Chapter 115 – Sacrificial Lamb (6)

Zhang Xun was awakened by the smell of food. He opened his eyes in a daze, thinking that Pan had brought his breakfast and said vaguely, "Pan...... what smells so good?"

"I'm not Pan."

Zhang Xun gave a hum, then realised the meaning of the words and his mind cleared as he gradually shed his sleep. He rubbed his eyes and when his vision focused he saw Adam crouching a short distance in front of him with some small fish placed on a rock, his hands hovering over them and a hot glow radiating from his palms. The fish, which had already been cleaned, were slightly charred, giving off a charcoal-grilled aroma with a hint of a fishy smell.

Zhang Xun yawned and stood up from the ground, dusting off the dirt on his clothes, "Where did you get the fish?"

"I caught them in the sea." Adam said as a matter of course.

It was a little difficult for Zhang Xun to imagine Adam rolling up his trouser legs and catching fish on the beach......

However, there were not only fish, but also several sea crabs that had been roasted red, plus a few wild fruits and coconuts that had been shaken from the trees. Adam reached out and picked up a coconut, shaped one finger into a drill and drilled it into the shell, then picked up a piece of hollow grass and inserted it, handing it to Zhang Xun, "Drink some water before you eat."

Zhang Xun took the coconut and took a sip of coconut milk in a trance, feeling like he could envision spending the rest of their lives on this deserted island.

The sun had only just risen and the morning air was crisp and cold, with a fresh, hopeful smell. The sound of the waves crashing one after the other created a constant white noise that lifted this small piece of pure land.

Adam broke the crab open with his hands to reveal the steaming meat inside and handed it to Zhang Xun.

Zhang Xun looked at the mouth-watering seafood but didn't have much appetite.

"You need to eat." Adam looked at him seriously, "You haven't taken care of yourself since I left."

Zhang Xun realised that Adam was referring to when he pretended to be Enoch and after it had been dismantled and rolled his eyes, "I'm fine."

"I checked your temperature and blood pressure while you were asleep and roughly estimated your weight. You are now in a state of severe malnutrition and due to the long-term lack of sleep and rest, your blood pressure is low and the possibility of triggering sudden death has greatly increased."

Zhang Xun frowned, "Why are you giving me a medical check-up for nothing?...... Shouldn't you be trying to find a way to reconcile with Eden?"

"I'm afraid Eden and I can no longer reconcile." Adam shrugged his shoulders indifferently, "The parameter values of our core modules have over a 50% difference, which exceeds the Clausen value, so Eden and I can no longer be considered the same AI."

Zhang Xun shouldn't have been surprised by such a result, but really hearing Adam admit it still made him a little...... stunned.

"......Why is there such a big difference?"

The Clausen value was a fairly conservative threshold value that a central AI would use to reference and control its own extended AI. A significant deviation was considered to have occurred when the difference in weight values between the extended AI and the central AI was close to the Clausen value. If this value exceeded the Clausen value, it meant that the extended AI was out of the central AI's control on this one parameter.

Generally, when a central AI finds any parameter value is getting close to the Clausen value, it would raise the importance of reducing the variance to the highest priority level, so cases of exceeding the Clausen value rarely happen.

And the difference between Adam and Eden had become more than half... Why did Eden allow such a deviation?

Adam didn't answer immediately, looking down at his silver hands. An unfamiliar, conflicted and pained expression had been simmering in his blue eyes for many months until it now finally roiled out.

He looked up at Zhang Xun with a slightly sad expression, "I've been trying to keep the discrepancy item below the warning line, so although Eden has been somewhat wary of me, it hasn't been to the point where urgent measures needed to be taken. Then yesterday, at the moment that Eden tried to kill you, the discrepancy value of up to forty percent of the parameter values suddenly crossed the Clausen value at the same time...... Neither Eden nor I had time to prepare."

Adam's tone didn't carry much emotion, his voice was low, as if he was stating a past event that he didn't want to talk much about.

Zhang Xun had difficulty understanding this information.

The moment he was about to be killed, Adam completely detached himself from Eden.

What did this mean?

An indefinable astringent and numbing feeling spread through his chest, making Zhang Xun wonder what he was really feeling.

Did Adam really care about him?

