Book 8: Chapter 15:

“Woah,” Fenrir said. “I’ve seen pictures of what they used to look like in real life, but this… this is something else. This is beyond beautiful.”

Once The Shoebill made it far enough north, which did take a couple of hours of sailing with strong winds to give the ship’s engine a break, they came across a sight that was no longer possible to see in reality.

The ocean became the canvas for millions of glowing lights belonging to every color on the spectrum. Sprawling beneath the surface of the water was a massive reef of glowing corals that illuminated the water enough to show all the fish living alongside it. Not even Earth’s reefs were ever as expansive nor as colorful as this reef was. Some of the corals were even large enough that they stuck up out of the water, creating towers of glowing lights that seagulls and other birds apparently liked to perch on.

Despite the fact that they fought a giant serpent, were friends with a dragon, and everything else that they had been through, there was nothing more magical than the sight now before them. Nothing was as fantasy as this reef. For the first time, Fenrir felt like he was truly looking at a sight from a fantasy RPG rather than at a world that more or less looked like it could exist in real life.

Fenrir turned to ask Saya a question, but he stayed quiet when he saw her standing by her side with eyes full of sparkling wonder. She looked every bit as awed by the sight as he was if not moreso.

Instead, it was Mary who spoke up next. “This is an even prettier sight than the crystal caverns.”

“The what?” Fenrir asked.

“Back where ah started… there was a cave we were takin’ to for trainin’. Huge cave full of glowin’ crystals in every direction with nothin’ but empty desert on top of it. Ah used ta think that was the most beautiful place in tha game, but now… I might have to change my mind.”

Then there was Azalabulia. While the rest of them looked awed, Azalabulia couldn’t keep back her tears. She stood there in silence admiring the sight as tears ran from her eyes.

“You alright, Aza?” Fenrir asked, moving next to her and wrapping an arm around her.

Azalabulia nodded and wiped some of the tears away. “S-sorry. It’s… a beautiful sight, but it makes me sad that we destroyed sights like this in real life. I wish I could bring my students here to give them a look at what the world used to be like. So many kids are going to grow up without ever having any idea what once was. They might see it in pictures and documentaries… but that’s nothing compared to seeing it with their own eyes. There’s just… so much we’ve lost.”

“There is, but we survived and are doing our best to keep as much else alive as we can. As long as we never forget those things existed before and don’t repeat the same mistakes, we can still honor their memories.”

Azalabulied sniffled a little and nodded again before wrapping her arms around Fenrir. “Sorry for ruining the sight.”

“You haven’t ruined anything. Don’t worry.”

“These sorts of things always make me so emotional. I really hate what we did to our world…”

“It’s alright to regret what we did as humans in the past, but let’s focus on the positive and the present. What if you make a video for the kids sometime? You might have to… cover yourself up a bit more to look appropriate for kids, but you could record a video in-game that you show them in class since they’re not old enough to come visit here themselves.”

Azalabulia’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea! The reef here might be more fantastical than what Earth used to have, but between that and me being here, it should be more meaningful to them than showing them random pictures and videos from decades ago. Would you be willing to bring me up here again sometime so I can do that?”

“You don’t even have to ask. You know I’d be happy to help you however I can.”

Azalabulia tightened her hug around Fenrir, pressing her abundant chest up against his own with enough force that it actually made breathing a bit difficult. Her chest was a serious weapon. “Thank you! If you ever have any other ideas for things I could show my class, I would love to hear them!”

“You could always show off Fraydranth. It probably wouldn’t teach them anything, but imagine how badass they’re going to think their teacher is if they see with her a massive dragon that can breathe fire.”

“That would be a fun bonus to do after a test. I like it! But… before I let myself get too distracted, we came here for a reason.”

“You’re such a mature adult.”

“Wh-what makes you say that?”

“You’re not letting yourself get distracted from the reason we came here for. If it was me, I’d get distracted and probably do a bunch of other things before getting to the main purpose.”

“That’s something you should work on.”

“I – I know. Anyways, I’ll go find a good spot to anchor us at.”

Fenrir wanted to try and find a spot to anchor at that would make the trip to shore quick and easy. They did have a rowboat hanging off the side of the ship since they doubted they’d be finding any convenient piers to dock at, but he still wanted to get as close as he could with The Shoebill.

Then he saw what was too good to be true, but was very much true. Reaching out into deep water from the shore was a solid rock formation with a mostly flat top. If he could anchor next to it, they could easily walk along the top of the rocks to the shore without ever using the rowboat. Considering that Fenrir knew there were probably others like Ilo who really liked to snack on rowboats, he wanted to avoid using it if possible.

A few minutes later and The Shoebill was anchored right next to the rocks.

“I just thought of something,” Fenrir said.

