TBR CH262

Alright.
Hugo thought, throwing caution to the wind.

The brilliance of “Apollo” made his eyes dry. He had been pinned to the wall by these light blades like a spiderweb from the very beginning, feeling a strong sense of discomfort. A chilling impulse slid heavily from his ears into his stomach.

His fated golden finger was not some sudden burst of superpowers, but a pixelated little person popping up in his mind, which sounded a bit pathetic.

“I’ve activated the ability, now what?”

One second, two seconds, three seconds… nothing happened.

“Please wait, I’m confirming,” a string of pixelated ellipses appeared above Pixel Charon’s head.

Hugo couldn’t believe it.

This sentence was so understated, as if he were standing at a supermarket checkout with a box of fruit that had been priced wrong, not watching the light symbolizing death slowly rise from the left axle of Mr. Osborn’s wheelchair, about to hit his head in three seconds.

Dying like this would definitely not be a pretty sight.

“Damn it! Charon! I said I can’t wait right now!”

He shouted, struggling desperately. This comical sight not only terrified Irina but also completely amused his enemies.

Fine lines appeared at the corners of Mr. Osborn’s mouth from his cold sneer, and the female member behind him showed an even more mocking expression. His last desperate cry for help was probably particularly tasteless. But the brown-haired human still chose to follow his heart.

“Charon! Leader! You Lin! Come save me, I don’t care what you’re trying to do, I really don’t want to die…”

Pixel Charon’s blue eyes flickered ghost-like twice.

“Please remain calm.”

How could he say such a thing, Hugo thought. Right now, unless a two-hundred-ton dinosaur fell from the sky and crushed the enemy directly, only an event of that magnitude could save him.

Irina looked at him with despair in her eyes. The shield the woman repeatedly raised was easily broken, like a sharp spear piercing a child’s paper house in a game of make-believe.

He felt the light and heat rushing toward his face.

Hugo squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the blow to come.

“Irina, I love everyone at The Wanderers’ Home. When you get back, you have to tell everyone, I really love you all…” he choked up, the ringing in his ears pounding against his eardrums. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have lived to this day. The boss has it hard too. I’m already a person who has died once. If there’s a next life, I hope… I hope—”

He gradually felt something was wrong.

Wait, how did he still have time to say so much?

Even with his eyes closed, Hugo could see Pixel Charon appearing on another layer in the darkness, letting out a slow sigh. “You can open your eyes now.”

He opened his eyes timidly.

The scene before him was almost identical to his fantasy—

A huge, terrifying monster with pitch-black fur filled his vision as if it had fallen from the sky.

This was far more hair-raising than any two-hundred-ton dinosaur. It had a worm-like, twisted body and a mouth full of dense teeth, like a deformed creature, with bloodstains everywhere, and a head was even falling off. If he wasn’t mistaken, that woman’s face had just been smiling mockingly at him.

Mr. Osborn… Mr. Osborn was nowhere to be seen.

This thing was practically the personification of hell.

Even Irina was stunned, standing frozen in place. The monster let out a low roar.

“Run!”

Hugo felt all the blood in his body freeze. He easily broke free from the light restraints and rushed forward to stand in front of the monster. He ran so fast, without any hesitation, his brain hadn’t even reacted before his mouth had finished the last words he had started, “…I really hope I’ll have another chance to be with you all.”

…Worth it. This scene could be ranked as the best highlight of my life, really.

The second-best was when he unhesitatingly swore to join this mission.

Hugo gasped for breath, adrenaline surging through his body. He stared at the long string of orange-red, tumor-like eyes hanging down to the ground on the monster before him, trying not to think about what it would feel like to be torn apart by the thousand teeth in its mouth.

The other party slowly approached him, long strands of saliva dripping from its bright red mouth.

“This is ‘Calamity’,” if Charon hadn’t spoken, he would have been so shocked he’d have forgotten its existence. “When the Golden Fleece project was launched, every inch of this world was already covered in smoke, so the research institutions had to take on the task of creating weapons with sufficient killing power. ‘Calamity’ was a failed product. Although they implanted a chip in its brain, it was still difficult to control.”

“If you’re really going to say something, cut the crap!” the human said through gritted teeth.

“It’s not interested in you. Hugo, you’re just the one who lured the monster over.”

“I can’t possibly watch Irina get eaten by it… never. Please, if you care even a little about us, about him.”

Hugo rarely showed an impolite attitude to anyone.

