I want to address the poll numbers directly, because I think they reveal something disturbing about where we are as a society.

Forty-seven percent of Metro City residents believe catching TerrorByte should be our top priority. Forty-eight percent believe addressing corruption should be.

Notice what's missing? A majority. Consensus. Agreement on anything.

We have become a city that can't decide whether murder is worse than fraud. And in that paralysis, corporations circle like vultures.

The False Framing

Here's what bothers me about the 48% who want to "address corruption" before catching TerrorByte: that framing accepts vigilante justice as legitimate. It says that burning five men alive is acceptable as long as they were bad men.

That's not how civilization works. That's how lynch mobs work.

Complicated Feelings About Sentinel

I have complicated feelings about Project Sentinel.

On one hand, the promise is appealing. Robots that can't be bribed. Robots that enforce laws impartially.

On the other hand, those same robots are programmed by a corporation that would profit from their deployment. The same corporation whose CEO wants to be mayor.

We would be trading one form of corruptibility for another. Human corruption for corporate capture. Is that better? I honestly don't know.

The False Choices

We're being offered false choices by people with agendas:

• "Catch TerrorByte OR fix corruption" — as if we can't do both
• "More surveillance OR more crime" — as if those are the only options
• "Trust Nexus OR trust Axiom" — as if we have to trust either

What I Want

I would like to see NexaGen's executives prosecuted. I would like to see systemic reforms.

I would ALSO like to see a killer apprehended. I would like to feel that vigilante violence has limits.

These shouldn't be contradictory positions. The fact that they feel contradictory is itself a symptom of how broken we are.

Outsourcing our hardest decisions to corporate technology is not the same as making those decisions ourselves.