Chapter 528: Planned Obsolescence

Aron wasted no time after sealing Rick's fate and immediately got to work. He turned to Gaia and asked, "How long would it take to do a deep scan of everyone with any connection to an imperial institution? And I mean all of them, all the way from the ministers at the top to the janitors at the bottom. And ARES and the nyxians, too, for that matter. We need to know if they've experienced any memory loss or any abnormal activities that don't have an explanation."

[A day, Your Majesty. It would be faster, but to do it without alerting anyone will require them to be logged into the simulation of their own will, so I'll have the recordkeepers do it shift by shift. The employees who aren't scheduled to work the day we choose will almost all be in the simulation anyway, since it's still fresh and new to them so they spend all their free time in it,] Gaia replied, generating a timetable for the deep scan along with a detailed plan for its implementation.

"Good, start the scan as soon as possible," he said.

Then he turned to Nova and asked, "How's the progress on miniaturizing our psionic shielding?"

[It's ready for use, sir,] she answered.

"Then, together with the deep scan, let's upgrade all of the government issued access devices to include psionic shielding. We can't risk any of them being compromised in any way—not now, and not in the future. So psionic shielding tech will be integrated into everything starting with the release of second-generation public devices as well.

"We can use planned obsolescence to force them to upgrade piecemeal. The general public is a low-risk category anyway, and in the meantime, we can just have the recordkeepers do continual deep scans to catch blank spots and abnormal activities."

[I've updated the new schematics and sent them to the factory for printing and distribution,] Nova said. She and Gaia had already worked out a distribution plan while Aron was talking about the upgrades and the need to introduce planned obsolescence into their products.

[Should we introduce planned obsolescence schemes for all of our products, or just the DR devices? After all, not everyone constantly upgrades their hardware to the latest and greatest bleeding edge technology. Especially when the cost of the product is equal to two months of living expenses for them,] Gaia asked.

Another AI faded into existence, her form flickering between real and illusory. She wore a long robe with the hood and cowl pulled up, decorated with symbols that shifted and changed from moment to moment, never letting anyone get a solid grasp on what they were before they were already something else. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves and clasped in front of her; she was none other than Mnemosyne, the true librarian of the Akashic Library. [What section of the general public should we focus our resources on with the continual deep scans?] she asked in her haunting, echoing voice.

"For now, focus on the most vocal people, both positive and negative. For the rest, monitor in waves as your processing power allows. We can't interrupt the functioning of the Akashic Record if we don't want to tip our hand."

[I suspect that if the cult is planning something, it'll be happening very soon. The longer they remain inactive, the more stable the empire becomes. So I believe they'll be carrying out their next attacks before our fortress cities are completed,] Gaia interjected. [So everyone in the empire needs to undergo at least one deep scan before then, and we can modify the scanning priorities after that.

[But as this has pointed out a hole in our security, the deep scans absolutely must continue in the future as well. With mana density on the rise, we'll only see more and more awakeners and there's no predicting how many will have similar affinities as the ones we're dealing with now.]

"The attack is likely to take place during the new year celebration," Aron said after some thought. There would be an empire-wide celebration of the first full year since the empire's founding, and if the progenitor cultists wanted to do significant damage, that would be their best opportunity. After that, the window for hitting the empire where it hurts would begin closing.

[They've likely gained access to some of the imperial training courses on how to use mana through taking over one or more of our awakeners. So they'll likely be using that in their next attack, which means the damage they can deal will be vastly more than their first wave of attacks,] Nyx pointed out. [And the worst part is that we have no way of knowing who or where the noncitizen awakeners are. Plus, unlike normal weapons, we can't inspect them and put a limit on their power.]

Aron turned to Nova again and asked, "Speaking of detection, how's the fine-tuning of the Henry's Eye system coming?" If they had solved the problem of sensitivity and granularity, everything else would be a walk in the park.

[Research is still ongoing, but we've developed an algorithm that should help narrow the search area even if the hardware isn't where we want it.]

"Okay, then use our current satellites to do a deep scan of Earth and highlight all of the large mana concentrations that might be a gathering point for noncitizen awakeners. It's a hail mary play, but now is the time for those," Aron ordered.

He turned to Athena and continued, "Have ARES on standby, as there's a chance of situations growing out of control."

[Yes, sir!] Athena saluted.

"Have your people prepare for emergency extraction. They're the tip of the spear, and the tip is always the first thing people see when it's coming at them," Aron said, looking at Nyx.

[We have extraction plans already set,] the petite spymistress said. [Most of Operation Hunting Dog was successful, but with the suicide programming it's becoming more and more obvious that we won't get the results we'd hoped for out of it.]

"Anyone have anything else to add?" Aron asked, scanning his gaze across the people in the room. He waited for a while, then continued, "Okay then, meeting adjourned. I have to prepare some things on my end before I move out and get to work."

He fully expected to be spending the next ten days looking through all of the mana blobs revealed by the satellite scan of Earth, so he needed to bid his family farewell.