a death ground for Commander Sis-ter! Do you understand!”
“The probability that our closed local network, encrypted in real time by The Core, would be broken is vanishingly close to zero.”
“That’s against an opponent with the same science! Even if your computation is correct, if your inputs are wrong, the answer is wrong! Your hypothetical simulations lack the magic-fantasy variable! With the input variables insufficient to begin with, of course your assumption comes out wrong!”
“I cannot agree that the variables are insufficient. We are exhaustively incorporating every phenomenon observed to date. On that basis, the probability of indirect or direct harm to The Tree is effectively zero, and—”
“Ringo, what are you refusing to see! To declare countermeasures unnecessary because the probability is ‘effectively zero’—that is unlike an overarching AI! We must protect Commander Sis-ter absolutely! Absolutely! All resources spent for that are necessary cost; no matter how low the probability, to refrain from taking measures is unacceptable! In fact, you’ve installed a heavy gun at The Tree for meteor defense—how do you rate the chance of Commander Sis-ter suffering harm from a meteor! Even if she lived ten thousand lives in succession, death by meteor would be rare!”
Well, true enough. Commander Eve had, upon Ringo’s request, authorized construction of the heavy gun. Out of fear of a vanishingly small possibility, they were consuming resources with no observed threat present. As Asahi pointed out, there was a contradiction in Ringo’s behavior.