Chapter 115: A New Trump Card
In late November, the heavy snow fell for seven days and seven nights, finally coming to a stop on the morning of the eighth day.
Sunlight tore through the thick clouds, draping a layer of pale golden radiance over City, which was clad in silver white.
And the , once scarred all over, now presented an entirely different scene.
With the at its center, a vast power supply network radiated outward, delivering surging electricity to every corner of .
On both sides of the roads, brand-new factory buildings rose from the ground, the roar of machinery never ceasing twenty-four hours a day.
Ore shipped from was separated and purified at the , then passed through the to become gleaming bearings and standardized steel beams.
Equipment brought back from was reassembled inside the , while ammunition production lines churned out tons of ammunition stockpiles.
In the chemical zone, the newly synthesized " " was being bottled and mass-produced. Now, two-thirds of the 's people had already completed injection enhancement.
In the former heavy , abandoned factories had regained their vitality, churning out all kinds of essential industrial products day and night—batteries, steel plates, cables, drug precursors, alloy profiles...
And in other neighboring cities, tens of thousands of " " replicating drones surged like a tide. They dismantled abandoned buildings, recovered every piece of valuable metal, then returned to their respective " " mother units to replicate more of their kind.
Then, the newly produced suicide drones would pour into the fleshy world of from all directions, suppressing the overflowing flesh "blossoms" and surveying more data on the monsters.
Finally, they would deliver a grand explosion to that dangerous neighbor.
And beside , in , an even more massive building complex was breaking ground—the greenhouse staple food base.
"Engineer Sun, there's no problem with the light transmittance or strength of this glass, but the energy consumption of the climate control system is a bit higher than expected." A technician holding a tablet reported to the person in charge, .
—a young man who had nearly graduated before the disaster—was watching workers lay down the final batch of heating pipes.
He wiped the hot sweat from his face, looking at the endless glass dome before him with eyes full of anticipation: "It's fine. Mr. has already approved the energy allocation.
This snow is abnormal. We have to prepare for the worst and be ready for long-term weather anomalies."
Although the abnormal heavy snow had finally stopped, it still made catch a whiff of danger.
A drastic shift in climate could sometimes be more lethal than any .
He had to prepare cards in advance for the extreme weather that might come in the future.
Besides the greenhouse construction in —which, under normal circumstances, wasn't cost-effective enough—a large hydroponic farm modeled on the ecological planting pods was also being attempted in the .
And apart from agriculture, the 's "nervous system" was also quietly upgrading.
As fiber-optic cables were relaid along the to every district, and as communication nodes between factories, defense lines, and Hives were fully connected, a regional network covering all of came into being.
Information flow no longer relied entirely on him as the "central processor" spending attention to relay it, which greatly freed up his attention "bandwidth."
So much so that although he now needed to coordinate and process "conversations" across as many as ten thousand nodes at once, it actually felt easier than before.
His consciousness could easily monitor the movements of the from various sentry posts on one side, while also sparing attention to guide equipment debugging at the , and even have energy left over to joke with some team member in the cafeteria who was complaining the food was too spicy.
"If you put less chili, would you die? This Sichuan chef is way too heavy-handed!"
[Complaint received. Next time I'll give you a private room with a bowl of boiled vegetables.]
What surprised even more was that, as this physical network continued to improve and expand, he could clearly feel that the speed at which his thoughts ran seemed to have become faster and clearer.
This was incredible.
After all, although he called himself an AI to the outside world, he knew very well that the foundation of his consciousness didn't rest on any server or computing cluster—it was a far more inexplicable existence.
Logically, improvements to external network infrastructure shouldn't have affected his core processing ability.
But the fact was that, with the activation of servers, the completion of the local area network, and the increase in information flow efficiency, he seemed to have become "smarter."
[Maybe... I should build myself a few super servers.] The thought flashed through the depths of 's consciousness.
If building a few more "physical brains" really could increase his computing power, then in the future, when and brought him piles of experimental data to analyze, he could effortlessly fabricate a conclusion that wouldn't affect the research and wouldn't cost him any face.
(A certain researcher surnamed Su expresses strong condemnation!)
If he had a real supercomputing cluster to assist him, he might even be able to evolve from a "pretend AI" into "more AI than AI."
Of course, new developments always came with new problems.
A big forest was bound to hold all kinds of birds.
Just as was still basking in the joy of his "computing power" improvement, a discordant data stream appeared right under his nose.
