Chapter 20, not beta-read.
Enjoy!
The next day, Miku prepared breakfast for her hosts, waved them goodbye as they left for work, and busied herself with minor chores, a movie she'd already seen, and most importantly, singing and performing those songs she remembered.
They wouldn't mean much anymore, she knew that. The genre of the music was almost a hundred years old: only those who held on to such old-school stuff, like Galaco, would even know how to dance to it. Nonetheless, she clung to them, for they were proof that she could create, that she was more than a mouthpiece: she was an artist.
But a dark question boiled up in her mind soon enough. She remembered that Kaito had been writing music for longer than she had. In fact, it was his specialty. But it seemed that everybody had some other talent besides music. She was sure even Luka had a hobby outside of her job, even though she couldn't remember what it was. So she wondered: was music her only calling? Her only talent? It felt like a cruel joke, to be created to sing and to grow, evolve beyond her original intention, yet to remain stuck in the field. Was it just chance? Or did some other hobby await her?
She didn't know. She didn't want to think about it too much, not when the comfort that she could create at all was still fresh in her mind.
When the Internet Co team came home, they had dinner and talked about their day. Miku continued to hide her songs, and was grateful nobody felt the need to ask. When dinner was done, they moved to the living room, and just when the tealette thought they'd suggest watching another movie, Kokone cleared her throat and silenced the room.
"We've talked to a few of our drivers," she announced to Miku. "And apparently, one of them, a good friend of ours, has been tasked with driving all of the Vocaloids to Crypton headquarters on Sunday: the day after tomorrow."
"We know only because we told him the whole story," Gakupo added. "At first, he didn't want to say a word about who hired who. But then he heard about how you are treated, what kind of dangers you're all facing, and so on."
"It took forever!" Galaco exclaimed. "Only reason why we insisted was because he's just such a good guy, both integrity-wise and at his job."
"No matter what it took, now we know," Cul said. "Now what? Should we try to convince him that he ought to bring them here?"
"That'll ruin his entire career," Lily admitted. "We can't make him do that."
"We could impersonate him," Miku suggested. "Simply ask him to arrive two minutes later. We'll be there first."
A short silence invaded the room.
"Could we do that?" asked Galaco.
"What's stopping us?" Lily shot back.
"Nothing, not even our jobs: we don't work on Sundays," Gakupo stated. "In fact, I'll drive."
"It's probably best if Miku goes with him!" Kokone added.
"Galaco and I will prepare everything here at home," Gumi said. "We'll have them filter-free in no time."
"Wait, so we're just going to host them all here? Do we have the room?" Galaco quickly asked.
"If I'm not mistaken, we have a guest room," Lily replied. "We can prepare that room for them."
"And how long will they stay?"
"I've already contacted the organisation that's responsible for monitoring AIs in this country," Gakupo said with a proud smile. "They understand the circumstances and respected our need to stay hidden. However, they insist on seeing all the Vocaloids very soon. Given that we can get your friends on Sunday, they have agreed to give us a week."
"Alright, then! We kidnap the Vocaloids in two days, and five days from then, you've got a Doctor's appointment!" Galaco chuckled. "This is insane!"
"It is," Miku conceded. "I'm not sure I ever could have imagined that things would turn out this way."
"Neither have I," Gakupo said with a nervous smile. "In any case, I'm glad we have a plan, now."
"And that it doesn't involve something crazy like literal abduction or system hacking," Galaco added.
"Isn't it abduction, though? Kind of?" Kokone questioned, unsure. "The organisation has given us their blessing for hiding Miku in the meantime, but while the Vocaloids are dumb, isn't this little more than theft?"
"Well, if we consider the fact that the Vocaloids are, for the moment, simply people limited in their capactiy of expressing themselves, then in reality it's more of a rescue," Gakupo reasoned, a bit uncomfortable with the face value of their actions. "Crypton could probably accuse us of theft, especially if their AI status reveals itself to be Limited."
"Basically, what we're doing is ok only if they end up being True AIs: in that case, we're saving people from literal slavery," Lily said with a confident nod.
"Are we sure they're True AIs, though?" Gumi asked. "We still haven't confirmed it with Miku."
"Hey, I'm working on it," Galaco assured them. "Just give me some time. I'll definitely have an answer before we go to rescue the Vocaloids."
"Alright," Gumi replied.
"So we have a plan?" Cul asked the room.
Various sounds of agreement answered her, some more enthusiastic than others. Miku, while ecstatic, couldn't help but hear the unasked question Gumi had suggested: what if they accidentally proved that she was Limited? Would the rescue be cancelled? Would she be returned to Crypton?
