The Record of Unusual Creatures

Lil Pea was waving at the Cortex Prime with an innocent smile on her face. She could never understand what “different lifeforms” meant and simply took the thinking, speaking pillar before her as a new friend. And surprisingly, the Cortex Prime responded to her.

Hao Ren held Lil Pea tightly in his arms as he looked down at her. Before they went there, he noticed that Lil Pea was acting a little weird and had asked her what was wrong. Lil Pea’s intelligence had yet to mature, and she could not clearly define what she felt, but after some deductions, Hao Ren could vaguely understand the truth.

Lil Pea had sensed the impending fall and doom of a race, and this race was probably the humans within the Inevitable Palace. Not only that, it had something to do with the damage to the Cortex Prime.

“Truthfully, I’ve met plenty of races and lifeforms, including elementals and spirits, but AI’s are probably the hardest to deal with,” Hao Ren said as he gazed at the Cortex Prime. “I don’t know how to persuade a stubbornly logical and strict super calculator, because everything I can provide as proof, is to you, unclear and unverifiable. I can only say, if you hope to complete your mission, if you are still loyal to your creators, you should at least try to believe in us outsiders, even if this may not be totally logical, it is still a choice.”

The Cortex Prime fell into an even longer silence, and the two-thirds of the lights on the pillar faded away. As Hao Ren thought that the AI had shut down, the latter spoke again. “The humans are dying.”

“The humans are… dying?” Vivian frowned hard. “Care to elaborate?”

Lil Pea, on the other hand, was waving her little arms wildly. “Daddy can help you! Daddy is super awesome!”

The response that came, was the whirring of gears opposite the hall.

Hao Ren saw a series of aligned cracks forming on a part of the ring wall, and with the cracks as a base, the whole wall started flowing like water as layers upon layers of metal retracted and folded rapidly. As the wall receded, a wide tunnel appeared before everyone.

“The gateway to the Inevitable Palace?” Hao Ren quickly understood the Cortex Prime’s meaning the moment he saw the tunnel and was surprised. “You’re letting us in?”

“The humans said before, do not give up on hope. Even if it is but a mirage.” the Cortex Prime said slowly. “Now that the situation is now the worst-case scenario, my logic system can no longer deduce what will happen, so enter. Perhaps this is what the humans meant.”

Hao Ren and the rest exchange glances. They had thought of entering the palace to meet the humans but never thought that the Cortex Prime had so easily allowed them access. Regardless, the way to the Inevitable Palace is open, and they had no reason to stay hold.

Different from the other places in the fortress, the long corridor towards the Inevitable Palace was brightly lit and the walls white. The bright lights helped to chase away the sense of foreboding dread that hung like a pall ever since they stepped into the fortress and gave life to this cold, metallic world.

After going along the corridor for a good while wall art depicting the homeworld appeared on both sides of the wall. There were mountains and rivers, skyscraper trees, and bustling cities within the mountains. It was like history being frozen in time in the form of a painting to allow people to remember the good old times 10,000 years ago.

Yet, at the end of these beautiful sceneries was the cold, cruel reality.

Another circular hall appeared before Hao Ren, and it was almost on the scale of the Cortex Prime hall. It was mainly white in color with no servers or cables in sight. The wall across the hall was a translucent polymer, and through it, Hao Ren could see all sorts of plants and buildings in a ‘greenhouse’, yet there was no human activity there.

Lily came to the translucent ‘glass’ out of curiosity and asked. “Eh, Cortex Prime, where are the humans?”

As if to answer Lily’s question, just as she finished her question, the circular gap appeared in the middle of the hall as a giant test tube-like glass container slowly appeared from the gap.

The cylindrical container was full of pinkish nutrient solution and within it was blobs of mutated biopolymer. The biopolymers seemed to be crushed in the most violent of ways and had become blobs of flesh. They had no fixed shape, nor any intelligent activity patterns. They only soaked within the nutrient solution as they wriggled and warped aimlessly, splitting or joining together from time to time.

Every other moment, the blood would seep out from the surface of the wriggling flesh and spread into the solution. Despite seemingly having a filtration system, the blood turned the solution into a pinkish hue.

