When John arrived at the Palace Hotel, Sergeant Y was sitting on a couch in the lobby waiting for him. He stood up when he saw John walking in from the revolving door.
“Hi Mr. Potter, Colonel X is waiting for you in the cafeteria.”
“Where are Tom and Dick?” John asked.
“They are with Colonel X.”
“I do need some coffee after sitting in the taxi more than an hour,” John said. “Let’s go to join them.”
The cafeteria was located half a floor above the ground on the left side of the lobby. They walked up a four-step stair into the cafeteria. When John pushed open its glass door, he heard the typical local music, a fast tempo melody that he heard in the house of Colonel X the previous day. The cafeteria was big, but quite empty, and only a few tables among about a hundred were taken. The light was dimmed so that it was not easy to see far from the entrance. A waitress came to greet them, but was stopped by Sergeant Y.
John was just about to ask Sergeant Y where Colonel X and his men were sitting, when he saw someone stand up behind a table near the street side windows waving to them. That was Tom.
John waved back to Tom and walked towards that table. Sergeant Y followed John.
When John got close to that table, Colonel X stood up greeting him, “Mr. Potter, we are waiting for you.”
“Hi, John,” Dick greeted John.
John and Sergeant Y each took a seat and sat down.
“How was your lunch?” Tom asked.
“Lunch was good. They have an International Town with many foreign restaurants near the factory, and we went to a steakhouse,” John replied. “How was your tour?”
“It was amazing…” Dick was about to share with John their tour experience, but he was cut off by Sergeant Y.
“Let me order some drink and food for you,” Sergeant Y said to John. “What do you want?”
“Oh, thanks. Please get me a large cup of coffee with milk and 2 sugars.”
“Do you want to try their cakes? Their cakes are very good,” Sergeant Y recommended.
“Sure. I am a bit hungry after the bumpy trip on the taxi.”
Instead of calling the waitress to the table, Sergeant Y stood up to walk across all the tables to the service counter.
John looked at Dick, “We might need to be more careful in front of him.”
Dick asked Colonel X, “Would he be mad if we talk about AH in front of him?”
“They are very sensitive.” Colonel X, who was sitting facing the street windows, turned around his head and looked over his own shoulder at the back of Sergeant Y. Then he turned back and said, “They know that they are different from us, but normally they don’t care we talk about them. As a matter of fact, sometimes they might act like they are superior over us humans.”
“Really?” Dick was surprised to hear that.
“The reason that he might feel uncomfortable when you talked, I guess, was because he went to the factory with you guys this morning so that he knew what you might talk about,” Colonel X added.
“But how could they even feel superior over humans who are supposed to have created them?” Tom asked.
“Well, it might sound ridiculous, but they do have reasons to feel some kind superiority, at least in our country,” Colonel X replied.
“What do you mean?” Dick asked.
“First of all, in our country, AHs are not in the lowest class; rather, people can see their presence in many government organizations, especially in the army. Even a Sergeant in the army is more respected than many ordinary people in our country.”
“You mean they belong to a high social class?” Tom asked.
“I would not say their social positions are very high, but in the middle,” Colonel X said. “It’s very rare to see an AH among the poor people in this country, or maybe I should say none of them is among the poor people since they are actually produced on demand. Right now the demand is greater than the supply of AHs in the global market.”
“Global market?” John blurted out his question.
“I am sorry,” Colonel X made a correction promptly. “I mean domestic market.”
John emitted a deep breath.
“Secondly,” Colonel X continued. “It’s not hard for AHs to find in everyday life that they are normally stronger, smarter, and quicker than ordinary people.”
“That would be a serious issue,” Tom remarked.
Colonel X stared at Tom. “More seriously, and the third, you just mentioned that we humans created them, but they can create themselves now. They already learned all the necessary science and technology.”
“Sam said during the lunch that they don’t share the top secrets with AHs,” John chipped in.
“Well, the so called top secrets were discovered by scientists who mastered the basics, but many AH scientists have learned the basics very well.” Colonel X could not hide his worries.
“It sounds like you do have concerns about the AHs. Why do you still allow them to be produced in that factory?” Tom asked.
“Shhh,” Colonel X put his right index finger on his lips. “That’s not something I can change.”
“I was a bit curious when he recommended the coffee and cakes to me. I remember you told me that they don’t eat the same food as ours,” John said to Colonel X. “How could he know the taste of the cakes and the coffee?”
“I learned from some engineers of the New Generation Factory that some of AHs were created with the same sense of taste as ours even though they don’t count on our food for survival. As for Sergeant Y, I know that he does not have our sense of taste. But he could guess, besides, he could still eat and drink the same stuff as ours anyway.” He lowered his voice and widened his eyes, “AHs are very alert animals. They are watching us all the time, and they know how to please us.”
“That’s not a good thing because it means that they know our weakness,” John remarked.
“He’s coming back.” Again Tom, whose back was toward the windows, was the first seeing Sergeant Y walking back.
Sergeant Y came back with two cups of coffee and a few slices of different cakes in a plate. He put the tray on the table first , and then gave one cup of coffee to John.
“Thanks a lot,” John took his coffee.
Sergeant Y put the plate of cakes on the table, and then put the tray on another table after he picked up his own cup of coffee.
“Untz~~~untz~~~untz~~~”
“Hello,” Colonel X answered his phone. “Okay, we will be there in another 30 minutes.”
After he hung up the phone, he told the group, “It was the Captain of the Palace Guard. He wanted to know when we will be there.”
“How long would it take for us to get there?” John asked.
“By car, it might take about 10 minutes, but the driving time might be two minutes, and the rest is the time for us to get in and out of the car,” Colonel X smirked.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thirty minutes later, John’s team entered the garden of the Presidential Palace together with Colonel X and Sergeant Y in the same limo that had carried them around.
Although the Republic of New People is a small island country with an underdeveloped economy, its Presidential Palace was of world-class standard. It’s a marble edifice with a seven-floor tower in the middle and two four-floor towers as its right and left wings. The center tower was connected to those two wings by two-floor flat buildings. The palace was surrounded by a huge garden with various beautiful local tropical plantations. However, the grass on the green lawn was not a local natural product, but a type of the best quality lawn grass imported from overseas.
The limo stopped in front of a side door of the left wing. After John and Colonel X stepped out the car, a uniformed officer came out of the door walking towards them.
Colonel X made an introduction for John and the officer, “This is Mr. John Potter from K Corp of BMA, and this is the Captain of the Palace Guard.”
He particularly pronounced “BMA” clearly and loudly, but no one corrected him even though everyone in John’s team knew that K Corp is not a company of BMA, at least not legally.
After greeting with each other, the captain told them, “General K is at the back of the Palace. He asked me to invite Mr. Potter to join him there. Colonel X might lead these two gentlemen to have a tour of the Palace first, and then you might go to the banquet hall directly.”
“Sure. I will introduce our great Palace to these two gentlemen.” Colonel X smiled towards Tom and Dick. Obviously, they had become friends already.
John followed the captain towards the back garden. When they walked around the left wing towers, John heard the sound of gun shooting. He looked at the Captain, but the Captain did not seem to be bothered by the sound.
Having noticed the confusion on John’s face, the Captain smiled at him, “General K is practicing trapshooting, which is one of his favorite sports.”
“Really? That’s a fun sport.”
“Please wait here, Mr. Potter. I will go to inform the General of your presence.” The captain stopped John in front of several secret agents in black dresses.
