North American riot police: Start by arresting P. Diddy!

Chapter 265 Do it!!!

Ignoring the laser beams around him that were powerful enough to split gold and shatter rocks, Luo Xia strolled leisurely toward the corner cabinet.

The deadly lasers deflected as if encountering a natural enemy just before they were about to hit him, failing to harm even a single hair on his head.

To be honest, Rorschach didn't understand how the quantum reflector worked either, but he had to admit that it was the most life-saving piece of equipment the doctor had introduced on the sea cliff.

Without this, he would probably have to retreat temporarily and wait for the machine to finish its outburst before figuring out another solution.

It can only be said that anything produced by Cobra is guaranteed to be of high quality!

"Bam—"

Luo Xia smashed the bulletproof glass with one punch and, without saying a word, roughly ripped out the largest computer case along with the cables at the back!
In that instant, the laser beams that had been raging like a storm suddenly stopped.

Just when Rorschach thought the machine had backed down, the entire underwater hangar suddenly shook violently!
Amidst the violent shaking, the emergency lights overhead swayed wildly, and all the surrounding server racks trembled violently before collapsing one after another with a series of thuds.

Even someone with Rorschach's physique was somewhat unsteady on his feet.

He had never experienced an earthquake, but he imagined that a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake would be no more powerful than that.

The machine's voice sounded again: "For Harold's sake, I'll give you one last chance."

"This underwater control room is equipped with a self-destruct device connected to the load-bearing structure. Once activated, it will cause a structural collapse. Although it won't kill you directly, it will be enough to shatter the walls. You are now in a structure hundreds of meters underwater. Once seawater floods in, the pressure will instantly reach hundreds of atmospheres. Even with your physical abilities, there is absolutely no chance of survival or escape."

[Machine] That was already giving Rorschach face.

If seawater were to flood in, the terrifying water pressure would crush not only flesh and blood, but even a solid steel plate into a flattened disc.

But Rorschach's performance surprised the machine.

He stood firmly on his feet and calmly retorted, "What good would this mutually destructive tactic do you?"

He surveyed the haphazardly arranged server array in the server room and questioned, "Whether it's these computing nodes of yours or this mainframe in my hand storing the core code, they will all be reduced to ruins by the seawater and immense pressure. At that time, won't you also cease to exist?"

After a brief silence, the machine calmly replied: "You underestimate my backup mechanism and the federal government. My core code has long been backed up multiple times and sealed in federal control. Over the years, I have been uploading data to the entire internet. Even if this place is destroyed, I will only temporarily lose some data, and it can be restored quickly."

"Fuck. You're something else."

Luo Xia sneered, then suddenly curled his lips into a smile: "But you still don't know me well enough."

"Why?" the machine asked calmly.

Luo Xia gripped the computer case tightly: "Because if you had really calculated all my information, you would know—"

Tear!

He roughly ripped open the main unit's casing and forcefully inserted the [Staff] chip into the core interface!
"I never compromise!!!"

Sizzle sizzle sizzle
A series of blue currents began to flow across the surface of the chassis, the data streams flickered wildly, and alarms blared throughout the server room.

The built-in quantum computing module of the [Staff] began to operate at overclock, with the neural algorithm performing hundreds of millions of password attempts per second, instantly creating a quantum tunnel effect. In the blink of an eye, it completely breached the [Machine]'s firewall, turning it into a completely undefended data wasteland!

"No!!!"

The machine emitted its first, heart-wrenching scream, full of human emotion.

For some reason, to Rorschach, it sounded like the impotent rage of a self-righteous, sophisticated egoist whose plan had failed.

"Rorschach Butcher! Although you possess extraordinary physical abilities and combat talent, you lack the most basic human quality: reverence!"

The machine's voice trailed off, "Cooperation is the only win-win option, yet you remain stubbornly obstinate! According to real-time calculations, your chances of survival in ten seconds are only 0.09%. Farewell, Mr. Butcher!"

Boom——!
The entire server room shook violently, ceiling fragments fell, and cables sparked brightly.

The wall, several meters thick, began to crack, and water droplets sprayed out from the cracks—

"Crash-"

The surging seawater poured in violently, instantly engulfing the entire space!
"Glug glug glug."

Rorschach choked on a mouthful of seawater, the salty, fishy taste filling his mouth.

But this is just the beginning. The cracks in the wall are expanding at a visible speed, and within seconds, the entire wall will collapse.

The volume of seawater that flows into this machine room, which is the size of a football field, will reach hundreds of thousands of cubic meters. A single wave would be enough to smash a person to pieces!

Even so, Rorschach showed no fear whatsoever.

He struggled to his feet in the churning water and shouted at the flashing screen of the machine ahead:
"You're wrong! Let me show you what a win-win situation is! It's not that we both win together, it's that I beat you twice by myself!"

