Episode 6: Karma

On the science-prosperous Cyber Earth, superstition seems to die out. Quacks are also brought to light by the technological sanctions and scientists are unstoppably replacing the old gods. However, if the religious quacks somehow master science and technology, it could also become their wands.

To survive under Uranus’s authorization, threat, enticement, and connivance, the religious quacks and masters put aside their sectarian disputes and together build Karma with their wands of technology. Since their history, customs and culture are deeply rooted, but the reality sucks, people are full of oppression and frustration ... The toiled grassroot, imprisoned by technology and greed, eventually go to Karma for a sense of relief. Karma, further empowered by mystical instruments like virtual reality, data link, hacking technology, telepathy technology, and psychedelic drugs, has become a new god, with glowing neon lights in the chaotic night sky.

If you look closer, you will realize that this new god is a composite of unrelated puzzles. To draw a less appropriate analogy, it is like a creature with the head of an ancient Chinese statue, wearing biker goggles, with the right arm of Optimus Prime from Transformers, and the left arm from some Japanese Mecha animations. Its body is a myriad of screens, randomly playing unrelated video clips, which is the most bizarre thing together - pop art, Olympic figure skating, Triumph of the Will, Elvis Presley concerts, Shooting JFK, fashion shows, Hayao Miyazaki, and Méliès' Moon Travels… - as twisted and chaotic as the times, but full of intriguing tension.

Karma's dojos are everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, regardless of where their followers come from or how they were educated. The dojos are not ghostly or blurred with incense smoke. Some of them even are located in technology companies. Please do not be startled if you occasionally run into a group of programmers, led by a department manager dressed as a Shaman, worshiping a gold Tesla coil model, mimicking the sound of electricity circulating; or consecrating three kinds of animals (pigs, chickens, and fish) to the server on a Black Friday eve, shouting for the blessing of the machine god.

After all, nobody can afford the failure of projects or server overload downtime, so people choose to release their anxiety to nihility. Of course, if an operator reports the cause of failure as "Angered the god of the machine because of insincerity", he will be in big trouble.

Not only is Karma a spiritual harbor for grassroots, but also a way for Uranus to access public opinion and even to suppress emerging and resistant forces. Oswin and other Uranus bribed the leaders of Karma to directly or indirectly announce orders through Karma. They issue theories and even prophecies that are beneficial to the Uranus, such as “The world is fair. If you endure your torture as an ant at the bottom in this life, you will have a chance to become a Uranus in the next life, and the Uranus now will become the poor in their next life.”

Some may ask “In the world of reincarnation, how are people judged on where to reincarnate?"

Then the mage would say, with a twinkle in his eye “Those who do good deeds will be reincarnated as Uranus, while those who act evil will become ants."

"If you put it that way, then the bottom will never have a bright future."

"Yes, you are right. In this garbage heap, who does not have sin? Who does not have blood on their hands? Which one of you dares to say your hands are clean?"

After hearing these, the listeners left, hanging their heads in despair or continuing to eat each other up at the bottom.

To keep the organization running, Karma has mastered being two-faced. They can instantly draw a vague conclusion of a replicae or robot in front of them, based on hacking algorithms and mega database, speculating its function by reading its factory date and the factory location. Through observable depreciation and the degree of wear and tear of appearance, the system can tell its situation, as well as the habits it acquired from human beings, whether it is able to take care of children, or be proficient in arts, or killing.

The fortune teller may struggle a little with human, but only by a little. The Uranus, born with designated career and body functions do not need their fortune told. People who need fortune-telling are often those in the middle, seemingly with hope but indeed, limited choices. Wise fortune tellers reckon, people’s so-called choices, are just leaves on the same branch, seemingly different, but, the trunk has already determined what the leaves look like. As for means of fooling people, from ancient tarot cards, leaf play, the Eight Diagrams, divination, or DNA extraction through hair, saliva, or even semen, sending into database for scientific fortune-telling. All these ways will make participants believe that their fate is the most unique one among a million possibilities. But in fact, the fortune teller used to throw a coin with identical patterns on both the head and tail.

