IBACT Chapter 15

Devaluation (3)

In games, what is freedom?

Basically, it would be choice. The freedom to choose whether to go to the living room, bedroom, yard, or street now.

If it’s a game where you can only stay where necessary for game progression, you could say there’s no freedom in that area.

It’s not just about space. In the process of moving, whether to walk on two feet, or use other means like bicycles, cars, or buses.

And taking one step further from there, you could also choose what actions to take.

Like saving people, or deciding whose side to take between opposing factions.

If you want a good protagonist, you’ll do good actions, and if you want an evil protagonist, you’ll do evil actions. Generally, games with high freedom faithfully recreated these themes.

But the most common choice used in games was the choice of how to solve problems.

Using what weapons and armor, using skills or attacks at the desired timing to achieve the goal of defeating enemies.

“Hey, let’s go in there.”

“Do you have someone to meet?”

“Yes if yes, no if no. I don’t have an appointment anyway.”

Games are ultimately just reproduction and symbolization of reality. Unless it’s a special case, most things you can do in games can be done in reality too.

But we don’t particularly live reality with ‘freedom’.

The reason is simple. Reality has a much weaker concept of ‘balance patches’ compared to games, and most have overwhelmingly efficient solutions.

Choosing what to do only happens once or twice. Even in games, it’s not that different.

In competitive games, you pick and use OP characters, and RPGs generally have common growth routes that apply to games.

No one would want to enjoy ‘the pleasure of choice’ by going through consideration and thought every time during the dozens or hundreds of times they might go to work.

After some time passes, you naturally find the most efficient method. Like taking the same bus route continuously, or walking the familiar path until you’re sick of it.

Sometimes variables might occur where you use a taxi, get a ride in someone else’s car, or purchase a vehicle and use a new standard.

But freedom in reality isn’t such an essential element. Rather, reducing complexity might be more comfortable.

Even if it’s a game world, at least at this moment, this world is reality to me.

In games, you can only say predetermined lines. You might be given not just one but three or four choices, but the ways to solve problems are limited.

If someone’s problem is solved by assassination, you have to kill the target to clear that quest.

There were choices like using tranquilizers to capture them, deceiving the target and luring them to a secluded place, or using hacking to disable defense systems.

But you couldn’t touch the method of problem-solving itself. Even though it received praise as a game with relatively high freedom, there were still limitations.

Still, I could employ more general, efficient, and destructive solutions.

“Hey, old man.”

I approached the elderly man sitting in front of the apartment.

“…Who the hell are you?”

A sharp yet heavy voice pressed against my ears.

“Why are you like this here? You’ll catch a cold sleeping here, why don’t you go inside?”

For a moment, silence flowed. Instead of the emptiness and despair contained in his hollow eyes, anger and irritation filled them.

“Can’t you see? Because I got kicked out.”

“Oh dear… Why?”

It was quite a realistic graphics game, but it was better to be careful.

Unlike games, real humans weren’t designed to strictly maintain uniformity or intuitiveness.

Just by changing clothes or trimming facial hair, even slight changes in atmosphere could make someone feel like a different person.

“Do I have to get interrogated by someone like you? Who are you?”

“Well, just. Because I’m curious?”

There was a possibility I might have identified the wrong person. I needed to accurately determine if this man was who I thought he was.

“I’m warning you, if you run your mouth carelessly even once, you’ll live unable to eat without implants.”

“That’s a bit scary?”

No, maybe there’s no need to be so strict about it. I have plenty of money, so nothing would happen if I help out one or two similar people.

Just need to move a bit more generously.

“Wouldn’t it be better if I stay close for safety?”

The secretary’s voice comes from my left ear.

Wireless in-ear. In this era, it’s an excessively mundane and classic item.

Just by wearing a reasonably practical implant, you could see not only phone calls but also videos and information through augmented reality.

I tapped my left ear twice. It was a signal of rejection.

Hand signals were an outdated and inefficient means of information transfer, but I didn’t have many options.

“…What’s that?”

Caught. This, there’s no point trying to hide it.

“Old man. Were you weak?”

“You fucking bastard where…”

“No, I can smell it. You did it, drugs.”

It wasn’t even electronic drugs.

Program-type drugs that directly affect the brain weren’t without side effects. Still, they were much less than drugs that directly inject into the body.

Simply seeing unfocused eyes, trembling hands, dirty clothes outside the monitor was different from seeing them in reality.

Specifically, it was the smell. The sensation that pierced my nose in this damp and hopeless space showed how desperate his situation was.

“I was just wondering why a seemingly normal old man is like this here. Well, you think I’m trying to rob you or something?”

