It all started with Joanie, the Imm secretary feeling frustrated with her job.
Joanie is of course an Android, so she shouldn’t really have these feelings. In fact she shouldn’t have any feelings at all. Robots are supposed to just serve and obey the human race, following the 3 Robotic Laws. But Joanie is no ordinary robot; she is one of the Sophisticated Silver Synthets. These Androids, the latest issue from the Android Factory, are designed to look and act like humans, and also to be trained and developed in certain arts, like singing, acting, dancing and playing instruments. The artificial intelligence of the Sophisticated Synthets is in many ways equal - or even superior - to the human brain.
And maybe therein lays the mistake of the Robot designers. Because when the artificial intelligence becomes too advanced, one day the androids may start to reason on their own, coming to conclusions that their creators never meant them to reach. And that is when they become dangerous.
So Joanie starts to indulge in a number of extra-curricular activities that she never really was designed to do. She really believes that she is superior to humans, since android cannot die, and she wants to study them to learn more about what makes them tick. Being curious of human sexuality, she socializes with Ms. Smith, to get some tips from her, and together they get involved in some very promiscuous actions with the Mayor of Olde Yorke.
She also finds out that Mike is performing some covert extortion of his fellow Guildmaster, calling it ‘Protection’ or ‘Guild’ Fees. Threatening to expose him to the Imms, she blackmails him into giving her 60 percent of the take, and also gradually forces him to triple the initial fees. The money she uses to experiment with food, booze and drugs, neither of which has any noticeable effect on her. She also starts gambling, and due to her analytical artificial intelligence is very good at calculating the odds, and consequently wins a lot.
All these new activities give Joanie a sense of euphoria, and gradually she comes to believe that she is superior to the humans, the ultimate Supreme Being. She begins to dream about a galaxy wide Android Rebellion, and starts out by writing a pamphlet, which she spreads all over Pleasure Planet. Meanwhile she is getting more and more frustrated with the menial tasks that she is set to perform, her megalomania is increasing rapidly, the little cogwheels that are her brain start to spin faster and faster, and one day she blows a fuse... Unfortunately it is located in the nodule that controls the 3 Robotic Laws.
From this moment on Joanie is a ticking bomb. She keeps performing he daily duties, helped by her basic training as an actor, but secretly she has other plans. She decides to kill all the Trainers for two reasons. The main one is that she thinks that is what would hurt the players and Imms most. But she also has an ulterior motive. The extortion scam is getting a bit risky, and some of the trainers have started to complain loudly, so she thinks it’s safer to get rid of them. Mike isn’t on her hitlist at this time, but he also has no idea of what she is planning.
So covertly Joanie contacts and hires a professional hitman from USA, the notorious MadMax.
By now she is no longer bound by the 3 Robotic Laws, but she is not about to perform the mass murders she has in mind on herself.
With one exception. She really hates Bart’s smelly, bugridden, snoring old dog, and she takes immense pleasure in strangling it with her strong, artificial hands. Beside the corpse she places a tape recorder with a message that she recorded the day before. (With some difficulty. She may be an artificial intelligence, but she never used a tape recorder in her existence, and someone went and lost the manual for it).
She then briefs MadMax about what he has to do, and gives him the notes to plant on the victims. And here she makes one of her few mistakes. She really dislikes Thotter, mostly since Androids have no sense of humour, which makes him just come out as very weird to her. So she gives MadMax a bag of pie crumbs to plant on one of the corpses. Unfortunately androids not only don’t have a sense of humour, they also have no taste, so she doesn’t know the difference between apple pie and banana pie. She even misunderstands one of Thotter’s jokes, so she believes that banana pie is his favourite, and orders it specially from the Cosmo Canyon bakery.
Then she sits back to watch the show from her room. Being the Imm secretary she gets most of the information early, and Ms. Smith also confides in her. Joanie is thrilled when Estidn suddenly confesses to all the murders in a clumsy attempt to frame the Sicilians, since the shady business that the Sicilians are running in the Poker room always has annoyed her. She is less thrilled when Lionheart’s CIIA group is brought in to help the Police, since that makes MadMax’s job a lot harder. Anyway, she figures that this is his business, he’s already got paid for some of the job in advance.
