The water slowly spread across the table, and Chen Hao reached out to wipe it. His fingers had barely touched the edge of the terminal when all the screens suddenly went black.
The lights went out.
The buzzer sounded for a second and then stopped, like someone was being choked. The robotic arm hung motionless in mid-air, and the surveillance footage froze on the last frame of the sheepfold—a goat was looking up at the camera with its mouth open.
"Damn," he said, "that little bit of water couldn't possibly be that bad, could it?"
Nana's optical lens flashed, indicating she was entering offline diagnostic mode. She didn't speak, but a faint electrical hum could be heard from under the console as she retrieved the underlying logs.
A few seconds later, she spoke up: "It's not a leak problem."
"What's that? A power outage? Where's the backup power?"
"Backup power has been activated, but is unable to load the load. Energy system output is zero, the defense grid is offline, the temperature control of the vertical farm is interrupted, and the biogas digester pressure has risen to a critical value."
Chen Hao sat up straight: "They're all dead? Who did it?"
"There were no signs of external attack. The preliminary assessment is that the system's internal communication protocol conflict caused a chain reaction of failures. The old and new modules were not completely isolated. Although the quantum storage was operating normally, erroneous instructions were still propagating between subsystems."
So our new hard drive wasn't broken, but rather a bunch of old relics around it fought each other to the point of destruction?
"That's one way to understand it."
He sighed, leaned back in his chair, then immediately jumped up: "Wait, the sheepfold has no temperature control, those calves will freeze to death in minutes! And if the biogas digester explodes, we won't even have anyone to collect the bodies."
"I have tried to restart automatically three times, but it failed. Manual intervention is recommended."
"Aren't you a robot? Can't you fix yourself?"
“I can operate it, but the high-voltage power distribution requires a physical reset. Someone has to open the main cabinet door and reset the fuse group. However, there is currently no lighting in this area, and there is a risk of electric shock.”
Chen Hao stood up, groped his way to the tool rack in the dark, and grabbed an insulated wrench from memory. He muttered, "Last time you said it was theoretically safe, and it attracted a flock of birds. This time you say there's a risk, but I feel like it's even more dangerous?"
"There is indeed a risk this time."
"Look, you guys are always so honest."
He walked back to the electrical distribution area, squatted down, and felt for the latches on the cabinet door with his hands. In the darkness, he could only rely on his sense of touch; his fingernails traced the metal edge, and finally, with a click, he pulled it open.
A burnt smell wafted out.
“This tastes bad,” he said.
"Slight carbonization was detected on the circuit board. We recommend avoiding direct contact."
"It's too late to say that now." He screwed the wrench in the screws. "I'll count to three, one, two—"
The wrench slipped.
The metal tip touched the exposed terminal.
Sparks exploded, the blue-white light blinding him. A force pushed him backward, his back slamming against the wall, and he collapsed.
Nana instantly cut off the main power switch. Her robotic arm reached out and dragged Chen Hao away from the power distribution area. The scan results showed that the current passed through his right arm and back, but due to the thick body fat, it was partially blocked and did not cause fatal damage, but his heart stopped beating for 0.8 seconds.
She immediately laid him flat and started emergency oxygen therapy. Two minutes later, his breathing stabilized.
On the control panel, the red light is still flashing.
Instead of waiting for human intervention, she directly accessed the original backup data in the quantum storage, bypassing the central system and waking up the devices one by one using the lowest-level protocol.
The lights came back on first, followed by the air circulation pump. The monitoring screen lit up again, showing that the temperature in the sheep pen was rising. The biogas digester pressure dropped, and the alarm was deactivated.
But she discovered a problem: the anti-gravity device was drifting.
The supply pod, which should have been suspended on the track, veered off course and slowly moved towards the goat area. If it crashed, at least six cubs would not survive.
Nana immediately locked the power output, forcibly shutting down the maglev system. The cabin fell half a meter before getting stuck, dangling in the air.
She breathed a sigh of relief; the optical mirror's flashing frequency increased, indicating that the computing load had reached its limit.
At that moment, the person on the sofa moved.
Chen Hao opened his eyes, his throat as dry as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper. He raised his hand to touch his head, his voice hoarse: "I'm still alive?"
"yes."
"Didn't go to the hospital? And didn't see the King of Hell?"
"No."
"Then I must have been asleep. I even got an electric shock in my dream."
