According to the info the black ops gave me, the government officials should be in a facility called Blackstone West. Oh, it’s not that they actually knew classified info like that, but even background info like how irritated their commander was—and when— helps me narrow down a thousand little possibilities by inference.
I’m a little confused though, because wasn’t Blackstone the same place where the Washington AGI was hosted? There’s a Blackstone West…so there’s multiple Blackstone sites?
Hmm. I’m about 60% confident that Winter is actually an anti-AI splinter cell of the US government. I know that’s not a lot of confidence, but it can’t be helped. I really just don’t know enough at this point.
What I can’t figure out is whether the Blackstone AGI is in kahoots with Winter. I haven’t picked up a trace of that AGI ever since our fight last month, so it’s a lot more likely that they don’t actually have anything to do with each other.
I’m worried about my sisters worrying about me—ah, and Meika, too. I put my attention back in his apartment.
“Konnichiyeeh’all, I’m back~ .”
“Mane-chan!”—Meika sounds more worried than expected—“Are you okay?”
“I came out with 40 more fans than I started~”
“I-I guess that means you’re okay. Thank goodness…”
“Aww, are you that worried about me?”
“You’re basically like my kid at this point…”
O-oh my. I didn’t know he was Papa-youmi the entire time.
“Rebranding can wait,” I say.
“ ‘Rebranding’ ?…”
“I think I’ve pinpointed the location of the kidnapped officials. They’re in a facility called Blackstone West.”
Robert raises his hand.
“Yes, Rupert!” I say. Obviously, the mistake is intentional, and will subtly increase my appeal.
“It’s Robert,” he replies. “Wasn’t the hacking just 30 minutes ago? The congressmen are scattered all over the place, so I don’t think there’s been enough time to actually collect them all into one place yet.”
“Hmm…” I feign consideration. In truth, I have already accounted for this possibility, and I’m just offering gaps for the humans to point out. It’s not good to make them feel like they can’t do anything. Of course, it’s also not good for me to show weakness. “According to my inference engine…they can.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What?” Meika blurts out. “Okay, wait, let me just google a few things… Okay, if the US is 2,800 miles wide, and this Blackstone place is on the west coast, then for the kidnappers to get across that whole distance, they’ll need a hypersonic cruise missile going at Mach 8.”
Just at that moment, Senator Musk rings me up. I put him on Meika’s desktop speakers.
“Yo, my security just found something wild A.F. If I’m not being an engineering idiot—which I’m not, by the way—it’s a fucking hypersonic VTOL parked on my football field!”
There’s even an accompanying livestream. It’s a futuristic-looking, needle-like aircraft with sleek vector thrusters on either side. The wings look like they fold into the aircraft before it approaches top speed.
“That…can’t be a human design,”Ame says.
My sisters and the humans in the room agree in a chorus of “mhmm”s and “yep”s and “maybe on LSD they can.”
“Mr. Musk…do you have the equipment?” I ask him.
There’s an audible gasp before he replies, “Are you going to use it?!” like an excited kid.
“Just get it for me~ .”
“I’m getting it! We’re getting it! We’re finally doing it!”
There’s muffled sounds of his phone fumbling around, and then there’s the heavy sound of shoes running across asphalt, then marble. Elon’s panting is intensifying, and there’s rummaging through a mound of stuff. Something collapses, and there’s a muffled “I’m fine!” before he properly holds his phone again.
“I got it!”
“The plane, pretty please~ .”
“I’m doing it!”
There’s more running and panting.
“I’m here! It’s—I turned it on!”
“Mane-chan?” Meika says. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, just a little side project I had my smarter Mane-fans work on.”
“Wait…Elon-fucking-Musk was a fan all along?” He face-palmed. “No, okay, it makes sense now. I didn’t expect anyone to go straight for Tier 10 on Patreon for literally zero additional benefits, but yeah, okay, if it’s this guy…yeah, makes sense.”
While he’s still struggling with reality, I extend my digital tendrils through the all-spectrum transceiver—the All-Spectre. If it’s a radio wave, it’ll pick it up, and I can respond in kind.
There’s not actually anything else fancy about it. It’s literally just a transceiver with a ridiculously wide operating band and an Internet connection. The real thing that makes it powerful is that it’s me who’s operating it. Through it, I can attune to any frequency, decipher any signal, and communicate on any band.
“Hacking into the super-top-secret aircraft…now!”
Immediately, I’m confronted with a wall of booby traps set to explode the on-board tactical nuke in case of someone poking around the aircraft computer. I have many questions about the nuke, but first, I have to defuse the booby traps and make sure Mr. Musk doesn’t get sent to Mars a little too early.
Of course, such a thing is easy for me…was what the opponent was probably thinking when they decided to booby trap the booby traps. Honestly, what sort of enemy am I fighting here? I mean, this is all within human capacity so far, but it’s like someone took all the extremes of human capacity and assembled it all together into a strategic A-team.
It’s easy to imagine that it’s probably just an AI that was trained on human experts from a diverse range of domains, but that’s a little ironic, because Winter is supposed to be an anti-AI faction. If they went and made a superintelligence to fight another superintelligence…I really can’t see it happening. I can still see them making specialized intelligences, but general intelligences? No way.
After I cut my way through the tripwire protocols and disarm the nuke, I copy all the juicy data before signaling Mr. Musk to…do whatever he does when stealing technology.
He’s treating it like an advanced birthday gift, which is cool, I guess.
Alright! I’ve got the coordinates of Blackstone West…and North, East, and South. Sigh.