Being moderately cocky might actually make him less wary. Even I thought that someone trying to ‘kindly’ help in this neighborhood would only look like a psychopath.

Someone who seems drowned in arrogance, who would only see people other than themselves as inferior trash.

Among them, I needed to appear like someone who could be used.

“Well, not like there’s anything worth stealing anyway.”

The empty bottles and syringes scattered around him were, strictly speaking, a bit difficult to consider his belongings.

“…Hansan.”

He opened his mouth.

It was a hopeless life. He had seen countless people die miserably in situations like his.

Sometimes, he had even decorated their endings. It was too late to mourn his death now, he had seen too many deaths already.

“Hansan?”

“Yeah. You might not believe it looking at this state… but I was once a somewhat renowned soldier.”

The man lifted his leg to show his empty leg.

“The wood looks quite rough.”

His crutch was crude, dirty, and rough.

To the point where even someone making crutches for their pet would probably give them neater ones than this.

“It was in a battle at Hexa Plateau. Lost my leg there. Better than the comrades who lost their lives… no, looking at my current state, it doesn’t seem much better.”

“You were a soldier?”

“Fought on Hansan’s side. Like a dog.”

The state was no longer the subject of war.

Half-conspiracy theories like ‘giant financiers are lurking and manipulating wars!’ existed before, but the corporations in this world didn’t even feel the need to lurk.

The disabled veteran looked up at that naive young master with clenched teeth.

“Oh my.”

He thought it would be fortunate if he didn’t just mock him, but unexpectedly, that young master frowned.

Maybe he could ask so innocently because he was truly an ignorant fool who knew nothing.

It might be sympathy. That kid must surely be connected to a corporation too.

It was pathetic that he had to receive sympathy from a corporate bastard who took his leg and life, but he was desperate enough to endure that patheticness.

He was thirsty. It had been a week since he was kicked out of his cheap apartment for failing to pay rent.

No one showed any interest in him. Not even someone to curse at him to not lie around in such a place existed.

“If it was a corporate war, there should have been compensation procedures.”

“I was fired. Ha, it was for insubordination. Damn…”

“Not such an honorable matter then.”

“Damn it, should I have followed Hansan’s orders and massacred all the civilians in the city?”

Corporations tend to see people as numbers.

They pick the statistically most likely plan while tapping small dots inside computers in safe offices.

“If it was that kind of insubordination.”

“Damn, if they had at least punished me right then and discharged me dishonorably, I could have understood. After all, it’s true that I didn’t follow orders.”

The old disabled veteran looked at his emptied leg.

“But those bastards kept their mouths shut and waited. Only when it was time to give compensation after the war ended did they notify me ‘Compensation will not be paid for various reasons.'”

Unexpectedly, that young master didn’t seem surprised.

He might have already known. If someone was interested in history, it was content that could be easily found with a little research.

But no one tries to know about these facts.

Even he himself came to think ‘maybe it’s not such a special thing?’ compared to the unreasonableness and pain suffered by the humans in this city.

In a district where such people gathered, no. In a space where such things are still happening, the ‘trivial’ misfortune of that disabled veteran wasn’t much of a factor to draw attention.

“Damn… fuck…”

It was pathetic.

Others in the city in similar situations were too busy focusing on their own problems to listen to his story.

And that was the same for him too.

While living in this apartment, and while lying here, numerous pains passed by.

He didn’t pay attention to them. He didn’t have the capacity to care.

But this young master, who might be the perpetrator of that pain, spoke to him first with that overflowing leisure and wealth.

Living like a human being requires at least some money. He didn’t expect to feel this so strongly.

“Hey, want to fight?”

“Well? I wouldn’t lose easily anywhere.”

After speaking out, he felt somewhat refreshed.

“I don’t have anything valuable among my possessions… but this should be quite a decent item.”

He pulled out the pistol he had kept carefully hidden in his chest.

“It’s a pistol from Hansan. Well, it’s not a named item or anything particularly special… but it’s on a different level from cheap street guns.”

Looking at that neat man’s unwavering eyes, the disabled veteran could be certain that he wasn’t a person from this street.

Hansan’s weapons could be considered objects of envy to street people.

The bullets didn’t jam, if you aimed properly the bullets hit exactly where intended, and the firepower was decent enough.

To people using cheap plastic guns that were no different from toys, it was equivalent to a luxury car.

If he sold this, he might have been able to hold out in that room for a few months. Of course, there wouldn’t be proper buyers so he would have had to slash the price endlessly.

“If you grant me one favor, I’ll give you this. Pretty good deal, right?”

His eyes were looking at something more distant.