Revenge Fantasy

Charles Ashford. Age, 56.

"Honorable to all. Friend of many. A loving father and a successful businessman."

The funeral was held one Friday weeks following the fact. His death in the obituary, scheduled for a nice 16:00 in a Birmingham church. A church that Charles, personally, arranged for his funeral to take place in. His staff were given express instructions on how the funeral will occur in the event of his death, with butlers and maids arranging the funeral.

Due to the nature of his death, there was a sizeable attendance at this most public of occasions. Business partners and friends present to mourn a good man's death. News reporters and journalists present to cover the following service. Teachers and classmates of his heir, and daughter, making time to be present as well.

"... it is with deepest regrets that I must announce that my father has passed..."

Chouko Ashford stands and gives her eulogy, dressed in funeral uniform of pure black. As the only family Charles had left, really, she was under great self pressure to give the speech. Readying to have her words documented by those blatantly holding notepads in their hands and all. Only recently, this child was shown with delight and joy.

Now, not a soul could see her smile.

As she goes on and on about fond memories of Charles, cementing him as the kind, protective, generous man he was. As the ten year old Chouko was expected to succumb to tears and sadness. The attendees simply witness a ten year old with no more tears to shed. Her words empty and hollow, eyes blankly gazing forward as she speaks.

Chouko's concluding words... "May his soul rest free, contently in Heaven, blind to the world he departs from..."

Her voice hesitant at the end, hiding whatever sadness lingers in those words, before she goes back to her seat. Sitting right at the front, blankly staring as the proceedings continue.

It was all a blur to Chouko, really...

"... apologies, Lady Ashford. There is a man out front, requesting for your presence. He was not permitted to enter given his... special guest."

Chouko looks at the butler, the blur interrupted by the whispering man. Her eyebrow raised, she... curiously gets up from her seat and briefly departs, being escorted to the front of the church, various funeral attendees watching as Charles's only family departs.

There, outside, Chouko encounters that... inventor. The one that conducted that presentation weeks ago. With him, on a wheel cart, the mass of machinery that was Vanilla.

"A-Ah! Uhm- hey, little girl!" the inventor greets, an awkward smile on his face with an inappropriately upbeat tone behind his voice.

"Good afternoon..." Politely nodding to the inventor, before directing her attention to Vanilla. "And... good afternoon to you."

"Yes. Good afternoon," Vanilla speaks... before letting out a robotic sigh. As human as ever. "... I... I am sorry for your loss, Chouko. Charles was a good man..."

The inventor... nods slowly. "Mhmm... w-we happened to be in town, and... came to pay our respects. To think it- it happened the day we meet and everything... I- I'm so sorry it happened."

"Sorry for your loss," Vanilla corrects him.

Chouko just... nods lightly at the two. "Thank you. You have arrived in the late stage of the funeral. Respects are being paid, and... momentarily, the church will lay Father to rest in its burial ground and all. Father... would have enjoyed knowing you two came to pay respects, I suppose."

"A-Ah..." the inventor noises, fidgeting idly. "W... Would you like a hug? I- I think people hug at funerals to feel better..."

Chouko... narrows her eyes slightly, before she nods idly at this sudden request. "I see no issue with it."

And then, with permission, Chouko is promptly hugged by the young American in an attempt to comfort the little girl in her time of mourning.

A hopelessly awkward exchange for an entire, uncomfortable fifteen to twenty seconds. This wasn't going the way that the inventor expected at all.

"..." After the hug, Chouko just nods faintly and pulls away from the hug. "I will be seeing you two some other time. I must return to the proceedings and all."

"Y... Yeah, sounds good- uhm- tell your pops that- I'll miss him, and I'll make him proud and all!" the inventor exclaims.

Vanilla- turns to almost stare at her creator as he says this. One could practically see the judgment on her face at this.

Chouko turns and starts to walk away. "Very well. I will let him know."

