Chapter 1560 - The Newborn (1/2)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“Humanity” was dead.

For Hao Ren at least, the humans on the planet had already died off a thousand years ago when they lost their ability to reproduce and lost the spark of intelligence. Or rather, when they could only survive in a nutrient tank as a cluster of cells, humanity was dead for all intents and purposes.

For the willful Cortex Prime and the entirety of the Executors, humanity had died today.

Within the cylindrical nutrient tanks, all sorts of tubes supplying nutrients were slowly disconnecting themselves from the Cortex Prime’s control. The wriggling flesh started to convulse violently after life support eluded them, and within a few moments, cracks began to appear on their surface as corrupted blood and bubbles started jetting out of them. The pinkish nutrient tank turned blood red.

Hao Ren was not sure if he could consider the piles of flesh a living being, because every cell within it was different and the fatal mutation caused the cells to create a new genetic sequence after every split. From a biological perspective, these cells should not have survived.

For so long, they were forcibly kept alive by the Cortex Prime, and the entire system had to filter the huge quantity of toxic substances produced by the flesh to prevent it from being killed by its own reproduction.

But today, that eternal agony came to an end.

The flesh could still survive for a time even if all life support systems were taken offline. A huge amount of cells will die continuously but until they exhaust all nutrients within the tank, they will continue on with their toxic biological process, and based on the Cortex Prime’s detection, the last of the cells will probably perish after a few hours.

“So that’s it?” Hao Ren frowned as he witnessed the ‘funeral of humanity’, and aside from his crew, the only two other witnesses were the Cortex Prime and N-6. “I thought it’d be a little more solemn.”

“The age of humanity had ended, and we will send them off using our methods.” the voice of the Cortex Prime echoed across the hall. “Today should have come sooner… and I had used too long to complete my calculations.”

“And for your hardware setup, completing this is very difficult.” Hao Ren sighed.

“But it is the thing that only I can do.”

The Cortex Prime was different than the Executors.

Even when both are artificial intelligence, the two had two different missions. Humanity, when they created the Executors tried to give them traits akin to a human, from their looks to their thought process, as such, the Executors had a richer and more agile thought process, and this two traits allow them to self-learn and to expand on their abilities; while the Cortex Prime was created as a precise manager. In those turbulent times, they needed to ensure that the civilization does not waste anything, and the Cortex Prime was designed to be precise, strict, logical and obedient to the cardinal order.

The Cortex Prime was the commander-in-chief of the Executors and at the same time, it was also their guardian.

To have a precise and highly efficient calculator to manage the newly formed Executor society was the best way to ensure that their civilization lived on, yet humanity will be gone someday, and when they perished, no one was able to come before the control platform of the Cortex Prime and to press that ‘decisive action’ button.

Perhaps the humans had thought of this problem and had created many types of decision-making mechanism to help the Cortex Prime to make that decision, yet the long war had destroyed too many things, and even the Bibliotheca had lost half of its data, and the original decision-making mechanisms were lost in time.

So when the time came, the Cortex Prime had to complete the arduous process by itself.

As a logical A.I, the Cortex Prime thought hard and with all its might, destroying half of its servers in the process, and burnt out all of its maintenance crew. Only after paying a destructive price did it accepted the fact amidst so many contradictions and conflicts: Humanity was dead.

It then activated the last code left by its’ creators, it was that short line of code, the code for an Executor to be deemed an ‘adult’. N-6 was its first user.

“Now, there is one last thing to be done.” The Cortex Prime’s voice echoed again, emotionless as ever.

N-6 looked up, still dazed. “What is it?”

“Now that the Executors have reached ‘adulthood’, the Cortex Prime is no longer needed.”

N-6 did not seem to have grasped the Cortex Prime’s words but Lily immediately understood what it was planning to do and yelped. “Eh! You don’t have to do that! Even if the humans are gone, there are others on the moon…”

“My mission has been completed.” The Cortex Prime did not mind what Lily had said and continued calmly. “The age of humanity is over, and so thus mine, a matured civilization does not need a guardian.”

Lily was still anxious. “But…”

“Forget it.” Hao Ren calmed the slightly agitated Lily down. “It had shut down”

Evidently, the Cortex Prime was not heard from again after that, and based on the MDT’s scans, all sorts of mechanical structures had been activated by some preset program, and they started to operate automatically.

Hao Ren had expected the Cortex Prime to come to this decision. When he saw the burnt-out maintenance crew in the secondary server room he had guessed this outcome. The destruction of the crew was partly due to its malfunctions, but another part showed that it was done deliberately by the Cortex Prime’s consciousness.