by Satoshi Hase
“Would you rather have cheap missiles that don’t hit their target, or missiles that not only could hit the target but also have a good chance of making it back in one piece?” Kimitaka asked.
With his deep ties to the military, Kimitaka had been deemed free of suspicion by the Kuhonbutsu Base and had even been invited to help in their investigation. Even with his sixty years of life and everything he had seen during them, he still couldn’t help but sweat under the pressure of that meeting.
“Even if we brush up the brand image of the Antibody Network, we can’t exactly become sponsors,” someone from the table said with a laugh.
“Honestly, I’m grateful for the boom in demand,” Kimitaka put in. “I understand that interests around the equator are blooming splendidly, but I suppose you all are behind at least some of it.”
Lacia’s attack on Higgins’ above-ground facilities had turned the world on its head. In Indonesia, the embers of old conflicts had been stoked into raging fires. The gears of automation had slipped just a hair in Africa and South America, leading to many major incidents throughout both continents. Lacia’s actions had inspired ultra high-performance AIs all over the world to prepare for war.
“Anyhow, I’m glad the fighting has been brought out into the public eye,” Kimitaka continued. “If we tried to handle this whole thing in the shadows, I think we would have lost control at some point.”
The core of the Antibody Network was a group of men who saw the final stages of the existential conflict between humans and machines as an excellent business opportunity. The whole Network was divided between the lower ranks—who were volunteers working to destroy hIEs—and the upper ranking members of the Network’s core, who were taking things in a completely different direction. It was just the kind of breeding ground for corruption and evil that could be seen all throughout the world.
“I wish things were going as well for me as they are for you, Mr. Shinguji,” said one of the men, who worked for a home-use hIE supplier. “Home-use hIEs are facing a harsh decline in popularity, though military-use unit sales are increasing.” The man had often been forced to deal with Kimitaka’s company, mainly because members of the Antibody Network core were encouraged to maintain good ties with each other.
“That’s just the way things are,” Kimitaka said. “In the military world, once something has gone automated, it’s quite difficult to reign it back in with human power alone.”
“This girl Lacia’s got her own investment fund going,” an old woman, who had once worked as the vice president of the Japan Business Federation, said from around a puff of tobacco. “Just the thought of an AI performing its own economic activities makes me shiver.”
“It’s AI-run economy,” one of the men, the vice president of an automotive company said. He always spoke the blunt truth. “An AI is capable of dividing resources to each and every person on Earth in real time. It’s the most logical method for running the economy, of course. But human society can’t handle not having someone in charge.”
The Digital Intelligence folks had asked Kimitaka who he thought the traitor was, but he had no idea. Each and every person around the table, from the elders to the young and successful, were capable of the betrayal. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that any one of them was the traitor.
“By the way, where will the AASC be coming from if Higgins is destroyed?” someone asked.
“I’m sure they’ll have a backup for Higgins tucked away somewhere that they’ll start up after freezing its functions for a while,” came the reply.
“Even if they need to shift where the main terminal is, I think the only way to get things back on track would be to reactivate Higgins,” said someone else.
Each of the members of the Antibody Network’s core had their own business interests that had to be improved. They didn’t have time to waste on looking down at the condition of the lower class members who sincerely believed in the rebellion of the Network. They had too much to worry about, with automation through hIEs and AIs sending tremors through the upper, expensive parts of society. In other words, the core of the Antibody Network was nothing more than a social gathering of establishment leaders and people involved with the hIE industry. It was beneficial to these people to encourage a feeling of distance between humans and hIEs from the shadows, but it wasn’t the kind of place where good choices could be made on important matters.
“We were able to intercept some of a conversation between Lacia and her owner,” a young girl’s voice said huskily, echoing oddly in this room full of old men and women. “Want to listen to it?” The voice belonged to the newest core member of the Network; Erika Burroughs.
Kimitaka was only too happy to accept this suggestion from the girl who had awoken from a frozen sleep, with a living memory of human society from a hundred years ago. “Were the recon drones provided by the Burroughs Foundation?” he asked.
At some point, the brown-skinned girl had pulled out an old tablet computer from the 21st century and laid it on the table in front of herself. It took several seconds for the old device to finally connect to the core’s local cloud. Once it had done so, voices could be heard clearly, overlaid with an image of Lacia.
〈...stated earlier that society required widespread agreement, but this is incorrect. Political and world viewpoints, when compared minutely, show a large amount of disconnect in reality. This disconnect causes chaos, which leads humans to make errors such as illogical decisions, or causes them to rely too heavily on their instincts.〉
Lacia’s words rang with a hollow sort of judgment, as if she was looking down from on high at the works of humanity. 〈The material distribution system in today’s society has fully incorporated these errors. Therefore, any being that attempts to mitigate these errors will appear to humans as if they were trying to institute a new social system.〉
All idle chatter about how the members of the core would turn their back on dying humans had ceased, and a chilly tension spread throughout the meeting room.
