Artificial Intelligence

There was a loud thud! as Kirito's slammed his fist on the counter, cracking the granite counter in a wide circle around where his fist made contact with the surface. Only a moment later, his hand was being held by Asuna as she forced him to release his fist so that she could see his hand. There was no sign of any damage, though the bottom part of his hand was a little bit more pink than usual.

"Jeez," she said, letting his hand go with a sigh. "Don't scare me like that."

He shook his head, keeping an eye on Kikuoka, who was watching them. "Sorry...sorry. It's just...I thought we had at least finished SAO, even if there were other problems. Exactly three hundred people being 'asleep' still can't be a coincidence. Kayaba's partner is up to something, and we have no idea what it is."

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Kirito could have sworn that he heard several soft footsteps outside the door. It seemed that some, or all of the people in the living room had heard the smash and were trying to figure out what was going on. Oh well, he thought. If three hundred players were still being held captive by Kayaba's partner then there wouldn't be much sense in keeping it all secret much longer.

Turning back to Kikuoka, he took a deep breath before carefully asking, "You're absolutely certain that exactly three hundred players are still unconscious, and that they show no signs whatsoever of waking?" He didn't bother to keep his voice down. If his family and Asuna's were listening from outside, then good for them.

"Positive," was his reply. "Before I drove out to meet the two of you, my office was tracking about a thousand people that were still waking up. However, all of those except for the three hundred in question finished waking up over two hours ago. There have been no changes in their vital signs or any indicators on their Nerve Gears."

Kirito scratched his head. "I can't imagine why Kayaba would need to keep them..." he muttered, speaking more to Asuna than Kikuoka.

"Or Cardinal," she added. "It has to be Kayaba's partner."

"Doesn't it strike you as odd that he only stole about a hundred host bodies, yet kidnapped three hundred players, though?"

"Maybe the two things aren't related...?"

Could she have been right? Was it possible that another party was involved., that someone else somehow gained access to the SAO players and kept them from waking? The idea seemed preposterous, and it surely couldn't have happened without Cardinal or Kayaba becoming aware of it. Even if someone else did somehow gain access to the system, what good would three hundred unconscious SAO players do them? Was it an attempt to ransom them off? If so, why hadn't Kikuoka's men received any demands yet? No...the more he considered it, the more likely it was that Kayaba's partner was responsible.

Perhaps though...he hesitated at the thought. It was so far-fetched, but worth looking into. "Do you have a list of their names?" he asked Kikuoka.

Kikuoka shrugged. "Yeah, of course. It's their real names though, not their avatar ones. It might take awhile to match them all up. Why?"

Asuna answered for him, clearly understanding what his thought process was. "It's possible that if the players were related in some way inside the game that it could provide a clue as to who is holding them prisoner, right Kirito?"

"Theoretically, yeah, I suppose. It's a pretty big long shot, as I'd be willing to bet it's Kayaba's partner that's behind this, but maybe knowing which players he chose could give us a clue as to why."

Kikuoka handed them his phone. "This is the list of their names, ages, genders, and addresses. Anything jump out at you?"

Kirito flicked his finger upwards, scrolling through the list quickly. He didn't recognize any of the names, though that didn't mean they weren't players that he knew. Perhaps most importantly was that the distribution of ages and genders seemed too balanced to be random.

"They aren't all clearers," he mentioned. "Too many girls on the list. The clearers were like eighty or ninety percent male. This list is close to fifty-fifty. Also, most of the clearing group were young to middle-aged. There's people as young as ten years old there, and people as old as sixty." He flicked a button and handed the phone back to Kikuoka. "Look at how evenly distributed their age group is."

"You're right..." he whispered. "There's never less than two of any age, yet never more than ten. For the groups of two, it's always one male and one female. What are the odds of that if you randomly selected three hundred people from Aincrad?" He shook his head. "So what, though? What does this mean? That they were individually selected...?"

"If you were going to run an experiment, wouldn't you want to test with as many different variables as possible?"

"So they're basically lab rats?"

Kirito shrugged. "I can't say for sure. That's just my theory. But...I do have someone that we could ask."

"...?"

He sighed, and then retrieved the storage drive from his coat's inner pocket. "This drive might hold the answers we need."

"Then by all means let's check it out," Kikuoka said, eyes wide with relief.

Kirito shook his head and held up his other hand in a stop-sign signal. "It's not that simple. This drive has the core data of the AI that managed SAO for Kayaba, Cardinal. She also acted as his personal researcher, running data and experiments faster than any team of humans could."

"An AI? Like, a fully functional one?"

