Aozaki Aoko [632-633] (Patreon)

Chapter 632: Terminal Dogma

Since she had agreed to clear up Aoko's doubts, Ritsuko naturally took over from Misato the role of acting as Aoko's guide within the NERV base, leading her toward the truth here.

After transferring elevators four times, the three of them finally arrived directly beneath the pyramid structure of NERV Headquarters and continued deeper underground.

Aoko was a bit puzzled. If they were following the script from Shinji's first visit to NERV, shouldn't they be taking her to the hangar to have a look at EVA Unit-01?

Even if Unit-01 wasn't fully completed yet, Yui had already dissolved into it, so at least its body and skeletal frame should have been built, right?

But the reality wasn't like that. Ritsuko brought her and Misato to an incredibly deep shaft—straight down to the deepest part of the NERV base—before a door marked "Terminal Dogma."

Well then, Aoko finally understood. This was the Terminal Dogma area.

The best way to conceal the truth about something is to use another truth to cover it up. Aoko didn't know whether the Ritsuko standing here now actually understood Gendo's true plan, but the importance of Lilith to NERV was indeed beyond question.

On the elevator's display, this floor was labeled Level-EEE. Judging from the surrounding architectural structure of the space, the Terminal Dogma chamber was only one part of all the functions on Level EE.

"Please prepare yourself," Ritsuko said solemnly to Aoko. "What's about to unfold before your eyes is humanity's greatest secret—and the reason NERV exists."

"...Is it really okay to show all this to a newcomer like me?" Aoko asked.

"For someone in charge of the AI systems, this is a rite of passage," Ritsuko said with a slightly inscrutable smile. "Otherwise, sooner or later you'd dig it up yourself from the system logs out of curiosity—so it's better to tell you from the start."

Katsuragi Misato kept silent, and Akagi Ritsuko didn't explain further. It seemed they both felt that it would be more effective for Aoko to see what came next with her own eyes.

As the enormous alloy gate slowly rose, an unusually vast chamber opened up before Aoko.

Most of the room was taken up by a gigantic pool, filled with a pale orange liquid.

A faint humming filled the chamber: countless machines were operating somewhere out of sight.

At the very center of the pool stood a massive red cross, solitary and towering, several dozen meters high, perfectly smooth and seamless.

But the most important thing wasn't the cross itself—it was the something nailed to it.

It was a giant, masked and entirely white, its size fit to match that huge cross.

The giant's head hung limply to one side. Its hands were nailed to the cross, just like the suffering Son in religious scripture.

A blood-red spear was thrust into the giant's chest. Its lower body lacked the legs it ought to have; instead, a mass of tendrils like tangled tree roots spread out in their place.

The white giant did not move. Pale orange fluid flowed from its wounds, into the surrounding pool. This explained the source of the liquid; the giant had probably been nailed here for quite a long time.

"This is the truth we wanted you to see," Akagi Ritsuko said, turning from the white giant to look at Aoko. "This is the origin of life on Earth—including the human race—Lilith, who appeared from the Black Moon."

"We're... not on the set of some weird B-movie, are we?" Aoko controlled her expression, presenting a look of shattered worldview.

"You know about Second Impact, right?" Katsuragi Misato said from the side. "The truth of Second Impact wasn't an asteroid hitting Earth. Natural disasters don't turn all our oceans red."

"It was a catastrophe caused by a colossal entity of unknown origin," Akagi Ritsuko continued. "We gave these beings the names of angels and collectively call them the Angels."

"Angels, huh?" With her finely tuned physical control, Aoko forced a single bead of sweat to rise on her forehead, glinting under the dim lights. "...Seeing this esteemed visage, it's hard to feel anything but fear."

"Weren't the earliest religions all like this?" Ritsuko exhaled and cast an indescribable look toward the white giant. "By describing fearsome images, they planted terror in people's hearts in order to control the masses... In a sense, that turned out oddly on point, because the true angels are indeed terrifying...

