11 The Truth About Death
◎Searching for the truth behind your death◎
As expected, artificial intelligence. When technology develops to a certain level, it is natural that artificial intelligence will appear in human society.
In this world, robots have self-awareness, the era of artificial intelligence has been fully opened, and the function of Prometheus is closer to big data deduction.
If all the data from a person's birth to death is controlled, algorithms can even be used to calculate the person's future development trajectory.
When artificial intelligence develops to its peak, every human being will be nothing more than a string of code in its database.
Judging from some random novels Zhu Ning had read, artificial intelligence was always a super villain. Zhu Ning was not sure what position this Prometheus took. Could it be chaotic neutral?
Why did "it" choose me? Is it related to the death of the original owner?
Zhu Ning asked, "Can I refuse?"
She'd already made enough money to live comfortably, so there was no need to deal with pollutants. She could tell there was a lot of tangled business here, with artificial intelligence and the juggling between the various departments at the cleaning center.
It might even be related to the original owner's death. It's not very rational to jump into it knowing it's a trap.
Fang Ying was stunned for a moment, obviously not expecting Zhu Ning to ask this question. She quickly regained her smile and said, "That's fine. You'll have to follow the confidentiality procedures then."
Fang Ying said, "But I suggest you stay. With your current savings, you can only afford one injection of gene medicine, which is not enough to last a full course of treatment."
For Zhu Ning, this is the best job. The salary is high and Zhu Ning is well suited to it. There is no reason for him to refuse.
"We won't force you." Fang Ying said the last sentence, "We'll wait for your good news."
…
When Zhu Ning changed into his regular clothes and walked out of the cleaning center with the information in his arms, it was already sunset. Information advertisement windows popped up on both sides of the road. A company called Chuangshi Technology was promoting uploading consciousness to the cloud, a dream paradise in the doomsday era.
The ads are quite annoying, and they even track and hover. Ordinary people don’t even have the right to avoid watching chaebol ads.
The incinerator outside was still burning. Garbage from all 260 areas of the Federation was sent to Area 103, and garbage trucks were coming in an endless stream.
The incinerator in front of me is made in the shape of a huge robot, as tall as a hundred-story building. Standing below it gives me the illusion of looking up at a giant.
It was said that this robot was originally used as a city defense robot during wartime, and after retirement, it was used to dispose of garbage. The incinerator's flames burned day and night, like a beacon in the darkness, illuminating the area for hundreds of miles.
Zhu Ning looked at it for a while and had to say it was quite beautiful.
She was acutely aware that she had entered another world: a wasteland world composed of high technology and pollutants. On the one hand, this world was developing rapidly, but in some corners it was barren and chaotic.
On one hand, there is order, on the other hand, there is chaos and disorder, and Zhu Ning has never even seen the chaotic world outside the high walls.
Zhu Ning transferred the rent to Wei's mother and paid various bills. Her current balance is: 671,200 Singapore dollars.
After doing all this, Zhu Ning did not go home. She turned and went to another place, an abandoned garbage room.
This was the first place Zhu Ning saw after waking up. It was fifteen kilometers away from her home and had been abandoned. When Zhu Ning arrived, it was already dark inside and there was very little light.
A musty smell hit Zhu Ning in the face as she didn't bring a flashlight. After thinking about it, she put on the employee bracelet Fang Ying gave her. Sure enough, this thing could provide lighting.
A warm yellow light comes on, and you can even adjust whether it's low beam or high beam.
Zhu Ning took a quick look and saw a lot of scrap metal piled up inside, with dozens of abandoned robots lying in the corner. In her world, steel was recyclable and would definitely not be left to waste here. Scrap could be sold for a lot of money.
But the scrap metal in the garbage room is piling up like a mountain.
Zhu Ning thought about the iron piece on his abdomen. It was irregular, about the size of a palm, and had jagged edges.
The person who killed her used local materials and found a piece of iron to kill her. The cause of death is easy to infer, but what about the motive?
The original owner was 19 years old, an ordinary mechanics graduate, a defective fifth-class citizen. He had no money, no resources, and nothing to be missed. The only thing anyone cared about was his spirit.
But Zhu Ning didn't know whether his high spirit value was because the original owner had a high spirit value, or because Zhu Ning had a high spirit value, or whether it was imposed by the system.
