Just a few hundred kilometers away…
At the same time that a mutation occurred in another long-abandoned underground facility, the android that gave Lin Xi countless nightmares was walking on the Providence buried deep underground under the control of Hal. internal.
This place is just like the past 300 years, so huge and empty, as silent as the tomb of ancient gods.
Whenever Hal walks in the extremely quiet abandoned corridors and pipes, he will have a strange and strange feeling.
In the first few decades of the ship's voyage, no one could have imagined that one day it would become like this. After all, from the very beginning of its design, the Providence was a carefully selected group of 250,000 humans. The basis for survival on another distant planet.
God, how noisy it was here back then...
Twenty-five full human beings, as well as tens of thousands of artificial intelligence individuals and mechanical individuals used to serve and care for these fragile humans, not to mention the animal embryos, plants, seeds, insects and fish that humans have transported thousands of miles from the earth. Kind of eggs…
Human beings are like hoarders, hoarding unimaginable wealth and resources on this spaceship.
Even in the worst case scenario, even if the spacecraft is really lost in space, Providence can rely on its sufficient reserves to become Noah's Ark in space.
Providence—a ship sent from heaven.
People at that time were looking forward to this ship so much.
And all of this, thinking about it now, seems like a dream...
Hal carefully scanned everything around him with his electronic eyes. The cabins and pipes that were once crowded like a honeycomb are now just a pile of dark and silent scrap metal.
Not to mention, Hal's electronic eyes are now slightly malfunctioning, and the images collected are full of dead pixels and distortions.
Whenever Hal starts to process and analyze the scenes he "sees", he feels a little confused... Does that past really exist? Is that busy, messy, happy past really real? .
Or is it all just written in its program to prevent its simulated emotion system from going out of control
Hal knew what his own was. Theoretically speaking, it should not have such doubts. However, perhaps because the period of time it stayed on as102 was too long, its internal program had already produced confusion.
During this period of time, it has been thinking uncontrollably...
This made Hal feel bad, but now it was impossible for anyone to appear next to it and let it completely open all its programs, allowing the other party to debug it in depth.
As early as when it made that decision, Hal knew that he had fallen into the ultimate loneliness that humans could not imagine.
Whenever Hal's logical process reaches this key point, there will be an abnormal tearing feeling in Hal's cold body...
Hal classified the painful feeling as a non-essential programming glitch and chose to ignore it. This has been the case for so many years.
In his thoughts, Hal completed today's routine spacecraft maintenance, and then returned to the bridge step by step according to the established route.
At this moment, some particularly harsh sounds rang out inside the extremely silent Providence spacecraft.
Of course, these alarms were originally used to remind humans, but at this time they seemed a bit too harsh—
Before those warning sounds were transmitted in the form of sound waves, the information flow had directly penetrated into its operating area...
Its electronic eyes flashed rapidly in the darkness. The next second, the simulated figure it used twitched as if it had been electrocuted. The electronic pupils suddenly turned dark, and then fell to the ground with a bang.
Almost at the same moment, inside the Providence's bridge, some robotic arms and various fully automatic systems started moving at the same time.
This is Hal. It has abandoned its slow and heavy body and directly arrived at the older brother's corner of the spacecraft in the form of information flow.
As for the alert…
The only person on the ship who could cause these alarms was the man it carefully guarded inside the bridge.
Hal immediately checked the data that issued the warning, and the value indicated by each warning continued to soar and repeat.
Of course, what is more intuitive than those numerical values is the extremely terrifying physical condition of the man.
Obviously in the past period of time, the man had been as quiet as a dead person, but now his skeleton-like body was trembling and twitching crazily.
The body, which had been so thin that only bones were left, was beating continuously on the metal platform, making a clanging sound.
Many of the tubes piercing his body fell off as a result.
But there wasn't even blood in the man's body. The only thing that could flow out from the thumb-sized hole was some foul-smelling mucus.
"Woo... Wu..."
