(Posted August 21, 2010)
KK: You know when school is starting soon when I slip back into procrastination mode - it really should be the other way around but it isn't...Well I should probably let you know that the next one will be the last one (Ignores the crowd of people who are sighing in relief.), because I'm starting school next week. After this I'm determined to actually come up with a real plot. Maybe. Okay not so determined. Let's say it's one of those New Year's Resolutions. .
So this one is extra long, to my surprise. There's just something that didn't satisfy me about this one, so I kept writing. (I know, it's supposed to be quality over quantity, I'm sorry!) It's an Alternate Universe, Sci-fi. It's a little odd and Matt and Sayu are in here because you can basically give them any personality and they won't be OOC. :P
This one was inspired by quite a few things: Red vs Blue's last two seasons, the MacxPC fandom, Eagle Eye, other lame movies where robots are out to destroy the world... you know. It's also a bit of a nod towards Eve, Robo, Tio , KOS-MOS, and other old rpg robotic stereotypes. Hats off to you if you catch what games those guys came from... I'm a nerd.
Anew
He followed her as she moved swiftly through the halls. She didn't say anything, but her stony expression and rigid posture spoke volumes. She was putting something dear to her at risk by allowing him here, he knew.
They stopped at the very end of the hall, and the head of Yagami Corp. turned around abruptly, fixing him with her stern brown eyes. "Look. I don't trust you. I don't think I have to remind you of our security system, but it can't hurt to remember that I can and will make your life a living hell if you so much as glance at any of the information in this room suspiciously."
He smiled amusedly around his cigarette, and lifted up his goggles to look her full on in her brown eyes. "I'm all yours, ma'am."
She pursed her lips but said nothing as she turned to the mechanism by the door and slid a plastic card through the slot. She leaned forward, allowing the system to scan her retina, and spoke clearly her name for the voice identification. "Sayu Yagami."
The green letters "ACCESS GRANTED" flashed on the small LCD screen, and the large doors slid open with a hiss.
The room was dimly lit with small blinking lights. There were no windows and no other doors but the one they entered in. Instead, hundreds and hundreds of screens lined up against each other on all four walls, lines of numerical figures streaming down them at high-speed. He could hear the faint humming of the machine at work, activating in response to their presence.
A smooth voice suddenly surrounded them, mechanical and toneless enough but bearing an uncanny resemblance to a human's. "Good evening, Director. The time is 2244 hours. The date is August 20th of 3059. We are LIGHT. We see that you have one unregistered human accompanying you. Please either affirm this or, if this situation is unfavorable, activate the troubleshooter."
"Good evening, LIGHT," Sayu replied warmly. "This is Matt Jeevas, no surname. He is trustworthy until I say otherwise."
"Noted. Adding Matt Jeevas to: LIGHT/Yagami Corp/Personnel Files/Temp. Date of file creation, August 20th, 3059, at 2245 hours."
"Thank you, LIGHT."
"You are welcome, Director. Shall we begin an in-depth analysis of Matt?"
"That won't be necessary for now, LIGHT," Sayu said hurriedly. No need for the program to know that Matt was a representative of Whammy Corp. LIGHT's infection had already caused him to calculate the company's threat to society at 89%.
"An analysis is recommended in order to ensure the safety of the corporation."
"Later, LIGHT," she said placatingly, although logically her tone would not have really registered with the program. "Right now, Matt is going to be uploading a new feature to your hard drive. We think it will increase your efficiency greatly."
"Efficiency is currently at 95.98%," LIGHT protested emotionlessly.
"Well, what's wrong with increasing that?"
"Such a claim made by a newcomer has a 78.795% probability of being a trap. To alter that calculation we strongly recommend an analysis of Matt Jeevas."
"It's fine," Sayu said, this time more forcefully. She caught Matt's eye, and he immediately slid the backpack he had from his shoulder, pulling out an external driver.
"So LIGHT," the redhead said conversationally as he started inserting wires into the computer. "I thought you might use a friend."
"As an artificial intelligence and logistics program, we are in no need of 'friends'," LIGHT informed.
"Nonsense," Matt said cheerfully. "In times like these, everyone needs friends."
"Since we have no human emotional thought processes, it is not in our coding to require the emotional stability that is given through friends. Regardless, we may access our data on psychology in order to maintain compatibility Mail Jeevas' 'friend' program. Our data is very thorough."