Maybe someone cleaned the scene. There was no blood and no "murder weapon" was found.
After she woke up, she found a vending machine a thousand meters away based on the original owner's fragmentary memories and bought a shot of powerful healing agent.
Her memory was a little confused. She had too many things to deal with at the time. She had to accept that she had traveled through time and was close to death, and she also had to accept that she had a system with her. She couldn't remember many details.
Zhu Ning sat at the place where she "died", immersed in recalling what happened that day. She looked up and saw that the roof of the garbage room had been in disrepair for a long time and there was a hole on it.
She fell here that day, it was raining acid, and you could see the sky from here.
The original owner was lying next to a pile of discarded steel, looking at the yellow sky, bleeding profusely and waiting to die.
Zhu Ning sat for a while but found nothing. She felt that her action was stupid. It was not Sherlock Holmes' memory palace that could retrieve any memory.
Zhu Ning was about to stand up when she suddenly froze. There were a few drops of blood in the corner of the wall. She was still sitting down, and the things she could see from this angle were low enough.
At the corner between the scrap metal and the wall, there seemed to be a line of crooked, small characters. Zhu Ning was sitting down, which was useless. The original owner was dying at the time, and her perspective was from a lying position.
She bent down and carefully moved a piece of scrap iron. There was a sentence engraved on the mottled corner of the wall.
"The end...is approaching," Zhu Ning whispered, "You and I are both...ants?"
The end of the world is approaching, and you and I are all ants. Zhu Ning's brain buzzed.
"The end of the world is coming, hahahaha——"
"The end is coming."
"You're just like me."
"You, you will become like me... the same... the same..."
This was what the fishman said to her before he died. The fishman was half dead at the time, and insisted on crawling towards Zhu Ning and said some incomprehensible words to her.
At the time, Zhu Ning thought it was a form of spiritual pollution, but now it seems she was naive. A more elegant way to put the fishman's words is: "The end is near, and you and I are all ants."
It's understandable that the murlocs are pollutants, but why is this the place where the original owner died? What was the cause of her death?
Was she chosen because she was a defective product, had no social connections, and was just garbage thrown into Area 103?
If Zhu Ning hadn't traveled through time, the original owner's death here wouldn't even have been discovered. Even if someone had discovered her, they would have simply thrown her into the incinerator, and it wouldn't even have been reported in the news that day.
Her death would be very "clean".
Zhu Ning's first reaction was to open the employee wristband. She wanted to check the cleaning center's internal network.
Fang Ying said that her video was uploaded to the internal network. If Yu Ren said such weird words to her, there should be people discussing it in the forum. She stayed at the login page and needed an official employee ID.
Zhu Ning now has to join the 103 District Cleaning Center. Her survival principle has always been: if you can't beat them, then join them.
Without any hesitation, Zhu Ning immediately selected a job and simply filled out the employment information.
Login successful.
The employee's wristband automatically plays a mechanical sound: Congratulations on joining the company.
Then there were some trivial onboarding procedures. Zhu Ning glanced through them, clicked off each one, and then entered the cleaning center's public forum.
The forum's top post is "Shocking! A new member's Spirit Points during the probation period are 1200! We have an S-class national treasure!"
Zhu Ning: “…”
The next post is: "Study materials for internal circulation only: The complete purification process of the last train that disappeared from the D-level contaminated area"
Zhu Ning clicked on the video to watch. The video was a combination of her and Li Nianchuan's helmet perspectives. She fast-forwarded all the way to the scene where the fishman and herself were fighting on the railroad tracks.
Zhu Ning's helmet was cracked, the camera was broken, and the radio picked up a lot of crackling sounds of electricity. Then Zhu Ning kicked the fishman into the ground track, and the fishman was directly run over by the ground track.
"They think I'm... pretentious and can't endure hardship."
"Am I being hypocritical?"
The next scene should be Zhu Ning standing in front of the platform holding a fire axe, and the fishman crawling towards him step by step, and it is about to say the words of doomsday.
But that's it. The next moment, a train approaches, and the murloc turns into a pile of rotten meat. The murloc dies, and the contaminated spores precipitate.
Zhu Ning read it again and confirmed that there was no doomsday part.
Zhu Ning was the person involved. If she hadn't believed in her memory, she would have thought it was just her imagination.
