22

The plan was absolutely stupid, Liam thought, but then he could not think of a better solution. There was no doubt that someone inside the building has heard the shooting. What he suggested was that they simply go in through one of the windows and then state that they were friendly and weren’t there to kill anyone. However, his brother Aiden reasoned if they simply go in, there is no guarantee that the professor will not just hide or sneak out of the building without them noticing. Aiden showed that for the professor, there is only one means of exit, which is the mag-mobile parked near the front door. Thus, all they had to do was to grapple down and wait there until the professor opens the door himself. Liam asked what they would do if the professor decided to just wait inside the house, but Aiden was absolutely assured that the professor would attempt an escape.

Thus, as soon as Ryan and Hunter were gagged and bound with their coms taken away, Liam grappled down. He didn’t understand how his brother Aiden was able to deal with the rope so easily, as he watched his brother complete two journeys each time carrying one of their prisoners. For Liam, the rope always seemed to be slipping in his gloves and he felt that he was able to fall anytime. Thus, he had to go slowly. When he was finally on the ground, he ran to all the way where Aiden had already found himself a seat on top the mag mobile with Ryan and Hunter down by him on the grass. It looked like that Hunter had already woken up.

“I don’t want my team to know that it was me. You can take your headgear off when talking to the professor, but I will keep mine on and won’t say anything unless I need to. My team probably don’t recognize you anyways.” Aiden whispered in his coms.

Hunter obviously didn’t hear what Aiden said under his helmet, as he simply continued to look at Liam murderously. Liam took off his mask, and Hunter looked as he wanted to say something, but could not through the gags. Liam guessed it probably a strong of long insults. They waited at the gate, and sure enough, after five minutes it opened. In the light of the room stood the professor. Liam thought that perhaps that the man would look terrified, but instead he saw serenity on the professor’s face.

“Good evening professor,” Liam said, not know how else to start a conversation.

Professor Owhn eyed his gun, and Liam immediately took it off and placed it on the mag-mobile near Aiden, and saw that his brother did the same. Owhn observed the action and spoke when Liam turned around.

“I presume that you are not here to kill me since you would have done so if wanted.” He said.

“No Professor,” Liam responded. “But these two here certainly are, and we stopped them.” Liam first gestured to Ryan and Hunter, then to himself and Aiden. “We have a lot to talk about. If you don’t mind may I come in?”

“I don’t really have a choice do I?” Said the professor rhetorically. “Also, please feel free to call me Kevin.”

Kevin turned around and walked towards a sofa by the fireplace in the main hall. Liam followed and he could see that his brother did too, dragging their weapons as well as Ryan and Hunter with him. Liam turned back quickly to help Aiden, and before long they were all seated across Kevin with their captives on the carpet by their feet. Liam felt the cold wind from outside and could see that Kevin felt it too. Before the professor could say anything, Aiden stood up and walked towards the door to close it. Meanwhile, Liam explained to Kevin the mess which New York was in. The professor did not look surprised and simply responded it was the same across most major cities anyways, the great disparity between the top and bottom.

Liam then explained his old position, as well as how he now was working with the HLF and his plans to influence the decennial announcements from the TAC IIs. The Professor now looked interested and listened intently. Liam could see that the man was excited as he was for what could be achieved. He concluded that Kevin himself was unhappy with the with the narrow audience that an academic philosophy book could bring, and wanted such a chance to influence social policy for the better. They talked for some more as Kevin learned about the details of their plan, and what they had been though to get here. However, Liam knew that he can talk about his experience and thoughts all day and Kevin would be happy to listen, but they would not be getting closer to their objective.

“That is all good small talk Kevin, but as you can probably tell from my explanation of the plan, I need to understand your comprehensive theory if you have one,” Liam said.

Kevin seemed to be thinking about something for a second and responded. “Of course, the initial draft is not completely complete, but all the main ideas are there. There might be some need for polishing, but I am sure that the main lines of logic hold strong. I have the copy on my laptop, and I will send it to you right now.” Kevin said, as he turned to his bag, got out his laptop, and started clicking.

“Thank you, Kevin, that is sincerely appreciated,” Liam said. “As for you and your family, which we presume you are hiding. You may go where ever you want in your mag-mobile, but we are happy to offer you safe passage to either HLF Versailles or even New York if you would like.” Liam offered.

“My family will not be in any danger if I am gone,” Kevin said as a matter of fact. “I will come with you to New York if you don’t mind. I have always wanted to travel more, but the restrictions these days are getting more and more ridiculous, especially on outspoken characters such as myself.” Kevin said, and managed a painful laugh. “Anyways, I still don’t trust you enough so I am not going to tell you where my family is. But they will find a way out once we are gone.”

