Chapter 1: Prologue
A loud bang resounded throughout the room.
"Court is now in session." Judge Hitowa said, before straightening his glasses and performing the repetitive task of reading the crime details that he had become accustomed to. "Akio Takao, you are charged with breaking and entering property, as well as more seriously illegally stealing character model data from Kayaba Akihiko. How do you plead?"
The defendant sat alone at his table, dressed in a grey shirt with a black tie, his black hair combed back neatly and his rectangular glasses resting on his face. The reason he sat alone was because he requested no lawyer, and it was clear he was willing to throw the case, judging from his relaxed posture.
"Guilty." He stated calmly.
The judge nodded, of course it was rare, even in the thirty years he had been a judge, for a man to throw a court case, but of course this meant either ulterior motives, he felt guilty...or he had already done what he wanted to do. Nevertheless, he leaned back in his chair and glanced at the opposite table. "Prosecution?"
The blonde haired lawyer stood up, his client not seated next to him. After all, it was only a few hours ago that he had launched his project: Sword Art Online, to the 1,000 selected beta testers, and it could be understood that he was currently a very busy, and even by now rich, man. "If it please the court, I would like to ask the defendant a few questions."
"Proceed." The judge nodded as Akio stood up and sat down in the single seat next to the towering man.
"Takao-san...when you were, arrested, it was discovered that all your online files, including personal information, had been deleted, and that recovery proved impossible...why did you do this? Where you trying to hide something? And why go to such lengths as deleting even recoverable data?" The lawyer pressed.
Akio simply shrugged. "There was no reason for me to have it anymore, and I didn't feel like sharing it."
"Can it be assumed, then, that this data was incriminating? Offensive? Possibly even dangerous?" Akio huffed at the annoying questions he had already been asked once before.
"Nothing of the sort." He replied. "All data was harmless and held no ill intent."
"I see." The lawyer said, though he was obviously still unconvinced. "And this...work, was doen by you and you alone? Without assistance."
"Yes." Akio replied simply.
The lawyer retracted his analytic gaze. After all, he had already pleaded guilty, so there was no point in dragging this out further. "I rest my case your honour." And so the two individuals returned to their original seats.
"The jury will now vote on the decision." The judge said as the group of people walked out of the room.
Finally, with nobody interrogating him every few seconds, Akio leaned back in his chair and had time to think, or more rather reflect, on how he had come to this point...
Around about a year ago, Akio had begun work into A.I, a subject he had been fascinated in since his youth. He loved technology overall, taking all the correct courses and quickly moved into the advanced studies, it was clear that he was gifted in this aspect. He had managed to get a sustainable job as an I.T technician, but now he wanted to aim high, actually achieve something.
He wanted to create a conscious, living, A.I.
Of course, that was no easy feat. He had to start with the most basic programming: commands and codes to respond to, but it also had to extend beyond that, to be able to create its own responses, to adapt and learn to respond, it was a complicated process, but one which he nonetheless aimed for.
Eventually he managed to get to a point of creating an A.I which responded effectively to all its given commands, and it was at that point that Akio was conacted by an old college friend of his; Miyoko Yumi. She had attended some classes with him and they had stayed good friends, so Akio took up the offer for drinks, and they met up the next day.
"So that's what you've been studying?" Akio asked.
"Yep." Miyoko confirmed with a smile. "I'm really confident in this Akio! I'm sure I can get it to work!"
"Of course you will, your a genius after all." The two laughed at his good humour as he downed a glass a sake, taking the time to think about his own project. With Miyoko's own study relating so closely to his, he was sure he could trust a good friend to tell his project to...also, it was kind of seperating to work on it alone. "Hey, Miyoko, can I show you something?"
He led her back to his house and showed her what progress he'd made, the basic codes, foundations and such.
"You really think you can do this?" She asked.
"I dunno." He admitted. "But I...I, feel...that I can do this. Does that make sense?"
"Guess so." She laughed. "Akio, if you think you can do it, then I'm on board, I've already started the basics of mine."
"Really? Tha-that would be amazing!" Akio smiled. "If I can really do this...h-here, I'll give you my number. It's a secure line?"
