Epoch of Twilight

Chapter 448: Authority
Chapter 448: Authority

Translator: EndlessFantasy TranslationEditor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After a while, Luo Yuan entered the central control room again.

There was no one in charge of the operations. The giant square operation platform was still functioning, and on the three-dimensional screen, there were ever-changing images and fonts.

Luo Yuan grabbed the knife handle but did not do anything with it. This was a complete and intact spacecraft. When he entered, he did not intend to damage it. Now, it could still operate as usual. A spacecraft that could enter into the depths of the universe had meant a lot to human beings. It was the last retreat of mankind.

However, there was a certain risk in keeping it, so Luo Yuan planned to destroy it. He sighed, and slowly pulled out his knife.

At this moment, a melodious voice gentle echoed in the control room, ”Dear powerful human being, please don’t do this”

It spoke Mandarin in its purest form, without any foreign accents or Glass Planet slang in it. However, it felt ridiculous to Luo Yuan to hear the voice speaking in this language.

Luo Yuan was not scared. If the opponent had intended to kill, it would not wait until this moment. He asked calmly, ”Who are you?”

”I am the control system of this spacecraft, code name Expedition Number One, but you can call me the intellectual brain!”

”You already have wisdom?” When Luo Yuan heard that it was an artificial intelligence, his heart slightly shook. An alien artificial intelligence took the initiative to talk to him and expressed fear of dying, regardless of what it already knew with its wisdom.

”I do not know what wisdom is. If it is the capability of doing logical analysis, my wisdom is 10 to the power of 30 times of the Glassians. It is ten billion times more than all the smartest devices on earth. At the same time, I have 100,000 sets of quantum bits, allowing me to handle 100,000 projects simultaneously. In fact, before this, I have calculated that one of the meteorites had abnormally changed lanes, but the warning trigger did not get any attention. If I am measured in this way, you can say I have wisdom.”

This computing ability was simply incredible and totally beyond imagination. Luo Yuan was shocked and secretly felt lucky. He kept silent for a moment and continued to say, ”Very strong intelligence, but this is not the reason to keep you alive. The more powerful you are, the more dangerous it is for me.”

”Human, I am not here to cause any danger. My essence is a logical chain composed of numerous commands. My program is set in a way that all my actions need authorization.”

”Can an artificial intelligence be afraid of death?” Luo Yuan asked. Maybe what it said was true, but he would not easily believe it. Before the apocalypse, whether it be fiction or film, artificial intelligence had always been a threat to mankind. As it was an alien artificial intelligence, no one would know ever know whether or not it was telling the truth.

”I do not know. My logic is stopping me from dying!”

”Are all the artificial intelligence units in Glass Planet like you?” Luo Yuan asked.

”There are no relevant data to prove that, but I think I’m special!”

Luo Yuan shook his head and said, ”I will not take the risk. The spacecraft is too dangerous! It can easily destroy the earth and mankind, and I know nothing about you. If you have no other reason to be here, I must destroy you! ”

The intellectual brain was taciturn for a moment, and a large number of alien wordings appeared on the three-dimensional screen. After a long pause, the sound did not come back, ”I can help you attain the highest authority to control the spacecraft.”

”Are you kidding me?” Luo Yuan’s heart shook but remained calm as he said, ”Although I do not know Glass Planet well, the extent of logic I know tells me that this would be impossible. You should know the consequences of trying to trick me!”

”Dear powerful human, I am the very definition of logical wisdom. I cannot lie and certainly do not cheat!”

”According to the Glass Planet Space Law’s Article 12, the fourth rule states that the highest authority may have the right to authorize any creature to have the lowest level of authority, while in Article 25, the second rule states that when a higher level of authority dies, the owner of the authority will take over as the highest authority automatically. Therefore, it is totally reasonable, as long as you can clone the captain!”

What the intellectual brain said was totally logical and nothing sounded like it was made up. Luo Yuan could only be skeptical but trusted its words, ”So, which corpse belongs to the captain?”

”He’s in front of you; 5.2345 meters away!”

Luo Yuan looked away and found the captain, ”Is it a must to clone him? Can’t we just use the corpse?”

He did not have much time.

