Pandora's Box

At last, it was Saturday, yesterday I had time to rest and today I have a day off since there is no school. In the house once again we could enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility at least if the next problem appeared because I think that at this point we all take it for granted that it will appear. Tamamo was trying to make a flower arrangement, Ikebana, as she calls it, seems to be quite an important activity because it is treated as a class of art and refinement, according to she learned to do this in her days living in the palace and what she has been doing since then. Maria was forbidden to have another wizard book and right now she is trying to finish setting up her room. My mother was working with the computer in the dining room, I know it is about something of the alliance but that is not something that concerns me for now, but according to what little I could see it seems to be accounting and budgets for various things. The remaining four people were in the room with nothing to do, I was trying to find something of interest on the TV, Momo is asleep on my shoulder, and my now daughters were sitting also trying to watch TV with me.

Now that we finally had free time, I remembered that I had promised to speak in more depth about Charlotte and Kazumi, so I turned off the television and went to talk to them. I asked them if they could tell me more details about them, that they will try to tell me as much as possible they knew about themselves. They accepted and began to tell me a little about their origin.

Kazumi began by talking about the fact that apparently the Empire when it discovered the world of Aria it was infiltrating little by little, they made connections with powerful and important people, they provided new solutions to some of the requests that came to them, and little by little they were gaining power. In return for its investment, the empire began to collect information on the knowledge of that world. With this, they created some of the new technologies that they used during the Continental war, among them the most important was the creation of the Dolls. Using a great puppet creator who gave them part of his research to be able to efficiently create a robotic body with human appearance without this posing a problem for durability, the Empire later refined the project further until creating the combat model that so many problems gave the Alliance. 

Later, from that same project, the idea of creating electronic warfare versions, Kazumi and Charlotte precisely, was born. But to create something like them the Empire needed enough resources to be able to create its idea. So using the nobles and important people of Aria, they made an excuse to try to save Aria's world, and with it, the "materials" did not take long to appear or scarce in quantity.

After that, the conversation took much more disturbing and gloomy when the two of them revealed an important part of them. To achieve the absurd goals that the Command of the Empire proposed, the development team did not ask to use a conventional computer CPU, so they looked for alternatives in the world of Aria until one day they found the answer. The central piece of processing for the new Dolls would be a small box, which, contrary to common sense for a high-tech piece like them, works with thousands of small gears, just like a clock. But this piece has a special character created with magic because it allowed saving the mind of a person, it was an invention that the nobles of Aria created trying to achieve immortality, but that failed because there was no way to use the device later so that that person could come back from death. Using this box, which the empire called Pandora's box, they could sacrifice people to create powerful processing units. But the horror does not end there, because later they thought that what if instead of saving one mind, they kept several better in a single box, but with that another problem arose because by storing two minds they made the thoughts of the trapped people enter in conflict, dropping performance to such a level that it was even less than the single-minded locked-in. The solution? Torturing so brutally the "donations" and "materials" in such a way that they could not think in the least, then unite them all by sex to avoid more conflicts and store hundreds if not thousands in a single Pandora's box, and then remembering that there were almost hundreds of identical units and the amount becomes even more alarming.  In the end, then it turns out that both Kazimi and Charlotte are machines with a great capacity to process information thanks to the large number of connected minds that work collectively.

 

 

After mentioning this, even Adelis had stopped working and was listening to us attentively. Then the sisters mentioned their thoughts on this because it turns out that they were both afraid of themselves. Because they believe that deep inside there are thousands of people who hate them for being able to be alive thanks to their tragedy and suffering. Unlike how they used to behave, this time both Charlotte and Kazumi really showed a face that reflects their fear of their situation, so it really had to be big. Seeing that this would not lead to anything good in case something is not done, I decided to take the first step. I get both of them and hug them, one with each arm. Moments later I mentioned my thoughts on the subject, I told them that if that was really the case then the two of them would have a great duty in their future. Which would be to try to live in the best way and help in the best possible way so that all those lost lives have not been in vain. That the two of them should make the lives sacrificed, they had a better purpose than to be only the objects of cruel experiments.  In a way, I felt the same as my own daughters, because like them I would not be alive if it had been for the sacrifice of other people who died trying to help me both during the war against the dragons and in the continental war. Hell if it wasn't even for Luna the first person who died saving me, probably no one here in this room would be alive.

