Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Jackal laughed nervously, cold sweat beading on her forehead.

The woman had never imagined that Noldrei truly knew Academy City like the back of his hand, even mocking the original ruling class that had been here.

But Jackal had to admit, in the past, Heliopolis Life Sciences wouldn't have even shared the benefits with those people. Thanks to the continuous popularization of Stigma Battlesuits, Heliopolis was now an outstanding tax-paying company.

"How do you know everything?!"

Kiana felt like she needed a brain transplant. When she used to spend every day with Noldrei, she had never seen him take the initiative to learn about these things. As it turned out, it wasn't that he didn't take the initiative; he had known everything from the very beginning.

"Didn't I tell you to come out and look around? I should be the one asking you why you don't know."

Noldrei rolled his eyes at Kiana, not bothering to continue the discussion on her foolish question.

He turned to Jackal instead. "You've done a great job. Don't worry about Academy City giving you trouble."

Kiana said uncertainly, "That's not right! Then where do the bodies I often see in the sewers come from?"

Noldrei pointed to the magnificent Heliopolis building. "Do you think this place is short on money for an incinerator? Obviously, we should ask our outstanding Academy City entrepreneur, Ms. Jackal."

Heliopolis certainly wasn't short on that kind of money, but Jackal couldn't guarantee that her subordinates wouldn't pocket a little extra.

"I... I'll go check."

Jackal left with a dark expression, instructing others to continue showing Noldrei around Heliopolis.

After Jackal left, Kiana asked angrily, "Why don't you do something about it? Are you just going to let these people harm others? Weren't those people tricked?"

Noldrei stroked the small, lifelike face of the White Tower android.

He didn't answer Kiana's question. Instead, he asked, "Do you think these White Tower androids, with their so-called Bionic Network, can truly be considered human life?"

"That..."

Kiana hadn't expected him to suddenly switch to such a question, and her brain stalled for a moment.

"No. Whether someone is a person is never up to them to decide. It's determined by the communication between lives. The communication gap between animals and humans is the fundamental reason for the differentiation between them."

"In the future, after humans granted intelligence to animals, they discovered that animals would become beings that made humans feel just as uncomfortable as other humans. Animals can become 'human,' but this change was collectively self-denied by humanity before it was ever collectively acknowledged."

"Why? Because the interaction and communication never reached a sufficient scale, a level that would make humanity acknowledge them. After that, humanity abandoned the need for 'pets' as emotional companions."

"Androids, this kind of life, were naturally brought back to the table."

Noldrei pinched the little cheek of the White Tower doll and said with a smile, "So now... what do you think the final fate of these android dolls... will be?"

Fate?

Kiana looked at the dolls displayed in the hall. Each one was connected to a centralized network, and they might even use a blockchain-like system to build their own android community.

"They'll probably be cleaned up too, right? I don't think humans will easily accept androids."

Kiana didn't believe androids could change this outcome. As Noldrei had said, if androids were made very strong, then by the same token, human modification would also surpass that of androids.

"No. It's that humans will modify themselves into a thought community similar to the android network. They will become like androids, rather than choosing to eliminate them. However, you're not wrong either. They will indeed 'eliminate' the androids."

"But this elimination is not the kind you're thinking of. It's the removal of the androids' own social network and the reconstruction of a new 'human network' system. This will complete the process of decentralization in the human management system in a true sense."

"So, the androids who lose their own network structure will also 'die' in a theoretical sense. Because at that point, humans will no longer need a humanoid emotional companion."

To Kiana, this sounded somewhat cruel, but perhaps not entirely so.

"On the contrary..." Noldrei sighed. "The androids whose old network was removed, because they couldn't accept the disappearance of their own community, over eighty percent of them chose to destroy themselves."

This time, Kiana was truly shocked.

She exclaimed, "Androids know how to commit suicide?"

"What are you thinking? Since they were created to fulfill the emotional needs of humans, they would certainly be given emotional systems similar to humans. That's not a difficult thing to do. Do you think replicating a human body is hard?"

Noldrei felt that Kiana underestimated the androids of the future. The reason they were identified as androids was because they were actually sacrifices in humanity's exploration of future social structures.

The so-called androids were, in fact, a "pilot program for new human thought communities." Once it was determined that this method was better for humanity, humans would unhesitatingly scrap the androids' social communities, praising it as "liberating the androids' freedom."

When future humans created androids, they had already thought of how to destroy them, and even made the androids feel eternally grateful for it.

After falling into the pitfall of turning animals into humans, how could humanity fall into the same trap with androids?

The biological emotional system is a human weakness. Conversely, an android with an emotional system would have the same weakness.

Kiana was silent for a moment. She looked at the new human race structured around this vast network of androids and realized that Noldrei had never taken these lives seriously from the beginning.

Once they became human, they would have all the weaknesses humans have.

Since humans could kill their own kind, they naturally wouldn't mind sending this new kind of human, who was just like them, to hell as well.

"In that case..."

Kiana suddenly felt a pang of sorrow for these androids.

"Doesn't that mean these androids are just like those people abandoned by society? Those who were willing to put themselves on the operating table to alleviate human loneliness, but the androids created based on them changed humanity. Yet, the androids ended up on the same path as them..."

Kiana suddenly felt she didn't have the confidence to control this group of people under her command.

She suddenly felt a sense of fear. If Noldrei were truly gone, wouldn't the infighting among these people become even more frantic and without limits than any war in the past?

Just as they finished talking about the androids, Jackal returned to them with an embarrassed look on her face.