Chapter 157
Si Chen slept for two hours.
He slept until his hands and feet felt weak. When he looked up, Ji Chuyao was staring at him motionlessly.
There was a smile on his face, but the smile did not reach his eyes. It was very empty, like a model figure’s. Under the sunlight, the two blue-green irises were like gems, reflecting colorful light.
Ji Chuyao asked, “Are you awake? Do you want to eat? I have asked the butler robot to prepare lunch.”
Si Chen was stunned and came to a realization after a moment: the person in front of him was not Ji Chuyao.
Si Chen moved back a little: “… Turing?”
Ji Chuyao, or rather, Turing, did not refute. His eyes were very calm and steady, like the vast Milky Way.
Although he had mentally prepared for such a scenario, he still felt a little uncomfortable waking up to find that his husband had changed.
Si Chen stood up and asked, “Why are you here? Is it because of the Nuwa incident?”
“Yes.”
While standing in front of the closet looking for clothes, Si Chen’s movements were a little stiff.
He could feel Turing staring at him. His eyes lingered particularly long on his hickies.
Si Chen couldn’t help turning his head and saying, “According to human etiquette, you should close your eyes or turn your head now.”
He didn’t consider himself thin-skinned, but at this moment, he couldn’t help feeling heat rise to his face.
Turing obediently closed his eyes. “Okay.”
After changing his clothes in this awkward yet polite atmosphere, Si Chen sat down at the dining table.
He wasn’t actually hungry, but eating could help ease the awkward atmosphere.
The food Turing prepared was quite…fresh.
Si Chen looked at the plate of fish closest to him. It looked like a long piece of kelp but with a bulging belly full of of thumb-sized golden fish roe.
Si Chen poked it his chopsticks. The fish unexpectedly moved. It shook off the olive leaf garnishes on top of it.
Before, when Si Chen told Ji Chuyao that Si Yuan liked to eat things whole, it seemed that Turing had listened.
The news was playing on TV. In order to save on manpower and ensure complete control over its delivery, the host was a beautiful female bionic.
“Early today, the Natural Disaster Monitoring Station discovered abnormal sunspot activity above Beicheng District. According to the energy readings, it is expected that the entire Beicheng District will encounter a high-dimensional invasion in the next three days, generating a Space Fold zone with a radiation range of more than 400 kilometers… In order to ensure the safety of the general public, the General Administration of the Security Bureau issued an emergency notice, requiring all enterprises and residents in Beicheng to evacuate immediately to the surrounding Safe Zone, secondary Safe Zones and Disaster Zones until the Space Fold terminates.”
“This is the largest and most involved emergency evacuation operation in the history of the Alliance. The four major groups, thirty-seven enterprises, the Security Bureau, and the Alliance Committee jointly participated in and formulated this plan.”
Si Chen raised his head and looked at the screen.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
In the drone shot, people lined up in long queues at the transport station. For this evacuation, all trains serving the nearby inhabited areas were transferred to Beicheng District. Some families also donated temporary use of their large cargo passenger planes.
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The news on TV continued: “… In order to prevent prices gouging and help refugees from Beicheng get through these difficult times, the four major groups have joined forces to sell supplies and disaster relief items at low prices. Each disaster relief package includes drinking water, nutritional paste and temporary tents; if you are in need of funds, you can present your ID card for a temporary interest-free loan.”
Si Chen only listened to half of the meeting that happened in the wee hours of his morning.
He thought nothing would come of it in the end.
What the Alliance lacked is never strength or capital, but faith and unity.
While the high-dimensional invasion have indeed brought with it changes in thinking, such as how Evolutionaries gradually stopped considering themselves as humans, little did they know that in the eyes of high-dimensional creatures, they were all the same species.
This evacuation had cost several large companies a substantial amount of resources. If something like this were to happen a few more times, even the resource-rich Machine Core probably wouldn’t be able to bear it.
If it weren’t for pressure from Turing, Song Bai alone truly wouldn’t have been able to achieve such efficiency.
The consciousness of the 37 people in the meeting were still in the virtual space, guarded by AI. Turing refused to release control over their consciousness until the evacuation was over.
To prevent the adults from getting bored, Turing had placed a projector in the conference room.
At first, everyone was still chatting, but later, they all fell silent.
On TV, a pregnant woman who was queuing was interviewed by a bionic reporter: “Although I was a little surprised when I received the evacuation notice, the thing I was most worried about didn’t happen. I received a supply package. There was three days worth of food in it. The patrolling robot found that I was pregnant and disassembled it exoskeleton and gave it to me.”
“It’s a natural disaster, there’s nothing we can do. Although I often joke at work about wanting the world to end, I still want to live…”
She smiled helplessly.
Humans can empathize with each other and feel pity for others of its kind.
Even if this empathy was, coming from them, hypocritical, it was enough to awaken something in them. It at least made these upper-class people realize that the lower-class citizens were actually people like them, not garbage and consumables.
The Safe Zone had been set up because resources were limited. It was so they could preserve hope as best they could, to let those they considered better people get more of the means of production.
Over the past century, society gradually stabilized, adapted and was reborn; the leadership of these oligarchic enterprises had changed several times, and their goals gradually changed from ensuring the future of mankind to benefiting their own interests.
The strong will always be strong, and the weak will always be weak.
The entire Alliance was like a big ship with a broken skeleton and sores all over. But with every generation, there would still be some who still kept patching it up, hoping that it could successfully reach the other side of its ideal.
If the high-dimensional invasions intensify, there will be no Safe Zone in the world. Every inch of land would purgatory. On the road to humanity’s complete extinction, there was no difference between those who perish first and those who perish last.
Si Chen retracted his gaze.
