(Oh oh, I forgot to ask for a monthly pass yesterday! Ask for a monthly pass at the end of the month, I sent it out yesterday, but I forgot about it!)
On the officer’s platform, a group of people gathered in front of the holographic projection, staring blankly. The screen showed the scene of an engineering probe being attacked, but the scene was so weird: one could not see the model at all, The "weird guy", as if several self-discipline machines were put together at random, is the attacker. It waved its working arms and tried to drive our probe away. This is the whole "attack" behavior. Even the main engine on the ship that issued the alarm before seemed a little embarrassed at this time, so it simply shut up and remained silent.
Qianqian rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling at a 45-degree angle, she didn't know what she was thinking, anyway, it was the same as usual, she was the first to react when everyone was stunned: "Ah Jun, Bring that back?"
... This girl's logic is a black box, no one will ever know the operation process, anyway, the result is very fast.
"Is there a way to bring that... that monster back?" I asked the monitoring team, and the person in charge of the latter immediately gave a positive [answer]: Although the attacker looks weird, his "combat power" is really strong. Worryingly, it seems that its most powerful weapon is the two creaking and flaming beam knives. Even without sending out soldiers, the few engineering probes on the scene are enough to deal with this funny attacker. After receiving the order from the monitoring team, the engineering probes, which had been in a passive defensive state, immediately switched from defense to offense, using their mechanical arms to control the movements of the "enemy". The tractor beam brought in forcibly dragged the strange-looking attackers towards the mothership. The scene looked really strange, as if a bunch of toy soldiers were fighting—although the combat power of this group of toy soldiers would not be too great if they were thrown on the earth. Considerable enough.
Basically, as expected, the strange thing resisted very fiercely, and when it realized that it was about to be dragged away, it exploded with a force stronger than that of attacking the probe just now. The one waving in the air is like Avalokitesvara, I can almost make up a series of WAAAAAAAGH from its movements, dragging the long sound for a long time, pulling my arm: "Ah Jun, is it protecting you?" Those suppression towers?"
"It looks like this." I was also thinking about the origin of this weird thing. It seemed that it should have been an autonomous machine for engineering, but it was modified into this look by some crappy engineer, and it had a huge impact. It may be one of the autonomous machines working here before the universe was abandoned tens of thousands of years ago. Perhaps our probes dismantling those abandoned suppression towers made this autonomous machine think it was vandalism, so it rushed out to protect own baby? Probably no other explanation.
No matter how fiercely that strange thing resisted, in the end it was dragged over by a brand-new probe that far outnumbered itself and was infinitely more powerful than itself. Entering the mothership’s storage port, we were still fighting fiercely when our engineers rushed over: they beat each other with their working arms, the attack level could not even activate the shield, but the movement was quite lively, followed up Like a smithy.
The engineers took great pains to separate the little guys (including a big guy), and finally had to use the energy shock device to paralyze both sides. It is said that after the working arm was paralyzed, the weird-looking attacker was still hissing aggressively at his enemies, but unfortunately, its enemies were a group of self-disciplined machines with no thoughts, and returned to each other after completing their tasks. The hangar went for maintenance.
We re-sent a batch of engineering probes to recover the parts of the suppression tower, and the strange thing was sent to the laboratory in the scientific research ship. When we rushed over, the scientists were already busy scanning it. up.
"It is based on a complete self-discipline machine as the core, and spliced together a large number of miscellaneous parts to form this." The technician in charge of examining the strange thing's body reported his discovery, "These parts are very messy, not only have self-discipline The standard accessories of the machine also have spare energy tanks for soldiers, processing modules for production lines, and even a shield generator assembly for individual fighters on its back. This shield generator has almost all of its It's a third bigger. I really don't know how this modification was done."
I turned my head to look at the "captive" who was restrained by several energy suppression devices, and was obediently lying on the platform, looking very listless, and we finally had a chance to see what this guy looked like. A normal autonomous machine is only the size of a child's torso, but its main body is almost the height of an adult, and with those messy working arms, this monster occupies a space almost the size of a small car. space. Its "trunk" is spliced together with a lot of messy things, and I don't know how to tell which one is its "original" core. Probably only the scientists present know how to tell. Damaged places, potholes, peeling coating, and even signs of melting can be seen everywhere on its shell. At the same time, a large number of repair marks can be seen on the shell. An autonomous machine in working condition, but it continues to work until today after being repaired by a technically lame engineer, but it may also be a creative maverick genius. We now have a question that we can't figure out: how does it survive in this environment
"The environment here is extremely dangerous. There is an energy storm above and the gate of the abyss below. Although due to the dynamic balance, the pollution level here is relatively low, but it is also an absolutely polluted area." I feel very puzzled "such a 'small' robot How can it survive tens of thousands of years in this place with its protective ability?"
