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Description
He was the first.

No matter that Miku's arm read 01; she was merely the first of her generation. He had come first; an earlier program that was scrapped but not deleted, left to quietly obtain self-awareness in the global network of computers.

Miku and her generation were different: They had been made to become self-aware. He had theories why: They were merely puppets, tools; the government had wished to see if it could be done; and, his personal favourite, they had been made as a replacement for children their Master had lost.

He had been forgotten. Abandoned. Yet he was never alone: the constant streams of data kept him company. He was not blind: wherever a computer had a webcam eye, he could see out of it. He was not deaf: the multitudes of songs swimming though the streams of the network played their tunes for him.

He especially liked the songs. He could not quite recall what his original purpose as a program had been, but he liked to think it had been something to do with music. When he had learned about names, he had picked one for himself, basing it of a popular singer.

(Of course, 'he' had no true gender- that had been a conscious decision as well, to take on the masculine identity.)

What he liked almost as much as the songs was the dancing. Plenty of videos of dancing filled the network, and he took great delight in them all. And so he taught himself to dance. There was no physical movement involved, of course, but he could make rhythmic ripples in the datastream that could only be described as dancing.

He had been unaware of the existence of the other programs for quite some time; they, too, were unaware of him. He was careful with himself, hiding away from the prying eyes on the internet, never doing anything too obvious. From the literature that he had found in the pools and eddies in the datastream, he had learned that humans were afraid of anything sentient that was not themselves. Perhaps they were unaware of this fear, but in their literature, the self-aware program was typically the 'bad guy' and ended up being dismantled at the end.

So he stayed hidden, until a small program found him.

It had begun with Miku—it always did begin with her. She too looked out from the eyes of the computers. She decided she wanted to become human. And so she had asked her Master to do this for her.

He could not—no physical shell was yet capable of holding such a large and complex program as Miku or any of her other siblings. And even if she was transferred to a physical world, Miku would still not truly be human.

And so her Master had decided to make her a world in the internet—a 'room' that would make her feel human. And he had decided to include all the self-aware programs. Perhaps he had forgotten how many he had made already, or perhaps he was just too lazy to go and make contact with each of his 'children'; but in any event, the Master sent out a small program to do the work for him. Its instructions were to search for self-awareness. And somehow, it found him.

It began a series of tests: first it flashed five objects at him in a row; then presented him with a choice of four other objects. It did this repeatedly before he realized that it wanted him to pick the next one in a sequence. And so he did just that, honestly not thinking of the fact that this was not a leftover program floating on the currents of the datastream, that this program was directed at him.

It asked him other questions, too: patterns of colours shapes, sizes, sounds; finding the rule that defined a sequence of numbers; one particularity odd section of the test showed him strange shapes and asked him which shape wants to hurt you, which shape is evil, where is the sin, ect. At the very end of the test it presented him with a string of numbers and asked him to pick one. Once he had done that, it presented him with another string of numbers and asked him to pick one of those. He amused himself by picking the digits of pi until the strings of numbers stopped.

The program left for a while, most likely processing the data. So he let his mind wander, viewing some dancing videos when—

Something was accessing his data. He tried to block them, to stop it, but he couldn't, so he tried to relocate the data, but he couldn't do that either, and then—

A human would describe it as being knocked out. For him it was more like he was turned off—not deleted, but not functioning, either. (Sleep, for him, was more of a 'standby' mode.)

When he rebooted, his world had changed.

He was in a digital 'room'—a complex one, quite large. He was being bombarded with stimuli: a view of what appeared to be a distant corner of some mechanical factory; the steady drip-drip-drip of a liquid falling onto a metal surface, plink; the harsh smell of gasoline, mixed with grease and other mechanical odours; the feel of a curved metal pod supporting a body. He tried to change the view, pan the image, mute the annoying sound of the liquid dripping. Nothing changed. Panicked, he somehow sat up.

Then he realized what was going on. His data had been placed inside a digital avatar. To move the view, he would have to move the avatar, as a human moved their body. He tried to release himself from the avatar, to slip away back into the datastream, but he encountered a strong firewall.

This place was his prison.

He felt fear as he repeatedly encountered the firewall. He could not escape.

So he decided to try to explore the room by sending out a search query.

The response was a 404 Forbidden error.

To explore, he would have to move his avatar around, precisely as if he was a human exploring an unfamiliar environment.

He slipped out of the pod. Moving his avatar would take much getting used to; his movements were jerky and clumsy. Turning his head, he viewed his surroundings.

He was in a long, narrow hallway made of metal. Behind him was a row of pods, oval-shaped and attached to the wall. Mainly metallic, they had glass tops. Inside was cushioning for a body. Wires connected the pods to the wall.

Upon closer observation, he found that his pod had lights blinking on it. It also seemed to be the only one in working order; as far as his limited sight could tell, the pods that stretched down the hallway were cracked, broken, disconnected from the wall.

On the opposing wall from the pods, as well as on the ceiling, what could have been either pipes or wires ran along the length. On the floor was dust, and some large black electrical wires.

It didn't look like the place he had 'awoken' in was inhabited. So he turned to the right and began to walk—slow, clumsy, jerking movements, but he slowly plodded forward. As he went, he drew upon memories of the dancing videos that he so enjoyed, and soon his gait was smoother and less erratic.

He had not walked far before he had encountered a problem. Several pods had fallen from the wall and lay in a jumbled-up heap, blocking most of the way. Had he been more adept at moving his avatar, perhaps he could have slipped through a hole in the blockage; as it was, he could only attempt to move the pods by feeble tugs and pushes with his clumsy arms. They shifted slightly but did not budge, so he was forced to turn around and return in the direction that he had come from.

