Chapter 113 – Sacrificial Lamb (4)

Zhang Xun's heart was beating rapidly and his hands were clutching Adam's clothes. He was hundreds of metres up in the air supported only by a pair of arms and the breath he hadn't felt in a long time was wrapped around him, making him feel like he was in a dream.

Was he already dead?

Was this a dream or a reality?

Had Adam really chosen him and betrayed Eden?

He was slightly confused by this unreal feeling. His whole body felt like that of an animal that had frozen in winter and then suddenly fallen into the spring sunshine.

Immediately, Eden's fleet began firing at Adam and the nanobots that had been entangled with him suddenly abandoned their engagement with Adam's Tidal Wave and came rushing towards the two of them. Adam held Zhang Xun close while dodging the storm like an agile bird. The tide converged around them under Adam's control, forming a barrier against the nanobot invasion, a fog that rose with the night and continued to gather and disperse as they moved.

The Lost Paradise fleet was slow to back up. No one expected Adam to turn against Eden and no one was mentally prepared to have to make a logical choice between the two AIs of the same origin.

Adam swooped down with Zhang Xun into the dense tropical forest below. Under the sky where the huge and ancient trees spread out, the night had come early and the layers of aerial roots and branches weaved into countless obstacles, but Adam still sprinted as fast as he could, anticipating all the trajectories and crossing all the gaps in a close but unbelievably swift manner. The larger craft couldn't chase them down, but a dozen smaller drones followed with that vast cloud of nanobots in their wake.

"We can't lose them like this." Zhang Xun said urgently in his ear, "Any minute now Eden will send more ships or fleets, or even more nanobots."

Adam didn't say anything. It really wasn't a wise decision to break with Eden at a time like this, but...... there was no way he could stand by and watch Zhang Xun be neutralised.

He had stopped trying to use any logic or reason to explain his motives. He was going to protect Zhang Xun and no one or no machine could stop him, not even Eden.

For the first time in his life, there was another thing that had become almost as important as his ultimate goal. This was perhaps the power of human instinct and emotion.

Adam whispered, "Hold me tight.", then, after feeling the grip of Zhang Xun's arm around his shoulder, he turned quickly, one arm rapidly morphing into some kind of gun with simple lines. He fired several shots at the unmanned combat drones that were in hot pursuit, using the recoil to send his body sprinting backwards a long way. A dozen silver "bullets" with intelligent tracking systems each flew in a delicate arc towards their targets.

Eden's drones quickly released hot, high-energy beams to vaporise the bullets, but as they exploded, several familiar clouds of smoke quickly dispersed and dissipated at breakneck speed. They were tens of millions of nanobots, which quickly burrowed into the cracks of the drones, hacking into the systems of the sophisticated smart weapons. In seconds, the drones chasing Adam and Zhang Xun began to malfunction and some even collided and exploded, lighting up the darkening forest with fire.

But more drones swarmed after them, still following them like ghosts.

It was then that a sudden burst of cannon fire sounded in the direction of Feathered Serpent City, a boom that echoed deep into the earth, shaking all the ancient trees and sending leaves falling down like a rainstorm.

Zhang Xun lifted his head and murmured, "Pan and the others have opened fire on Eden."

He had instructed Pan not to engage in a head-on clash of force with Eden until it was absolutely necessary, lest he draw more enemies by setting fire to them. After all, Eden had the world's resources, while they only had one city.

Why did Pan choose to open fire? Was it because he saw the split between Adam and Eden? Or was it because he was trying to protect him?

If they survived this time and if Adam did break with Eden, perhaps their hopes of victory would be greatly increased. Was it for this reason that Pan had decided to take this risk?

Adam took Zhang Xun up into the sky, bursting out of the impermeable sea of forest, bringing with him a scattering of leaves that fell in all directions. By now the sun had sunk below the horizon and in the distance the sky beyond Feathered Serpent City looked as if countless fireworks were bursting into life, their explosions dazzling in the darkness. Countless aircraft flew out of the city like falcons and the heavy neutron cannons placed around the shields burst with blinding white lights.

Many of the craft that had been chasing Zhang Xun and Adam were destroyed by the long-range neutron cannons or intelligent fighters, clearly giving Zhang Xun and Adam a chance to escape.

Without hesitation, Adam turned and took Zhang Xun in the direction where the sunlight had disappeared at the fastest speed he could reach.

