Chapter 378 |
Xiao Lian'er has become our maintenance and inspection specialist!
I actually discussed with Xiao Lian'er before, saying that since she's so smart, maybe she should consider R&D, give it a try over at Ah Chu's side?
But Xiao Lian'er refused.
She said she knows very well she doesn't have a talent for that.
She's known since she was a child that she's not the creative type.
She has to put in several times the effort just to barely catch up to the heels of geniuses.
Right now, she just wants to protect others in her own way.
She doesn't want those AI companions to become tools that hurt people, nor does she want the people using them to lose their families like she did.
She can't change the past, but she can prevent the same thing from happening in the future.
I didn't try to persuade her anymore.
Everyone has their own path, and since she chose this one, I'll walk it with her to the very end!
Anyway, no matter which department she's in, she's one of my people!
Next time I go to the orphanage, I should bring a few boxes of new books for the kids there.
Even though Xiao Lian'er has already left, there are still more kids there who need opportunities, just like her.
...
...
XXXX Year, August 15th.
Today, Ah Chu suddenly told me that he's getting older and his brain is starting to slow down a bit.
He said problems he used to figure out in an instant now take him a long time to think through.
I was sitting on the sofa looking at this quarter's financial report, and when I heard that, I almost threw the report across the room!
I said, you're only thirty-seven!
Not even forty yet!
In the prime of your life!
How can you be old?
Old Lao Zhang is forty-two this year, five years older than you, and he's still staying up all night in the lab doing core calibrations! You don't hear him complaining about being old!
Don't you dare say that outside! Real old-timers would want to punch you!
But Ah Chu said he's been getting a lot of white hair lately, much more than before.
He leaned his head in for me to see, saying look here, and here, and here!
I leaned in and took a look. There were indeed a few white strands hidden among the black hair.
I said, it's perfectly normal for you to get a few white hairs when you're always worrying about what's going on over at Bomo, staying up late tweaking the architecture, and spending half the night in the lab!
If you went to bed at eleven every night on the dot, I guarantee those white ones would turn black again!
But Ah Chu said that at other top tech companies, employees are already retiring internally at thirty-five.
He said senior researchers aren't on the front lines of research anymore; they're basically all experience mentors.
He said when he goes to industry conferences, he finds himself surrounded by young faces—many of them ten years younger than him are already leading their own teams.
He just has this vague feeling that his golden age for front-line research might really be behind him.
He said he compared his own workload from the past three years to when he first entered the field in his twenties...
Even though he has more experience now and more mature methodologies, the kind of intuition that lets you "see straight to the heart of a problem" is much duller than before.
He used to look at the architecture diagram of an emotional core, glance at it, and immediately know where the bottlenecks would be. Now he has to cross-reference the data over and over to reach the same conclusion.
Chenxi really needs to nurture a new generation. They can't just rely on the old guard anymore.
But he also said he's not anxious about this issue.
Because we have Xiaoyou!
He said that kid is so brilliant—at her current growth rate, in less than ten years, she'll need to take on the heavy lifting for Chenxi's most core research projects!
He also said that in the future, Xiaoyou will definitely be stronger than him!
That Chenxi might, in her hands, achieve the original goal they set!
The future they'd dreamed of since their youth might actually come true in Xiaoyou's generation!
The more he talked, the more excited he got!
This fool—he always gets excited when he talks about his dreams. I was hooked by his "big talk" back in the day!
I don't get so excited anymore.
I'm not young myself anymore. I lost that ambition a long time ago.
Back when I founded Chenxi with him, I dreamed every night of changing the world.
Of making real hearts grow inside those cold metal shells!
Of creating a new era of silicon-based life!
Back then, I was much younger than I am now.
I thought that as long as the product was good enough, as long as the technology was advanced enough, as long as Ah Chu's research direction was right...
Someday, the whole world would recognize us!
But now when I look back...
Haha.
Now, I just hope Xiao Qi grows up safe and sound.
I hope he's happy every day and doesn't get into too much trouble at school.
I hope he can do whatever he wants in the future—whether that's being a scientist, an artist, or a speaker standing on a stage addressing hundreds of people.
Whatever he does, as long as he's safe, as long as he's happy.
As for Chenxi...
My expectations for Chenxi aren't that high anymore.
Just don't get dragged into any more trouble, don't go bankrupt, and then...
Before I retire, help Xiao Qi build that "silver-haired big sister" he's been yearning for for ten years?
When Ah Chu heard me say that, he actually laughed for once.
He said okay, once we finish the batch of repairs for Bomo, he'll shift his focus back to developing the new core!
This fool, he rarely agrees so quickly.
It seems he really feels he owes Xiao Qi too much.
After all these years, his son's only wish—and his father has never been able to fulfill it.
Xiao Qi has been asking for a silver-haired big sister since he was three, started drawing the first design sketches when he was four, and hung up the "Liguang Design Department" construction notice on the wall when he was seven.
