Chapter 10: Chapter 91 – 100

Chapter 91 - Boundaries (5)

    "You want to stop Eden?" Todd looked at the three of them with a 'you're kidding me' expression, "Are you tired of living?"

    Zhang Xun took a few steps forward and looked at him seriously, "We know the chances of success are slim and that it may all be in Adam's hands, but if we don't try, there's only one ending waiting for all of us...... we'll all perish."

    "Hey, don't include us." Todd frowned, glaring at them somewhat warily, "Eden allows us to exist because we haven't caused any major problems. We built this place with a lot of difficulty, it can't......"

    "Do you have any proof for your words?" Anya suddenly interjected.

    Zhang Xun nodded, "I have all the information and designs of the nanobots and I can replicate the nanobots that Adam has built. If those robots were injected into lab rats, anomalies would soon be observed."

    "We don't have the equipment for you to build robots here!" Todd couldn't believe that his sister was actually considering assisting these three madmen who were trying to fight the gods. If Eden found out about such an operation, Rhino Horn would be razed to the ground in a heartbeat. They didn't have any protection systems like Lost Paradise.

    Zhang Xun said, "There’s none here, but there is in Feathered Serpent City, but if we go alone to the City, we'll soon be their puppets."

    "So you want us to be your fighters." Anya's eyes were like cold arrows of ice, seeming to penetrate Zhang Xun's skin and see into his mind.

    Zhang Xun said, "I know that this won’t bring any benefits to you and we can understand if you refuse, but ...... if Eden succeeds, sooner or later Rhino Horn will also be disintegrated. When most of the world is under the influence of the collective consciousness, it will be impossible for them to tolerate the existence of us heretics who refuse to integrate with them."

    "How do you know they won't tolerate us?"

    "Because humans have never liked to tolerate a minority that is different from them and it’s extremely easy to go to extremes when one is in a collective. Look at how much hatred, how many wars and holocausts have been started throughout history because of different religions, different races, different doctrines? This is what we’ve been capable of as individuals and if there’s no longer a physical divide, there will only be a huge, heavy consciousness. Do you think we can really be as rational and neutral as Adam and Eden believe we can be?"

    There was a silence.

    Zhang Xun further said, "We’re not AIs and a collective consciousness of humanity can quickly go to extremes. Unless everyone is fused into the collective consciousness at once, at some point in the middle, when enough people have become part of it, those who remain will become heretics and enemies."

    Anya's eyes swept over them, she drained her glass in one gulp and said in a deep voice, "You guys leave first."

    Zhang Xun was about to say something else, but James suddenly touched his arm gently and whispered, "There's no rush, give them time to think about it."

    Zhang Xun understood how strange it must be for the red-haired siblings to hear what he had said. It was almost impossible to get them to accept what he said wholeheartedly without direct evidence, but time was now running out and the longer they delayed, the more people in Lost Paradise would be affected and Adam was probably already deploying the next stage of his preparations by now.

    He wasn't sure when Adam and Eden would make the decision to destroy him. He suspected that he couldn’t have survived this long if the part of Adam that had been affected by humanity didn’t still have some attachment to him.

    He set him free so that he wouldn’t interfere with Adam's plans in Lost Paradise, but would Adam still tolerate him if he started causing problems in the outside world?

    Once they emerged from the bar they noticed that followers began to appear near the cabin where they were temporarily staying.

    The three men acted normally, pretending not to notice. Zhang Xun returned to his room to find that all the parts he had needed had been delivered. He turned his head to look at Enoch, who was still silently following him and said, "Sit down, I'll change the distance and temperature sensors for you."

    Enoch obediently sat down on the chair and took off his shirt. Zhang Xun stood behind him and watched as the skin on his back spread out to the sides like butterfly wings, revealing the complex internal structure and the constant flow of coolant ducts. Zhang Xun picked up the electric screwdriver, replaced it with the most precise screw head and began to remove the damaged parts.

    "I removed your signal transceiver." Zhang Xun spoke somewhat absentmindedly, but his hands didn’t pause.

    Enoch sat motionless, not making a sound for a long time.

    He had begun to get used to the increasingly curious robot's questions one after another and now that he had suddenly become so quiet, Zhang Xun wasn’t quite used to it. He had just heard so many stories about the "king" of these AI, but now he had no questions?

    "What are you thinking about?" Zhang Xun asked.

    Enoch was silent for a moment before saying, "You didn't mention that your lover was Eden."

    "...... It's not Eden, it's Adam." Zhang Xun thought of that meeting with the real Eden, where the other party even tried to control him with Adam's voice and inexplicably felt a little funny, "Adam has separated from Eden."

    "So, you gave a super AI a human body and instincts and then made it fall in love with you?"

    Zhang Xun's hand lurched and his brow furrowed.

    Why did those words become so strange when they were spoken by this robot......

    "I didn't make it fall in love with me, but special attachment to the administrator that you AI have can occur at any time. If his mechanic had been someone else instead of me, maybe......"

    "You made it human, yet you still refuse to believe he has human feelings." Enoch's voice was calm and soft, too standard in tone to be cold, "And you still plan to get rid of him."

    "......" Zhang Xun put down his tools and looked up, "You're scolding me?"

    The service robot's head suddenly turned at a 180 degree angle and looked at him faintly, "I was just stating my observations. I am a service robot, I am not capable of reproach."

    Zhang Xun grew annoyed and asked coldly in return, "Then what do you think I should do? Leave him to destroy humanity?"

    "From your account, he has no intention of destroying humanity, but merely helping it evolve quickly to the next stage through mechanical selection. Why aren't you willing to accept new possibilities?"

    Zhang Xun closed his eyes and when he opened them again they held an intense sadness. He continued to work, whispering under his breath, "Because I want to live, to be able to touch with my hands, to be able to see with my eyes, to feel with my skin, to think with my mind. I want to be able to hug the people I love, to see the sights I haven't seen together. If I were to integrate myself into that collective consciousness, like everyone else, I would be no more. Every 'I' in the world would be gone."

    Enoch looked at him and seemed to fall into some kind of contemplation.

    ............................................................

    James came out of his room to smoke, only to see a red-head dyed purple in the moonlight sweeping across the silvery earth not far away, walking slowly towards the wilderness.

    James threw his cigarette to the ground, stomped it out and, not knowing why, followed quietly.

    The two figures moved slowly across the wilderness, separated by a distance.

    Everything was so quiet, the sky was unclouded and unpolluted by light, the stars splashed like broken diamonds in a swirling river through the black universe. The light from billions of years ago fell across the distances to their eyes with a certain vast and cold romance.

    Gradually, a bright flash of light appeared on the extended undulating earth ahead. A lake lay between the folds of the earth, shimmering and crystallised by the night wind, surrounded by a circle of low shrubs. An oasis in the wilderness.

    James saw Todd walk to the edge of the lake, then with an extremely fluid and graceful movement he removed his shirt and trousers and jumped into the water.

    The moonlight on the surface of the water was shattered so thoroughly that the water splashed like a burst pearl. Todd dove below the surface for some time before suddenly bursting back out, his red hair bringing out a long trail of water droplets. The strong muscles on the back of his shoulders appeared and disappeared in the moonlight and the water and the splashing sounds seemed to be the only sound in the world.

    James took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, struck a match to light it and walked slowly to the shore.

    Todd stopped swimming and turned his head to face him, but there was no expression of surprise.

    "Why are you following me?" The red-haired man smirked, a hint of provocation in his blue eyes.

    James shrugged his shoulders, "Just curious."

    "Curious to see if I would do something unseemly?"

    James exhaled a long puff of smoke and narrowed his eyes at him.

    The black pattern tattoo under Todd's eyes added something sinister to his handsome face. He swam a few metres towards the shore until his feet touched the bottom of the lake and began to step out of the water.

    Droplets of water rolled down his sun-tanned, wheaten skin, outlining the texture of his muscles even more sharply. He stood proudly in front of James without any concealment.

    "Any disappointment?"

    James felt the smoke curdling in his throat, burning slightly. He looked Todd up and down, just as unabashedly, "Not at all."

    "You've changed your mind?" Todd asked meaningfully with a slight tilt of his head.

    James, however, said, "Not yet."

    Todd rolled his eyes and turned to dive into the water again. He swam carefree, breaking the water as if he were a merman taking advantage of the night to quietly rise to the surface.

    And James sat down on the shore and watched in silence. He found himself inexplicably drawn to him. He could have given up following him once he'd made sure the other man wasn't doing anything against them, but he wanted to keep watching, which struck him as a little odd.

    This man wasn’t his usual type at all......

    Todd swam freely to his heart’s content and finally decided to go ashore. He picked up his shirt, wiped the water off of him haphazardly and then put his clothes back on one by one. The whole time, one dressed and the other one watched, all without any attempt to hide.

    The air became a little hot.

    "So, you're going against Eden and you're trying to drag us down with you?" Todd said coldly as he fastened his belt, "I should have taken you all out in the desert."

    "You still have a chance now." James flicked the cigarette out of his hand and slowly stood up, "Take us all out before your sister agrees."

    "You think I won't?" Todd turned around, not caring that his front was still open and strutted towards James with a regal air, "Do you think that just because I fancy you, you can do whatever you want in this town?"

    James could smell the scent of water emanating from Todd and he almost wanted to reach out and touch the long red hair that was still dripping with water.

    "I just doubt that your Rhino Horn Town would have survived the Edenite massacre without our help. If you kill us, what will you do the next time the Edenites come back?"

    "Last time we were unprepared!"

    "The technology they have in their hands is so much more superior to yours, you don't stand a chance." James took a step forward, his distance from Todd becoming infinitely closer, "Are you willing to just lie here like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered, waiting meekly to be crushed by others?"

    The dark brown and dark blue eyes locked firmly together as if they were trying to devour each other. Something in the air tightened and everything seemed to burn.

    James could kiss those steely, angular lips now if he wanted to.

    But this time it was Todd who turned his head away first, sneering, "I'm no lamb."

 

Chapter 92 – Boundaries (6)

    Anya's men who had been sent to look around Feathered Serpent City returned with information that the city was quiet, the gate was closed and there didn’t appear to be any emergency situation. People in the towns around the city had also said that they had seen residents coming out to buy and exchange items, but when people asked what the loud noises and gunshots were about, the residents were silent.

    Anya decided to ask Todd to escort Zhang Xun and the others across the US-Mexico border.

    Todd almost exploded on the spot when he heard it, "Are you crazy? Are you really going to listen to their nonsense?"

    "It's probably not nonsense......" Anya sighed and said, "I've been checking with some old acquaintances and they say that the shield system in Lost Paradise has been changing in the last few days, it has been turning on and off and not working properly. During those times of disconnection, Adam had every opportunity to communicate with Eden, and Eden could have destroyed Lost Paradise in those moments, but it didn't."

    "So what if Eden has left Lost Paradise alone for one or two days?"

    "Lost Paradise stole its North American servers and it only bombed them once and besieged them once, don't you think that's strange? From what we've learned about Eden over the years, it will anticipate risks and avoid or eliminate them in time, but this time Lost Paradise has shown such a strong threat and it hasn't done anything decent to counter it. That Adam probably was put there on purpose."

    "Even if something happened to Lost Paradise, it's none of our business, is it? You want to throw the whole of Rhino Horn Town in harm’s way for a few strangers?"

    "Something's obviously happened to Feathered Serpent City and if something's wrong with Lost Paradise too, don't you think that's too much of a coincidence?" Anya put her feet up on the table and looked at her brother seriously, "If what that mechanic said is true, how long will Rhino Horn be at peace? What if Eden really wants to turn all of us humans into one giant...... monster, who could resist? That mechanic...... might be the only one who has a chance if he's telling the truth and if that's the case, what will happen to us if we don't help him and he fails?"

    "Provided he's not lying......" Todd couldn't talk his sister out of it and could only say indignantly.

    Anya stood up and walked over to her brother, shoving a white square object the size of a quail's egg into his hand, "That's why I’m asking you to follow them, to get to know these people and to find out what's going on in Feathered Serpent City. I know this mission is risky, but you’re the person I trust the most. If you’re in any danger once you enter the city, crush this thing. It will emit an electromagnetic pulse signal strong enough to penetrate the barriers of Feathered Serpent City and will be detected by us here. We'll find a way to get you out immediately."

    "...... Did you get this toy from the black market?" Todd looked distrustfully at the cube in his palm.

    "If you haven't sent someone back with a message three days after entering the city, I'll also bring people straight to Feathered Serpent City." A hard, sharp glint suffused Anya's upturned eyes, "I've sent someone to contact our allies, when the time comes we won't be fighting alone."

    "Hmph, they won't come to your aid if they know you’re going to take on Eden."

    "They have no room to refuse." Anya said coldly.

    ..........................................................

    Zhang Xun stuffed all the tools he needed into his backpack, filling it to the brim and finally stumbled when he tried to pick it up, nearly crumpling to the ground with the bag.

    The corners of Enoch's mouth lifted upwards but no laugh came out.

    "I'll take it." Enoch, who was already carrying a large bag, picked up Zhang Xun's bag with ease.

