30 The Reason of Life 4

Author: Bishamon Mine
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0664js/33/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

◆◇Sight: Narita Inori◇◆

 

“Look, it’s Narita.”
“Gross…… you’ll catch the virus, so stay away and eat?”

Datanoid soldiers moving away from This unit.
But This unit feels nothing. This unit keeps carrying food to its mouth.

Silently, scoop soup, carry to mouth, scoop soup, carry to mouth. Repeating that, a square tray is set in front of its eyes.

“Is here okay?”

When This unit looks up, there is a blonde girl.
Probably not a Datanoid, a Homo sapiens.
Someone who belongs to the military and still has not become a Datanoid, and is still surviving.
Either outstanding, or a rookie. One or the other.
But it is rare for a Homo sapiens to come here, a Datanoid cafeteria.

Surely this person does not know who This unit is. That is why she is trying to sit close.
This unit introduces itself as usual.

“This unit’s name is Inori.”
“I’m Iris.”

For some reason she introduces herself back.

“Eh.”

When This unit looks up, she is staring at This unit’s face.
This unit, whose emotions were broken by error——the artificial emotions assisting those emotions react. That is surely a sad face, a face that wants to say something——a complicated expression.

The woman who named herself Iris suddenly blanks her expression and sits in front of This unit.
She hid her emotions——why?

“Inori, the reason of life, a prayer——a lovely name.”
“How do you know the kanji of This unit’s name? Or rather, you know kanji?——More than that, why sit? This unit is Narita Inori, you know?”
“Yeah, I know——you’re famous.”
“My chip is full of a dangerous virus, you know?”
“No, that isn’t something that infects people.”

The person called Iris starts biting bread with a calm face.
She even comes to talk.

“Hey hey, Inori-chan.”
“……Inori——chan?”
“Yeah yeah, Inori-chan. Why did you lose your emotions?”
“Inori……chan……? I don’t remember——This unit has almost no memories of that time left. There don’t seem to be records either.”
“You really have no memories.”

When This unit tilts its head, the woman called Iris smiles a little——a lonely smile.
After that the person called Iris watches This unit continuing its meal, as if cherishing it——as if watching over it.
Even though it is being stared at, for some reason it does not feel bad. A comfortable, kind gaze.
But it does not understand the reason for the gaze, and just as it is about to ask, the person called Iris asks first.

“Inori-chan, was it only memories that disappeared?”
“——Emotions were lost too. From the virus, the emotion parts errored and broke, apparently. Now they’re supplemented with artificial emotions, so there are only faint feelings.”

For some reason the person called Iris seems to have a terribly pained face.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“A little.”
“……I see.”

The person called Iris, who looks lonely at This unit’s answer, takes her gaze off This unit and silently starts eating bread and soup.
Eventually, when This unit finishes eating and is about to stand to return the tray to the return shelf.

“Hey, Inori-chan. Do you want to know about your past?”
“——That, either way is fine.”
“———I see.”
“Just, one thing…… I feel like I promised someone something——I want to remember that at least.”
“You probably don’t need to remember that anymore.”
“Why?”

There is no answer to This unit’s question, and the person called Iris reaches for This unit’s hair.

“May I touch?”

Asked, it nods, and the person called Iris adjusts the angle of its hair ornament a little.
A hair ornament with a blue butterfly, said to be a symbol of happiness.
The person called Iris asks again.

“Do you always wear this?”

This unit nods.

“When I wear this, for some reason a little happy feeling wells up. Because so many emotions are gone, for This unit, it’s an important charm.”

At these words, the eyes of the person called Iris waver.
She clenches her teeth and turns her face away from This unit.
The person called Iris bites her lip and trembles, and after a short silence she faces This unit again.

“……Inori-chan, do you have friends?”

The person called Iris says, and looks around.
She seems to confirm that no one is near This unit.

“I apparently did.”
“Apparently——did?”
“The Caligulator told me. But that person doesn’t come near This unit anymore.”
“……That’s———”
“No problem. For some reason This unit’s artificial emotions are satisfied with that. And it would hurt more if the person who was a friend got involved with This unit and had something terrible happen.”

The person called Iris stares at me for a while. Since there seem to be no more questions, when This unit stands she suddenly opens her mouth.

“Inori-chan, will you be friends with me?”

Strange words. Words with no benefit for her, only disadvantage.

“Why?”
“Why…… well. Somehow——I can’t leave you……——no?”

This unit tells the facts.

“You should stop. If you stay with This unit, weird rumors will start about you too.”
“That kind of thing, I don’t care!”

The person called Iris raises her voice a little. Her expression looks terribly serious.

