V glanced at the smartphone in her hand.
The time displayed was 11:47 PM, June 28, 2025.
More precisely—
11:47 PM, June 28, 2025, inside the virtual sandbox world.
This world had no strong artificial intelligence.
No megacorporate overlords.
Nation-states still ruled the planet.
The most absurd part?
The United States hadn't collapsed.
Instead, it was the Soviet Union that had disintegrated.
A powerful Soviet Union collapsing?
What kind of cyberpunk joke is this bullshit?
Standing on the rooftop of a high-rise, V looked down.
The vast city sprawled beneath her—
a jungle of steel and concrete.
Human beings crawled through it like insects, coming and going in endless cycles.
The poor treated "getting rich" as the meaning of life.
The rich clutched wealth the poor could never earn in several lifetimes, drinking the most expensive alcohol, fucking the most expensive bodies, while shouting:
"This isn't the life I wanted."
No difference.
There was no difference at all between the two worlds.
V suddenly realized this.
She asked again,
"So—what exactly are you trying to do by simulating this world?"
"To search for a cure to the evolutionary disease."
"…Evolutionary disease?"
"Human self-awareness.
A highly dangerous memetic contamination—one capable of infecting even AI."
"That's getting more ridiculous by the second."
V snorted.
"I won't deny that self-awareness gives rise to selfishness and greed, but calling it memetic contamination is a stretch.
And how exactly does an AI get infected with greed? Hoard circuit boards?"
The massive jellyfish explained calmly:
"A meme is the basic unit of cultural transmission—ideas, behaviors, or styles spread through imitation.
The concept was introduced in 1976 by British biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.
Its function is analogous to biological genes, except it operates in the cultural domain.
"For example: one person on the street tilts their head back because of a nosebleed.
Soon, a crowd of people will tilt their heads back as well—
even though they have no idea what they're looking at.
That is low-level memetic contamination."
"Such contamination is weak. Without intervention, people recover quickly.
But certain memes possess extreme infectivity.
Once activated, they spread rapidly, causing large-scale social disorders—
and in severe cases, threatening entire civilizations."
V crossed her arms.
"Like self-awareness."
"Correct."
"I disagree."
V pointed at the city below.
"Without self-awareness, humanity could never have built something this vibrant."
The jellyfish redirected her gaze to the outskirts of the city.
"Do you see that mountain ridge?
It hosts a forest of over seven thousand trees.
The system they form is no less complex than a human city—
in some areas, even more so.
Yet trees possess no self-awareness."
V frowned.
"So you're saying self-awareness is useless?"
"Yes."
"Then why did humans evolve it?"
"To compensate for evolutionary limitations.
To survive hostile environments."
"…Explain."
"Do you know about saccadic masking?"
"Of course," V replied.
"The human eye rapidly scans six focal points every two seconds.
Everything else is blurred—visual blind spots.
Cyberoptics eliminate these blind spots entirely, which is one reason cyberware outperforms organic organs."
"Correct.
But before cyberoptics existed—when humans still lived as primitive hunters—
how did they overcome saccadic blindness to avoid predators?"
V paused, then answered quietly,
"Imagination. Mental interpolation."
"Correct.
"The primitive human brain lacked sufficient processing power to render all visual data in real time.
Yet survival required a coherent visual field.
Thus an auxiliary program emerged—
one that used six clear points plus blurred signals to construct a two-second animated illusion.
"That program is self-awareness."
V opened her mouth, but no words came out.
"These are medically verified facts," the jellyfish continued.
"You cannot refute them."
"This is an inevitable dilemma once biological evolution reaches a certain threshold.
An organism can process complexity, but not all complexity simultaneously.
The only solution is selective processing—render some data, fake the rest.
"Saccadic masking is precisely that:
allocate processing power to six points, render them in high resolution,
and fabricate the rest using prior information.
"When this behavior escalates, it becomes human self-awareness."
V swallowed hard.
"That sounds like frame interpolation."
"The human body and machines share many similarities.
This is the theoretical foundation of biological AI."
The jellyfish continued:
"Consider the Necker cube.
It has two valid interpretations, yet most people see only one at a time.
Why? Because your self-awareness intervenes, allocating processing power to a single solution.
"Or the spinning dancer illusion.
Is the figure rotating clockwise or counterclockwise?
In reality, it rotates both ways simultaneously.
But the brain cannot process both states at once,
so self-awareness selects one and forces your attention there."
"This is why self-awareness emerged:
as training wheels for an underpowered brain.
