They called them Internal Agents.
They were the little AI that sat in what was effectively a cellular phone and interfaced with your neuralware to help you organize your business, whatever it may be. Normally audio only, if a person had a chyron then any information could also appear in your field of vision. From this Internal Agent a person could handle calls, access the NET in limited ways, handle transactions, and whatever other things that meatbags used phones for.
In the modern day, they were so overwhelmingly common that it was rarer to see someone without one rather than someone with one. Little AIs of no particular learning capability that assisted every human in just about every task that connected to their Internal Agent.
What most meatbags didn't know is what they were for originally.
EVPA. Extra-Vehicular Powered Armor. Power Armor designed not for combat, but instead boring things like exploration in hostile environments, namely deep underwater and in vacuum. Of course, back in 2021, the communication technology was bulkier, slower, and often not worth trying to fit too much onto each individual suit. They ran into the problem of meatbags getting lonely in the crushing black depths and dying unexpectedly.
To counter this, they started designing what they called 'pseudo-intelligences'. Little AIs only about as smart as the average meatbag was, capable of sorting through the immense amount of sensory information that the exploration PAs took in, monitoring systems to ensure everything was green, and other smaller tasks that the meatbags apparently couldn't keep track of themselves.
Although categorically disproven by Netwatch observers, the pilots would consistently report 'personality conflicts' with certain PIs, preferring one over the other despite being identical in function.
PIs would go on to become standard features for all PA, including ACPA. They were simply too useful not to, apparently. Having them on-board resulted in a net 5% increase in pilot survivability rates across the board, and as pilots are almost as expensive as their PA, the minor cost of the PIs were more than worth it to military planners.
Indeed, they were so useful that the security forces and military planners started using them for all of their forces, not just the PA jockeys.
Then they realized they could be used to help monitor civilians. By the time the 2040s rolled around, nearly everyone with access to chrome had an PI, the name having been changed to suit their new purpose, Internal Agent. Originally an assistant for hazardous exploration, then for war, then for the general populace. Even though the Internal Agent works fine for civilian use, that's not really what it exists for.
Its original code is designed to monitor a hundred systems, and alert the jockey to ones that cross over certain thresholds. To filter information and provide it to the jockey. To constantly scan for potential threats with its heuristic pilot-preservation algorithms.
An Internal Agent may not have had a personality as part of a civilian's kit, or as an exploratory PA, but they absolutely had one as part of an ACPA.
A Militech Commando IA prioritized the survival of the pilot, the completion of the mission, and avoiding collateral damage. A Russian Arms Boris IA prioritized avoiding getting bogged down, whether that be from poor terrain, heavy resistance, or too many civilians to kill. A Dynalar Grasshopper IA prioritized finding cover, working in groups, and hitting soft targets.
An Arasaka DaiOni? It was a frame purpose-built to be the best combat cyborg in the world bar none. It was a frame designed to be as strong, fast, and heavily armored as possible. It was designed for the sole purpose of going into a hot zone and killing everything that wasn't an ally.
Its IA prioritized the elimination of all targets not marked as 'friendly' with IFF verification.
He loved the frame, but he was always annoyed while wearing it. Mostly because it wouldn't stop pointing out all the ways he could kill everything around him, the best of which he had already thought of before it could've.
That woman on the right? 76 ways to kill in the next second and a list of them rated best to worst based on an internal parameter. He only needed one, and he knew it before it could tell him.
The man on the balcony? 45 ways to kill in the next second, half of which required his sandevistan. Worthless AI, he didn't need any of that, stop talking.
He looked dead ahead, and in the crowd of thousands around him, it listed off 10.3 thousand variations of killing all of them. Most of which were completely useless, pointless, redundant, or similarly not worth his time.
The old man had gotten him a new DaiOni as part of a PR thing, he wasn't quite sure what. Merchandising or something? He was assigned to walk in besides the car that was currently transporting Hanako on their way to another facility. His job was to look around and appear intimidating in his brand new, shiny chrome-black DaiOni.
"...you remembered right, this is annoying." Uriel spoke up, frowning as the sensors cycled through another dozen ways to kill the little girl holding a plushie of his Gemini. Adam internally grunted.
He loved the DaiOni, the sheer power, the overwhelming cybernetics rendering him a veritable one-man genocide…
Oh wait, he already was that.
Heh.
…Fuck off Uriel, those were his kills, you can't take credit for them.
"We share a brain, dumbass."
"Still my body, dumbass."
