NOVEL NEXT 1.04 – The Uncanny Valley
Tokyo-III, Hakone, Kanagawa. 5th September 2015.
Evangelion Unit-01 surged upwards, coming to a halt with a thunderous clank as the catapult hit the arrestor bolts and locked into place. About a hundred meters to the north stood the Angel that had breached Tokyo-III’s outer defenses. Aiko’s job was to stop it before it could do significant damage to the city and kill the people who currently were sheltered beneath multiple layers of armor plating.
Aiko took a breath of LCL and pushed forwards on the saunters. Unit-01 surged forwards as the locking bolts on the catapult released, charging towards the giant monster that stood at the end of the street. Aiko knew what was coming as soon as she saw the Angel’s eyes flash with a light, and the Eva moved to obey her will, not quite one with her like last time, but moving perfectly in sync with her thoughts. Unit-01 leapt sideways, the beam of blinding light that had been aimed squarely at its head narrowly passing between the head and her right shoulder fin.
Aiko took cover behind a nearby weapons depot, grabbing the pallet rifle that emerged from within the structure as she hit the release switch. Before the monster could fire off another one of its energy blasts, she had already emerged from behind the building, raised her rifle, and fired off a burst at the target, the casings from her rounds crashing to the ground below, and peppering the roadway with craters the size of a small car.
The rounds tore through the already weakened AT field but glanced off the outside of the Angel’s core. Aiko fired off another burst, to no effect, and cursed as her ammunition counter read dry. She had memorized all the logistics depots and their positions within the city last week, and she knew that the nearest one with ammunition for her rifle was too far away to reach before the Angel would be able to rebuild its AT field, making the last five minutes a complete waste.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed a truck off the road next to her, and pegged it at the Angel’s chest, aiming for the red globe that was its heart. The vehicle smashed into the core, doing very little in the way of harm, but managing to knock the Angel off balance slightly. The angel staggered back, almost falling, before reaching out to steady itself on a nearby building.
However, before it could move any further, or the pieces of the truck that had not yet touched the ground could finish falling, the world froze. Aiko relaxed in her seat slightly, still breathing heavily. A message blinking in the middle of Aiko’s HUD helpfully confirmed to her that the simulation had been paused.
“Remember, Aiko,” came Dr. Akagi’s voice over the radio. “The Anti-AT field rounds fired by your gun are expensive and cannot easily penetrate the Angel’s core. They’re also energized by your own AT field when fired, which means that you can’t use your rifle to bring down the target if your AT field is not deployed or has been depleted or breached.”
Aiko swallowed. Even though this was a simulation, and the entry plug she sat in was attached to one of the training units- a biomechanical facsimile of the head and torso of a real Evangelion that sat in one of the many laboratories in NERV headquarters- she was beginning to realize just how terrifying her life had become since her arrival in Tokyo-III just over three weeks ago. For the last three weeks, she had in and out of the simulator countless times. She had been quizzed on the operation of the various weapons that were available for the Evangelion, from handguns the size of a two-story home to rotary cannons that fired projectiles the size of artillery shells at a thousand rounds per second.
She’d even received instruction in some of the more esoteric weapons that were yet to be fully implemented for use by her unit, such as electromagnetic spike launchers, to particle beam rifles. In-between this, she had been subjected to a battery of physical and mental testing, which she had been assured was for the purpose of calibrating her Eva to respond to her more effectively. Personally, she just thought it was pure sadism. Nobody should have to hook their genitals up to five or six electrodes while running on a treadmill.
She was beginning to feel like she could lose herself in it all.
“Aiko? Are you OK?”
came Dr. Akagi’s voice over the radio, jolting her out of her stupor. “This is the last training sim for the day. You’ve been pushing yourself really hard the last three weeks, and we’re all very proud of you. You’ve performed far better than we expected of you at this stage. If you’d like, we can stop now for the day.”Aiko didn’t even need to think about her answer.
“I think it’s definitely time to take a break,” she said, gratefully. “Thank you, Dr. Akagi.”
Schaller-Pribnow Simulation Laboratory, Σ Unit, Central Dogma. 5th September 2015.