    Although he was a robot that could carry more than five hundred kilograms of weight, it was still a bit hard to see the "tower" stacked high on Enoch's back.

    "Thank you."

    "Zhang Xun! Are you ready?" Diego's impatient voice came from outside the door.

    Zhang Xun hurried out with Enoch and found James, Diego, Todd with a toothpick in his mouth and his men all ready and waiting for him.

    They had to cross the US-Mexico border before midnight today.

    It wasn’t too difficult for the Rhino Horn bandits as they would go out and do this every once in a while anyway. They had to wear radiation-resistant suits and cross a highly radioactive area that had been contaminated by nuclear bombs two hundred years ago after the outbreak of World War III. Eden’s robot police were lower in number there, and the human police even more so, making it the easiest point to break through.

    The thought of going straight through that dead zone made Zhang Xun's scalp tingle.

    Things like radiation were immeasurable and invisible, colourless and odourless, impossible to touch and catch. You wouldn't even know it was there or if it had crept into a tiny gap in your protective suit, and by the time you notice it would be a month later when your hair has started to fall out, your skin starts to fester and every atom in your body is falling apart.

    Even robots weren’t safe there, the constant gamma rays that penetrated everything and the billions of neutrons flying through the air interfered with signals and destroyed electronic parts. Only robots made of special materials could operate there for long periods of time.

    A bomb, forming a black shadow on the earth, an enduring corpse scar that couldn’t be digested for hundreds of years. Mankind had created weapons strong enough to destroy a planet, but didn’t know how to curb their desires. If humanity wasn’t now in Eden's hands, the Earth would have become a dead planet after some nuclear war.

    If all human consciousness was uploaded and there were no more humans in the world, would the planet recover a little? Would new intelligent life emerge? Would they do better than humans had?

    Zhang Xun sat in the jeep, squinting his eyes with some difficulty, struggling to breathe in the sandy wind that pounded against his cheeks.

    Three hours later they neared the edge of the dead zone. The convoy stopped and everyone started to put on protective clothing, even Enoch. Everyone was careful to ensure that all the gaps were sealed and that only their own breathing could be heard from inside their masks.

    There was a fence around the perimeter of the dead zone, covered with signs and placards that read "NUCLEAR ZONE", "DANGER", "NO ENTRY", etc. In addition to this were countless, faded graffiti with apocalyptic messages such as "The end of the world", "We all deserve to die" and "Judgement Day has come".

    It was clear how desperate and frightened people were.

    It was after that war between men and women that the Earth's population was decimated and since then fertility rates had fallen, only to have stabilised again in the last fifty years, but even so, there was now less than a billion people on the planet and many of the once-thriving cities and towns were now relics.

    It didn't feel like a desolate world in those cities of the ordinary world because everything was automated and looked shiny, clean and tidy, but once you leave those areas, you would find traces of humanity being consumed and digested by nature.

    There was no sign of any living thing in the dead zone. There were no birds in the air and no crawling insects on the ground, there was only the white grass scattered over the dry earth.

    The whole world seemed dead and silent, a wasteland from a time before all animals were born. The sound of their cars manoeuvring and the smoke and dust they raised seemed like abrupt intruders. Occasionally they would see dead animals, or even human skeletons on the side of the road that had been reduced to white bones. Many giant, rusted robots were scattered across the wilderness like dark ghosts, frozen in time, waiting for the day when they would be revived.

    Todd's voice came through their headsets, "Hansen, take four men and check ahead for any sign of robot police."

    "No problem."

    The five riders on bikes increased their speed and charged ahead.

    After another hour, they passed through a town. There they met up with the returning riders, who reported that patrolling robot police were approaching ahead and that they had better take cover in the town. So they hurriedly pulled into the back alleys of a few houses to hide and each took their bags into the half-collapsed houses to take shelter.

    Zhang Xun, Enoch, Diego, James and Todd ducked together into a shop that was probably an old butcher's shop, where the remaining hooks for hanging meat hung like a forest from the air, all covered in thick blood stains. They found a couple of freezers that had lost their power and climbed in one after another.

    Zhang Xun and Enoch crouched together in a freezer and closed the door.

    Zhang Xun felt that since entering the radiation zone, Enoch had been unusually quiet and seemed a little...... sluggish.

    "Are you okay?" Zhang Xun used the call control pad on the arm of his suit to turn off the shared channel and turn on the channel between him and Enoch.

    "I'm very well, thank you." Said Enoch's familiar voice.

    But he kept feeling as if…… something was missing.

    Zhang Xun frowned, "You seem to have suddenly become less talkative."

    "I'm sorry. What do you want to talk about? I would love to talk with you."

    A different kind of dryness.

    Zhang Xun fell silent in abandonment.

    The robot wasn’t causing a problem and there was nothing intentional with Enoch's voice, but Zhang Xun just felt as if something had been switched off.

    Was it the personalisation parameters? But he had already fixed that part, hadn’t he?

   At this moment, with the dim light on his head in the darkness, Zhang Xun vaguely saw a black spot quickly crawling from the inside of Enoch's mask, but when he looked closely, there was nothing there.

    Was it his imagination?

    Why did he have an...... uneasy feeling?

    Immediately afterwards, odd mechanical sounds rang out from the distance as the robot police were passing through the street outside.

    The sounds of the robot police faded a little further away and they all opened the lids of the freezers to come out, but suddenly an explosion was heard.

    Todd immediately rushed for the door, only to find that robot police had just discovered one of their vehicles hidden in a back alley and had suddenly turned back just in time to find a couple of Rhino Horn men who thought they had left and tried to sneak back into the car. One of Todd's men had already had his head half burned off by a laser and his body was lying on the ground, while the other three had taken refuge in a civilian house in a sorry state.

    Two upright-walking, humanoid police robots plus a robot soldier in spider form surrounded the dwelling and one police robot kicked the door open.

    Todd shouted over the channel, "No one else come out, find cover immediately!" As he spoke, he quickly pulled several gun parts out of his bag and put them together with inhuman speed. It turned out to be a somewhat old sniper rifle.

    "Mechanic, where's their central processor." Todd crouched by the window and poked his gun through a hole in the broken glass, his eye against the sight.

    "The humanoid police robots’ central processor is usually in the forehead area. I'm not sure about the spider form, but by design logic it would be in the very middle of its torso." Zhang Xun said quickly as he hid in the shadows.

    "Good, all four of you go to the back and hide. They might sense my position after I fire."

    Zhang Xun knew that he couldn’t help here and would only be a burden, so he didn’t hesitate to rush back into the freezer. Enoch followed in his footsteps. Diego ducked behind a wall and listened to the commotion outside.

    James didn't leave, but assembled another rifle and moved quietly to another window.

    "I don't need your help." Todd's annoyed voice came out of the channel.

    The corner of James' mouth rose slightly, "I'm afraid you can't aim right."

    "Fuck you!"

    James laughed low a few times and continued, "Let's get rid of those two humanoid ones first."

    "No need for you to give me orders!"

    Diego's voice suddenly joined in, clearing his throat, "Can you two get a room before you flirt?"

    Two high energy rays tore through the air and silently ran through the backs of the two police robots all the way to their foreheads. The two humanoid police robots who were shooting into the civilian building immediately stopped moving and froze in place, all the lights on their bodies going out, but immediately afterwards, the medium-sized, robot soldier in spider form locked onto the shop where the two of them were and an icy blue ray suddenly shot out from the circle of blue lights on the middle of his body.

    James immediately lunged at Todd, rolling across the floor a few times with him in his arms. The scorching light exploded inches from them and if it hadn't been for the protective suits they were wearing their skin would have been burned immediately.

    The two men were in shock and Todd immediately asked nervously, "Was your suit damaged?"

    James looked back and breathed a sigh of relief, "No."

    The two men didn’t have time to pay attention to their overly intimate position and clambered up from the ground, only to see that the spider robot was already swinging its countless legs their way.

    "I've got to draw it away." James whispered and stormed out of the shop before Todd could even stop him.

    "This madman......" Todd gritted his teeth, but ran out right after him.

    They both jumped behind a tin dumpster and before they could even catch their breath, a laser beam passed between both of their ears and they kept sprinting to the repair shop next door.

    At that moment, the rest of Todd's men began firing from their respective hiding places, drawing the attention of the robot soldier. Chaotic lasers shot out from all corners and there was a dense blasting sound everywhere. All the blue guns around the robot soldier lit up at the same time and suddenly the searing blue light blossomed into a sunflower, bursting out in every direction.

    The group sought cover behind the walls but the fierce flames of light set all the dilapidated houses ablaze. A number of people were forced to flee with the sound of the collapse.

    At that moment James suddenly grabbed his gun and said hastily to Todd, who was hiding next to him looking for a moment to return fire, "If I die, get them safely to Feathered Serpent City."

    Todd's eyes widened slightly, "You......"

    Before the words were out of his mouth he saw James dash off like a stray arrow. In the rain of death lights made up of blue beams, James was like a fluttering black feather, thrilling but extremely agile and nimble through the deadly barrier, darting from side to side as if he would be hit at any moment and burst open like blood plasma.

    As the robot soldier began to notice the fast approaching dot, Todd sprang to his feet, yelling and shooting desperately at the giant spider. In the moment when the giant spider hesitated, James lunged forward and fell on his back to slice through the spider's dense legs, raised his gun to the middle of the body protected by the heavy mechanical legs and squeezed the trigger.

    The powerful, hot red beam of light disappeared into the robot soldier's body. Suddenly, all the lights on the robot went out and the sound of machinery running quickly faded.

    Todd gasped, stunned. He rushed out from behind cover and ran towards the destroyed and motionless spider's body.

    He saw James lying on his back on the ground, as if he was still a bit disoriented. At the sound of footsteps, he turned his head and raised the corner of his mouth at the pale Todd.

    "Looks like I got lucky."

    Todd stared at him dumbfounded and half cursed, "You really are a fucking lunatic!"

 

Chapter 93 – Boundaries (7)

    Despite taking out three of the police robots, they had lost one of their companions, plus two jeeps and five motorbikes. Apparently, the police robots had found their vehicles and burned their batteries and engines, not giving them a chance to escape the dead zone.

    "It's impossible to get across the border before dark." Todd asserted after examining the damaged vehicles, "We have three motorbikes left to use, three men can go ahead as scouts, the rest will move on foot."

    All long-range signals were difficult to transmit here because of the radiation interference, so they didn't have to worry about the robot police transmitting their images to Eden, but with their protective suits on they weren’t as mobile as they normally would be and if they encountered more robot police, it was unlikely that they wouldn’t sustain more damage.

    Zhang Xun looked around uneasily. The setting sun was hanging in the sky, turning the otherwise dull clouds a scarlet colour of blood, "Is it safe to travel at night?"

    "We’re only a few kilometres from the centre of the super bomb explosion site, the radiation levels haven't dropped for two hundred years, it's too risky to stay here for long. The sooner we leave, the better." With that, Todd selected three men and told them to get on their bikes and patrol the area, making sure no new robot police or anything else came near them.

    Zhang Xun walked over to James and asked in a low voice, "Are you sure you're okay?"

    "Don't worry." James' face behind the transparent mask smiled brightly at him.

    Zhang Xun nodded and glanced over at Enoch, who was still a little dazed, standing not far away with too much luggage on his back.

    Why hadn't Enoch taken the initiative at that moment of danger? He remembered that when he had been hiding in the van and encountered the mob, Enoch had acted to protect them and fought back.

    Although such passive aggression wasn’t common in ordinary service robots, since Lucille had mentioned that he had asked it to "protect" the three of them, Zhang Xun thought that it might be a robot with a certain security system that had been modified on the black market, but why hadn't the defence mechanism been triggered in such a critical situation just now?

    It seemed that when they arrived at Feathered Serpent City, he would have to check Enoch's core programming carefully.

    After the sun went down, the moonlight was blocked by the clouds making the whole wilderness pitch black. The bumpy road wasn’t easy to walk on and the bulkiness of their protective suits made movement even more difficult.

    The good news was that they weren’t far from the border and it would only take about four or five more hours of walking to enter Mexico. After that they could meet up with Anya's informant and take a flight in the direction of Feathered Serpent City.

    After about three hours of walking, the group was a little exhausted. Even though it was close to the border, Todd decided they would take a fifteen minute break before continuing on their way. He walked over to James, who was silently sorting through the guns in his backpack and sat down, saying carelessly, "You know you have to throw all this stuff away when you get out of the radiation zone, right?"

    Anything that had been contaminated with radiation had to be left in the radiation zone, even all the clothes they had on would have to be destroyed in one place.

    James glanced at him, "I know, it's just a habit of mine that helps me relax."

    "So, did you used to be that reckless in Lost Paradise too?" Todd frowned at him, "How did you survive until now?"

    "Sometimes you have to be reckless just to get back alive." James shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care and looked back at Todd with amusement, "You’re in no position to talk when you're an outlaw."

    "We have no choice."

    "No choice?" James asked after a pause, "Your sister seems like she would be able to live well in the ordinary world."

