Prologue: Certainly nothing unfortunate will come of this...

Lord Rend on Nov. 9, 2010

Here is the second page of the prologue for Systematic… not much to say about it really. I will however make mention of the fact that even though Systematic is updating every week right now, that may or may not continue once Linked Fate begins updating again. Just by how much time it takes me to finish the strips for both, I am inclined to believe that Linked Fate will probably update every week and Systematic every other week. I hope I can keep that up, seeing as I really dislike the idea of missing any more updates.

In any case, for those curious as to why the government is “gutted” in this comic, this is why: there is no way that any reasonable government would allow additional AI's to be manufactured after hearing the first one's profound ‘wisdom.’ At least, not if they had the ability to put a stop to such things, but the vestigial government that does exist has nowhere near the authority to implement such controls.
This page also introduces the concept of AI's and virtual personalities (in a manner of speaking…). As RAM mentions, AI's are pretty much entirely without personality, a side effect of dealing solely with machines and being programmed for the purpose of solving problems with said machinery. And, just like a multi-tasker has difficulty focusing on any one task for too long, so too do the AI's find it impossible to focus all their monolithic processing power on any one task/ individual. Virtual personalities, on the other hand, are programmed to interact with people and machines equally, so they were programmed with the ability to adapt and develop personalities to ease interactions with humans. The situation is somewhat similar to how you simply want a toaster to do its job but really appreciate actually talking to someone for tech support.