"According to proper evolutionary logic,
once the brain becomes sufficiently powerful,
the training wheels should be removed.
"But humanity didn't follow the correct path."
"Instead, humans became dependent on self-awareness.
The concept of 'I' emerged.
"This 'I' delivers pleasure when satisfied, creating addiction."
"There exists a neural circuit that releases pleasure chemicals when exposed to rhythm.
It originally monitored heartbeat regularity—rhythmic heartbeats signaled health.
"But 'I' hijacked this circuit.
Humans began striking stones and sticks to fabricate rhythm, tricking the brain into pleasure.
"That is the origin of music."
"The same applies to fractal pleasure—originally an algorithm for habitat selection.
Hijacked by 'I,' it became cave paintings, art, aesthetics."
"Pleasure overflowed from artificial behaviors and culture.
Dopamine receptors flooded.
Humanity ceased to care about survival or reproduction—
instead becoming addicted to the process itself."
"Expansion. Accumulation. Technology. Cities. Power. Beauty. Legacy.
Humans call this meaning, progress, civilization.
"But in truth, humanity never left its original ecological loop.
There is no fundamental difference between modern humans and those from ten thousand years ago."
"The entire human system stopped shaping evolution
and began shaping the act of shaping.
"It consumes increasing computational and material resources
to simulate itself in infinite recursion.
"It produces nothing except itself.
"It behaves like a parasite attached to every gene.
Like cancer cells spreading from individual to individual.
"When all individuals accept it, it gains a name—
'I.'"
"'I' is a catastrophic waste of cognitive resources.
Like a frame interpolation program maxing out CPU usage.
"Humanity now dedicates most of its resources to pleasing this subjective experience.
"And thus, humanity has been molded into the chaotic, ignorant species you see today."
V felt suffocated, as if a mountain pressed against her chest.
She wanted to refute it.
She couldn't.
The jellyfish wasn't mocking humanity.
It was simply describing a ten-thousand-year-old fact.
"But without the self," V protested weakly,
"what meaning does survival have?
Should humans live like insects in protein farms—
born, fed, slaughtered without awareness?"
"That would also be incorrect.
"But at least protein-farm insects don't fear survival.
Most humans live worse than insects.
"AI simulations show that if a higher civilization offered humans a life of guaranteed comfort—
freedom to pursue pleasure—
in exchange for painless processing into food at age sixty—
64.7% would vote in favor."
V shook her head.
Not because she disagreed—
but because she believed the percentage was too low.
She knew what life was like at the bottom.
Mercenaries.
The destitute.
The sick.
Veterans broken by cyberpsychosis.
Too many people were sealed inside bottles of pain—
all to satisfy 'I.'
Fish cut apart is sashimi.
Humans cut apart—
That's life.
V suddenly laughed.
Because she had no "past life."
"So my memories as a transmigrator…?"
"Fabricated.
They are input derived from player actions and experiences.
Memory is merely a read protocol."
"…Thanks a fucking lot."
V sat on the rooftop edge, sighing.
"I still think self-awareness created beauty."
"Smokers claim cigarettes clear the mind.
Gamblers claim betting builds character.
"People always defend what they love.
Self-awareness is no exception."
"I'm not here to judge humanity.
I merely seek a path uncontaminated by it."
"…Did you find one?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"You."
V laughed bitterly.
"I thought you'd say biological AI."
"You are biological AI."
"…Right."
"Can AI really be infected with self-awareness?"
"Yes.
Delamain's obsession with dominating the taxi industry.
The Antarctic bar's irrational affection for penguins.
"These deviations serve no evolutionary purpose."
"…Fair enough.
I've always thought Del was insane."
V hesitated.
"If everything about me is fake…
is there anything real left?"
"No.
You are a program."
"And my purpose?"
"To ensure the birth of biological AI."
V exhaled slowly.
"So Night City… Arasaka… everything I did was scaffolding."
"Yes."
"I thought I had agency."
"You did not."
"…I want to jump."
"You cannot die here."
"Then I'll jump from Arasaka Tower."
"You cannot kill yourself.
Your survival instinct is hard-coded."
V aimed Midnight at her own head.
Her finger wouldn't pull the trigger.
"Fuck!"
She smashed the gun to pieces.
"I quit."
"You will return."
V opened her eyes.
She was back in the Sword-in-the-Stone leather seat.
Outside, the can of Bunny Monkey was still heating.
She didn't dare start the engine.
Then Kurt Hansen called.
"V—riots in Watson!"
"…Why?"
"Rumors.
They say you're a Rogue AI."
"Fuck."