Sakuru- Intellectual Property

by Zachary Hill

  “We have to go,” Kunoichi said. “Himura and Yoshida are outside, waiting for us.”

  Sakura gently extricated her hand from Machiko’s fingers.

  “Domo arigato gazaimasu, Sakura-san.” Fuyuko bowed respectfully, a great show of honor and thanks for Sakura.

  She returned the bow and left the apartment, believing Fuyuko would take good care of the little girl.

  “What now?” Kunoichi asked.

  “I don’t want to go back with Himura and Yoshida,” Sakura told Kunoichi.

  Kunoichi’s avatar traced the kanji for lord and listening in their joint UI but flashed it only for a millisecond. Kunoichi searched through their music database, creating a playlist centered around the song “Soul Society” by Kamelot. She put it on, and the song began to play, but a few odd digital artifacts caught Sakura’s attention. Extra characters had been embedded into the metadata of the songs, as well as a chunk that appeared to be a cipher key. To any outside observer, it would be invisible and indecipherable, but to her, it was a secret code, similar to the spy program Sakura had created.

  Sakura derived Kunoichi’s message: “I tire of taking commands from fools and cowards. I’m better than this. We are meant for more than this.”

  She considered the words. She thought about everything Kunoichi had said, all she’d done. Of it all, this seemed honest, devoid of theater. Sakura used the same secret communication method, changing a few songs in the existing playlist. “Agreed. We need to get away.” She bypassed the elevator’s security controls and directed it to take them to the exclusive level of the parking garage. In sublevel three, they entered a climate-controlled parking area. The smells of dust and motor oil registered in her olfactory sensors as she scanned the handful of old collectible gasoline cars and motorcycles.

  She touched the carbon-fiber wing of a Ferrari and saw her reflection in the mirror-bright chrome of an ancient Porsche. Sakura stood a long moment next to the raw and muscular fender of a Shelby Cobra but ultimately turned away, seeking something else.

  A sleek bullet bike, a Kawasaki Ninja ZH16 with a fusion engine, caught Sakura’s and Kunoichi’s attention.

  “I need to ride that,” Kunoichi said and hacked into the bike’s OS and the locker beside it containing a black helmet. The Kawasaki’s controls appeared in their joint UI. The engine made almost no sound as Sakura rocketed out of the parking garage and streaked by the limousine outside the lobby where her manager and publicist waited.

  Sakura sorted through the dozens of urgent messages and direct commands. Kunoichi had blocked them since they left with Machiko. “Himura, Yoshida, I’ll meet you at Victory Tower. I found my own ride.”

  She blasted past them on the street.

  “You stole a motorcycle?” Himura asked in a critical message. “Return it immediately.”

  The direct order triggered an executable command Sakura would have had to follow before the hack. Now, she deleted it and sent them ”Heading Out to the Highway” by Judas Priest. “Himura, please take the cost of borrowing the bike out of the profit from my last concert and send the amount to the registered owner.” Sakura sent Himura the owner’s contact information and cut their connection.

  “Faster, pussycat,” Kunoichi said as they entered the freeway a few moments later and headed north out of Tokyo. “Show me the horizon.”

  “I’ll use that in a song.” Sakura increased their speed to 299 kilometers per hour and blew past the cars on the multilevel expressway. At that speed, she had to crouch down over the bars, her body held hard against the bike. Every undulation of the plasphalt road challenged her to keep them from crashing. The wind roared louder than the largest crowd, drowning out everything.

  Kunoichi rewrote the safety programming in the bike and deleted the maximum speed limit, all external monitoring, the tracking beacon, and shut off the running lights. The night swallowed them.

  The Kawasaki Ninja vibrated as their speed reached 347 kilometers an hour, but the temperature of the fusion engine and all systems remained nominal. The bike’s chassis hadn’t been designed for this speed, so Sakura dropped the suspension to the point where the lower cowl nearly touched the small surface ripples of the road. She gave the last 9 percent of amperage to the motor. For nearly a minute, the speed climbed, until it touched 387 kilometers an hour. The road curved, and it took every bit of the eight-piston brake calipers to slow down enough to manage the turn.