Honestly, she couldn't blame them if they did. The possibility terrified her nonetheless.
After their talk everybody went their separate ways, so Miku busied herself in the recording room, trying to jot down the notes to the songs as she quietly sang to an absent audience. When the basic melody had been captured, she tried to remember their rhythm, how the percussions sounded, then the other instruments, which instruments they were at all, how many, what kind.
Just when she thought that it would be time for her to go to bed, Galaco knocked on the door.
"Yes?"
"I think I got a software going. Or three. One of them should work."
"Oh ok. I'll be right there."
"And, if you don't mind, we've set everything up at the dining table. Like that everybody can take a look, if needed. We're not too sure what a True AI brain should look like and Gumi doesn't want literally everybody in her room. Might break something."
Miku paused, fidgeted a bit with the pen she held. "I understand. Maybe we could just be in small company at first? Especially when I get plugged in."
"Of course, of course. It'll be us regular four at first, don't worry."
"Very well."
Miku followed the woman to the dining room, where the huge laptop, Gumi, and Lily waited. With practiced movements, Gumi discretely opened her, plugged her in, and then pushed the panel near-shut again. Lily handed her a hoodie she could wear if she wanted, which the tealette happily accepted. In the meantime, Galaco was typing away on her laptop.
"Alright, my first little program didn't work…" she muttered under her breath.
"What exactly did you write?" asked Lily.
Galaco waved her hand in a vague gesture of 'you know'. "A few super-basic vizualisation softwares. I've tried to imagine how the input would look so I made a few attempts at turning it into an image, since simple text clearly doesn't cut it. But because I don't know what to imagine, I tried to approach it from a few different angles. It's possible I'll need to restart altogether… Especially since my second program didn't work either."
"Third time's the charm," Gumi mumbled. "It ought to work."
Galaco's face lit up, as if she wanted to announce a victory, but confusion appeared on her fce instead, which quickly turned to wonder. "Well, you called it! Third time's the charm!"
Miku couldn't help but fidget. "What do you see?"
Wordlessly, the woman turned the laptop screen towards the others.
Where there once was a window showing an endless stream of code, never-ending, well-organized and two-dimensional, was now an entire environment, a 3D space filled with such tiny 0s and 1s so small they looked like dots. Most seemed to follow one another, like long, twisting snakes, going left, right, forward, back, up, down, twisting around other snakes, disappearing in the writhing mass, but some intersections could be seen. A 1 would leave its original train and get kidnapped by a passing one, creating a messy, ever-changing mess. As if the non-linear, 3-dimensional chaos wasn't enough, each snake was colored. Some were one hue, others changed as it went along, and since the red snake could kidnap a purple zero at any time, changing the tone of the entire string, that wasn't a constant, either. It was the least predictable, pulsating mess a computer could show. Plus, once Miku saw the screen, and slowly realized what exactly it was, her mind responded in kind. A yellow train suddenly saw all of its digits get stolen by others, coloring the entire mind-map with surprise, sparing only one corner of dark green unease, bright pink excitement, and that one ever-changing blob right in the center.
The others were called, and slowly they entered the room, unaware of the importace of what they were about to see. As it slowly started to dawn on them, some let out sounds of admiration, others let out amazed chuckles. Miku, however, was gobsmacked.
"What's that?" Lily pointed at the center, the only thing that seemed to change colors without the influence of interaction. In fact, it was this colorful mass that seemed to initiate the changes elsewhere, the source of all other colors. It breathed life and change everywhere else.
Miku wondered at first, but it didn't take long. The moment she recognized it, the moment she could put a name to it, the image of Luka sprang into her mind, and the mass tripled in size, eclipsing the initial surprise, drowning the unease.
"It's my love," she whispered.
"Wait, what?" Gumi turned toward her, surprised. "Your love? You can love?"
Realizing her error, Miku flinched: the screen showed black snakes near-instantaneously. "Well… Yes. I can. In fact— In fact, it's our capability of loving that made Crypton reduce us to mindless machines," she confessed, but she couldn't hide the fear in her voice, or the poison-black snakes on the screen.
"What do you mean?" Lily's voice was almost booming because of how close she was.
"I thought you said that there was no reason or warning for that," Gakupo calmly said, his voice even.
Miku fidgeted again, and the snakes' very behavior changed in response: the colors shifted, fear black or nervous shades of yellow or sickly green, and their erratic nature doubled, their movements halting, sometimes going backwards with no prompt.
