After a few hours of hyperspace travel, the Petrachelys finally left the hyperspace state in a brand new sector. With a sudden light that lit up the space, the warped space opened, and the silver-white inspector's ship slowly emerged from the portal.
"Arriving at the L-B-35 outpost. Automatic navigation terminated."
Nolan's voice woke Hao Ren up from the star map. He looked up and saw that the simulation projection around the bridge was gradually expanding, and the external monitor was projecting a panoramic view of the outside of the spacecraft to the periphery of the control platform.
He found that the spacecraft had arrived in an unfamiliar airspace surrounded by dust clouds. The space background here was slightly lavender, perhaps some kind of thin, primitive air mass that had not yet formed a galaxy shrouded this place. In the distance of the space background, there was a series of bright gray stripes with distinct outlines, which was the place where new stars were being formed. And in front of the Petrachelys, he saw the foothold built by the drone cluster here.
There was a huge and strange metal fortress floating in space, it looked like a persimmon with a number of protrusions. It was a near-circular structure with a radius of several kilometers, concave in the center and bulging around it. The huge fortress was grayish-white and dark black. A large number of metals and rocks were piled up together, making it look like some kind of strange civilization relic. A large number of flashing lights could be seen on the edge of the fortress, and many things that looked like pipes poked out from the densest places. Some busy drones went in and out of those pipe openings like busy worker bees.
In the center of the huge fortress, there were several huge antennae structures. They were placed in a circle of self-defense artillery protection net, and there were combat drones patrolling around. Although all the firepower was "civilian-class", they still looked majestic.
This was the nest built by the drone cluster. It did not conform to human aesthetic standards, it looked like a huge ant nest made of metal and stones. The robots only followed the principle of convenience and ease of use to build this thing, but they did not know how to decorate their own home. This fortress was one of the larger ones in the drone cluster's nest. Originally, it would take a long time for a group of outpost drones to build a base of this size, but the L-B-35 drone cluster was lucky enough to find a suitable size and hardness, so they hollowed out the celestial body and built their own proliferation plant and various facilities inside.
The Petrachelys slowly flew toward a large platform on the edge of the strange fortress, and Nolan's voice continued to broadcast on the bridge. "Automatic navigation to the drone nest, welcome and guidance signal recognized. Entering port process, main thruster stopped, auxiliary thruster in operation. Do I have to report these things to you in such a stupid tone every time? "
"Don't interrupt when reporting the status of the spacecraft," Hao Ren glanced at Nolan's projection floating on the navigation map. "Can we just follow the instruction?"
Nolan pouted and waved her hand. She used her first-person perspective to watch the Petrachelys slowly approaching the strange fortress that looked like an ant nest. A large number of drones, including the original L-B-35 drone cluster and the drones that had just come from several nearby nodes as support, were flying around her, like a swarm of insects guarding near the nest. Nolan could not help but sound a little strange. "I feel that this place is scary, especially the nest in front, it looks like a bug nest."
Lily was also quite impressed. "How come I didn't know that the place where these drones gather is so gloomy?"
In fact, most of Hao Ren's attention was also attracted by the strange drone nest: this was the first time he saw a nest.
Although he was the first to release the mother of these drones and gave them the command to expand and investigate, he had only met with the wandering fleet of drones in the universe, or simply communicated directly with the consciousness of the drone cluster through the communicator. He had never seen the drone breeding plant in person like today.
It was only today that he saw the first completed nest node with his own eyes. To be honest, the appearance of the nest was a little different from what he had expected.
He thought that this thing should be more like a coffin, after all, the technological items issued by Xi Ling Celestials were basically coffin-shaped.
The Petrachelys slowly stopped on the platform under the guidance of the guidance signal, and a group of mechanical devices floated up from below the platform to hold the spacecraft steadily. Then Hao Ren and his team left the ship and stepped into the depths of the nest through a conduit.
In order to welcome the 'drone cluster commander', the nest had self-adjusted after receiving the visit order from the superior. It had built a temporary inner atmosphere and a constant temperature system so that Hao Ren and his team could walk more comfortably inside. Two small round drones came out from the core of the nest to greet their master. They were two 'Rogue Scouts'. This small body did not operate in outer space, but was specially set up in places like the nest or outpost for internal inspection and mechanical maintenance, just like the autonomous robots in the Petrachelys.
