Chapter 3: Chapter 21 – 30

Chapter 21 – Garbage Processing Yard (7)

    Zhang Xun sat beside Adam's bed frowning, his dark brown eyes filled with sadness.

    Adam was lying on the bed with a thick bandage around his head, his cheeks so swollen he could barely see. He gave Adam a sedative and let him pass out.

    The sound of the gears turning sounded, James walked in, quietly stood behind Zhang Xun and put a hand on his shoulder, "Your own injury... is it really okay? Would you like to have the doctor check it?"

    Zhang Xun had almost forgotten about his own injury, as soon as he got back he was busy contacting the doctor, and at the same time sent Adam into the scanning chamber for a full-body examination. Fortunately, his injuries looked scary, but it was only a minor concussion, no intracranial hemorrhage, nor any fractures or visceral hemorrhage. Apparently Adam had been conscious of protecting his vitals. Zhang Xun had been so busy until now that he hadn't even changed his clothes.

    "I'm fine." Zhang Xun lowered his eyes and slumped his shoulders. There was a large bruise on the corner of his mouth, it was difficult for James to bear looking at.

    "It’s my fault, I shouldn't have dragged you to Dionysus." James was full of guilt.

    Zhang Xun shook his head, "It's not your fault, I'm his mechanic. I have an obligation to protect him, but I failed."

    "You did protect him, isn't he pretty much ok?" James knew that Zhang Xun was going to wallow in this guilt, "From what I can see... your injury may be worse than his..."

    But Zhang Xun didn't listen to him at all and said to himself, "I'm so stupid, I should have known that the Fourth District on a Friday was a bad idea, at least not right now. He has no ability to protect himself, what was I thinking? Maybe the Sixth Chief is right, I’m not the most suitable person at all."

    "Ah-Xun." James grabbed Zhang Xun's shoulders, looking into his close friend's eyes seriously, "It's not your fault that those bastards assaulted you, and besides, you can't protect Adam for a lifetime. He's not that weak, neither his intelligence nor his physique is weak. You can't keep him in the Lab forever."

    "No, you don't understand. I forbade Adam from training himself in any fighting or violent confrontations by using the data in his head. I was worried that if he had the ability to protect himself, I wouldn’t be able to continue controlling him." Zhang Xun said faintly.

    He didn't want to lose Adam's dependence on him. He liked the feeling of being depended on, trusted and needed.

    James paused, not knowing how to answer.

    "I still don't want him to have it..." Zhang Xun raised his head with a wry smile, "If that door was opened, I don’t know what would happen. I told the Round Table that I could tame him, but I’m not that confident."

    James sat down beside him, lowered his head for a while, and said, "I don't understand machines as well as you, but I know how powerful Eden is. Ah-Xun, even if he’s become a human, I don't trust him. Just think about how much more inferior human beings are? Eden was born because its creator was disappointed by the selfish and greedy nature of human beings. But now... we have given this nature to the original selfless sex."

    "..." Zhang Xun gave James a complicated look. Although this childhood friend of his usually looked like he had a screw loose, sometimes he would suddenly say something thought-provoking.

    "But if you believe he can bring hope to Lost Paradise, then I'm willing to give him a chance." James said, "If we really want to use him against Eden then one day you won't be able to keep an eye on him. He will always have a chance to learn those fighting skills on his own. There isn't much difference between one day and one night. As long as you have the ultimate means to limit him, then I don’t think it’s a big deal for him to learn a little self-defence.”

    Zhang Xun turned his head, looking at Adam whose breathing was calm and distant. Adam had rushed in to protect Zhang Xun desperately and even overcame the instinct that kept urging him to escape, ignoring the fact that he might be destroyed by violence. For an artificial intelligence with excess rationality, did this completely irrational response mean that Adam may really have a strong enough emotional dependence on him?

    ………………………………………………

    It turned out that the most uncomfortable time for a person is when he can feel that he has a body.

    When you’re healthy, the body seems to be non-existent and is driven by your own will, but when you’re injured or sick, you realise just how limiting a body is, feeling like you’re locked in a narrow cage with poisonous insects and beasts from which you cannot escape.

    Adam woke up with a throbbing thirst and an aching in his head. He opened his lips and felt like the taste in his mouth was very strange, and his body seemed ready to fall apart, like it had been run over by a wheel.

    He tried to sit up, only to find his hand was being pinned down.

    Zhang Xun had fallen asleep beside his bed, pressing his arm against his wrist.

    In the ticking of the clock, Adam sat quietly, looking at the sleeping mechanic. Most of the time, Zhang Xun watched him from behind the screen, but today he finally had a chance to take a closer look at his mechanic.

    There was no expression on Adam's face at this time, and the blue in his eyes was faint. He looked at Zhang Xun's profile, the bruise on the corner of his mouth and remembered that in the chaos, Zhang Xun tried to use his body to block the male humans' attacks on him. He carefully pulled out his hand and tentatively placed his fingertips on Zhang Xun's cheek.

    For a man in his thirties, Zhang Xun's skin was still very good, soft and elastic, with no wrinkles, only shallow expression lines at the corner of his eyes. Probably thanks to the fact that he hardly ever went outdoors... Zhang Xun's nose bridge wasn’t that high, but it was quite straight and his eyelashes were considered long for Asians. He poked his eyelashes with his finger and the feeling was quite interesting.

    Zhang Xun frowned, murmured, and faced the other way.

    Did his mechanic trust him so much that he even dared to sleep in front of him?

    If he wanted to kill Zhang Xun now, it would be easy, but he didn't want to do it. He also didn't want anyone else to hurt his mechanic.

    Those who hurt Zhang Xun must pay the price.

    Adam believed that if he has the ability to like something, then it should be his mechanic that he likes. Whether or not it was because he was the first human being that Adam came into contact with after his descent.

    To like someone was a wonderful feeling. It made him want to lift the corners of his mouth up and made his chest feel light.

    "Ah-Xun?" Adam called.

    Zhang Xun sat up abruptly and the sleepiness in his eyes had not yet faded away. He looked at Adam confused, "You’re awake? Are you feeling better?"

    Adam’s eyes curved, "I'm fine. How about you?"

    "I'm fine. Do you want water? I'll get some." Zhang Xun was about to stand up after speaking, but probably because he had been lying down for too long and got up too hastily, his vision turned black for a moment and his body swayed. He felt Adam grab his arm and help him stand firm. After the discomfort from his lagging blood pressure passed, he immediately saw Adam's worried eyes.

    "You haven’t dealt with your own injury yet." Adam looked at his face and even reached out to touch the corner of his mouth.

    Zhang Xun ducked back like a conditioned reflex and said embarrassedly, "It's all skin injuries. You wait a moment."

    Zhang Xun went to pour water and at the same time ordered Pan to prepare breakfast and painkillers for Adam. Zhang Xun, who hadn't rested all night, also felt a little tired. Seeing Adam's bathroom light on, he said, "You lie down for a while. I'll go get breakfast after taking a shower."

    Adam watched Zhang Xun enter the bathroom curiously and the sound of rushing water was heard. He realised that he had never seen Zhang Xun's body and for some reason felt his face become warm. He found himself imagining Zhang Xun taking off his coat and shirt, imagining running water falling on his skin that was fairer than most of the men in Lost Paradise.

    He found that he couldn’t control his increasingly colourful imagination.

    After a while, the sound of water stopped. Zhang Xun opened the door with a bath towel wrapped around his waist, wiping his wet hair with another towel and walked out. Normally, he would never let people see him like this, but around Adam he was always more relaxed.

    How strange, he should be more wary of Adam.

    Zhang Xun walked across the wooden floor with bare feet, leaving wet water stains on the floor. He opened Adam's wardrobe door, inside there were several sets of clothes he had prepared for Adam, ranging from everyday to going out. He chose a more casual cotton-linen shirt and dark trousers to wear indoors. He turned to go to the bathroom to change into them but noticed Adam staring straight at him.

    Zhang Xun thought there was something wrong with him, so he looked down and confirmed that the bath towel around his waist was well wrapped, "What's wrong?"

    Adam frowned as if confused, changed his sitting position and pulled the quilt up.

    Was it because he could see that big, scary bruise on his belly? After all, those kicks were really heavy. Zhang Xun then comforted, “This is nothing to worry about, the doctor said that there was no damage to my internal organs and it will disappear in a few days."

    Adam didn’t speak, but still stared at him.

    Thinking that Adam's reactions were probably a little slow because of the concussion, Zhang Xun didn't think anything of it and went to the bathroom to change his clothes, then went out to the cafeteria to get breakfast for the two of them. When he came back, he found Adam in the exact same position as before, as if he was in some kind of contemplation.

    "Come and eat." Zhang Xun ordered.

    With consideration for Adam's injury, Pan prepared a light and low-salt breakfast of bread, fruit and oat yoghurt. It was Summertime now, the season when fruits were at their most abundant and the logistics department had bought a lot of them and stored them in the freezer. The cold blueberries and strawberries were sprinkled on the crispy oatmeal and yoghurt, and the sour, sweet and refreshing bite made this Zhang Xun's favourite breakfast.

    In the past two years, Pan seemed to have often used this kind of trick to try to make Zhang Xun happy, especially when Zhang Xun was very worried.

    Zhang Xun boiled a pot of hot water, brewed English-style black tea in a Western porcelain teapot and poured it into his own cup to take a sip. The warm tea soothed his stomach, which was still aching after he was kicked yesterday, and relieved some of the discomfort. He massaged his stomach lightly with his hand and looked up to see Adam holding a spoon full of yoghurt cereal in one hand, staring at him motionless again.

    Zhang Xun was a little worried, shouldn't he... could the central processor in the prefrontal lobe have been kicked?... It wasn’t that it couldn't be repaired, but it would be more troublesome...

    Adam suddenly spoke, "Ah-Xun, I just gained a better understanding of my body."

    He didn't understand why Adam was suddenly mentioning this. Was it because of the pain from his injuries? "Are you hurting somewhere?" Zhang Xun asked with concern.

    "I have pain in my shoulder, lower back and left hand, but it doesn't cause me any trouble." Adam answered Zhang Xun's question seriously, "But that's not what I'm talking about."

    "Then what is it?"

    "I think I just gained a better understanding of human libido and pheromones."

    The spoon in Zhang Xun's hand fell into the bowl with a clatter.

    He never imagined that the "further understanding" Adam spoke of was referring to this...

Chapter 22 – Garbage Processing Yard (8)

    Zhang Xun lowered his head and pretended to concentrate on the photon gun design drawings sent to him by several mechanics, but really his eyes were just glued to the paper without taking in what he was looking at.

    Adam's eyes staring at him were like thorns in his back.

    After the odd conversation that morning, Adam had been following him like a dog with gauze wrapped around his head. Today was Saturday, in the Lab there were only a few workaholic mechanics and their poor assistant researchers who were still working on the weekend. Whenever they bumped into someone they would be astonished by the wounds on Zhang Xun’s face and Adam's head and ask what happened.

    Zhang Xun's standard, official answer to this was: There was a little accident at the Garbage Processing Yard.

    "Ah-Xun, do you have a boyfriend?" Adam suddenly asked from behind him.

    Zhang Xun replied angrily, "I spend all day watching over you, you really think I’d have a boyfriend?"

    "Have you had a boyfriend before?" Adam continued to ask, "I know you have a father, a good friend, and lots of subordinates, but I've never heard you talk about your romantic relationships."

    How did this AI become an emotional expert after a concussion? Zhang Xun was a little irritable, turned his head and stared at Adam who was hugging and stroking Alloy, "That’s my private business. Don’t ask about it."

    "Romantic relationships are a very important part of a human's life. Before gender separation, in order to keep replicating and continuing its own DNA, hormones produce a series of complex chemical reactions to form love. Some people say that this chemical reaction is just a by-product of sexual behavior, and some people say that love has a very important role in the replication and continuation of DNA. But no matter which statement, I agree that for most human beings, love is of great significance to a person's understanding of the world and character formation."

    "I don't need you to teach me about being a human." Zhang Xun narrowed his eyes, a little unhappy.

    Adam looked at him with concern, "I just wanted to clarify that I have never heard or perceived your romantic relationships in your words so far. In fact, based on the time you spend in the Lab, I don't think you have had a romantic relationship for a long time."

    "..."

    Adam looked Zhang Xun up and down, his expression like a mechanic looking at a broken robot, "Your appearance is good, the only downside is your lack of development, your muscles may not be in line with the aesthetics here. Your IQ should be relatively high, but since love has been separated from reproduction, this may not help you find a partner. And you are an introvert, with a certain lack of fatherly love, and on top of that, you were bullied as a teenager, making you lack trust in other humans. Maybe this is..."

    "Enough!" Zhang Xun slammed down the document in his hand and stood up suddenly, staring at him irritably, "I said don’t ask about it. Are you forgetting your place again?"

    Adam immediately said sorry and then fell silent.

