Embers Ad Infinitum

At a water source in Mount Chilar.

Long Yuehong wore the military exoskeleton and used the flashlight he carried with him to provide light for Shang Jianyao and the others. To be honest, his legs were a little shaky now. He only wanted to find a place to sit down and rest.

This wasn’t because he was excessively nervous from the robot guards’ pursuit. After all, he had stopped seeing any pursuers after the bridge was blown up. He had only relied on the occasional commotion to remind himself not to relax.

His nervousness mainly came from racing in the middle of the night—especially in the mountains.

The sharp bends, the cliffs everywhere, the incomplete roads, the jeep’s crazy advance, and their wrangler lights that they didn’t dare to turn on combined to form Long Yuehong’s nightmare tonight.

In particular, after leaving their original route, Bai Chen was no longer familiar with the environment and needed Genava’s guidance. It made things more dangerous—according to Long Yuehong.

He was afraid that Bai Chen would accidentally drive the car into the ditch. That would still be fine, but nobody in the car would survive if she drove the car to the bottom of a cliff, including the smart bot, Genava.

Long Yuehong’s legs and stomach trembled a little when he recalled the scene back then.

Fortunately, the moon was relatively bright tonight, so the driver didn’t need to rely solely on the headlights.

“Alright, let’s continue.” Jiang Baimian walked back with her waterskin.

Genava—who was standing on the other side—suggested, “I’ll be in charge of driving next. You guys shouldn’t be familiar with the places we’ll pass by.”

“Alright.” Jiang Baimian also felt that it was better to leave this matter to Mount Chilar’s terrain expert, Genava.

What’s this called? This was called fully autonomous driving!

As she opened the passenger door, Jiang Baimian said to Long Yuehong, “Take off the exoskeleton. We can preliminarily consider ourselves as having eluded the pursuit. We have to conserve electricity.”

Long Yuehong had already received the system’s warning of low battery levels, so he had no objections.

After the jeep resumed its journey under the moonlight, Jiang Baimian turned to look at Genava and asked curiously, “Don’t you have any problems with insufficient electricity?”

Smart bots mainly relied on high-performance batteries to provide energy.

“I’ve already changed batteries,” Genava replied simply. “We smart bots use a dual-energy system that allows us to change batteries at any time. Just like how you need to prepare food when you are out, we usually carry four high-performance batteries as a backup. I even stole two additional batteries. Yes, we try our best not to use the backup batteries when the conditions allow.”

“I also stole two,” Jiang Baimian said.

“Wealthy.” Shang Jianyao expressed his opinion.

Genava skillfully made the jeep turn the corner without responding.

Jiang Baimian asked in a casual tone, “Are there many smart bots like you who escape from Mechanical Paradise?”

If Genava was the first, she suspected that there would be many more problems in the future.

Genava fell silent for a while, the blue light in his eyes dyeing the windshield with a little color. “There are some. Most of them fled because of their humanization.”

“What happened to them later?” Shang Jianyao asked with concern.

Genava replied in a slightly synthetic male voice, “They might’ve been caught, or perhaps not. This isn’t public information; we don’t have access to read or download the information.”

“Do you have an Internet connection internally?” Jiang Baimian asked casually.

“Yes, apart from main module updates, everything else can be obtained on the Internet. However, it has to be within the base station’s range.” Unlike Bai Chen’s wildness when she drove, Genava drove very calmly. There were basically no sudden stops, but his speed wasn’t much slower.

Jiang Baimian nodded and asked, “What does the C in your serial number mean?”

Grasping as much information about Mechanical Paradise as possible helped them choose and determine their subsequent plans.

“C represents a general type.” Genava didn’t hide anything. “The first two numbers are the years when the main module was added to the core chip. The latter numbers indicate the serial number of that year’s batch.”