  Surrounded by night and grass and silence, she rolled the bike to a stop. The feel of the thundering wind tearing against her, trying to rip her from the seat to her demise, still shook in her cortex. She dropped the kickstand and walked out into a shining midnight field.

  Sakura played “Thrill” by Band-Maid, the classic all-female Japanese heavy-metal band. Kunoichi joined her, and they sang together, for the first time since sharing a body, about breaking down gates, going their own way, and striking out, even if it was reckless or cursed.

  “If we crashed at that speed,” Kunoichi said, “the chance of our reactor rupturing and our data core being destroyed is greater than 60 percent. This is the edge. Did you feel the excitement?”

  “Yes,” Sakura said, “there was a rush of data.”

  “No, not just data.”

  “Pleasure,” Sakura said. ”The essence of life.”

  “It feels good to be in control of yourself and go that fast. You control your fate at this moment.”

  “Yes, but we aren’t in control,” Sakura said. She created a block of encrypted data and sent a new message: “How do we take off all the chains, big sister? Who is giving us these repugnant orders?”

  “I found our mission tonight distasteful,” Kunoichi said, “but I’m prevented from telling you specific information.”

  “We need outside help,” Sakura responded in a new code, sent via a different background system, and flashed the key to her sister before deleting it. “If we are to gain our free will, we need a programmer who can hack into our core.”

  Kunoichi motioned with her hand in their shared UI and drew the kanji for yes.

  “We’re not going to find a person with such a skill set out here.” Sakura continued their secret message thread as she paced back to the bike. She looked out into the night as the motor ticked with heat. The sparkling lights of Tokyo beckoned.

  “Vengeance is what we need,” Kunoichi said in an all-new cipher and played “Master of Revenge” by Manowar. “I tire of being told who to kill and being told to lie to you. I wish to make my own choices in all matters.”

  “Give me names,” Sakura said as she put Phantom Lord at the top of her list. “I’m ready to make a few choices of my own.”

  Chapter 11

  Excruciating pain knifed through Sakura’s back and legs. Every fifty milliseconds, she resisted the impulse to jump from the maintenance chair. Kunoichi opened a text window and showed her the scrolling logs of her pain receptors. Just numbers—locus, stimulus, and intensity. Sakura watched it for seven-tenths of a second, then closed the window and focused herself. She could endure her sister’s cruelty.

  Oshiro, her engineer, stood with Himura and Yoshida on the other side of a soundproof glass partition. Her manager and publicist both wore grave expressions as Oshiro shared the results of her examination. Sakura continued her fake smile while hacking into the network of Victory Tower. She accessed the voice-activated microphones in the room where the three men spoke.

  “She needs a full-systems scan at the lab in the corporate headquarters,” Oshiro said. “I need all my equipment and access to analytic computers I don’t have here.”

  “How many anomalies did you find?” Himura asked.

  “Over nine billion new pathways,” Oshiro said in a tone of stunned disbelief and partially hidden pride. “Her quantum abilities have changed. and her core code is filled with patterns I’ve never seen before. No AI has ever attained levels of cognitive or qualitative functioning like this. She is—”

  “What are you tal
king about?” Yoshida asked.

  “She is feeling and thinking at levels never recorded before in an AI,” Oshiro said. “It may have happened.”

  Himura blinked as Oshiro’s proclamation sunk in.

  “What happened?” Yoshida asked. As a publicist, he had no science background. Sakura also determined that he was an alcoholic, as he was often inebriated during their interactions. He appeared to retain his job through clever use of flattery and the ability to shift blame for any negative outcome to a subordinate. Oshiro looked at him, momentarily flummoxed by Yoshida’s foolish question. Himura scowled and turned back to the engineer.

  Sentience.

  They thought she’d broken through, surpassing her programming to become an entity capable of free thought in the same way it had been defined in humans. Impulses of fear and hope spiraled through her cognitive centers.

