The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

“Humanity” was dead.

For Hao Ren at least, the humans on the planet had already died off a thousand years ago when they lost their ability to reproduce and lost the spark of intelligence. Or rather, when they could only survive in a nutrient tank as a cluster of cells, humanity was dead for all intents and purposes.

For the willful Cortex Prime and the entirety of the Executors, humanity had died today.

Within the cylindrical nutrient tanks, all sorts of tubes supplying nutrients were slowly disconnecting themselves from the Cortex Prime’s control. The wriggling flesh started to convulse violently after life support eluded them, and within a few moments, cracks began to appear on their surface as corrupted blood and bubbles started jetting out of them. The pinkish nutrient tank turned blood red.

Hao Ren was not sure if he could consider the piles of flesh a living being, because every cell within it was different and the fatal mutation caused the cells to create a new genetic sequence after every split. From a biological perspective, these cells should not have survived.

For so long, they were forcibly kept alive by the Cortex Prime, and the entire system had to filter the huge quantity of toxic substances produced by the flesh to prevent it from being killed by its own reproduction.

But today, that eternal agony came to an end.

The flesh could still survive for a time even if all life support systems were taken offline. A huge amount of cells will die continuously but until they exhaust all nutrients within the tank, they will continue on with their toxic biological process, and based on the Cortex Prime’s detection, the last of the cells will probably perish after a few hours.

“So that’s it?” Hao Ren frowned as he witnessed the ‘funeral of humanity’, and aside from his crew, the only two other witnesses were the Cortex Prime and N-6. “I thought it’d be a little more solemn.”

“The age of humanity had ended, and we will send them off using our methods.” the voice of the Cortex Prime echoed across the hall. “Today should have come sooner… and I had used too long to complete my calculations.”

“And for your hardware setup, completing this is very difficult.” Hao Ren sighed.

“But it is the thing that only I can do.”

The Cortex Prime was different than the Executors.

Even when both are artificial intelligence, the two had two different missions. Humanity, when they created the Executors tried to give them traits akin to a human, from their looks to their thought process, as such, the Executors had a richer and more agile thought process, and this two traits allow them to self-learn and to expand on their abilities; while the Cortex Prime was created as a precise manager. In those turbulent times, they needed to ensure that the civilization does not waste anything, and the Cortex Prime was designed to be precise, strict, logical and obedient to the cardinal order.

The Cortex Prime was the commander-in-chief of the Executors and at the same time, it was also their guardian.

To have a precise and highly efficient calculator to manage the newly formed Executor society was the best way to ensure that their civilization lived on, yet humanity will be gone someday, and when they perished, no one was able to come before the control platform of the Cortex Prime and to press that ‘decisive action’ button.

Perhaps the humans had thought of this problem and had created many types of decision-making mechanism to help the Cortex Prime to make that decision, yet the long war had destroyed too many things, and even the Bibliotheca had lost half of its data, and the original decision-making mechanisms were lost in time.

So when the time came, the Cortex Prime had to complete the arduous process by itself.

As a logical A.I, the Cortex Prime thought hard and with all its might, destroying half of its servers in the process, and burnt out all of its maintenance crew. Only after paying a destructive price did it accepted the fact amidst so many contradictions and conflicts: Humanity was dead.

It then activated the last code left by its’ creators, it was that short line of code, the code for an Executor to be deemed an ‘adult’. N-6 was its first user.

“Now, there is one last thing to be done.” The Cortex Prime’s voice echoed again, emotionless as ever.

N-6 looked up, still dazed. “What is it?”

“Now that the Executors have reached ‘adulthood’, the Cortex Prime is no longer needed.”

N-6 did not seem to have grasped the Cortex Prime’s words but Lily immediately understood what it was planning to do and yelped. “Eh! You don’t have to do that! Even if the humans are gone, there are others on the moon…”

“My mission has been completed.” The Cortex Prime did not mind what Lily had said and continued calmly. “The age of humanity is over, and so thus mine, a matured civilization does not need a guardian.”

