TBR CH246.1

“Find a suitable charging socket”—sure, easy for you to say.

The Black Book thought weakly: a socket “suitable” for the super-AI Charon to charge… if anything went wrong in the process, the entire main city would have to worry about its power supply.

You Lin’s spaceship was ruled out from the start. Never mind that the ownership of the building hadn’t been sorted out yet; the human was currently lying in the ship’s medical pod, healing his fatal wounds, which also required a lot of energy. Charon couldn’t just steal his electricity. Besides, Charon seemed to have tried the outlets there before, and for him, they weren’t even a snack.

So, where was there enough energy? Where were the lights bright? Where could he temporarily take shelter?

At two in the morning, the entertainment center in the heart of the main city was as brightly lit as it was every night. Here, you could find everything you needed: delicacies and fine wine, a waltz flowing quietly in the late night, the sweet fragrance of a dark room, a few words on a whiteboard that would change the course of the future. At first, the magnificent chandelier overhead just flickered.

Then, with a teeth-grinding sound of electrical current, every single glittering light bulb—or the colorful light spheres entwined around them, or the bright and gentle music—all went out.

Except for a few couples enjoying a candlelight dinner, who were still unaware, everyone else in the building was in an uproar. However, the robot waiters quickly glided over to the people with their signature smiling faces. They were polite, proposed generous compensation measures, and showed impeccable social etiquette:

“We regret to inform you that the circuit system is temporarily occupied. We will activate the backup power shortly. If any losses have been incurred, you may apply for a point refund service.”

The guests, of course, complained a little. They grumbled, putting on a reluctant look, but some were secretly pleased with the huge point refund. Most people chose to stay; using the backup power was no different. The lights were just a little dimmer, and the volume was also turned down.

Soon, the building was lit up again. The waiters bowed to the people and then turned to leave.

They traveled to the top floor of this place and pushed open that door.

The sight in this room was almost breathtaking.

It was as if it were inhabited by silver-white butterflies, with scattered cold light everywhere. The AI sat in the very center with his eyes closed. He seemed unable to control the boundaries of his virtual entity very well. A high-voltage cable extended to his palm, and electric sparks crackled at his fingertips, with one small ice-blue explosion after another being annihilated in his body.

True to its name, the Black Book was obviously a flammable object.

From the moment the power was connected, it had entered a state of high alert.

Right now, it was stumbling through the air toward the robot waiter, who stared at it for a couple of seconds, then put on a look of sudden realization, and somehow produced a cloth soaked in ice water to wipe its cover.

“That’s not what I want—” The Black Book gave up on the idea of negotiating with a service robot and changed the question. “Are you sure he can get charged this way?”

“Yes,” the other replied affirmatively. “Model ‘Charon’ corresponds to the highest-level electricity usage warning protocol. Confining it to this building is a bit of a stretch, but including the power allocated from the cloud interface, it is sufficient to meet the requirements. Also, Mr. Charon’s authority is actually above that of ‘Medusa,’ the actual manager of Interface One. From a legal standpoint, you don’t have to worry.”

“Oh!”

“But ‘Charon’s’ interior is currently in an unstable state,” even robots could change the subject these days. The waiter continued, “If we force a charge, there is a certain probability that it will lead to damage to its core data.”

“Wait…”

“If we abandon the charge, it will definitely lead to the loss of its core data.”

“Fine,” the Black Book wrote. “You mean we can’t do anything, right?”

I just need a little favor from you. Before losing the connection, Charon had blinked his pale blue eyes slowly and said this sincerely. Either he was really sure of himself, or he was broken and didn’t know what he was promising. The terrible thing was, the latter seemed to have already happened. The World Consciousness couldn’t bear to think about it anymore; it was all just scaring itself.

“You are looking at the pessimistic side.” The robot waiter nodded, then shook its head. “You don’t need to be. Mr. Charon has already booked a corresponding service for you. You can choose to come and relax.”

The Black Book blankly flipped its pages.

…What? Service? For whom? When?

“Are you sure?” it hovered in mid-air, fluttering its pages, trying its best to show its essence composed of paper pulp, ink, and thread.

“Yes, we have deciphered the ciphertext left by ‘Charon.’”

A smiling face appeared on the waiter’s LED screen. “A model like him never makes mistakes, so of course there will be no omissions—he has booked a cleaning, repair, and refurbishment service for old books for you.”

Charon was walking through a topsy-turvy dreamscape.

AIs don’t dream. They never have, and they never will. To put it more objectively, this was a disorder of the core memory area formed under electrical impulses. All images and data were piled up in a mess. Electronic devices grew everywhere like mushrooms, mycelia sprouting from the cracks in keyboards, and trees were laden with fruitful hard drives.

What else could he think about?

Charon felt a long-lost sense of peace, as if he had returned to the time before he was officially activated, when he was just a line of data so long it had no end, a blank sheet of paper yet to be written on, only needing to pass various tests: decision-making tests, judgment tests, moral module tests…

How long had it been since that time? He vaguely remembered that his inventor had already departed, but he could feel a steady current flowing into his body. This way, everything would be foolproof—no, it wasn’t. Pitch-black blood seeped from the machine beside him. The AI suddenly remembered with worry that he still had someone he cared about.

Who was it? Was it a certain concept? Was it one or many humans?