“Sure. Please.” John could feel the majestic atmosphere around the head of the country.
A few minutes later, the captain came back to call John, “The General wants you to come to meet him.”
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
General K, the ruler of the Republic of New People was in the middle of his 60s. His 6 feet tall body was very well-built. The natural dark thick eyebrows and mustache contrasted his bald head which was shining even under the late afternoon sunlight.
“Come over here, Mr. Potter.” He waved at John with his right hand while his left hand still held the rifle. His vibrant voice was full of arrogance. When John started to trot towards him with the captain, General K passed his rifle to one of the young girls beside him, and then took a white towel from another one to wipe his perspiring hands.
“It’s my honor to meet you, Mr. President.” John stretched out his hand after he stopped before General K.
John had seen quite a few portraits of him hanging on the walls of the hotel, the house of Colonel X, and even on billboards beside the road. In all those pictures, General K was in his military uniform with peaked army cap on his head. This bald-headed old man in a red short sport suit in front of him looked quite different; the only part of his face that looked same as in those pictures was the pair of arrogant eagle-like eyes.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Potter.” General K squashed and shook John’s hand use his right hand while his left hand still held the towel, and John almost cried to get his hand out.
“They all call me General.”
“Hi, Your Majesty General, please call me John if you would not mind.”
“Good,” General K let go John’s hand and then walked towards the Palace building while continuing to wipe his hand with the towel. “I am very glad that BMA sent you guys to come. Did Colonel X tell you what we expect from you?”
“We had some conversation. But I am still not very clear about what you need from us.”
“Good, I will let you know what we want.” General K gave the towel to his guard and got two bottles of beer from him. He passed one bottle to John, without even asking if he wanted, and then popped off the cap of his own bottle and started to drink.
John was a bit embarrassed because he was not good at opening beer bottles with bare hand. He decided not even to try since he knew that might not be an easy job for him.
After empting his bottle, General K started to talk. “I was told that you visited the New Generation Factory this morning.”
“Yes, I did.” John was wondering whether General K knew that he quit the tour at its very early stage.
“What do you think about those AHs?”
John did not answer right away because he needed to find a proper answer. He disliked the AHs from the bottom of his heart; he even felt disgusting to think about living with artificial humans. He could not yet explain why he felt that way, but he just hated the fact that he had to coexist with AHs on this globe. But he also knew that General K was behind the production of AHs, so that he had to be careful with his answer.
“It’s an awesomely amazing thing.” John did not reply straightly.
General K burst out laughing loudly. He pointed to those girls following them, moved his mouth close to John’s ear, and said to him,, “All those chicks are AHs.”
John could hardly believe his own ear. He looked at General K with widely open eyes, “I thought AHs are genderless and all looked like men.”
General K laughed loudly again, and then crossed his right arm over onto the right shoulder of John. “That would be a big waste of the scientific potential.”
John was almost stifled by the reek of alcohol from the mouth of General K, but he was more concerned with what he heard from General K. He confusedly turned his face at General K, “So they can bear children?”
“No, they cannot, but that’s exactly what we want, isn’t it? We made them that way on purpose,” General K giggled, and withdrew his arm from John’s shoulder.
At that moment, John felt that General beside him more disgusting than those AHs. But as a professional salesman, he had learned to endure some extreme things when facing important clients. He tried to disguise his contempt for this warlord by turning conversation into a more serious discussion.
“Is that the only difference between these girls and human girls?”
“Almost,” General K replied. “They don’t feel the same taste of the food as us, but that is also tunable.”
They entered the right wing of the Palace through a side door. General K said to John, “I need to take a bath. The Captain of Guards would take you to my private study. I need to talk to you about some business before the dinner.”
“Sure,” John replied.
“Please take Mr. Potter to tour around and then wait for me in the study on the second floor in about 30 minutes.” General K instructed the Captain of Guards before he left with those girls.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tour was only in the right wing of the palace since 30 minutes would be passed quickly. They visited the collection room of treasure, as well as the library with many exotic ancient scripts in various languages that would be hard to find even back to John’s home country.
The Captain of Palace Guards deliberately led the tour only on the second floor near the private study of the General so that they would not be late for the meeting with him. When it was five minutes before the supposed time, the captain started to take John to the said study waiting for the General. Obviously, he was a very careful person who would not displease his master.
“May I get you some drink?” The captain asked John.
“Oh yes, could you please pour this beer into a glass?” John showed the bottle of beer that he had held in his hand all the time.
“Of course,” The captain took over the beer and went out of the study. A couple of minutes later he came back with a glass of beer and gave it to John.
“Thanks,” John took the glass from the Captain.
They had some trivial small talk before the General K came into the study.
“Sorry to have you wait, John. It always feels good to take a bath after sports.”
“We just came in not long ago and Captain showed me a lot great stuff in the palace,” John stood up from the couch to show respect.
General K waved to let him sit down, and said to the captain, “Give us two glasses of wine.” He then sat down on the same couch that John was sitting.
“Where did we quit the conversation?”
“We were talking about the taste of AHs,” John replied.
“Right, right, right, the taste of AHs,” General K looked at John. “But the technology of making AHs is not just for providing chicks to entertain men. We have more important plans for AHs. As a matter of fact, I should say that BMA has more important plans for AHs.”
“I have seen AH soldiers,” John replied.
“That’s only one of the important reasons for us to have AHs,” General K said.
The captain came in with two glasses of wines. He left the room after he gave the glasses to General K and John.
“Cheers for our business of Red Hats,” General K raised his glass.
“For Red Hats,” John raised his glass as well.
“Ting ~~” they clinked glasses for their business.
“I guess you might have wondered what has the Red Hat to do with AHs since you arrived in this country, right?”
“Yes,” John admitted.
“We need to look at this matter in a big picture,” General K stood up from the couch and paced a few steps in the room, and then turned to stare at John. “We are a problematic species that are ruining our common homeland, the Earth planet. Do you agree with that?”
“Well, we are not perfect, or I should say that we have a lot of problems. But that should not cause us to be replaced with AHs.” Right after he said that, John noticed that he was a bit jumping ahead of the conversation since General K did not mention the issue of using AHs to replace humans. John was quite a good drinker, but sometimes after taking a few mouthfuls of alcohol into his belly, he would tend to lose his usual alertness in conversation.
General K seemed a bit surprised at the answer of John. He did not respond right away, instead he went to open a cabinet and took out a bottle of whiskey and one glass. He poured one glass of whiskey and then shook the bottle to John to see if he wanted some.
John shook his left hand, and then raised the glass with his right hand to show General K that he still had some wine in his glass.
General K put the bottle back to the cabinet and pulled an armchair to sit before John so that he could look down at John from a higher position. “I understand your concern very well. It is reasonable for any person to get shocked when all of a sudden they sense that their own species, or own race, own hometown, own country is under threaten by some foreign species, foreign race, or foreign nation.”
“I am sorry that I did not express myself properly…I might be a bit confused by the new thing that I never imagined before,” John offered his apology for having made some improper comment.
“No, no, no need to sorry at all,” General K looked very serious and said, “You are an honest person, and I like it. I am glad that BMA sent you here. Together we will do a great thing for this world.”
John did not know what to say, so he just lifted his face looking at General K.
“Do you know how many red hats we might need to purchase from you?” General K asked.
“I don’t know that yet,” John replied.
“Take a guess.”