"Secure?" She echoed.
"Yeah...truth is, I don't want anybody to find out I'm working on this until it's complete. Trust me, there are bastards who'll copy whatever you try to do if you leak info on it...I-I mean, that doesn't make it...shit." He cursed in exasperation.
"Don't worry, I get it." She said as she saved the number. "This could really work."
"I really hope so, Miyoko." Akio admitted.
After weeks of studying, replanning and tweaking, Akio finally had a group of codes he was confident in, and this time gave it no command response triggers, now it was just a case of typing in codes until there was a response...if any. It was late one night when Akio was mindlessly tapping codes and entering them when he noticed something.
"What the...?" It was a code of no more then three symbols, but it was in a different text colour; green, as opposed to Akio's endless red lines. "Holy crap! Gah!" In his shock he had stood up and banged his knee on his desk. "Ah! Fuck! Gaaahhh!" Stumbling around he fell to the floor before grasping his phone and hurriedly typing in numbers. He ran his hands through his hair erratically until she picked up.
"Akio?" Miyoko's voice groaned down the line. "Jesus, its three in the morning, what do you-"
"Miyoko!" He interrupted her. "I got a response."
"Holy shit! Really!?" She gasped down the line.
"Yes! Really!" He squealed like a little school girl. "This is seriously a major breakthrough! As long as I can keep the codes all working together-" He checked the computer for bugs in the A.I, but when he found none he sighed in relief. "-it can only go uphill from here!"
Over the next few weeks Akio constantly fed the A.I new codes. Sometimes it responded, sometimes it didn't, but the most noteworthy detail was the fact that the A.I would respond differently to the same code, which obviously made Akio ecstatic, and only a few weeks later, he once again contacted Miyoko.
"Hey!" He said. "The A.I's ready!"
"Already!? Are you serious?" She replied.
"Yeah, once you show me how it's done, I reckon it'll be complete." He grinned.
"That's wonderful! Oh, I just thought of something, does it have a model?"
at that, Akio froze. "A-A model?"
"Well...yeah. IIIII kinda need one to do this."
"Damnit." He cursed. "I didn't think of that."
"Sorry, but, I'm amateurish at best with models." She said guiltily.
"Nonono! It's not your fault." He replied hastily. "Don't worry, I'll...I'll post an add for a specialist in the paper or something, yeah?"
"Okay..." She said. "Just call if you need any help."
"I will. Thanks, Miyoko." He hung up and began working on an add.
A week after he started advertising, Akio still had no luck. "Are there really no model specialists? Ugh, but we're so close..." He sighed. "Maybe I'd have better luck online." He began searching around in the online department, but with no luck...that is until a colourful add caught his eye. "Huh? What's this?" He clicked o it, and the add enlargened into a poster with the words: 'COMING SOON: Sword Art Online!' bolded on the front.
"Oh yeah, this has been all over the news lately..." Akio thought aloud as he read up on it, whistling to himself. "Wow, this guys got some impressive technological skills." He kept reading until he came to the statement: 'Fully changeable realistic character models!', and he jumped in his seat. "I never thought I'd say this, but thank you internet adds! I need to contact this guy, hopefully he won't be too busy..."
He checked the poster, then went to Kayaba Akihiko main site page, but there was no contact details of any kind. "C'mon!" Akio huffed. "Sheesh, this guy is private!" He was so close to completion, that he couldn't bare to wait another second! "...Wait..." Cautiously, he copied the site's address onto his main computer, and proceeded to hack it. "Pleasebethere, pleasebethere, pleasebe-yes!" He entered through the virtual backdoor and into the man's main database. "Okay, okay, I'm in...now what? Do I send him a message? No! He'll think I'm a creepy stalker and trace this back!...Let's see!" He scanned through various files until he came to one named 'CC'. "Character Customization, of course." he clicked on the file and it instantly brought up an abundance of data on the character models, and even the complete customization menu. "This is it! This is iiiiiiit!"