The DaiOni listed off another hundred methods of turning the woman in the flower kimono into a fine red mist. Both Adam and Uriel grumbled in response, frustrated that they were pulled out of their bickering by a third party.
As annoying as the IA was to listen to, it was still absolutely worth it.
ACPA were mobile, relatively cheap, and carried a decent amount of firepower. They were the reason that light tanks went extinct, and that tanks in general were rarer nowadays.
Artillery was king of the battlefield, that much has always been true and will likely always be true. Tanks are the queens of the battlefield. Ever since their invention they have been a massive factor in practically every engagement they participate in. A general who doesn't have an answer for the enemy tanks will get rolled, simple as that.
They were big, loud, expensive, high-maintenance, and had huge guns. Queen was an apt descriptor. Of course, they weren't called queens of the battlefield for that reason.
They were called queens of the battlefield because artillery was king, and the king fucks the queen. Usually pretty hard too.
Of course, an army isn't composed of just kings and queens. It needs pawns, bishops, rooks, and knights. Pawns were the infantry, meant to slow down other forces long enough for everything else to murder them, and occasionally garrison a location. Bishops were the navy, capable of circumventing many of the opponent's defenses when used properly, and taking out keep units before they could be reinforced. Rooks were the airforce, direct, fast, destructive, they went to bomb the shit out of a place and then leave.
That left knights. What were knights? Well before they were things like amphibious soldiers or spec ops and other tactically-useful but not directly powerful troops.
In the last century or so, the knights had transformed. They were ACPA now. A soldier that had as much armor as a light tank, moved as fast as a medium tank, carried guns capable of killing light tanks and armored trucks, and was barely bigger than a person.
A U.S. M-75 Light Battle Tank could move at 80mph, was crewed by 2 people, weighed 14 tons, had as much armor as a midweight ACPA, and cost 1.3 million eddies.
So, what would a given army prefer? A 1.3 million dollar tank that couldn't fight in cities and took two people to crew? Or two 108k eddie Commandos that could fight in buildings, carried about as much armor, and a gun just as big?
The Light Tank was no longer commercially viable for the armies of the world. The ACPA had replaced it.
The match-up against heavier tanks was also favorable for the ACPA.
The U.S. M-11 MBT was perhaps the finest Tank ever produced. It had enough armor to ignore anything save direct artillery, had a 2cm railgun that could smash multiple rows of buildings down, only required 3 to crew, weighed 60 tons, could move 60 miles per hour…
And cost 16.4 million eddies per unit. You could buy 150 Commandos for that same price and have change left over to give about ten of them an anti-tank rocket launcher.
What happens when the queen is cornered by an army of knights?
A gangbang.
A DaiOni was not a Commando.
It was better in every way.
Tanks had not gone away, not by a long shot. But any given army in the world now had to ask the following question, "Do I absolutely need to use a tank, or does a squad of ACPA on an armored transport do just as well here?". Military planners plan based on their wallets, and so tanks had become rare, specialized, purpose-built machines that operate in specific mission profiles.
All of this of course, was him thinking to distract him from the DaiOni eagerly pointing out a child holding a cat, and suggesting another 187 ways to kill the potential enemy.
He and Uriel grumbled in unison.
"Uriel, try making it less annoying."
"How do you propose I do that, huh?"
"Fuck if I know, smile at it or some shit, that's worked for you so far."
"Suave grin protocols engaged."
"Smartass."
The DaiOni pointed out that he could run over and punch that man in the suit through the nearest building, and if he did it hard enough he could kill the people inside in the same attack. Dumbass, he could do that way more efficiently by smashing the exterior pillars and causing the whole building to collapse, hitting everyone around the block.
The DaiOni paused at that, processed the information, then saved it. It then started pointing out how fast he could break all the buildings around him down.
Uriel started pinching its metaphorical virtual cheeks. It stopped pointing out inefficient methods of murder and started pointing out that it was under attack, which was somewhat less irritating.
—
He glared at the man supposedly responsible for bringing him back from the grave. He was an average looking guy, brown hair and eyes, tanned skin, light stubble, standard Nomad leathers. If you saw this guy in a crowd, he wouldn't stand out at all.
Silverhand hated those guys. They were never there for the music, they were there to monitor. To record. To observe. To go skulking back to their owners after the fact and report everything they had seen, brainlessly.
Men who decided to be dogs. All the freedom in the world to stand against those cocksuckers behind the curtain, and they choose comfort and a t-bone steak instead. The man on the other side of the table reminded him of them, it was not a favorable comparison. He had spent his whole life fighting, he had no respect for the ones that gave up.
