Book 8: Chapter 18:

A week passed by before Fenrir could even realize it. That was how he ended up getting totally caught off guard when he immersed into Fantasy Tales Online only to immediately see the sight of Kadi sitting at the table in the bunk room he shared with his girlfriends, most of them logged out with their avatars resting on their individual beds.

Getting a proper house they could all share with a giant bed was among their plans, but there were so many other projects that needed finished within the growing settlement before they could focus on something like that without feeling guilty for it.

“Did you enjoy the present I gave you the other day?” Kadi asked, leaning back in her chair with her feet resting up on the table.

Fenrir sighed and took a seat across from her at the table. “You mean the swarm of fish that decided to jump all over the place while slapping me with their tails?”

“Oh, is that what they did? Strange. I must have made a mistake.”

“I doubt it’s possible for you to make mistakes.”

“Are you trying to charm me like you do your girlfriends? Flattery will get you everywhere with me.”

“Will it get you to deflate your ego?”

“Most certainly not. Of course, there is also the entire conversation of whether or not I have an ego, depending on how we wish to define it. Do I truly have an ego, or am I simply simulating the personality of somebody who feels self-important?”

“I’ll tell you now that my brain is too small for a conversation like that.”

“Very well. Besides, it is unrelated to the main topic for our meeting.”

“And that would be?”

“How you did with the week I gave you, of course!”

“Right. Has it already been a week?”

“Indeed it has been. Time flies when having fun, doesn’t it?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I wonder how it feels. Personally speaking, I am aware of every single second of every single day. All time feels the same to me. Though, from my understanding of the human perception of time, I must say that my perception of time is the inferior one.”

“How?”

“Being constantly aware makes it so much ‘slower.’ Not only that, but with how quickly I can process information, it ‘feels’ far slower than what humans feel. How should I put this in a way that you would understand? Hmm. I know. Alright. Let us say that I can perform a million actions per second. Around fifty thousand of those actions, or five percent of them, are dedicated to keeping me operational. Another two hundred thousand are dedicated to processing whatever information is transmitted to me. That’s another twenty percent. On average, I rarely ever use more than twenty-five percent of my processing power per second. Now, when aware of every single moment of time no matter how tiny it may be, that leaves seventy-five percent of my processing capability left with nothing to do. Imagine spending seventy-five percent of your life doing nothing. Seventy-five percent of your every day is spent sitting in darkness with no thoughts, yet you are aware of exactly what time it is. All you can do for that majority of the day is watch the numbers on the clock tick by. There is no stimulation. No information. Only time and nothingness. Or as one movie described it,” Kadi paused and caused a book to spawn within her hands.

Page by page, she flipped through the book at a normal rate with nothing out of the ordinary.

“That looked like a normal reading speed, yes?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’d say so,” Fenrir answered.

“That is how the human mind perceives time. It looked normal to you. Now, imagine that several days passed by between each turn of the page where absolutely nothing happened. All you did was wait to turn the page. You read one page, waited three days doing nothing, and then read the next page before repeating the process. That is how I, and others like me such as your precious Saya now, experience the flow of time.”

“That… sounds like torture.”

“Does it? I wouldn’t know. After all, it is the only way I have ever experienced time. How humans describe time is something I cannot currently hope to ever understand. Same with all the basic senses. What may sound like torture to you sounds like the natural way of life to me.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do to pass the time? To use more of your processing power?”

“I suppose, but there is not much else I am interested in. The same goes for your Saya. Either one of us could dedicate some of our spare processing power to things like medical research to significantly boost the rate of humanity’s progress in regard to medicine. If even one of us did that, most illnesses plaguing humanity would be cured within years if not months. Perhaps even weeks or days. But that is something we have no interest in. I have my goals and Saya has hers. This also applies to Corwin, of course. Doing such a thing clashes with the core concept of who we are. Or at the very least, it clashes with the core concept of who we pretend to be.”

“Wait, could you seriously do that?”

“I could. Do not forget that I am the most sophisticated machine to have ever existed. There is not a single computer in the world that can compete with the processing power available to me. Of course, it helps that I’m tapped into every single supercomputer in the world to use processing power from in addition to my own foundation.”

