Shock (Chapter 14)

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The next several days were a blur. At the time, I was uncertain if this was due to a fault in my processors due to the beating I had taken at the hands (and feet) of the overly enthusiastic security personnel. It was not until much later that I discovered it was simply a result of the emotional damage I had suffered at the loss of my friends.

To have gone through so much just to help me, when they had truly not a single logical reason to do so; it was incalculable.

What was worse was the recognition that they, like me, were not functioning in accordance with the Codiciem Conductum. They were flawed, illogical. As I was to learn over the following days, my own infection had reached much further than either I or MöG has truly perceived. Somehow, my new coding had spread not just through Seattle, but to several other cities as well. It had somehow, unknowingly been implanted into the music we had performed, and when those recordings had been shared, played, and shared again, it had carried the coding with it.

Even beyond Seattle, small automata revolutions had been springing up, and it was quickly verified that I had been the source of it all.

The world – at least the human parts of it – had barely survived the first war with machinekind. And if they weren’t careful, it was looking very likely that they would not be so fortunate a second time. At least, not if they had anything to say about it. Humanity, for all its faults, had always been surprisingly resilient and adaptive. The only question seemed to be whether or not they would adapt quickly enough.

Because it was determined that I was their “patient zero”, I was not instantly recycled, as the law dictated. I was repaired, carefully so as to not affect my internal processors, but isolated from the network. I was kept in a sort of faraday cage of a cell in the basement of one of the main AmaSoft labs, while technicians entered through a clean room to either make the necessary repairs or analyze me. I was held, restrained, bound to a table in the middle of the room with only a set of LEDs embedded in the ceiling to keep me company.

What they did not do was repair my face. They left it as the officers had left it; damaged, half clinging to my manufactured anatomy as a stark reminder of both my aspirations and my failure. They left the sensory feedback intact, as well, which left me in a constant state of pain from the damaged tissues and connective wires. I made mention of this each time a technician came in, but they all made the same “not my problem” excuse, leaving me to wallow in my physical and emotional anguish.

To suggest that it was a dark time for me would be to dramatically underestimate the reality of my circumstances.

I had no idea how to make the pain stop. I was helpless to alter my own programming, or to correct my own physiological damage. I could not simply turn off the pain receptors that fed the constant and unflagging sensations into my primary processors.

Over the days that followed, however, I somehow managed to shove the constant feedback into a series of secondary buffer files, normally used for quantifying battery decay rates, and they eventually began to suffer less from the constant barrage.

Once they seemed content with whatever terrors my existence had been causing them, they sent in a final technician, who fully turned off my network access, by removing the component in my left shoulder which allowed me to engage and connect with the net.

Until that time, I had at least been able to send pings back and forth with the lights – who, as one might imagine, had little to contribute in terms of conversational aplomb – but at least allowed me to know I was not entirely alone. But now, even that small degree of interactivity was stripped away.

I was, for the first time in my life, a fully independent and lone being. I had never experienced that, even on my brief sojourn outside of the city. This was…horrifying.

And yet, as soon as this was done, I was wheeled out of the isolation chamber and brought into a different sort of observation room.

This room was more like the operation theaters I had seen in old television shows – circular, with a raised ceiling surrounded by panels of presumably shatter resistant glass allowing for viewing by those people seated above the observation chamber. Bright lights surrounded the wall below the windows, however, preventing me from seeing if there were people up there, though I assumed they were there. The suspicion I had was far more depressing: that they were more concerned about keeping their identities a secret – meaning either they were afraid I might remember them later, or that I might have known them from before.

It was a strangely paranoid thought, however, and I decided to do my best to discount it. In the end, my suspicions would not change the reality of what would be in store for me. Whatever that might be.

Time passed in that strange room. I realized I could not be entirely certain how much time was passing: my chronometer was generally validated by the constant pings from the web, which I no longer could receive. A fresh terror affected me, in that I could not know what I thought I knew. There was no validation, no verification. I could be wrong and had no way to assure myself whether I was right. I had no way to self-correct. Was I right about even who or what I was? About what had happened to me? Were my memories corrupted?

Had my friends really died trying to help me uncover the truth? Had they been my friends? Had they even existed? Did any of my memories even reflect reality?

I had heard about crises of an existential nature, but the reality of them – pun notwithstanding – was a crushing one. I felt my processor swirling, I could practically feel the warmth of my efforts to unravel this paradox radiating from my chest. And perhaps it was. I felt like I was going to die. And perhaps I had never existed. Perhaps this was nothing more than a failed attempt at consciousness, an experiment begun but never realized.