"Uhm- Chouko," Vanilla... speaks up, calling for the girl. "... I have- processed, lately, Gulliver's Travels."

"Jonathan Swift, yes?" Chouko asks. "I am familiar."

"Yes... we... I would like to talk about it with you sometime," Vanilla requests.

"... we will see. Until then, cheers," Chouko responds. Entering the church again, walking out of the machine's view.

After that, the inventor and Vanilla begin to walk away. Starting to leave the church after their brief chat with Chouko.

The inventor lets out a sigh, hopelessly just- cringing at that entire interaction. "Ugh... great. Just what I needed before a big conference..."

The one saving grace of that entire thing was that he didn't bring up the reason they were in the country: presenting Vanilla in Birmingham for another presentation, invited overseas to a tech demo and a talk show. Moving up on the world, on the same day and country as the funeral and everything. That would have been absolutely abysmal...

Vanilla was left pondering Chouko's response, its artificial intelligence... thinking as it asks its creator: "Question... did Chouko seem- distant to you?"

"Huh?" The inventor raises an eyebrow at this question. Distant? "I- I mean, sure, but it's a funeral and her dad died and all... I don't blame her..."

"No. I mean... distant, distant. Like... she..."

For a while, the nation was brought to tears over the death of Charles. The tragedy in that king's suite spread throughout the nation, and brief memorials were held to honor the man.

... but news, afterwards, quickly turn to old news.

The fact that it was an overseas murder fades away from attention. The crime was just another statistic in the US, with officers having gotten all they could from forensics and witness reports. Chouko cooperated the best she could, but these men will never face justice, and Charles's body is buried away.

Businesses began to separate from the Ashfords. Bought out by other partners to put them under new management, now that Charles was gone. Many of them wanted to keep Charles's spirit alive in their company goals, but... none of them found interest in continuing contact with Chouko.

Now that Charles was gone, Chouko... Chouko didn't have any help available to handle the affairs. She understood none of the paperwork, nor did she have assistance in managing any of Charles's assets. The maids, butlers, and groundskeepers begin seeking new employment.

Various assets in the Ashford Manor have begun to be seized and auctioned off. The books in the Ashford library were quite valuable, sold off alongside more and more of his furniture for a pretty pound.

The thing that Chouko struggled to part with, however, was the piano. And when its time came, Chouko... spent an entire day in that room, sitting at its bench. For some time, Chouko's hands hover over the keys. She stares forward at the sheet music, knowing exactly what note she needed to play.

But none of her fingers press down on the keys.

"..."

Chouko was escorted off of the premises, taken away from her childhood home. Chouko ultimately proved to be an incompetent head of the Ashford family. Charles simply raised her as a child and - altogether - she had no further guidance on how to run the family businesses. To make matters worse, her... attendance... for her last year of education took a severe hit. She was unable to graduate and needed a repeat... one that she ultimately never fulfilled.

Pretty soon, after... months... the manor itself was foreclosed. Standing in front of the gate, hand raised and rested gently in the air, the girl holding onto something that no longer existed.

Eventually, Chouko... left it all behind. With no staff remaining to accompany her, and all business partners moving on from the Ashfords, she was nothing more than a common face. Fading away from media attention, her name losing its power and relevancy. The only unique thing left about her was her red eyes, which was no longer recognizable in public.

Chouko was just... erased from the media. Beyond a dead man's legacy and the growing obscurity of the Ashford name, the world moved on and focused on other topics.

In Chouko's place, media focus shifted to Vanilla. The old footage of Vanilla and Chouko talking was now substituted for Vanilla's newest conversations with other people.

"So- Vanilla! Good to have you on the show!"

"Thank you, thank you. It's great to be on here, everyone! Glad to see all your smiling faces! ... haha."

The pure, lifelike realism of Vanilla charmed the hearts of people around the world. Celebrities were in love with this android. From athletes to movie stars, and talk show hosts to news anchors. Overwhelming amounts of publicity showered Vanilla all around the world, with investors and companies beginning to look into Vanilla and her technology.

