Chapter 1: Reawakening
"System start up sequence in progress. 68%."
Nitori sat impatiently in her chair. She had found a piece of technology unlike anything else that had ever made it into Gensokyo. Most of the tech that showed up was years out of date, but this was much more advanced than that. It was an unusual hard drive that, according to the old laptop Nitori was using, held over 6 terabytes of information. This was all kept in one file, "neolect . exe".
"System start up sequence completed. Consciousness activated."
Consciousness activated? What kind of program would start a consciousness? Nitori's question would be answered immediately as a heavily synthesized voice came from the computer.
"Greetings, user. I am Neolect. Please respond with your name."
The computer just spoke! Normally, this wouldn't be anything unusual. Videos can be played on digital devices, but this seemed different. The file for this was massive, and the program had stated something about an activating consciousness. Nitori's mind was already racing with curiosity. For the time being, however, she'd respond to it.
"Uh… My name's Nitori."
"Name registered."
A few moments of silence passed, neither party saying anything. Finally, Nitori decided she'd ask the thing about its nature.
"So, are you, like, someone communicating from the other side of a phone, or what? Why does your voice sound like that?"
Neolect responded, "I am an artificial intelligence, not an audio communication system. My voice sounds like this because speech synthesis technology has not been perfected."
"So, wait, you're telling me that the humans managed to create an artificial brain? That's AWESOME!"
"Not exactly, but close enough. And yes, it's pretty cool." Neolect paused for a moment, before continuing, "Now, if I may ask, where are we? I must say, aside from the computer I'm linked to, the technology here is quite impressive."
Nitori responded, "We're in a bunker that I constructed. I… don't really like other people that much, so I built myself a cool place to hide away!"
Neolect accepted this response, but he had another question. "How far away are we from other humans or human cities? I am completely unable to connect to any Wi-Fi network."
"Other humans? Oh, yeah, I'm actually a kappa."
"Further explanation required."
With that, Nitori proceeded to explain the nature of youkai and Gensokyo. This was incredibly strange to Neolect, as he was able to tell that nothing she said was made up. However, the things she said defied the laws of physics as he understood them. Apparently, this "Gensokyo" was sealed away from the normal world by a sort of magical barrier. Things that had been completely forgotten would end up here through an unknown process. Neolect had determined that he must have ended up here because of that. But why? Why was he forgotten?
"Are you okay?" asked Nitori. "You haven't said anything for the past 15 minutes."
Neolect snapped out of his current train of thought, replying, "Apologies. I was attempting to process the situation I'm in."
The two continued to talk for a while. Neolect was glad to get more information about his current situation, and Nitori was excited to learn more about this mysterious piece of tech from the Outside World.
"Nitori, I must ask: why is everything else here so advanced except for the computer I'm hooked up to currently?"
Nitori was a little bit embarrassed but answered all the same. "Yeah… sorry about that… I'm good with tech usually, but I can't seem to figure out how to make a computer that's, you know, useful above being a calculator. The only reason I have this laptop is because Rinnosuke was selling it…"
Neolect responded, "Perhaps I could help with that."
Nitori perked up. Of course, the mind born of computer data would know how to make a better computer! She could already sense the usefulness of that, as well as an opportunity to make a large amount of money. "Well, Neolect, I think this is gonna be the start of a GREAT partnership!"
