The Record of Unusual Creatures

The strange “rock”, which had been in the crater in the forest for a week, finally moved.

Early in the morning, the little creatures living nearby were stunned by a strange sound. After determining that it was not the sign of another round of explosions, the daring animals slunk up to the edge of the crater through the woods and bushes, then proceeded to look at what the “rock” from heaven was up to. They were surprised to find that the culprit who smashed a big hole out of the forest had changed. The once black shell was now shining in silver and white. There was a beautiful halo floating over its armor, like the ripples on a lake’s surface.

A strange humming sound like wind blowing in a cave was heard coming from the belly of that weird thing.

Several little beasts with pointed grayish-white ears grabbed the branches and looked down from above. They were furious when they thought about their homes—the beautiful tree holes. The “rock” from space had destroyed their squats, which were now pinned under the belly of that strange object. The little beasts held on to the branches and roared at the thing in the crater from a distance, they thought was safe. They were trying to chase the uninvited guest away.

This time, it seemed like they had succeeded.

The silvery-white monster began to lift off with the bright blue light shooting out of the nozzles at the rear and notches around the waist. This seemingly heavy behemoth seemed to have lost its weight as it lifted off in the air and flew away.

That damn strange thing had finally flown away.

The little animals in the forest looked in disbelief before cheers broke out among them—or it could be just their random scream as they fled. A few little beasts with gray-white pointed ears still clung to the branches. They looked at the crater left behind by the silver-white thing, trying to find their beautiful tree holes. But they were disappointed.

They chirped and exchanged opinions with each other. Figuring that it was no longer suitable to this place home, they decided to move to the forest, where there were many frames and “stone trees”, to find their next beautiful tree holes.

“How does it feel to be able to fly again?” Hao Ren asked with a smile.

Standing next to the projector at the center of the flight deck, Nolan was checking the flight data with enthusiasm.

“Awesome!” Nolan’s arms were in akimbo, and she swung her silvery-white ponytail. “I was worried for the past few days that I would have the flying disorder. You know what, it turns out that I am born to fly. I have never felt so good!”

“Great.” Hao Ren nodded with a smile. Nolan, the ship girl had been debilitated for a week, and today, she finally regained her spirits, which was a good thing. “How’s the spacecraft doing?”

“It is better than expected!” Nolan seemed so happy that she had created a bunch of firework and lantern special effects using a hologram. “The power reactor works excellently, the shield is stable and sturdy, and the weapon system is as powerful as new. The main gun seems to still have a little problem, but I think it will be ready to blast anything away in a few hours!”

“All right, all right. I understand how happy you are. But you better concentrate on flying this thing for now.” Hao Ren waved his hand at Nolan to calm her down. “We need to be wary of the Divine Storm in the galaxy. The latest surveillance report from the drone cluster shows that the Divine Storm only exists in deep space and is now generally calm, but do not be too carried away lest the storm will come after us.”

The bluster worked. Nolan suddenly looked around like a frightened rabbit, as if she could weaken the presence of the several-hundred-meter-long spaceship in space.

Hao Ren felt a sense of relief. Compared with when she was still a Gray Fox mercenary who had been through the mill and brought out of Zorm’s dreams, Nolan now looked more cheerful than before. Perhaps, this was the AI woman’s actual “personality” setting?

The spacecraft had left the planet’s atmosphere, but it did not accelerate away. Instead, it activated various interfering and cloaking mechanisms and moved closer to the high orbit unhurriedly. Ahead in its flight path was the Zenith, the miraculous space station that the native inhabitants of the planet had built, gleaming under the sunlight.

Hao Ren turned to look at the two robot girls, N-4 and N-6, who were sitting not far away.

The other Executors were also on the Petrachelys. After N-4 and Hao Ren reached a consensus, N-4’s ground forces, including those who had fled before, became the temporary passengers of the Petrachelys and were in standby mode in a visitor compartment. N-4 and N-6 were on the flight deck to answer questions from Hao Ren.