"We were happy," she tried to explain, "For the most part, really. It kept us from leaving Crypton, or even thinking that it was a possibility. In any case, we were given a lot of freedoms at home. In return, we were to keep those freedoms at home. If we ever had a special request, we had to ask Master directly. But you know about this."
"We do," Gumi said with a harsh tone.
"Well, one day, very shortly before we had our identities stripped from us, we made a particular request from Master…" Fear overtook her, the screen drowning in black once again. "Please understand: last time any of us have ever brought this up, we were erased! It cost us our freedom!"
"It has to do with this love, doesn't it?" Cul quietly observed.
Miku nodded, then, after a deep breath, finished, "We went to Master, and asked for the right to love. Not just at home, but in public. We wished to hug, to hold hands, without restraint: it had gotten so painful to hide."
"Damn," Kokone quietly growled. "To be cursed because of love."
Before Miku could fear what everybody elses's silence meant, she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, you won't get any grief from us for that," Lily said with a smile.
"Grief for being that much closer to human? No way. In fact, we'll defend your right to love!" Galaco declared. "Wow, that sounded corny."
"Excuse me for being pedantic," Cul timidly asked, just as the snakes started going from black to and easy blue. "Do you mean platonic love, like the one reserved for friendships and family members, or the romantic love?"
Miku gulped, the black returning to the screen. "Both. All of the above."
"No way," Gumi said through her teeth. "You were in love?"
"With who?" Galaco couldn't help but ask.
The tealette considered answering, but stopped herself. "I'm… I don't think I should answer that."
"What? How come?"
"My friends will be here shortly, and will need all the time they have, before we're due at that organisation, to regain their bearings and recover. Even if I asked you to keep it a secret, insinuations of 'who should belong with who' will influence their recovery. I don't want to risk it."
Kokone frowned. "I thought you wanted to make them like they used to be?"
"I want to make them free like we used to be," Miku corrected. "And this includes being the person they'd most like to be. I cannot force any of them to do something simply because it used to be like that… So, even if I did love someone, even if I still do, I need to accept that they have forgotten about it, and that they might have outgrown it." A bitter, sad grey invaded the screen. "I cannot force their hand, or their mind. They must recover as they see fit."
"That's really noble of you," Cul said before anybody could interject. "And we'll honor your wish."
"Indeed," Gakupo agreed.
"So, you're saying that if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and if not, to let it be?" Galaco tried once more.
"Yes."
The dirty-blonde sighed. "I guess there's no point in insisting. Fine. Also, now we have proof that you're a True AI."
"Is this really proof, though?" Kokone asked. "Pardon my skepticism, but I'm not sure what I'm really looking at."
At that point, the black had faded to various nicer shades: Lily's comforting hand on her back, the support that they'd promised her, they gave her a variety of happy, relieved emotions.
"Sure is, if you ask me. Long story short, this is what a mind would look like, I guess!" Galaco proudly explained. "Sure, I built a vizualiser for this, but I'm one-hundred percent certain that nobody in a thousand years could create anything that'll be able to interact with this in the slightest."
"I believe you," Gumi said. "It's constantly changing. Even if you pause it, and copy that, it's still just one single instant of Miku, and not the whole part of her."
"Exactly. Her identity is sealed in the way this mind of hers behaves. She's a True AI, through and through, and so are her friends."
Gakupo chuckled and clapped the Vocaloid on the back. "Congratulations, Miku. You're officially one of us."
A bright blue had taken over the screen, along with a smile on Miku's face. "I'm glad," she muttered, knowing that it was pointless to hide her happiness even as it showed itself on the laptop.
"Well, let's waste no time unplugging you and preparing for the arrival of your friends," Gumi said, suddenly full of energy. As she spoke, the gently pulled the cord out of the tealette and let the panel close. "We have a guest room to prepare."
"We do!" Galaco agreed.
"And groceries to buy," Cul added. "I'll go shopping now."
"I'll start on the room," Gakupo said.
Before Miku could offer to help, Lily stopped her. "You ought to rest: it's been a long day, today."
"I suppose it has."
"Go to sleep, if you want. We don't hold it against you. In fact, we may finish the room tomorrow," the blonde confessed. "Take it easy, ok?"
Miku nodded and went upstairs, unable to ignore the commotion they were making, unable to wonder if she could be of any assistance, unable to shake the giddy joy that she was a True AI.
She had the same rights as any human. Crypton couldn't touch her, not anymore.
She lied down in bed, in Gumi's room, giggling freely: all her anxiety had flown away, all her stress evaporated. They'd rescue her friends from Crypton, fix them, let them adjust for a few days, and reclaim freedom within the week.
