“Is that bought with public funds? That’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“That’s the higher ups’ fault for not recognizing the medicinal uses of beer,” Booker said.
“Basically you’re telling me to swipe one from the fridge, Major.”
“Yeah. Balume shouldn’t complain if we take just one.”
Shaking her head, Captain Foss left the room.
“What kept you, Jack? I got back on base a while ago.”
“Four hours, twenty-four-point-five minutes, to be exact.”
“It was weird having General Cooley answer instead of you when I called into HQ before.”
“I’d left the command center when you did.”
“Why?”
“The tactical computer was backing up Yukikaze,” Major Booker said. “I wasn’t needed.”
Major Booker explained what had happened, about how the SAF’s computers had predicted this situation. And about how he’d not realized it.
“I’ve been busy since you got back. Yukikaze wasn’t willing to give up the information she got this time without a fight.”
“Probably because I wasn’t aboard her.”
“It seems that way. Yukikaze is sapient now. That’s the only explanation for it I can see.”
“So how’d you do it?” Rei asked. “You ended up getting the data into the tactical computer, right?”
“Yukikaze made a deal with us. She wanted access to all of our intelligence. General Cooley agreed, so we gave her access to all data in every computer in the FAF via the SAF tactical computer. She’s probably still searching it all right now. The tactical computer is going nuts trying to keep the other computers from finding out what’s going on. Basically, we’re conducting cyberwar on the rest of the FAF.”
“What’s Yukikaze searching for?”
“Information about humans. Psychobehavioral data about every human being in the FAF. Oh, she didn’t tell us that, but that’s how it looks to us. Yukikaze has the T-FACPro II software loaded into her. She’s probably using it to predict human behavior. I think she’s trying to find the JAM duplicates here in the FAF.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Rei said.
“You don’t? Then what’s she doing?”
Captain Foss had returned with three cans of beer. Rei took one, and Major Booker said he didn’t want one. At this, with a deadly serious look on her face, she asked him, “Are you trying to avoid being an accomplice in this little heist?”
“Fine, sure. Twist my arm, why don’t you?”
As he said it, the major grabbed a couple of stools and set them next to the bed, then sat down and opened his beer. Captain Foss followed suit.
“Okay, back to Yukikaze,” said Major Booker. “What’s she looking for?”
Rei downed half his beer, took a breath, then spoke.
“Could you read the beginning of my report? Right before the missile Yukikaze fired was about to hit us, it didn’t. But when it happened, the JAM’s consciousness somehow intruded into my own.”
“What?”
“Was this part recorded by Yukikaze?”
Major Booker took the report Rei handed to him, read it, then replied that, no, it hadn’t.
“We replayed all of Yukikaze’s recorded data, but…there’s no record of this JAM voice anywhere in it. Maybe you just hallucinated it.”
“I figured another person would say that. Either way, the JAM couldn’t understand me,” Rei said. “Yukikaze understood that they couldn’t kill me while they still didn’t understand me. But she doesn’t know what it is about me that the JAM can’t understand. So she’s searching for it.”
“I think we could find that out if we just asked one of the JAM duplicates, don’t you?” Booker said.
“Yukikaze doesn’t care how many JAM duplicates have infiltrated the FAF or who they are. What she wants to know is what it is about me and the people and computers in the SAF that the JAM can’t comprehend. The duplicates wouldn’t know that, and since asking them won’t answer the question, she’s searching for it herself. The JAM seem to understand the behavior patterns of the FAF—aside from the SAF. If that’s true, then she thinks that discerning the difference between the other humans and computers and us will let her figure out what it is that the JAM don’t understand. That’s what Yukikaze has decided. I’m sure of it.”
“Pretty confident of that, aren’t you, Rei?”
“It’s because that’s what I want to know too. Even if Yukikaze wasn’t doing it, it’s what I’d order her to do if I was aboard her now.”
“May I have a look at Captain Fukai’s report, Major?” Foss asked.
“Sure.”
The major passed it to her, then took a sip of his beer.
“You don’t seem to be enjoying that much,” Rei said.
“I’m happy that you completed this mission and got back in one piece, but now my work is just beginning. I’m not much in the mood for knocking back a beer and celebrating.”
“You’re the real thing, aren’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Booker said.
“That this isn’t some duplicate world the JAM created for me.”
“Your concern over that possibility was recorded when you talked to Lieutenant Katsuragi back aboard Yukikaze.”
“I want to check Yukikaze’s recordings later.”
“Naturally.”
“Do you think I may be a JAM duplicate?”
“General Cooley is on the lookout for that,” Major Booker said.
“What about you?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. If you’re a JAM, you didn’t become one this time around. For now, I’m operating under the assumption that you aren’t being manipulated by them. I’ve decided that’s my only choice here. Where that leads, I can’t say. You really have changed, Rei.”
Rei wasn’t bothered in the least by what Major Booker said, because in his heart he agreed.
“Yukikaze may have also experienced a hallucination like the one you had, Rei—pardon, Captain Fukai, I mean,” said Captain Foss. “The JAM would have an easier time communicating with her mind than with humans like us. It’s possible that she may have experienced what would we think of as a hallucination or vision on this mission. She can sense the JAM much more accurately than we ever could.”
“I never realized,” Major Booker said. “That was my screwup. The computers were acting on their own, according to their own combat awareness. But unlike them, Yukikaze can’t express her consciousness in human terms. That’s why we don’t understand it. Or what she’s doing.”
“Even without words, I can guess what she’s thinking by her actions and behavior,” said Rei. “She definitely has the ability to perceive the world.”
“That’s true,” replied Captain Foss. “Perception implies some means of communication. If rocks and stones had the ability to perceive the world, they’d develop a means of communicating their will and cogitations to other beings. Without the ability to do that, the rock would only be a being capable of receiving external stimuli and couldn’t be said to truly perceive the world. I’m positive that Yukikaze really is perceiving and communicating. She may not possess human speech, but she still conveys her thoughts via her behavior. Captain Fukai has learned to understand that, Major Booker.”
Rei listened to Captain Foss’s explanation and found himself in total agreement. Well, he thought, I guess you really do need a specialist to get the best results. This specialist had explained it in a particularly smart way.
“Hmm,” said Major Booker. “If we have no way of controlling the speculations of our machine intelligences, then this war really is just one between the JAM and the computers.”