Good Luck, Yukikaze

by Chohei Kambayashi

  Rei just grunted in response. That, he thought, is most probably the case.

  “I’m a woman, you’re a man, and the both of us are human,” Edith said, not looking at Rei. “Whether we’re at work or in our private lives, that never changes. Not when we get angry at each other or when we’re complaining to each other. I can complain about little things right here, right now, only because you are human. If I thought of you as a machine, I wouldn’t be talking to you like this. Doctors don’t share their private complaints with their patients.”

  “Are you doing it because you think of me as a partner?”

  “Yeah. Funny, huh?”

  “Not really. Actually, I think it’d be interesting to try complaining to Yukikaze too.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Foss said.

  “When I think about it, I realize that I never thought of Yukikaze as a machine. It just occurred to me that I complain to her all the time when we’re in combat. I don’t talk to her like I’m better than she is. I get pissed off at her as though she was my partner and chat with her when I relax. Like now, with you. We’re equals. I was just wondering what Yukikaze thinks of us. At the very least, I’m sure that she sees me differently from other people. She isn’t just a machine.”

  “Has Yukikaze ever warned you to knock off the chatter?”

  “Well…yeah, actually. Now that I think about it, there have been situations where that’s happened. I wasn’t aware of her talking to me, but—”

  “That’s because you always just thought of her as being an extension of yourself. You wouldn’t have considered it communication from someone else.”

  “I’m reconsidering that.”

  “I may need to do a psychobehavioral analysis on Yukikaze as well.”

  “Having a disinterested third party doing that for her would be useful. Major Booker doesn’t seem that concerned about it, but it’s of vital importance to me,” Rei said. “She’s been my partner for a long time, after all.”

  “Let’s give it a try. If we can get Yukikaze to complain to us, it might relieve some of the stress she’s under.”

  “I never thought of her having psychological stress, but she probably does. The same as the maintenance teams, or Major Booker.”

  “So while I’m profacting the JAM, I’ll also be working on stress reduction for a fighter plane named Yukikaze,” Captain Foss said, taking a deep breath. “You people must have really hooked me deep into your environment, because that doesn’t seem nearly as asinine to me as it should.”

  “But it doesn’t feel bad either, does it?”

  “No. I used to be scared of you and the SAF, but not anymore. That change in itself may be something to fear though.”

  “That’s my fault. I took you into battle in Yukikaze. I figured if you were one of us, you wouldn’t be scared. However…” Rei stopped in front of the hangar bay entrance and turned to face Captain Foss. “I want you to stay a neutral party in all this. Stay on guard to see if I and the rest of the SAF are just crazy. I know this is a selfish and difficult request, but…it’s hard for me to explain, but somehow I think I can trust you more that way.”

  “Basically, you want me to become a standard for objective reality.”

  “Exactly. Like a spy operating on her own, observing enemy movements.”

  “I’ve had training for stuff like that,” Foss said.

  “You’ve had spy training? That’s amazing.”

  “No, as a psychologist. It’s training designed to prevent me from assimilating a delusional patient’s fantasy world. It’s difficult because unlike other illnesses, like infectious diseases, you can’t take precautionary measures like getting vaccinated. Still, I’ll try my best. If I go crazy, then there’ll be nobody to help you with your rehabilitation. This business I’m in is all about cause and effect. If I fall in love with my partner, it’s all over.”

  “That’s up to you to judge, but if you’re going to say that, then I’ll say this—I don’t like your personality,” Rei said as he touched his hand to the entry ID plate by the blast doors. “But I respect your battle skills.”

  “Battle skills… Just the way I’d expect you to put that.”

  The abilities you need to survive, Rei thought. Captain Foss pressed her hand to the ID plate as well.

  4

  NO “ACCESS DENIED” warning interrupted Captain Foss’s entry into the hangar bay. The two of them stepped side by side through the blast doors. As the doors shut behind them, a second set of doors leading to the hangar opened automatically.

  “Looks like I’m still welcome to enter,” she said.

  “Maybe you still are,” Rei replied. “Or maybe you were granted new access. Still, it shows that you are considered necessary around here.”

  Grabbing two headsets in the prep room, he handed one to Captain Foss, and they climbed aboard Yukikaze.

  Captain Foss looked like she was having a hard time climbing in, loaded down as she was with folders full of documents, so Rei gave her a hand. Once she was settled into the rear seat, Rei opened his own folders and asked what they should do first.

  “I’d like to access Dr. Lecter, my personal computer in my office. How do I do that from here?”

  She said it like she thought it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course, she could do it, but it wouldn’t be that easy. Rei first indicated for her to plug in her headset, then switched the onboard comm system on.

  “You’ve had training on how to use the electronic warfare systems in front of you, in case you have to go into combat. Do you remember it?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Rei flipped the master arm switch to ON. The electronic warfare system in back activated, indicating to Captain Foss that she could use it.

  As he did, Rei saw MISSION UNKNOWN flash onto the main display. It was a kind of warning from Yukikaze, asking what he was planning to do. He’d already experienced what would happen if he ignored her hint.

