The Record of Unusual Creatures

Thanks to the robotic girls whose names started with “N”, Hao Ren’s understanding of the “society of survivors” finally gave him a more realistic impression of Nolan’s vague data.

According to N-4 and N-6, the society consisted of two larger “territories”⁠—the giant Zenith space station in high orbit and the large industrial fortress complex on the moon, the lunar base. Each performed a different function.

Zenith, the giant space station served a different purpose than Hao Ren initially envisioned. It was not a survivors’ home base, but an outpost and command center. The huge, ancient space station had been in service for many years, and the lunar base farther away was apparently safer than the one in high orbit, so the survivors’ real home base was on the moon. The Zenith was not a safe place to live, but it was an excellent bridgehead. It was responsible for dispatching and directing rebel forces to attack the home planet and providing temporary stationing of troops and comprehensive maintenance, supply, and maintenance services. The Zenith was seen as a temporary home for every unit that took turns to fight on its home planet.

The lunar base, on the other hand, was the foundation of the survivor society, the source of raw materials and the cluster of factories, which the rebels depended on. In this base of factories, mines, barracks, and ecological domes, vast quantities of war machinery were produced, and the ‘biomass’ needed for human survival was basically synthesized there. It was the production center, and also the place where most of the warriors who were determined to take back their home planet were born and live. General-purpose combat “executors” like N-4 and N-6 were built on the lunar base.

In the course of thousands of years of struggle, the survivors dug up almost a tenth of the material of this natural satellite to sustain their seemingly endless war losses. That was a pretty astonishing number.

This constant depletion was said to have even altered the orbit of the moon and the climate of the home planet.

As for how many “executor troops” there were in the two bases, N-6 and N-4 had chosen to remain tight-lipped. Apparently, Hao Ren’s “security level” in the hearts of those two robot girls was not high enough to talk freely about their own military secrets.

On the lunar base, there was another very important site, which could be regarded as the “capital” of the survivor society.

N-4 called it a “fortress”. She said it was a fortress built of superalloys and advanced technology, with the strongest structure and stacked shields, as well as the incredible “Titanium Guard Regiment” with powerful defensive firepower and combat power. Even if the planet devourer launched the attack, it would not be able to gnaw down the protective shell of the fortress. The fortress was the most important core of the survivor society. There was a super-thinking center called the “chief”, which was the highest command unit of all executors. And in the most closely guarded “Inevitable Palace” within the fortress lived the civilization’s last human descendants.

Obviously, this information was more important and sensitive, but N-4 did not hide it, because the fortress was totally impossible to hide. It was so huge and eye-catching that if you looked through an astronomical telescope, you could see that the survivors’ capital was the metal structure built in the center of the lunar base. The details of the executor troops could be kept a secret, but the existence of the fortress could not be concealed, so she just revealed it while emphasizing the fortress’ strong protective force in order to remind Hao Ren not to do anything to that fortress.

In a way, the robot’s mind was quite simple – perhaps because the enemies they dealt with were not intelligent at all?

Humans who lived in The Inevitable Palace never left their shelter. Although normal production executors such as N-4 and N-6 were not qualified to meet humans (mainly because there are too many executors and few humans survivors), the titanium guards and the chief in the fortress maintained direct communication with humans.

As an artificial intelligence community that relied on logical systems and access systems to keep society functioning, there was no lie or deception among executors, so even if they had not met humans, N-6 and N-4 were sure that their creator still existed and was watching them from their base high on the moon.

After hearing the two robot girls describe the human survivors on the moon, Lily had some dismissive thoughts. In her view, those who launched the kindling into space thousands of years ago and stayed on to defend the home planet were worthy of respect, as were the humans who boarded the ark with the mission of preserving the kindling of civilization. But the descendants who dared not even step out of the fortress were not so appreciated.

Although there was a First Born on the surface of the home planet, the First Born did not even hit the moon with artillery shells and laser beams. Did the surviving humans not have the courage to go out and take a look at their homeland?

But those thoughts were just spinning around in the husky girl’s head, knowing how important the “creator” was to the robot girls.

Hao Ren also had a similar thought in his head, but he did not dwell on this kind of problem. He was just an observer of civilization. His job was to observe, record and report to his boss. What course these civilizations took was not his concern, and he believed that the human survivors had chosen to lock themselves up in their fortresses for reasons other than fear.

“I thought humans would act with you,” said Hao Ren, rubbing his eyebrows and looking at N-6. “Because we analyzed the wreckage and found that you were only co-pilots of the aircraft… Isn’t the pilot human?”

“The pilot seat is always reserved for humans. They just don’t fight with us for the time being, but when we finally get our homeland back, there will be human sitting next to us!” There seemed to be a little pride on N-6’s face.

“…Huh?”

“We are the executors, the instruments that carry out their great will in place of the creator.” N-4 nodded slightly, saying it with a sense of mission. “In the early days, when our creators were able to fight alongside us, we were their helpers, and that mission will never change. We’ll sit in the co-pilot seat and do whatever the creators tell us to do, all the way to the day of ultimate victory.”

Hao Ren quietly looked into N-4’s eyes, and N-4 also looked back with calm, deep eyes. Perhaps it was not a deep look, but a standby look waiting to receive new information, but Hao Ren seemed to feel that something called faith really existed deep inside this artificial intelligence.

They really were no different from human beings…

“I get it,” Hao Ren said, relaxing as he turned to N-6 and asked another question, “There are some minor details I need to know. First of all, you call the First Born a planet devourer?”

“Our humans name it that.” N-6 nodded. “Because it comes out of the depths of the earth’s crust and eats everything on the planet. You call it ‘First Born’? Is there something similar on other planets?”

“Yes. First Borns exist on almost every ecological planet. The truth about this creature may be very different from what you think…” Hao Ren sighed. He realized that the planet’s natives did not know the truth about the First Born, so he ended the topic decisively. “This is not the right time to explain it to you. I will elaborate on it when I have a chance. I’d like to ask, has your war with the planet devourer always been like this? I mean it stays on the planet, neither strikes nor surrenders, and you keep sending bombers to deal with its tentacles. You can neither win nor be defeated by it, so you just stay stuck?”

It was not something that needed to be kept a secret, so N-4 answered directly, “This has been going on for at least 3000 years, but it wasn’t like this at first.”

“It wasn’t like this at first?” Vivian immediately showed her interest.

“According to the great think tank, in the first few thousand years, humans and their mechanical legions faced extinction on several occasions. The planet devourer used far more power than it does today to hunt down survivors who fled the planet, and at its worst the Zenith had to travel deep into space, returning to orbit after five centuries of exile. But three thousand years ago, things changed…”

Hao Ren realized that this crucial turning point was the cause of the First Born’s brain death. “What happened? Did the planet devourer’s activity drop dramatically after that?”

“According to the great think tank, this was the moment when Zenith was once again at risk. A beam of light fired by the planet devourer blasted through the space station’s shield system, splitting a huge canyon in the earth, and the body of the planet devourer could almost be seen in the earth’s core from space. But suddenly, a meteor shower rained down. A large number of unidentified object fragments crashed into the planet, right into the canyon, so the planet devourer was hit badly. Although it immediately closed the earth’s crust to protect itself, it lost most of its power after days of earthquakes.”

N-4 told this history in a way that was full of sentimental descriptive words, not at all like the way an artificial intelligence would speak, because this history was not told in her own way, but directly from the records of the great think tank⁠—from human observers who lived 3,000 years ago.

Everyone at the scene, except for the two robot girls, stood gazing at one another.

Hao Ren muttered to himself, “The First Born was smashed into an idiot by a meteor shower? Is this a joke?”