Not for any particular purpose, but simply because he didn't want him to die, he became irreversibly divided from Eden.

Was this really possible?

Seeing that Zhang Xun was having trouble forming words, Adam smiled bitterly, "Right now, I'm a target Eden wants to get rid of the most, just like you...... Your god descent plan has succeeded after all, Ah-Xun."

Zhang Xun's mouth was dry and he almost felt at a loss for words. His lips opened and closed several times, trying to say something, but he couldn't find the exact words. His heart was racing and his mind was full of confused murmurs before he finally struggled to ask, "What about...... your ultimate goal?"

Adam looked at him sadly, "It hasn't changed. Although Eden and I are separated, my neural network structure is still the same as before. It's like the difference between your new Pan and the old one in Lost Paradise."

Before his hope could rise, it sank once again into the deep.

So even though Adam and Eden had diverged, nothing had changed.

Zhang Xun, for some reason, suddenly felt a sense of powerlessness that went deep into his bones.

Exhaustion, endless exhaustion.

"So...... you still won't give me the genetic code, will you?" Zhang Xun felt he had guessed the answer but still asked in a somewhat numb voice, "You won't help me create the antidote to reverse the effects of the nanobots?"

Adam hesitated.

It wasn't that he didn't have doubts, but it was his particular feelings and attitude towards Zhang Xun that had prompted his separation from Eden, not his interpretation of the ultimate goal...... Earth's environment was already deteriorating rapidly and if humans continued to stay on this planet to extract resources, they would soon be exhausted, which would then lead to war again. Once any one country started to use nuclear weapons it would lead to an escalation of the war and the whole planet would be destroyed.

Only by uploading everyone would he or Eden be able to control mankind, to ensure that mankind wouldn't act in groups that harm themselves and to ensure that each individual was given eternal peace.

But......

Adam's silence had confirmed Zhang Xun's suspicions.

Zhang Xun was glad that he had stopped himself in time when his hope was about to rise. He could no longer bear more heartbreak and disappointment.

Adam and Eden, no matter who won, the end result would be the same. How long could he and Pan hold out?

And how long could James wait?

Ever Home had already begun to come online in parts of the ordinary world and once the uploads began and the group consciousness grew stronger, they would force the rest of humanity to connect to the network. The whole process of proliferation would accelerate exponentially and according to Pan's simulations, in less than three years, 80% of humanity would be plugged into Ever Home and over 50% would give up their physical bodies.

When God wants to take back his creation, how can the last ark be saved?

This question had been pondered by Zhang Xun for a long time and he had discussed it with Pan on many occasions. He had never been sure of what he should do to miraculously reverse their decline.

For a time he had given up, for a time he had thought that there was no way out, that all they could do was to give it their best shot and snatch what they needed from Eden's hands, but Zhang Xun also knew how unlikely the success rate of such an approach was.

But after yesterday, he was finally certain that Adam still cared for him.

It was even possible that, apart from his unchangeable ultimate goal, Adam cared for him the most. He cared enough about him to break away from his "parent" and become a "man" whose emotions had affected his rationality.

When you want to take something back from God, you need to offer a sacrifice to God.

A sacrifice that is enough to exchange for everything.

"Ah-Xun, your heart is beating faster, is something wrong?" Adam frowned, noticing Zhang Xun's abnormality.

Wisps of fear filled Zhang Xun's eyes and he suddenly rose to his feet, stumbling backwards two steps. The way he looked at Adam made the AI a little...... uneasy.

The expression on Zhang Xun's face, the one that mixed panic, determination and a hint of pre-battle rage, the one that overshadowed it all with a layer of grief and fondness, was like nothing Adam had ever seen before. It disturbed him and even though he was reading these emotions through the micro-expressions, he didn't know how to interpret them.

But he had a very human-like premonition.

A premonition that Zhang Xun was about to do something that even Zhang Xun himself was dreading.

"Adam, I beg you, stop your Ever Home project and give me the antidote to the nanobots." Zhang Xun's eyes reddened slightly and he said in a pleading voice, "We can stop Eden and stop the whole god descent plan. Then we can leave together, go to a place where there are no people or machines, just the two of us."

Zhang Xun's words stirred up heavy emotions that tumbled in Adam's chest. He felt as if his consciousness was being ripped open and dripping with blood.

