“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.