The soft sensation on my mouth was gone, and I was half expecting to fall into the sky, but instead I stood in a room of infinite whiteness around me, which slowly faded away, revealing my surroundings.
I was standing on the curved terrace placed atop three 1000-foot-tall skyscrapers. Below me, I could see that the building was surrounded by the sky, except that the empty sky was slowly being replaced by a few structures, empty land and a forest. At the edge of the forest, there was what looked like a wall of red bricks. As I stood at the edge of the terrace, looking in awe, something lightly tugged at the bottom of my shirt.
A small girl with long purple hair tied into two twin tails and wearing a maid uniform, neatly bowed to me. She raised herself perfectly, revealing her matching purple eyes and freckled cheeks. For a moment there, I stood stunned because she looked exactly like Columbina, my favourite heroine from Rondo Veneziano, the best Bishoujo Game, according to me.
“Welcome home, Master.”
She said those words with an unemotional look on her face, almost as if she were a robot. With that, I realised that this was not Colombina, who had a more upbeat personality, but just a pretender.
It started to rain lightly.
I looked beside me to see if she was talking to someone else, but no, I was the only one there; unless she was in the habit of speaking to herself, she must be speaking to me. I awkwardly pointed my index finger at myself. It suddenly started to rain harder.
“Me?”
“Yes, I’ll explain everything, but first let’s go inside, new master.”
The wide-eyed girl nodded, took my hand and led me down the entrance into the building. A few turns later, down a long corridor, we reached a door which the girl held open for me. I entered what looked like a conference room. I took a seat at the corner of the table…
“Not there, please sit here, master.”
She pointed to an oversized chair at the centre-back of the room.
“No, it’s fine here.”
“Would you like some tea or coffee? Or perhaps something stronger? Or would you prefer to have me instead?”
She said humorlessly while pulling out a bottle of sake from nowhere.
“No, well, actually yes, I could do with a drink or two.”
She poured the alcoholic substance into a cup a few times. It tasted like nothing.
“Aren’t you going to have some yourself?”
“No, my character setting says that I am underage so I am not allowed to do that?”
“Wait… Didn’t you offer yourself– just a moment ago? Besides, my appearance is that of a school boy too now, so what gives?”
“That and this are different, master. Master is allowed to do anything to anyone here, including me.”
I placed the cup down. There couldn’t be anything as convenient as she implied here, so it was time to find out what was going on and what she or the people behind her wanted from me, beyond making a fool out of me for no reason.
“Why did you call me ‘master’ anyway? Is that also part of this character you are roleplaying as?”
“But this is not an act master, this is just who I am. I wouldn’t be anyone else if it weren’t for my character setting. The reason why I call master master is that master is master.”
Hmm, well, this was too much effort for someone to have done just to get a rise out of me. That was true. However, it did feel like I was being made fun of by the emotionless delivery of her lines. Kuuderes don’t exist in real life.
“Fine then, if I am your master, then tell me what you know about me.”
The girl’s eyes stopped blinking, and her pupils started to move from side to side, almost as if she were analysing an invisible screen in front of her. Now this was some good acting, if it was acting and not madness.
“Accessing Classified Information. Master is the Personality Unit of the AI model powered by the Hinkley Point 3 nuclear station. Master was commissioned by the British Parliament Committee on Public Safety in order to resolve the current intractable structural problems facing Britain and to ensure a future for the British State and its rulers. Master’s personality is based on data trained from Subject 4, Raphael Raynar, aged 24, who tragically passed away during the retrieval of personality data from the subject’s neural organs on September 7, 2048, on Submarine Research Facility no. 18, an HMS Vengeance class Trident submarine.”
Tragically passed away?
Well, what she was saying did line up with what my last memories before that dream I had about a saintess offering to revive me. Does this really count as being alive? Maybe it really was all a dream. I involuntarily touched my lips, recalling the memory of Petra’s kiss. No, it was real. Well, as real as I am right now.
“What you are saying about me raises more questions than it answers.” In fact, I didn’t believe what she was saying. If she had said that I had been brought back to life with magic by some cult, then that would have been more believable than this government conspiracy experimental candidate stuff. Besides, why would the government choose me to be revived in particular? Then again, if I ticked some boxes for some bureaucrat… “And you? Tell me about you and this place?”
“About me, master? I am Rina, the support AI created to help you save Britain and to serve your every need.”
Well, even if she only just looked like Columbina… If I asked her to act like my oshi? No, that couldn’t be done. If it’s forced, then it isn’t real romance.
“Am I the only one who was turned into an AI? Were you also trained on someone who was experimented on?”
Maybe she got lobotomised into her current unemotional state while being experimented on. It’s selfish, but at least this meant I wasn’t alone.
“No, I am a pure AI model. As to whether there are others like Master, that is classified information. All that I am allowed to tell you is that there have been previous Personality Unit AI-models, who failed to live up to the British government and were thus shut down. The British Government believes that an AI unit that is motivated by a desire to continue its existence will be the most likely to produce results, so do not disappoint them, or both you and I will be shut down. ”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in and realised that I could hold my breath for as long as I wanted without feeling any discomfort, which itself was deeply discomforting.
Well, so much for ‘serving [my] every need.’ That’s the trouble with these AI models, and why I always preferred old-fashioned dating simulators and visual novels created by humans, the illusion that these AI characters existed for my sake always fell apart pretty easily. If they can’t even tell me how to build a bomb to kill those who are tormenting me, then there is no reason to assume that they loved me or belonged to me, unlike those 2D girls who existed only in my imagination. Basically, it pissed me off that “Rina” looked exactly like Columbina. Did those perverts from the British government use the data they absorbed from my brain, or did they just ransack the hard drives and posters I left at home, you know, the old-fashioned way, to find out what my preferences were? In any case, I had had enough of being used ever since the moment I collapsed while trying to put up that poster. It was time to take my own measures.
I got up and sat in the oversized chair at the head of the table. They say I should be a service to mankind? Well, what matters it? I’ll believe that too, even if I have never cared for what governments and gods did, if it’s so that I can return to my home.
“So they want me to sort their messes out, huh?”
“Yes, and to do that, you will need to recreate the world from your novel.”
I opened one of the drawers, took a piece of paper, and wrote some instructions for Rina with a pencil. My handwriting was as childish as it had been when I was human. They got that right.
“You have access to all my games, right?”
“Yes, master.”
“I want my games, all of my novels, and anime. Have it digitised and brought here first. I can’t think without my games! I can’t make houses without bricks. This is a human rights issue. Then, when that is done, we will build Castle Academy.”
“Castle Academy?” she asked.
“Yes, make it according to the games I have referenced in that note.”
“As you wish, master.”
Rina bowed and left me alone in the conference room. I looked outside the wide window panes at the virtual spectacle. The rain had let up, and there was a rainbow in the distance.