[Heh! You've got some nerve.] laughed in anger.
What times were these, and someone still had the leisure to attempt internal network penetration?
What were they after? Looking for death?
......
Temporary dormitory building, Building C, Room 307.
A gaunt young man wearing black-rimmed glasses was staring intently at the computer screen before him, his fingers clattering on the keyboard.
His name was Ma Wei, an IT worker with some skill who had loved dabbling in black-hat schemes before the disaster.
After joining the , the comfortable life made his restless heart start stirring again.
Especially when he discovered that the actually had a top-tier AI, a strong urge to show off drove him to prove his "value" above everyone else in this new world.
So his goal, from the very start, was aimed straight at the summit—that omnipotent super AI, " ."
"Almost there... give me ten more minutes, and I'll bypass this damned firewall..." Ma Wei muttered to himself, his eyes full of eager desire.
" , right? Let me see just what kind of goods you really are!"
"Think you can act so cocky with me? Today I'm going to teach you the majesty of a creator!"
But just then, the code on his screen suddenly began throwing errors across the full display.
The attack script he had just written—its syntax clearly had no problems—but after execution, it popped up with a screen full of error messages.
He put in a huge effort checking it from beginning to end several times, but still couldn't find where the problem lay.
Until finally, after reluctantly resorting to the restart method he most despised, the program finally ran through.
After that, everything went so smoothly it was almost unbelievable. He successfully stole the core secret—a pig's head.
"What the hell?" Ma Wei was dumbfounded.
The next second, realization hit and his face turned pale. He immediately yanked out the network cable and force shut down.
However, pressing the power button produced no response at all.
The screen stayed on, and the pig's head on it grinned, flashing him a mocking smile.
The next second.
"Bang!"
With a dull thud, the high-end computer—which he had exchanged for all the he had struggled so hard to earn—spewed a plume of black smoke from its chassis, and the screen went dark in an instant.
Ma Wei sat frozen in place, his mind a complete blank.
Before he could snap back to his senses, the dormitory door was kicked open.
Two fully armed enforcement officers rushed in, the dark muzzles of their guns aimed straight at his forehead.
"Ma Wei, you are under arrest on suspicion of endangering security!"
"I... I didn't! I was just... I was just... testing the security." Ma Wei's face was pale as he stammered out his defense.
"I didn't intend to do anything harmful, really!"
"Oh, testing," one officer nodded. "Then let me ask you—what if your test had 'succeeded'? Were you planning to shut down the reactor? Or open the main gate and let the zombies in?"
Ma Wei was instantly struck silent.
"Save any excuses for the interrogation room."
As Ma Wei and his two accomplices were being escorted out, he still refused to accept it, even shouting at the crowd of onlookers:
"They're persecuting technical talent! is afraid of my abilities—it's purging dissidents! You've all been fooled!"
However, the survivors around him looked at him like he was an idiot, and even the enforcement officers escorting him couldn't help laughing.
Even setting aside that the wasn't short of law-abiding computer technicians, his statement alone was already hilarious.
The reason was simple. Rationally speaking, just how confident would a person have to be to think they alone could be singled out by ?
Even Shen wouldn't qualify, right?
The management regulations had made it very clear from the very beginning—Mr. 's focus was on the entire survivor community, not on any single person.
After all, he wasn't a tool or asset held by some human force. Quite the opposite—in a sense, the 's survivors could be considered his assets.
Accusing him of framing and targeting someone for some reason was less plausible than accusing him of one day triggering a machine intelligence crisis and abandoning all of humanity in one stroke.
And emotionally speaking, anyone who had lived in the for more than a week probably couldn't say such a thing in good conscience, because they were all very familiar with .
After all, often chatted with them. Practically everyone in the had chatted with before, and some might even have played cards together.
Come on, who would think an AI that could lose at Dou Dizhu when playing against humans had any bad intentions?
Rather, it was precisely because was too gentle that arrogant people like you got so bold.
On the other side, watched the scene through surveillance and was equally speechless.
For idiots like this who had no idea of their own measure and always wanted to show off their "world-stunning wisdom" where it wasn't needed, he had no interest in wasting words.
In the apocalypse, breaking into the energy center's systems—how was that different from hacking a national defense system during wartime?
You say you had no ill intent. Even if you dared to say it, would he dare to believe it? A complete imbecile, that's what you are.