“That move she did with the car was inspired, don’t you think?” commented Lt. Aoba, swiveling around in his chair and leaning back with his arms behind his head. “I think the Marduk Institute found us a real natural. And she’s the Commander’s daughter too! We certainly struck gold, didn’t we, Major?”
“Well, she certainly managed to get the hang of piloting the simulation body quicker than the Second Child did, that’s for sure,” replied Misato, taking a sip from her coffee, and frowning when she realized it was cold. “But we still haven’t figured out what the cause of the disparity in skill between the battle with the Third Angel and her first attempt in the sims was. It was if she had forgotten how to get the Evangelion to walk.”
Misato turned to Ritsuko, who was surreptitiously studying her clipboard and not responding to her long-time friend and colleague. Misato rolled her eyes.
“Go on,” she said, playfully feigning exasperation. “Tell us your grand theory about why Aiko was so skilled in the first encounter, but had to relearn everything come the start of training. You’re going to say it’s due to the difference between the simulation system and the actual Evangelion, right?”
Misato waved towards the window of the control room, which looked out at the simulation body, a mechanical facsimile of an actual Evangelions upper torso and head. It was skeletal, made from bare steel, and mounted on a complicated armature that could simulate the movement and jostling of an actual unit moving around. The entry plug emerged from the back, nestled in a circular truss, tubes and wires coming out of it in various places. Currently, the LCL was being drained from the cockpit, and Aiko was being monitored as she expelled the breathable liquid from her lungs. Exposed paneling on the torso showed off the various plastic tubes and sacks pumping LCL out of the cockpit for recycling, making the simulator seem almost like a facsimile of an organism. Huge, twisted bundles of cables emerged from the empty eye sockets of the skull-like head, leading up into the ceiling. Misato thought it was all rather overcomplicated, but she was a strategist, not a scientist, after all.
“Good guess, Major Katsuragi,” replied Ritsuko, her eyes twinkling behind her square-framed glasses. “But no. The simulator isn’t even really synchronizing with Aiko directly. It’s linked directly into the Personality Imprint Operating System of Evangelion Unit-01, and therefore should have zero functional differences that could alter the performance of the synchronization. Furthermore, differences in synch rate or synchronization technology do not directly affect the ability of the pilot to…well, pilot. It’s a control system, that’s all. My working theory, based on the data gathered from the encounter with the Third Angel, and from what we’ve gotten back from our synch testing and the simulator’s own recordings is that during the battle, Unit-01 entered a berserk state, and Aiko did not directly control the unit as it engaged in combat.”
Misato blinked. “Ritsuko, I’ve seen the records of Unit-00’s activation test, and of the observed berserker state it entered. Unit-01 acted nothing like that. In fact, the projections we had for the damage that would be caused by such an incident occurring in actual combat were vastly different from what actually happened in the encounter.”
“Ah, but that’s where the fun part comes in,” Ritsuko said, grinning broadly. She turned to Lt. Ibuki, who was sitting next to her at one of the consoles. “Maya, please bring up the pulse rate graph for Evangelion Unit-01 during the encounter with the Angel, and put it side by side with the readings we got during the failed activation test with Unit-00. Also, would you mind giving us your analysis of the comparison.”
“Yes, Dr. Akagi,” said the lieutenant, cheerfully entering a string of commands into her terminal. The glass window darkened, before lighting up with two graphs showing a complex three-dimensional waveform that Misato didn’t even try to understand. She was used to dealing with classical physics, a subject she had received training on during her time as a flight officer in the JSSDF. However, quantum mechanics, and particularly the more esoteric variety that was at the core of Project-E was beyond her. The graphs seemingly looked identical, at least to her untrained eyes.
“The graph on the left is from the Evangelion Unit-00 activation test, specifically showing the state of the link between the Evangelion’s central nervous system and the pilot’s psychographic field during the anomaly in synchronization that caused the unit to go berserk and the pilot to lose control of the machine,” explained Lt. Ibuki. “This shows that the pilot was still linked, but was not at the right quantum harmonic frequency to issue conscious command-control signals to the unit. On the right, we have a graph taken from approximately five minutes after Unit-01 was released from the cage and deployed into battle. This graph clearly shows that the Eva entered a berserk state, where the pilot was still linked to the unit, and able to maintain activation, but was not consciously controlling the unit.”
