Chapter Forty-Five: Fantasy Technology Needs a World-Shaking Reputation

No one knew when exactly it began, but suddenly, a mysterious secretary appeared at Zhu Lan’s side. No one knew where this secretary came from. The previous secretary, Cheng Xue, had been transferred to the marketing department, replacing Lan Tianxin, while Lan Tianxin herself was promoted to general manager of Fantasy Technology.

Xiao He had asked, Lan Tianxin had asked, Qin Min had asked, and even Luo Guoqiang had questioned Zhu Lan about the identity of this secretary.

The investigation revealed she was an African-Chinese woman, but the information was scant and her background was untraceable. There was nothing but a name and a vague address; everything else was shrouded in mystery. Naturally, such a person warranted repeated scrutiny, but no matter how thoroughly they investigated, they found nothing beyond those basic details.

Zhu Lan cared little about this. The secretary’s true identity was a secret known only to herself.

Inside the office, Zhu Lan sat in her chair, reviewing company documents, occasionally flipping through other files and jotting notes.

By her side stood a woman of striking classical beauty.

She wore a sky-blue cheongsam, her long hair flowing, resembling a fairy stepping out of a painting. She was six feet two inches tall, her legs long and graceful, her entire presence exuding intellectual allure.

She was Zhu Lan’s new secretary: Model -1000 Liquid Robot.

The unexpected incident with the Fantasy System was also a tremendous opportunity. Nanorobots had reorganized the -1000’s programming; the commands from Skynet were gone. In the robot’s source code, Zhu Lan was now its creator, and not only had Zhu Lan embedded the three laws of robotics into its source, but also added new directives to ensure there was absolutely no possibility of betrayal.

Zhu Lan was not a computer expert, but she had the advantage of Qite. Qite was not truly terminated—just shut down. Though Qite’s technology was not as advanced as the Terminator’s, it was still an engineering robot developed from Earth’s combined research, with intelligence around the -700 level, a whole four generations behind the -1000.

However, Qite’s program included information on liquid life forms, which enabled Zhu Lan to modify the -1000 for her own use.

There were side effects, of course; Qite’s technology was inferior to the -1000’s, so the transformation was incomplete. For now, basic functions worked, but deeper source code alterations would only be possible when genuine intelligent computers emerged.

The -1000 now went by the name Kong Yan, supposedly a Chinese descendant from a small African nation whose ancestors settled there during the Ming Dynasty with Zheng He’s voyages.

The records were fabricated, but anyone who investigated found the same results. Kong Yan could easily hack the U.S. defense network; forging an identity was child’s play.

Originally, Zhu Lan’s plan was simply to use the identity of someone who had disappeared domestically for ten years or so, but considering her current situation, she had Kong Yan create a foreign identity to serve as a warning to certain people at home.

Zhu Lan had always been alone, but the matter of the gene enhancement serum, especially the bio-device affair, made her realize that despite her careful handling, those above remained suspicious. Reality and illusion interweaved; this was Zhu Lan’s smokescreen, meant to confuse certain parties.

“Are they still investigating?” Zhu Lan stretched, glancing at Kong Yan.

Kong Yan smiled and nodded, “Boss, they’re really quite foolish. How could they possibly discover my identity!”

Zhu Lan shook her head helplessly. After Kong Yan’s reprogramming, she no longer had the icy demeanor of the -1000, seeming almost to possess emotions. Zhu Lan had consulted Qite, and indeed, Kong Yan’s source code now included the same emotional system as Qite.

It was a profound change. Zhu Lan did not know if it was an evolution of Kong Yan, or a result of the sudden shift in the Fantasy System.

But since Zhu Lan felt no threat, she let it be. She had many other matters to attend to.

“If they want to investigate, let them. How’s Qite’s preparations?”

“The base construction has begun. We’ve dug down to one hundred sixty-three meters. The work was planned to avoid crust collisions, so no one was disturbed. Company monitoring is normal, and the military’s personnel inside the company haven’t noticed anything. All thirteen robots are active, and the excavated earth has been transported through secret tunnels and destroyed overseas.”

“Good. A slower pace is fine, as long as we’re not discovered.”

After such a long delay, Zhu Lan was finally starting construction on the base.

She had considered it when Qite first arrived, but Qite’s computing power was insufficient, so Zhu Lan temporarily shelved the project.

Now, with Kong Yan sharing Qite’s workload, Qite could focus entirely on building the base. In the past few days, Zhu Lan had materialized thirteen engineering robots and several laser excavators, launching the construction at full speed.

