Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS3 Chapter6 (section)

===Part 5===

“It’s a virus.”

In the interrogation room, Inoue produced a trembling voice while still sitting in his chair.

“But it’s designed to destroy instead of hijack control. It will be sent from Academy City and randomly disable networked devices all over the world when their OS, security, firmware, or whatever else is updated.”

“A computer virus???”

“Academy City’s tech is about 30 years ahead of the outside world, so ''if it can pose a threat in this small city, it can be plenty effective on the rest of the planet.''”

“What are you talking about?” asked the well-behaved Anti-Skill officer. “Hey, Inoue. Are you trying to confuse us with disinformation!?”

Directly behind him, Shokuhou Misaki rubbed her slender chin with her fingertips.

Her other hand toyed with a TV remote and she whispered in a voice only the suspect could hear.

“What does that global prank have to do with the bloodline delusions?”

“The belief that birth and social status determine one’s quality as a person is only hated because the modern age rejects it. But sometimes people are more willing to accept something when you change the wording. Just like the fortunetellers giving advice based on their own experience and their observations of the customer have been resurrected in the form of AI speakers supported by big data. Basically, the higher ups needed a trigger.”

“So they want to spread a virus around the world and eliminate the internet and computers?”

When Shokuhou said that, Inoue continued.

He was not bragging. He simply could not even roll out of his chair anymore.

“They bring back the respect their bloodlines deserve. Noblesse oblige. The value of noble blood is found in how much they can support the commoners in their time of need.”

“So they’ve decided for themselves how much they’re worth and started a global game of chicken?”

If that computer virus really did spread, it would end up destroying more than just digital data: pharmaceutical factories, power plants, industrial complexes, dams, airports, etc. Even the people with no interest in anything new would be quite interested in bringing back what they already had.

“In the West, your social status is apparently determined by how much money you give to charity. So if our representative pays out far more than the real noble families and socialites, it will place us even higher than them, won’t it? After all, the people in our organization think simply having money is not enough. If they can pay to gain a position in an old and established family, they will pull out all the stops.”

It was hard to tell whether he was really answering her questions or not.

Although she was using her power to ensure he could not lie, so this had to be what Inoue really believed.

“The thing about all this is, if you build too large a charitable foundation and hand out money from a position of superiority, people will view you with hostility. Even in these largescale things, the grassroots are important. That’s how it is with Santa Claus and the Kasa Jizo, right? Everyone knows who they are, but they never identify themselves. Bring it far enough and the charity becomes a legend. And this is not some logic of the past. Do you remember when everyone was talking about the backpack gifted by an anonymous person a while back?”

…As someone who specialized in manipulating people’s minds, that seemed overly hopeful and optimistic to her, but she was not about to argue over the validity of the man’s views. Someone who truly understood the human mind would not even begin that kind of discussion.

And more importantly…

“Let’s say they do create an age with the hierarchy of power they want. What proof do they have it would be them who rises to the level of nobility? Nothing says they will be the only ones trying to take advantage of the risky opportunity they created. Aren’t there plenty of other people who would want to stand at the top if they had the chance?”

“There is no guarantee, of course. However. Their chances will be much better in that game of musical chairs than in the current age where everyone is stuck in the chair they already have. Creating a chance and a possibility is what matters. For one thing, this is their Plan B because the current method of using brand bags and violins to reduce everyone’s frustrations was not enough and they need to take some major step to prevent the entire organization from falling apart. Giving up and doing nothing is simply not an option.”

“…”

“Also, it is a noble bloodline that the higher ups want. They want to be nobility, not royalty. I called it a game of musical chairs, remember? If there are empty chairs left over, there is room for others to interfere. It is not quite like an auction. If all you want to do is enjoy evening parties and sip at the sweet nectar of your position, then being at the very top is actually a major inconvenience. Those executive positions require so much paperwork and you are publicly executed if you screw up, so those can be given to someone else. The best place to hide a tree is the forest and near the top is the best place to position yourself. There you have plenty of rivals who will hide your indulgences and ugliness with their own.”