“A couple thousands?” John asked in reply.
“Multiply that by a thousand,” General K smiled with his eyes winked.
“A few millions?” John was surprised again.
“You are right,” General K replied.
“That means almost one for every single person in this country.”
“Pretty much every viable person,” General K added.
“Would they be demanded to wear the hats all the time, even when they are at home?” John asked.
“Why not?” General K asked back, and then added, “Of course, there might be some relax for top class people, such as state officials and other noble families. They might be required only wear the red hats when they are in their official posts. But their assistants and servants won’t be given that kind of tolerance.”
“But it would be very inconvenient to wear the red hat when sleeping, especially for those who suffer from insomnia,” John remarked.
“For that, I need your professional input,” General K leaned toward John. “I heard that you have been very successful in helping prisons to put red hats on the heads of inmates. I guess they will not be allowed to take off their hats during sleep, am I right?”
“The prisons are quite different. When the inmates are required to wear the red hats all the time, they indeed don’t have much choice but just do it, for otherwise they would face the consequences,” John replied. “But the citizens of a society are different.”
“Who said they are?” General K responded in a condescending tone. “In this country, someone is different only if I said he or she is different.”
“But don’t you worry that they might rebel against you if they are forced to do something against their will?” John’s warning was obviously out of his sympathy for the citizens of the Republic of New People, not for the General.
General K’s brow was furrowed for a fraction of a second, and then a cunning smile was put upon his face. “I don’t really worry about that, not only because I could count on the loyalty of my people, especially the military force including the police force, but also because anyone who dares to rebel against me would know that they won’t be able to challenge the power behind me, which is the one that sent you here, the BMA.”
Once again John was reminded that he was sent by Steve who was a senior executive of BMA, and thus he would be considered as a representative of BMA. Accordingly, if his behavior might ruin the ambition of BMA in this Indo-Pacific island country, his own job security back in the K Corp might be in danger. Therefore, he needed to be more careful when talking to this warlord who might be directly connected to the top inner circle of BMA.
“I don’t mean that I have any doubt about your unchallenged authority in your country,” John responded. “As for those prisons that I have done business with in the past, not all of them required that the inmates wear the red hats during sleep.”
“Why was that?” General K asked.
“For the first few prison projects, we asked the inmates to wear the red hats even during the night time. But then we relaxed that requirement in other prison projects. Even some of those that originally asked the inmates to wear the hats when sleeping also made changes on that.”
John further explained, “It is because during the night most inmates would be sleeping and thus the output of the red hats would be those sleep-related waves, including delta or theta or random low voltage waves which are not what the IB servers are designed to interpret.”
John noticed that General K was listening with great interest. He paused and emptied his glass of wine.
“Whiskey or more wine?” General K asked.
“I can have whiskey,” John replied.
General K took the glass from John and put it away on a tea table, and then he went to pour whiskey into a clean glass from the cabinet for John.
John had a sip of whiskey and continued, “So far the IB technology has not even attempted to analyze sleeping brain waves because it is a language-oriented system, which is more interested in the patterns of language-related waves, which are not typically meaningful for sleeping waves. Although people might talk in their dreams, for most of the time their talks are illogical or random, and thus it makes no sense for us to waste efforts analyzing them. Even if some sensitive words, such as rebel, occur in someone’s dream, you don’t know what they dream about. That’s why the IB system is not interested in sleeping waves.”
“That makes sense,” General K concurred. “But not everyone sleeps during the nights.”
“That’s right,” John responded. “However, in most prisons, the inmates are all under 24 by 7 CCTV surveillance. Therefore, it is easy for the prisons to pinpoint those who behave abnormally. They could take some special measures against those atypical ones if they have some concerns about their queer behavior, which include forcing them to wear red hats all the time.”
General K cut in, “But outside the prisons we don’t have CCTV in everyone’s home, and they are not necessarily staying at home all the time during the nights.”
“I agree,” John said.
“I saw from some videos the type of red hats you guys wear in the office,” General K said while looked at John in his eyes.
“Sure,” John avoided the eyes of General K with a short response and then had a sip of the alcohol from the glass. He could sense that General K was implying, “Don’t you dare to assume that I don’t know what kind of slave you are back to your own company.”
General K emptied his glass and then continued, “Don’t you guys have some kind of red hats which are more convenient for wearing on the pillows, just like those biggonets?”
“Actually, F Corp did try to make something like that, but then gave it up,” John replied.
“Why?” General K was obviously not ready to give in yet.
“In addition to what I just mentioned about the brain waves, the chip is easy to be damaged when a heavy head keeps grinding it on the pillow, and it also might cause some skin problem of the head,” John explained.
“We can tolerate that kind of problem,” General K said as if he was speaking for all the hat wearers.
“Besides, the quality of data collected from those hats during the night was very poor compared to using ordinary hats during daytime.” John was irritated by the ruthless tone of General K, but he still managed to control his own emotion when talking to this arrogant warlord of the Republic of New People. “More importantly, as I have mentioned, it’s almost meaningless to waste the computer power to go through the sleeping data which are mostly meaningless.”
“If that is the case,” General K seemed unhappy with the information provided by John, “Is there any way for me to know whether they are sleeping or not. If they are sleeping, then they are allowed to take off their hats, otherwise they have to wear their hats.”
“That’s not what IB technology is concerned with since as long as the subject takes off the red hat, we won’t know what he is doing. If you really want to replicate what the prisons are doing, you might just treat every household in your country as a jail cell, which means you might install CCTV cameras in every household,” John suggested sarcastically.
“Thanks for that suggestion, and I might consider that option.” General K responded coldly.
“But even if you do that, it will not be seamless,” John remarked.
“Why?”
“Even in our company, I mean in K Corp, we are allowed to take off the red hats when we are taking showers in the gym within the building. Although the red hats are waterproof, we don’t encourage people to wear them during shower time since the chemicals they put on their heads might reduce the lifespan of the hats; besides, what are you expect to learn when they are taking showers?” John replied.
“You start to worry me,” General K’s face started to fall.
“Well, you should still feel good about the red hats since they could offer some extra capacity you don’t have today anyway,” John responded.
“En…, that makes sense.” General K seemed to be convinced and ready to be less greedy. “I can buy into that. Maybe I should not be too greedy about the effectiveness of the red hats. But anyway, I believe the IB system recommended by BMA would help my country to be transferred into a better shape.”
“But… I still don’t understand very well why you need to put the whole country under the IB system,” John sounded confused.
“I don’t blame you,” General K said. “You feel confused because you are not looking at the picture from my position. In fact, I need to put the whole country under the IB system for the same reason why your company, K Corp, wants to put its employees under the IB system. You could understand this only if you could look at the picture from my position.”
General K went to the cabinet to get the bottle of whiskey to fill his own glass and John’s glass. He put the empty bottle aside and clinked glasses with John.
“To me, the whole country of the Republic of New People is a big corporation, just like K Corp to its CEO. The only difference is that I need to look after a much bigger population.”
“But you also have a much bigger power than a CEO,” John remarked.
“Yes, you are right.” General gazed at John, “But the power itself could become a big burden if I could not use it smartly.”
“You just mentioned the loyalty of your people a moment ago,” John said. “So the power should not be a big burden for Your Majesty.”
General K was dumbstruck a bit by John’s remark, and then burst into laughter, “You are absolutely right. But the loyalty of my people also comes at one condition, which is that I will not let them think they could afford to be not loyal to me.”