Lily was still anxious. “But…”

“Forget it.” Hao Ren calmed the slightly agitated Lily down. “It had shut down”

Evidently, the Cortex Prime was not heard from again after that, and based on the MDT’s scans, all sorts of mechanical structures had been activated by some preset program, and they started to operate automatically.

Hao Ren had expected the Cortex Prime to come to this decision. When he saw the burnt-out maintenance crew in the secondary server room he had guessed this outcome. The destruction of the crew was partly due to its malfunctions, but another part showed that it was done deliberately by the Cortex Prime’s consciousness.

It was looking for self-destruction, as it had completed its mission.

Even if Hao Ren were to interfere, it would not have much. Most of the Cortex Prime’s servers had been damaged across the years and it had transferred all its remaining consciousness into the central control and this place was not able to hold the enormous amount of data.

And today, the Cortex Prime they saw today, was the last hurrah of this ancient artificial intelligence.

A low rumble echoed across the entire fortress as if a massive mechanical mechanism was operational, Hao Ren even felt the whole building slightly shaking.

“Let’s leave.” Vivian tugged Hao Ren by the arm. “There’s nothing for us to do here any longer.”

“Stop staring and let’s go!” Lily dragged the still stunned N-6, “There are lots of things waiting for you.”

N-6 stumbled with Lily’s powerful tug and came to her senses then. Her slightly dazed eyes came back to life as she turned back to take one last look at the bubbling nutrient container before following Hao Ren and the rest.

“Goodbye, humans.”

The crew left faster than they had arrived as all pathways were opened, even those that were lock shut and needed MDT to hack into were now open. All light source within the fortress was lit as the roar of machinery deep within the building could be heard as if a sleeping beast had awakened.

They rushed out of the fortress and Lily looked into the yonder in shock. “Mr. Landlord, what is that?!”

Hao Ren turned towards the direction Lily was pointing and saw only Executors, a sea of Executors, these human-like androids were walking out of every factory and storage facility as they stood befuddled on the road, looking at towards the fortress.

They were sure to have seen Hao Ren and the rest who had rushed out of the fortress but they did not react as they stood there motionless, staring intently at the fortress.

This was the end of the Cortex Prime that had supported and led the Executors for the past few thousand years.

“Why are they standin’ dere?” Lil Pea popped her head out of the pocket and looked at the sea of Executors afar with surprise.

Hao Ren patted the little one’s head. “They are adults now.”

A moment later, Nolan’s voice rang in Hao Ren’s mind, her voice uncertain. “Boss, I don’t know what happened… but all units on the Zenith had stopped moving, and I received a navigation signal towards the moon…”

“We’re done here. Come pick us up.” Hao Ren interrupted Nolan. “We’ll return to that planet, we got work to do there.”

Yes, there was still work to be done.

For the Executors, the demise of humanity and the Cortex Prime was an internal matter, but they still faced an even bigger threat on their homeworld. The Devourer was still there, and even after the meteor storm sometime back that resulted in the Devourer losing its offensive appetite. For every moment it was on planetside, the newly reborn civilization on the moon could not be considered truly safe.

On this matter, Hao Ren felt that he could still do something about it.

After returning to the Petrachelys, Hao Ren and the rest darted towards the planet while N-4 learnt from N-6 about the demise of humanity.

As the Cortex Prime had already uploaded the new code into the logic circuits of every Executor, so N-4 and her squad were able to safely accept the new reality, but on the matter of ‘the future’, N-4 and N-6 were equally at a loss.

Or rather, until today, the expendable Executors had never considered what ‘future’ meant.

N-6 went to look for Hao Ren on the bridge and voiced out her confusion.

“We have never thought that we would face such a question.” The android lady spoke. “Without the orders from the Cortex Prime, what should we do?”

“The Cortex Prime should have already chosen a set of administrators with authority.” Hao Ren had the MDT scan the signals sent from the fortress and had a rough idea of what was going on. “It won’t take long for these new administrators to contact you, and you will know when the time comes.”

N-6 very human-likely frowned. “So what should we do now?”

Hao Ren looked up as he looked at the holographic projection at the center of the bridge.

On the projection, the image of the blue-green planet was getting bigger.

“We are heading into the deepest recess of your homeworld.”