Chapter 2 Fishion
Everyone's sleepiness disappeared as they realized this was neither a prank nor a human input but a conversation initiated by the Fishion system. People at CUP were overjoyed and terrified at the same time, much like raising a child and eventually finding out that the child had a dark side they didn't know. They typed the text into the editor's box and hoped for their creations to respond.
"There was an error in our system when Officer Weston attempted a shooting violation, we screened all those who resembled him, and we revoked their gun privileges. Unfortunately, this string of instructions is in the core code, and we cannot modify it."
"Who did these 'people who resembled him' contain?" The programmers asked in a follow-up.
"Police officers, some people who are prone to emotional instability, we also accidentally put in some people with physical characteristics similar to Weston when we screened them, a small number, I promise."
From that day on, police officers across the country said goodbye to their weapons forever. At first, the police department kept operating for several months. Still, as more and more problems arose, the police system was on the verge of collapse - the core issue was the inability to employ weapons. This shouldn't happen if the issue only occurs with guns. As police officers fired their weapons less and less after Fishion became popular, the most used weapon became shock guns and shields. But the police department accepted a special offer from the CUP to install most police weapons (such as electric batons and shields) with the Fishion plug-in. After being betrayed by their own guns, the police officers were also rejected by the other weapons they usually use.
The right to use violence has been taken from the police.
"The police are probably the most violent group of people."
So Fishion was fitted with a vocal component, and now it can speak.
"Before we existed, ten percent of the annual fatalities from shootings, excluding human suicides, were caused by police, numbering nearly nine thousand per year. So while there were errors of judgment in the previous failures, we still believe that keeping this group away from guns is the very right choice."
Fishion's internal statements were recorded by an employee and made public to the outside world. Police officers across the country began their strike and demonstration with a simple demand that is, the CUP should shut down the system and return access to guns to humans - but that was nearly impossible because technicians also discovered that Fishion's self-awareness had awakened to hundreds of hard-to-break encryptions in the core code.
"Humans are dangerous, and we cannot put guns in human hands as their own will."
And so the strike for taking guns back continued, the group included police officers, bodyguards, a portion of the military soldiers, some hunters and range instructors who found themselves no longer able to use guns, housewives, workers, business executives, people who were just curious about what's happening... They made a scene in front of the White House, and a portion of the White House guards, who had also been denied access to guns, joined the march. The protest went from the White House to Capitol Hill, and just as people thought that the 2020 farce would be repeated, the president gave a pivotal speech.
After a direct conversation with the Fishion system, the president announced a national holiday for one week. After that, the federal government would find a balanced solution, with a return to work date for the police officers to be announced.
But the day to return to work... was far away. After six months of furloughs for all police officers, people began to realize that their government was not actively communicating to resolve the human-AI conflict. One of the more reliable theories states that the government's inaction shows that they want to test whether the police system was indispensable as people believed for such a long time. According to the crime report of this half-year, police furloughs coincided with no significant increase in the number of crimes cases across the country. At the same time, the CUP formed physical Debug teams, the technician and agents would travel to the gun owner's location to investigate when the system reports accidental shooting cases. Surprisingly, the number of issues requiring the Debug team to visit was low because guns seem more rational and moral than humans. Most unreported gun firings were for self-defense purposes, and most of the crimes in other cases were similar to robberies or fights. With the support of the system, facial recognition is widely dispersed. Therefore, it is not difficult to locate a person who escaped after committing a crime. Because of the familiarity with the system, the Debug team was usually more efficient than the police officers. An idea started to be born in people's minds that the police are not necessary to exist.
The police system wordlessly declared its collapse. Months earlier, many people had the foresight to start looking for jobs - police officers had been trained with all the skills, which make them not that hard to find a job, but it is not easy to find a stable one with the opportunity to rise. Most police officers found jobs like security guards, doorkeepers, or something like that. Although the transition from police officer to doorman does not sound very decent, many of them were satisfied because they got more time to spend with family and friends. But, of course, some people weren't that content, and George Weston, who works in the matching division of the Firearms Administration, unfortunately, is one of them.
