Automated Capitalism

Acting on a tip, Section 9 dismantles a ring of thieves scheming to cripple a Japanese financial firm called Interstar. Soon after the operation wraps, an intelligence officer from China warns the unit about activity that may signal a planned killing. The apparent mark is Kanemoto Yokose, a secretive Japanese multimillionaire, and the suspected aggressors are Chinese Socialists. The team takes on the job of shielding him.

Yokose is described as a fifty-six-year-old former mathematician who built his wealth by trading shares. Section 9 and the would-be killer arrive at his estate within minutes of one another, and inside the bedroom each side stumbles onto the same shock. Yokose has in fact been dead for a very long time. The reason everyone assumed otherwise is an automated trading program that kept managing his holdings as though he were still alive.

The closing sequence shifts to the home of Togusa's wife, whose personal computer switches on by itself, seizes the stock-trading routine, buys shares in Serano Genomics, and then goes dark again. The subtitle "¥€$" strings together the symbols for the Japanese yen, the euro, and the US dollar. Directed by Hideyo Yamamoto and written by Kenji Kamiyama, the fourteenth Stand Alone Complex episode premiered in Japan on December 31, 2002, with the English broadcast on February 13, 2005.