MMXLR8 - Zero.EXE

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Create New:  The History of Zero.EXE

I have to confess that I feel guilty writing notes about Zero behind his back…to be honest, this is the first time I’ve accessed this server since before Zero became my Navi.  Back then, I didn’t have a very reliable Navi or PET…well, that’s not totally true.  The PET hardware itself was as reliable as any other of the time, but I had an uncustomized Navi back then; he didn’t really have much of a personality.  Call me dumb and sentimental, but that’s not someone I’d feel safe entrusting my life’s work to.  That, and there was the whole thing with the Dematerialization Phenomenon…my PET got caught in one of those stupid things and I had to get a new one.  Needless to say, I needed a safer place to backup my data.

So I have this server, completely isolated from the Net.  I modified the tower and everything; I’ve even removed the standard circuits that allow the wireless Net transmissions that are so common these days.  Gosh, I remember when you had to plug into everything to interface with it…

But I need to jot this all down.  I need to keep a record on file about Zero, before too much time passes and I forget everything that’s happened.  I think Zero’s history might hold a clue to what I’m after in my research, and despite my misgivings about not sharing this theory with him, I must document my observations.

Now, this is a bit of a long shot, searching for a connection between Zero’s formally viral nature and the energies of the Undernet.  But my research, my attempts to create a Light chip to counteract the Dark Chips that turn Navis into Darkloids, is going nowhere.  After all this time, I’ve hit dead end after dead end.  I’m fishing for anything I can get here.

Enough preface; I’ll start at the beginning.

No one seems to know too much about Zero from what he calls “the time before…”  Several Navis and NetOps connected with Sci Labs had contact with him during that period of his existence, but no one seems keen on talking about it.  For the most part, my policy concerning my Navi’s personal history has always been to leave the past in the past.  I trust Zero, and history has shown that I’m a fair judge of character.

The exception to this dry well of information is Dr. Hikari himself.  He’s the one who introduced me to Zero initially.  He’s the one who put me on staff for Project Zero.EXE.

According to Hikari, Zero started his existence as a virus.  He was coded by a man calling himself simply The Professor.  This Professor character used to be, reportedly, a member of the original World Three before the syndicate was dismantled, and honestly that’s all I know about him.  News feeds say he’s locked up in a federal penitentiary halfway across the country, and hell if I’m going to fly all the way up to Hokkaido just to talk to a man who would probably tick me off before he told me anything useful.

But the details of Zero’s creation aren’t something anyone, not even Zero himself, cares to know, and they’re superfluous besides.  His abilities as a virus were well documented.  His purpose wasn’t to infect public utility systems and cause mayhem as the other World Three members were prone to doing, but instead the Zero Virus infected Navis.  Those infected Navis would go rogue, often turning to destructive rampages before an antivirus could be administered.

At first, Zero lived to fulfill the mission for which he was created—infect Navis, cause chaos and destruction, and impede any Net Savior who interfered with The Professor’s plans; all pretty standard World Three fare.  But somewhere along the way, the viral Zero underwent a change of heart.  Zero must have discovered that there was more to life than mindlessly following his master’s orders, though what prompted this revelation, not even Dr. Hikari seems to know.  Zero abandoned The Professor and vanished, choosing to live his own life.

Unfortunately, members of WWW are notoriously petty and vengeful, and sure enough, The Professor resurfaced with a Zero clone dubbed Zero One, whose purpose seemed obvious enough:  destroy Zero and replace him.  Zero’s battle with his clone turned into something far greater than self-defense:  he sacrificed his own life to destroy Zero One.

The only footnote to that story in the news feeds is The Professor’s arrest and imprisonment.  But Zero’s fate doesn’t need any more footnotes, because it was the events of this battle that lead to his becoming who and what he is today.

It seems that in Sci Labs’ studies to explore the upper layers of the Undernet, they ran across something they rather didn’t expect:  a piece of Zero, floating in the lightless void at the threshold between Net and Undernet.  Enough of Zero’s data remained that they were able to capture it, bring it back to a Sci Labs server, and actually begin to reconstitute it.  During this process, Dr. Hikari discovered that most of Zero’s soul remained intact, attached to that chunk of his data drifting through the Undernet.  

Zero’s memories of his previous life were heavily damaged, scattered and scrambled.  And he lost quite a bit more than his memories: all of his unique abilities, minus the ability to summon and wield his Z-saber, were deleted.  His tendency to spread and infect Navis with violent rampages had also ceased to exist.  But he gained quite a bit during his rebirth as well.  His form changed completely, shifting away from the fierce appearance the Professor had engineered for him and morphing into something more human looking, something that better accommodated his true spirit.

So over time, Sci Labs was able to resurrect the being known as Zero.  In the process, he lost his viral nature completely, returning to the Net as a true Navi.

I was part of the team that helped re-engineer Zero.  That was a few years ago so my job was rather low on the totem pole, but I assisted with analyzing the data found in the Undernet so that the higher-ranking engineers could puzzle together the missing pieces that would bring him back to sentience.

Once Zero was fully restored, however, there arose a debate among Sci Labs’ top dogs:  what exactly to do with him.  Not all of the scientists there trusted Zero, given his past, and many weren’t sure that the reconstitution process had completely culled out all of his viral aspects.  After tests verified that he’d been rebuilt into a fully functional AI, the committee opted to store him on a secure server until they could figure out what to do with him.

For many months he stayed like that, silent and dormant.  And, like most great events in history, everything changed in a single instant on an idle, ordinary day.  It was a Tuesday, I think.  Tuesdays always seem to be a little idle.

