11 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
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Fantastic chapter, but I’d like us to get a little more context about WHY it’s such a bad thing to have their back channel code discovered, so much so that A almost immediately considers murdering a powerful political figure in response.
I got the sense that the back channel is unusual, but is it illegal? Immoral? Just something no one else has done before?
Now that its existence has been exposed, people will certainly try to copy and / or hack into it, and that’s going to occur regardless of if Robert is still alive or not.
Comment by PropagandaPagoda at 28/01/2025 at 15:22 UTC
27 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A is living a lie that she is more exceptional than anyone. A quicker study, top tier performer in multiple arenas, a sort of military strategist capable of organizing the resistance to the science center attack, someone who manages an entire second life under the scrutiny of billions using glances and other subtle interpretive clues. If the lie comes out, will her audience kill her like they killed Hruby? Kill each other in a war to end all flame wars? In A's mind, as closely as Basil can model it for us, A feels abject fear about bring found to be a fraud. Capable of one tenth of what she does, piloted increasingly by the intelligence wrapped in her skin, who she maligns.
The existence isn't common knowledge, and Robert avoided broadcasting anything in activating it. It's plausible that moneyed elite have had this for aeons, and he's realized she did it on her own, or Bas on his. Or Bas edited the past in a way other public footage subtly refutes, and an image-minded person inferred the rest.
Comment by mcmatt93 at 28/01/2025 at 13:38 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think it's less that the back channel existing is bad and more that the potential for figuring out the code can lead to people deciphering what was said in the back channel. That leads to people finding out Basil took control of A as well as all the memory edits that Basil did to make A appear to be more than she is.
The amount of influence A has gained as a direct result of those actions and edits is insane. Planets moved, society adopted on boards, and A has gotten a girl killed after more or less deleting her from society. If people find out that the things that got her that influence were lies, the effects of that are had to fathom. Worldwide riots at a minimum, complete societal collapse possible as people go to war with the onboards who are literally a part of themselves.