 

Momo mentioned to me after that she would try to ask about the people sacrificed in Aria, and what happened to them after they died trying to comfort the girls, but then she mentioned to me that if these people were still trapped inside them and the security section realized that they could try to destroy them to free those people. I replied that it was THE BOSS himself who proposed to rescue them, so he probably counted on that from the beginning.

 

Looking for a way to change the subject and not make the day a depressing one, I retell my story one more time, to bring Kazumi and Charlotte up to date, in addition to avoiding once all the possible misunderstandings that could appear. Once again I told them about who I was originally, my past, how I ended up in this body, why I had to protect the codex, about Luna's core. And with that, they also received an explanation about why my erratic history, why it seemed that it appeared out of nowhere and why it suddenly appeared in different places without explanation. Although they were basically a computer having experienced mysterious things and being also a part of magic they told me that they have given up and assumed that there are simply things that can happen without logical and scientific explanation. When they mentioned this I even heard my mother mention in the background: "never seen before, computers that believe in the occult." But just thinking about this house a little, a goddess, a crystal angel, a person who should be dead, and two living dolls are currently living. I think that it would be normal to believe in the supernatural under these conditions.

 

The next to speak later was Tamamo, who, like me, told our daughters about her past. Although it was not so necessary she wanted to make it clear that she would try to instruct them as best as possible how to behave and what to do with her powers, as she was the only other person here who could do something remotely similar. And using her own past as an example she made it clear to them as if the humans realized what the two of them were capable of, they would be afraid of them, a fear so dangerous that not even a true goddess like her could stop. The way Tama spoke sounded like even a serious and important topic until she was the usual Tama again. So the best thing they should do was take as an example the superheroes of the movies and imitate them, only use their powers as little as possible and when they had to try to hide their identities in the best possible way.

 

To achieve this Charlotte and Kasumi should try to be as human as possible. So we all came up with ideas about what they should do in that sense. The first part is that although we know that they can communicate with each other without speaking, it would be best if they also spoke with each other, even if it was inefficient for them so that the people around them could know what they were talking about. My mother proposed to teach them to eat and they discovered the value of the taste of food. For my part, I indicated that although they will review the information and the past of a person, they should be current as if they did not know, because a person although their history says one thing, humans are known for their consistency of inconsistency. A person can act in a different way towards several people, but if they judge that person as really dangerous then they could tell anyone in our family to see what to do in that case. Momo's idea was that they would also try to look as human as possible because unlike her, girls could go outside if they dressed in the right way, that way it would be more difficult for people to realize their true nature. Finally, Tama proposed something quite radical but interesting because she mentioned that although our daughters did not need to sleep, they still had to do it or else she would be worried. The girls instead mentioned that even that was useless because as they are machines they do not have the ability to dream that others have. But Tama, seeming to have foreseen that, mentioned that she had an idea to fix it.

 

She told them that every day without exception they should reserve a time, from six to eight hours for normal days and four for when there is a serious emergency but it is not necessary to be awake permanently. During those times they will have to close their eyes and act as if they are asleep outside. Then the interesting part would come, the two of them would have to create a different scenario every day, any theme, but they had to put themselves in the center of that scene. And there they would have to invent a piece of art, whatever, from a painting with watercolors or the lyrics of a song, inventing a story or saying what shape the clouds in the sky had. But they have to say for the next day when they woke up. Without a doubt, it was something quite curious what she proposed, but it also interested you, because even I wondered if I could leave by forcing her to do something like that. The impression was so great that even the girls mentioned they bow their heads as a sign that they were not sure about their mother's proposal either.  Maria mentioned that computers are frequently used to create that CGI in movies or to create a world in video games, so in a way, it wasn't completely unreasonable for them to do either. That would only be an extension of that idea.

 

Since nothing was lost by trying, we thought that they should start just tonight and tomorrow they would have to show their results.