He then realised something. "Wait, what am I doing!? I'm invading this guys data! This is bad! Ohhhhh so very bad!" He looked back at the screen, the answer to all his problems sitting in 0's and 1's in front of him. Just the sight of it forced him into a tough internal debate, and after a while, he sighed in defeat. "Okay...I'll just copy the data, then close, and delete the link. It'll be like I was never even here." He quickly got to work, copying and downloading the data onto his own hardrive before closing it and deleting the link. "yes! Oh my god, yes! I did it! With this I can do it!"
Unfortunately, Kayaba Akihiko later found out about all this, and he was not happy.
However for Akio, he quickly created a character model with the easy-to-use system and downloaded his A.I into it, a careful process to preserve the precious code, but it worked nonetheless and he quickly phoned Miyoko "Hey! I got a character model, ad just finished downloading the A.I!"
"Oh my god! No way!" She laughed. "Can you send me a picture?"
"Sure!" He screenshot the model and emailed it to her.
"Oh! They did a really good job!" She beamed. "So you made it a boy, huh?"
"Oh, w-well, if you want it to be a girl then-"
"Oh no, it's fine! I really like him...hey, we should give him a name. Now that he has a face and everything."
"Good idea!...Uh...any ideas?"
"Hmmm...how about..." Suddenly Akio got an email from her, and he opened it to see a name typed out, with the meaning of it underneath.
"Ohhhh! I get it, clever! really like it."
"Great! So...you gonna send it-oh wait...HIM, over now?"
"Sorry." He chuckled. "Now that he's got a model, I've gotta make sure everything syncs up and that he can use it properly. BUT! One everything's in order, I'll transfer it over to you, and we an start working on verbal communication!"
"Brilliant! This is really, really, brilliant!" She sighed down the line "Akio...sorry, for not saying this earlier but...well done. You've done an amazing thing."
He smiled. "Thank you, Miyoko, I'm so glad I told you about this...I'll call you once everything's ready, yeah?"
"You'd better." She laughed. "...Bye, Akio."
"...Bye Miyoko." And so they hung up, and he got to work.
It was late into the night a few days later, and Akio was still working hard, so close to completion, watching what he had created come to life before his eyes. He had been hesitant to use this word until now, but he could finally say he was...proud. proud not only of himself, but also proud of the little A.I who'd come so far.
However...this happy conclusion was ruined when there was a bang at Akio's door. "Akio Takao! This is the police! Open up!"
"Shit!" Akio cursed. He would be lying if he didn't say that this was a major fear of his, that people would break down his door and destroy his data. Thankfully, he was smart enough to have a plan. He rushed over to his computer and quickly brought up his A.I's model.
"Be strong..." He whispered as he pressed a key, and the model faded into a network line.
"Send Successful." His computer beeped.
The banging was intensifying, and it was clear they were breaking down the door. 'I have no choice!' He quickly brought up his menu and typed in a code only he knew, bringing up a red warning message that read: 'Are you sure?' With a yes or no selection.
The door burst open as he clicked yes. And from that one click, all his work, all his data, his backups, his backups backups, his recovery discs, the recovery routes, everything that he had created for the past year, was deleted. and his hardrive fizzled out as its core burnt, and Akio was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.
And that was how he found himself here. In court. With no judge. Being questioned. With the jury walking back into the room.
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" The judge asked.
"We find the defendant guilty as charged." A man spoke.
The judge nodded. "Akio Takao, you have been found guilty of the crimes put forward. As such, you will spend up to ten years in prison to atone for your crimes." He banged his gavel. "Court Adjourned."
Akio allowed himself to be handcuffed, stood up, and led out of the room. Because he didn't care. Because Miyoko hadn't been dragged into this. And the A.I that they had created together was safe.
Because Akio had downloaded him onto Sword Art Online.
Hello! Nice to meet you, SAO readers! I've decided to start a story on it, because, it combines the two things I love most! Videogames, and Anime/Manga! It's a match made in heaven!
Anyway, this prologue is really a 'test' chapter, to see if anyone will actually read it, and if you guys enjoy it! Please, if you want me to keep writing, or just delete this story, leave a comment on what you like/hate so far! It will really help!
Overall though, thank you so much for reading! And, hopefully, I will see you all next chapter!