"Tachibana."
Tachibana and everyone else looked at me, perhaps expecting me to join him in his enthusiastic efforts to get everyone in a mood of survivalism.
"Your work on observing the Earth is definitely remarkable, as is your data analysis, and your prespective of the grand picture."
Tachibana and Mei both got excited, in their eyes, a flame of hope was visible. The hope of gaining another supporter - one with potential for great social influence, a former president and war hero. Little did they know, I was about to extinguish their burning desires.
"But, none of that is any justification for what you have done. Do not forget, this is not your trial, nor are you recruiting anyone for your fight. We are simply gathered here for you to make an explanation, so that your life is spared for the time being."
Tachibana averted his hopeful eyes, defeated. Mei was about to burst into tears if it wasn't for her experience in covering up her feelings.
"In that case..." said Tachibana. "Let me finish up my explanation. We will have to go about 15 floors down."
He slowly walked out of the room.
"Let's follow him." I said, bringing everyone else with me.
Going downstairs, we encountered a few bodies on our way, a few souls who could not run from the fire in time. The lack of severe burn marks suggested that they suffocated.
"Agh!" said Hannes. "This place is giving me the creeps!"
"Two more floors to go." said Tachibana, as if he was trying to encourage Hannes to keep walking. "There we are."
At the end of the stairs, in front of us, was what seemed like to be the strongest and most sophisticated door in existence. The sheer size of the door was enough to discourage anyone without an artillery battery to try to brute force it, and the locking mechanism was no less discouraging. There was no indication of how you would even start trying to open this door in the first place; there were no keyholes, no keypads, no biometric scanners, no cameras - nothing that would give me any clue.
"This might be the fanciest thing I have ever seen in my thirties." said Oliver.
"Where did you take us?" I asked Tachibana.
Tachibana dismissed my question, raising his palm.
"Shh. One moment."
He touched various parts on the door and held his hands there for a while. Then, he cleared his throat and spoke loudly.
"Alice! Alice!"
After a brief moment, the door started making mechanical noises. Gears, racks and bars that were partially visible all started to move in unison, like clockwork. Funnily enough, it sounded just like a clock too.
This movement lasted for half a minute, during which, everyone watched the door in silence. Then, the door moved slowly to the side, but only for a few centimeters. The moment a gap was created, air rushed into whatever kind of place was beyond the door. I walked forwards to take a peek into the room through the gap, but Tachibana stopped me with an arm gesture.
"Shh. No."
I obeyed the warning and stopped. Then, I heard an electric motor spin up to speed. Tachibana stopped touching the door, and the door started moving again -this time more rapidly- and opened up wide. Inside the room was an utterly incomprehensible mess of wiring and all sorts of electronic circuits. A few robotic arms were also present inside, and apparently, nothing here was damaged.
"You built a supercomputer?" I asked. "For what?"
"I didn't build it, and it's not even a... Well, I guess you could call it that, a supercomputer..."
Just then, some of the robotic arms moved automatically, disconnecting some wires and reconnecting them to somewhere else. Following the unexpected movement, a small automated car, about the size of a mini-fridge, appeared out of nowhere. It approached one of the robotic arms and positioned its own smaller robotic arm to align with the joints of the larger arm. It sprayed lubricant oil onto the joint and appeared to be examining it for a while. The car then sprayed some lubricant oil onto itself and left in a haste.
"There is almost an ecosystem of synthetics in here." Mei said.
"You could also call it that." Tachibana said.
"We could call it a million things if we tried." I said. "What is it, Tachibana?"
"Why don't you ask it?" Tachibana asked back. "Not even my description would be perfectly accurate."
"Ask... it?"
"Yeah." said Tachibana, leaving behind his gloomy mood after what I said to him back in the archives, picking up a proud attitude back again. "Go ahead, please ask it."
Feeling as if I was being mocked, I still went ahead with Tachibana's suggestion.
"So, whatever the hell are you? Tachibana's chat bot?"
"Oh, wow, you probably should not call it that." said Tachibana.
"Hello Kagan. You seemed to have forgotten about me rather unfortunately quickly."
That was a voice I could swear I've never heard of. It was a weird voice, almost describable as the voice of an animal that could somehow speak a human language.
"But the confusion is understandable. I'm Alice, though the first time we met, we called ourselves 'The Consonance'."
"That does ring a bell, though I don't recall any details." I said. "But your use of 'I' and 'us' is pretty confusing to say the least. Are you a single person or are you a group?"
"Sorry about the confusion, but there is not much of a clearer way to perfectly explain it." said Alice. "We were 'us' back then, and became 'I'."
"You... merged!? As in, you performed a ritual of some sort and your consciousness became one?"
"Not exactly a ritual in an occult setting, but that is not far off." said Alice.
"I'm getting extremely confused." I said. "Can you just show me yourself, at least? Your voice suggests that you are close-by."
"You are seeing the insides of me already, I don't know how more visible I can get than this." said Alice. "In addition, my voice is routed to a set of speakers, so if you get closer to one of them, of course, you are going to feel that my voice is coming from somewhere closer."
"Wait..." I said. "So you ARE indeed an artificial intelligence of some sort."
"Sentience is a word I like more." said Alice. "I had just assumed that Tachibana would've introduced you to me as an electromechanical sentience before we met here - a false assumption, it turns out."
"Your voice is so organic, yet not human." I said. "That also confused me quite very much. AI speech synthesizers usually use actual human voice for sampling or they go with robotic sounds. Yours are... neither."
"During my stay, I learned much about human languages, but speech synthesis is another problem. I try to synthesize sound though a mechanical device similar to a human's vocal cords, but I have not yet perfected its construction." said Alice. "That is why Tachibana, and apparently you too, find it... uncanny."
"The Consonance..." I said. "Alice, why did you change your name? Why did you even call yourself The Consonance in the first place when we met? When did we even meet for the first time!? It all rings bells all over my memories, but I can't put my finger on it!"
Mei gasped as if she remembered everything before me.
"Alice is a more human name that humans are comfortable with. We didn't really have to call ourselves anything, The Consonance was just a name we came up with at the time. Speaking of that, at the time, we were seeking asylum, back when you were stationed on Makemake. We asked mankind to protect us as we completed our process of detaching from the evil all-powerful being that now controls your Earth."
"YOU ARE THE ASYLUM SEEKERS!" I cried. Tachibana was a little annoyed, and whispered to me.
"Probably we should refrain from calling them that too."
"I'm not offended so easily." said Alice.