S.A.O Project Alicization - OC/Male Reader Insert

Project Alicization ----- Chapter Twelve

"But still...I'm concerned, Kirito. I mean, memory manipulation..." Asuna said, her face downcast and worried. "And wasn't it Chrysheight...I mean, Mr. Kikuoka from the government who brought you two those job offers? I don't think he's a bad person, but I feel like I don't fully understand his motives. He's like the guild commander, somehow. I just get the feeling...that something bad is going to happen again..."

"You're right that he's not someone you can fully let your guard down with. I still don't know his exact position or job duties. But..."

Kazuto paused, and his pupils focused on someplace far away.

"I took the very first morning train on the day the original industrial full-dive machine was first put on display at the amusement park in Shinjuku. I was only in grade school...but I knew that was it. That was the world that had always called to me. I saved up all my allowance to buy the NerveGear the day it came out...and spent countless hours on all kinds of VR games. At the time, I couldn't have cared less about the real world. Eventually I got selected to the SAO beta test, and everything went wrong from there...All those people died. Even after we finally got out after two years, there was Sugou, and Death Gun after that. I just...want to know. Where full-dive technology is taking us...What all those incidents truly meant..."

"Yeah, I'm almost practically the same, and if I'm being honest, being trapped in SAO might be the best thing to ever happen to me. Nonetheless, the the Soul Translator functions is entirely new, but the basic architecture is modeled after the Medicuboid they use in hospitals."

Asuna's shoulders twitched when she heard Shi. But his quiet, steady voice continued to fill the room.

"I just have a feeling. There's something within the Soul Translator. Something more than just an amusement...Yes, there might be risks involved. But..." He mimicked grabbing a sword and swinging it. "I've come back from all those worlds before. I'll be back from this one, too. Even if I am just a wimpy, underweight gamer in real life. Plus even if something goes wrong, me and Kirito will both be there"

"You'd be totally helpless without me there to watch your back Kirito, and you'd be lost without your sister Shi-kun" Asuna laughed, then sighed and looked over at Shino. "I wonder where these two get there confidence."

"Hmm, I don't know. He is the legendary hero, after all."

Shino understood some of the things Shi, Asuna and Kazuto were talking about and didn't know others, so she chose to keep her distance from the conversation as it was happening. Now she tried to break the chilly mood by saying, "I read that Full Record of the SAO Incident book that came out last month. I'm still having a hard time reconciling that the Black Swordsman in there is this guy, and the Swordsman from Asgard is him"

"H-hey, don't say it like that," Kazuto complained, waving his hands dismissively as he leaned back.

Asuna giggled. "I know, right? The leader of a pretty big guild among the active members of the game put the book together, so it's pretty accurate about most stuff, but there's a heavy bias on how they represent the people. Like the scene where Kirito fights the orange player..."

"'When I pull out my second sword, no one can withstand me!'"

The girls burst into laughter and Kazuto sank sullenly into his chair. Relieved that Asuna was smiling again, Shino decided to deliver a follow-up.

"I hear the book's going to be translated into English for America. Then the great hero will be an international figure."

"...Just when I was trying to forget...They really owe me some royalties, I figure," Kazuto grumbled to another round of laughter.

Shino decided she'd get back on topic by asking something that had been bothering her. "But Kirito, does this STL just end up doing the same thing as the AmuSphere? If it's just going to generate a virtual polygonal world and send the images and sounds to the brain like before, why go to the lengths of this elaborate new system?"

"Aha! Good question," he said, sitting up straight again. "You said 'generate a virtual polygonal world.' Well, a polygon is just a series of coordinates and a plane connecting them. It's digital data. Modeling is so high-res nowadays that trees and furniture and all that are indistinguishable from the real thing, but at its core, they're no different from this."

He flipped through the phone on the table and booted up one of the preinstalled mini-games. The futuristic race car that rotated slowly on the demo screen had a primitive interior design and somewhat blocky angles. It wouldn't fool anyone.

Shino looked up and noted, "Sure...even in ALO and GGO, if you get enough players in one place, the system sometimes starts to chug as it draws objects. But there isn't really a fundamental difference between the AmuSphere and STL in that regard, is there? They're both showing their users things that don't exist so that they can see and touch them. Those things still have to be created as a 3-D model from scratch."

"That's the thing. Umm...how do I explain this...?"

Kazuto paused, then picked up the empty caffé shakerato glass and showed it to Shino. "This glass exists in reality, right?"

"...Yes," she replied drily. Kazuto pushed it closer to her face. His next words were somewhat difficult to understand.

"Listen. At the same time that this glass is being held in my fingers...it's also in your mind, in what Rath would call your fluctlight. Technically it's just the light reflecting off the glass that your retinas are catching and converting into nerve signals that allow you to visualize it as a glass in your mind. Now if I do this..."

He reached out and covered her eyes with his other hand. She automatically shut her eyelids, reducing her vision to solid gray with a hint of red.

"Did the glass within you disappear instantaneously?"

She wasn't sure what he was getting at but gave him an honest answer anyway. "I'm not that forgetful. I was watching it for so long, I remember the color and shape of the glass. Oh...but it is getting a bit more vague..."

"Exactly."

He took away his hand, and Shino opened her eyes to glare at him.

"Exactly, what?"

"Get this...When we look at the glass, or the table, or each other, we're holding that data in a form that can be stored and replayed within the visual processing center of our fluctlights. It's not just a copy that disappears the moment we close our eyes. So when I hide this glass from sight and your memory of it fades..."

He slipped the hand holding the glass under the table.

"And then I input into your fluctlight vision center a perfect copy of that data from when you were looking at the glass earlier, you will be seeing a glass that isn't actually on the table right now. Something far more vivid than just a 3-D model...The glass will be absolutely identical to the real thing."

"Okay...maybe that's true in theory...but when you're talking about data that the human mind saves, that's just memory, right? You can't just hypnotize people into recreating their memories from an external source. How do they..."

Shino stopped. Just a few minutes ago, Kazuto had told her about a machine that could do that very thing. Asuna broke her long silence to chime in for Shino.

"The same way the AmuSphere shows the user's brain 3-D data...the STL writes in short-term memories to the user's mind. In other words...it's not a creation. The virtual world and everything in it that the STL builds...is essentially real, as far as our brains can process it...?"

Kazuto dipped his head and put the glass back on the table. "Rath calls the images in our minds 'pneumonic visual data.' I still remember what happened in my first few test dives...and it was different. It was nothing at all like the VR worlds that the AmuSphere creates. It was just a small room I was in, but I..."

He paused and adopted an awkward, deliberate grin that dimpled one cheek.

"...I didn't realize it was virtual at first."