The young lieutenant finally took a breath before continuing, clearly not caring that Misato’s eyes had already glazed over. “However, there is one key difference between the two, namely when we take the three-dimensional data representation and convert them to a four-dimensional projection.”
The graphs changed, turning from helical spirals into two drastically different shapes. The graph on the left now showed what looked like a rapidly oscillating cluster of spikes that speared outwards violently, merging together at the base into a roughly spherical form. On the right, however, the graph resembled a near-perfect sphere, with the surface oscillating with near-imperceptible spikes, rippling across the sphere in clean patterns.
“From what we can tell, when Evangelion Unit-00 went berserk, the pilot remained synchronized, but instability from the pilot caused the unit to lose control and lash out violently, causing severe damage to the testing chamber, and forcing an emergency pilot ejection due to a malfunction in the safety system,” explained Ritsuko, taking over, and smiling apologetically at Misato. “Essentially, when Unit-01 went Berserk in the first encounter, Aiko was able to keep the unit in check, and direct the berserk state such that the unit was able to engage the Angel without causing major collateral. We believe this was a result of her unique propensity for synchronization, and due to an unusual degree of emotional control for a girl her age. We’re not sure if this has to do with her…um…gender identity affecting her ego border, but we’d need further data to confirm that.”
Misato sighed. “I’m not going to pretend I understood even a quarter of that. Forget I asked.”
“Major, isn’t Aiko due for her first day of school this Monday?” asked Lt. Hyuga, looking up from his console briefly. “If we’re done with the current round of training, we can use the school week to put together some more advanced scenarios for her to run through. I also think the simulator is due for some overhaul, we’ve been running the system pretty much around the clock for the last few weeks, and it’s due for some serious downtime.”
“Good thinking, Makoto,” replied Misato, grinning at her assistant. “Get the maintenance documentation finished and on my desk for signing by tomorrow. I’ll get it back to you on Monday. Well done, everyone. Let’s finish up here, and get Aiko debriefed and on the way back home.”
“By the way, Misato,” said Ritsuko as the rest of the staff began closing down the simulation, and Aiko climbed out of the entry plug. “I’ve been meaning to get Rei her new access card, since her old one has expired. Aiko also hasn’t met Rei yet, and they’ll be working together once we do the Unit-00 activation text in two weeks. Could you get Aiko to run the card over to her tomorrow? It’d save me a lot of time, and Rei doesn’t live that far from your building.”
“Sure?” said Misato, taking the card that Ritsuko handed over. “Wait, she lives topside? I thought she’d be quartered here at headquarters with the Commander?”
“That’s…difficult to explain,” said Ritsuko, her voice unsteady. “I’ve never got the full picture, but Rei has a…unique…relationship with the Commander, and she likes to be by herself most of the time. I’ll send you the address later, I’ll need to look it up. Please give my regards to Aiko. She is a most fascinating young lady.”
Tokyo-III West District One, 701-D Kigyō Street, Apartment 402. September 6th, 2015.
Aiko looked down at the address Misato had scrawled on the index card she was holding and looked back up at the filthy door of the apartment she stood in front of. There was no way this was where she was meant to be. Misato had asked her to deliver a replacement access card to the other pilot currently at NERV HQ, a girl who she had only heard of up till now. Rei Ayanami, the First Child, and the pilot of Eva-00, the prototype model. Aiko looked around at the crumbling concrete building she had been sent to. It was a crumbling relic that had to date back to before the Second Impact, and that was in the process of being demolished. The building was in the middle of a district that was half demolished, construction work still underway everywhere else. The building was plastered with condemned notices, and part of the east wing had already been demolished. When Aiko had tried to use the elevator, it had been without power, and the stairs were covered with rubble, trash, and dead leaves. Nobody could possibly be living here, let alone the First Child, who Aiko would one day be fighting alongside.
She pressed the door buzzer, and nothing happened. She looked over at it and noticed that the LED indicator didn’t light up when she pressed the button. It was, like the building it was attached to, broken and ready for disposal. She knocked on the doorframe and received no response. However, she could faintly hear the sound of running water from inside the apartment. Rei was clearly home, but was probably either in the kitchen, or in the bathroom. She knocked again, this time on the door itself, and was surprised when it swung open. The handle didn’t even function from the look of it. She pushed the door further open, and cautiously stepped inside.