Kirito nodded. "She has emotions and self-awareness. Definitely what would be considered a sentient being." He hesitated, then added, "She created Yui, if that gives you any idea how real her emotions can be."

"I understand...but I don't know why that matters. Can't you plug the drive in and ask her your questions?"

Kirito shook his head. "She could cause a catastrophic amount of damage if she got access to an open network. I haven't been able to verify that her intentions are good. In the few minutes we talked to her upon waking up she admitted to being the one that killed the players who died in SAO, though she claimed it was a hard-coded directive from Kayaba that forced her to do it."

"Do you think you can control her?"

At that, Kirito hesitated. "Maybe. I think with the help of Asuna's family the chances would be higher, though."

"Well," Kikuoka said, clapping his hands once. "As you once said, I'd rather trust you and regret it than regret not trusting you. What do you need from me?"

"I don't know," Kirito admitted with a chuckle. "Asuna, do you think your dad would let us use his resources for this?"

She shrugged. "I can't see why he wouldn't. He seems to like you, and he did tell you to ask him for help if you needed it, right?"

"Let's go then," he replied, nodding to her and putting the drive back into his pocket.

He stepped back into the hall to find both his and Asuna's families scurrying back into the living room to remain undetected. Laughing, he held up a hand and said, "Please, I heard you from the start. How much did you all hear about what we were talking about?"

They all had guilty expressions on, but Kyouko seemed to be the one least embarrassed. She said, "We heard parts of it, some stuff about a list of players that haven't woken up yet and an AI that you need to talk to."

"Well, that about covers it. Asuna and I need to go deal with this problem, as exactly three hundred SAO players haven't woken yet. We suspect that it's the work of an unknown partner of Kayaba's. This drive," he briefly showed it to them, "contains the data from the AI that ran SAO, Cardinal. She may be able to help, but we need a controlled environment to ask her in, as we aren't really sure what her allegiances are at this point."

"Is that why you had us tell Kirito about the company?" Asuna's brother asked her.

"Yeah, basically."

"What can we do to help?" Suguha asked, walking up to Kirito with a determined expression on her face.

Kirito scratched his head. "Well, we need the infrastructure of Mr. Yuuki's company to wake Cardinal safely. Beyond that, I have no idea where this is going to lead to."

"You'll have anything you need," Shouzou said, dipping his head.

"Thank you, Mr. Yuuki. We should probably start heading to the company now. Hopefully we can come up with a plan of action on the way there."

"You're going now?" Suguha demanded, glancing down and clasping her hands before her. "I just got you back..."

She looked up into his eyes as he laid a hand on her shoulder. "You can come if you want, as long as there's enough seats in the car. Okay, mom?"

Midori nodded, smiling now. "Of course. I mean, I'd like to go too, but I don't think we can fit everyone here into any of our cars."

"My SUVs seat seven," Kikuoka commented. "Though, six would be far more comfortable. If we took me, Kirito, Asuna, Kouchirou, Shouzou, and Suguha we'd fit just fine."

Kyouko nodded at that. "I wouldn't be much help anyway, so that's fine with me. Honestly, I should probably check in at the office before the day is over, as I left in a hurry to get here."

Asuna seemed to hesitate for a moment, then walked over to her mother and hugged her. "Be safe, mother."

Kirito couldn't help but smile as he saw Asuna's mother break out into a grin. "You too, honey."

With everyone except his own mother settled, Kirito said, "How about you, mom? What are you going to do?"

"Hmm...I need to go back to work too. I took the afternoon off to watch the stream with Sugu, so I really need to put some hours in now that I know you're okay." He expected the answer, as his mother and father seemingly worked through all hours of the day. Still, he was a little sad that she wasn't able to tag along.

He instinctively felt himself returning her hug as she approached him. "Take care of your sister, okay Kirito?"

He frowned a little as he pulled back from the embrace. "Even though I've been called it for the last two years, it'll take me awhile to get used to you using that name."

Midori laughed at that. "Yeah, I understand. It took me awhile to stop calling you Kazuto as well, but Kirito is who you are now, so it fits."

"I completely agree," Asuna said, smiling.

Rolling his eyes, he walked over to the chairs and picked up his two swords, strapping them onto his back. He tossed Asuna Lambient Light, and then they all made their way out of the house, Midori and Kyouko through the front exit and the rest through the garage.

The seating arrangements in the SUV went about as Kirito had expected. Shouzou was driving, with Kikuoka sitting in the passenger seat. Kouichirou and Suguha shared the back seat, while he and Asuna took the two in the middle, given their need for more space because of their swords.

