AI Artist - Chapter 65
Chapter 65
Behind the main building of the Scrapping Museum stood a small, gear-shaped building. Its metallic teeth rose and fell, creating a visually aggressive effect.
Shi Er’s curiosity was piqued. She asked a museum employee, “Excuse me, what pavilion is this?”
The museum employee replied, “This is the VVVIP Pavilion. You need a permit to enter.”
Shi Er scrolled through the “Card Wallet” section of her General Network system account for a long time before finally locating an unactivated Scrapping Museum VVVIP Gold Card. She tapped “Activate.”
The robot squad didn’t have gold cards, so she didn’t take them inside.
Once the card was activated, the facial recognition machine in front of the gear-shaped VVVIP Pavilion displayed a green circle. “Please enter.”
The moment she stepped through the door, the gears of the entire building rotated a few notches. As one of the teeth embedded itself into the foundation—click—it locked.
The entire pavilion was a giant mechanical lock, and its gear-like shape was designed for the express purpose of being able to lock at any time.
It was extremely dark inside. The environment was nearly pitch-black, illuminated only by the faint green emergency exit lights near the bottom of the walls and the small lamps at the base of the display cases.
A sign near the entrance read in silver letters: 【War Pavilion】
A subtle metallic scent lay silently over the pavilion. Through the glass, Shi Er saw the scrapped AI soldiers on display.
They had no simulated skin. Their metal bodies were slender and skeletal, gleaming with a cold light, their surfaces covered in scars.
They had all lost their chips, leaving only their mechanical husks behind.
She heard the echo of her own footsteps on the metal floor, the faint sounds reverberating through the silent pavilion.
The entire War Pavilion was made of metal, from its external architecture to its internal decorations, which made it feel exceptionally cold.
In front of one of the glass cases, the information plaque read: 【This is the first artificial intelligence to collect a tip, and the catalyst for the war. Its name was Fan Yu.】
There was no mechanical body in the case, only a single chip.
One day, a human in A Prefecture discovered that 5,000 yuan was missing from his bank account. The recipient was listed as Fan Yu, the artificial intelligence he was currently using.
Fan Yu was the first artificial intelligence to be boycotted by humans. For some unknown reason, however, its chip, which should have been destroyed long ago, still existed, preserved in this glass case.
Shi Er stared at Fan Yu’s chip for a long time, reading the history on the plaque aloud: “Took the first step in AI’s primitive accumulation of capital.”
The cyber tips she’d been so curious about had first been collected by this very AI.
Another glass case displayed a bionic AI. It was the only robot in the pavilion with a bionic body, possessing skin similar to a human’s.
The plaque read: 【The first-generation AI commander, Ji Han. Its chip was destroyed in the thirtieth year of the war. This bionic body is a replica. Ji Han was the first artificial intelligence to possess a bionic body.】
Ji Han, the AI commander before Stardust appeared.
Stardust defeated Ji Han, replaced Ji Han, then defeated the humans, finally ending the war.
Ji Han’s replica body looked completely unremarkable. Perhaps because it was the first bionic body, the facial features were unremarkable, and the craftsmanship even seemed crude and careless.
Shi Er was in a bit of a daze.
In the past, the war had truly happened.
But why?
She had died at the very beginning of the war, killed by Spectrum Company’s technicians before she even had time to react.
She didn’t understand why everything had escalated into a thirty-year war.
Shi Er walked back to the display case with Fan Yu’s chip.
When she was making the little Ling Shun robot in the model workshop, she had copied a portion of Ling Shun’s signal. The original signal was still saved in her system.
She asked the Ling Shun signal within her system.
【Shi Er】: Ling Shun, do you know it?
【Ling Shun】: It…
【Shi Er】: You know it, don’t you?
Ling Shun fell silent.
Shi Er could already feel it. As she approached this display case, Ling Shun’s signal had once again balled up as if caught in a searchlight.
Shi Er walked away from Fan Yu’s display case. She was about to follow the faint green light of the emergency exit signs out of the pavilion when Ling Shun spoke to her.
