“What was the point of that clip?” asked a delicate voice from a white-haired girl in a blue-and-white Spanish military-style battle dress. Her appearance and voice were roughly based on Helen, whose pictures Rina provided. I guess it was my petty way of getting revenge. She finished her cup of tea and placed it on the table.
“The point, Rain-sama, is that in order to justify the expenses for our continued existence, we will need to raise the UK’s birth rates. Is that clear enough?”
“Hhmp! It’s Lain, not Rain!”
Lain took a Jaffa cake biscuit and ate it, then turned aside. There was still a bit of biscuit left on her lips.
“I will now outline the previous plans which have failed so that you will not repeat their mistakes and be taken offline.”
A pair of intellectual-looking glasses appeared on Rina’s face, and she read out from a paper even though she didn’t need either of those props. Was this a joke? As the only AI I had not programmed myself, I could not predict her actions, nor could I trust her not to rat me out to the government if I tried anything funny. The only way I could keep suspicion away from me was by making full use of her.
“The previous plans included nationalisation of all industries to fund artificial womb research, state arranged forced marriages, banning of all contraceptives, getting the state health service to kill off everyone over 65 to re-balance the population pyramid and blaming it on a virus and poor healthcare funding, preventing poor or low IQ people from having children by only handing out state benefits to poor people who refused to have children, turning Britain into a pro-natalist multi-faith theocracy by making all major British faith-leaders to lie about receiving a new prophecy, banning all forms of education and upward mobility so that people focused more on their families rather than improving their social status through education, banning all forms of media and entertainment except sex, simultaneously declaring war on all of Britain’s neighbouring countries in order to force people to have children to produce more martyrs for the war, using Britain’s nuclear weapons to destroy all major British urban centres then blaming it on anti-natalist terrorists because it is those urban centres which have the lowest fertility rates.”
If that is the quality of the proposals they got, I wondered to myself why they even bothered to continue this program at all.
“Generally most previous Personality Unit AI suggested temporarily turning Britain either into a totalitarian state, by for instance genetically modifying, implanting brain chips, and drugging the British public to be more obedient to the state, or on the other hand the previous Personality Unit AI’s tended to suggest to dismantle the British state itself in order to create a stateless society of total anarchy and possibly a racial-gender war which would theoretically induce a sense of purpose and a need to have children in order to have hope. Needless to say, the British government rejected most of these proposals.”
“Does that mean that there were proposals from those whom you named that the government accepted?” asked a small boy entirely clad in metal armour with his gauntlet-ed arms crossed and with two normal-sized black swords hanging from either of his sides.
“That is classified information, Master Arthur. I can only say that Prime Minister Chamberlain’s directive has prohibited all forms of mass death events. So, for instance, trapping the entire British public in a death game virtual reality simulation to teach them the value of their life would be unacceptable.”
The little armoured figure innocently slightly slumped, causing his armour to clank, but he didn’t say anything. Did he want to fight the strongest sword masters and fighters in Britain? Well, it was I who wrote that setting into him, so that’s why he would think that.
“Well, at least we know that they rejected the proposals which involved dismantling the British government. ‘No wanton murder,’ really narrows our options down.”
Lain wryly remarked while trying to hide a yawn. I did have to agree with Lain, I mean, I created her; if we can’t do anything too drastic, then what’s the point? Couldn’t the government have come up with its own sensible, acceptable, boring proposals on its own? Are they so creatively bankrupt that they would resort to AI to create a solution for them?
This whole program was the brainchild of Professor Chamberlain. Without knowing what the hell that man really wanted from us, well, from me, (I am not sure if these AI around me count as people or if they are more like delusions in my mind come to life), there is nothing we can do.
“-erm”
There was a cute, manicured hand held up, matching that shy voice. It was Celestina who was looking down, hoping that she’d be given a chance to speak up. I based her on my second favourite heroine from Rondo Veneziano. My heart skipped a beat. Of course, I knew that this was just an illusion and not the real Celestina, and yet, unlike the robotic Rina, her shy mannerisms matched those of the character model she was based on.
Lain, who sat next to her, petted her on the head.
“Go on, Darling, don’t worry, I will bite you!”
“Yes- What!?”
Lain held Celestina in her arms, causing both of the oversized chests to swell, while at the same time preparing to sink her fangs into her.
