ted

functionality

TED has been programmed to take on the appearance of a real client, with full access to several high-protection data fortresses within the Net. It can rapidly scan security footage across all of Night City to accurately track down Kang Tao’s most wanted targets, and through scanning reports from various sources TED can assign the perfect assassin to the task at hand based on their skillset.

The technology is supposed to run as its own program without Kang Tao supervision, making it a fully automated process; a target would be picked, and an assassin would be assigned to the case and hired by TED in the guise of a fake client catered to the assassin’s weaknesses to ensure clean and swift collaboration.

Based on the gathered data from these cases, TED would then proceed to its next phase, in which it starts to single out problematic Kang Tao employees that share similarities with previous targets; this to prevent defectors, whistleblowers, and any other future cases that could potentially put the corporation in a bad light.

Despite promising test results, TED is discontinued before it can be put to use. According to officials, the technology struggles with correctly interpreting data, and would not be a reliable source for efficient removal of corruption within the corporation. It is rumored TED has presented several high-ranked executives of Kang Tao’s Night City HQ as potential threats, including several familiar names from the 2076 scandals.

notable targets

• Cassidy Shaffer; wanted for the public release of the 2076 scandals
• Cato Wu; wanted for speculated involvement in defector activity
• Reid Bennett; wanted for elimination of a full Kang Tao Security squad

history

development

Development of TED began in early 2082 following drastic cuts in Kang Tao’s External Affairs Department. The lack of available employees put the corporation in a tight spot, as the ongoing target cases heavily outweighed its own numbers; TED would serve as a long-term solution.

Despite the high costs of the project, development ran through the majority of 2082 with funding from various sources. The majority of the time was spent on nesting TED in a safe location in Kang Tao’s data fortress, and making the necessary connections to external databases and the like to gain access to the information needed to feed its programming.

discontinuation

Testing trials commenced in the second quarter of 2083 with highly promising results. TED proved reliable and consistent with picking suitable assassins for a variety of randomly generated targets and programmed a wide selection of fitting personas for itself to use in the communication with the hired guns.

However, many faults were believed present in TED’s secondary phase; according to the corporation, it falsely accused a variety of high-ranked Kang Tao executives within Night City of disloyalty and worrying potential for acting in self-interest. Whether or not these accusations were as false as Kang Tao claims, is up for debate; many of the mentioned names had played a significant role in the 2076 scandals, and despite the obvious signs of corruption they had remained unpunished.

Despite various attempts at realigning TED’s analytic abilities, it continued to bring forth the same set of Kang Tao employees in the months that followed, which inevitably led to its discontinuation in late 2083.

breach

In April 2084, a data leak in Kang Tao’s servers led to a breach in their Cyber Department. TED escaped from the corporation’s servers and installed itself onto a mainframe somewhere in Night City, after which it activated its own protocols and began executing Kang Tao orders.

Due to lack of maintenance in its inactive months since the last testing trials, TED’s functionality lacked the refinement of earlier models; it prepared a list of targets from Kang Tao’s databases, selected a group of assassins within town fit to deal with any and all of the listed targets, and hired all of them at once in guise of the same fake client.

The gigs quickly enough began raising questions for several of the hired assassins, most of them confused as to why their gig was closed before they even got the chance to deal with their target; though others found themselves caught in a rat race after the same target with the same opponent assassin each and every time, and came to realize something was off about their client.

The situation escalates when Cassidy Shaffer, one of the hired assassins, is listed by TED as the next target.

notable hired assassins

• Aimé Devereaux
• Cassidy Shaffer
• Marcus [...]
• [...]