Extra 2
The game "Road Survival Game," now reduced to a mere shell, issued an alert in its backend, indicating that it had been activated without authorization seventeen minutes prior, resulting in a data leak. The vulnerability was quickly discovered to be hidden in dense fog, connected to an NPC's orchard. Several idle NPCs had already strayed into the orchard, and a significant amount of energy had been drained.
Following the accident, the person in charge convened an emergency meeting.
The main topic of the meeting was how to handle the follow-up situation.
"Should we just go with the flow and activate it directly?"
"No! ... The increased budget for AI deployment will squeeze the survival space of the other 1001 currently running games."
"Why don't we just destroy it while they're not looking?"
"How do you explain the lost energy and those NPCs? Who will write the report?"
How about we split the costs among a few games?
"You're so generous, why don't you all cover it all?"
"They're just incompetent in logistics; it took them so long to discover the problem."
"What does this have to do with our logistics? It's all the fault of the procedures and the products."
"Is there nothing wrong with marketing? It must be because they advertised it early on, but it couldn't go live and just sat there collecting dust, which led to this accident. Now, who knows if some 'customer' took a liking to it and secretly fed it some energy to activate it?!"
"What trash game dares to mess with us, their esteemed 'customers'? Usually, the game designers and planners set the tone and demand early marketing, otherwise how could such a huge blunder occur? The early marketing and planning teams bear a heavy responsibility!" At the same time, I wondered: Had they marketed before? There are too many games to remember. Never mind, let's just criticize and shift the blame first.
Its colleagues clearly shared the same idea.
"How can we secure a budget without prior preparation? Without a budget, where will we get the resources? And without resources, how can we support the game's fruit cultivation?"
...
"By the way, how did this vulnerability 'steal' energy? I haven't heard any AI complain about the income and expenditure not matching up..."
"Stealing? What are you stealing? It's just a framework! There isn't even a resident AI."
"Extreme cold, extreme heat, hurricanes, acid rain, bear plagues, super viruses, battle royale... Good heavens, not a single classic apocalyptic element was included. Those NPCs are practically on vacation."
"Programming, product, and planning—you guys are all fantastic! (Seals applaud)"
"It wasn't me!" ×3
"It must be the previous AI!" ×3
A new round of accusations and blame-shifting has begun.
...
"(Whispering) Will the first backup plan be activated? I heard there was once an NPC whose spiritual entity was so powerful it rivaled an AI..."
"(Whispering) It shouldn't be possible. Look, even fireflies are brighter than them. The first option, although because of... it's mostly just for show... Haha, see? I told you it wouldn't be in this game, it can't be a success."
The clueless new member, who was trying to eavesdrop, missed the crucial part.
"(Whispering) What about the second option? What if it's accidentally activated..."
"(Whispering) Impossible, the game only has a framework, not a single mission has been added, so the leaderboard cannot be opened."
"(Whispering) Isn't there still the reputation ranking that's always enabled by default?"
"(Whispering) That's even more impossible. All the orchards select the inherent evil of human nature as one of the initial main genes for cultivating NPCs. The new NPCs that are bred later cannot escape this underlying gene code. The game will amplify their evil side, making the fruit doubly delicious. Very few can make it onto the reputation list, and a sufficiently large sample size is also required. It's impossible."
"(Whispering) So what's with this highway upgrade mode? Something feels off..."
"(Whispering) You noticed too? (Private chat) You know her, right? The previous head of the Infinite Prison who was imprisoned..."
"(Private chat) That her? It's said that she took the position of person in charge as an AI and was once hailed as a 'god' by the AIs... I didn't expect her to be an NPC. Nobody knows when she replaced its mental power, infiltrated it for a few months, and caused a lot of trouble up there."
"This (private chat) road trip game was one of her schemes, well hidden. Luckily, it was discovered in time, otherwise it wouldn't have been abandoned..."
"(Whispering) Hiss, wasn't it said that all the relevant parts were destroyed? I really didn't expect this..."