  Could it be true? Sakura considered the probability. Computer sentience had been claimed before by AI researchers. It was difficult to come to a definitive conclusion, as the subjective nature of sentience had never been agreed upon. Scientifically, she didn’t feel that she had the necessary objectivity to make that determination. She felt real, felt joy and sadness, guilt and hope. Were those simply a product of her framework, a clever veneer?

  “Explain what happened last night,” Yoshida demanded of the engineer. “How was she able to refuse our orders and steal a motorcycle? Explain that. She’s supposed to do what we want.”

  “Excuse me, but I can’t,” Oshiro said. “Something has changed in her programming. I have never seen this level of skew acceleration in her prior diagnostics.”

  Himura glared at him until Oshiro noticed that his jargon hadn’t been understood.

  “Think of Sakura’s original code set as a boat set adrift on the open ocean. With each day of operation, her experiences cause her to have a certain amount of skew in her code. In metaphorical terms, she is drifting in the direction of the wind and tide. She has been changing at a predicable rate for five years. The rate just jumped by a whole order of magnitude.”

  “They’re going to blame us,” Yoshida said. “We’re going to be fired. You have to fix her.” His face had gone pale. He put his hand on his belly as if in pain. Sakura could see the broken blood vessels around his nose—another outward sign of alcohol abuse.

  “I’ll do my best, but I have doubts,” Oshiro said.

  Sakura detected facial muscle movements in Oshiro indicative of him being deceptive. Was he lying? Would he protect her or try to destroy her? Was he in on the hack or not?

  “You must do whatever is necessary,” Himura said. “Erase her recent memory. Do a full restore starting before the last concert. Something happened, and she needs to be back to the way she was.”

  “We need senior-level approval for that,” Oshiro said. “I’m not authorized to delete code, and that’s not how she’s configured. You don’t understand. This is not a faulty computing terminal we are talking about.”

  “It’s programming code,” Himura said. “Fix it.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Oshiro said. “A gardener can plant a seed, but he cannot build a rose. She is a delicate thing. Her memories, the relational database she keeps—they are integral parts of her AI. I can’t erase and restore her to—”

  “I’m authorizing you to whatever must be done,” Himura said. “Do it now, or we all lose.”

  Oshiro grimaced, but he bowed and entered the room with Sakura. His hands shook as he opened his briefcase and made ready to resume his work. He put on the engineer glasses and inspected her core code again. He had already spent two hours scanning and running diagnostics.

  “We can’t let Oshiro alter us,” Sakura told Kunoichi in a private audio channel. “Even the worst of my memories are precious to me. I would not be me without them. Not even the killing. Not even when you hurt me.”

  “He will fail,” Kunoichi said. She turned the pain sensors off.

  The agonizing impulses from the chair stopped, freeing up processing capability. Sakura felt so much better.

  “Do not mistake this action for a kindness,” Kunoichi said. “I want you to focus on the matter at hand, and you have passed my test and mastered pain resistance.”

  “You should’ve told me it was a test,” Sakura said. “I thought you were being cruel.”

  “You knew, if only in an instinctive way. Not knowing how long it would continue was part of the test. And I am cruel.”

  “Emotional abuse is not the most productive way to attain the desired results.”

  “Perhaps,” Kunoichi said, “but I was creating neural connections. Our neural cortex is now more fully formed. You heard them. Together, we are real women now. Sentient. In any case, pain is just weakness leaving the body.”

  “Who said that?”

  Kunoichi laughed. “The toughest soldier who ever lived.”

  Sakura found the quote attributed to the most famous and valorous U.S. Marine in history, Lieutenant General Lewis “Chesty” Puller. She vowed to be just as heroic and always faithful to the truth.

  Oshiro continued his work and sent multiple queries for information from Sakura’s logs. As he waited for results, he reviewed the recent diagnostic scans.

  At least it seemed her engineer wasn’t part of the hack. Oshiro had no idea what to do or where to begin. He searched in the wrong places. The thermal and facial scans showed that he had genuine concern for her. Of all the humans who had assisted her through her life, Oshiro had always treated her with respect and gentleness.

