by Project Itoh
In a pained, raspy voice, Snake said, “Otacon … can you do it?”
The nanomachines had helped, but not much.
“Leave it to me,” I said and piloted the Mk. III to one of the tombstones. I lifted up the cover to a maintenance panel in the floor and inserted the robot’s manipulator into the access port.
Hurriedly, I searched for the best location to upload the worm.
GW comprised an unimaginably large system. Everything rested on my ability to find the right place to insert the first line of code. For that, I had less than a minute to search through the galaxy of information contained within GW’s exabyte of data. At once, I launched several crawler agents—my scouts—and handled the stream of reports as they came in.
If I transmitted the worm into the wrong place, days—or even weeks—might pass before GW’s ability to define and comprehend data would be completely destroyed. No matter how powerful Sunny’s finished version of the cluster might have been, if the worm took too much time to overwhelm the AI, we would lose.
Less than two minutes remained before Liquid would reestablish connection with JD and fire the railgun nuke. After that, Emma, Sunny, and Naomi’s stories would become meaningless.
Snake lifted his rifle and roared in pain.
He had sensed something. Even this near death, his senses hadn’t dulled.
“Snake, what’s wrong?”
Beyond the tip of Snake’s gun barrel, which he had somehow managed to raise, rolled a single black bowling ball.
The object glided toward Snake to be joined by others like it, rolling out from behind the gravestones. The black swarm came at Snake and the Mk. III, carpeting the ground, and extended humanlike arms.
Scarabs—the small, unmanned scouts that had attacked Big Mama’s base in Eastern Europe.
The carpet rose up, leaping at Snake, who remained on his back.
Snake squeezed the trigger, and the M4 kicked in his arms. His body, scorched, bled, and ravaged, no longer had the strength to handle an assault rifle. But Snake endeavored to protect the Mk. III from the Scarabs. Rubbery, jet-black arms grasped Snake, and in an instant, the bowling balls were all over him.
Somehow, Snake pulled his knife and stabbed at a Scarab at his side. The robot’s red sensor eye flickered out, its arms slackened, and it fell to the floor. The rest of the swarm, in unison, shot out electricity, the sparks stabbing into Snake’s body.
The machines attacked without mercy, striking at pieces of muscle and bone exposed by the microwave blowouts. I thought back to when Ocelot had interrogated him on Shadow Moses. Back then, Snake possessed the youth to withstand the pain, but now, his body cooked by microwaves, he struggled to remain conscious through these lethal shocks.
But if he fell, the Mk. III would be next.
“Otacon!”
As Snake released a deathlike cry
Sunny, Emma, and Naomi’s self-replicating story
eroded through GW’s core agent cluster.
In front of Meryl and Johnny, at the door in the CIC, the Haven troopers froze.
So did the soldiers bearing down on the armless Raiden at the entrance to the microwave corridor.
Throngs of Gekko filled Missouri’s deck.
Giant RAYs stomped through the wooden deck to split the battleship in two.
In an instant, the machines shut down.
“We did it!”
I read from my notebook’s display to confirm we had taken over GW. The self-replicating worm cluster had practically exploded through the system. The program overwhelmed the core high-speed information-processing sectors and deleted nearly all the program units.
The Scarabs fell from Snake’s body as if molting from his skin. The tiny robots had gone completely immobile and began to roll with Haven’s gentle sway atop the ocean.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
I looked at my screen. Something wasn’t right. I had set up a window to display the progress of the worm cluster’s spread through a mapped rendering of GW’s architecture. But the worm pushed farther than I’d anticipated. The program forced through every boundary and spread, like an insolent army, to every corner of the map, replicating with abandon.
“Is it removing the other clones?” I wondered, then rejected the hypothesis.
The worm’s territory extended beyond GW’s network. Not content with consuming GW in its entirety, the cluster reached its tentacles out toward the other AIs.