"But they don't need religious shackles and control—because all they want is to exterminate us."

"Tell me more?"

"In short, NERV's job is to protect Lilith here, as the origin of life, and prevent any Angel from approaching it!" Katsuragi Misato summed up. "Clear enough? One day in the future, the Angels lying in hiding will start appearing one after another and begin attacking Tokyo-3!"

"And once the Angels make contact with Lilith..."

Misato didn't continue. She simply gestured with both hands to mimic an explosion—her meaning was obvious.

"Third Impact... is it?" Aoko murmured. "That's not exactly a cheerful truth."

"Well, in any case, we're all survivors of Second Impact," Katsuragi Misato said with a bright smile. "Rather than sighing over a future that hasn't arrived yet, isn't it more important to live each day well right now?"

Aoko said with precise diction. "Captain Katsuragi, you're a strong person."

"You researchers always say stuff I don't understand!" Misato pretended to be annoyed, hands on hips, but Ritsuko beside her didn't reply—she only smiled at her old classmate, a hint of relief in her eyes.

"Dr. Aozaki is praising your free and easy nature, Misato," Ritsuko patted Misato's shoulder. "That's definitely something to be happy about, you know?"

"Really? I haven't read much—don't you trick me!" Misato replied.

Aoko laughed aloud. The atmosphere among the three of them recovered from the heavy topic. Even though Lilith still stood silently nailed to the cross, the people here had, for the moment, set it out of mind.

After leaving Terminal Dogma, Ritsuko, who knew the layout, led Aoko around, and they quickly completed all her onboarding procedures; along the way she signed a non-disclosure agreement several dozen pages thick.

According to Katsuragi Misato, NERV is, after all, a special agency under the United Nations. The information here is classified and cannot be revealed to ordinary civilians outside, or it could easily cause widespread panic.

Besides the one in Aoko's own hands, Misato also took a copy of the family NDA that needed the signature of Aoko's girlfriend, Alice.

Aoko readily agreed, but both sides tacitly avoided mentioning Touko, who had long since entered the Bethany Base for work.

Chapter 633: Ibuki Maya

After Aoko officially joined NERV Headquarters, her first task was to begin tuning the MAGI system.

This should have been Akagi Ritsuko's job, but after Aoko arrived, Ritsuko tossed her a few operation manuals hefty enough to be used as murder weapons and then sauntered off, leaving only her underclassman, Ibuki Maya, to act as Aoko's assistant.

It might have looked like dumping the work and not cleaning up after, but considering the various responsibilities Ritsuko was bearing at the moment, Aoko—tasked solely with MAGI issues—actually had it relatively easy.

First, Aoko needed to further master the various characteristics of the MAGI hardware system. Because even though Akagi Naoko had published a great deal of her theory before, as an external scholar, there were many parts Aoko had not had access to.

As a result, she actually didn't understand MAGI as thoroughly as she would have liked.

Second, once she truly had the physical system in her hands, Aoko could essentially run any tests she wanted on the system.

At the side, Ibuki Maya watched Aoko read the manuals at a pace close to quantum wave speed-reading.

She couldn't help but feel a sense of awe toward Aoko, because before this, only Dr. Akagi Naoko and Maya's most respected senior, Akagi Ritsuko, had shown that level of work efficiency.

At this rate, Dr. Aozaki truly deserved to be the AI expert whom both Dr. Akagi Naoko and Senior Akagi Ritsuko had specifically requested to invite. To reach their level, Maya still had a long way to go!

Out of Aoko's sight, Ibuki Maya, as the assistant, quietly cheered herself on.

Aoko flipped through the manuals while tuning the MAGI operating system. This AI system, composed of three bionic supercomputers of differing structures, was anything but simple to operate. To enable her own rapid operation, Akagi Naoko had omitted a large number of graphical interfaces; users needed to be thoroughly familiar with MAGI's command codes and macro commands to operate MAGI efficiently.