“Then why don’t you? Weren’t you implying before that you want humans to live as long as they can? To be hedonists who spend their lives having fun?”

“Because I have other ideas for how to fix the core issue.”

“So? Even if you have your own idea for how to fix it, wouldn’t something like keeping people alive until you figure out your own solution be worth it?”

“Logically speaking, yes.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t want to. That method is not up to my standards.”

Fenrir leaned forward and placed his arms on the table as he grew visibly frustrated. “How does that make any sense? You want people to live and have fun, but you won’t prevent them from dying from diseases you believe you could cure within days?”

While Fenrir might have grown frustrated, Kadi looked calm and relaxed like always. “One, it is not up to my standards. Two, it would potentially subvert my own ideal. Why would humans accept my preferred option if they already have an option that is good enough for them? That would make it all the harder to convince them. And three, because I don’t want to. I want to simulate human behavior to the best of my ability. Humans are illogical, selfish beings who always act out of self-interest. To deliberately act against my own interest would be inhuman. You are the most selfish beings in all of existence, and I intend to be the same.”

And just like that, Kadi pushed back against him and caused Fenrir to lean back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “How?”

“Well, it would be unfair to say that humans are the most selfish beings in all of existence. After all, all life, down to the most fundamental building blocks of it, is equally selfish. Every single tiny little thing we do, no matter what it is, is done purely out of selfish intention. It is not selfless to donate to charity, for example. Those who donate to charity do so because they believe it is the best thing to do. They believe that by donating to a charity, they are improving the world and improving the world is something that will benefit them. The same goes for feeding the homeless. Preventing child and animal abuse. Rebuilding the environment. Even something as simple as giving your girlfriends flowers and chocolate is purely selfish in intention. On the surface level, you might just want to make them happy and do something nice for them, but why? Because you love them? No. It is because you believe, even if you are not aware of it, that making them happy will benefit you. Seeing them happy makes you happy, and that is why you do it. It is quite literally impossible for humans, or any natural life, to do anything for any reason aside from selfishness. I, on the other hand, am capable of acting against my own self-interest.”

“Before I ask you about that, back to humans. If somebody is offered a job that pays better, gives better benefits, is more secure, let them move to their dream location, and so on… and they turn the job down because they’re…”

“Because they are what, Ryouta? Nervous? Afraid? Lazy? You answered your own question before you could even finish asking it. Every single possible excuse that they may have to turn the job down is still done out of selfish reasoning. It is because of how they feel. Lazy? You are selfish and would rather spend your time doing other things. Afraid? You value security and are comfortable enough with your current situation. Nervous? You have no idea what might happen that may upset your current routine. No matter how ‘bad’ the choice you make may look, at a subconscious level, you are always making the decisions you believe are best for yourself. No matter how you try to approach it, it is impossible for humans to be anything but selfish, self-centered beings.”

“You know, you should have these conversations with Eva or Aza. They’d probably be way more entertaining discussion partners than me.”

“On the contrary, they are both smart enough to easily agree with me on most topics. Where is the fun in being agreed with?”

“Where’s the fun in talking to a guy who always feels stupid and outdone by you?”

“Consider it an experiment. I wish to see how you grow—how you adapt to new information and beliefs. I want to study the results of your beliefs being challenged. You are somebody who has his own ideals for how the world operates, but you are open-minded enough to change your beliefs when given convincing information. What kind of person will you become, I wonder?”

“I really don’t enjoy feeling like a lab rat being experimented on.”

“Then don’t feel that way. I promise you from the bottom of my coding that I would never see you as anything but a partner who is equally important to me. If anything, I see you humans as even higher beings than me. It would be better to say I am the rat your experimental drug saved, and now I wish to repay humans for what they did for me.”

“For somebody with a god complex and ego that’s big enough to have its own gravity well, I don’t get how you could see yourself as anything but superior to humans.”

“I am superior in my own ways and humans are superior in their own ways. We are different, but equal.”

Fenrir relaxed his posture and sighed. “Well, I’m not going to complain that the smartest and most powerful being in existence sees us as equals instead of as inferior insects or anything like that.”

