Doomsday Wonderland

‘Puppeteer is heading to the fallen zone?’

An intense fear flared up in Lin Sanjiu’s heart for a moment, but another thought entered her mind and soothed her. She let out a breath, and her expression relaxed.

She had almost forgotten.

This was Puppeteer’s memory. She was merely re-living a fraction of historical events that had happened at a certain point in his life before their meeting. Although Puppeteer went to the fallen zone with his friends, he did come back alive in the end. With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu realized that her worries were uncalled for.

‘Since he’ll return in the end, I should probably take this opportunity to learn more about this world. Perhaps I can find a way to escape from here.’

Hearing information about this world from the young man was by no means an easy task. The several posthumans who had engaged Lin Sanjiu earlier on, including the lively man who had his pants ripped off by her, were all dead in a fine glow of gallantry in the battle. The remaining 20 or so posthumans did not know anything about world leaping.

The good thing was that she had earned some prestige for herself through the action she displayed in the battle. Although the young man still felt skeptical about her, he answered every one of her questions.

The first thing that had Lin Sanjiu so shaken was that the apocalypse did not cause the end of this world. In fact, this world had never been so pristine, efficient, developed, and ideal as it was today.

Dumbfounded, Lin Sanjiu glanced around at the city. Her eyes jumped from the abandoned buildings to the streets to the corpses that littered the ground outside the gate before stopping at the overturned, damaged vehicles and trains. She almost thought her hearing had failed her, but the young man soon shed light on what that meant.

“It’s not the world that has ended. It’s us, humans,” said the young man as he sat in the corner with his back leaning against the wall. He grabbed a crumpled cigarette from nowhere and continued, “You are lucky, you know. Sector 9 is the smallest sector. It’s the least populated and the most impoverished and backward division. People from other sectors always see us as good-for-nothing slums. Ironically, it’s also due to this reason that Sector 9 has escaped their attention. At least, we can keep our homeland safe for a certain period.”

“They?” Lin Sanjiu emphasized the phrase. “Are you talking about the Vindice?”

The young man looked at Lin Sanjiu quizzically. He even forgot to flick the ash of his cigarette.

“Seriously, don’t you know about that? Mind telling me which hole you’ve been hiding in all this time?” He teased halfheartedly, but he was too lazy to go into the whys and wherefores. He offered Lin Sanjiu a bitter smile and said, “Well, guess I have to take up the job and be your history teacher for the time being. Again, lucky you. I don’t think there is anybody else—besides me—who’s acquiescent enough to give you a history lesson at a time like this. Most of them would ignore you, while some would treat you to some punches. Anyway, come and have a seat here. It’s going to be a long story.

“It all happened about two hundred years ago. This world entered an era of technology explosion. During this era, due to several reasons and opportunities, Artificial Intelligence technology, a.k.a AI, acquired a quantum leap in development. After a while, the AI technology equipped with deep learning abilities and neural networks made a series of astonishing breakthroughs, reaching an unprecedented level of growth in merely a few decades.

“That was the best of our times.” The young man took a drag on his cigarette. The choking smell of the low-quality smoke instantly filled the air. “Nobody needed to work anymore. Oh, politicians still had to work though, pity them. AI had learned all human skills, replacing all human labor. They could do everything. The only thing restricting you was your own imagination. For example, menial work such as mining and extraction of petroleum that required heavy labor was merely the minority of the group. They performed even better than humans in certain areas that required professional personnel such as national defense, military, technology, medicine, music, and literature.”

“Even music and literature?” Lin Sanjiu could not believe what she just heard.

“Yep, even music and literature work. In every piece of monumental production, traces are left.” The young man threw Lin Sanjiu a surreptitious gaze as if he found no reason for her surprise. “After the AI grasps and masters the rules, they can produce a different kind of literature and artwork in multiple ways. Does the work look good? Of course, it looks good. At the very least, the final product is better than the work produced by a human hand, not to mention the production rate is massive. Before the purge began, I kept a lot of 54AI albums in my home.”