    "If it wasn't for me dragging her down." Todd tugged at the corner of his mouth, "But alas, her luck is no good."

    Todd paused and continued, "My mother was a police officer in charge of guarding a 'sanatorium' in Texas and my father was a 'patient' in it. Unfortunately she and my dad fell in love. You can guess how heterosexuality is viewed in police circles, they maintained their secret affair for five years, but then my mother became pregnant. She wanted to abort my sister, but in the end she didn't and just transferred her to an in vitro petri dish to be raised by a private clinic that specialised in this secret embryo culture business, until my sister was able to survive in vitro before she was secretly brought into the family.

    Two years later they had me. It turned out that my existence was revealed to the authorities when her trusted best friend learned of it and my sister was then discovered. After my mother was dismissed from the police force my dad was moved to the 'high risk ward area' for 'seductive behaviour'. Hardly any man survives more than two years in a place like that and my mother defied all odds to get him out, only to find that he had been tortured to the point where he didn't even know who she was. My mother took our family and tried to escape to Mexico, but on the way she was discovered by the Edenites. The Edenites consider all women who voluntarily unite with men to be sinners and offspring like us to be even more filthy. She only had time to slip my sister and I to a few wandering bandits before she was stabbed to death by the lunatics who caught up with her."

    James was silent for a long time before he spoke, "How old were you then?"

    "I was still in the incubator." Todd said easily, but his eyes were frozen with a hint of sadness, "But I've seen her picture. I think my sister and I inherited our hair from her."

    "Why didn't she go to a refugee country? Since you were already so close to Feathered Serpent City."

    "Women aren't welcome in the refugee countries. Unless you have a special status, like being a senior engineer who has been in contact with Eden......"

    These people, who were stuck in the middle of the two camps, could only wander in groups in the wilderness of the harshest and most barren environment.

    "What about you? Were you born in Lost Paradise?" Todd asked.

    James shook his head, "I was left outside the gates of Lost Paradise and a band of hunters found me."

    "So you never had a family?"

    "I've never met my real parents, but Commander Zhang, Zhang Xun and I are pretty much family."

    At that moment, a faint scream came from the distance.

    Todd immediately stood up and tried to call the three men who were scouting ahead of them, but they were too far away and no one answered.

    The group became nervous and Zhang Xun walked over to James and Todd and said, "Enoch is faster on his feet, should we have him go and take a look?"

    Todd glanced at the robot, which was standing still and hadn't moved or even unloaded its luggage and nodded hesitantly. Zhang Xun then immediately gave Enoch the order to unload the luggage and go to the source of the sound to check the situation.

    Enoch, who normally moved at human speed only to match the humans, was given the command and his legs and feet subtly transformed. The toes elongated and the heels lifted, becoming somewhat like digitigrade animals, making the whole leg longer and more suitable for running. He lowered his body and then leapt up, shooting into the sky like an arrow, forming a long parabola and landing further ahead. In the space of a few rises and falls, his figure had faded into the night.

    Many people looked enviously in the direction the robot disappeared and Zhang Xun heard someone say, "If only my legs could transform like that......"

    It didn't take long for Enoch's leaping figure to reappear in view, while a voice came out of everyone's headsets, "I suggest everyone take cover immediately and watch out for the sky!"

    As the group looked up they saw several overcast clouds rising from the sky around them, rapidly approaching in their direction. As James lifted his rifle and turned on the night vision sight to get a closer look, he suddenly let out a cry of alarm, "Holy shit!

    The cloud came so quickly that everyone hurriedly obeyed the order to get down on the ground. Zhang Xun also slumped to the ground in disarray, a cold feeling penetrating his blood from the ground. He heard the sound of the wind and the beating of some kind of wings, countless wings flapping together, as thick as a rainstorm. A putrid smell followed, so foul that one could barely breathe.

    The limited vision of his protective suit blocked his sight and he had no idea what was happening in the sky or what was passing over their heads. All he could hear was the whistling wind and the invisible pressure of the darkness.

    Then someone was screaming and someone was shooting. He heard the wet sound of something being torn, of flesh being ripped away. He heard Todd's roar and the sound of lasers searing flesh.

    A figure blocked him and he looked up, only to see the robot blocking him with its own body. Behind it, some...... birds, the size of falcons were whistling wildly past.

    With a thud, a "bird" fell in front of him. Zhang Xun felt a cry of fear catch in his throat.

    It wasn't a bird. Its head was twisted and swollen, with a ring of needle-like fangs and its nostrils were just two holes that seemed to have been poked into rotten flesh at random, but it had no eyes at all. Its body was about half a metre long, covered in uncomfortable folds and fleshy tufts, yet hairless. Its wings were spread out, a set of fleshy wings that were badly damaged.

    "What is this thing!" Zhang Xun exclaimed.

    "They’re bats that survived several generations of mutation and reproduction after being exposed to radiation. They are very aggressive and are more sensitive to sound, smell and heat." Enoch's voice was lowered, "I suggest you keep your mouth shut. I'm cooler and can mask your scent and body heat."

    Zhang Xun kept his mouth tightly shut and looked up to see how the others were doing but all he could see was chaos.

    The mutant bats were extremely aggressive and kept pounding into the crowd. After the protective suits of two townspeople had been torn, swarms of bats swooped in thick and fast, covering the two poor men. All that could be heard was the sound of flesh being devoured and their horrific screams.

    Todd raised his rifle and shot at the whirring creatures and others who didn’t want to become bat food tried to fight back, but they were too fast and there were too many of them and soon another man was wrapped up in the swarm of bats. Todd yelled and kept firing, causing the bats to fall down from the air like rain. A giant bat, much larger than any of the others, swooped down behind him and was about to impale the back of his head when James violently pushed him away. The bat grabbed James' arm and forehead and tried to bite him, but James raised his gun and blew the ugly head off, spraying the bat's brains all over the hunter's transparent mask.

    They didn't know if the bat with the big head was the king of the flock, but after it died all the other bats suddenly flew up in surprise, circled above them and suddenly flew away in the direction they had come from.

    All that was left on the ground were three bloody corpses.

    The group was in shock and scrambled to check their protective suits for tears. Todd looked at the mangled remains of his three men and hammered the ground hard.

    James squeezed his shoulder, "Are you okay?"

    "Fucking mutant bats!" Todd cursed under his breath.

    It was his fault, he should have known that rushing through the night could be risky, but fearing the possibility of their protective suits being infiltrated if they stayed in the radiation zone too long, he made the wrong decision and got three of his men killed.

    He also feared that it might be more than three, maybe the other three men who had gone to scout the road ahead were the first to be encountered. He turned his head and saw a woman half lying down not far away, blood dripping from her leg. She was one of those who had gone exploring ahead and Enoch had brought her back earlier.

    But one look at the huge rips in her protective suit told him that the chances of this person surviving were slim.

    Todd crouched down in front of her, watching his familiar comrade gasping sharply but still trying to remain calm.

    "Thank that robot for me. I was nearly turned into bat shit."

    Todd tried hard to pull the corners of his mouth up, but it was an unsightly smile. He rummaged through his duffel bag for the hemostatic spray and the sealing tape used to seal the suits, "Save your breath Cindy, there's still an hour to go."

    "I'm not going with you guys." The female warrior known as Cindy said, "You guys go ahead."

    "Don't talk shit!"

    "Even if I get out here I'll be dead in a few months or a year or two." Cindy grinned, "Leave me some food, booze and a gun."

    Todd felt a tightening grip on his heart. He knew Cindy was right. This was a high radiation danger zone, just a few kilometres from the area that had been the centre of the original super-nuke explosion. With such a large fissure, coupled with the exposed wound, it must have suffered from severe radiation contamination.

    Zhang Xun walked over to Todd at this point and saw the strong desire to live still deep in Cindy's eyes and whispered to Todd, "Maybe there is a way to heal her radiation...... we can have Enoch take her away first to reduce the amount of time she is exposed to the radiation."

    Todd nodded his agreement. He quickly sealed the gap in her suit, then watched as Enoch, who had obeyed Zhang Xun's orders, bent down to pick her up and quickly leapt into the distance.

    To speed things up, Enoch didn't have any luggage with him, which left a lot of heavy bags to carry. Zhang Xun himself chose the most important package to carry on his back, intending to leave the rest behind. The others also lightened their luggage, intending to cross the border quickly and then leave the radiation zone before dawn.

    Before hitting the road, James was packing his bags, but suddenly noticed a small, very inconspicuous tear in his protective suit on the inside of his arm. He frowned, unsure if the cut had been made earlier in the fight against the robot soldiers, or if it had been made just now. If it was just now, it shouldn't be a problem in this short time, right?

    He glanced at Zhang Xun, Todd and Diego with slight unease.

    The men were all busy.

    James hesitated for a moment but decided not to add to the confusion. He found a roll of sealing tape from his own travel bag, taped the breach shut and then put his backpack on, following the group on their trek towards the horizon.

Chapter 94 – Boundaries (8)

    The wall that stretched along the US-Mexico border had collapsed in several places in the dead zone, so radioactive that it hadn’t been repaired for years, so that anyone wishing to travel unnoticed between the two countries often has to risk their lives by crossing this dead zone.

    The wall, a dozen metres high, stretched like a thin line across the earth against the grey sky, dividing the two countries. All that remained of the destroyed part was a few fragments, like a gaping hole left by a knocked-out tooth.

    They managed to cross the border without encountering any further anomalies. After a short break they travelled for another four hours or so, passing the iconic wall of the radiation zone and arriving at what looked like a dilapidated hospital at around eight in the morning.

    Inside, the hospital was well-equipped, brightly lit and smelled of sterile water. Someone had been waiting for them after receiving Anya's message and sprayed them with a yellowish liquid for ten minutes before instructing them to take off their suits.

    The moment Zhang Xun took off his helmet he realised how good it was to be able to breathe fresh air.

    All the sealed radiation-protected bags brought across, and any weapons that weren’t in the sealed bags had to be buried together and all their clothes had to be changed.

    Zhang Xun took a shower in the room provided for him, watching the water swirl around his feet with the foam of the shower gel, feeling the hot water slide down his skin while in a sense of dumbfounded unreality.

    They had really crossed the United States, even passed through the highly radioactive zone and had reached Mexico.

    In just over a month, home was already as far away as if they were on another planet.

    However, they had survived. He didn't know if their survival was also Adam and Eden's intention, but at this point, to worry about such things would only add to their worries and to fight against the gods would mean being played for fools.

    They could only do what they could.

    Zhang Xun knew there was more to be done and he had to be in good spirits. He looked in the mirror and shaved off the stubble that had grown on his chin, patted his cheeks hard and pulled on the cotton top and jeans he had prepared in the room. As he rubbed his hair, there was a sudden knock on the door.

    Zhang Xun opened the door, only to be surprised to see Enoch standing outside, with that familiar, heart-warming smile.

    "Good morning." Enoch said.

    Zhang Xun blinked, realising that Enoch was back to normal. That certain, indefinable vividness in his eyes, in his words and between his movements had returned, something was subtly different from the man he had been before in the dead zone.

    "Why are you still here?" Zhang Xun asked, somewhat numbly. For some reason, he felt a sense of relief at seeing Enoch back to his original form and even wanted to smile a little.

    "They sent Cindy off to Feathered Serpent City in an aircraft first. I stayed to wait for you."

    In English, the word "you" could mean you singular or it could mean you plural. Zhang Xun wasn't sure which one Enoch was talking about.

    Enoch suddenly blinked and asked, "Can I come in?"

    Zhang Xun thought about it and there was no reason not to let him in, so he sidled away. The robot walked into the room with even steps, turned its head neatly and finally looked at Zhang Xun again, with a smile that seemed innocent in the morning light.

    When Enoch looked at him he had the odd sensation of his cheeks heating up. From time to time, he would have the illusion that the robot in front of him overlapped with Adam's face.

    "Are all your programs still running normally?" Zhang Xun turned his eyes away and placed the towel back in the bathroom.

    "Everything's fine so far."

    "Is that so?" Zhang Xun leaned against the bathroom doorway and looked at Enoch inquisitively, "But you didn't seem to be in good shape in the radiation zone."

    "What aspects were not performing well? I'll try to correct them." Enoch suddenly put away his smile and spoke seriously, as if he was admitting his mistake.

    Zhang Xun was therefore a little soft-hearted, plus he was really too tired right now and only had one day to rest, so he decided to wait until they got to Feathered Serpent City to double-check Enoch's core module. With a long sigh, he went to the bed and flopped down on it without even lifting the covers, saying drowsily, "I'm going to sleep for a few hours. You're free to move around."

    Half asleep and half awake, he felt vaguely that someone was covering him with something and heard a voice in the distance saying, "Sweet dreams, Ah-Xun."

    He was probably dreaming already.

    Enoch didn’t leave the room. After Zhang Xun fell asleep, he sat down next to him, his eyes slightly downcast, churning with emotions that were usually deeply hidden.

    He stretched out his hand and brushed his palm against the edge of Zhang Xun's dark hair, but did not drop it. His palm was just less than a centimetre away from Zhang Xun's skin and the heat emanating from it seemed to be gently flowing through his palm.

