Lil Pea waved at the Cortex Prime with an innocent smile on her face. It was as if she could not understand what 'different lifeforms' meant, and was only treating the black pillar that could think and talk as a new friend. Inconceivably, the Cortex Prime responded as well.
Hao Ren held Lil Pea in his arms as he looked down at the little mermaid. Before coming here, he had already noticed that Lil Pea was behaving strangely along the way, so he asked her about her condition. Lil Pea's mind was still immature, so she could not clearly explain what she felt, but through guesswork and deduction, Hao Ren could vaguely grasp the truth of the matter.
Lil Pea felt the decline and extinction of a race, and this race could only be the humans in the Inevitable Fortress, and the Cortex Prime's malfunction might have something to do with it.
"Truth be told, I've dealt with many races, all lifeforms, even elemental beings and pure spirits, but A.I. is the hardest to deal with." Hao Ren looked at the Cortex Prime and said, "I don't know how to convince a supercomputer with its rigid logic and strict thought processes, because the evidence I can provide is vague and unverifiable. I can only say that if you truly wish to complete your mission, if you are truly loyal to your creator, then you should at least try to believe us outsiders. Even if it lacks any logical support, it is at least an option. "
The Cortex Prime's silence was even longer than before, and even the light on the black pillar dimmed by two-thirds. Just when Hao Ren thought that the A.I. had crashed, the latter's voice suddenly rang out. "Humans are dying."
"Humans … dying?" Vivian frowned. "Care to tell me what's going on?"
Lil Pea waved her little arms around in Hao Ren's arms. "My daddy can help you, my daddy is super powerful!"
What responded to Hao Ren and his party was the sudden sound of light mechanical friction coming from the opposite side of the hall.
Hao Ren saw that on the other side of the circular hall, countless cracks suddenly appeared in a neat row. With these cracks as the basis, the entire wall surged like water. Layers of metal shrunk and folded in the surging. After the wall faded away, a wide passage appeared in front of everyone.
"The gate to the Inevitable Palace?" Hao Ren understood the Mainframe's intentions the moment he saw the passageway. He was shocked. "You're letting us in?"
"The humans once said that we should never give up on any hope, even if it was as faint as an illusion," the Cortex Prime said quietly. "The situation could not get any worse. My logical system could no longer deduce what would happen after this, so come in. Perhaps this is what the humans meant."
Hao Ren and the rest exchanged a few glances. They had thought of entering the Palace of Destiny to meet the humans, but they did not expect the Cortex Prime to open the door so readily. Regardless, the door to the Inevitable Palace was already open, and there was no reason for them to stop.
Unlike the other parts of the fortress, the corridor to the Inevitable Palace was brightly lit. The walls were white, and the bright light dispelled the oppressive feeling that everyone had accumulated along the way. It was as if the cold steel world had a hint of liveliness and liveliness.
After walking along the corridor for some distance, murals of the homeworld began to appear on both sides of the walls. There were green mountains and clear waters, towering trees, and bustling cities hidden in the mountains. It was as if a piece of frozen history was hung vividly on the wall, allowing people to imagine the idyllic times of ten thousand years ago.
And after passing through these beautiful scenes of the past, there was only the cold cold reality.
Another circular hall appeared in front of Hao Ren. This circular hall was similar in size to the hall where the Cortex Prime was, but the main color was bright white. There were no buzzing servers or cables around. The wall opposite the hall was a layer of transparent polymer, and through the polymer, Hao Ren could see a large 'greenhouse' with all sorts of plants and integrated houses, but there was no one moving in the greenhouse.
Lily curiously ran to the transparent 'glass'. "Cortex Prime, where are the humans?"
As if in response to Lily's question, a round hole opened up in the center of the circular hall. Then, a glass container that looked like a giant test tube slowly rose from the hole.
The cylindrical glass container was filled with a pale pink nutrient solution, and within the solution were blobs of twisted and mutated flesh polymers. The polymers were like pieces of meat that had been kneaded and mixed in the most insane way. They had no fixed shape, and there was no discernible pattern of activity. They were just soaked in the nutrient solution as they wriggled aimlessly, morphed, fused, and split apart.
Every once in a while, the surface of the wriggling meat would ooze out and disperse into the solution. Even though there seemed to be a filtration device running in the container, the dispersed blood still dyed the solution a light pink.
Y 'zaks saw it and asked, "What is this?!"
