Chapter 81 – The Ordinary World (4)

James, Diego and Zhang Xun stood in a row, holding their chins and looking at the service robot Enoch in the corner.

James looked unhappy, "I don't want something like this staring at us all day in the room and who knows if it's being controlled by Eden?"

Diego held the note Lucille had left them and looked at it left and right, "This note is indeed hers and the message did come from her Button. I think we'd better keep it for now. We can make it stand outside the door most of the time. "

"That's too conspicuous, isn't it?" Zhang Xun frowned. He thought for a moment and said, "Let me check its programming, see if its network port is interfaced with Eden before making a decision."

After speaking, he ordered Enoch, "Service robot Enoch, enter maintenance repair mode and call up the core module."

A mechanical sound emanated from Enoch's body, followed by two beams of light projecting from its blue eyes, creating a myriad of dazzling operational interfaces in the air. Zhang Xun expertly clicked on a few, carefully reading the parameters. Every now and then his finger selected a parameter bar to make some changes.

James and Diego didn't know anything about this and had to go and play cards to pass the time.

Enoch was a Genesis model 554 robot, not the latest, but a typical model from the last five years. Most of the important parts were still in high performance and only the Ram had been replaced once. However, there were signs that its programming has been modified by professional mechanics or engineers; several firewalls had been added to block all messages sent by Eden and the robot was also prohibited from sending any content to Eden and the network interface had been kept switched off. All program updates were done manually.

It seemed that Lucille was also averse to Eden's omniscient rule, probably because of her own involvement in the black market.

In theory, a robot like this couldn't connect to Eden, but after the incident with Adam, Zhang Xun knew that anything could happen, no matter how improbable it seemed. The safest way was to remove the wifi transmitter and receiver, so he turned to James and Diego and said, "Help me find a mechanic's ...... or an engineer's tool kit."

Diego complained, "Where would we find one?"

"Usually when you buy a robot like this you get it as a gift, they must have it downstairs." Zhang Xun said as he pulled up Enoch's source code and read it with interest.

Diego had no choice, so he had to go out and run his errands. James watched as Zhang Xun's entire body was flooded with the blue light projected by the robot and saw the bright stars in the mechanic's eyes and knew that Zhang Xun was far more interested in machines than in people.

Maybe that's why he fell in love with Adam.

Within moments Diego rushed back, slammed the door with a nervous look on his face and said urgently, "There's loads of robot soldiers coming from the mountains and heading towards Hope Town. We have to leave now."

Zhang Xun was startled and immediately ran to the window to look outside. A few blocks away he could see some oddly shaped, spider-like robots crawling rapidly past the buildings and a number of patrol robots were mixed in with the aircraft traffic.

James said, "But didn't your friend tell us to wait here?"

"It's too late. I suspect they're the robot police that Adam sent to find us after Adam communicated with Eden. If they forcibly search this place we won't be able to leave."

James and Zhang Xun froze for a couple of seconds then immediately began to change into their clothes and disguises. Zhang Xun ordered, "Enoch, clear your data and history for the past forty-eight hours."

The blue beam of light shooting out of Enoch's eyes immediately dissipated and the robot turned its head in a somewhat stiff manner to look at Zhang Xun who was busy putting on his wig, "Ms. Lucille has instructed that if an emergency arises, I would be responsible for taking you to plan B. May I ask if you are sure you want to delete my history and data?"

"What Plan B?" Diego asked.

"There is an aircraft in the underground parking garage, which can be unlocked and used in an emergency, but since it is not connected to Eden it will attract the attention of the robot police soon after taking off. But the aircraft has a complete anti-tracking system, so generally the chances of being caught in this situation are low."

The three of them looked at each other and immediately decided to ignore the rest and implement plan B first.

Enoch led them swiftly across the hallway and toward the escape stairs. These days there were very few parking lots underneath buildings and if there were, they were mostly used for temporary parking of aircraft and dual-purpose vehicles. After all, all cars were leased through Hermes, only some rich people would have their own private aircraft, everyone else would apply to Hermes when they needed to use a car.

There were a few flying machines parked sporadically on the basement floor, apparently all rented during the day by guests. Enoch led them through the large car park and verified a long string of garbled codes that no human could possibly remember into a smart lock. As the gates rose upwards, the lights came on in a heavy burst of brightness, revealing a silver-grey flying machine that could probably hold four to six people, resting silently in the centre of the space. The smooth, clean lines of the aircraft's transformable body were stitched together so tightly that there were hardly any joins to be seen.

James couldn't help but let out a sigh of admiration and walked towards the dreamy "car" with wide eyes.

The most commendable thing was that this aircraft had a cockpit in it, unlike ordinary aircraft that didn't have a steering wheel at all.

"This is Thor 720... Half-solar and half-electric drive, I saw one once when I was out hunting..." James had the intoxicated expression of looking at a peerless beauty on his face and touched the smooth, metal body tenderly.

"Come on brother, you'll have plenty of opportunities to fly a flying machine in the future. Get your ass in there!" Diego urged, pushing James towards the door. After Enoch gave a concise command in the AI language, the fuselage of the craft began to diffuse a faint, pearl-coloured luminescence and the hatch swung upwards and opened. One by one, the three of them got inside and found a surprisingly ample amount of space inside.

