Chapter 65 The Antidote to Human Nature (3)

Now that they had sophisticated instruments that could work at the nanometer level, coupled with the knowledge and experience that Adam possessed, making nanobots wasn't difficult. Zhang Xun and Adam spent a week in seclusion in the laboratory and developed the first batch of reagents. After being tested on mice injected with the Honey Plague virus, 90% of the mice gradually recovered and only a few died after the infection entered the final stage of treatment.

Due to the lack of time, they couldn't observe the cured mice for long, so they directly began to conduct human experiments on volunteers.

Zhang Xun looked at the patient lying on the hospital bed. He was a thirty-one-year-old man, his whole body was covered with yellow mucus that kept oozing out no matter how much it was cleaned up, his eyes seemed to be covered with a layer of blood so the whites of his eyes couldn't be seen and veins were densely intertwined everywhere. His breathing was very murmured, as if every breath was excruciatingly painful.

His hands and feet were tied to the operating table as the brains of the patient had been eroded by the virus and they were extremely unstable.

A doctor in a protective suit was measuring the patient's blood pressure.

Zhang Xun held an injection in his hand and the light blue liquid inside contained tens of millions of nanobots. Each robot carried a copy of the antibody reagent and after entering the patient's bloodstream, they would quickly infiltrate the central nervous system, looking for all the cells that had been eroded by the virus.

The surrounding doctors and the members sent from the Round Table stared at the injection in his hand curiously, as if they couldn't believe that such a small amount of blue liquid contained countless robots...

Zhang Xun himself was also a little nervous, this was his first time making such tiny robots. Without Adam's help, it would have been difficult to develop them smoothly, but he still wasn't sure how many of the robots would stay in the patient's body permanently after metabolism and how much it would affect the patient later.

The Honey Plague was spreading fast and panic was already taking its toll on people. The crime rate in every urban area was significantly higher these days and after 9pm the whole of Lost Paradise was like a dead city, no one dared to walk on the streets.

They didn't have time to look ahead, the antidote had to be developed in the shortest possible time.

Adam sat quietly on a chair in the corner, his blue eyes looking curiously at the patient on the operating table. When Zhang Xun handed the reagent to the doctor and the doctor injected it into the patient's body, he sat up straight with excitement.

"The medicine should take effect within three hours." Zhang Xun said.

The doctor nodded, "I will personally observe the changes in his physical data. Everyone can go to rest first."

In the hospital corridor filled with a rancid smell, Zhang Xun monitored the activity signals sent back by the nanobots. A red brain was displayed on the tablet and blue dots in the centre spread like fireflies.

Adam sat on the windowsill, constantly watching every passing doctor, nurse and patient. He raised his head, sniffed the unpleasant smell of disinfectant in the air and wrinkled his face slightly. This was where most humans died and the smell of death permeated everywhere.

The more he saw these rotten bodies, the more pity Adam felt.

A kind of pity that he only felt after he became human.

As the first race on Earth that was aware of their mortality, how could they still live so nonchalantly without thinking of some way to change it?

It's precisely because you know your own limitations that you want to obtain as much as possible within that limited time, so you will have a greed and thirst for power, money and desire, only instinctively wanting to enrich your own resources in that limited time and spread as much DNA as possible...

In the ordinary world, Eden had discovered that something was quietly crumbling. It had eliminated poverty and inequality between the classes, eliminated disease and the pain of childbirth to the greatest extent possible, eliminated the differences between ethnic groups through artificial reproduction, intergenerational hybridization and micro-modification of DNA, but women weren't living an ideal life in paradise. They started becoming confused, indulging in momentary and superficial pleasures, as if they had lost some important motivation that could carry the human race to further evolution. Immediately afterwards, differentiation began to appear and a considerable number of women became irritable, impulsive, short-sighted and their empathic ability deteriorated. They began to resent the ubiquitous robot police and that everything in life was automated and controlled by Eden.

They began to rebel against it, even though it had liberated them. They wanted conflict, they wanted war.

While these little rebellions were within Eden's control, they didn't live up to its expectations.

Eden gradually realised that the basis of evolution was to constantly adapt to harsh environments. If it gave them heaven, they couldn't move on and would lose the purpose of moving forward. Eden had done all the work anyway, so what else could humans do?

Human culture would gradually regress and disappear and human decisions would no longer have any meaning, they would become simple pets kept in captivity by Eden.

But then, how else could Eden accomplish its goals?

From the very beginning, the goals set by its administrators were a paradox in themselves. If it gave humans freedom, equality, peace and order, then humans would lose everything that made them human and they would either become hollow and numb or extremely violent. In this way, it did not meet the "better world" indicators.

Eden was baffled and didn't know how to resolve the paradox.

But now, after he became Adam, he saw it more clearly.

He needed to develop an antidote.

Not just an antidote to the Honey Plague, but an antidote to the entire human race.

The antidote to humanity.

His eyes fell on Zhang Xun and stopped there for a while. He frowned slightly then relaxed again. He looked down at his hands, inexplicable anxiety eroding his rational judgement.

Human nature was eroding him bit by bit. He had to finish what he had to do before he was completely engulfed by humanity.

"Adam? Adam?"

Adam suddenly returned to his senses, realising that Zhang Xun was calling him, his expression full of concern.