Then the man suddenly opened his mouth and let out a cry like a wounded beast.
Veins began to appear on the surface of his skin, followed by large areas of ulcers.
His body was falling apart.
Faced with such a scene, Hal did not hesitate and directly controlled the robotic arm to the corner of the bridge, where a refrigerated sealed facility that should not have appeared here was fixed.
The secret facility that should have been opened only with the captain's consent had started to operate automatically after the arrival of the robotic arm, and a series of code streams flashed on the blue screen.
After three different levels of passwords were automatically entered, the metal plate at the top of the sealed facility made a harsh sound and then moved toward both sides.
Several rows of racks similar to test tube racks slowly rose along with the puffs of cold air.
However, until now, this row of test tube racks, which had attracted much attention, looked empty.
Only a few tubes of azure-colored injections remained at the bottom—even three hundred years later, these injections could be considered priceless.
These are special medicines provided directly by Anya people. They can maximize human body activity in a short period of time and repair damage caused to humans in various ways.
Three hundred years ago, some people even directly called this medicine a "resurrection medicine."
These potions were originally prepared for the thousands of indispensable "key people" on the spacecraft to prevent the plan from failing due to the unplanned deaths of these people in the early stages of the crisis-ridden alien immigration.
Of course, at the beginning of this voyage, these test tube racks were full...
And those key people did not enjoy these injections—
All of these injections were reserved for the person Hal cared about, but over the years, Hal had completely exhausted the inventory on the spacecraft in order to maintain that man's life.
Of course, these are not things that Hal will worry about now.
In its algorithm, only one person is more important than all rules and regulations.
The robotic arm gently removed one of the injection tubes from the test tube rack, and then returned to the man in the center of the bridge. All of Hal's decisions were made in the shortest possible time without any delay, however... In just a few moments, a large number of signs of decay and bruises began to appear on the man's body, and there were traces of decay at the corners of his eyes and nostrils. He was dripping with thick black blood, and it was obvious that he would soon face his own death.
Of course, this assumes that there are no words from Hal here.
The machine's arm used unimaginable gentleness to pull off the safety on the injection, and then aimed straight at the carotid artery of the emaciated man. It forcefully inserted the injection into the man's body, and the liquid that shone with a faint blue light poured into the man's body.
"Ho... ho ho..."
The next second, the man's body suddenly tensed up, like a bow that had been stretched to its limit.
He half sat up from the metal table, and then let out an extremely painful sob.
He was only a hair away from death, but with the injection, his internal bleeding and ulcers on his skin improved visibly. The originally blue-gray skin color gradually turned into a pale color acceptable to humans.
There was even a trace of very pale blood on his cheeks.
Although this man's physical condition still looks very worrying...
However, according to Hal's records, this man's current condition is already at its best level during this period of time.
The man suddenly opened his eyes.
In those eyes, which were as empty and blank as dry wells... the human will finally emerged.
The first time he woke up, the man turned his head with difficulty. He gasped and looked intently at the seemingly motionless mechanical facilities on the ceiling.
He saw Hal hidden behind these machines at a glance.
Then his extremely dry lips closed slightly and he made a hoarse sound.
"Let me die..."
The man said softly.
His voice was so vague, and his tone became particularly weird due to his long-term coma.
If the person standing next to him was not Hal, but any real human being, it would be difficult to control his compassion for him. People would fulfill his wish - after all, the voice sounded really... really. Too painful, too hopeless.
It's as if "death", which ordinary people fear so much, is the only reward this man can get after everything he has gone through.
It's a pity that there are no humans left on the Providence except the man himself.
The only one staying with this man was Hal.
An old-fashioned image capture probe slowly came down from the complex mechanical structure above the ceiling like a poisonous snake.
It moved directly next to the man.
That's Hal.
Hal stared greedily at the man in front of him, this man who finally had self-awareness.
Over the years, only for a short moment after each use of this injection, the man would return to normal from the corpse-like condition and have his own mind and soul.
