I, the undead, save the world with the dolls

Antonina and Pascal effectively held some emergency command authority. In emergencies, Antonina could command the humanoids to enforce certain actions. This power was granted to Antonina out of trust in her and Sun Yang's emphasis on network security.

"Self-check in progress. Antonina, I'll assign you more computing power." Pascal's voice echoed. All the base's networked equipment underwent a self-check, while Antonina conducted a thorough screening of the base's electronic defenses. The self-check was quickly completed.

[Self-check completed. No access records found in any unit. Fortunately, fortunately... Professor, your one-way shielding barrier blocked a large number of malicious electronic signals.] Antonina breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the plug from her stomach.

"I have some understanding of this world. I remember that the roaming AI in this world is very powerful, and the Internet has become a dark web in the true sense." Sun Yang tapped his head.

His memory of the game was a bit hazy, and with the passage of time, his less important memories of the past had become somewhat unclear.

"It's more than impressive. If Antonina and I hadn't specially developed a protection system using psychic signals and radiation codes, there might be a bunch of virus codes wreaking havoc in the base right now." Antonina sighed.

"I remember that the main base was protected by my big soul. It seemed that one-way communication could be maintained." Sun Yang remembered that Pascal or Antonina mentioned it.

"Simply put, it's a conceptual soul barrier that eliminates all malicious intent. I don't understand magic, so I can't rely on this barrier for safety. Professor, please proceed to a nearby city. Our team needs time to gather data on this world. But you appear to have considerable knowledge of this world." Antonina frowned across the screen, eagerly anticipating Sun Yang's response.

"I do know something...although it's limited." Sun Yang climbed over the seemingly endless mountain of garbage and dictated some of the information he knew to Antonina.

Generally speaking, the functions of each country in this world are divided among many companies. These major conglomerates control the rules that govern the world. In turn, these companies use extreme means to exploit the people at the bottom.

The gap between the rich and the poor in all classes has reached an alarming level. People living in low-income groups cannot even be hired by companies if they do not wear prosthetic devices. If they buy prosthetic devices, they will have to work for the rest of their lives to repay the prosthetic device loans.

Prosthetics not only require daily maintenance, but over time, prosthetic manufacturing companies continue to innovate, producing better and more advanced prosthetic components - of course, more expensive. If the older generation of employees do not upgrade to new prosthetics, they will be eliminated by the new employees who use the new prosthetics.

In this context, several wars broke out between companies occupying various ecological niches, and the last one ended with both Arasaka and Militech suffering heavy losses.

"This setting primarily takes place in Night City on the west coast of the United States, where Arasaka holds considerable power. However, this is American soil, so military technology is also well-established here. Other companies that trade and manufacture a variety of products are also located here."

Finally, after persevering through mountains and rivers, Sun Yang finally reached the edge of the garbage mountain. Honestly, Sun Yang felt that the garbage mountain outside Night City was probably even bigger than Night City itself. Sooner or later, the city would be overwhelmed by garbage.

Sun Yang, still the same, crawled slowly in the armor Javier had modified—a suit of armor that was completely unremarkable in Night City, where everyone was unique. It was just a set of exaggerated armor, what was the big deal? However, climbing a mountain of garbage in this heavy armor looked a bit idiotic.

While Sun Yang was communicating and crawling, he encountered many teams of scavengers.

These scavengers basically make a living by recycling or selling scraps from the garbage mountains. Sometimes, they can find a worn-out prosthetic body or a separated chip and eat a full meal for the day.

Most of them wore filthy clothes, draped with rags to shield them from the scorching sun. Their arms, eyes, or thighs had long been replaced with prosthetics. However, due to a lack of funds and an inability to find prosthetic surgeons, their prosthetics were in dire condition.

Some people can only hang one arm and look for useful things in the scrap metal while wearing dirty canvas shoes.

In addition to those who rely on the garbage mountain to fill their stomachs, there are other groups that also operate nearby.

Mercenaries who ran out of Night City to work; people sent by companies to do dirty work; a family of wanderers who travel long distances in the badlands and have no fixed place to live.

Whatever the reason, there are always people wandering around this garbage mountain. Of course, their behavior logic varies.

When the main base finally connected to Night City's local area network and collected various public information about the city, Sun Yang encountered several teams with completely different attitudes towards him.

Most of the tattered scavengers ignored Sun Yang. They didn't want to bother a guy in sleek armor. Perhaps he was just filming some show? There was even a drone overhead, revealing it was a new variety show being filmed.

There were also some fashionable-looking people wearing bright bulletproof jackets, fancy sunglasses, and large pistols hanging around their waists who came to talk to Sun Yang.

