It was a tough ride. Normal people would have gotten car sick already with the blindfold and earplugs; moreover, the government intentionally drove in circles and did countless unnecessary twists and turns so that nobody could track their cars' directions. However, Michael's superior sense of space allowed him to stay completely awake.

When the government officers took off Michael's blindfolds, Michael found himself in a room surrounded by strangers. However, it wasn't like those dark government interrogation dungeons in the movies. This room was brightly lit by overhead LED lights, and Michael could see computer screens and projectors all around. The one thing that stood out was the big old-fashioned meeting table in the center surrounded by chairs. Chairs — real, physical chairs — not those holographic projectors that display images of officers all around the world into one room.

Then Michael's eyes drifted to the windows. There were blinds covering them. Clearly they didn't want Michael to see where their secret safe house was located at. He sighed, only option B for him now.

That princess-like woman was here again. She was about to walk towards Michael when suddenly he held out his hand around his Bracelet.

"I know exactly the coordinates of this safe house, and I am not bluffing. You come one step closer and I'll immediately broadcast it to the whole Airnet." Michael was trying to make his voice sound authentic when he spoke.

That woman didn't stop moving, but she slowed down her pace. "Michael, you can trust us. Calm down. Besides, this place is signal-blocked. You have no access to the Airnet."

Michael's hand relaxed for less than a second before it tensed up again. "Trust you? No. Tell me why I am here! Or I will press the send button. And we both know here that the Airnet is in the air. You can't block off its signal."

The woman looked to her left and made eye contact with a man. Michael turned his head slightly and focused his vision on them for a second.

That man had neatly cut hair and wore a freshly ironed suit, but the thing that caught Michael's attention the most were his gaze. It was as cold as steel saber, piercing through Michael's eyes and minds, digging out any sorts of information. But that only lasted for one second, and the next second, the man realized that Michael was glancing at him and immediately softened his stare into a casual browse of vision, though Michael could still sense the calculation in that man's head.

"Having reduced rate of blinking, but possibly due to nervousness. Hand is shaking. Noticeable contractions in diaphragms. Eyes keep averting towards the bracelet, so very probable that there is indeed something there. Right hand extremely tensed up, probably ready to press the button anytime. He is not bluffing." The sharp man dropped these sentences cleanly, as if he was cutting his analyses into fragments then weaving them together into a bigger conclusion.

"Who are you? Stop pretending to be a mindreader or something!" shouted Michael, "I will press send, I'm not joking here."

The woman blinked for a second, and an expression of anxiousness appeared on her face. Only for a brief moment though, as she quickly concealed it within her usual countenance of friendliness.

"Relax Michael, we are here for a friendly talk."

"Shut up. Three... Two..." As Michael counted towards one, his arm raised high, and he was actually about to press the send button when the woman finally flinched back and raised her hand palms open.

"Okay okay. Michael. Calm down. I'll tell you everything."

The woman swiped her finger over her Bracelet and the droids and bodyguards retreated out of the room. However, there were still a few individuals remaining in the room.

Michael looked around. That micro-expression analyst was still standing there in his usual firm posture as if he just belonged there. There was another woman and man standing on the sides.

"I am Agent Amelia, and I'm the head of this operation. I should start from the very beginning. Currently, we are here because we are facing an extremely devastating crisis. I believe you have seen it on the news already. There's the discovery of an abandoned silo."

"And please don't tell me that the rumors are actually true and there are actually crates of cash that I could have gone over and taken," Michael talked in a very sarcastic tone.

"No..."

"With your intelligence I thought you would have a bit more common sense than that." The micro-expression analyst broke in abruptly with a cold smirk.

"Nicholas. Please," Amelia turned her eyes to look at the micro-expression analyst then back to Michael, "Most people would know that this is probably one of the rumors, and nobody would trust it. However, the location of this 'silo' is a bit too coincidental to be true. It must have been a leak of information, and a criminal or terrorist group probably is using this to sabotage the government."

"What's wrong with the coordinates?" Michael questioned.

"We have a valuable digital weapon located at that place."

"I thought the government now stores all their digital weapons on the encrypted cloud network."

Then Amelia began to fill Michael in with surprising truthfulness. The weapons nowadays were categorized into physical weapons and digital weapons. Physical weapons were a mere amplification of the traditional swords and guns by adding some plasma and laser. These were mundane and ineffective. However, a new form of weapon was cooperatively invented by the government and ArtTech. This new kind of weapon was completely composed of codes, but it was capable of dealing substantial damage.

When the nation was facing major terrorism threats from major militant groups, the government had decided to give the new digital weapons a try. For the first degree, it was only the government tapping into the terrorists' communication systems and browsing through the decrypted messages. Soon enough, however, the government was able to shut down their entire communications network, then the remote control network of droids and drones, and finally directly dismantle their digital base.

That wasn't even the scariest part about digital weapons. In a society when every physical thing — machinery, infrastructures, and even furnitures — was connected to the cloud, and when the signals of AirNet was embedded into the molecular structure of gaseous particles and spread literally everywhere (thus came the name AirNet), the digital weapon could literally manipulate, translocate, and destroy individual section of the cities.

Through the cooperation with the government, the ArtTech corporation undoubtedly rose to hegemonic power and took control of a major portion of the sovereignty of the people, but whenever there was a company, there would always be a competitor. The archenemy of ArtTech was Hypersphere, founded by a group of people who were tired of the AI dominance by the ArtTech. The government imposed a set of laws at first to ensure the monopoly of ArtTech, but it was soon repealed as a series of violent protests took place to ensure the "economic freedom of the people" and to avoid "modern imperialism and slavery". The government knew that the current peace lied on a very fragile balance, and any disturbance could cause the thin and weak unity to splinter.

"So tell me about the digital weapon. What was so valuable about it?" Michael now finally had some clues on the complex relationship among the government, the corporations, and the people.

Amelia sighed. She took a sip from the cup and swallowed the water slowly. Then she raised her head and spoke.

"250 years ago, we had the industrial revolution. Production was centralized. Factory workers, water wheels and steam engines took many jobs of many artisans and individual craftsmen. Then 150 years ago, we had the electricity revolution. Electricity began to replace manual power for energy, and assembly line was put in use with machinery. 60 years ago, the automation revolution took place, in which computer-controlled robots substituted almost all human jobs in assembly lines, and productivity greatly increased with the near-perfection state that the computers and automatic machines could achieve. Then 23 years ago, in 2025, the Artificial Intelligence revolution. The span went beyond the factory walls and reached into all other kinds of jobs. 90% of the jobs had been replaced by AI, and this percentage was still increasing."

"Yeah, and how does this correlate with the weapon?"

"No Michael, this isn't just a weapon. This is a piece of technology so controversial that some seek its immediate obliteration from the face of the planet while others will sacrifice their lives to protect it. Mathematicians in history and our computing systems now had all predicted something both sublime and catastrophic."

"And why is that so?"

"Innovations will be emerging at an unimaginable exponential speed — maybe one new creation every minute, even possibly every second. The speed of computation will be close to infinity, and it will continuously increase nevertheless. All humans will be completely unemployed and replaced. The way of life will completely transform, and who knows positively or negatively."

"All this will be brought about by a single piece of technology?"

"Yes, because it will trigger the fifth revolution. Mathematicians call it the Singularity, meaning when infinity is reached and all systems and laws we know today explode."