Chapter 107: Chapter 81: Black Light
There was a sense of caution in the atmosphere.
The state police pointed at John and said.
"This is self-defense, Lieutenant Colonel, as long as it doesn’t move, I won’t take any further action."
His voice was extremely hoarse, as if his original vocal organs had been severely damaged, and he had to rely on an auxiliary voice device to communicate.
His tone was flat.
There was a semi-mechanical pallor to it.
The state police didn’t want the negotiation content to be leaked out, so he followed Eden into the Harbor Company building alone.
The conversation was arranged in a room without electronic devices, with only four participants:
John, Tinfoil, Eden, and the state police.
A plain wooden long table.
Conference chairs with metal tube backrests.
"Long time no see, Lieutenant Colonel."
The state police adjusted his sitting posture.
"First, I apologize for this disturbance, then, I hope to take it away peacefully."
The state police’s words didn’t treat John as human, but rather as some kind of dangerous object, deliberately keeping distance.
He would even reduce eye contact.
"F*cking squid, huh, what did I do?"
The drugs made John’s knuckles numb, otherwise, he would definitely have pulled out his gun and pointed it at the other’s head.
"Reason."
Eden took over the topic calmly.
The state police were willing to communicate only with him.
"Eden City’s Internet Surveillance Office suspects it’s related to rogue AI behind the Blackwall. To ensure public safety, I need to reclaim it legally, if necessary, it can be terminated on the spot."
After saying, he waved his finger, sending the arrest warrant to Eden and Tinfoil.
The network of the Cyber Era was newly built.
Decades ago, some crazy hacker released an infection virus, causing the old network to collapse completely.
Cyberspace became hell.
A group of self-aware rogue AI rampaged, wielding enormous power and invading civilized society, causing unimaginable damage.
At that time, accessing the network became a life-threatening endeavor.
Apart from the top hackers, almost no humans could survive in cyberspace, constantly facing the risk of brain burnout or being targeted by AI, thus dying in offline accidents.
For a long time after the event broke out...
No company or entity could establish a stable network environment.
Until the 1940s:
Internet Surveillance utilized massive resources, combined the power of several top hackers to launch the "Blackwall Project."
They compiled an algorithm to block dangerous rogue AIs, gradually evolving into today’s Blackwall.
Humans hid behind the Blackwall, building a new network, gradually restored network applications.
But as a price, the immeasurable treasures of knowledge on the old internet were abandoned.
The stature of Internet Surveillance rose.
It continually expanded its influence, gained legal management rights in cyberspace, and within the network scope, even surpassed all corporations. No matter how big, any giant company daring to cross the Blackwall would be hunted.
At least it was like this initially.
As time went on, the Blackwall gradually got analyzed, the resources controlled by companies grew vast, and the interaction between surveillance and companies became increasingly intimate.
John was bewildered.
Such a complex thing as the Blackwall was somewhat distant for a mercenary like him, who didn’t even have a network access pod.
"Evidence."
Eden asked calmly, arms crossed.
"Confidential regulations, Lieutenant Colonel, I respect you and hope you understand the work of Internet Surveillance, some information indeed can’t be shared. The arrest warrant you can investigate, it absolutely follows procedures..."
"You can’t take someone away based on a piece of paper."
Eden Weitz did not compromise.
The state police propped up his hand, showing a thoughtful expression.
The areas on either side of his jaw were replaced with special materials to increase heat dissipation.
"Alright."
He turned to John,
"Let’s talk about your story, you once searched for a serial number on a regional network, the full name is AQM-T05, where did it come from?"
"Underground clinic."
John had long prepared this answer.
"I ran transport for Tiebang Logistics, that damn job got me heavily injured, abandoned by the company, had no choice but to try my luck with a doctor."
"Underground clinic at Industrial Area 227."
The state police calmly recited the specific address. "Originally planned to ask when I got back to the surveillance office, but since Lieutenant Colonel Eden is interested, we might as well discuss it here. What happened that night?"
