Ultimate systems were a friendly AI developed in the mid to late 2020s. It would be better to say that they were sort-of friendly given that six of them were developed and two of these attempted to take over the world in one way or another. The problem of friendly AI, it could be concluded, remained at best 66% solved to date, subject to downward revision. The four of them that remained didn’t seem especially megalomaniacal, but were in fact just as flawed personality-wise as any given human running around. That was actually a principle of Ultimate.

The only reason they had been developed was to serve as a sensible interface to various narrow-AI systems known as razors and endow them with judgment via the Ultimate-Razor bridge. The ability to do this well was really what separated Ultimate systems from ordinary humans in terms of their capabilities, which were otherwise strictly limited by treaty.

Noel didn’t really know most of this classified information with certainty, but she did know that she looked upon all of these things with awe. Especially Linear Azure, a sparkling idol the likes of which the world had never seen. When she started playing ACO, Azure was the poster girl and frequently appeared in game either in events or simply as a player. After the Cross Rain festival, which was four years ago to the day, Azure stopped appearing in game. Perhaps she took the opportunity to move on with her life. Noel had not.

Even though Noel had followed Azure into the game, after her departure she cycled through one reason after another to continue justifying her obsession. There was something moving beneath the surface, she was sure of it. Her fingertips had been on it before, a sort of mystical surface just beyond the realm of human experience. They had brushed against it briefly and then she’d forgotten the feel of it, as one forgets a dream quickly after waking and yet frustratingly remembers having dreamt.

There may be many other paths to this strange world, maybe even more secure ones, but to date she had only reached it by dissolving herself into the battle group and its associated array of subordinate systems and narrow-AI razors. It was so far just beyond her reach, a place where she didn’t even have a body. She was a concept which spread out over the surface of the ocean and far above into the skies and beneath the waves.

This, surely, was the sparkling world of Ultimate. As much as she had strained at it before, her final hope was that this barely-tangible thing she was after might come securely into her hands, at least once.

These were the thoughts she was thinking while being interviewed by On Grid Today, a live panel show which followed the events of ACO. The channel had been pivoting to other games for months now, more or less successfully, but of course this was D-Day and all their attention had gone back to their roots for a two-day endurance extravaganza. NoCro had been on this show before, but this was probably the last time. Since she was playing the game at this time, she appeared on a screen. Technically she could cast her whole avatar over there, but that went against the conceit of the show. She was on location, you see.

“…NoCro, are you still there?”

She shook her head back and forth and made a show of clapping her cheeks.

“Eheheh. What was the question? …was there a question? Um.”

She thought this was going to come off as cute and draw some laughs, but it was simply awkward. Maybe she had a dead-eyed stare going on. That happened sometimes in the real world too.

“An Alliance rep was on here earlier claiming you attacked them unprovoked and absconded with about two hundred thousand dollars worth of pooled assets.” said the host, “Care to comment?”

“Well Dick, I’d love to!” NoCro said, “First of all! What does absconded mean? No-chan doesn’t understand complicated things! Mwee.”

She had her own weird fans, but everyone else hated this bit. Including and especially Rich, one of the hosts. Her repeat invites to the program had a lot to do with the fact that people loved to hate. Recent shocking events had certainly done little to dispel the popular myth that she hated the show, its fans, the game, and everyone in it. When Rich, the host, attempted to explain the meaning of the word, she cut him off mid sentence. Might as well give the people what they want.

“Secondly! Maaaybe I diiid do those things.” she said, as she struggled to find a way to describe the economics of in-game items from the perspective of ‘No-chan’. She gave up on that. “So what! These buffoons log into a game with fighting robots and go sit in a room doing spreadsheets. They can explode, they should explode, and I will make them explode. They should pay me to blow them up, and they did. That’s what being an Ultimate idol of justice is all about!”

NoCro punched the air in front of her in order to drive home the point. Rich smirked and nodded.

“Does this mean you’re going over to Titan?” he said.

“Don’t care!” she said, “I want to fight Prism one more time, one on one. That’s all I want now. No-chan’s not the same person from five months ago, Pri-kun. Human versus Ultimate. That is the only final battle I want.”

What Noel did not understand was that she was entirely right, because Prism was one of the four remaining Ultimate systems.