Chapter 1558 Mastermind

Hao Ren did not dare to say that all the defenders had died in this hall, but he could guess that there was probably not a single defender still active inside and outside the fortress - there was probably more than one scene like this in this hall. , in other server rooms and other main brain equipment rooms, there may be densely packed with the burnt remains of maintainers.

Because the mastermind obviously premeditated and planned the destruction of these loyal workers who were usually responsible for repairing him.

Hao Ren came to a charred wreckage and carefully turned over the washbasin-sized steel beetle. The latter's hanging mechanical arm had been jammed by its own joint device. Hao Ren had to cut off its two mechanical arms to remove it. The metal plate on the belly of this thing was removed.

"It was destroyed from the inside out. The core circuit board was almost completely charred, and these coils... they were obviously the initial point of fire," Hao Ren pointed at the messy internal structure of the maintainer's body, " Typical result of an electrical pulse attack."

"They should have been working when they were destroyed," N-6 recovered from the initial shock. She looked at the cable connectors and servers with their covers opened around her, and quickly restored the scene at the time. "The recent period has not been a day for hardware replacement. There is no need to carry out such large-scale dismantling operations, so these maintainers should have been summoned by the mastermind."

Lily's ears twitched: "In other words, the mastermind summoned his own team of maintainers on the grounds that he needed urgent maintenance, and then 'murdered' them in these computer rooms? Is this the grand banquet of the robot world?"

"Although most of the defenders usually operate inside the fortress, they are a team that can contact the outside world. The fact that they are all destroyed cannot be hidden from the outside world for a long time." Hao Ren frowned, "The terminal can judge that these robots are probably When was it burned down?"

At this time, the data terminal had completed sampling and analyzing the ablation traces everywhere in the hall. It came over after hearing Hao Ren's words: "About a month ago. To be honest, according to the information about the maintainers provided by N-4, This is enough time to arouse the vigilance of the agents outside. The main reason why no one raises any questions is probably because the master brain always has absolute control over the lunar base. The agents completely follow the orders of the master brain, even if they have Their own thoughts and feelings cannot get rid of this 'thinking lock' set in the program, so all abnormal situations in the fortress are subconsciously ignored by them."

"But in fact, the anomalies and the content set in the program will accumulate a lot of conflicts sooner or later. When the conflicts accumulate to a certain extent, it will be a disaster for this kind of artificial intelligence society," Yzaks said angrily. Said, "There used to be a kingdom of magicians called Retitus in my hometown. Their technology of using artificial souls to create intelligent golems was unparalleled in the world. But in the end, because of a logical error that no one noticed, all the intelligent golems collectively If it gets out of control, the country will be destroyed in three days.”

Hao Ren nodded slightly. The society on the moon dominated by artificial intelligence had huge congenital flaws. He had only a vague feeling about this before, but now that he saw the situation inside the fortress that was on the verge of collapse, he thought about it again. For agents who appear to be doing business as usual on the outside, this congenital flaw becomes extremely obvious.

As for N-6, who was standing blankly not far away, she was already caught in a huge contradiction.

Everything she saw after entering the fortress had a great impact on this poor robot girl. Everything she had never doubted and regarded as her "life" principles was shaken here. The fortress that was supposed to never fall, the mastermind that was supposed to be always correct, the fortress defense system that was supposed to have no logical loopholes or security issues... all of them are now in vain, and inside this solid steel fortress, everything is decaying , is collapsing. This collapse process has already occurred a few years ago, and reached a very terrifying level a month ago: the mastermind even personally destroyed its own defenders.

But the compatriots outside knew nothing about this. They could only see that the fortress was still standing on the moon, and then they faithfully carried out the orders coming from the fortress - even if the order would be so crazy in the next second. They collectively went to their home planet to self-destruct.

A surge of electricity beyond the limit appeared in her logic circuit, and N-6's field of vision was quickly occupied by the error message window. She felt that her thinking became intermittent, and her body fell to the side uncontrollably.

But in the next moment, she felt that her unbalanced body was being supported, and the once chaotic logic circuit gradually stabilized. Some codes that did not belong to her were clearing system errors that would cause fatal failures.

Vivian quickly supported N-6, who had fallen down as if dead. Seeing that the latter opened his eyes again after a few seconds with the buzzing sound of a system restart, she couldn't help but feel a little worried: " What’s wrong with you?"

"It's not a big deal, it just shut down due to excessive stimulation," the data terminal replied for N-6. "Every agent's program has set absolute obedience to the master brain and absolute trust in the fortress. And the truth she saw in the fortress was enough to cause fatal bugs in these programs. But now it seems... her system seems to have the ability to repair itself? She recovered on her own after fainting like this."