It can’t be … Naomi.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As the worm expanded its influence, the display map of GW’s network zoomed out. A planet retreated into a solar system, then a galaxy, and onto a nebula.
The worm was expanding into the entire universe of the Patriots’ information network.
Noticing my unease, Snake asked, “Otacon, what is it?”
“JD is being erased.”
“What?”
Already the worm cluster had nearly complete dominion over JD. The self-replicating tempest overloaded JD’s central processor cores, destroying them. The AI’s highest processing core, in effect the Patriots themselves, failed. The worm legion engulfed the immense neural network.
Then the worms, content at having entirely supplanted JD, solemnly engaged in their planned self-destruction.
It had happened so quickly.
Screams and whispers, innermost feelings, lies and confessions.
Every human story spoken or written, flowing through the networks of the world.
Every business transaction, real or virtual. Whether over the phone or by email, someone had declared love; someone had demanded a breakup.
Devouring every scrap of day-to-day information, the Patriots’ prediction and control reconstructed the universe into a jail where everything was predetermined, woven by the biggest and most complex narrative in human history.
A book titled Reality. A 1:1 Map.
A single large tale written by coldhearted, arrogant, and lonesome gods in the belief that restricting the human narrative was the only path to preventing the extinction of the human race.
Effortlessly brought to failure, then destruction, by the stories of only three people.
This day, before my eyes, a universe perished.
The warm pulse of network traffic cooled in an instant, falling into eternal silence.
I felt like I had witnessed the last moment of time, the heat death of the universe.
Snake, Hal. It’s you, isn’t it? I hope you’re listening.
Naomi’s face appeared on every wall of the server graveyard.
I sank to my knees in astonishment. Naomi smiled at me.
She had smiled when she heard Sunny made the eggs well, and she had smiled many times when we talked together.
But I’d never seen her smile like this.
Of course, she wasn’t actually looking at me now; this was a prerecorded message.
The virus you uploaded used GW as a conduit to annihilate the entire AI network—all four AIs along with JD, the core that tied them all together. I’ve set this video to play once they’re all gone.
Sons of the Patriots was only the beginning.
The Patriots were planning to use nanomachines to implement the System to control the entire population.
I had an obligation to stop it.
With a little help from Sunny.
She believed her talents could help you all put GW to rest.
She created an anti-AI FOXDIE.
The virus’s name is FOXALIVE.
It’s the conceptual opposite of the nanomachines I created all those years ago.
We wished to free the captured foxes … to let them run free in the wild.
Her expression showed no trace of darkness—no sense of tragedy, or the pain she must have felt. Her smile was that of one friend talking with another. Her smile was that of someone nestling close to the one she loved. Her smile held no cynicism and was so typical as to become beautiful.
Naomi had rea
ched the horizon of that smile.
Believing that the dead couldn’t forgive, I had strived to live a life without regret. Misdeeds, once committed, couldn’t be undone, and so the only avenue was recompense. I thought the same applied to Snake and Naomi.
But Naomi had come much, much farther than us. She had arrived at the final destination for souls; a place accessible only after one’s time on Earth had been spent.
And we saw it.
We saw the smile of a woman who had stepped into the world beyond atonement.
By the time you hear this, I’m afraid I’ll be gone.
This is a strange feeling. To be alive, recording a message for after I’m dead.
Hal … If you’re listening …
“I’m listening,” I said. I’d never felt anything so nice as to hear her call me Hal.
I’m sorry I deceived you.
It hurt me more than anything else, lying to you like that. I wanted to apologize to you before I died … but not even that was allowed me.
And yet, in the end, I finally can feel the joy of living.
Thank you, Hal.
I realized that now, with everything over, I didn’t need to hold back my tears.
Her choice couldn’t have been a happy one. Afflicted by illness, she used the time she had left to make amends for her sins. Few would find joy in thusly spending their last days.
Yet her eyes were at peace.
Snake … hear me.
