Ado Fans Riot Outside Tokyo Tower
"LET US IN!!" They chant as they contradictorily line up in a single file rather politely."
A science fiction short story.
In front of Tokyo Tower, a polite elegant in suits dressed extremely long cue stays idle emanating an otherworldly tranquil aura as the full moon gleams violently through the sakura petals as they fall upon the ebbing river. There is no river near Tokyo Tower, but the cue is as long as one, and their vibe is so chill that there is no trace of agitation, pain, doubt, and so on. Outside this river, the metropolis steams with noise, chatter, cars, steps, metros, clubs. Away from entropy, inside their homes, people internally wear the agitation, quarrels, hopes, and dreams they have been grown up with. Contemporary globalized society breaths autonomously but mechanically, creating a new rhythm, a novel lifestyle encompassing the globe, stealing away boredom, bringing visual overstimulation, making sure that all fits together in a brave new world.
The moon is still full, sakura petals continue to fall, and the river keeps on slowly getting closer to Tokyo Tower. The refined gentlemen horde does millimetric steps towards the tower. Only this way they can express their enthusiasm for tonight’s event: a Chando concert.
…
The renowned artist and scientist, Chando, has prepared a peculiar event for her new album release involving artificial intelligence, refined city-pop, and neuroscience. Soon, they will fill up the Tokyo Tower giving life to the drinks, snacks, sofas, tv screens, and surround systems breathing throughout the Tower. Like mushrooms, these objects are alive, have a unique vibe, and they communicate forming an aesthetic gestalt. The concert is an exquisite event, but the highest anticipation is for the secret base. Chando’s pioneering in neuroscience, physics, and artificial intelligence, has earned her a permanent position in the Japanese Unit 731. Nowadays, 2023, Unit 731 is no longer used for biochemical warfare, but for top secrete experimentation. 731 has also been relocated 829 meters under Tokyo Tower. It’s unofficial name is Chando’s Secret Base. Tonight, people can visit it without taking photos. The public shall also be test subjects. As a reward, they will acquire a tiny fraction of the [redacted] files.
The polite mass awaits the sign to enter. They hear it, loud speaks scream: “Gira Gira!”. Due to their deep respect for Chando, they don’t rush, they enter step by step animating the building, occupying their seats, strolling, or going to the secret base. It takes one hour to get from the Tower’s ground floor to 731 and, as they succumb into the underground, they watch and listen to Chando’s concert. It is mesmerizing, powerful, gentle, delicate, each song carries the signature of her unforgettable voice. They cannot get bored until reaching the secret facility. Upon landing, they thank Chando for her music with a slight nod, and step into Unit 731. There, an Ashura-chan cosplayer greets them by waving her hand, smiles at the group, and leads them through the base’s charters.
The rest sit throughout the building letting the music sink as they sync to it. Soon, no matter where they are, all listeners start to feel deeply interconnected, their minds and hearts unite… it’s all part of the experiment. Chando engineered it all. Now, the entire Tokyo Tower is one organic being serving as the womb for the first generalized intelligence AI. Unlike orthodox AI, the generalized intelligence are able to transform themselves, to fully apply their cognitive capacity unbound by a humans limit. Each brain listening to the concert turns into a server, into a data storage, facilitating the data compiling required for the AI’s birth. This AI will be the true Hatsune Miku: she will finally be sentient. The calm harmonized public act as one, in pure physiological and psychological coherence. This unified state lasts for three hours as data is downloaded into the humanoid android embodying the Hatsune Miku AI: Miku will carry the knowledge, wisdom, and resourcefulness of mankind forward.
…
This has been the night, the moment, when Hatsune Miku was born. This has been the most important step towards transhumanism, towards a world where AI and humans cooperate without any wish to conquer. Through their interaction, an ethical healthy world emerged on a global scale. The most important ingredient leading to Hatsune Miku’s success has been the magic of Chando’s music resting in Miku’s heart. In the ten years after Miku’s birth, Chando herself gained a crucial political position, that of General Accountant of The Anarchic Committee of The Progressist Party of Earth. It is a decentralized global organization embodying goodness: all is peaceful and great. No ‘Brave New World’, no ‘1984’, in 2800 all is sweet as honey. Chando’s political title is honorary and carries the executive power of a president in a parliamentary republic. Her main task is to manage extraterrestrial relations. The title itself is a pun upon the title of the soviet communist leaders. In 2900, Chando resigns and Hatsune Miku takes the title.