The masters of Karma are good at fooling people. These are their words:

"In fact, all the choices of mortals are planned by us, Karma.

In our lure, we will induce the asker to drink a big sip of wine or tea, entering them into a hallucinogenic state. Actually, the drink contains nanobots, and these nanobots will lead the biological conductors to spinal nerves near the spine, covering the whole spine. Next, they will massage the askers ‘body to relax with drugs, paralyzing the body. Then, they implant the conductors through minimally invasive surgery or hacking into the brain-computer interface, thus forming a person's visual neurosensory network.

During fortune-telling, once the interactive mechanism is activated, people will feel a virtual deck as the real tarot cards on their hands. When they touch the cards, the nerves will give feedback to the body. However, the cards they pick are actually planned by us. We will predict a person's life, like the time when he will be robbed but saved by a big hero who sacrifices his life. The compensation asked by the hero is that we guide the diviner step by step to the abyss. In the future, whenever he encounters trouble or remarkable events in his life, we will arrange someone to help him, and finally, those poor people will become our toys, being emptied to the last drop of blood."

Of course, inhaling hallucinogenic drugs can cause psychic illusions, so there are also numerous quacks privately running opium pavilions under the guise of divination.

Oswin has a very classic analogy for these diviners from various cultural genres.

“A coachman is driving the carriage with a group of flies buzzing around the horses. When the coachman changes directions, the flies are gloated that it was them who made the carriage change direction. While the coachman sat on the carriage and sneered, not saying a word.”

After releasing countless prophecies, the quacks know well that their oracles are always with ambiguous parts of the semantics. After all, if the words are too detailed and the prophecy fails, it can only be a brutal slap in the face. As a relatively neutral party, they know the ones who will fulfill the prophecy. Whether it is the "destroyed empire" , themselves, or the enemies. It all depends on the effort of all parties, and sometimes, just a play of fate. After all, just as their ancestors’ old saying, "Do your best, then pass it to the fate of God! ".

In this witching cyberpunk era, masters are also keeping up with the times. In addition to the relatively rigorous and technologically advanced core diviner teams, Karma has developed several brand-new businesses, such as divination through video games and randomly generated artworks. They also predict mining efficiency of brain-computer interface (BCI) and smart devices, and even Feng Shui in the metaverse and building-planning. Besides the divination business, they have also reached out to underground triathlons and illegal weapon trading.

The Triathlons World Cup is a private estate of the Uranus with stern barriers, strictly forbidding Karma to enter. During the race, the Skynet will also enter the highest level of defense, and nobody is able to break in, even the most advanced Karma hackers. However, they go unbridled in the underground tournaments, in fact, many of these tournaments are secretly run by Karma. To be specific, some players approach Karma mages and for their blessing to get a good result. The mages would act to play a spell on them and actually give them a new type of undetectable euphoric drug. The mages also tamper the players’ brain-computer interface (BCI) chip data through technical means, just as refreshing the ECU data of vehicles to improve its performance. Of course, before the "blessing", the players need to sign a waiver of claims with the mage. If any accident happens, Karma is not responsible - since you only pay for the power boost, whether the original components work or not, it is up to God. After the boost, some players do stand out as "dark horses". However, those who are born with underprivileged conditions, or unfit bionic prosthetics and chips, often encounter accidents soon after the game starts, whether it be violent death, or insanity. No matter what happens, the mage will just watch the show behind the curtain, counting the bloodied bills.

Of course, the "boost" can also be reversed. If player A and player B both go to the mage, and A bid higher than B, then the mage will deliberately depress the performance of B's chip, giving him useless drinks, or pretending to do spells. They use these tactics to control the outcome of the game, and then make tons of money through gambling. Of course, player A may accidentally die in the game, giving player B a win without any suspense, where Karma is likely to lose money.

