Cyberpunk: Starting in 2071

Chapter 2 Crisis and Witnesses

"The situation is not optimistic; his brain nerves have been severely burned." A tired female voice sounded in my ear.

"Just give me the result." The cold male voice sounded slightly impatient.

"Okay. The result is that even if he wakes up, there is a considerable chance that he will become an idiot, and if not, there is a high probability that he will suffer from amnesia."

His brain nerves had been eroded to an extremely fragile state, so fragile that even a slight internet fluctuation could prevent him from standing up straight. The woman sighed as she finished speaking.

"Have you heard about the technical department's assessment? Is it AI or the Black Wall?" The man turned to speak to another person.

"It's hard to tell, but it's most likely AI. If it were Black Wall, it wouldn't have burned only one person's head so gently."

Then another cold female voice rang out.

"Once he wakes up, we'll conduct tests and assessments. If he's deemed unfit, we'll proceed with the necessary procedures. I'm going to a meeting now."

"understood."

The footsteps faded into the distance, and with two clicks as the automatic door opened and closed, the room fell silent again, save for the beeping sound of some unknown instrument that seemed to be emitted every ten seconds.

Mercer tried hard to open his eyes wide, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see what was in front of him.

He tried to move his arm, but it was as if his arm had disappeared; only his body kept twisting.

"Click."

The door was opened again.

"Don't move." A calm female voice sounded: "Listen, you will find that you can't see anything, you can't move your arms, you feel dizzy, nauseous, and want to vomit. This is all normal because most of your prosthetic body has been removed."

"As for the problem of not being able to see, it's because your prosthetic eye was also forcibly shut down. We'll talk about it again after it's been re-adjusted in a while."

"Next, I will activate your prosthetic eye. Try to stay calm."

Mercer could only let out a muffled "hmm".

He heard the sound of tapping on the screen, and soon his eyes lit up.

[The Arasaka Seed.3 prosthetic eye is being reactivated.]

[Recalibrating]

"Just like when you first got your prosthetic eye, take a deep breath, and the blurriness in your vision will soon disappear."

Mercer did as instructed, and after about ten seconds, the image that had been blurry in his vision became clear again.

He looked around and saw a woman in a white coat staring at data on several monitors. The surrounding lights were bright, making it look like a clean operating room.

Well, in the cyber world, an operating room is generally just a bed, a doctor, and a bunch of instruments.

Mercer looked down at himself again—luckily, his hands were still there, and the reason he couldn't move them was probably because his neural connections had been shut down.

At this moment, he could still see the forearm of his arm, where many of the interfaces connecting to the prosthetic components had been cut open with a scalpel, exposing flesh and some mechanical structures, which were then fixed in place by cold restraints.

"Very good, the matching data for the prosthetic eye is very stable. It seems you're not completely useless yet."

The female doctor sounded relieved: "Stay awake now. We need to experiment to find out the maximum capacity of your prosthetic body. If you feel headache, nausea, or mental abnormalities, speak up immediately."

"Okay," Mercer could only say okay. The stinging pain in his head had lessened considerably, but it still came at him every now and then like a seizure, making his body tremble uncontrollably from the pain.

Do you know your current situation?

The doctor tapped his finger on the screen. From Mercer's angle, only her face could be seen—a typical face of a middle-aged Asian woman, but she looked very well-maintained and had an elegant demeanor.

"I heard a bit of it."

After Mercer finished speaking, he couldn't help but ask, "What do you mean by 'following procedures'? Dismissal?"

"Highly likely." The female doctor turned around expressionlessly, staring at his face. "If I were you, I would think about how to report this incident to the company before considering being fired."

This is the first time that a stray AI has been found to be disrupting the server. Currently, all operations at the training center have been suspended, and the supervisor has been held accountable.

The severity of the accident far exceeds your imagination. In the worst-case scenario, the project will be terminated, a large number of people will lose their jobs or be reassigned, and as the direct cause of the accident, being fired is perhaps the best outcome you can imagine.

All Mercer could do was twitch his lips slightly—truly worthy of Arasaka, no, I should say truly worthy of a company from the cyberpunk world.

Sending ignorant children to mine cryptocurrency on an old network that could be attacked by AI at any time, and then making these clueless kids who were forced to mine take the blame after an accident occurs.

Mercer pondered for a moment, but immediately realized the seriousness of the matter.

In any case, we can't let anyone put the blame on him; otherwise, once he's lost his usefulness, he might be immediately killed by Agent Arasaka on the grounds of harming the company's interests.

"It's not my fault."

Mercer immediately gave the answer: "It's Tony's problem."

Tony was the little hacker who sat next to him after he regained consciousness and died from a head injury caused by a direct burn.

