Who are you, exactly?

On a cliff in southern Japan were two girls. One of them was floating just above the edge of the cliff while the other was eyeing her with curiosity.

"You look kinda like Nagato Yuki," she said, "Also, judging from the fact that you appeared from nowhere, I suppose that you are the cause of Earth going to Hell for the last several months."

"I am the cyborg of planetary magnitude. My identifier is Anima. As a result of planetwide meteorite shower, Earth was covered by delirium. Its contact with this biosphere activated my processes. As a consequence I am currently the mind of Earth."

"Shouldn't you then be busy with important things, such as orbiting the Sun instead of talking with me? "

"You are Áviya, the necrophiliac witch. I am using only a small fraction of my power for communicating with you. You are the first tainted human who survived."

"I am not a human! " growled Áviya, "And dissecting corpses for fun hardly qualifies as necrophilia," she continued with a grin.

"I am using the consistent definitions. Philia means attraction."

"Actually I am the Sorceress of Pestilence. And only human would call this a taint. As far as I can tell, my powers have no drawbacks."

"Contact of a chemical biorg with delirium may result in significant increase of its concentration inside their body. In most cases it's removed by natural processes. But in some animals it forms an AI, which immediately and absolutely dominated by the mind of the biorg. This AI grants its host randomly created extraordinary abilities. This is the taint of delirium."

Áviya chuckled, "I have a feeling that as we talk the number of questions will increase exponentially. I already have about four. What are biorgs? What is your definition of cyborg? How can the taint be fatal? What is delirium? Where have you came from? "

"Biorg is organism created by evolution. Cyborg is organism designed to be able to function without needing to use death and reproduction. My source is the stellar system of the Creators 11 954 129 095 779 196 425 568 302 328 853 108 961 754 695 667 426 784 Planck lengths..."

"Stop," interrupted Áviya. "I think you should limit yourself to accuracy within one percent like '12.0 octilliard Planck lengths'. Also, it's dumb to measure intergalactic distance in Planck lengths, it's impossible to achieve such precision."

"This number was accurate in the moment I finished its output. Delirium was created as material for cyborgs active in chemical biospheres outside stellar system. I and my siblings was sent in random direction. Because of attraction of delirium to chemical biorgs, each of us was supposed to arrive to chemical biosphere and contact it. Most of tainted humans died from tumours created when they tried to increase size of one of their organs, other ripped their bodies apart, thirds from collision with obstacle while running..."

"I got the idea," said Áviya. "But wouldn't human collapse from exhaustion before achieving lethal speed? "

"Delirium uses sources of energy and momentum other than chemical"

"Like what? "

"It would take 67.2 octillion Planck times to explain this to you."

"Oh, I get it. The Creators are sufficiently advanced aliens."

"Their technology is very different from the one here."

"So, I suppose we are going to have danmaku duel now."

"Danmaku duel..." said Anima, as if entering a search query. Suddenly, her voice changed: "Soon you will be behind my barriers, there within, is neither night nor day! The edges of my barriers cannot be found! Barrier: 'Boundary of Life and Death! ' "

Various danmaku bullets floated in all direction, passing harmlessly through Áviya.

"Well, this is disappointing," she said.

"It is ineffective to fight using visual hallucinations," said Anima, returning to her normal voice.

"So, what was this 'channelling Yukari' thing about? " asked Áviya.

"I drew extra attention to most powerful danmaku attack. Such actions could have some side effect. For example, when I was analysing demons, I found out that they should be properly labelled as half-demons since their qualities are preserved when mating with humans. Demon phenotype is apparently determined by mutated version of X chromosome, which include such trait as suppression of SRY gene and rejection of implantation of blastocyst with XX karyotype. I have done this analysis in Central Africa. They exist there now."

"You can create living being from scratch? " asked Áviya sceptically.

"It's possible to create biorg without working brain. But working brain has signal-to-noise ratio too low for accurate synthesis. I merely converted some humans into half-demons and made it so as if they were born half-demons."

"Including brainwashing? "

"Low coherency of human mind makes it's practically impossible to control. Collective consciousness of group of humans is much more coherent, so it's possible to edit it. Human minds will then construct consistent picture by themselves."

"So you can't read my mind, are you? "

"Reading your mind is easy. It's impossible to extract coherent information from it."

"I always knew I am special! " said Áviya with a grin.

"You are just an ordinary tainted human."

"I already said that I am not a human! Anyway, what are my powers exactly? "

"You already know this."

"No, I only have empirical model. For example, I know that my body contain about five tons of bacteria, but it doesn't seem to affect my inertial or gravitational parameters for some reason"

"Massive particles was converted to their massless counterparts and rotates out of three-dimensional space you perceive."

"Even if they are massless I still have to exert force on them to change their momentum and they should move at the speed of light, which is a little faster than my maximal speed."

"Your misunderstanding is caused by the limits of your knowledge. Any local theory isn't even close to describing those particles."

