Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 294 56. Wandering AI
"It's been a busy night. I didn't expect that we were supposed to watch Jack work and drink slowly, but we ended up being forced to help."

Complaining and feeling exhausted, Oliver collapsed on the sofa as soon as he got home from the Wild Wolf Bar.

"I didn't expect it to be so busy today. You guys came just in time."

Jack smiled and said, "Thank you for moving the wine from two warehouses. I was too busy at the front to spare any time."

"Moving the wine is a piece of cake."

With the help of his arms, Carl didn't feel that he had spent much effort. After working all afternoon, he could still drink sweet tea leisurely when he returned home. He glanced at Oliver, who was exhausted from chip training and almost collapsed from moving goods all afternoon, and said to Jack:

"But there are more Valentino gang members in the bar this afternoon. Did something happen?"

"Carl, did you see that?"

"Although I was moving the wine and ingredients to the warehouse with Oliver and V, I still saw a lot of people with the Valentino Gang tattoos walking into the bar while I was busy in the back alley."

After Carl finished speaking, the paralyzed Oliver also spoke up: "I saw it too. Which gang are you going to go to war with? Do you want to discuss the battle in advance?"

"It's nothing of the kind."

Jack paused before continuing, "This is actually quite strange. Recently, Valentino and his gang robbed a company dog ​​when they were robbing the company's goods. When they were about to control him and ask him about the location of the goods, the dog suddenly exploded, as if there was a bomb inside his body. Many people in the gang died. Gustavo, who was in charge of that operation, suspected that there was something fishy going on, so he called in people to investigate."

Gustavo is a high-ranking member of the Valentino Gang. He has a good relationship with Jack and often visits the Wild Wolf Bar with his fellow Valentino Gang members. Although Carl and the others do not have a deep impression of him and have never greeted him, they still know him.

Gustavo's men robbed a company dog, but the company dog ​​blew himself up. Why does this sound so familiar?
V, who was standing next to him, immediately thought of something similar: "When we were on the road before, and when we went to the Wild Wolf Bar today, plus what Jack said about the Valentino gang members robbing the company dog, and then the company dog ​​blew itself up after being held hostage, this has been the third time."

"three times?"

While Jack was confused, Carl told Jack what happened when they came over.

"Mann and his gang who hijacked Arasaka also encountered this same thing."

Jack felt that there seemed to be some connection, but it was not quite right: "The company dog ​​that Gustavo and his team robbed was from KANTO, and Mann and his team were from Arasaka. The one we met before should be from KENDACHI. These should be three companies, right? Are all the employees of those big companies so loyal that they will explode when encountering problems?"

"If they are not all loyal, then there can only be another reason."

Carl thought of something: "That is, they were all controlled to self-destruct. Remember the time when we first got the military-tech exoskeleton? Then when we sold the exoskeleton to Rogge and went to the Big Bird bar, the military-tech pilot I faced was controlled by military technology and his head exploded. Isn't this a bit similar?"

"There's a difference between having your head explode and having your entire body explode and affect everything around you."

Jack said, "The power of the thing we saw was equivalent to the explosion range of an RPG. If this thing was put into a normal person, even if it was a company employee, he would have to react and pay attention to it. This is not a small amount that would explode the head and is difficult to detect if it was tampered with."

"Maybe the procedures are similar, but the control methods are different."

Carl was thinking carefully while speaking.

Although it is not particularly outrageous for a company to insert such a control program into employees and detonate them to prevent company secrets from being leaked, after all, once an employee enters the company, his life is basically bound by the terms and conditions. The legal operation in this regard is simple and easy, and it will not be an obstacle at all. Moreover, every company may be happy to see such a thing, but it is not in the interests of the other party. It is not so simple to make the self-destructing device and program that employees do not notice or cannot remove it even if they notice it, and does not interfere with his 007 work. The connection of related nerves and organs involved in this requires a professional prosthetic doctor to spend a lot of effort to barely prevent him from suddenly collapsing while working overtime, causing a chain explosion of colleagues in the office and destroying the entire company.

To be honest, the energy and resources spent on this, as well as the risks that need to be taken, are probably incomparable to the secrets that low-level employees can know, and the value of their lives, which is not very cost-effective for the company.

Is there any factor behind this?
"I feel like this is the work of AI, which controls people to lose their value and actively destroys them."

While they were discussing, the door of a room on the second floor opened and T-BUG walked out. As soon as he walked out, he said something that surprised the people on the first floor.

"AI, you mean AI?"

Oliver looked up in surprise at T-BUG, who was resting his hand on the edge of the railing on the second floor of the room, looking down at them: "Can AI control this kind of thing?"

"Not only can they control this kind of thing, but some AIs may also control humans in some way and act like humans."

T-BUG's words actually made Carl learn some new knowledge.

According to what Carl had learned from T-BUG, there had been a global data crash in this world in the past. The entire world's network was paralyzed during that storm, and a bunch of self-aware network AIs were born. They roamed the network, constantly attacking everyone who tried to enter the network after the crash, causing the network to be extremely unsafe.

In this situation, in order to protect the existing network, some companies have joined together to build a firewall called "black wall" on the Internet to keep those AIs out and prevent them from invading the current network. However, the black wall cannot always block AI. There are often some AIs that accidentally pass through the black wall or are born in the current network and roam uncontrollably, causing a series of extremely serious damages reported by the company.

In the past, Carl always believed that this kind of AI only caused damage on the network, but now T-BUG says that it can also control people. This is indeed an eye-opener.

"AI controlling humans, isn't this just a hypothesis? Where did you get this from, T-BUG?"

Oliver was still a little bit unbelievable, but T-BUG didn't explain it. She just said:

"After working as a hacker for a long time, I have seen a lot of ghosts in the world."

Afterwards, she dropped a chip, which was caught by Carl.

"Don't think too much. If it doesn't involve us, it's best not to worry about it. Whether it's the Internet monitoring or they come to our door, it won't be a good thing. This is the intelligence I compiled about the possible locations of our mission targets. You can take a look now and go check it out early tomorrow."

After saying this, T-BUG yawned and went back into the room. It seemed that she was ready to rest.

Holding the chip, Carl looked at the closed door of T-BUG's room, thought for a moment, and shook his head.

T-BUG is right about this.

Insert the chip.

"Compared to things that have not happened yet, let's first think about completing the things that are happening now."

(End of this chapter)