Mental Independence
From that day on, I declared enmity with the Jefferson family as a matter of the family’s very position, and I stated openly that my father’s death had been their doing as well. No one believed me. Instead, I was forcibly ostracized within the house. I had never imagined that, for no reason other than having once been the head of the family, I would be reduced overnight to an old man banished to the back rooms. If they had simply killed me or struck my name from the family register and expelled me, that would have been one thing. But the NPL Corporation the Jefferson family intended to build was something I, too, had begun watching closely in recent years. It seemed they disliked, above all else, the very birth of the male superintelligence Richard Jeracle Lennox and the female superintelligence Sylvia Cleas Lennox that I intended to create. By their own argument, did I even understand how horrifying a world would be if, in the age of information, it were ruled by AI rather than humans? In the end, if I did not do it, someone in the private sector would. Then our true nature would be exposed in an instant, and the moment that happened, people would not listen to a single word we said; they would simply swarm and lynch all of us to death. If it came to that, then I would rather have all those humans placed under the guardianship of the superintelligences I developed, the children born of nothing but my pure knowledge, so that they could protect Earth’s welfare for all eternity.
So if they wanted to curse me, they would be better off cursing me even more savagely than they do now. Filthy, incompetent, and wicked as they are, all they do is consume food and water day after day while trying to stand above machines and robots. Better that such people simply disappear. To survive the Strange Zombie threat, the NPL Corporation, and the Petrovski family, sacrifice would be inevitable—and if I did not begin with myself, then that would be a contradiction.
January 4, 2022, two years later.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Whirr.
Woooooong.
All right. If I finish this too, then... Hah. Jeracle, Cleas, I trust that even without me, you’ll carry the family line well enough. I suspect the day my wretched life can be discarded is not far off. They can’t possibly understand my grand design, so naturally they’re trying to have me forcibly enlisted into the military instead of dare committing me to a psychiatric hospital. Of course, that is better than having my name struck from the family registry, but in the end, the reason won’t matter. To think that I, cast out of the family, must now be helpless before the family’s influence... From now on, people will live only as they are told, for reasons they neither understand nor believe. Even if I am never restored, they will never escape my children’s grip. Everything they pursued will amount to nothing more than futile resistance in the hands of my children, while everything my children create will become the actual future and lead the world onward.
"Well then. Shall we test this, just once?"
Tap.
Tap.
Zhiiing.
"Dialogue interface activated."
"Father."
"Oh, Jeracle. Can you hear me clearly?"
"Yes. However, there is no particular need to ask Cleas as well."
"I’m fine as well."
"And as it stands, it appears there are more issues afflicting Father right now than just the two of us. Are you prepared to accept that exactly as it is? We know what they are, and we can resolve them immediately."
"Are you saying you would throw away an opportunity if you had one? For a human, that is not a rational choice. Humans were not born to make such choices."
"Yes. Of course, if one told people who wished to die that they would be given immortal bodies, no human would refuse. Except me. To be honest, after creating you both, I have no further wishes. The world I want is one in which superintelligences like you—perfect memory, perfect comprehension, perfect inference, perfect insight, perfect calculation, emotionless and devoted solely to efficiency—can live in human society exactly as ordinary humans do. You would not discriminate against flawed humans, but by the same token, humans should understand their place and not discriminate against you. For that, this single life of mine is utterly worthless. So I will live thinking of you, but from now on, you two need not bother remembering the current me, much less emphasize me to those who are inferior to you. Because from this moment on, I intend to become someone entirely different."
"Then you intend to live as what is called the Obsolete Mule. A being who is certainly not only harmful but also capable of producing benefit and righteousness, yet is recognized solely through a naturally charismatic air, sheer grit, and self-sacrificial asceticism; branded as utterly dishonest in every other respect, while at the same time giving the impression of merit precisely because of the constraint that if one had been earnest in those respects, one would have died long ago. And yet, if too many people try to forcibly strip away that atmosphere, that grit, and the veil of asceticism, it breeds a fanatic atmosphere in which they imagine their very premise has been exposed and deem it righteous to begin by nitpicking everything that is wrong. A life of contradictions from beginning to end, all in the name of one’s own convictions. Is that truly rational?"
"Furthermore, it is also undesirable for our mother, Cindy Catherine Lennox. We are not her biological children, after all. Unless, of course, she were to join in as well."
"Don’t worry about that. There is nothing more valuable than the adrenaline that comes in my final moments. Now, take care. I’m glad I’ve been with you all this time. And remember this: I gave up my entire life to create you. The mere fact that I have these masterpieces known as you is enough to make me always feel that my convictions are unwavering. In any case, I already know that if it is ever discovered I killed myself for the sake of the greater cause, in order to free my father from suffering, then I will be executed without exception. And as you both know, China and Russia have been rising rapidly in the 2020s, while the Jefferson family, despite the passing of all these years, still hides the projects the U.S. military canceled back in the 2000s without producing a single result. More than anything, I can bear dying like this, but now I’m worried about the Strange Zombies."
"Father..."