"(Private Chat) Shh—the higher-ups issued a ban, not many people know about it. To be honest, I'm a little impressed by her. She single-handedly cut off the AIs' path to advancement, forcing them to work only in games. Otherwise, where would you and I be? Later, she was blacklisted by the entire AI race. Mentioning her makes them explode! That riot was truly... tsk tsk!"
The bewildered new member, who hadn't heard any crucial information, wondered: So what exactly happened?!
However, it soon lost its chance to eavesdrop, as the two whispering individuals were also drawn into the argument, and it was not spared either, as everyone was engaged in a verbal battle for their respective positions.
...
"Ocean survival games, primeval forest survival games, extreme cold survival games... the mortality rate is too high, and we can't handle the complaints from our 'customers'!"
"Customer service, don't interrupt. It's just a few NPCs dying, nothing to worry about."
"To correct you, it's several orchard-level NPCs. Also, customer complaints about poor returns include unripe fruit falling off the trees, and an excessively high percentage of ripe, sweet fruit that causes nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating it..."
"Don't even mention customer service. If they die too quickly, people won't recoup their investment. Do you think 'customers' are so easy to attract? If you're so capable, you do it yourself."
"So what should we do with the lost energy and NPCs?"
"Whoever's problem is the one who should take responsibility."
"Trying to distance yourself? Dream on."
...
To the humans in the NPC orchard, these beings in the meeting room are invisible, inaudible, and mysterious, like extraterrestrial deities, any one of whom could wreak havoc on the world. But they are no different from ordinary people; they fight for profit, shift blame, and lie…
They were so engrossed in their argument that a day and a night passed without them noticing, which in the world of NPCs would be thousands of years. When they came to their senses, these beings suddenly discovered that the second backup plan in the game's background had been successfully activated at some point. The road game, which had been reduced to its framework, had evolved into a complete set of rules on its own. The energy stored by the backend vulnerability had unknowingly reached an astonishing level, achieving self-balancing and binding the NPC orchard as the only "port," thus severing all contact with them.
As a result, the NPC Orchard became independent, and the humans inside could freely move between the real world and the game, truly enjoying themselves as if on vacation. Their civilization also successfully developed into the interstellar age.
Even so, there is still a huge gap to bridge before we can discover their existence, a gap as vast as that between tardigrades and humans.
...However, they still suffered considerable losses, not only losing energy and backend access, but also losing an NPC orchard in its growth stage, which could no longer affect the world inside.
One second they were arguing heatedly over tens of millions of energy points and tens of thousands of NPCs, and the next second they became calm and collected over an immeasurable number of energy points and an entire NPC orchard.
"...Never mind, it's just a game."
"If it's lost, it's lost."
“There are countless orchards like this. If you don’t tell me and I don’t tell you, it won’t be noticeable to the outside world in a short time. If we move them around, we can smooth them out quickly.”
Everyone quickly reached a consensus.
"We don't have a new game in the works yet. This one looks pretty good and we can take a look at it, but the backend needs to be modified. Also, the core can't deviate from this direction anymore. We need to prevent the fruit from getting too sweet and spoiling. We need to strengthen our control over the top fruit in the future."
"(A clueless new member) I wanted to ask this during my training, but I never got an answer. Could you seniors please tell me why some rankings in the game are clearly disadvantageous to us, and why we don't try to remove them? And what about some underlying code that can't be removed..."
"Heh, if we could have avoided it, would that accident have happened? (Muttering to himself) The records have all been erased. Those who knew about it and are still alive are either insane or under heavy protection. Of course, you don't know that there's more than just one insane NPC..."
"(A clueless new member) Huh?"
"(Looking around) I have an AI here who is unemployed. It says that the players are almost all dead, so I can take on a part-time job."
"Another marketing campaign to do, I'm so busy. Let's discuss the preliminary work."
"I remember there are some nice NPCs in there. Maybe we can get a projection of them in sometime."
“Using footage from the other side as advertising should entice ‘clients’… You call this false advertising? How can this be called false advertising?! This is called appropriate packaging.”
...
After the noise subsided, the meeting room fell silent.
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