"Hey! You! Yes! It's you! A new program, right?" Just as Sun Yang was climbing the mountain diligently, a few ruffian men and women stood on the high slope of the garbage mountain and shouted at Sun Yang who was climbing the mountain below.

These fashionable guys have more or less some cyber modifications - or you can say prosthetic modifications, which refers to installing some messy prosthetics on their bodies.

If there is one thing they have in common, it is that they all have two chip slots behind the ears - that's where the brain-computer interface is.

This is a basic prosthetic modification that almost everyone in Night City has. With it, people no longer need additional equipment to make phone calls, transfer funds, or browse information online.

Sun Yang remembered that this device could easily be backdoored or implanted with hacking software by certain companies to eavesdrop on communications. However, most people didn't really care. They simply accepted the possibility of eavesdropping, and chatting on the phone and then meeting in person was the norm.

So what's the difference between this and leaving your brain out there to be attacked? If your phone gets hacked, you can still survive, but if your brain-computer interface gets hacked, you're doomed, right? The more prosthetics you have, the higher your combat power, but the more prosthetics you have, the more weaknesses you have. So, the higher your combat power, the more weaknesses you have.

Of course, the premise for being able to exploit these weaknesses is that you are a professional hacker who can break through the firewall, find remote loopholes, cause the prosthesis to overheat, paralyze, or directly kill the user.

As for whether there are prosthetics without backdoors? Not at all. All prosthetics have backdoors created by the company. Unless you can find a trustworthy prosthetics doctor to remove these, but prosthetics doctors with such skills and integrity are extremely rare. It's good enough if they don't cheat you out of your money.

"Yeah, huh. Without prosthetics, wearing heavy armor, and climbing through a whole mountain of garbage." Sun Yang pretended to be very tired and slowly moved around. Sun Yang felt that there was no need to waste time talking to these guys now, and he quickly found a way to get into the city.

"Hey, little Over, this guy is so weird. I can't find the cyber implant on him." One of the women with modified eyes said excitedly after looking at Sun Yang for a long time.

"Fuck, have all the prosthetics really been removed? No, could it be the physical body? Pure physical body?! Fuck!" A man wearing sunglasses and with shiny skin exclaimed.

"They are probably from a family of wanderers. They don't even have a brain-computer interface and rely on a mobile phone to make calls. They are very old-fashioned." said the woman who scanned Sun Yang.

"Wanderer? Which family are you from?" The gangster-like elder brother squatted down and asked Sun Yang again.

"No, just one person." Sun Yang only knew one Adecardo family, but pretending to be someone from another family was no joke, and there would be endless troubles afterwards.

"Oh! We're kicked out." The fashionable men and women looked at each other, and then the leader said again, "Hey, hey! Buddy, if you're climbing so slowly, there's no way you can get ratings. Then your production team will fire you. Let me tell you, your show needs to be exciting, you know? It needs to be a little thrilling!"

"What are you doing?" Sun Yang was already losing his patience. What were these idiots doing up there?

"I think a battle royale show would get more ratings, what do you think? Don't forget to share the money with us afterwards." The eldest brother took out the big gun from his waist and fired a shot at Sun Yang's feet.

Bang! A big hole was punched into the metal under Sun Yang's feet, and the fashionable guys above took out their handguns and pointed them at Sun Yang.

It was obvious that they were going to play a game of cat and mouse, their goal probably to drive Sun Yang to exhaustion and then shoot him.

"I'll count to three, three--" Before the eldest brother in the lead finished his words, he saw a heavy laser launcher produced by Oasis suddenly appear in Sun Yang's hand.

Zig! The beam instantly pierced the leader's head, creating a massive, smoking hole. The remaining men roared and roared, firing their weapons at Sun Yang. However, the normally powerful kinetic energy bullets couldn't penetrate Sun Yang's heavy armor; even a ricochet would ricochet if they struck his face.

"Fuck, he clearly has prosthetics! You idiot! Just dig your eyes out!" "Where did you get that gun from?!" "Kill him! Kill him!"

Although these fashionable city dwellers tried every possible means to shoot Sun Yang, the small pistols in their hands obviously couldn't even break Sun Yang's skin.

Within half a minute, Sun Yang had completely wiped out these fleeing hippies. Each of them died quickly, as Sun Yang's rapid-fire shooting was accurate.

"Are all the people in Night City so violent?" Sun Yang sighed and packed up all the bodies. He sent them to Oasis Labs for research.

521 Entering Night City

This is not a good place, nor is it a good city.

Sun Yang had played this game before becoming an undead, though he had a very bad impression of it because he was a first-runner, and his computer couldn't even handle the game's lowest graphics settings. This made playing it very, very unpleasant for him, as the game didn't even run at 24 frames per second.