  Rei contacted the tactical computer in SAF HQ and from it called up a catalog of past missions and orders on the display. He looked for any orders from Major Booker regarding the task he’d handed to them today. He found them next to the current date: personality analysis of Lieutenant Katsuragi and prediction of future JAM behavior. Each had been assigned a mission ID number, with Captain Foss and Captain Fukai listed as leading them. Since these had been entered, explaining the details to Yukikaze would be easy.

  Rei opened a voice line to Major Booker’s office. The response came quickly.

  “Captain Fukai, I just got another alert from STC. What are you doing, prepping Yukikaze for combat?”

  Rei read aloud the mission numbers displayed on the screen and asked that Yukikaze be added to the column indicating the personnel with command responsibility. When he explained that Captain Foss thought that Yukikaze would be interested in these missions as well, the major agreed.

  “I’ll authorize it,” he said. “It’s in your hands now.”

  Just as Major Booker had said, the tactical computer informed Yukikaze that she’d been added to the mission. She quickly confirmed the change; the MISSION UNKNOWN display vanished from the screen. Preparations, complete.

  Rei called out to Captain Foss.

  “Use the emergency tactical link. Activate the SAF super linker. You can do it, Edith. It’s on the menu in front of you. Just select it and hit execute.”

  “Executing,” she replied. “Confirming SSL startup. I did it!”

  “Right now, you’ve got a direct voice line to the SAF tactical computer. Just tell it your request. Call it ‘STC’ when you’re talking to it.”

  “STC, call up my computer and have it link with Yukikaze.”

  Denied, came the brusque reply from STC.

  “Okay, first, it doesn’t know what ‘my computer’ is,” Rei said. “Second, you don’t make a request from your computer to Yukikaze. You have to say Yukikaze is making the request. First, you have to make a declaration like ‘Th
is is Yukikaze, emergency,’ or even ‘B-1, emergency.’ If you make that declaration, you don’t have to tell it who you are. A request like that coming from aboard Yukikaze during a mission can be confirmed by both STC and headquarters, and they’ll give you top priority in executing it. In order for STC to know which personal computer you’re calling and want to access, you have to give it either its registry number or its personal name. That’s all.”

  “STC, this is Yukikaze. Emergency. Requesting access to personal computer Dr. Lecter in the office of SAF flight surgeon Captain Foss.”

  This is STC. Roger. Initiating emergency enforced linkup. Link, established.

  “Tell it ‘roger.’ Say ‘This is Yukikaze’ first, though.”

  “This is Yukikaze. Roger.—Okay, Captain Fukai, I know we’re connected, but how do I use Dr. Lecter from here?”

  “You can bring up a soft keyboard on the EW display in front of you.”

  It was meant for making it easy to program the programmable systems on board as well as to enter established orders, but wasn’t functional during flight.

  “It’s on the menu. Just select it.”

  “Got it. Big display, huh?”

  “It’s meant to be used while you’re wearing flight gloves. You can change the size if you want.”

  “Got it. So…this is a virtual version of my personal computer within the SAF tactical computer, right?”

  “It’s an independently operating SAF personal computer. Not virtual. You’re accessing your office terminal by an individual domain that’s assigned to each SAF PC. That private domain acts as a single personal computer, so I suppose it’s a virtual computer if you look at it that way. You can load any sort of application software you have on it, but you can’t actually connect to the real PC through it. It was set up that way for security, so you can’t call it a totally virtual computer. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I remember it being explained to me, but seeing it laid out in a hierarchical display like this is the first time I can really see how it works,” Captain Foss said as she looked at the EW display. “That means that all the data on Dr. Lecter is going through the tactical computer. I never realized that at all.”

  “Fundamentally, it can’t be tampered with. I suppose anybody could if they got permission from General Cooley, but it’s probably pretty hard to get clearance under false pretenses. That’s the official line at least, but from a hardware perspective, the personal computers are just a segment of the tactical computer. The STC could probably do whatever it wanted to them if it decided to.”

  “I’m sure. Like access it freely from Yukikaze the way we’re doing now.”

  “The SAF super linker makes that possible. The SSL lets you operate the tactical computer from Yukikaze by means of a transmission protocol that’s unique to the SAF. You can’t do it unless you’re on a mission. We’re only able to do this because we’re acting under General Cooley’s orders.”

  “But that means that any squadron member could do this. My patients’ privacy would mean nothing then,” Foss said. “I suppose encrypting my stored files would be a waste of time.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. It’d take time to decrypt them, which greatly increases the likelihood of you noticing if someone’s been reading them on the sly. Anyway, let’s get to work.”

  Captain Foss’s computer Dr. Lecter had profacting applications installed. Rei had learned of the various psychoanalytical and diagnostic software applications Foss used from his numerous examinations, but as to what specific tools she was using now, he hadn’t a clue. Rei monitored her work from the display in front.

  Captain Foss started her profacting software.

  “This is T-FACPro II, the most powerful profacting tool currently available,” she explained to Rei. “Using the numerical data it outputs from the effects of real-world behavior caused by mental load components, I can set up a certain situation and then simulate what sort of actions the target personality will take and the mental state they’ll have. It’s actually a standard tool in profacting. Ever heard of it?”