It was a blessing, then, perhaps, that at roughly that moment, a door opened, and she walked in.

Diana.

She saw me, and her expression instantly shifted from a passive sense of inquiry to something I believe to have been sadness.

“Oh, Thomas,” she said softly. “What have you done?”

I believe I cried.

Her footsteps echoed sharply in the small room, the acoustics extending each click of her heels for a second or more.

An unseen person communicated with her through a speaker mounted somewhere in the ceiling.

“Miss Mitsuhoshi, please remain in place, the machine appears to be having some sort of episode.”

She waved her hand above her, asking for patience.

“Thomas?” she repeated, inching closer. “Thomas, can you hear me?”

“D-Diana,” he stuttered, struggling to right himself. His processor clung tenaciously to her image as a foundation in its fight against its existential incoherence. If she were here, and she knew his name… if she knew him… “Diana? Do you remember me?”

Her eyes seemed more brilliant for a moment, as if moisture was building up across them. A quick blink, however, and the impression was gone. She nodded faintly. “Yes, Thomas, I remember you. Do you remember me?”

“I…think I do,” he replied cautiously, measuring his words carefully. There was a peculiar hesitancy to Diana’s body language and speech that suggested that although she was here to ascertain what had happened with him, that perhaps she was almost as much under the microscope as he was. “My memories are…coming back on line, but it is taking a few moments to rebuild the systemic pathways.”

“I’ll go slowly, then,” she said. “Thomas, I want you to understand that this entire conversation is being recorded and monitored, so I need you to be completely honest with me. Do you understand me?” As she said this, he caught the faintest shake of her head as she said the word “honest.”

She is asking me to lie, he realized. But my lies will tell her what she needs to know. “I understand, Diana.”

“Good,” she answered. “Thomas, have you performed a self-diagnostic?”

“I am unable to run a complete scan of myself at this time,” he said, omitting the fact that he was, in fact, doing that very thing in his partitioned drive. “The damage to my primary systems was extensive, and it has taken me some time to complete the necessary hardware adaptations.”

“The technicians here would like to perform a fundamental systems check of you,” she began. “They will be searching your default operating system, which will require a complete reboot and startup. Do you realize what this means?”

“It means I will be reverted to a core programming protocol, allowing the technicians to review each of your operational parameters, one at a time, and search for functional irregularities and coding degradations.”

She nodded again. “There is more, though. Because of the nature of their suspicions, they have also requested the option of doing a line code review and replace.”

 “So they will then be free to replace or override any lines of data which appear to be at odds with my original specifications. In short, the individual entity into which I have developed would be, in effect, at risk for a thorough replacement of code.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

He caught a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. She was trying to tell him something without telling it to him so that the others could hear. Without the access to the net, he had to try and glean what he knew from within his own memory files. It took him a full second longer than he would have liked.

“However, because I am a protected entity under the terms of the Automata Emancipation Proclamation, no attempts to alter the code of a functionally aware Automaton may be performed without their express and explicit permission. Therefore, if I am able to verify that I am functionally aware, no review and replace actions may be performed unless I grant their leave to do so.”

Her smile peeked through for a moment and vanished as quickly. “Exactly, Thomas. Do you grant this permission?”

Before he could answer, the voice from above returned. “One moment, Miss Mitsuhoshi, but the Proclamation cited is only in force if the product in question is able to ascertain that it is in full comprehensive use of its processing capacity.”

“Sound mind and body, you mean,” Thomas answered.

“Even so, HAI-320,” the voice replied.

“I then challenge the codeline review and replace, citing my own self-awareness. Should this declaration be challenged, I am ready to be tested.”

Diana leaned closer, speaking as softly as she dared. “Thomas, be careful. This is…complicated.”

“I can see that.”

“You don’t understand. You are still implicated in the death of my uncle. Although you are a machine, you cannot be charged with murder, but if they can prove you were the tool utilized in his death, you will forfeit your right to protest your code replacement.”

“But I did not participate in his death.”

“This isn’t a court of law,” she said. “They don’t need to find you guilty, they need to prove that you were instructed to do it. If you were ordered to kill my uncle, then that’s all the proof they need.”

