#jchat

Kim is obviously the Kamski of this universe, but instead of building androids, she's programming artificial intelligences to populate cyberspace. Maybe they were originally intended as like, cyberspace guides? "Hi I'm here to help you navigate this virtual space". But whoops, they gained sentience and now they're doing stuff outside the bounds of their programming.

So like, people can pull a Matrix I guess and hook up to cyberspace/virtual reality or whatever. But that's optional, they're not trapped there. There's different "places" to go, so folks can sign in to work, have interviews without leaving the house, or do various forms of entertainment. But they don't just sit at home plugged in all day. People still have to GO places.

So, for example; Chatham (the Hank of this au) is a police guy and has to physically go to the police station to do his job, and still has to travel the city during investigations. But he can hook up to the station's virtual server for stuff like paperwork and cataloguing evidence and so on. And while out and about, there's probably some way to stay connected to the work server to make real-time reports and reference files or whatever. I don't know man, I'm not a cop.

Chatham fucking hates logging on to the servers. Not just for work, but like, any of them. Since this is a dbh au, he's the grumpy millennial who misses how internet used to be, compact and on a phone in your hand. He doesn't like being IN cyberspace and he hates having cyberspace in his head.

So these virtual AIs are becoming self aware and the murders happen. Maybe they're doing something to fry people's brains while online, and just leaving heaps of bodies with no explainable cause of death. I mean obviously it gets figured out eventually, they learn that people are getting toasted online. But WHY. HOW. WHO IS DOING IT

So Chatham's the guy who gets put on the case, and now he's gotta go around investigating the virtual scenes where these people have died, and he hates it.

And in comes this rookie prettyboy to be his partner, of course. Because da cheif said so, and because Jiro (the Connor obviously) is hot shit in the virtual world. Maybe he's got crazy high levels of comprehension and that makes him capable of cruising through the internet at a breakneck speed. Which is exactly what this investigation needs, since there's a LOT of virtual settings they need to comb through.

Also Jiro has special police-issue cybernetic implants that let him connect to pretty much anywhere at any time, and he has neat security access to stuff. The boy is practically half robot, why not.

Obviously Chatham is disgusted by the implant trend, and hates his new partner, and from here we more or less follow the dbh themes through their courses.

But wait, there's more

Down the road we get to the whole Kamski scene,and we discover that

GASP

Jiro isn't just some guy with cybernetic implants and a super fast brain. He's been a virtual AI the whole time, designed by Kim along with all the rest. But he's a fancy prototype that's been stuck into a body instead of existing solely in the virtual world. And, idk, maybe only certain people knew he wasnt human, so the company could see how well he'd blend in with people.

Anyway Chatham is shocked to learn that Jiro isn't human. He's suspicious about it, but Jiro passes this version of the Kamski test (which I assume happens in cyberspace and Kim tries to get Jiro to murder one of her other AI programs, and obviously he doesn't do it)

Jiro and Chatham go back to their investigation and also later have a long talk about feelings and humanity and of course Chatham threatens to shoot Jiro in the face, because "what are you really, Jiro?"

This is about as far as I've gotten with it, and I'm leaving out a LOT of key plot points. But at the end there's definitely a whole scene from Her, where after their uprising the AIs all decide to fuck off to some other plane of existence instead of living in humanity's virtual world. Jiro has the option to leave his body and go with the rest of the AI, but he chooses to stay and rejoins Chatham on the force.