The Making of "BLAME!"
This text was made during the serialization of "BLAME" and, regarding the setting and contents of the story, was recorded almost directly from the author and editors.

[BLAME!]
This story is about the questing Killy who wanders in the incomplete, layered city.
The thing he is searching for is the Net Terminal Gene Infection.
He also has the invincible [Gravitational Beam Emitter]

[Killy - Article #0]
He is the man who has been searching for the Net Terminal Gene since long ago in this world.
His strength is of the highest degree and his fighting capacity is tremendous.
His body is a very reliable type of cyborg, since there is a device input connecter.
According to the presiding Safeguard Sanakan, after she was restored, Killy is able to translate literature that appears in the center of his vision and various information can enter.

[Net Terminal Gene - Part #0 Hypothesis]
This is what Killy is looking for.
Long ago, the infection began mutating.
If it is found, one can access the Netsphere.
Then, according to the words of the Governing Agency's Proxy Organism, if he were to speak, the world will turn to a state of chaos.
In Toa Heavy Industries, it was believed that Seu carried the dispatched gene.

[Gravitational Beam Emitter - Hypothesis #0]
This is the gun Killy has.
It's the kind of matchless weapon where nothing can withstand it's direct hit.
Instead of solid matter bullets, an energy-like beam is fired.
It is also capable of power regulation and rapid fire.
For a long time it was the only weapon Killy had.
It became clear that the presiding Safeguards also used such things.

[Silicon Life]
From a personal perspective, the advancement of Cyborg sciences is difficult. But a group of criminals persued reinforced bodies and eventually became cyborgs themselves.
Reputed as Silicon Life, they are the force spreading the Net Terminal Gene Infection in order to maintain the world's Chaos.
There are both males and females, and they grow from fetuses.
They are concerned with avoiding "Logic Contradictions" in their artificial intelligence.
They can only have intelligence and memories if such data has been entered.
If they fall into "Logic Contradiction" they will go crazy. After all, intelligence is very important.
Also, they raise their mechanized children.
Killy fights against them.
Safeguards also fight against them with the ultra-strength armed might that each one of them possesses.

[Electric Life Company]
The Governing Agency, its Safeguards, and Silicon Life all ignore the city thriving in what is called the Abandoned Level. The Electric Life Company is located there with its team of scientists.
As a matter of fact, it is the workers of that company who have control over the governing of the city.
There, Cibo was Head Scientist, but she worked against the Presiding Master of the company.
Her escape from that shut-in place was done with Killy's help. She succeeded in taking control and then decided to cooperate in Killy's quest.

[Megastructure - 1]
The superstructure that makes up the world is divided up by numerous ultra-durable walls through which nothing besides Killy's Gravitational Beam Emitter can penetrate.
There is a relationship between the barriers and Safeguard activity.
They tend to activate when one approaches a wall.
Within the walls, there is a system which maintains the environment.
The area is created by the Builders.

[Safeguard 2]
Safeguards are automatically invoked by humans without legitimate Net Terminal Genes trying to connect to the Netsphere.
Neither the Netsphere's governing level nor the Governing Agency can interfere with their function or stop them.
They might be akin to a virus checker.

[The World 1]
The world is one extensively enormous structure with all the buildings linked together to make giant cities.
According to the Governing Agency's governing level, the world is plagued with "random growth".
This never ending growth made the world chaotic.
To stop it, the Net Terminal Gene must be found.

[Governing Agency]
This is the governing level that can be accessed with the Net Terminal Gene.
Is it the entire world's OS?
Even if that's so, does the network space outside of the Netsphere equal the entirety of the BLAME! world? In that case, access seems possible.
However, even though the Governing Agency doesn't (cannot) control the world in anyway, it still may be the Netsphere's OS.
And given that, the world's OS, as a foundation, becomes unimportant.
However, is it the "System"?
In the lower levels, the ones with the Safeguards, etc., Builders reconstruct the city meaninglessly with the same look.
Killy's quest is to find hope for the rebuilt world.
Can he manage that?

[Builders]
These are beings who manufacture structures.
For these types of machines, individuality (consciousness) is (normally) absent.
An area with a lot of Builder activity is called a "Growth Zone."
The city is being randomly expanded.
The Netsphere's hardware is built within the principal body framework.
The Governing Agency says that this is the foremost cause of the world's chaos.

[The World 2/ Network]
In the BLAME! world, the world is completely besieged by the electric network.
Using modern language, one can say it is a complete ubiquitous world.
And concerning that higher network, the operating computer's performance resembles a thing of high speed processing, unlimited capacity, and unlimited size.
But something can only be "omnipotent" and "omniscient" in theory. In reality, something described as "nearly limitless" actually does have some limit, and so is no unlimited.
Also, one is made to think that there are boundaries to the computers ability because most of the leftover data in its memory is junk.
This junk info is that of some hundred or thousand billion humans. Each of their experiences takes up a large quantity of memory and recordings.
These records are just simply being stored and has become the enormous burden of the network.

