The Lazarus Corporation
The rain came down in sheets of acid, blurring the garish logos of the mega-corps that ruled this neighborhood. We snaked through Neo-Tokyo’s urban canyons, following the step-by-step directions of the computerized whisper in my ear.
“This is something outta the old ‘zone flicks,” Tanaka muttered as his grav-boots squished softly.
We had just breached the perimeter of Kisei’s complex. Tanaka wasn’t wrong. A creeping dread set into my gut, something worse than ordinary pre-mission nerves.
We moved through the complex nervously. I expected to see someone jump out at any point, but we just passed through empty halls bathed in the flickering light of malfunctioning lamps.
“Place gives me the willies, boss,” Kenji whispered, his hand clenching tighter around his neural disruptor.
“Keep your eyes down,” I barked at them. “This ain’t a standard smash-and-grab.”
Even as I said it, I could hear the uncertainty in my own voice.
We came to a room deep in the labyrinth that seemed like the only place with any activity. Server towers pulsed like skeletal giants. Wires draped the ceiling as thick as vines in some cyber jungle. All I could hear was the low, persistent hum of machines running.
Years back, Kisei was just another name on the never-ending docket of large corporations with tax anomalies. Then the founder had a heart attack in the middle of his trial and the whole business shut down overnight. But last month the payments started again. Millions, no, billions of yen funneled back into the system — this from a company that officially had no employees or even living shareholders. Hell, there wasn’t even a CEO.
We had been called in — Tax Enforcement, black-ops division. It's a fancy way of saying we're the guys sent to pry open the financial secrets corps would rather shove down a wormhole. Neo-Tokyo Central had commanded us to tap into these revenue streams and figure out what was going on.
Tanaka let out a sharp whistle. “I’ve never seen so much ancient tech in one place…”
“You good boss?” Saito asked behind me. Saito was my best data jockey. Kid could hack a bank’s safeguards while riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. I’m glad he’s on our side.
“Company shouldn’t be making revenue if there’s nobody here, right? Nothing here but this machine.”
“Think this is some kind of lifeform? Some sentient AI?” Tanaka questioned.
“A sentient AI that just spontaneously came to life?” I retorted.
Yet I was worried he was right. A corporation of that kind? I mean, we had no damn playbook for this.
“Uh boss, you should take a look at this,” Saito was looking at the single small screen that connected all these machines together.
“Look at this smart contract. Look how it’s running in an endless loop.”
"How the hell does that work, legally? No way that charter was watertight after this long."
“Whoever wrote this charter was either a genius or insane,” Saito chimed in, his voice tinged with a mix of fascination and fear. “This system is some kind of legal hydra. Whenever something damages it, it spontaneously breaks the company into three smaller companies with their own smart contracts. Those contracts become shareholders, governed by code.”
“So who’s in charge?”
“Nobody. It is just running forever.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I’m trying to but there’s some kind of counterflow. It’s like it’s watching us.”
“Just unplug the damned thing.”
“If you do, we may take down the entire financial market.”
That’s when it hit me — Kisei wasn’t a machine, it was a machine that made itself… using legal code, patent, and financial contracts. My boys looked as lost as I felt. Standard gear like neural disruptors weren’t going t owork here. Not for whatever mess was holding Kisei up.
Our task had been simple: infiltrate the corporate headquarters, collect their records, and find whatever ghost in the machine was trading those funds. Then we’d figure out how to tap into that stream ourselves. Governments never get tired of money, not even ones run by data daemons and cyborg politicians.
Yet whatever intelligence did exist wasn’t centralized. It pulsed into a million little algorithms. It was outsmarting us, out-evolving us. We spent hours combing through whatever corporate files we could access. It didn’t make sense.
“Burn it down. I want this whole place to be nothing but an ash heap,” I snapped suddenly, more out of frustration than a real order.
Tanaka grizzled and blinked at me with his bionic eye. We weren’t in the business of scorched earth.
“What about asset seizure?” he asked diplomatically.
“You can’t slap a court order on an algorithm,” I sighed.
That was the heart of it – due process wasn't built for this. Sue a smart contract? Where do you send the subpoena? Seizing intangible assets, digital patents whose rights existed only as lines of code – we didn't have the tools for that, literally or legally.
In the end, we left empty-handed. Once we returned to the van I keyed in my report. We failed the mission, but I knew how to gloss over those details when working with management.
“Well I guess we're not dealing with a ghost in that old shell,” I chuckled forcefully. “We’re dealing with something worse.”
This story doesn't end with Kisei under government control. It ends with another entry on my endless 'threat assessment' log, and one hell of a meeting with the suits back at HQ. Something new under the neon sun, and for once, I can't be sure if it's something we can eventually beat – or if it's already beaten us.
This story was originally inspired by someone’s comment on Twitter and their point was interesting. With modern financial tools, you can automate a lot of a business. Do you even need humans anymore? What does a corporation look like if the whole thing is automated? Who is responsible if it goes wrong? Lots to think about with the Tax Black-Ops team.