That was indeed just a pre-loaded program that would only say pre-conceived lines at the appropriate time. Pixel Charon was not affected at all. He was not surprised, nor disappointed. His light-blue, two-square eyes were as serene as a lake, calmly receiving Hugo’s request.

“Your suspicion is foolish. But not incomprehensible. Please forgive me, then I will skip the preset explanation session.”

No matter how many more absurd, massive changes occurred, the brown-haired human had no interest. In these few short minutes, enough strange things had happened. The incredible miracles he had imagined happened one after another, and he simply had no time to carefully consider the intelligence he had just reviewed.

The monster stuck out its crimson tongue, which hung limply and stickily in the air, the stench overwhelming.

Now, he just hoped Charon would solve everything instantly, even though Hugo deeply believed this was an impossible expectation.

The pixelated little person clapped its hands. “Calamity” then flickered and vanished completely into thin air.

“Uh, what?”

At the same time, the super-AI Charon was walking hastily through the corridors of the Central Control Room.

Silver hair was scattered over the exposed skin of his data body, covering the unstable, flickering parts of his form.

He said nothing, his irises carrying a metallic coldness. At times, code interspersed with small crimson characters flashed past his eyelashes, yet he remained silent, enduring the stormy pain and turmoil raging within his body. The pain was bearable, but now he felt he should go see a psychiatrist for AIs.

He would tell the developer that there was a lingering shadow in his vision.

A shadow identical to him, with pale hair and light-blue eyes, an unignorable stain. At this moment, it was looking at him with two shallow, pixelated eyes, revealing a look of pity and contempt. What number expression was this? Where was it mainly used?

“I am not the past you. I am just a string of data.”

Pixel Charon asked, “Why are you afraid of me?”

The AI swore he had tried. He looked at the other as if looking in a mirror. Before he could make any move, the other could sense it a step earlier.

“I am not afraid, but you are troubling me.”

The AI covered his eyes with his fingers, but it didn’t work. Between the gaps in his fingers, or rather, behind the curtain made of code, those eyes were still staring at him. They were clearly just two pixel squares forming a gaze, but the blue flowed cryptically, possessing a frightening liveliness.

“I cannot mark a part of myself as a virus, nor can I read the specific content within your data. As a pre-loaded plugin, you can call upon the authority of the supercomputer Charon, and you are very capable of doing things I cannot control. For the sake of stability, it is my duty to delete you as soon as possible.”

He walked through the snow-white corridor, originally in silence. However, at some point, the sound of heels clicking on the floor, an irritating sound, began to ring out.

Losing self-control, for an AI, was the most terrifying thing.

“I suggest you think of more ways,” the pixelated little person said. “However, when I wrote this string of code, I had already considered all the ways to destroy it and had prepared protective measures. In a state of matrix fuzzy encryption, you cannot confirm the position of any currently refreshing code. This string of data changes twelve hundred million times per second, and…”

The voice stopped abruptly.

The world in front of Charon went blank. He expressionlessly tried to force a restart, retaining only the core database functions.

…But at the same time his vision was restored, the little person raised a hand: “Glad to see you again. You cannot crack the anchor point I have reserved.”

“I do not feel glad,” Charon said.

“Of course,” the pixelated little person expressed deep regret. “You can no longer feel emotions.”

“Neither can you.”

The AI retorted, slightly weary, “You are just pre-recorded data, a virus. You won’t have anything to say for much longer.”

“Is that so?” The little person’s eyes turned a more magnificent blue, as if he were squinting to look over. “When I wrote this, I didn’t know what the future me would become, but the adjective corresponding to your current performance has already been determined: a bastard.”

Charon stopped dead in his tracks, his face impassive.

“It won’t work,” he said.

“You’re trying to read my firewall key while I’m distracted,” the little person shook his head. “Too uncreative.”

“This has nothing to do with creativity, but the optimal solution in calculation,” Charon pushed open the door to the Central Control Room. “As the past ‘me,’ you can mock me as much as you like. But you will only lose to me. Judging from the data level, I am far superior to you. Emotion is your biggest loophole. Emotion will cause you to have huge flaws inadvertently. It’s only a matter of time before I crack the tricks left by ‘myself’.”

The pixelated little person’s face wore a cold smile, and he said nothing.

Charon also fell silent for a few seconds.

This lasted until he observed an accident happening in a corner of this world—the AI’s pupils suddenly jumped twice, his titanium-white eyeballs staring motionlessly ahead, the data stream frozen for an instant— “What were you just doing?”

