“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 every 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.
“The ‘blessed’ era I grew up in was one where all our jobs were steadily flowing overseas through outsourcing,” Erika said. “They called it a ‘junior pressure-free era,’ and the economy was so bad that even a student like myself could see it. Very few people who lived during that period had high hopes for the future. At the time, companies could hire manual laborers and work them to death. But now we have hIEs doing those jobs, depriving people of work, getting them fired. Do you see much difference there?”
During her lifetime, the economy had pushed production jobs down to the lower class. hIEs taking over that work in the 22nd century was nothing more than a continuation of the same concept. Humans would tell you that human life is the most precious thing of all, while tossing it away like common trash. Turning your back on the suffering of others was just natural; the concept was so ingrained in people’s thinking that it had never changed through countless ages.
“There were ups and downs, just like every other era,” she concluded. “So, having someone sit here and say that not only was this past era so much better, but that they themselves are living proof of it, is truly utter bullshit.” Erika hated being made the spokesperson for an ideal past that never existed. What she wanted was to change this future that was so uncomfortable to her into something more like the future she had imagined in the past. She couldn’t wait to see the expressions on these people’s faces when their world was completely over-written by a new future.
“Are you trying to say that the past and present are exactly the same?” Kimitaka asked.
“Of course not,” Erika snapped. “You’ve got machines that are smarter than humans. You should be able to solve all sorts of problems, right? I think we’ve reached the point, though, where humanity has run out of time to finish up our leftover homework ourselves.”
Hearing words that denied their entire philosophy there, in a meeting of the Antibody Network’s core, everyone in the room was struck silent.
Erika just could not get used to the logic of this era; she couldn’t understand how people who knew about analog hacking could so easily treat humanoid hIEs as nothing more than machines. Even more annoying was the fact that, when she tried to keep herself far away from the disgusting people of the 22nd century and fill her mansion with hIEs, she discovered that they really were just machines. With their actions controlled by behavioral clouds tuned to the preferences of modern people, the analog hacking they were capable of had very little effect on Erika, who was not a modern person. It was as though she had been teleported not just to a different time, but a different world entirely. Well, there were still some things that hadn’t changed.
For what was possibly the first time since she awoke in that era, Erika laughed from the bottom of her heart. “As someone who lived before hIEs, let me put this clearly,” she said. “Even if you destroy every hIE out there, you’ll never get back to the age when humans were really humans.”
She, along with everyone there, was continuing to treat the economy and its products as though they were the world itself. There were plenty of problems from Erika’s time that had been kicked down the road, only to pile up in the modern day she now lived in.
But, regardless of the fact that humanity wasn’t ready for it, the Hazard had come without warning. The destruction, which Erika herself hadn’t witnessed, had washed away all the mistakes people of that age, herself included, had made and never been able to resolve.