But even though Sun Yang had a bad impression of it, there was indeed enough discussion about it. And the animation "Cyberpunk Edgewalker" successfully pulled him back into the game and made him re-examine it.

Major companies have carved up almost all the jobs in the city, covering everything from food, clothing, housing, and transportation, and each company is exploiting everyone in an abstract way.

[Professor, we analyzed the data...in their brains.] On the other side of the screen, the Oasis research team quickly dissected these individuals' brains and thoroughly analyzed their brain interfaces and implants.

"Do we have this technology?" Sun Yang looked around on the highway outside Night City. After making sure that there were no people nearby, he summoned an all-terrain motorcycle produced by Atlas from the main base and rode the motorcycle towards Night City.

There is no need to go anywhere else in this world. Night City has everything Sun Yang needs.

"This is technology provided by the Boston region of the Fallout universe, and we've fully mastered it. In short, we can confirm that these individuals have multiple identities. They're KTV security guards, and they're also responsible for scouting for Mewtwo films. This Mewtwo technology... we have something similar." Pascal tapped the screen twice.

Sun Yang remembered. In Fallout 4, during the main storyline, when searching for Kroger's memories, they would use related equipment and technology. Sun Yang had originally just collected them, thinking that a thief would never leave empty-handed, but he hadn't expected to find similar technology here.

Normally, the technology in Radiation is not enough to access the data of the entire human brain.

But the world of Girls' Frontline has come a long way in computers, with hardware and algorithms sufficient to scan a complete human thinking model.

At the same time, with the cooperation of Oasis bosses and top scientific researchers from all over the world, the technology in this area has made some progress.

This means that the humanoids have no problem scanning a human brain. The humanoids have been working diligently, after all, they have nothing better to do.

It’s just that Sun Yang usually doesn’t pay much attention to these things. When he sees that the humanoids don’t have any requests, he basically lets them go.

"I'm afraid the cost of this radiation technology will make me die," Sun Yang complained silently in his heart.

The figures on the other side of the screen quickly analyzed the information in the corpses' heads. As the analysis progressed, many of the figures showed signs of mental instability.

However, these diligent humanoids quickly analyzed the knowledge in the heads of these corpses and used it to construct a basic worldview of Night City.

"Looks like I don't need to explain it." Sun Yang breathed a sigh of relief. He did intend to have the humanoids sneak into various parts of Night City to steal all kinds of useful information.

But considering that the humanoids would suffer a lot if they didn't have common sense about Night City, he had been worrying about how to cultivate common sense in them.

Now, the humanoids can avoid being humiliated by simply updating this data synchronously.

Unlike Fallout and XCOM, the technology in this world is flourishing.

Fallout is about picking up pre-war relics in the wasteland, and XCOM is about learning the enemy's technology while fighting a desperate battle with aliens. No matter how you look at it, these two worlds are not suitable places for technological development.

Only in 2077, after decades of development, has all sorts of technology truly flourished. Sun Yang has already made up his mind to use various channels to infiltrate humanoids into various companies and all levels of society, in order to gather as much high-end technology as possible and improve the research level of the main base.

This wasn't a case of "it's better to buy than to make"; Sun Yang intended to acquire both the technology and the finished product. Being able to build it yourself was the true path forward.

"This is a city filled with despair. Professor, what are you going to do? We will support you no matter what you do." Antonina sighed after reading the message. In her previous career as a network security engineer, she had seen enough tragedies like this.

"I do have some ideas. Let me find a place to park first, and then call all the humanoids to a meeting." Sun Yang looked at the border checkpoint ahead of the road and the skyscraper that was getting closer and closer.

Border checkpoint. All vehicles entering Night City must pass through the checkpoint before they can be released. Otherwise, they will be regarded as illegal intrusion and will be shot on the spot.

"Please stop the car and cooperate with our inspection."

Several massive automatic cannons stood at the border checkpoint. Guards in full protective combat gear, armed with automatic weapons, stood in groups of two or three. Through their transparent eyepieces, Sun Yang could clearly see the stitches on their faces.

Sun Yang took a look at the all-terrain motorcycle under him and felt that there should be no problem, so he went directly to the inspection area for inspection.

"Hmph... a high-end motorcycle without any driver's license. Where did you steal this?" The guard on the side looked at Sun Yang's strange clothes and the cool motorcycle under his butt and snorted coldly.

What the hell? Night City even cares if cars have license plates? How do the Nomads enter the city to do business? Are they only allowed to enter with licensed cars?

"This is what my parents left me." Sun Yang was going to fool around. Damn, if you ask me again, I'll have to give you a full map of the checkpoint. Don't force me.