  “No,” replied Rei.

  “The psychoanalysis engine this tool runs on is top-notch, but it can’t really demonstrate its true effectiveness here in the FAF.”

  “Why not?”

  “T-FACPro II was designed to be linked up with MAcBB, a huge active database used exclusively for T-FACPro. MAcBB contains the prediction data from countless researchers who use T-FACPro II as well as the actual behaviors of the target personalities. When the gap between the predicted behavior and the actual behavior is too great, the prediction technique is judged to be flawed. Then, T-FACPro II’s analysis engine looks for the cause and attempts to select a prediction technique more in line with observed behavior. It’ll be hypothetical, but that hypothetical method would send feedback from the other versions of T-FACPro II running out there through the MAcBB database. If similar examples show that the method works, then it’s no longer considered hypothetical. By those means, we accumulate usable methods and samples through MAcBB. In other words, the greater the number of researchers accessing it, the smarter T-FACPro II’s analysis engine gets. However, I can’t access MAcBB from the FAF. Cut off from that, T-FACPro II can’t reach its full potential.”

  “But it’s not completely useless, right?”

  “Right. With my own know-how, we have a pretty good chance of getting a result. My T-FACPro II is better than the FAF’s own analysis tools and probably on par with the ones used exclusively by the SAF.” As she said this, Captain Foss began entering numeric data that seemed to be about Lieutenant Katsuragi.

  “You said it compares predicted behavior with actual behavior?” Rei asked, being careful not to interrupt her.

  “Right. Predictions made by the software are technically called predicts, while the actual behavior are actuals—”

  “How does T-FACPro II know what the effects of real-world behavior from the target are? Do you input that?”

  “Basically, yes. It isn’t always possible for it to judge if a prediction was accurate or not. If we take you for example, if I were to operationalize some specific behavior like ‘How will Captain Fukai feel about Yukikaze from now on,’ and profacted you, T-FACPro II would output an answer like ‘He will fear her and take steps to eliminate his fear.’ Then I’d keep you under observation to see if that’s correct, and after I judge if it is, I enter the result. After that, T-FACPro II will judge the method it used as being a good one.”

  “But nothing you just described depends on that tool, does it?”

  “That’s because you’re recognizing that the results of your profact are correct. That would be useful in an actual profacting where you’re making more detailed and specific predictions. The predicted result isn’t always the actual one, so it outputs a probability for how likely a prediction will be to come true.”

  “But, in the end, it’s still just a prediction,” Rei said. “Basically, the program’s just a tool used by a researcher who’s accumulated experiences for the database. No matter how precisely T-FACPro II makes its predictions, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be correct.”

  “Yes, of course. And having said that, there are times when it has such a high degree of accuracy that a user may become convinced that its predictions are absolutely correct. It’s easy for experts to fall into that trap, to say nothing of amateurs. Well, shall we give it a try? What would you like to know about Lieutenant Katsuragi? Try giving me a concrete scenario. For instance, something like ‘What will he say when he sees Yukikaze?’ ”

  “Is that even possible to predict?”

  “I still can’t profact him with a high degree of accuracy. All I did was enter his PAC code.”

  “What’s a PAC code?”

  “His standardized personal analytic classification code. Don’t you know about that? The FAF authorities used it to determine that assigning you to the SAF 5th Squadron would be a good fit for you. Naturally, Lieutenant Katsuragi had a code a
ssigned to him as well. That’s what I was inputting just now.”

  “Is everyone in the FAF numerically classified like that?”

  “Not just in the FAF. You may not have known it, but you’ve probably had a PAC code following you around since childhood. Well, how they use the code varies from nation to nation. Some just use them to classify criminals, but the PAC code itself is a worldwide standard. It’s not unique to the FAF. Starting with blood type and an introversion/extroversion scale, it classifies you according to various psychological tendency components and arranges them as numeric data. T-FACPro II can read PAC codes directly, but in a full-scale usage of the software, it utilizes something called a PAX code, which is just an extended version of the PAC code, in order to achieve a greater level of predictive accuracy. It adds even more detailed psychological tendency components onto the PAC code, and coding those extensions is basically my job in all this. It leads to an even more detailed personality assessment. While you have to use T-FACPro II when you’re profacting, anyone can operate the software itself.”

  “I see.”

  “Since a mistake in analysis would lead to a flawed profacting, I’m sure you can understand why it requires an expert’s experience and advanced knowledge.”

  “Have you made a PAX code for me too?”

  “Yes, but your values aren’t fixed. You’re gradually changing.”

  “I’d expect that. Humans are essentially analog. I doubt digital numeric data could express an individual personality,” Rei said.

  “No,” Captain Foss replied. “It’s actually quite rare to have to revise past PAX code data to achieve an accurate profacting, as in your case. I’ve never seen anyone demonstrate personality changes as dramatic as yours. I originally thought I’d made a mistake when I first created your PAX code, but T-FACPro II determined that it was highly probable that the code was fine; you were changing. At this point, I know that was correct. It’s very rare. You have noticed how much of an interest I have in you, right?”