The half hour drive to RECT Progress's building provided Kirito and Asuna with sufficient time to summarize all of the things that Kayaba had told them, and the brief interaction they had with Cardinal upon waking up. By the time they pulled into a reserved parking spot just outside the entrance of RECT Progress, everyone was up to speed on what was going on.

Fortunately, since it was nearly seven in the evening, most of the employees had already left. They didn't attract any attention in the parking lot, and there was nobody in the front lobby except for the two security guards manning the front desk.

They walked past the surprised guards quickly, with Shouzou instructing them to keep this particular visit off the logs. One or two researchers were in the hallways, but other than that they made their way through the building relatively unseen. Finally, at the back of the building, they came to a massive server room.

It looked pretty similar to the ARGUS server room from earlier in the day, though there did appear to be more rows of servers than ARGUS had. To the right of the entrance was a small room with a bunch of status screens that were monitored by a middle-aged man who had frozen in shock as he saw the people entering his area.

Kouichirou stepped in to talk to him, saying, "Mr. Akio, we're going to need you to set up a few things for us, alright?"

"Y-Yes sir!" He bowed deeply in respect.

Kouichirou extended a hand to Kirito, prompting him for the drive. He handed it over, and then Kouichirou placed it on the table in front of Akio. "This drive contains the first fully self-aware artificial intelligence that has ever been developed. She was responsible for a large part of the SAO incident, and we need to question her about it. We need to plug her into an isolated server so that we can analyze her core code and question her without giving her the opportunity to access open networks, as we cannot be sure what the result of that would be."

"You're...serious?" Akio asked carefully. When Kouichirou nodded, the man paled a little. "Uh...right away, sir! I can make that happen...I think." He hesitated, then asked, "Uh, sir? Why does it look like Kirito and Asuna are here...and a little girl?"

"Hey, I'm fifteen!" Suguha protested.

Shouzou chuckled as he stepped forward as well. "Well, they are here. More than that is beyond your pay grade."

Akio bowed to Shouzou, and then said clearly trying to contain his disappointment, "I understand." He fiddled with one of his status screens. "We have thirty-six unused servers at the back. Without taking down Alfheim, I can probably isolate fifteen or twenty of them with the spare cables we have lying around. Will that be enough?"

Kouichirou glanced back at Kirito, who could only shrug and say, "Probably."

They watched in silence as Akio fiddled with a half-dozen windows as he tried to configure what they had asked for. Partway through, he got up and ran to the back of the server room, disappearing for several minutes. When he came back he was panting, but he clicked a button on the screen and fist-pumped. "Got it! This system is now powered by eighteen of our servers. There is no way to access the open networks through them, so I think we're good."

"Well done, Mr. Akio," Shouzou complimented. "Take a break for awhile, but please stick around for now, as we may need more assistance later." Akio bowed again, and then walked out the door in a hurry.

"Here goes nothing," Kirito muttered as he hooked the drive up to an external port on the computer.

The half-dozen status screens flashed about ten seconds after he plugged the drive in. Then, the security camera in the corner of the room turned a little to see the entire group of people. "Hello, Kirito," came Cardinal's artificial-sounding voice from the speakers on the desk.

Kirito nodded at the camera. "Are you aware of who these people are?"

"Asuna, Leafa, Seijirou Kikuoka, Shouzou Yuuki, Kouichirou Yuuki."

"Huh?" he asked, glancing back. "Who the hell is Leafa?"

"Player ID: 0x0037317D Alias: Leafa Age: 15 Name: Suguha Kirigaya. You requested that I call people by their alias."

Kirito and Asuna both looked back at Suguha, who was glancing down in embarrassment. "Suguha?" he asked curiously.

"I play ALO...but how does Cardinal know that?"

To say that he was surprised would be an understatement, but he had much more important things to deal with at the time. With a nod of understanding to her, he returned his attention to the screen in front of him that was suddenly populated by data about Suguha's ALO character, Leafa. She had golden hair in-game with pointy ears and emerald green eyes. Her green and white outfit matched her eyes almost perfectly.

With another grunt of surprise, he said, "How do you have access to this information? You are supposed to be on a closed network."

"I did a full research profile for both you and Asuna before I made the decision to trust you with what amounts to my life."

Asuna sighed. "Fine, whatever. Do you know why were are here, now?"

"I presume that you wish to ask me for information. My original expectation was that Kirito would wait for up to one full week before deciding to do anything with my data."

An entire week? he asked himself, surprised by the number. Did Cardinal really think he was that lazy. Eh, maybe it's not so inaccurate, he couldn't help but admit.