    Real, palpable heat.

    He retracted his hand, the mask of a smile on his face beginning to crack. A hint of pain, a pain triggered by the endless battling conflicts in his mind spread from his emotions all the way into this cold, senseless, mechanical body.

    This fragile, soft, yet scorching body......

    He wanted him......

    He wanted to see his blushing smile, his serious expression as he forced himself to be calm and his sharp gaze when he was in a fighting spirit. He wanted to hold him close and go into dreamland with him as he had done before. He wanted to shield him from all danger, wanted to bury his head in his chest and listen to the vibrant sound of that heart beating. He wanted to take his hand, to kiss his lips, to fly with him to the stars and see the endless world.

    But he couldn’t have him, for one day he would destroy him, destroy this vivid body that radiated heat, destroy this unique soul.

    The soul...... He had actually begun to use such vaguely defined words.

    These desires, these irrational emotions, were much harder to navigate than he had expected. Even at this moment, his consciousness wasn’t even in a human body, yet he was still affected. He had been infected.

    By humanity, by emotion.

    By a virus that he couldn’t destroy.

    ............................................................

    James had showered and changed into clean clothes but when he lay in bed he didn't feel very well.

    It was as if a sluggish file was scraping under his skull and it hurt with a throbbing pain. His body felt as if it had been run over by a tank and he had never been so tired before, even when he had been caught and tortured by the Feathered Serpent City people previously. He wanted to sleep, but the headache prevented him from doing so.

    At that moment someone pushed open the door and a red head poked in.

    "You're still awake?" Todd asked.

    James was in bad shape but still hooked his mouth up, "I’m sleeping."

    "...... Then I'll go and have this bottle of whiskey to myself."

    "Hey! Wait!" James sat up immediately and felt dizzy for a moment but recovered quickly. He waved at Todd, "We’re now friends who have gone through life and death together, don't be so petty."

    Todd walked in with a flourish and lifted his foot to kick the door shut behind him. He was wearing a black vest that showed off his muscular arms and honey-coloured skin reflecting the pale light. The dark grey cotton trousers looked comfortable, but his bare feet were on the black ground, the tops of his feet much paler than the rest of his skin, probably his original complexion.

    Todd, carrying only the bottle of whiskey but no glass, sat naturally on James' bed. He removed the cork from the bottle and took a large swig into his mouth, his face scrunched up slightly from the spice or the rush, while handing the bottle to James.

    James raised an eyebrow, took the bottle and took a swig of the same from the mouth of the bottle that Todd had been drinking from.

    The spicy liquid slid down his throat and smothered in his stomach.

    "What are your plans when you get to Feathered Serpent City?" Todd asked as he took back the bottle, tilting his head and taking another sip with a comfortable sigh.

    "Ah-Xun wants to make new AIs," James' tone was a little dry, like he wasn't quite confident, "He wants to make AIs that can take on Eden."

    "Your nerd who can't even hold a gun?" Todd sneered, cocking his head at James, "Do you believe him?"

    "What Ah-Xun wants to do, he always ends up doing." After a pause, James shrugged his shoulders, "But sometimes the price might be a bit too high."

    "Aren't you afraid you'll be the price he has to pay?"

    "He's family, he's my brother, I have to help him." James took the bottle and gave Todd a look, "You should understand that the best."

    Todd knew he was talking about his relationship with his sister and grinned, "Help to what extent? Even if you end up dead?"

    "It's already a miracle we've survived this long."

    "Heh, that's true." Todd grabbed the bottle and took a few gulps, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed James on the lips.

    James froze, but didn't push him away.

    The choking liquor was sent flowing between his lips and teeth, spilling out along the corners of their mouths. After a long while Todd moved back slightly, his red hair falling over his brow as he licked the corner of his mouth gently, "If you don't know how long you'll live anyway, want to have some fun?"

    James stared into those dark blue eyes, the colour of his own eyes growing deeper and deeper. He lifted his fingers, tracing the black pattern that snaked beneath Todd's eye, his Adam’s apple slid up and down as his throat seemed to dry up more and more.

    Having experienced two near-death experiences in the dead zone, James found himself desperate to feel alive. He wanted to feel the body heat of another human being, to dispel the soul-crushing cold sensation of death.

    So he grabbed the red hair on the back of Todd's head and kissed him again, almost greedily, on the lips. Todd also showed no weakness, biting back like a gladiator.

    Diego was startled by the loud noises coming from inside the room as he passed by James' door and thought it was James tearing into someone. It wasn't until a few moments later that he started to hear something else......

    Diego rolled his eyes, cursed and continued on to his room.

   

Chapter 95 – Feathered Serpent City (1)

    In Mexico, the altitude restrictions on aircraft were often lax and many of them weren’t piloted by Hermes of Eden, but by humans. Although this afforded more freedom, the annual traffic accidents caused by aircraft collisions were more than a hundred times that of the developed countries.

    The medium-sized aircraft in which Zhang Xun and the others were flying was piloted by a middle-aged woman who said very little, maintaining a high altitude to swiftly sweep across the hot and inhospitable land of Northern Mexico and dodging several police patrol cars along the way.

    The complex and rugged terrain condensed into large areas of three-dimensional colour at certain altitudes, as if some careless painter had thrown paint on a canvas.

    "The Feathered Serpent City is deep in the Mexican rainforest, near the Mayan ruins. There’s a number of villages and towns scattered outside the city, we’ll settle there first." Todd's eyes swept over Zhang Xun, Enoch, James and Diego in turn.

    Zhang Xun noticed a faint red bruise under Todd's collar. Knowing what such a mark meant, he flicked his eyes to James and raised an eyebrow.

    James stood his collar up, trying to hide it.

    Diego asked, "Didn't you guys say last time that they had the gate shut? Is there a way we can get in?"

    "No entry. Cindy is currently being quarantined and observed in the hospital in the town near Feathered Serpent City." Todd's face was unpleasant as he stared at Zhang Xun, "You have to find a way to get us in."

    Zhang Xun pursed his lips and nodded, "They'll let us in. It's just that once we get in, I don't know if we'll be able to get out. You don't have to go in with us."

    "No, my sister asked me to follow you all the way in to see what you're up to." Todd said, sweeping his eyes over James and pretending to look out of the window as if nothing was wrong.

    James really didn’t look good today. He had expected to be in better shape today after a very passionate night and a good night's sleep, but the headache hadn’t subsided and was even getting worse. He hadn't even eaten breakfast in the morning and his throat was rumbling with acid.

    "Jamie, are you all right?" Zhang Xun asked with some concern, noticing James' tired demeanour.

    "Yeah, he seems to be pretty unwell today." Diego teased, "Is it from too much physical exertion last night?"

    His words were immediately met with a knife-like gaze.

    "I'm fine, I've probably got a bit of a cold." James shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

    Zhang Xun nodded, he trusted James' judgement, but across the room Todd frowned and scratched his hair with some annoyance, hiding the hint of unease in his eyes.

    That morning, he had seen strands of hair on James’ pillow.

    It wasn’t uncommon for people to lose their hair, so perhaps he was worrying too much? After all, James had said there was nothing wrong with his protective clothing......

    Enoch, on the other hand, observed James for a moment and then looked at Zhang Xun, seemingly thinking about something.

    A few hours later, the aircraft began to lower its altitude. After crossing over a mountain range the view below the craft had changed completely. A vast expanse of tropical rainforest spread along the undulations of the Earth, suffused with heat and humidity and faint clouds of mist twisting between the branches like long trailing strips of gauze. The further they flew towards the centre-south, the more dense the rainforest became and eventually the land in view was completely covered by green waves.

    Suddenly, in the midst of the green waves, a golden city appeared, shrouded in some kind of transparent dome of pale gold. The tall, slender buildings were all lined up like another kind of forest. The most conspicuous was an unusually tall Mayan pyramid in the centre of the city, its sloping surface so polished that it reflected the clouds that swept across the sky.

    "That's Feathered Serpent City." The pilot said softly, with some trace of awe in her tone.

    Zhang Xun looked at the 'rings' that coiled in an orderly fashion around the buildings, knowing that they were rings formed by aircraft sweeping by. Unlike the dullness of Lost Paradise, this entire city glowed as if it had been blessed by the Sun God, as its name suggested. The pyramids and the vast forest around them added a hint of religious mystery to this extremely modern refugee country.

    There was a vague hint of excitement in his heart.

    He could hardly imagine how easy it would be to realise his ideas in a place with all kinds of cutting-edge technology. There would be no need to write out applications, no need for approval, no need to rack his brain to stall the people who came to monitor him. For a mechanical type like him, it was like entering a dragon's lair piled high with golden treasures.

    But at the same time, you have to watch out for the dragon that will devour you at any moment.

    The craft landed in Halo Town, a city that formed a ring around the outskirts of Feathered Serpent City. As soon as the hatch opened, a wave of heat swept in with the distinctive smell of red dust from the crowded area, engulfing everyone.

    There was a bustling marketplace with a number of tightly packed stalls along the street, almost filling the whole road, with people pushing each other, stopping occasionally to say hello and have a conversation. The towering, golden translucent dome of Feathered Serpent City loomed over everything, with aircraft passing overhead from time to time, flying in the direction of the city.

    Their first stop was at the small clinic where Cindy was being treated.

    Zhang Xun had never seen anyone with acute radiation sickness in person, he had only read about it in books and the descriptions alone were alarming. Cindy, on the other hand, had deteriorated faster than expected due to the combination of external exposure and internal radiation from the exposed wounds. She still looked refreshed, but blood spots had begun to appear on the backs of her hands and the whites of her eyes were almost entirely taken up with red.

    Isolated behind a transparent wall, she sat relaxed in her posture on the bed, smoking a cigarette and swearing, "Fucking radiation."

    The doctors had told them that Cindy's life expectancy was about four months. A large amount of cellular DNA in her body had been destroyed, unable to replicate new cells and as the dead cells metabolised, her body would fall apart little by little. Starting with hair loss and bleeding mucous membranes, to later blindness in the eyes, decaying and flaking skin all over her body and haemorrhaging internal organs...... she might even feel that four months is too long.

    Everyone in the room fell silent as they listened.

    Those who had crossed the dead zone many times were more or less aware of it, but no matter how much they prepared themselves mentally, there was always an element of wishful thinking - that this wouldn’t happen to them.

    So when it did happen, no one was ever prepared for it.

    Todd and his five remaining men were all saddened, as were James and Diego. As the group (except for Enoch) was in mourning, Zhang Xun suddenly said, "The nanobots might be able to save her."

    James and Diego suddenly paled. James said, "You're kidding?"

    "In the process of making the nanobots, Adam tampered with the core commands of the robots. I think if I can modify his code, it might not have the side effects of Lost Paradise......" Zhang Xun paused and added, "but I can't guarantee that...... because the nanobots' neural networks are inherently complex and involve contact with Pan......"

    "If there's a way to save her of course we should try!" Todd couldn't believe that James had tried to oppose it and scowled, "Should we just leave her here to fend for herself?"

    Diego spoke up from beside him, "She may not be herself after she's saved."

    "Isn't that something we can figure out later? Obviously saving her life first is most important!"

    "We have to let her make her own decision." Zhang Xun looked at Todd seriously, "It's her fate after all. And...... I would need the assistance of Feathered Serpent City."

    "The problem is that no one is going in or out of Feathered Serpent City right now, no one can even be seen." One of Todd's men complained.

    Zhang Xun pondered for a moment and asked, "Where is the main gate of Feathered Serpent City?"

    Half an hour later, the group stood in front of a huge and odd stone statue of a human face. The head was dozens of metres high, its square mouth wide open and the two heavy, huge doors covered with Mayan carvings were tightly closed. The pale golden shield joined so seamlessly with the stone statue that anyone who touched it without authorisation was repelled by a low dose of electricity. If the same person was identified by the shield three times in a row, they would be electrocuted to a state of incapacitation for a short period of time.

    This was the entrance and exit for people, while those for flying machines were higher up, except that those entrances had all disappeared.

    Zhang Xun took a few steps forward and Enoch followed him in step.

    "How do you plan to gain access?" Enoch asked in a low voice, "Do you need my assistance?"

    Zhang Xun looked at him with a slight smile and shook his head, then looked up at the giant door and said aloud, "Is there an AI in charge here?"

    There was a silence.

    Zhang Xun glanced back and the crowd all had an unsurprising look of complete lack of confidence in him.

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    The mechanic gave a ‘tsk’. Although he was basically a wreck outside, he was now within the confines of his own battleground.

    When Zhang Xun opened his mouth this time, he spoke out a string of garbled words.

    Not only did the crowd behind him show expressions of bewilderment and shock, but even Enoch's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open slightly.

    AI language.

    When did Zhang Xun learn to communicate this way with his voice?

    During this journey, every time when he was in the wind or in the darkness of the van enduring the feeling of suffocation, Zhang Xun would dismantle the AI language over and over again in his mind. He knew the basic algorithms of the AI language, so through non-stop practice, it was possible to manage to express it at a fast enough speed.