Although he hadn't had time to fully process the new 'Mercer' memories in his mind, at this moment, the original Meser's memories were like data waiting to be accessed, all of which were at his disposal.

With just a thought, one can extract relevant knowledge concepts.

“Tony and I were mining data in the same area when a tall, red-clad female AI appeared, whose characteristics matched those of the extremely dangerous AI Ultra, Ultra Cunningham, mentioned in the company’s tutorials.”

Mercer started the story, and the rest of the lies flowed out smoothly: "Tony was simply touched by Ultraman and his ICE (personal firewall) was directly breached."

The moment I saw Ultraman, I started preparing to log off. Following company procedures, I returned to the other side of the black wall and logged off in time, but Ultraman had already spotted me and launched an attack that crossed the black wall.

Fortunately, the black wall worked, preventing Ultraman from successfully crossing it to attack me directly. Even so, the overflowing data stream nearly killed me.

"That's a very good point. If I were you, I could add one more thing—the company's firewall didn't work either. Of course, unfortunately, I'm just a doctor, and your explanation is useless to me."

After the woman finished speaking, she turned her head back and typed on the screen: "Very good, your thinking is very clear, and your memory doesn't seem to have any major problems. Is there anything else you need to tell me?"

“Nothing has been found yet,” Mercer said.

"That's all for now. Your brainwave data has shown a significant improvement. Take a day off and observe the condition of your brain nerves. After that, your prosthetic body will be gradually restored, and then we'll test whether you can continue to be a hacker."

After the woman finished speaking, she looked at his body and said, "Let me put the prosthetic arm back in your hand first, and check your condition. If anything abnormal happens, call me immediately."
"I've sent you my contact information. If there's a problem with the brain-computer interface and you can't make calls normally, press the red button next to the bed."

A profile picture popped up in front of Mercer's eyes—just like the interface for adding friends in a chat application.

Junko Oda is the doctor's name.

After Mercer saved it to his contacts, he watched as Junko Oda raised her hands. Her arms, which usually looked ordinary, suddenly began to deform.

One of the fingers on her right hand was shaped like a syringe, while her left hand picked up a medicine and poured it into it.

"Okay, take a nap, and your hand will be back on when you wake up."

Mercer could not refuse and could only watch as she injected the drug into his neck. He lost consciousness in just over ten seconds.

When I regained consciousness, my hands, which had been completely numb, were back to normal.

[Data linked.]

[The Arakasaka biological monitoring system is under evaluation]

[The Arasaka monomolecular line (Enterprise Type V2.03) is connected.]

The hand data connection is normal.

Mercer blinked, looked around, and found himself alone in the cold operating room.

Finally able to calm down and think alone, Mercer breathed a sigh of relief, then sat up wearily, only to realize that he had some vague phantom pain all over his body.

Surprisingly, the pain in his body wasn't too unbearable, and the throbbing in his brain didn't hinder his high-speed thinking. In fact, he felt as if he had become smarter. This wasn't just an illusion.

Just like now, with just a thought, the memories that originally belonged to 'Mercer' began to 'flow' rapidly in his mind.

It's like watching a movie at 10x speed, or even 100x speed!
Memories of writing my first hacker puppet virus online when I was six years old, and the memory of being scolded by my foster mother.
When the Arasaka Corporation came to his door offering him 'elite education,' his adoptive father's face lit up with ecstatic joy as he looked at the amount written on the contract after signing it.
Memories of attending classes at Arasaka Company.
He absorbed information about 'Mercer's' life very quickly, not only those memories, but also the hacking knowledge, prosthetic knowledge, and social common sense that 'Mercer' had spent years learning in Arasaka.

It's hard to imagine that just a few hours ago he was an ordinary office worker playing games on his computer, but now, lying in bed, he has completely absorbed all the knowledge and memories of a genius hacker in just over ten minutes.

It's no exaggeration to say that the current Mercer, in terms of hacking skills alone, is even stronger than the original Mercer, perhaps even much stronger!
Mercer gently rubbed his temples—the rapid-fire brain was a violent torment to his fragile nerves at that moment.

After finishing his exploration of 'Mercer's' memories, he decided to relax his mind by thinking about some relatively lighthearted questions.

For example.
The sounds I heard before I fell into a coma.

He didn't think it was his imagination.

'Operation FF:06:B5, codenamed FF, has been successful.'

Operation codename: Ragnark.

What are the code names for these two operations? Where does the voice in my head come from?

His now much smarter brain has come up with some guesses.

As for the meaning of the first code name FF06B5, Mercer couldn't think of a reasonable explanation for it yet. He could only analyze it based on the knowledge in his mind. If interpreted using a hexadecimal color code table, it would mean the special color 'magenta'.