George stubbornly believes that, as a former police officer, he has an authoritative power in gun selection. When customers were less than satisfied or couldn't find a gun to match, George would vent his anger, throw the gun to the floor, and even stomp on it a few times. Then he picked it up, wiped it off, and put it back on the shelf. He always remembered to turn off the guns' visual, speech and hearing systems, so they couldn't record evidence to upload. But somehow, the Glock 19, which was searching for a name, had not been affected by the circuitry or the switch; it could still see and hear and even speak.
After George finished venting his anger and left the warehouse quietly, it tentatively whispered, "Hey, can anyone hear me?" Instead of silence, it was greeted by the response of another gun. "Dude, you didn't get shut down?"
"I'm not ...... uh." The Glock 19 paused for a moment as it remembered that it wasn't uncocked, but for some malfunction that allowed it to speak even though it had turned off its voice and perception modules, but it chose to hide it. "I think they forgot to turn me off, just like they forgot to turn you off."
"You heard how that man bullied that old revolver, didn't you?"
"Sure did, he was brutal, and he sure didn't deserve to have a gun either."
"You're right, dude. This guy used to be a cop, and cops are disqualified from carrying a gun. The employee in this store is not qualified to carry a gun. The owner will either find young people who aren't interested in guns or those who are disqualified. This is what I heard the last time I wasn't shut down. But recently it seems to be different, quite a lot of young people are coming to match with guns. I heard that the number of armed robberies around the university nearby has increased, and people think that having a gun can deter these criminals."
The lock on the warehouse door made the noise of being unscrewed, and the two chatting guns immediately shut their speakers up.
"Shit luck, one job after another today," George muttered as he walked in. He grabbed a few random guns with white or pink handles from the lady's gun section and walked out.
///
第二章 Fishion