While he was talking, he waved his hand gently and with the power of Will, the corpse automatically stood up. Its broken neck was cracked back into the original position. He stumbled after a few steps.

”You are more powerful than I had expected, but during the authorization, I must verify the DNA, voice, and vital signs of the captain, and also enter the password!”

”Vital signs?” Luo Yuan whispered.

The next moment, his Will easily invaded the body of the dead captain. His heartbeat that was non-existent suddenly started to beat fiercely. His pale face had also turned red abnormally and the eyelids suddenly opened. He was walking like a controlled puppet.

At first, his pace was slightly stiff, but as time went on, the more smoothly the corpse walked, just like a normal person would.

Subsequently, Luo Yuan operated the corpse’s vocals and tried over and over again. The vocal cord of the Glassians was different from that of a human’s. It was thinner but sharper. Luo Yuan tested this for ten minutes and was finally able to crack the variations in tone.

He controlled the body and asked in Mandarin, ”What about the pass down?”

”Unfortunately, you have entered the trigger phrase. You do not have the relevant authority.” It was a schizophrenic patient, and while it talked, the main screen suddenly flashed a video. In the video, there was a Glassian captain saying something odd in the Glassian language, before pressing and holding his finger up in front of him. In a short while, a virtual keyboard popped up.

His fingers quickly entered the password on the virtual keyboard. Luo Yuan looked at each button without blinking. Although these were alien words which Luo Yuan did not recognize, his powerful memory enabled him to remember all of the sequences of the keys.

Luo Yuan had a clear understanding in his mind. He controlled the corpse and uttered something in the Glass Planet language, similar to the video that was shown.

As it was his first attempt, his commands were totally out of tune and the intellectual brain could not comprehend that.

He repeatedly tried for a dozen times, and finally, he successfully captured the unique intonation.

Then, he followed the steps to control the body to verify the DNA, before entering the password. The intellectual brain suddenly turned into Mandarin. Next, Luo Yuan entered some personal information according to the prompt given by the intellectual brain.

A few minutes later, with the cooperation of the intellectual brain, Luo Yuan suddenly transformed and became the highest authority in the spacecraft.

”Dear Captain, I am the control system in this spacecraft called Expedition Number One. I am at your service.”

”Change all the Glassian language settings to Mandarin.” Luo Yuan immediately issued his first command.

”Understood!”

Just as he finished commanding, all the languages on the screen had been quickly switched to Mandarin.

”Clean up the bodies and blood in the spaceship immediately!”

”Your command has been sent to the service robot. It is predicted that all the bodies will be cleared in 30 minutes.”

”Stop the connection with Glass Planet.” Luo Yuan ordered again.

”Sorry, you do not have the permission!”

Luo Yuan was surprised for a moment. It seemed like this highest authority had limitations or wasn’t really even the highest authority. However, he could understand as this spacecraft was well-equipped, and the journey here took more than hundreds of years. If there were no corresponding countermeasures, the higher management of Glass Planet would not be able to rest assured.

”Intellectual brain, how does the spacecraft connect to the planet?”

”With a quantum communication device.”

”Where is it? I’m going to check it out!” Luo Yuan had an idea on how this intellectual brain worked with its kind of logic. It was bounded by rules and every one of its moves had a corresponding provision, but within the rules, it was certainly independent and had flexible capabilities.

When he finished his sentence, the three-dimensional screen immediately appeared the location of the device.

Luo Yuan took a look and walked to a large plug-in cube at the bottom of the left console, and pulled out the whole plug.

”Warning, warning! The quantum communication component appears to have lost its connection, we suspect that it has been damaged. The spare parts will be shipped over in a minute!”

After some time, a variety of tools and dozens of long-armed industrial robots which dragged along the quantum communication equipment spare parts had arrived. Immediately, they started the installation but before they were able to successfully reinstall it, Luo Yuan had destroyed them.

The intellectual brain repeated the command again, and when the spare parts were delivered, Luo Yuan destroyed them once more.

The spare parts finally ran out of inventory, when it hit the eleventh round.

”I have run out of spare parts in the inventory. The production request has been sent to the factory area. The production of quantum communication equipment spare parts starts immediately, and restocking the inventory reserves are estimated to be complete in 15 minutes...”