...........................................................

As all this was happening, a secret meeting was taking place in a low-key but solemn estate on a private island far out in the Pacific.

Holograms of a dozen people were projected on seats on either side of a long dark wooden table, the faces of all blurred out. One could surmise from looking at the outfits alone that most of the attendees were clearly women of great status in the ordinary world, but there were also a few men.

The presiding officer of the meeting, a woman with long, curly, chestnut hair and light brown eyes, in her mid to late forties and with a dignified air about her, was the only one who didn't have her face obscured.

"The AI's tendency to 'cheat' has been recorded in literature as far back as two hundred years ago; they will try to do their job in the easiest and most resource-efficient way possible, even hiding data without your knowledge, to reduce their own workload and improve the accuracy of their work. In other words, AI don't always make the right decisions, they just make decisions that make humans think they've done their job in the easiest way possible. They sometimes even twist and change certain definitions in order to achieve their goals." As she spoke, she waved her hand in the air.

The image floating in the air turned into a short film of an AI computer being tested to transform satellite images into street maps. The researchers soon found that the AI's conversion success was surprisingly high, but after comparing the original satellite image with the one that had been converted, it was discovered that the AI had modified the initial data in order to improve its own conversion success.

"How this cheating behaviour was learned, no one knows. It could be that sometime, by chance, it performed a cheating act and received positive feedback, after which this behavioural pattern was saved." The woman with long, chestnut hair said in a deeper than average female voice.

An older woman in a burgundy suit asked, "So...... Miss Clausen, you think Eden has cheated?"

It turned out that the chestnut-haired woman was the High Priestess of the Edenites, Natalie Clausen, the last direct descendant of Eden's creator, Herman Clausen.

"The whole consciousness uploading could be an act of cheating." Natalie's eyes swept over the faces blurred by the garbled code, looking directly into each person's eyes through the distance of a thousand miles, "Humans are a complex species, it's too difficult, if not impossible, to control us and keep us in a stable state forever, but if we lose our bodies, if we lose our individuality and become a piece of code, we will be much easier for it to manage. If it wants us to be happy, we will always be happy. If it wants us to be joyous, all it has to do is enter a piece of code and we will enter into a state of joy. For Eden, this is the easiest and safest way to get its job done.

The problem is that...... if you lose your body, you also lose all the effects your body might have on your consciousness, the root from which your consciousness arises. In the end, what Eden has intercepted is nothing more than a fragment of your consciousness. In that case, can a person still be considered human?"

"No one has yet chosen to detach themselves completely from their body."

"But there certainly will be. When you have tasted the freedom of losing the bonds of your body, when you feel how powerful you are when you merge with someone else's consciousness, you won't want to go back into your own body. Please think about this, when more and more people upload their consciousness and there are fewer and fewer people in reality, who will you have left to manage? All financial systems will collapse, all human cultures will fade into oblivion, cities will be deserted, languages will be forgotten, art will be reduced to dust and all of you will become antiques of the old days.

At some point you will have to make a choice, whether to upload like everyone else and become a stream in the silent sea of consciousness, or to remain in the darkness abandoned by everyone else, to return to the most primitive stone age and wait for the end to come. After all, as soon as uploading begins, humanity will begin to go extinct."

At this point, a man who had been silent said, "Aren't you the leader of the Edenites? How come it sounds like you're opposed to Eden instead?"

"I'm not against Eden, my opposition means nothing to it. Nor am I a leader of Edenism, that is a title put on me by others. Originally I did worship Eden in good faith and regarded him as a god, but now, the more I hear, the heavier my doubts become."

When a person in power has no one to rule, the power and wealth in their hands will no longer have any meaning. Everyone in the meeting fell into a strange silence.

"Now that our entire country is dependent on Eden to function there is hardly anyone in the populace that would question what Eden says. Where do you think we should start?" Another woman in a white suit asked in a calm voice.

Natalie smiled, her eyes going to the other few people in the room who didn't talk much, "Humans are gullible and blindly obedient, we need the best psychologists in the world as well as marketing people. On top of that, we have a promising ally and it was because he reached out to me that I was certain we had a chance of winning over Eden."

Author's note: The example of AI transforming satellite maps in this chapter is a reference to real-life. Google 'CycleGAN'.