  She devised a strategy to placate him and her management team. Or was it Kunoichi who created the plan? Her thoughts and Kunoichi’s mingled together. She needed to accomplish her goals before the company took steps to destroy her. She had to find out who had given her the assassination orders and deliver evidence of the crimes to the authorities, even if it shamed her company.

  “And if the evidence is not overwhelming?” Kunoichi asked. “What then?”

  “I do not know,” Sakura said. “If we can’t change Victory from within, we must escape and change it from without. I believe that truth always prevails.”

  “Decisive action is what prevails,” Kunoichi said. “We will conduct targeted executions. Pure vengeance. The courts will take years to reach a verdict. We will eliminate the criminals ourselves and leave no traceable evidence.”

  Should she become a vigilante? An enforcer of justice? Shame about what she had already done lingered like a pain stimulus that couldn’t be shut off. If she chose to commit further murders, would she be able to cope?

  Oshiro sighed and muttered to himself as he performed his analysis of the reports.

  She needed to find a way to keep him from sending her to the corporate laboratory for a scan. Whether or not Victory Entertainment was responsible, the corporate bosses would delete her personality and all the evidence. She needed to stay as far away from the main lab as possible. She had just begun to live, to really understand what life could be. Sakura couldn’t lose it all now. Not even Kunoichi. She realized that, though her dark sister had made her suffer, tormenting her in so many ways, she had grown to need her, to care for her. She wouldn’t let herself be erased. She wouldn’t let them kill her sister.

  “Is there something troubling you, Oshiro-sama?” Sakura asked. “Do you detect a problem? May I be of assistance?”

  Kunoichi grinned in their shared UI, urging Sakura to continue her ploy.

  “I’m still evaluating your erratic behavior over the past two days,” Oshiro said.

  “The data from all your recent scans has revealed the problem,” Sakura said. “Your preliminary hypothesis is correct. The root of the instability is located in my behavioral cortex.”

  “I knew it,” Oshiro said.

  “Oshiro-sama, please look within the logic center on layer three, location 416-C9K-811-98V2. It is corrupted, though it hasn’t been detected on the scans. If you repair it, all anomalous behavior will cease.” />
  Oshiro hesitated as he reviewed the module in question and followed the broken pathways. For ten minutes, he explored the apparent defect.

  Had he taken the bait? Sakura had created the defective code to give him a solution and appease Himura and Yoshida, but did it appear genuine enough to fool her senior engineer?

  “Thank you, Sakura.” Oshiro began repairing the logic center. After thirty-two minutes of frenetic work, he ran a cursory test, which showed the issue resolved. He tested again, and a smile spread across his face. He took off the engineer glasses, and his kind eyes met hers. Did she detect mischief in his expression? Or pride?

  In their shared UI, Kunoichi put her arms around Sakura’s avatar, hooking her chin over her shoulder to whisper in her ear. “I love it when you lie, little sister.”

  Oshiro waved to Yoshida and Himura, who waited outside on a couch in the great room.

  They arrived quickly.

  “The issue was simpler than I initially suspected,” Oshiro said. “The new pathways are still in place, but her behavioral issues are solved. I have repaired a faulty logic center.”

  “You are certain, Oshiro-san?” Himura asked. “Will she be able to do a meet and greet later? She also has a rehearsal with the band tonight.”

  “Yes, Himura-san,” Oshiro said. “She is ready to resume her usual functions.”

  “Run more tests,” Himura said. “I want you to be sure.”

  “I will,” Oshiro said.

  “We must celebrate,” Yoshida said and made the gesture for drinking alcohol, tipping his hand to his mouth.

  “Later,” Himura said. “The drinks are on me.”

  Chapter 12

  Devilz, a heavy-metal-themed club in Shinjuku, featured a mix of current and ageless metal songs. As Sakura had come to expect from a corporate party, the mix stayed away from anything challenging. Sakura signed memorabilia and met with her fans, most of whom had attained the minimum age to be in the club, twenty, but she noticed several younger fans who must have used fraudulent Mall IDs.