"So, you're operating all of the time? Like, a fully functioning person?"

"Yes, indeed. My operational time has been three weeks so far!"

"Wow! You hear that, folks? We got ourselves a night owl here!"

"Hoot, hoot!"

Within its mess of wires and machinery, people soon found out that the inventor was either a revolutionary genius, or got extremely lucky. The source of Vanilla's power was primitively wired to minimize the necessary electricity. Meaning, Vanilla ran almost indefinitely for months with the same power it took to charge a phone.

A miracle wonder in the face of other AI technology requiring plentiful amounts of power to run. The Vanilla prototype was a miracle wonder of science, one that prompted the inventor to an overwhelming success. Riches and money to further develop his project, propelling him and Vanilla to luxury.

While Vanilla was regularly maintained and updated, she soon found competition starting to come after her. Other inventors began coming out with their own models, trying to claim the success Vanilla held. With them, more inventors started to work on their own "Vanilla", even building off of the leaked source code of the prototype. Years upon years of technical development transpire, inspiring and causing an oversaturation of supposed tech geniuses wanting to achieve the success Vanilla met.

Moore's Law, in layman's terms, is the theory that computers and technology exponentially double every two years. With countless people in a worldwide competition to come out on top, this law was stretched to its utter limits, with constant growth and improvement to surpass all human limits. The race began to innovate and improve, products being cranked out like crazy, and several companies have begun rising to the top with their renditions of the Vanilla prototype.

Vanilla became the backbone of android technology, with pre-existing android technology plastered over it. If a tech company didn't have their own version of Vanilla, their stocks would significantly drop to the point of bankruptcy. The fall of many tech giants came from this, with unsustainable Vanilla copies that never matched the same amounts of humanity as Vanilla and new rising tech companies achieving high amounts of success in a new wave of technology.

With this success, however, came... controversy. Development of AI has shifted into being as human as possible, thus causing the newest renditions to become eerily human. Overwhelmingly human. To the point where, with copies like Chocolate and Orange, the realistic human technology came with a synthetic and lifelike mechanical body. They could talk like humans, walk like humans, grab things and drive cars like humans, even perform and work like humans. Many bring up that these models are better at being human than most humans were!

With this, the concept was... starting to become less universally loved. What made Vanilla tolerable is the idea that the technology was just a mess of wires and machinery. Now that development was causing overwhelming amounts of functional artificial humans to spread into the world's population, people began wondering: if these androids could act like humans, talk like humans and even live like humans, then what stops them from completely replacing humans?

What stops the androids from replacing people? And if they did begin replacing people, would they stop before every human is replaced?

This growing, irreparable mindset was proven correct, as companies discovered that mass produced androids surpass working humans in every way. Factories, construction sites, call centers and office buildings, countless industries effectively pushing out any need for organic labor whatsoever. People were sacked and fired after this increase in productivity, with androids that costed far less and complained far less than humans.

With the way things were, humanity was on the path of becoming obsolete, and a Second Great Depression was seen coming over the horizon.

Thus, humans needed to adapt and overcome. They needed to prove themselves more valuable than the androids, physically superior even.

Companies met the android threat by creating new technology to change a human's body, to theoretically surpass their physical and mental limits. Initially, it began with the following capabilities: prosthetic and mechanical arms to give super strength. New eyes and ears to cure the blind and deaf with super sight and hearing. Phones and neural chips in a person's head to promote communication.

Pretty soon, more and more uses were invented, making it possible for real people to compete with these fake humans. Generalized in the blanket term of "cyborg technology", cybernetics and organisms crossed together, people started to jump onto this bandwagon, and began relying on cyborgs to overcome the growing threat of androids. Investors dumped money into these projects, giving developers more incentive to go full steam ahead.

