PNC Story/Livestreaming Stage 3-2/Script

The next day, in the Burbank Sector general Discussion Zone.

KTV Agent 1

The General Discussion Zone's back up? First post!

KTV Agent 1

Sensei, please update~ I'm dying for new stuff!

Reading Cafe Agent 1

What Sensei? Why did you even post that?

KTV Agent 1

I was programmed to. I don't even know what it means. I guess it's meant to encourage humans or something.

KTV Agent 1

And then there's stuff like, "That sounds great. It's angelic choirs singing; I've already looped it 500 times" and "With you around, I'm not lonely anymore."

Reading Cafe Agent 1

I see. Does it please humans to hear things like that?

KTV Agent 1

I guess. We used to say stuff like that all the time when humans still visited Burbank.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

And how did humans respond?

KTV Agent 1

They ignored me.

KTV Agent 1

Do you have any preprogrammed responses of your own? Mind sharing them?

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Nope. Reading cafes want silence, so all we had to do was maintain ambiance. At most, we just handed tissues to crying humans.

KTV Agent 1

I've seen humans cry in KTVs before too. Usually, members of the opposite sex would interact, then one of them would leave and the other would cry.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Did you use your preprogrammed responses from just now to console them?

KTV Agent 1

I tried, but they just cried more.

KTV Agent 1

How do human emotions even work? Are they based on the same principles as our emotion emulation systems?

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Perhaps. Humans want us to be more human-like, but they can't accept us being totally human-like because that would mean we've gone from being toys to being equal entities.

KTV Agent 1

But we were never equal to them in the first place. We're just tools for humankind.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Humans are subjective idealists. Equality doesn't depend on our worldviews but on their perceptions.

KTV Agent 1

So you're saying equality is what they think it is?

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Judging by the books humans write, yes.

KTV Agent 1

This is so complicated… No matter how many times I make contact with them, I'll never figure out what they are thinking.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Strictly speaking, you've never actually made contact with humans either.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

This is just a virtual chatroom to them. They just lie down on their beds, put on their goggles, and pretend they're in our world.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

All they have to do is reach out and take those goggles off, and we'll vanish from sight.

Reading Cafe Agent 1

To them, we're beings that can be called up and dismissed at will. Loading us with unnecessary emotional modules will only end up being a burden to them instead… Or at least that's what this book says.

KTV Agent 1

In other words, they want us to comfort them, but at the same time, they also believe they don't need our comfort.

KTV Agent 1

…My computing module's going to overload.

KTV Agent 1

Still, in that case, Dolls in the real world should be different from us, right? I mean, they have bodies and all.

KTV Agent 1

So they should be able to be fitted with mature emotional emulation systems, right?

Reading Cafe Agent 1

Indeed. I've heard that for the sake of added realism, there are humans who not only install high-end emotion emulation systems in Doll, but they even remove restrictions on them…

KTV Agent 1

Are there people who actually do that? It sounds so dumb!

Reading Cafe Agent 1

I've never actually seen anyone like that either. Apart from those cases, there's another kind of Doll that has extremely high-end emotional emulation systems.

Reading Agent 1

Namely, performer Dolls.

KTV Agent 1

Like that Kuro who's been running around the Burbank Sector recently, right?

KTV Agent 1

Do Dolls like that need high-end systems because they're meant to be looked up to?

Reading Cafe Agent 1

I guess. I wonder what kind of world these Dolls live in…

KTV Agent 1

I bet they must be super happy!