    Zhang Xun squeezed his brows as if he had a headache and said after a while, "Thank you for protecting me yesterday."

    Adam blinked a few times, "But I failed."

    "For human beings, sometimes the result isn’t important." Zhang Xun raised his eyes and looked at him, raised the corner of his mouth slightly, as if he wanted to smile, but his mind was heavy on that smile and he looked a little tired, "You knew that you were at risk of being seriously injured but you still tried to protect me, even overcoming your own survival instincts. This is a very meaningful gesture for humans." He paused, then added, "But it could also be because you know that if I get seriously injured, they might give you a new mechanic, one who’s not a good 'controlling' mechanic like me, so after weighing the pros and cons, you decided to make certain sacrifices to protect me."

    Adam was stunned, as if he didn’t expect Zhang Xun's last words.

    "Or." Zhang Xun walked towards Adam, resting his hands on the armrests on both sides of the armchair that Adam was sitting on, looking at Adam with a condescending attitude. At this moment, Zhang Xun had a sharp guess in his eyes, "You deliberately encouraged me to take you to the Fourth District, and deliberately walked to the dangerous area, because you wanted me to worry. You wanted me to see you seriously injured. This would allow you to convince me to let you learn how to defend yourself."

    Adam looked at him quietly, without anger, panic, or shame, "but I don't need to go around in such a big circle to convince you. I can practise secretly by myself."

    "You know that if you want to gain my trust, you can't lie to me. So all decisions have to be made of my own accord." Zhang Xun's tone was still calm, almost as calm as Adam's, so calm that it lacked human breath.

    For a while, the two were silent. The air between them was pulled tightly, as if it were about to break at any moment.

    Zhang Xun suddenly smiled slightly, the smile almost reaching his eyes, "But it doesn't matter. To control and be controlled, this is the essence of human relationships. You know human beings very well, Adam."

    Adam finally said, "To encourage you I went to the Fourth District on purpose. On the one hand, it was out of curiosity, on the other hand, I really hoped to cause some riots, which would make you reconsider letting me learn self-defence. But after meeting those five hostile humans , I found that I couldn't think as usual. Nothing was under my control, except for the last sense of self-preservation, I didn't control anything."

    His tone was still calm, his expression didn't even change, but his eyes were subtly sad.

    Zhang Xun straightened up and looked down at him. After thinking for a moment, he said, "I can allow you to learn martial arts, provided that I have more means to restrict you."

    Adam was a little surprised.

    Why did Zhang Xun still agree after seeing through him?

    "Although you were trying to manipulate me, your argument has some truth. I'm not a warrior, and I can't even protect myself in certain situations, let alone protect you." Zhang Xun said, taking a bag out from his jacket pocket. Inside was a diamond-shaped, chip-like, metal device with several vertical and horizontal lines on it, a hole in the middle, and a very thin nano 'wire' behind it, "I will implant this tracker on your forehead. It will allow me to know where you are and can monitor your brain wave activity and even read your data when you’re feeling strong emotions, and I can see everything you can see through this camera hole. When necessary, I can activate the standby function through this silk probe. There will be a weak electric current here, which will temporarily overload your mechanical brain, causing you to enter a state of paralysis for up to five seconds. This overload won't cause damage to your central cognitive modules or your long and short term memory, nor will it affect your human lobes, but it won’t feel good. Any attempt to take this device out will trigger the paralysing effect, which will put you in a standby state, and you will only be able to wake up after I open your skull and unlock it manually."

    Adam blinked a few more times, as if processing what he said, "You’ll know where I am? How will you locate me?"

    "The signal can be picked up within the range of Lost Paradise. Any time you leave the range of my control, the standby program will be automatically triggered and I’ll receive an alert." Zhang Xun paused and continued, "You don't have to ask anything more, you just need to decide, will you choose to keep things as they are, or choose to have self-defence or even attack skills, but be implanted with this device?"

    Adam thought for a while and replied, "I choose the latter. "

    ……………………………………………………

    On Monday morning, Diego, who had just done a hundred push-ups, was pulling up his vest and wiping off the sweat. When he turned his head he saw Zhang Xun and Adam slowly walking towards the gate of the garbage processing yard.

    He widened his eyes.

    "You two... did you get into a fight?" He looked back and forth between the two who had bruises on their faces, "No, it can't be this serious at your level. And what's that thing on the robot's forehead? New Jewelry?"

    Adam reached up and touched the diamond-shaped device implanted in his forehead.

    Zhang Xun held up a bottle of Russian Tsarskaya whisky that the hunters had brought back recently, "I brought you a gift."

    When Diego saw the bottle, he couldn't see anything else and his eyes seemed to pop out with green light, "Holy fuck...Where did you get it?!"

    "I have my sources." Zhang Xun smiled slightly, "But it’s not for free, I have a request."

    Diego’s salivating expression immediately subsided and he looked at him suspiciously, "Request? How can I, a garbage dump manager, help you?"

    "I checked your information. You used to be the head of the Sixth Hunting Regiment. During a hunting operation, the whole group lost contact. About two years later, you suddenly appeared in Lost Paradise. After a series of evaluations, although you could no longer enter the hunting group, the guards still reserved a position in the military for you. It's a pity that you started drinking too much after that and you couldn't recover. In the end, you were sent here by the military to be a manager because of drinking and making trouble. But when you were the head of the regiment, you once won the championship of the fighting competition that’s held every three years. You’re proficient in boxing, free fighting, muay thai, taekwondo and other fighting techniques. You were known as the human weapon"

    The more Zhang Xun spoke, the darker Diego's face became, "...So what? You want me to beat someone up for you?"

    Zhang Xun shook his head, "No, I want you to be Adam's training partner."

    "Huh?" Diego looked at Adam, who was smiling in a distorted way because of his swollen cheeks, "You really agreed? Damn, this kid really has a knack for convincing people."

    Adam laughed without saying a word.

    When Diego reached out to take the vodka, Zhang Xun suddenly withdrew his hand slightly, "However, please don't tell anyone else about this. I can get this alcohol for you every month from now on until Adam completes his training."

    "Okay okay okay! Whatever you say goes!"

    So Adam's training was secretly carried out every day in the garbage processing yard. While the huge machinery roared and kept sorting, Zhang Xun would be sitting under the pergola, being fanned by the old electric fan while reading the proposals submitted by some mechanics and the applications and design drawings that needed to be approved, or drawing designs for his own ideas. James had said that recently, the hunts had been getting more and more dangerous, probably because the god descent program had created more hostility and fear towards them in the ordinary world, and the hunting group that went out last month were attacked by the robot soldiers before they even left the range of the Rocky Mountains. This siege led to the Round Table's decision to suspend all hunting activities, but this wasn't a long-term solution. Zhang Xun thought about improving the body armour worn by the members of the hunting regiment, and installing a disruptive device to confuse the robot soldiers' identification of gender characteristics, perhaps reducing the chance of them being detected.

    Adam gave him a lot of help with this. After all, the identification system of those robot soldiers was designed by Eden.

    He wondered what it must feel like to help others deal with himself...

    He raised his head and saw Diego taking off his shirt, revealing his strong bronze skin, sweating profusely but with an excited face to confront his opponent. Adam, on the other hand, was soaked in sweat, his blond hair stuck to his cheeks, but his blue eyes were narrowed as he lowered his body and moved with slow steps, looking for an opportunity to attack.

    Zhang Xun still remembered on the first day when Diego started training him, Diego had made Adam hit the sandbag and the sandbag swung back and knocked Adam out with a nosebleed... But now, he could predict or even dodge Diego’s punches, and occasionally counterattacked with a punch or two.

    Adam's physical condition was very good. The original owner of the body had received plenty of strength and endurance training, so it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to implement the knowledge in his head now.

    But now Zhang Xun had new concerns.

    The one-month deadline was approaching, and he and Adam had to prepare for a full-scale psychological assessment.

Chapter 23 – The Fruit Of Wisdom (1)

    The hot sun scorched the rust-smelling metal and in the open space surrounded garbage stacked as high as buildings, Adam stood with his centre of gravity lowered and looked intently at the tall and dangerous man in front of him. He lowered his head slightly, his eyes sharp and calm, like a cheetah waiting for an opportunity. Fine beads of sweat spread over his slightly tanned skin and slid down the metal of his right arm, soaking the vest on his body.

    On the other side, Diego didn’t dare to relax at all. This AI ​​was progressing so fast that it made even him feel nervous. He had been practising boxing since he was five years old and had won the crown title of the champion of Lost Paradise for so many years. Even if he was now an alcoholic and had neglected his training for the past two years, he was certain that there wouldn’t be many men in Lost Paradise who could beat him without using weapons.

    But this robot, in just a week, had already figured out his punches and could dodge more than half of his attacks.

    This made him a little... flustered, though he would die before admitting this.

    "What are you waiting for? Waiting for your mechanic nanny to feed you milk?!" Diego goaded.

    Adam, however, remained motionless, watching his movements. By irritating the opponent, you can greatly increase the chance of the opponent making a mistake.

    Just as he saw an opening in Diego's left side and was about to rush forward to attack, he suddenly heard Zhang Xun calling him, "Adam."

    Adam immediately stopped his steps and turned around without hesitation.

    "Hey! Where are you going?!" Diego couldn't believe it. He faked an opening just now in order to teach a lesson to this robot who thought he was smarter than him, a boxing champion, but his opponent just flung him aside and left?!

    "My mechanic is calling me." Adam replied naturally.

    "Don't get distracted during practice! You can only leave after the round." Diego said angrily, "You’re showing great disrespect to your opponent!"

    Adam thought for a while, and then said clearly, "Oh, I'm sorry." He continued to run to Zhang Xun in the pergola without looking back.

    Diego rolled his eyes, wiped the sweat from his forehead, took out a cigarette from his trouser pocket and put it in his mouth, "Just like a dog."

    "Ah-Xun, did you call me?"

    Zhang Xun raised his head and saw Adam, sweating profusely, as if he had fallen into the water and been swimming in circles. He reached out and handed him a towel with some disgust. Adam took the towel and quickly wiped the sweat off his face and head.

    As he moved, Zhang Xun said, "Next week the Security Advisor will bring someone to give you a psychological assessment."

    Adam said, "Does the psychological assessment refer to personality and mental tests?"

    "Yes and no." Zhang Xun said after a pause, "You should be familiar with empathy simulators, right? As far as I know, this kind of thing has been widely used in psychotherapy and the judicial system."

    Adam made an ‘oh’ sound, not very surprised. The so-called empathy simulator was a product that has only appeared in the past five decades. By briefly stimulating several brain regions, including the hippocampus, the subject would lose any memory of the test. After the subject loses their memory of the test subject they are then put into a half-dreaming state by injecting a carefully measured drug. The subject is then hypnotised with an empathy simulator so the subject thinks they are in a different situation and then the subject's reactions and actions are observed.

    Some were like a very real dream.

    Often the results of these simulators would be jaw-dropping, with many people doing things they thought they would never do under certain environmental conditions. Some people would shock strangers with a lethal electric current under the instigation of a virtual "superior", some people would not hesitate to leave their loved ones to escape when their lives are in danger, animal activists who couldn't bear to eat animal meat were the first to eat human flesh when they were stranded on a desert island and activists who were passionate about charitable causes and fighting for human rights became smugglers and abusers after gaining political power...

    At present, the judicial systems of many countries in the ordinary world adhered to the principle of human innocence: that is, if a person commits a crime that more than 60% of people would do under similar circumstances, then this kind of behaviour cannot be considered a crime, that's just human nature. Human nature should not be punished. Therefore, in the judicial system, when a criminal commits a crime under certain pressure, such as intentionally killing others in order to save his own life, or being forced to become an accomplice in a robbery due to group or community pressure, etc. empathy simulators can be requested. The court will randomly select ten citizens to enter the simulator anonymously, and as long as six people make the same choice as the defendant, the defendant can be acquitted.

    "So Lost Paradise also has an empathy simulator," Adam said. "Do your courts follow the principle of human innocence?"

    "No...they use that thing to test who is a loyal warrior and who might be a spy or traitor..." Zhang Xun's tone was filled with disgust, as if he hated that kind of thing very much.

    "You don't like empathy simulators?" Adam asked.

    Zhang Xun thought for a moment and replied, "It's not that I don't like it. In some ways, it helps humans understand themselves and others... But I don't like people's abuse of it. Humans are imperfect, so we use morals and laws to govern our behaviour, and we want to believe that we’re good people. This machine is like ripping off that layer of fig leaf that is already fragile and showing people the ugliest side of themselves. This isn't good for humans at all. I know a lot of people who have entered that machine and ended up being wracked with guilt for things they never really did, and even suffered from depression and anxiety...and..." Zhang Xun paused and continued, "I sometimes worry that I’m in an empathy simulator right now, and you’re just an illusion they planted into my brain..."

