[Arasaka Corporation encrypted channel: Target is speeding along the elevated highway on the edge of Westbrook. Suspected Rogue AI: Muramasa.]
[Militech military channel: Rogue AI confirmed. Dangerous weapon assembly in progress.]
[Petrochem security channel: Recommend dispatching security Agents to conduct a safety sweep.]
[Kang Tao Corporation security department: Rogue AI.]
[Biotechnica security department:.]
A Rogue AI could roam the Net unimpeded, but Night City's network was a Local Area Network, and almost every Local Area Network of any significant size was connected to the Blackwall.
So if a Rogue AI really ran amok on the Net without restraint, it would instead come under tremendous pressure from the Blackwall.
But some AIs, like Muramasa, were also highly skilled technicians, weapons designers, and mechanical engineers.
The micro high-frequency transmission devices buried throughout Night City became its vanguard for hacking and destruction. These tiny devices easily crippled the power grid of Night City's non-corporate electricity network on a physical level, gathered vast amounts of electrical power, and seized most wireless frequencies.
It had seized the initiative, and the corporations were left scratching their heads for the time being.
First, wireless tracking relied to a large extent on the endurance of the equipment and the strength of its signal transmitters and receivers. That strength, in turn, depended on the energy supplied through the power lines.
Muramasa's devices had already seized a great deal of electricity and stored it in small devices scattered throughout the city. Their total capacity was large, they were durable, and they were hard to locate. There wasn't even anywhere to launch a physical attack.
Furthermore, the frequency bands and encoding methods used by AIs were almost impossible for humans to decode. If they had to decode them in a short time, they could confidently drop the word "almost."
Humans couldn't