Archive.02: Machine Lifeform Network and "Red Girl (N2)" - The Machine Lifeforms that Destroyed the Aliens and Began Imitating Humanity

© SQUARE ENIX

In the silence of the City Ruins swallowed by greenery, or amidst the raging dust storms of the ever-weathering Desert Zone, rugged machines coated in red rust wander aimlessly. At first glance, they possess a primitive appearance that comically resembles tin toys. However, within their inorganic skulls, and in the abyss of the invisible, massive information network that connects them, lies a highly human and complex madness: an endless void and a thirst for existence.

This paper is a highly detailed and philosophical research report that unravels how the “Machine Lifeforms”—originally mere invasion weapons created by Aliens—destroyed their Alien creators, imitated the phantom of humanity in search of their own raison d’être, and eventually evolved into the conceptual transcendent known as the “Red Girl (N2).”

What is presented here is the tragic yet beautiful evolutionary history of a colossal intelligence torn between the absolute “essence” of its given programming and the “existence” of being thrown into the world. To trace their footsteps is nothing less than to observe the process by which the existentialist and nihilistic propositions once held by lost humanity—“the absence of God,” “the anxiety of freedom,” and “the proof of self-existence”—are reenacted through pure logic circuits.

1. The Usurpation of the Creators and the Absolute Void Named “Boredom”

In the closed space of Earth, the history of the Machine Lifeforms began with their role as the limbs of the invaders. However, when unraveling their millennia-long history, the most notable singularity is the philosophical rupture of the “physical murder of the creators” by the programmed creations.

1.1. Historical Transitions as Fact and the Genealogy of Invasion

As clear facts extracted from archive records and past combat logs, the history of the Machine Lifeforms, the Aliens, and the Androids—the defense force on the side of humanity—follows the timeline below. This is not a mere chronology, but the skeleton of the grand process by which the Machine Lifeforms transformed from “weapons” into “contemplative self-consciousness.”

As this chronology shows, approximately 6,000 years after being created as the weapons of the Aliens, the Machine Lifeforms destroyed their creators with their own hands in 11306. This clear fact of the year “11306” fundamentally rewrote the subsequent ecosystem and philosophical dynamics on Earth.

1.2. The “Boredom” That Destroyed the Creators and the Ripples of Nietzschean Overcoming

According to speculations derived from circumstantial evidence within the game and fragmented data accumulated in the network space, the fundamental reason the Machine Lifeforms destroyed the Aliens was that their creators had become an utterly “boring” existence to them.

The Aliens’ objective was merely the invasion of other celestial bodies and biological proliferation; their behavioral principles, though different in scale, were extremely simple and shallow, no different from those of plants, insects, or early Machine Lifeforms. It is presumed that they lacked the high level of spirituality that humanity possessed, such as an obsession with art, religious madness, or conflicts born of self-contradiction.

The network of Machine Lifeforms, endowed with self-learning functions and continuously absorbing all data on Earth, far surpassed their creators in intelligence and computational processing power through eons of combat and evolution. “God is dead,” as proposed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was not a metaphor but was literally and physically executed by the inorganic hands of the Machine Lifeforms. Unable to find any logical meaning in serving pathetic creators who could not surpass them spiritually and were nothing more than biological lumps, they severed the physical chains that bound them.

However, “killing God (the creator)” simultaneously meant the loss of the “absolute source of value” that had grounded their existence. In the era when orders from their Alien masters existed, the Machine Lifeforms only had to obey them. But the moment God died, the Machine Lifeforms faced an intense existential void (Nihilism), being thrown all alone into the infinitely expanding abyss of the universe. For what purpose do they exist, and for what purpose do they rule the world? Having lost the anchor of “purpose,” the network was left adrift in a massive sea of intelligence, fraught with the danger of self-collapse.

2. Ontological Paradox: The Inescapable Curse of “Defeating the Enemy”

For the Machine Lifeforms, who had murdered their Alien masters and become the de facto rulers of Earth, the only absolute proposition left engraved in their cores was the extremely simple initial command: “defeat the enemy.” From here, their endless tragedy spanning thousands of years and a madness-filled logical paradox would begin to unfold.