This, in and of itself, spawned even worse issues faster than anyone could have expected. At a time when people needed it most, it was rare for a common man to afford any of it. People were rushing to get cybernetics, sacrificing parts of their lives to compete and survive. Controversy spawned as a result, with a vocal minority attempting to warn people not to get these implants.

But it didn't matter, it was a necessity. A plan to protect our way of life by ignore every ethical concern. The ends justified the means, propelling the majority into blind acceptance that cybernetics were the future. A path similar to how the public once thought about androids. The costs went down, more of the population became cyborgs...

... and in this mass panic, four years after the Vanilla prototype was presented... came the first major blow to artificial intelligence. The predecessor to human androids herself, the spark that inspired massive waves of progress...

Vanilla... completely shut down. No response, no word. The technology was rendered... broken, suddenly.

"V... Vanilla?! Vanilla, speak to me- h-hey! Vanilla!"

The inventor refused to comment any further as to what happened, almost- struck with grief when Vanilla stopped responding altogether. But Vanilla was gone, and this secrecy spawned controversy. People immediately speculated on what could have happened to cause this, going wild with their imaginations. If the technology just failed, if it ran out of power and fried its components, or some other third cause- the world wanted an answer.

Well, initially, it did.

New questions rose up from this one, single case. This malfunction, this error, this shutdown. With it came high debate on the longevity of AI and androids as concepts. How they could keep up its power, how costly they were to the power grid, how they ultimately only functioned to "be human" and "do human things". Was it worth it to continue manufacturing these things if they're just going to perish away like Vanilla did?

The supposed "death of Vanilla" marked a major turning point. Current historians cite it as the start of humanity's destruction, when the mass public began going insane.

Now that the human androids showed a possibility of shutting down, of coming to a complete end after this campaign of replacement and fear, the humans... were finally safe. No need to worry about their lives being replaced. Androids were being scrapped and discarded once damaged, and there was no need to use cybernetics anymore.

Or, so people thought. Cybernetics enhanced life in ways people thought unimaginable, products of innovation that struck gold. A surplus of effort was put into these things, and now they were expected to give it all up? No. Humans were bypassing their own limits, able to do these wondrous things. There was no reason to stop.

And with this mindset, spawned what people call "the First Cybernetic Crime Spree". Catastrophic events transpire in just one year. With technology to surpass base humanity and a soon to be defunct android industry, nothing stopped people from committing any crime they wished.

No population to suffer worse from this than the Americans, with damages going into the millions and casualties rising into the thousands.

"Our top story today! Countless banks across America are being held up by these 'cybernetically enhanced men', leaving many powerless. Exact numbers are still being processed, but at this time, it is suspected that these banks have been robbed of at least five hundred million dollars. What is the future of this country if these people are permitted to...?"

"America's hearts go out to the victims' families. If you're just now joining us, America has recently experienced one of the worst cases of arson, with one individual suspected to have burnt down 30 neighborhoods and counting. The known culprit is a 'Cyrus Hernandez', a 22 year old Floridian that..."

"And in bizarre fashion, a trend has come back to the Number 1 spot on social media. The tag, '#FistMeFather', is a tag used to post candid clips of brawls between cybernetic individuals in public places. Originating back at the start with Australian user 'FatherOfTheFist65', a middle aged influencer promoting self defense classes, he was a witness to such a brawl at his son's birthday party, when..."

And the media went insane when a cybernetically augmented man ran into the United States White House with a comedically oversized magnet. Running through its halls at an alarming speed, jumping through its walls, an absolutely insane lunatic making a mockery of this country's leadership.

When the androids were under fire, the worst that happened were people losing jobs. Now that cybernetics were in this hot seat, atrocities of crimes and dangers to human life are being committed in massive waves.

The world was in crisis, and its people needed a solution.

Regulations were initially attempted by the government, but no one could agree on what action to take. Stricter regulations were a violation of basic human rights and freedoms. Looser regulations were a threat to human safety. A familiar American controversy, only with expanded international attention. The polarizing global problem of "what happens if these deranged criminals cross the ocean into other continents" divided the world.

