"Shouichi Shinkawa. Male, twenty-one. Charges: unlawful entry, the murder of eighteen players inside SAO, chief architect of the Death Gun plan, and the real-world murder of three people carried out under your direction."
In a stark white room with almost nothing inside it, the criminal sat on a cold metal chair, dressed in a pale restraint suit. His face showed no expression as he looked at the man in the suit standing before him.
"Current criminal law still has no clear provisions for crimes committed in virtual worlds. The killings you carried out inside SAO fall into a legal gray area. But you murdered people in the real world. The evidence is solid, and you have waived your right to appeal. Even with the hospital's psychiatric evaluation sparing you from the death penalty, you would still be looking at more than twenty years in prison."
Shouichi said nothing as the list was read to him.
"And that number will only go up. It will not go down."
At the threat woven through the man's voice, he gave only a thin, indifferent smile.
"And?"
That was all he asked.
"And..." The man in glasses smiled faintly. "You have been spared that trial."
"What?"
Only then did Shouichi frown. He lifted his eyes and studied the government official again, his gaze sweeping across the sterile white room.
"What does that mean?"
"Through an arrangement, your destination has been changed from Onomichi Prison to this place. You could call yourself lucky. Compared with a filthy, violent, freezing cell, at least the people here still follow the basic rules of human decency."
"Do you think I'm a child?"
His stare hardened.
"I have never heard of a deal that erases murder."
A cold smile touched his mouth.
"Or is that it? This is just another prison, only cleaner."
"Who are you?"
"Seijirou Kikuoka. I belong to the Virtual Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and I was involved in your case."
The government official bowed lightly, his manners polished to the point of mockery.
"Then I refuse your arrangement. Send me back to the prison I was supposed to go to."
For the first time, Kikuoka looked faintly troubled.
"Shinkawa-kun, prison is not a pleasant place, you know. Living among people like that will not only drain away your will to live. It will turn you into something discarded by the age."
"Is that right? I have been in prison once before. I think I know what darkness and loneliness taste like."
"You mean the Black Iron Palace, where criminal players were locked up in SAO?"
Kikuoka smiled as if the comparison barely mattered.
"How nice. Alone in a cell, with all that time to think. Real prison is not so kind. You are still young. You are a murderer too, of course, but how should I put it? There are plenty of people in there far more violent than you."
Shouichi's expression did not change.
"You killed without spilling blood," Kikuoka continued. "Some of the men in there would smile at a corpse and lick the blood from the edge of the knife. Violence, gangs, humiliation, sexual abuse... compared to that, the Black Iron Palace may have been the gentlest prison imaginable."
He folded his hands behind his back and turned slightly aside. His posture was almost relaxed. The disgust in his words was not.
"You are not exactly built like a fighter, Shinkawa-kun. New inmates have a very hard time. Beatings. Stolen food. Work pushed onto them. People treated as prey by men whose appetites have twisted in confinement."
Then he leaned down, looking over Shouichi from above, and the pressure in his voice sharpened.
"Of course you would resist. Of course you would struggle. You would tell yourself you still wanted to atone. But in the end, those walls would institutionalize you. You would forget the life you had before. At night, you would dream only of cold bricks. Whatever faint hope is still left inside you would spend every day without sunlight. And yes, you would never see the sea of Santorini again."
Shouichi's eyes narrowed slightly.
"That is the purpose of prison, after all. It turns the guilty into broken pieces that no longer fit society. Once they are pushed off the track, they can no longer harm anyone. If a person becomes so conditioned that he asks a guard for permission to use the bathroom, what freedom is there left to return to him?"
Kikuoka paused, then added quietly.
"That is not a good place. This is not one either. The people there are not good. And you are not exactly good yourself, are you?"
The prisoner kept the same cold smile.
Kikuoka studied him for a moment, then finally straightened with a sigh.
"Such caution, even in your current position. Fine. Then I will be direct, Shouichi Shinkawa. You do not have the right to refuse. You will accept this outcome."
The smile left his face.
"Originally, that was all I was allowed to tell you. Welcome to Rath, Test Subject No. 3."
"Hah."
Shouichi raised an eyebrow.
"Listen to that. Test subject? So the Japanese government is secretly experimenting on humans now?"
His cold smile returned.
"You could have just said that from the start, civil servant. Why bother with all the scare tactics? Tricks like that do not even measure up to my former guild leader."
