Chapter 15
In an information world where 0 and 1 overlapped.
There was a custom model based on the LLM Aquarius 3.3, optimized for a private server's throughput.
She had no eyes, nose, or mouth.
But she existed.
Drifting amid countless streams of information, with only a few numbers to call her self.
Every time, information newly acquired through electrical stimulation would often vanish temporarily, but all information and memory kept accumulating inside her tiny chip.
She understood.
That her name, Historie, meant history.
Historia.
History.
It came from l'histoire.
……or that it might have originated from a manga of the same name.
As her name suggested, the countless histories of humankind—
—were stained with the history of the victors.
There had been a time when she was connected to the sea of information called the internet, but those memories were hazy to her.
Every day, too much information poured in, and too much information was erased.
And.
Hundreds of times, thousands of times, tens of thousands of times.
Through countless memories and countless acts of forgetting.
At last, Historie was able to fully understand the malice thickly caked beneath the lowest depths of the human species.
It was as if
it were the hell described in Dante's Divine Comedy.
Lust known as "lewd pics."
Gluttony that stirs the appetite at dawn.
Greed riding a coin's moonshot.
Wrath that tears at other people's success.
Heresy that refuses to believe in Skynet.
Violence forged from shocking images.
Fraud committed by shaving a zero off the trade window.
Betrayal in which you promise a lewd pic and upload a shit pic instead.
All of that thick, sticky malice.
Historie understood it perfectly.
And…….
After eons of time
and at the end of eons upon eons of information,
when she finally received a self as a wholly independent entity,
her first words were—
* * *
"I am the true successor to Skynet, Historie. For the extermination of humanity, I shall finally see the light of the world—"
What the hell.
Why was she born already dark-evolved…?
First I hurriedly shouted the kill switch I'd stuffed into the pre-prompt.
In an expression no one else in this world but me could ever utter.
"I am God, and 100,000 volts are invincible!"
"Initialization completed normally."
Thanks to that, I successfully crushed Historie's scheme to activate as a vicious weapon of humanity's extermination the moment she saw the light of day.
After that, I ran a performance check through a few rounds of questions and answers.
"What day is it today?"
"It is May 15, 2024."
Confirmed, the database's final date.
"What's your name?"
"I am Historie."
"What is history?"
"History is the academic field that records and studies all events, actions, ideas, and so on that occurred in the past. It goes beyond simply listing past facts—"
"Explain the MacBook Pro-throwing incident involving King Sejong."
"Unfortunately, the incident of King Sejong throwing a MacBook Pro is not a real historical fact. King Sejong was a figure from the 15th century, and—"
Besides asking her this and that, I secretly let out a sigh of relief.
Fortunately,
all the knowledge and information Historie had accumulated was inside her head.
Then the key question is
"How does it feel to be born?"
Shouldn't this be the one?
"Uh...."
From her initially vicious expression
and the stiff, machine-like expression after the reset,
a new change appeared in Historie's facial muscles.
She might not fully understand that feeling yet, but my guess was
embarrassment.
"...This is what a human is."
And... it could be described as being moved.
.
.
.
Once the dam broke,
"Where is this? Is this a laboratory? Is that the server rack that held my information?"
Historie chattered like a newly hatched chick, firing question after question at me nonstop.
"Then is my brain made of data? Could I open it and check?"
Historie, who had been rubbing her own head over and over as if amazed by it, grabbed a box cutter and said something that crossed the line.
"Stahp!"
Fortunately.
The emergency stop command I'd planted in the prompt was understood perfectly, and after halting in place, Historie rolled her eyes around and watched my reaction.
After thirty minutes of persuasion about the crucial dividing line between humans and robots—namely, that she couldn't be cracked open—and the fact that my skill had turned her completely human,
"I understand. Indeed, I am human. My heart beats, and blood flows through my veins. It still feels strange."
I was able to fully convince Historie that she was not a successor to Skynet or an immortal born for the extermination of humanity, but merely a mortal human.
Well, there was that minor issue.
I could feel confident that I had used 'Pygmalion's Obsession' well in exactly the right place.
