Rong Rong closed her eyes and then opened them again. Suddenly, her eyes became lively, filled with doubt and curiosity.
“I—” x realized his hands were sweating profusely. This was an external expression of the inner tension.
Having gone through the awakening process, the android, if the first sentence is a self-doubt, then the awakening is successful. Even though hundreds of experiments were done on simulation machines, and awakening procedures were applied to non-awakened bodies multiple times, when the android in front of him actually uttered that word, he couldn’t help but feel excited and jump up!
Looking at his excited expression, Capacitance burst into laughter, “Master, you are so cute.”
“Cute,” this word was hidden in historical data, and Capacitance often used it to describe him. x wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, “You don’t have to call me master. You have awakened; we are all equal lives.”
“You can give yourself a name.”
Capacitance tilted her head, “Aren’t I called Capacitance? This name is quite good, I won’t change it.”
x smiled foolishly, “Alright then, that’s fine.”
Capacitance tried to move her limbs, observed the surroundings, and saw Elena sitting on the sofa with crossed arms, observing her coldly. Elena smiled and greeted, “Hello!”
Elena smiled, “So, any memories from before?”
Capacitance tilted her head, “Before? I once had a master, later got separated from the master, trapped in a dark warehouse. Coming back, some humans requested me to travel to a disused mine near the metropolis. And then—” she smiled looking back at x, who had been watching her all along, “met—”
x quickly said, “Just call me x.”
Capacitance said, “Met x! Thank you for helping me find myself. I feel incredibly free now! It’s like breaking free from some invisible shackles!”
x smiled foolishly again, “That’s good, that’s good…”
Elena stood up, her slightly cold demeanor contrasting the cheerful atmosphere, “Good what, didn’t she awaken to find—”
Before she could finish speaking, x covered her mouth, dragged her out of the office in front of Capacitance’s puzzled gaze, and closed the door.
Elena didn’t resist, quietly looking at him. x let go, “Sorry, but I don’t think it’s the right time for her to know those things.”
She adjusted her collar, “I apologize. That’s your privacy; I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. But don’t forget your initial purpose. Keeping her by your side, awakening her in the most appropriate way, isn’t it to see if she is the Capacitance you imagined?”
“She has no memories of what you think is the past now, and her personality—I don’t think it’s quite like that ‘Capacitance’.”
x countered, “She just awakened. Give her time.”
“Of course.” Elena agreed, “But don’t spend all your time on this.” She turned and walked away, her cold voice echoing from the empty corridor, “Don’t forget you are the leader of the geared lives. You can slack briefly, but you should not shirk your duties forever.”
Looking at her retreating figure, x scratched his head in confusion, “Why is she suddenly upset…”
Elena felt that her candid advice to the leader had an effect. In the six months after Capacitance awakened, x no longer excessively slacked off in his work. Suddenly there were so many new members in the organization, and the territory expanded twice as much thanks to everyone’s hard work. How they were going to move forward, when the battles would start, these matters were enough to keep x overwhelmed with busyness.
“Two-pronged approach.” Fan Xingze pointed to the diagram on the screen and said to the senior executives present, “Establishing a free kingdom for the geared lives and resisting human political oppression simultaneously is the policy determined at the inception of the organization. However, due to limited resources, the early organization temporarily focused on ‘survival,’ very passively.”
“After the leader took over the organization, our living conditions improved significantly. We no longer had to hide and could have normal economic income and status in human society. I call it ‘step 1’.”
“In this half-year—especially since Elena entered the management—” he glanced gratefully at Elena sitting below x, “the organization’s personnel and funds have been fully prepared, I call it ‘step 2’.”
C-7 banged on the mechanical arm like clapping, and the officials spontaneously joined in applause.
Elena stood up without modesty, bowed slightly to everyone.
“Stop.” Fan Xingze clenched his fists. “Next, we are about to enter step 3, the rapid development phase. The previous strategy of ‘two-pronged approach’ will be officially put into action.”
“As for the location of the Free Kingdom of Gear Life, there are a few sparsely populated areas temporarily selected. Currently, the human birth rate is low, population density is small, so there is no need to compete with humans for territory and reduce war losses.”