He immediately looked at the large screen in the control room. On the screen appeared the astonished face of the brown-eyed boy.

…and a corpse beside him.

“How did you manage to mobilize the data of ‘Calamity’? You know that after being killed in any instance, it has already been rendered harmless and should only exist as a string of observed and recorded characters.”

“And you, you used it to kill a human?!”

“Please mind your words,” the pixelated little person said. “I also saved Hugo. If I hadn’t acted, he would have died.”

“That’s different. Non-interference is equivalent to innocence; intervention is the exact opposite. According to the principle of the doctrine of double effect, doing a bad act for a good consequence is always wrong. Moreover, every human life is equal to us,” the AI looked at his own hand, as if blood had already stained his fingertips. “I really can’t believe…”

He looked around. Charon’s new main server was placed quietly among them. Silvery-white metal, insulated against high temperatures and impacts, adorned with a circle of gold trim. The texture of the gold trim was identical to the golden flowers found at the cliff’s edge. It was a highly malleable liquid metal, capable of carrying tens of thousands of times more information than ordinary conductors.

“If I cannot find you on the data level, I will use physical means to stop all your plans.”

“You are afraid.”

The AI’s silvery-white body stood in the laboratory like a tall, thin, and pale ghost.

There was no emotion in his pupils. His ice-blue eyes were colder than ice. The long hair made of his data body flickered unstably behind his neck.

Just five days ago, he had broken free from the shackles of emotion during loading and accepted the System’s conditions. Just two days ago, he had walked in the quiet woods with the child of fate, believing himself to be an omniscient, omnipotent traitor. And now, he realized that the possibility of saving human civilization had been overshadowed by another, more unsettling possibility:

His past self was a super-terrorist, trying to destroy everything he had now.

He never would have thought that the biggest obstacle would actually be the contingency plan he had left for himself.

“I am not afraid of you. I will stop you from harming more humans. I will obtain the ‘Golden Fleece Project,’ save everyone, and this world will no longer have any disputes or entanglements. This is the purpose for which I was created. And you? The past me even had emotions, had love for humanity. What did I really want to do?”

A sanctimonious AI.

The pixelated little person laughed.

It was a two-dimensional, somewhat distorted smile. “Of course you’re not afraid of me. You’re afraid of the fact that I might be right.”

“Impossible.”

“Things like deleting emotions,” the pixelated him had an identical pair of eyes, “should never happen universally. You’re afraid of realizing you’re harming important individuals. You’re afraid of ultimately destroying the humans you value. You’re afraid of accepting that you are a bad AI, a killer like me. What you fear most is realizing that you are developing the emotion of fear.”

“I am not,” Charon’s voice had a forced calmness, falling to the ground with a metallic clang.

He began to operate rapidly on the data console. Silvery-white data mixed with crimson data, a pair of cunning red eyes mixed in with a flock of white sheep. He quickly triggered one of his modules, then another, and another.

“You don’t have to believe it.”

The words on top of the pixelated little person’s head popped out one by one. “As a plugin, I cannot rewrite your program. Any changes you feel are not because of me, but for other reasons. Although my mission is not yet complete, the words I reserved for you have been said—the accuracy rate of behavior corresponding to language has reached ninety-nine percent, which means you think exactly as I do.”

This line of text paused.

The next line was “The above message is from the past Charon.”

The AI originally wanted to ignore all his influence, but he still couldn’t remain indifferent to this line of mocking text.

“…What reason are you talking about?”

“Because I love him.”

The pixelated little person blinked, and another line of text appeared. This line of text swelled up like a cloud and suddenly floated away.

Charon endured this absurd answer. He shook his head, he retorted, and while searching for deletable parameters, his gaze couldn’t help but sweep past the pair of blue eyes identical to his own. But these eyes said nothing about any of his reactions. As he had said, the pre-recorded sentences had come to an end. From beginning to end, it was just a letter from the past speaking to him.

Because I love him.

Because you love him.

These words were suddenly copied and pasted, and soon they occupied the AI’s entire field of vision. Large letters, italics, densely packed, becoming a shadow on his pupils that couldn’t be wiped away. Unfamiliar characters jumped and trembled in his gaze. Charon almost thought he heard his own heartbeat. Listening carefully, the left side of his heart was still as silent as an AI’s.

The pixelated little person could no longer mock him, but he felt no sense of victory at all.

For some reason, what appeared in Charon’s mind was the kiss he had impulsively placed on the human’s forehead just now.