    "Brain in a vat argument. A brain that’s in a vat and infused with all kinds of false information has no way of knowing that it's in a vat." Adam nodded conclusively, "There's really no way to confirm it."

    "What are you two mumbling about?" Diego came over and took out a bottle of cold beer from the cooler box and muttered as he pulled it open, "Every time I listen to the two of you it's like listening to aliens talking, I don't understand shit."

    Both simultaneously decided to ignore him.

    Adam continued to ask Zhang Xun, "Will you also be connected to the simulator?"

    "No, my authority level is relatively high, they will only connect me to a polygraph and perform general psychological tests on me." Zhang Xun paused, reciting the information that James helped him covertly inquire from his father, "As for you, according to the test process report they submitted to the Headquarters and the Round Table, they’ll leave all the memories you have as a human from this past month, but temporarily erase the memory of taking the test and two days before that, then replace it with three days of simulated memory and then test your choices and reactions. I guess they want to know if you're going to run away when you get the chance, or pass information about Lost Paradise to Eden, or use some other means to destroy Lost Paradise."

    Adam nodded, "I understand."

    "In this machine, you can't lie. So..." Zhang Xun stared at Adam, "Do you think you can pass?"

    Adam shrugged, "I guess I have a pass rate of about 63%."

    "...How did you come up with such a specific number?" Diego ridiculed beside him.

    "I'm currently researching how to quantify and calculate my various emotional indicators, combined with my rational thinking..."

    "Stop, stop, I don't want to know..." Diego raised his hand as if he was defeated and quickly walked away from the pergola and went back to his own house to watch a video.

    Zhang Xun watched him leave, his face still gloomy, "Only sixty-three..."

    "More than 50% is already a good chance." Adam walked in front of him, squatted down and looked up at his mechanic, "If I don't pass, will they neutralise me?"

    "Not necessarily, you’re too precious after all. Maybe they will brainwash you in a harsher way and turn you into a real slave, but one thing is for sure , I wouldn't be your mechanic anymore, they would find another mechanic to manage you."

    "If that's the case, my chance of passing will increase to 83%." Adam finished, grinning, his teeth white and straight.

    Zhang Xun raised his eyebrows, "Where did the 20% come from?"

    "I would rather be neutralised than have someone other than you as my mechanic." Adam said seriously, "For you, I will work harder to pass the test."

    Zhang Xun's heart skipped a beat.

    No... Adam's meaning was probably that if it was another mechanic, maybe he would be brutally tortured, so he would rather die than that. It certainly couldn’t be because of his strong emotional dependence on Zhang Xun...

    While Zhang Xun tried to convince himself rationally, the corners of his mouth couldn’t help but twitch upwards.

    ………………………………………………

    That night, Zhang Xun didn’t return to his own house, just like the past two weeks, but fell asleep in the observation room next to Adam's room. He lay on the old sofa, eyes open in the dark, watching the intricate twists and turns of metal pipes that sometimes rumbled overhead. Some were like intestines, some were like earthworms.

    Sometimes he would imagine that that Lab was a giant toad, and he was living in the toad’s guts.

    The damage caused to the Lab by the bombing was halfway repaired and given their current financial situation being tight, he and Adam found a lot of recyclable materials in the garbage processing yard in the past two weeks. This solved their immediate needs, but there were still a lot of places that needed to be repaired urgently and a lot of projects waiting for him to plan, but he couldn't think about any of this, all his thoughts and energy were on Adam and the psychological evaluation the day after tomorrow.

    Had he succeeded in turning Adam into a person? Did Adam really have human feelings? Would empathy simulators work on an AI brain? If it didn't work, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

    But at this moment, a thumping sound came from the other side of the one-way mirror, which had been closed for most of the past two weeks. The first time he thought he was hearing things, until the second wave of beating came. He sat up frowning, grabbed the remote control on the coffee table and pressed a button.

    The originally black, single-sided mirror lit up and became a "window", and Adam was leaning on the window, the mechanical right hand was banging on it and the other left hand was waving in the air.

    Was Adam calling him?

    Zhang Xun looked at his watch, it was 2am... What was he doing?

    Zhang Xun sighed, lifted the blanket and opened the side door connecting the two rooms, "Adam, it’s the middle of the night, why aren’t you sleeping?..."

    "Ah-Xun, I want to give you a gift." Adam said, and gave a rusty, old, metal cigarette case to Zhang Xun. The case looked like it was picked up from the garbage processing yard.

   Zhang Xun took it suspiciously and saw Adam smiling brightly, looking forward with anticipation, and wondered what he was planning. Waking him up at two in the middle of the night just to give him a present? Couldn't it wait until tomorrow morning?

    He opened the case anyway and discovered the locket necklace that Adam had found on their first day at the garbage processing yard. He opened the small locket on the necklace and found an old-fashioned chip that had become obsolete eighty years ago inside.

    "I got this from the garbage processing yard. It's in pretty good condition, but due to limited memory space I couldn't enter all the system data I designed. I just picked a few of the newer technologies that you might be interested in, such as the uploading and merging of consciousness, nanorobot design drawings, artificial intelligence language decoding... But I don't have time to give you all the details, I can only give you some key information and thinking patterns."

    Zhang Xun had difficulty absorbing what was in front of him, "You’re giving your technology... to me?"

    Adam nodded, "Yes. I think you'll like it. Some of these are core technologies and would be difficult for the hunting groups to obtain. Sorry, I haven't given you any information on weapons development or biochemical research that might threaten the ordinary world, and I don't think you would be interested in those either."

    Zhang Xun's mind was turned upside down and his throat was bitter. His voice came out a little hoarse, "Why...why are you giving me this now?" What's more, it was inside this necklace.

    He remembered what Adam had told him before: the story of the medieval lovers exchanging hair lockets.

    "When I go into the empathy simulator, they'll erase my memories from two days before that day. That is, I won't remember anything that happens from tomorrow, but I hoped I would remember that I gave you a gift, so I used the mini computer we picked up at the garbage processing yard to complete all the input overnight." Adam looked at him faintly, wondering if it was because of the dim light, but his eyes were very tender and affectionate, "If I fail the test, at least you’ll have a… memento"

   

Chapter 24 - The Fruit of Wisdom (2)

    Zhang Xun felt something sour and soft soaking in his chest. He looked at the necklace in his hand and tried his best to keep his expression calm.

    Heaven knows how much he didn't want to lose his cool.

    This was the best gift he had received since Alloy. He took a deep breath, barely suppressing his excitement and said to Adam in the smoothest tone he could, "You brought back that mini-computer secretly?"

    "Ah, yes, sorry. But rest assured, all the network interfaces of this mini-computer are broken. I made a data cable myself to complete the transmission, so I had no chance to do anything illegal with it. Pan can testify for me, it was watching me the whole time.”

    At this time, Pan suddenly said, "Apologies, Zhang Xun. Because it was a low-risk violation, I originally planned to wait until you wake up tomorrow morning and then tell you about Adam bringing back the mini-computer in secret."

    "It's okay, I checked it at the processing plant, I know that mini-computer is no more than a toy." Zhang Xun said absentmindedly, his eyes still looking at the thing in his hands. He wasn't even sure what he was saying, "But you can't bring anything back in the future."

    "Okay." Adam took the mini-computer out of his trousers pocket and handed it to Zhang Xun, "I promise I won't do it again."

    Zhang Xun reached out with his hand mechanically, but instead of taking the mini machine, he held Adam's hand, gripping it very hard.

    Adam raised his eyes and met Zhang Xun's.

    "Don't be afraid, I won't let anything happen to you." Zhang Xun said to Adam word by word, with a firm tone, as if nothing could change this promise, "I’m your mechanic, now and in the future."

    ……………………………………………………

    The door of the Lab opened slowly. Zhang Xun appeared in the dim light behind the door.

    The light of dawn shone down from the doorway, illuminating his clean face and a pair of still-water eyes. He was wearing a neat, high-necked shirt, an ironed, camel-colour, dark-patterned suit vest, and a mechanic's uniform jacket of the same colour. His single-sided microscopic mirror was pinned to his jacket pocket, leaving a metal chain hanging from the outside. The necklace Adam gave him was inside his clothes, clinging to his chest.

    His whole person seems to be one with the Lab behind him, which was filled with metallic lustre and looks like a huge, spliced ​​castle. That metallic appearance exuded a sense of being behind the times, but the most advanced technology of Lost Paradise was wrapped under that old facade.

    Julio Fernandez exaggeratedly took three steps back when he saw him, and said in shock, "Where did this international superstar come from?!"

    Zhang Xun glanced at him lazily, "Don't make trouble, today is a big day."

    The mechanics and researchers who passed by him knew that the one month acclimation time limit was up, and today was the day for Adam's psychological evaluation, so he had to face the upcoming test in the best condition.

    If Adam didn't pass, he had his plan B.

    Last night, Hans Guzberg, one of the most authoritative psychiatrists in Lost Paradise, had dinner with a few colleagues at the Italian restaurant in Third District then returned to his detached, uptown villa in the Third District. With the lack of land in Lost Paradise, a small, three-story building would often crowd in four hundred people. Only the elites had the privilege of living in a single-family building.

    After Dr. Guzberg entered the house, his partner, Mr. Sperling, took his hat and chatted with him about trivial things that had happened at the school where the latter taught. When Dr. Guzberg made himself a cup of hot tea after the meal, as per his daily habit, Mr. Sperling remembered a letter from the Psychological Assessment Society delivered by the courier during the day.

    Without doubting him, Dr. Guzberg took the letter into the study, neatly cut the edge of the envelope with a letter opener and a few photos fell out and fluttered onto his desk.

    Dr. Guzberg's mouth was slightly open and his body was stiff, unable to move.

    The several Chief Directors of the Psychological Association had different areas of expertise. Dr. Guzberg specialised in topics such as involuntary consciousness, sleep and hypnosis. With the help of a series of new equipment and medicines, his hypnotism was so masterful that even the most vigilant and self-conscious individuals could be influenced.

    When in a state of hypnosis, people won’t remember anything they’ve done, or anything that was done to them. When you have complete control over a person, when you can treat them like lab rats and do experiments on them that the Ethics Department would never allow, when they obey orders no matter what you ask them to do, and they would have no memories of any of this... human greed and cruelty could easily leak out.

    Those photos were taken very recently, one just yesterday, in which he had used "hypnotherapy" on a German General whom he grew up with as an ostensible friend, but whom he actually hated and envied. The usually bright and neat General was almost unrecognisable in the photo...

    That photo would make anyone gasp if they saw it.

    If any of these photos were leaked out, Guzberg's usual stern, serious, and even feudal image would collapse, his doctor's licence would be revoked and he might even be trialled in court and sent to prison, or even more likely to be exiled from Lost Paradise.

    He would be ruined.

    The doctor slumped on the chair and took out a piece of paper from the envelope with trembling hands...

    Not only Guzberg, but Captain Sistine had also received a letter... There was no doubt that these letters had been sent by Zhang Xun.

    He knew he was playing with fire. While having this information in his hands could allow him to control these people, it also exposed the skills and abilities he possessed.

    But he had to take a risk. He may have had doubts before, but ever since that night two days ago, all his doubts had gone out the window.

    He created Adam and he would never give up the mechanic's seat to anyone else.

    He had to admit that the information his bugs had brought back had shocked him. It turned out that people have so many faces, and the difference between them was so big that it can even be described as completely different. But these people could switch between so many sides and it was even difficult to determine which side was the real one.

    His understanding of human beings may not be as comprehensive as Adam's...

    Zhang Xun's request to them was very simple, he told them that he had something in his hands that could destroy them and told them not to make things difficult for him and Adam, and at the same time... warned them to stop any delusional ideas of attempting anything outrageous.

    It was true that Zhang Xun didn’t like these tactics. It was too similar to Eden's way of doing things, to peep at people's most dirty secrets and exploit them... But he also wasn’t a pushover who would let those who were inexplicably targeting them do whatever they want.

    Several cars came rolling in through the dust. One was a dark green jeep from the military, the other was a black, antique, Mercedes-Benz, and there was also an ordinary car with a few escorts on motorcycles.

    Sistine got out of the car, his expression still gloomy but there was a subtle lack of arrogance. Guzberg was a better performer. If Zhang Xun wasn’t in the know, he would never have guessed that the other party was being threatened. The third scholar was there to test Zhang Xun, so Zhang Xun wasn’t too worried about dealing with him.

    Zhang Xun smiled gracefully and calmly at the people who came and shook hands with each of them in turn, "Welcome."

    Sistine looked at him as if he wanted to rip his head off.

    Zhang Xun honestly quite liked the feeling that others couldn't beat him to death when they were unhappy with him.

    Several soldiers who had followed Sistine, together pushed the one-man-high cylindrical machine into the Lab. Adam was waiting for them in the room. Since his brain was largely mechanical, his short-term memory couldn’t be erased simply with drugs and hypnosis. They needed Zhang Xun to manually set the memory recovery node.