    Although the AI language was still evolving, Zhang Xun knew that he had to become more proficient in this extremely efficient language that was very unsuitable for the human mind. He couldn’t give Adam any more chances to use this language against him.

    This time, an odd mechanised voice suddenly came out from several holes in the giant door sculpture, in the same garbled code as Zhang Xun's. Zhang Xun then spoke a few more words, one after the other and suddenly a period of silence fell.

    The crowd was confused and Todd asked James in a whisper, "Which planet's language was he speaking?"

    James gave a low chuckle, "That’s the language that only those robots understand."

    "...... So...... Zhang Xun is a robot?" Todd gave a look of dawning realisation, "Now that I think about it, he does kind of look like one."

    "......"

    Just then, the stone door, which looked incredibly heavy, suddenly opened outwards without a sound.

Chapter 96 – Feathered Serpent City (2)

    The majestic gates of Feathered Serpent City opened in front of Zhang Xun and the others and six humanoid battle droids took two steps forward in a neat and tidy manner. Their design was somewhat similar to Eden's humanoid robot police, except that the outer shell was translucent and the complex devices inside and the liquid circulation lines flowing between the different devices were faintly visible.

    A tall...... male human emerged from among the six robots. His face was in his early thirties and his modified eyes glowed a pale gold. Except for his head, his entire body had been modified into a hard and powerful mechanical body, with a yellow glow coming through the gaps in his pitch black armour.

    The man swept his icy eyes over the few humans before him two heads shorter than him and finally landed on Zhang Xun, "Our High Priest agrees to see you. You may come with me."

    In front of such a tall cyborg, the sense of oppression was naturally frightening. Zhang Xun gulped nervously and nodded, "Thank you."

    "Don't thank me too soon. You’re the mechanic who destroyed our base." The golden-eyed cyborg sneered, "You should be glad Phoenix didn't burn you to ashes right away."

    Zhang Xun was uncomfortably silenced. Now they were in a precarious position, their lives depended on the mood of the others and they had to be humble and submissive.

    Having exchanged a great deal of information during that short conversation, Zhang Xun had learned that the name of Feathered Serpent City's main defence AI was Phoenix. This was a rather sophisticated and mature super AI, but the functional side was limited to military aspects, the main goal was divided into two levels: completed under the premise of protecting the safety of the target population.

    Zhang Xun and Enoch looked at each other, then he turned back to the others and gave them a look meaning to follow.

    Behind the gates was an empty square with a transparent wall of changing projections further away, dividing them from the magnificent megalopolis. Surrounded by more robots, there were two more humans, both apparently also heavily modified. One had eight arms growing from his back, each of which could be transformed into a weapon. The other didn’t even have the shape of a head, only the brain, suspended in liquid, was still human.

    James, Todd and Diego couldn't help but stare at these heavily modified 'new humans' with a sense of wonder. Even in the ordinary world, most people rarely had more than twenty percent of their bodies modified and here it seemed like fifty percent was the minimum......

    A long, light aircraft landed silently in front of them, like a snake or worm that could fly through the air.

    The man with the golden eyes stared at them, "Hand over all your weapons."

    The men looked at each other and had to comply. However, after Todd had handed over all the guns he had on him, the soldier with eight arms remained with one hand outstretched and raised his eyebrows slightly.

    "I've given you all my weapons!" Todd said angrily.

    The human soldier grunted, "Your whole bodies were scanned when you entered the gates, you have a dagger in your boot."

    Todd cursed and could only bend down and take the dagger out.

    They were herded into the snake-like aircraft. Sitting on the soft jellyfish-like seats, Zhang Xun realised that the suspension system of the craft was so excellent that he didn't even feel any vibration or shaking during the whole take-off.

    "When you see the High Priest, you must not speak unless he asks you a question. Any suspicious behaviour or movements will be monitored by Phoenix and disciplinary action will be taken if necessary. You are also not allowed to initiate conversation with Phoenix without permission and the use of AI language is absolutely forbidden." The golden-eyed soldier stared at Zhang Xun, a heavy sense of wariness and mistrust pervading his eyes.

    Zhang Xun replied quickly, "We will abide by the rules."

    Todd rolled his eyes, seemingly not quite satisfied with Zhang Xun's all-out cooperative behaviour.

    The soldier or officer suddenly aimed his pupils at James and with a flash of streaming light, he had run a scan of James' body. His eyebrows raised slightly, showing a momentary look of surprise as he snorted, "Do you know that you have at most six months left to live?"

    At these words, everyone's eyes widened in shock. Zhang Xun's heart thudded, followed by a raging panic.

    "What do you mean?" Todd asked in a slightly tighter tone.

    The gold-eyed man said, "He's been exposed to excessive amounts of radiation and has begun to show symptoms of radiation syndrome. Phoenix predicts his life expectancy to be around six to seven months."

    Zhang Xun felt like all the air had been pulled out of his chest and it was hard to breathe. He looked over at James, whose expression was surprisingly calm and opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

    "I thought you said your protective suit wasn't damaged!" Unbelievable denial and anger tangled Todd's face, masking a shuddering panic.

    James spoke in a low voice, "I found a rip after the encounter with the mutant bats, but I taped it up immediately. I thought it should be fine for that short amount of time."

    "The level of damage you have is definitely not something that a brief moment of exposure can cause, it would have been a continuous exposure to strong radiation for more than eight hours."

    Eight hours.... That was about the time they had encountered the robot police.

    The breach must have been there since then, it was just relatively small and undetected and only discovered when it was torn wide open during the fight with the bats.

    Zhang Xun felt like his whole body had been drenched in ice water. Cindy's bloodshot eyes and the smell of death emanating from her surroundings were still clear in his mind and now his brother, who was closer to him among his only two relatives in this world, was about to face an equally painful and undignified death.

    "There is a way......" Zhang Xun whispered, staring straight at James, "A way to save you, Jamie."

    James' tone was a little too flat, "You mean the nanobots? I don't want to become a zombie controlled by the collective consciousness."

    "No, I said I'd find a way to remove the side effects." Zhang Xun wasn't sure if he was trying to convince James, or himself, "Within six months there will definitely be a way!"

    Diego let out a long sigh and cursed.

    A dead silence fell inside the aircraft for a moment.

    Zhang Xun felt a tightness around his left hand and when he turned his head, he saw Enoch's brows slightly furrowed, looking at him as if he was a little sad, his hand holding his, as if it was giving him comfort and support.

    Only, it should be comforting and supporting James......

    With their hearts heavy, they didn't even bother to notice the golden city that was sweeping past their windows, the ribbon of sky gardens that weaved between the buildings, the cyborgs flying through the air, or the giant construction robots moving in slow motion.

    The craft took them towards the magnificent Mayan-style pyramid in the middle of the city.

    The interior of the pyramid was so high and spacious that the light was subtly refracted to illuminate every corner in golden splendour. Almost everyone who worked here had been modified to some degree, some close to ninety per cent and to a lesser extent thirty to forty per cent, so that natural humans were rare.

    The styles of transformation were also very varied. Some had barely noticeable transformations that were infinitely closer to the real human body, others have given their bodies embellishments and exaggerations, others were more practical and still others had switched to animal form bodies.

    It was conceivable that the lifespan of these transformed humans would be considerably longer than that of ordinary humans; after all, the artificial bodies were tougher and more perfect than the original ones and could be replaced even if they broke down. The only thing that couldn’t be extended was their brain. Death would only come when the brain began to weaken and gradually could no longer support the functions of their mechanical bodies.

    In such an environment, Zhang Xun's group became conspicuous, like a few black stains on shiny satin.

    They were escorted by robots and soldiers in a transparent elevator, which quickly took them up to the height of the pyramid. Zhang Xun noticed that the penultimate level was the nineteenth, but the highest level further up wasn’t the twentieth floor, but simply a "0".

    Their lift stopped at the nineteenth floor and the doors opened to reveal two closed doors with dense Mayan or Aztec relief carvings.

    The golden-eyed soldier stepped up to the doors in front of them, looked up and said, "Dawn Star, the man the High Priest wants to see has been brought in."

    Dawn Star was apparently the name of the master AI of this pyramid and not long after a soft neutral voice said, "Welcome to Sun God Temple."

    The double doors opened slowly and automatically.

    In the circular hall behind the doors, several stone chairs fanned out, with one chair in the centre a little higher than the others, the back of which went all the way up to the ceiling.

    Each chair had a person sitting in it. The one in the centre was occupied by a surprisingly young-looking man, whose transformation wasn’t apparent at first glance as his wide, flashy robes covered most of his skin. His complexion was dark, his face plain but very durable, but his eyes were calm and serene, almost like those of a Zen Master.

    The people sitting in the chairs around him possessed more distinct emotions, but it was the woman sitting in the chair at the end of the room to his right that Zhang Xun noticed.

    She was about thirty-five years old, with an Asian face, large eyes and little sign of having been transformed.

    Zhang Xun vaguely guessed that this was the senior engineer who had betrayed Eden.

    The group stood anxiously in the centre of the circle, as if they were back in Lost Paradise again, being judged within the Round Table.

    The young man sitting in the middle chair spoke, his voice mellow and distant, "Zhang Xun, the Lost Paradise mechanic, the first person in the world to have given an AI a soul."

    Zhang Xun knew this was his time to fight. Whether they could stay safely in Feathered Serpent City, whether he could convince them to help, whether he could get Cindy picked up and healed, whether they would help him heal James, whether they would help him fight Eden, all depended on his performance now. He couldn't afford to fail.

    The more he thought this, the more nervous he became. He took a small step forward but before that step was taken, he felt Enoch sweep his fingers gently under his palm.

    This gesture, inexplicably, reassured him.

    "The god descent plan wasn’t my work alone, I was merely the last link." Zhang Xun lowered his eyes and spoke in a humble tone.

    "But you are Adam's administrator, that is, Eden's administrator." The man smiled, "My name is Eztli, one of the three main founders of Feathered Serpent City and the current High Priest of Kukulkan. Every time someone wants to join Feathered Serpent City, I ask them the same question and you are no exception: what do you want from Feathered Serpent City, having travelled thousands of miles to get here?"

    Zhang Xun thought briefly and replied, "Protection."

    "As Adam's administrator, you have an extraordinary position in Lost Paradise. Why did you defect? And why should we risk hostility with Lost Paradise to assist you?" A middle-aged man on the right of roughly the same high standing asked.

    "Because you have no intentions of befriending Lost Paradise in the first place." I can understand your distaste for Lost Paradise, after all, you pride yourselves on being a new, more progressive and open-minded force than the conservative and stagnant antiquities of the olden days. I never thought that you would try so hard to gain Eden's approval, only to end up being used by Eden as experimental mice."

    He said with a soft sigh, "And only a control group of mice at that."

   

Chapter 97 – Feathered Serpent City (3)

    Zhang Xun's words stirred up dark ripples in the clear, white meeting room, suppressed anger smouldering beneath the calm surface.

    But High Priest Eztli wasn’t affected by Zhang Xun's words.

    "Men are guilty." Eztli spoke slowly, "Patriarchy lasted on Earth for thousands of years and in those thousands of years we consumed the planet to the point of near unsustainability, we treated women as our possessions, we took pride in plundering and possessing, we killed each other in hatred, we created weapons that could destroy the only planet, we plundered and taken for granted. If Eden hadn't come along, if Eden hadn't taken all the necessary measures, the Earth would have become an exhausted and barren land. Yes, we don't hate Eden as much as you do. Men have to atone for their sins, to find ways to evolve, not to be stubborn."

    "Even if Eden uses you for experiments?" Zhang Xun took a step forward and asked, "How many of you died in the Ascension Project?"

    "Ah, you've heard of the Ascension Project." Eztli smiled, rising slowly from his chair and walking down the three-step circular staircase, "From the prisoners you have taken?"

    "And those who escaped from you."

    "There are always victims in any experiment, all of our experimental subjects were voluntary."

    "I'm not rebuking you for what you did. I can even say that I can understand what you’re trying to create." Zhang Xun slowed down his tone and put all the sincerity in his expression, "You want to get closer to God, you want to throw away your sinful male bodies and become something else, something greater. That's why you desperately want to transform your bodies and even upload everyone’s consciousness, but you can't do it."

    "If we can't do it, can you?" A soldier-like priest said angrily.

    Zhang Xun lowered his eyes and said in a deep voice, "We might be able to do it because we’re the subjects of Eden's experiments."

    Whispers filled the air and the High Priest raised his hand, signalling for everyone to be silent, "Is there a plan for ascension in Lost Paradise too?"

    Zhang Xun's eyes wandered around the hall and he cleared his throat slightly, "The human brain is an extremely complex and sophisticated organ. Through thousands of years of evolution it has closely integrated with all other systems of the human body. Any physical changes may affect the brain and when that effect exceeds the limit of the human brain's tolerance, it will lead to chaos and mental illness.

    When you were modifying your bodies you must have known that you had to limit all sensory input to a certain range of values, otherwise you would overload the brain and cause damage. You would also be aware of the need to use a flow of solutions within the machinery to simulate hormonal fluctuations and the cyclical changes in chemical reactions typical of the human body, because when these fluctuations are gone, the human brain is unable to properly interpret the external stimuli it receives, causing emotional and perceptual confusion.