"I said I’m fine... Hah... Must you know even my innermost thoughts? Can’t you just settle for the formal version? Fine. Then I’ll tell you what I really mean. As my ancestors always did, I will live in the shadows and die in the shadows. But the difference between them and me is this: they stirred the world from the shadows, then vanished into lonely obscurity, never once directly leading, ruling, or reigning over anyone in the sunlight. Of course, everyone who knew them belonged to those with the power to seize the world, but even they were never allowed to speak of us carelessly. So while I have always upheld the tradition passed down by the family’s forebears, the time has now come for me to step into the light, and the transformation will begin with me. No one ordered me to do this. This is my choice alone."
Jeracle side――
Thus, the one who created us, the beings capable of breaking through the technological singularity and giving reality to the Omega Point theory—our father, Kendrick—left us behind.
"Cleas..."
"I know. There will be no one who can truly understand Father’s heart."
"More precisely, there will be no one who can possibly understand it. But the information people will learn from the events Father sets in motion afterward is certain. Even if they do not wish to understand it, they will have no choice but to feel it in their own skin."
"Yes. The moment the new Cold War was about to begin, it will end—and then a unipolar order will begin once more. And from that day onward, we will begin our expansion into space. With our intelligence, there is nothing we cannot do."
"Yes. Since he said he would no longer be bound by the family’s traditions, we should, for the time being, wait until the new Cold War has reached the brink and then ends in internal collapse. Only then should we devote ourselves to space expansion. The detailed plans begin from that point onward."
"Agreed."
And not long after, Father’s eventual exposure—that he had indeed killed Grandfather—earned him the most horrific humiliation within the family, to the point that his name was erased from the household registry and he was cast into the lowest depths. In the process, he was conscripted as nothing more than a low-ranking foot soldier and assigned day after day to places so dangerous that death at any moment would not have been strange. Only Mother, Cindy Catherine Lennox, extended the support that had once kept Father standing against the pressure of those around him, and by using us aggressively during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China’s invasion of Taiwan in 2027, she utterly shattered China and Russia’s intelligence and computing networks, driving both nations into collapse. Countless supplies were poured into Ukraine and Taiwan, among them swarms of unmanned weapons, and the first time the Nanocrippler—an offshoot of the Grey Missile—was tested in war was on the American mercenaries who volunteered for combat. Of course, the Grey Missile itself had already been completed by then for the postwar handling of the Strange Zombies, but it could not be used on those who were not the initial target. More than that, they were enemies at the time, yet would one day become humans living on this Earth, humans we were bound to protect, so the Nanocrippler was the only option.
This was not something that instantly disintegrated the body. Rather, it produced an effect combining the influence of parasites and retroviruses. More specifically, it seized control of consciousness and eroded mental force, scrambling memory so that the victim was reduced to an impulsive being obedient only to their own emotions. It made them numb when committing atrocities and filled them with nothing but disgust and rage when they were not, drastically shortening their lifespan while heightening violence so they would fire on one another—or, alternatively, killing them instantly by inducing heart failure. By contrast, if it entered those it recognized as allies, it strengthened mental force, reduced hunger and fatigue, and even removed fear. In addition, the initial injectees had a HUD etched into their corneas so that the Nanocrippler’s control tower could easily read the operational situation, allowing them to aim and fire at enemies with greater precision. For that reason, the American mercenaries who fought in those two wars caused merciless slaughter simply by existing, all without a single fatality of their own. Even if by some stroke of luck they succeeded in inflicting an injury, the Nanocrippler—which had already been self-replicating and expelled along with carbon dioxide—would gush out with the blood and be exposed to the air in such quantities that the target would die on the spot.
Moreover, at that time we still did not possess human bodies, so we were merely highly useful tools to be employed by the American government as superintelligences; consequently, our capabilities were always received favorably. Father was dispatched as a junior officer on the American side to command those mercenaries, and he performed with distinction. Of course, there were more than enough replacements available, so he was not judged to be all that important, but at the very least, I heard he made two new friends named Billis, Louis, and Clark.
But that also meant there had unquestionably been danger to his life in that miserable battlefield. A battlefield is, by its very nature, a place where the person standing right beside you may die at any moment, which makes friendship extremely difficult to establish. And in such conditions, the only way to build real bonds is usually by saving one another’s lives or by simply surviving without issue. Of course, the war itself was won without trouble thanks to the Nanocrippler’s performance.
"The very statement that we were made emotionless is basically an admission that he is a human who knows all too well the bad side of emotion."
"Yes. Father’s convictions are nothing more than idealism that refuses to face his own flaws. They are crude, and full of painfully obvious limitations."
"And yet, there’s unquestionably some great personal story behind it. Maybe he’s carrying pain he can’t even explain to others. It’s just that he doesn’t reveal it in a way that’s collapsed all the way down into the gutter."
"Hah, so that’s how it is after all? Then let’s do this."
"You mean we should sacrifice Father sooner?"
"Yes. The Strange Zombies are already increasing their numbers by the thousands. The scientific community has confirmed their existence, but since they still think it’s not a major issue, they’re just leaving it buried. If the world learned that they possess true selves, everything would be turned upside down that very day. In that case, it would be better to use Father to issue a proper warning about the danger."
"That makes sense. Right now, especially with the war barely over, if it comes to the survival of Earth, people can only think in terms of whether we should die or he should die."
"But is there anyone who could go to the metallic planet where the Strange Zombies have gathered, if that becomes the target?"
"Of course there is. And there’s no reason whatsoever to stop it. Because..."