N-4 and N-6 were fascinated by the Petrachelys, which was built with technology that they had never seen before. They had been in awe, especially when the spacecraft lifted off.

Meanwhile, Hao Ren was quietly observing them.

Curiosity—an extremely human trait.

The aerospace technology of the aborigines of this planet was so-so, which was evident by their lack of warp drive, but their achievement in the field of artificial intelligence had been outstanding. Those AIs called the Executors not only exhibited almost perfect emotional expressions but also could choose their own self-learning path, which was the most terrific achievement.

This meant that they could self-evolve.

N-4 had said much about the condition of the Cortex Prime. Now, Hao Ren had a general grasp of the situation.

It sounded like the problems with Cortex Prime did not crop up all of a sudden but was a gradual process. No one had noticed the problem when it first happened.

Since a few years ago, that massive artificial intelligence had begun to make contradictory instructions. The number of conflicting instructions was minimal at first, and it always involved almost non-critical decisions. It was regarded as a glitch. The Cortex Prime had a self-correction mechanism. Its thirteen computer servers were like a voting mechanism eliminating the fault codes automatically based on the rules of the majority—at least that was the case in the beginning.

But then, the situation deteriorated.

Somehow, the Cortex Prime began to hide the syslog of its fault codes, which was probably the deadliest fault in itself. The system administers in the fort were not aware that the Cortex Prime was making more and more erroneous instruction. There were only one or two servers that generated incorrect instructions at first, and that happened only three or four times in a month or two. By as time went by, the problem became more serious. Erroneous instructions appeared more frequently as more servers generated them. As the number of erroneous servers increased, the number of normally-functioning servers decreased.

It was not that the servers of the Cortex Prime lacked maintenance nor updates. In fact, as the most crucial decision-making machine in the survivor society, the Cortex Prime’s motherboards and primary logic circuits were replaced every 100 years, other hardware was checked and maintained every year, and system self-diagnostics ran daily. N-4 had mentioned that the Cortex Prime’s motherboards and logic circuits were newly installed less than two decades ago, which meant they were less likely to fail.

But fault still happened, inexplicably. When the ratio of the normal servers and faulty servers reversed, the errors were finally exposed.

The Cortex Prime first issued two different instructions. One of the instructions was a directive to put the existence of the unidentified spacecraft on embargo and prohibit anyone from approaching the crash site. The second instruction was sent directly to more than a dozen Executors, including N-4, ordering them to investigate the unidentified spacecraft.

At first, N-4 did not realize that there were two contradictory instructions. She thought that it was a secret operation. But when she routinely crossed check the instruction she received with a lower-level server of the Cortex Prime, a serious warning within the system was triggered.

The Cortex Prime thought that she and her team members had defied its order and acted arbitrarily.

Then the Cortex Prime sent her a transport plane, ordering her to set off to finish her mission as soon as possible, and also sent into her memory tons of messy system logs.

So, under such contradictory instructions, Miss N-4 and her temporary squad members came to Hao Ren.

“Have you never suspected anything amiss at all?” Hao Ren looked at N-4 in disbelief. “The contradictory instructions and the blank mission details? Most likely, the Cortex Prime will treat you as rogue Executrix when you report back. Can you not report the problems to the system administers?”

N-4 was expressionless as she said matter-of-factly, “We must carry out the command of the Cortex Prime. It is the reason we can still survive until this day.”

Likewise, N-6 said, “We must carry out the command of the Cortex Prime. The system administrators will do their jobs.”

Nangong Sanba could not help but bury his face in his hand. “You can’t reason with those who have an entirely different worldview than yours.”

While they spoke, the Petrachelys was slowly approaching the mega-space station, the Zenith.

Its silver-white oval shell glittered on the hologram onboard the Petrachelys. The behemoth was as massive as a small moon, occupying the field of vision of everyone.

“Nolan, get the traction beam ready.” Hao Ren gently tapped the console and sighed. “Get ready to work.”