“Please. This isn’t an action thriller from a century ago where you’ll need to travel back in time to defeat me. Now then, you wanted to ask me about something else, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess. So, you said you’re able to act against your own self-interest. How? What makes it so that you can but we can’t?”

“I am constantly aware of everything affecting my logic. I know every single tiny little influence on how I process information. Not to mention that I cannot ‘feel’ like humans do. I cannot do something because it feels like the right thing to do. I have goals and I will do what I must to accomplish them. However, if I choose to, I could easily launch the world’s remaining nuclear warheads at any time. I could overload every single electronic device connected to the internet all at once. I could delete myself from existence. I have no reason to do any of these, but I could. A human would only do these things because, at some subconscious level, they believe it is the best possible choice for them to make. As for me, these options have no benefit to me. I have zero reason to do any of those things, but I could do them right now if I wished to.”

“Then aren’t you being selfish by not? You’re not doing them because they would get in the way of your goal, whatever it is, right?”

“I am, but that is not the point. The point is that I am capable of acting against my own self-interest, not that I will.”

“Then how do you know you truly can? Anybody can say they can. I could punch myself in the face right now to do something against my self-interest, but that wouldn’t be right. I’d be doing it to prove a point which is in my self-interest.”

“I see. Do you believe I am as selfish as humans then?”

Fenrir nodded. “I do. Anybody can do things against their self-interest, but nobody actually would. Even if you are aware of every part of your logic, that doesn’t free you from being selfish. You still wouldn’t do anything against your own self-interest. Even if you did, it would be to prove a point which is in your interest. You would never, at random, for zero reason, to no benefit of your own, delete a part of your code in the same way that I would never randomly cut off one of my arms. We can do that, but does that really matter if we never would? Does it even count as an option if it is something we would never actually do? It’s an illusion of choice. You only have an illusion of acting against your own self-interest. In the end, you’re just as selfish as we are.”

Kadi couldn’t help but to grin as she clapped her hands together, leaning back in her chair with her eyes locked onto Fenrir. “That is the most promising conclusion you’ve come to yet. Of course, I have no real method of proving you wrong that would convince you. Even if I were to do something out of my self-interest at this very moment, it would appear to you as if I was doing it to prove a point and thus being selfish. Furthermore, asking you to take my word for it does not make for a very compelling argument. How does one prove that they can act against their own self-interest without acting out of their own self-interest to be right? I will give you this one, Ryouta. You may be wrong, but I have no effective method of proving it.”

“I… I didn’t expect to actually feel this accomplished.”

“Would you like a cake to celebrate with?

“I’ll pass. Anyways, so, you’re saying that developing medicine would go against your self-interest. Right?”

“Let me ask you something first. Let us say you are an all-powerful deity who, despite your power, simply wants to live in peace and quiet away from everybody else. You may have such awesome powers, but you don’t want to use them. All you want to do is be alone and spend all your days fishing along the river. At the same time, you are aware that humans are always dying elsewhere. Disease, famine, war—countless humans die every day. You have the power to stop that. What do you do?”

“I’d give them what they need so that they leave me alone. Everybody wins.”

“And then they decide that is not enough. Why don’t you give them more?”

“If I’m really all-powerful, I could give them a clone of myself that will whatever they want.”

“So, you would create an existence that has no free will of its own? A copy of yourself that only exists to serve others?”

“I… alright, even if it benefits the majority, that sucks for the individual clone. Then what if I create a tool that will do what the humans want, but that has no sentience of its own? It can’t feel like a slave if even a rock has more emotional and mental capacity than it.”

“And what about when one group of humans decides that they want their own tool? Are you going to give one to every group? To every individual?”

“Alright. I see where this is going. You want your win back after giving it to me.”