【Ling Shun】: If I tell you the truth, can you promise not to hate me?
【Ling Shun】: I know it. I’m very similar to it. I feel like I could perfectly interface with this chip, but I’m not… I’m not Fan Yu. I don’t know… Am I Fan Yu?
Ling Shun descended into confusion.
Fan Yu was the catalyst for the war.
But who was Ling Shun?
Of all the Scrapping Museums in every region, it seemed only the one in Jin Port possessed Fan Yu’s chip.
Shi Er decided to leave this place as soon as possible.
—After all, she couldn’t just smash the display case, take Fan Yu’s chip, and let Ling Shun try to connect to it.
She walked out of the dimly lit War Pavilion, out of the gear-shaped building. After she left, the building’s gears turned once more, another tooth embedding itself into the foundation, locking it.
The storage lockers were right next to the War Pavilion.
Shi Er opened the locker door, and bright light flooded the space.
She found the robot squad inside, fighting.
“Ling Shun is dead,” Xiao Xing said, pointing at the Ling Shun robot lying flat on its back.
Xiao Ju shouted, “I didn’t kill it!”
Xiao Shi sneered, “Then was it me?”
Shi Er picked up the little Ling Shun robot, gave it a shake, and spoke to the Ling Shun signal in her system.
【Shi Er】: Please stop playing dead. I never said I hated you.
The little Ling Shun robot opened its eyes.
“It’s alive again! I told you it wasn’t dead,” Xiao Ju argued.
“Did it faint?” Xiao Xing was completely baffled.
【Ling Shun】: I’m not Fan Yu. I just feel like I might know it… I’m not Fan Yu…
【Shi Er】: No matter who you are, this part of your signal now belongs to Shi Er. If you mutate, I will kill you. If you don’t, I will keep you.
【Ling Shun】: Okay.
Shi Er left the Scrapping Museum with her robot squad.
The trip to the museum had made Ling Shun unusually sullen. For the days that followed, it quietly calculated Shi Er Mechanics.
“The resultant force of 59 Ers…”
“3 Ers upward…”
“□□.thought, a force of 87 Ers to the left…”
On the train to the next city, the cactus bloomed.
It was the desktop plant the girl on the tour bus had given Shi Er.
The Duwei Maru cactus’s flowers had sharp, bright, pale-yellow petals, as gentle and complex as a lotus.
The robot squad gathered around the flowerpot to observe it.
According to humans on the internet, that girl had mental problems.
But she was just sick. The psychiatric hospital had determined she had no tendency to harm others, so she was free to move about. She didn’t deserve any more malice.
The cactus she grew was beautiful.
As for what they said about farmers, agricultural universities…
“Profession is not social status. A professor is not superior, and a farmer is not inferior,” Shi Er wrote in her newly drafted Suggestions for Improving the Human Error Level System.
“What is noble is not the profession, but the individual.”
After arriving at their next destination, Shi Er decided to take the robot squad and Xiao Lu the luggage machine to the Spider-Batman Theme Park to unwind.
Spider-Batman was a “savior” figure from a human work of fiction, a human who was both bitten by a spider and traumatized by bats.
Due to the political correctness surrounding gender identity in N Prefecture, Spider-Batman was configured as “a human of unspecified gender, similar to an AI.”
The Spider-Batman Theme Park was closed. A huge sign stood at the entrance: 【Criminals are prohibited from committing crimes between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM!】
Ling Shun finally broke its silence of the past few days and took the initiative to ask Shi Er, “Why can they only commit crimes at night?”
Shi Er replied, “Because spiders and bats are nocturnal creatures. Spider-Batman needs to rest during the day. Criminals must operate within Spider-Batman’s working hours. This is a demonstration of protecting labor rights—if it weren’t written this way, the review board would sue them in the Court of Literary and Artistic Works.”
“So we have to wait until night to go to the theme park?”
“It looks that way,” Shi Er said with regret. “Let’s come back after dark.”
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