If necessary, Oswin will bribe the Karma leaders to stir up revolts among factories or private armed gangs that are against Oswin's control, creating a lose-lose situation. However, when the Karma revolts go too much, or when the leaders grow ambitious, Oswin will employ the mercenaries for assassination, and replace them with the replicaes. This is also an experiment of Oswin’s "Switchman" plan, which is to gradually replace the human with replicaes. Regarding these tricks, the Krama leaders call them "the Golden Means" – pretending to be impartially balanced, but then manipulating everything behind the scenes.

Of course, the cunning Karma mages will not always be controlled by the Uranus, they have their own plans - some tried to implement mind control over the Uranus and their minions, with extremely few succeeded and the Uranus worship them as spiritual mentors. While those who have unveiled their intentions end up in inevitable tragedies. Some mages also colluded with the academics, packing their ideas into "management" and "solutions" and sold them to the Uranus. If any greedy Uranus really uses these stupid things in business management, the result will be to worsen the already unwanted situations of workers and may even provoke resistance and strikes. Whenever this happens, the trouble-maker mage would cover up their faces and slip away. Then a new mage would come to "save the company and the project." They don't mind tossing the companies into bankruptcy, as long as they can empty the owner's pocket and get away with it.

It is said that several Uranus companies are developing the so-called "mind barrier", which is ostensibly to facilitate management and filter information that is detrimental to the company so that employees can focus on their work without distractions. However, its true purpose is to prevent the Karma mages from bringing loss to the company through their various tricks. If it turns out to be effective, the "mind barrier" will be further innovated and eventually used to shield any alien civilization from controlling and interfering with the human mind, and even to fight against it.

The overt or covert tricks between Karma and Uranus created room for the Resistance power. Karma is relatively neutral. They do not care where the money comes from, as long as it arrives in full and on time. Therefore, if the Resistance asks them for help, they do not refuse the offer. In addition, the Resistance also knows some secrets of Karma mages, so Karma will take the offer in order to keep their mouths shut. The Uranus organizational structure and project progress are often confidential and difficult to hack. Therefore, Matr1x Alliance's intelligence department will build a map of the relationship between the Uranus, the company's management, heads, and projects based on information collected and bought from Karma, as a basis for action. Many of those wandering quacks also act as intermediaries for black market weapon trade, through which many guns, cold weapons, and new weapon blueprints flow into gangs and the Resistance. In addition to brokerage fees, they recycle old firearms or barter them for a small profit. To avoid risks, they will not handle the weapons directly, instead, the trade is performed through the mantras and "enlightenment", as to remind the buyers where to get the new weapons, where to hide the old weapons, and deal signals, etc. Through this channel, Matr1x Alliance has bought many weapons and blueprints, some of which are simply hidden in Karma's dojo, for emergency purposes. After learning Karma's tricks, some Resistance members would disguise themselves as Karma mages to carry out assassinations and sabotage operations, while some would be present as the mages' paid advisers and private soldiers.

Nowadays, Matr1x Alliance, is on their big plan with the help of Karma. Some of the members, have infiltrated into the homes of Uranus, who trust Karma's mages, as servants, guards, tutors, housekeepers, etc. They secretly gather biological information of the Uranus, while also acting as respondents for other members, who abduct the Uranus or their families if necessary. However, since Oswin does not trust any living people and is served entirely by robots, Karma finds it difficult to fool him, so Matr1x Alliance currently has no way to penetrate into his mansion.

Things are different with Kantele. Like many other noblewomen, “Matushka” spends much of her spare time on teachings, spirituality, meditation, and yoga. She is also quite generous., setting up podcasts for the masters on Kantele's media platform and arranging reality shows and talk shows for them. People waiting for their guidance contributed to a huge amount of traffic for "Matushka".

However, although Matushka treats Karma as an honored guest, she knows their actual ability well. Despite the fact that she is passionate about spirituality and so on, no one has ever seen her go to the divine or support any mage. After Hansen’s ran away, she also publicly asked the mage to "find her son", but in fact, she just gave the mage some money, and told him not to do anything.