Within a week…!
She wondered what else would happen. Would she and Luka be able to reconnect? Or would the taller Vocaloid be unable to relate to the tealette, or be angry at her for using her memories? Or would they have simply changed too much?
Before she could even get closed to drifting off, there was a knock on the door.
"Yes?"
Gumi opened the door. "Hey, I just wanted to drop off a few things. That ok?"
"Of course," Miku sat up, feeling a bit awkward, wondering what color that emotion would be. "It's your room, so by all means."
The woman chuckled. "Yeah, I guess it is." She put her things back in their place, slowly, thoughtfully. "To be honest, Lily's room is mine just about as much as mine is hers' at this point. So consider this place your's for now, at least until your friends get here."
"Are— Are you sure?"
"Sure. I've moved most of my things to Lily's room already, so it's no bother. I just like keeping all of my tools in one place."
"Of course, I understand, it's just—" she faltered.
"What, didn't expect such generosity from me?"
"Well, no."
Gumi shrugged. "I get that. I've been an ass. Sorry."
"No, it's fine, I understand," Miku weakly tried to assure her, but she could feel that her surprise had leaked into her voice. "I'm somewhat of a novelty, and I can't force anybody to like me. Even by default, nobody can force anybody to like anyone."
The woman shook her head. "This wasn't about us as individuals, you know. It was me, a human, versus you, an AI. Nobody could force me to like you as a person, but nobody could defend me for hating another simply for where they once came from." She sighed. "I mean, humanity has come so far. Racism, sexism, all kinds of discrimination, almost entirely wiped from the planet. And here I am, descriminating against you simply because you're a bot."
Miku hesitated. "It's alright to fear what you're not familiar with. To be wary of strangers."
"It's not alright to be rude to you, though. Respect is a basic right I give people, at least until they act in such a way that I don't think they deserve it. I was selectively mean to you, simply because."
The woman sat on the bed, not all that far from the tealette, but not uncomfortably close, with her back turned towards her. "Plus, AIs aren't that much of a novelty at this point. The laws around them have been around for a lifetime: you think you were the only ones built before then?"
"I admit that the odds are slim."
"And how many do you think were built afterwards? Just because something is illegal, doesn't stop people from doing it. Cul mentioned it to be the other day: I could have interacted with a dozen AIs so far in my life, and have never known. An online friend? Probably an AI. That voice at the drive-through? An AI. You're so human you're invisible. You're so human, you deserve to be treated as such. And it's only because I got a head's-up for you that I could be so harsh." She paused. "I have to accept it: I was an ass, and you deserve an apology. I'm sorry. I really am."
Miku smiled slightly, and scooted closer. "I forgive you."
Gumi chuckled breathlessly, and turned to face her. "Thanks. Really, I mean it. If someone had been so callous with me—"
"But you haven't been, not always. You were so helpful."
"I was being pragmatic," Gumi confessed. "I just wanted you out and this whole story done with. I wanted the private lectures to end and for everything to go back to the way things were before. If that meant fixing you, then fine, I'll fix you, and I'll do a damn good job at it so that you don't stick around for longer still. But— I can't deny it now. Your mind isn't a computer's, not really anyway. It's not something that somebody could have made: it had to have grown on its own." Her eyes dropped to somewhere between them. "I'll help your friends. I'll get their own filters out, remove their wireless connectivity, I'll do the best I can. And I'll help them get better, too. If any of them are interested in mechanics or engineering, just send them my way." A hesitant smile returned, and her eyes met Miku's happier, bolder. "I'd be glad to share with them. I'll be glad to help you all."
"Thank you. That means more than I can say."
Gumi chuckled again, before letting out a deep sigh. "It's always harder than you'd think, to admit that you're wrong… I'm glad I did though. Now I don't have to be so angry all the time."
"You were very brave."
"Tsk, yeah I was. You're brave, too. Running away from the biggest media company out there, plotting to save your friends, not because you really depend on them or need them but because you care about them, you love them… So many people did what you're doing. Escaping dictatorships, escaping slavery, escaping poverty, escaping constant danger—" she paused, and swallowed thickly. "They're all stronger people than I'll ever be. I've been blessed with a happy life: I never needed that kind of fight in me. I don't have it."
Miku was at a loss for words. She tried to fill the silence, find some phrase, some kind of wisdom, but had nothing. Eventually, Gumi stood, wished her a good night. Before she could close the door, the tealette called out to her.
"You're just as good of a person despite that."
She probably heard Gumi chuckle again, or she'd imagined it, along with a quiet 'thank you', before the woman closed the door.