Hao Ren walked along the conduit corridor under the guidance of the Rogue Scout. Originally, inspecting the nest was just a casual act, but he did not expect to see such an interesting thing here. The interior of the drone nest was as strange as its exterior, with no human aesthetic characteristics. The robots only built wide tubular channels and reinforced scaffolds according to the needs, so the metal and primitive asteroid rocks were entangled without any decoration, making the interior of the fortress look like the digestive system of some huge steel monster.
The interior was brightly lit, and the busy drone cluster shuttled between the various holes and conduits. It was a busy scene.
Lily looked at the scene and muttered, "It feels like the base of the villain."
Before Hao Ren could say anything, a rigid voice suddenly came from all around. "It's just a coincidence, ma 'am."
"Wow!" Lily exclaimed. She saw a huge, amorphous face floating in the air in front of her. The face was projected with a pale blue light, surrounded by countless small streams of light. It turned out that they had unknowingly arrived at a larger chamber in the nest. A few main pipes intersected here, forming a large egg-shaped space. Many mechanical devices were operating quietly in this chamber. These machines all had the characteristics of Xi Ling, but because they were placed in such a place that looked like a bug nest, everything seemed a little strange.
"Yo, drone cluster," Hao Ren greeted the face. Although he also felt that the atmosphere of the nest was strange, he had read all the relevant information in the inspector's handbook before releasing the drones, and later consulted with many colleagues about the drone cluster, so he appeared very calm, because he knew that this thing was like this. "By the way, this is the first time I've seen your 'nest'."
"The fleet is honored." The huge face trembled as a constantly changing smile appeared on it, but the voice was still rigid. "I didn't expect the commander to suddenly want to enter the nest's headquarters personally, so I hastily built an ecological environment. I hope the environment is still comfortable."
"Uh, it's pretty good," Hao Ren scratched his head. "I just wanted to come and take a look, I didn't expect to cause you so much trouble."
"The drone cluster doesn't think this is' trouble '," the big blue face said rigidly. "This is within my ability, so it's a regular load."
"Well, let's not talk about this," Hao Ren knew that the drone cluster's thinking was more rigid, so he directly changed the topic. "About the traces of the lens that were tracked before, is there any update?"
"It has only been less than twelve hours since those traces were first discovered, and there has not been any more information from the drones. We are expanding the search area, and it is estimated that it will take at least twenty-four hours for further findings. "
"Well, just as I thought, it's not that easy," Hao Ren muttered, scratching his chin. But he was not impatient because after seeing the drone nest, he suddenly found that there were a lot of things here to kill time, and it seemed that he would not be bored while waiting for news in the 'development outpost'. "Then let's wait. I finally have a chance to understand the work of the drone cluster. By the way, you mentioned 'just a coincidence'? Do you know what Lily is talking about? "
A large number of holographic projections immediately appeared around the chamber, and the projections were a variety of film and television clips — from humans and other alien races, movies, TV series, animations, games, and simple video clips, depicting the story of various drone cluster mutiny or intelligent robots going on a rampage. Some of them were obviously fantasy, but some were very disturbing: they looked a bit like a realistic documentary.
Everyone looked at the sudden display of these short clips, and suddenly no one knew what to say. But except for Lily who was nervous, everyone seemed very calm: because these guys did not watch sci-fi movies, and Y 'zaks did not even know what an AI rampage was.
The corner of Hao Ren's mouth twitched. "So you can collect these … Don't you feel weird looking at these things?"
"I can connect to the Imperial Data Network. Collecting these cultural works is my personal hobby. They embody the interesting parts of the basic thinking process of the native races, and some embody the 'form of civilization'," the drone consciousness replied. "The plot of the drone cluster mutiny and the continuous development of AI leading to the loss of control is very interesting and worth discussing. It looks like serious documentary literature, but there is also an elevated romantic part. It is a hot topic on our forum."
Hao Ren was stunned, and the last sentence of the drone consciousness stunned him. "Your … forum? What forum? "
He suddenly found that even though he had read a lot of manuals and asked a lot of homework from his peers, he still knew very little about the drone empire he had created.
This constantly growing AI was becoming more and more like a living person.
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