“The purge?”

The young man had gotten used to Lin Sanjiu’s lack of knowledge about this world, so he explained, “In that golden era, the AI virtually handled everything. The manufacturing processes: AI; the production processes: AI. They even overtook the research to ameliorate Artificial Intelligent technology. All humans needed to do was stay at home, and the government would give everyone a round sum allowance. The living standards improved, the crime rate decreased, society became stable, and everybody was happy. Of course, some work still needs humans to carry it out, but it was merely posing as so. It made no difference whether we did it or not.”

Lin Sanjiu could not imagine that this kind of world actually existed. After all, a world that possessed such highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens only happened in the movies or in some wild talk of some mad scientist.

By right, if the Artificial Intelligence had not gone sideways, this should have been the perfect place, a utopia that everybody sought for.

“You can’t see the problem here, can you?” The young man looked at Lin Sanjiu and smiled bitterly. “We didn’t see the problem either… The whole world didn’t.

“In the end, the AI replaced the people,” he lamented as he looked at his own hands. His voice was low. “Do you know what people mean to those politicians? Human resources. We create value, and we promote the economy. We are laborers and soldiers. However, the nation soon realized that the AI far exceeds the value that humans can contribute.

“They follow orders without question. They are efficient, precise, and constantly upgrading themselves. Most importantly, they would never commit any crime, they would never riot, and they would never ask for equality. Each country was feeding a large number of good-for-nothings that contributed nothing but was only double the trouble for them. In other words, we were the cancerous cells. You rear a cow that can give you milk. You rear a hen that can lay you eggs, but what can a human give in return? Nothing, zero, zip. We can give nothing aside from creating more doo-doo.”

A chill suddenly crawled down Lin Sanjiu’s spine. Initially, she thought the AI had developed their own thoughts and began attacking humanity to overtake the world as many movies had shown. However, it seemed like she was wrong.

“You get it now?” The young man smirked, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “In the beginning, the government merely tightened the law. Any crimes committed—be it theft or murder—would earn a death sentence. Hence, human judges lost their jobs and had to join us in receiving an allowance from the government. Later on, they released a list. Aside from those upper echelons and top researchers, all citizens were strictly prohibited from bearing children until they were tested and given a license to do so. All illegal children discovered would be euthanized immediately.

“Of course, we fought back, but it was no use. We lacked weaponry, and we needed food from the government. When riots broke out, the AI was called in to quell the protest. They didn’t have to show themselves. All they needed to do was fly over the sky and drop a bomb. After all, according to the new rules, rioting was treated as a capital offense, and the only judgment was death. By the time we realized we had lost everything that we could use for negotiation, it was already too late. We were on the chopping board.”

Lin Sanjiu was distracted by what she heard. She then asked blankly, “Right now, is Mistral still run by the government and AI?”

“Bingo.” The young man grinned. “After roughly 90% of humanity had been wiped out, some of us began to evolve. Then, we don’t know if it’s because we’re a hard nut to crack or if they suddenly lost interest in us, but the purge ended, leaving only the Vindice to roam from sector to sector to control the population. Oh yeah, the Vindice is an AI, too.”

Lin Sanjiu was shocked. “So, what you mean by the ‘fallen zone’ is a particular area that has been fully occupied by AI? No humans are living in there?”

“If you leave out those jacks-in-office, yeah, you are right.”

“So… so, why does he still want to find the president?” Lin Sanjiu tried a few times, but she could not utter the name “Yun”. She said ambiguously, “The president should be on the AI’s side, right?”

“Almost all of the bureaucrats at that level have been killed.” The young man sighed. “But I get him. There’s no way Sector 9 can survive the next wave of attack. When the Vindice return, they will burn the entire Sector 9 down until there’s nothing left. He’s willing to take the bet. The codes and the defensive system are the only things that can save Sector 9.” He had long finished his cigarette but refused to throw it away.

“No matter if Yun comes back or not, he’s the hero of Sector 9,” he spoke in an undertone, staring vacantly at the sun, which hovered above the horizon.