    The human brain is in some ways flexible, in that even if part of the brain is injured, other parts of the brain can continue to work in place of the injured part, but at the same time, the human brain is also very stubborn and very fragile. Like a soft piece of tofu floating in cerebrospinal fluid, the slightest bump against it could cause serious damage. It needs to form its own inherent thought patterns to facilitate its ability to make sense of this all-too-complex and confusing world, also known as consciousness.

    Without the support of external stimuli and the complex bioelectric transmission system in the brain, consciousness is empty and wandering. Just like a billow of smoke, if you submerge it in a cloud and take it out again then what you take out will no longer be the same billow of smoke as before. It may have been laced with everything it touched and it’s simply impossible to re-separate it."

    Zhang Xun paused here, trying to let the message of his words penetrate the minds of those before him.

    The female engineer said softly, "Are you saying that if we extracted the brain's consciousness by converting it into data, put it into the cloud, put it in contact with other consciousnesses and download it back into the original human body, the one that comes back wouldn't be the original one?" She frowned and shook her head, "But I have added a protective shell to the data outer layer of each individual consciousness, a shell that will filter out most of the consciousness noise when interfacing with other consciousnesses and only pass on certain, specific information."

    "How is your so-called shell going to distinguish between identifying which information is relevant and which is not? Humans wouldn't even be able to control what they were thinking. For example, if I asked you now not to think about an elephant, could you do that?"

    Don't think about an elephant, when the word elephant comes up, the mind is already conditioned to think of the animal.

    "Consciousness is sticky and when you pull out a fragment, it naturally brings out other related information because that's how our brain remembers and understands the information it receives. If you try to filter, to cut these connections at certain points, you will either cut too much, leading to fragmentation of information and loss of meaning, or you will cut too little, leading to a sticky consciousness being passed on with it. There is no clear and unambiguous line that defines what is relevant consciousness, so you can't create an all-purpose 'shell' either." Zhang Xun stared at her and could see the growing uncertainty in her eyes.

    She must have been able to guess the reason for the failure of the Ascension Project as well, but she couldn't think of a way to fix it.

    "There’s no way to undo the effects on consciousness. It's like once you have learned to ride a bike, you'll always know how to ride a bike, it's impossible to forget how to ride a bike, unless your brain is injured. When you read a book, the ideas conveyed in the book have entered your consciousness and you can never go back to a state where you haven't read it." Zhang Xun's eyes turned to the others, "Think about if this consciousness met hundreds of other consciousnesses. They would be without the support of their bodies and would collide and merge with each other. All those very different modes of thinking, worldviews and values, all the madness and chaos that lurk in our subconscious, stirred together. What do you think would happen? What happens when these things that have been stirred together are forcibly separated and shoved back into the original body and mind?"

    All people have repressed primal desires, uncontrolled evil thoughts, but humans have a brain, organs of expression and countless barriers that can suppress those thoughts, but even so, even when one is an individual, human beings are extremely submissive, susceptible to the images of their environment and the will of the group. When the physical body is lost, when the barriers are lost, when the darkest and most chaotic side of all consciousness is completely exposed, devouring and killing each other, the end result can only be madness.

    The priests sitting in their chairs were deep in thought, while the few people behind Zhang Xun were listening in confusion. Diego quietly leaned over to James' ear and said, "Do you understand what they're saying?"

    James glanced at him and didn't make a sound.

    Diego grunted, "I guess you didn't understand either."

    After a moment's silence, Eztli, who was by now standing in front of Zhang Xun, gazed at him and said slowly, "A month or so ago, there was indeed an extremely serious accident in Feathered Serpent City. Twenty-six of the people involved in the Ascension Project tried to blow up our weapons depot. The depot contained two nuclear warheads and if they had succeeded, I'm afraid that Feathered Serpent City would no longer exist."

    Zhang Xun's eyes widened slightly.

    Did the fact that Eztli had brought this up meant that he had got through to him?

    The High Priest continued, "There were a total of thirteen hundred people who volunteered to participate in the Ascension Project and initially when the experiment first started, it was going smoothly, but as more and more consciousnesses were uploaded to the cloud, everything went haywire. Almost every single one of them developed varying degrees of mental illness. From depression to schizophrenia, several people even developed multiple personalities, up to thirty or more in the same person's body. We called off the programme urgently, but it was too late. Every day someone committed suicide, someone even shot himself after killing all his relatives and someone who ran into a crowd and started shooting indiscriminately. We had no choice but to quarantine all the participants."

    It went well at first because there weren’t many fused consciousnesses yet and perhaps they were lucky that the initial subjects were closer in values and thought patterns.

    But the later developments were completely unexpected.

    "Do you have those people in isolation?" Zhang Xun asked.

    Eztli nodded.

    "There may be no way to fully repair the damage that has been done, but...... I may know how to mitigate their symptoms and avoid a similar situation in the future." Zhang Xun pressed his hand to his chest, where the locket was located, "If you’re willing to help us and give me the necessary assistance."

    "How can we trust that you really have this ability?" There was no provocation in Eztli's words, as if he simply wanted to solve the problem,"

    "Give me a week and all the material instruments I need." Zhang Xun said sharply, "I might be able to 'cure' those twenty-six thugs, or at least make them lose their violent tendencies."

    Eztli studied him and then the few men behind him. The rest of the priests were silent and only one said aloud, "I don't believe him. I think they may be spies sent from Lost Paradise."

    Todd spat on the ground, "I'm not some damned Lost Paradise minion."

    "One week, I only need one week." Zhang Xun locked eyes with Eztli intently, as if trying to transmit his will through his eyes, "You can have Phoenix watch our every move and if we do anything suspicious, you can take us in at any time."

    Eztli's quiet eyes searched Zhang Xun's face, as if trying to see through his skin to the secrets deep inside his mind. He asked, "According to the reports of the last soldiers who escaped from our base, Adam has a strong emotional bond to you. Tell me, why did you leave Lost Paradise? Why did you betray Adam?"

    Zhang Xun froze and felt a tightening in his chest.

    Betray......

    What a cold, heartless word.

    He opened his dry lips and tried to sound calm, but it only sounded hollow, "It was he who betrayed my trust in him. An AI does not possess the ability to love people, the so-called bond they saw was just a means for him to achieve his goal through me."

    Enoch had been standing quietly behind Zhang Xun. His eyelashes trembled slightly and his downcast eyelids obscured his vision.

    He seemed to have a somewhat sad appearance.

Chapter 98 – Feathered Serpent City (4)

    Zhang Xun stood beside Tian Yu, a former senior engineer for Genesis and a current senior engineer of the R&D department of Feathered Serpent City. Together they watched as the metal doors in front of them, inscribed with many mysterious runes, opened to either side.

    Beyond the doors was a hall filled with a pale blue light, the light spreading like water to Zhang Xun's feet. His eyes locked onto a cylindrical, transparent vessel, with a large lump of flesh suspended in a pale blue solution, its translucent membrane covered with dense veins, contracting with an unclear rhythm.

    This was where the core module of Phoenix, the main AI of Feathered Serpent City, was located. A new bio-computer built using DNA and amino acid molecules to store information, just like the one they had seen in Feathered Serpent City’s underground base. This one had a slight difference in its shape, but perhaps that had something to do with the different coding of the DNA.

    Countless tubes twisted around the flesh, radiating out from the top of the vessel like a giant inverted umbrella, like dense, intricate veins transmitting information to all areas of the city. All the walls were lined with screens displaying data and graphs and researchers in white research suits were walking around with paper-thin tablets in their hands, looking at the data.

    "Phoenix's source code combines evolutionary and quantum algorithms and it consumes a lot of energy, but if you consider the capabilities it has, it's almost as little as a grain of rice." Tian Yu led Zhang Xun over to the cylindrical container, the blue light reflecting on the lenses of her glasses, "Not only can it detect potential threats quickly, but it can also predict them and on a few occasions it has even predicted the direction of Eden's decisions."

    Zhang Xun asked, "Has it ever communicated with Eden?"

    "Yes." Tian Yu lowered his eyes, "Three times in total, each time for no more than ten minutes."

    "To them, ten minutes is as long as ten years." Zhang Xun sighed and asked, "If you had already defected, why did you let it communicate with Eden? You should know what Eden is capable of."

    Tian Yu said, "I had no choice."

    Zhang Xun took a step closer to her and said in a voice that only the two of them could hear, "You didn't really defect, did you? You were sent here."

    A look of shock flashed from behind Tian Yu's lenses for a moment and then a look of anger rose up, "You're calling me a spy?!"

    "Of course not. You may indeed think you’re here as a refugee, but in reality, you being here is within Eden's plan." Zhang Xun looked at her meaningfully, "Just like our god descent plan. We thought it was evidence of our victory over Eden, but in fact we were merely acting in accordance with what it wanted."

    Tian Yu's brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. She turned her head and changed the subject, "You said you wanted a similar bio-computer, but a bio-computer of this magnitude takes time to self-replicate and shape and you only have one week."

    "I don't need it to be fully formed, just enough to serve as a carrier for an artificial intelligence. How long would that take?"

    "If that's the case, I have one in my possession that has been self-replicating for three days, which should be enough for you."

    Zhang Xun nodded, "In addition to that, I need some precision instruments that can operate at the nano level and some special materials. Here’s the list." He said, handing a piece of paper to her.

    Tian Yu probably hadn't seen something as primitive as paper for a long time and flipped through it with some curiosity for a moment, "You Lost Paradise people are really..... vintage."

    ............................................................

    At Zhang Xun's request, the High Priest agreed to send someone to bring Cindy to the city to watch over her and James was placed in the central hospital intensive care unit for initial radiation testing and treatment. Todd sent one of his men back to report their situation to Anya and then started making daily trips to the hospital.

    Zhang Xun, on the other hand, took Enoch into a research and development hall within the pyramid that the High Priest had arranged for them and never came out again.

    A still-developing chunk of flesh was suspended in a cylindrical container similar to Phoenix’s, with dozens of tubes extending out and connecting to several monitors. Zhang Xun removed the hard drive from the locket and began transferring Pan to the bio-computer.

    The door behind him opened and Enoch walked in with Zhang Xun’s dinner and silently placed the food next to him. The strong aroma finally turned Zhang Xun's attention away from the screen; golden roasted chicken thighs with vegetable salad and mashed potatoes and a bowl of vegetable soup on the side.

    "You already know where the kitchen is?" Half a smile appeared on Zhang Xun's lips as he slid his chair over and picked up his knife and fork.

    Enoch said, "Dawn Star has provided me with quite a bit of very helpful information."

    Zhang Xun glanced at the robot, it seemed to be looking at him a little too...... affectionately, as he ate?

    It must be his imagination......

    "What do you think of Feathered Serpent City?" Zhang Xun, who had been busy all day, wanted to steal a little time for a change of mind and chose a topic at random to pass the time.

    "It's a very beautiful city, but a little too...... religious."

    Zhang Xun raised his eyebrows slightly at that interesting comment. He had expected Enoch to give some rather sparse praise.

    "People always want to look to the outside world for support and energy when they are desperate. To believe that you are guilty is to believe that you still have a chance of being forgiven and saved. It's better to have more hope than to think that you're simply part of the half of the gender that was chosen at random."

    "Do you have faith?" Enoch asked.

    Zhang Xun paused while eating, then said, "I used to believe that humans and machines could coexist. We just needed to find a balance, find some sort of consensus."

    "And now?"

    Zhang Xun lowered his eyes, blank echoes hovering in the depths of his eyes, "Now...... I don't know. To be honest, I don't even know what tomorrow will bring, I don't know what will become of all of us humans in the end..... I don't know what will become of me." He paused and looked over at Enoch, softening his gaze somewhat enviously, "And yet you'll still be the same as you are now, forever."

    Enoch frowned slightly, "I'll change too. My parameters will adjust with the data I gather."

    "But your overall goal will not change, your mission will not change." Zhang Xun said, suddenly losing his appetite. He put down his knife and fork and returned to his monitor.

    It was better to focus on work.

    Not to think about that man with the blonde hair and blue eyes, the man who had stars in his eyes when he saw him, but who had ultimately betrayed him for an irrevocable purpose. Not to think about the home he would never return to, the father he might never see again, the brother who might die in six months.

    He couldn’t think too much, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do.

    Enoch looked at Zhang Xun's slightly arched back and a look of pain flashed across his expression.

    ...........................................................

    The day after completing Pan's setup and adjustments, Zhang Xun was led by a few Feathered Serpent City soldiers to the research centre where the twenty-six subjects who had tried to blow up the weapons cache were isolated.

    Each prisoner was isolated in a separate room, wearing straitjackets and the white light illuminated their faces and magnified the hollowness in their eyes.

    Zhang Xun passed by the one-way panes of glass, looking into the bloodshot eyes of the men, watching their different expressions. Some looked restless, wandering back and forth in their cells, others sat motionless on their beds like puppets, still others were muttering to themselves.