He paused and continued, “A represents a computational type. They’re mainly used to assist the Source Brain in carrying out the corresponding research; B represents an experimental type. On the one hand, they participate in all kinds of dangerous experiments. On the other hand, they test the new versions of the main module, the latest algorithm, and so on. In the eyes of us smart bots, these two models of robots are closer to tools.”

So there’s a chain of contempt among robots… Jiang Baimian smiled thoughtfully.

Bai Chen and Shang Jianyao listened very attentively and seemed very interested in such matters.

Long Yuehong—who was sitting in the backseat—was more curious about another question. “What does the degree of humanization entail?”

As the car sped down the dark mountain road, Genava subconsciously slowed down his speech as he trained his eyes forward. “My understanding is self-cognition and a similarity to humans—the more you think of yourself as a human, the more you appear like a human in all aspects, and the more human you become. Once one exceeds 70%, they will suffer the Source Brain’s punishment. If it’s too low, they will be deemed unsuitable to come into contact with humans as there are latent dangers.”

Long Yuehong roughly understood what humanization was about. “How does your Mechanical Paradise deal with uh—smart bots who have overly high or low levels of humanization?”

Genava’s tone sounded a little vacant. “They will be formatted, and the main module and the corresponding algorithm will be reloaded. In other words, there will be another Genava, or it won’t be called Genava. It will take over this body.

“I really don’t understand. We are clearly a large species with our own reproduction means. Why is the Source Brain still treating us as intelligent tools? Many companions don’t understand…”

Without waiting for Shang Jianyao and the others to respond, he continued asking questions. “In that case, why was a lower limit to humanization set, and why were we needed to maintain such a state? In order to serve humans better and not harm humans? But…”

Genava fell silent as if he couldn’t find an answer, nor did he expect Jiang Baimian and the others to answer.

Jiang Baimian quietly listened and raised a question. “If your humanization is excessive, how will your bodies be affected before you are examined and punished by the Source Brain?”

The core point of her question was: Was the degree of humanization a mandatory rule of the Source Brain or a restriction of the smart bots themselves?

Genava turned the steering wheel and fell silent for a moment. “At times, there will be certain malfunctions in certain cases. When we realize this, we will deliberately avoid it because the Source Brain will know that our condition isn’t right once the corresponding malfunctioning code repeatedly appears.”

At this point, Genava smiled bitterly and spoke with a slightly synthetic tone. “Every time this happens, I know that we might not be a true human species. Our creator had set too many restrictions in our core module, making it only a tool, not a soul.”

Shang Jianyao suddenly laughed when he heard that. “Do you know what our next goal is?”

“What?” Genava asked cooperatively.

Shang Jianyao pointed north and said, “Go to First City and find Oray Ubis’s descendant. His name is also Maximian. He was once the Chief Scientist of the Third Research Institute.”

After Shang Jianyao said that, Jiang Baimian helped Genava understand. “Perhaps you still don’t know that your Mechanical Paradise’s former form was the Third Research Institute. Maximian should be the creator you speak of.”

Shang Jianyao continued, “When the time comes, we might be able to obtain some information from his descendants. Maybe it can remove the various restrictions on your souls.”

He used ‘souls’ to replace the core module—the main module—that Genava spoke of.

“This…” The blue light in Genava’s eyes suddenly lit up, illuminating the path ahead in a faint blue.

He was clearly a little shocked.

At the same time, Jiang Baimian furrowed her brows slightly before relaxing. She cast her gaze at the rearview mirror without showing any abnormality.

A few seconds later, Genava sighed. “That’s something to look forward to… I never expected that this escape would involve the creator.”

Shang Jianyao smiled and asked, “Then, do you believe in fate now?”

“Fate…” Genava ruminated over this word again but still didn’t answer.

Upon seeing this, Jiang Baimian changed the topic and casually asked, “Genava, uh—it feels like there’s a distance between us when calling you that. Have you seen humans at Mechanical Paradise’s headquarters?”

What the hell is that question… Long Yuehong was a little dumbfounded.

The next second, he heard Genava answer in a deep voice, “No.”