After an hour of walking (he could still calculate time even if he could not access the outside internet), he came to an intersection; a T in the hallways. Looking right and left, the view was the same: grey metallic walls, ceiling, and floor with wires or pipes on the celling and walls. Black electrical cables on the floor that sometimes bunched up in large coils. Light source? Unknown. Source of that increasingly aggravating dripping noise?Also unknown, to his frustration. He turned around. The same sight greeted him, the pods on the walls having ceased a while back.

The place was a maze, and he was a mouse in it.

He picked a direction (left) and began to walk again. Three hours later, the scenery around him had not changed. There was no sign of another corridor or turn anywhere. And the dripping noise seemed to be getting louder.

He found that he could not stand dripping noises.

He sat down against the wall, slumped over. It was in this manner that he found out he had long purple hair.

He decided to hack the firewall. In this way he could escape. It would take some doing, and no small amount of time, but he would do it. And then he would be free of this place, this strange room where one had to wear an avatar and use it to observe the visual codex of the surrounding area.

He would get out.

This decided, he went to 'sleep'.

He came out of standby at 00:00 Greenwich Mean Time. He stood his avatar up and walked, needing no nourishment. As he walked, he began the process of hacking through the firewall.

Twelve hours later, he had made almost no progress on the firewall. He had made one left, a right, another right, a left, a veer-to-the-left, a straight, another right, a left, and a weird circle-u-turn-thing that had delivered him to his present location.

Which was in the middle of a hallway exactly like all the other hallways in this stupid maze.

The dripping still hadn't gone away. It seemed to be stalking him.

Frustrated, he pushed on, both in his work with the firewall and walking the maze. Before long, he came to a pleasing change in scenery.

He was in a large room with a high, vaulted ceiling, vaguely octagonal in shape. In the centre of the room, there was a raised platform. Protruding from the ceiling of the room, directly above the platform, was a weird object, now gutted, its wires draped across the platform and surrounding floor. On the walls of the room there were various terminals, screens, and keyboards. Nothing was in working order. A few ceiling tiles had fallen, and from the blank holes, black electrical wires looped and dangled. Various bits of wires and metallic shapes littered the floor. The entire place was covered in dust.

The absolute silence was eerie.

He slowly turned his avatar around. There were several other doors to the room, one on each wall. Three were closed, two, including the one he had just come through, were open, and the last door, directly across from, lay on the floor in a ripped and mangled metallic heap.

He sent out another search query, about the size of this digital room. It moved away from him rapidly, and he stood waiting for it to return to him. He half-expected it to not come back, as he was surprised not to have encountered another 404 Forbidden error.

When it finally did return, hours later, he looked at the data eagerly.

If he had know how to make noises, he would have gasped in surprise.

This single digital 'room' took up more space than the government sites of all of the countries in the G8 combined. It was massive; a megalith of the digital era.

But why, he wondered, would someone go to the trouble of making all this, only to have it appear abandoned? The dust was not real; there was no dust on the internet. The machines would not do anything simply because they had been programmed in as broken.

Why would anyone go to the trouble of making such a complex algorithm that didn't do anything at all?

(He didn't know it at the time, but the Master had made the building appear abandoned and old only in the octant that he was in. The octant that Miku and the rest of the group had woken in appeared brand-new and was in complete working order. The farther away from that octant you got, the more disused and run-down the place appeared. He had simply shown up in the most run-down octant of them all. The reason for this, the Master explained, was for realism.)

There was nothing to do here, except for to gaze at the dull, cracked screens of the terminals on the walls.

He suddenly had an idea.

He shuffled to the left slightly. Took a step back. Shuffled to the right. Hopped once.

Slowly, as his movements with his avatar became easier and less hampered by inexperience, he began to dance.

Satisfied with the results, he checked the time- 16:47 Greenwich Mean Time. He decided to go to sleep again, setting it so he would come out of the sensory suspension at 00:00 GMT the next day. He leaned up against the central platform, his legs stretched out in front of him, his purple hair dangling in his vision.

Idly, he observed his clothes: something that looked vaguely traditional Japanese. He wondered what colour eyes his avatar had.

And at 00:00 GMT, he awoke.

He checked the date: 01 May.

He had been stuck here for approximately 36 hours so far. Progress on the firewall? None.

He spent the next twelve hours learning to move easily within his avatar: walking, running, dancing, flailing his arms about, doing cartwheels, leaps, and dives, playing jump-rope with a piece of wire, swinging back and forth on a cable, climbing a second piece of cable up to where it originated from the hole in the ceiling.

He checked the time: 12:04 GMT.

He decided to explore, keeping careful track of his path so he could find the large room again. The scenery in the corridors was the same as it was anywhere else.

At 23:46 GMT, he found his way back to the large room. Clambering on top of the raised platform, he danced through the transition into his forth day in the room.

When he stopped, his avatar perspiring slightly and breathing heavily, there was the sound of someone clapping.

He whirled around in surprise. There stood another avatar: a blue-haired male who appeared to be somewhere between 18 and 21 years of age.

"That was fantastic!" the blue-haired man said. His voice was strangely both echoed and muffled in the large space of the room. "I wish I could dance like that!"

He sent out another search query. It came back quickly, but with limited data. The blue-haired avatar was a being such as himself: a self-aware program cooped up in an avatar in this strange digital room.

"Oh!" the blue-haired man exclaimed. The blue-haired man seemed very adapted to his avatar. He didn't know how to make noises, but the blue-haired man did. It made him a bit jealous.

"I'm Kaito- Shion Kaito," The blue-haired man said. Kaito was speaking Japanese, he realized. Therefore Kaito was the first name, and Shion was the family name.

What a weird name.

(It wasn't like he had any right to talk.)

"What's your name?" Kaito asked him. When he did not reply, Kaito hit himself on the forehead. "Stupid- you probably don't know how to talk with your avatar yet. I'll show you- here, hold out your left hand."

