2077: V really knows how awesome he is

Just as V was about to struggle, he heard Michiko Arakasaka's voice, which was trembling with sobs.

“V, Aunt Hua Zi committed suicide.”

"how come?!"

“She destroyed the Arasaka family’s digital backups—mine, hers, my grandfather’s, everyone’s—and then shot herself.”

V paused for a moment, then quickly realized: "Because that's not the real person at all, right?"

"That's right, that's not the real person at all. The Arasaka family spent a lot of manpower and resources thinking they would achieve immortality, but it turned out to be just a cybernetic illusion. The digital backup is just a digital backup; it's just a string of data written in code, an AI created based on a living person! V, my father is dead, my mother is dead, my uncle is dead, my grandfather is dead, my aunt is dead, even Kenichi Saburo, who always protected me, is dead. I'm the only one left in our lineage. I'm all alone. Maybe I should die, or maybe I've already died. I'm also an AI simulated by a string of code, but I just don't know it!"

V was somewhat embarrassed because at least half of the people that Michiko Arasaka mentioned were killed by her, and some were even killed twice.

Out of guilt, she turned around, grabbed Michiko Arasaka's shoulders, and said sincerely, "Ms. Michiko, I don't know how to comfort you. But what I want to say is that I approve of you as a person, whether you are an AI or not."

Michiko Arakawa wept with joy; in this period of isolation and helplessness, V's approval was incredibly important to her.

She buried her face in V's chest and kept saying "thank you," which made V feel a little awkward.

After all, it was her fault that Michiko Arasaka was isolated and helpless, and now she's even thanking herself, making V suspect that she has Stockholm syndrome.

But then I realized that most Japanese people are like that, so V felt relieved.

"Go to sleep." V stroked Michiko Arasaka's hair. "Everything will be alright when you wake up tomorrow morning."

"Ah."

the next day.

To retract my earlier statement, waking up won't make things better at all; in fact, it will make things much more troublesome.

Because Michiko Arasaka did not return to her own bed, the result was... the two of them fought until dawn.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck!"

V quietly put on her clothes and left the room like a thief.

She had just caught her breath when a hand patted her on the shoulder.

"Hey V, you're up early! How about grabbing a drink before the meeting starts?"

It's Meredith Stock.

V was almost scared to death by her.

"No, drinking so early in the morning is too decadent. The military technology team didn't send you here for pleasure-seeking; you should be working hard!"

???

The blonde, slicked-back-hair mature woman was left completely bewildered by the scolding.

Drinking alcohol first thing in the morning is decadent? Then who drinks tequila like it's morning tea?

Meredes Stock looked V up and down.

V feigned composure: "What are you looking at?"

You're acting a little strange today.

"What's wrong?"

"Too noble, like a saint. Like the post-coital sage's moment after masturbating."

The blonde, slicked-back-hair woman was as eloquent as ever.

V's lips twitched, and he was about to lose his composure when Joanne Koch appeared, yawning.

“Hey, Koch!” V said as if grasping at a straw: “Let’s go to the conference room together, and let Stock go drink by himself.”

“Drinking alcohol so early in the morning isn’t good for your health,” Joanne Koch said casually, then asked, “Where’s Michiko? Isn’t she up yet?”

“Uh,” V paused for a moment and said, “She’s… feeling a little unwell.”

"Do you need my help?"

"No need, she said she just needs to rest."

"Okay, feel free to ask if you need anything."

"Thanks, Koch."

The three of them walked together toward the conference room.

V looked at Meredith Stock with disdain: "Didn't you say you wanted to go for a drink?"

The latter shrugged: "It's too pathetic to drink alone. Let's drink together after the meeting. Remember that little wildcat we met yesterday? I'm definitely going to win her over tonight!"

"You're just bragging. That little wildcat clearly doesn't even look at your type, right, Koch?"

Joanne Koch turned her head, but instead of answering, she asked V, "You slept with Michiko Arasaka?"

"Cough cough cough!" V coughed violently.

Joanne Koch nodded. "Looks like it's on."

“I didn’t!” V denied loudly.

Meredith Stock nodded in agreement: "Looks like it's not just once."

"Damn it, you two!"

“Don’t worry.” Meredith Stock gave a thumbs-up, revealing his gleaming teeth. “I told you before, we’ll keep it from Sasha.”

"No, listen to me..."

"Shouldn't we keep this a secret?"

"...No, please keep it a secret for me, thank you so much."

The theme of today's meeting is the future of humanity.

According to AI calculations, if the Earth's population continues to grow and humanity cannot leave the solar system within 150 years, it will perish due to environmental destruction and resource depletion.