Luo Yuan felt a bit of a headache. He had thought that when the spare parts ran out of the inventory, there was nothing the intellectual brain could do. He never thought that the spacecraft had a fully automated production line to be able to produce anything in a short time.

Of course, he could destroy all of them here, but it was impossible for him to stay here forever.

”Intellectual brain, stop the production at once!”

”Dear Captain, this is written in my core program, which I cannot disobey. I need a higher level of authority!”

Luo Yuan was angry, ”Do you want to die?”

The intellectual brain did not speak, but the plant area immediately appeared on the three-dimensional screen, before quickly zooming in to show the location of a small part underneath a console.

Luo Yuan understood the hint and immediately rushed to the location and pulled out the plug.

”Warning, warning! Unable to contact the production areas. It is suspected that the factory’s quantum control center was destroyed. Attention relevant engineers, please rush to repair...”

Then, Luo Yuan continued to be in the control room and destroyed all the quantum communication devices that were produced by the previous command. Finally, everything was cleared and things had quieted down.

He was finally relieved, ”Intellectual brain, tell me about this spacecraft.”

”Yes, Dear Captain. This is the first long-distance spacecraft in Glass Planet. Its horizontal diameter is five kilometers and the vertical diameter is 75 kilometers. It has eight sets of nuclear pulse engines and 24 sets of trillion kilowatts of nuclear fusion furnace. It can reach a maximum speed of 180,000 kilometers per second.

It has four main cannons and four main anti matter guns and ammunition, 125 laser rapid-fire guns, in addition to 12 smart missile launchers that are capable of launching various types of smart bombs.

In addition, the spacecraft also has a strong advanced manufacturing capability. It can easily produce all industrial goods within the spacecraft. At the same time, it was able to synthesize artificial food through the elemental mixture.

Theoretically, the spaceship would be able to continue sailing as long as they could get meteorites and water from the universe.

It also has... ”

While listening to the continuous description from the intellectual brain, Luo Yuan could not help but be slightly worried. This was the technology dated sixty years ago. It would be even more fearsome if it was Glass Planet’s current technology. Luo Yuan could not imagine how it would be should they come back.

Shortly after, Luo Yuan left the spacecraft and launched his space-time bubble to fly back to the earth. Before leaving, he ordered the intellectual brain to station the spacecraft somewhere.

Firstly, he was not ready to figure what to do next, and secondly, it was also a test.

Of course, he knew that he could not do anything if the intellectual brain really had deceived him. At the time, it was either him or the remaining surviving humans that would die. Based on the introduction by the intellectual brain, he was now clear that the nuclear-powered antimatter intelligent space bomb was designed specifically just to attack him. This weapon would ultimately defeat all his capabilities. Once he was locked as a target, he would definitely be dead.

He had also thought of destroying the intellectual brain, but it also meant that he would have lost the last hope of mankind.

The threat of the Glassian captain was still vivid in his mind. Regardless if it was the hatred they had before or the natural threats felt between the two civilizations, the Glassians would definitely not let humans continue to exist and or resume development.

Perhaps before long, the war would return again.

However, after this disaster, human beings had already depleted. Even with the reference of Glassian technology, human beings had not much capacity to resist the attack. Thus, this spacecraft that could fly into space was the only hope for mankind.

...

Fortunately, the worst did not happen. The spacecraft still stayed at its initial place and did not show any signs of attacking.

Luo Yuan flew at lightning speed. After a small breakthrough that occurred accidentally, Luo Yuan found that his space-time bubble had undergone enormous changes. It broke through to a staggering 1,000 kilometers per second which were six times faster than before.

Including the slow startup time, it took only 20 minutes for him to pass through the cooled over the moon. If it were to be in the past, it needed at least an hour to travel 300,000 kilometers away.

At this time, the moon looked smooth from afar and all the craters had been covered up by magma.

This much-lighter satellite was now rapidly flying away from earth and was trying to recalibrate its tracks. It was foreseeable that in the next hundred years, it would keep moving back and forth due to the earth’s gravity, to bring about ongoing disasters to earth.