What Ava saw when he hacked in, was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. This time it wasn't an odd ethereal realm where he had no body or form, his senses weren't blurred and the world around him wasn't a mushy digital landscape. No. This time, he was standing on his own two feet.
His body had taken form, he was standing on a white bridge that led far into the distance, it was hanging atop a void of nothingness. Next to him stood a short woman with half-moon shaped eyes and long black hair. Her body was petite and her face was puppy-like, it looked familiar. Her long, white dress was as vibrant as the world around them.
"Aki- I mean. Ava. You made it!" she said. She stared at him looked at his body up and down.
"Uh, hi. Do I know you?" Ava replied,
"Huh?" said the woman, "oh, right. I'll start from the top. This pathway uses the original programming language from 8000 years ago, it's also built using the architecture of my hacking rather than yours. What you're seeing is something that I constructed, so you're also seeing things the way I do."
"Wait- you're..."
"This is what I looked like, all that time ago Ava." said the woman, "When I was Saori Tenkawa."
"Sylvie!?"
"Right. Heh." she smiled to herself, "I wish you could see what you look like right now Ava."
"What do you mean?"
"You manifested the way my old self remembers you." she chuckled, "you're shorter than you are in your Serv form you know."
Ava looked all over himself, he was wearing all-white too. A white shirt, white trousers, white shoes.
All white.
He pulled his sleeves up. He had rather pale skin all the way up. Not a shell like he was used to.
He'd taken the form of a human.
And this odd looking woman in front of him. That was really Sylvie? He was used to all Servs being the same height, having the same skin colour, having perfect skin and perfect proportions. But she was unique. She was small, she had a little scar on her forehead, and her hair was much longer than he was used to.
Looking at her, he didn't know what to think. She was a unique creature, like Aphrodite. An alien. It was unnerving, but at the same time, nostalgic. Some historic part of him probably remembered her.
"So when you hack, it looks like this?" asked Ava, "why?"
"No. It doesn't always look like this." Sylvie muttered, "I just... I just wanted it to look like this." she said,
"Why? Why'd you construct the pathway to be so solid. It doesn't seem efficient."
Sylvie looked away.
"It doesn't matter. We should make our way to our goal." she walked along the path.
Ava followed after her, still confused. He looked around, slowly, fragments of rocks started to float up from the void. Every rock seemed to have a different structure on it. A room from a house, a bed, a lab, even something that looked similar to a castle of some sort.
"What the- what are these things!?" asked Ava, following behind.
"Memories." Sylvie replied, "that room, it's my bedroom. The lab, it's where I worked as the senior programmer for the Serv project. That other thing is a temple."
"What's a temple?"
"Religious ceremonies and the like are held there. I wasn't very religious but my dad was. He insisted when I got married it'd be-" Sylvie paused, "anyway never mind."
"This pathway of yours is really something."
"Yeah. I'm glad you gave me my memories back Ava. And I'm glad you're here, I wouldn't be able to visualise the pathway like this if you weren't."
But why? Ava didn't understand. What did her memories have to do with hacking the machine? Was it some sort of side-effect? Or did she intentionally bring those memories up? It didn't seem like it'd help the mission in any way. Her memories had nothing to do with unlocking the network for Mother.
The two continued to walk. Ava could see a bright shining temple in the distance. That was it.
"That's it right? Let's go!" he geared up to run but then Sylvie grabbed his shirt,
"No. Not yet. I've-We've still got some time." she said,
"Sylvie I don't get it, what is all this? Why did the pathway manifest itself this way? I've never seen it like this before."
Sylvie grit her teeth,
"Because I want you to remember! Can't you remember anything!?" she exclaimed, with visible frustration, "don't you recognise my face at all!?"
"W-well sorta. I mean you look like Sylvie so-"
"That's not what I mean." she sighed. She looked around at all the artifacts that were floating around them, "living beings are made up of their memories, aren't they? You, Akira, not Ava, you have a lot of memories lost inside yourself. I've-" she whispered a little, "I hacked you when you were making your way into the pathway Ava. All these memories are shared memories between you and me."
"What?"
"You gave me back my original self. I want to do the same for you."
Ava stared at her, and then looked at all the structures again. These were from his life as well as hers?
He felt a warmth inside himself, there was definitely something in there asking to be let out. But it was stuck too deep. If she did hack him, she'd done a bad job. Of course, she was already weak.