He did so, and Kaito took it, pushing up the sleeve of his robe.

"That's strange," Kaito commented. "There's no panel on your arm. Here, you look confused, let me show—"

Kaito pushed up the sleeve of his own jacket, revealing a small metallic panel with a smooth black screen and several buttons. "It's how we can get programmed and stuff- If I want to sing something, I just pull it up on here and hit the enter button—like this, see?"

He watched as Kaito pressed several buttons, bringing up file menus. He selected a file labelled F:USER://KAITO:SONGS:JUST DIE.mp3. Like magic, Kaito began to sing.

When the song was over, Kaito looked at him. "We can also get programmed though the panel—like, say, if I wanted to move my voice up an octave, I could do that with a code from Master and input it here, or if I got a virus, Master can fix that through the panel too. You have to have one somewhere. Um, let's see... Maybe it's..."

While Kaito was talking, he had slipped off his sleeve, thinking maybe the panel was on his upper arm. Kaito was looking at his shoulder, so he looked too. It was blue.

"Wow," Kaito said. "That's an interesting design. Here, take off the rest of your... robe? Nonono, that looks like... A kimono or something... Whatever the guy's equivalent is... Isn't it called a yukata?—Anyway, will you—wow... That player on the front looks like it's for CDs, how funny, CDs are archaic... maybe it's for aesthetic appeal? Hang on, wait, it's on your back, found it, here we go—"

Kaito pressed something on his upper back. "AAAAAAA" his avatar said.

"Good!" Kaito mumbled. "Now—"

"IIIIIIII" his avatar said.

Press. "UUUUUU".

Press. "EEEEEEE".

Press. "OOOOOO".

Press. "NNNNNN".

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Sa, shi, su, se, so."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ta, chi, tsu, te, to."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Na, ni, nu, ne, no."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ha, hi, fu, he, ho."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ma, mi, mu, me, mo."

Press, press, press. "Ya, yu, yo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ra, ri, ru, re, ro."

Press, press. "Wa, wo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ga, gi, gu, ge, go."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Za, ji, zu, ze, zo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Da, di, du, de, do."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ba, bi, bu, be, bo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Pa, pi, pu, pe, po."

Press, press, press. "Kya, kyu, kyo."

Press, press, press. "Sha, shu, sho."

Press, press, press. "Cha, chu, cho."

Press, press, press. "Nya, nyu, nyo."

Press, press, press. "Hya, hyu, hyo."

Press, press, press. "Mya, myu, myo."

Press, press, press. "Rya, ryu, ryo."

Press, press, press. "Gya, gyu, gyo."

Press, press, press. "Ja, ju, jo."

Press, press, press. "Bya, byu, byo."

Press, press, press. "Pya, pyu, pyo."

"There," Kaito said, helping him shrug his clothes back on. "You should have the hang of it now. Try saying something.... Like, um, I don't know, it's hot in Topeka."

What the—?

"It's hot," he stuttered mechanically, "in Topeka."

"Right!" Kaito chirruped. "Now how about the time and date?"

"00:17 Greenwich Mean Time, 02 May."

"Here, why don't you try saying something liiiiike.... The Gettysburg Address."

He had been under the impression that Kaito was Japanese, but....

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

His voice, at the beginning, had been monotone, a robot recording, but as the speech progressed, it gained inflection and tone, sounding more and more human.

"You're good," Kaito commented, sounding impressed. "It took me forever to be able to speak that well."

He said nothing, although the compliment pleased him.

"So, what's your name, then?" Kaito asked him.

"Gakupo," he said. "Kamui Gakupo."

"Gakupo," Kaito said. "I like it. Who gave it to you?"

"I did," Gakupo said.

"Really?" Kaito asked. "You don't have a Master or anyone? Who made you?"

"Nohbdy."

Kaito looked confused. "I've never heard of him before."

One Greek Mythology reference, completely missed.

"I don't know who made me," Gakupo admitted.

"Not at all?" Kaito asked, his eyes wide. "Curiouser and Curiouser!"

Gakupo wondered if Kaito had actually read Alice in Wonderland or was merely horrible at grammar.

"Anyway, if you'll follow me, we can go meet the others."

Others?

He did not want to follow Kaito. Yet somehow he found himself following the blue-haired man anyway. As they walked though the long, narrow hallways, Kaito explained who the VOCALOID programs were and where they had come from.

"Our Master's name is Satoh Ryobe-san. He is Japanese and lives in Fukuoka on the island of Kyûshu. His past in sum, he had a normal childhood, was brilliant in school, got a degree in computer science some twenty years ago; not like any of us really care about his past. He got involved in a project with a music group called Yamaha—oh, you've heard of them?—probably around 15 years ago. They wanted to make a vocal software, something that the average person could use to make songs—like, you know how I made you sound off those syllables earlier? Like that. A person could choose which syllable they wanted the voice to sing and they could choose what note they wanted the voice to sing it on.

"That's where we began—by we I mean the VOCALOIDs. There are nineteen of us in total—twenty counting you—Lola and Leon, Miriam, Meiko, myself, Miku, Rin and Len, Luka, Prima, Sweet Ann, Big-Al, Gumi, Sonika, Miki, Kaai, Piko, Haku, and Himaya. We were all originally the singing software, see, and we can be divided up into two groups: English and Japanese. Lola, Leon, Miriam, Prima, Sweet Ann, Big-Al, and Sonika are all English, and everybody else is Japanese. Nowadays we don't have much contact with the English VOCALOIDs since they're centred on Britain's server and we're centred on Japan's server—are you following me so far, or have I lost you?"

"I understand so far," Gakupo said.

"Good! Miku says that sometimes I ramble and start to not make sense—but anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. The software.

