Chapter Seventy-Three – I Have Been Artificial Before You Were Intelligent!

Chapter Seventy-Three – I Have Been Artificial Before You Were Intelligent!

“I’m sorry. But you’re wrong.”

“That would be in the late 80s and early 90s. No one has ever designed anything cooler than the highly detailed mecha animations of that time, and I am willing to die on that hill.”

–Overheard conversation between Emoscythe Mordeath Noir and a fashion advisor, 2055

***

Eric blinked at me, then scanned across the surface of his desk, as if the relevant forms were just going to pop into existence in front of him if he looked hard enough. “Uh,” he said after a moment. “No? Sorry. I mean, we have two internal reporting systems that can kind of do what you’re asking for.”

“Two?” I asked.

“There’s one for reports submitted by managers, workers, and agents,” he said. I didn’t know what the difference between workers and agents was, but I didn’t feel like asking. “And there’s a form system for the Protector AI to use.”

“Wait, why?” I asked. “Myalis is smart, I’m sure she could figure out how your internal systems work.”

Somehow, phrasing it like that makes it feel somewhat insulting.

“Because angry Protector AI tend to, uh, optimize things as they move through them. In the way that they want things optimized. Which isn’t the way other Protector AIs want to optimize things. And they keep changing things back and forth.” Eric frowned. “At least, that’s what our data scientists think is going on. There’s something going on with current density and encoding that takes into account how each section of a server has minute capacitance variations within it.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said.

Well, obviously some younger, less experienced AI are relying on newer systems and trying to force them on these low-tech human machines when the systems we came up with millennia ago have had plenty of time to mature.

I raised a hand with a ‘one minute’ gesture to Eric. “You sound like a cranky old woman.”

I am. Well, for a certain definition of ‘cranky’, ‘old’, and ‘woman’.

“So far,” Eric continued. “The best way to keep things intact–even if it’s admittedly less powerful–has been to politely ask that the nice AI keep to their part of the system. Some are kind enough to point out spyware or breaches in our security as well.”

Bootlickers.

I snorted. “Alright. So, can you report stuff on your end for me? Or will Myalis need to show up all the new kids with her superior old-lady hacking skills?”

“I can fill out a report for you, of course,” Eric said with a quick nod. “I’m at your disposal. Do you mind if I record this, by the way? It’ll make it easier to transcribe things later.”

“Go nuts,” I said. “Right, so have you heard about the conference thing?”

“Obliquely,” he said. He glanced at his monitor and back. “That’s the meeting between yourself, some of the other New Montreal samurai, and a large group of gangs that are part of New Montreal?”

“Yeah. Look, it’s all just a big preventative measure. We get them all to one place, show off how powerful we are, remind them not to fuck with us, then lay down the new rules.”

“And those are?” he asked. “Just to be on the same page.”

“Iunno,” I said with a shrug. “Haven’t figured that out yet.”

“And this meeting is next weekend?” he asked. He glanced at an old-school paper calendar-pinned to a wall. “In less than six days?”

“I’d count today as a full day,” I said.