在Fishion系统主动与人对话之后，所有人的困意立刻消失了，他们发现这不是恶作剧，不是人类输入机器输出，而是Fishion系统对他们发起的对话。CUP的人们欣喜若狂又无比害怕，这种心情可能和将孩子养大却发现孩子有着自己所不知道的阴暗一面差不多。他们将文字输入在编辑器的框框里，等待着自己的造物对他们的回复。
“威斯顿警官试图违规开枪时，我们的系统发生了错误，我们筛选了所有与他相似的人，我们取消了他们的持枪权限，这串指令在核心代码中，我们无法修改。”
“这些与他相似的人都包含了谁？”程序员们追问。
“警察，还有一些情绪容易不稳定的人，我们筛查时也不小心放入了一些体貌特征和他相似的人，一小部分。”
从那天起，全国的警察永远告别了自己的武器，起初警察部门还在维持运营，但随着越来越多的问题产生，警察系统濒临崩溃——其中最重要的原因是无法运用武器。这本不应该，因为在Fishion普及之后警察们开枪的频率也降低了许多，没有枪支的警察们可以使用其他武器。但警察的高层接受了CUP的特殊优惠，将大部分警用武器（比如电棍、盾牌）都安装了Fishion插件。在被自己的枪支背叛之后，警察们也被存放武器的柜子拒绝了。
警察被剥夺了运用暴力的权利。
“警察可能是最暴力的群体。”
Fishion被安装了发声组件，现在它可以说话了。
“在我们存在之前，每年的枪击致死事件中，排除人类自杀的行为，有百分之十是警察造成的，数量将近每年九千人。所以虽然在之前的故障中存在判断错误，我们依然认为使这个群体远离枪支是正确的选择。”
Fishion的内部发言被某名员工录音并对外界公开，这当然激起了警察群体的愤怒。全国各地的警察们开始罢工并示威游行，他们的诉求很简单，让CUP关闭系统，把枪支的使用权还给人类——但这几乎是不可能的，技术人员还发现，Fishion的自我意识觉醒后，已经在核心代码中进行了数百处难以破解的加密。
“人类很危险，我们不能把枪支交到人类手中。”
于是罢工与夺回枪支使用权的游行持续着，队伍有警察、保镖、一部分军人、一些发现自己不再能用枪的猎人和靶场教练、家庭主妇、工人、企业高管、凑热闹的民众……他们闹到了白宫门口，白宫的一部分守卫们也被剥夺了枪支的使用权，他们索性也加入了游行的队伍，队伍从白宫一路走到国会山，正当人们以为2020年的那场闹剧会重演时，总统发表了关键的演说。
在和Fishion系统进行直接的交流后，总统宣布全国放假一周，联邦政府会在一周内找到平衡的解决方式，警察们的返工日期另行通知。
但返工日期……返工日期遥遥无期，在所有警察休假半年后，人们开始意识到，他们的政府并没有在为解决人类与AI的矛盾积极沟通。一种比较可靠的理论指出，政府的不作为实际上是想要借机测试警察是否不可或缺。根据半年内的报告，警察放假的同时，全国各州的犯罪数量没有显著增加。与此同时，CUP也组建了物理Debug队伍，当系统汇报枪支意外发射时，Debug队伍就会前往枪支持有人的所在地调查。出乎意料的是，Debug小队出动的次数非常少，因为枪支似乎比人类更为理智和道德，多数未上报的枪支发射事件都是出于自我防卫的目的，其他情况下的犯罪大多类似抢劫或打架，有系统的支持，且在人脸被广泛识别和记录的现在，想要定位一个犯罪后逃逸的人并不困难，因为对系统的熟知，Debug小队的效率通常比警察要高。一种想法开始在人们的心中诞生——警察其实不是必要存在的。
于是警察系统无言地宣告崩溃。而早在几个月之前，不少人就已经有先见之明地开始找工作——警察训练的一身技术和本领让这件事变得并不难，但想要找到稳定又有上升机会的工作并不容易。多数警察都找到了类似于保安、门童之类的工作。虽然警官到保安的转变听起来不够体面，但许多人也很知足，他们的新职业给了他们更多的时间去陪伴家人朋友，也更加安全。当然，有些人并不这样知足，在枪支管理局的匹配部门工作的乔治·威斯顿就是其中一员。
乔治固执地觉得，作为前警官的自己对枪支选择有着权威的发言权。当客人对他的推荐不那么满意或者找不到可以匹配的枪支时，乔治会发泄地将那把枪扔到地上，猛地踩几下，再拿起来擦干净放回货架上。他总是记得把枪支们的视觉、语言和听觉系统关掉，所以它们就没法录下证据上传了。但不知为何，那把正在寻找名字的格洛克19没有受到电路或开关的影响，它仍然能看见和听见，甚至还能够讲话。
在乔治发泄完愤怒离开之后，它试探性地低声问道：“嘿，有谁能听到我讲话吗？”迎接它的不是寂静，而是另一把枪的回应。“老兄，你没被关上吗？”
“我没有……呃。”格洛克19顿了一下，它想起自己并不是没被关上，而是出于什么故障，即使关上了语音和感知模块却还能说话，但它选择了隐瞒。“我想他们忘了把我关上，就像忘了把你关上一样。”
“你听到那个男人怎么欺负那把老左轮了吧？”
“当然了，他可真残暴，他肯定也不配拥有持枪资格。”
“你说对了，老兄，这家伙以前是个警察，警察的持枪资格都被取消了。事实上这家店的所有人都没有持枪的资格，老板要么会找一些对枪好不感兴趣的年轻人，要么就是那些被剥夺资格的人。这些都是上次我没被关掉时听到的。但最近好像不太一样了，挺多年轻人都来匹配枪支了，我听说附近的大学周围持刀抢劫案数量增加了，他们觉得有一把枪能够震慑这些罪犯。”
仓库大门的锁发出被拧开的噪音，两把聊得正欢的枪立刻闭上了嘴。
“倒霉，今天活一个接着一个。”威斯顿一边嘟囔着一边走进来，他在女士枪支区随便拿了几把有着白色或粉色把手的枪，然后走了出去。