What arrogance from a genius researcher, Aoko thought as she flipped pages with one hand and rapidly typed huge amounts of commands with the other, leaving Ibuki Maya staring, dumbfounded.

But in fact, this performance was boosted by Aoko's extraordinary attributes as a superhuman. An Intelligence of 30 and Agility of 13 placed her far, far above ordinary humans. And even this display of speed was Aoko holding back in front of others.

"Ms. Ibuki," Aoko said to her assistant while working.

"Here! I'm here, Dr. Aozaki!" Ibuki Maya responded quickly.

"No need to be so nervous," Aoko said. "I don't want to put pressure on the AI division...

"But in my view, this MAGI system has a major flaw."

Ibuki Maya blurted in surprise. "H-how is that possible? Dr. Akagi Naoko and all of us have used it for so long without discovering—"

"Then let me ask you: besides Dr. Akagi Naoko and Dr. Akagi Ritsuko, is there anyone who can raise their MAGI operating efficiency to the same level as those two?" Aoko countered.

"N-no," Ibuki Maya said, biting her lip. "But you, Dr. Aozaki, you can—"

"Which means I'm only an exception," Aoko said, looking into Maya's eyes and shaking her head helplessly. "The MAGI OS is very efficient, but its operating logic is designed entirely for users at Dr. Akagi Naoko's level. In practice, it lowers the operating efficiency of everyone else at NERV who uses the system."

Ibuki Maya said nothing, her face paling. But being clever, she already understood what Aoko meant: Akagi Naoko's OS was too esoteric and ill-suited for the vast majority of users.

"So, I've decided that starting tomorrow, we're going to rebuild the MAGI operating system!" Aoko said with a smile, patting Maya on the shoulder. "Go let everyone in the department know, so they can be mentally prepared, okay?"

"Understood, Dr. Aozaki. I'll do my best!" Ibuki Maya took a deep breath, then looked at Aoko with firm resolve.

"The AI hardware system designed by Dr. Akagi Naoko is extremely sophisticated and epoch-making," Aoko continued. "The deep neural network model I've developed is a distributed computing system at the software and network layers, with a bionic structure only at an abstract level."

"But now that I've joined NERV and have the chance to work hands-on with MAGI, I plan to merge the two." Aoko's eyes shone.

"You mean...!" Ibuki Maya instantly grasped Aoko's implication. "You want to deploy your deep neural network large model, DeepThought, within the MAGI system?!"

"Exactly!" Aoko snapped her fingers in confirmation. "General-purpose computers ultimately don't fully align with how deep neural network large models compute—but MAGI is different...

"By combining the fully bionic computer MAGI with my DeepThought, we have a chance to create the most powerful AI in history!" Aoko said, a bit excited. "Well? Isn't that a fascinating project?"

Ibuki Maya placed a hand over her chest. Her heart fluttered, and she seemed to recall her days at university when she first met Senior Ritsuko. But today, what surged in her chest wasn't some wistful sentiment, but a far grander heroic spirit!

"All right, don't get carried away," Aoko said lightly, patting Maya on the back. "We've got plenty of time, and so many things we want to do. No need to rush."

"Yes, I understand, Dr. Aozaki!" Maya replied earnestly.

"I'm new here and not familiar with everyone yet—how about coming over to my place for dinner tonight? I'll cook myself," Aoko said with a squinting smile as she invited her assistant. "I'm actually quite confident in my cooking~"

"Eh?! G-go over to Dr. Aozaki's home?" Ibuki Maya suddenly flustered. "I-I'm not prepared—"

"What's there to prepare for just to eat dinner?" Aoko said casually. "It's just that after work, you'll have to take me to the supermarket to buy some ingredients. I'm new here, after all, and I'm not very familiar with Tokyo-3."

"I see, that's how it is?" Ibuki Maya finally found a reasonable excuse for herself. "I'll take responsibility and be a proper guide for you, Dr. Aozaki-Senpai! I've memorized the discount days for every supermarket in Tokyo-3, down to the last detail!"