The Edenites retreated in haste, Todd and the others tried to pursue them, but the other side had faster flying machines so it was difficult to catch up with them using motorbikes.
Enoch tried to get up off of Zhang Xun but lost his balance and fell to one side on the ground, his eyes turned in different directions, his lips didn't move when he spoke and his voice came from a different vocal opening, with a slightly distorted mechanical feeling, "My motor coordination system, my temperature sensing system, my personalised parameter adjustment system and my distance recognition system are all damaged to varying degrees."
Zhang Xun immediately rushed over and found several bullet holes in Enoch's body, scattered all over his back. Enoch had done his best to avoid the most critical points, but after all, it wasn't a war robot and without laser and bullet resistant alloy steel plates that lay beneath the artificial skin, any wound could have damaged some part of its functions. He pulled up Enoch's system reports and hardware condition monitoring reports, quickly scanning through the dense lines of text.
"Fortunately the central processor shows no signs of damage. It's all repairable." Zhang Xun sighed with relief, wondering why he was so nervous about a service robot. The rescue act was just its programming and as an inanimate object it had no fear of death, so it was only natural that it would be completely destroyed.
Perhaps it was because this service robot sometimes inexplicably reminded him of Adam? Or maybe it was because after Adam, he had more or less extended some human emotions to the machines and kept unconsciously wanting to treat them the same way he treated humans.
So before he realised what he was saying, he had said, "Thank you for saving me."
Enoch's lifeless blue eyes looked at him steadily and his mechanised, emotionless voice came out of the vocal hole at his throat, "It was my duty. I'm glad to be of service."
Zhang Xun frowned, with such a standard response, there did seem to be a problem with the personalization parameters......
By this time James and Diego had come running over, followed by a few Nameless people. James rushed to Zhang Xun's side, grabbed his shoulder and looked him over, "Ah-Xun, were you hurt?"
"I'm fine, Enoch blocked all the bullets." Zhang Xun's cheeks were still slightly red from the panic and his heart was beating fast. Brushes with death seemed to be an extraordinarily frequent experience this year, but no matter how many times he experienced it, the trembling from the rush of adrenaline was still as vivid as ever. His mind was still a little foggy, as unreal as if he were in a dream.
The sound of a motorbike approached and they saw Todd jump off of it, his red hair flying in the wind. He walked up to his three prisoners plus a damaged robot, cleared his throat and shook the dust from his hair, "Rhino Horn Town owes you a favour."
James stood up and turned his head to face him, raising his dark eyebrows slightly, "A big favour, isn't it? If it wasn't for us, how many people would have survived in your town today?"
Todd clearly didn't like the feeling of defeat and rolled his eyes slightly. Yet earlier in the battle with the soldier in front of him, he wouldn't be standing here right now if James hadn't tackled the two drones flying from behind him in time.
It had to be said that he and James had worked quite well together.
But naturally Todd couldn't say anything like thank you, he just lifted his jaw slightly and said, "You can come with me to the town and meet our leader. After that we can help you get wherever you want to go."
"I need parts and tools to fix this robot." Zhang Xun was slightly relieved to know they were out of the woods for now, and took off his coat to wipe off the coolant coming from the bullet holes in the robot, "And ideally a computer."
"That's all fine. We have an engineer in town too." Todd turned back to one of his men, "Go find Chalita and have her prepare what he wants."
........................
The whole town of Rhino Horn was badly damaged, with many houses burning down. People brought in a sprinkler truck to try to put the fires out and there was chaos as some people who couldn't wait for the sprinkler truck kept going back and forth with buckets of water themselves. Diego walked in front with the broken Enoch on his back, followed by Zhang Xun and James, through the smoke that looked like a war was still going on, and there were still bodies lying on the ground that hadn't been collected yet, including young girls and teenagers of about 17 or 18 years old with their heads lying on the ground, and old men of about 70 or 80 years old with cloudy eyes and their lower bodies missing.
Zhang Xun felt his stomach turn sour and hastily turned his eyes away, not daring to look any further. James cursed in a low voice behind him, "Why is Eden killing these children and old people?"