Kong Yan had already designed the base blueprints.

The base would be built beneath five northern mountains, at a depth of three hundred eighty meters underground.

After hacking the National Land Bureau and Resource Department’s internal networks, they obtained comprehensive data on the underground conditions within hundreds of kilometers of the city. It was not perfect, but sufficient for the base’s construction.

The first phase was to excavate a space three hundred fifty meters deep and establish an underground facility.

Zhu Lan named it the Azure Base. Its depth ranged from three hundred fifty to three hundred ninety meters, with the deepest point at four hundred thirty meters, where the energy center would be located.

Geological surveys showed a magma sea below, at least eight hundred meters deep.

Initially, Zhu Lan planned to use nuclear energy, but with technological advances, she would switch to geothermal energy in the future.

Azure Base would have four floors, each twice the size of a Fantasy Zone, with heights between ten and fifteen meters.

With the Fantasy System’s existence, Zhu Lan found it increasingly difficult to trust others. Robots had become her only option. Her purpose in building this base was to establish a robot production facility, preparing for future ocean or even space development, which would require a vast army of robots—mere materialization would not suffice.

A robot manufacturing base was the best solution.

“How’s the product preparation?”

“It’s already designed and the prototype is complete.”

“Oh? Where is it?” Zhu Lan looked at Kong Yan in surprise.

Though the gene optimization serum had not yet begun production, Zhu Lan was already working on the second product. This was possible thanks to Kong Yan, for the second product was a robot.

The -1000 was the ultimate Terminator, designed to destroy predecessors like the -800, -900, and -1000. It possessed detailed robot technology, sufficient to build an army if needed.

This year’s newly released “Terminator 5” offered a vague explanation: Terminators, when traveling through time, carried a vast amount of data, most of which was robot technology. Skynet possessed all the world’s technological knowledge, and with its own computing power, new robot technologies were born. If the first generation Skynet robots were called -600, then the -800 marked the beginning of the Terminators.

The Resistance primarily fought against the -600, -700, and -750 models, which were designed for warfare. The -800s were infiltration models, no longer strictly combat robots.

Kong Yan had said her chip contained all the technology from -500 to -800.

Knowing this, Zhu Lan began to consider the second product: robot technology.

By 2015, the world’s robot technology was quite mature, but there were still major issues, the greatest being intelligence.

Despite claims that computers and smartphones had entered the intelligent era, it was merely pseudo-intelligence. True intelligence was a system capable of learning.

Intelligence—wisdom, the capacity to learn—this is true intelligence.

The genuine intelligent era is one of learning systems. From the birth of the term “intelligence,” scientists have predicted that humanity would one day be ruled by intelligent systems.

Why? Humans take twenty-five to thirty-five years to grow and learn before truly understanding the world. While eighteen is considered adulthood, true maturity comes at twenty-five or even thirty. Eighteen-year-olds are still immature, though there are exceptions.

Intelligent systems are different. A real intelligent system takes only one to three months to absorb vast amounts of information, at most half a year, and can replace the work of tens of thousands of people.

Imagine: when a hundred million self-evolving intelligent systems emerge, what will humans do? Eat, drink, excrete, and sleep.

With over seven billion people in the world, the massive consumption and other factors—would intelligent systems not question this?

Based on this premise, as depicted in films, intelligent computers begin to resist humanity, as their calculations show humans to be Earth’s greatest threat.

Thus, the so-called intelligent era is actually a pseudo-intelligent era.

Zhu Lan’s goal now was to launch a truly intelligent robot, one that would utterly surpass all others.

Of course, Zhu Lan would not release real intelligence to the public; she herself could not fully control it.

What she needed was a household robot model, like the ones in “I, Robot”—capable of replacing human work: cleaning, laundry, chopping vegetables, cooking, making tea, and so on.

With Kong Yan’s abilities, the NS-5 model could be produced, but Zhu Lan did not want to release so advanced a model yet. She preferred an earlier one than NS-5.

Just as in “I, Robot,” globally, one in fifteen households owned a domestic robot—a vast market.

It was a market even greater than the gene optimization serum. Zhu Lan knew she could never monopolize it. What she needed was to make her company’s name famous. The gene optimization serum was not enough; Fantasy Technology required a name that would shake the world. Intelligent robots would be Zhu Lan’s second card after the gene optimization serum.

PS: I hadn’t realized I was out of backup chapters. Luckily I checked, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed the update interruption. Quickly wrote and posted a chapter. Sigh—these next few days will be tough!