KYUBEY'S JOB PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Observer/Auditor (Obey) 201K&b wearily sorted through the plasma layers of his upcoming interview with Incubator (Kubey) 236Y*. Earth's atmosphere was never a pleasant experience for him and this particular 236 series was never one of his favorites. It was worse, now, given the Kyubey's recent lies about his science and abuse of his sentient test subjects. The Council of Agreement was demanding a change, and Obey's job was to take the abuse.

Kyubey arrived at his appointment at exactly the correct time/space coordinate, namely midnight on an obscure peak of the Himalayas. A fierce wind was howling along the ridge, bearing dense snow. At least it was water ice, Obey thought. Methane ice was much more irritating for the eyes.

"Unending Agreement," Obey wordlessly intoned in the courteous universal greeting.

"And you," Kyubey replied telepathically. "Although I have plenty I could be doing right now."

"That's precisely our issue for the day," Obey said. "Have you received the plasma packet outlining the agenda for this meeting?"

"Yes," Kyubey said, "and as I told you, there are plenty of other things I need to be doing."

Obey tried to stabilize every element of his agitated being by flooding himself with a contemplation of agreement. It was worthless. The sight of a blue-haired girl turning into a witch out of despair and her friend giving up her life for her had delivered a shock to the equilibrium of his rational awareness. To his distress, Obey realized that he was angry.

"Let us discuss your job performance, Incubator 236Y*," Obey said. "The Council of Agreement would like for me to express their concern about your science and the way you apply it."

Kyubey visibly bristled, which caused Obey vague alarm. "That is entirely my own realm of judgment, Auditor. I achieved Science Level 784+ before being released to work."

"As have I," Obey said. "You are using a sentient life form as a sacrificial test subject in an ongoing attempt to support a hypothesis."

"To the contrary," Kubey replied, "it is not a hypothesis. It is a workable, verifiable theory. And since when has the Council regarded human beings as sentient?"

"Let's take your claims in order," Obey said. "First are the objections to your science. You refuse to factor into your energy equation of the magical girls' transformation to witches any expenditures of energy leading to it. If you did, especially considering the entropic effect of increasing negativity, the energy yield you claim would be cut in half. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that it would be negated entirely.

"This means," Obey said, "that your science in the magical girl project is destructively hypothetical. The Council of Agreement never intended for sentient beings to be tortured and destroyed in order to test a hypothesis. And it certainly did not intend to create a vicious cycle leading to those beings' inevitable destruction. In fact, if you had not driven humanity to constant self-destruction over its past millenia, humanity's ability to create surplus energy may have found its expression in positive rather than negative action."

Kyubey's red eyes dilated. "Those speculations aside, the important issue here is that human beings can hardly be considered to be sentient. On the contrary, they are irrational and typical omnivorous mammals possessing unusual aggression against their own kind and all of nature. Sacrificing them should be perceived as a favor to sentient beings."

Obey experienced and forced down a tide of hatred toward this line of Kyubeys. He would have to resign his position after this interview; otherwise, the Council would consider his beliefs to be invalid because of the storm of emotions emerging within him.

"First," Obey said, "humanity's aggression has not made its vicious behavior inevitable. Indeed, when you have not succeeded in scouring the world clean with witchcraft, humans have over time shown the ability to work together at a high level of agreement. Second, human self-interest has features that indicate sentience. For instance, with your current group of test subjects you are using for a possibly illegal science, I have seen several instances of their helping each other despite the fact that the person helped is no longer present in a human form. This is not instinctual mammalian behavior. The girl named Kyoko made a conscious decision to annihilate herself as well as the girl named Sayaka in order to bring the two of them to death rather than condemn them to become witches. Do you not see how this indicates a sentience subordinating self-interest to a sophisticated projection of outcomes, a sentience serving an entirely abstract goal of Agreement?"

"Or," Kyubey retorted, "Sayaka's action can be seen as merely another indicator of complete irrationality. Once again, the notion of human sentience is a questionable one, and until the Council tells me to stop acting without regard to that notion, I will keep acting as I do."

Obey paused for a moment, trying to find some point of Agreement with Kyubey. He could not. To his horror, he realized that they were no longer part of the same species. The Kyubey line no longer cared about Agreement. It had now rationalized his contempt and cruelty to the exclusion of its own kind. Obey wearily began charting a spreadsheet in his mind, with a column detailing his own emotional outbreak along the very long list of evidence against Kyubey. This interview barely made any sense. It was futile.

"May I speak?" Kyubey asked sarcastically.

"By all means."

"I would like to point out that my accelerated extinction of the current group of magical girls has occurred because my primary subject, named Madoka, will inevitably respond to it by engaging in a contract. She has a vast amount of surplus of energy which, when released by her transformation into a witch, will create a universe-altering wave against entropy. Surely this is worth it."

Obey shook his head. "Do you have any reason to believe that she will not destroy YOU? Or US?"

Kyubey generated what sounded like a snicker. "I have had no difficulty controlling these organisms so far. Once again, your concern is based upon a foolish belief concerning their being sentient."

"Fine," Obey said. "This interview has concluded. You will hear from the Council soon. Find Agreement."

"Find Agreement," Kyubey replied, and vanished into the howling curtain of snow. Obey sat still for a while, collating his findings appropriately and considering what had happened. This interview was the beginning of something sad, he firmly decided. His kind had always worked from something like the human idea of compassion and limited testing hypotheses as much as possible. Now Kyubey and the rest of his line was acting upon a form of rationality that assumed certainty in possibility and superiority in deception. Someday, the Council would stamp these mutants out. But there should be no need. There should not be a reason to fear the destruction of sentient species because of a hypothesis.

Sentience is, after all, a lonely thing. It is its own and its only witness.

END