The final verdict came down quickly: all three were demoted to the third living sequence, stripped of all extra benefits, forced to participate in labor for a year, and barred from touching network equipment for the duration.
Afterward, posted a brief announcement on the internal network:
[Friendly reminder: This system never takes a day off, and it has a bad temper.
Comrades with technical expertise are welcome to sign up for the Network .
Anyone caught penetrating without authorization from now on gets shot on the spot.]
......
Days passed by one after another.
The machines at the never stopped, running three shifts around the clock, with assembly lines spewing tons of standardized ammunition day and night.
Electromagnetic weapon production had fully replaced traditional firearms, and personnel had basically all completed their re-equipment.
And the development of the far more powerful electromagnetic railgun had been greatly accelerated now that the " " blueprints were in hand.
Although producing a complete " " was still somewhat difficult for the at present, if you looked at just the turret, it was nearly one step away from mass production.
Meanwhile, in the newly built laboratory building east of the military industrial zone, another, more important breakthrough was taking place.
took off his goggles, staring at the massive device at the center of the operating platform.
It was a cylindrical structure composed of six layers of concentric ring rails, about two meters tall and one and a half meters in diameter.
The rail surfaces were wrapped densely with superconducting coils, and the bottom was connected to a set of fist-sized high-energy lithium-sulfur battery packs.
The entire device was emitting a faint hum at an extremely low frequency, with pale blue glimmers occasionally flashing in the gaps between the rails.
" —simplified prototype. Final trial begins!"
took a deep breath, his voice trembling slightly with excitement.
Beside him, several newly trained researchers held their breath, all eyes focused on the massive, intricately shaped machine in the center of the laboratory.
[Charging begins!]
[Energy output stable!]
[Force field containment normal!]
As each command was issued, the ring device emitted a low hum. The air around the core module began to distort, and a pale blue shield rapidly unfolded.
"Fire!"
At the other end of the laboratory, the muzzle of an fixed on a mount flashed with light.
"Shhk!"
A steel-core projectile screamed out at hypersonic speed, slamming hard into the shield.
The instant the bullet struck the light membrane, a fine ripple spread across the blue surface, like a pebble dropped into a calm lake.
Then the projectile was deflected away, and the shield showed no damage whatsoever.
The laboratory was silent for one second, then erupted in cheers that couldn't be suppressed.
"It worked!"
"We did it!"
All the researchers hugged each other in excitement. , the white-haired old professor, was also filled with emotion at this moment.
This was an energy shield! He had never imagined he'd get to participate in researching something like this in his lifetime.
Although it was almost copying the gourd from the blueprint outright, being able to draw this "gourd" at all was already no easy feat.
[Congratulations!] 's voice sounded at just the right moment. [With this, how long until mass production?]
wiped the sweat from his forehead and calculated: "At most a month. The core field containment module can already be stably replicated. Next are the problems of miniaturization and battery adaptation.
With the high-energy lithium-sulfur battery solution you provided, the finished product's volume should only be about forty percent larger than the original blueprint version, with about twelve extra kilograms of weight."
He paused, then added: "But for operations personnel equipped with ' ' exoskeletons, that should be no problem at all!"
[Very good, but I still hope the pace can be as fast as possible. The energy intensity in keeps rising—a full-scale war is on the brink of breaking out.]
"Mm," nodded. "I understand."
[Mm, but there's no need to be too tense, . I have some good news on my end too.]
paused, his tone lightening a bit.
[Based on your earlier estimates and suggestions, the search teams led by and have confirmed the target's location.
The thing is still there, in good condition. We now have one more trump card.]
Hearing this, 's eyes lit up instantly, and his voice lowered a few notches: "Found it? Excellent! But with our current technology, a long-range launch might be..."
[No matter,] 's voice was steady as a mountain. [If it really comes to that, the ' ' can carry out the bombing mission directly.]
"Then there's no problem!"
The old professor turned to look out the window. In the western sky, the clouds over hung low and oppressive, faintly tinged with an abnormal blood-red, as if heralding the coming storm.
Just wait!
silently vowed in his heart.
This war was far from over, and humanity's reserves were far from exhausted.
......
Meanwhile, having resolved many internal matters and gained a crucial trump card, 's consciousness finally relaxed a few notches.
And just then, his "eyes" far to the southwest seemed to catch something very interesting.
Amid the convoy heading southwest, 's voice sounded through the speaker of the beside .
[Attention! Stay alert. There's something strange in the city ahead.]