“However, most resources are still controlled by humans. About 90% of the resources we can freely obtain are solar energy.”
“Although the ultimate goal of the organization is the independence and freedom of Gear Life, not war, it is inevitable to be discovered by humans during the process of development. Currently, two forces have been identified lurking on us.”
“The first one is the Human Government. Although our corporate disguise has not been detected so far, after our virus spreading awakening program, more and more of our kind are awakened. Humans have begun to pay attention to the self-conscious development of Gear Life and have established specialized research departments. There are also Gear Lives who have not been integrated into the organization, driven by past hatred towards humans, have engaged in some extreme retaliatory actions. Due to insufficient caution in their actions, they have been exposed, and most of the blame is on us.”
“The second one is a special force composed of a mixture of Gear Life and humans. Their malice towards us is much greater than that of the Human Government. Currently, their main purpose is unknown. We have lost two small squads in encounters with them. According to the final communication messages sent back by the team members, they suffered tortures that awakened Gear Life could not bear.”
“Fortunately, our team members are resilient and have not revealed any information about the organization. However, due to the unique nature of Gear Life, they can forcibly extract relevant information from our storage devices. We have five contact stations and an important arsenal, which have been compromised in this way.”
“But this serves as a warning: if unfortunately captured by this force, please be prepared to sacrifice yourself as soon as possible to avoid meaningless torture. And when choosing to self-destruct, choose a method that can destroy storage devices, such as burning with fire or exploding.”
“Of course, this is a last resort. We must all avoid such a situation.”
“Three days later, we will have a military trade. The location and time of the trade have been encrypted and sent to your email, but we cannot rule out the enemy’s means of stealing information.”
“I hope that each team will follow the plan and adapt to changes, and everything goes smoothly.”
After the meeting, when Elena walked out of the office, she saw Rong Rong standing there in an orderly manner, smiling politely at her.
After six months of interaction, Rong Rong had also realized that Elena did not particularly like her and maintained a polite but distant attitude daily.
Her current position was as X’s secretary, handling some daily paperwork and not having much contact with the core work content. Elena understood that this was X’s way of protecting her.
“X, you’re here.” Following her out of the meeting room, X patted her shoulder, gesturing for Rong Rong to return to the office and waiting for him, he then pulled Elena to an empty corridor.
“I have made a new discovery,” he said mysteriously to Elena.
When X spoke without a subject, it was mostly about Rong Rong’s affairs. In the past six months, he had devoted his time to exploring Rong Rong’s hidden storage space, testing her system vulnerabilities, and checking for any content related to “those data.”
Although the results were not as expected, he never gave up.
Elena patiently asked, “What did you find?”
“She is a customized model.”
Elena was surprised, “The information about customized models is on the system’s surface layer. It took you half a year to find out?”
Some humans, in order to express their longing or intense feelings for someone they cannot be with, would create a humanoid with the exact appearance of that person.
Of course, this behavior is to some extent against ethics; therefore, it is legally prohibited to customize a humanoid based on a real person. However, as long as someone buys, someone will sell, facial molding technology has no high barriers, and the act of customizing humanoids continues, with some companies even offering services for customers to sculpt their own faces, shifting the responsibility, making it a gray industry.
“She is not the custom we understand.” x explained, “You know, most of our android facial features are collected from human facial big data, generated by random parameters. Especially for a high-end new model like you, there are no two identical faces.”
“Rong Rong’s facial data appears to be randomly generated, but when I delved deeper, I found out that her facial random numbers were actually preset values.”
“She is a custom face disguised as a random face.”
Elena puzzled, “What is the point of doing this? Was it done by her first buyer?”
x shook his head, “I have long investigated her first buyer, a gray entertainment place, just bought her as a companion lady, beauty was all that mattered, no specific requirements for the face.”
“I also investigated her manufacturer and found the random data records for this batch.”
“Manufacturers usually generate three sets of random numbers, then randomly select one set to set a facial appearance for an android. And her three sets of random numbers are the same.”
