I finally took on the ‘personal handling advised’ folder.

Fortunately, it was considerably smaller than the others. But when I started reading I became more and more dispirited with the world.

Yes, there were a couple of serious requests that the VI simply was not able to answer. Mostly about why I did not have cyberware X or cyberware Y in my catalog.

The VI could only answer that I had compiled the catalog and it had no further information about what criteria I had used. Naturally, it was only placing polite requests in this category.

But what made me upset was the seemingly endless demands for this feature or that, and complete insistence that it gets to be done.

Especially as there were a couple of dozen requests for specialty cyberware which were essentially already included in the cranial board.

In other words, a highly specialized computer that was connected to the jack. The idiocy of it was that any specially developed computer would cost more than the much more powerful, and versatile cranial board.

Yes, they would need to get the specialized software, but they would need that anyway.

And while I suspected that I would find a few of these types of requests in the ‘request – cyberware – pending­’ folder, when the VI convinced the customer that their need was fulfilled by the board, a significant portion of the people requesting this sort of special tech simply did not accept reality.

Just to give an example, the message exchange between the VI and one of these idiots was more than 12 thousand words. The VI again, and again patiently explained that this function was already available. And the potential customer insisted that he needed a specially designed piece of cyberware.

Exclusively even.

We are talking about 40 freaking pages of messages here! With the customer becoming increasingly belligerent.

After the first few of these conversations, and despairing for humanity, I had enough.

“Please tell me that this is not true.”

Huh? What…? I was completely confused by what the VI had just messaged me.

“Why…? If the messages are not true, why did you put these messages into this folder for me to personally handle?”

“Then why did you tell me that it is not true?”

Wait. Did it really…? Wow, I knew VIs were somewhat literal-minded, but that…?

“That was a rhetorical expression of disbelief. You should look into commonly used rhetorical phrases to aid conversation."

“Now, why did you mark these messages for me to personally handle?”

Ok, I could understand that, to some extent.

“That are not faulty processes, but humans.”

“No… no. No terminating of humans. And why did you not keep the messages ongoing and otherwise ignore them?”

“I know what resources you have available. All these conversations together could not take up more than a single percent of what you have.”

“So you had more than enough resources to keep the conversations going?”

Did it really…? Did these idiots really out stubborn a VI? Their stupid intransigence had made my VI throw up its virtual hands and walk away.

That is… an accomplishment. Not a good one, but it is seriously astonishing.

“Then why did you not just put these people on the ignore list?”

I was speechless for a moment. These people had made a VI, a fricking computer program, give up.

That was truly unprecedented.

After a few seconds, I managed to collect myself again.

“Agreed. If they manage to be so stubborn that you see no way to resolve it, you can place them on the ignore list. But send them a message before placing them there.”

And suddenly, around 80% of the personal messages vanished.

The rest of the messages were much easier to handle. Mostly because they were much shorter exchanges, and the customer accepted that the VI did not have the answer and waited patiently for me to answer them personally.

The vast majority of the requests were for reflex boosters. It was mostly known that these things existed and were used in cyber zombies.

So why did I not offer them?

The answer is actually pretty simple. Reflex boosters were in development when the great war broke out, and they had the very first test runs when the UNAN released the second CRS virus. Unsuccessful test runs.

As it turned out, the human nerves are not designed to withstand near-lightspeed transmission speeds. A reflex booster caused almost invariably severe peripheral neural damage. In two, with a bit of luck three years, usage of a booster paralyzed the limbs, made them numb, caused tremors, and essentially destroyed the ability to use the limbs and most of the lower torso.

The corps had no problem using them in their cyber zombies. After all, these were throwaways anyway. And if the zombie survived for a year and a half they were happy. So the neural degradation was completely ignored.

I could, of course, produce them and apply the nano filter, but I would only sell cyberware that had a significant chance of damaging the user at an explicit request, and after I thoroughly informed the customer.

I mean, if they absolutely wanted to ruin their nervous system it is their decision, but I will make sure it is an informed decision.

Add in that I was pretty sure that the problems with the booster could be fixed, with time and research, and I had decided not to include it in the catalog.

The next most often asked question was about the smart gun. Well, here it was mostly taking on a cranial board, or a smaller system comparable to the synaptic accelerator, and building a connection between it and the weapon.

Nothing particularly hard to do, but something I was the wrong person for. Yes, I could design the implant. Heck, if I took the design for the accelerator I already had a working design. The connection was equally simple. Either via OPB-cable from the jack, or via contact pads in the hand and grip. Both options were pretty simple from the implant side.

The work I could not do was build the interface from the weapon side. I simply lacked the experience and knowledge about weapons.

That also prevented me from writing the software side of the smart gun interface. I just did not know what was needed, and how it had to be put together.

Mark could help with much of that, I was sure, but I could not speak for him, and so I had, at this time, no smart gun interface to sell.

The third group of questions came out of nowhere. A handful of people seriously asked me if I could digitalize them.

Yes, that had vague connections with cyberware, but that was all. We, as in humanity, still to this day did not fully understand how and why we were we. How our consciousness, our sentience actually worked.

Yes, we were relatively sure that it was happening in the brain, but that was all.

There had been experiments, before the great war, to completely simulate a human brain. The results were… disappointing to sum it up in one word.

What they had was not even to the level of a VI, much less full sapience. Of course, since the war such experiments, if they happened at all, were done in high secrecy by the big corps.

If anybody at all could do that then maybe Burgmeister or Dalgon. But they would market it to doomsday and back. Virtual immortality would be worth a pretty penny.

So no, as far as I knew, it simply could not be done.

And that is what I told the people who had requested it.

And yes, I might not have been the perfect example of tact and politeness when I answered all these messages, but I was still reeling from people actually being able to bring a VI to the point that it gave up.

To that effect, I placed an addendum to my catalog, that arguments with the VI might lead to being banned from buying from me. And that some already had lost their customer privileges that way.

So when the VI gives a final warning, stop, or you can talk to the wall for all eternity as far as we were concerned.