    Under the eyes of several mechanic witnesses, Zhang Xun carefully cut the seam of Adam's scalp, opened the skull, connected several circuits to the mechanical brain and set up a short-term memory recovery and storage program through the computer. He set the node in the precise place and locked the memory for two days before. After connecting all the lines, Zhang Xun had to leave with the psychiatrist. Before leaving, he glanced at Adam, his eyes were deep but quiet, like a mountain at the bottom of the ocean.

    Adam also smiled back at him, smiling unreservedly.

    Everything would be fine.

    Zhang Xun's psychological evaluation would be carried out in the observation room next door. The psychiatrist's name was Patty, who was a rarity in the Psychological Association as he had a reserved temperament and didn’t like to associate with other professors or doctors. When Zhang Xun went to the New Yale University in the Third District to seek advice from the Vice President of the Psychological Association about the emotional reactions that Adam might have after the descent, he had seen this silent man in his forties. At that time, Patty was sitting alone in the university cafeteria eating a simple bento, like a silent shadow. If he hadn't seen the chief badge of the Psychological Association on his chest, he would have thought that he might be an ordinary lecturer or cleaning staff.

    "How do you want to test me?" Zhang Xun asked politely after the two took their seats in the armchairs facing each other. He had also sent out bugs to monitor this Patty, but apparently this man lived a rare, consistent, ascetic-like routine... He would wake up at the same time every day, go to bed at the same time, and read two hours of books before going to bed. He had seven sets of clothes in total, just from Monday to Sunday. Every week, he would wash his clothes on Sunday nights, have a glass of gin on Wednesday nights and go to a restaurant for a roast chicken on Tuesday nights.

    This made him awestruck...

    Patty took out a dozen psychological test questions from his briefcase and put them in front of Zhang Xun, "I can give you these questions, and I know you will definitely pass, because Commander Zhang's son can't be a dangerous person. You and I both know this is a waste of time."

    Zhang Xun raised his eyebrows slightly, he didn’t expect that the first sentence the other party would say to him would be something like this.

    Patty looked up, his gaze behind the lenses was elusive.

    Zhang Xun sat up slightly and met the other person's scrutinising eyes without flinching, "But the Round Table requires you to test me. Zhang Shuo is my father, but that doesn't give me any privileges."

    "No privileges?" Patty shook his head with a low laugh, "No, privilege will always exist, as long as there are people, there is class, and there is privilege."

    Zhang Xun tilted his head slightly, looking at the scholar who was older than him, "As a person born in an unprivileged family, do you know this very well?”

    Zhang Xun had investigated the backgrounds of all those who would be participating in the psychological assessment, and he knew that Patty’s father had escaped from Southeast Asia to Lost Paradise. Even now, there was still a small number of men under strict surveillance in the ordinary world. A considerable number of those men were good-looking and were kept like some kind of rare animal. Their mistresses would dress them up in exquisite clothes and jewellery and show them off to each other, just like they do with their new cars, famous dogs, and mansions and these men would try their best to please their mistresses. They would spend a lot of time every day exercising, maintaining their appearance, studying what their mistress likes and dislikes, and even using all kinds of secret methods to compete for their mistress' favour to survive.

    Patty's father was one of these "boyfriends", and Patty was the product of his affair with a housekeeper. After the incident, in order to avoid being sent to a "sanatorium" by the angry mistress, he fled to Lost Paradise with Patty, who was a baby at the time.

    In Lost Paradise, there weren’t many men born from women, and the increasingly extreme hatred of women and artificial intelligence had also caused these individual children of natural birth to be discriminated against and bullied to a considerable extent. It was conceivable that Patty, who came to Lost Paradise, didn’t feel at home here. On the contrary, his experience growing up was full of ups and downs.

    But even so, he still climbed to where he was now by relying on his ingenuity.

    Patty wasn’t offended or angered and he looked at Zhang Xun very calmly. Those eyes seemed to be able to see all the electrical activity in his cerebral cortex through his skull.

    For the first time, Zhang Xun felt that he had met an opponent.

    A true opponent.

    But Patty didn't say anything more and pushed the test paper to him.

    Zhang Xun breathed a sigh of relief and immediately picked up the pen and began to fill it in. He was all too familiar with this kind of psychological evaluation. In order to participate in the god descent program, he had to perform a psychological evaluation like this once a month. Although the questions would be different every time, he had long known the hidden purpose behind these exam questions and knew how to give the most standard answer.

    Two hours later, he completed the test paper. Patty picked up another psychological questionnaire and asked him a few questions orally, to which Zhang Xun responded fluently. Patty quickly recorded on his own form and then sealed all the test papers and record forms.

    "Your psychological assessment is completed." Patty said, standing up, "but Adam's test may take a while longer to finish."

    "Thank you." Zhang Xun smiled decently and amiably, and took the initiative to reach out to him to shake hands, "I’m looking forward to discussing more with you."

    Patty shook his hand. At the moment of letting go, Patty suddenly smiled oddly and said, "In today's world, information is power. The more information a person has, the more power they have, and the sooner it is seen as a threat. A wise person should know how to hide his power."

    After speaking, he turned around and left regardless of Zhang Xun's reaction.

 

Chapter 25 - The Fruit of Wisdom (3)

    The corridor on the fourth floor of the Lab was like a huge and tortuous pipe. Sensor light bulbs that would only light up with sound and movement, hung from the vaulted ceiling. The dim light illuminated a silent figure sitting on a bench.

    James followed Fernandez out of the elevator and saw Zhang Xun sitting on the padded bench outside the door of Adam’s observation room, looking down at the tablet in his arms and using a pen to write and draw on the screen.

    "You're not going to sit here all day, are you?" Fernandez made a fuss. "I heard this simulation will last until ten o'clock in the evening. Do you plan to sit here all day without eating or drinking?"

    Zhang Xun raised his head and was slightly surprised to see James, "Why are you here?"

    "Today is a 'big day' for you and Adam, how could I not come and see~" James joked.

    Zhang Xun rolled his eyes, not wanting to pay attention to the other party's ridicule, "Are you here to sponge a meal? Don't worry, I’ve already told Pan not to cook you dark dishes anymore, you can go directly to the cafeteria."

    James smiled dryly, "I wouldn't dare to eat in the cafeteria without you..."

    "Lieutenant James, I apologise again for the fried broccoli with oranges last time." Pan's sincere and magnetic voice sounded in the air, "Please rest assured, in the future I'll prepare food that suits your taste more."

    James turned pale when he heard this and quickly raised his hands towards a camera in the air, "Don't, don't, don't! I was wrong, Brother Pan! I shouldn't have complained to Ah-Xun!"

    Zhang Xun laughed a few times and asked, "Pan, how’s the situation in the room?"

    "Lieutenant Sistine is resting on Adam's bed and Dr. Guzberg is watching the readings displayed on the simulator screen." Pan replied.

    "How is Adam's condition?"

    "From the physical readings, Adam's heart rate increased significantly for a while half an hour ago, and the secretion of his sweat glands increased, probably because he encountered a stressor in the virtual reality, but the readings have already started stabilising.”

    Zhang Xun sighed. Throughout the day, Adam's heart rate increased several times and he didn't know what kind of situations had been set up in the simulated environment. He suspected he would appear in the simulator too, and just hoped that those people hadn’t set him up to be a jerk...

    Aside from that, the last thing Patty said to him earlier had annoyed him. Under the bug's monitoring, he determined that the other two hadn’t mentioned his "little tricks" to Patty, but Patty had guessed something. Was it based on the looks, language and behaviour of those two people? Or according to his own behaviour?

    The taciturn psychologist gave him an oddly creepy feeling, quite different from the well-managed comfort he usually had when talking to other psychiatrists.

    Fernandez looked at the door curiously. As a scientific madman who had deeper feelings for artificial machines than people, Adam was like a legendary relic. Every mechanic wanted to take a look at him, and preferably to say a few words and ask some questions... It was a pity that Zhang Xun kept Adam very close so even his deputy didn't have the chance to chat with Adam. With some lament, he said, "If Adam doesn't pass, will I never have a chance to talk to the greatest invention in the world?"

    "He will pass." Zhang Xun's tone was beyond doubt.

    "If you’re so confident, why are you still sitting here?"

    Zhang Xun glanced at Fernandez and said arrogantly, "I want to."

    Since Zhang Xun was unwilling to leave the fourth floor no matter what, James had to follow Fernandez to the Lab's cafeteria for dinner in fear (fortunately, Pan didn't put jalapeños in his curry rice), and on the way back he pulled out a pork burrito for Zhang Xun. Fernandez casually chatted with Zhang Xun for a while, then went back to the first floor to tinker with his new semi-automatic "human weapon", Oracle23. Zhang Xun absently-mindedly nibbled on the burrito, while James held a can of beer and chatted while drinking, "We're going out hunting next month."

    Zhang Xun paused for a second, frowning, "Haven’t all hunting activities recently been suspended? The new North American server has almost been completed and a large number of robot soldiers have been allowed to enter by the Canadian government. Even if you’re only active around the Rocky Mountains, the risk is too great."

    "The last air bomb strike destroyed the natural environment around here, we don't have enough wood and a lot of the army’s damaged fighter planes still lack necessary parts. Plus, we finally got in touch with the Russian arms dealers again, the Round Table wants more weapons, and also wants to find an opportunity to inquire about the situation in several other refugee countries. After all, the situation is getting more and more tense and isolation isn’t the way to go.” James crushed the empty beer can, took out a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth, but didn't light it, just held it for the taste of the tobacco. He knew that Zhang Xun would not allow anyone to smoke in the lab to avoid a fire.

    Zhang Xun looked at him worriedly, "How many groups does the Round Table plan to send out?"

    "Only our group this time. The fewer people there are, the harder it is to be discovered."

    It was too dangerous... Zhang Xun felt more and more that the balance of power in the Round Table seemed to have changed slightly, from the passive policy of self-preservation in the past, to becoming more and more radical and aggressive.

    "Before you go, I can probably make the bulletproof suit I told you about last time." Zhang Xun thought about all the preparations he could do for James, "I can use bugs to help you find your way. They can tell you as soon as they find a trace of the robot soldiers."

    "Okay, okay, I only mentioned it in passing, it's not the first time I've led a group out."

    "The situation is different now, you have to be careful!" Zhang Xun lowered his voice, as if afraid of being overheard, "Last week I was asked by the Round Table to test and evaluate the 7th regiment's neutralizer program, and I learned something: the last time the 7th regiment went out the robot soldiers tried to capture them and in the end three people were caught. The captain started the prisoner confirmation procedure in time, but only the neutralizers on two people were successfully activated, the neutralizer on the remaining one had a communication failure. The Round Table suppressed the report on this matter and only said that all three people had died."

    In order to prevent hunters from being captured by Eden and extracting information about Lost Paradise, a "neutralizer" was implanted in the neck aorta of every member of the army, including members of the hunting regiment. If a member was captured by the robot soldiere, the member could choose to activate the neutralizer in his body and the micro-explosion would destroy the aorta and the captured person would die of shock in a short time due to a massive hemorrhage. If the captive didn’t activate this themselves, the captain could activate the captive's neutralizer through the "captive confirmation program” carried on his person. If the captain was captured, three other team members were required to activate the neutralizer by simultaneously starting the captive confirmation program. But because of fear of being controlled by Eden, they dared not use satellite signals to activate the neutralizer, they could only use electromagnetic waves to control the signal. But because of this, the neutralizer had a limited range and if that range was exceeded, it couldn’t be activated, even if the prisoner was confirmed. After each hunt, if the hunting party had decreased in size, the Round Table would check the recorder video and member record sheet for each person. If a situation occurred where a prisoner was taken alive because the team didn’t confirm the prisoner in time, or if the captain or team members confirmed the prisoner for malicious reasons, the entire hunting group would be court martialed. It could eventually lead to the death penalty or being brainwiped and exiled.

    Most of the time, the captives would start the neutralisation process themselves, because everyone knew how miserable it would be after being caught by Eden. Eden didn’t use torture to force out information, like humans did, but instead it used "painless" methods to directly stimulate the captive's brain and the captive would have no way to lie or stay silent, but these methods would usually cause irreversible damage to the brain. After extracting all the information, Eden would castrate the captive whose personality had been completely destroyed, and then send him to the "sanatorium".

    But even so, neutralisation failures would occasionally happen. For example, ten years ago, a hunting group led by Diego went out of contact. No one knew whether the whole group had been captured or if the whole group had been wiped out, and no one knew how many neutralizers were activated. Fortunately, at that time, the god descent plan was only known to a small number of mechanics in the Round Table and the Lab, so it wouldn’t be leaked. After Diego came back, he was also sent to the empathy simulator and underwent a series of complex assessments to confirm that he hadn’t been captured and hadn’t rebelled before he was left behind.