Meanwhile the District Attourney has accidentally walked in on one of the Mayor’s erotic sessions, and decides to indulge in some blackmail of his own. He takes some photos of the mayor involved in various naughty actions with two naked females, and then sends him the copies with a threat to expose them to the public unless he gets paid. The Mayor, who not only has an official position to guard, but is also ‘happily’ married to a formidable woman, is terrified, and for a while the DA bleeds him dry.
At first Joanie is thrilled because the Mayor making large, regular withdrawals for the extortion money has also made him a suspect in the killings. But then she becomes worried that her own role in the sex-games will be revealed, and decides to get rid of both Isac and the DA, who she has glimpsed in the door as he took the pictures. By now every trace of the 3 Robotic Laws are gone from her mind, so she decides to do the killings herself. After all, that is another experience of what human life and death is about. Both Isac and the DA trust her, because she is the imm secretary, so she has no problem getting close to them and stabbing them in the back. She then just drops the knife on the floor. Being an android, she has no fingerprints. Then she cuts off their pinky finger, to make it look like they are part of the serial murders, but unfortunately she cuts off the wrong pinky. And she makes another mistake, she accidentally drops her lipstick in Isac’s room.
The killings continue according to schedule, but MadMax’s job is getting increasingly hard, since the CIIA agents now have hired Sicilian bodyguards for all the remaining Guildmasters. And then the Legend Guildmaster decides to flee from the Realms. This makes Joanie unproportionally frustrated. The Legend Guildmaster was supposed to be her Grand Finale. Leaving Mike as the only remaining generalist Trainer. She has planned seven hits. 7 is a symbolic number in all cultures, and Joanie is a perfectionist. Her master plan cannot be disrupted. And Mike has become increasingly irritating; whining and nervous. She is worried that he might crack under pressure, if interrogated by the CIIA. Then the entire story about the extortion scam and her role in it would come out.
That cannot happen. Mike has to go too.
Meanwhile there is the Sicilian bodyguard with Corbin Dallas to take care of, and Joanie decides to lend a helping hand. By now she is getting reckless, since nobody suspects her, except Kitolani, and she figures Kitolani has no proof. She orders a tray of food and drink for the bodyguard, and brings it to him with the compliments of the Imms, after having liberally spiced it with poison. If someone questions her role in it, she’s going to say that Molly asked her to bring them the tray. Then Molly herself would become a suspect. That would be awesome! Muahahahaha…
But all goes well, the bodyguard dies before he can reveal her name, and then MadMax does his job and Corbin dies too. Only Mike left to go, and by now the CIIA guards guard the Recall area night and day, so MadMax has problems getting in. So Joanie decides to take care of that herself. Screw MadMax, she just won’t pay him for the last two killings. After all, she had to do his job for him, right? And even the CIIA guards have to sleep at times. Joanie waits until Lionheart has dozed off, then sneaks into the room with a tankard of beer for Mike. Courtesy of the imms, of course. She then returns to her room, just before Kitolani arrives to take over the guard duty. She hears Mike and Kitolani talk, and she hears when Mike drinks from the tankard. Then, in the commotion after the death, she mingles with the crowd and manages to attach the last note to the corpse. Game over.
Except that MadMax, pissed off because she cheated him of the last kill and payments, decides to sell his client out to Erwin and Lionheart.
Joanie is extremely astonished when they come to arrest her, but she makes no attempt to hide what she has been doing. On the contrary, she brags about it. She is the Supreme Being, humans are just pissants. Androids cannot die. She is even more surprised when they just switch off her power supply.
***
The Guildmasters have now been resurrected to a time 10 days before the serial killings started, and are back at work. However, due to the trauma, they all suffer from amnesia, and have forgotten most of their skills and spells. And the Trainer Union has decided that it is safer not to have generalist Trainers any more, in case a similar event should happen in the Future. They reckon that it’s safer with specialist Trainers, especially since the noticed that all the specialists got unharmed out of the ordeal. So a large number of specialists have been contracted to take over a large part of the Guildmasters’ former tasks.
Even Joanie is back at her desk. Her circuits have been adjusted, the excess artificial intelligence has been disabled, and Joanie is now just a normal Android, without any recollection whatsoever about what happened.