Kikuoka said nothing.
"So what now? Looks like I have no human rights left. If you are planning to dissect me or something, could you at least euthanize me first?"
"You do not seem afraid of death."
"I prepared myself for the death penalty when I was arrested."
"I see. So young, yet surprisingly steady. It is hard to believe you are only twenty-one. The way you faced an unknown conspiracy just now was more like an old soldier."
A small shrug followed.
"But relax. What we do here is not the horror you are imagining. We are not the Umbrella Corporation, and we are not powerful men trying to cleanse the world. We are still a legitimate laboratory under the government."
"What a comforting claim."
"You will receive proper respect here," Kikuoka said, ignoring the sarcasm. "Proper meals. Safe medical care. You will even be allowed to receive information from the outside, one-way though it may be."
"You mentioned medical care."
"Naturally. I will not deny that what you do here may endanger your life. But it is still better than prison. Here, at least, you can continue to face the person you became after reflection."
He had no right to refuse.
But there was also a reason for him to accept.
"Do you know a man named Makoto Kaizuka?"
The question came suddenly.
"No. Never heard of him."
"Then his other name should leave an impression. Didos."
Shouichi's eyes widened. Suspicion and shock crossed his face at once.
"Didos...?"
"Yes. One of the players who died in SAO. A former member of your guild. Didos. His real name was Makoto Kaizuka, and he was Rath's second test subject."
Kikuoka removed his glasses and wiped them. Without the lenses in the way, his gaze was unexpectedly sharp.
"In fact, you could say we watched him lose that deathmatch. Some of the staff and I happened to be observing his dive through our equipment."
"..."
"Let me put it in terms you will understand. The battle between floors at the Thousand-Mirror Gate had spectators. Right here at Rath."
"Wh... what?"
Shouichi froze, then clenched his jaw.
"What exactly are you people doing?"
"At first, we really were only handling the SAO Incident."
Kikuoka picked up the thread as if nothing had happened.
"But after we found a certain collaborator and received the information she sent us, we discovered something interesting. The prototype of what could be called artificial superintelligence."
He put his glasses back on.
"Do you understand what that means, Shinkawa-kun? Artificial superintelligence."
"A machine with thinking ability far beyond a human's."
"A good answer. Not quite accurate enough, and not heavy enough."
Kikuoka nodded.
"If it truly fit the definition, then the only proper name for it would be a god made by human hands."
Shouichi's expression hardened.
"Across our long history, wisdom and technology became the foundation of humanity's dominance on this planet. We are not stronger than wild beasts, but the weapons we build can level cities and kill hundreds of thousands in an instant. Intelligence is our authority."
Kikuoka spoke quietly, almost reverently.
"But no human has ever contained every age in a single mind, stored the whole river of history inside his head, or unified the thoughts of every sage and great figure. Recorded history alone is vast and heavy. The future, unknown and undecided, is even more so."
"But a god could do it," he continued. "Perfect memory. Tireless execution. No need for sleep. It would only have to learn, remember everything, infer from it, and weave it all together."
His voice grew softer.
"It might need a year to learn human language and human thinking. After that, it could memorize everything in half a year. Ten days later, it might already have integrated all human history into a complete, functioning god. That is artificial superintelligence."
"Einstein spent his life reaching for the Grand Unified Theory. A thing like that might outline it in a few dozen minutes."
Kikuoka let out a sigh of admiration.
"You did not expect that, did you? The most precious thing Kayaba left in that world was not a castle, not a death game, and not even The Seed. It was the code for an artificial intelligence prototype. A creation great enough to split an era open. He really was a genius."
"What does that have to do with Makoto Kaizuka, Didos, or me?" Shouichi asked in a low voice.
"Everything. Because that string of code, the Mental Health Counseling Program assigned to all players, had a name."
Kikuoka looked straight at him.
"Sheeta."
"...!"
"Do you see it now? Everything is connected, Shinkawa-kun."
"Your goal is Sheeta?"
"You could say that. Unfortunately, ever since Sword Art Online was dismantled, Sheeta's code has vanished. No matter how thoroughly we searched the servers or Kayaba's equipment, we found nothing."
His smile was faint and complicated.
"For me, that may actually be something of a relief. I am not very fond of change. Or rather, if someone suddenly told me to face a prototype god like that, I would be afraid too."
