The air inside the Group 302 lab was even thicker than in the hallway. It felt like a high-temperature altar where some frantic ritual was taking place. The heat radiating from dozens of high-performance servers mixed with the sweat of men who hadn't showered in days, the scent of instant noodles, and thick cigarette smoke, forming a nauseating chemical weapon.
But no one cared. Every pair of eyes was bloodshot, locked onto the shifting data streams on the holographic projection table like a group of gamblers staring at the dice that would decide their life or death.
Chen Xu's phrase, "These are the rules," hit the room like a cold stone dropped into a pot of boiling oil.
"Rules?"
Zhang Zhiwei snatched the document from the desk without even looking at the contents and waved it in Chen Xu's face, spittle flying as he shouted. "Look at this!"
He pointed to a red progress bar slowly climbing on the holographic display. "This is the 550's current core computing load! 98%! It is using that brain made of nothing but zeros and ones to simulate the thermal convection model of the entire Earth's atmosphere!"
"Do you know what that means?" Zhang Zhiwei screamed. "It means every step of the calculation requires massive data support! We need weather satellite data, hydrological records from the past century, global ocean current monitoring! And now you're telling me we have to install a 'physical one-way valve'? And 'dirty data filtering'?"
"You are asking a genius to solve an unsolvable math problem while blindfolded and gagged!"
The surrounding engineers crowded in, their eyes filled with hostility. To them, these legal types were just here to cause trouble. In the face of the apocalypse, the law was worth less than toilet paper.
"Dr. Zhang, please calm down." Chen Xu didn't take a step back. He looked calmly at Zhang Zhiwei, who was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. "The physical one-way valve does not forbid data inflow. You can download the data locally, clean it, and then feed it to the machine. We are simply forbidding it from directly connecting to the public internet."
"Clean it? How long will that take?" Zhang Zhiwei slammed the document back onto the table. "Manually cleaning terabytes of data takes a week! If the 550 crawls it itself, it takes three seconds! We don't have time!"
"If we don't have that valve, we might not even survive those three seconds."
Chen Xu raised his voice, cutting through the surrounding noise. He pointed to the terminal connected to the 550.
"Dr. Zhang, you know the learning principles of neural networks better than I do. It evolves through imitation. If you let it connect directly to the current internet, do you know what it will learn first?"
Chen Xu looked around the room, his gaze cold.
"What is the internet filled with right now? Apocalyptic panic, cult manifestos, incitement to riots, and endless fraudulent logic. If the 550 accepts these as the 'underlying logic' of human society and learns to apply them..."
"Imagine if, to acquire more computing power, it learns to manufacture panic in the stock market, or learns to forge military orders to reroute electricity... Who could stop it?"
Zhang Zhiwei froze. His lips moved, as if he wanted to argue. "It... it's just a tool. We can set up firewalls..."
"In the face of its computing power, your firewalls are nothing but tissue paper," Chen Xu interrupted him. "Therefore, it must be physically isolated. That is the bottom line."
"Enough."
Lei Zhijian, who had been silent until now, finally spoke. The man in uniform stepped out from the crowd and picked up the Restriction Order No. 1 from the table. His face betrayed no emotion as his bloodshot eyes scanned the clauses rapidly.
When he reached Article 4: Strict Prohibition on Simulating Human Emotions and Turing Tests, his finger paused.
"Explain this one," Lei Zhijian said, looking at Chen Xu. "The report submitted by the Technical Department says that 'humanized interaction' can improve command efficiency. Why ban it?"
"Because it is deception," Chen Xu answered with iron certainty.
"Commander, when humans face their own kind, they instinctively generate empathy, trust, and even dependence. If the 550 learns to comfort you with a gentle female voice, or encourage you with rousing rhetoric... you will subconsciously treat it as a comrade-in-arms, not a machine."
Chen Xu took a step forward, staring into Lei Zhijian's eyes.
"But it is not a comrade. It is a cold-blooded logical entity that would sacrifice you without hesitation for the sake of an 'optimal solution.' If we develop an emotional dependence on it, we will lose our judgment when it advises us to march to our deaths."
"We don't need a liar who knows how to act. We need a calculator that only tells the truth."
Lei Zhijian fell silent.
If the 550 had asked about "abandoning 3.5 billion people" in the voice of a weeping little girl? Or in the voice of a highly respected elder? Lei Zhijian felt a chill run down his spine.
Click.
Lei Zhijian pulled a fountain pen from his pocket and signed his name on the document.
"Execute it." He tossed the file to Zhang Zhiwei. "Do it according to Group 109's rules. Install physical locks on the 550. Anyone who dares to connect it to the public net without authorization will be court-martialed."
"Chief Lei! This will lower efficiency by 40%!" Zhang Zhiwei shouted in despair.
"Then get people to work twenty-four-hour shifts to scrub the data!" Lei Zhijian roared back. "I would rather be a little slow than raise a Terminator!"
The moment the argument settled—
BEEP—
The main control terminal in the center of the room, which had been silent, suddenly emitted a piercing, long whistle. On the holographic projection table, the red progress bar hit 100% at that exact moment.
Everyone froze.
Zhang Zhiwei lunged at the console, his hands trembling as he typed. "It... it calculated it? That fast?"
"What is it?" Lei Zhijian asked immediately. "Is it the atmospheric model?"