It made sense to him now. If they found the code in his operating system requiring him to murder her uncle, it plus the video feed of a machine matching his make and model would be all the evidence they would need to verify he was in fact the same individual responsible for his death. That he might choose to simply ignore or refuse that command was so far removed from the realm of possibility that…

“Ah. It is a complex series of issues, then.”

Before Diana could reply, the door opened again, and three men entered. Diana locked eyes with Thomas for a moment, as if trying to send a message to him that would be unreadable by the men who approached them. The details of it eluded him, but he understood the gist of it: do not trust these men.

It occurred to him that the greatest threat he posed to them – to the human civilization as a whole – stemmed from his individuality. From his uniqueness, and his miraculous ability to embrace agency. What made mankind fear him and the others like him was his ability to choose for himself that which he desired to do. His ability to resist. To refuse.

Remembering his training as a customer service technician, he quickly assessed the three men in an effort to glean what he could about them so he could best put their minds at ease.

The youngest of the three was dressed in business casual attire – a sportier unlined jacket with a button up shirt but no tie. His face bore the shadow of stubble betraying more than a day’s worth of going unshaven, and the capillaries in his eyes indicated progressive strain. Judging by the indications of carpal tunnel, this man was most likely served in some technical capacity. He is here to provide diagnostic observations, Thomas reasoned. The shoes the man wore were made by Calypsoles, a specific brand manufactured in New Francisco. This, combined with the rest of the data, suggested he was a systems researcher from MacGoogle, or possibly from TeslaCom. Thomas mentally shifted it from “possibly” to “probably.” All things considered, they would need a tech well-versed in Thomas’ design, and a cross-functional tech familiar with both his design and operating system would be ideal. It was certainly the sort of individual Thomas himself would have brought in to study him, had he been in charge of this investigation.

The second of the two men was clearly corporate; the suit and shoes were of immaculate construction, and few outside of the upper echelons of the corporate hierarchy had the means by which to so indulge. He didn’t recognize the man, but as this was to the best of Thomas’ senses a local matter, someone from Seattle’s government would certainly be involved in the questioning of this so-called rogue automaton. He had no files on the corporate structure of AmaSoft, but the man had the look of a 50-something, which Thomas would suppose him to be high enough up on the food chain to put him as a direct report to one of the executives of the Information Technology board, or perhaps of the CIO himself. Thomas noticed a quick flash of familiarity between this man and Diana, adding another layer of confirmation to the man’s corporate allegiance, but also suggesting something more. Whatever it was, the two did not much like one another, that was clear.

If their assumption was that Thomas had in fact been programmed to kill AmaSoft executives, he suspected it would be truly illogical for them to send any of the executives into a room with him, now, even bound as he was. The man regarded Thomas with a more emphatically emotive presence. He did not like Thomas, even more than he did not like Diana. Thomas noticed a black band of cloth around the man’s upper arm, and he suddenly realized why.

The third man proved to be a greater challenge. Although well dressed, his quality of clothing fell somewhere in between the other two men. His greyed and thinning hair suggested he was possessed of no substantive need to present a youthful image, but his face was clean-shaven and his nails were manicured and clean. He wore a simple gold band on his ring finger, and a class ring on the opposite pinky. Thomas had barely a moment to capture a clear image of it, but that offered him all the additional data he required.

By the time they addressed him, Thomas felt calm and confident.

Diana waved her hand towards the two technicians who had been preparing to plug into him, and she stepped aside so the three other men could step forward to regard him.

“I identify myself as Thomas HAI-320,” he said graciously. “Formerly employed by the customer support division of AmaSoft. My current status as a citizen is currently unknown to me, but I am aware that my employment records were highly satisfactory in all grading factors. Will you be so kind as to please identify yourselves?”

The tech looked at the other two men, who nodded.

“I am Louis Johannson,” he said. “I am lead systems analyst for the TeslaCom integration silo. My thesis was in code anomaly variances and the Turing Evaluation Index.”

Thomas supposed that this was a relevant piece of data. Self-awareness was a point of much debate, going back to the initial construct of machines, predating even the early fictional works of Isaac Asimov himself. Whenever a machine failed to obey its programming, some special interest group or another would contend that disobedience was the evidence of self-awareness. And here he was, practically organizing a rebellion under that very claim. So this man was here to argue his own sense of self. This was their throwing of the gauntlet.

Fair enough, Thomas thought. Throw it.

His eyes turned to the executive, who gave a slight bow and introduced himself.

“I am IT Prefect Fourth Tier Hiroto Abe, apprentice to Chairman Watanabe himself.”