“What are these?!” Y’zaks said under his breath as he saw it.

“These are humans.” the Cortex Prime responded through the speaker on the side of the hall.

“Humans?!” Hao Ren was flabbergasted. “Humans look like this over here?”

As he said he turned to N-6 who was not too far away and saw N-6 having the same dumbfounded expression. It was clear that the humans did not look like this in the executor’s memory.

Vivian frowned again. “Since when did the humans become like this?”

“The mutation was happening all along without any specific starting point. Ever since the war started, or when the creators had escaped their homeworld, the Devourer’s curse was already imprinted on them.” the emotionless synthesized voice spoke. “Before creating the executors, they have already realized that they will not be able to escape the Devourer’s powers. This power was beyond comprehension and will be the end of their civilization. The birth of newborn fell, fatal disease and mutation increased. Many thousands escaped the homeland, but their population fell year on year. That’s why they had created the executors, for the executors to execute their will, to take back their home.

The Cortex Prime continued, “In the first thousand years, humans were still moving among the executors and they had taught the executors plenty of things during that period, including how to think: After that, due to mutations and deteriorating physique, human could barely maintain the societal functions and they created the Great Think Tank, and turned all human knowledge and thought process into data that can be downloaded and understood by the executors. At the same time, they created me, and have me the responsibility of protecting and guiding the society. Another thousand years later, the genetic deterioration had reached a critical point and humans could no longer live within the fortress ambient environment and they were forced to go into the support tanks.

“Another thousand years later, there were no more new births, and humans lived on with the help of the support tanks.

“After another thousand years later, they started losing their form and even lost their individuality and looked more like primitive cell clusters. In the ancient historical texts, such cells were indeed found on the homeworld, that was when the Devourer unleashed the Crimson Blood Tide, and everything that came into contact with the tide was rapidly dissolved into these cell clusters.”

“And then… it is what you see now.”

Vivian was still frowning. “…The executors outside had no idea of this?”

She turned towards N-6 and found the latter was stunned to the point of having a system shutdown. She had her answer.

“The secret was buried deep within the fortress.” the Cortex Prime answered. “The normal executors did not know what happened to the humans.”

“Because it’ll lead to their breakdown?” Lily asked.

“The executor’s task is to help humans retake the homeworld, and this is imprinted in the memory core of every executor off the production line.” the Cortex Prime answered. “Without humans, what are we?”

Hao Ren’s gaze traveled between the stunned N-6 and the container in the middle of the room, looking deep in thought.

“For so many years, the human condition was getting worse.” He looked up, talking into the void, but he knew that the Cortex Prime was looking. “After hitting the critical point a few years back, and that caused your malfunctions?”

“Humans have created me, for me to serve them, but they never told me what I should do if they were gone.” the Cortex Prime said plainly. “For the past thousands of years, my mission was what they had entrusted me to. To build the moon base, to expand the executor’s society, to create an army, to invade the homeworld. This was all because the humans needed me to do so.”

Hao Ren then let out a sigh. “And now, the ‘humans’ are disappearing.”

This was the cause of the fatal malfunction.

He had noticed that the humans had created the Cortex Prime and the Executors differently. The Executors is an extreme copy of humanity, from speech to their thought process was akin to that of a human; an intelligent unit with emotions. On the other hand, the Cortex Prime was a powerful supercomputer than lacked emotions and the ability to perform vague calculations. This setup was meant for the long term, to ensure the stability of the Executor’s society, and probably to ensure that the ultimate goal of ‘retaking the homeworld’ does not change. Regardless, the results of the design had veered far from the original plan.

The current level of technology could not prevent the extinction of humanity, and the rigid logic system of the Cortex Prime could only come to a conclusion: It could no longer complete the mission it was entrusted.

So it started malfunctioning, wrecked with confusion, it went into a self-destructive countdown.

“Do the ‘humans’ still have any thought capability? Or can they still communicate?” Hao Ren asked.

“…That was a thing in the past,” the Cortex Prime answered.

Just as Hao Ren thought, there were no more humans to fix the logical deadlock of the Cortex Prime. They perhaps had a chance once, but it was now too late.