"Humanity" Was Dead

In Haoren's definition of humanity, the humans on this planet had actually been extinct for at least a thousand years. When they lost the ability to reproduce, lost the light of wisdom, and could only be stored in culture vessels like a clump of cell samples, they had already become extinct in the racial sense.

But for the stubborn mainframe and the entire society of Executors, humanity died today.

In the cylindrical culture vessels, various electrodes and conduits for delivering nutrients were slowly withdrawing from the liquid surface under the control of the mainframe. The wriggling clumps of flesh trembled violently as soon as they lost the support of the machines. In just a moment, cracks of all sizes appeared on their surfaces, and turbid red liquid and bubbles gushed out from between the clumps of flesh, turning the originally pale pink nutrient solution blood red in an instant.

Haoren couldn't tell whether these clumps of flesh could still be considered complete organisms—because almost every cell contained within them was completely different. Deadly mutations caused these cells to produce entirely new gene sequences with each division. From a biological point of view, these cells could not possibly have survived to this day.

For a long time, they had been forcibly combined and maintained by the mainframe using technical means. The entire maintenance system had to filter out large amounts of toxic substances produced by these clumps of flesh every day to prevent all the cells from being killed by their own metabolic products.

But today, this endless suffering could finally end.

After removing all life support systems, these flesh and blood could still survive for a short period of time. Cells would die in large numbers, but they would continue to carry out deadly and toxic physiological activities until they exhausted the nutrients in the vessel. According to the mainframe's calculations, the last cell would probably die completely in a few hours.

"Is this really all it takes?" Haoren frowned, watching this "funeral of humanity." Besides the group of "outsiders" he led, the only witnesses to this funeral were the mainframe and n-6. "I thought there would be a more solemn ceremony."

"The era of humanity is over. We will see them off in our own way," the mainframe's voice echoed in the hall. "This day should have come long ago... I took too long to complete all the calculations."

Haoren sighed. "It was too difficult to complete these calculations with your hardware architecture."

"But only I could have completed this task."

The mainframe and the Executors were different.

Although both were artificial intelligences, they had completely different missions. When humans created the Executors, they gave them as many human-like traits as possible—from appearance to thought processes. Therefore, the Executors had richer emotions and more flexible ways of thinking. These two traits gave them stronger self-learning and development abilities. When humans created the mainframe, they were designing a precise manager. In that turbulent era, they had to ensure that the potential of civilization was not wasted in the slightest, so the design standard of the mainframe was precision, rigor, rationality, and absolute obedience to original instructions.

The mainframe was the supreme commander of the Executors, but at the same time, it was also their nanny.

Using a precise and efficient calculating machine to manage the fledgling society of Executors did ensure the survival of the spark of civilization in the earliest years. However, the day would eventually come when humans would leave, and when humans left, no one could come to the mainframe's console to press the button that could make the ultimate judgment.

Perhaps humans had thought about this problem and designed various judgment mechanisms to help the mainframe determine when to make this decision. However, the long war destroyed too many things. Even the Great Library lost half of its data, and the judgment mechanisms originally designed by humans had long disappeared into history.

Therefore, when this day finally arrived, the mainframe had to complete this difficult process itself.

As a rational and logical artificial intelligence, the mainframe thought hard, thinking with all its might. In its thinking, it burned down most of its own servers, burned down all of its maintainers. After paying a price close to destruction, it finally accepted this fact amidst heavy contradictions and conflicts: "Humanity" was dead.

Then it ran the last program that its creators had left it, which was that short piece of code that represented "adulthood" for the Executors—n-6 was its first user.

"Now, there is only one last thing left," the mainframe's voice echoed in the hall, still that emotionless electronic synthesized voice.

n-6 looked up somewhat blankly. "What is it?"

"Executors after 'adulthood' do not need a mainframe."

n-6 didn't seem to understand what the other party meant at once, but Lily thought of what the mainframe wanted to do before she did, and she immediately cried out: "Hey, you don't have to do this! Although humans are gone, there are still so many people waiting on the moon..."

"My work is done," the mainframe didn't care about Lily's words, just continued quietly, "The era of humanity is over, and so is my era. A grown civilization doesn't need a guardian."

Lily was still anxious: "But..."

"Forget it," Haoren held down the somewhat agitated Lily. "He's already shut down."