I was running diagnostics on Zero.EXE, just like myself or some other technician had been doing twice a day for nearly a year.  Same old, same old; subject Navi remained in Stasis mode, all systems nominal.

Except just as I was turning to walk away, the terminal beeped at me.

I whirled; I definitely freaked out a little.  Total silence had engulfed the lab except for the humming of equipment; after all, we were about to close up for the night.  Every footfall echoed loudly enough to make all the little hairs stand up on end, so that beeping sound made me jump out of my skin.

And my eyes nearly popped out of my head at what I saw.  I’d turned to find Zero staring at me from the monitor.  He was wide awake, totally composed, just staring, as if I had just asked him a stupid question and he was giving me the silent treatment to try to convey some kind of obvious hint.

I couldn’t win a staring contest with an AI, especially not this AI.  I blinked at him and—rather pathetically—just sort of gaped like a deer caught in headlights.

“Good morning.”

That’s what he said:  ‘good morning.’  I’m shaking my head as I type this.  Most customized Navis introduce themselves the moment they’re activated, but not Zero.  As if it wasn’t important.  Just a plain, level, ‘good morning.’  Like the only thing worth his attention was that little courtesy.

And here was my brilliant response:

“It-It’s six-thirty at night, Zero.”

He just stared at me some more, again in that way that made me feel like I’d accused the sun of rising in the west or something.  (Except this time I really felt as stupid as his eyes accused me of being.)

And then I watched his expression change.  No justification, just…one minute the concrete stare, and the next, confusion.  Not scared confusion, not suspicious confusion; just simple, innocent puzzlement.

“Zero is my name.  Zero.EXE.”

He was asking me to confirm something he already knew rather than actually asking me.  And like a bloody genius, I just stared for a few more seconds, dumbfounded.

It’s only natural for a Navi to know their own name when they’re first activated.  But Zero had the look of a true amnesiac when he asked me that.  He knew his own name, but he also knew there was something else to it.  There was something else he was supposed to remember, something attached to his name.  A history.  A personality.

That was the one and only time I ever got that feeling from him.  In all the years I’ve known Zero, that moment was the singular instance when he wondered about, or even cared about, his past life.

“Yes,” I answered simply.  Finally, I snapped to my senses and started actually doing my job.  I whirled about and scrambled to another terminal, initiating a diagnostic.  Zero watched me work, and after a while he struck up a conversation.  (After this point I don’t remember the exact wording of what was said.)  His words were sparse and to the point, but nonetheless he seemed keen on having someone to talk to.  Even more strange remained the fact that even after I paged the other technicians still on duty to come help me out, Zero would only address me.

That’s the reason why the Sci Labs top dogs came to their eventual decision to place Zero in my care.  Since he’d been reprogrammed as a NetNavi, it was only logical to start off his new life by having him perform in a standard Navi function.  What was more, I still didn’t have a customized Navi by that point, so a lot of technicians thought it made perfect sense for Zero to be my Navi.  Many of the leading scientists had serious misgivings about handing someone like Zero to a known Net Battler, but Dr. Hikari vouched for me.  (God Bless that man.)  I promised I wouldn’t let Zero do more than give me directions for at least two months so that the techs could collect sufficient data on him to ease their paranoia.

Except I never got the chance to do Net Battle one with Zero.  Almost the moment I introduced him to Lea, he said he’d help me with what I really wanted to do at Sci Labs:  research into building a Light chip.  Zero’s the reason why I was able to pursue that course in the first place.  Firstly, he’d been my main project up till that point, so with him out of the box I was more or less out of a job, and secondly…Zero was and always has been behind me one-hundred percent.  He may not say much, but his support is invaluable.  I honest-to-God don’t know what I would do without him.

So with Zero silently cheering me on (though using the word “cheer” in the same sentence with him just sounds weird), I presented Dr. Hikari with my proposal for looking into developing a Light chip.  And Hikari in turn convinced the committee to not only fund my research, but to give me a promotion as well.  (Really, that man is an angel.)

And all of this because I was lucky enough to be the one present at Zero’s awakening.  He told me later that he’d decided to stick with me because I was the first person he’d ever met.  I’d say that I owe everything to chance, except I don’t believe in chance.  I owe everything to Zero.

As for Zero’s prowess in battle?  Well…he’s certainly proved he’s one seriously badass Navi without ever setting foot in a Net Battle tournament.  Occasionally, Sci Labs asks us to do some antivirus work on the side.  Whenever Zero jacks in and draws his sword, it isn’t long before people’s jaws drop.

Hindsight is 20/20, undoubtedly.  This history has come to an end because all I have left to say about Zero relates to who he is in the present.  Which has no place in a scientific log, because it would be far too subjective.  Although…reading back through this log, I don’t think I’ve done a very good job at being objective in the first place…but that’s all right.  At least it’ll be more interesting to read when I pull it up sometime down the road.

I think my earlier hypothesis was right.  Zero’s past, his previous life, won’t really help me in my research.  The only relation anyone has been able to draw between viruses and the Undernet is that the Undernet is where data from deleted viruses ultimately goes.  The Undernet is merely part of a virus’s life cycle and is not related to its nature.

The only thing that might help is if I ask him if he remembers anything from his time in the Undernet…but I could never do something like that.  For all intents and purposes, Zero was dead.  At that time, he existed only as a wad of data with a dormant soul floating through a lightless void.  If he did retain some scrap of recollection from that experience…it must be painful.

There’s no way I’d make Zero relive that.