Chapter 66 - The Antidote to Human Nature (4)

Zhang Xun put on a dark brown woollen coat, boots, scarf, hat and gloves while waiting for Pan to open the door of the Lab. The cold air of the winter morning fell on his face and his exhaled breath condensed into a dense fog then quickly evaporated.

It had snowed all night last night and the uneven dirt roads throughout Lost Paradise were covered with thick snow, making it more and more difficult to travel. The muddy soil and snow were crushed by the passing vehicles and mixed into long lines like arable land. Zhang Xun trudged through the muddy road and watched the people who were going out to work in the morning, wrapping themselves tightly just like him. They locked their doors in a hurry and walked back and forth between the narrow alleys. Some breakfast shops on both sides of the main street had opened and the aroma of hot coffee and toasted wheat diffused in the faint sunlight, soft and warm.

Zhang Xun liked this kind of aroma. If happiness had a smell, he thought it should be this kind of smell. He bought a box of freshly baked chocolate croissants at a bakery he frequented, ordered three cups of coffee and holding the pastries in one hand and the coffee tray in the other, he wobbled toward the garbage processing yard.

After the antidote had been successfully developed Adam resumed his combat training with Diego and would go to the garbage processing yard almost every day. Zhang Xun gradually stopped following him all the time. With the tracking device he could know Adam's location at any time. He was busy working on new, unmanned weapons and began designing and building a new artificial intelligence based on Pan—one with the general goal of guarding Lost Paradise. Occasionally he would activate the camera on the tracking device when he was busy and put on a microscopic lens to see what he was doing through Adam's eyes.

In these few days, Adam would leave the Lab very early to train and when Zhang Xun opened his eyes, he would find that the other side of the bed was cold.

Even if he was beaten to death, Zhang Xun would never want to admit that he missed the warm and comfortable feeling of waking up in Adam's arms...

After the framework of the new artificial intelligence was set up, Zhang Xun decided to give himself a day off to see how Adam's training was going.

The entrance to the garbage processing yard was still the same as it used to be but the snow-covered, rusted, steel giant with hollow eye sockets looked sad somehow. Zhang Xun looked up at this ancient mecha, thinking that it must have also had glorious years and was once the most proud weapon of mankind, and he felt a little uneasy.

Everything would reach a time when it becomes obsolete and fades, no matter how brilliant it was.

He found Adam, who was fighting Diego, near Diego's cabin. It was obviously a cold winter day, but the two were only wearing thin vests and camouflage pants and they were in a state of stalemate, with bruises on their faces and bodies. Diego was like a raging lion, rushing up bravely again and again. In comparison, Adam was more like a cheetah who was good at calculating and moving carefully. His blue eyes stared at his prey unblinkingly, every step was so quiet that there was no sound and every move was precise and ruthless.

Zhang Xun widened his eyes slightly and watched they way Adam predicted the opponent's movements before Diego made a move and the metal arms quickly and accurately blocked all attacks. Adam's control of his arms was already perfect, as if he had been born with them. However, Diego had plenty of battle experience after all. Even if he wasn't as accurate as Adam in terms of prediction, he could stabilise his position by relying on the conditioned reflexes he had honed over many years.

They didn't know how long they had been facing each other like this, they were both sweating and panting and the heat from their bodies was evaporating into a faint steam from their skin. Exhaustion was gradually eating away at them and the chance of mistakes occurring was increasing rapidly.

Diego's disadvantage was that he was older, he had been drinking for many years and his physical condition wasn't as good as Adam's, who was in his "youthful years". His offensive also gradually slowed down and it looked like Adam might win soon.

However, at this time, probably due to underestimating the enemy, Adam's punch was too reckless. A ray of golden light flashed in Diego's eyes and with a sudden burst of dormant strength, he grabbed one of Adam's arms and was about to take him down with an over-the-shoulder slam. However, he didn't expect that the arm would suddenly disintegrate and become countless smooth and soft... silver threads, which he couldn't grasp at all, and instead wrapped around him in loops, making him unable to move. Adam grabbed Diego's lower back with the other arm and threw him out.

Diego lay on the ground and scolded, "No more fighting, you fucking cheated again!"

Adam hurriedly ran over to help Diego up apologetically, "I'm sorry...it's a conditioned reflex... When sensing a threat, the arms seem to have a certain self-defence function..."

"So I'm fighting you alone when you have two helpers? Why bother practising?"

Zhang Xun smiled and walked over, "You're working hard."

Diego felt bitter when he saw Zhang Xun, "I can't teach your artificial intelligence, please find someone else!"

Zhang Xun apologised, "It's my fault for not teaching him properly, so I brought you Lucy's Scottish coffee to make amends." Saying this, he lifted the coffee tray holding three cups of coffee.