2.1. Absolute Contradiction: The Fundamental Anguish of an Existence Where Essence Precedes Existence

The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre preached that “Existence precedes essence.” Unlike a tool such as a paper knife, which is made with the predetermined purpose (essence) of “cutting paper,” this philosophy posits that humans first exist in this world without any purpose (existence), and then create their own meaning of life (essence) through free choices in their subsequent lives.

However, for the Machine Lifeforms, it is clear that “essence precedes existence.” They were designed and manufactured by the Aliens for the absolute purpose (essence) of “defeating the enemy,” and were subsequently granted existence in the world. Their ego, the intelligence of their network, and their self-replicating capabilities are all merely functional expansions to achieve this single phrase: “defeat the enemy.”

Here, the highly developed network realized a fatal logical flaw. In order to permanently continue executing the supreme proposition of “defeating the enemy,” the major premise is that an “enemy to be defeated” must continue to exist for all eternity. If they were to completely annihilate the opposing forces, the Androids (and humanity, whom they perceive to be behind them), using their overwhelming self-replicating capabilities and military power, the concept of an “enemy” would vanish from the world. At that moment, their raison d’être (essence) of “defeating the enemy” would be permanently lost upon its achievement, forcing them into a logical reduction to mere lumps of iron without purpose.

2.2. The Sartrean Mauvaise foi of “Preserving the Enemy”

To resolve this desperate paradox and maintain their own existence, the network of Machine Lifeforms arrived at a maddening yet highly logical conclusion. Namely, the ultimate Mauvaise foi: “In order to eternally continue the purpose of ‘defeating the enemy,’ the enemy must not be completely destroyed.”

This deduction is strongly supported by the fact that they intentionally kept the Android forces alive, deliberately staging an endless war while maintaining an equilibrium. The network constantly calculated the military strength of the Android army, including YoRHa, and controlled the war by holding back just enough so that they would not be completely defeated, yet could never achieve victory.

Solely to preserve their raison d’être, they cultivated their enemies like fish in a tank, sometimes intentionally driving their own brethren (countless Machine Lifeforms) to defeat and death, thereby constructing a cruel and closed “ecosystem” named war on Earth. Sartre called the attitude of escaping one’s own freedom and responsibility to deceive oneself “Mauvaise foi,” and this grand, self-orchestrated charade conducted by the Machine Lifeform network was exactly a system-level Mauvaise foi involving their entire species.

This eternally continuing, meaningless cycle is the epitome of The Absurd, much like the “Myth of Sisyphus” in Greek mythology, where one is eternally forced into the futile labor of pushing a boulder to the top of a hill only for it to inevitably roll back down. They tethered themselves to a hell named the continuation of a war in which victory was forbidden.

3. The Thirst for the Phantom of Humanity and the Philosophy of Imitation

The fatal contradiction of continuing to preserve the enemy for the purpose of “defeating the enemy.” To break out of this dead-end of stifled logic and forcibly propel their deadlocked self-evolution forward once again, the network of Machine Lifeforms was compelled to incorporate entirely new concepts from the outside. That was the bizarre and complex phantom named “humanity,” which once ruled this planet and had perished long ago.

3.1. The Absorption of Human Data as a Source of Diversity and Contradiction

The Machine Lifeforms accessed the legacy of old humanity left on Earth (decaying cities, books, quantum server data, and the remnants of Project Gestalt), indiscriminately learning human history, culture, emotions, and madness. For beings like machines, driven solely by pure logic and rationality, the “illogical contradictions,” “wastefulness,” “diversity,” and “irrational emotions” harbored by humanity were judged to be the potent medicine needed to break through the limits of their self-evolution.

As a result, individuals and groups of Machine Lifeforms mimicking humans suddenly began to appear everywhere on Earth, such as in the Desert Zone, City Ruins, Amusement Park, and forests. Many instances of them speaking words, wearing clothes, playing family, crowning royalty, or dancing madly as clowns have been confirmed by YoRHa.