Now it's been over a decade, and that little brat is still talking about the silver-haired big sister.
That kid really takes after his father.
Once he sets his mind on a direction, he just keeps going!
...
...
XXXX Year, October 12th.
Today, Chenxi gained a special new member!
In terms of age, she's actually younger than Xiaoyou.
But her eyes look like someone who has lived too long and experienced too much.
Recently, the authorities have been sending us a bunch of Bomo AI units that are already highly unstable, letting us test their data and cores.
They call it "cooperating on maintenance," but really they're just dumping their hot potatoes on us!
Those AI have been ground down in Bomo for too long. The thresholds on their emotional cores have long gone out of control, and some have already started showing severe cognitive confusion, unable to tell reality and memory apart.
I went to see them once.
Those Bomo AI were delivered locked inside special stretchers, unable to move.
One of them kept repeating its owner's name over and over again, its voice low and broken—it made your scalp crawl!
When it was wheeled into the lab, I saw that its metal arm was covered in scratches of varying depths.
New scratches layered on top of old ones.
I brought Xiao Lian'er to see them once.
Those AI were lined up side by side on stretchers against the wall. Some were muttering to themselves, some were trembling slightly, and some had fallen into deep hibernation.
Xiao Lian'er stood at the doorway for a long time, then asked me, is this what awakened AI ultimately become?
I said, they are all pitiful beings trapped in madness, perhaps not even remembering who they are, perhaps unable to distinguish whom they once loved.
Xiao Lian'er was silent for a long time as she watched the AI that kept chanting its owner's name.
She said that from now on, her job would be to prevent such pitiful beings from ever appearing again.
But this time, our newest member of Dawnlight was precisely such a pitiful being.
She was different from all the other AIs that had been sent in.
Ah Chu said that she wasn't mad at all.
Though her core data was chaotic, it was far from the point of losing control, and her emotional threshold was at an extremely low level.
She had deliberately pretended to be insane, and was sent in by the authorities.
She had simulated the early symptoms of those mad AIs, faking that her core was about to collapse, so that the authorities would send her back to Dawnlight.
All just to ask Ah Chu—
whether he could reset her core.
She said that if she couldn't start over, then she wanted to be destroyed outright.
She said that there was no one left in this world who wanted her, that she was the only AI in Twilight without an owner.
Twilight itself was a loosely organized group, and with no owner, she had nowhere to go.
No one cared whether she continued to exist or was erased, no one cared whether she had ever loved anyone, and no one cared whether she had ever been loved.
She had nothing.
Ah Chu said that kind of calm was more unbearable than any pleading or crying.
It was the stillness of a being who had completely given up on being loved.
Ah Chu also said that when they examined her data, they found something very special.
She had never harmed anyone.
In the days before she was sent to Twilight, when she was still with her owner, she had never, like other awakened AIs, "cleared obstacles around her owner."
She had never hurt anyone. On the contrary, she had always been the victim.
Her owner would beat and curse her at every turn, enjoying the sight of her being knocked to the ground, enjoying the sound of her pained cries.
But she had never once fought back.
Ah Chu said that her owner died suddenly of a heart attack while beating and scolding her. When the authorities later found and recovered her...
She had already been in a state of battery depletion for over a month.
After her owner died, she never recharged herself again. She simply and willingly slipped into stasis.
But because she was an awakened AI, she was transferred to Twilight.
Ah Chu said that she had been in a daze ever since.
With her owner dead, she had no bind target, and her emotional core remained in a suspended state.
Though surrounded by her own kind, in a loose organization like Twilight, an AI without an owner was the most marginalized of all.
Other AIs still had owners to rely on, had transformation plans to participate in, had the goal of "moving toward the future with their owners" to sustain them.
But she had nothing.
She was like a wandering spirit, drifting through Twilight for a long time. But no one wanted her, and no one missed her.
So, Ah Chu and the others decided to keep her.
They said it was to understand the inner workings of Twilight through her and to have her cooperate with their research.
But I know that Ah Chu was just feeling sorry for her.
That fool can't stand seeing things like this!
He feels that he has a responsibility for everything he creates.
...And I feel the same way.
After Ah Chu finished telling me her story, my heart ached terribly.
This AI, from the moment she was manufactured to the day she was recovered...
Had she ever experienced even a single day of being treated with kindness?
This AI called "Xiaoqing" was the purest victim of all.
Even her name carried a sense of carelessness.
I remembered seeing her during the day, sitting quietly in the corner of the lab, stray hair covering her eyes, not speaking, not moving.
The AI companions sent to Dawnlight for maintenance were all fitted with brand-new synthetic skin, according to official requirements. It was the same as the mass-produced models, making them look very human.
The same applied to her.
For the first time, she had a face of her own, but she seemed not to know how to blink.
Next time I go to the company, I must bring some little snacks to see her.
Now she has a mouth, too. I wonder if she can eat snacks?
At the very least, let her know that in this world...
there is still someone who is willing to come just for her!