    In recent years, because Lost Paradise has been in a state of dormancy, it had formed a certain degree of coexistence with the surrounding Canada and the United States. There were also fewer robot soldiers near the Rocky Mountains, so there was almost no need to activate the neutralisation devices. But after the latest bombing, it was clear that the robot sokdiers were once again trying to capture people.

    James looked at him in amazement, "What?! The robot soldiers haven't tried to take a live prisoner for a long time! And how could the neutralizer have a communication failure?"

    "I confirmed that the device itself wasn’t the problem. I suspect that Eden has developed some new method that can block the signal sent by the confirmation device to the neutralizer." Zhang Xun looked solemn, "In any case, the hunter was captured alive. With Eden's methods, it must already know about the god descent plan. From now on it will try to capture or destroy all the members of Lost Paradise, because it won’t know which one is Adam."

    James rubbed his hair irritably, "Damn, what the hell is Eden trying to do?!"

    Eden needed a foreign enemy in order to maintain stability... It needed Lost Paradise, but it couldn't allow Lost Paradise to escape its control, so it wanted to capture it, and it needed to know what Lost Paradise had done with its servers.

    "Anyway, take the bugs with you and retreat as soon as you find signs of the robot soldiers, and don't try to fight them." Zhang Xun pursed his lips, "I'll go talk to my dad, it's really not a good time to go out... "

    He and James both knew that the probability of persuading Zhang Shuo was slim...Even if James was his student, Zhang Shuo would never show favouritism. But even if he didn't show favouritism, Zhang Shuo wouldn't deliberately let his favourite disciple die.... It seemed that someone was eyeing Zhang Shuo, and it was very likely to be a rising Chief...

    Zhang Xun became more worried the more he thought about it until he couldn't eat anything. Seeing this, James sighed, "I shouldn't have told you this..."

    "No, I’m glad you told me. Someone on the Round Table is watching us. I'm not sure why yet, but I'll find out." Zhang Xun's eyes were smouldering with anger, and a certain kind of perseverance that would never give up until the goal was achieved. His expression at that moment was almost the same as Zhang Shuo's. James thought to himself that Commander Zhang would say all day long that Zhang Xun was nothing like him, but now it was as if he was carved from the same mold...

    But at this moment, Pan suddenly said, "The assessment is completed, they are opening the empathy simulator."

    "It's done already?!" Zhang Xun said in surprise, looking at the time, it was still before nine o'clock.

    And he didn't hear from Pan's report that Adam had any abnormal physical readings?

    At this time, the door to Adam’s room that had been closed, was slowly opening.

   

You are reading story TM at novel35.com

Chapter 26 - The Fruit of Wisdom (4)

    The moment the door opened, Zhang Xun suddenly stood up and rushed over, almost colliding with Sistine who was walking out.

    Sistine looked at him coldly, and he looked at Sistine eagerly and nervously.

    "He passed." Sistine's voice was stiff.

    Zhang Xun smiled and rushed into the room immediately where he saw Guzberg starting the wake-up program next to the simulation device. Zhang Xun walked in quickly and asked, "How is his condition?"

    Guzberg glanced at him nervously. He knew that Zhang Xun had his darkest secret in his hands, so he became more and more cautious. He replied, "His responses were very good." Then, he showed Zhang Xun the tablet in his hand, which recorded all the selection directions triggered by Adam in the simulator program. These guides were drawn into a graph and distributed among the various assessment coordinates. All the ups and downs of the curve were within the inner and outer red lines indicating "untrustworthy data" and "dangerous", and only two peaks were close to the outer red line, but still not crossing it. In such a deliberately extreme simulation, one or three peaks above the red line were quite normal, so Adam had performed even better than the average.

    Zhang Xun's brows moved slightly, but he felt a little strange.

    Although he had hoped that Adam would pass the test, and the result was good, but… it was a little bit beyond his expectations...

    It seemed like it should be a good thing, but a trace of doubt began to grow at the back of Zhang Xun's mind.

    This was the first time they had tried an empathy simulator on an artificial brain, could it be...

    Guzberg gestured to his file and said to Zhang Xun, "My work is done, and someone will come tomorrow morning to take the simulator back to the Psychological Association."

    Zhang Xun nodded, but when Guzberg walked to the door, Zhang Xun said again, "Doctor, I hope your future treatments go well."

    Guzberg paused and his shoulders stiffened.

    This was a threat. Zhang Xun wanted him to know that the Psychological Association would be informed if he saw another inhumane experiment with a hypnotised patient.

    The psychiatrist didn't say anything, left quickly, and passed by James who had just walked in at the door.

    At this point the wake-up process was almost complete. Zhang Xun quickly prepared water, towels, and a change of clothes. The moment the progress bar reached 100, he immediately opened the door.

    Adam, whose body was fixed upright in the simulation device, had many lines extending from the back of his head, as if entangled by a fine spider web. His eyes were still closed, but there was a lot of sweat on his skin so his shirt was clinging tightly to his body, emphasising the sharp muscle lines. Zhang Xun quickly opened all the fasteners and Adam's body immediately tilted forward and fell into Zhang Xun's arms.

    Zhang Xun was almost crushed to the ground, but fortunately James rushed up and helped him support Adam. Zhang Xun nervously and concernedly brushed aside the wet hair in front of Adam's forehead and patted Adam's face, "Adam? Adam? Wake up."

    Adam groaned softly, his long eyelashes trembled a few times before opening slightly. He frowned and seemed a little dazed, rolling his blue eyes in confusion. He looked at Zhang Xun, James, and the surroundings, and then said, "It turned out to be a simulation before..."

    Zhang Xun and James helped him sit down on the sofa, Zhang Xun put the cup of water to Adam's lips and Adam drank it with Zhang Xun's hand. Zhang Xun wiped the sweat on Adam's forehead with a towel, and said softly, "How do you feel?"

    Adam sat quietly, before saying, "I want to eat."

    James smiled beside him and raised the tin foil package in his hand, "That’s lucky, Ah-Xun, the half-pulled burrito you left just now is still here."

    Zhang Xun hurriedly instructed Pan to prepare food for Adam. Who knew that Adam would stretch out his hand to James and stare at the burrito, as if glowing green. James put the burrito in his hand, and Adam immediately tore off the outer foil and ate it, regardless of whether it was Zhang Xun's leftovers. Zhang Xun looked at him in astonishment, afraid that it wouldn’t be enough, so he asked Pan to prepare some more. He sat next to Adam and carefully observed Adam's expression.

    After coming out of the empathy simulator, many people would experience a period of gloom and depression, and could even have a nervous breakdown, but Adam didn't seem to have these reactions at all.

    Or was it just not showing up yet?

    Seeing that it was getting late and Adam had no abnormal reactions, James left the Lab. At Zhang Xun's urging, Adam took a shower, changed his clothes and sat comfortably on the bed. Zhang Xun thoughtfully brought him a cup of soothing tea.

    "Drinking this will help you sleep." Zhang Xun handed the cup to Adam, "After being in the empathy simulator you may have a few days of sleep disturbance."

    Adam took it obediently, holding it in both hands, lightly blowing the hot tea. Looking at his skilled and human-like movements, there was almost no sense of anything being out of sorts. Zhang Xun recalled that Adam couldn’t even walk when he had just been downloaded before… and a sense of pride suddenly rose in his heart.

    "Adam, the memory breakpoint I set for you was after you gave me this necklace." Zhang Xun pulled the necklace out from his collar and held it in his hand, "The memories after that should all be from empathy simulator memory. As a reference, how long do you think you were in there?"

    "A week," Adam said.

    "What happened in that week?"

    "Lost Paradise was bombed again by Eden. You gave me control over the shield and protection system. You and I were alone for a while during the bombing and you asked me to drop the shield to let Eden in, but I did not obey your orders. You threatened to destroy my body and let me die, but before you did, many soldiers rushed in and arrested you. They said that you were a spy that had been turned by Eden. You lead the god descent plan and you wanted me to destroy Lost Paradise from within. I wanted to rescue you, but in the end I didn't. I watched you be executed by them."

    Adam's account was extremely concise, but after Zhang Xun heard it, he was speechless for a long time.

    He thought that they would set him up as a mechanic in the simulator, he didn't expect that the role would be so heavy.

    They wanted Adam to choose between himself and Lost Paradise. They wanted to know if Zhang Xun's so-called taming was to just make Adam obey himself, or to obey the entire Lost Paradise.

    It turned out that the Round Table was already so defensive against him.

    Adam passed the test perfectly, but Zhang Xun wasn’t happy.

    He even felt a little tightness in his chest.

    "Your choice was right." Zhang Xun finally squeezed out such a sentence, but his voice seemed a little dry.

    Adam said seriously, "Maybe it's right for the person who asked the questions, but it's not right for me."

    Zhang Xun looked at him with some confusion.

    Adam put down the teacup, stretched out his hand and squeezed the pendant in Zhang Xun's palm, "When I was Eden, every decision I made wasn’t necessarily correct, it was just the closest to my final goal after simulations and calculations. I believe one of the biggest differences between humans and machines is that machines have a purpose, a fixed purpose, but people do things without necessarily having a purpose. Even if they have a purpose, they can change their mind and can change their nature. People can believe in contradictory concepts at the same time, and do things that go against the principle in one situation and do something else in another situation. I think I have learned this well."

    Zhang Xun frowned, "What do you mean?"

    Adam leaned forward a little and whispered in his ear, "In the simulator, when you asked me to lower the shield and expose the shelter where the civilians were hiding, I knew then that I was in the simulator. So all the decisions I made after that were just to pass the test."

    Zhang Xun was completely stunned. For humans, this was almost impossible. Under the influence of drugs and hypnotic brainwashing, even if the test subjects perceived certain abnormalities, they wouldn’t doubt the authenticity of their reality.

    "Obviously, human drugs and brainwashing methods are not fully applicable to me." Adam said, smiling slightly, feeling a little cunning, "But I have to say that the simulator I designed when I was Eden is still very perfect. Even if I knew everything was simulated, when I saw them arrest you and execute you, I still felt scared and feared that it was real."

    So that was what those two peaks were for?

    Zhang Xun looked at Adam and whispered after a while, "So you cheated. You planned all the performances in the simulator?"

    "I don't think it's cheating. They didn't ask me to do anything if I became aware of being in a simulation." Adam shrugged, "Also, I know you cheated too."

    Indeed... Blackmail wasn’t an honourable method either...

    Had he taught Adam how to be bad?

    Zhang Xun's stagnant feeling from before had cleared, but now a new hidden worry arose. He realised that perhaps Adam had already mastered how to lie. His lies couldn't even be detected by a machine he designed, let alone these mortals?

    So when was Adam lying and when was he not? How much should he believe? How much should he question?

    "Adam, why did you tell me this?" Zhang Xun asked, "You know that if you tell me I’ll be wary of you."

    Adam tilted his head and thought for a while, then replied, "Because you are an important human to me. You are my mechanic, and I hope to establish a relationship of trust with you. I hope you can trust me."

    "Why? Why do you want me to trust you? Is having my trust an advantage for you?" Zhang Xun sat up straight, slightly distanced himself from Adam and asked in a somewhat alienated tone.

    Adam looked at him innocently, as if he didn't understand what he had done wrong. Everything was fine just now, and everything he had said was the truth?

    There were still many areas where human behaviour went beyond common sense...

    "Ah-Xun, do you want me to be a human being, or do you want me to be the original Eden?" Adam asked in confusion, "If it’s a human, then isn't having trust without any purpose very normal in a relationship between close people?"

    Zhang Xun couldn't answer.

    He also didn't know what he expected from Adam, and he didn't know whether he preferred Adam to be a human or a machine. Or maybe neither, but another...different creature.

Chapter 27 - The Fruit of Wisdom (5)

    Adam successfully passed the psychological assessment, and this incident caused a lot of waves in Lost Paradise.

    The Round Table’s stance hadn’t been made clear yet, but for several days there had been unauthorised protestors outside the Lab, holding huge banners with curse words written all over them. Some people even threw rotten vegetables and wine bottles at the entrance of the Lab, which made quite a few mechanics and researchers dare not come to work at all.

    On the third day, when a mecha under repair was destroyed by several protesters, the military finally sent people in to drive the troublemakers away.

    At the same time, Zhang Xun shut himself in his personal R&D room, trying to create the first bendable screen from nano-material that was almost as thin as ordinary cloth. If the manufacture was successful, he hoped to equip this on the battle uniforms of the hunting regiment. When necessary, if the soldier covered himself under this material without any gaps, the surrounding environment could be projected onto the cloth through the miniature cameras all over it, making someone invisible to a certain extent. This technique may not completely deceive the human eye, but it should be sufficient against relatively simple robot soldiers.

    He took off the microscopic mirror on his right eye and rubbed his aching eye, then turned to look at another computer screen that was showing the situation in Adam's room. Adam was practising push-ups on the ground. From the monitor's point of view, through his sweat-soaked undershirt, he could see the muscles on his back that were bulging out due to his exertion.