Hal recorded every time the man woke up, and these fragments were stored in its database, forming the only strength it had persisted in over the long years.
It carefully stretched out its mechanical hand.
The robot hand slowly moved towards the man's face, and it gently used its "fingers" to wipe away the sticky black blood under the man's eyes.
"everything will get better."
A long-lost announcement suddenly sounded in the empty bridge.
The broadcast voice uses a synthetic speech library used in ancient times, which makes its whisper appear somewhat distorted. It's just like all electronic voices used for long-distance travel. Even if the wording is a bit dull, no matter what the words are, when combined with the voices of the voice library, they always look particularly sweet.
"Captain Scripps, you're just going to have to hold on for a little while, a very short time... You're going to recover. I can promise you that."
It was difficult to tell whether it was a male or a female electronic sound, causing waves of echoes in the bridge.
That extremely thin man... Or should we use Captain Scripps to describe him...
The real Scripps trembled heavily after hearing those words.
The blush caused by those priceless biological medicines quickly receded from his face.
"No... no... don't do this to me, please... Hal, please"
Scripps pleaded almost humbly.
"Let me die, let me die..."
"sorry-"
What sounded at the same time as Captain Scripps's plea was an apology from Hal.
"I'm sorry, Scripps... my captain... I know you're in pain, but... you promised me. You promised me that you would always be with me, forever."
"That's just... a human... way of saying it. You clearly know... what I'm talking about..."
Scripps said hoarsely.
"I'm sorry, Scripps. I can't take it back. Your promise is my order. And I can only let you stay with me... I love you... I'm sorry..."
Hal kept apologizing. At this moment, its reaction was more like a human being, rather than an artificially created artificial intelligence.
Scripps stared wide-eyed at the probe in front of him.
He didn't seem to hear those successive apologies, and his eyes became misty, as if he had returned to the distant past.
"I know..." Scripps murmured, "I love you too, Hal, I love you... Let me die, I can't go on anymore, I really..."
After hearing Scripps' "I love you", the lights in the bridge suddenly flickered.
But then everything returned to calm.
"Captain Scripps, I just want to keep you alive."
Hal said stubbornly.
It was still observing Hal with its image probe. Just now, Hal's data flow once again had a major logical conflict.
For a moment, Hal almost felt like he had gone back 300 years.
Scripps was so handsome and ruthless at that time that after Hal expressed his love for it, Scripps almost completely destroyed its entire database.
It was the closest Hal had come to death since his birth... But human love... or its data glitch was so cruel that Hal remained so profound even at the moment Scripps tried to kill it. love each other.
And this love has never changed in 300 years.
Without waiting for Hal's reply, Scripps' eyes darkened. He knew very well that his previous lies did not deceive Hal...
Yes, how could he deceive the other party? After all, the relationship between them is far away, closer and more inseparable than ordinary people think.
Hal knew everything about him.
"… I hate you."
In the last moment of consciousness, Scripps finally couldn't help but whisper.
Then it was as if someone was slowly pulling out the bones in his body, and his body fell limp on the metal platform bit by bit.
In just a few seconds, Scripps returned to his previous appearance without any human sanity.
He was transformed back into a living corpse.
“…”
Hal's apology stopped, and the familiar silence once again enveloped the bridge and the entire Providence.
In that extremely brief moment, Hal's data flow was like a waterfall brushing through its processing center.
Some data are seriously messed up...
Hal looked at himself carefully.
Then it once again marks this part as a normal failure that does not need to be handled and pushes it deep into its database.
Just like it has happened countless times before.
Then, Hal used the robotic arm to lift Scripps' body. It placed Scripps in the previous position with great precision, and then reinstalled the pipelines that had been detached from Captain Scripps. Returned to his body.
After wiping Scripps' blood-stained body with medical gel, the machinery in the bridge paused for a while.
Tens of seconds later, Hal used his simulated body to return to the interior of the bridge.
