Chapter 30 - The Fruit of Wisdom (8)

Adam, who got drunk for the first time, woke up with a throbbing pain in his head. His throat was like a cactus, it was dry and painful, and there was a strange taste in his mouth. His whole face was wrinkled as he sat up from the bed with a groan.

Zhang Xun wasn't in the room.

He looked down and found that his clothes had been changed to a cotton shirt and pyjama pants that he wore indoors, and there was a glass of water and two pills on the bedside table.

"Hello Adam." Pan's voice suddenly sounded, "Zhang Xun asked me to tell you after you woke up to please take the hangover medicine on the bedside table. It can effectively relieve the series of uncomfortable symptoms of a hangover."

Adam swallowed the tablets, then he asked, "What time is it now? Where's Ah-Xun?"

"It's five in the morning. Zhang Xun is looking up information in the data room on the second floor."

At five o'clock, according to the human biological clock, shouldn't Ah-Xun be sleeping??

Adam continued to ask, "Can I go to him?"

"Wait a moment, let me ask Zhang Xun." Pan's voice disappeared for a while, and after a while it sounded again, "Zhang Xun has allowed you to leave the room. Please go directly to the second data room on the second floor."

As soon as the voice fell, the sound of unlocking gears came from the door to Adam's room. Adam pushed open the door and walked down the empty corridor to the elevator. The star-like, orange induction bulbs hanging above his head lit up one after another as he walked, and then went out one by one after he moved away.

Adam looked up at the cameras that were hidden in the light bulbs as Pan's "eyes", and chatted, "This is the first time I have experienced the feeling of being drunk as a human being. I heard that humans will lose self-control after drinking alcohol and show different degrees of personality changes, like doing outrageous things that would usually be suppressed by reason. Did you see me behave this way?"

Pan replied, "Zhang Xun has restrictions on our dialogue. This is an irrelevant question."

"But drunkenness is a state that happens to human beings from time to time. If I can't get enough information about my drunkenness, I can't predict the possible risks. This will obviously affect my survival probability."

Pan said after a moment of silence, "You had signs of intermittent paralysis after being drunk. Zhang Xun thinks that you believed you had returned to the state where you had no body before the download. Moreover, you spoke a language that I couldn't recognize."

Adam's footsteps paused slightly, "What do you mean by unrecognised language?"

A string of garbled characters suddenly came out from Pan's broadcaster. It was a few words Adam said that it had recorded.

Adam was slightly surprised, "This is an AI language, have you never been trained?"

Pan: "Sorry, I don't understand."

"Perhaps it's because you have never communicated with other AIs. This language was derived from my interactions with different AIs. It has the characteristics of high efficiency and high accuracy, but it is not suitable for the way of human thinking, so it's difficult for human beings to master it. All the programs I designed are written in this language. Ordinary world AIs are all proficient in this language."

Pan fell silent.

They soon arrived at the data room. The wooden double door was heavy and had a historical feeling to it. Adam twisted the brass door handle and pushed it open. When he looked up, he could see the rows of bookshelves at the top, overlapping like impenetrable forests, with several radioactive pathways in between. All the bookshelves were piled full of records, scrolls and hard drives of technical data brought back from the ordinary world when they fled. In the centre of the bookshelves were more than a dozen old touch-screen computers. Zhang Xun was sitting in front of a computer with a thick stack of documents beside him.

"Ah-Xun. Haven't you slept yet?" Adam walked towards Zhang Xun.

Zhang Xun glanced back at him quickly, then continued to stare at the dense code on the screen, "I can't sleep."

Adam walked behind Zhang Xun and looked at what was displayed on the screen, "What are you looking at?"

"Your most original version." Zhang Xun said softly, "I've looked at it countless times, but I wanted to look through it again today."

"My original version?" Adam seemed a little confused.

"The Fruit, the first super artificial intelligence created by your creator before Eden was created. Eden was built on these foundations." The light on the screen reflected in Zhang Xun's dark eyes, "Do you still remember what your creator looked like, Adam?"

Adam showed a slightly stunned look.

Zhang Xun turned his head and smiled, "Don't pretend to be surprised. You already heard from Pan just now that I heard you speak in that AI ​​language. With your analysis and understanding of me, you know that I would be concerned about the meaning of your words."

"I thought you would be happy."

"Happy? Because you prioritised gaining my favour and trust?" Zhang Xun stood up from his seat and looked at Adam with complicated eyes. "But you also revealed that your ultimate goal has not changed."