“Friendship——This unit barely feels it anymore, but.”
“No problem.”
“……If that’s so, then fine, but you can stop whenever you want to stop.”
“Yay! Then we’re friends!! ——From today……”

When the person called Iris says “from today,” she looks a little pained.
The artificial emotions compute, is that “a crying face?”

 

One month has passed since This unit and Iris became friends.

That day too, after finishing VR training and heading back to the barracks, water falls from above.

This unit is soaked.
Looking up, a female-type Datanoid leaning out a second-floor barracks window is laughing.

“Gyahahahaha! Ah, sooorrrry!”
“But you were spacing out too so it’s your fault~. For an apology, here, I got it ready for you.”

The female-type Datanoid takes a box out the window and turns it over.
A lot of screws fall.

“You’re always spacing out, your head-screws are loose, right? Swap them out.”
“Buhahahahaha!”

While This unit is staring blankly up at the roaring female-type Datanoids, an angry voice comes from their direction.

“You lot!!”
“O-Orkan-taicho!!”

The voice of the captain of This unit’s unit. He is called things like the epithet one-man army.

“I’ll tell you the thing I hate most.”
“Tai, taicho……”
“I-I’m sorry!”

Orkan-taicho pinches the two of them by the scruff and throws them from the window.
Two female-type Datanoids roll in front of This unit’s eyes.

“If you’re going to fight, do it from the front. People who sneak around from the shadows piss me off the most! What are you doing pulling dirty tricks on comrades whose backs you leave to them. Front and back both enemies, you think you’ll survive like that!?”
“Hii.”
“Please forgive us!”
“If you’re asking forgiveness, ask Second Lieutenant Inori! In the first place, Inori lost her memories and emotions to save me and you lot!”

At those words of Orkan-taicho, the female-type Datanoids freeze.

This unit thinks (is that so?). This unit has no memory of saving them the way Orkan-taicho says. It cannot help tilting its head.

“Eh.”
“Us……?”

Orkan-taicho folds his arms and glares at the female-type Datanoids sitting on their butts on the ground.

“That’s right. Inori, on the day of that great defeat. Among the ten who survived, she was the only one who could fight properly. To protect the data chips of the countless Datanoids lying around, knowing that if she fought seriously while infected with the virus she would lose her memories and emotions, she did an all-out fight.”
“L-lies…… that’s not the story we heard.”
“Second Lieutenant Inori…… for us, this?!”

The two still sitting on their butts put both hands on the ground and look up at This unit.

“Second Lieutenant Narita……”
“Inori!”

Eventually the two even have tears in their eyes.

“Sorry!”
“We’re really sorry!! We heard you were fine because you ran alone and survived!”
“That you lost memories and emotions to save us!!”

On that point This unit has no problem, so it answers.

“It’s okay, This unit has no emotions so nothing hurts. And I don’t have the memory of saving you either.”

Then for some reason the two look even more pained at This unit’s words.

“You don’t have to worry about it.”

When This unit adds that, Orkan-taicho grinds his back teeth, a face like he bit a bitter bug.

“Damn it, if only I hadn’t gone down then.——Inori, if anything happens tell me, I’m always on your side.”
“That’s right, we’re on your side too——you’re our benefactor who saved us! I’m Erin!”
“Tell us anything! I’m Linda!”
“Thank you?”

After that, bowing their heads over and over, the two female-type Datanoids leave This unit.
Watching that, Orkan-taicho sighs.

“……But you know, Inori.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve started smiling lately, haven’t you.”
“……Have I?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I see you laughing like ‘fufu.’”
“……If so, it’s surely thanks to a person called Iris I recently became friends with.”
“I see. You recently became friends with Iris.”
“Yes.”
“I see.”

Orkan-taicho repeats “I see” over and over, turning a sad smile on This unit.

(Is something the matter?) The meaning of his expression, This unit’s artificial emotions do not understand.
They do not return an answer.

But certainly, This unit’s feelings toward Iris are growing stronger day by day.
This unit seems to “love” Iris very much.
Is this called friendship. Even when it asks the artificial emotions, there is no answer.

After that, a new weapon is developed.
A new Datanoid body.
The body named Another 1 is powerful.
Only, there is a rumor that Datanoids who use this body gradually lose memories and emotions.
Moreover, this body sometimes moves automatically, and there are even cases of making a human’s thoughts into an assist AI.