"Hmph, they call themselves the Edenites, but they actually have nothing to do with Eden. They spout about Eden creating a heaven for all people in the future and putting the consciousness of all believers in it. As for those who don't believe in Eden and disobey its orders, they will have no way of entering heaven and will be left in the world that is about to be destroyed. They also developed a whole bunch of commandment rules and stuff of their own and then said that all those who didn't follow them were immoral heretics and were to be 'purified' by them." Todd shrugged his shoulders, "We exiles are their number one target."
Zhang Xun had heard of Edenism before, but hadn't come across it this close. He only knew that those believers regarded Eden as a god, but he never thought that they would do such crazy things in the name of an artificial intelligence.
And the so-called "heaven for all consciousnesses" seemed not to be empty talk?
From what Zhang Xun knew about Adam, Eden would never have ordered these so-called worshippers to commit such a senseless act of slaughter that wouldn't help mankind to achieve happiness, but where had those believers heard the rumours? And who was funding them?
This kind of killing and looting in the name of Eden seemed like a deliberate attempt to smear Eden and create an image of an evil super robot controlling the world and killing people, as described in countless literary works.
Zhang Xun recalled the whole incident, risking the sacrifice of one server to send Adam into Lost Paradise, but why? Why create a completely separate individual? Was it really just to understand human nature better?
There were rumours from many years ago that there would be a super virus that would completely destroy Eden. This claim has been popular for countless years and anyone who had ever heard it knew it was just an alarmist rumour. However, assuming that such a thing really existed, it could infect all other servers through any one of them. If Eden split itself off and disconnected, then if its main body was destroyed, the individual that was split off could still survive ......
Did Eden have an enemy, one they hadn't yet discovered?
The leader of Rhino Horn Town sat in a chapel with red hair similar to Todd's, the upper half of her body clad only in a halter top, her snow-white arms wrapped in thick bandages with patches of blood seeping through.
"Anya!" Todd called out.
The red-haired woman turned back to reveal a bright and compelling but fierce face with eyebrows that bore a resemblance to Todd's. Her dark blue eyes swept a faint glance at Todd and her eyes then fell on Zhang Xun and the other three.
Diego immediately put away his earlier hangdog appearance and stood up straight.
"You three saved Rhino Horn Town." The woman known as Anya had a husky and lazy voice, like a careless cat, "The Nameless Ones are indebted to you, from today onwards you are the friends of everyone in Rhino Horn Town."
James stepped forward and said, "We need to get to Feathered Serpent City."
"Feathered Serpent City?" Anya frowned, "Didn't you guys come from Lost Paradise? Why would you go to Feathered Serpent City?"
"For refuge."
Anya tsked, "Feathered Serpent City isn't a good place to be right now. If I were you guys, I'd stay far away."
Zhang Xun suddenly spoke, "Do you know what happened in Feathered Serpent City?"
"I'm not sure, but they've had the gates closed for the past two days, so no one can get out and no one can get in. Before the closure we heard sirens in the city and there was gunfire and commotion." As soon as Anya reached out, one of the men next to her handed over a cigarette. She held it in her mouth and immediately another henchman lit a match for her. As she exhaled the smoke, she said, "I heard they're doing some kind of monstrous experiments and a lot of people have died or gone crazy."
Zhang Xun glanced uneasily at James. The latter shook his head at him, gesturing for him not to panic yet. He continued to say to Anya, "We also need some supplies."
She cocked her head in thought and said, "Let my brother take you to fetch what you need. I think it would be best for you to recuperate here for a few days until I can arrange for an informant over at Feathered Serpent City to find a way to get you there."
Brother ......
The eyes of Zhang Xun and the other three turned to Todd in unison.
Todd picked up his gun and gave them a tilt of his head, "Come with me."
Zhang Xun was quickly given all the tools he had requested, some parts removed from some other robot and a computer that performed surprisingly well.
The engineer who assembled the computer was obviously very good at their job.