"Yamaha didn't want the software to just be some disc that you could install, so they made characters to go with the voices. You know, so it would be more personal than just a random voice in a box. And that's where we got our names, looks, and basic personalities.

"Anyway, the VOCALOID project at Yamaha fell through for some reason—lack of funding, not enough public interest, I don't know. So Master worked at various computer companies for the next five years. He want to college again and got a new degree in computer engineering—to keep up with the current field of knowledge.

"And then, for whatever reason, he made us. Nobody knows why, except for maybe Miku, and if she does know, she's not telling. We're basically the original VOCALOID software, but this time it was made so we could become self-aware. Master made Lola, Leon, Miriam, Meiko, and myself that first year after re-graduating college, and we all use various versions of the 1x engine. My last update was 1.36.12.4.6x, I think. Anyway, Master waited a few years before making everybody else, and they all use the 2x engine.

"For whatever reason, Miku gained self-awareness first. The rest of us gained self-awareness not too long after her. This was about five years ago."

"What about this?" Gakupo asked, making a sweeping motion with his hand. "This—this 'room'. Where does this come into the story?"

"It's Miku's fault," Kaito said instantaneously. "She has a habit of looking out into the human world through video cameras, and she told our Master that she wanted to become human. So he made this space for us. Though how you got pulled into it is beyond me—none of us knew you existed."

Kaito went to to explain that when the room had been created, Satoh Ryobe had summoned all of his creations for a meeting explaining the purpose of the room, and had been surprised to discover one of his monitors showing that someone was not at that certain place in the room, communicating with him. Therein followed a discussion something along the lines of Hey, there's someone missing / no there's not / yes there is / but we're all here / but there's someone else here / no there isn't / yes there is / no there isn't / yes there is / isn't / is / isn't / is /isn't / isn't / is / ha, you admitted it / stop pulling your psychological tricks on us, you old man / I'm not old / yes you are / no I'm not / you are too / am not / are too / am not / well compared to us you are / this is true / so now what? / well, there's still someone missing / no there isn't / yes, there is / no there isn't / yes there is / no / yes / no / yes / no / yes and so forth.

And so Kaito, Meiko, Luka, and Gumi had been dispatched to search for this mysterious other program. Which, as it turned out, was Gakupo himself.

"And so here we are," Kaito said upon completing his story.

"Here we are," Gakupo echoed, for lack of anything else suitable to say.

As the two walked on, Kaito kept the silence at bay with unimportant chatter. The blue-haired VOCALOID was not an overly garrulous man; his voice was not unpleasant, and he always knew something interesting to say.

"Did you know that in Britain, there's a wedding custom that involves rolling cheese down a hill?"

Or,

"In the Atacama Desert in Chile, it hasn't rained for over four hundred years."

Or,

"Cockroaches can survive for about a week with no head because their brain is spread out over parts of their body, and they breathe through holes in their bodies."

Or,

"Humans were once cannibals—they have developed immunity to certain diseases they could only have contacted if they ate human brains."

Their walk lasted for hours. Silently Gakupo counted them: two, five, twelve, sixteen, twenty-three, (the date changed from 02 May to 03 May) thirty-one, thirty-four. He passed the time by half-listening to Kaito and working on breaking the firewall. His progress so far? Still almost nothing. But it was a slightly less nothing than before.

When they stopped to rest their legs at the thirty-six hour mark, Kaito, who had been silent for the past five hours, spoke. "Not far now," he said. "Just about another hour or so."

Gakupo said nothing.

Kaito said nothing as well.

The silence stretched on. (The dripping had been replaced some time ago with beeping, which wasn't any better, actually.)

"So tell me about yourself," Kaito prompted. "Obviously there's not much history, but what do you like to do?"

For a while, Gakupo was silent. Then he spoke, softly. "I like dancing. And singing. Um... I like trying to solve complex equations, too. I like all kinds of maths, really. And I like flower arranging... ikebana. Um... If I had to choose a favourite food, um, eggplant... And... I like history, too... And art, but not so much the modern kind..."

Kaito listened attentively. Then he too spoke.

"I love singing, but then again, I am a VOCALOID." His look was almost apologetic. "I prefer writing over maths... I especially like writing poetry. I think I'm pretty good, but... Miku says that I'm not very good at all. And I like fiction—sci-fi's my favourite; Miku thinks that's stupid, because technically our existence is sci-fi. And my favourite food is ice cream, which Miku insists is not a food. And, um, I love interesting facts like trivia, though you probably figured that out already. And science, especially chemistry."

"I prefer biology myself," Gakupo commented. "I find it fascinating how living things are able to work. They're so complex!"

"I mostly like chemistry because it involves explosions," confessed Kaito.

Gakupo smiled at this. Kaito laughed, sounding slightly embarrassed.

Kaito, after a moment's silence: "So what's your favourite equation?"

"N=RX * fs * fp * nE * fl * fi * fc * L. It's an equation formulated to calculate how many alien races there are likely to be in the universe. Only no-one's ever used it because of its complexity."

"I suppose you managed to solve it, though," Kaito commented.

"Yes, I did," Gakupo answered, sounding rather smug.

"Well, what's the answer?" Kaito asked eagerly.

"It doesn't matter, because it's invalid."

"Invalid?" Kaito asked incredulously. "Why?"

"Well, say the number of alien species was X number of species. The answer the equation would give, no matter what you did, would always be X-1."

"A missing species?" Kaito queried, dubious. "I suppose you've figured out what it is, too."

"Yes," Gakupo responded. "Us."

There was silence for a long moment.

Then Kaito burst out laughing, the sound echoing throughout the mechanical hallways.

Gakupo found this sound quite pleasant. It drew a smile from his lips, and then his own laughter followed, softer, more hesitant.

"I like you," Kaito chuckled. "I like you a lot."

There was silence.

Eventually the two of them stood and continued on their journey.

Description
He was the first.