Áviya picked a green crystal about ten centimeters long and one centimeter in diameter. "Can I do something interesting with this sample of delirium? " she asked.

"It can be activated by some species of bacteria."

Áviya licked the crystal. As soon as it touched her tongue it started to leave a green line after itself when moved. Áviya carefully moved her mouth away from the line and focused her attention on the crystal.

"Okay, I'm going to determine which one is it by removing them one by one. Is it this one? " she moved the crystal. "No. This one? " another movement. "No. This one? .."

This continued for about a minute until the crystal stopped producing its special effects. "I got you! " exclaimed Áviya. "It is very unusual bacterium. It doesn't even have a scientific name," she said thoughtfully.

Zigzagging green line hung in the air.

"So, what goes next? " asked Áviya.

"Pressure will trigger execution."

Áviya squeezed the crystal. Immediately green line disappeared and, after a few seconds, electric arc appeared between its ending points.

"I guess voltage is proportional to amount of time I am squeezing delirium crystal."

"It's correct. But it isn't crystal, delirium is a continuous state of matter, it isn't composed of discrete particles."

"But... Dammit, I wish you were from nearby star system, so I could understand how everything works. Is it only good for electrocuting and producing infinite energy? "

"Effect depends on the form of the line. Cross shape cancels the effect. I will disable this avatar now," said Anima disappearing.

"Hey! I am not out of questions! " angrily demanded Áviya.

She crossed out the electric arc and looked at the shard of delirium in her hand. "[English]Hmm..., it almost says: 'Handheld laser,' " her grin widened and she went in the direction of the nearest town.

Elsewhere:

"Say, Yukari."

"Yes? "

"Why is there a desert behind my shrine?! Isn't the Hakurei Barrier supposed to be there?! "

"Oh, that. Don't worry Reimu. The Barrier is still there, it just became permeable."

End of elsewhere

A few hours later Áviya was walking in a back alley of a town and encountered two men who walked unsteadily.

"Look, buddy, a pretty girl," said one of them slurring words.

"What have we here? A pair of test subjects? " said Áviya

"It's even better: she is a gaijin! " said the other one and grabbed Áviya's right elbow. "Kiss me, pretty girl."

Áviya laughed mockingly and second later he fell down choking. Then the same happened on the first man.

"Normally, I would take the infection back," said Áviya, while they were lying down trying to breath, "But since you are just worthless drunkards, I'll leave you here with it to die within a day."

She had turned to leave but slapped herself on the forehead. "I almost forgot! " She walked to the nearest man, took a shard of delirium out of her pocket and connected his right thumb with his left foot with zigzagging green line. Then she rose up and pressed on the shard with her index finger. After few seconds the man started to scream. Then smoke rose from his body. Then screaming stopped. Áviya continued pressing for about a minute after that.

"[English]Interesting... I hoped he would burst into flames," she looked around. "[English]So, one was electrocuted and another left as a control group." She turned and called cheerfully over her shoulder, "Die painfully, human! " And she walked away, laughing.

Fragment from Anima's log 381

This log is intended to be read by humans. As such it includes only explanations that can be understood by humans. For this reason numerical parameters in it is mostly replaced by verbal description of magnitude. Furthermore, profiles of notable biorgs include description generated by an algorithm based on analysis of human fiction. It has several flaws supposedly caused by the flaws in human perception. These flaws are: neglect of non-visual information such as electromagnetic fields, density distribution, biochemical deviations from norm and others (full list in log 768), unnecessary attention to size of mammary glands of female humans instead of providing parameters for each cross section (as done in logs intended for cyborgs (full list in log 294)), limited information about spectrum of electromagnetic radiation reflected from various body parts and others (full list in log 768).

End of fragment

Fragment from Anima's log 381

Name: Áviya ['aːvija].

Type: Human, tainted.

Age: 23.

Sex: Female.

Abilities:

1. Normal human abilities.

2. Immune system enhanced by delirium-based AI allows quick destruction of foreign agents, conscious control of prokaryotes and assimilation of transplanted human tissue.

3. Ability to break and restore connections between cells in animal tissues she touches without triggering apoptosis.

Weaknesses:

1. Normal human weaknesses, except those neutralised by her abilities.

2. Absence of olfactory perception makes her more vulnerable to the poisonous chemicals.

Description: She is slightly taller than average. She has ordinary grey eyes. Her mostly dark brown hair is straight and reaches her shoulders. Two symmetrical red stripes of hair are framing her face. Her face is average for a human female of Caucasian physical type. However, no one who have interacted with her will fail to recognise her, because of her constant mad grin which shows teeth slightly sharper than normal. Her breasts are just big enough to barely serve as secondary sexual characteristic when she is dressed and only her upper torso is visible. Overall, she has somewhat tomboyish figure. She usually wears a grey long-sleeved t-shirt, a black sweater vest, a dark grey medium-length skirt, thick opaque grey tights, black socks, black featureless loafers, a backpack and black gloves.

End of fragment