“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 mechanisms 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.