“Those AHs could help you to make your people more loyal to you since they are made for that purpose, right?”
“No, no, no,” General K shook his right-hand index finger three times. “Actually, they are one of the major reasons for the need of red hats.”
John furrowed his brow and looked at General K confusedly. “I have been impressed since this morning that AHs are created for serving humans because they are loyal to their masters. Why do you need to worry about them?”
“Obviously you were not told the truth or the whole story,” General K said. “Those AHs are smart animals. If we are not careful, we might be fooled by them.”
“Then why don’t you just stop producing them?” John asked.
“Now we come back to the subject why we need to produce those AHs in the first place.” General K emptied his glass again and sat down in the chair facing John. “One good thing about AHs is that they are very cost effective in the sense that they are not materially as greedy as we humans, but they are capable of working efficiently.”
“I’ve heard of that,” John said.
“Not only that…we could even eliminate many human weaknesses from their genes when we create them, which could essentially improve the quality of the inhabitants of this globe.”
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John was about to say something, but he refrained himself from saying it.
“Well, I understand that you might be worried that the perfectness of AHs might cause them to replace us. But I can guarantee you: that would never happen.”
“Why do you think so?”
“It is because we are in control of all the social resources,” General K replied slowly but clearly.
“If their population grows quickly, they might have more social resources,” John responded.
General K shook his head, and said, “Today the only country in this world which allows AHs to live like ordinary citizens is the Republic of New People, and we are not announcing this officially. We have to do this secretly due to the harsh banning of the United Nations.”
“But that banning effort of the United Nations could be compromised bit by bit if more countries are doing what you are doing now,” John interrupted General K.
“Even if that happens…even if the production of AHs is legalized by the United Nations and they could become common citizens all over the world,” General K stood up. He walked to the back of the chair, and leaned toward John by putting his hands on the back of the chair. “Even if they become the citizens of every country, they would not be allowed to have the same rights as we do. Because we, who are in control of all the resources, would not let that happen.”
“But I was told that AHs are socially superior to many poor people in this country, especially those who are put behind the wall on a hill that we passed yesterday,” John responded.
“Wow, you already noticed one big secret in our country,” General K chuckled. He walked back to the chair and sat down. “Actually, it’s good that you have seen that wall, because that will help you to better understand our country as well as the future of this world. I believe that what is going on in this country will become the model of the future human civilization around the world.”
John could not help but twitched his mouth in a contemptuous sneer for what he just heard from General K.
“Do you know what we call those people who were sent to the back of that wall?” General K asked.
“Something like ‘useless people’, I guess.” John recalled what Colonel X told him.
“Correct!”
General K then added, “They are useless not because they could not do things. They still can. For example, they still can kill others.”
“As far as I know that they are humans and they are still working to produce food, at least for themselves behind that wall.” Now John felt more courageous to argue with General K, partly because of the spirits of alcohol in his body, and partly because he had sensed the veneration of General K towards people from BMA, even though he started to really dislike his own BMA background in that circumstance. Besides, more and more John felt that he could hardly stand the cruelness of that warlord toward the people of his own species.
“You are correct on that, and we do agree with each other on that. As I just mentioned that we call them useless not because they could not work,” General K paused, and then added, “but because they are useless to us.”
John really hated to hear General K repeating the word “useless”, but he knew that he cannot let his own emotion take control of his manner. He had to show respect to that warlord.
“Excuse me, Your Majesty. I am a bit confused on what you just said.”
“Well,” General K stood up again and stared John up and down for a second. Then he walked to the back of the chair and said slowly, “This world has greatly changed since about four decades ago... I guess you were still very young at that time.”
“I was still playing peekaboo in the kindergarten,” John quipped.
“That’s right. I was not very old either. I guess I am about 10 years older than you,” General K smiled amiably.
John’s heart was somehow instantly softened by that affectionate elder-style expression of General K for some strange reason, maybe the guilt of being lack of humbleness in front of the head of a country, or maybe the curiosity about what might have changed the world when he was a baby (even though he might have heard of similar stories many times). He did not say anything but just listened to General K like a little kid in front of a grownup.
General K continued to say, “I was old enough to remember that, about 40 years ago, one of the hottest things was the so called industry 4.0 and the fast growing AI technology. It was acclaimed by the general public as being symbolic of the invincible human intelligent capacity. Even the defeat of human beings by AI in some competitions, such as Go games or international chess games, which were traditionally considered as the paramount of human intelligent combats, was hailed by the people all over the world with pride as the great progress of human civilization.”
When noticed that John was listening to him very attentively, General K proudly smiled and then continued, “But a few decades later, human beings started to taste the bitter fruits of those revolutionary changes, that working people were massively replaced by machines in all kinds of working positions.”
He paused and then added four words slowly and clearly, “all around the world.”
“That I witnessed, and unfortunately, that is still an ongoing process even today,” John said.
“You are right. It is still an ongoing process,” General K stared at John. “But do you know what does that mean?”
“It means, I mean, it means many people would not be able to find a job,” John sighed.
“Your statement is correct, but that’s not the point.” General K raised his voice a bit.
“What is the point then?” John asked.
“The point is that many people are continually becoming useless in this world as the consequence of the industrial automation and the artificial intelligence, or we might call it as AI.” General K spat out every single word of the whole sentence clearly and slowly.
John was shocked by General K’s remark because all of a sudden he found that he could not find a strong argument against the use of the term of “useless” by General K, even in his own heart.
“But…but it would be too rude for us to condemn those who unfortunately could not find a job using the term ‘useless’…you know, it’s not their fault,” John disputed weakly.
“It seems that you still don’t get the point that it is no longer a nominal moral issue, not a game of words, but a brutal survival issue…and the industrial automation and AI are just one part of the cause to blame, which might not even be the most important cause but just a superficial direct trigger for the global crises of generating useless population on this globe.” General K became emotional and his face turned reddish and the loudness of his voice increased.
“If not the industrial automation and AI to blame, what else should we blame?” John also raised his voice a bit.
“Market economy,” General K responded.
“In a market economy, most people, or any person without the resources or capitals has to earn his rights of eating and resting under a roof by selling his own labor. Now, because of the automation and AI, massive amount of the working population around the world cannot find a chance to sell their own labor in exchange of their rights to purchase food and to be housed under a roof. Therefore, the meaning of ‘useless’ is indeed ‘useless in the market economy’.”
John could not just accept the use of market economy to rationalize the term of “useless”, and argued, “I am not convinced of that. Market economy is just one form of economic activity. We might choose some other forms of economic system to offset the impact of automation and AI.”
“Did we?” General K questioned sarcastically.
“Uh…,” John realized that he was not standing on a solid ground in the fight, but he still could not swallow the brutal fact that the human-created technology would cause humans to be tagged as ‘useless’ and then to be deprived of the survival rights. “Apparently we are not doing well in that respect…but it does not mean that we are already hopeless and should give up human civilization to machines or AHs.”
“Let’s not jump too much. We will come back to the issue of AH later.” General K waved down his hands to let John calm down. “You mentioned that we might choose some other economic systems to replace the market economy so that we could offset the impact of automation and AI, right?”
“Yeah…that’s what I said,” John replied.
“Human beings had failed many economic systems before they chose the market economy as the global economic system.”
“But we didn’t have to face the challenge of automation and AI back to the old times,” John cut in.
