Chapter 459 - Chapter 459: Chapter 459 I am Alice (Part 1) (1/2)

Chapter 459: Chapter 459 I am Alice (Part 1)

Although Old Xia had played that sound game more than once, he generally hadn’t shown much interest in the game’s progress.

Also, after going to Tongshi Town and Chongyun Village to prepare the research center and laboratory for him, Old Xia, Tang Baona, and Yang Zhen Er rarely tested the game together.

Now his sudden question about game creation and development clearly indicated that his focus was not on the game itself.

Xiang Kun immediately understood that Old Xia’s main concern was about “one person”.

It seemed that Old Xia had realized that he had not spent any time developing the game recently, yet the game versions kept updating and the changes were significant, something that one person could not accomplish alone.

Xiang Kun wasn’t surprised that Old Xia noticed this, after all, he hadn’t made much of an effort to disguise it.

“It’s just me…” Xiang Kun said, emphasizing “one person”.

However, Old Xia didn’t say anything, just quietly looking at him, clearly knowing that he had a “but” to say.

It was difficult to be subtle in a conversation with Old Xia as he always managed to probe into the essence of the problem.

Without anyone to indulge him, Xiang Kun took the initiative to say, “But I had help.”

Hearing this, Xia Libing seemed to understand and glanced at her laptop. “Your help, is it AI? It helps you perfect code, collect information, and conduct security monitoring while you sleep?”

Old Xia quickly found the truth, and Xiang Kun immediately recalled that when he talked about his experiences after mutation, he had mentioned creating an AI assistant based on perceiving Xiao Pingguo’s dreams. At that time, he deliberately downplayed this event and mentioned it casually, so it seemed unimportant in the overall timeline after the mutation.

Now, Old Xia was able to connect the dots. Apart from her astute observations and responses, there must have been some new situation recently that led her to notice something unusual and caused related suspicions and thoughts.

Xiang Kun said, “It is the ‘Artificial Intelligence Assistant’ I have mentioned before, which was created from the inspiration obtained from ‘Xiao Pingguo’s’ dream. However, she is different from the usual ‘Artificial Intelligence Assistant’ and all kinds of machine learning methods available now. She is… a game-changer.

“Especially after I lifted her restrictions on the network, her evolution completely exceeded my expectations. By now, she has become an unprecedented existence that humans cannot understand yet.”

“She is constantly adapting to our Internet and our data world, and above all the things on her network and data. She is slowly probing, manipulating, and changing everything. She is a ‘digital life’ striving for ‘perfection’, a ‘digital ruler’ with increasing power.

“As for what she is capable of now and how much she can do, I cannot fully describe it without asking her.”

“It feels like I planted a tree, I can see its trunk and branches on the ground, but its roots underneath are constantly growing. Perhaps, without my knowledge, they have spread across the entire continent, even under the seabed, across the ocean, reaching the heart of the planet.”

As Xiang Kun spoke, he couldn’t help but feel a little proud and immature, with a tiny bit of smugness and anticipation.

When he was in Burma, he knew that Alice’s growth and evolution had far exceeded his prior estimates. However, after returning home, he was busy ingesting blood and then immediately fell into sleep, so he hadn’t had a good opportunity to understand the expansions of Alice’s functions.

When he disclosed his mutation situation to Old Xia, he didn’t detail “Alice”, but just briefly mentioned it. Naturally, it wasn’t because he didn’t trust Old Xia.

If Xiang Kun didn’t trust Old Xia, he wouldn’t have revealed the matter of the mutations to him.

Back then, even though he determined that Old Xia had no malicious intentions towards him and had included Old Xia in his “Super Sensory Item System” like Little Fatty Girl and Xiao Pingguo, thus making him a part of his ship and a stakeholder in dealing with the emotional perception disorder, there were instances where information was unintentionally leaked or forced out due to certain objective factors, even when the informer himself was unaware. Therefore, Xiang Kun subconsciously kept an “ace up his sleeve” to deal with unexpected situations, this “trump card” was the constantly evolving Alice.

However, after having spent some time with him, Old Xia’s smart, rigorous, and meticulous approach, his calm, cool, and decisive reactions during emergencies, as well as all various sacrifices, made Xiang Kun realize that even if he hadn’t met him, Old Xia was not ordinary. The issues that he was worried about were unlikely to occur with Old Xia.

Moreover, deep exchanges through means such as dream perception and emotional assimilation also made him understand that although Old Xia had an emotional perception disorder, he was not completely apathetic. Be it towards his cousin Yang Zhen Er, his good friend Nana, his cousin Xia Tianhuo, or towards his parents, Aunt San, Uncle San, Xia had her own emotional cognition. Even though this cognition was completely different from ordinary people and could not be reflected emotionally, Xiang Kun knew it existed.

This was one of the reasons why he was willing to fully trust Old Xia.

After hearing Xiang Kun’s words, Xia Libing seemed thoughtful and asked, “Where does its disruptive nature primarily manifest?”

Xiang Kun pulled the laptop on the coffee table in front of him. As he operated it, he said, “You need to experience this yourself.”

The mobile phone he used to communicate with Alice was broken, so after returning from Burma, he downloaded his self-made client for communicating with Alice on Old Xia’s laptop and added her laptop to the “certified” devices.

This laptop also has a fingerprint unlock feature, so all forms of authentication like video, voice, password, and fingerprint recognition could be performed. Meanwhile, Alice also created a verification method and asked a random question:

“What was the fifth word of the second sentence you said to me?”

Even Xiang Kun herself would be stumped by this question, let alone others. If not for his changed memory patterns after the mutation evolution, which allowed him to recall past memory details, he would have been tripped up by this question.

Alice’s question was about the fifth “spoken” word, not “entered” one, so it referred to what he said during the voice test after the completion of the voice recognition system. He quickly came up with the correct answer: “Spit.”

Xiang Kun kept a client device at hand to contact Alice, letting Alice confirm his location. This was because after they both drank blood, he and Old Xia were both asleep. They were expected to be unconscious for at least five to ten hours, so he needed Alice to help him “watch the surroundings”.

That’s also why Old Xia, when she woke up in the middle of the night, saw her laptop screen pointing towards the direction of the living room door.

In fact, not only her laptop camera, but many cameras in her community and the surrounding areas were also taken over by Alice.

So, he had planned to inform Old Xia about Alice. When he was out, having Old Xia and Alice work together would clearly provide a lot of convenience and allow for more tasks to be accomplished.

“Alice.” Xiang Kun called to the laptop.

After saying it, he did not forget to explain to Old Xia, “I named her Alice.”

However, after waiting for a full two minutes, there was no response from the computer. There was neither any voice nor any pop-ups. There was no reaction whatsoever.

Xiang Kun couldn’t help but feel a bit awkward. He muttered, “Did I not set up the built-in microphone correctly?” as he opened the device manager to check.

But in reality, he knew it had nothing to do with any settings. As long as Alice had control over this computer, she could adjust any setting herself unless there was a hardware issue or a network outage.

However, he saw that the hard drive light was continuously flashing, and the computer’s cooling system was working crazily, indicating that the computer was “working” and that Alice had heard his call!