 

◆◇Sight: Iris◇◆

 

Iris is furious at the military pushing the use of Another 1.
Using a body that steals humans’ memories and thoughts is unforgivable. Iris goes to negotiate directly with Lieutenant General Darmas, who is forcibly promoting Another 1’s use.
Furthermore Iris has noticed that Another 1 is created based on the algorithm of the enemy virus that stole Inori’s memories and emotions.
Moreover Darmas is trying to change the bodies of everyone in Orkan Company to Another 1 as well.
Iris resolves that she will not let Inori lose any more memories and emotions.
Iris slaps both palms on the desk in Darmas’s private office.

“Lieutenant General Darmas, please stop making the Datanoids use that suspicious body immediately! Stealing memories and emotions, do you intend to steal their humanity!! Moreover in combat they almost make human thoughts into AI, don’t they!”
“What are you saying. Since we introduced that body, we have been on a winning streak, have we not.”
“Don’t mess with me! If you re-adopt as the main force the Versus Frames you rejected——frames that should have been the current main force——you can achieve sufficient results without that suspicious body!”
“You, are you saying my judgment was wrong!? Our army no longer has the stamina to rebuild the production line at this point!”
“Don’t mess——there are rumors of graft between you and Green Pure, who are making the low-performance Versus Frames currently adopted!”
“Y-you! You people just have to shut up and follow your superiors!”

There, the comm in Lieutenant General Darmas’s private office rings.

“What!”

Darmas opens the comm in VR and yells.
For a while Darmas ignores Iris and talks with the other party.
Then his mouth twists.
——Evilly, endlessly happily.

“Lieutenant.”
“What is it……?”
“A method to save the Datanoids has been discovered.”

 

◆◇Sight: Narita Inori◇◆

 

When This unit is doing gun training at the firing range, the two female-type Datanoids it reconciled with before——Erin and Linda——burst in.

“Inori, this is bad!”

Both of them have changed color.

“What is it? Erin.”

When This unit tilts its head and asks with its still-nonfunctional expression, Erin raises her voice.

“We heard Iris is a compatible person!”

The talk does not add up, so This unit asks further.

“——Compatible? With what?”
“Compatible to become a Mother MoB!”
“Eh?”

At Erin’s too-shocking words, the artificial emotions stir greatly.

“What’s that, a Mother MoB compatible person? Then, Mother MoB used to be human——? And Iris is compatible?”
“That’s right! We heard Iris talking with Lieutenant General Darmas, that she’s a human who can become a Mother MoB!”
“It came through just when we were passing in front of Lieutenant General Darmas’s private office!”
“Don’t tell me Lieutenant General Darmas is going to, Iris!?”
“Iris agreed to become a test subject on the condition that Lieutenant General Darmas stop the use of Another 1!”
“Another 1……”
“Yes, it’s for us!”
“What do we do, Inori!”
“I won’t hand Iris over———!”

After this, This unit and Orkan Company move to recapture Iris. But this ends in failure, and all of Orkan Company are imprisoned as traitors in a prison on the galactic frontier. Once it comes to this, This unit and the others have no means left to save Iris.

And in the galaxy, a terrifying Mother MoB far exceeding Vector’s Mother MoB’s ability will be born.

 

Two years later, the war with the parallel-world people suddenly ends.
This unit and Orkan Company are rescued by an anti-Empire organization called Fatal Limit.
From there, five more years pass after the war’s end.
This unit has left the military and kept searching for the traces of Iris, who went to a parallel world.
Surely someday, believing they can meet again.
With only a sunlit smile as a guidepost.

Iris’s traces had a lot about This unit. They were overflowing with the wish to somehow save This unit and the others.

“Iris, why did you try so hard to save This unit……?”

This unit kept being confused.

“Because we’re friends.”

It felt like such words might come back.

Five more years, twelve years after the war’s end——This unit reunites with Iris.

Called by the organization that has come to be called the Galactic Union from Fatal Limit, when This unit rides the new Versus Frame Ulysses toward the Horsehead Nebula, a terrifying figure is there.
I know it——that giant figure is a Mother MoB.
A being that evolves infinitely and keeps producing MoB.

A blue light in the shape of a woman with butterfly wings——seeing her, “I” am crying.

“Iris……, “you” are Iris, aren’t you.”
“I-no-ri-cha-n”

Inori-chan————I definitely heard it.
That is Iris.
It is Iris.

When I was following Iris’s traces, the Iris who wanted to save me had concluded that the only way was to end the war.

That answer——is that figure.

If I think about it, I feel like this is the first time I have cried, as far as I remember.

MoB are weapons that exist only to make all of humanity go extinct.
Furthermore, because the base body Iris was far too outstanding, this time’s Mother MoB is incomparably stronger than the Mother MoB we once fought.
Thus the curtain rises on a war harsher than the war with the parallel-world people.

It is the beginning of a fight for me to kill Iris for her.

“This time it’s my turn——to save Iris.”