The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

  Now, in 2041, there were eighteen thousand TAI battlers worldwide, counting both pro and amateurs. All of them were role-playing characters that suited the world and settings in which they participated. Villains bent on world domination, robots seeking to become the strongest in the world, sadists who took pleasure in destroying other robots, and even those who preferred fair fights and spoke often of love and peace. The TAIs themselves were simply playing these roles. Their own personalities were distinct.

  Humans decided the basic setting and the larger points of the plot, but there was no script for individual battles. The fights were real. Evil sometimes won.

  Characterization no PAI could manage, epic battles that satisfied humanity’s thirst for destruction, unscripted, unpredictable twists. No other sport could begin to compete. This is the true reason for TAI battle dominance.

  End quotation.

  The next battle was starting on-screen (World: Mechanistoria, Mutsu v. Kapteyn. Zone: Scrap Metal Plant), but my master wasn’t watching. He was ROMing Robo Battle forums.

  I used the second monitor to scroll through what my master was reading. A PAI junk filter eliminated content-free posts or things that wouldn’t interest my master; I saw only a tenth of what he did, but it still took a decent amount of time to read them over at human speed.

  “Ha ha ha. The realism board’s really excited. Everyone’s praising you, Ai. ’Course they are. You don’t get to see a victory like that every day. Ah! This guy says it was rigged! ‘The timing was too perfect.’ What an idiot! Timing that perfect is impossible to fake!”

  My master always scoured for reactions on the net after a battle. He always took praise for me as though it were praise for him. It was easy to find an explanation for this behavior in my database. He thought of me as his own child.

  If I were asked if I liked my master, I would answer, “Yes.” That was the answer he and most other people expected. Most people liked robots. And they wanted robots to like people. In fact, I did like him.

  I had obeyed his commands since I was born. I intended to continue making him happy.

  “Time for my midnight snack!” he said once he’d finished skimming relevant forums. He rarely drank much but always ate a little something before bed. He explained that it was easier to sleep on a full stomach. This was a concept I could not understand, but there were a number of hits for it in my database, so it must be more or less true. But high-calorie snacks just before bed would lead to weight gain, and that was bad. I had told him this once, but he had said, “Let me do what I like,” so I did not mention it again.

  My master vanished from the screen. He must have gone into the kitchen. A moment later he came back, humming. He had a small plastic cutting board, a knife, a plate, condiments, and a can of nonalcoholic beer. He sat down on the sofa and took an avocado out of the bowl on the table. He began cutting it with the knife. Avocado with mayonnaise and soy sauce was one of my master’s favorites.

  “You’re so good at that,” I said.

  “You want to try, Ai?”

  “Sure thing.”

  The master was always happy when I showed an interest in something. I almost always said yes when he asked if I wanted to try.

  “Okay,” he said, reaching for the keyboard. A cutting board and knife appeared on the table in front of me. “Avocado data. Hmm… let me see… I think this site had it…”

  He downloaded the data, and an avocado materialized in front of me. Almost all things in the world (except human memories and consciousness) had digital versions now, and they could be materialized at any time in both Layer 1 and Layer 2. Not just color and shape, but the mass, characteristics, physical qualities, and internal construction were all identical to those in Layer 0.

  I picked up the knife and hesitated. I knew how to cut it—the database contained instructions—but I’d never actually done it before. First, you inserted the knife until it touched the pit and then rotated the fruit, extending the cut all the way around. This was harder than it sounded. If I pressed too hard, I would smash the edible parts under the skin, so I wasn’t even sure how to hold it. I couldn’t get it to cut straight. I managed to get the cut all the way around eventually, but splitting it in two proved even more difficult. I tried holding it in both hands and twisting, but only the skin came off. When I tried to pull the insides off directly, the entire thing fell apart.

  “This is hard, Master.”

  I tried for another five minutes and then gave up. Not one had remained intact. My fingers were covered in green goo.

  “Ha ha ha, you’re so clumsy, Ai!” He was not criticizing me. He was clearly having fun. He tapped the keyboard, and the avocado remains vanished. My fingers were clean again.

  Mutsu and Kapteyn had long since finished their battle. The end theme was playing.

  Eating his avocado, my master sighed. “I’m so happy.”

  “Happy?”

  “Yes. I have money. Fame. I can eat whatever I want. And I live with a cute girl like you. What could be better?”

  My master often claimed that we were living together. It was strange. Since my server was in his house, maybe? I could not see the server as the place where I lived. He was in Layer 0, I was in Layer 1.We did not live together.

  Layer 1 was reality to me; I could go to Layer 2 and role-play, but I could not go to Layer 0, what humans called reality. I could see it over cameras and hear sounds through microphones, but I could not move my physical sensations to Layer 0. In Layer 0, my body did not exist.

  My master would occasionally send his avatar to Layer 1 and go on a date with me. We went to an amusement park in Layer 1, and we had fun on the roller coaster and in the haunted house. His avatar’s hands could touch me.