The Lunar Cloud Mare Base was built for this purpose. It is a comprehensive scientific research base with a diameter of 715 kilometers built in the cloud mare basin on the near side of the moon. At first, it consisted only of scientific research facilities such as a research center, data matrix, and ecological farm, with the sole purpose of exploring a suitable path for human space colonization.

However, with the influx of more and more capital, the structure and function of the Cloud Sea Base completely spiraled out of control. The number of scientific research facilities was gradually reduced, while commercial establishments such as space casinos, space hotels, space clinics, and space red-light districts proliferated rapidly. By around 2070, the Cloud Sea Base had become a money pit for the rich and a tool for further exploiting and oppressing the poor.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is certainly unwilling to see this situation, and at every meeting it has been asking major companies to return to their original mission. However, due to profit-driven motives and competitive spirit, the ESA's words have little effect, and the major companies continue to do things their own way.

The speaker at the meeting gave the same old presentation, and after listening for a while, V realized that the main issue was still about technology sharing.

With current human technology, we are already capable of colonizing the solar system. The High Knights Group's colony base on Mars proves humanity's ability to expand into deep space.

The main challenge in breaking through the solar system now lies not in the long-standing problems of materials and energy, but in the construction of the ecosystem.

Space colonization is a long journey, and ensuring the basic needs of the crew members are met becomes a problem that must be overcome.

Reality isn't a fantasy movie where pressing a button puts a person into hibernation for hundreds or thousands of years; that's simply impossible. Therefore, creating an ecosystem capable of autonomous production and recycling within the colony spaceship became the final piece of the puzzle for the entire space colonization plan.

Space agriculture, air and water recycling systems, waste recycling systems, hazardous pollution cleanup systems, and environmentally friendly material production lines—these are the key factors preventing humanity from reaching the stars.

Similar technologies do exist, but they are too primitive. They might work on Earth, but they are simply unreliable for space travel that can take hundreds of years.

The reason for not improving is simply because it's not profitable.

In the highly capital-driven year of 2077, nobody wants to do something so thankless. Initially, everyone thought these things wouldn't be a problem with technological advancements, but as the 150-year deadline approached and nothing was achieved, the bigwigs began to feel a sense of crisis and increased their investment in this area. The current situation is that while major companies have made some breakthroughs, they haven't been able to achieve a qualitative change.

Technology sharing has been proposed, but the question of who should lead its implementation and where it should be carried out remains unresolved. We give you all the technology, agreeing that you fly first and then help everyone else fly, but what happens if you fly alone?

After all this fuss, we've come full circle, back to the same old routine: everyone arguing and dragging things out, choosing to believe in the wisdom of their descendants.

Having understood all this, V made up her mind. After the speaker finished speaking, she spoke:

"How about letting Night City take on the task of developing ecological technology? What do you all think?"

Chapter 53 Two Futures

Even before defeating Saburo Arasaka, V had already considered the future of Night City.

The results were quite harsh. With the technological level of 2077, out of Night City's more than 700 million people, only about 2 were scientific research talents who were still useful. The remaining 698 million people were completely useless to the city and could be "optimized".

In this highly intelligent era, AI can do almost any job, from construction workers to artists, from delivery drivers to municipal officials; machines can replace humans and do it better than humans.

Some people once predicted that AI would never be able to do creative work, but with the gradual maturation and popularization of AI writing and drawing, the taboo of "creativity" that humanity is so proud of has been broken.

The good news is that current AI cannot truly engage in scientific research, but the bad news is that it is not incapable. This is just a deliberate measure taken by humans to ensure data security. As long as we are willing to feed AI enough data, even scientific research will be replaced by AI.

This is even after the "early internet crash," in which human society lost a great deal of technology. If it weren't for that disaster, humans would probably have been completely replaced by AI long ago.

Although everyone says that the legendary hacker Bartelmos sent the virus to destroy the initial network in order to rebel against the company, V thinks that Bartelmos should have seen the threat that AI posed to humanity and acted preemptively.

Unfortunately, once one mirror shattered, it became many more. The AI, which was originally under human control, spiraled out of control, growing wildly and becoming a rampaging AI that slaughtered humanity. Bartmouth was indeed highly skilled and far-sighted, but he only calculated that destroying the Initial Web could temporarily slow down the development of AI; he failed to foresee that the AI ​​would also take advantage of the destruction of the Initial Web to break free from human control.

Barthemos may have simulated 1000 scenarios before making this decision, but unfortunately there are only 1001 possible scenarios now.

Humans have their limits, even hacker god Barthes Moss has them, let alone ordinary people.

It's a bit far-fetched.

What V wants to say is that AI replacing humans is inevitable and is already happening. In the process of initial elimination, how humans and AI coexist is the main contradiction of human society in the new era, and it is also the primary problem that Night City must solve.