Edited? Who did it? Prometheus? Is it helping itself? But why?
【bite--】
There was a buzzing sound in Zhu Ning's mind.
[Congratulations on triggering the side quest: Find the truth behind your death. This is a long-term quest that can be completed in parallel with other side quests. Success will result in generous rewards, while failure will reset your health. Currently, the search is 5% complete. Please keep up the good work.]
Zhu Ning: “…”
She shouldn't have come to the garbage room!
This damn system doesn’t reveal the mission rewards at all, so why does the health value reset to zero when the mission fails?
Zhu Ning discovered that the logic of this system was consistent with the logic of reality. Zhu Ning's "death" might be related to the reason why Prometheus chose her.
If someone wanted to kill her, Zhu Ning not only did not die, but was sent to a cleaning center instead, she would definitely be killed a second time.
Therefore, Zhu Ning must find the truth before this and take the initiative, otherwise if he is killed a second time, he will be dead, and his health points will be reset to zero, right?
Searching for clues requires entering the cleaning center and becoming a formal employee, so that she can come into contact with Prometheus and the next pollutant.
Well, that’s great, she can go sweep the trash happily again.
Zhu Ning thought about it, and used his secondary brain to take a picture of the corner of the wall from every angle, fearing that he would miss any details, and then scraped off the sentence with a piece of iron.
Zhu Ning was here "destroying the body" when he suddenly heard a slight noise outside.
Eeyore——
"Who?" Zhu Ning's first reaction was to pick up an iron rod. Could they be here to kill and silence the witnesses?
A robot slowly emerged from outside the door. It was round and only half a person's height. It was frightened by Zhu Ning and walked out with its two robotic arms raised.
Zhu Ning: “…”
The robot didn't look very advanced, similar to the supermarket navigation robots of her era. Zhu Ning put down the iron rod and asked, "Fifth-class citizen?"
The robot nodded.
As expected, District 103 is so dirty and messy that it looks like a defective product to appear here. Zhu Ning: "Me too."
It had no voice function, and the light screen on its face displayed two words: "Lack of treasure."
Is this its name?
Zhu Ning shamelessly said, "My name is Ning Bao."
The light screen on Labao's face turned into a smiley face. It must have been a service robot, and it looked very happy. Zhu Ning suddenly thought of a question and asked, "Are you picking up trash around here?"
Its name is Labao. It was probably developed as a garbage cleaning robot, but there may be some flaws in its development, so it was thrown here.
Labao nodded.
Zhu Ning asked, "Have you seen anyone suspicious?"
Labao: “You.”
"..." Zhu Ning: "Besides me?"
Labao: “No.”
Yes, if the murderer came to kill people, he would definitely avoid people.
Zhu Ning asked, "Is there any surveillance nearby?"
Labao: “No.”
Okay, Bai Wen asked. This place is full of abandoned garbage rooms. They won't install such things. Zhu Ning didn't find any useful clues and was a little disappointed.
Labao noticed that Zhu Ning was unhappy and typed on the screen: "But the machine has it."
"Hmm?" Zhu Ning became interested.
Labao slowly typed a line of words on the screen: "Robot camera is turned on by default."
The standard configuration of developed robots is to have a camera. The camera is the "eyes" of the robot. Even if the machine is scrapped, many of the robot's camera functions can still be used.
So there's a mountain of garbage here, and some cameras might be on. The killer might have a deep understanding of murder, but not robots, otherwise he wouldn't have chosen the garbage room.
In other words, as long as the camera of a scrapped robot here is usable, it will record the entire process of the original owner's death?
Zhu Ning's eyes lit up and he asked, "Can you help me find it?"
Labao: "No, it's too much."
There are mountains of garbage here. It will take at least two months to filter out the cameras that are still intact, export the data, and then analyze the useful ones.
Zhu Ning: “…”
"Labao," Zhu Ning squatted opposite Labao, holding an iron rod, looking at it at eye level with a smile on his face, "Would you like to do business?"
Labao: “?”
The author has something to say:
In the wasteland world, humans are forced to mature, their study time is compressed, and they graduate from university at the age of 18, so Zhu Ning is an undergraduate graduate at the age of 19.
The secondary brain is equivalent to a combination of our mobile phone + wallet + identity
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