Lunar Base—Strictly speaking, it is not a base, but the appearance of the entire lunar surface after it is completely covered, reinforced, and armed. After thousands of years of continuous construction, this natural satellite has turned into a steel fortress , it hovers icily in the vast universe, pointing in the direction of the mother star with forests of guns and heavy armor, it has to be said to be a kind of sadness.
The exiles who have been expelled from their hometown have been looking at the direction of home for thousands of years, hoping that one day they can return to the native land where they once thrived, but they have to live in this place hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from home. The locals put on strong and sharp weapons and point all their weapons in the direction of their hometown, because the hometown-the hometown has become their enemy.
It is difficult for the survivor society established and maintained under such circumstances to have the vigor and vitality that normal civilization should possess.
The entire lunar base is a huge and well-disciplined barracks. Factories and barracks account for 70% to 80% of all facilities. On the continuous steel land, there are everywhere mining brackets and assembling war machines. The production center of the machine, and the high-intelligence mechanical and biochemical people called "agents" are continuously produced in these factories, and sent to the Zenith after a short period of adaptive adjustment and maintenance—in After a short period of time, half of them will be filled as consumables in the never-ending pulverizer on the home planet.
Agents like N-4 who have served for more than ten years are almost a miracle. Most of them, like N-6, encountered the counterattack of the eldest son in a certain bombing mission, and then were easily shot down, crashed, and became It became a pile of fragmented wreckage on the parent star.
If Hao Ren and his party hadn't been met, N-6's existence would have ended at that moment.
Cautiously dodging a group of patrol planes flying over the avenue, N-6 poked her head out from her hiding place, but somehow these inexplicable thoughts came to her mind: about the world she lives in, about the agent life, about her own destiny.
This is the first time she thinks about her own destiny. To be honest, Ms. Acter feels that this question is a bit of a waste of power.
Perhaps this is the "emotional problem" that agents who have served for more than a certain period of time often say? N-6 was a little curious to check the operation status of her logic circuit. She knew that there would be a big difference between those agents who had been in service for a long time and those who had just left the factory, even if the former had not downloaded new ones from the Great Think Tank. Logical programming, this difference also appears over time. N-4 once talked about this topic with herself, and the other party called it accumulation of experience and emotional development, but N-6 has never been able to understand these things, and now she feels as if she is about to understand.
It turns out that after surviving for a while... the logic circuit will start to generate some codes that have nothing to do with the main program.
"There are automated things everywhere," Lily looked around curiously, her golden eyes reflected the steel buildings in the distance, "It's deserted..."
"It's normal," Hao Ren nodded. "This society doesn't have any entertainment activities, and it doesn't need livelihood industries. What we saw along the way were either factories or barracks. The newly produced soldiers and war machines were all stored in their respective stores. In the warehouse of the army, it is directly sent to the front line by transport plane when going out—I can hardly imagine such a society with busy street scenes and pedestrians wandering around."
Vivienne frowned: "But the agents actually have feelings... At least those like N-4 have a lot of feelings, and N-6 is actually not bad."
Y'zaks nodded: "That's right, they have the foundation to build a normal society, but they don't have the leeway."
Hao Ren didn't continue this topic. He raised his head and looked towards the direction of his group: a huge "mountain" was just ahead, and it didn't look very far away. It was the "fortress" that N-4 and N-6 were talking about. .
The fortress is a circular steel fortress. If you look down from the air, it looks like a round cake with regular edges and a slightly sunken interior. On the edge of the fortress are neatly arranged black cube structures. Huge metal pipes and corridors flow from these cubes. Extending out from the center, they are connected to each other and point to the central structure of the fortress. At their intersection, you can see an alloy cylinder hundreds of meters high. That cylinder without doors and windows, as dark as a prison, is the place where humans live —Final Palace.
It really doesn't look like a palace for the Creator to live in, but it is where the faith and faith of all agents lie.
And those black cubes neatly arranged on the edge of the fortress are actually part of the main brain. They are the superstructure of thirteen giant servers. Under the steel ground, these black cubes have larger bodies and more complex secondary servos. And all these things are centrally connected in the Final Palace. According to N-4, there is also a computer room inside the Final Palace, where there are also thirteen servers, which is where the main brain's interface and control center are located.
Simply touching or destroying the black cubes on the edge of the fortress is useless. The destination of Hao Ren and his party is in the core computer room of the final fortress.