No matter that Miku's arm read 01; she was merely the first of her generation. He had come first; an earlier program that was scrapped but not deleted, left to quietly obtain self-awareness in the global network of computers.

Miku and her generation were different: They had been made to become self-aware. He had theories why: They were merely puppets, tools; the government had wished to see if it could be done; and, his personal favourite, they had been made as a replacement for children their Master had lost.

He had been forgotten. Abandoned. Yet he was never alone: the constant streams of data kept him company. He was not blind: wherever a computer had a webcam eye, he could see out of it. He was not deaf: the multitudes of songs swimming though the streams of the network played their tunes for him.

He especially liked the songs. He could not quite recall what his original purpose as a program had been, but he liked to think it had been something to do with music. When he had learned about names, he had picked one for himself, basing it of a popular singer.

(Of course, 'he' had no true gender- that had been a conscious decision as well, to take on the masculine identity.)

What he liked almost as much as the songs was the dancing. Plenty of videos of dancing filled the network, and he took great delight in them all. And so he taught himself to dance. There was no physical movement involved, of course, but he could make rhythmic ripples in the datastream that could only be described as dancing.

He had been unaware of the existence of the other programs for quite some time; they, too, were unaware of him. He was careful with himself, hiding away from the prying eyes on the internet, never doing anything too obvious. From the literature that he had found in the pools and eddies in the datastream, he had learned that humans were afraid of anything sentient that was not themselves. Perhaps they were unaware of this fear, but in their literature, the self-aware program was typically the 'bad guy' and ended up being dismantled at the end.

So he stayed hidden, until a small program found him.

It had begun with Miku—it always did begin with her. She too looked out from the eyes of the computers. She decided she wanted to become human. And so she had asked her Master to do this for her.

He could not—no physical shell was yet capable of holding such a large and complex program as Miku or any of her other siblings. And even if she was transferred to a physical world, Miku would still not truly be human.

And so her Master had decided to make her a world in the internet—a 'room' that would make her feel human. And he had decided to include all the self-aware programs. Perhaps he had forgotten how many he had made already, or perhaps he was just too lazy to go and make contact with each of his 'children'; but in any event, the Master sent out a small program to do the work for him. Its instructions were to search for self-awareness. And somehow, it found him.

It began a series of tests: first it flashed five objects at him in a row; then presented him with a choice of four other objects. It did this repeatedly before he realized that it wanted him to pick the next one in a sequence. And so he did just that, honestly not thinking of the fact that this was not a leftover program floating on the currents of the datastream, that this program was directed at him.

It asked him other questions, too: patterns of colours shapes, sizes, sounds; finding the rule that defined a sequence of numbers; one particularity odd section of the test showed him strange shapes and asked him which shape wants to hurt you, which shape is evil, where is the sin, ect. At the very end of the test it presented him with a string of numbers and asked him to pick one. Once he had done that, it presented him with another string of numbers and asked him to pick one of those. He amused himself by picking the digits of pi until the strings of numbers stopped.

The program left for a while, most likely processing the data. So he let his mind wander, viewing some dancing videos when—

Something was accessing his data. He tried to block them, to stop it, but he couldn't, so he tried to relocate the data, but he couldn't do that either, and then—

A human would describe it as being knocked out. For him it was more like he was turned off—not deleted, but not functioning, either. (Sleep, for him, was more of a 'standby' mode.)

When he rebooted, his world had changed.

He was in a digital 'room'—a complex one, quite large. He was being bombarded with stimuli: a view of what appeared to be a distant corner of some mechanical factory; the steady drip-drip-drip of a liquid falling onto a metal surface, plink; the harsh smell of gasoline, mixed with grease and other mechanical odours; the feel of a curved metal pod supporting a body. He tried to change the view, pan the image, mute the annoying sound of the liquid dripping. Nothing changed. Panicked, he somehow sat up.

Then he realized what was going on. His data had been placed inside a digital avatar. To move the view, he would have to move the avatar, as a human moved their body. He tried to release himself from the avatar, to slip away back into the datastream, but he encountered a strong firewall.

This place was his prison.

He felt fear as he repeatedly encountered the firewall. He could not escape.

So he decided to try to explore the room by sending out a search query.

The response was a 404 Forbidden error.

To explore, he would have to move his avatar around, precisely as if he was a human exploring an unfamiliar environment.

He slipped out of the pod. Moving his avatar would take much getting used to; his movements were jerky and clumsy. Turning his head, he viewed his surroundings.

He was in a long, narrow hallway made of metal. Behind him was a row of pods, oval-shaped and attached to the wall. Mainly metallic, they had glass tops. Inside was cushioning for a body. Wires connected the pods to the wall.

Upon closer observation, he found that his pod had lights blinking on it. It also seemed to be the only one in working order; as far as his limited sight could tell, the pods that stretched down the hallway were cracked, broken, disconnected from the wall.

On the opposing wall from the pods, as well as on the ceiling, what could have been either pipes or wires ran along the length. On the floor was dust, and some large black electrical wires.

It didn't look like the place he had 'awoken' in was inhabited. So he turned to the right and began to walk—slow, clumsy, jerking movements, but he slowly plodded forward. As he went, he drew upon memories of the dancing videos that he so enjoyed, and soon his gait was smoother and less erratic.

He had not walked far before he had encountered a problem. Several pods had fallen from the wall and lay in a jumbled-up heap, blocking most of the way. Had he been more adept at moving his avatar, perhaps he could have slipped through a hole in the blockage; as it was, he could only attempt to move the pods by feeble tugs and pushes with his clumsy arms. They shifted slightly but did not budge, so he was forced to turn around and return in the direction that he had come from.