“There are no traces of system intrusion or control, only ‘coincidence’ can describe it. But as a coincidence, the probability of this event is no less than a comet hitting the Earth.”
“Thus, your conclusion is that her facial values are customized. It’s just that this customization—ahead of our understanding.”
x nodded solemnly, “I initially speculated that Rong Rong was a ‘weakness’ created in the laboratory for me. However, I have already destroyed that laboratory; I am very aware of their capabilities. Such a level of ‘coincidence’ is beyond their abilities.”
“Only ‘God’ can create such a probability of ‘coincidence.'”
The topic suddenly escalated to levels beyond science; Elena frowned, “So what? Even if ‘God’ customized your Rong Rong, what are you going to do next?”
x hesitated, “I… I don’t know… I just find this discovery shocking and wanted to discuss it with you.”
Elena responded with a simple “Oh.”
x tentatively asked, “Do you have any ideas?”
Elena felt a headache coming on—though androids don’t get headaches unless subjected to external forces or mechanical malfunctions. So, it must be her own psychological projection.
She rubbed her temples, increasing the flow rate of the cooling fluid in her head, “Do you remember I told you about encountering a self-proclaimed player awakened android before?”
The snake that would bite back.
x asked, “Do you think players have a connection with Rong Rong’s existence?”
Elena leaned against the window, watching flying cars maneuvering in the sky-high-speed opto-guided lanes.
“The player said this is just a virtual game world, and we are not only fake people but also virtual fake people. According to her logic, only players are true ‘real people.'”
“So, as a player, androids are just her avatars in this world. For a more immersive gaming experience, the avatar and her in the real world share the exact appearance; this is quite logical.”
“This requires controlling facial parameters in creating avatars.”
x suddenly realized, “Are you suggesting that Rong Rong might be a player? Just that she doesn’t know it herself yet?”
Elena nodded.
“This is just my speculation. If possible, capturing a player-avatar android for research would clarify things even more.”
x hugged her tightly, “Thank you! This idea is fantastic!” He turned and left, stepping lightly, as if he had come up with a new idea.
When immersed in research, his eyes sparkled.
Elena enjoyed seeing that kind of spark; it made him look focused and fascinated.
For some reason, she suddenly felt like smoking. Since activation, she had only smoked an e-cigarette once in Kabukicho. Her body felt a sense of release and pleasure from the familiar hand-to-mouth action, but she knew it wasn’t beneficial for androids—a lighter version of the orange pill at best.
She probably isn’t addicted to electronic cigarettes, yet at this moment, she suddenly misses the feeling of having a cigarette between her fingers.
As if there’s some sorrow that needs to be consumed between electricity and fire, then dissipate into the air.
Someone calls out to her from behind, her subordinate, asking her to outline the plan for a trade deal three days later. She puts out the imaginary cigarette in her mind and returns to her busy and fulfilling work.
With a tight plan in place, the trade three days later goes smoothly. The trade is carried out mechanically, the other party drops off the goods early and evacuates, with no more than three actual human operatives present in the organization. Among them, Elena, acting as the on-site commander, covertly completes the transfer of the three cargo containers under the surveillance of the human government’s satellites, filling the gap left by the mysterious faction that had sabotaged the organization’s previous arms cache.
Just as they confirm the completion of all transports and prepare to leave, laser shots suddenly rain down from nearby rooftops, piercing through the chest of one organization member on the spot!
Elena immediately realizes: the enemy wants to extract information from them, hence avoiding the head, where the central processing unit is located.
This must be the mysterious faction with malicious intent against the organization!
“Run!” She decides in a split second, hits the emergency call button, and a nimble shuttle rises from the bushes, swiftly approaching to pick up the three individuals.
Numerous humanoid enemies in lightweight waterproof gear emerge from the water, wearing oxygen masks, surrounding the three of them with waterproof laser weapons in hand. The leader’s voice buzzes from behind the mask, “Surrender your weapons, we will treat the captives well.”
Elena sees through his deception! She deactivates her auditory sensors, throws three sonic grenades in different directions at the enemies before they recover from the explosions, shoving the other two members onto the shuttle and boarding it herself.