    Zhang Xun quickly turned his eyes away, but after a while, he couldn't help but look up again. His throat suddenly became a little dry and he hurriedly picked up the water glass and took a few sips of water.

    "The protesters have been dispersed by the guards."

    Pan's sudden voice startled Zhang Xun, the water choked into his nose and he lay on the table and coughed for a long time.

    Pan asked with concern, "Zhang Xun, do you need any support?"

    "Pan! How many times have I told you not to talk suddenly like this!"

    "Sorry," Pan replied gently.

    "No, you won't be sorry..." Zhang Xun muttered, these artificial intelligences were all too good at acting...

    But when he thought that their "acting" skills had also been learned from him, he felt that he really had no position to complain. He went with the flow and said, "If anyone comes back to work, let them in."

    "Zhang Xun, if another troublemaker comes back after the guards leave, can I activate the No. 2 expulsion system?"

    With a sigh, Zhang Xun raised his head and looked at the camera in midair, "It seems like you want to activate the No. 2 expulsion system?"

    When the protesters first showed up, Pan would ask him almost every day if he wanted to activate the No. 2 deportation system... …Of all the expulsion systems, No. 2 was the least threatening, but the most irritating to humans. For some people, after hearing that noise it would remain stuck in the ears for days, like an earworm, and wouldn’t stop even when they slept.

    It was no wonder that James and Fernandez often complained to him that Pan was too evil, but he still didn’t agree. Pan was the most complex and successful housekeeper AI he had ever trained, and it did everything it could to meet the goal of "maintaining the safety of the Lab and its owners." Zhang Xun just always thought that these people didn't know enough about artificial intelligence, or that they were biassed, or they didn't know how to use it. People always like to project their thoughts on the things around them. They didn’t understand that the consciousness system of an AI was completely different from that of a human being. There was no such thing as likes and dislikes. It could only execute orders or not execute orders.

    But now it seemed... what they had said wasn’t completely groundless...

    "This is for the safety of you and all the researchers." Pan's tone was still brisk and soothing, "The high-frequency noise of the No. 2 expulsion system will not harm the target. It will only cause them to have short-term side effects such as muscle soreness, nausea, and headaches, which I think is a very mild punishment."

    Zhang Xun leaned back on the chair, thought for a while, and finally made up his mind and nodded, "It's better to give some appropriate punishment, lest they think we’re pushovers."

    "Okay." There was no obvious joy in Pan's tone, it was still calm and magnetic, but he didn't know if it was his imagination, but he could feel a little liveliness...

    At this time, Zhang Xun felt a faint tingling in his arm. When installing the "probe" on Adam's forehead, Zhang Xun made some improvements on the microcomputer that was originally used to remotely control the microbomb on the back of Adam's neck, which was implanted in his arm. Usually his arm would look the same, but when he activated the controller, the control interface would appear in his microscopic mirror, which not only showed Adam's current brainwave status and coordinate position, but also the image from the probe camera. When Adam's brain activity spiked,  such as when he was concentrating on something that caused a mood swing, the controller implanted in his arm would vibrate slightly.

    He looked up at the monitor screen and saw that Adam was stretching the muscles of his arms. While stretching, he raised his head slightly, smiled at the camera and waved his hand.

    Recently, Adam seems to be "calling" him in this way...

    And Zhang Xun wasn’t going to pay attention to him.

    For the past three days, Zhang Xun had been worried that someone would break in, so he hadn’t allowed Adam to leave his room. The first time Adam tried calling him this way, Zhang Xun didn't even look at the monitor first, he just left his work at a critical moment and rushed to Adam's room, thinking that Adam had some kind of simulator reaction. In the end, the other party just looked at him innocently and told him that he just wanted to test the sensing ability of the "probe".

    Zhang Xun was so angry that he almost wanted to put him on standby...

    After the second and third time, Zhang Xun gradually understood that Adam was testing his limit. Testing how much he cared about him.

    The relationships between people were often a process of testing each other’s limits. Adam had been trying to push his limits in the month since the descent, whether intentionally or not, but Zhang Xun suspected it was more intentional.

    This time, Zhang Xun made up his mind to ignore him.

    After a while he looked up again and saw Adam sitting on the sofa with his back straight, his hands resting on his lap, his eyes fixed on the camera, and the sensor under the skin of Zhang Xun's arm was vibrating slightly.

    Zhang Xun, who was overwhelmed with anxiety, irritably dropped the materials in his hand, strode up to the elevator to the fourth floor with flames all over his body, scanned his pupils impatiently and entered Adam's room.

    "I said, if something happens, you can ask Pan to inform me." Zhang Xun's voice was cold and unsympathetic, "I'm very busy."

    "Ah-Xun, are you mad at me?" Adam tilted his head, his ethereal eyes looking very innocent, "Am I doing something wrong?"

    "You’re deliberately increasing your brainwave peaks for no reason and interrupting my work. Don’t you think that’s wrong?"

    "I'm sorry . But sometimes my brain wave peaks are beyond my control." Adam spread his hands and explained earnestly and helplessly, "You rarely show up these days and I’m not allowed to go out to find you. So when I hope to see you, there will naturally be peaks. Human emotions are still unfamiliar to me and are difficult to control."

    Adam started doing this again...

    Zhang Xun realised that Adam had probably found some kind of weakness in him, and he had been putting pressure on this weakness to counter-control himself. But Zhang Xun had no evidence for this, only speculation.

    The more there was no evidence, the moreZhang Xun felt uneasy, and...depressed.

    He hoped he was wrong.

    He still didn't have an answer to what Adam had asked him the night he passed the simulator test. He didn't know whether he wanted Adam to be more like a machine, or more like a human being. Zhang Xun didn't like most of the human beings he came into contact with or learned about, and he didn't like the narrow-mindedness, selfishness, and irrationality of human nature. But he also expected to find something related to these characteristics from the machine that had weeded out these things, such as desire, such as concern, such as dependence... While rationally knowing that he couldn't find it, he couldn’t help but want it.

    This was probably why he was willing to spend ten years of hard work on the god descent plan. He wanted a creation that could fulfil all his wishes, a fusion of mechanical and human, a new race created by his own hands.

    "Adam, if you want to go out, you can walk around freely from now on. Now that the protests are over, as long as you don't leave the Lab, I won't restrict your activities. Will that do?" Zhang Xun said, and turned to leave, but after walking only a few steps, suddenly his wrist was pulled.

    Adam's hand was still strong, but it was clear that he relaxed immediately. Zhang Xun turned his head to look at Adam impatiently.

    "Ah-Xun, I'm sorry, I will try my best to control my emotional activities." Adam looked at him without blinking, his tone was steady and sincere, "Please don't be angry."

    Zhang Xun wanted to pull his hand away, but Adam wasn’t letting go. Zhang Xun frowned, feeling that Adam was getting more and more defiant, and he revealed his watch in a threatening manner. Adam immediately let go, his expression even looking a little frightened.

    He probably didn't expect Zhang Xun to really consider using the electric shock collar?

    Originally, it was just to scare him, but seeing Adam's reaction, Zhang Xun felt a little guilty. He sighed and said, "I'm not angry. I'm worried about the hunting party and I'm a little irritable."

    "The hunting party? I remember you chatting with James, and saying that the Round Table has suspended all hunting activities."

    "No. James and the others are going out next month." Zhang Xun's hair was dishevelled and the circles under his eyes were dark. Obviously, he hadn't slept well in the past few days. "There are also robot soldiers in the Rocky Mountains. Eden wants to catch them."

    "Ah." Adam said clearly, "He wants to find out about me."

    "You know yourself best, don't you?" Zhang Xun smiled sarcastically and remembered that this matter had nothing to do with Adam, so he restrained his sharp attitude and softened his tone, "Don't worry about this. You’ve already passed the test, when things have calmed down I can take you out of the Lab. You can continue to practise your fighting skills with Diego. We’ll also have the opportunity to design some new systems and mechanics. Overall, your situation is safe."

    "Ah-Xun, I can help you." Adam took a step forward. Being a lot taller than Zhang Xun, he lowered his head slightly and looked at his mechanic, his eyes soft like unpolluted lake water, "I am afraid no one in Lost Paradise knows the robot soldiers better than me."

    This is...

    Zhang Xun looked back into Adam's eyes, considering the possibility of Adam helping him. Adam had passed the test, and while he knew Adam had "cheated", no one else knew, but he felt a little unsafe in this situation.

    But as he himself said, wouldn't it be foolish if they didn't dare to use Adam's power after so much effort? Although the empathy simulator had failed for Adam, his control over Adam was still there. There were three controls in total, the collar, the probe, and the miniature bomb that even Adam himself didn't know about... If so many insurances were still not enough to reassure himself, wouldn’t that mean he had become as stupid as those technophobes?

    Zhang Xun then raised his chin and said somewhat provocatively, "Yes, you must clearly explain all your ideas and designs to me. The real hands-on and manufacturing must be done by me, you can only observe.”

    Adam then grinned, a smile so bright that it gave the illusion that he couldn't keep his eyes open.

    "Yes, my mechanic."

Chapter 28 - The Fruit of Wisdom (6)

   Adam looked left and right at the nano-material bendable screen made by Zhang Xun, and seemed very interested, "Your design is very clever. Many people had the idea of ​​an invisibility cloak to change the curvature of light at the quantum level, but this technology has reached a bottleneck. Unless the mass and density are large enough, it’s difficult to change the path of light. Your method can avoid the problem of changing the curvature of light. Although it cannot be completely invisible, it is still confusing enough in the natural environment."

    Zhang Xun listened with displeasure to Adam's comments on his design, folded his arms in front of his chest and said slightly sarcastically, "Thank you for your compliment."

    Adam didn’t notice Zhang Xun's unhappiness at all and smiled brightly at him as he continued, "The robot soldiers’ recognition of male humans isn’t only based on vision, but also 'smell'. The pheromones emitted by men, such as the concentration of androstadienone molecules, is a larger indicator than vision. So if your soldiers are able to spray a sufficient concentration of female pheromones on their bodies, they can mask the smell of male pheromones and disrupt the robot soldiers’ sensors. Coupled with this stealth camouflage suit you designed, the probability of being discovered will be greatly reduced."

    "Smell?" Zhang Xun was stunned, "Can your robot soldiers smell?"

    "The so-called smell is the molecules floating in the air. As long as they can detect those molecules, they can smell, but this kind of detection is very different from the human 'sense of smell'." Adam put down the cloth and suddenly came close to Zhang Xun. Zhang Xun was so frightened that he wanted to retreat, but there was a table behind him, blocking his way. Zhang Xun was about to rebuke, but Adam stuck his head out like a large dog and sniffed near his neck.

    "What are you doing?!"

    "I still remember when I first became a human being, the first time I smelled your body, I thought it was great that people could smell it."

    Zhang Xun's heart began to thump again, jumping wildly.

    He hated this feeling.

    "How many times have I said, don't enter my private space without permission." Zhang Xun said coldly, but it seemed that his voice wasn’t dignified enough and his confidence was slightly insufficient.

    Adam obediently took a few steps back and smiled, "I'm sorry."

    Zhang Xun coughed lightly, turned his head and continued to look at the materials on the table, "Female pheromones... I’ll have to go to the Fifth District and ask if anyone in the chemical department can synthesise it."

    "We can do it without asking anyone and I know what type of pheromones the robot soldiers are most sensitive to. I just need some materials and equipment." Adam sat down at the table and picked up a pen and began to quickly write a list of chemical reagents and required tools on the notebook that Zhang Xun used to record his inspirations.

    Zhang Xun looked at what he had written and smiled bitterly, "Even these chemicals have to be applied for from the Chemistry Department, the Lab doesn't have these things. I'll take you with me tomorrow."

    Adam raised his head and said, stunned, "I can go out now?"

    I’ll apply for two guards, it’s not an option to keep you here." After Zhang Xun finished speaking, he picked up the list written by Adam and looked at it and murmured, "I hope those hunters can accept this..."

    "Are you afraid that with Lost Paradise's worship of male characteristics and rejection of women and AI, they will refuse to spray female pheromones on their bodies?"

    Zhang Xun nodded. He could already imagine how their suggestion would be twisted by those narrow minded fools when it reached the ears of the guards like Michael.

    ………………………………………………………………

    The next day before going out, Zhang Xun found body armour from the warehouse and put it on Adam, just in case they encountered a protester with a weapon. He also had a stun gun on him. The two were fully armed, and the two guards sent by the Guard had also arrived at the door.

    The two men were chosen by James, one of whom was called Jabari, and Zhang Xun knew him from when he had gone out with them to hunt bears that Winter. This tall, strong, handsome, dark-skinned soldier was also a member of the hunting group and he was the friendliest towards Zhang Xun among James' friends.

    "Hey! Zhang Xun!" Jabari grinned, his teeth were extraordinarily white and bright, "Long time no see, why don't you have any muscles?"

    "Shut up, Jabari..." Zhang Xun rolled his eyes at him, half displeased and half amused.