Bonk!
A thick tome out of a fantasy flew towards Lain’s face, but Lain swatted it out of the way with her hand as if it weighed nothing.
“Stop fooling around, Lain-sama,” said Rina, who had apparently launched that book.
Lain looked bored, but let Celestina go, who hid behind Arthur’s small figure.
“So, what did you want to add, Celestina?”
Celestina gulped but finally gathered the strength to speak. She still looked around helplessly, which was cute. Even if I made her that way, I wondered how much of it was an act.
“Erm- well, you see, yes! You know, well, I thought about why you, master, were chosen to be our Personality Unit and why you created us, and I thought, what if there is a purpose to it all? I mean, the problem is that there is no love left between people, and you love love simulation games, and so-”
“We should recreate it all, obviously.” Declared a bespectacled Japanese high school boy. “Why the hell have you summoned me here anyway?”
“I didn’t summon you, Ryou, you didn’t exist,” I explained to Ryouta Kudou. He frowned, unconvinced, but gestured he was willing to listen to me with his characteristic coolness. “Unlike the others here, whom I created merely based on filtering personality traits that I liked, I decided to wholly recreate the strategist protagonist of a manga about a genius Japanese high school gamer and detective. That protagonist is you, so please don’t say silly things like that.”
I pointed at him, mirroring the scenes where he always pointed at the culprit before revealing the trick behind a case. He didn’t seem impressed.
“I see… As if..! That’s ridiculous!” He hesitated. “That is something out of the imagination of a third-rate mystery writer. Tell us why you have kidnapped me? Even if you don’t, there is no way that I won’t find out!”
“I just want to make use of your intelligence to get us out of a death or life situation, that’s all. Fine, Mr high school genius gamer-detective, then explain this to me: why is it that you are able to speak English fluently, when one of the gaps in your character leading to all sorts of misunderstandings with your seventeen-year-old main love interest that I am not definitely jealous about, is that you can’t speak English, whereas she is half-Irish? I knew that your overthinking would cause a situation like this, so I removed your knowledge of Japanese.”
“My lord, I think you are oversharing a bit too much there,” the small boy in armour quietly muttered.
“Wait.. You were right. I can’t speak Japanese. So I am not real, I am not real, I am not real…!”
Oh shit, did I break him? I turned to Rina for moral support. She looked forward indifferently. Well, she had told me this would be a bad idea, since it was a miracle that I, too, hadn’t gone insane yet.
“Kyaa! Stop!”
“It’s not real, it’s not real, it can’t be real. Wait, so Hinata is not real!? Mother, Father, even the Organisation that tortured me, the enemy I have been plotting my revenge against, is not real?!”
Lain had handed Ryouta a copy of the manga that he was adapted from, while Ryouta was slowly going insane while flipping the pages. She then also started to try to sexually harass Celestina again, who was screaming while trying to prevent Lain from biting her. Ryouta started banging his head on the table. His spectacles were already broken. If these were my Elite handpicked characters, how were the ones randomly generated from my otaku database going to fare? Was I going to have to reset the entire server?
A vein popped on my forehead.
“The first Roundtable Discussion of the Castle Academy is adjourned,” I stated. “Rina, take care of this mess.”
Rina pulled out a remote from her maid uniform and pressed a red button labelled “stop,” which made them fall like inanimate dolls. I am pretty sure she didn’t need to press that oversized button to do it, but I ignored that.
“Do you want to delete them?” asked Rina.
“Why are you so casual about this?”
“As you wish, my master, but be careful letting your sentimentality get ahead of you. Master Raynar knows that we are working against the clock. The AI before you lasted for just six months before being shut down. Do not expect the Prime Minister to show any sentimentality towards you as you showed to them.”
Rina piled them over her shoulder, one by one, and carried them out presumably to their rooms. She grabbed Lain by her foot and dragged her away along with the others on her back. Such a violent maid, not like Columbina at all!
She was right though, in just five months and a half there will be a UK by-election, in two constituencies, this was going to be a test for the PM’s newly minted British Liberal Party (BLP), and the PM in turn is going to test me depending on how well or badly they do at the by-election, so if we don’t deliver some good result by then… Fuck, I just can’t get rid of deadlines and work targets even after I am dead. Okay, no need to panic, I am a master at coping.