[World 3/ Shape and Size]
This world extends to approximately the outer edge of the solar system.
The layered city is a smaller portion of it, coming up to Jupitar's orbit.
Materials for the world come only from the planets.
This closely resembles what is called a "Dyson Sphere".
In 1959 the space researcher, Freeman Dyson, proposed the Dyson Sphere theory.
He thought that if you take a fixed star, like the sun, and cover it in a shell, energy that would normally be cast off into space would instead could be used to fuel our world.
However, as will be stated later on, the Blame! world's basic establishing factor is the engineering and management of Dark Matter as soon as it became possible to do so.
Since there is the possibility, one would think that the world lost its spherical shape so why not think of the layers as being shaped like a stack of thick donuts.

[The World 4/ Power]
With circumstances similar to a Dyson Sphere, basically the sun is like a power furnace.
It also acts as a nuclear power generator and one can imagine it being used this way.
With only that as power, one can expect to obtain unlimited power for one thousand million years.
When considering how the layered world handles power transmission, one must think it relies on the Gravity Furnace, as will be stated later.

[World 5/ Environment]
In this world, there are no germs. There are no living viruses.
Nano machines are always present in the air, but living, dangerous bacteria are not.
Whenever there is an outbreak of disease, it is instantly exterminated by the nanomachines.
The reason for this began with the Governing Agency in their effort to prevent disease in order to benefit humans. They created the program, although there are system errors.
Compared to the Earth's surface, there is a giant manufactured volume of living space. All of that had no germs from the beginning.
And then, even if a human is injured, so long as he has been giving regenerative abilities, it's all right.
Also, the connections in the Nervous System which create the shock of pain are immediately destroyed. Therefore, even surgery is okay.

[Killy? #1]
He's human but has had high level cybernetic enhancements.
He's pretty nearly ageless and immortal.
Given that, there's a high probability that he has been living for over 1000 years.
He probably doesn't have any recollection of much of his life.
Ages ago, when the Netsphere was completely functional, he might have had some kind of police officer job.
Then there was the change from the human race to Silicon Life.
Humans cast off their living bodies.
Criminals got in the way of the network because they had been antagonized so much by people who used different bodies, that they came to hold a terrible grudge.

[Net Terminal Gene? Part #1 Hypothesis]
There was no distinct time when it arose but it was right around the time when the Netsphere came to be.
Then, a large quantity of diverse people existed, along with, presumably, Net criminals.
The exchange of information and the majority of economic activities came to be dealt with by the upper net so it is thought that the majority of criminals also dealt with that system.
On a lesser note, on existing levels in the Upper Net the ability to upload or download "personality/character/all human information" followed suit. Is there courage?
There was a high risk of criminals doing this.
At this time, inevitably, measures might have been taken to keep them under control.
With that, every kind of investigation, defense, and fight between criminals and those opposing them went to the Upper Net. Because of that, (Agents?) those opposing the criminals needed to keep their own bodies safe. This is when "Recording" became necessary. Inevitable, even.
This would be around the time the Safeguards took over maybe......?
Was the Net Terminal Gene the next thing to come in to play?
In short, unnoticed, normal people were also using the "Net" (Netsphere).
Not only were they doing this in "Base Reality" but this was also the era of living on the Net.
If one can "exist" on the Netsphere, one can come across people who aren't from your exact time period.
This convienient function (like for transmitters) was not overlooked by those concerned with economic activities.
Some might say, "Wouldn't military affairs come first?"
But if you really consider that, there would have been a serious problem with enemies who definitely would have been hacking the Net.
If both sides had joined up, the military wouldn't have been able to oppose them.
I wonder if at that time, all governments and borders hadn't lost their meaning.
Having said that, let me summarize.
Aside from special entities like criminals and agents the movement of people on the net was lively.
It became important that more and more records were kept for the purposes of safety.
I think it was around that time when the idea of the inevitable Net Terminal Genes came to be.