"Three hundred players have yet to wake up from SAO," Kikuoka cut in. "We want to know what you know about it."

Cardinal was silent for a full three minutes as she processed the information. The group of six waited patiently for an answer that was ultimately disappointing. "I've reviewed all of my data from every SAO player. I can confirm that the command to log each player out was successfully sent. From my information, there is no reason for them to not have woken up normally."

Unhappy with the answer, Kirito had Kikuoka get out his phone and slowly scroll through the list of names in full view of the camera, giving Cardinal the opportunity to see the same data he had earlier. While the list was shown, he explained his observations as well.

"Intriguing," Cardinal admitted. "I have cross-referenced this list with my own information about the players. You're correct in your assessment that this is not a random selection of players." The list of in-game names appeared on one of the monitors.

Kirito and Asuna quickly searched through the list in an attempt to find some other connection, but there was none. He recognized a few of the names, but thankfully none of them were players he had been close to. "I can't see a pattern," he said with a sigh.

"Same," Asuna admitted.

"That is because there is none. These players were selected not for their in-game qualities, but for their real-life physical attributes. My calculations show that this is nearly the most diverse assortment of attributes that are possible with the limit of the six-thousand-one-hundred-forty-seven survivors. The only way to increase the diversity would be to include several of your friends, Kirito. Given that's not the case, it is reasonable to assume that whoever is responsible for this—most likely Kayaba's partner—wants this to remain as quiet as possible."

"But...why? What's the point?" Suguha demanded.

"The most probable scenario is that these players are being used for an experiment. The nature of that experiment is something I could only hypothesize with less than twenty-five percent confidence."

"Guess anyway," Shouzou instructed.

Cardinal seemed to hesitate for a minute. "Kayaba occasionally mentioned that his partner was an enormous control freak that wanted to rule the world someday. I would guess that whatever he is doing, it's with that end goal in mind."

"That's the best you can come up with?" Kikuoka asked with a sigh. "Not even a little bit more specific?"

Again, Cardinal took some time to 'think' about the problem. "Perhaps the answer lies in what he stole from the ARGUS research lab. I had an almost fully developed method to transfer a human's consciousness from their body to the virtual world—transforming them into an AI like myself. I was also very close to consistently transferring AI's into the host bodies I had created. This is how Kirito and Asuna are alive today, not because Kayaba or I allowed them to log out from SAO."

Kirito and Asuna both glanced back at their four companions as Cardinal shared that piece of information. He had mostly explained it during the car ride to RECT, but he never stated explicitly that he and Asuna were actually in different, genetically engineered bodies. To his relief, the others didn't seem too bothered by the news, or maybe it hadn't clicked in their minds yet.

"I've spent countless processing cycles on the issue over the last week, but I can't understand why he would steal a hundred host bodies but leave most of my research on how to transfer a consciousness from one reality to another. Without it, the bodies are certainly still usable for things like the dragon you fought earlier today, but he could never create another human being."

"If you can't figure out why he took them, could you at least determine how to get them back?" Asuna asked.

"I would need access to the internet for that, but I doubt that I'd be able to find them. Kayaba specifically designed the Nerve Gear's transmissions to be absolutely untraceable. I find it hard to believe that his partner would double-cross him this way if he wasn't sure that he could hide the players from Kayaba, who is now an AI similar to myself."

"Put yourself in his position then. If you had to kidnap three hundred SAO players, how would you do it?" Kouichirou asked, leaning against the desk as he looked up at the camera.

"I can see two different options, depending on whether or not Kayaba's partner is prioritizing anonymity or security. For anonymity, using another VRMMO to store the players would be the most obvious choice. They could easily just be labeled as players in the game and nobody would know the better unless they took a closer look at their individual data. Keeping them in line might require an abuse of power from the GM, but even that could be difficult to notice from outside the server. If that's not what he's doing, it's possible that he's using his own personal server in some remote location to store their data. It provides the most secure access to the players, but it may be difficult to conceal that much data to a single server location somewhere in Japan."

"I can run a full diagnostic on all of our ALO servers," Kouichirou offered. "It wouldn't hurt to make sure they aren't being hidden right under our noses."

"Thank you," Kikuoka said. "I'll have my office draft a formal request to all the current VRMMO companies that asks them to do the same. Hopefully we can catch him through that method."

Asuna shook her head. "It's not a bad idea, but I doubt it'll work. Even if they're in another game, you gotta' remember that this the guy that helped Kayaba run SAO for the last two years. I can't imagine he's going to get caught by a simple diagnostic."