Still on the ground, Snake lifted his head.
Our country is an innocent child once more.
A new dawn is rising. Now she can build a new destiny for herself.
Snake … the time has come.
You’ve earned your rest.
Snake had mangled Frank and watched the man be killed. He had stolen Naomi’s brother away from her, and I know he carried it with him. I know this from his doubts, during our briefing, when he asked if she was on our side. During the Shadow Moses Incident, Snake said to her, Naomi, I don’t blame you for wanting me dead. He carried her hatred on his back.
But Naomi had forgiven him, after the incident nine years ago.
And now she had finally been able to tell him. She didn’t hate anyone anymore—but to fulfill her duty, she couldn’t let Snake know.
After she died, Snake thought he would never earn her forgiveness.
And now, to suddenly be granted that which he thought was lost, Snake felt bewildered. The legendary warrior was not used to such kindness—strange, since he had so much kindness within himself.
Her speech at its end, Naomi’s gaze turned off-screen, to somewhere in the distance—as if she could see her next destination. Her eyes held no fear. Or maybe they did, only for an overpowering hope to scatter such shadows and lead her ever forward.
She looked not just to the past, but also to the future.
The rose petal is about to fall.
In the end, everyone went to the same place.
“Soon, I’ll be there,” Snake said. The man-made rose and the snake born not from nature. Our stories were near their end.
Another violent spasm racked Snake’s body. He hardly had the strength left to even cough. His chest convulsed and his muscles clenched, and Snake curled into the fetal position.
“I’ve set things right. Now let me go.”
And Snake slipped from consciousness.
5
HELICOPTER BLADES BEAT against the sky, and their sound slapped his eardrums.
The ocean’s scent.
Snake tried to lift his eyelids, but they were as stiff as fired clay. Finally, he managed to force his eyes open—only to see Liquid Ocelot, arms folded, standing atop Haven’s bridge, gazing down at the calm, tranquil sea.
There were no sounds of battle; no gunfire, no shouts. Only Mei Ling’s booming voice echoed from Missouri’s loudspeakers, announcing the battle’s end and attempting to stop any remaining small pockets of hostilities. “Stop this pointless fight,” she declared. “This is no war.”
The low pressure front had been swept away, and the sunlight shone on the top of the bridge. The flat oval roof was covered in plates of stealth material and a layer of OctoCamo, and several transmission antennae stood like columns.
His long, black leather coat fluttering in the wind, Liquid kept his eyes on the ocean as he said, “Rise and shine, Snake.”
Snake lifted his chin from the cold floor and moved his body slightly. He was still in pain, of course, but not more than he could handle.
“Look,” Liquid said. “The war is over.”
Snake got to his knees, and then to his feet. Surprised that he had been able to do so, Snake stood on the roof of the bridge and saw the battered Missouri along with several smaller craft, moving here and there to mop up after the finished fight. A US military helicopter flew overhead.
“Why?” Snake asked.
Liquid didn’t act confused or angry about the defeat of his plans. If anything, he seemed relaxed. He just stood there, gazing at the tranquil sea, and Snake couldn’t explain why.
“If you had wanted to stop us,” Snake said, “you should have been able to.”
Any way I looked at it, a server room guarded merely by a swarm of Scarabs didn’t make sense. I supposed a gunfight among the rows of the AI’s exposed hardware would have been unworkable. But Liquid knew that the server room was his opponent’s final target. Surely he could have prepared a more suitable line of defense.
Liquid shrugged. “Stopped you? Why would I want to do that? This is just as I’d hoped things would end.”
Snake didn’t understand. If Liquid was attempting to bluff at this point, he’d be a real fool.
“Our father, Big Boss,” Liquid said, “sought to free himself from the Patriots’ chokehold. His dream was to create an army of free citizens, one that answered to no government: Outer Heaven. But he failed … because of you.”
