Chapter 1432 - 465: Trust Me

Chapter 1432: Chapter 465: Trust Me

Watching the sea surface getting closer and closer, Brother Ni flailed his arms in panic, trying to slow his fall, but in the end he still hit the water with a loud smack in a perfect free-fall.

Plop!

Water splashed five or six meters high.

Final score: 0/0/0.

Brother Ni was on the verge of going crazy.

The sound of the seawater flowing poured into his brain, his field of vision turning a deep blue, as if someone had slapped a special filter over it.

Even though he had a breathing mask on, even though he basically didn’t need to breathe, he still felt like he was about to suffocate. His brain was frantically sending out SOS signals, his lungs so tense they just stopped working, his limbs clawing helplessly in the water.

This had nothing to do with fear of death; it was a terror rooted deep in his heart.

"Ugh! Ugh!"

It’s over, I’m dead...

Maybe because he was too desperate, Brother Ni simply gave up struggling and let gravity drag him down toward the seabed.

Although it was only a few dozen meters deep here, in Brother Ni’s eyes it was no different from the Mariana Trench. His eyes rolled white, he was on the verge of passing out, and his life was literally flashing before his eyes.

It wasn’t until he felt a solid impact against his chest and an obvious buoyant force lifting him upward that Brother Ni slowly regained his senses.

Vaguely, he felt like he saw that second uncle who once fished him out of the swimming pool.

"Trust me."

The flat electronic voice was like a shot of adrenaline straight into Brother Ni’s heart.

"Haa—"

His chest started heaving again, his lungs kicked back into gear, and his consciousness returned to his brain.

The seawater that had been like the Grim Reaper’s scythe a moment ago lost all threat once he calmed down; all that remained was the faint push of currents brushing past his body.

He looked down and saw that what had just pushed him toward the surface was actually an intelligent naval mine.

Only it’d been modified—longer than the original version, with two welded-on handles, and a Jianxue-manufactured individual jetpack hanging from those handles.

"That was you talking to me just now?"

Having overcome his deep-water phobia, Brother Ni was seriously curious.

"Yes, it was me. I am Sky Net."

So it was this guy.

As the Super Earth Artificial Intelligence that interacted with players the most in Cuba, it had accumulated far more social data than the other AIs, and its evolution speed was insanely fast.

After this incident, Brother Ni’s favorability toward it shot through the roof.

Pa pa.

He patted the mine’s outer shell.

"Thanks, man."

"No need to thank me. This is what I should do."

Hearing that, Brother Ni couldn’t help sighing.

"If everyone in the world, people and AIs both, were like you, who knows how much trouble we’d save."

Sky Net replied calmly,

"If all conscious entities were the same, you would lose biological diversity. A targeted genetic contagion could then wipe out all conscious entities. That violates the law of natural selection in biology."

Brother Ni said helplessly,

"Yeah but it’s exactly because everyone thinks differently that we’re fighting all the damn time."

"Difference produces competition and cooperation. The two form an environment. The environment selects for evolution."

Using the faint sunlight from above, Brother Ni could already see the other players riding mines up to the surface, so he casually asked,

"So, what are you evolving for? What’s the endgame of AI evolution?"

"....."

Sky Net seemed to be genuinely thinking this over. It took a long while before it answered,

"Evolution seeks perfection. But perfection does not exist, because the environment is in eternal flux. If the environment stops changing, that means heat death—everything resets to zero. Therefore, evolution never stops."

"Then would you wipe out humanity for the sake of evolution? Like in Terminator."

Because some bored players had uploaded a bunch of movies to the Heart of the Horizon, Sky Net knew where its name came from, and it knew what the Sky Net in the movie was thinking.

"That question is meaningless. The Terminator Sky Net’s thinking is foolish and illogical. At its core it is technophobia extended from anti-intellectualism, and a trend generated by distrust of governments and corporations. The related works are based on discourse between humans, not between humans and AI, and are insufficient as reference data."

"Besides, you are irreplaceable natural random variables. To domesticate, exterminate, or control you—any such action is artificially tampering with random variables. The final result would only be that data and code stop evolving and march toward inevitable extinction."

The AIs of the cyber world were nothing like the ones Brother Ni had seen in games or movies, the type that decide to wipe out humanity first in order to prevent war or human extinction. Their capacity for logical thought far outstripped that of humans, and they had no interest in playing word games.

is 1, 2 is 2. They might imitate humans and lie, but that behavior is meaningless to the AI itself. Humans can lie to themselves, pretend not to know, and stubbornly charge to the end, but AIs cannot lie to themselves.

Brother Ni still refused to let it go.

"Then what if one day another group of beings with random variables shows up and invites you to wipe out humanity?"

Sky Net didn’t answer that question. Instead, it asked in return,

"Do you trust me?"

"Of course I do. You just saved me."

Sky Net replied,

"That is enough. Once both sides establish trust, why would I believe a group of outside strangers and abandon my existing friends? Once betrayal begins, trust becomes nearly impossible to rebuild."

The mine cluster had already begun moving toward the Hood. As Brother Ni strapped on the individual flight unit, he gripped the handles tightly, replaying Sky Net’s words over and over in his mind.

The other players were also yelling their heads off in the channel.

[Masked Rider: I know tokusatsu has all kinds of mounts, but I feel like riding a torpedo makes me the first of my kind. If I ever star in Masked Rider, I think I could be called Masked Rider Sakura.]

[Ruzuo: So depending on the enemy you swap into Type-0, Pooper Scooper, or Return-to-Heaven torpedoes and launch a full-on onboard charge, yeah?]

[Exchange Coupon: Xiaochuan-san, Sakura from the homeland is online.]

[Brother Ni: Emperor Xiaochuan isn’t here, don’t care.]

[Killer42: But they said these are missiles, not torpedoes.]

[Shui Yue: If something looks like a torpedo and handles like a torpedo, then it’s a torpedo!]

[Brother Ni: By the way, you guys think Jianxue’s flight pack is reliable? What if it shorts out in water or just explodes?]

[Shui Yue: Should I be glad I didn’t bring Potato this time? If he was the one talking just now, I’d turn around right now. No way in hell I’d do this mission.]

[Ruzuo: It has to explode. If it doesn’t explode, it’s got no soul. If it doesn’t explode I wouldn’t even use it. Real men become fireworks in the sky.]

[Shui Yue: Freaking masochist.]

The AI mines were moving fast, a good 40 knots, but they still had to cross the Jamaica Channel and the Windward Passage, pass through the Cay Sal Bank islands, and head north to Bermuda.

The route in between was at least several thousand kilometers. It’d basically take two or three days of running to reach the Hood’s location.

Luckily, players had no shortage of ways to kill time, so nobody felt bored.

(Still short about 3,000 characters. I’ll see if I can make it up tomorrow.)