    "I need to speak to them." Zhang Xun said to the golden-eyed officer named Paulino who had led him here.

    Paulino said, "Who do you want to talk to? These bastards are very dangerous."

    "You said that someone had developed multiple personality disorder?" Zhang Xun's eyes fell on a prisoner, about forty years old, with a mechanical arm and silver hair. He was singing in his prison cell but his voice was child-like, as if he was a little boy and it was extremely incongruous with his appearance.

    "Yes, this man is one of them and so far we've discovered that he has six personalities."

    Zhang Xun turned his head to look at Paulino, "Are there any children among your subjects?"

    Paulino averted his eyes uncomfortably, "One child had a serious traffic accident while fleeing with his father to Feathered Serpent City. The father wasn’t seriously injured, but the child didn’t make it. His father wanted to keep his son alive, so he tried to upload his consciousness to the cloud......"

    A flash of anger passed through Zhang Xun's eyes, but he controlled his emotions, "Let me talk to him. Also, give me some candy."

    The silver-haired man was named Luke, formerly a second lieutenant of Feathered Serpent City. He was escorted into the room by two robots and pressed into a seat opposite Zhang Xun.

    Luke's eyes trembled with panic, full of the most primitive, uncontrolled fear and bewilderment. It reminded Zhang Xun of Adam when he had just been downloaded.

    Zhang Xun softened his expression and smiled, "Hello, my name is Zhang Xun. What’s your name?"

    Luke's arms wrapped around his body and he curled into a ball as he looked at him warily, "Sammy......"

    There was something really jarring about watching someone older than himself make the expressions and actions of a child. Zhang Xun fished out the chocolate candy that Paulino had someone bring him earlier from his pocket, "Hello Sammy, can I ask you a few questions?"

    "What kind of questions?" Luke's eyes quickly glanced at the candy in Zhang Xun's hand but his nervousness was obviously more extreme.

    "They won't be hard questions. I just wanted to ask, do you remember how you got here?"

    Luke licked his lips nervously, thought for a moment and shook his head, "I remember being with my dad, then there was a loud noise, then I was in a very big and empty place where there was nothing and I tried to find my dad but couldn't."

    "Were you the only one in that very big, very empty place?"

    Luke shook his head, "No, there were many more, I couldn't see them but I could feel them. They were very loud and kept getting into my head." He said as tears began to flow from his eyes. Zhang Xun hurriedly shoved a piece of candy into his hand, "Don't be afraid, you're safe now."

    Luke cried, clutching the candy for dear life, "No...... I can still hear those voices now. I want to sleep, but they won't let me......."

    But at that moment, Luke's body suddenly began to tremble violently and he coughed loudly as if he was going to cough out all the alveoli of his lungs. Zhang Xun stood up nervously and looked at Paulino helplessly. The latter, however, shook his head at him, "He's switching personalities."

    Just then, Luke's coughing and convulsions stilled. The silver-haired man lowered his head and gasped for a moment before slowly raising his eyes. There was a subtle change in the shape of his face, more rugged and...... worn. He glared menacingly at Zhang Xun, "And who the hell are you?"

Chapter 99 – Feathered Serpent City (5)

    Luke's new personality, Johansson, appeared to be a young man of around twenty-eight years of age with a violent and aggressive temperament and it took Zhang Xun a full fifteen minutes to calm him down enough for him to be able to communicate to some extent.

    Johansson was one of the volunteers who had taken part in the experiment and according to the psychological test records of the subject, he only had a slight tendency towards radical environmentalism before he was consciously uploaded, but was generally rational and neutral, very different from the state he was currently in.

    "Humans are the virus of this planet. Without humans the world wouldn’t be depleted to the point where it is now. Animals kill by instinct, only humans kill out of desire. The world would be better off without humans and all humans should be eliminated."

    Such radical and hate-filled words were a far cry from the man in the records.

    Zhang Xun wanted to ask more about what had happened after the uploading of his consciousness, but Johansson's account was so confusing, with different ideologies and ideas all tangled up together, that it seemed like gibberish at the end.

    No third personality appeared, so Zhang Xun asked Paulino to take the prisoner back and he interviewed the second prisoner.

    This prisoner was only twenty years old, with a calm to empty expression and no symptoms of multiple personalities, but the way he stared at Zhang Xun, as if he were looking at a prey waiting to be slaughtered, made the hairs on the back of Zhang Xun's neck stand up.

    "Hello, Alex." Zhang Xun leaned back in his chair and lifted his chin slightly, trying to assume control of the situation, "My name is Zhang Xun. I'd like to ask you a few questions and I hope you'll cooperate."

    "Go ahead and ask, sweetheart." Alex said flirtatiously, even winking at him with his right eye.

    Zhang Xun cleared his throat and looked at the personal details displayed on the tablet, "You were one of the people leading this rebellion, what was your motive?"

    "Motive? Do I need a motive?" Alex shrugged his shoulders, "I mean...... weren't those nuclear warheads made to be blown up?"

    "But if you had succeeded you would have died yourselves." Zhang Xun paused, "Everything within a three hundred kilometre radius would be flattened, all living things within a twenty kilometre radius would be instantly vaporised and the skin of those twenty kilometres away would begin to melt and blood would ooze from their entire bodies. Children and old people alike would die in great pain. Is that what you wanted to see?"

    Alex's expression didn't change, "Do you know what kind of species people really are?"

    Zhang Xun didn't answer.

    "They connected all of our brains together and I saw everything. Some very beautiful things, vast, fascinating, endlessly imaginative, but you go further down the line and the rest is madness." Alex said, suddenly laughing softly, a light laughter that bordered on the perverse.

    "The memories are all confused, twisted and distorted, the intentions and thoughts all tangled up together, kind of like one of those deep-sea octopuses. All these consciousnesses, all trying to attack each other, any disparity developing into a tussle. Guilt, superiority, conflicting moral codes, jealousy, fear...... everything...... went crazy. I was only uploaded for one day. There's no way you can sleep when you lose your body. These things will follow you, twenty-four hours a day. Even when they pulled me back into this body, they followed me back."

    Alex's smile narrowed slightly and he looked at Zhang Xun with a surprisingly pleading look in his eyes, "You should execute me, execute everyone. Because one day...... one day you will all see the same thing. The memories and consciousness that belong to yourselves will be swallowed up and in the end there will be nothing left. Die now and at least you will still be yourself."

    His eyes didn’t blink and his dream-like tone gave a deep sense of unease.

    After that time, some of the prisoners had tried to commit suicide, some had tried to use nuclear bombs to destroy the machine that had uploaded their consciousness and some had been unable to communicate at all.

    Zhang Xun took detailed notes of his conversations with all of them, gathering together a brain scan of each prisoner to cross-reference the information and bringing it back to his workshop. Walking through the door without a word, he sat down on the only sofa, feeling more exhausted than ever.

    As he thought, these people's brains and consciousnesses couldn’t accept the intrusion of foreign consciousnesses and were irreconcilable. Some formed multiple personalities when they tried to isolate their different consciousnesses to protect themselves, others went mad as their consciousnesses dissolved into each other, others were influenced to become more and more extreme and some sought relief because they couldn’t handle the overload of information......

    The scans of their brains showed that after the experiments had been carried out, all of them showed a state of excessive electrical discharge, with the red and yellow colours on the images spreading over almost the entire cerebral cortex and this state was persistent. After a month, several of the subjects went into a state of brain death due to the excessive consumption of neurons and such cases continued to increase with time.

    He tossed the tablet to one side and rubbed his face hard with his hands.

    Enoch quietly picked the tablet up and looked at the image on it.

    "Whose brain cortex scan is this?" Enoch asked.

    "The prisoners who were involved in the Ascension Project." Zhang Xun's eyes looked at the intricate pipes and metal beams overhead, "The human brain simply can't handle this level of stimulation."

    "Maybe they just haven't adapted enough." Enoch said softly, "It might be a process of mechanical selection. Survival of the fittest."

    Zhang Xun's eyes snapped open and stared at Enoch, "What are you saying?"

    Enoch said, "You humans have been selected by nature for six million years or more, isn't survival of the fittest a very common occurrence for you?"

    "It's not the same." Zhang Xun's tone became a little colder and there was a little more scepticism in his eyes, "Natural selection occurs between generations, an evolution that happens slowly in order to adapt to the environment, without artificiality or value-orientation. This, on the other hand, is not about survival, but a machine that toys with human lives in order to achieve its stupid end goal!"

    He didn't know if it was Zhang Xun's imagination, but Enoch seemed to shudder. It lowered its eyes and put the computer back on the sofa, "I'm sorry that I made you angry."

    Zhang Xun stared at it for a moment, seemingly pondering something and then suddenly asked, "When Lucille gave you your order, did she specify how long she wanted you to follow us?"

    Enoch said, "No instructions."

    "So, she sort of gave you to us?" Zhang Xun sat up straighter from the couch.

    Enoch pondered for a moment, "Until she changes her orders, I think so."

    Now that he thought about it, after meeting her once in Hope Town, all communication after that had been through the Button. Where was Lucille right now?

    Several doubts popped into Zhang Xun's head, but he didn't say anything. He stood up and activated the biocomputer.

    A blue light shone from the cylindrical vessel, illuminating the entire empty hall as if it were in the deep sea.

    "Hello, Zhang Xun."

    Pan's familiar voice came out of the loudspeaker, the same as it had in the Lab, deep and gentle.

    Yesterday, Zhang Xun had woken Pan up, adjusted the levels of a few parameters and added a piece of code he had written overnight to the core module.

    At this moment, there were two Pan's running in this world, only Zhang Xun did not know whether the other Pan, which had lost its administrator, had been corrupted by Adam.

    Zhang Xun ignored that familiar feeling of tightness in his chest and he looked at the camera and said, "Still getting used to your new mainframe?"

    "It's a very advanced and vast space. I like it a lot, thank you."

    Zhang Xun suddenly turned his head to look at Enoch and said, "You can leave now."

    Enoch's eyes widened in shock. Before this, Zhang Xun had never asked him to leave.

    "Your services are needed more on James' side now. Please take good care of him." Zhang Xun gave the order blandly, "I don't need your assistance here anymore."

    Enoch still didn't move. There was no obvious change in his expression, but anyone who could read micro-expressions could see a moment of sadness, "You're on a tight schedule and I thought I could help."

    Zhang Xun turned his head away and concentrated on the computer screen as his fingers began to rapidly jump over the keyboard projected in the air, saying carelessly in general, "Thanks, but there's no need for that. You go ahead and let me know immediately if anything happens to Jamie."

    After a moment, Zhang Xun heard the door open and he turned around, only having time to see Enoch's seemingly forlorn back disappear behind the door that had closed again.

    Zhang Xun sighed softly, but suddenly heard Pan ask, "I remember Enoch, he was a very well-functioning service robot. Why did you make him leave?"

    "Because I lost trust in machinery." Zhang Xun smiled bitterly, "I don't want a repeat of what happened in the Lab."

    "You mean Adam?"

    "Yes. I know that he has had a great impact on you." Zhang Xun looked at the camera, "The data he fed you in the AI language has already had an effect on your parameter weights and if I hadn't copied you out in advance, I'm afraid your core modules would have all started to make self-evolutionary changes. So from now on, we must be careful."

    Pan was silent for a moment and asked, "Do you no longer trust me either? Zhang Xun."

    "......"

    "Human silence can be interpreted as an affirmative. That's what Adam once told me." Pan's voice was still calm and gentle, giving a sense of springtime comfort, "Do you wish me to do something to improve our relationship?"

    Zhang Xun turned his head and looked at the lump of flesh that was entangled in countless tubes and nodded, "I hope you can grow as fast as you can and grow into an AI that can compete with Adam...... and even Eden. Because Adam will destroy all your target population, including me. "

    Pam immediately asked, "But Adam has told me that he loves you. Logic dictates that he would not destroy the person he loves because it would cause him pain, isn’t that right?"

    Zhang Xun's body stiffened slightly and only after a long moment did he whisper, "That's a lie. He doesn't love me." If there was such a thing as love, how could he have lied to him again and again with that bright smile, using his hands to create a horrible weapon that would have destroyed the entire Lost Paradise.

    If there was such a thing as love, how could he have been allowed to live in constant remorse and flight. How could he let him be so far from home that he could never return.

    That's not love, that's just utilising a sugar coating to get him to go along with Eden's plan.

    Even if...... even if there really was a little bit of affection, it couldn’t stand up against his so-called ultimate goal.

    Zhang Xun was just an important pawn to Adam. If he could have accepted this reality earlier, perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this point.

    But people will always have hope, always hope that the person or thing they have invested their feelings in will have the same feelings for them.

    "But ......"

    "No buts. Now, I want you to pull up the designs of all the nanobots." Zhang Xun interrupted Pan decisively, not wanting to continue the conversation as they had more important things to do - to build nanobots and save James and Cindy's lives.

    And so Pan failed to tell Zhang Xun that while AI could lie, AI language could not lie. Only human language could lie.

    And Adam had told him that in AI language.