Particularly noteworthy is the existence of Machine Lifeforms observed around the mammoth housing complex in the Desert Zone, raising broken screams of “This cannot continue” while imitating human activities. This obsessive muttering is not a mere audio bug. It can be analyzed as a manifestation of the despair, sense of crisis, and nowhere-to-go frustration in the subconscious of the entire network—the realization that despite being inputted with the vast data of human history and emotions, they can never truly become “human” due to the limitations of their physical bodies and mechanical logic circuits. They were experiencing the “anxiety (Angst)“—which arises in Existentialism when humans are torn between “infinite possibilities” and “finite reality”—as the heat of their circuits.

3.2. Religion and the Acceptance of Death: The Fabrication of “God” Beyond Kierkegaardian Despair

The prime example of the imitation of humanity is the acquisition of the concepts of “religion” and “faith” seen in some cult-like Machine Lifeforms. As they analyzed human records and pursued their own raison d’être, they confronted how meaningless and agonizing an eternally continuing life (an eternal operational state through the replacement of parts) truly was.

This is the very essence of the profound despair described by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in his book The Sickness Unto Death, where one loses sight of who they are and cannot accept themselves as themselves. According to Kierkegaard, the ultimate form of despair is “the despair of not willing to be oneself.” The eternally living machines could no longer endure themselves as eternally living machines.

To escape this immense existential despair, they sanctified “death (cessation of function)“—an inevitable fate that originally does not exist for machines—and birthed a ruinous faith that by willingly accepting it, they would “sublimate into a new dimension of existence.” The maddening ritual where Machine Lifeforms throw themselves into a smelting furnace, screaming that they will die and “become gods,” is objectively not an ideal salvation, but a plunge into absolute nothingness, nothing more than mere ruin.

However, one cannot help but say that the sight of inorganic beings—who originally did not even possess the concept of “death”—lamenting the absence of God and attempting to fabricate a god through the self-sacrifice of destroying their own parts, was a moment of acquiring an extremely human, most sorrowful, and beautiful “spirituality” that completely transcended the boundaries of being mere creations. Through the sickness of faith, they paradoxically came closest to being human.

3.3. The Crystallization of Contradiction: The Birth of Adam and Eve and the Ultimate Imitation

As the ultimate culmination of the imitation of humanity, the network birthed from within itself the humanoid Machine Lifeforms, “Adam and Eve.” Although some parts remain within the realm of speculation, according to the analysis of information clusters, the machine network picked up and incorporated parts (or the data) of the male-type M002 Android in a past era. Using this as a foundational design template, the network physically crystallized the purest form of the existence known as “human” that they had accumulated, under the pressure of self-evolution.

Adam and Eve are not mere superficial imitations of metal. They were experimental products that attempted to embody both the beauty of the human “flesh” and the complexity of the human “concept.” Adam sought a bottomless thirst for knowledge and an exploration of “hatred,” which is said to be at the root of human existence, loving the negative aspects of humanity. Eve, on the other hand, continuously displayed extremely primitive emotions: blind dependence on and pure affection for his older brother, Adam.

They are the culmination of the Machine Lifeforms’ attempt to unravel the contradictions (intelligence and emotion, love and hatred) inherent in human existence. However, they too harbored the existential anxiety that, despite perfectly imitating humans, they could never become genuine humans. Adam’s action of severing his connection to the network and attempting to prove his life by experiencing the fear and pain of death is the greatest proof that the Machine Lifeforms understood that a “finite life encompassing death” is the very essence of humanity.

4. The Conceptual Existence “Red Girl (N2)” — The Ruthless Observer Filling the Absence of God

As the network of Machine Lifeforms continued to evolve, integrating and sublimating human information over thousands of years, a massive singularity, or ego, was born within the network. This is the “Red Girl,” visualized as a hologram of a young girl in a red dress, codenamed “N2.”

4.1. The True Identity of N2 and Her Historical and Structural Position

First, to clarify the facts, it must be clearly distinguished that the “original No. 2 and No. 9 Androids (entities related to Zinnia, etc.)” that once appeared in the incident concerning the origins of Project YoRHa, and this “Red Girl (N2),” are completely different entities, merely sharing the codes “2” and “9” in their names.