Liam nodded and understood the professor’s concerns. He opened his coms and told the helicopter pilot to start coming to the castle now that the mission was complete. For the thirty minutes that had before the chopper arrived, Liam had a conversation with Kevin to understand the basics of the theory while Aiden sat at by their side seemingly lost in his own thoughts. But first, to ensure the Hunter doesn’t hear anything, He took his pistol from his side, and shot the man on the legs at point blank range. The man seemed to want to curse at him, but lost consciousness after a few seconds. Kevin looked at him with a judgmental face but didn’t say anything about it, and instead started explaining what his theory was about.

Liam found the theory that Kevin had fascinating. In fact, the whole theory was quite intuitive. In addition, everything started from the fundamental problem which Liam himself understood all too well as he spent sleepless nights contemplating. Under the current theory of morality which the TAC IIs used, what are called negative freedoms are guarded completely. In other words, personal property of all kinds can be used by individuals who own them however they like, and no one else can do anything about it. However, this leads to many problems, the most important being the unbelievable levels of inequality. Some of these inequalities lead to moral catastrophes, such as people, due to no fault of their own, being placed in what is effectively wage slavery, Liam reflected. In fact, Liam agreed with the Professor when Kevin stated that it was effectively the light zone which had kept the dark zones dark. It was not because people were lazy or did not want to work that they are stuck in poverty; it was because they never had the chance to, they never accessed an empowering education, and that they lived in homes with either drunken, drugged, or missing parents.

Furthermore, Kevin pointed out that these inequalities which feel intuitively unfair exist not only in lotteries of birth concerning wealth and status but also other factors as well. For example, even if the world was completely equal in the distribution of wealth, some people would be born smarter and healthier than others. It was a simple fact of nature. Kevin call this unequal distribution of wealth, power, status, and ability “the natural distribution.” However, he also said that “the natural distribution simply exists and there is nothing right or wrong about them. To say that the natural distribution is somehow right or wrong is to say that the arrangement of the universe is right or wrong, and that does not make any sense.”

Liam was taken aback, was the professor suggesting that all the previous inequalities that he mentioned were not wrong or right? Kevin seemed to see the thought in Liam’s eyes, an assured him with a hand gesture. The professor went on and explained. “It is what is done about this natural distribution which is right or wrong. When we see a child drowning because he has not been taught to swim, there is nothing right to wrong about the occasion, it is whether we jump in to save the child which is right or wrong. But, when we apply this theory to the larger society, where sometimes an individual really cannot do much, we must rest the responsibility on organizations, systems, groups, or in other words, institutions. It is how institutions deal with natural inequalities which creates justice or injustice.”

Liam was intrigued and asked Kevin to continue, who happily did. “So then, we have reached our first conclusion, that for all our social institutions, their first virtue is justice. Where an institution is efficient or effective is not the most important, what is the most important is that the institutions are just.”

“But we have to find a definition of justice, right?” Liam interjected. “You have a theory of how the natural distribution ought to be dealt with?”

Kevin nodded, not showing that he was annoyed at all with the interruption, but Liam apologized a few seconds later anyway. The professor continued and Liam listened. “the first axiom that your AI has to simply take, is not to view justice as the safeguarding of group of arbitrary rights, but as fairness. If you can do that, the rest is simple. By viewing justice as fairness a who set of principles, rights, and policies can be derived from there, as well as the state of the natural distribution.”

Liam saw that Kevin was looking at him, wanting to make sure that understood everything. “I understand that, and I think I will be able to do it although it will be difficult. Now that it is known that institutions ought to be just and that justice is fairness, how do we define fairness?” Liam inquired.

“Very simple,” the professor answered, “through a thought experiment which I came up with. Let us imagine a group of people stuck in a sphere above the Earth, each being reasonable and caring only about themselves. However, they are about to be born on Earth and they do not know anything about the circumstances of their birth. They do not know when they will be born, they will not know where they will be born, and most importantly, they will not know what position in society they will be born. They are behind a veil of ignorance, for all they know, they can be anything from the billionaire or the beggar. Now, let them chose principles which their society will be governed by. What they choose, will then be the principles of justice which everything else will be based on. Since they are self-interested, they will thus consider the perspective of all the possible roles which they make take on in a hypothetical society, and that will best approach the truth.”

Kevin cleared his throat and continued. “After they do that, they shall access some more information such as basic facts of economics, psychology, sociology, etc… to design more detailed principles of governance. After even that, they will finally be able to know all the information about the world in which they are born in, and then make realistic policies, all based on the two initial principles of justice. The purpose of taking away the veil of ignorance level by level is to ensure that there are no biases. The initial principles of justice as fairness are then universal principles, transcending space and time.” The professor then stopped, having finished his account.