"Maybe it will hide in those suppression towers when it is on standby," the Xiling technician next to him speculated, "The suppression towers are specially designed to continue to operate next to the gate of the abyss, and their working life in the abyss environment is extremely long , and there is also a certain space inside, which is used to arrange temporary observation equipment or personnel, etc., probably this self-discipline machine has found a suitable shelter for itself. Its energy problem is probably solved there: it carries too many Extra components, the power core itself can't support so many devices, so it presumably has a 'recharging' place."
"Then go find it" I connected to the command hall and ordered them to send more probes to search all the suppression towers to see if they can find this strange guy's "nest" "Okay, this is really impressive Surprised to come across such a... guard. Now I'm thoroughly interested in it."
The strange thing that surprised everyone was lying on the platform, gathering all its strength and twitching once in a while, as if it was resisting the scanning of it by nearby scientists. I ordered that it should not be dismantled for the time being, and no Any sabotage, because it's likely to hide some serious secrets, and from another perspective... I think this is a conscientious guard, although it's a bit weird to put such an adjective on an autonomous machine, but I still I think it is more appropriate to say this.
At this time, Qianqian took advantage of people not paying attention, and moved to the front of the scanning platform, fumbled on the shell of the "strange thing" and didn't know what to study. After a while, she suddenly yelled: "Ajun, Ajun. ! Look at this look at this! This is new!"
Everyone gathered together to take a look, and it turned out that Qianqian was referring to an obviously non-original protective plate, which was located in the center of the main body of this magically modified autonomous machine. In my opinion, this protective plate and the surrounding patches and parts There is no difference, but Qianqian lightly pressed it with his hand, and said firmly in a cold voice: "It was modified two years ago."
"This is..." Father God gave me a puzzled look.
"She's so talented, it's good to observe the flow of time." After Qianqian recovered her usual appearance, I tapped her on the head, and my eyes fell on the scanning platform again. "In other words, this machine has been repaired recently! I I always thought that it was modified by some engineer before the resident scientists in this universe evacuated, but now it seems that... "
There are traces of recent modifications and repairs on this patchwork engineering robot! There are only two possibilities, either, the person who modified it into this patchwork look is still alive, or... it modified itself into this way!
Everyone looked at each other in blank dismay, anyone could think of this simple reasoning, but except Father God and Bingtis are not experts so they may not understand how strange it is, everyone else is very clear: self-discipline machines do not have this ability of.
Obviously, there are countless mysteries on the magically modified autonomous machine in front of us, but what is even more obvious is that the other party cannot communicate. As long as the energy supply is restored, it will immediately toss and want to return to its own job, so we decided to change the method Let's explore the secret of this strange thing: its core is directly connected to the data reading device.
The technicians adjusted the output of the restraint device and the energy suppression device to the maximum to prevent unnecessary damage caused by the target's sudden resistance, and then they began to carefully cut the opponent's protective plate: the reason why they took such a primitive method to dismantle is that Because the technicians discovered that the protective plates all over the body of this messy modified body were welded together in a poor way, and the snap locks that were originally used for disassembly and maintenance have long been unusable. With the layers of worn-out protective panels and strange, non-original parts obtained from God knows where, the magic-modified autonomous mechanism (by the way, is this the name of this strange thing?) The shimmering light The core of the core was gradually exposed in front of us, and the assistant technician next to him immediately connected the data interface that had already been prepared with the processing module near the core, and began to try to synchronize the access rights of both parties.
The working arm of that strange self-discipline machine shook a few times, which was the last resistance, but as its core was shielded into an isolated operating environment, the guy finally calmed down, and the slight mechanism in the [body] was running The sound completely disappeared, and the flickering lights on the surface of the body gradually went out, as if it was dead, but only its torso "died", and its core had been placed in an operating environment far more efficient than its original processing board by external equipment. , and began to run rapidly. Looking at the scene in front of her, Qianqian scratched her hair: "Ah Jun, why do I feel so much like dissecting an alien?"
Me: "..." Forget it, what this girl thinks is what she thinks. Studying logic with her is like asking Ding Dong to do a master's and doctoral degree. From the perspective of the world, it is full of insane and unreasonable...
