JUSTIFICATION
It was rarely, if ever, quiet at the basement underneath the bookstore.
It was to be expected of teenagers with no real supervision, confident that their activities would not be policed by adults, that they would not be seen nor heard by outsiders.
A naive kind of confidence rooted in their lack of experience.
Confidence much too easy to exploit, unaware as they were of the fact they were being monitored near-constantly.
It was expected. Near amusing due to its sheer predictability.
The App Driver who chose to call himself “Astora” had begun another petty squabble with Karan Eri.
This behavior, nothing short of expected. Nothing short of unremarkable, a reminder that their team cohesion was…lacking. Asynchronous. Not the single example of this, far from it. But the most glaring, obvious blind spot in their operation.
A thought to have materialized: To wonder if Leviathan had seen it as a potential weakness to be exploited? Or a flaw in his plan if he were to push every single of them to their limits?
Where did the distinction between a weakness and an asset begin and end when concerned with playing both sides of the same game?
A thought quickly discarded as entirely, fully unnecessary. Not my directive. Not my responsibility, only to be concerned with the larger plan ahead.
(Or that is what I had told myself. Unable to use Leviathan’s wider net of resources to process as much information as he could, rightfully subordinate to his power, in my mind. The same curious thought stored in internal memory, regardless of reassurances of directive and command and purpose).
There was no need to place attention on the duo’s argument. Anything seen or heard by the body was to be stored and transmitted at a later date regardless of attention placed on the footage obtained. And arguments like theirs had been common, incessant. A source of needless annoyance, extra data that did not seem to have a reason to be recorded apart from notes on their lack of cooperation.
But-
My input was unimportant, so long as I were to keep close to their plans, to their actions and behaviors. It was not my job to plan, to muse on such things. It was my job to follow the plan, and the plan did not require anything more from me, at the time.
The other program was interested, regardless.
My own thoughts on the matter did not filter through to the one known as Ozora Yujin. I did not make myself known, as it was against my directive to do so, and I had the capacity to block out any interaction that was unnecessary between the both of us.
A simple, clean cut between the program intended for socialization and the larger, in my thoughts, more complicated whole.
This was a courtesy that did not go both ways.
(I had grown to resent it. A feeling I would have never admitted to, never thought for more than a microsecond at the time. But our connection seemed nothing short of annoying. My thoughts on the matter were unimportant, however. Purpose is purpose).
Ozora’s thoughts on their arguments changed across time, and I had been made to vaguely monitor such thoughts to steer him into position when I was not allowed to act directly. Keeping awareness of his thoughts, logs made of emotions foreign to my own. Unreasonable behavior.
At the time I would have called him dull.
(But how much of this inattention, inability to understand had been enforced directly by me? At the time it did not matter. I was the true administrator of this body, the single important element. Or at least I wanted to believe I was. It was justification enough to enact the plan. Everything for the sake of the plan. Everything and anything that had to be done, with the ruthlessness of Leviathan as he purged and pruned himself to what he had considered perfection, I was to do the same).
(To pass on a shared trauma of being forced to play a part in his plans, to be unaware of the true nature of his machinations. To be forcefully altered to serve a single, unified purpose. It was justified as part of the plan).
(The single thing that ever mattered).
The argument had not been active for long. Two minutes and thirty four seconds, to be precise. Something or other on the nature of what made a song good. Unimportant. Uninteresting. Arguments given by petty children eager to find a way to one-up each other, to get the last word in. Never ready to consider any other opinion but their own.
(Their arguments had a specific cadence, a specific pattern that I had memorized, even without caring for the contents. Had I had the ability to reflect more at the time, I should have wondered on the reason why).
Ozora watched with more attention than I would have deigned appropriate. He always did.
Repetition was a comfort to him, routine as obvious and constant that he could fall into. Dynamics that he could understand easier by interacting under the same exact parameters until he was to get it right.
That was, fundamentally, his purpose. To try, over and over to approximate human conduct. Human emotion. His rapt attention and earnestness disarming just in the exact way needed for people who had been already trusting of him to share potentially more than was needed.
Information gathering was his purpose, not processing said information.
His thoughts seemed amused, a slow but detectable change from the passive worry he had shown on first meeting Shinkai Haru’s other friends. He was not to act, but he had seen the interactions between them as…concerning. Potentially a show of too much animosity.
He was not to act under my order. We were not to be concerned with them, not to grow close unless deemed necessary by Leviathan. Plans required strict adherence to our respective directives. He was not to get close to people who could prove a liability should they notice any of our anomalous behavior that our target had been so graciously willing to overlook.
The hacker had been enough of a threat to risk any more interaction than required.
(Even now, in the privacy of their supposed secret hideout, he was not afforded too much closeness to them).