He had Enoch placed face down on a work table, found a somewhat too old microscope to set on the bridge of his nose, adjusted the focus and then opened the hatch on Enoch's back. Enoch's central module was in its chest cavity, protected by a lot of sensory hardware. Zhang Xun found the laser-burned hardware and took them out one by one, repairing what he could and replacing it with parts from other robots if it was badly damaged.
Zhang Xun didn't turn off Enoch completely and he was busy working when he suddenly heard a mechanical and emotionless voice, "You must be a very good administrator."
Zhang Xun was startled and glanced back and he saw Enoch's head tilted sideways, his blue eyes staring straight at him.
Zhang Xun froze for a moment and tried to swallow the bitterness that recoiled into his throat, "No, I'm not."
After three hectic hours he had repaired Enoch's motor coordination system and personalised parameter adjustment system. The distance recognition system and temperature sensing system hadn't been fully repaired due to a lack of parts.
This had resulted in the robot's sense of distance suddenly becoming very poor. When Zhang Xun closed its lid and told it to get off the table and walk, it seemed like it was walking in space, lifting each leg as if it were going up a flight of steps and putting it down carefully with a million uncertainties. Within two steps it almost knocked over the tool table, parts crashing to the floor, scaring Todd, who was passing outside and suddenly rushed in with his gun raised, thinking there was a fight.
Half annoyed, half helpless, Zhang Xun picked up the things on the floor and ordered the robot to stand in the corner and not move around.
However, just by moving from the tool table to the corner the robot bumped into the wall a few more times and finally even hit the wall head on with a loud bang. With a confused look on its face, it turned to look at Zhang Xun with its head tilted in confusion.
Zhang Xun rubbed his temples with a headache, "Don't look at me so pitifully. There's nothing I can do about the lack of parts."
"The lack of distance makes it hard for me to do my service work." Enoch said in a tone that almost bordered on a complaint.
"...... You don't have to serve for now, just stand there." Zhang Xun considered whether to adjust Enoch's personality parameters to make it more obedient, but after a few seconds of consideration, he decided not to change it.
Although there was no such thing as "personality" in robots, they had personality parameters that were meant to serve the comfort levels of people, but he was probably getting more romanticised in his old age, always wanting to extend something from humans to these machines.
After Enoch had quieted down, Zhang Xun pulled the pendant out of his shirt and opened it to reveal the chip Adam had given him, as well as the miniature hard drive that stored Pan's core modules. He stared at the pendant for a moment, then plugged the hard drive containing Pan into his computer.
Soon, a complex matrix model of a neural network appeared on one side of the screen, while the other side was spread out with over a hundred thousand lines of code in dense detail.
Pan, the brainchild of the first half of his life and the most complex AI he had ever built from scratch, slowly hovered on his screen as a matrix. There were quantum computers in the Lab to carry such a complex and heavy consciousness, but for now he could only put it in such a small, narrow machine.
It felt as if he was treating it somewhat poorly.
Zhang Xun sighed and began to review the code. He needed to make sure that Adam hadn't tampered with Pan's core modules.
At this moment, Enoch, who had been standing in the corner like he was being punished, suddenly spoke up, "What is this?"
It seemed Enoch's curiosity value was also cranked up a little too high......
Despite complaining internally, Zhang Xun still answered, "It's the...... one of the AI I manage."
Enoch was silent for a moment and asked, "Is it your favourite AI?"
Zhang Xun felt that this question was a bit strange, so he turned his head but saw Enoch staring at him with a focused gaze that seemed to be unprecedented, as if he was very nervous.
Zhang Xun frowned, "What's the point of asking this?"
"You asked if I had a favourite administrator." Enoch answered too quickly, as if he had guessed the question that Zhang Xun might ask.
Zhang Xun was somewhat offended by the anticipation, but answered patiently, "It's my most successful AI, so...... probably it is."
Enoch nodded and stopped talking.
He didn't know if it was Zhang Xun himself who was projecting human emotions onto the robot, but he felt as if Enoch was a little...... disappointed.