RWBY/Sword Art Online (Discontinued)

Chapter 83: Project Alicization

Higa: What did I tell you? Those four are this projects biggest security hole.

Kikuoka: You were right.

Asuna: Are they safe?

Jack: Did you lie about treating them?

Yang: They better be. If not, I'm going to bash your bones into a fine powder.

Kikuoka: Because of the attack by the fugitive from the Death Gun incident, and another by Ilia Amitola from the White Fang, David, Penny, Evelyn, and Kirito's brains have sustained damage that normal medicine cannot heal. However, Rath is the only place in the world that has the only technology to treat them. I'm sure you all have heard of it. The Soul Translator. STL for short. If we use the STL to directly stimulate their fluctlights, we can induce the generation of a new neural network. But it takes some time. Right now, they are each inside full-spec STL's that can only be found here. The treatment they are getting rivals that of any major hospital. They even have a nurse to care for them.

Asuna: I understand. I'll believe you for now.

Rinko: Since we have come this far, I believe you should tell us everything, Mr. Kikuoka. Such as why an SDF like you would use the Ministry as a front, what you're plotting here, and why do you need, Kazuto, Jaden, Evelyn, and Penny?

Ruby: And why did you lie about transferring them to that other hospital?

Kikuoka: Well, I apologize for lying and keeping this a secret. And, if Rinko is asking me that, then I will need to have her help me.

Rinko: I'll decide based on what answer you give me.

Kikuoka: Well, I assume that you are all familiar with the concept of the STL.

Jack: Penny told me about it. It's a machine that reads the soul, their fluctlight, and allows them to dive into a virtual world indistinguishable from reality.

Kikuoka: Correct. But I'm not sure you know what this projects objective is.

Blake: Objective?

Kikuoka: The objective is to make a bottom-up multi-purpose artificial intelligence.

Yang: Bottum-up multi-purpose artificial intelligence?

Kikuoka: There are two approaches to developing AI. One is top-down. Wherein you program the AI with experience and knowledge, so that in the end, it will learn to replicate true intelligence.

Higa: Including the research of Dr. Shigemura who was working with us here, almost everything considered an AI right now uses top-down approach.

Kikuoka: But a top-down type can't react appropriately to anything it hasn't learned about. In other words, they haven't evolved enough to be called true intelligence.

Weiss: What about bottom-up?

Kikuoka: So this is the human brain. It involves artificially replicating the construct of a biological organ comprised of a hundred billion linked brain cells, and generating intelligence there.

Blake: But is that even possible?

Jack: Well, Penny did make an android body for Yui, so now she's a real human.

Kikuoka: Ahem. Back on topic. Up until now, it was thought to be impossible. But the Soul Translator can scan the human soul, the quantum field we call a Fluctlight.

Higa: And so store the same amount of data as the human brain, we have developed the Light Quantum Gate Crystal, aka, the Lightcube as a medium.

Rinko: Which means it can be used to copy a Fluctlight?