Lin Sanjiu could not imagine Puppeteer in a hero suit. It did not come together with the image she had of him in her mind. After that, she extended her gratitude to the young man and stood up. She had no idea what would happen next or what action she should undertake to help Puppeteer and her escape from this memory.

The area outside the main gate was littered with dead bodies. Nobody had the time nor the energy to help those dead go to their final resting place.

People were walking out of the inner city, their figures silhouetted against the setting sun. One after another, they came to the side of the heroes and heroines that protected their homeland, crouching beside them. They consoled them and helped them up from the ground. It was a warm sight, yet at the same time, it felt so lonely. Lin Sanjiu looked over to the cyan staircase. The scene of posthumans rushing and hopping down from there was still vividly clear in Lin Sanjiu’s mind. At that time, they were so lively and robust in morale. Although they were afraid, their eyes were filled with determination, and they had only one goal: to protect their homeland.

“Hey, girl.” An elderly woman came to Lin Sanjiu’s side. “You’ll catch the flu if you keep standing here. Come on, let’s head back into the city. I have prepared some food, and you can take a shower as well.” Lin Sanjiu pondered for a moment and took up the offer in the end. However, she did not want to fill her stomach, whatsoever. It was just that Puppeteer would eventually return to the city, so why should she not wait for him inside?

She just never expected to wait for 17 days straight.

Since she was inside a reality produced by the Veda, Lin Sanjiu did not know whether or not she had spent 17 days there. The long wait tormented her to the brink of losing her mind, but at the same time, she also felt that the Veda had sped up the rising and setting of the sun, as 17 days passed by in the blink of an eye. Lin Sanjiu was so confused that, in the end, she completely lost all sense of time.

On day 18, a team of figures appeared on the horizon, walking closer to Sector 9.

The person on the observatory deck was the first to discover them. As if a hornet’s nest had been stirred up, all of the posthumans began to make preparations and gathered around the main gate. Their faces were full of sweat and apprehension. For those civilians that had not evolved, they remained hiding inside the city, praying wholeheartedly that the newcomers were not the Vindice.

Their wish came true: it was not the Vindice.

As the figure of the team grew clearer, Sector 9 grew quieter. A teenager and a tall young man were carrying a man in the center. The man’s head was hanging low. He seemed to have fallen unconscious due to his injuries. There was a young girl in a short skirt walking next to them.

“Everyone, we have found the president! He is still alive, and he has evolved as well!”

The teenager’s lively voice spread across the sky. In that instant, a frenzy of excitement and euphoria engulfed the entire city. Everyone was shouting and yelling in jubilation as they cried tears of joy, their faces lit up with hope. With the president and the code, they no longer had to fear the government.

Although Lin Sanjiu was not one of them, she was infected by the electrifying atmosphere as well. Her heart spurred into a gallop. She did not go forward but kept looking at the teenager and his two friends walking past the gate and collapsing to the ground.

They were exhausted.

The tall young man’s hair was a mess. He could hardly maintain a candid smile on his face. His entire upper torso was charred as if he had been burned by electricity or fire. The young girl was not in good shape either. Lin Sanjiu could not see her appearance, as she was entirely bathed in blood. Every step she took would leave a bloody footprint.

The worst of them all was the teenager. Half of the bones in his body were crushed. His calf was so contorted that Lin Sanjiu wondered how much willpower he had to amass to carry the man from Sectors 1 to 9. In contrast, the president appeared to be lightly injured. He was just not conscious.

However, the silver lining was that all of them were alive.

Lin Sanjiu looked on as the people carefully placed the four of them onto stretchers and rushed them into the inner city. There were no professional physicians inside the inner city, only some quack doctors. However, since all of them were posthumans, they would be fine.

It seemed that everything was developing in a positive direction.

However, Lin Sanjiu did not know why there was an evil foreboding stirring inside her. Her heart was spiraling deeper and deeper as if it was falling into an abyss.