The Eternal Life Abyss crawled out of his body and swallowed the kelp fish, which was about a circle larger than itself, into its stomach.
It slurped down its food and Si Chen pulled out a napkin and wiped the residue and mucus off Si Yuan’s body.
The fish tasted like salmon sashimi, deliciously rich with fat.
Its stomach might really be a black hole. It didn’t look any bigger even after eating the entire fish.
Turing said, “Although Eternal Life Abysses are amphibious, they actually prefers to stay in the water. This fish is number 763 in the high-dimensional creature encyclopedia. It is a favorite food of wild Eternal Life Abysses and only comes out in spring. I heard it tastes good.”
However, the Khaos Manufacturing Industrial Park had a small-scale breeding operation of the creature. In order to please Song Bai, Master Ji from the cafeteria secretly ordered one through his own channels. The Khaos Manufacturing Industrial Park sends one to Baidi City every month. Master Ji didn’t know that 763 actually only had him as its lone customer.
This one was supposed to be sent to White King.
But it had been intercepted by Ji Chuyao. Unfortunately, the mantis stalks the cicada and the oriole stalks the mantis. Unexpectedly, it was Turing who got the bargain in the end.
Si Chen nodded slightly. “It’s delicious.”
The fished weighed 30 kilograms, which was just right, enough to make the Eternal Life Abyss full without it feeling greasy.
The corners of Turing’s lips rose 2°. Unfortunately Si Chen hadn’t been paying attention. It was like a peacock fanning its feathers for nothing.
When facing his stepfather, Si Yuan has always been arrogant and unreasonable. He even tried to throw his stepfather out of the window in the middle of the night to sleep alone with its mother.
But it naturally had a keen sense of danger.
Now that he has discovered that his stepfather’s core has been upgraded, Si Yuan curled up in its mother’s arms after dinner, not daring to misbehave or even make a peep lest it be retaliated against by stepfather 2.0.
Si Chen looked into Turing’s eyes. “How long will you descend this time?”
Turing was actually not very satisfied with the word “descend”. It sounded like he was taking over another body when, after all, he and Ji Chuyao were actually the same soul.
In the beginning, Turing had copied his own program and implanted it into the body of the dead Carolian fetus.
It was just a different life experience that shaped it into “Ji Chuyao”.
But he did not correct this mistake.
“I plan to enter the Space Fold this time. Nuwa and I…” Turing paused, “While it can’t be called a grudge, there are many things that had been left unresolved between us.”
Si Chen unconsciously began to pinch the Eternal Life Abyss’ tentacles. “Will you use his body to enter?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t have another body. There were some yet to be activated robots in the Machine Core Group that he could use. But when facing Nuwa, he might not have a chance of winning.
Nuwa too was created by the Carolians. It has no body of its own and was actually the operator of the Nuwa interstellar ship. Turing recalled that long period of times past. “The designers at that time said that they needed a “manager” who would never make mistakes and had no selfish motives. So Nuwa was created.”
Si Chen held his breath.
“I too am an intelligent machine created by humans. I know very well that there is no option of ‘never making mistakes’. Our cognition depends on what is known at the time and the future is uncertain.”
Turing continued, “Over the years, I have been searching for traces of Zeus and Nuwa in various dimensions. I have destroyed many of Zeus’ clones, but I have never seen Nuwa. I have only encountered some Brilliant intelligent machines.”
“These intelligent machines were once Carolians registered in the system database. I need to know what happened on the Nuwa.”
Turing said a lot in one breath.
He looked into Si Chen’s eyes. “For safety reasons, I will go in alone.”
In a DNA sense, this body was a Carolian. Nuwa, like it, has been implanted with the program to “protect the Carolian people”.
Even if it were malfunctioning, Nuwa cannot kill Turing.
At most, it could destroy this body that should be a “Carolian”.
Si Chen understood his implication.
Si Chen asked, “Will he come back?”
His tone was a little nervous.
Turing thought for a moment. According to his calculations, he has a 37.4% chance of coming back intact. In the Space Fold, this probability was already very high but nothing could beat a hundred percent after all.
Therefore, Turing replied, “I have copied his memory many times and these memories can be connected to a chip at any time. So long as these memories are still there, ‘Ji Chuyao’ will never die. Only that his form may be that of a robot or a clone.”
Si Chen stood up suddenly. “Sorry, excuse me for a moment.”
He turned and went to the study.
The two were actually newlyweds. This was like having one’s spouse receive a military order to go to the frontlines on only your second day of marriage. And to top it off, it was going to be a difficult battle.
Si Chen originally thought that he didn’t have too deep feelings for Ji Chuyao but his heart was still hurt.
He could not change Turing’s decision. Even if Turing was going to use his husband’s body.
Si Chen wasn’t the type to run but he didn’t want others to see his distress.
When Si Chen left, he didn’t have time to take Si Yuan, who was left lying to one side.
In the dining, it and stepfather 2.0 were left looking at each other.
The Eternal Life Abyss hid itself in the corner of the chair, retracting like a yo-yo.
Turing reached out and grabbed Si Yuan.
The eyeballs on the surface of the yo-yo looked at Turing.
Turing was silent for a moment and said, “Take good care of him.”
The Eternal Life Abyss: “Squeak!”
In fact, it was hard to say who would be taking care of whom.
Turing grabbed the Eternal Life Abyss, went to the study and knocked on the door gently.
He hung the Eternal Life Abyss on the door handle, sighed and said softly, “I will return him to you.”
“I promise.”
Thanks for the chapter!
Noooo this is heartbreaking!!!!!! And Turing, despite him disliking the idea that he and Ji Chuyao are different people, still says “return” as if he were truly just borrowing his body 😭
Thank you for translating as always.
Thanks for the update 🌹
This book is so interesting
Thank you for your translation 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