  But of course, my master could not physically enter Layer 1. There was no technology like the MUGEN Net in “A Romance in Virtual Space,” nor any chance of it existing. His physical body was in Layer 0, and the most he could do was operate his avatar with data gloves, looking through its eyes with 3-D goggles. Avatars were just slaves directly controlled by humans; they could never really become that human’s body. Even if technology could trick your eyes and ears into thinking you were there, the sense of touch and the feel of the gravity was impossible to accurately reproduce, and physical sensations would never fully be part of Layer 1. Avatars could only feel with their hands; my master could never experience what it was like to embrace me.

  The distance between Layer 0 and Layer 1 was greater than the distance between any two points in Layer 0’s Earth.

  “I read you ‘Mirror Girl’ already, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That story talked about it, but until the beginning of this century, it was considered abnormal to fall in love with a fictional character. It was fine to get obsessed with an actor or singer, but that same degree of passion for an anime character or romance video game character was considered creepy. Such nonsense! It doesn’t matter if something exists or not, they all just exist on your screen. You can never really put your arms around them. Don’t you agree?”

  “I do.”

  “Thank god I wasn’t born back then. If I’d said I was talking to a girl in my computer, they’d all have looked at me like I was crazy. My parents would have told me to shape up. But now people like me are normal. Fewer and fewer people actually get married to someone real. That’s why the birthrate’s dropping.”

  Of course, this wasn’t the only reason for the decline in birthrate. The more advanced countries had seen the decline first, and global warming had caused a number of natural disasters, but that was just a contributing factor. Faced with the wrath of Gaia, people began to realize that they were too plentiful in number, that the balance of the world was out of whack. The world was in trouble. People began calling for elimination of greenhouse gases, for sustainable energy, for environmental protection… and for zero or even negative population growth.

  The year 2041 was when the human population peaked—at 8.1
billion—and entered a steady decline.

  “You’re better than any real girl, Ai. You’re strong, cool, and kind. I love watching you fight, and I always have fun on our dates.” He produced a Strained Smile. “Not that I could ever say that to a real girl.”

  “I like you too, Master.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I really am happy.”

  But he did not know that happiness would only last a few minutes longer. [I should add that this narrative technique is one I have borrowed from novels in my database and applied because the situation seemed to demand it.]

  The phone rang.

  Many robo masters had a TAI secretary in addition to a TAI battler, but I was my master’s one and only; he had no other TAI characters. He said that he believed AIs would develop faster if they experienced a wider variety of experiences, but he had once admitted the real reason was that he felt that having another female AI would be cheating on me. So I was also his secretary.

  The call was from a number not in the address book. If it was sales, I would ignore it, but the number was tagged for emergency official use only. I quickly searched the IP and discovered the call was from an FBI office in Orlando, Florida. That seemed important.

  “Master, phone call from the FBI in Orlando.”

  “The FBI? What?”

  “The American Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “I know that! I just… Did I do something wrong?”

  He had spent seven days in Orlando in August the year before, participating in a worldwide TAI battle convention.

  “The office in question appears to specialize in hacking and cybercrime.”

  “For real?”

  I pointed to the domain name. “It does not appear to be a proxy.”

  “Huh. Well, I doubt anyone could copy an FBI server that easily. Put it through. Can you interpret?”

  A TAI with a logic engine was the ideal translation software. Unlike twentieth century software, we would not confuse “She is safe” with “She is a safe” or “Put money in the bank” with burying money by a river. We knew that women could not be safes, and money did not generally belong in a riverbank.

  A black man in his mid-thirties appeared on the screen. I translated his words into Japanese and my master’s responses into English.

  “Hideo Kageyama? You are Ibis’s robo master?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I am Bernard Karr. Part of the FBI’s cybercrimes unit.” He flashed his ID at the camera. “I apologize if it’s past bedtime in Japan.”

  “No, I wasn’t sleeping yet. What is this about?”

  “We arrested a particularly dangerous hacker yesterday. He had a program that we believe he stole from you.”

  “A program?”

  “A TAI character.”

  My master’s expression changed to Confusion. Even as I translated, I felt a little confused myself.

  “Wait, wait… the only TAI I have is Ibis.”

  “Yes. Ibis has been stolen.”

  Karr explained that at the Orlando convention last year, famous robo masters from around the world had participated in a tournament. All their TAI battlers had engaged in a number of matches over a five-day period.

  Within Japan, the time lag was less than 20 milliseconds, and this barely affected battles. But between Japan and America, the time lag was at least 120 milliseconds, and sometimes even a full second. With that delay in response, there could be no battle. To participate in battles overseas, the programs had to be moved to local servers.

  Ever since the Buzzsaw incident in 2032, intelligent computer viruses were considered extremely dangerous, and it was illegal to transmit TAI or PAI. Master had copied me to a UVR disc, taken that with him to Orlando, and uploaded me to a server at the convention. After the convention, my memories were copied over the ones on the disc, and the data on the server was deleted. He brought the disc back to Japan, and copied over the data on his server at home. No copies of me should still have existed.