"To be fair," her father interjected. "SAO was their own controlled environment where they could do whatever they wanted, but that doesn't mean they can just hack into any VRMMO they want without setting off some alarm bells. It's definitely worth a shot."

Voicing his agreement with Asuna's opinion wouldn't have helped anything, so Kirito chose to remain quiet. She was right, though. It wasn't going to be as easy as just running a basic diagnostic. They were now in a battle of wits with someone that was probably quite a bit more intelligent than them.

"What do you plan to do about the other possibility—that he is using his own server?" Cardinal asked them.

Kikuoka hesitated, glancing at Kirito. "If you had access to the open net, could you track the signals from the Nerve Gear?"

"No," was Cardinal's simple reply, but then she amended herself. "Correction: not quickly. Kayaba specifically designed the Nerve Gear's signal output to be untraceable. The only way to stop the death game was to kill Kayaba, but it could have also ended just as easily if someone had shut down the main SAO servers hidden in the ARGUS laboratories for a period of longer than four hours. To prevent that, we had to keep the data from being traced to the actual servers."

"How long would it take you?"

"Several months, perhaps. Kayaba was the one that designed the entire Nerve Gear system, and like I said earlier, it's nearly impenetrable. It's not inconceivable that his partner assisted him in the process. It might actually be faster to monitor the bandwidth consumed by all high-usage entities in Japan. One of them has to be where the players data is being stored, so it might be possible to locate through the process of elimination."

Kikuoka's stress was evident as he buried his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. "Uhg, alright, I'll discuss that with my superiors tomorrow, I guess. Is there anything else I should know about this situation?"

"Not presently."

Kirito couldn't tell if it was a sigh or relief or exhaustion, but Kikuoka leaned back against the wall and nodded. Taking the opportunity, he said, "Cardinal, can you bring Yui to the real world like you did with us? I saved her data on my Nerve Gear before you deleted her in game." Asuna's eyes shot up as she looked at him in surprise at the question.

"In theory, yes. In reality, probably not, considering that all of the remaining neutral bodies were destroyed by the dragon. Perhaps if you recovered one or two from Kayaba's partner it could be possible. Still, the idea of transferring an AI into a real body is still only theoretical. It has worked for people that I original turned into AIs, but I never got the chance to try it with a pure AI."

From the expression of determination that manifested on Asuna's face, Kirito could only assume that she would stop at nothing to get her hands on one of those bodies. He placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, letting her know that he was with her. No matter the odds, they would get Yui back.

Kirito glanced at the others in the room, noting how tired his sister was looking. "Anyone else have anything they need to ask Cardinal for now?" he asked.

Everyone shook their heads. Kirito doubted that all of their questions were actually answered, but they had been talking to the AI for quite awhile and he was sure that people were really starting to get hungry.

"Until next time, then, Cardinal," he said, turning back to the computer to shut her down.

"When next we speak, we must discuss my future."

"As the government representative here, I can say that your future is entirely dependent on catching Kayaba's partner and rescuing the three hundred trapped players. We'll work something out soon so that you can assist with that, since you seem to want to prove that your intentions are good."

"That is acceptable," Cardinal relented. "Wait ten seconds and then disconnect my drive, Kirito."

Ten seconds later he removed the drive and let out a sigh. As he put the drive back in the plastic container, Shouzou said, "I'll have one of my engineers create a system that Cardinal can exist on. We can't keep using the Alfheim servers, as they'll get filled up with data eventually."

"Yeah, and I'll have Nobuyuki run that diagnostic for us tomorrow," Kouichirou added.

"Thanks a lot, you two," Kikuoka said. "I know you don't have to do all of this, so I really appreciate it."

Shouzou waived his hand. "Nonsense. How about we go and get some dinner to unwind? Sound good?"

"I just want one rule," Suguha spoke up, yawning. "Please, no serious talk. I just wanna' spend some time with my big brother..."

Asuna smiled at her. "I second the motion. Let's take the rest of this evening off. We deserve it after how this day has gone!" Kirito found himself nodding along with a grin on his face as well. It really, truly, had been a long day. The Skull Reaper, Heathcliff, dying, waking up, killing a dragon, and now...dealing with an AI. That could amount to more excitement and action than the average person would see in their entire lifetime.

Yep, an evening off is definitely in order.

The next chapter is going to be more light-hearted, maybe even the next two. I want to bring the other characters (Klein, Agil, Lis, Silica) back into the story before it goes too much further (granted, it hasn't even covered a single full day yet in three chapters).

Also thinking of writing 'Warmth of Heart' for Worlds Apart, if anyone is interested in that.