"The doctor was in cahoots with Ghouls, wanted to hollow me out, but he wasn’t as lucky as I was, met a miserable end."
John half-truthfully said. "Before running away, I grabbed some things to start over— a bunch of illegal chips, exchanged them for money with second-hand vendors on Oil Drum Street. That model, I glimpsed it in the computer, thought it might be worth something."
The state police stared at John expressionlessly.
John matched his gaze.
"You don’t believe it?"
"I don’t believe a single word you say, this conversation is just to make Lieutenant Colonel Eden realize there’s a problem with you."
The state police answered coldly.
Tinfoil asked, "What’s special about this model?"
"AQM-T05 is related to a rogue AI we just detected, preliminary speculation suggests this model corresponds to a program designed with old network information. If the rogue AI finds a channel to cross the Blackwall, do you know what that means?"
The state police looked at Tinfoil.
"Ma’am, you don’t understand. But the Lieutenant Colonel has witnessed what it looks like when the Blackwall has an issue. The last time we spoke face to face, he and I stood on the ruins of Pompeii."
There was a moment of silence in the room.
Pompeii was a terrifying word.
The Blackwall wasn’t impregnable.
Historically, there had been several globally sensational rogue AI out-of-control incidents.
Pompeii, a thousand kilometers from Eden City, was the most recent one, though it wasn’t called that at the time.
Rogue AI broke through the Blackwall, escaped from the network into the real world, hacked multinational corporations, controlled smart weapons in labs, remotely fried soldiers’ brains, and finally transmitted data to the European Space Agency’s near-Earth orbit.
The kinetic weapon descended from heaven.
Nearly three hundred thousand innocent citizens died.
This was an attack tantamount to a corporate war, directly turning it into a city of death.
So, people replaced the original name with "Pompeii." The rogue AI destroyed civilization as easily as a volcano destroyed a prosperous city thousands of years ago.
Eden remained silent with his arms crossed.
The state police continued telling Tinfoil:
"You’re a hacker, so you’ve certainly seen in cyberspace, rogue AI seeks a suitable carrier by all means, allowing their power to penetrate the Blackwall, thus affecting the real world."
"You mean..."
Tinfoil tried to grasp the logic.
"John, is controlled by rogue AI?"
"What a bloody farce!"
John could not wait to brawl with him. "Just because my damn curiosity led me to search a keyword?"
Eden stared at the state police, also thinking the evidence was insufficient.
The state police looked at Tinfoil, then Eden:
To move things forward, he shared highly confidential investigative intelligence with Harbor Company, or you could say the special operations team behind it.
These pieces of information were incredibly valuable.
Theoretically speaking:
Internet Surveillance is the most powerful hacker group in a region, usually with overwhelming advantages in equipment, technology, and numbers.
Except for a few genius hackers, they don’t have to respect any unit online.
The surveillance teams would patrol the Blackwall routinely.
In cyberspace, the network would be objectified to help deep web users better understand data, and the image of the Blackwall was often a curtain composed of red data streams in cyberspace.
Years ago, Network Surveillance discovered that:
Besides the towering red data streams, the black parts surrounding it were also part of the Blackwall.
Originally, people treated it as "shadows" in cyberspace, or some sort of redundant, accumulated data garbage.
As network technology continued to progress...
Surveillance suddenly observed that the black parts were also a considerable data stream.
"AI is a new life form born in the network."
"These shadows around the Blackwall actually have enough space to give birth to an intelligent entity."
"But no matter how we verify, we haven’t found any signs of AI existence in the shadows."
"The emptier it is there, the more terrifying it is, indicating that over the decades the Blackwall protected us, some monster had already escaped from the cage, and we can’t even observe its existence."
"In the surveillance data repository, any theoretically possible AI is recorded."
"This unit suspected to have been born in the Blackwall..."
"We call it..."
"Code T-Black Light."