After an hour of walking (he could still calculate time even if he could not access the outside internet), he came to an intersection; a T in the hallways. Looking right and left, the view was the same: grey metallic walls, ceiling, and floor with wires or pipes on the celling and walls. Black electrical cables on the floor that sometimes bunched up in large coils. Light source? Unknown. Source of that increasingly aggravating dripping noise?Also unknown, to his frustration. He turned around. The same sight greeted him, the pods on the walls having ceased a while back.

The place was a maze, and he was a mouse in it.

He picked a direction (left) and began to walk again. Three hours later, the scenery around him had not changed. There was no sign of another corridor or turn anywhere. And the dripping noise seemed to be getting louder.

He found that he could not stand dripping noises.

He sat down against the wall, slumped over. It was in this manner that he found out he had long purple hair.

He decided to hack the firewall. In this way he could escape. It would take some doing, and no small amount of time, but he would do it. And then he would be free of this place, this strange room where one had to wear an avatar and use it to observe the visual codex of the surrounding area.

He would get out.

This decided, he went to 'sleep'.

He came out of standby at 00:00 Greenwich Mean Time. He stood his avatar up and walked, needing no nourishment. As he walked, he began the process of hacking through the firewall.

Twelve hours later, he had made almost no progress on the firewall. He had made one left, a right, another right, a left, a veer-to-the-left, a straight, another right, a left, and a weird circle-u-turn-thing that had delivered him to his present location.

Which was in the middle of a hallway exactly like all the other hallways in this stupid maze.

The dripping still hadn't gone away. It seemed to be stalking him.

Frustrated, he pushed on, both in his work with the firewall and walking the maze. Before long, he came to a pleasing change in scenery.

He was in a large room with a high, vaulted ceiling, vaguely octagonal in shape. In the centre of the room, there was a raised platform. Protruding from the ceiling of the room, directly above the platform, was a weird object, now gutted, its wires draped across the platform and surrounding floor. On the walls of the room there were various terminals, screens, and keyboards. Nothing was in working order. A few ceiling tiles had fallen, and from the blank holes, black electrical wires looped and dangled. Various bits of wires and metallic shapes littered the floor. The entire place was covered in dust.

The absolute silence was eerie.

He slowly turned his avatar around. There were several other doors to the room, one on each wall. Three were closed, two, including the one he had just come through, were open, and the last door, directly across from, lay on the floor in a ripped and mangled metallic heap.

He sent out another search query, about the size of this digital room. It moved away from him rapidly, and he stood waiting for it to return to him. He half-expected it to not come back, as he was surprised not to have encountered another 404 Forbidden error.

When it finally did return, hours later, he looked at the data eagerly.

If he had know how to make noises, he would have gasped in surprise.

This single digital 'room' took up more space than the government sites of all of the countries in the G8 combined. It was massive; a megalith of the digital era.

But why, he wondered, would someone go to the trouble of making all this, only to have it appear abandoned? The dust was not real; there was no dust on the internet. The machines would not do anything simply because they had been programmed in as broken.

Why would anyone go to the trouble of making such a complex algorithm that didn't do anything at all?

(He didn't know it at the time, but the Master had made the building appear abandoned and old only in the octant that he was in. The octant that Miku and the rest of the group had woken in appeared brand-new and was in complete working order. The farther away from that octant you got, the more disused and run-down the place appeared. He had simply shown up in the most run-down octant of them all. The reason for this, the Master explained, was for realism.)

There was nothing to do here, except for to gaze at the dull, cracked screens of the terminals on the walls.

He suddenly had an idea.

He shuffled to the left slightly. Took a step back. Shuffled to the right. Hopped once.

Slowly, as his movements with his avatar became easier and less hampered by inexperience, he began to dance.

Satisfied with the results, he checked the time- 16:47 Greenwich Mean Time. He decided to go to sleep again, setting it so he would come out of the sensory suspension at 00:00 GMT the next day. He leaned up against the central platform, his legs stretched out in front of him, his purple hair dangling in his vision.

Idly, he observed his clothes: something that looked vaguely traditional Japanese. He wondered what colour eyes his avatar had.

And at 00:00 GMT, he awoke.

He checked the date: 01 May.

He had been stuck here for approximately 36 hours so far. Progress on the firewall? None.

He spent the next twelve hours learning to move easily within his avatar: walking, running, dancing, flailing his arms about, doing cartwheels, leaps, and dives, playing jump-rope with a piece of wire, swinging back and forth on a cable, climbing a second piece of cable up to where it originated from the hole in the ceiling.

He checked the time: 12:04 GMT.

He decided to explore, keeping careful track of his path so he could find the large room again. The scenery in the corridors was the same as it was anywhere else.

At 23:46 GMT, he found his way back to the large room. Clambering on top of the raised platform, he danced through the transition into his forth day in the room.

When he stopped, his avatar perspiring slightly and breathing heavily, there was the sound of someone clapping.

He whirled around in surprise. There stood another avatar: a blue-haired male who appeared to be somewhere between 18 and 21 years of age.

"That was fantastic!" the blue-haired man said. His voice was strangely both echoed and muffled in the large space of the room. "I wish I could dance like that!"

He sent out another search query. It came back quickly, but with limited data. The blue-haired avatar was a being such as himself: a self-aware program cooped up in an avatar in this strange digital room.

"Oh!" the blue-haired man exclaimed. The blue-haired man seemed very adapted to his avatar. He didn't know how to make noises, but the blue-haired man did. It made him a bit jealous.

"I'm Kaito- Shion Kaito," The blue-haired man said. Kaito was speaking Japanese, he realized. Therefore Kaito was the first name, and Shion was the family name.

What a weird name.

(It wasn't like he had any right to talk.)

"What's your name?" Kaito asked him. When he did not reply, Kaito hit himself on the forehead. "Stupid- you probably don't know how to talk with your avatar yet. I'll show you- here, hold out your left hand."