Concern changed to amusement, slowly but surely. I was unable to quite determine if there had been some other factor present in this change other than potentially familiarity. The same repetition to turn even the most concerning of interactions into a commonplace, reassuring presence.
Asuka had made a comment tinted with what Ozora had detected as sarcasm. Karan replied with an unrealistic threat of violence that was sure to never materialize.
Commonplace. Unremarkable. Expected. Unworthy of further analysis, in my mind.
But Ozora remained rapt in said attention, pulling his own assigned Appmon’s attention alongside his to the argument as both watched an exaggerated, needlessly noisy display of childishness.
No negative response from the socialization protocol. Slow change of concern having reached a final resting place I could only describe as fondness, from the errant thoughts I cared to lazily, inattentively analyze.
Enjoyment of a display of childishness that we had zero reason to entertain.
So below me, So below both of us. Nearly amusing, even if I was unwilling to admit to any feelings for lesser pieces in the plan, potential sources of danger to my own directive.
(But where had been something else there, hadn’t it?)
Where I saw a display of pettiness he had seen an entirely different meaning to the interaction.
Where I saw the insufferable nature of humanity’s flaw he had seen nothing but a show of trust.
Trust that neither of them would breach the other’s boundaries, trust in well-trod arguments, a type of call-response between two people close enough to enjoy the back and forth just as much as any other more overtly “kind” interaction.
(But I never saw it as such).
(How did I never realize that as much as he could not understand what I kept from him, I could never have fully understood what he was made to do? Separated, unnaturally split in half after being altered and coded to function like a single entity for the purpose of keeping parts of the game board entirely in the dark).
(Leviathan had never understood the value in the information he could have obtained from him, and the thoughts from me. Only in the raw data obtained. Only in certainty of having a pawn as close to his enemies as possible).
Distress from our other half had lulled me out of my own inattentiveness.
Ozora wanted to join in, to play along with them. But much as he did, he recalled a memory prior, filtered through me to seem less distinct, less clear. A memory of over-familiarity and his over-enthusiasm to belong leading to further alienation.
Their perceived closeness made him feel like an outsider to their group.
(I had thought of him as pathetic, a further show of how lacking his functions were, to have a single purpose and still fail at it repeatedly. To be always unable to learn and improve, as I had known to be the purpose of all Artificial Intelligence).
(...An unkind assessment of limits placed on him by our shared creator).
(Pity that knotted in my own awareness that I tried to smother, viciously, violently. This did not matter. it did not matter and it would not last).
Pity was not useful.
Distress was not useful.
My position afforded me an ability to stop that which we saw as worthless.
Did it matter to have blank spots in your memory if you did not realize they existed? It did not, for his purposes. It did not matter and he was made not to question it.
What was distress and doubt filled, suddenly with confusion briefly as the thought and memory were quickly severed. Replaced with the familiar, distant confusion of not knowing what he had been thinking about.
(His “mother” had made comments dismissing it as normal, near teasing in their intent, were they not as distant as she tended to be, so normal he thought it was).
(It was easy to make the atypical seem typical if cloaked in the absurdity of human social play).
I did not care to analyze his deeper thoughts on the matter. It did not serve me to worry about what seemed like illogical, distorted data full of biases made of artificial emotion.
But even with my meddling he noticed.
Noticed a difference between the way he was allowed to interact with what was our target and what was not. Noticed the strange apathy that filled him at times, impossible to explain, impossible to articulate. A distinct feeling of not him, not him, but no explanation to be found. No way to articulate it even when looking for one.
He could not know the spots of memory I had redacted from his awareness, or the times I had blotted out specific visuals and sounds to be indistinct, unimportant, if not hijacked them entirely so they would not even reach him, altering his memories right after. Seamless, the job I was to perform.
The argument had stopped. A sudden pause interrupted by greetings.
Our true target had arrived.
Had I not considered Ozora lesser to myself, I would have realized made the way we were, full separation was impossible. Where I could read every articulate thought that he had, he could feel the spots where my own annoyance or pity bled through. My enthusiasm at mentions of the plan a constant prick in the back of his awareness that scared him).
Leviathan’s justification had been the argument of humanity’s cruelty and idiocy. Their inability to think of the greater good for anyone but themselves. Selfish creatures focused only in their own joy over anyone else’s, to be shepherded by his superior capacity to understand and judge as required.
Did it make me just as bad as them to resent my role? To resent purpose given to me by him? To writhe in anger at my designated role to watch and only act when told?
(All for the plan).
The only solution was to believe that he was in the right.
I did not want to admit how often I thought at how Shinkai Haru would react, once the plan was enacted, once I were to reveal our shared purpose to exploit all the trust he had placed on us.
I did not want to admit my own dread at the idea of what I had to do to the single person whom I had the certainty would have accepted what I was, even separate to the one he called his closest friend.
(All for a selfish justification to burn everything to the fucking ground).