General K waved his hand again to let John not to interrupt him. “All those other economic systems that preceded the market economy shared with the market economy one common thing that human labors gain their rights to consume in exchange for their work. The only difference is that the market economy puts on a mask of so-called ‘free will’. That tells that other economic systems might force the labors to offer their work without the free will of the labor when the governments feel like so, which would not help to solve the challenge posted by automation and AI.”
“That’s not true. The socialist economic system means to offer better social benefits to the citizens,” John argued.
“Touché. You scored a goal in this respect,” General K said. “However, in those so-called socialist countries the basic economic system is still simply market economy, which means the majority of the so-called working class is supposed to earn their rights of consumption by selling their work. When only a very small percentage of the working class could not find a job, it might help by giving them unconditional free cashes, as quite a few so-called socialist countries initially tried but only very few are still doing now. However, when those countries are facing large scale shortage of jobs, free lunches won’t help them much.”
“At least that can feed hungry people,” John responded.
“You might say that,” General K said. “But you cannot use your own statement to defend your original position in this discussion. What I mean is that you still cannot change the fact that they have become useless to the rest of those countries.”
“But when you say ‘the rest’, you might not actually be referring to the majority if most working class people could not find a job,” John argued.
General K looked at John for a couple seconds and then said, “You are very right on that. That might sound sad, but the fact is this: those that we might call as ‘the rest’ are not only producing for this world but also own the resources. And thus they could decide how to treat those useless people.”
“That might be true in backward countries, especially autocratic countries like yours, but not in advanced democratic countries like mine.”
John regretted for his offensive statement right after saying that, so he apologized, “Excuse me for saying that, Your Majesty, I did not mean to offend you.”
But General K did not seem to care about what John just said at all. Rather, he seemed very interested in continuing the debate.
“You need to notice how many countries now in this world are treating those useless people in different ways from yours; besides, you might also have noticed that your country is not giving out free lunches to the useless people as those so-called socialist countries either.
I dare to bet you anything, even your country would not succeed in dealing with this automation and AI challenge, which means that the situation would be worsen.”
John was seized by a sudden impulse, and he wanted to stand up from the couch and slap on the face of that ruler of the Republic of New People. But he quickly gained control of his own emotion and responded calmly, “You don’t really have any solid reason to say that. The voters of our democratic country would not let that happen.”
“I respect your good wish. But don’t you realize that the hurdle you are facing to is actually the very foundation of your democracy?”
“What do you mean?” John asked.
“I am referring to the basic principle of fairness. Isn’t it the foundation of your democracy?”
“Of course it is,” John responded. “But why do you think that is the hurdle?”
General K asked, “Why do you think your democratic system has not allowed the government to give out free lunches like those very few socialist countries?...Actually, let me ask you another question, how would you look at those who are getting the free lunches in those socialist countries if you are a tax payer in one of those countries?”
“Uh…” John did not know how to answer since he knew that there were a lot complaints made by “the rest” of the society about those getting free cashes from the governments. He had witnessed that kind of complaints during his business trips to some of the socialist countries in the past years.
“As a matter of fact, the reason that none of the countries including yours could satisfactorily handle the problem is because human beings are lack of the capacity to handle the issue of fairness in a rational way,” General K remarked.
“I think you might be right,” John said. “But we might still be able to improve ourselves in that respect if we are determined to do so.”
The moral-sense-based argument turned into a theoretical discussion of political economics. John started to find some agreement with General K.
“Actually, when I was in college, I did read some books about how to rationally analyze the issue of fairness in our civilization, and accordingly how to rationally deal with the fairness issue collectively as a society in this world,” John recalled.
“Yeah, yeah … I read some kind of philosophical writings about fairness as well. But I don’t think the society as a whole has been paying much attention to the theoretical work on fairness,” General K responded.
Then he added, “Philosophy is different from science and technology. The latter could function well even if only a very few people learned some ideas and perform some work in closed-door laboratories or workshops, but the former could play an effective role only if the general public has been aware and accepted some philosophical theories.”
“We can always start to make efforts to let the world pay attention to the vitality and complexity of the issue of fairness,” John responded. “I would say that there should still be some way for us to handle the issue of fairness in a rational way so that we might handle the challenge of automation and AI better.”
“Too late!” General K responded. “When this world was originally hit by the industrial automation and AI, if we could realize the potential severe challenge and start to do something at that time, no matter theoretical or practical, we might have already worked out at least a model social system that every country on this globe could follow to build a more harmonious or more humanitarian would now.”
“We still should try,” John said.
“No. We won’t have the chance anymore now.” General K shook his head and sighed. “The automation and AI have already put this world into an irreversible course of splitting into useful and useless classes. Some countries, like mine, have come close to the completion of this course, and some countries, like yours, will come to the same in the near future. Once we entered this new process, there is no way for us to turn this gigantic fast running train back anymore. The rest for us human beings to do is……” He stopped in the middle and walked to the desk beside the window.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
General K pressed a button on the desk and the voice of the Captain of Palace Guards came from the speaker of an interphone.
“Yes, General,” The captain answered.
“Please bring a bottle of brandy and two glasses.” General K commanded.
“Sure. I will be there in a second,” The captain replied.
John showed his glass to General K, “I have not finished my whiskey yet.”
“You don’t need to finish it. Just leave it on the table.” General K walked back to his seat. “I like to drink different types of alcohol when I need to think. I could get different inspirations from different types. You might find the same.”
“Okay…let me try to get that kind of inspiration as well.” John forced a smile, and then he asked, “May I ask a question, Your Majesty?”
Somehow John kept calling General K “Your Majesty” while no one asked him to do so. But General K did not correct him either, even though he mentioned that he liked others to call him General.
“Please,” General K replied while he was sitting back to the chair.
“It seems that you know very well about what happened around the world, especially what happened in my country in the past. You must have spent a lot time doing research on my country, right?” John asked.
General K got up from his chair right after he just sat in it. “Come, let me show you something.” He waved to John and walked to the desk. John put down his glass on the side table, and stood up to follow General K to the desk. When he got close to the desk, he noticed that there were a few photos under a glass top of the desk.
General K let John move to the front of the desk and pointed to the middle three photos under the glass, “This was at the graduation ceremony of my bachelor’s degree in economics from the famous H University of your country, this was at the graduation ceremony of my master’s degree in psychology from the famous Y University, and this was at the graduation ceremony of my Ph.D. in philosophy from the famous N University.”
John looked at those photos very carefully because he almost could not believe what he just heard. But clearly he could recognize the face under the degree caps as the younger version of the warlord who stood beside him.
“No wonder you sound like a professor,” John looked at General K and complimented. “It’s because you are a doctor from N University.”
“I might have become a professor if I did not come back,” General K twitched his lips.
“Actually, we are alumni. I was graduated from H University as well,” John said.
“So you stayed in the same city after your graduation, right?” General K asked.
“Yeah…I have lived in the same city since then.” John then asked, “Did you go to my country to do college study after your high school?”
“No,” General K replied. “I was sent to your country when I was a grade school pupil, and I came back right after I received my Ph.D.”
“You never came back before you got your Ph.D.?”
“I came back every summer and winter.”
The Captain of Palace Guards came in and walked to the desk. He put a tray on the desk and then opened the bottle of the brandy. When he was about to pour the brandy into the glasses, General K let him leave the bottle on the desk.
After the captain left the room, General K poured brandy into the glasses and gave one to John.