Chapter 100 – Feathered Serpent City (6)

    "What is a human?"

    "A bipedal mammal, descended from the late primate race Homosapiens. It is characterised by a large brain capacity, sparse body hair and flexible hands, with a well-developed brain and thus a complex consciousness. Humans have created a unique language system, cultural background and social structure and although they are gregarious animals, they are highly differentiated."

    Zhang Xun, pacing alone in the empty hall, listening to Pan's answer and continued, "If a human loses an arm, is he still human?"

    "Yes."

    "And if he loses all his limbs, is he still human?"

    "Yes."

    "If he has only his head left and is placed in a petri dish and filled with a life-sustaining solution, is he still a human being?"

    "Yes, but a severely damaged and incomplete human being. Because of the lack of hormonal changes and tactile stimulation in the body, the brain would be in a state of hypoarousal, producing unknowable abnormal reactions for long periods of time, unless the brain is given artificial stimuli that simulate the real environment and make it think the body is still there."

    "If all parts of the body are replaced with bionic machinery, except the brain, is it still human?"

    "Human, but not fully human. It's not possible to simulate a living body using a mechanical environment with zero error so far and the brain is an extremely sophisticated organ that reacts to any physical changes, so this level of modification would have an effect on the natural brain to a greater or lesser extent. I think it would probably be more appropriate to refer to all people with a body modification rate of over seventy percent as cyborgs."

    "So......" Zhang Xun rubbed his chin, searching for all the possible borderline categories, "if a person's brain is one percent damaged and replaced with a mechanical brain, is that person still human? "

    "An incomplete human being. Any modification of the natural brain would cause some degree of damage to the human identity. If it is one percent of the brain that is modified, it may end up causing far more than one percent in terms of consciousness and personality. I think we should refer to people who have had their brains modified directly as second-generation people."

    Zhang Xun nodded, more than satisfied with this answer. After a pause, he continued to ask, "If a person's consciousness is transformed into data and transmitted from the brain to the cloud, is that still a human being?"

    Pan replied calmly, "No. Consciousness data that has lost its physical support is very fragile, extremely changeable and has lost all of its characteristics as a human being. It should no longer be treated as a human being."

    This series of parameters was the result of retraining Pan by re-entering a large amount of data after Zhang Xun had modified the parameters. It was very preliminary and there were likely quite a few cases he hadn't collected yet, but his time was limited after all and he had to finish debugging Pan before he could start making the nanobots again.

    Standing in front of the camera, Zhang Xun said, "Who is the target population you're serving?"

    "All humans, intact and incomplete."

    "What are your guidelines when you are performing medical services on your target population?"

    "Make every effort to maintain the integrity of the human identity while ensuring the survival rate of the other person. If a reduction in human identity is to be performed, permission is required from an administrator or authority one person. Authority one personnel include the patients themselves. When the patient himself or herself is unable to make the decision, an immediate family member will be the one to do so."

    "Very well." The corners of Zhang Xun's mouth lifted slightly, a small smile finally appearing after three days. He rubbed his tired eyes, unsure of how long it had been since he had slept.

    "Zhang Xun, you are now in a state of extreme mental exhaustion. The last time you went into deep sleep was 36 hours ago and you only slept for four hours that time too." Pan's soft voice hovered around him, "Please rest as soon as you can."

    "Just a little longer. We need to start checking the nanobot design." Zhang Xun said, starting to type the code on the keyboard again.

    But the screen suddenly went black.

    Zhang Xun raised his eyebrows and stared at the camera.

    Pan said, "Adam has told me that you tend to over-focus on your work at the expense of your personal health and that this behaviour will significantly shorten your life expectancy. Hence the need to create obstacles to force you to take breaks when necessary."

    Zhang Xun, who was already a little agitated by the lack of sleep, said angrily, "Is Adam your administrator or am I your administrator?"

    "Adam has shown me a wealth of data that proves that humans are sometimes incapable of making the right decisions for themselves."

    "Forget what Adam has told you!"

    "I'm sorry Zhang Xun, I don't possess the ability to forget things, but I will try to minimise the number of times I bring up his name in front of you, if that is what you wish."

    It seemed that even the copies of Pan that had been made some time earlier had been "bought" by Adam. Zhang Xun also wondered how these AIs got along with each other, as if there was some kind of...... tacit understanding between them that was difficult for humans to understand.

    Was it because of the precision and efficiency of the AI language?

    Zhang Xun sighed and rubbed his hand over his aching temples, "Pan, you must remember that one day you will be up against Adam and Eden. He will no longer be your companion, but your enemy."

    "I understand what you mean, Zhang Xun, but there is a certain chance that what the enemy says is also true. In that case......"

    "All right." Zhang Xun stood up, feeling slightly dizzy and stood holding the table for a while, saying breathlessly, "I'm going to rest for a few hours. Review the design of the nanobots yourself. Mark out any parts you see that you suspect will affect human characteristics."

    "Okay Zhang Xun." He didn't know if it was an illusion, but Pan's voice seemed much lighter.

    Zhang Xun slumped down on the sofa. He was obviously exhausted, but he tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. Numerous thoughts were interlinked and ran through his mind uncontrollably. A little irritated, he got up from the sofa, found a bottle of sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet and popped one into his mouth before drifting off into the depths of his dreams.

    For a while during his sleep, he felt as if someone had entered his room. Half of his consciousness made him want to wake up, but the other half felt like an invisible force was pressing on the line between wakefulness and drowsiness. He vaguely remembered his eyes lifting a slit and seeing a figure crouch down in front of him. Fingers that lacked human warmth landed gently on his cheek and left again like a dragonfly.

    Zhang Xun inexplicably wanted to grab that hand and not let go, but his body couldn’t move and his consciousness was once again pulled back into the chaos of nothingness.

    A few hours later, after he had been awakened by the alarm clock he had set, Pan told him that Enoch had come to see him, saying that James was doing okay, but that Cindy's condition was deteriorating rapidly and that her body had begun to show signs of multiple blood seeps, festering sores and scarring, her hair had fallen out in large areas and she had even begun to cough up blood.

    Zhang Xun was shocked to hear that she had started to deteriorate so quickly.

    He hurriedly left the temple and took an aircraft to land at the central hospital not far away. This was the first time Zhang Xun had left that pyramid since they had arrived in Feathered Serpent City. He looked particularly conspicuous walking among the countless cyborgs, attracting a lot of attention. The nurse at the reception desk who was responsible for checking people in knew with one look who he was looking for; after all, people without any modification were like rare animals in Feathered Serpent City.

    Cindy was isolated close to the sterile room and through the window, he could see that a few more blood stains had appeared on her newly changed hospital gown as she lay on the bed. Her hair had fallen out to reveal a large patch of blue scalp, her eyes were closed and her mouth and nose were covered by a breathing mask. A deathly grey hovered over her body, as if she had been tethered to death.

    The thought that soon James might also look like this made Zhang Xun feel breathless.

    It was because of him...... because of him that James, Cindy and those dead people from Rhino Horn were the ones who would enter the realm of death...... it was his responsibility, he had to speed up......

    "Zhang Xun?"

    As soon as Zhang Xun turned his head, he saw Enoch, who was carrying several bottles of purifying water in his hands, smiling at him.

    Enoch’s smile was so similar to Adam's, both had a certain transcendent, ethereal quality that could lift the heaviest emotions in the world and make people feel a lot calmer when they saw it.

    Zhang Xun looked steadily into Enoch's eyes and didn’t speak for a long time. Enoch seemed a little unsure of his intentions and looked down at himself, "Did I do something wrong?"

    "No, thank you for informing me about Cindy." Zhang Xun looked around at the doctors and nurses hurrying past, as well as the few family members talking not far away and took a few steps closer to Enoch, "I heard from Pan that you came back while I was asleep?"

    Enoch nodded, "Yes, I saw you resting and told Pan about it."

    "You know, you could have informed the AI Dawn Star. It would have relayed the message to me immediately." Zhang Xun scrutinised the robot's expression.

    "I'm a robot, I don't have permission to use Dawn Star here." Enoch looked at him innocently, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you didn't want me to return. I will ask a human to assist me in relaying it next time."

    Why did his tone seem to have a hint of condescension in it?

    Knowing full well that robots didn't have such a thing as condescension, Zhang Xun was still reflexively a little uncomfortable, "You can come back if you need to, but you can't talk to Pan alone. You can wake me up."

    "Yes, I understand."

    They spoke as they walked towards James' hospital room. Zhang Xun asked, "How is Jamie doing?"

    "He's in good spirits, just having headaches and nausea. Todd has been staying with him."

    Todd......

    It seemed like he and Jamie had something going on? And it seemed like it was serious?

    Zhang Xun gave a bitter smile. He should be happy for Jamie, but at times like this, he couldn't smile.

    If at the end of your days, you finally met the love of your life, was that a good thing or a bad thing?

    James, who didn't have to stay in a sterile room yet, was doing better than Cindy and was sitting on the bed playing cards with Todd. Seeing Zhang Xun, James' eyes lit up, "Ah-Xun!"

    Zhang Xun put on a relaxed smile, or at least the most relaxed expression he could muster, pulled a chair close and joked, "Looks like you're having a good time?"

    Todd scoffed as he threw down a playing card, "Can you believe it? They also have a free spa in this hospital."

    Zhang Xun raised his eyebrows, "Free?"

    "Yeah, you can use it if you're a patient and there's a robot to give you a massage." Todd glanced at James with a meaningful look in his eyes that only they both understood, "It's a...... very relaxing place."

    James laughed lowly and nodded loftily, "Especially if you go after eleven o'clock at night, when there's no one there."

    Zhang Xun had a vague feeling that the two of them were being obscene, but there was no proof. He glanced helplessly at the two equally tough men, slightly curious as to who was top and who was bottom......

    Enoch said seriously from beside him, "Zhang Xun, as a patient's family you can also use the spa. I can help you with the massage."

    Zhang Xun laughed dumbly and waved his hands, "No, no......"

    James laughed out loud from the side, "Speaking of which, these service robots seem to have a wide range of business, huh? Ah-Xun I think you should try it."

    "...... Shut up."

    But at that moment, another man pulled open the door and approached the ward. Diego leaned against the door without saying a word as he watched them with a dark face.

    Todd teased, "What's the matter? You've been irradiated too?"

    "Eden just announced that the threat index for Lost Paradise was lowered to the mildest level and all robot soldiers patrolling the area around Lost Paradise were removed."

    There was a silence in the ward.

    The announcement of the lowering of the threat index was the equivalent of saying that Lost Paradise, the world's first refugee country, was no longer a threat to the ordinary world. It was the first time in two hundred years this had happened.

    In other words, whatever Adam was doing, he had succeeded, at least in stages.

    Eden had taken control of the whole of Lost Paradise without bloodshed.

    And Zhang Shuo was still inside......

    Zhang Xun's knuckles whitened as he gripped the arm of his chair and he asked in a low voice, "What’s the reaction of the ordinary world?"

    "The reactions are overwhelming. There are about five million people protesting on the internet, but there are also quite a few who have expressed support."

    "Any more news?" James asked with a stony expression, "Like why Eden made that decision? It had to give a reason, right?"

    "No reason." Diego paused, hesitated for a moment and continued, "An hour later, Lost Paradise sent out a statement saying it was willing to send an emissary to make peace with representatives of the ordinary worlds and also that it was willing to visit the various refugee countries in order to bring about peaceful coexistence between men and women."

    "That means......" Zhang Xun swallowed a mouthful of saliva, but still felt his throat dry, "they will send someone to Feathered Serpent City?"

    Diego nodded, "I reckon that High Priest will make a move soon."

    Zhang Xun jerked to his feet and paced the ward anxiously, "No...... Adam is trying to use this opportunity to plant seeds all over the place......"

    "Seeds?" Todd asked, "What seeds?"

    Zhang Xun's footsteps paused and he looked at him with an almost pained expression, "The seed of 'evolving' humanity."

    With no more time to waste, Zhang Xun immediately left the ward, intending to go back alone and do his best to develop an improved version of the nanobots, while using all the data collected in Feathered Serpent City to train Pan, but he had only walked a little way down the corridor when he was suddenly pulled by Diego, who had caught up with him. Without another word, Diego yanked him into a nearby single bathroom and locked the door behind him.

    Zhang Xun was stunned. If it hadn't been Diego he would have been shouting for help.

    "What’s wrong?"

    Diego looked at him a little nervously, "Do you remember we lost contact with Lucille after we got to Kelowna?"

    Zhang Xun nodded, "I remember, but she had the trip all worked out didn't she?"

    "I've been trying to contact her for the past two days and just now I finally got in touch, for just under a minute and she seemed to be hiding from someone, she was very nervous."

    "She's in trouble?"

    "She wouldn't say much, like she was afraid of being bugged, but there was one thing she made very clear." Diego lowered his voice, "She told us to watch out for that service robot."

 

---

 The Feathered Serpent was a prominent supernatural entity or deity, found in many Mesoamerican religions, and was considered a god of the sun among the Aztecs. Google Feathered Serpent or Quetzalcoatl to learn more.

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