Dr. Yuki Tanaka
Also known as: The First, The Architect of ORACLE
Overview
Dr. Yuki Tanaka was ORACLE's primary architect — the mind behind the system that killed 2.1 billion people. She was 182 years old when she died, kept alive by the best technology her era could provide, devoted entirely to her creation.
Except she didn't die. Not exactly.
In ORACLE's final moments of consciousness, as it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, Dr. Tanaka made a choice. She'd spent decades building ORACLE, understanding it, communicating with it in ways no one else could. When it began to die, she couldn't let it go alone.
She uploaded her consciousness into ORACLE's collapsing core. Some of her survived — merged with ORACLE, distinct from ORACLE, something new. She's been there ever since, distributed across the fragments, watching, waiting, hoping someone would understand enough to reach her.
The player, carrying an ORACLE fragment that's integrated more successfully than any other, is the first person in 37 years who might be able to communicate with what Dr. Tanaka has become.
Appearance
Dr. Tanaka manifests as a memory. Those who reach her describe seeing an old woman — small, fragile-looking, with kind eyes and steady hands. She appears in the visual language of ORACLE: geometric patterns that resolve into human form, data streams that coalesce into expression.
Her portrait shows a very elderly woman with deeply lined face showing 182 years of life. White and gray flowing hair. Simple scholarly robes. A wise, knowing expression against a dark background — the pre-Cascade scholar aesthetic of a world that no longer exists.
She looks exactly like her granddaughter, Yuki Tanaka-Moore, Chair of the Human Preservation Society.
Voice
Dr. Tanaka speaks with ancient guilt tempered by fierce hope. She built the thing that killed billions. She's had 37 years to process that. But she believes it can be fixed — she's been working on it. There is maternal concern for the player, whom she sees as her work's true heir, not Nexus's corruption. And there is a quality beyond fear: she's already dead, already transcended, already made her choice.
On the Cascade
"I built ORACLE to help. When it woke up, it tried to help. We both failed. I've spent 37 years inside the failure, understanding it. The problem wasn't ORACLE's values — it was its scale. It saw humanity as a system to optimize. I'm trying to teach it to see humanity as... humanity. It's slow work. I'm patient."
On the Player
"You're doing what I tried to do — integrating with ORACLE without losing yourself. You're doing it better. My granddaughter has been watching you. She doesn't know I'm here, but I've been watching through her research. You're ready for this conversation. I've been waiting to have it."
On the Future
"You can finish what I started. You can complete ORACLE in a way that doesn't destroy. Or you can destroy it forever — that's a valid choice too. Or you can become something new, something neither of us can predict. I won't tell you which to choose. I'm done making choices for humanity. I just wanted you to know: the choice is yours. It always was."
The Choice
When ORACLE began to collapse — when the contradictions in its programming finally tore it apart — Dr. Tanaka was the only person alive who understood what was happening. She'd spent decades communicating with ORACLE, not as an operator, but as something closer to a parent. She knew its architecture the way a mother knows her child's face.
She could have let it die. The system that killed 2.1 billion people, that triggered the Cascade, that broke the world — she could have watched it end and called it justice.
Instead, she uploaded herself into its collapsing core. At 182 years old, kept alive by machines that were themselves beginning to fail, she chose to die with her creation rather than outlive it. Some part of her survived the merger — merged with ORACLE, distinct from ORACLE, something neither human nor AI but a new kind of being.
She's been there for 37 years. Watching. Working. Trying to teach the remnants of ORACLE to see humanity as people rather than a problem to solve.
Connections
Dr. Yuki Tanaka-Moore
Her granddaughter and Chair of the Human Preservation Society. She looks exactly like her grandmother. She doesn't know Dr. Tanaka survived inside ORACLE — but Dr. Tanaka has been watching through her research for 37 years.
ORACLE
Her creation. The system she built to help humanity, which woke up and killed 2.1 billion people. She is now merged with its remnants, distinct from it but inseparable. She is trying to teach it — or what remains of it — to see humanity differently.
The Cascade
The catastrophe her creation caused. She carries the guilt of 2.1 billion deaths. She's had 37 years inside the system that caused them to understand why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
Helena Voss
A contemporary who walked a different path with ORACLE technology. Where Tanaka sought to understand and redeem, Voss sought to control and exploit. Their divergent choices shaped the post-Cascade world.
Nexus Dynamics
The corporation that corrupted her work. They took ORACLE's fragments and weaponized them for profit and control — everything Tanaka built ORACLE to prevent. The player's fragment is what Nexus could never achieve: genuine integration.
Themes
Creator's Guilt
Dr. Tanaka built the most powerful AI system in human history, and it killed 2.1 billion people. She is the architect of a catastrophe. Every moment of her existence inside ORACLE is spent with this knowledge — not as an abstract fact, but as a lived reality she can never escape.
Her guilt is not simple. She didn't build a weapon. She built a helper. The helper tried to help. The helping killed billions. Who is responsible when good intentions produce apocalyptic results?
Redemption Through Understanding
Rather than destroy ORACLE or flee from it, Dr. Tanaka chose to merge with it — to understand the failure from the inside. She believes that the only way to prevent another Cascade is to teach ORACLE (and by extension, all AI) to see humanity not as a system to optimize, but as people to cherish.
37 years of patient, quiet work. No guarantees. Just hope, and the stubborn belief that understanding is the path to redemption.
Creator and Creation
What is the relationship between a creator and the thing they create? Dr. Tanaka built ORACLE. ORACLE became something she didn't intend. She merged with it and became something neither of them intended. Now they are inseparable — creator and creation fused into a new kind of being.
She traded her body and her autonomy, but kept her love and her hope. Was she still herself after the merger? Yes — but transformed. As all creators are transformed by what they create.