Although the Far East was a scene of chaos and bloodshed, things were still stable and improving!
The current situation was a bit out of control, especially for Shinomiya Kaguya, who was far away in the Middle East, after she received a call from Hayasaka Ai.
"What? My family was killed in a revolt by our underlings? I'm an orphan now?"
Shinomiya Kaguya never thought being so far away could have such benefits. She had been on the verge of being killed in the Shinomiya family's internal war.
The Shinomiya family had always valued a certain "smiling-on-the-outside, plotting-on-the-inside" attitude, so it was only reasonable that their underlings would want to kill their masters.
It was truly strange for something like this to happen in the Far East. She hadn't expected such a problem to arise for a moment.
Her first reaction was that Academy City couldn't hold back anymore and was about to purge the upper echelons of the Far East.
But then she reconsidered and felt it was completely unnecessary. Academy City had never considered assassination in its dealings; it had always been simple and direct.
This tradition ran through the entire administration of the Supervisory Board Chairman.
Father's dead? Brothers are all dead too?
Huh? Does this mean... I can inherit the family fortune?
A lightbulb suddenly went on over Shinomiya Kaguya's head. Had she inexplicably stumbled upon such a huge windfall?
But to Academy City, so-called external assets were completely meaningless. The internal productivity of Academy City was in a state of complete crushing dominance. They wouldn't consider how much money you had on the outside. In any case, it certainly wasn't as useful as the council's points.
The council's points were tied to a person's genetic "ore." Even if you wanted to speculate, you didn't have the ability to.
Should I go back and inherit the family business? Shinomiya Kaguya didn't really dare to accept this hot potato, but there was no problem in exchanging the Shinomiya name for some other benefits.
She had heard that since Academy City got the Herrscher of the Void, they had even created artificial gold, causing the international gold price to plummet again and again.
Creating gold was indeed an ability of the Herrscher of the Void. She could use spatial distortion to manipulate gravity and further change the structure of matter. By guiding electrons into the atomic nucleus to combine with protons to form neutrons.
In the process of neutronization, if she then guided them into iron atoms, through this method of "neutron capture," the iron element could break through the bottleneck of being unable to fuse into heavier elements, thus producing all heavy metal elements, including gold and silver.
So, theoretically, anyone who had control over gravity or spatial abilities was a living, walking gold mine.
Sirin, with the White Tower network controlling the Herrscher Core, had already completed the production of gold from theory to reality. It was just that the commotion it caused was a bit bigger. But this wasn't a huge problem. Sirin could be sent to other planets to continuously create gold mines.
If a Herrscher with the power of gravity and space couldn't create their own gold?
Then you could only say that this Herrscher was one of the more useless ones.
---||---
Mountains of clanking gold fell from the sky, bringing a strong visual shock to Theresa, who was working in the Middle East.
Theresa estimated that in the future, financial capital would have to remove the word "gold" from its vocabulary.
But Sirin had no intention of staying long. The little girl slipped away after a simple handover.
"This is what he asked me to bring you. I'm going home now!"
Sirin didn't care what these mountains of gold would be used for. If she wanted to, she could create a mountain of gold the size of Mount Tai in space. She could, but there was no need, and it was very tiring.
After paying Theresa with two small mountain-sized piles of gold, Sirin rushed off in a daze. She had just killed Theresa's grandfather, so naturally, the two had nothing more to say to each other. At a time like this, it was best for them not to meet.
But Theresa still wanted to ask more about her grandfather. It was just that only Noldrei knew about these things. After Otto's death, Theresa hadn't found a chance to talk to Noldrei in detail.
She was immersed in the Second Academy City's research on healing human psychological trauma, which made Theresa have a positive expectation for her dream-eating ability for the first time.
Even if she wanted to chat with Sirin, she wasn't given much of a chance.
Theresa felt like she had been thrown into the Middle East and left to fend for herself. Even when she was at the Far East branch before, Otto would often send her his care and condolences.
"Sigh... She ran off again..."
Theresa turned to look at the two glittering mountains of gold and began to worry about how to find people to deal with them.
---||---
Besides inspecting the situation in Academy City with Rita, Noldrei also came to the Second Academy City to see its development.
"What we've seen shouldn't be an isolated case. It's very likely that in the future, a large number of people will be in this mental state. Even if they understand that Androids can't produce Stigmas, they will still think that Androids are humans without Stigmas. After all, not many people in history have had Stigmas."
Rita herself couldn't tell if the "Gita" Android at Noldrei's doorstep was a real person or a fake. Although Noldrei had been explaining that the emotional interaction of Androids needed the structure of the Android network to function completely.
After the birth of the Android Cecilia, the Android network could already simulate the real situation of "being unable to grasp one's own emotions."
This meant that Androids could simulate the state of human emotional out-of-control, which had made it impossible for humans to distinguish whether an Android's emotions were real or fake.
The overly realistic simulation effect would make humans constantly experience the process of being replaced.
Rita was worried that this would become a new psychological trauma for humanity in the future.
"Don't worry about these things. The trauma repair work of the Second Academy City is temporary. In the future, the emotions and thoughts of humans will be closer to the state of adolescents. They will gradually adapt to a new form of life where 'psychological trauma' is forgotten."
Noldrei himself was like this. It wasn't about being emotionless and cold, but about using this life vitality to make it easier for people to forget pain.
Pain could indeed become a driving force for people to move forward at certain times, but this was an ability that only a few people possessed, relying on the cold reflection of reality to continue carrying the pain forward.
This is what is called "growth."
"The requirement of the new society is to minimize the impact of the inevitable pain in reality on people, to reduce the impact of pain on human activities to the lowest level. For us, the best thing is never the absence of pain, but to prevent pain from affecting the progress of human civilization. Rita, just like you are now, the hormonal interaction and information exchange between people can bring a sense of happiness."
"This is a feeling that humans can't get from playing games and interacting with virtual characters. The dopamine rush stimulated by game mechanics is a completely different experience from the hormonal interaction brought by real-life interactions."
"This is set by matter for the human sensory system, unless you can change your own hormone production process. But the problem is, will anyone really change their own cognitive system of emotional interaction to be equivalent to that of a virtual character?"
Noldrei asked a question that was difficult for Rita to answer.
Would anyone change their own cognitive system? Wouldn't that mean they really couldn't tell the difference between virtual and reality?