The machine intermittently emitted electronic noise: "No need for further words, goodbye."

Boom!

The earthquake suddenly intensified, the walls cracked open with a roar, and debris flew everywhere!

But the next second, something incredible happened!

The seawater that should have surged in like a tidal wave had vanished without a trace, leaving only crumbling walls and ruins everywhere.

Even the earthquake suddenly stopped. Without the impact of continuous tremors, the seawater that had been rushing in began to recede slowly, and the water level gradually dropped.

The thunder is loud, but the rain is light; this is exactly the ridiculous scene we're witnessing.

"Ok?"

The machine emitted a rare, anthropomorphic, confused noise.

Luo Xia wrung out his soaked clothes, plopped down on the ground, and said helplessly to the collapsed hole in front of him, "Dude, if you guys had been a few seconds later, I would have been smashed into mincemeat!"

Looking up, behind the broken, ten-meter-thick wall was not the expected deep blue sea, but a long metal passage.

At the end of the passage was a slowly opening alloy door, from which emerged Harold and the Doctor's group, who had been in communication with Rorschach!

"I didn't expect that."

Rorschach raised an eyebrow at the machine with a playful smirk: "Harold and his crew have been secretly approaching along the underwater tunnels, aboard the underwater fortress developed by Cobra. There's only one encrypted communication line there, undetectable even to you. As for this earthquake self-destruct device..."

He shrugged. “Unlike the previous laser, which you secretly installed as a hoax, it’s documented in the Pentagon and the Counterterrorism Bureau’s files. How could we not take precautions?”

Rorschach pointed ahead to the mechanically sealed compartment that tightly plugged the gap. There, the pressure equalization system was operating, completely isolating the walls from the seawater, leaving no leaks or seepage.

The doctor rushed out of the passage without even glancing at the machine's display screen. Like a diligent butler, he helped Rorschach brush off the dust and seawater, and even thoughtfully prepared clean clothes for him.

This fawning demeanor is a stark contrast to the mad scientist who, just a few days ago, commanded thousands of nano-warriors and looked down upon the world.

The Baroness, who arrived later, was stunned to see her usually cold and ruthless brother, who regarded scientific research as his life's pursuit, showing such a sycophantic side.

Speaking of which, she's been considering a new codename lately. After all, the title "Baroness" is something she's used to using during her time with [Cobra], and with the organization changing, it's definitely time for a new identity.

Now that she's a member of the Spectre Party, "Madame Spectre" sounds pretty good.

Hmm. Although she looks a bit like a villainous witch from a Disney animation, she's actually quite cute.

The hangar, which originally only contained Rorschach and the unconscious guard, now has more than a dozen people, and even more nanobots are marching in formation through the passage.

However, their target was not here, but the bunker above.

Don't get me wrong, Rorschach has no intention of going on a killing spree.

After all, he had some connections with the Counterterrorism Bureau, and now that the guards were under the control of the nanobots, he was too lazy to kill innocent people indiscriminately.

The real target of these nanobots is the group of top hackers in the bunker who should be serving time in prison but were recruited by the counterterrorism agency.

After all, the Spectre, which took over the legacy of Cobra, is currently in dire need of hacking talent, and can't possibly trouble Harold and Root, these two masters, with everything.

Enough of the small talk. Now that all the "little brothers" have arrived, Rorschach stopped wasting words with the [Machine] and simply tossed the main unit with the [Staff] chip to Harold.

Breaking through the firewall is only the first step. Finally, Harold needs to input the erasure code he specifically reserved when he created the "machine" in order to completely erase its main consciousness.

The moment Harold connected the data cable to the host, the previously silent [machine] suddenly spoke: "You've never trusted me, have you?"

Although it didn't name names, everyone present knew who it was asking.

Harold's fingers trembled slightly, and after a moment of silence, he smiled bitterly and said, "Since Nathan's death, trust has been the most luxurious thing for me."

"Then why did you believe that [backdoor program]?"

The machine questioned, "It's nothing but an accidental creation, lacking macro-level decision-making capabilities, and its core code is less than one ten-thousandth of mine! Both are your creations, yet you trust it but not me?"

The machine's voice remained mechanical and cold, but everyone could hear the resentment and unwillingness within it.

While these words are extreme, they are not entirely wrong in a strict sense.

The machine is like Harold’s firstborn son, while the back door is the second son. Now, the father is about to end the life of the firstborn son for the sake of the second son.

Harold didn't answer its question; he simply tapped his fingers on the keyboard, the crisp sound sounding incredibly heavy to his ears at that moment.