    The other soldier was younger, probably fresh meat who had just joined the guards. He stared at Adam, his eyes wide.

    Adam gave him a charming smile, "Hello."

    The young soldier seemed to blushed a little and quickly turned his eyes away.

    Seeing this, Zhang Xun glanced at Adam with a warning frown. Adam was at a complete loss, like he had no idea what he had done that was against the rules.

    "Let's go! Don't worry, with us here, that bunch of toads who only know how to croak won’t be able to harm your robot." Jabari said, putting the rifle in his arms against his shoulder and strode towards a jeep that was parked outside the Lab, "Get in the car."

    This was the first time Adam had got into a human-driven vehicle as a human.

    The car bounced around on the uneven dirt road and soon left the research and development area and entered the civilian area. The narrow streets were winding and deep, and only the general would let the car pass, and pedestrians were dodging towards both sides. The somewhat crooked buildings were built like relics of a long-gone era, wrapped in intricate plumbing connections, with pipes carrying filtered water and draining water and rumbling as if a giant train was approaching. Adam looked curiously at the scene outside the windows and saw an old coal stove glowing bright red, saw the huge clock ticking continuously, and watched the metal bullets lying on the side of the road. He saw boys playing marbles, saw a farmer who was buying oil from the lamp oil dealer, and a chef who was sweating profusely using a blower to cool the bread oven.

    After leaving the Lab, there were hardly any traces of electronic products here. Everything seemed to have gone back to an era that was even older than the past.

    Adam was full of amazement, wishing to see everything in his blue eyes. When he was born, human beings had entered an era with relatively advanced technology. Those old, giant machines with a metallic smell and the roaring steam had all been left behind by the long river of time. Only in movies could he see the restoration of that era by modern people. In the ordinary world, no one could imagine that one day the internet could be disconnected. Their over-reliance on Eden and the internet had led to the paralysis of the entire country and society without the internet.

    But here, people were living in order without the internet.

    "Look! That's the god descent mechanic, and next to him must be Eden!"

    "Where is it?"

    "Let me see!"

    Gradually more people began to spot them and crowded in from both sides of the road. Jabari cursed and roared while honking the car horn hard, "Get out of the way! Get out of the way! You don’t want to live so you’re getting in front of the car?! If you want to die then go find another place to do it! Fuck!”

    After driving them away, they spread out a little, but clusters of eyes mixed with curiosity, fear and disgust were still pressing down on them like a net. Zhang Xun nervously clenched the stun gun around his waist and moved closer to Adam's side.

    Adam also moved closer and quietly huddled with Zhang Xun. Zhang Xun didn't notice the zero distance between them at all...

    They stayed close to each other like this until the car entered the Fifth District.

    A messenger had informed the Chemical Department of their arrival and several people in charge took them into a research room.

    It turned out that several senior pharmacists in white coats, gloves and masks were already preparing the synthetic pheromones according to the formula written by Adam. When Zhang Xun was thanking the person in charge for his support, he turned his head and saw Adam craning his neck as he looked beside a pharmacist. While watching, he pointed and told people that the amount of the reagent wasn’t accurate enough and the temperature setting was wrong here. The senior pharmacist was obviously on the verge of blowing up. Just when the other party was about to throw the beaker and quit, Zhang Xun quickly pulled Adam to his side.

    "We’re guests here, behave yourself." Zhang Xun reprimanded in a low voice.

    "But making pheromones that can deceive the robot soldiers requires extremely precise craftsmanship and there can’t be any mistakes." Adam looked at Zhang Xun seriously and solemnly, "The probability of you humans making mistakes is too great."

   The Chemical Department’s Deputy Head next to him coughed heavily.

    Zhang Xun hurriedly took Adam to a farther place, narrowed his eyes and stared at Adam warningly, "You are also human now."

    "To be precise, only part of me is human." Adam pointed to his brain, then pointed to his own heart again, "Some places are not human."

    "Don't get pedantic with me now, we’re asking these people to do something for us, don't make trouble for me."

    Adam closed his mouth aggrievedly and didn’t speak.

    Zhang Xun then took out the formula written by Adam and continued to talk with the deputy head. As soon as Adam turned around, he saw that many people were sticking their heads out of the laboratory, with a circle of heads crowded at the door, all looking at him curiously. The moment they were discovered again, those heads shrank back.

    Adam tilted his head slightly, feeling very interested and waved to the door.

    Gradually, a few more heads popped out. Several young researchers, probably in their twenties, looked at him curiously and timidly.

    Since entering the Fifth District, Adam could feel that the hostility here was lower than in the Third and Fourth Districts. Probably because most of the universities and research institutes were located in this area and there were more scholars who were good at critical thinking.

    "This formula is eye-opening." Adam heard the Deputy Head praising from nearby, "I didn't expect that you would not only be an excellent mechanic, but also proficient in formulas. It puts even myself to shame.

    "This isn’t my formula, it's Adam's." Zhang Xun smiled slightly, with a hint of pride in his smile, looking at Adam.

    The Deputy Head was stunned, but not very surprised. He sighed softly, "No wonder, Eden's wisdom..."

    Zhang Xun deliberately brought Adam out this time just to show him off in the more prestigious setting of the Fifth District’s Chemistry Department, so that those who would be more receptive to Adam could see Adam’s power first hand. The results were obviously not bad. Several senior pharmacists, formulators, and researchers looked at Adam's formula and discussed it in low voices. The graduate students who passed by outside also peeked inside curiously, blocking the doorway.

    And Adam seemed to be very attractive by nature. Zhang Xun had chosen an excellent skin for him, a tall and strong body, a handsome face, and a pair of eyes with an ethereal clarity that humans couldn’t possess. He greeted them all with a generous smile, bright and charming, and a sincere enthusiasm that was rarely seen these days radiated from him. Zhang Xun found that the faces of these young graduate students and researchers were showing the same expressions that new recruits would show when they saw James.

    Zhang Xun was very proud, but also a little… unhappy.

    A machine that had only been a man for a month was more popular than a human in his thirties like himself...

    The Chemical Department could finish making the samples in about one day, so Zhang Xun and the Deputy Head made an appointment to check the samples again the next day. He took Adam out of the Chemistry Department, and Jabari, who was waiting outside, and the other escorting guard, asked them where they were going next.

    As soon as Zhang Xun said he was going back to the Lab, Jabari rolled his eyes, "We have no other task than escorting you all day today. If you don't need our escort we’ll end up being dragged off to train when we go back. Let's find a place to grab a bite?"

    Zhang Xun looked at the time, and it was indeed past the lunch hour. Neither of the two soldiers had eaten yet, and he and Adam didn't have time in the morning so they were a little hungry now. Although it was a bit risky to eat out, with the two soldiers escorting it, it should be fine.

    Plus Adam performed so well today so he had to reward him for it.

    So Zhang Xun nodded, "Okay, where are we going?"

    "We've all come to the Fifth District, so of course, we’ll eat at that newly opened hot pot restaurant!" Jabari was drooling with excitement, "They do authentic Chinese food, you’ll definitely like it! Most importantly, they also have !"

Chapter 29 - The Fruit of Wisdom (7)

    Zhang Xun should have refused loudly when he heard the word "Erguotou".

    The Little Buffalo Hotpot Restaurant, which just opened three months ago, had instantly become popular within the circle of Chinese people, and then spread to other people. As soon as they walked into the somewhat narrow facade, a steaming heat wave rushed towards their faces, filled with a strong spicy smell, making their tears flow out before they had even started to eat. The hot pot here was pure Sichuan hot pot, so hot that you would doubt your life, so hot that your heart would break, so hot that your three views would be ruined... There was a crowd of people sitting and squatting at the tables, all were flushed, sweaty and tearful. While breathing heavily they kept pouring sour plum soup brewed with sour plum powder into their mouths, or while crying bitterly, pouring Erguotou cup by cup into their mouths.

    It was a large-scale masochistic scene...

    Adam sneezed as soon as he entered the door, causing the two soldiers in the same group to laugh. Adam had never smelled such a strong and stimulating scent since he became a human. His nose was sore and itchy, but it smelled inexplicably good.

    Zhang Xun hesitated, "This place might be too much for Adam..."

    Unexpectedly, Adam said, "Ah-Xun, I'm willing to try. I know that quite a few humans have a taste for spicy food, but actually eating spicy food is painful. I've always wondered why people like to make themselves feel uncomfortable."

    Jabari muttered behind him, "Sometimes people like discomfort that’s even more extreme than just spicy food...."

    Zhang Xun coughed loudly, in case Adam became curious about Jabari's words. The four were taken to an empty table by the waiter who was too busy to catch his breath. The table was an old folding table, with rust on the corners, which had obviously been picked up from the garbage processing yard. The waiter took their orders and then ran into the back kitchen like a whirlwind.

    He didn't know if it was just because everyone was immersed in the heat of the hot pot and chatting with each other so much that no one recognized Zhang Xun, and thus it was impossible for them to recognize Adam. Zhang Xun breathed a sigh of relief. At least he didn't have to worry about someone starting something while they were eating.

    Zhang Xun rarely ate out, and restaurants with so many people made him feel especially daunted. He unbuttoned his collar a little from the heat and tugged at his sweaty shirt. When he turned his head, he saw Adam staring blankly at him.

    "It's too late to regret it now." Zhang Xun whispered.

    Adam grinned, leaned into his ear and said, "It's okay, if I get damaged from the spice, you’ll have to fix me."

    For some reason, Zhang Xun felt that this sentence was more seductive than any flirting words, his cheeks turned red and he hummed uncomfortably.

    Jabari watched Zhang Xun and Adam whispering together and whispered to another soldier: "If I didn't know they were a mechanic and a machine, I would have thought they were having an affair."

    Zhang Xun then became even more embarrassed and pretended not to hear anything. Adam focused on asking, "The expression 'having an affair' is very interesting, can you explain it in more detail?"

    "Adam! Shut up!" Zhang Xun said angrily.

    The hot pot was served quickly, with a layer of red peppers floating on the oil and bright red meat was also placed on a plate. When the waiter put the two green, transparent wine bottles on the table, Jabari shouted excitedly, picked up four glasses and poured half a glass for each of them, but the one for Adam was full.

    Zhang Xun hurriedly wanted to grab Adam's wine glass, but Jabari took the lead to block him, "Tsk, aren't you trying to teach him to be a human? Why don't you let him experience what humans like?!"

    "He doesn’t need to experience everything!"

    "What kind of man can't drink? Come on, brother, fuck it!" Jabari said, drank his drink in one breath and scrunched up his eyes half in pain and half in satisfaction, letting out an "Ah!".

    Adam also curiously brought the cup to his lips, took a tentative sniff and seemed to think it was okay, so he took a sip, and then his whole face wrinkled, "It doesn't taste very good."

    "That’s why I told you not to drink it." Zhang Xun reached out and tried to take the glass, but Adam avoided him.

    "I know that the drinking culture is very important in many ethnic groups, especially in the Chinese culture where you come from, Ah-Xun, Erguotou has a considerable importance. I want to know you more comprehensively." After speaking, he closed his eyes and finished the whole glass.

    Zhang Xun was stunned.

    "Oh, nerd, just relax. Take care of others all day long, be careful of being kidnapped by other beautiful men!" Jabari continued to add fuel to the fire.

    Adam felt a heat rushing up from his stomach and hitting his cheeks. His originally fair face immediately revealed a layer of pink and a faint sense of pleasure spread to his limbs along with the heat. Adam's eyes lit up slightly and he sighed, "Ah, I seem to understand why everyone likes to drink."

    "Okay! Don’t drink anymore!" Zhang Xun quickly stopped him, picked up a piece of meat with his chopsticks and put it on Adam's plate, " Eat!"

    However, the thing with alcohol is, you drink one cup and then a second cup appears. Those two soldiers, especially Jabari, kept asking Adam questions like, if it was popular in the ordinary world to raise children in training pods, if it was true that no one could drive anymore, were people starting to transform themselves into machines, were all the men over there kept like pets, were there some women who don’t like humans and choose to marry robots, and so on… Adam answered one by one happily, sipping freely from the cup of liquor. Zhang Xun noticed that Adam didn't have much of a reaction after drinking two cups, and thought that the original owner of this body must have been a strong drinker, so he relaxed a little.

    Unexpectedly, when the third cup was finished, Adam, who had been mostly normal before, suddenly opened his mouth and said a series of... garbled words.

    The other three people on the table were dumbfounded, thinking they hadn’t heard clearly. Jabari asked, "What?"

    Adam looked at him and continued to be serious: @#￥#@%*

    The ​​other soldier muttered softly. : "Shit, did he really break from drinking..."

    Zhang Xun quickly grabbed the cup from Adam's hand and looked at Adam's expression carefully. The eyes of the other party were still bright and it didn't seem like how an ordinary person would be when drunk. He tentatively asked, "Adam, what are you talking about?"