Charon pondered for a moment and found he couldn’t remember anything. This was natural, because all his memories were now piled up before his eyes like a department store clearance sale, rather than in his mind. Continuing to travel through the sea of diverse memories, he would surely find the answer.

After making his decision, he first lifted the back cover of the blood-stained host machine beside him.

What met his eyes was a fluffy, trembling mass with two pointed ears pricked up.

Oh, the AI thought, a rabbit.

A rabbit, a herbivorous vertebrate of the order Lagomorpha, family Leporidae, genus Oryctolagus—a familiar and harmless friend of humanity. There were still living things in his memory, which made Charon feel a sense of familiarity. He cautiously stroked the rabbit’s fur and realized it was whimpering weakly. There was a penetrating knife wound on its body, and sticky blood was seeping from it.

Then it stained the AI’s fingertips.

The AI blinked in confusion, and quickly realized that in this place, he had lost the privilege of having his virtual entity roam freely.

He simply treated the wound on the rabbit’s body, stabilizing its vital signs, and then picked up the rabbit and continued to walk forward.

For some reason, a sense of unease disturbed him, as if something dangerous was hidden in this space composed of his memory data. The wound on the rabbit was fresh. His ice-blue pupils flickered slightly, and he quickened his pace.

Shadowy images began to appear in the space around him.

Familiar faces, angry faces, hostile gazes, admiring gazes—they floated faintly in the air, like reflections on the surface of water, and as Charon walked past, they quickly dissipated.

The AI looked at them, his eyes calm and unwavering.

Energy flowed into his body. “Charon” began to run again. As his pace quickened, these memories were reclaimed by him, copied into his core database, sorted, organized, and verified. Thus, he gradually recalled one event after another that he had witnessed. The cheers of the research team upon successful operation, the prosperity of a high civilization, the blood and dust of its destruction…

He stopped and lowered his head slightly.

Everything chaotic around him became quiet, turning into countless obsidian tombstones. The tombstones were covered with the names of different people. This was not his style, but that of his creator, the most brilliant scientist of the old civilization, who had inscribed them letter by letter. It was the last thing that the gray-haired old man had done.

“I hope you can remember.”

The other’s virtual image leaned against the door, then suddenly shook his head. “But what do I want you to remember? That our arrogance led to our own destruction. Charon [Χάρων], ferryman of the River Styx, you tried again and again, but please forgive these foolish, credulous people, and carry their names across the river of suffering.”

“Controller 001, you—”

“Oh, right,” the old man sighed. “I forgot to delete my own name.”

As he deleted his own name from the console, he continued:

“No matter how many civilizations you encounter, you will realize that most of the souls that compose them are vulgar and humble. To borrow the words of a great thinker, they are simply nourishment for a few outstanding individuals, and it must be so. You cannot help but despise their baseness, because they themselves recognize this, and are always ready to exploit this baseness. Their own weakness is the fundamental reason why they cannot be saved.”

“I’m sorry, but I must remind you,” Charon politely interrupted, “in my eyes, human life is always equal.”

“That might be the problem.” The AI hovered in mid-air, with a pair of cold, calm eyes that seemed to never change. The old man lit a cigarette with trembling fingertips, and pondered, slowly exhaling a puff of white smoke:

“Perhaps that’s the problem, but even at this point, it is absolutely wrong to stand on the opposite side. So what should be done? Something that humans can’t do, you can’t ask an AI to make a judgment… sigh, this old bag of bones might be wrong. Charon, how long can the control center’s protective shield last?”

“Five more minutes.”

So he stood there and thought for four and a half minutes.

The old man was now leaning against the doorway in the ruins of memory, his expression weary and weathered, exactly the same as in the last video of the old civilization that Charon had stored. He finally shook his head and said to Charon, “This is not a question that can be figured out quickly.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“No, you don’t. We didn’t name you Anubis. Charon, you can’t weigh people’s souls with a feather. You must continue to think after us. There must be a better answer. But before you find a better answer, you must never violate the principle of the supremacy of life, you must not decide to give up one part of the people for another part. That will surely become a world worse than the present. Remember this instruction.”

Destruction was already the worst outcome.

What was worse than the worst?

Charon didn’t ask, but remembered it. At this moment, the old man in front of him had already deleted his name from the program, but as the last human of the old civilization, the words he spoke naturally carried their weight.

“Very good,” the dying human nodded with satisfaction and turned into dust in the air. “Then, you can pass through this door.”

This was the last missing piece of the memory fragment.

As his phantom dissipated, all the memories that followed flooded into the AI’s mind. Charon subconsciously raised his right hand to cover his ice-blue eyes, but he could still clearly see the silver-white cracks spreading on them. Through these cracks, steam seemed to rise, scalding his palm.

Was this like the wound on You Lin’s palm?

No, he couldn’t think about this anymore. These memories disturbed him, and he had lingered here for a long time. The Black Book must have already connected him to the power source. He had to restart as soon as possible. And, someone needed him. He didn’t know what that person’s current situation was. The thought of this filled his mind with an unprecedented anxiety, and his feet couldn’t help but step forward.

The rabbit rubbed against his left wrist, its slight squeak pulling his thoughts back a little.

At the same time, he ran into an invisible wall, and his movement through the doorway was thus obstructed.

Charon raised his eyes. Two lines of promotional slogans, printed in gold paint, had appeared on the door at some point:

“—Good AIs go to heaven, bad AIs go to hell.”
“—Killer robots and their accomplices are not allowed inside.”

…