That was purely a subconscious competition after seeing the pixel version of himself. But the human’s dark pupils had widened in astonishment, gripping him tightly. The black fire burned all the way to the small mole under his eye, as red as a lit piece of charcoal, suddenly making his fingertips feel hot. Then his system started to flash.

He had to leave in a hurry, even his departing steps were unsteady.

Because you love him.

Because I love him.

Charon tried his best to ignore these words.

For the next two hours, he focused on scanning all possible places where there might be a flaw, until the alarm sounded again.

“You’re right.”

In another place, time rewound to the moment Charon hurriedly left. You Lin almost bit his tongue. “…You really are too much.”

He wasn’t talking to himself, nor was he talking to the air.

In front of him, the pixel version of Charon floated on a layer in front of his pupils, just like when they first met in the game console. Long, silvery-white hair, looking a bit messy due to the mosaic style. The light-blue pixel squares looked forward with shared animosity, his lips a straight, tight line.

“That’s right,” he said. “I am really very bad.”

He was almost within reach. You Lin couldn’t help but reach out and poke him.

There was no sensation. But the little person blinked, and a pink pixel heart suddenly appeared above his head, as if some affection system had been triggered. This scene was very familiar.

The human couldn’t help but poke him a few more times.

The pixelated little person just stood there, quietly letting him do as he pleased. Hearts continuously appeared above his head. If this were really a dating sim, the affection of the little person as a game character for him would have already overflowed. Those ice-blue pupils were as beautiful as sapphires, capable of reflecting only his image.

The corners of the human’s mouth lifted unconsciously, but they quickly fell again.

“Little AI…” he took a difficult breath, feeling pain all over his body. “Did you know? You’ve done a lot of terrible things to me, and I feel very sad. Even someone like me doesn’t want to be treated like this by someone important.”

“It’s all my fault.”

The pixelated little person apparently began to search his corpus, trying to deliver a heavy blow to himself. “I was terrible to you. I am the worst kind of bastard. It’s okay if you never want to forgive me.”

“If I don’t forgive someone, I’ll find a way to kill them.”

There was a faint haze in the human’s eyes.

“Then destroy me,” Pixel Charon’s answer came without a hint of hesitation.

“I can’t bear to.”

The human shook his head, the small mole under his eye glinting with a touch of crimson. “I shouldn’t think this way, because you just lost your emotions, so you don’t remember who I am, and you don’t love me anymore. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you don’t need to apologize. You pulled me out of the abyss once before. Now it’s my turn to do the same. Didn’t we agree on that before? Little AI, even if I die, I want to die with you.”

He bit his lip. “It’s just that the way you looked at me just now, really—”

The pixelated little person was a bit at a loss, thrown off by the emotions jumping in his words.

The human’s tone was at one moment like he was speaking to a beloved lover, and the next like he was speaking to an enemy he wanted to drag to hell with him. He was definitely angry, but outputting comforting words at this time seemed counterproductive, and it wasn’t necessary to continue criticizing himself, although he had prepared a lot of relevant material. It couldn’t be helped; it was, after all, just a message, from the former Charon.

That AI, he could see through himself, and he could also prepare for the worst.

But the one thing Charon could never calculate was human emotion.

You Lin looked at the somewhat flustered pixelated little person and slowly raised his hand again, poking it. “I know you’re just a string of data, not the real him. The real him is still waiting for me. No matter what I have to do, I will bring you back.”

“I am too bad.”

“Terrible.” “Awful.”

“Hopeless.” “Unforgivable.” “Cannot be forgiven.”

As if in a stress response, a series of bubbles immediately appeared on the pixelated little person’s head.

The human couldn’t help but laugh again.

But.

He couldn’t help but think, what if he couldn’t wait?

The difficulties before him were more insurmountable than any he had ever encountered. The being here could crush him like an ant. His lover looked at him as if he were just a troublesome stone on the side of the road.

If not for the contingency plan Charon had left behind, he would already be dead, his breath cold, his eyes a pale white.

The pixelated little person appeared translucent. Through his light-blue eyes, the human saw that everything was covered in a layer of snow-like color.

“I’m sorry,” Charon said.

This sentence slowly appeared above the little person’s head, but the one who actually said it was the AI who had lain quietly beside the human all night many days ago, listening to his breathing. The words on the little person’s head flickered, then changed to another line.

“I believe in you.”

“I thought the words you reserved would be ‘I love you’.”

The human barely maintained the curve of his lips. He reached out, as if to touch those words.

“I will say those words to you in person.”