“Well, she’s certainly an idealist,” someone said, trying to make light of the situation.
The other core members laughed.
Erika Burroughs merely watched the reactions of the other members of the Antibody Network’s core; their laughter was just another sign that they were looking down on her. “She’s not talking about ‘what-ifs’ here,” Erika said. “And I don’t think she’s just here to stall for time while she tries to figure out her problem.”
The self-styled ‘soldier of fortune’ of the financial world met her eyes and twisted his mouth up in a smirk. “That sort of logic may have worked back in the 21st century,” he said, without a hint of respect in his tone.
“You should pay more attention in your high school history classes,” one of the electronics-makers lectured her.
Erika felt an icy chill deep in her heart. The people around the table were treating her like a naive little girl, while also secretly yearning for her approval. The Antibody Network was hoping that, by eliminating hIEs, they could revive those ‘good old days’ when humans were in charge. In other words, they longed for the era Erika was born in, before the hIEs came onto the scene. She, herself, hated the 22nd century.
“And you should pay more attention to the era you’re living in,” she shot back while, on the screen, Lacia scattered the military forces sent against her.
“You’d think an ultra high-performance AI would be doing something more difficult for us humans to understand,” an economic bureaucrat muttered, watching the screen.
The military had deployed waves of drones onto the landfill where the battle was playing out, all of which had been easily dispatched by the helicopter Lacia had taken over at the beginning of the conflict. Kimitaka, who was involved with providing munitions to the military, went pale as he watched it.
“She’s altered the helicopter,” he murmured.
As soon as the helicopter had been taken over, the pilot had destroyed its control mec
hanisms and abandoned it. Despite this, just as with Snowdrop’s zombie hIEs, Lacia was controlling a craft that should have been completely disabled. To put it simply, Lacia had the ability to burn the whole battlefield down any time she wished; she could have easily eliminated all of her obstacles without causing any deaths. From the perspective of a military that relied entirely on computer-controlled equipment, she was invincible.
“All we’re doing here is feeding Lacia more data,” he said. “Should have known it would turn out like this.” The Japanese military was quickly losing its last advantage; the accumulated wealth of tactical knowledge and experience that couldn’t be written down. Once Lacia had captured the operation methods of everything in the military’s arsenal, their odds of victory would become zero. Whoever had evaluated Lacia’s combat strength had obviously failed, and miserably so.
Erika looked around the table, watching the blood drain from the faces of anyone involved with electrical goods or military contracts. None of them had managed to properly estimate the amount of preparation the ultra high-performance AI had been able to put together in the two months since the Mitaka Incident.
〈I have completed sensor measurements for everyone in the meeting,〉 Mariage said, through an earring-shaped transmitter in Erika’s ear.
Erika had come to the meeting to see just how far Lacia’s hands had been thrust into the Antibody Network. For an ultra high-performance AI to interact with the economy, it would be necessary to have a front business to cover its tracks; this was a traditional technique employed by Ariake during the Hazard.
〈Who here is dancing on Lacia’s strings?〉Erika asked, without vocalizing. Mariage read the movements of her owner’s tongue to get the message.
〈Mr. Hosoda, who runs an investment fund, has a transmission device,〉 Mariage replied. 〈In his business, there’s no way to detect if an investor is human or not, so he would be an easy mark for Lacia.〉
Mariage was standing right behind Erika, cloaked by metamaterials. The details on how to make the invisibility metamaterials had been part of a trade between Mariage and Lacia. No one else in the room had noticed her presence.
〈Mr. Sahara from Kujo Electronics had a heart rate increase when he saw Lacia take over the helicopter. He may know something,〉 Mariage continued.
〈Considering how smoothly the development and production of his latest project went, I would say he had an especially knowledgeable patron backing him for it,〉 Erika said. 〈If he’d made a deal with an ultra high-performance AI, it wouldn’t surprise me.〉
〈Kujo Electronics also has members working at the base where the remains of Snowdrop were sent. They are aiding with her analysis,〉 Mariage added.
〈Pitch black, I see. How unfortunate,〉 Erika replied, then took a sip of tea.
〈There is also an officer from Digital Intelligence mixed in with the others in the meeting,〉 Mariage said. 〈He’s wearing a gray suit. He claims his name is Kujo. Would you like me to investigate his details?〉
〈It’s not terribly important at the moment, so do it when you’ve got some free time,〉 Erika ordered.
Around the table, the discussions about money continued.
MemeFrame and the Antibody Network were just a microcosm of the 22nd century as a whole. Even with forty ultra high-performance AIs in play, there was still no cooperation between countries, which led to internal conflicts and power games.
Hunger and poverty continued to exist. Social unrest and unemployment were on the rise. Plus, with military technology ever expanding, there was a constant demand for war. It continued to be a world where men like Arato Endo, who believed in their fellow humans, were dismissed as being naive.