"It's not a dream."
He paused for a few seconds, then sat up and looked around: "The lights are on? The system is back?"
"Basic services have been restored. I adopted a phased restart strategy, prioritizing the life support system. However, the overall system remains unstable, and some older equipment burned out during the restart process."
"So...it's not over yet?"
"No."
Chen Hao stood up, supporting himself on the sofa armrest, and walked to the control panel. The screen displayed the status of more than twenty subsystems, half of which were marked with yellow lights, while three red lights remained constantly on.
He stared at it for a while, then suddenly said, "Don't put everything together in the future."
Nana turned to look at him.
"I mean, it's unreasonable for one person to break down and the others to die as well. It's like eating; you can't have everyone sharing the same pair of chopsticks. If one person has diarrhea, the whole table has to lie down."
"You mean, to establish an independent operating unit?"
"Yes. For example, the vegetable-growing system operates on its own, and the power-generating system doesn't need to take orders from the sheep-raising system. Anyone who wants to upgrade can upgrade, without affecting others."
Nana began dividing the interface into functional blocks. She divided the base into twenty independent modules, each with its own power supply, data channel, and emergency protocol. If a module malfunctioned, it could be immediately disconnected to prevent the problem from spreading.
“Doing so will reduce collaboration efficiency,” she said.
"It's better than dying together."
"agree."
She continued developing the isolation strategy while retaining quantum storage as a global backup center. Any data changes to any module are uploaded asynchronously, ensuring rapid reconstruction even if local storage fails.
Chen Hao stood to the side watching the parameters fluctuate, then suddenly asked, "How long was I dizzy?"
"Six minutes and forty-three seconds."
"So long? I thought it would only take a moment."
Your heart has stopped beating.
"Oh." He touched his chest. "No wonder I heard drumming in my dream."
That wasn't a dream.
Why do you always correct me?
"Because the facts matter."
He rolled his eyes, turned to get some water, but his legs gave way and he almost collapsed. Nana grabbed his arm and helped him sit back down on the sofa.
"Don't move around. Your nervous system is still recovering."
"Can't I even have a sip of water?"
"Wait five minutes."
He snorted, leaned back, and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them again: "Nana."
"exist."
"Aren't we particularly unlucky? Other people build bases slowly, but we do it all at once, and every time we're happy, something goes wrong."
"We pursue maximum efficiency."
"But too much efficiency can easily lead to failure."
"You can go slower next time."
"The fact that you can say that means you're afraid too."
She didn't answer, but continued to adjust the communication permissions between modules.
One by one, the red lights on the screen went out, and the yellow lights turned green. The temperature in the sheepfold returned to normal, and the sprinkler system restarted. The goats huddled together grazing, completely unaware that they had almost been flattened into pies.
Looking at the monitor screen, Chen Hao said in a low voice, "Actually, I didn't really want to curse the system. I'm just... a little tired."
"I know."
"Why do people go through all this trouble? They could live just by lying down, so why bother with automation, quantum storage, and anti-gravity transportation?"
"Because stopping progress means regressing."
"But every time I made progress, I almost got electrocuted."
"Risk and reward go hand in hand."
"That sounds like something out of a textbook."
"It's the original text from the knowledge base."
He smiled and didn't say anything more.
The wind outside grew stronger, making the ventilation ducts hum. Inside the base, however, it became quiet, with only the low hum of the equipment running.
Nana completed the configuration of the last few modules. She marked the priority order on the interface: survival-related modules were the highest, production-related modules were the second highest, and research-related modules were the lowest.
“The next step is to test the isolation mechanism,” she said. “You need to confirm the operating procedures.”
Chen Hao nodded and struggled to get up.
“You don’t have to start working right now,” she said.
"It's alright." He steadied himself by holding onto the table. "Since lying down isn't comfortable anyway, I might as well do some work."
He walked to the console and placed his finger on the confirmation button. Nana began demonstrating the disconnection experiment of the first module.
She selected a decommissioned old communication array, a low-priority unit. After pressing the command, the system prompted:
[Module successfully disconnected]
The rest of the systems are functioning normally.
“It works,” she said.
Next, the power module was tested. This is one of the core components; if isolation fails, it could trigger another power outage.
She took a deep breath—though robots don't need to breathe, this action had become a habitual prelude.
Press down with your finger.
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