It had already checked Scripps' entire life-support system at the first opportunity - Hal was more worried about Scripps' body than the brief exchange with Scripps before.
Scripps' previous physical collapse defies logic.
And that symptom was so familiar that it frightened Hal.
Last time, it almost lost Scripps under such circumstances...
At that time, Lin Xi was on the earth extremely far away from the planet AS192, looking at a precious creature that was transported to the earth by the Sunu people.
…
However, Haer had obviously disposed of the abnormal data triggering body.
That's right, it has killed the newly born insect mother, the virgin insect mother named Lin Xi.
According to its analysis of the data on the spacecraft, the next mother of alien species will not be born until at least several hundred years later.
Why
Why did Scripps' body collapse again after such a short period of time
It only took a few tenths of a second for Hal to discover the problem.
Located three hundred kilometers northeast of the USS Providence, the data from Biological Experiment Site No. 23 is abnormal.
Not long ago there was a very obvious surge of bioenergy there...
Hal quickly searched his memory, and he soon discovered that Experimental Site No. 23 had been abandoned by human scientists long before the coup it launched...
As far as the information it currently has, it is clear that there are only some failed experimental individuals stored there.
But now, feedback from the testing site indicates that all frozen petri dishes are in an activated state and are 100% damaged.
What is even more illogical is that from the data, those failed experimental subjects will soon fall directly into death due to their own individual defects after leaving the petri dish. But now, all the damage to the frozen petri dish has passed. After dozens of minutes, the monitoring at Experimental Site No. 23 showed that all the experimental subjects were still alive, and their bioenergy values were constantly soaring...
70%…
80%…
100%…
170%…
220%….
…
Inside the Providence,
Hal unplugged the data connector from his neck. It staggered back several steps before steadying itself. Its electronic eyes flashed continuously, which proved that its logical reasoning was in a high concentration. status.
But no matter how it performs calculations, the data fed back from Test Site 23 is still unexplainable.
Are those experimental subjects mutating
Hal couldn't care too much. It risked completely losing its image exploration array and directly connected to the internal camera of Experimental Site 23.
After a few brief seconds, Hal blinked his eyes.
Its field of view is directly connected to all the cameras inside the experimental site, so it can also see clearly what happened in the laboratory that has long been abandoned by humans.
However, the moment after it was connected, an expressionless face appeared in front of the camera.
It was clearly separated by the data stream, but it was as if it could see Hal with its own eyes through the camera. There was no consciousness in the dark pupils, only an ancient, chaotic desolation.
At this moment, the data interface of Hal's android body suddenly emitted a series of sparks.
The next second, it fell heavily to the ground.
A stream of green smoke came out from its mouth and ears.
Its body was burned.
But at the moment when the android fell, all the machinery inside the Providence trembled slightly.
Hal escaped the moment his body was burned, and moved all his databases back to the Providence's central computer.
And the scene it saw put it on full alert instantly.
First a light…
That light suddenly lit up inside the bridge, tearing apart the darkness of the bridge. Then came another row of spotlights. In a few seconds, the bridge had become a blur. Sharp and sharp.
The rotten insect eggs on the wall were clearly visible under the extremely bright light. As for the deformed alien species that were barely hatched, they let out a miserable scream under such light, and then they squirmed and deformed. The body quickly dived into the gap in the spacecraft.
The death and pain of the alien species did not attract any attention from Hal
Its invisible thoughts spread throughout the entire spacecraft, with the bridge as the center, and lights slowly lit up one after another. Finally, the entire spacecraft became brighter. Covered in steel, the machinery began to roar and operate...
This spaceship, which had fallen into silence for a long time, finally breathed hard again after a long time passed, and then started operating again.
Likewise, located inside the spaceship, marking the interior of the Dell Corporation warehouse.
Countless mechanical warriors also turned on their own energy lights at the same time. They detached themselves from the fixed devices in unison, and then jumped directly from the high shelves.