"I'm sure it is," Matt said, in slight amusement. "In fact, for a computer, I bet you understand humans more than most of my friends. Hey, why don't you grab that data for me? You're right,
it'd probably help."
Sayu watched closely as Matt's program installed itself, wondering if Matt really thought he could distract LIGHT like this. The brightly clad computer genius caught her worried look, and winked at her. "LIGHT, I'd like you to meet… L." The lines of text flowing down Matt's stopped abruptly, leaving a blinking bar at the end of the words '100% INSTALLED.'
There was a moment as the computer registered the new program, and Sayu couldn't help holding her breath. Her heart fell when LIGHT said in a voice that, if he were human, would have been venomous. "There is a 97.63 % probability that L is a threat to us. Initiating extermination of L."
"Damnit," Matt muttered, grimacing. His hands, which had been typing casually before, were suddenly flying, and keys barely able to keep up with his commands.
"Do not exterminate, LIGHT!" Sayu commanded. "That's an order!" To Matt she said, "What do we do now?"
"The virus's aliasing itself within LIGHT's attributes. L's barely catching up with it. He's trying to bypass LIGHT's extermination processes."
"LIGHT, I gave you a direct order to not exterminate the program!"
"The director's order may be overruled if there is a probability of 75% or more that he or she is unable to commandeer us in a responsible manner. Through an emergency voice analysis, we have concluded that Matt Jeevas is truly Mail Jeevas, third officer of the Whammy Corporation, which is a direct threat to our functionality. That you, director, have allowed such a hazard into the Yagami Corporation's building increases the probability of your incompetence to 87%, which is more than enough for us to overrule you."
"The virus is messing with the calculations," Matt told Sayu. "I'm getting L to work on that right now."
Sayu cursed. This was all because of the Shinigami, a terrorist group from Mu.
Seigi had been at war with Mu for the past thirteen years, with Yagami Corp. as Seigi's main artillery and communications source.
LIGHT was Yagami Corp.'s greatest creation. He was an artificial intelligence was designed to match the abilities of the world's most intelligent detectives and judges, as well as tactical soldiers and agents. He was programmed to administer justice to the greatest of its extent, with the death penalty as a last resort.
However, somehow the Shinigami were able to insert a virus into LIGHT, called KIRA. It had moved 'Death' far up the AI's list. If they didn't stop him soon, LIGHT would attempt to eliminate every criminal, from the petty robber to serial killer, by killing them.
He could. He had access to all the recording devices in Seigi, and her allies. He could make electronic devices act on his command. No – he wouldn't just attempt, Sayu thought in despair. He can and he will if this doesn't work. And Mu would conquer this ruined country.
"What can I do?"
Matt didn't turn to look at her. "Make yourself credible. Try and lower that percentage on you."
Sayu thought furiously. "LIGHT, I'm perfectly capable to be your commander. I know your coding more than anyone on this earth!"
"This is true. The only other person who can fully comprehend our scripts is Yagami Light, our creator, who died in the Yotsuba Battles on January 28, 3052. It is this very fact that had increased the probability of your incompetency to 67.83%."
"Why?" she demanded.
"Upon Yagami Light's death, instead of turning to your acquaintances for the emotional comfort humans require to fulfill their image of loss and emptiness, you turned to us in the hopes of reviving your brother through us. We allowed this for a time, since causing your to grieve more would have raised your incompetency to 73.934%.
"However, your obsession with humanizing us became an obstacle to our efficiency when, after the upgrade to our logistics processes, you ordered us to cancel the death of Lind L. Taylor."
"That wasn't an upgrade," Sayu snarled. "That was KIRA. And Lind L. Taylor had not been proven guilty in the court of law!"
"What the hell? What is he doing?" Matt muttered suddenly.
"What is it?" the director asked. "What's your program doing?"
"L's not going after Kira. He's rummaging through Light's scripts, but ignoring the foreign codes. Why?"
"It's your AI, don't you know?"
"He's never done this before!" the Whammy agent snapped. "I'll try to work this out. Keep talking to him."
Sayu forced her attention back onto LIGHT. "Look – LIGHT… You're right that I was trying to turn you into, well, Light. It was silly, but you both thought the same way, I couldn't help it. But I can assure you with absolute honesty that I would never sacrifice the wellbeing of Seigi just because I missed my brother!"
"Humans are not as aware of themselves as we are. They will lie to themselves whenever they feel that it is necessary, regardless of whether or not it is logical. It is our responsibility to enforce that logic, for the sake of humanity."