"Well, ha, you are a rich second generation, huh? Come to Night City to enjoy yourself? Oh, and you are a pure flesh man? No prosthetics at all. Young man, after you enter the city alive, hurry up and install some prosthetics to save your life. This is my last advice. Okay, there are no prohibited items, let you go." The guard laughed at the scan results.

That's true. He's driving a cool all-terrain motorcycle, and he's just an ordinary human without any prosthetic modifications. At this level, he'll probably be robbed before he even enters the city.

"Thanks for the advice." Sun Yang shrugged, drove straight through the checkpoint, and sped down the highway. At his current speed, it wouldn't be long before he reached the southern suburbs of Night City—which, in Sun Yang's opinion, should be considered part of the urban-rural fringe or an urban development zone.

The all-terrain motorcycle was moving at a high speed. Sun Yang planned to discuss the next steps with the humanoids while driving.

522 Communication

"Pascal, agent, I think it's not possible to accurately understand the local situation relying solely on the information on the Internet. I need you to send a signal to everyone. Tell everyone that Night City needs personnel to conduct reconnaissance activities." Sun Yang was driving a motorcycle while holding a meeting with the humanoids.

As usual, only the elite T-dolls and agents were present on Griffin's side, while on Oasis' side were the heads of various R&D departments, led by Pascal and Antonina.

Don't expect the T-dolls to express their opinions during meetings. Most of them just want to do their jobs diligently, but when it comes to things like base development, they can only offer suggestions for making the environment better.

Rather than offering insightful advice, they should charge at tanks. At least, tactical dolls are better at beating up tanks.

I think there are a lot of humanoids willing to move around Night City. The agent knows the nature of the humanoids in the base, and they will definitely join in the fun.

All humanoids have mastered basic common sense. But Professor, I'm not sure our current firewalls can handle this world's electronic attacks. Antonina, once the most powerful network security engineer, understood the absurd development of information technology in this world after a brief understanding.

The information technology in this world is far more advanced than anywhere else the humanoids have ever encountered. If the humanoids' electronic technology hadn't also advanced, it would have been difficult for them to survive in this world.

"At least the humanoids on our side won't be easily hacked by hackers, right?" Sun Yang looked at Antonina expectantly.

Anton A-mon! Save me! Sun Yang cried in his heart.

"Not really. Humanoids are far more vulnerable to electronic warfare than humans. However, I've created a composite firewall, encrypted with both psychic and radiation codes, that's powerful enough to block electronic attacks. If you don't want to carry this firewall, you must be offline."

Antonina's meaning was very clear: either install a firewall or do not enable any device that can receive signals.

"Unless you're a dedicated electronic warfare T-doll," Antonina glanced at UMP45, who sat in a corner browsing local data. "But there are too many hackers in Night City. Rogue AIs are also a threat to T-dolls. Unless you have power like M4, it's best not to bother with electronic warfare."

UMP45 and AK12 looked at Antonina meaningfully before finally agreeing. Although they were both considered experts, they were nothing compared to Antonina.

"The information I've read shows that there's a group of humans called the Wanderer Family, many of whom haven't undergone brain-computer interface surgery. They also use cell phones for communication. Why not use these external communications like humans in the Old World?" Pascal suggested.

[Will these devices also be eavesdropped on?] M4 was somewhat aware of the nature of the companies in this world. They would do whatever it took to intrude on people's privacy. The people of Night City were used to it, so they just let it go. It didn't matter.

"Use encrypted language for communication. We'll discuss important matters in person—this is the only way. It's better than burning out your mind core." Antonina said helplessly.

"Then do it. Prepare the firewalls, communication equipment, and once you've drawn up your list, I'll take you all there to handle it. Oh, and by the way, as humanoids, you can enter various places, right? Will that reveal your identities?"

You know, this world's attitude towards wandering AI is extremely bad. However, AI running around in a body is rare in this city.

Most AIs just wander around in cyberspace or live peacefully in the Night City local area network.

"At most, they'll be mistaken for the Super Whirlpool Gang, right? Professor, you underestimate the generosity of the people in this world." Antonina didn't really care.

"One more thing, Master. You'll need a base of operations for your scouting T-dolls. I suggest you start a company as a cover." After everyone finished speaking, the agent offered his own suggestion.

"Company? Company... I do have an idea. But let's talk about it after you get the list of volunteers first." Sun Yang said and hung up the phone temporarily.

***

Heading north along the highway, on one side of the road is a vast protein bio-farm.

That should be the territory of the "Biotechnology" company, where a large number of artificially bred maggots are fed. These artificial maggots are used to make various artificially synthesized protein foods.

Sun Yang didn't venture over to take a look out of curiosity. After all, it was the company's territory, and if he was caught, he might be shot. Furthermore, Sun Yang was deeply afraid of places filled with insects.