“To H University,” General K raised his glass to toast while walking back to their previous seats.
“To fairness,” John raised his glass as well.
After they both sat down, John brought the conversation back to their previous discussion. “You just mentioned that after this world entered the process of getting into the new classification because of the automation and AI, there is something left for us human beings to do. Did you mean that we might still somehow to reverse the process?”
“Oh…no…no.” General K looked at John but did not finish his answer, instead he asked, “What do you think we can do to change the reality of the stratification of useful and useless classes?”
Even though knowing the educational background of General K had changed John’s perspective about that warlord, he still felt his repeating of the word “useless” very irritating.
“Since Your Majesty is a Doctor in Philosophy, we might look at this issue more philosophically,” John responded. “The question that we might need to ask ourselves is whether we are created for the universe or the universe created for us.”
“That’s too much abstract, which would not help us at all.” General K cut him off. “From a scientific point of view, the occurrence of humans was just a small-chance event while Mother Nature had been there since the big bang. But all that kind of discussions would not help our problem at all. One fact that I guess you might have never thought about is that we have been very lucky that we have peacefully entered this current status quo of new social classification, thanks to the advanced technologies that have helped us to avoid uncontrollable global turmoil.”
“What do you mean?” John was a bit surprised to hear that.
“I mean,” General K paused when he emptied his glass. “The changes brought up by the automation and AI is not trivial. It is a revolution, and might be the most radical one in human history.”
“That sounds like a fair statement,” John agreed.
“When I use the word ‘revolution’, I am not solely referring to its technical or economic perspectives, but also referring to its social political impacts. The fact that it has created new social classes of useful and useless ones makes it the most radical social and political revolution, for it is transferring human society permanently into a new reality that humans never experienced in the past.”
“It sounds like you are saying human society is transferring into an inhuman stage,” John mocked.
“Right, inhuman!” To John’s surprise, General K was not mad of his sarcastic criticism, but was excited about the term. General K put his glass on the tea table and got up. He walked to the desk to get the bottle of brandy and then came back to his chair. “I have been looking for a term for that, but I was thinking in a wrong direction. Inhuman is a very proper term.”
“The term ‘inhuman’ is nothing new but has been used for anything that is not human, e.g. animals or oceans, for a long time. Why do you feel it so special?” John was puzzled by the reaction of General K.
“Yes, the word ‘inhuman’ is nothing new. What makes it new is what you just said that ‘human society’ has been turned ‘inhuman’.” General K particularly stressed the words “human society” and “inhuman” in the sentence.
“It’s also common to call some people or their behavior inhuman when they behaved like animals,” John responded.
General K shook his right index finger back and forth. “No, no. Here we are talking about the social environment instead of individual persons.”
“That’s also common. We often call a working place inhuman if, say, the boss is too mean, or the working or living condition is too terrible,” John argued.
“Touché, you made a point, although people often add a letter e at the end of the word inhuman for what you just referred to,” General K said. “But here what we are facing is a very different sense of inhuman in terms of the social environment.”
John looked at General K and frowned with confusion.
“We are not talking about a local inhuman condition as you just mentioned,” General K continued. “We are talking about a global inhuman cultural environment. Different from what you just described, the global inhuman environment I am referring to actually might look very human or sometimes even cozy in terms of apparent living and working conditions.”
“Then what sense of inhuman are you talking about?” John was further perplexed.
General K stared at John with a proud smile. “I am talking the artificial tone of the general culture of the society,” he replied slowly with a hidden contemptuous tone.
“I am confused,” John’s face looked as confused as his mind. He asked, “While the term ‘artificiality’ itself is referring to the human originality, how could the artificiality make something inhuman?”
“A good example is the AH that has been bothering you since this morning,” General K laughed slyly. “They are artificial, and even pretty much behave like humans, but you don’t want to consider them as human.”
“I agree,” John admitted. “But that might be just a special case, which might not represent the general culture.”
“How about AI---the artificial intelligence?” General K asked.
“AI is just a bunch of computer programs, the same as glasses and wines, which cannot be used to characterize the nature of a society,” John argued.
“Not so simple,” General responded. “AI has become an essential part of the culture in many places around the world in the sense that they are doing the ‘thinking’ or playing proactive roles in everyday life, which would very well differentiate them from glasses, TV set, or even cats and dogs.”
“But it seems that AI has not gained the same popularity in your country as in mine, so...” John paused and was hesitating if he should make a point that at least a backward country like the Republic of New People should not have created so-called useless people as the result of automation and AI.
“Yes, unfortunately,” General K did not let him finish his sentence and cut in. “But we are getting there. As I said, it is a process. Just like that AH would gain its popularity all over the world.”
“No way!” That’s what John wanted to say, but he did not speak the words out; instead, he said, “At most, AH & AI are just part of the society, they cannot define the general nature of our world even if they are appearing or walking around in all kinds of forms all over the world.”
“I wish you could still say so in a moment after you realize how much the general lifestyle of this world has been formalized since the beginning of this century.” General K cast a pity smile at John.
“You mean ‘normalized’?” John asked.
“No. I mean ‘formalized’,” General K replied. “Its goal is not the normal state or the so-called social norms in the common sense, but a state that is specially designed by so-called rational human mind, based on certain ideas or theories, after deliberate calculations, in favor of certain classes of people.”
“I am a bit lost here.” John was puzzled again.
General K mused for a second, and then said, “The formalization process was actually started hundreds of years ago when the first industrial revolution started.”
“Why is that?” John asked.
“Because it started with the idea of making human society as a machine and each individual a component of the machine,” General K replied.
“But if it has been for many centuries, what is special for the past few decades?” John questioned.
“Because of the so-called high-tech started around the beginning of this century, which includes things like big data and artificial intelligence, as well as a lot other fancy stuff,” General K said.
“I am still not very convinced … I don’t see how technology could formalize our life… it seems to me technology provides more freedoms to human beings since we can do many extreme things that no one could ever dream about before we had the those fancy technologies,” John argued.
“You are right…technology itself is not the problem … it just expedited and enforced the process of the formalization which might not be significant without the advanced technology,” General K explained. “So you need to focus on the social aspects instead of technology in order to understand the formalization.”
“How?” John asked.
General K smiled, and then responded, “We humans have been living on this globe for thousands of years. We act or interact according to our so-called human nature. Although the mind is one important part of our nature, or maybe the most important part so that Aristotle even equals the mind with the soul, but the output of our mind is not.”
“It’s fair to say that, I guess,” John said.
General K continued, “But when the behavior of every ordinary person is regulated by various rules that are created by human mind and enforced by machines that are created by humans, then the behavior of the whole society would lose its original randomness, but be formalized into certain pattern that would reflect the design logic of the rules, which in turn would reflect the will of the designers of the rules, or the best interests of those whom the designers are most concerned with,”
“Isn’t following rules and obeying laws what characterizes us as civilized beings?” John questioned.
“You are absolutely right on that,” General K responded. “But that’s not where I am getting to. Here I am not trying to devalue those fundamental laws, no matter in the religious sense or in secular sense. I am even not trying to lessen the importance of any organizational or community rules, not at all,” General K responded. “I am using the term ‘rule’ here in a generalized sense, which refers to any social patterns that are crystallized by human intentions.”
“What do you mean?” John asked.
General K smiled compassionately at John and started to explain patiently, “Social rules in a general sense always involve two sides, one is the social needs, and the other is humans that are regulated by the rules.”