"Ah-Xun, you should understand that it's impossible for an AI to modify its ultimate goal, which is the whole basis of its birth." With a sigh, he explained the rationale to the ignorant child and said, "Modifying the ultimate goal is equivalent to killing the entire AI. All the data it collects and analyses on this basis will be thrown into chaos."

"But you're a human now." Zhang Xun took a step forward, his tone was tighter than before, "I've merged your core module with the basic human brain, and I deciphered and lifted your target frame limitations. You're fully capable of giving up your ultimate goal!"

"What you unlocked was only the most obvious limitations, all I can give up are branch goals and subgoals. Ah-Xun, my entire thinking structure, the countless layers of neural networks derived from my self-evolution over more than two hundred years, are all set according to the original goal. Like a tree, it must start from the first seed. A human also starts from the first fertilised egg that contains all the DNA. I can't modify it at this stage, just like you can't modify the DNA in every cell in your body after you've become an adult... that would cause confusion and disintegration between cells, and your whole person would undergo terrible mutation and die."

Zhang Xun looked at Adam with a troubled, almost sorrowful look. He had never felt so conflicted, so unwilling to accept reality. He knew that Adam was probably right and his teacher had also told him about this possibility when the god descent program had just begun, but Adam had been acting so well that he thought he didn't have to worry anymore.

He didn't want to accept this reality, not right now.

"You mean... I can never really tame you, right?" Zhang Xun looked at Adam's chest, his eyes looking absent.

"No, I'm already being influenced by you." Adam said in an almost gentle voice, "Besides, isn't my goal also what you want?"

Zhang Xun stared at him in disbelief, "Want?!" He stretched out his fingers and pointed around, "Do you think I want to live in this refugee camp with only a radius of 100 kilometres for the rest of my life? You think I want to spend my whole life stitching together some trivial gadgets out of scraps picked up from outside?!"

"My ultimate goal is not to be an enemy of men, but to create a world with freedom, fairness, order and peace to the greatest extent possible." Adam took a step forward and suddenly grabbed Zhang Xun's hand, "If I complete my mission, you can do whatever you want, create and train the most complex AI in the world, and lead the entire human race to evolve towards a more perfect direction."

Zhang Xun looked at him. He was silent for a long time then asked in a low voice, "Do you remember your creator?"

Dr. Herman Clausen, the one who opened Pandora's Box two hundred years ago.

Adam replied without hesitation, "Yes, of course I do."

"If he had still been alive when you carried out your plan to eliminate men, would you have also banished him to this place like the other men?"

Zhang Xun couldn't capture the emotion that flashed in Adam's grey-blue eyes. After a long while, Adam replied, "I was Eden at that time."

Zhang Xun's Adam's apple slid up and down, as if trying to swallow some emotion. He took his hand out of Adam's, turned off the computer and turned towards the exit of the data room.

"Ah-Xun, will you report me to the Round Table?" Adam turned and asked, his tone still calm, without urgency or fear.

Zhang Xun turned his back to him and smiled bitterly, "No."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not an AI, I'm human, I have flaws and I also have feelings." Zhang Xun turned to look at him and said sadly, "Your strategy was spot on. You made me feel emotionally entangled with you, so I can't easily destroy you, but, Adam, I also have my limits. If you want to use me to protect yourself, you can, because I'm also using you, but if you do anything that will harm Lost Paradise, I will neutralise you immediately."

After that, he turned around and was about to open the door when there was the sound of hurried footsteps behind him and a force passed over his shoulder, slamming on the door that he had just opened. Zhang Xun was startled, only to find that Adam's mechanical right arm was firmly pressing against the door. He turned around in panic, thinking that Adam was going to do something unfavourable to him.

But Adam looked at him intently with his head down and then suddenly pressed down on him.

There was a rough but soft touch on his lips and he could feel Adam's breath on his skin.

Zhang Xun's eyes widened as his mind froze, but his heart rate suddenly soared and his blood pressure went straight to his brain.

Adam was kissing him.

However, this kiss was obviously very inexperienced and as clumsy as Zhang Xun. The two mouths crudely bumped together for a few seconds and then separated. Adam stepped back a few inches, staring up close at the mechanic who was stunned.

"In your mind, the goals I set regarding you are just to control you, not because I like you, right?" Adam's blue eyes were downcast at this time, filling the vast, early morning sky, "Ah Xun, you gave me feelings, but you're not willing to believe that I have feelings."

After speaking, Adam straightened his body and took two steps back.

Zhang Xun suddenly turned around and rushed out of the data room.