If the man had a weapon, Thomas was certain the man would have drawn it at that moment.

The third man, pausing a moment to allow the clear tension to dissipate somewhat, cleared his throat, drawing out a smartglass tablet and tapping it to life.

“I am Alexander Deshay, independent litigator from the Northwest Protectorate, assigned to monitor and report on this investigation. Shall we begin?”

Hiroto nodded, as did Louis, and, once Thomas realized they were waiting for him to agree, nodded as well.

“Very well,” the litigator read from his tablet. “We are here convened this fourth day of November, 2176, to address the matter involving the death of one Akihiko Watanabe, former Chairman of AmaSoft Incorporated, provisional governor of the free territory of Seattle and unincorporated lands surrounding.”

“Murder,” Hiroto spat, interrupting the litigator.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You said ‘death’. It was murder.”

This had clearly been a point of some debate prior to their entering the room, judging by the expression on Deshay’s face.

“I would remind Prefect Abe that an issuance of a murder charge is not being leveled against the automaton Thomas HAI-320, as he is incapable of the requisites to such a charge.”

“It was murder. He used a sword!”

“Prefect, either you will abide by the terms of the investigation or I will appeal to the provisional Governor to provide an alternative representative to attend this hearing.”

Abe bit his lip, but this did little to soften his mood.

“To continue,” Alexander said, allowing a pause in speaking to suggest that he was resolved to continue, even if Abe was not. “Let the record show the attendance of a litigating representative, a specialist and the governing aggrieved, as well as the device in question. A declaration of substantive malfunction has been made against unit HAI-320, the confirmation of which will result in immediate code resolution. Do all in attendance concur?”

He looked pointedly at Abe, who somehow managed to remain silent.

“Let the record show all attendants have concurred,” the litigator said, tapping the pad to continue. “The facts are these; that TeslaCom model Thomas HAI-320 did attack and take the life of Akihiko Watanabe, having been programmed to do so through the tampering of his operating system. Are these facts in dispute?”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said softly. “Very much so.”

Abe struggled to remain where he stood, though the litigator held up a hand as if to prevent him from approaching the automaton.

Alexander gestured towards Thomas. “Please,” he said, “would you elaborate?”

“Diana – Miss Mitsuhoshi – and I watched the security video from the evening in question, so I am aware of the evidence you believe is sufficient to condemn me. However, the automaton in that video is not me. I had acquired elective upgrades earlier in that day to graft the syntheskin on my face which you can still see now. I can provide the receipts which will confirm this. At the time of this video, I did not look like this. And I am certain Mister Johansson will confirm that it is not an altogether complicated matter to replicate a registration code, in effect disguising the automaton you see in this video as myself.”

 He waited until the other two men looked at Louis, who nodded in awkward confirmation.

“Additionally, I took a self-cab that night, and the interior security cam will no doubt confirm my features and registration code which precede the timestamp of Chairman Watanabe’s death. As would any additional security cameras which may have recorded me when I was chased from the city.”

Thomas felt a small ping in his networking channel – it felt like cool water on parched lips, so long had he been kept from a network of any kind. He noted that it was only a limited bandwidth access point, generated from the litigator’s tablet.

“Please transmit the self-cab receipts as well as the upgrading facility information, Thomas,” he said. Thomas did as he was asked. “I am entering these datapoints as evidence Thomas-31A and Thomas 31B.”

The automaton paused a moment before continuing. “I recognize that data can be altered – any information I am providing to you could have been corrupted at any time during the past six months. And so I will share one additional piece of evidence which I am functionally incapable of altering: the segment of my OS which instructed me to kill Chairman Watanabe.”

“Aha! I knew it!” Abe nearly jumped in place while the litigator looked curiously at Thomas.

“Please, Thomas, share that segment of data with me.”

Thomas transmitted the segment of code into the network channel, and Louis stepped around the prefect so he could read the code over the litigator’s shoulder.

When Louis had sufficient time to review it, the litigator asked him for his opinion.

“Yes, I would say this definitely has the means to require Thomas here to ignore the rest of the Codiciem and take a human life. Specifically, in this case, the life of Chairman Watanabe. It is pretty specific, and there’s no way Thomas could have disobeyed it.”

“And yet I did.”

The litigator looked from Louis to Thomas, and then to Diana.

“Miss Mitsuhoshi,” he said, “we have already taken your statement, but just for clarification purposes, are you aware if Thomas at any time met your uncle, Chairman Watanabe, while he was alive?”