The route to the fort is well-mapped, but approaching it unnoticed is not so easy. Although the eldest son (the planet devourer in the mouth of the agent) has never implemented complex tactics such as dispatching spies and internal sabotage, the humans who originally designed and built the lunar base still set up layers of checkpoints and Patrol teams, and these designs were also inherited and carried forward by the mastermind who took over the management of the lunar surface.
Hao Ren and the others saw many patrolling troops and sentries along the way: there were walker guards riding in small combat vehicles, and there were also electronic monitoring stations that were fixed in certain places and constantly scanning the surroundings, but more of them were of a kind. The small things called "patrol planes" are disc-shaped intelligent aircraft, they are only the size of a basketball, usually in groups of three or six, and are distributed all over the lunar surface, especially around the fortress.
They are the eyes and ears of the Mastermind.
It is not difficult to eliminate these "eyes and ears". A well-trained husky and a brick that can be attacked and defended can kill all the sentries, but this will inevitably cause riots in the entire lunar base. By that time, the overwhelming Legion of Proctors might be enough to completely overwhelm the small team led by Hao Ren.
It is true that Hao Ren led gold medal fighters, but gold medal fighters are not invincible in this place. Even if Vivienne can stun a hundred ordinary agent soldiers with a small bat, she will not be able to fight against a million soldiers. Not 10,000 little bats to throw away...
So Hao Ren walked very cautiously along the way. The N-6 can guide the team to bypass the main monitoring equipment, and the data terminal will constantly sense the patrolling troops wandering nearby and issue an alarm in advance. Surprised to get so close to the fortress.
Hao Ren originally wanted to try to let the data terminal fly a certain distance and take everyone away through space teleportation, but the moment the terminal activated the space device, it sensed at least seventy radar signals concentrated, so this idea could only be dismissed. give up.
Obviously, although the agents have not been able to point out the hyperspace transition technology, their radars are not blind. The abnormal energy fluctuations and electromagnetic radiation before the opening of the space door are enough to trigger the vigilance of the main brain. Short-term dizziness and perceptual disturbance will reduce everyone's combat effectiveness. Hao Ren must give up this risky way of traveling.
But fortunately, the "good show" that Hao Ren arranged in the Zenith seat had its due effect, and the attention of the mastermind was almost completely attracted by the battle in space—and also attracted by it. There are a large number of troops left behind on the lunar base. Although there are still a considerable number of Agent Legions stranded on the moon to maintain the necessary force of this base, their numbers have been greatly reduced after all.
In this way, Hao Ren and his party crossed the road to the fort without any risk, and the dark steel building finally appeared in front of their eyes.
"The fortress was built on the basis of a crater. It was originally an underground bunker with an alloy shield excavated from the bottom of the crater," N-6 looked at the towering black fortress in front of him, and his tone was not without pride, " However, it has undergone countless large and small transformations and enhancements over thousands of years, and now, except for this circular outline, it basically cannot see what it used to be. Its shell is covered with the main brain's sensors and electronic eyes. , the entire black city wall is made of activated metal, and any contact with the outer wall will be transmitted to the main brain in real time—how are you going to deal with this thing?"
Y'zaks looked at the black wall not far away: "Air or underground?"
N-6 shook his head: "There is a layer of repulsive shield in the air, although it is not as good as your shield technology, but the repulsive shield itself has 'perception', the master brain can also sense what has entered it through the shield The fortress, underground is also not feasible, because the entire underground is covered by a layer of hemispherical activated metal shell, it is impossible to sneak in quietly."
Vivienne was thoughtful: "It sounds like the entire fortress is surrounded by a barrier... This structure gives people the feeling that it can be separated from the lunar base at any time."
N-6 glanced at her, and said after two seconds of silence: "You guessed it, the entire fortress is indeed designed as an independent structure that can be separated from the moon at any time. This great project was completed three thousand years ago. And the correction has continued intermittently to this day. It was designed to keep the last light of the survivor society when the situation was too critical and irreparable: if the moon base fell and the Zenith space station was destroyed by Galactus, then the fortress would be raised. Space and fly to the universe, becoming a new "Zenith Ark", humans and masterminds still have a glimmer of hope to find a place to live in the vast universe.
"At the same time, the agent has already buried an annihilation reactor inside the moon that is powerful enough to push the entire planet out of orbit. If the day comes when the fortress has to escape from its homeland again, the agent will detonate those annihilation reactors after the fortress lifts off. Reactor, the moon will then change orbit and eventually crash into the parent star. We don't know if this will eventually destroy Galactus, but at least... we can go home."
This plan made people gasp, Lily's eyes widened even more: "Are you guys crazy?"
"We just want to go home."