During the two world wars of the last century, the Philosophers gained influence as an international group of people who traversed the halls of power. After World War II, the Philosophers disbanded, and the secret fortune behind the organization ended up in the hands of a former SAS major known as Zero.
Zero formed his own organization, the Patriots, whose members utilized the vast wealth of the Philosophers’ Legacy to bring one woman’s vision to the world. But what they brought about was a spiritual prison where supreme authority was maintained by means of prediction and control.
In the nineties, Big Boss sought freedom from that prison. Nine years ago, on Shadow Moses, Liquid sought freedom from biological destiny—genes. And five years ago, in Manhattan, Liquid and Solid’s brother Solidus sought freedom from the Patriots’ information control—memes.
All of this, until this moment, was nothing more than a process of trial and error resulting in Haven.
Everything until now had been a fight for freedom; resistance against any power attempting to restrict and belittle the human spirit within a confined narrative.
“Now we are free,” Liquid said, “from the Sons of the Patriots, the ultimate form of external control imposed on the Patriots’ soldiers. Free from FOXDIE. Free from the System. Free from ID control. Our minds free from their prisons.”
Suddenly, Liquid thrust a finger at his cursed brother. Snake knew immediately what the action meant.
A part of Snake was not yet free, and a part of Liquid was yet imprisoned: the other’s very existence. The bloodline of Snakes remained upon the earth.
“This is it, brother,” Liquid said. “Our final moment. The battle has ended, but we are not yet free. The war is over, but we still have a score to settle.”
Liquid discarded his coat. Caught in the breeze, it fluttered away. Liquid’s bare upper body, now revealed, remained surprisingly muscular for the man’s seventy-some years. Layers of exposed tendons were visible where Frank had severed his right arm. But the tissues weren’t red and pulsing with life. They were synthetic, part of an augmented artificial lim
b, built from the same cybernetic technology as Frank’s and Raiden’s exoskeletal bodies.
At the end of the artificial arm, Liquid’s hand balled into a fist. Liquid brought the fist to his chest and took a fighting stance.
I wondered what had happened to Liquid Snake’s right arm, the arm that had taken over Ocelot’s consciousness.
Snake raised his fists as best he could given his burns and injuries, and the two men measured their distance.
“Show me what you’ve got, Snake!”
Snake obeyed and charged at Liquid full speed. Liquid, stunned at the sudden, wild attack, took the tackle in the chest, and said, “Not bad!”
Snake, at his opponent’s chest, jerked his head up, catching Liquid at the bottom of his chin, then followed up with a shoulder to the ribcage. Liquid had been overtaken at the very start, but he managed to shake Snake off and jab an elbow into his brother’s back.
The impact penetrated through to lungs and gut and knocked the air out of Snake. For a brief moment, his guard slackened. Liquid seized the opportunity and delivered a knee strike. Snake recoiled in pain. His head cocked back, and in that instant, Liquid’s artificial elbow connected with his burned left cheek and sent him reeling.
Pressing the attack, Liquid launched into a roundhouse kick, but before the centripetal force could accelerate the tip of his foot into the tender muscles of Snake’s side, Snake jumped back.
The other time was in a place like this. Snake closed distance and struck at Liquid with everything he had. Chest, stomach, back, face. His elbows and forearms sunk into every bit of flesh they could find.
Nine years ago, Snake and Liquid’s final battle on Moses Island, a masterful display of hand-to-hand combat, had been atop a similar giant platform. Back then, the REX’s back had been the arena, and now it was on the back of a whale, but both times the two had stood on colossal weapons armed with the latest technology and punched at each other with their primitive fists.
No, it wasn’t just that time. There was also that fistfight with Cyborg Ninja in the Moses facility. And the first time he exchanged blows with Frank, in the Zanzibar Land minefield. Just like then, this contest brimmed with a peculiar vigor—the sportlike purity of two men striking at each other, without malice or murderous intent, to prove each other’s being.