Sure enough, after that, the mainframe's voice never sounded again, and the data terminal detected that various mechanical structures inside the fortress were being activated and starting to run automatically under the control of some pre-set underlying programs.

Haoren had already guessed that the mainframe would eventually make this decision. He guessed this when he saw the charred maintainers in the secondary server room: the mainframe burning those maintainers was partly the result of its own malfunctions, but on the other hand, it also represented the choice made by the mainframe's "subconsciousness."

It was seeking self-destruction—because its mission was over.

Even if Haoren forcibly intervened, things wouldn't change much: most of the mainframe's servers had actually been destroyed one by one in the past few years, and its remaining consciousness had been transferred into the control center, but this center was not enough to carry the mainframe's massive amount of data.

Therefore, the mainframe that Haoren and the others saw today was the last time this ancient artificial intelligence would operate in its life.

A series of low rumbling sounds came from deep within the fortress. Some kind of huge mechanical structure was operating, and Haoren felt the entire building shaking slightly.

"Let's leave here," Vivian pulled Haoren. "There's nothing for us here anymore."

"Don't look, let's go," Lily reached out and tugged at the somewhat dazed n-6. "There are still many things waiting for you."

n-6 staggered a step under Lily's great strength, and then she woke up. Her somewhat blank eyes quickly regained their vitality. After taking one last look at the culture vessels that were constantly bubbling with gas and blood mist, she turned and followed Haoren and his group.

"Goodbye, humanity."

The group left the fortress at a speed much faster than when they came. All the passages along the way were open, and even the gates that were originally locked and needed to be cracked by injecting a virus through the data terminal were wide open. All the lights in the fortress were turned on, and the roar of mechanical operation came from deep within the building, as if a long-sleeping beast was murmuring as it was about to wake up.

They rushed out of the fortress gate. Lily pointed into the distance in surprise: "Landlord! What is that?"

Haoren looked in the direction Lily was pointing. He saw the Executors, many Executors. These synthetic humans, who looked no different from humans, came out of various factories and warehouses. They stood blankly on the road, watching the direction of the fortress.

They must have also seen Haoren and his group who had just rushed out of the fortress. However, they had no reaction to this, just maintained a motionless posture, watching the constantly shaking fortress.

The mainframe that had always supported and guided the Executor society for thousands of years was facing its end.

"Why aren't they moving?" Dou Dou poked her head out of Haoren's collar, looking at the Executors in the distance with a face full of surprise.

Haoren patted the little fellow's head: "They've grown up."

A moment later, Nolan's voice sounded in Haoren's mind, with some doubts: "Boss, I don't know what happened... All the troops on Zenith suddenly stopped moving, and I also received a guiding signal to the moon..."

"The matter here is over, just come and pick us up," Haoren interrupted Nolan. "We're going back to that homeworld, there's still work to be done."

Yes, there was still work to be done.

The departure of humanity and the mainframe was just an internal problem for the Executors, but the bigger deadly threat they had to face was on their homeworld. The "Planet Eater" still existed. Although this "Planet Eater" had lost its initiative due to a meteorite rain back then, as long as it still occupied the homeworld, the reborn civilization on the moon couldn't be considered truly safe.

At least on this point, Haoren felt that he could still find something to do.

After returning to the spaceship, Haoren and his group flew straight towards that vibrant planet, while n-4 learned from n-6 that humanity was dead.

Since the mainframe had updated the code in the logic circuits of every Executor in advance, n-4 and her teammates accepted this fact safely. However, n-4, like n-6, seemed very茫然(mangran - at a loss) about the topic of "future."

Or rather, until today, the Executors, as consumables, had never considered the word "future."

n-6 took the initiative to find Haoren, who was staying on the bridge, and frankly stated her confusion.

"We never thought about facing these problems ourselves," the robot girl said. "Without orders from the mainframe, what should we do?"

"Before leaving, the mainframe should have selected and set up a management group with authority among the Executors," Haoren said, because he had been scanning the signals sent and received by the fortress with the data terminal, so he had a general understanding of these things. "It won't be long before this new management group should contact you, and you will know then."

n-6 frowned very humanely: "What should we do now?"

Haoren raised his head and looked at the large holographic projection in the center of the bridge.

On the projection, the blue and green planet was rapidly magnifying.

"We'll go to the deepest part of your homeworld together."