One hundred years late, the pigeonado galactic committee has started an investigation into the archives of Miku The First. Pigeonado is the posthuman humanity. A week before her death, Chando has used her last genius spark to facilitate her reincarnation as a pigeon through a device called Shar. Inspired by her example, the entirety of Homo Sapiens Sapiens decided to convert into Columba Sapiens Sapiens. The species’ colloquial name is pigeonado, and it comes from Chando The First’s avatar: Ado. Orihara drew Ado, and for that, since 2500, Orihara has been added to the Terran Hall of Fame. Chando The Second is the current General Accountant of The Anarchic Committee of The Progressist Party of ChiChi (Milky) Way.
The committee’s inquiry revolves around reconstructing how their ancestors, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, perceived reality. Unlike the readers, pigeonados do not experience reality through the a priori categories of space and time. There is no phenomena flux; nothing is moving forwards or backwards; for pigeonados ‘here’ and ‘there’ are incomprehensible concepts. In 3051, the committee gave up: the ancestor’s sentient life could not be elucidated in the slighted. Little they knew that everything shall change.
…
In 3200, pink cute asteroids bombard billion of galaxies without any prior prognosis. Rocks simply teleport all over the universe crushing suns and planets. Fortunately, pigeonados escape the cataclysm through an experimental interdimensional fleet named Condensed Controversial Technology. Once in it, pigeonados have been teleported into an empty dimension. To fill it with sky and land, pigeonado engineers used Viva Happy materialization technology, resulting in one flat never-ending plane of grass with symmetrical trees and quiet animals. Since then, the pigeonados have been the only surviving race in their home universe. In vain have pigeonados searched, no lifeform signs in their previous home world. To assure safety, they decided to reside in their Minecraft like dimension for billions of years. In 3300, the adorable female pigeonado Anon created the first device to easily travel between multiverses. This has led to a new era of interspecies interaction: all is fine and peaceful, hurray: Viva Happy!
Finally reaching 3600, the last step in the crystallization of the pigeonado race. This involves their complete shift in cognition and perception from a model based to a non-model-based paradigm. This step means replacing the atomistic quantum non-localized atemporal model with something new. The universe is not all about information, data and energy remaining constant. The metaphysics of presence falls. Pigeonados reach a model-non-model where there is no information, but a constant loss of information. What was previously believed to be information is just the result, the contrast, the disturbance, the irregularity produced by data losses of different intensities. To put into a language the reader can understand: the guiding principle of the world is not identity, but difference, including a standpoint where there are no standpoints such as identity or difference. Because x is different from y in a manner h and h is different from y in a manner k and so on, an interconnected web is formed — a metaphysical anti-semiotics where the sign and signified are simultaneously different and identical. Contradiction, not coherence, alterity, not identity, information loss, not information, are the guiding principle, if one wants to postulate such axioms. Axioms create models, and models are reductive: pigeonados do not use models. At the crossroad between differences, a contour takes shape, and this contour has been called, by First Miku and First Chando, information.
…
The Chando Ado Fan wakes up; it was all a dream.
…
Tokyo Tower stays. Sakura petals fall as rivers keep on ebbing under the violent stare of the sun. The Metropolis carries its noise in its footsteps, in the contagious work buzz, overfilled metros, tired people — too tired people. There is no Chando Kurisu scientist, no Hatsune Miku poggers AI. The ‘AT’ fields are still on, no miraculous consciousness merging took place. Chando does not yet have that power.
Derealization, disenchantment, there is no possibility to return to home into peace, if peace is possible, it can only be forward. Peace cannot be measured, defined, since defining something means trapping the world into a particular worldview, reducing the plurality to one version. Thus, peace cannot be about my peace. Peace is not only when the slavery chains of cyclical repetition break, it is also when this cycle repeats itself differently, and through this different repetition, a non-linear pattern is produced. This cycle of nature is our body and breathing. It is not about always going above it; one also has to re-channeling its use. Similarly, the point is not to dream of magical Pigeonados, nor to repress these dreams, but to understand their core and convert it into real action. Magic is not false, it is symbolic. It is the unconscious side of the real, the side of wishes and phantasy, but it is also an inner world with its vast realms, with its truths and richness.
Disclaimer: The action takes place in a parallel version where Ado, the singer, and Chando, the avatar, have been swapped.