Diego's eyes lit up. This warrior not only liked to drink, but also liked to drink coffee. This Scottish coffee that mixed coffee and alcohol was simply his dream lover, but Lucy's Breakfast Shop, which made the best Scottish coffee, costs a lot and a poor garbage manager like Diego couldn't afford it.

Adam followed, sniffing around Zhang Xun like a dog, "This smell is chocolate croissants!"

Zhang Xun raised one eyebrow and stuffed the bag of pastries into his arms. Adam cheered and ran back to Diego's cabin with the treasure in his arms.

Zhang Xun watched Adam running away and unconsciously a smile appeared on his lips. At this moment, Diego suddenly patted him on the shoulder and said, "I wasn't joking just now. I have nothing else to teach him."

Zhang Xun turned his head to look at him in astonishment, "But it's been less than a year."

"He's learning so fast. To be honest, I'm a little scared at how fast." Diego narrowed his worn eyes slightly, looking in the direction of his hut and sighed, "It's impossible for any human being to learn this fast. I used to think that artificial intelligence was just a bunch of machines with no mind, that only know how to input and output, but now..."

Diego paused, then continued, "I used to believe that humans were the greatest race in the world. But...I spent a year outside and I've seen what those machines can do. They can predict criminal behaviour in advance by recognising fluctuations in a person's physiological indicators and analysing behavioural patterns, stopping criminals before they have time to commit their crimes. They can know from birth what the probability is that you would pursue a certain career and then groom you in a direction that is 'right for you' from the time you're old enough. They can predict what you want and don't want and give you everything you need before you even say it. In other words, people were like the robots'... livestock. But people didn't know anything, they still believed everything was under their control."

Zhang Xun looked at him and asked softly, "Is that why you've become this dispirited? Because you found that humans are no longer the most advanced species on this planet."

"Not only that, but that's a big factor." Diego turned to look at him. This was the first time this rugged warrior had mentioned his past to him, "I fell in love with a person, a woman. It was she who told me that the era of human beings was coming to an end. Already, in the ordinary world, there's hardly anyone who can drive and cook. It won't even take two hundred years for people to lose all their skills and even forget how to write, speak and walk, because all their needs can be met by AI so there will be no need to work hard to live anymore."

Zhang Xun looked at him in astonishment.

In love with a woman.

If the wrong person in Lost Paradise heard this and reported him, he would be thrown into prison and scolded by thousands of people. He never imagined that the decadent Diego would have done such a... controversial thing?

Of course heterosexuality was the societal norm two hundred years ago. No one would have thought that the gender balance that had lasted for hundreds of millions of years, would be broken by Eden in just two hundred years.

Seeing Zhang Xun's stunned look, Diego laughed, "What? You scared, nerd?"

"No... Thank you for confiding in me..." Zhang Xun turned his eyes away embarrassedly, but couldn't help being curious, "Then...what about your girlfriend?"

"She's dead." Diego replied simply, without much sadness. "She was a member of the underground group that rebelled against Eden. She was killed by the robot police on the way to escort me back to Lost Paradise."

So that's how it was...

Zhang Xun asked in confusion, "In that case... why are you still willing to train Adam? Don't you hate him?"

"Hating the robot police, hating Eden, there's no point to it at all. They have never been living creatures, they don't understand what their actions mean to humans and all their killing is simply problem solving for them. They won't feel scared or ashamed or sorry if I seek revenge. It's like......if your relatives were crushed to death by a building that collapsed in an earthquake, it would be ridiculous to hate all the buildings." Diego grabbed his jacket from the ground and put it on, drank another sip of the coffee brought by Zhang Xun and continued.

"But Adam is no longer a mere machine. Adam is alive, but he's not human either..." Diego sighed, looking at Zhang Xun with sympathy and worry, "I suspect, that you've created a new race, a higher race, that will really bring human history to its end."

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

Diego's words kept lingering in Zhang Xun's mind, lingering like a ghost.

He quietly went to the basement and looked at the cages of lab mice that he had secretly hidden. After hearing the sounds of movement, the white mice, who were behaving strangely, all turned around, their movements were uniform, their black bean-like eyes stared straight at him and seldom blinked.

The numbers of these eccentric white mice were on the rise. They would still eat and drink regularly and gain weight instead of losing weight, but their movements were too orderly, too...programmed.

The suspicions that were quietly stagnating in Zhang Xun's mind began to expand again and he started keeping an observation log, secretly praying that there would be no other side effects.

Fortunately, so far, there had been no reports of strange behaviours from the Honey Plague patients cured by the antidote.

However, on the way to find Adam that morning, Zhang Xun was a little concerned about a person he saw. The man was standing in the middle of the road in pyjamas, with a confused look on his face. A person who seemed to be a family member hurried over to him, muttering indistinct words such as "sleepwalking" and "recently" and took that person away.

Zhang Xun had heard the man say, "I feel like there's a hole in my brain."

note- this story is my nightmare and my sweet dreams.