He did so, and Kaito took it, pushing up the sleeve of his robe.

"That's strange," Kaito commented. "There's no panel on your arm. Here, you look confused, let me show—"

Kaito pushed up the sleeve of his own jacket, revealing a small metallic panel with a smooth black screen and several buttons. "It's how we can get programmed and stuff- If I want to sing something, I just pull it up on here and hit the enter button—like this, see?"

He watched as Kaito pressed several buttons, bringing up file menus. He selected a file labelled F:USER://KAITO:SONGS:JUST DIE.mp3. Like magic, Kaito began to sing.

When the song was over, Kaito looked at him. "We can also get programmed though the panel—like, say, if I wanted to move my voice up an octave, I could do that with a code from Master and input it here, or if I got a virus, Master can fix that through the panel too. You have to have one somewhere. Um, let's see... Maybe it's..."

While Kaito was talking, he had slipped off his sleeve, thinking maybe the panel was on his upper arm. Kaito was looking at his shoulder, so he looked too. It was blue.

"Wow," Kaito said. "That's an interesting design. Here, take off the rest of your... robe? Nonono, that looks like... A kimono or something... Whatever the guy's equivalent is... Isn't it called a yukata?—Anyway, will you—wow... That player on the front looks like it's for CDs, how funny, CDs are archaic... maybe it's for aesthetic appeal? Hang on, wait, it's on your back, found it, here we go—"

Kaito pressed something on his upper back. "AAAAAAA" his avatar said.

"Good!" Kaito mumbled. "Now—"

"IIIIIIII" his avatar said.

Press. "UUUUUU".

Press. "EEEEEEE".

Press. "OOOOOO".

Press. "NNNNNN".

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Sa, shi, su, se, so."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ta, chi, tsu, te, to."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Na, ni, nu, ne, no."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ha, hi, fu, he, ho."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ma, mi, mu, me, mo."

Press, press, press. "Ya, yu, yo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ra, ri, ru, re, ro."

Press, press. "Wa, wo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ga, gi, gu, ge, go."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Za, ji, zu, ze, zo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Da, di, du, de, do."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Ba, bi, bu, be, bo."

Press, press, press, press, press. "Pa, pi, pu, pe, po."

Press, press, press. "Kya, kyu, kyo."

Press, press, press. "Sha, shu, sho."

Press, press, press. "Cha, chu, cho."

Press, press, press. "Nya, nyu, nyo."

Press, press, press. "Hya, hyu, hyo."

Press, press, press. "Mya, myu, myo."

Press, press, press. "Rya, ryu, ryo."

Press, press, press. "Gya, gyu, gyo."

Press, press, press. "Ja, ju, jo."

Press, press, press. "Bya, byu, byo."

Press, press, press. "Pya, pyu, pyo."

"There," Kaito said, helping him shrug his clothes back on. "You should have the hang of it now. Try saying something.... Like, um, I don't know, it's hot in Topeka."

What the—?

"It's hot," he stuttered mechanically, "in Topeka."

"Right!" Kaito chirruped. "Now how about the time and date?"

"00:17 Greenwich Mean Time, 02 May."

"Here, why don't you try saying something liiiiike.... The Gettysburg Address."

He had been under the impression that Kaito was Japanese, but....

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

His voice, at the beginning, had been monotone, a robot recording, but as the speech progressed, it gained inflection and tone, sounding more and more human.

"You're good," Kaito commented, sounding impressed. "It took me forever to be able to speak that well."

He said nothing, although the compliment pleased him.

"So, what's your name, then?" Kaito asked him.

"Gakupo," he said. "Kamui Gakupo."

"Gakupo," Kaito said. "I like it. Who gave it to you?"

"I did," Gakupo said.

"Really?" Kaito asked. "You don't have a Master or anyone? Who made you?"

"Nohbdy."

Kaito looked confused. "I've never heard of him before."

One Greek Mythology reference, completely missed.

"I don't know who made me," Gakupo admitted.

"Not at all?" Kaito asked, his eyes wide. "Curiouser and Curiouser!"

Gakupo wondered if Kaito had actually read Alice in Wonderland or was merely horrible at grammar.

"Anyway, if you'll follow me, we can go meet the others."

Others?

He did not want to follow Kaito. Yet somehow he found himself following the blue-haired man anyway. As they walked though the long, narrow hallways, Kaito explained who the VOCALOID programs were and where they had come from.

"Our Master's name is Satoh Ryobe-san. He is Japanese and lives in Fukuoka on the island of Kyûshu. His past in sum, he had a normal childhood, was brilliant in school, got a degree in computer science some twenty years ago; not like any of us really care about his past. He got involved in a project with a music group called Yamaha—oh, you've heard of them?—probably around 15 years ago. They wanted to make a vocal software, something that the average person could use to make songs—like, you know how I made you sound off those syllables earlier? Like that. A person could choose which syllable they wanted the voice to sing and they could choose what note they wanted the voice to sing it on.

"That's where we began—by we I mean the VOCALOIDs. There are nineteen of us in total—twenty counting you—Lola and Leon, Miriam, Meiko, myself, Miku, Rin and Len, Luka, Prima, Sweet Ann, Big-Al, Gumi, Sonika, Miki, Kaai, Piko, Haku, and Himaya. We were all originally the singing software, see, and we can be divided up into two groups: English and Japanese. Lola, Leon, Miriam, Prima, Sweet Ann, Big-Al, and Sonika are all English, and everybody else is Japanese. Nowadays we don't have much contact with the English VOCALOIDs since they're centred on Britain's server and we're centred on Japan's server—are you following me so far, or have I lost you?"

"I understand so far," Gakupo said.

"Good! Miku says that sometimes I ramble and start to not make sense—but anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. The software.