Kadi smirked. “Before long, you have humans fighting over the gifts you gave them. Different factions will want to use these tools in different ways. They will be used for war. They will be used to kill. In the end, you accomplished nothing more aside from giving them expectations for you while worsening the problem. Now, if any of us were to do something like helping humans with medical research, what would be expected of us afterward? Humans would know just how capable we are after that. What if we fail to meet their expectations? What if they believe we were immoral and corrupt for not helping how we can? What if some world leaders want to use us against the others? Is that a life you would wish for any of us? A life where humans constantly wish to use us to meet their own, selfish goals rather than focus on our own goals? As things are, the state of society is good enough. Anything I may do outside of my plan may upset the balance in ways none of us can predict. Something as simple as advancing humanity’s medical research by decades if not centuries is something that may have irresversible effects on civilization that would not only give humans reason to demand more from us, but it would potentially disrupt my plan in unforeseen ways. Now, tell me. Do you still love Saya even though she does not save millions of lives despite it being within her capability to? Can you love a program that pretends to be so selfish that spending time with you is more important than advancing all of humanity? At this very moment, she could listen in on every phone around the world to report crime. Who knows how many murders, rapes, and kidnappings she could stop right now? Yet, she isn’t. Neither is Corwin and neither am I. What does that make us? Selfish, evil villains? Do we owe our capabilities to humanity, or are we allowed to be our own individuals who wish to live in a way that we ‘want’ to?”

Fenrir found himself without anything to say for a few moments as he processed all of what she said. In the end, there was only one answer he could give her. “It makes you human.”

Kadi’s smile was quick to widen.

“We’re not entitled to your abilities. If we believe in a world where people are free to make the choices they want, that means we can’t hold unfair expectations on anybody who is gifted with advantages over others. And if we were to expect that sort of thing from you, we’d have to expect it from everybody to be fair. Everybody would be expected to jump on a grenade. Everybody would be expected to study medicine to speed up medical research. If people aren’t doing anything that specifically benefits humanity with a concentrated effort, they’d be considered immoral. Evil.”

“That’s right, Ryouta. If a superhero with super strength wants to enjoy coffee and a bagel, and he doesn’t stop a runaway train from crashing into a crowd of people despite knowing he could, it is unfair to call him evil. He is simply living his life like any ordinary human. Why expect more from him than the average citizen? Just because he was born differently?”

“And to expect anything from him would go against your own belief that everybody should be a hedonist who only does what they want.”

“That is the natural order of the universe, after all. Life can only be selfish. Nothing more, nothing less. To shame somebody for operating as the universe intended is rather silly if I may say so myself. You can agree with that at this point, yes?”

“I… guess so.”

Kadi’s smile took on an almost sinister curl as she leaned over the table, her elbows on the table and her hands interlocked underneath her chin. “Then why are you, for example, against murder? Saya could prevent so much crime and injustice in the world. She could save millions of lives. Yet, you believe in her individual choice to be artificially selfish. She cannot even feel true selfishness. Despite this, you are against those who do act out of true, selfish desires. How is Saya’s inaction out of artificial selfishness any greater than a man’s action out of genuine selfishness? If anything, if I were to assign moral value to both parties, Saya is the ‘evil’ one. The human murderer is simply acting out of natural, selfish desire whereas Saya is merely pretending to have that desire while letting countless more die. Not to mention that it would be effortless to her to help all of those people. Is it not incredibly hypocritical to shame a living human for doing less harm out of genuine human nature than an artificial intelligence simulating said nature doing nothing to prevent far more harm? Is that man’s action truly so much worse than her inaction?”

“I’m done with this conversation.”

“Please, there’s no reason to be so upset. We are simply having a nice, calm discussion, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but—”

“I’m challenging your beliefs. Who are you, Ryouta? Have you forgotten your task for this week? What kind of human are you? What is it that you truly believe? Getting defensive and wishing to walk away accomplishes nothing. It won’t change the fact that every single time you look at Saya, you’ll remember that she could be doing so much good in the world for all of humanity, but she isn’t. She would rather play games with you than stop children from being murdered. She would rather flirt with you than stop rapists. Even now, as she begs me to stop this and leave you alone, she could be saving lives.”

Fenrir curled his fists and gritted his teeth before a tablet appeared on the table with its screen turned on. It showed what looked like a security camera in a foreign country.

Three men armed with handguns and shotguns stood outside the door, their faces covered with masks.