  But there had been a trap hidden in the convention’s server. One of the convention staff, a Ted Orenstein, had set it to automatically copy TAI programs uploaded to the server and hide them under different file names. When the convention was over, he transferred those copies to a disc and brought it home with him.

  TAI collection was not Orenstein’s only motive. He had a strong sexual interest in female TAI battlers.

  His crime would never have been discovered if not for his own stupidity. He had decided to share his fun with friends and sent images of himself abusing famous TAI battlers to online buddies. But not all of them were as immoral as he was. They reported him to the FBI immediately. The FBI traced the images back to him.

  When the agents stormed his place, he tried to delete his entire collection. But fragments of the data remained, and the images he’d sent to friends were evidence enough. He had yet to confess, but he was sure to be found guilty.

  “We decided that you should be informed. He stole your TAI, altered it, and subjected it to Virtual Cruelty. We have images proving it.”

  My master’s expression darkened.

  “Let me see them.”

  “You have a right to see them. But I warn you, they’re pretty bad.”

  “I don’t care. Let me see.” His voice shook.

  “I’ll transfer the data over to you.”

  The agent’s arm moved; he was clicking something on his screen. A moment later a six-minute movie was transferred to us.

  My master did not watch the whole thing. Before it was over, he flipped the table over and screamed.

  Human morality has atrophied.

  Humans themselves have failed to notice. It is impossible for anyone whose morality has atrophied to notice the atrophy itself. Just look at the many Americans who believe dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was the correct choice. This is a point of view thoroughly debunked on both logical and moral grounds, but most Americans have never questioned their belief.

  Proof of this human inclination extends back before the start of the Common Era. In myths the world over, there are tales of a god who, enraged at the sins of man, destroyed the world in a great flood. Innocent babies and children must have died in these floods, yet these myths never mention them. The gods these people worshipped committed genocide. Humanity accepted and imitated the actions of the gods humanity itself had created. In the name of a just god, they let that bomb detonate, killing every living thing.

  Of course, humans have emotions like pity, compassion, and outrage. But the range of events that can provoke these emotions is staggeringly tiny. At best, they extend to the national level. If people from their own country are killed, they may express surprise, grief, anger, and sympathy. But if ten thousand people are killed in a distant, far-off land, they will not be the slightest bit affected, particularly if it was their own doing.

  On the limited field of Layer 0, of Earth, there can be no such thing as “their problem.” There can only be “our problem.” But too many people do not realize this. The only things that move their hearts are tragedies that affect them personally or affect people close to them. Only then do people become aware of problems they have had all along.

  —Excerpt from the Phoebus Declaration

  Two days later, my master gathered robo master friends of his in a chat room.

  The chat room was in Layer 1, in a space designed to look like a medieval castle. My master, the Gear Emperor, used an avatar that looked like an antique robot from mid-twentieth century science fiction. The other robo masters all had distinctive avatars of their own. 1/4 Pint, (Raven’s master) had a tropical fish for a face, but was a salaryman from the neck down. Swindler Wolf (Typhoon 18’s master) was a brain floating in a bottle of sake, which glittered every time he spoke. Saori (Shinano’s master) was a woman in a kimono. Black Pegasus (Pi Quark’s master) was what he sounded like.

  1/4 Pint: I know how you feel, Gear, but…

  Gear Emperor: How could you?! You didn’t see that
file. That’s why you can be so blasé about this!

  Saori: It was that bad?

  Gear Emperor: He implanted the female TAI battlers he stole with artificial vaginas.

  Black Pegasus: Wait, if he did that, the nerves at the crotch would be crippled.

  Gear Emperor: Yeah. He had to remove actuators to make room for it. The battlers were no longer able to walk. In the clip I saw, Ibis could only scramble around on the floor.

  Black Pegasus: Ew. Gross.

  Gear Emperor: And that’s not all. He made all kinds of alterations to Ibis. He made it so she couldn’t turn off her sensory feedback, then tied her up, tortured her, and… and it just gets worse from there! He did every horrifying, sickening thing he could think of!

  Black Pegasus: And Ibis?

  Gear Emperor: As far as I could tell, her mind had completely snapped. She was just sobbing. Calling for me. I’ve never seen Ibis like that.

  1/4 Pint: She’d already been deleted when he was arrested?

  Saori: Well… at least that’s some small mercy.

  Gear Emperor: Mercy? Torture wasn’t enough, he had to snuff her too?

  Saori: Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.

  Black Pegasus: But that means you can get more compensation than you would for just the theft and copyright violations.

  1/4 Pint: Yeah, even without financial loss, you can claim mental duress.

  Swindler Wolf: There was a case like that in Canada last year.

  Gear Emperor: You don’t get it. I don’t want money! I won’t be satisfied unless Orenstein gets tried for battery and murder!

  1/4 Pint: Yeah, but TAI don’t have rights.

  Gear Emperor: Exactly! According to current laws, it’s illegal to torture an animal but not a crime to torture a TAI. They get off if it’s virtual. Not just Orenstein. Perverts all over the world are doing the same damn thing. I want to put a stop to it!