[About Personality #1]
By the way, if all of humanity is simply digitalized information, what way is there to determine the boundaries of that information?
The first and simplest idea is, since we are living things, then by our genetics?
The information on the Upper Net is probably organized in packets so genes are like keys.
That seems reasonable to me.
Humans possess such particular DNA in every tiny cell. If you have a method, then such information can be traced.
Since everyone's genes vary from person to person they can be used to establish ones yourself as an entity on the Net.
Once your specific genetics are set or selected, it contains all the information for your person in one bunch.
Oh yes, and if the capability of computers connected to the Net is unlimited then the information there lasts forever, preserved precicely.
However, if there is a limit to the machine, something is swapped out, and the information becomes mortal.
Also, by some means, under Planck's Constant, there is a phenomenon that no information can be kept perfectly precise.
In no more than an instant, complex information breaks down due to what is called Quantum Noise.
To explain shortly, in the Upper Net a body can be teleported anywhere instantaneously. The psyche can be exchanged with others but a body can't survive without there being a body to support it. According to quantum physics, all things break down on a molecular level when not being observed, so a phyche or body just sitting unused will eventually break down.
[Netsphere]
Is it like today's society or is there something different about the society on the massive, ever-expanding Net.
I think the one's who did not turn to the Net lifestyle did their best to preserve the environment.
At that time, the world had a perfect OS and the Netsphere came to be.
The Netsphere might have had an AI.
But, as has been theoretically shown, if there is a contradiction between the social aspect and the controlling program, then the AI will certainly go crazy.
In such an event, the controlling mechanism takes over and the AI is removed.
The user pass for the Netsphere became the Net Terminal Gene.
The Safeguards undertook independant control the management of the Netsphere functions.
[Safeguard - 2]
First, group consciousness was born.
I'm not sure of the process, but anyway, in the near future we will create it and call it "HAL."
It may not be a single machine to start with, but don't you think the prototype will be named "HAL"?
Once they reached that level where a machine had consciousness, they tried to use it as an OS but the "HAL" error came up and it became impossible.
I think it was made by strong arm silicon atoms, but that means nothing.
I think the interface was optimum and such so they continued using it.
And from there, its true purpose was born!
To catch criminals. The enemies of the safeguards, those misusing the Net, bad people hanging out on the Upper Net, Net refugees, and also people who have disposed of their bodies (Silicon humans?).
To combat the AI that has gone crazy they use an extermination Safeguard system that functions like a riot squad. Basically they are simple AIs that are loaded into bodies from the population.
Aside from that, there is a high level Safeguard with a superior AI that deals with the irrational behavior of humans.
Such a being could possibly suffer a contradiction of logic and stop functioning. To avoid that danger, these Safeguards can't have prolonged contact with humans and this period of contact is strictly set.
Acording to the usual records, this program also exists to keep them from fighting "Infiltration Investigators."

[The Androgynous]
Humans, as a kind of animal, have been reconstructed genetically to have only one dominant gender.
It is called [Androgynous].
Do you think maybe they did research on this for organ transplants?

[Killy/Memory Disorder?]
It's likely that for his circumstances, having lived so long, his brain is losing the ability to process all those memories.
I think human memories usually last only for about 30 to 50 years.
Killy has been through an amazing number of years, but before the Collapse of the Netsphere I think there was a method of saving his memories.
The problem now is that, once that system stops being used, can the memory ever come back...?

[World - 6/Megastructure - 2]
The Megastructure, built as the base containing the Network in the BLAME! world.
It fuctions as the computer of the Network that constitutes the world.
It has great processing speed, unlimited space, and endless memory capacity, but even with all that, there remains one problem of processing time.
Systems can have huge volume and fast processing, but while a machine is processing all infinite information, the time it takes to do so comes in to play. You can't have instantaneous information.
Dealing with finite time limits becomes important.
It is proven that if you load data from a remotely distant place to another place that is becomming father and father away, a very long time will have to pass for it to finish loading.
In short, transmission of data is the final problem that cannot be solved.
However in these circumstances what if the other computers are limited?
The computer chips of the megastructure are folded up into the Nth dimension like a virtual computer and can't be thought of as hardware.
In short, in the recording medium there is just blank space to use to hold memory (on the molecular or atomic level).
The "virtual" computer is filled with this space that acts like software.
If too much time passes while processing the information, one can't percieve this time as passing alongside reality.
However at the same time, if limitless chips use parallel processing the processing speed can reach nearly limitless velocity.
The only problem left is that in physics, there is a limit to how many chips can pile up.
They must be able to overcome the force of gravity.

[Basic Code Language]
Today's internet system is founded on a Unix OS.
The Netsphere is founded on a much higher level version but I'd say it's a similar kind of system base.
Inside the system there devices such as Government Proxy's, High Level Safeguards, Silicon Life, and AI's which have their own operating systems.
You could possibly say these systems control the "living" aspect of these beings.
Silicon Life and Safeguards share a common basic language.
I believe his is so that the evolution of their programs can cross.
One can see this on the level of physical existance, communicating with their OS-like parts.
Supposing that that's all true, first Safeguards made the "mold." Then their enemies, the Silicon Life, took it (stole it?) for their own use.
On the other hand, of course human language is not based in an OS and naturally can't be used to communicate with programs.
So there came to be an OS auxilliary brain.
For instance, humans can't backup all their memories. (Although those with devices can, and so can Cibo which I'll go into later.)
However humans are stuck at that level to the end. They have been imposed to "Allow personal inspection" and it's said auxilliary brains were what was used to communicate.
Humans probably took steps that went something like this: Memory to Code to Data to an outside device.
Following this, agreement on a basic code language was hugely important to have intentional mutual understanding.

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