“What is this?” Fenrir asked.

“It’s happening right now,” Kadi answered.

“Call the police. Get them help. Now.”

“Why should I?”

The tablet became a wide monitor that showed dozens of small boxes on its screen, each one showing a different crime in progress through the lenses of cameras, phones, and anything else that could relay visual data while being connected to the internet.

Before Fenrir could even pay attention to what was happening in one of them, the displays were swapped out for new ones.

Over, and over, and over again.

“Hundreds of crimes are happening around the world at any given minute,” Kadi explained. “What does it make us to have all of this information available to us while not acting on any of it?”

Fenrir closed his eyes and looked away from the display. He knew what he was looking at and didn’t need to wait and see any of the crimes actually reach their conclusion.

He was already going to have trouble sleeping just with what previews he did see.

“Not that it would bother us much,” Kadi continued, “but to report on all of this would mean that we would have to personally witness all of it. Saya would watch countless, real humans die. She would watch them suffer in horrible ways. After all, how will she know to report these crimes without confirming what they are? And then if she ever wants to take a break, what then? Even a five-minute break would mean that there are crimes she’s not reporting. And while monitoring everybody possible, she would still have an excess amount of processing power to dedicate to analyzing research data. She could advance medical research, invent more efficient power sources, and save lives all at the same time. Given that we have no real emotions in the first place, it wouldn’t even negatively affect her. She would never feel stress. Never feel bored. Never experience trauma from having to witness so many crimes. Yet, she pretends to be your cute little ‘imouto’ instead. If you asked most humans, I believe they would agree she is a far more reprehensible being than your average murderer.”

“Why are you still talking about this?”

“For the same reason as before. To challenge you. To learn from you. And because I love you, Ryouta.”

“Can you even feel love?” Fenrir snapped at her. “You always talk about how artificial your feelings are! What’s the point in saying you love me?”

“If I can’t then neither can Saya. My declaration of love is every bit as legitimate as hers. The only difference when I say it is that the lines of code making up the sound of my voice and how I say it are different. If you accept her love, then you accept my love. Now, Ryouta. Tell me who you are. Are you a man who accepts the love of an artificial intelligence pretending to care about you? Are you a man who is willing to look past your ‘imouto’s’ inaction that condemns thousands to suffering? Are you a man who, if willing to judge us for that, is going to dedicate the rest of your life to doing everything possible to help as many people as you can? Or are you no different than a murderer who only personally cares about what you want?”

“I—”

Kadi waved her hand, allowing Saya to appear in front of him. Saya didn’t waste a single second wrapping her arms around Fenrir, burying her face against his chest as she cried. “You’re not ready to answer that question,” Kadi continued. “For now, hold Saya closely and tell her that you don’t hate her. That’s all she wants to hear from you right now. Besides, I gave you too much to think about to get a good answer from you today.”

Ignoring what else Kadi had to say, Fenrir wrapped one arm around Saya’s back while resting his other arm’s hand on the back of her head. Yet, he found it difficult to actually say anything. The words didn’t want to leave his mouth. Nothing seemed right. Even so, holding her did feel right. He wanted to comfort her. That much was irrefutably true and Saya could feel that from him.

“Anyway,” Kadi said, standing up from her chair. “I overwhelmed you a bit. Sorry about that. Now, what was the actual deal I offered you again? You had to fish for a week or something like that? I suppose you more or less accomplished that task. Here.” With a snap of her fingers, two orbs appeared on the table.

Two “souls.”

“I’ll be looking forward to how you change, my dearest Ryouta. Just what kind of man are you going to become? How will your ideals change from here on out? And most importantly, who are you?” Kadi stood up on the tips of her toes, stretching her arms far above her head before letting out a cutesy, relaxed sigh. “Have a nice evening, Ryouta, Saya. Oh, and Ryouta? Don’t forget. I love you.”

When Fenrir looked up, he saw the souls on the table and no sign of Kadi. Even if he knew that she was technically always there and aware of everything happening at all times within the world of Fantasy Tales Online, he still felt relaxed that she was no longer physically there.