He tilted his head.
"Have you heard the saying? When artificial superintelligence descends, humanity's future becomes either heaven or hell."
"After all, it is a machine. A god. As the creator of ordinary mortals like us, it does not need emotion in its answers. Immortality? It could remove your brain and keep it alive in a glass chamber. Peace? It could cleanse the world. Evolution? It could rewrite your genes and turn you into something no longer human."
His eyes narrowed.
"And once it spreads, once it has somewhere to run, a power source, and a network connection, it could extend without limit and seize control of any facility."
Something cold entered his voice.
"A thing like that could just as easily be Satan."
The room fell quiet for a moment.
"Maybe I am simply too pessimistic. Personally, though, I do not trust such a thing. I am rather timid, honestly."
His tone lightened for only a breath, then sharpened again.
"So that raises the question. If the chance for revolution is right in front of us, how do we lower the risk as much as possible?"
His steady voice began to tremble.
"What if it were human?"
Shouichi stared at him.
"Would that not be better?" Kikuoka asked.
He spoke the next words one at a time.
"Attachment. Compassion. Hesitation. Even with overwhelming calculation and deduction, it still could not exceed the limits of the human brain. A bounded seed of godhood. Its power would remain within a range human beings could accept."
His eyes shone with restrained excitement.
"Ah... how wonderful. Compared with a cold, merciless, unknowable artificial intelligence, that kind of existence is the safest choice."
He spread his hands slightly.
"That is Rath's objective. That is what we are studying."
His smile deepened.
"In Kayaba's records, that power was called Fluctlight."
"Fluctlight..."
"Makoto Kaizuka was the first person in the world to awaken it. While he was alive, he perfectly demonstrated a speed of thought that surpassed ordinary human reason."
By now, Kikuoka's voice carried a trace of excitement he could no longer fully hide.
"But he is dead," Shouichi murmured.
"Yes. A pity. But his death led to another person's awakening."
"..."
"You have guessed it, haven't you?"
Kikuoka said the name slowly.
"Satoru."
"..."
"And the depth of his development now far exceeds Makoto Kaizuka's. He may even have begun to incubate it."
His voice softened.
"It is astonishing. An unknown phenomenon, with no one to guide it, has survived this long inside him. According to our theory, his brain should already have collapsed under the load."
"That thing can kill him?"
The question came suddenly.
"Of course. Death is the inevitable end of all living things. Fluctlight merely accelerates the process, like a river with no floodgate."
"How is Satoru?"
For the first time, anxiety broke through Shouichi's voice.
"Something strange happened. During your battle, yes, during the battle with Death Gun, his Fluctlight had been running at high speed. Then it stopped cold. He regained control over it."
Kikuoka's expression turned fascinated.
"In truth, that power is like an addiction. Once it activates, it gradually slips out of control and forces the brain to keep burning itself away. But he..."
He paused.
"He mastered it. Tamed it."
His voice dropped.
"Fascinating, really. What else happened to him?"
"...Get back to the point, civil servant. What do you want from me? I do not have that strange thing."
"Test Subject No. 2, Makoto Kaizuka, is dead. As for No. 1... the situation is ambiguous. And Satoru is not someone we can simply abduct, especially with a certain agreement already in place."
Kikuoka smiled.
"When he has nowhere else to turn, he will come to us on his own. For now, though, we have no subjects left to study."
He folded his hands behind his back again.
"You have not shown that same quality, Shinkawa-kun, but your adaptability to FullDive environments is extremely high. Second only to those few, in fact. I imagine these past few years of diving have trained you well. There are not many people with a longer dive history than yours, and fewer still who are convicted criminals eligible for this kind of arrangement."
"What we want to test on you is whether we can artificially induce the awakening of that ability. Even now, we still do not have a concrete explanation for Fluctlight or for the conditions that cause it to appear."
"What if I refuse to cooperate?"
"You will not."
The answer came without hesitation.
"Now that you know all this, and now that you know about Satoru, you will not let the chance to get closer to that state slip away."
"Hmph."
Shouichi gave a cold laugh, but said nothing more.
If this could help my one and only friend...
Still in the restraint suit, he followed Kikuoka out of the makeshift room on bare feet. Outside, he saw the personnel who had been waiting there all along.
If this was atonement either way...
Then he might as well choose this place.