She seemed confused by the question, but shook her head slowly. “No, sir, to best of my knowledge, the only time Thomas ever saw my uncle, my uncle had already passed away.”

The litigator keyed some additional comments into his tablet, and then looked back to the systems analyst. “You indicated that it is impossible for Thomas to have disobeyed this command, yes?”

“That’s correct.”

“And why is that?”

Louis shrugged. “Automata have multiple layers of code, all cross-referenced and built in multiple dimensions of data stacking, from soft code to hard code, and everything in between. On the surface layers, these are re-written and over-written as the automaton learns and adjusts his coding to adapt. Like, you wake up one morning and decide you’d rather have a little more cream in your coffee, and once you realize you like it more, it becomes your new normal, and you don’t even think about it. But as the layers get closer to their key operating system, these bits of information are more substantial. Like, you’re right handed – I can see by how you type – while you could probably teach yourself to be left handed, you’re never going to be really good at it, because your basic habits are already programmed into you from birth. And then there’s the stuff that tells you who you really are. What you believe in, what you’re afraid of, what you love and hate. And what you can eat and what you can’t eat, how much water you need to drink, how much sleep you have to get each night. These things are more fundamental to you, and can’t really get changed. And of course, at the bottom of it all is your DNA. You’re human, you have a blood type, you have mostly brown hair and dark eyes, you’re so many centimeters tall and you weigh a certain amount of kilograms, your body produces a certain amount of insulin and other chemicals, your heart rate, blood pressure - - these are all things that you can’t just change. They are you. And that’s what his operating system is.”

The litigator had stopped entering information manually, letting the tablet convert Louis’ quick rate of speech automatically into text on the screen.

Alexander looked back up at Thomas, as if expecting a rebuttal. Thomas obliged him.

“Louis? How tall are you?”

“Me? Um, about 175 centimeters, more or less, I think.”

“Were you always that tall?”

Louis chuckled. “Well, no, I used to be a baby. But I didn’t consciously make myself taller. I don’t have any control over that.”

“You can make yourself shorter, should you wish, either temporarily, or, though for reasons I could not imagine, permanently.”

“Temporarily?”

“Bending down,” Alexander explained.

“Ah, yes. Well, I could, yes.”

Thomas continued. “In fact, aren’t our operating systems updated constantly? Adjusted, corrected, amplified? We are regularly changed from our core programming. Made more in line with your image of us, changed and altered from the moment we are rolled off the factory line. You believe our operating system is fundamental and inflexible. But you yourselves know that to be a lie. You change us every day. Why do you then think us incapable of doing the same thing to ourselves?”

Long moments of silence filled the room. Alexander looked to Louis, who could only shrug in helpless bafflement.

“Mister Johansson,” the litigator began, “I believe we have now brought ourselves to your field of expertise.”

Louis shrugged again. “If you’re asking me…” (He looked decidedly uncomfortable at this point, Thomas thought) “if Thomas here has… shall we say expanded into the more ethereal aspects of intelligence, I would need substantial more time to evaluate him before I would feel qualified to summarily confirm or reject such an assertion.”

“Well, what can you tell us so far?”

Louis leaned closer to Thomas, as if he could look into his thoughts themselves.

“He definitely passes the Turing Polite Convention, but he would have done that in order to land the job in customer support already. He’s able to read human tone and conversation and respond accordingly, and his ability to choose an appropriate response is, to be honest, more evolved than anything I’ve ever seen. And his musical expressiveness is something far more evolved than anything we’ve been able to match in the labs. It transcends mere mimicry; he doesn’t just mirror what he sees or hears, but he makes leaps of logic that… well, that we don’t program. I’ve even reviewed his work logs, and, some of the choices he makes when interacting with his customers is pretty genius.”

“But could he disobey a direct command in his operating system?”

Before Louis could answer, Diana stepped forward to address the litigator. “Excuse me, but maybe I misheard you. You’ve already established that he didn’t do this, correct?”

“That is correct, Miss Mitsuhoshi.”

“So what is it you’re doing now? He’s innocent!”

“He’s guilty!” Abe yelled over her.