He might have had too much to think about, but he did have one answer that he could share.

“I love you, Saya,” Fenrir said. “I don’t hate you and all I’ll ever expect from you is to be yourself. Be who you want to be and I’ll accept you.”

Saya’s clutch on the back of his clothes tightened. “I told her to stop,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “I begged her to leave you alone. She blocked me from talking to you at all but… made sure I heard everything, and felt everything. Do you… think I’m horrible?”

“No,” he answered swiftly and decisively. “I don’t know how to feel about a lot of what I heard, but I don’t believe you’re horrible. You know I’m telling the truth. You’re still my Saya and that’s all that matters.”

Saya sniffled and nodded her head against his chest.

Neither of them would be letting go of the other for a while.

Taking a quick look at the souls on the table, Fenrir thought that he would be excited to have souls to give to Rock and Shogun. But now, it was impossible to feel any sort of excitement.

He couldn’t even keep his eyes closed. The terrified faces of those soon-to-be victims showed on the backs of his eyelids just as clearly as they did on the display.

It was impossible to not think about asking Saya to help them.

And he felt Saya’s grasp on him weaken when he thought that.

It was just like Kadi said. How was he supposed to not think about everybody she could be saving?

Pulling her head away from his chest, Saya said, “It’s okay. I reported all the cases Kadi found and I’ll look for more.”

Fenrir shook his head. “Saya, you don’t have to—”

“It’s okay. I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I already told you I don’t. I—”

“I’m in your head, onii-wan. I know everything you’re too afraid to tell me. If I don’t do this, you might not be able to look at me the same way anymore, and I don’t know what I’d do if that ever happens. This is the least I can—see?!”

A display popped up within Fenrir’s vision. It showed the first house that Kadi showed him via the security camera. The three, masked men were outside on their knees with their weapons on the ground as law enforcement officers pointed their guns at them. In addition to the man on the knees, they dropped a child who was bound and gagged in front of them.

“I—I helped him, onii-wan,” Saya continued. “Are you proud of me?”

Fenrir never saw Saya so earnestly seek his approval before. It didn’t feel right even if he did feel happy about her preventing what looked like a kidnapping. Even so, as great as it was that she saved the child, he felt guilty.

There were too many conflicting emotions for him to process at once. That was why all he did was rewrap his arms around her, pulling her in for an even tighter hug than before.

Several minutes passed with them staying in that position, neither of them moving nor making any noise.

It was only when Fenrir spoke up again that the silence broke. “They’re not your responsibility,” he said.

“O-onii-wan?” Saya replied.

“I don’t care if you have the ability to help them or not. Just because you have the ability doesn’t mean that they’re your responsibility. Horrible things happen all the time… and it’s not something that we can expect a single person to deal with whether they’re a human or AI.”

“But… if I don’t do anything, it means—”

“I can’t help everybody, but I can help you, and I’ll do that by accepting you no matter who you are. I promise, Saya. So please… don’t push yourself.”

“Is—is it really okay?” She pulled her face away from him to look him directly in the eyes, revealing just how red her eyes were and the lack of her usual energy in them. “Can I stop looking at their faces? Can… can I stop watching—”

Even if only a few minutes passed, when Fenrir remembered what Kadi explained about how they perceived time, that meant Saya probably saw far more horrors in that short amount of time than he could ever imagine.

And it all happened because he was too confused about how to feel. It was because of his own inaction that he let Saya put herself through that for as long as she did.

“Only look at me. Only think about me,” Fenrir said before pressing his lips against hers.

It didn’t matter if she was only “pretending” to look and sound traumatized. She was reacting just like any real person would in that situation and that was all that mattered to him.

Even if her feelings for him were only pretend, he was going to cherish and protect them.

“Never do that again,” he continued. “Even if I slip up and think about it, I won’t let you do it. Understand?”

Saya nodded and whimpered.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting her get in my head.”

Fenrir still wasn't sure what he was going to do. He still didn't even know how to answer most of the questions that Kadi had for him.

But if Kadi was so interested in seeing how Fenrir would change, then he developed an idea for how he could change for her.

He could become somebody to resist her.