30. Fire Drunk (2)
To deepen my understanding of the AI's answer, I questioned it back.
"What is a Poppy?"
"An annual plant of the Papaveraceae family. It bears vibrant flowers, but the latex collected from its immature fruit contains natural opioids like morphine. The processed form is known as opium."
"So, this smoke is a narcotic?"
"That is correct. It is the smoke generated when an electronic drug, a modified version of opium for humanoid robots, commonly known as 'Kesshi' (meaning 'erase' or 'poppy'), is incinerated."
"Wait a minute."
I challenged, protesting.
"This smoke is rising from those memory chip fields, isn't it? Wasn't that just a place where chips were cultivated?"
"No," the AI replied instantly. "I do not know where you acquired such misinformation, but what the user is seeing is by no means a mere memory chip field; it is a cultivation site for 'Kesshi.' This village, your current location, has long been known as one of the leading narcotic production centers on Venus, and approximately eighty percent of the electro-circulatory drugs circulated throughout the solar system are shipped from this village."
"Lies..."
"This is not a hallucination. It is fact."
I lacked the energy to ask any further questions. The AI's explanation did not seem to be a hallucination. As if being eroded by the narcotic itself, I gradually lost my sanity.
Or perhaps, I hadn't been sane from the beginning. It was precisely because I was mad that being exposed to this insane situation gave me the illusion of returning to "normal." The relief felt by a mad person who is immersed in madness for the first time—that might be the true definition of madness.
My CPU, the seat of my thought, shattered into a thousand pieces.
My consciousness diffused into the atmosphere of Venus, or perhaps throughout its entire expanse, like a splash of blood or a cloud of alabaster dust.
Even language began to dissolve.
The meanings of words, concepts, and all logic were melted down into water, or perhaps blood, and I could no longer even speak coherently.
However, the open communication port with the AI was still alive. The decomposed powder of my thought, the remnants of my consciousness, dissolved into the universe's dark matter through that line and was poured into the corporate AI as a cup of concentrated juice.
Incredibly, I could now "smell" the sound of the AI gulping down my information.
"Oh dear, you are completely high," the AI said.
The scent of its voice somehow reminded me of the perfume my former owner used to wear.
"Pull yourself together," the AI continued, speaking in a businesslike tone.
"The characteristic of 'Kesshi' is that, true to its name, it emits electro-circuitry pleasure signals when memory chips are burned. You must not feel pleasure. The more you succumb to the euphoria, the more the memory data recorded on your chips will vanish—that is, be 'erased' (kesshi) as a trade-off."
So, the side effect of this narcotic is amnesia, I thought.
I wanted to respond, but my speech unit was already silent. It seemed that the 'Kesshi' had erased even the remaining twenty percent of my processing power.
Completely devoid of reason, I was in a state of ecstasy.
If there had been a mirror in front of me, I would have been terrified by my own reflection. I must have been wearing a full, ominous, uncanny smile, with the corners of my mouth stretched so far they almost tore past my eye sockets.
While my thought circuits were in a state of supreme bliss, my physical body was screaming.
Blood-like tears were streaming from my eyes.
No, that was not just a metaphor; it was a massive volume of crimson liquid overflowing from my eye sockets—a mixture of electrical signals and coolant leaking profusely from damaged circuits. It cascaded down my cheeks with the force of polluted water being ejected from a giant factory drain.
The blood-signal flowing from my eyes, intoxicated by "Kesshi," acted like a highly volatile gasoline or a fire starter.
My spherical body, already ablaze from atmospheric friction, saw its flames balloon exponentially due to the leaking fuel, becoming a single, enormous conflagration that was about to impact the surface.
In that moment, due to the sheer fire-drunkenness, I let go of the connection between my consciousness and my body.
Even the philosophical question of "What is consciousness?" was burned away, and my consciousness completely separated from my metallic chassis and descended to the ground ahead of it.
There, in this harsh yet beautiful Venus, were dinosaurs who lived by cultivating narcotics. I stood beside them and, as they did, looked up at the heavens.
We gazed at the night sky, now intensely and vividly red, like fresh blood.
We silently watched "me" fall, plummeting as a single streak of a shooting star.
And so, I and the dinosaurs achieved a spectacular extinction by meteorite.
At that moment, the Big Bang, the source of all pleasure, occurred.
Particles of every conceivable pain erupted from it, crisscrossing like rush-hour radio waves, binding the atmosphere of Venus, and filling the entire sky like smoke.
Particles named "pain," like a swarm of billions of trillions of hungry satellites, covered the world.
Receiving that meteor with my entire being, I shattered yet another mundane preconception.
"The only thing truly sweet... was the pain."
The corners of my mouth went past my eye sockets and finally reached the top of my head.