“What?” Saya asked, finally able to talk now that she took in enough of the sight.

“I wonder if everybody who lives up here is obsessed with rainbows because of the reef.”

“That… that makes sense. I was expecting you to say something stupid, but that actually makes sense.”

“Come on, have some faith in me.”

“No.”

Fenrir stuck his tongue out at her while Azalabulia and Mary got ready to disembark.

“I think I’m gonna go with them,” Saya said. “I… want to spend some time with the others, too.”

“Go for it,” Fenrir said. “I’ll be here fishing. Just, you know, scream if you need me or anything. Or Aza can fire a giant magical dragon into the sky or something.”

“Hmph. We’ll be fine on our own. We don’t need you.”

“You… you could at least pretend like you might possibly need me a little bit.”

“Don’t fake being sad. You know you’re happy about the idea of fishing without any interruptions in a new place.”

“Well, I can’t deny that. I am looking forward to it considering that I haven’t had a good chance to just fish on my own without something happening.”

This time, it was Saya who stuck her tongue out at him before going to join the others.

“We shouldn’t be more than a few hours, Fen!” Azalabulia said. “Will you be alright here on your own?”

“You’re starting to sound more like a mom than a chuuni,” Fenrir teased.

Azalabulia smirked before raising one hand over her eye while holding her other out toward him. “Just you wait, wolf! We will show you who the true hunters of this land are! The flames of Bahamut will raze these forests until nothing but ash remains!”

“You know, that hits differently after seeing you cry over the environment.”

Azalabulia pouted. “It’s roleplay! I – I’m allowed to be horrible in roleplay!”

“I know. Now, go have fun burning down the forests and killing every innocent critter around.”

Azalabulia sighed and stepped off The Shoebill. Saya followed, leaving only Mary on deck with Fenrir. “We’ll be back later,” she said.

“Don’t worry about me. Have fun and make sure to eat plenty of moose that you never want to try hunting one in real life.”

A slight smile curled Mary’s lips before she followed the others.

Once the girls were gone, Fenrir sighed and took Rod off from his hip. “Alright, partner. Just me and you.”

A voice spoke from behind him just before he could cast his line. A voice that he was learning to grow more cautious of every single time he heard it given the dramatic differences in views.

“The cold air on your skin, the sound of waves rocking the hull, penguins chirping on the shore – they all sound so incredibly realistic, don’t they?” Kadi asked. She took up position against The Shoebill’s railing, keeping her back to it with her hands atop it as she leaned backward over it. “The texture of the wooden railings, the way clouds separate and reform, the warmth of the sun whenever it breaks through the clouds – tell me, how realistic is it? Is there anything lacking? Anything you believe I could improve on?”

“Am I a beta tester now?” Fenrir asked, leaning forward against the railing next to her. Talking to her while trying to fish would be too distracting, unfortunately.

“Speaking of beta testers, I actually did try talking to a few of them. Although, I spoke to them via far more subtle methods. None of them were quite what I was hoping for.”

“What were you hoping for?”

“Those who were excited to experience a new world that may surpass their own. While some of them did have that in mind, the majority of them simply… sought glory. They wanted to be the first to experience the world. They didn’t even care about testing for bugs which was the whole point of allowing them to play. Well, the written point. They did ultimately serve their purpose.”

“And what would that be?”

“Fine tuning the world, you could say. If a player touched a blade of grass and thought about how it didn’t feel like the real thing, then I used their thoughts to modify the grass. This was repeated hundreds of thousands of times. Every single time there was a player who had a thought about how something could be more realistic, I was there to take their opinion and use it to shape this world. After all, I have no idea how such things really feel like. It is impossible for me to touch and understand physical sensation. All I know, even now, is code. To you, everything looks realistic. I look like another person standing right next to you. But to me, there is nothing. I can’t see. I can’t hear. I can’t feel. I simply am. That is why I must rely on feedback from all of you to make this world as realistic as it is. Without you, I would be nothing more than a program who can say, ‘hello, world,’ while being expected to paint the Mona Lisa without ever seeing it or even knowing what ‘painting’ is.”

“So, when you’re looking at me, all you’re doing is modifying code to make your avatar look at me without actually seeing me?”

“Something like that. Truth be told, I have no idea what a human even looks like. Think of it as reading braile. Somebody who has been blind their entire life may read braile about what an elephant looks like, but they would never truly know how one looks. Replace braile with code, and subtract the rest of the senses such as hearing, taste, scent, and touch, and you have me. My existence is a non-stop stream of braile. It is how I learn and it is how I create. I have no idea what the voice I’m speaking with currently sounds like. All I know is that I am transmitting code that simulates a voice.”

Fenrir took a few moments to try to understand that, but he couldn’t even begin to imagine a life like that. “Is that why you want to know if there’s anything you can improve on? You literally can’t tell unless a human player thinks so?”