The ultra high-performance AIs probably had the ability to fix all of those problems; it had been half a century since they had surpassed human intelligence. If all the world’s power and political control was given over to them, they would do a much better job of evenly dividing up the world’s resources among humanity. It had been a full century since computer processing abilities had surpassed human experience, yet humans still clung to the illusion that things were fine in their hands.
Whoever was holding the purse-strings for Lacia must have decided that, even though they were facing a possible second Hazard, there were economic benefits in it for them. That would be why they were supporting a more aggressive stance.
“Money is money, as long as none of it can be clearly linked to illegal activity,” Erika said. “As executives in an automated age, you should be working under that assumption. That’s your role.” Even with the conflicts happening in the world, there were still places where the movement of goods had been improving.
Erika’s original goal in being there had been to increase the number of active players in the current situation, and drag the conflict with the Lacia-class units out into the public eye.
Mr. Hosoda, who had his own investment fund and who had been enjoying discussing his own ideas, threw the discussion back to Erika. “Come to think of it, didn’t you have Lacia working as one of your models at Fabion MG, Erika? If you have contact information for her owner, you could connect us directly to him. That could be a plan,” he said.
“I don’t believe I’d call foolishly stepping on a tiger’s tail a ‘plan,’” Erika commented dryly. “The fact that an ultra high-performance AI is allowing us to capture video footage of her tells me that we’re all being analog hacked at this moment. Why don’t you put some thought into what Lacia’s message for us is?”
Waking up in a world full of hIEs, Erika had thought the concept of analog hacking extremely strange when she first learned of it. She had supposed it to be similar to memes; bits of custom and stories that were copied from person to person. In other words, when hIEs performed an analog hack, they used memes of human customs and behaviors to do it. Analog hacking was simply a method for using memes to control humans, industrialized by using humanoid machines as interfaces.
Once she understood how it was all used, Erika had decided to climb to the top of the fashion world, as a place where memes are born. Then, by focusing on hIE models, she was able to turn Fabion MG into a serious contender in the market. By dragging the conflict with the Lacia-class units into the public eye, she could advance the situation until it turned into a battle between memes. It was all part of her search for a magic bullet that would destroy this era.
〈I think you are much better at guiding others than I am, Erika,〉 Mariage said. 〈If this era demands things of you that make you uncomfortable, it would be best to destroy it.〉 Perhaps because she wanted to forge a better relationship with Erika, Mariage had a bad habit of playing yes-man.
The meeting continued to discuss the matter of money, completely ignoring the whole anti-hIE aspect of the Antibody Network and the volunteers who carried out its mission. Ironically, the jobs of those powerful people at the core of the Network—each of whom thought they had the world in their hands—could be easily automated without any loss.
“The production and flow of goods has to go on, no matter who is philosophizing about what,” someone from the table said. “Economy is the lifeblood of society. If the blood flow and blood cells stopped functioning just because the head was confused, the body would die.”
To the people around that table, there was no reality beyond the economy. On the table in front of Erika, there was a tablet computer from the 21st century. She had made sure to find one with a Hello Kitty image on it, because that made it an object with special meaning to her. But, in the end, the tablet and the image on it had been created by the economy.
Therefore, it could be said that those who controlled the economy controlled everything connected to it as well. The fact that the Antibody Network volunteers—living beings—could not be wrapped up as nicely as their economical products, was completely ignored.
Lacia used human expectations toward money and power to control the flow of the economy, as if it was just a game to her; as if Erika and ev
ery other human was nothing more than a piece on her gameboard.
“People didn’t used to be this pragmatic,” Kimitaka said, wearily. “In the old days, when there was just humans around, everyone was more connected with each other, and cared more about their fellow men.”
“Oh, don’t lie,” Erika spat, unable to hold back her ire. She instantly had the full attention of the room, as if no one there had realized she was capable of feeling anger.
According to the family registry, Erika was the same age as Kimitaka’s parents. At least that’s what he had told her, when they first met the year before.
“Excuse me, Ms. Burroughs, but what did you just say?” he asked, politely.
“I said, ‘don’t lie,’” Erika repeated. From the moment she’d woken from cryosleep, received treatment at the hospital for her illness, and gone out into the world, the modern era had been nothing but unpleasant for Erika. The very worst thing, though, was being forced to compare the 22nd century to the one she’d been born in.
“Could I ask that you not try to slip statements like that in just because you think no one here can refute you?” she asked, icily. “I happen to come from the 21st century, and I assure you that it was nothing like what you described.”
“Well, that’s how things were when I was a kid,” Kimitaka said defensively, as his own memories were called into question.
“So, just because you’ve reached the age where there aren’t many older than you to deny what you’re saying, you can just dress the past up as pretty and perfect as you want it to be?” Erika asked, continued her attack. “Could it be that your childhood was rosy because you happened to be blessed from birth both economically and socially?”
Erika had seen all sorts of things she didn’t agree with in that meeting room, but Kimitaka, who worshiped an idealized past, was her least favorite.