They had no way of knowing if it would turn out that well.

Would the computer virus actually work, could they really manipulate so many people to do what they wanted, and would they really be chosen as the nobility of the new age? They had a general path laid out for themselves, but it felt like there were a lot of hurdles they would have to adlib their way past along the way. And if they had to place themselves at the mercy of some high-risk, high-return calculations, it was hard to think of it as a sure thing.

But.

“They might be motivated by utter nonsense, but they can still cause real harm. And that includes how far the virus’s damage will spread.”

Shokuhou did not sound happy, but her words of course did not reach the Anti-Skill officer seated right in front of her.

She did not know much about phenomena outside the human mind.

The situation made her think of the #3 who she was constantly squabbling with.

An undeniable catastrophe might occur, or it might fizzle out. Financial deals might grind to a halt, starting a great depression, or a single country or continent’s digital systems might shut down, triggering an invasion by some other country.

In other words, she had no idea what would happen.

In a way, this was even more of a pain than being presented with a plan meant to slaughter the 7.5 billion people on the planet.

At the very least, it seemed impossible to keep the number of deaths at 0 if this was allowed to happen. But she knew nothing for certain since she did not have all the security information on the many power plants and factories around the world. It was possible there were some crucial facilities out there with outdated or sloppy designs and everyone just stuck with it because ‘it hasn’t blown up yet’.

“You said it would target the OS and security updates, didn’t you?”

“A few different companies and organizations are in charge of that, but they’re all effectively the same. Their engineers have already given up on manually identifying and working out countermeasures for the massive amount of viruses and hacking methods produced on a daily basis. An average of 8000 malicious scripts are discovered every day and the quantity and quality are gradually rising as times passes. The puzzles they must solve have far surpassed what they can handle.”

The IT classes taught in schools these days had their downside. When even elementary school kids could write their own apps, even elementary school kids could create and upload their own malware.

“The antivirus software is supposedly manually created in a special facility known as the virus storage center…but even that isn’t enough. Most of the process is automated for the same reason as destination sorting for online store packages. They have machines handle as much as possible and the humans handle the irregular parts left over. More than 80% of vulnerability patches are entirely done by the machines.”

“…”

“You understand, don’t you? The virus storage center is supposed to be a museum of malicious data, but it barely functions in that role at all. For the same reason that a small team of elite commandos can’t handle every war across the globe.”

There was no hesitation in Inoue’s voice.

He was not being arrogant either. He had simply fallen into a state where he was listing off everything he could think of until something worked and he could reverse his fortunes here.

“Corporations and universities that specialize in security will receive a great number of error reports from users and they use an AI system similar to a complex search engine to gather and analyze that data. They do receive an answer, but not even the programmers that designed the system can explain how that answer was reached. And in fact, more than 80% of patches are the same. …So if a few drops of poison are manually snuck in, those in charge will never notice the trouble. We live in a crazy age, don’t we?”

“Zero-Day Link…”

“Yes. The different groups like to talk about how they share data on viruses and vulnerabilities, but that’s really just them linking their representative computers together to steal each other’s methods of solving the puzzles. So as long as you can reach one of those computers, anyone can add the poison. And it will be a deadly and untraceable poison.”

That network would of course be closed to normal users.

It was only AIs exchanging data, so allowing normal users access would accomplish nothing.

To access it, there would have to be a spy within the management of Zero-Day Link or that field would have to have one of those “keys” set up, be it a piano or a violin.

Blue Blood wanted to make themselves into something special.

To do that, they would spread a computer virus across the world from Academy City to destroy everything from personal mobile devices to public infrastructure. All so they could prove they were better than the VIPs sitting on whatever thrones they currently had.

They had no way of knowing if it would turn out that well, but they believed it would.

“Zero-Day Link is composed of four AI servers. One with a university, one with a company, one with an organization, and one with the government. Which one is it? Where does Blue Blood intend to insert their poison!?”

Inoue Kasha slowly inhaled.

He could not resist even if he wanted to.

And.

And.

And.