Good Luck, Yukikaze

After a normal mission, Major Booker would come down for Rei’s report, but not this time. It was possible that Booker’s conspicuous absence was a sign that Rei was in a virtual world, but even as he considered the possibility Rei wondered what the point of such a deception would be. If this was a virtual world so perfect that not even Yukikaze could see through it, then it wouldn’t be that different from the real world.

If, in the future, the JAM were to tell me that this really was... Well, even if he found that out, that wouldn’t mean the destruction of his self. Even if he was told that he was actually a JAM duplicate and that his original self was dead, it wouldn’t change a thing. Oh, it would open up all sorts of questions about the nature of his identity, there was no doubt of that. But that didn’t necessarily mean the annihilation of his existence. It would be like having his parents tell him that he wasn’t really their child. The situation would open the possibility of losing his sense of place in the world, but it wasn’t a direct threat to his actual life.

He’d go on eating and sleeping and experiencing the trivialities of existence until he eventually grew old and died. So long as I keep meeting the challenges of this thing called life, it would be no different, Rei thought. The most important thing, even before the question of how best to live, was being clear in knowing what he wanted to do. He had come back alive; that was the most important thing.

Rei was totally exhausted, but he hadn’t gotten a moment of sleep before Major Booker showed up to say he was amazed they’d made it back. As Booker read over the report he’d written, Rei felt he needed to give his head a rest as he kept thinking about the JAM, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t forget about them and sleep.

“I’m amazed I made it back too.”

I must look like death warmed over, Rei thought, but he could easily say the same thing about Major Booker as his commander stepped into the plastic tent.

“Should you come in here, Major?”

“Does it matter? I feel like I’ve caught JAM fever, along with everyone else around here.”

“Everyone being who, exactly?”

“Starting with General Cooley, everyone in HQ. Everyone pretty much got sick when they downloaded the combat intel from Yukikaze and played it back.”

“You’re saying it made them physically ill?” Rei said.

“In a manner of speaking. I mean we’re exhausted from analyzing it. The only one who seems to be enjoying it...” Major Booker looked behind him as he spoke. “...is Captain Foss.”

Outside the tent, Edith Foss shrugged her shoulders.

“Edith,” the major said. “Could you just come inside this depressing tent with me already?”

“I think it’d be wise to wait a bit longer. And keep your voice down before you wake up Lieutenant Katsuragi. Let him get some rest.”

“Well, he is an important guy now, I guess. Rei —”

“Could you get me a cold beer, Jack? And leave the debriefing for later?”

“Edith, can you write Rei a prescription for beer, please?”

“Pardon?”

“Dr. Balume, the chief flight surgeon here, keeps a stash in the medicine refrigerator. You don’t need to write a prescription for it. It’s pretty much an open secret around here.”

“Is that bought with public funds? That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

“That’s the higher ups’ fault for not recognizing the medicinal uses of beer,” Booker said.

“Basically you’re telling me to swipe one from the fridge, Major.”

“Yeah. Balume shouldn’t complain if we take just one.”

Shaking her head, Captain Foss left the room.

“What kept you, Jack? I got back on base a while ago.”

“Four hours, twenty-four-point-five minutes, to be exact.”

“It was weird having General Cooley answer instead of you when I called into HQ before.”

“I’d left the command center when you did.”

“Why?”

“The tactical computer was backing up Yukikaze,” Major Booker said. “I wasn’t needed.”

Major Booker explained what had happened, about how the SAF’s computers had predicted this situation. And about how he’d not realized it.

“I’ve been busy since you got back. Yukikaze wasn’t willing to give up the information she got this time without a fight.”

“Probably because I wasn’t aboard her.”

“It seems that way. Yukikaze is sapient now. That’s the only explanation for it I can see.”

“So how’d you do it?” Rei asked. “You ended up getting the data into the tactical computer, right?”

“Yukikaze made a deal with us. She wanted access to all of our intelligence. General Cooley agreed, so we gave her access to all data in every computer in the FAF via the SAF tactical computer. She’s probably still searching it all right now. The tactical computer is going nuts trying to keep the other computers from finding out what’s going on. Basically, we’re conducting cyberwar on the rest of the FAF.”

“What’s Yukikaze searching for?”

“Information about humans. Psychobehavioral data about every human being in the FAF. Oh, she didn’t tell us that, but that’s how it looks to us. Yukikaze has the T-FACPro II software loaded into her. She’s probably using it to predict human behavior. I think she’s trying to find the JAM duplicates here in the FAF.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Rei said.

“You don’t? Then what’s she doing?”

Captain Foss had returned with three cans of beer. Rei took one, and Major Booker said he didn’t want one. At this, with a deadly serious look on her face, she asked him, “Are you trying to avoid being an accomplice in this little heist?”

“Fine, sure. Twist my arm, why don’t you?”

As he said it, the major grabbed a couple of stools and set them next to the bed, then sat down and opened his beer. Captain Foss followed suit.

“Okay, back to Yukikaze,” said Major Booker. “What’s she looking for?”

Rei downed half his beer, took a breath, then spoke.

“Could you read the beginning of my report? Right before the missile Yukikaze fired was about to hit us, it didn’t. But when it happened, the JAM’s consciousness somehow intruded into my own.”

“What?”

“Was this part recorded by Yukikaze?”

Major Booker took the report Rei handed to him, read it, then replied that, no, it hadn’t.

“We replayed all of Yukikaze’s recorded data, but... there’s no record of this JAM voice anywhere in it. Maybe you just hallucinated it.”

“I figured another person would say that. Either way, the JAM couldn’t understand me,” Rei said. “Yukikaze understood that they couldn’t kill me while they still didn’t understand me. But she doesn’t know what it is about me that the JAM can’t understand. So she’s searching for it.”

“I think we could find that out if we just asked one of the JAM duplicates, don’t you?” Booker said.

“Yukikaze doesn’t care how many JAM duplicates have infiltrated the FAF or who they are. What she wants to know is what it is about me and the people and computers in the SAF that the JAM can’t comprehend. The duplicates wouldn’t know that, and since asking them won’t answer the question, she’s searching for it herself. The JAM seem to understand the behavior patterns of the FAF — aside from the SAF. If that’s true, then she thinks that discerning the difference between the other humans and computers and us will let her figure out what it is that the JAM don’t understand. That’s what Yukikaze has decided. I’m sure of it.”

“Pretty confident of that, aren’t you, Rei?”

“It’s because that’s what I want to know too. Even if Yukikaze wasn’t doing it, it’s what I’d order her to do if I was aboard her now.”

“May I have a look at Captain Fukai’s report, Major?” Foss asked.

“Sure.”

The major passed it to her, then took a sip of his beer.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying that much,” Rei said.

“I’m happy that you completed this mission and got back in one piece, but now my work is just beginning. I’m