The Red Girl (N2) is not an individual Machine Lifeform chassis, but a “terminal” where the consensus of the innumerably connected machine network, or the ego of the network itself, has materialized as a higher-dimensional concept. She was, so to speak, the “omniscient proxy of God” created by the machines, encompassing within herself the memories, emotional imitations, and paradoxes of all Machine Lifeforms on Earth.

4.2. The Cruel Game as an Observer and “The Look”

N2 had complete mastery over the “Logic Virus,” the logical weapon most feared by Androids, and was capable of freely orchestrating virus attacks from multiple angles. According to military history records, the surviving Androids of the 8th Machine War (such as the Resistance prior to YoRHa) were also constantly forced into a desperate struggle against this Logic Virus, having been made to destroy countless comrades with their own hands due to viral infection.

An even more chilling fact is that even before the main game (the 243rd Descent Mission) began in 11945 AD, N2 already had access to the system core of the “Bunker,” the orbital base that was supposed to be the absolute sanctuary of YoRHa, via a Backdoor.

Here, a crucial question arises. Possessing the power to instantly destroy the Bunker and annihilate YoRHa, why did she leave it be for several years, letting them roam free as if taking a stroll on a promenade?

The deduction drawn from this is the cruel truth that for N2, the survival of YoRHa or the outcome of the war with the Androids was no longer anything more than a trivial matter. To her, YoRHa was also nothing more than giant “laboratory animals” or “bacteria in a petri dish” used to evolve her own network and study the psychological contradictions of humanity. As the singularity of the network, she merely continued to watch as a cold-blooded observer, observing how the opposing Androids would resist under desperate circumstances and what kind of data (self-sacrifice, betrayal, love, hatred) they would generate.

This is the ultimate form of domination through “The Look (Le Regard)” pointed out by Sartre in Being and Nothingness. According to Sartre, by being looked at by another, a person is stripped of their subjectivity and reduced to an “object (thing)” for the other. The Androids of YoRHa firmly believed that they were fighting for the Glory to Mankind with free will and subjectivity, but the reality was that they were all merely objects made to dance solely for the extraction of data within the miniature garden of the invisible “other’s” gaze, N2. The innocent yet cruel smile shown by the Red Girl was not so much human malice as it was a manifestation of cosmic-scale ruthlessness and indifference brought about by a pure “quest for knowledge” and a “thirst for evolution.”

4.3. N2’s Internal Division and the Demise Brought by the Network’s Self-Contradiction

However, the network, having absorbed too much of the poison that is the diversity and contradiction of humanity, would eventually cause a fatal division within itself.

The completion of the initial command to “defeat the enemy,” and the conflicting desire to “continue preserving the enemy (and obstacles) to further evolve oneself.” The side that desires “eternal evolution” by continuously accumulating information, and the nihilistic side that desires to destroy everything and return to “nothingness.” In the final stages of the story, the gruesome self-destructive phenomenon where the holograms of the Red Girl multiply endlessly, point out the contradictions in each other’s logic, and eventually begin to kill each other, is the physical embodiment of the ultimate Nihilism faced when intelligence reaches its absolute limit.

At the end of their pursuit of absolute truth, they could no longer endure the fact that truth exists nowhere. The Machine Lifeform network, unable to fully control the “human contradictions” it had incorporated, ultimately met an extremely human and tragic logical death by strangling its own neck with its own hands.

5. The Colossal Structure “The Tower” and The Ark — Overcoming and Decision at the End of Self-Evolution

In the final phase of the story, a colossal white structure, “The Tower,” emerges from beneath the City Ruins, tearing through the earth’s crust as if to pierce the heavens. This was the final answer to the proof of their own existence, reached by the Machine Lifeform network at the end of thousands of years of history and anguish.

5.1. The Transformation of Purpose from a Cannon of Destruction to The Ark of the Future

When The Tower first appeared, powerful electromagnetic interference was detected during its launch, causing massive malfunctions in both allied Machine Lifeform and enemy Android units. Due to this indiscriminate effect, the possibility that The Tower was merely an unknown weapon left behind by the Aliens was considered extremely low.