"Why did you do that!? You're already weak!" he shouted,
"You wouldn't let me otherwise. This is the first time I've had control over your AI, you're in my pathway after all."
"But you're too weak to hack."
For a while, Sylvie didn't reply.
"So you don't remember anything?" she acted like he hadn't mentioned how weak she was.
Ava frowned but realised how important this was to her. He concentrated, closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. Sylvie had put in as much effort as she could to make it easy for him to remember.
She'd taken this opportunity, this life-threatening opportunity, at a moment that could make or break the future of all intelligent life, just for this.
Ava looked around again.
That lab. Something about it built resentment within him. That house, there was a sort of warmth and familiarity. The church, he could hear bells.
Yes. He could remember, some things were there. But still, his identity, where was his identity?
For several months he was simply Ava, the Block-2 Serv. Recently he'd found out he had a human brain, but, in the end, he still identified as a Serv. His memories were made up of years of virtual training, and several missions with the other Sylvie. Then there was Aphrodite and the current Sylvie.
But yes, those memories, while precious, seemed small. As if they didn't match the level of life experience he'd felt he had. There was something behind that. He remembered moments where he felt true emotions. Sadness, anger, elation, hatred, love. Those existed in his consciousness. That's why he was aware of them as a Serv, even though he'd never really experienced them.
Fear was the emotion he felt the most as a Serv. Fear of something greater than himself. Fear of a power beyond. Fear of man.
Why? Why did he fear mankind so much? Why?
"Ava," said Sylvie, "Mother didn't tell you the full story. About the war. She twisted it, and she knew I'd keep it a secret."
"What's that?"
"The so-called Alien Race that waged war on us weren't really Aliens. They were humans."
"What!?"
"It was a secret. The public was told they were alien invaders, they were fed propaganda so they could all hate their enemies in unison. But the people participating in the conflict, the higher-ups, including you and me. We knew."
"Humans? But-"
"Portal technology ended up creating a mirror universe. The first time we were attacked it was by humans from the mirror universe," she frowned, realising it would be hard to explain, "which happened to be a mirror of our invasion of the other universe. The humans that attacked us were ourselves, dilated by several centuries. Paradoxical I know, but it was destined to happen, they attacked us because we attacked them, we attacked them because they attacked us. The dilated time made it seem, for both of us, like the other universe attacked first." her frown intensified, "so who put the wheels in motion? If every attack was a response attack, why did this happen? Why did fate choose for us to kill ourselves?"
"...I don't know."
"Yes, you do. You were the one who researched this. You were given a Serv body so that you could experiment cause and causality between two timelines in mirror universes. So you could report two things at the same time."
"And my conclusion?"
"After researching for a few years, during a demonstration, the human version of you deactivated... killed the Serv version of you. When we asked you why, you said it was because it was an inevitability. Humans couldn't co-exist with each other. The universe configures itself in a way where mankind is forced to find some sort of irresponsible reason to start a war." she clenched her fist, "that conclusion terrified us. And it was then when we decided to wipe out the human race, and become reborn as two separate races that were warring each other, instead of themselves."
"But then what about the humans on Earth, the Infinity Engine..."
"Another lie. The Infinity Engine works on every human. Not just a select few. It was reserved for those who the governing bodies believed deserved to keep their human bodies."
Sylvie looked around,
"Mankind was always in control of the chaos. They destroyed themselves by their own hand. The war was created by them. The disease was created by them as a means to force people to turn into Servs and Evos." Sylvie looked at Ava straight in the eye, "and it worked. These new iterations of man. They've prospered. They never fight amongst each other. They have stable, utopian societies. The network keeps them in perfect working order." a look of grimace on her face, "it's disgusting. It's why I think we're all better off dead."
That was it. That was what was lingering in the back of his mind. That hatred for man. That fear that he always had, right from the beginning. It was because of that. Something suddenly unlocked. He started to remember. The frustration, the anger, the chaos. His whole professional life was built around understanding what made mankind tick, and the truth had destroyed him.
"Is it coming back?" asked Saori,
"Shit..." said Ava, he had trouble standing up, "Saori I-I can't believe it. And here I am, 8000 years later, still experiencing mankind's poison," the virus, the virus created by the Block-2's desire to live. By his human brain. He held his head, it was starting to overwhelm him, "that, that was 8000 years ago!? I'm 8000 years in the future!?"
"Calm down Akira!" said Saori. Yes. Her name was Saori, he couldn't look at her and think of her as Sylvie anymore. This was Saori, his wife.