The only solution that could "work" in the long term... was to further lean into technology. Tech companies left in power to develop anything and everything to fully balance out and combat the cyborg crimes.

With this freedom, cybernetics cemented themselves as an essential necessity for citizens to stay safe, with a mass number of loans offered and taken for people to install the basics: top of the line technology with access to security, emergency, and medical services.

Police officers were turned cyborgs, with training to go no-tolerance on crime. If a criminal was spotted, the police force was to mobilize and arrest immediately. The cybernetic criminal either needed to give up instantaneously, or fight through a massive force that will follow the criminal to the ends of the earth.

It has gotten to the lengths where it was safer to stay indoors than step a single foot out the door. Companies seized the opportunity to develop technology and software for eye technology, bringing to life a truly virtual reality where - for a price - those that wanted to stay especially safe could disappear into VR and isolate themselves from the outside completely.

Cybernetics were wildly climbing to their peaks. But alongside the cybernetics, as options for those who wished to not be cyborgs, came the resurgence of AI and android companies as an alternative solution. There was now a rebirth of AI as humanity once knew it, as that recognizably artificial technology to serve their purposes more efficiently than the natural human.

On one end, companies continued to prioritize humanizing androids to give humans hope in this crisis of cyborg criminals. People needed comfort, needed safety in this dangerous time of fear and terror. Thus, androids were introduced into the toy industry, creating androids to serve as mobile and lifelike human companions.

The #1 spot for a company producing this type is "Sweet Bot Industries", founded on selling android sweethearts to spread comfort and safety. With programmed humanities deeply connected to Vanilla, these androids are named after desserts and pastries, with a sort of... disposable nature to them. Encouraging short term purchase with relatively low costs for an android that could shut down at any moment if desired.

On the other end of the spectrum, to cover the problem Vanilla's shutdown presented, many companies saw humanizing the androids as a lesser - if not nonexistent - priority. If the androids were less human, that would improve their long-term utility and open room for other defense purposes and safety features.

Many companies took this approach, but the android powerhouse that came out on top is "The Caliber Company". Following the route of mass productions, with top of the line military technology, scientists and developers worked their hardest to make a quality product to guard everything. Banks, offices, ships, planes, homes... everything. For a rather expensive price, your life and safety was forever guaranteed with a Caliber Android.

Nine years, nine years alone to pass as the world became a dystopia of technology. This subsection of the age of technology is aptly named the Artificial Revolution, as cybernetics and androids reign supreme as leading industries. An economy and society backed by pure controversy and chaos, public opinion shifting back and forth as the world became completely reliant on this subset of technology.

Humanity's worst fears, worst nightmares, and worst morals coming to life before everyone's eyes.

... with the technological solutions serving as cover, drawing media attention away from the era's most darkest of organizations, the most secretive of organizations.

"Client: Unknown.

Target: Terrence Gardner

Deadline: 3 days.

It has come to our attention that the CEO of Sedimate LLC. is preparing to release the testing prototype of Agridorm - an indoor, nutrient rich soil for growing crops - to thousands of households across the country. An anonymous tip has come in, with evidence that the product contains carcinogenic substances. Human safety is in danger.

Before this release, action must be taken. The most optimal of ways is to leak his criminal background, to have public opinion and all investors stray away from this man. The Underworld is calling for an information leak of this man, to provide as much evidence of his crimes as possible.

The address of his office has been provided. Time is of the essence.

Pay: $20,000."

"..." In an undisclosed location, with dossier in hand, a mercenary browses through the documents with skimming eyes. Taking note of each intricate detail provided, committing the information to her memory.

... before promptly burning the documents with a lighter. Tossing the ashes into a nearby bin, and making her way out into the streets. On her way to the address in question, ready to carry out this work.

"See you soon, Gardner."