Enlightening was the only word which Liam could find for the professor’s elucidation, for now he was shown a logical justification for the sense of injustice he felt when he saw people suffer due to no faults of their own, and a sound explanation as to how a society may be designed so as to avoid those injustices as much as possible, through the consideration of all perspectives. Although Liam still had some minor questions concerning little details of the theory, which he was sure that the professor would have explained in his book, he had one single pressing answer which he really wanted. “And what are these principles of justice, professor?” Liam asked.

Kevin responded slowly. “There are two. The first is the principle of equal liberty, ever every person is free to do whatever they wish as long as they do not interfere with the equal right of another. This is the obvious choice that the agents in the original position will go for. None of them want to live in a possible oppressive society like the one we have today. The hunger for freedom and liberty is part of what it means to be human. However, where a certain group of people gains too much freedom and power, that usually means less liberty for everyone else. In practice, this would not only mean bringing back the democratic government at some point and erasing the corporate police state that we have, but also universal basic services such as quality education and healthcare, to ensure the fact that everyone is mentally able to make sound decisions for themselves, and are alive to do so.”

Liam nodded, agreeing with the professor.

Kevin continued. “The next principle is what I call the difference principle. It is the idea that all the inequalities in society should benefit the least well-off members of the world. The rationale is simple. The least well-off members are the ones who have suffered the most from the natural distribution and are the most in need of improvement. However, this does not mean that we will have some sort of communist society. Everyone who ever picked up a history book will know that communism doesn’t work, it makes everyone poor, and benefits no one. Capitalism has brought us far away from what we were. Although it is true that it brought the Great Collapse, it is also true that it brought humanity’s golden age before that. We will still want a very much capitalistic society, except that poor will receive the help they need from the rich. Those are the principles, clear, simple, precise. What your TAC IIs do from there on with all the information they have is their choice.” The professor sat back, stretched on his chair and yawned, clearly tired from the evening’s events.

Liam sat thoughtfully, musing over what he has just heard, and saw that Aiden was also listening intently. The theory was very abstract, and some details he hoped that he would find in the book. However, it was elegant. Liam thought that there was beauty in the results of the theory, that though a thin line of pure logic, they were able to arrive at a conclusion which supports the intuitive inner feelings for justice that most people had.

He wanted to talk some more with the professor, but saw that Kevin was barely keeping himself awake. Liam felt sorry for that man, that his vacation had to be cut short, but what was necessary remain necessary. He looked at his brother, then at the two captives they had on the floor. Hunter was still down from the dose which Liam gave him. Meanwhile, Ryan was slowly waking up from the poison dart which Aiden shot onto his leg, and Liam could hear the man rolling on the carpet and trying to make sense of what happened. When Ryan finally did wake up, he was obviously startled but Liam was surprised to see that the man kept his calm. Ryan saw that one of his squad mates were tied next to him and that another was missing. He probably presumed that he had been caught by the professor’s home security not having heard the long conversation that Kevin had with Liam.

Later, when the chopper finally arrived, Liam was the first to get up. He lifted Ryan up and dragged him outside onto the vehicle as Aiden did Hunter. Kevin followed them silently, taking only his bag pack. Liam buckled his seat belt and checked that their captives were secured. After everyone was secured and seated, the pilot noted that time and location on his mission log and started lifting off. Liam leaned back in his chair and felt the bullet wound sting again on his arm. The fact that Aiden had bandaged it well and that Liam wasn’t in danger of losing his arm or dying did not directly help ease the pain. He tried to relax and looked out the chopper as he saw the chateau vanishing over the horizon.

The next two days went like a blur for Liam. In the first day, he finished reading Kevin’s book which was five hundred pages of hard philosophy. In the second, he stuck himself to his room frantically writing the contents of the information stick with Aiden will deliver to the TAC IIs. During the whole time, medics came in and he had to endure an operation where the bullet was taken out of his arm. It was Friday when Liam finally finished and asked the HLF technicians to read the information stick along with Professor Owhn to ensure that all the information was transmitted and understood perfectly. When Kevin finished hearing what the HLF technicians said about the contents of the information stick, Liam could see that he looked pleased even before the professor acknowledged the validity of the data. Liam thanked the professor once more and told the technicians to deliver the information to HLF ops command center.

Liam then returned to his room and decided to shower and sleep. It was only around seven at night, but Liam hasn’t slept for around seventy hours, and his mind was deteriorating temporarily as a result. When the technicians looked over the information stick, they found sever simple syntax errors which Liam could not believe that he made. He hoped that all the mistakes were found, as although not be overdramatic, but the fate of humanity might well rest on his work. He went into the shower and turned up the steaming water. He stepped in and let the water ran over his back, holding his hand against the wall. His job was now done, the information stick delivered. Next, everything would rest on Aiden to actually get the information to the TAC II’s core. There was nothing that Liam himself could do to help that. After the hot shower, Liam dried himself and dressed for sleep. He looked out the window and simply could not believe how far he had come. He closed his eyes, and for the first time in three days, slept.