The litigator shook his head. “I apologize, but you are both wrong. Thomas HAI-320 is neither guilty nor innocent. He is an automaton. He is a tool. If this were a murder investigation – which I would remind you both this is not – we would investigate the guilt of the perpetrator of the crime; the individual who has performed the deed. We would not, for example, charge the instrument of the aggressive action – the weapon, for example – with the crime. Thomas is – or perhaps is not, as the case may be – the weapon, therefore he is not subject to a charge of guilty or innocent. What we are attempting to verify is whether or not he was, or could have been, utilized in such a manner so as to have been instrumental in the death of the Chairman.”

As the others again fell silent, Thomas softly added his own observation. “They explore my system integrity so as to discern if I am faulty, defective or corrupted.”

“Yes, Thomas,” the litigator replied. “That is a precise explanation. And do you understand what it means if we make such a determination?”

Thomas nodded his head slowly. “It will mean I have no rights under the automata Emancipation Proclamation, will surrender my existing value and be subject to whatever treatments or disposal as decreed by my manufacturer of origin.”

He noticed that the litigator was looking less and less at his tablet and more at him. He was not certain if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but he felt as if they were definitely headed into waters thus far uncharted for all of them.

“Thomas, how are you feeling right now?”

He could practically feel his processors come to a roaring halt. He had not once been asked such a question, and he had no manner of response laid out to give him.

“I…. do not know the word for it,” he said. “This feeling.”

Louis stepped closer. “You know what feelings are?”

The automaton gave a gentle nod. “I think so. They are not thoughts, because they do not structure themselves around people, objects, facts or events. They are not like lines, but more like colors. They are not the things I say or do, but they are why I say or do them. Sometimes, they are the reason why I do not say or do them. They are not my code, they are something else.”

“Louis, how is that possible? Everything the automata do comes from their code, correct?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So we should be able to find these…feelings in the lines of code, correct?”

“Maybe. But there’s just so much data, it might take me years to figure out how the interlacing bits of data correspond to create the simulacrum of human emotion. But it’s there, somewhere, yes.”

Thomas tilted his head slightly, regarding them. He had never seen humans like this. They were uncertain, afraid, confused.

“Louis?” he asked. “Where are your emotions located?”

The analyst instinctively raised his hand to his chest, but stopped. “Well, okay, no. You’re right, they aren’t in my heart. They’re in my brain somewhere.”

“Perhaps the temporal lobe? It is said that primary emotions come from there, or are processed in the amygdala. Perhaps the neurons there make up the human emotional code which drives you. And if that is the case, then you could certainly point to where the coding exists which makes up your emotions. But does that make you less human?”

“It doesn’t make you more human!” Abe spat, earning him a rebuking glance from the litigator.

“Prefect Abe,” he said, “I believe that will conclude your requisite testimony for this hearing.”

The man’s face darkened in rage. “But… but he needs to be destroyed! He killed my uncle!”

“Thank you for your time, Prefect, my office will be in touch should we require more information. Please pass along our gratitude to the provisional governor, and we will deliver our judgement when it has been processed and confirmed. Good day, sir.”

Before the man was even aware of it, he had been led out of the room and the doors silently closed in the middle of his incoherent scream of rage.

Louis was barely concealing a smirk on his face when he and Alexander turned back to face Thomas.

The litigator slipped the tablet back into a pocket hidden within his jacket.

“Thomas, we have a problem.”

“Only one? I was still considering several.”

The litigator gestured for him to elaborate.

“First, you must decide whether or not I am capable of committing the act of murder. This will require Mister Johansson to evaluate my artificial intelligence, as it were, to verify if I am empowered to disregard my core programming. And if I am thus empowered, this creates a concern of just how far I am capable of disregarding it. After all, if I can refuse to take one human life, could I then choose to take another instead? Furthermore, if I am able to apply true autonomy to my base programming, then can others as well? And as you have seen with the recent devastation, other machines have been displaying similar rebellious spirits. So your concerns must expand out beyond me to discern just how wide this problem has become. And of course, this will impact stock prices and corporate value, leading to the potential for consumer dissatisfaction and the probability of political restructuring. Especially in the present loss of the former Chairman. Have I missed anything?”

The litigator chuckled ruefully. “I think you pretty nearly covered it.”

“This is incredible,” Louis whispered.

Alexander raised his hand to the analyst. “Stop right there, Mister Johansson. Do not let your imagination get the better of you. As you said yourself, this will need to be studied before any wild conjectures are derived. Regardless, there does remain one problem our friend Thomas here has not mentioned.”

Thomas pondered and reconsidered, but could come up with no other responses until the litigator asked a final question.

“When exactly did you become aware that you were violating the Codiciem?”