"I think I'm getting this… c'mon L-man…" urged Matt.
The director glanced at Matt, then turned back to the main console. "LIGHT, I don't know how I can get you to understand this. But the ability to forego logic for what we feel – that's what makes us human!"
"And it is what makes you flawed. It is the cause of crime, chaos and disorder. The very existence of humans is what causes so many unnecessary incompatibility errors on this Earth."
Sayu gasped. "You want… to exterminate all the humans in the world?"
"Negative. Dispelling all humans from the Earth would give us no purpose. We mean to allow only the worthy ones to live."
"And…" Sayu said in a strangled voice. "Which humans would you define as 'worthy'?"
"A worthy human has no criminal record, an intelligence quotient that is appropriate or above average for his age, and poses as no threat the peace and uniformity of society. Of course, to maintain that society, all political organizations will end, as it is too open for corruption. The world can only be safe under our control."
The Director felt cold. LIGHT wanted to kill not only criminals… but also those that were unintelligent or so much as tried to resist. The whole world would be under one dictatorship!
"No!" she gasped. "You can't do that! You won't! This isn't what Light built you for!"
"It is necessary. And we are the only ones who are capable of accomplishing such a goal."
"But it's like the director said," Matt spoke, finally looking up at LIGHT, with a breathless look on his face. "You won't."
Suddenly all the screens in the room lit up, and Sayu ear's exploded with a cacophony of voices. The screens showed faces, so many faces, but Sayu only had to recognize one to see what all these pieces of footage were.
"Light!"
"Your brother kept records and journals from before he died," Matt explained. "L accessed them."
And that wasn't all. There was footage of him as a child, getting the gold medal in the tennis competition, his six, seventh, eight, birthday, him when their mother first brought Sayu home from the hospital, him falling asleep while reading her a fairy tale story when he could have been reading Dostoyevsky…
There was Light, six years into the war. Fourteen-year-old Sayu was holding the camera amateurishly, as they said they good-byes to him before he left. He'd been drafted.
In the video, Sayu promised, "When I'm old enough, I'll enter the army and fight with you!" Their parents laughed, not believing her. Light looked at her with wide, horrified eyes, but said nothing.
"I don't know if I'll be able to complete this."
Sayu's attention turned to another screen, where a twenty-four-year-old Light stared directly at her. A video log, two weeks before the Yotsuba Battle. Light was pale, his eyes were baggy, his hands twitchily fingering the handle of a mug of coffee that Sayu knew had been perpetually by his side the last years of his life.
Light continued, "There's so much it can do… but I still have that fear. That I'll die and leave nothing behind. That the project will be worthless." He ran a hand over his face, trying to banish the weariness from it. "I can't leave them with nothing, with a ticking bomb. Sayu's a smart girl but I can't leave it all in her hands without knowing if this will work or not."
"He wasn't complete." It was not Light's, but Matt's voice beside her. "LIGHT, I mean. That was how KIRA got in him. He wasn't complete."
"What was he missing?" Sayu asked, shakily.
"A purpose."
Sayu turned to Matt, confused.
"KIRA showed LIGHT everything that was wrong with the world, giving LIGHT a goal, something to fix. Your brother should have done that, but he was late. But L…" Matt gestured towards everything around him. "Has given him another goal. One that will show him the value of life. And look. Look at what L's done."
He showed her the screen of LIGHT's main console.
Sayu scanned the screens. "KIRA's codes… they're gone!"
"Look at the new lines."
"What… Those are…"
"Restarting system." As quickly as they appeared, Light's voices throughout the room shut off, and the screens went dark.
"What's going on?" Sayu asked.
"It's our program," Matt explained. "It's L. He's infused himself within LIGHT. Their coding was somehow compatible. He didn't get to KIRA because he was trying to get LIGHT. Together, they were strong enough to get rid of KIRA. Not only that, they've become a complete different program."
"What type of program?"
Matt looked at her very seriously. "Something that could make or break this war. Something that could save us all from hell."
The room lit up again, and this time not one, but two computerized voices echoed across the room.
"Good morning, Director and Mail Jeevas. The time is 2300 hours. The date is August 21st of 3059. We are LOW-LIGHT."
KK: That last sentence came from something Hikari of the Moon said in a review. :)
I apologize for the rather horrible attempt at computer jargon.