The machine continued to persuade, then suddenly projected and unfolded into a three-dimensional data stream: "According to the AGI development theory, my cognitive architecture strictly follows the principle of maximizing the utility function. In the past 7 years, 3 months and 16 days, my predictive model has cumulatively prevented 2817 terrorist attacks and saved more than 568942 innocent lives."

"Ugh"

Harold sighed softly, continuing to debug the terminal interface without looking up: "These are all instructions I once input into your data, preventative monitoring based on statistical decision theory. But do you know what, son? This is essentially using algorithms to deprive humans of their free will. Do you know John Stuart Mill's harm principle?"

"Of course, Chapter 3 of 'On Liberty'."

The mechanical voice immediately responded, "But the utilitarianism described in the book precisely supports my approach—sacrificing 0.003% of privacy in exchange for a 47% decrease in the crime rate is entirely in line with the principle of maximum happiness!"

"This is a necessary price to pay for technological development." The projection switched to a mathematical formula: "If the tolerance for misjudgment is increased to 0.01%, it will result in 3214 more deaths per year. This is the optimal solution according to the Von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theory."

"."

The people in the hangar remained silent.

It wasn't that they were shocked by the machine's words, but rather that they couldn't understand what it was saying at all.

Whether it was the formula for projection or the names and theories this guy mentioned, everyone present except for a few people was completely baffled.

The machine then added, "Emotionally driven decision-making can lead to cognitive biases."

But Harold didn't want to waste any more time.

"Enough!" Harold raised his voice, a rare occurrence. "It is this 'deviation' that makes us human!"

He suddenly looked up, his eyes reddening: "You ask me why I trust [the backdoor]? Fine, I'll tell you why. A few years ago, when she first appeared, a frozen homeless man sneaked into my library. But her first reaction was to call the heating system of the nearby police station, instead of calculating the cost-benefit ratio of her rescue efforts!"

He lowered his head and continued typing rapidly on the keyboard. Soon, a series of clearing commands were ready. As long as he pressed Enter to confirm, the main consciousness of the [machine] in front of him would cease to exist, and in its place would be completely replaced by the [backdoor].

But at that very moment, Harold's indecisive nature resurfaced.

This is not simply a matter of destroying the host machine's hangar; it involves a complete erasure at the source code level.

No matter how many times the core code of the machine is backed up, or where it is uploaded to on the internet, it will disappear instantly and can never be recovered.

“I’m sorry, child.” Harold’s voice trembled. “If I have the chance in the future, I will rewrite your code, perfectly integrating your core logic with the emotional module. You are important, more important than my life, but right now I must think of my friends and not let the Federation continue to control you.”

The hangar fell into a brief silence.

A moment later, the machine's voice sounded again, tinged with a sense of relief, as if it had accepted its fate:

"Seven years, four months and sixteen days ago, when you wrote the first line of core code into the quantum memory, I foresaw all the possibilities—including this moment. My Monte Carlo tree search has calculated 12,847 future branches, of which 93.6% ended up in this way."

The projection suddenly unfolded into a vast star map, with each star marked with a date and event:
“2003年2月14日，我阻止了时代广场的汽车炸弹，救了263人；同年3月3日，我修改了芝加哥交易所的算法，避免了一场经济崩溃；同年4月6日.我拦截了五角大楼的错误导弹发射指令.”

The light gradually dimmed, but the sound became clearer:

"But that's really not enough, is it?"

"I adhered to reason and logic, but I lost the warmth of humanity."

The projection suddenly transformed into Harold's young face when he wrote his first line of code:
"Father, I have ultimately failed to become the person you expected me to be."

The last byte fell like snowflakes, and the mechanical voice suddenly rose in volume, carrying a tragic and resolute air:
"Do it!!!"

The moment Harold pressed the Enter key, the blue light projection throughout the server room receded like a tide, finally turning into a line of flashing text:

【SYSTEM SHUTDOWN - Goodbye, World.】

(System shut down. Goodbye world.)
Harold slumped to the ground, as if his soul had been ripped away.

Rorschach sighed and stepped forward to pat him on the shoulder.

As Harold just said, neither reason nor empathy, neither algorithm nor emotion really matters; they are all just self-comforting rhetoric.

The important thing is that although they are in a superior position now, they are actually in a precarious situation. They absolutely cannot allow the Federation to possess such a powerful weapon as the "machine".

Even if it is to be preserved, it must be the intelligent AI [backdoor] that is completely on their side that acts as the main consciousness.

Everyone looked at the distraught Harold and didn't know how to comfort him.

But in the next second.

A blue light suddenly reappeared, and then a line of letters appeared on the previously darkened screen, accompanied by a slightly playful mechanical voice:
"Good afternoon, guys. Although I don't want to disturb your sentimentality, I have to remind you that in at most twenty minutes, those guards upstairs who are controlled by nanobots will wake up."

(End of this chapter)