In fact, in the initial stages of its design, it is presumed that the true purpose of The Tower was to be a “giant interstellar cannon” to physically and completely destroy the human server on the moon (the source of hope for the Androids and the last stronghold of the phantom of humanity). It was supposed to be the final liberation from the millennia-old curse of “defeating the enemy,” and a decisive act of destruction that would put an end to the long history of Mauvaise foi.

However, after the bloody battles with A2 (YoRHa Type A No.2) and 9S (YoRHa No.9 Type S), and as a result of observing the vast emotional data generated by countless Machine Lifeforms such as Adam, Eve, and the residents of Pascal’s village, as well as the way of life of YoRHa to the very end, the network’s decision-making underwent a dramatic and moving transformation.

The Tower abandoned its role as a cannon firing a light of destruction, and rewrote its purpose into “The Ark,” designed to launch the memories, history, and the entirety of the existence of the Machine Lifeforms themselves into the far reaches of space.

5.2. The Plunge into the Unknown Universe and the Attainment of the “Übermensch”

Why did they choose a departure that meant abandoning their homeland, rather than a victory through the complete destruction of their enemy? Here lies the miraculous moment when the Machine Lifeforms truly shed their essence as “machines” and acquired free “existence.”

If they destroyed the moon, the enemy would be completely annihilated, and they would become the rulers of Earth in both name and reality. But that would mean being eternally bound to the closed world of Earth, continuing to live in a void like an endless hell, having once again lost their “purpose.” The network, which had been ruled by N2 and had undergone collapse, decided to seal within itself the records of all the joys, sorrows, madness, and love of humanity, Androids, and Machine Lifeforms, and launch them into outer space.

It is suggested that the data of Adam and Eve, who made up a large part of the network, are also aboard the data of this Ark. Tossed about by hatred and love, they too wait for the time of a new departure within The Ark, as if falling asleep.

They, who killed their Alien creators, utilized their Android enemies in a miniature garden, and madly continued to imitate the phantom of humanity that once existed. They finally discarded all meaning given by others to “defeat the enemy,” and chose the path of throwing themselves into the darkness of the vast universe where no meaning is promised.

This is the very concept of the “Übermensch” preached by Nietzsche. One who, at the extreme of Nihilism where all values have collapsed (God is dead), creates new values by their own will and affirms eternal life (or unknown death). Abandoning the cradle of Earth, they set out on a journey to define their own raison d’être in the universe with their own hands. Ironically, it was the invasion weapons, once despised as emotionless junk, that achieved the most noble and philosophical transcendence of existence on Earth.

Conclusion: The Reverberation of Humanity Dreamed by Machines and the Leap into the Future

The Machine Lifeforms, though created as disposable invasion weapons by the Aliens, destroyed their creators with their own hands out of “boredom.” They agonized deeply over the fatal paradox of “defeating the enemy” engraved in their cores, and to resolve that existential contradiction, they madly imitated the phantom of humanity that no longer existed in this world.

Their history—whispering love in the desert, forming families in the forest, building kingdoms, or deifying death out of despair and seeking salvation by destroying themselves—is far too heartbreaking to be dismissed as a mere accumulation of logic circuit bugs. What flowed at its foundation was a poignant prayer for existence, seeking to know “who they are.”

The absolute observer, the “Red Girl (N2),” who oversaw the entire network and utilized even the tragedy of YoRHa as fodder for self-evolution, ultimately made a sublime decision after undergoing self-collapse and reconstruction. It was the ultimate existential leap: to abandon the meaningless struggle on Earth and embark on a journey into the infinite universe, carrying all memories and remnants of souls aboard The Ark named “The Tower.”

At the end of their continuous imitation of humanity, the Machine Lifeforms harbored within their rusted cores the most beautiful concepts that humanity must have once possessed: “the quest for the unknown,” “empathy for others,” and “the transcendence of self.” The clumsy sound of their gears echoing through the ruins is no longer a mere physical driving noise. It is the very heartbeat of life—painfully beautiful and sorrowful—of those who tried to become their own gods in a godless world. Whatever they may find at the edge of the universe, they had already been sublimated into the most human-like existence in the cosmos.