To ask, “What is consciousness?” or whether Yukikaze dreams with purpose, when we couldn’t answer these questions about ourselves, sounds like the subject of some scholarly thesis, Rei thought. It might be an interesting waste of time that could help him understand Yukikaze, so Rei didn’t think the line of inquiry was entirely trivial, but they weren’t questions that would be answered easily or soon. It could be like a huge puzzle, to be solved at his leisure, and not having an immediate answer shouldn’t get in the way of his duties.
“The essential point in all this is to find some way to communicate with that ‘something’ within Yukikaze. That something is her true nature.”
“An unknowable something that’s the computer’s true nature, huh,” Lieutenant Katsuragi said. “What I’m trying to say is that what you’re taking to be Yukikaze’s true nature may be just your own illusion. There have been times when a computer I’m using seems to be conscious to me. The odds are good that this true nature you think Yukikaze possesses is just a fantasy you’ve created. If you try to communicate with it, you’ll just end up talking to yourself. For you, Yukikaze is like a shadow of yourself. In other words, it’s possible that you’re ascribing consciousness to your own mirror image. And that would be stupid.”
“You’re saying my talking to Yukikaze would be a monologue?”
“Yeah, I’d definitely say that.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to right now, Lieutenant Katsuragi?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you think that I have consciousness? How do you know that my consciousness isn’t just a shadow that you’re creating? Maybe you’re just having a monologue with a shadow that you call Captain Fukai.”
“Because I’m talking to you in the belief that you’re human. What you just said is the same as claiming that you might not be.” The lieutenant paused. “Are you a JAM?”
“You can’t know that unless you communicate with me. Barring that, the only other way you might be able to infer it is from my behavior. The same goes for Yukikaze. And the JAM. So they may be only my own shadow projections… You know, I’ve never thought of it that way before, but I can see that point of view. That means you should try chatting with me some more, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Katsuragi did not reply.
“I think the only way we’ll ever know what the JAM really are is to communicate with them,” Rei said. “Whether they possess humanlike consciousness or not doesn’t matter. If they have a different form of consciousness from what humans have, or some other type of ‘something’ similar to consciousness, then it would be impossible for humans to understand them. After all, even we humans don’t understand human consciousness. But I think even if they have that something I mentioned before, then they also possess consciousness. And if your opponent has that, then I say you can communicate with them, Lieutenant Katsuragi. It’s not an abstract concept that’s hard to understand. It wouldn’t be very different from checking out how Yukikaze handles.”
Adjusting his grip on the side stick while working the pedals, Rei snapped them into a 90 degree roll, then inverted, then into a three-quarter roll before returning them to level flight: a four-point roll. Good response. He then twisted the stick right, yawing her nose to starboard while still traveling straight ahead. Keeping his eyes on the main display and not what was outside, Rei saw Yukikaze flash a warning: she had judged his flight attitude to be erratic and meaningless. Irregular flight attitude, she complained. He could have canceled the warning by flipping the dogfight switch to ON, but didn’t. She then automatically canceled the control input Rei was feeding her, pointing her nose back in the direction it should have been facing. Rei’s actions and Yukikaze’s response was displayed on the rear seat monitors as well.
“See, it doesn’t matter if what she just did was because of some peculiar ‘something’ in Yukikaze or simply because I activated a program to correct her attitude if she deviates from the optimal flight posture. The important point here is that, by doing that, I can determine what her intentions are. Now, if I can build on that—”
“Calling that communication,” Lieutenant Katsuragi cut in, “is like striking a bell and then saying the sound it makes is you and the bell communicating.”
“That’s an interesting example. Yeah, if you strike it, it resonates. Maybe the bell’s sound comes from the bell’s own will. Humans would never know that unless someone demonstrated that the bell possessed that sort of will. But you have to determine if it does by ringing it, because that’s the only method available to you to do so.”
“That’s out of the question,” Katsuragi said. “You just want to talk to Yukikaze like some sort of a pet.”
“I wish she were my pet. Maybe you’re right. If you don’t handle a pet well, they bite you. Anyway, we use Yukikaze to hit the JAM, but the JAM don’t sense that they’re being hit by us humans, and I don’t like that. What I want to make clear to them is that I’m here riding inside of Yukikaze too.”
“You’re a naive man.”
“And you’re like me, just as naive and ignorant of how the world actually works. We may both be men who spend our time just bickering with ourselves.”
The lieutenant didn’t answer, apparently having grown tired of their chat. Rei said nothing either.
A short while later, Lieutenant Katsuragi informed him in a businesslike tone that they were nearing their refueling point.
“Three minutes out. I’ve made contact with the tanker. Weather looks good at the refueling point. Just maintain course and you can’t miss it.”
“Roger.”
If I told him that Yukikaze’s automatically maintaining her optimal flight attitude was an example of her will, Lieutenant Katsuragi would most likely say that was “out of the question” and chalk it up to some foolish delusion on my part, Rei thought. But he would only say that because he had no experience with Yukikaze. It didn’t matter what some stranger who had nothing to do with her said. At any rate, every individual lived in a world of their own delusions. How other people lived their lives had nothing to do with how Rei lived his own. The problem was that this man was riding in the same plane with him, and if he maintained a view of Yukikaze that was different from her pilot’s, they were going to end up operating her differently. In an emergency, that could be fatal.
Rei wanted Lieutenant Katsuragi to feel the same as he did about Yukikaze and the JAM. However, if he could agree that Katsuragi’s cool viewpoint was more rational than his own, then Rei should have no problem matching himself to it. Still, it looked like it was going to take some time—requiring several combat sorties—before they’d be able to harmonize in performing their duties.
After completing their in-air refueling, Rei tensed his body as they headed toward the combat zone. The battle was on.
3
THE JAM BASE code-named Cookie by the FAF had been nearly destroyed by the time Yukikaze arrived for her reconnaissance duty. The fact that they couldn’t detect any JAM radar waves emanating from either the base itself or its surroundings made that clear enough. Radar sites are vital to an air base’s defense, and the FAF had initiated this operation by targeting several of them, and after successfully destroying them after four Faery days of intense resistance, the operation appeared to be 80 percent successful.