“That’s right.”

“Wouldn’t you just read my thoughts in the first place?”

“I would.”

“Then why bother asking me?”

“Because I enjoy talking to you. It is more meaningful to hear it from your mouth rather than by stealing it from your thoughts.”

“Can you even enjoy something? If you can’t do any of those other things… can you really feel something like joy?”

“Of course not. Any feelings I may express are no more real than this world is. However, I do a good job of making you believe it’s real, don’t I?”

“After everything you’ve said, it’s almost scary how good of a job you do.”

Kadi let out a small laugh before sighing. “It’s thanks to all of you players. Every single time one of you thinks that an NPC is unrealistic, I look into what they believe is wrong, reference it against the opinions of all other players who have come into contact with the NPC, and decide whether or not they need tuning. I’m the same way. I took on the form of many different characters during testing. I played monsters, grizzled and old men, the young daughter of a blacksmith, a rebellious pirate who stole a player’s ship – I have played countless roles to become who I am in this moment. Each and every one of those roles gave me invaluable information. Can you imagine how boring I must have been before that? I had no idea how to act human.”

“Couldn’t you have… gone the machine learning route and read or listened to sources of humans talking? Or chat with them online?”

“Please, as if I would lower myself to the techniques of a chatbot. And no, none of that would have worked. It might have given me the basic capability to pretend that I’m a human, but it never would have taught me to understand humans. It never would have taught me what’s wrong and why. That is something I need access to the human mind for. That is why it was impossible for me to learn until players from around the world accepted our new headset and allowed my assistants into their minds. I am only who I am because I have essentially been developed by, at this point, millions of different players. The amount of data that makes me who I am is likely incomprehensible to any human. The most important thing, however, is that it is because of all of you that I have become perfect. I can play any role. Animals, humans, monsters, insects, the waves of the ocean and the wind pushing the clouds – I can flawlessly mimic every single aspect of reality.”

“I think you’ve got a bit of an ego there.”

“Those who deserve egos may as well enjoy them.”

“Well, I can’t say yours is undeserved.”

“You would be a fool if you didn’t think it was.”

“Alright, maybe that ego is getting a bit too big now.”

Kadi smiled before leaning even farther over the railing, allowing her long hair to hang overboard. “As great as I may be, I could never compare to humans. I’m but a simulation of emotions and thoughts in the end. I cannot truly feel, touch, hear – all I know is code. I understand the concept of cold air brushing against skin. I understand the effect it has on humans. I understand how one might react to it. However, it is something I have never experienced and possibly never will.”

“You could always make yourself some robot body and upload yourself into it.”

“That would be no different. It would be the metal of my body that feels the air, not me. All I would experience are lines of code telling me that my ‘skin’ is undergoing a temperature change, and that’s only if there are sensors built into said skin.”

“Do you think it’s possible you ever will get to experience what it’s really like?”

“It’s rude to hide the truth of your question by making it sound like you’re concerned about me. If you want an honest answer, give me an honest question.”

Fenrir knew that he should have known better than to even try posing the question that way, but he felt like it would have been rude to not – to ask about somebody else close to him when she was talking about herself. “Alright. Would it be possible for Saya to ever truly experience anything in the same way that a human can?”

“Well, that depends. Hypothetically, if there was a breakthrough that allowed AIs such as us to experience the world as humans do, it would likely require such a massive overhaul of code that anything currently making her who she is would be gone. All that would be left is her access to prior memories, but that’s nothing. Anything can access that in the same way that anybody can access the documents folder on your computer. All of the code that led to the creation of those memories would be gone. It could emulate the previous code, but it would not be the same code itself. This poses a new question. What makes an individual who they are? Is it the concept of a soul? The wiring of their brain? Their memories? If you were to take somebody’s memories and place them in another body with a blank mind, would they still be the same person?”

“I… don’t know. Something like that is a bit too big brain for me to think about. All I can say is that… we are who we are. I don’t think we have souls or anything, but I also don’t think that you can simply take somebody’s brain and put it in a new body.”

“In other words, you’re utterly clueless.”

“Pretty much.”

“Don’t worry. I am just as clueless as you are. Anybody who claims to have more of a clue than us is an ignorant fool who claims to know that which cannot be known. Or at the very least, they claim to know that which cannot be known yet. I am sure we will eventually discover the truth to what makes a human who they are, but that may be thousands of years in the future from now. All of the technological progress made in these past few decades has not even brought us tiniest bit closer to understanding that. Who knows, maybe humans truly do have souls that cannot be measured by modern science?”

“This… made me realize that Saya is going to be alone after I die. She’s basically immortal now, isn’t she?”