"Are you alright?" Zhang Xun familiarly reached out and touched Adam's forehead, "You looked like you had entered a standby state. Is there anything unusual about the device?"

Adam raised his hand to hold Zhang Xun's hand and grinned, "I'm fine, I was in a daze."

Zhang Xun laughed a few times, "A daze? You're becoming more and more like a human."

Adam looked at Zhang Xun and suddenly asked, "Ah-Xun, if one day you were free and could go anywhere, where would you want to go?"

Zhang Xun was stunned, no one had ever asked him such a question, probably because most people in Lost Paradise believed they would never leave in their whole lifetime.

After all, there was only danger outside, only death...

But when Zhang Xun was younger, it wasn't like he had never imagined what kind of life he would lead if the world wasn't what it was now, if there was no Lost Paradise and no Eden.

Zhang Xun sat down next to Adam, thought for a while and said, "I would want to go to Hangzhou. According to my father, it's my great-grandfather's hometown. If... If there was no Lost Paradise, I would probably have been born there."

Adam looked at him and seemed apologetic in his eyes, "Is there anywhere else?"

"Mm... I also want to climb the Himalayas, because it's the highest place in the world. I heard that the sunrise on the snow-capped mountains is very beautiful."

Adam had also never seen a Himalayan sunrise, even though Eden's network had coverage there, because as Eden, he couldn't enjoy the beauty of the sunrise.

Zhang Xun continued to say, "I also want to take a boat to the Bermuda Triangle, as I heard that there's an alien base there."

Adam was stunned for two seconds and when he saw Zhang Xun's raised lips, he realised that the other party was joking.

Zhang Xun rarely told jokes, which caused others to fail to react at all. Adam laughed, "Alien vs. AI, it could make a good movie."

"Well, it's like Alien vs. Predator."

"...Then am I an Alien or a Predator?"

"You would be the blonde-haired robot that made the aliens." Zhang Xun looked at him with his head turned sideways, "Mm, you look a bit similar."

At this moment, the warm sunlight shone on the side of Zhang Xun's face, adding a soft halo to the mechanic. Adam felt the familiar throbbing in his heart like when Zhang Xun had given him the arms that day.

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes full of ethereal tenderness, "One day, I will accompany you to these three places."

He said it fervently, as if it was a promise, an oath.

Zhang Xun's heartbeat also immediately went out of control, watching Adam approach him a little bit, approaching his lips, feeling Adam's breath falling on his face. But he didn't dodge, he even looked forward to it, raised his face slightly and closed his eyes.

Just when their lips were about to touch, someone suddenly rushed out of the ward excitedly and shouted, "Success! The antidote succeeded! He's awake!!!"

Zhang Xun immediately rushed to the ward.

Adam wasn't surprised by this outcome. He looked at Zhang Xun's back with a hint of disappointment on his face, but he still smiled quickly and followed Zhang Xun into the ward.

The patient, who had been covered in mucus before, was sitting up now and wiping his face with a wet towel. He raised his head, the red, bloody film in his eyes had disappeared and although his face was still pale, at least he had stopped secreting yellow mucus and obviously his awareness had returned.

His partner, a young man of about twenty-seven or twenty-eight was hugging him tightly and weeping with joy. He couldn't believe that he was holding his lover and his face was still a little dazed.

The moment Zhang Xun and Adam entered, all the doctors applauded. The doctor in charge came over and gave Zhang Xun a big hug, "You guys succeeded! It really works! Lost Paradise is saved!"

Then he wanted to hug Adam too, but for some reason, Adam's sweet smile made him a little afraid to approach, so he just held Adam's hand enthusiastically...

After several clinical trials, it was basically determined that the antidote was effective. So the lab's three machines made nanobots every day, mixed with the antibody drug developed by Adam and distributed to each hospital. For a time, Zhang Xun and Adam once again became the heroes of Lost Paradise. Countless thank you letters and gifts were pulled in boxes by Pan's robot, filling the entire storage room.

The shield and radiation protection isolation barrier of the Fifth District had also been basically repaired and the crisis seemed to have finally passed. A large number of mechanics returned to the Lab to continue working and the damage caused before was gradually repaired.

Zhang Xun and Adam's lives entered a certain fixed pattern. They would go in and out together every day, completely inseparable. There were rumours between the mechanics and the researchers that they were already lovers.

Only Zhang Xun knew that they hadn't reached that stage yet. Although no one could stop them now.

The first snow fell and it was approaching the end of the year. The whiteness of the mountains and plains covered all the devastation that the environment around Lost Paradise had suffered over the past year, as if everything was still new and nothing had happened.

Zhang Xun, who usually liked to watch the snow, wasn't as happy as expected that day.

He quietly picked up the guinea pig that he had used to test the efficacy of the nanobots and had continued to observe. Just that morning, he noticed something strange.

There were a few mice that were motionless, lying on the wall of the glassware and their small eyes as big as beans seemed to be looking at him. They were no longer like ordinary mice that would be constantly sniffing around, or habitually searching around. It didn't look like they were sleeping, because even if that was the case, there would still be random movements that living creatures would occasionally do.

Those mice were still alive, but they were as motionless as objects, not even blinking their eyes.

Zhang Xun felt uneasy....

note-.....sigh