After killing Saburo Arasaka, V's financial wealth did not increase much, but his material wealth had reached a level that ordinary people could not even imagine.

To put it simply, if V wanted to, she could single-handedly support the 700 million people of Night City. They wouldn't need to work or study; all they could do every day was eat, drink, have fun, and have children. Calculations show that V's existing material wealth could support them for a full 142 years. If we also consider the cyclical production of material wealth, then this time would become truly "infinite."

V only received a small portion of Arasaka's assets. Consider the leaders of those large corporations; it's no joke that one of them can support an entire country.

This is why companies don't treat people like human beings. In the eyes of the gods high above, humans are literally worthless. The value they create in their entire lives is truly less than that of a beef cattle, a fruit tree, or a barrel of methanol.

V only realized this fact after entering this circle, which completely overturned her previous understanding. She even changed her traditional impression of the company's big bosses as cold and ruthless, and instead felt that they were very gentle and kind - they clearly had the ability to eliminate 90% of humanity with a single sentence, but they let these useless people run around.

Then V laughed.

She laughed at her own unique way of thinking. To come up with such a reason to excuse those big shots, she shouldn't have gone to work for Arasaka in the first place; she should have gone to News Channel 54 instead.

As V has said before, no matter how advanced the technology becomes, the service industry will not be replaced by AI, because some sense of accomplishment and satisfaction can only be obtained by enslaving and oppressing one's fellow human beings.

The gods atop the tower call themselves gods, but in reality, they are still human. Humans need recognition, and ordinary people are their source of this spiritual fulfillment. It's like an online game: a game entirely populated by pay-to-win players would be a disaster for the operator. To keep these big spenders satisfied, there must be enough ordinary players to be exploited and abused by the paying players; otherwise, they won't quit and will continue to spend money.

Human society is like a large-scale online game, so the same principle applies here.

Based on this, the first future that V found for Night City was the service industry.

The first stage is basic service industries, including wholesale and retail, accommodation and catering, transportation and logistics, transmission and communication, medical and health care, residential services, community services, and personalized services;

The second phase is productive service industries, including financial insurance, business negotiation, repair and renovation, green services, cultural and sports entertainment, and digital services.

The service industry may not be high-end enough, but it's the only sector that can avoid AI. You might be excited about food delivery robots now, but in the not-too-distant future when AI is ubiquitous, you'll eventually grow tired of the coldness of machines and miss the warmth of humans.

Just like in the early days of the Second Industrial Revolution, people would fight tooth and nail for a piece of machine-made yarn, but today, the most luxurious items must be entirely handmade, or at least touted as so.

If this bag had been crafted by a dozen artisans over six months, its value would be even higher.

Are wealthy people really spending money to buy a handbag? No, they are spending money to buy the services, time, and lives of these dozen or so artisans.

To reiterate, some pleasures must be derived from the enslavement and oppression of one's fellow human beings. This is something etched into human genes and has nothing to do with knowledge, wealth, status, or position. As long as one is human, one has this need.

Therefore, V wants to transform Night City into a city of services, and in order to attract wealthy people, a beautiful and safe urban environment is essential.

With today's technology, creating artificial landscapes is easy; the challenge lies in creating natural landscapes.

Mountains and rivers, flowers and trees, temperature and humidity, rain and snow—Night City doesn't meet any of these criteria, which necessitates human intervention. Although major companies' ecological technologies are intended for space colonization, using Night City as a pilot project is certainly worthwhile.

This is why V proposed that Night City undertake the task of developing the ecosystem.

Major companies are wary of each other, but they can certainly feel at ease when facing a Night City.

V defeated Saburo Arasaka, but the latter only deployed one-fifth of his forces. Furthermore, due to Taihou's defection, the fleet led by Shoukaku was likely only one-tenth of Arasaka's total military strength.

Even so, Night City still won by a narrow margin. If V really dared to take the technology from various companies and leave on his own, then if companies all over the world united, it would probably take less than 5 minutes to destroy Night City.

Faced with V's proposal, the company representatives were all somewhat tempted, and the spokesperson for the European Space Agency was overjoyed, constantly encouraging V.

The meeting lasted the entire morning. During the lunch break, each representative called their superiors to explain the situation. When the meeting resumed in the afternoon, V's proposal was quickly passed with 16 votes in favor and 2 abstentions.

V was not surprised by this result.

Just as Dogtown served as a buffer zone for the various factions in Night City, the world also needs a buffer zone like Night City.

Who is most eager for space colonization?

They are not ordinary people at the bottom, but the big shots at the very top.

They most want technology sharing, but the middle class is unwilling to give up their interests. This stalemate has left the bigwigs really anxious.