"It's humans." The Cortex Prime's voice came from the speaker in the corner of the hall.
"Humans?!" Hao Ren's jaw dropped. "The humans here look like this?"
As he said that, he looked at N-6, who was not far away, and saw that N-6's face was also filled with shock and disbelief. It was clear that the Executor's memories of the humans did not look like this pile of meat.
Vivian frowned. "Since when did the humans become like this?"
"The mutation has been happening all this time, without a clear timeline. From the day the war began, or should I say from the day the creators first escaped their homeworld, the power of the Devourer had been imprinted on the humans." The Cortex Prime's emotionless electronic voice said. "Before creating the Executors, they had already realized that humans would never be able to escape the power of the Devourer. This power could not be explained with common knowledge, and it would eventually end their civilization. The survival rate of newborns plummeted, and fatal diseases and mutations increased. Millions of people escaped their homeworld, but their population was declining every year. That was why they created the Executors, so that the Executors could fulfill their mission and reclaim their homeworld. "
The Cortex Prime's voice continued. "In the first few thousand years, humans could still live with the Executors, and they taught the Executors many things, including how to think. In the next thousand years, due to deformity and the rapid decline in their physique, humans could no longer maintain their social functions, and so they built the Great Think Tank, and converted human knowledge and thought processes into data that the Executors could download and understand. At the same time, they created me, and gave me the responsibility to protect and guide the entire society. Another thousand years later, the genetic mutation finally reached a point where it could no longer be alleviated, and the greenhouse environment in the fortress could no longer sustain humans, so they were forced to enter the cultivation vessel.
"In the next thousand years, no newborns were born, and humans survived with the help of the cultivation vessel.
"In the next thousand years, they began to lose their form, and even lost their isolation from each other. They became more and more like a primitive cell colony. In ancient historical records, a similar form had also appeared on the mother planet. It was a phenomenon caused by the Crimson Blood Tide released by the Planet Devourer. Any living being that came into contact with the Crimson Blood Tide would dissolve into this cell cluster in a short period of time.
"And after that, it is what you see now."
Vivian's brows were still furrowed. "… The Executors outside know nothing about this?"
She glanced at N-6, and from the latter's almost frozen expression, she had already gotten the answer to her question.
"The secret is buried deep within the fortress," the Cortex Prime replied. "The normal Executors do not know what happened to the humans."
Lily asked curiously, "Because this will cause them to break down?"
"The Executors' mission is to help the humans reclaim the homeworld, and this mission is engraved in every Executor's memory the moment they step off the production line." The Cortex Prime replied. "If we lose the humans, what do we have left?"
Hao Ren's gaze moved between the dazed N-6 and the glass vessel in the center of the hall, as if deep in thought.
"For so many years, the situation of the humans has been deteriorating." He looked up and spoke to the air, but he knew the Cortex Prime was watching him. "A few years ago, the deterioration reached a critical point, and this caused your malfunction?"
"The humans created me to serve them, but they did not tell me what I should do if they were to leave one day." The Cortex Prime replied flatly. "For thousands of years, my mission was to complete the mission they gave me. Build a lunar base, develop the Executor society, create an army, and attack the homeworld. All of this was because the humans needed me to do so."
Hao Ren slowly exhaled. "But now, even the 'humans' are about to disappear."
This was the cause of the Cortex Prime's fatal malfunction.
He had long realized that the Cortex Prime and the Executors created by the humans on this planet were not the same thing. If the Executors were an extreme imitation of the humans, from their speech and thinking ability, they were no different from the humans, and the Cortex Prime was more like a supercomputer with superior computing power, but lacked the ability to think and calculate vaguely. This design must have had far-reaching considerations, perhaps it was to ensure the stability of the entire Executor society, or to ensure that the long-term goal of 'reclaiming the homeworld' would never change. But regardless, the result of this design was far from the humans' original goal.
When all technological means could not save the humans from extinction, the Cortex Prime's strict logic system could only come to one conclusion: it would never be able to complete the mission given to it by its creator.
So it began to malfunction, lost, and entered a self-destruct countdown.
"Do the 'humans' still have the ability to think? Or rather, communicate? "Hao Ren asked.
"… That was a long time ago." The Cortex Prime replied.
Just as Hao Ren thought, there was no longer any humans who could fix the Cortex Prime's logic. They might have had the chance, but now, it was all too late.
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