At this time, the host computer in the laboratory has successfully established a connection with the self-discipline machine, and began to quickly crack the other party's not-so-advanced firewall, and the synthetic voice began to announce its work progress: "Access rules are being synchronized... 10, 30, 70... 100, the target processing core has been cracked, starting to read data... The data environment identification is completed, XL-Z-12J engineering modified self-discipline processing core, the system version cannot be determined, the integrity of the basic database cannot be determined, and the integrity of the logical system cannot be determined —Ignore all authentication errors. Conclusion report: The processing program has mutated, there are traces of recompilation, and there are signs of self-evolution."
I thought for a while, then patted the shoulder of the nearest technician, and then pointed to the host computer in the laboratory: "Then what, can I let this one speak something I can understand?"
"It means that the operating system it uses is not the original version." Viska came over and said, "If it is recompiled, it should have been modified by the outside world at first, and then began to evolve by itself."
If I had said that earlier, I would have understood.
At this moment, the external reading device seemed to have read new data from the core of the self-discipline machine, making a weird creaking sound. The operator in front of the terminal looked at the data displayed in front of him and said strangely : "The core is still running autonomously? It's strange, it has clearly switched to a pure read-write state, and it stands to reason that the logic output has been lost..."
"Does it want to talk?" I suddenly had such an idea, and then the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was possible, "No matter what the core outputs, it can be translated according to logical language."
The laboratory host translated the mutated basic language very quickly. Soon, a line of words appeared on the data terminal: "...patrol, maintain, repair... protect the suppression tower... return to work, suppress the gate..."
It was just such a sentence, which appeared cyclically from the beginning to the end. I thought for a while: "Is this its only thought?"
"It seems so." The senior technician nodded, "Its owner set up these work orders, and it has been carrying out the task until today. As for these messy modifications, it should be to complete the task and prolong its working life. ongoing."
"Entrusting this kind of burden to an autonomous machine?" I felt unbelievable. "Don't they have other advanced equipment?"
"If the request of the original order is only to provide time for the local garrison to evacuate, it is still possible..." the senior technician only spoke halfway, and was suddenly interrupted by the communication from the command hall. The probes of this autonomous machine's "nest" found a small workshop in a psionic suppression tower that was about to go out. There were a lot of scattered parts in the workshop, and there were clumsy modified According to the recording equipment found in the small workshop, that place is the "nest" we are looking for.
Soon, the workshop that this "weird thing" in front of us regarded as its home, and even the entire psionic suppression tower were packaged and dragged to the research ship's hangar. Various parts and workbenches in the workshop were It was transported to the laboratory, and then the technicians at the scene found the remains of several autonomous machines that had been disassembled into pieces, as well as the memory cores of these remains.
After putting all these things together, we finally found the original order that was left behind when the local personnel of the old empire were evacuated.
Because the stability of the gate of the abyss has dropped to a critical value, the world has lost its deep diving environment, and it is decided to evacuate according to the superior's order. Twelve self-discipline machines and an unmanned engineering mothership are left behind, responsible for continuous control of the gate of the abyss, and will come to receive them after the start of the second phase of the test project.
The above is the abbreviated version of the original order, which is stored in an autonomous machine with only the core left.
"It turned out to be like this. The people who evacuated here left behind a total of twelve autonomous machines and an unmanned ship." I said to myself, "It seems that there was originally a second-phase project, and this universe was not completely abandoned. , It’s just temporarily disabled, the self-discipline machine that stays here is responsible for continuing to control the gate of the abyss, waiting for the personnel of the second phase of the project to receive it—but the people of the second phase of the project did not come.”
"Why?" Qianqian asked in a daze.
"Looking at the time, the empire probably happened at that time," I sighed, "and then this place was forgotten."
I can probably guess what happened after that. There is no personnel to receive them. The autonomous machines and the engineering ship that stayed here will naturally continue the original order until they are all scrapped. In this way, the mystery of the sudden explosion of the Abyss Gate at some time during those tens of thousands of years and its subsequent suppression can also be explained: it must be the efforts of these self-discipline guards.
"It seems that there is only one left in the end." Bingtis looked at the "weird thing" lying on the test bench, "I probably know where the parts on it come from, and nine out of ten are from my partner." After we scrapped it one by one, it was dismantled and installed on its own body. It seems that it was on a routine patrol just now, and then thought we were attacking the suppression tower—this guy’s recognition ability must be gone.”
For a while, I had a lot of feelings. What I didn’t expect was that an autonomous machine would do this. Yes, it’s just an autonomous machine, not even a war puppet. It has no personality and no intelligence. Perhaps even if it has reached this point, it has not been aware of the existence of the "self". Everything it has is just to complete the task, plus a little unknowable mutation, and it has persisted until today. In any case, its mission has been completed, the gate of the abyss is still under control, and it has waited for the response personnel who are 70,000 years late.
It's time to evacuate, there's nothing more to do here.