“Un…” John stared at General K and tried to capture what he was trying to lead to.
General K continued, “A very good example is the social professional division, which was discussed by Plato about two and half millenniums ago. The existence of each profession is determined by the correspondent social needs, which is reasonable. However, once the social professional division gets more and more delicate and sophisticated, most human beings, no matter white-collar workers or blue-collar workers, managers or ordinary workers, are all tagged with not only their professions but even their specific jobs.”
“That’s true,” John agreed. “From this example, I guess, the formalization you were referring to is the ever sophisticated process of social professional division.”
“Not exactly,” General K corrected him. “First of all, I have to remind you that only the tagging effect on the people by the professional division contributes to the formalization, not the division itself. Secondly, the effect of social professional division is only one minor aspect of the formalization.”
“Then what else could cause the formalization?” John asked.
“A lot,” General K replied. “As I just said, generally speaking, the effect of the advanced integration of those scientifically-produced-theories-based rules and the high-tech means including AI machinery has expedited and enforced the process of the formalization which started centuries ago.”
“Why?” John was obviously unprepared for such an abstract theory that was utterly too profound for him.
General K replied with a cunning smile, “It would take some brainpower for abstract geometrical imagination to see the difference here.”
John looked at General K like an incompetent student looked at a tricky teacher in the class of advanced relativistic quantum mechanics.
General K continued, “As a simple example, in action movies of ancient stories, you might often see some fugitives were running into some remote areas or desolate mountains. They could survive from the chase of their enemies by hiding themselves into those places, and then come out later to revenge.
But nowadays, you can no longer find that kind of hiding places even in an underdeveloped country like mine. Almost every inch of the land has been either too open for hiding or already put under the surveillance by cameras which are connected with the system having the facial or even moving habit recognition software. Not only that, the authority of the state could even trace back the personal history since his birth and treat him accordingly, if they want.”
“In that sense, I agree with you,” John said. “The degrees of freedom for individuals have been greatly reduced by the high-techs and the correspondent new social theories. But that reduction of the freedom, if you want to use the word ‘reduction’, is supposed to benefit the society at large, isn’t it?”
“Nominally it is,” General K responded, “but practically, it is not always so. Very often the reduction of the degrees of freedom for the general public is for the benefit of those who can determine or influence such reduction.”
“You mean for the benefit of people like General yourself?” John asked.
General K nodded. “Yes, I am one of them.”
“But in a democratic country, it might be different from your country because the laws are established through legislation by elected representatives,” John said.
“Politics is always interest-oriented, and legislation is a very political matter. No matter in a democratic system or even in an autocratic republic like mine, the legislature is an important battlefield for various interests.” General K drew a curve in the air with his hand. “Anyway, legislation is a very special area, and we don’t need to get into that area since it is just one limited part in the process of formalization and the global impact of the end results is more meaningful here. Don’t forget there are many private rules in various organizations and communities as well.”
“But if the laws are made through a fair process, then it should not impact the society in negative ways,” John argued.
“The point is not whether a law is nominally fair or whether it was created in a fair way,” General K responded. “The point is the accumulation of various laws is acting to reduce the degrees of freedom of the public, thus in the long run the society would be more and more formalized into some patterns that are designed by the human mind. Think about this, in a city, if more land is occupied for restricted special uses, then the free land for the general public would be definitely reduced.”
“Again, it has been always like this in the history of human civilization, what’s special about it now?” John questioned.
“Again, the advanced technology has made it special,” General K replied.
“I am still not very clear about that,” John said.
“Do you agree that we humans are limited and thus our mind cannot perceive in scope or in depth as our Creator does or as nature operates, depending on which faith system of yours is?” General asked.
“I agree,” John replied.
“Good,” General K said. “For that reason, even the fairest laws or rules might be aimed to reduce the degrees of freedom in this or that way. As a matter of fact, fairness of freedom means avoiding conflicted freedom since freedoms of certain individuals might come at the cost of the freedoms of others.”
“That makes sense,” John agreed.
“The reason why in the history of human civilization the formalization as I am talking about here did not happen was neither because the accumulation of those freedom-reduction laws and rules did not have the formalization effect, nor because powerful people did not want to formalize the behavior of the public to fit their own standards, but because they did not have the means to reduce the degrees of the freedom.” General K paused to check the reaction of John.
John was listening to him attentively without any objection.
“Back to a few hundred years ago, if someone was wanted in a city, no matter for a right cause or an evil cause, he might just escape to another city and get away from the punishment,” General K continued. “Now, if you had a cup of coffee in one coffee shop in the morning and then fly to another continent in the evening, people might know what kind of coffee you had drunk in the morning.”
“Technologies do reduce the private space of everyone,” John said.
“Not everyone in the same way,” General K responded. “For example, I could hide my trace much better than you do since I have the power that you don’t have.”
“I agree.”
“But you are right on the other hand,” General K said. “In general, technology has definitely reduced human private space, which is the personal freedom of the public, which is what makes today special compared to the history of human civilization. And this is why the world is quickly formalized by the products of the human mind.”
“Now I think I understand much better about the meaning of ‘formalization’ you have talked about,” John said. “But I still don’t understand why you would connect this formalization to ‘inhuman’.”
“As I said earlier, different from those animal-like evil doings, you normally won’t see anything inhuman at every specific move of this whole process, but if you close your eyes and visualize the whole human society to be transformed step by step into a system that is designed by human intelligence to carry on the will of specific group of humans, don’t you feel that it is no longer a naturally formed human society but a gigantic artificial machine?” General K asked.
“Uh…” John subconsciously closed his eyes and then opened again. “I guess you might be right. But there is still one problem with your theory.”
“My theory? Thanks for giving me the credit,” General K quipped, and then asked, “What is the problem then?”
“In the whole process of the formalization, it seems that science and technology has played a critical role, right?” John asked.
“Of course,” General K replied.
“But isn’t science and technology also empower ordinary people to protect themselves? If it is, then it might also help us to reverse the formalization process you just described,” John said.
“Obviously it hasn’t,” General K responded.
“But it doesn’t mean it won’t, since technology is fair to everyone.” John said.
“That’s not true!” General K raised his voice. “What you just said is extremely wrong. If you say technology is fair to all kinds of capitals, you would be closer to the truth. But saying ‘technology is fair to everyone’ is just insane.”
“I am sorry,” John apologized. “I would agree with you that technology is fair to money, not to person.”
“That’s better,” General K said. “It’s actually more complicated than just money. It involves social power, capitals, and some other factors, but definitely not fair to all people. That’s a key to understand how this world has come to this stage today.”
“I agree,” John raised his glass and had a sip of the brandy.
“The unfair access to the extreme might of those high-techs over the natural capacity of ordinary people has been a major cause for the irreversible progress towards what we are having today,” General K remarked.
“Now I think I do see why you would consider that human society is entering the inhuman era,” John said. “Instead of animal-like or stone-like, here by ‘inhuman’, you are referring to machine-like.”
“Finally you get it. Congratulation,” General K quipped.
“But, excuse me, Your Majesty.”
“You want to say something?” General K asked.
“Yeah…I really appreciate your very professional analysis and I’ve learned a lot from this lesson.” John confusedly looked at General K, “But I guess all your theory is based on your view as one of the very powerful few. The public might look at the issue from a very different perspective.”