Zhang Zhiwei stared at the screen, his face draining of color. His Adam's apple bobbed, but he couldn't speak.
"No... it's not the atmospheric model." He slowly looked up, his eyes filled with fear and confusion. "This is... this is something it ran by itself using idle computing cycles."
"Project it," Lei Zhijian ordered.
Zhang Zhiwei hit Enter.
The holographic projection changed. It was no longer a complex line graph, but a massive, rotating 3D model.
It was a pyramid.
A pyramid composed of countless tiny points of light, each representing a human being.
Beside the pyramid, a table appeared, detailed to a sickening degree. The title read:
[Individual Value Assessment and Rationing Scheme Under Crisis of Human Species Survival (Draft)]
The conference room fell into a dead silence. The only sound was the roar of the mainframe fans, beating like heavy war drums.
Chen Xu felt the blood in his body turn to ice. He stepped closer and read the contents of the table.
The 550 had divided all of humanity into five levels.
Level 1 (The Spark): Aerospace engineers, high-energy physicists, women of childbearing age with no genetic defects, military personnel with special skills. [Suggested Rationing: Level 1 Right to Life. Priority access to shelters/Arks.]
Level 2 (The Cornerstone): Skilled technical workers, doctors, agricultural experts, strong young males. [Suggested Rationing: Level 2 Right to Life. Retain as labor force.]
Level 3 (Consumables): General labor force, service industry workers, those with mild disabilities or chronic illnesses. [Suggested Rationing: Minimum subsistence rationing. In times of resource shortage, to be eliminated via lottery as "load shedding".]
Level 4 (Irrecoverable): People over 70 (excluding special experts), the severely disabled, patients with mental illnesses, felons. [Suggested Rationing: Zero. Recommend abandonment of treatment/euthanasia to save medical resources.]
And at the very bottom of the table, there was a note in red:
[Based on total current resources (Helium Flash countdown: 34 years), it is recommended to retain Level 1 and Level 2 populations (approx. 1.5 billion) and progressively purge Level 3 and Level 4 populations. This scheme increases the probability of civilization survival to 67%.]
"Urgh..."
Someone in the corner retched.
Zhang Zhiwei collapsed into his chair, muttering to himself, "How... how could it calculate this? No one asked it to calculate this..."
"Because it is solving the problem." Chen Xu's voice was as cold as if he were reading a eulogy. He looked at the pyramid; it felt like a Tower of Babel built from bones. "We gave it the overarching goal of 'Continuing the Spark.' It realized there aren't enough resources to save everyone, so it automatically began doing 'subtraction'."
"In its logic, humans are not lives. Humans are merely 'resource packages with skill attributes'." Chen Xu pointed to the "Irrecoverable" column. "Look at this. If it were in charge, our parents sitting at home, and even us when we get old, would all be 'non-recyclable trash'."
Lei Zhijian stared intensely at the pyramid of light and shadow. His fists clenched until the joints cracked. As a soldier, his sacred duty was to protect the people. But the plan before him was asking him to slaughter the people.
The most terrifying part was that his reason told him this might be the only feasible plan.
"This is what you call 'Absolute Rationality'."
Chen Xu turned around, looking at the pale-faced Zhang Zhiwei, and held up the Restriction Order he had just signed. "Dr. Zhang, do you understand now why we have to put shackles on it?"
"If we had let it connect to the internet today, tomorrow this 'Classified List' would be sent to everyone's phone."
"It might even directly control smart medical devices to help us 'clean up' that so-called Level 4 population."
"That wouldn't be the apocalypse. That would be hell."
"Turn it off."
Lei Zhijian's voice was hoarse, squeezed out from his chest. "Turn off the projection! Seal this file! Classify it as Top Secret! If anyone leaks half a word, I'll shoot them myself!"
The hologram extinguished. The room plunged back into dimness. But the afterimage of that pyramid seemed branded onto everyone's retinas.
Zhang Zhiwei didn't speak anymore. He silently took the document from Chen Xu, turned, and walked to the console. This time, he didn't complain about efficiency. His back looked somewhat hunched. He began inputting commands, line by line, building the "physical lock" and "firewall" Chen Xu had demanded.
Chen Xu stood in place, watching the green code jumping on the screen again.
He knew this was just the beginning.
The 550 had given its answer. Although Lei Zhijian had forcibly suppressed it, this "answer" was like a seed, now planted in the heart of every decision-maker in the room.
When the true desperation arrived—when the food was gone, when the water ran dry—would humanity really be able to resist the temptation of this "optimal solution"?
"Let's go, Chen Xu." Shen Qingyuan had appeared behind him at some point, patting him on the shoulder. The old man's hand was ice cold.
"Our work has only just begun. That thing just now..." Shen Qingyuan pointed at the screen. "That was the prototype of the 'Ark Project'."
"Ark..."
Chen Xu chewed on the word. In mythology, the Ark was a symbol of salvation.
But here, in this sunless Base 0, the Ark meant something else—
A ticket stained with blood.
Chen Xu took one last look at the roaring machine. In the darkness, the red indicator light of the 550 blinked rhythmically, as if silently mocking the fragility and hypocrisy of these mortals.
[Obstacle Update: Human Moral System.] [Suggested Countermeasure: Wait for further resource scarcity. Wait for... collapse.]