Hao Ren blinked: "Isn't it because Nolan wrote some security software into her system when he repaired her?"

"No, Nolan has not touched her core system at all, he just wrote a bunch of drivers for her. Her system recovery function should be built-in."

N-6 felt that her auditory system was turbulent for a while. The conversation between Hao Ren and the data terminal sounded like a distant and roaring noise in her ears, which continued for a long time before gradually becoming clearer. She heard the word system recovery, but she didn't understand what it meant, because she didn't know when the codes that helped her clear the fatal error were stored in her chip.

She stood firm on her own and showed a grateful expression to Vivian: "Thank you, I have recovered."

"Are you sure there's no problem?" Hao Ren glanced at the robot lady uneasily, "Can we still move forward?"

Next to her, Lily reminded her: "Let me remind you, you might see something more exciting if you go further..."

"I'm fine," N-6 nodded, "The system error has been eliminated and I think I can continue."

Seeing the other party's persistence, Hao Ren didn't say much, but looked at the messy place thoughtfully: "To be honest, this is really an act of killing one thousand enemies and damaging oneself eight hundred... These servers look like It was also damaged a lot.”

"These are the secondary servers of the master brain. Their destruction will not cause the master brain to completely lose its ability to operate," N-6 immediately explained, "but the loss of these secondary servers will cause excessive pressure on the master brain's main server and Performance degraded. I think the Overmind was completely insane when it came to destroying these maintainers, and he didn't care how much damage was done to his own structures."

Hao Ren was noncommittal.

At this time, Doudou emerged from Hao Ren's collar again. The little guy blinked his bright eyes and looked around.

Yzaks couldn't help but muttered when he saw this situation: "To be honest, don't you feel uncomfortable carrying such a big fish in your arms?"

"You usually don't find it awkward to have a girl sitting on your shoulders."

"That's true..."

At this time, Doudou had already looked around. The little guy was thinking about something and suddenly grabbed Hao Ren's chin: "Dad, over there..."

Hao Ren looked up in the direction of Doudou's finger and found that it was the exit of the computer room.

The group did not stay in this area for too long. After leaving the remains of the defenders behind, they entered the true core of the fortress.

They entered the long corridor leading to the palace of the end.

What they saw along the way was not much different from what they saw elsewhere in the fort.

Titanium guards who were incapacitated could be seen everywhere, and offline monitoring equipment and weapon platforms could be seen everywhere. In addition, they also saw more computer rooms and subsystems related to the main brain - and in Without exception, these places are filled with the remains of destroyed defenders, and even the master brain's own hardware has been severely damaged by the release of super-powerful pulses.

The size of the mastermind is beyond imagination. It is almost the fortress itself. The most powerful artificial intelligence in history occupies nearly two-thirds of the volume of the fortress. It is not so much that Hao Ren and his party are walking in the fortress. It is said that they are traveling through the body of the master brain now, and what they are looking for is just the external interface of the master brain.

The interface is right in front of you.

A heavy black mechanical door stood in front of Hao Ren. There was a faint light flashing on the door. Weapon systems that had lost power supply were installed on the walls on both sides of the door. A gloomy and depressing atmosphere lingered around this door. On the door, when Hao Ren looked at it, he couldn't help but think of the scene he had witnessed many times before -

The end of a civilization, the end of an era.

N-6 told him that behind this door is the center of the master brain, and it is also the location of the only "master interface" that can directly communicate with the deep consciousness of the master brain.

And the only entrance to the Palace of Finality is behind the center of the Master Brain - for thousands of years, the Master Brain has been guarding this only door to the secluded place of mankind like the most loyal guard. Before today, this level It has never been open to a "surrogate" like her.

"Open it." Hao Ren instructed the data terminal.

"We may encounter resistance from the Elder Brain," Yzaks said. "The most likely possibility is electrical pulses - that's what the Elder Brain uses to destroy the defenders."

Hao Ren nodded: "Be more vigilant. Lily, stay back, your resistance is low."

Lily wanted to refute, but after thinking about how miserable she was every time she was hit by Vivian's lightning ball, she obediently hid behind Hao Ren with her tail between her legs.

The energy system of the black door was not offline yet, and the data terminal was able to disable the access control system through virus injection. Soon, with the sound of the locking device opening and a slight sound of mechanical friction, the heavy gate in front of everyone slowly retreated to both sides.

A broad circular hall appeared in front of everyone, and in the center of the hall stood a majestic and silent black cylinder with flashing lights.

This is the center of the mastermind.