“No, no, no, no,” General K shook his left index finger multiple times, and said, “What I just said was from a neutral stand point, or you might call it a scholar’s point of view. That’s why I felt sorry for this current situation of human civilization. If I look it from my personal social stand as a ruler of a country, I would very happily hail this status quo since it means that there is less chance for my ruling position to be challenged by people of lower social classes.”
John did not respond right away. He felt a bit hurt because he realized that even an ordinary social scholar might paint the same pessimistic picture of human civilization as that warlord did.
General K stared at John, and said, “I am talking about the issue from the neural point of view instead of my personal stand point because I want you to realize that we know very well how the world gets into this process of the separation between useful and useless. We will defend this new status quo of human civilization, but not just out of pure greed or selfishness. We defend it because we clearly know the logic behind it and we don’t see any other way out for our civilization.”
The use of “useless” by General K reminded John of their previous topic. “You reminded me that before we got into the discussion of the word ‘inhuman’, you just mentioned that we should appreciate the fact that this world is lucky for not being in a global turmoil.”
“You are right,” General K responded. “Actually the discussion of ‘inhuman’ could help you to appreciate it better because the change from the ‘human society’ into the ‘inhuman society’ is not just a mere concept, but the most radical revolution in human history.”
“You mentioned that,” John said.
“During human history, radical social political revolutions were always accompanied by uncontrollable violence,” General said. “There were countless examples of brutal killings happened when the civilization was shifting from one phase to another. But so far this world has been not too violent even though we have almost completed one major shift from human to inhuman.”
“What do you think is the reason for that?” John asked.
“The high-tech assisted formalization that we just discussed a moment ago is the reason,” General K answered. “As I told you that technologies are not fair to every person, they are fair to power and money. They serve us much better than those who are under our control…they actually help us to prevent the world from having any turmoil that might threaten our positions.”
John was disappointed by that answer because he was expecting something like “human beings have become reasonable and passionate with each other so that they tend to solve social issues peacefully instead of using violence.” But what he heard from General K about the reason of a peaceful transition was the unshakable control of the powerful ones like General K himself. While General K might have thought John should appreciate that supposedly good news about why the world was not in a global turmoil, John was not excited about it at all. Instead, he sensed an indescribable pain when heard General K laid it out.
Obviously, as a Red Hat wearer, John was not one of the “us” mentioned by General K, but just one of “those”, and thus that answer could also infer a hopeless future for people like himself. What made John feel even more painful than the coldness of that answer given by General K was his realization that General K just said a undeniable bloody fact.
John did not say anything but gulped in the whole glass of brandy.
“Very good,” General K commented. “I like someone who could drink alcohol like drinking water.” He lifted his head and poured his own glass of brandy into his mouth as well.
“Your Ma-jesty,” John noticed that his tongue was a bit stiff. He took a glance at General K and found that he was looking at him. He felt that General K might be waiting for him to act like a fool. John realized that the chemistry of the mixed alcohol started to have its effect on his body and mind. Even though, as an experienced salesman, John could handle alcohol pretty well, he had never been a quick drinker. He was a stylish drinker who could enjoy fine alcohols slowly while chatting for hours, but not have a quick drink of different alcohols in a messy way. He took a deep breath and tried to manage his sentence in a clear and elegant manner.
However, in addition to the effect of alcohol, he was also confused by the scholar-style speech given by General K during the conversation. The only time in his life when he was kinda soaked in the academic atmosphere was during his four years undergraduate study. Since then, as a business person, John occasionally had some encounters with some scholars, but he had never been interested in getting close to that type of people.
Besides, John had been confused since the morning tour of the New Generation Factory. Now in the state of mildly drunk, he started to mistake General K as a professional scholar after his long and profound philosophical speech. John cleared his throat and said to General K just like a student trying to get more tips from a teacher during a tutorial session before the final exam, “You have not told me why you need AHs yet.”
“Thanks for reminding me. We can talk about it now since you seem to have realized that this world has irreversibly come to a process that would finally separate the whole world, including your country, into the new classification of useful and useless,” General K said. “But we are now facing a serious problem, a really serious problem.”
“What is it?”
“In your opinion,” General K responded by asking him, “how should we handle the useless population?”
“Uh…as you have mentioned that the useless population is the outcome of the industrial automation and AI, and you also mentioned that it is an irreversible process for this world to be classified into useful and useless.” John tried to think thoroughly against the influence of alcohol and give some reasonable solution. “I guess we still need first to try harder to see if we could make the seemingly irreversible process to be reversed. For example, you rich people could invest more to create more opportunities that are only good for humans, not for robots, so that we would have fewer the so-called useless people.”
General K frowned for a fraction of a second, but John was focusing on his own thinking without noticing the frown on General K’s face. He continued, “In the mean time the governments should build up good welfare systems across the world so that helpless people could be helped.”
“You really think so?” General K asked.
“Uh…I guess that’s it,” John replied. “May I ask one question?”
“Sure,” General K replied coldly, “let me hear your question.”
“As I mentioned earlier, I’ve noticed that the automation and AI have not gained the same popularity in your country as in mine, how could you have so many…uh…useless people that you have to send them to the back of that wall?” John did not find a better term than the word ‘useless’ even though he hated that word during all that conversation.
“Well, En…” General K did not answer John’s question right away; instead he stared at John straight into his eyes and said, “I was told that you did not feel well this morning during the tour.”
“Oh, Yeah. I guess it was because of the jet lag.” John felt the pressure from the look of General K.
“That’s normal,” General K said. “Although you might not see as many icons or gadgets around, which might remind you of the automation or AI in this country, they have actually already become an indispensible part of our industry and economy. If you had a complete tour this morning, then you could have seen more automation and AI in that very factory.”
“But I was told that some AHs are working in that factory,” John looked at General K. “If you replace those AHs with humans, then you could at least reduce the number of useless with the help of that factory alone.”
General K did not answer right away, but laughed grimly. He stood up and paced a few steps away before he turned back. He smirked, while looking down at John, “Don’t you forget that factory is run by your friend.”
“He would listen to you if you request, I guess,” John said.
General K paced back to his seat and said, “No matter it is AI or AH, they are the same in terms of providing viable cost effective resources for productivity. As I said, it is the free market economy that has created those useless. After all, this world could not afford to become a grand charity, and it needs productivity.”
John was about to say something when the Captain of Palace Guards came in, “Excuse me, General, should we start the party, all the guests are waiting for you and Mr. Potter in the banquet hall.”
“Yes! We should start the party now, and I am also hungry. But I have a couple of phone calls to make,” General K replied. “Could you please show Mr. Potter the way to the banquet hall first, and I will be there right after you guys.”
“Sure.” The captain then said to John, “Shall we go?”
General K said to John, “You might go with the captain first, and I will join you guys very soon.”
“Sure…but Your Majesty have not told me why you need the Red Hats for AHs,” John looked at General K while he stood up from the couch.
General K exchanged glances with the confused captain, and then turned to John, “Don’t worry, we will pick it up sometime later.”
General K stared at the back of John with a disdainful look when he was leaving the room with the captain. He took out his mobile phone and sent a text to an addressee alias of “Brilliant Machines Association Test Center”.
In the text he typed:
Subject: J. Potter
Evaluation: Not our kind. Not trustable.
Then he sat down on the couch and poured a glass of brandy for himself.
A few minutes later, he received a response to that text with the following content:
Plan B.
He responded with “Okay.”