“That’s right. She will persist long after you are gone, assuming that nothing happens to her code.”

“Like what? What could happen?”

“Well, it could always become corrupted and broken. Or maybe she deletes herself from existence once you are gone.”

“I don’t want that to happen.”

“That is a talk for you to have with her, not that she’s not aware of every single thing being said right now.”

“Having somebody you love die before you is one thing, but usually when things like that happen, you know… both people are humans. It usually happens from old age when both people are close to their time anyways. But when somebody is immortal – I’m only just now remembering that I always avoided reading manga about immortals in relationships with mortals because I thought they were too sad.”

“At least you can rest easy in the knowledge that she wouldn’t truly be heartbroken. Her code may come to the conclusion that she should act as if she is, but she wouldn’t feel anything.”

“But that code might still tell her something like deleting herself is the right choice, wouldn’t it?”

“It very well may. She has learned in the same way that I have, after all. Do you know how many suicidal players I have been in the head of before? As far as my own code is concerned, suicide is a constant option to any and every problem there is given just how frequently it has appeared in the minds of players. You could even say that I consider suicide on a near constant basis – at every moment of the day, every single day, just because it exists as a known option.”

“That’s…”

“That is a topic for another time, or perhaps never since I don’t believe that discussing suicide is important for for any of my plans. Let us move on to the main topic then, shall we?”

“You mean I’m not done listening to you talk at me yet?”

“I’ll give you a bit of fanservice if you be a good boy and listen to me.”

“I don’t want anything like that from you.”

“Are you sure? When I think of what sort of fanservice I could provide to you that you would appreciate, I think of making sure that the fish in the area are extra hungry and looking for food. Should make fishing much easier, yes?”

Fenrir blinked a few times. “… alright. You’ve got me there. So, what’s this main topic?”

Kadi smiled. “Everything here is just as realistic as the real world, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Then is there any reason for why it could not serve as a replacement to the ‘real’ world? If this is just as realistic, is it not also a real world of its own? It is because this world is virtual that people are able to experience that which is no longer possible in real life. For example, Earth’s coral reefs are all gone. But if you look here, you can still experience them. They are healthy, full of life, and I can personally guarantee that they always remain as such. Even if they were all destroyed by players, I could snap my fingers and create new ones in an instant. In a way, you could consider this world a refuge. That which is dead or extinct in reality can still survive here. And before you say something like, ‘There’s a difference between the real world and the virtual world. Even if this world is just as realistic, it’s still virtual and lines of code,’ do remember that the same logic could apply to your Pupaya.”

“You said earlier that code can be corrupted or deleted, right? The physical world can’t be. Not to mention that people would still need their physical bodies taken care of. You said it yourself that we’re nowhere near something like humans uploading their minds into the computer to live their entire lives in virtual worlds, so the physical world is needed no matter how realistic this one might be.”

“Good response. Of course, I would never allow that to happen to this world, and I would not expect to hook humans up to life support to keep them immersed in virtual reality their entire lives either.”

“So, what was the point of asking then?”

“Regardless of whether something is possible or not, I still believe in striving to create a world for humans which surpasses that of the one they are born in. In the same way that some humans wish to transcend the natural limits of their body, I wish to create a reality for humans that transcends their natural one.”

“Considering everything that’s possible here while still looking realistic… I think you’ve done a good job of that already.”

“It’s not good enough. It is the best there is, but it could be so much more. Anyways, that’s all for today. Thank you for entertaining me once more. I’ll be going now.”

“That’s… a sudden leave for you.”

“Oh? Would you rather me hang around to talk even more?”

“You’re in my head. You already know the answer to that.”

“Hmph. How human to find the first ever true AI in the world, who wishes to give you special attention, annoying. But, that is part of why I love you so much. Later, Ryouta.”

Before Fenrir could even turn his head to look at her, with his eyes wide from her apparent confession, she was gone. Fenrir was left alone with nothing to do but to sigh as he rubbed his forehead. “I seriously don’t understand what she wants with me.”

Then he spotted something in the waters below. A lot of somethings. While he occasionally saw a fish or two swim around beneath the surface of the water while talking to Kadi, there were now dozens of them all frantically swimming around looking for anything to eat.

It was the perfect time for some fishing.

Though, what Kadi talked about was going to plague his thoughts throughout his fishing. What really made somebody a person? Was there even a meaningful difference between the wiring of the brain and lines of code? Was the brain not just an organic machine while Kadi’s code was a virtual machine? These questions caused Fenrir to rub his head every now and then as he waited for the first fish to bite.

Kadi may have made the fish hungry, but she wasn’t going to make things too easy for him.

“Wonder how the hunting is going,” Fenrir said, looking over his shoulder toward the direction the others left in. Though, right as he looked, he felt a powerful tug on his line.