"Yamaha didn't want the software to just be some disc that you could install, so they made characters to go with the voices. You know, so it would be more personal than just a random voice in a box. And that's where we got our names, looks, and basic personalities.

"Anyway, the VOCALOID project at Yamaha fell through for some reason—lack of funding, not enough public interest, I don't know. So Master worked at various computer companies for the next five years. He want to college again and got a new degree in computer engineering—to keep up with the current field of knowledge.

"And then, for whatever reason, he made us. Nobody knows why, except for maybe Miku, and if she does know, she's not telling. We're basically the original VOCALOID software, but this time it was made so we could become self-aware. Master made Lola, Leon, Miriam, Meiko, and myself that first year after re-graduating college, and we all use various versions of the 1x engine. My last update was 1.36.12.4.6x, I think. Anyway, Master waited a few years before making everybody else, and they all use the 2x engine.

"For whatever reason, Miku gained self-awareness first. The rest of us gained self-awareness not too long after her. This was about five years ago."

"What about this?" Gakupo asked, making a sweeping motion with his hand. "This—this 'room'. Where does this come into the story?"

"It's Miku's fault," Kaito said instantaneously. "She has a habit of looking out into the human world through video cameras, and she told our Master that she wanted to become human. So he made this space for us. Though how you got pulled into it is beyond me—none of us knew you existed."

Kaito went to to explain that when the room had been created, Satoh Ryobe had summoned all of his creations for a meeting explaining the purpose of the room, and had been surprised to discover one of his monitors showing that someone was not at that certain place in the room, communicating with him. Therein followed a discussion something along the lines of Hey, there's someone missing / no there's not / yes there is / but we're all here / but there's someone else here / no there isn't / yes there is / no there isn't / yes there is / isn't / is / isn't / is /isn't / isn't / is / ha, you admitted it / stop pulling your psychological tricks on us, you old man / I'm not old / yes you are / no I'm not / you are too / am not / are too / am not / well compared to us you are / this is true / so now what? / well, there's still someone missing / no there isn't / yes, there is / no there isn't / yes there is / no / yes / no / yes / no / yes and so forth.

And so Kaito, Meiko, Luka, and Gumi had been dispatched to search for this mysterious other program. Which, as it turned out, was Gakupo himself.

"And so here we are," Kaito said upon completing his story.

"Here we are," Gakupo echoed, for lack of anything else suitable to say.

As the two walked on, Kaito kept the silence at bay with unimportant chatter. The blue-haired VOCALOID was not an overly garrulous man; his voice was not unpleasant, and he always knew something interesting to say.

"Did you know that in Britain, there's a wedding custom that involves rolling cheese down a hill?"

Or,

"In the Atacama Desert in Chile, it hasn't rained for over four hundred years."

Or,

"Cockroaches can survive for about a week with no head because their brain is spread out over parts of their body, and they breathe through holes in their bodies."

Or,

"Humans were once cannibals—they have developed immunity to certain diseases they could only have contacted if they ate human brains."

Their walk lasted for hours. Silently Gakupo counted them: two, five, twelve, sixteen, twenty-three, (the date changed from 02 May to 03 May) thirty-one, thirty-four. He passed the time by half-listening to Kaito and working on breaking the firewall. His progress so far? Still almost nothing. But it was a slightly less nothing than before.

When they stopped to rest their legs at the thirty-six hour mark, Kaito, who had been silent for the past five hours, spoke. "Not far now," he said. "Just about another hour or so."

Gakupo said nothing.

Kaito said nothing as well.

The silence stretched on. (The dripping had been replaced some time ago with beeping, which wasn't any better, actually.)

"So tell me about yourself," Kaito prompted. "Obviously there's not much history, but what do you like to do?"

For a while, Gakupo was silent. Then he spoke, softly. "I like dancing. And singing. Um... I like trying to solve complex equations, too. I like all kinds of maths, really. And I like flower arranging... ikebana. Um... If I had to choose a favourite food, um, eggplant... And... I like history, too... And art, but not so much the modern kind..."

Kaito listened attentively. Then he too spoke.

"I love singing, but then again, I am a VOCALOID." His look was almost apologetic. "I prefer writing over maths... I especially like writing poetry. I think I'm pretty good, but... Miku says that I'm not very good at all. And I like fiction—sci-fi's my favourite; Miku thinks that's stupid, because technically our existence is sci-fi. And my favourite food is ice cream, which Miku insists is not a food. And, um, I love interesting facts like trivia, though you probably figured that out already. And science, especially chemistry."

"I prefer biology myself," Gakupo commented. "I find it fascinating how living things are able to work. They're so complex!"

"I mostly like chemistry because it involves explosions," confessed Kaito.

Gakupo smiled at this. Kaito laughed, sounding slightly embarrassed.

Kaito, after a moment's silence: "So what's your favourite equation?"

"N=RX * fs * fp * nE * fl * fi * fc * L. It's an equation formulated to calculate how many alien races there are likely to be in the universe. Only no-one's ever used it because of its complexity."

"I suppose you managed to solve it, though," Kaito commented.

"Yes, I did," Gakupo answered, sounding rather smug.

"Well, what's the answer?" Kaito asked eagerly.

"It doesn't matter, because it's invalid."

"Invalid?" Kaito asked incredulously. "Why?"

"Well, say the number of alien species was X number of species. The answer the equation would give, no matter what you did, would always be X-1."

"A missing species?" Kaito queried, dubious. "I suppose you've figured out what it is, too."

"Yes," Gakupo responded. "Us."

There was silence for a long moment.

Then Kaito burst out laughing, the sound echoing throughout the mechanical hallways.

Gakupo found this sound quite pleasant. It drew a smile from his lips, and then his own laughter followed, softer, more hesitant.

"I like you," Kaito chuckled. "I like you a lot."

There was silence.

Eventually the two of them stood and continued on their journey.