Pandora's Box

Finally it was Saturday, yesterday I had time to rest and today I have a day off as there is no school. In the house we could enjoy a moment of peace and quiet again, at least if the next problem appeared, because I think 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 in Japanese culture because it is treated as a class of art and refinement, according to what she learned in her days living in a tea house and what she has been doing since. Maria has been forbidden to have another magic book and is trying to finish decorating her room. My mother was working on the computer in the dining room, I know it has something to do with the Alliance but that is not something that concerns me right now, but from 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 tried to find something interesting on the TV, Momo slept on my shoulder, and my now daughters also tried to watch TV with me.

Now that we finally had some free time, I remembered that I had promised to talk more about Charlotte and Kazumi, so I turned off the TV and went to talk to them. I asked them if they could tell me more details about them, that they would try to tell me as much as they knew about themselves. They accepted and began to tell me a little about their background.

Kazumi started to talk about the fact that when the Empire discovered the world of Aria, they seemed to infiltrate it little by little, they made connections with powerful and important people, they provided new solutions for some of the requests that came to them, and little by little they gained power. In return for their investment, the Empire began to gather information about the knowledge of that world. With this, they created some of the new technologies they used during the Continental War, the most important of which was the creation of the dolls. With the help of a great puppet maker who gave them some of his research on how to efficiently create a robotic body with human appearance without the problem of durability, the Empire later refined the project to create the combat model that caused so many problems for the Alliance.

Later, from the same project, the idea of creating electronic warfare versions, Kazumi and Charlotte to be exact, was born. But in order to create something like that, the Empire needed enough resources to realize its idea. So they used the nobles and important people of Aria as an excuse, and with that, the "materials" did not take long to appear or become scarce.

The biggest difference between the two is that the Empire changed the original plans quite a bit, going from a basic device to Serius elite electronic warfare units to computers capable of running the Empire to a level where they would be able to manage and monitor the daily lives of all the people to ensure maximum efficiency, so their processing power would have to be superior in every way to anything seen before, they would have to be able to process an absurd amount of information at a completely ridiculous rate and continuously and permanently, something almost impossible to achieve with the current technology available on Earth. As the war progressed and the Empire began to lose, the program changed again, and now it will try to infiltrate the units in key points of the Alliance in order to destroy their defense system networks. But the brutal attack of the Alliance that managed to end the war suddenly ended the purpose of the project and they decided better to focus on creating a new model with another purpose, apparently so confidential that no matter how much they tried to gather the information Kazumi and Charlotte, they failed to get it. It seemed that the security measures were so great that they even kept it between physical documents and not with digital files.

After that, the conversation became much more disturbing and dark as the two revealed an important part of themselves. To achieve the absurd goals proposed by the Imperial High Command, the development team did not ask to use a conventional computer CPU, so they searched 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 that, contrary to common sense for a high-tech piece like them, works with thousands of small gears, just like a clock. It was an invention that the nobles of Aria created in an attempt to achieve immortality, but which failed because there was no way to use the device later so that the person could come back from death. With 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 what if instead of storing one mind, they better store several minds in a single box, but with that another problem arose, because by storing two minds, they made the thoughts of the trapped people come into conflict, lowering the performance to such a level that it was even less than the single mind trapped. The solution? To torture the "donations" and "materials" so brutally that they could not think at all, then to unite them all by sex to avoid further conflicts and to store hundreds if not thousands in a single Pandora's box, and then to remember that there were almost hundreds of identical units and the amount becomes even more alarming. In the end, 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  and souls working together.

When we mentioned this, even Adelis stopped working and listened attentively. Then the sisters shared their thoughts about it, because it turned out that they were both afraid of themselves. Because they believe that deep inside there are thousands of people who hate them because they born and are alive thanks to their tragedy and suffering. Unlike before, this time both Charlotte and Kazumi, despite their emotionless exterior, spoke slowly and less directly than before, so it really had to be big. Seeing that this would lead to nothing good if nothing was done, I decided to take the first step. I got them both and hugged them, one with each arm. Moments later, I mentioned my thoughts on the subject, telling them that if this was really the case, then they would both have a great duty in their future. That would be to try to live in the best way possible and to help in the best way possible so that all those lives lost would not have been in vain. That the two of them should sacrifice their lives, they had a better purpose than just being the objects of cruel experiments. In a way, I felt the same way as my own daughters, because like them, I would not be alive if it were not for the sacrifice of other people who died trying to help me, both in the war against the dragons and in the continental war. Hell, if it wasn't for Luna, the first person to die trying to save me or Erina, probably no one in this room would be alive.

Momo mentioned to me after that 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 those 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 suggested that they be rescued thanks to my father plan, so he probably expected that from the beginning.

Looking for a way to change the subject and not make the day a depressing one, I told them my story once more, to bring Kazumi and Charlotte up to date and to avoid all possible misunderstandings. Once again I told them 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 got an explanation for my erratic history, why it seemed to appear out of nowhere and why it suddenly appeared in different places without explanation. Even though they were basically a computer that had experienced mysterious things and was also a part of magic, they told me that they had given up and assumed that there were just things that could happen without logical and scientific explanation. When they mentioned this, I even heard my mother mention in the background: "Never seen computers that believe in the supernatural." But just thinking about this house, a goddess, a crystal angel, a person who should be dead, and two living dolls are currently living. I think it would be normal to believe in the supernatural under these conditions.

The next to speak was Tamamo, who, like me, told our daughters about her past. Although it was not really necessary, she wanted to make it clear that she would try to teach them as best as she could how to behave and what to do with their powers, since 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 that 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 it. The way Tamamo spoke even sounded like a serious and important topic, until she became the usual Tamamo again. So the best thing they should do was to take the example of the superheroes from the movies and imitate them, using their powers as little as possible and if they had to, trying to hide their identity as much as possible.

To achieve this, Charlotte and Kasumi should try to be as human as possible. So we all came up with ideas of 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 talked to each other, even if it was inefficient for them, so that people around them could know what they were talking about. My mother suggested that we teach them to eat, and they discovered the value of the taste of food. For my part, I pointed out 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 his history says one thing, humans are known for their consistency of inconsistency. A person may act differently to different people, but if they judge that person to be really dangerous, then they could tell everyone 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 them, girls could go outside if they dressed properly, so it would be harder for people to see their true nature. Finally, Tamamo suggested something quite radical, but interesting, because she mentioned that even though our daughters did not have to sleep, they still had to do it or else she would be worried. The girls, on the other hand, said that even that was useless because they were machines and did not have the ability to dream that others had. But Tamamo, who seemed to have foreseen this, mentioned that she had an idea to fix it.

She told them that every day, without exception, they should reserve a time of six to eight hours for normal days and four hours for when there is a serious emergency, but it is not necessary to be awake all the time. During these times they would have to close their eyes and pretend to be asleep outside. Then the interesting part would come, the two of them would have to create a different scenario every day, any subject, but they would have 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, invent a story or say what shape the clouds in the sky were. But they have to say for the next day when they wake up. Without a doubt, it was quite strange what she suggested, but it also interested me, because even I wondered if I could leave by forcing ther to do something like that. The impression was so great that even the girls mentioned that they bent their heads as a sign that they were not sure about their mother's suggestion either. Maria mentioned that computers are often used to create CGI in movies or to create a world in video games, so in a way it wasn't completely unreasonable for them to do it. It would just be an extension of that idea.

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