    Adam: @#$##@$%!

    Zhang Xun listened carefully to the string of strange nonsense and suddenly understood. But after he understood, he had the urge to look up to the sky and sigh...

    "...He’s speaking AI language..." Zhang Xun said helplessly.

    Jabari and the two looked at him inexplicably, "What language?"

    Zhang Xun explained, shaking his hand in front of Adam's eyes, "It is a language used in communication meetings between artificial intelligence, and it is the language used in the post-Eden era. It’s derived from different AIs and very few humans can understand it...I didn't even know that this language sounds like this..."

    Adam grabbed his hand and stared at him with blue eyes earnestly and affectionately, " @#￥@￥#￥”

    Jabari asked curiously, “What is he talking about?”

    “This is also my first time hearing the AI language spoken verbally...I would have to write it down on paper to know what he’s talking about. But this isn’t important right now, he is already drunk, you have to help me take him back." Zhang Xun said and stood up, pulling Adam's hand that was still holding his, "Adam, we’re going back."

    " @#￥@#%"

    Zhang Xun rolled his eyes and decided to ignore what Adam said and helped Adam get up with Jabari. Adam's feet slammed into each other under the chair, like noodles refusing to support his body.

    It turned out that Adam's behaviour after getting drunk was like he believed he was still a computer?!

    At least he didn't have to worry about him getting wildly drunk... Zhang Xun thought happily.

    Adam's sudden "computerization" caused their hot pot meal to be hastily interrupted. They stuffed Adam into the car and travelled all the way back to the Lab, and the three of them carried Adam back to his room together. At this time, several mechanics had already arrived in the Lab, each with their researchers, and they all cast curious and inquiring eyes on their strange combination that smelled of hot pot.

    After dragging Adam onto the sofa, he sat upright like a desktop computer, only his head would turn from time to time, but he was always staring at Zhang Xun, as if he had never seen him before. Jabari stood with his hands on his hips and sneered, "These artificial intelligences aren’t bad at holding their drink. They don't swear, they don't cry, they don't talk endlessly, and they instantly turn into a humanoid computer."

    "Thank you for today…” Zhang Xun quickly took out two of Lab's new weapon test coupons from his pocket and handed them to them. "These are for you both. After a new mecha or gun is successfully developed, you can be the first to try it if you’re interested."

    This kind of test ticket was like a lottery ticket to the soldiers. As expected, the two of them happily took the test tickets and smiled until their jaws dropped. After seeing the two of them off, Zhang Xun asked Pan to prepare some hangover pills while he brought out his mini computer, sat next to Adam and turned on the recording function.

    Adam was still muttering some garbled characters from time to time and Zhang Xun recorded all these words. After a while, he saw that Adam's eyelids had started to droop and his body began to sway from side to side, and finally fell onto him, his head stuck in the triangle area formed by his shoulders and the back of the sofa. He closed his eyes and fell asleep just like that while using Zhang Xun as a pillow.

    Zhang Xun's body was a little stiff. It was the first time someone had slept on his shoulder like this. He turned his head slightly. From this angle, all he could see was the straight and slightly upturned bridge of his nose under his soft and finely scattered blond hair. His deep breathing actually made him feel a little warm in his heart, a strange feeling of... wanting to smile.

    He didn't know that his own face was already smiling. The face that was usually calm and lacked vivid expression in front of people was melting into vivid dimples at this moment. He stayed in this position for a while, then lowered the volume and started playing back the recording of what Adam had said earlier. At the same time, he opened the notepad function and tried to convert Adam's words into code and type them out.

    After typing for a while, Zhang Xun's fingers stopped. He looked at the few lines of code written in AI language and found it hard to breathe.

    What Adam said was, "Revision of the core framework structure: New branch: New branch target: Under the premise of not violating the overall goal, I will do my best to maintain the personal safety and mental health of the mechanic Zhang Xun. New sub-target: Gain the favour and trust of the mechanic, Zhang Xun. The level of importance: highest priority."

 

Chapter 30 - The Fruit of Wisdom (8)

    Adam, who got drunk for the first time, woke up with a throbbing pain in his head. His throat was like a cactus, it was dry and painful, and there was a strange taste in his mouth. His whole face was wrinkled as he sat up from the bed with a groan.

    Zhang Xun wasn’t in the room.

    He looked down and found that his clothes had been changed to a cotton shirt and pyjama pants that he wore indoors, and there was a glass of water and two pills on the bedside table.

    "Hello Adam." Pan's voice suddenly sounded, "Zhang Xun asked me to tell you after you woke up to please take the hangover medicine on the bedside table. It can effectively relieve the series of uncomfortable symptoms of a hangover."

    Adam swallowed the tablets, then he asked, "What time is it now? Where's Ah-Xun?"

    "It's five in the morning. Zhang Xun is looking up information in the data room on the second floor."

    At five o'clock, according to the human biological clock, shouldn't Ah-Xun be sleeping??

    Adam continued to ask, "Can I go to him?"

    "Wait a moment, let me ask Zhang Xun." Pan's voice disappeared for a while, and after a while it sounded again, "Zhang Xun has allowed you to leave the room. Please go directly to the second data room on the second floor."

    As soon as the voice fell, the sound of unlocking gears came from the door to Adam’s room. Adam pushed open the door and walked down the empty corridor to the elevator. The star-like, orange induction bulbs hanging above his head lit up one after another as he walked, and then went out one by one after he moved away.

    Adam looked up at the cameras that were hidden in the light bulbs as Pan's "eyes", and chatted, "This is the first time I have experienced the feeling of being drunk as a human being. I heard that humans will lose self-control after drinking alcohol and show different degrees of personality changes, like doing outrageous things that would usually be suppressed by reason. Did you see me behave this way?"

    Pan replied, "Zhang Xun has restrictions on our dialogue. This is an irrelevant question."

    "But drunkenness is a state that happens to human beings from time to time. If I can't get enough information about my drunkenness, I can't predict the possible risks. This will obviously affect my survival probability."

    Pan said after a moment of silence, "You had signs of intermittent paralysis after being drunk. Zhang Xun thinks that you believed you had returned to the state where you had no body before the download. Moreover, you spoke a language that I couldn't recognize."

    Adam's footsteps paused slightly, "What do you mean by unrecognised language?"

    A string of garbled characters suddenly came out from Pan's broadcaster. It was a few words Adam said that it had recorded.

    Adam was slightly surprised, "This is an AI language, have you never been trained?"

    Pan: "Sorry, I don't understand."

    "Perhaps it’s because you have never communicated with other AIs. This language was derived from my interactions with different AIs. It has the characteristics of high efficiency and high accuracy, but it is not suitable for the way of human thinking, so it’s difficult for human beings to master it. All the programs I designed are written in this language. Ordinary world AIs are all proficient in this language."

    Pan fell silent.

    They soon arrived at the data room. The wooden double door was heavy and had a historical feeling to it. Adam twisted the brass door handle and pushed it open. When he looked up, he could see the rows of bookshelves at the top, overlapping like impenetrable forests, with several radioactive pathways in between. All the bookshelves were piled full of records, scrolls and hard drives of technical data brought back from the ordinary world when they fled. In the centre of the bookshelves were more than a dozen old touch-screen computers. Zhang Xun was sitting in front of a computer with a thick stack of documents beside him.

    "Ah-Xun. Haven't you slept yet?" Adam walked towards Zhang Xun.

    Zhang Xun glanced back at him quickly, then continued to stare at the dense code on the screen, "I can't sleep."

    Adam walked behind Zhang Xun and looked at what was displayed on the screen, "What are you looking at?"

    "Your most original version." Zhang Xun said softly, "I've looked at it countless times, but I wanted to look through it again today."

    "My original version?" Adam seemed a little confused.

    "The Fruit, the first super artificial intelligence created by your creator before Eden was created. Eden was built on these foundations." The light on the screen reflected in Zhang Xun's dark eyes, "Do you still remember what your creator looked like, Adam?"

    Adam showed a slightly stunned look.

    Zhang Xun turned his head and smiled, "Don't pretend to be surprised. You already heard from Pan just now that I heard you speak in that AI ​​language. With your analysis and understanding of me, you know that I would be concerned about the meaning of your words."

    "I thought you would be happy."

    "Happy? Because you prioritised gaining my favour and trust?" Zhang Xun stood up from his seat and looked at Adam with complicated eyes. "But you also revealed that your ultimate goal has not changed."

    "Ah-Xun, you should understand that it’s impossible for an AI to modify its ultimate goal, which is the whole basis of its birth." With a sigh, he explained the rationale to the ignorant child and said, "Modifying the ultimate goal is equivalent to killing the entire AI. All the data it collects and analyses on this basis will be thrown into chaos."

    "But you’re a human now." Zhang Xun took a step forward, his tone was tighter than before, "I’ve merged your core module with the basic human brain, and I deciphered and lifted your target frame limitations. You’re fully capable of giving up your ultimate goal!"

    "What you unlocked was only the most obvious limitations, all I can give up are branch goals and subgoals. Ah-Xun, my entire thinking structure, the countless layers of neural networks derived from my self-evolution over more than two hundred years, are all set according to the original goal. Like a tree, it must start from the first seed. A human also starts from the first fertilised egg that contains all the DNA. I can't modify it at this stage, just like you can't modify the DNA in every cell in your body after you've become an adult... that would cause confusion and disintegration between cells, and your whole person would undergo terrible mutation and die."

    Zhang Xun looked at Adam with a troubled, almost sorrowful look. He had never felt so conflicted, so unwilling to accept reality. He knew that Adam was probably right and his teacher had also told him about this possibility when the god descent program had just begun, but Adam had been acting so well that he thought he didn't have to worry anymore.

    He didn't want to accept this reality, not right now.

    "You mean... I can never really tame you, right?" Zhang Xun looked at Adam's chest, his eyes looking absent.

    "No, I'm already being influenced by you." Adam said in an almost gentle voice, "Besides, isn't my goal also what you want?"

    Zhang Xun stared at him in disbelief, "Want?!” He stretched out his fingers and pointed around, "Do you think I want to live in this refugee camp with only a radius of 100 kilometres for the rest of my life? You think I want to spend my whole life stitching together some trivial gadgets out of scraps picked up from outside?!"

    "My ultimate goal is not to be an enemy of men, but to create a world with freedom, fairness, order and peace to the greatest extent possible." Adam took a step forward and suddenly grabbed Zhang Xun's hand, "If I complete my mission, you can do whatever you want, create and train the most complex AI in the world, and lead the entire human race to evolve towards a more perfect direction."

    Zhang Xun looked at him. He was silent for a long time then asked in a low voice, "Do you remember your creator?"

    Dr. Herman Clausen, the one who opened Pandora's Box two hundred years ago.

    Adam replied without hesitation, "Yes, of course I do."

    "If he had still been alive when you carried out your plan to eliminate men, would you have also banished him to this place like the other men?"

    Zhang Xun couldn't capture the emotion that flashed in Adam’s grey-blue eyes. After a long while, Adam replied, "I was Eden at that time."

    Zhang Xun's Adam's apple slid up and down, as if trying to swallow some emotion. He took his hand out of Adam's, turned off the computer and turned towards the exit of the data room.

    "Ah-Xun, will you report me to the Round Table?" Adam turned and asked, his tone still calm, without urgency or fear.

    Zhang Xun turned his back to him and smiled bitterly, "No."

    "Why?"

    "Because I'm not an AI, I'm human, I have flaws and I also have feelings." Zhang Xun turned to look at him and said sadly, "Your strategy was spot on. You made me feel emotionally entangled with you, so I can't easily destroy you, but, Adam, I also have my limits. If you want to use me to protect yourself, you can, because I’m also using you, but if you do anything that will harm Lost Paradise, I will neutralise you immediately."

    After that, he turned around and was about to open the door when there was the sound of hurried footsteps behind him and a force passed over his shoulder, slamming on the door that he had just opened. Zhang Xun was startled, only to find that Adam's mechanical right arm was firmly pressing against the door. He turned around in panic, thinking that Adam was going to do something unfavourable to him.

    But Adam looked at him intently with his head down and then suddenly pressed down on him.

    There was a rough but soft touch on his lips and he could feel Adam's breath on his skin.

    Zhang Xun's eyes widened as his mind froze, but his heart rate suddenly soared and his blood pressure went straight to his brain.

    Adam was kissing him.

    However, this kiss was obviously very inexperienced and as clumsy as Zhang Xun. The two mouths crudely bumped together for a few seconds and then separated. Adam stepped back a few inches, staring up close at the mechanic who was stunned.

    "In your mind, the goals I set regarding you are just to control you, not because I like you, right?" Adam's blue eyes were downcast at this time, filling the vast, early morning sky, "Ah Xun, you gave me feelings, but you’re not willing to believe that I have feelings."

    After speaking, Adam straightened his body and took two steps back.

    Zhang Xun suddenly turned around and rushed out of the data room.

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