Zhang Xun purposely took the back seat and the seat belt immediately secured him to the seat automatically. James had wanted to take the pilot's seat, but to his surprise Enoch looked at him sincerely and solemnly and said, "Please let me pilot, I am more familiar with the controls of this aircraft."

James defiantly tried to argue, only to be pushed into the passenger seat by Diego, "Well, now the question is, where are we going to go?"

Enoch said, "According to Ms. Lucille's arrangements, we have to go to Kelowna and wait for her to meet us there. "

As they were talking, there was suddenly the noisy sound of machinery moving not far away. James and Diego were all too familiar with that sound - robot soldiers.

Clearly they were here to search.

"Go, go, go!!!" Diego yelled.

Enoch skillfully activated the craft's manual flight mode. Hearing only a low frequency buzzing vibration coming from beneath his feet, Zhang Xun felt the entire craft leave the ground and slowly turn around to face the two slowly approaching robot soldiers in spider form outside the main door. James exclaimed, "What are you doing?!"

Enoch didn't say anything, just stepped on the accelerator suddenly.

Zhang Xun felt like his head was almost torn off.

With wind-like speed they swept between the two robot soldiers and headed straight for the direction of the exit. The craft climbed violently and the weightlessness frightened Zhang Xun into grabbing what he could with both hands - Diego.

"Don't grab me!" Diego complained.

Zhang Xun rolled his eyes, "I'm not grabbing you..."

"You still won't admit it? Indecent!" As Diego spoke, he pretended to be a little girl that only existed two hundred years ago.

Enoch and James simultaneously glanced behind them in their reflectors and, whether it was an illusion or not, both seemed to be less than happy.

The aircraft rushed out of the steep tunnel towards the nearest traffic track overhead. On the glass of the aircraft was all kinds of data; the red edges of the air track and the road signs and so on. Without being trained, you may be dazzled and unable to see the way forward. However, Enoch didn't seem to need to read the data at all, he merged into the traffic flow familiarly, dodged left and right and entered another higher track in the air.

But at this moment, a flying robot suddenly rushed towards them and a mechanical, emotionless female voice came from the amplifier of the aircraft, "Hello, your car is not logged with Eden, please stop for inspection."

At this time, Enoch pressed a button to activate the anti-tracking system.

The so-called anti-tracking system was a sudden burst of extremely thick smoke that disrupted the visual judgement of the vehicle's AI causing a brief period of traffic confusion, blocking the view of the robot and all police cars. Then the car jumped out of the traffic again like a wildebeest, flying through the gap between the two lanes of traffic at a frighteningly fast speed.

Immediately behind him were at least five robot soldiers, including three flying robots and two giant spider robots. Enoch, as a service robot, apparently also had pilot functions included and was basically perfect at operating flying machines. Sometimes the gaps between the cars were too narrow to pass through, but he just happened to be able to slip through them, throwing off a giant spider and a flying robot just like that.

The aircraft veered to the left, veered to the right, dove to the point of nearly hitting the ground and suddenly rose again. Zhang Xun's face turned blue, his stomach acid rose and he almost threw up, scaring Diego into clinging to the car door, "Hey! I'm warning you, if you throw up on me I'll beat you up!"

"Please bear with me a little longer." Enoch said soothingly in an extremely soft voice.

After breaking out of Hope Town, they carried on for at least another fifty kilometres before they lost Eden's minions who were in hot pursuit behind them. When the aircraft had just smoothed out a bit, Zhang Xun quickly pulled out a paper bag from under the seat and vomited in it.

"Ah-Xun! Are you okay?" James turned his head to look at him worriedly.

Zhang Xun's body trembled and then he realised that the person who called him was James, not Adam.

He never knew that a simple name could make his heart beat faster in an instant, almost like a heart attack.

"I'm fine, just a little motion sickness..." Zhang Xun said awkwardly.

As soon as he finished speaking a small red candy wrapped in transparent cellophane was handed to him. Zhang Xun raised his head to find that Enoch was turning his head to look at him with a charming smile, "Plum candy can help relieve the symptoms of motion sickness."

Zhang Xun hesitantly took it, "Uh...thank you."

"Hey robot, eyes on the road!" Diego complained.

Enoch politely said sorry, soared to the highest speed and rushed towards Kelowna at a speed like a thunderbolt. Two hours later, they landed on the roof of an abandoned factory. Zhang Xun's feet felt a little soft when they touched the ground. His first experience of a manually piloted aircraft was really not good...

This was clearly the edge of the city of Kelowna, and from a distance one could see the glittering forest of tall buildings, more prosperous than Hope Town, sprawled out like a silver forest under the bright sun. And it was then that Diego finally got through to Lucille.

Lucille's image was projected from Diego's Button, as if standing in front of them.

Diego said, "When are you coming? I guess it won't take long for the robot police to come after you."

Lucille had her arms crossed and scanned the three of them, pausing when she saw Enoch, but not saying much.

"Something went wrong. The flight to New Zealand was blocked." Lucille sighed and continued, "The only refugee country I can send you to now is Feathered Serpent City."