Chapter 388: Their Sacrifice

The AI Engineering Department.

This was one of the higher-level departments in the company and the source of its core competency.

But now, more than half of the AI engineers in the office had left under various pretexts. Meanwhile, the manager—who would normally issue a warning if someone was gone for even three minutes—was in his office, nervously watching two uninvited guests.

One was Goldman Sachs, the son of a director. His father held a rather high position in the company, making him a bona fide second-generation heir.

The other, who looked to be about thirty-five, was #9521. He was known as the nice guy from the sales department—a man of few words who rarely smiled but was considered quite reliable.

When Goldman Sachs had sought out the manager, the manager had immediately grown apprehensive, wondering what kind of trouble he was about to stir up this time.

Ever since entering the office, the two of them had just been sitting there drinking tea, not saying a word.

It was a negotiation tactic: create psychological pressure through silence, forcing the other party to speak first and thereby establishing a higher psychological standing.

But the manager understood that whether it was a matter of intelligence or their respective statuses, he was the one who had to speak.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, the manager had no choice but to ask, “Mr. Gao, how can I help you?”

“I’m a little interested in AI. Could you explain it to me?”

“Is that so… But learning about AI won’t help you sell products. Why do you want to learn about it?”

“Right now, I’m the one asking the questions, not the other way around,” Goldman Sachs said with a smile.

Even though Duan Fei had put him through the wringer, and he cowered whenever he looked at Duan Fei, and he would start trembling if he was with Duan Fei for more than three minutes, in front of ordinary employees, Goldman Sachs was still extremely intimidating.

The manager flinched. Just as he was about to reply, he suddenly heard a faint alarm from his desk.

Every employee’s seat in the company was equipped with a sensor that would trigger an alarm if they were away for more than three minutes.

However, just as he was about to check on the situation, Duan Fei, who was standing nearby, reached out and switched off the alarm.

“You…”

“I think explaining the situation to us is more important,” Duan Fei said with a smile. “Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Just explain it to us.”

The manager frowned and looked at Goldman Sachs, questioning him with his eyes.

“Listen to him. He speaks for me.”

The manager eyed the two of them suspiciously before finally conceding.

Although he wasn’t well-versed in office politics, the manager was a junior executive, after all, and possessed a basic level of shrewdness.

He keenly sensed that Goldman Sachs was plotting something—something far beyond the reach of a minor character like himself.

Resisting Goldman Sachs meant getting fired on the spot. Not resisting meant possibly getting fired later. Weighing the two, he could only sigh and capitulate. “Alright, I’ll explain. What part are you interested in?”

“Everything.”

“Then what part don’t you understand?”

“Everything.”

The manager instantly felt like the two of them were just messing with him.

But he couldn’t say a thing.

Finally, feeling utterly aggrieved, he could only open his laptop and begin explaining to Goldman Sachs.

Meanwhile, Duan Fei excused himself, pushed open the door to the stairwell, and walked into a surveillance blind spot.

The blind spots in the corridor weren’t continuous but were scattered around the corners of the walls.

Thus, within this fire escape, Duan Fei could see hundreds of engineers scattered in various corners, like mushrooms after a spring rain.

They were gathered in small groups, their shiny, bald heads glinting with the light of wisdom.

They cradled their laptops, constantly murmuring to one another, then transmitted their findings by tapping on the handrail in Morse code.

As AI engineers, they knew just how insecure the company network was. A team of network security officers was always lurking on the network, constantly prying into everyone’s data.

This also meant the stairwell handrail was constantly vibrating, which looked rather… suggestive.

Duan Fei’s request was for them to find a weakness in the Chairman AI. However, directly reverse-engineering the Chairman AI was unrealistic, so they were resorting to a brute-force method.

They were going to build a Chairman AI from scratch!

Of course, even with the same requirements, the resulting AIs could be worlds apart. So, the AI they were building now would likely have significant differences from the existing Chairman AI.

However, factoring in that Duan Fei was a Time Traveler, they only needed him to constantly compare the existing model with their new one. This would allow them to bring their newly created Chairman model infinitely closer to the original.

The news that Duan Fei was a Time Traveler had stunned the AI engineers. As Duan Fei walked past them, they each handed him a small slip of paper. They told him that if they died and he traveled back in time again, he should relay a specific phrase to their past selves, as it was a password they had set for themselves.

Seeing that every single one of them had a password, Duan Fei felt rather helpless.

‘You guys… Do you all have a thing for verifying Time Travelers with passwords?’

‘It’s making me want to set one too!’

‘But the enemy might be a mind reader, so I’ll need an additional verification method. Okay, whenever I suspect a mind reader is nearby, I’ll just think of some dark humor. If someone around me laughs, they’re the mind reader.’

‘Perfect. That’s the plan.’

Making his way to the top of the stairs, Duan Fei found the bald manager talking with an engineer.

Seeing Duan Fei approach, the engineer waved excitedly and said, “We’ve already come up with a model!”

“So fast!” Duan Fei asked in surprise. “I thought it would take you half a day at least.”

“It wasn’t that complicated. We’re a mature team, and we already had a preset Chairman AI module. All we had to do was find the original module and add some new parameters. You can think of these parameters as personality traits, and our database is full of them.”

After a few taps on his laptop, the engineer displayed a password over a hundred digits long.

“Memorize this password. This is the identifier for the new Chairman AI we built in the database. When you input this key, the database will automatically call the AI modules and assemble them. That way, you won’t need all of us. Next, we’re going to put this password in the test library. The current Chairman AI is sure to see it, and it will be forced to run a comparison. We can’t see its AI key, but by comparing the two, we can tell which parts are wrong. So after that, you’ll need to memorize the incorrect parts as best you can.”

Duan Fei immediately began memorizing the key. Five minutes later, he nodded and said, “Got it.”

“You’ve got a great memory. Alright, I’m uploading the key now.”

“Wait,” Duan Fei stopped him. “If you upload it, will the Chairman AI find out?”

“Of course it will. And then security will hunt us all down and kill us. But it’s fine. You’re a Time Traveler, aren’t you?”

Looking at the perfectly candid engineer, Duan Fei asked, “Aren’t you afraid that I’m not, actually?”

“I am afraid. But I’m more afraid that Time Travelers don’t exist. People have to believe in something, right? Some believe in gods and buddhas, some believe in money, some believe in morality. What’s wrong with us believing in a Time Traveler?”

“Well said. Personally, I believe in Ultraman Tiga.”

“Gaia is better. Alright, uploading.”

With a sharp tap of the enter key, the new key began its rapid comparison.

The process would take some time, and the company’s security guards were already on the move.

The clumsy robots responded swiftly to the Chairman AI’s command. They used earlier video footage to find the engineers’ location, and now they had arrived to begin an indiscriminate slaughter of the engineers in the stairwell.

Horrified screams echoed out as engineer after engineer was shredded into a bloody pulp. The security guards trampled over the engineers’ corpses as they continued their relentless charge up the stairs.

Knowing they couldn’t escape, the engineers simply shrugged their shoulders in resignation, letting the guards eliminate them.

The code was still comparing. Duan Fei stared, expressionless, at the progress bar, forcing himself to memorize all the information.

Just as the last digit appeared and he had committed every highlighted red area to memory, a bullet shattered the heads of the engineer and the manager before finally aiming at Duan Fei.

Whipping out his Crowbar, Duan Fei faced the approaching security guard and charged straight at it.