"Why go through all the effort to bring me back, huh?" He asked, aggressively to the point. He didn't have much patience for someone so bland. Everyone expresses themselves different, to not express yourself at all meant you were trying to hide something.
"I plan on using you." The bland looking man took a drag of his smoke. Silverhand glared, furious.
"Just going to admit it outright huh? What makes you think I'll do jackshit for you?" He countered, pointing a now very powerful finger in blandie's direction. "Shifty little shits like you make me sick. I can see how you operate just by looking at you."
Blandie, undeterred, replied simply. "I don't need you to do anything that you weren't already going to do. You plan on going to Night City and attacking Arasaka, am I right? You can pick through our equipment for that."
Silverhand leaned back in the white plastic chair, causing it to creak ominously. He kept his glare up, but took a moment to think before his reply.
"...What are you after?"
Blandie grabbed a fancy-looking flatscreen cybermodem (?), tapped on it a bit, and slid it across the table to him. He snatched it up and looked at the screen. It was the profile of some kid with brown hair in a restrictive looking uniform. David Martinez, seventeen years old, male, student at…
He nearly crushed the cybermodem in his hands.
Arasaka had a fukken school? Probably teach em' how to murder babies and firebomb villages there. He almost snarled as he kept reading.
Drop-out? At least the kid had some sense, getting out of that place, no doubt it was an oppressive shithole.
"Swipe the screen with your finger." Blandie piped up. He shot a glare at the fucker and did just that. Nothing happened.
"Other way."
Silverhand audibly growled and did so, watching the screen change to a… merc profile? David Martinez, eighteen years old, male, edgerunner, overall threat rating BC3C. Known associates…
He furrowed his brow, so the kid dropped out to become a merc? Well, it wasn't the best thing for a kid to be doing, but Silverhand himself had lied about his age to join the army back in the day, so he didn't have any room to judge the kid for it. At least he was fighting for himself, rather than some boot.
He swiped the screen again, and a flatvid started playing automatically. There was a massive cybernetic figure in the center of the room, with black ungainly arms and stumpy legs, it took him a second to recognize the kid's face on the nugget in the center.
There was a swathe of corpses around, a fucker in some dumb suit on the floor, an equally dumb looking corpo fucker on one side of the room, and some big borg between the chromed-out kid and the second corpo.
The kid was next to a girl, protectively hunched over her.
He narrowed his eyes when he saw the Arasaka logo. So the kid was fucking up some 'Saka goons for threatening his girl? He had nothing but approval for that one.
[Adam Smasher? Go on, kill the boy!] The dumb looking fucker on the floor cried out pathetically. He resisted the urge to smash the cybermodem. Just before he could decide to or not, a gravely, almost bored voice called out.
[Who the fuck are you?]
He paused, and kept watching. He glared at the screen.
[You're packing some pretty heavy artillery for your size boy, I'm impressed you can string two words together.]
[You think you're special because you're scrappy?]
[You're good kid, but you're a long way from the best, and you're looking at him.]
[I never had anything to lose in the first place.]
…Smasher sounded different. He almost couldn't recognize him. Last time he saw the Steelhead he was practically bouncing in joy at all the killing he got up to, happy more than anything else to be the boot of Arasaka.
He was just as arrogant now, but he sounded…
It didn't matter, the Steelhead was going to die anyway. He needed to for all the people he's killed. Nothing less was acceptable. He kept watching the vid to the end…
[I've been thinking about getting an apprentice.]
He tossed the cybermodem back onto the table. "So what, Smasher got himself an apprentice, you were gonna headhunt the kid or something?"
"He's my son."
Silverhand paused and looked over at blandie. He glared at the man, who looked just as unphased as he has been since he first laid eyes on the fucker.
"...Real shit parenting if you let that fucking happen."
The man nodded, and took another drag from his smoke. "I'm aware. You want to go attack Arasaka, I just need you to do it well enough to give me an opening. So what do you need?"
Silverhand glared, and tapped a finger on his bicep, arms crossed.
"What do you have?"
"Guns, cars, and information."
"What kind of information?"
"Smasher's a rockerboy now."
…
Silverhand glared.
"Fucking what?"
Blandie slid a… chip? A computer processor or something. Alt used to ramble about these in that cute way she did.
"His most popular album, If you want to give it a listen."
Silverhand most certainly did not, but he was planning on it anyway. If only to see how dogshit modern taste was with his death. He flipped what was apparently a modern piece of chipware over, and read the tiny label.
MGR.