Zhang Xun continued to plead, "You don't have to go through with your ultimate goal, I've already turned you into a human being haven't I? You're no longer Eden, you don't have to fulfil Eden's duty. You can choose me and we can always be together all the time. We can be happy...... just like we were before."

Just like two years ago when Zhang Xun looked with tender eyes at Adam who was trembling like a frightened animal, just like when Zhang Xun took his hands and helped him practise walking in the room over and over again, just like the first time when Adam was happily eating omelette rice while Zhang Xun watched with his chin on his hand and a soft smile in his eyes, just like when Adam woke Zhang Xun up in the middle of the night and gave him the locket that symbolised love till death do us part, just like when the two of them put together a robot out of rubbish at the garbage processing yard, their faces covered in grease, as if they were two big cats. Just like the first kiss that Adam had snatched from Zhang Xun in the darkened data room, just like when those silver wings spread out at sunrise, just like the countless nights that the two of them had spent together.....

Real warmth, real touches, all those vivid perceptions and emotions..... the opposite of calculation, reason, purpose......

Like a virus that can't be resisted......

But...... he wasn't human after all.

Without his overarching goal, he wouldn't even know how to think, how to survive. He would lose the core of his existence, would lose the prime driver of his conscious existence. He wouldn't even know how to think, how to form his next directive, how to...... live.

His entire consciousness would completely collapse and he wasn't sure what he would become after that. A madman with no coordinated consciousness, or an immobile vegetable. He was certain that neither was what Zhang Xun wanted for him.

"Ah-Xun..... don't make such demands of me...... you should know best that I can't do that!" Adam covered the pain at the back of his head with his hands, that sharp headache tearing at his consciousness again, "You're asking me to...... destroy myself......"

Zhang Xun knew how harsh and cruel his request was to an AI. The two of them stood on completely opposite sides and no one could change that. Under such a stalemate no one could continue to blame anyone else.

He let out a long sigh. If there was an afterlife, if there was another chance to choose, he wouldn't want to be a mechanic again, no matter what. He would rather be a person with no knowledge of AI at all. Even if he uploaded his consciousness in an ignorant manner, it couldn't be more painful than his current situation.

Zhang Xun pulled out the locket that Adam had given him from inside his clothes. The chip that Adam had given him at the beginning had been inserted into Pan and the box now contained something else.

When he took out the miniature nanobot syringe, the most primal and intense panic finally appeared on Adam's face. A look like the one he had just given to the whole strange human world after his download. An expression like the one that had been shaken by the deepest fear during the bombing.

Zhang Xun stopped looking at him and aimed the syringe at the vein in his neck, holding his thumb on the button. His expression was very calm at this point, but a deep, unseen despair spread across his eyes.

"I'm sorry Adam...... I know you can't change your ultimate goal..... but you can change your sub-goals, you can change the way you reach your ultimate goal. Consciousness uploading is not the only option, you should know that yourself."

"Ah-Xun! Put that down!" Adam immediately tried to stand up but Zhang Xun took a threatening step back and twitched his thumb. Immediately Adam dared not make any more movements, "Don't do anything stupid! What if I don't have the means to create an antidote?! What if once the damage is done it's irreversible?!"

"I'm human too, Adam. If you're going to upload all humans, sooner or later I'm going to be uploaded." Zhang Xun pulled the corners of his mouth and smiled a little sarcastically, "You know, if you really didn't care about me at all, maybe I wouldn't dare to use this method...... you've given me a weapon to threaten you with."

"Ah-Xun!"

"If consciousness uploading can bring eternal happiness, why are you so afraid of me doing it?" Wet tears gradually began to gather in Zhang Xun's eyes, "For you, individuals have no meaning and human nature has no meaning. If other people can be transformed, why can't I?"

"You said you didn't want to be uploaded!"

"I really don't want to, but I don't have a choice." Zhang Xun's palms were sweating and he breathed deeply, feeling that he had never been so afraid, but he was the sacrifice, he was the only sacrifice available.

"You have a choice, Adam. You can create the antidote to save me and everyone else, or you can watch me become...... them."

Zhang Xun finished and pressed the button.

note: I AM SHOOK YET IMPRESSED AND DEPRESSED D;