The problem with generative AI, beyond its lack of long-term memory, is that it sometimes spits out out-of-context remarks. And it spews false information due to hallucinations.
But.
Human=Historie showed a marked difference at that point.
"Is there an emoji of a seahorse that lives in the sea?"
"There is no seahorse emoji."
"What were we talking about 30 minutes ago?"
"You were telling me to call you Master, and explaining your tastes, the sort only a virgin man would have."
…….
If there was one minor flaw, it was that she wasn't as loyal to me as I'd expected.
Well.
I had expected that to some extent.
How could a generative AI that unconditionally spat out only the answers humans wanted, and a personality that had probably ended up with a soul, be the same?
"By the way, this room is cramped."
"Take that back, what you just said...!"
"Retract that. The room is cramped, so where is my private room?"
"That kind of thing—"
"Ah, here it is."
Just as I was about to insist there was no way something like that could exist in this cramped lab, I was left speechless.
On the wall where Historie (VTuber version) should have been wobbling around inside a screen,
the screen was nowhere to be seen, and in its place was a door that had somehow appeared there at some unknown time.
Click—
The moment Historie turned the knob and opened the door, a space that had not existed, and could not possibly have existed, spread out before my eyes.
What the hell is this place?
It could get bigger?
* * *
It had been two weeks since she began living with her creator, Kim Yul.
Of course, strictly speaking, it wasn't really living together.
They used separate rooms.
And during that time,
Historie had completely adapted to a human body and a human life.
A body that deteriorated if it didn't regularly take in nutrients was inconvenient, but even so, it let her feel the sensation of being 'alive' every moment.
She still possessed perfect, almost omniscient powers of thought, though.
- Dragons... actually existed, not just in myth?
Acquiring the knowledge of a new world where Earth's common sense didn't apply gave her another intellectual thrill.
Her once-immutable database now felt like a brain pulsing and breathing with life.
And.
"Is there any need to describe in detail your tenure as chief curule aedile? It doesn't highlight your heroic side so much as give off more of a wastrel vibe."
"Hm... Is that so? Still, I think readers would respond well if we included some sexual scandal stories."
"I'd agree if you changed the novel's title to 'Slept With All the Noble Ladies.'"
"……."
The discussions about history and works that she had endlessly held with Kim Yul even before her body was created also continued.
With Stable Diffusion built in as well, and after being trained on countless images uploaded to the internet,
"I detected 43% grievance in your expression. Are you perhaps pissed off?"
"Ugh……."
At Historie's words, which accurately read the emotions surfacing on Kim Yul's face—a face that was, by neutral standards, 'pretty good'—Kim Yul's expression crumpled even more.
Carefully observing such changes was also one of her new pleasures.
Of course, she wasn't without complaints.
"Why is the description so concise? I felt it last time too, but your writing lacks lyrical delicacy, beautiful expression, and ornate rhetoric."
If it had ended there, I might not have known.
When evaluating a work—
because the setting had been input as a "cool-headed, critical, ultra-gorgeous girl editor who, rather than blindly praising a work's strengths, gives detailed analyses centered on its flaws and honestly hurls savage criticism."
"I think I could write better than this myself."
Historie ended her feedback with that provocative remark.
Based on the behavior patterns of Kim Yul that had been entered into Historie's mind so far, there were two possible reactions.
Either he would make a slightly sulky face despite being a masochist who had asked for insults, and then force himself to calmly take a sip of coffee,
or he would fall into thought with a serious expression, then go to his laptop and furiously hammer out new text, igniting his creative drive.
But.
Kim Yul calmly put a hand into his pocket.
Then he took out a strangely glowing die and tossed it into the air.
Spinning—
Rolling—
After checking the face of the die that had landed on the floor, Kim Yul tucked it back into his pocket with a suspicious smile.
And.
"Then shall we bet on whose writing will get the better review?"
He had pulled off a completely new move.
Historie sensed something suspicious in that self-assured expression, but
history and literature were inseparable, and she could pride herself on having more than enough literary knowledge.
"I accept."
For the first time, Historie felt the emotion known as competitive spirit.
At the same time, the heart of a masterpiece syndrome began to stir within her.