The apartment was no less of a war crime than the rest of the building. The best thing Aiko could say about it was that it was at least tidy. Rei either didn’t like leaving her belongings strewn around, or didn’t have anything to leave lying around. The only furnishings were a basic folding cot with a bare mattress and a single pillow, a stainless-steel surgical trolley that was clearly serving as a nightstand, a clothing rack to the right of the entrance, and a dresser at the foot of the bed. The room was badly lit, with the only possible source of natural light being the boarded-up window over the bed.
The only possessions in the room were three sets of the same school uniform that Aiko would be wearing to school tomorrow, a box of cylindrical pill containers sitting on the trolley beside the bed, and a glasses case on top of the dresser with a broken pair of glasses sitting inside. The shower was on in the next room and was seemingly being fed by an ad-hoc water tank that had been installed on the wall inside the main room. Aiko didn’t know what to think. How was Rei okay with this? What sort of person would make a child live alone like this?
The shower abruptly switched off in the adjourning bathroom, and Aiko looked away as Rei exited the shower, completely naked, and still towelling herself off. She could now see why she’d had so many people comment on how similar she looked to Rei. Dye the other girl’s hair from the weird blue colour it was to black and remove the contacts she was wearing (red was a…interesting colour), and she’d look like Aiko’s sister, although the difference wouldn’t be close enough that they’d be identical twins.
“Who are you?” asked the other girl, her voice almost a whisper, and seemingly devoid of any sort of annoyance or anger at Aiko’s intrusion. “Why are you here?”
“Rei Ayanami?” Aiko asked, continuing when the other girl quietly nodded. “I’m Aiko Ikari. I’m the pilot of Unit-01. We haven’t met yet.”
“No,” replied the other girl, seemingly unperturbed by being naked around another person as she began dressing herself in front of Aiko. “We have not. You are Commander Ikari’s son?”
Aiko winced. “Daughter, actually.”
“He said he had a son, Shinji,” Rei said, her voice inexpressive. “He never mentioned having a daughter.”
“I…used to be a boy,” Aiko said, feeling increasingly disconcerted by the detached demeanour of the other girl. “I’m transgender.”
“I see.” said Rei, tying the laces on her shoes, and walking past Aiko to the door. Aiko momentarily stood there, slightly stunned by the other girl’s attitude. She’d never got a reaction like that from anyone about her gender. Rei didn’t sound bothered, but she didn’t sound interested either. It was as if she just…didn’t care to know more. Aiko hurried after her, closing the front door as best as she could behind the other girl, who left the broken door wide open as she left.
“Rei, wait up,” she said, jogging for a few paces to keep up with the peculiar young woman before slowing down to walk beside her. Rei didn’t even slow down. “I need to give you this. Dr. Akagi sent me over with your new access card.”
Rei stopped suddenly and turned to face Aiko. She wordlessly extended her hand. Aiko placed the new access card in her hand and smiled at the other girl.
“Apologies for interrupting your shower,” she said. Rei cocked her head to one side, seemingly not understanding. “I saw you naked? I’m not really used to seeing other girls naked. I’ve always changed in a stall for sports at my previous schools. It’s a bit uncomfortable for everyone, me included, when I don’t have the same genitals. I’m sorry for intruding on you during your shower.”
“There is no need to apologise,” replied Rei, her voice still completely expressionless. “Please excuse me, I am needed at headquarters for a meeting with Dr. Akagi. Goodbye.”
Aiko watched as the other girl walked off, now feeling extremely uncomfortable. There was something uncanny about the way Rei acted, and the way she looked. It was like the human-looking androids that Aiko had seen on television from time to time. They looked extremely lifelike, and even emoted like real humans. But there was something off about them that made the illusion completely break down. She remembered the phrase that one of the roboticists in the news had used. The uncanny valley, where the believability of a machine emulating a person drops off hard after a certain point and becomes uncanny.
She watched the First Child walk away, her movements as stilted as those of a machine, and she knew deep down that there was something about Rei that wasn’t quite human.
Aiko didn’t think she and the First Child were going to be friends any time soon.