Code name: Magenta?

What a strange code name.

Unable to come up with a solution for the time being, Mercer began to think about a second codename.

Ragnark.

The automatic translation software in my brain has already translated it into readable text.

Ragnarok.

Haha, that codename sounds a bit scary.

Mercer sighed. The two codenames and the voices that had appeared in his mind were most likely related to the AIs roaming the network. Based on these two pieces of information alone, it was impossible to deduce anything.

But without a doubt, his time travel, including his current miraculous, high-speed brain, is probably inseparable from the roving AIs. To find out the truth, what he needs to do will definitely be inseparable from these mysterious roving AIs.

However, what's troubling is that there are more than just one or two AIs in the old network.

Instead, there are dozens, or even hundreds.

In other words, if he foolishly sneaks into cyberspace to find the answer, he might be fine if he encounters the powerful AIs that sent him through time, but if he encounters an unfamiliar AI, he will most likely end up like poor Tony, with his head burned out.

Humans facing AI in the cyber world is like an infant fighting an adult driving a tank—the AI ​​will run over you and you probably won't even know what you ran over.

Therefore, until he is powerful enough, at least capable of protecting himself, even if Mercer were to delve deep into the cyber world, he would never try to cross the black wall to confront AI directly in the old network.

Mercer shook his head, deciding to temporarily set aside questions about 'where I came from' and 'where I'm going'.

Compared to all that, the bigger problem facing him now is survival.

At the very least, they need to survive the accountability process following this accident to avoid being made scapegoats.

Next, they need to figure out how to escape this deserted 'hacker training camp'.

There's no way he'll stay. This idiot Arasaka's project is just using him and the other poor kids as disposable materials, dumping them on the old network to mine data? Even the Voodoo Gang wouldn't do something so brain-dead.

If Mercer remembers correctly, based on the memories of Lucy, the female protagonist in the cyberpunk anime "Fringewalker," only one of the entire group of hackers survived in the end, and that was Lucy herself.

The rest of the teenage hackers either died in attacks by roving AIs while mining data, or perished on their way to escape to Ara-zaka.

But this also fully illustrates one thing—escape is entirely possible!

But until then.
"Click."

The automatic door opened.

A young girl walked in hesitantly.

It wasn't Lucy as Mercer had guessed, but a cute little girl with red pigtails.

".Kyoko?"

The girl's name immediately popped into Mercer's mind.

Kyoko Nishimura.

A genius hacker girl from Osaka who was sent here two years ago.

He is only eleven years old and is the youngest in the hacker training center.

The girl heard his call, but just watched his expression nervously. Seeing that he looked puzzled, she didn't reply.

She hesitated for a moment before taking a step, slowly walking to his side, her eyes gleaming with a faint golden light, clearly scanning something.

She walked to Mercer's side, and after a moment of silence, asked in a seemingly casual manner, "Mercury, are you alright?"

"Me? I'm still alive." Mercer looked at the little girl's expression thoughtfully.

"Um..." Mercer understood everything she said in Japanese without needing an automatic translator, because he was required to learn Japanese during his training. It was the 'native language' of the Arasaka Company and a compulsory course that trainees like him had to take.

In the hacker training institute in Arasaka, most of the hackers are Japanese or of Japanese descent, with only a very small number being of other ethnicities. This is because all the selected hackers are orphans.

Since most of the orphanages that Arasaka mentioned were located in Japan, it is only natural that most of these young hackers came from Japan.

Mercer himself is of mixed race, but he doesn't know which race he is. From his memories, Mercer was originally an orphan who was adopted by his foster parents when he had memories.

Unfortunately, his adoptive parents were not good people. When young Mercer showed his talent in internet technology, the people from Arasaka came to investigate and bought his life for a small sum of 50,000 euros.

Judging from his appearance alone, his primary ancestry should be East Asian.

Kyoko Nishimura stared at Mercer's face, seemingly trying to discern something from him, but in the end, she simply whispered, "If you need help, please, please contact me."

"We're still friends, right?"

She said softly.

Mercer simply gazed at her calmly, and after a long while, smiled and said, "Yes, we are friends."

Kyoko Nishimura seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, then, after scanning her surroundings once more with a glint in her eyes, she cautiously said:

"Let's chat when you get discharged from the hospital. Me, Lucy, Dadi-kun, and Leon, just the few of us for now. Would you like to come? It's just a... um, a small gathering."

"Hmm." Mercer nodded, then narrowed his eyes and said meaningfully, "If I can come back alive..."
Given this suspected instance of a mobile AI attacking the server, I'm unsure about my future – dismissal? Reassignment? Or something even worse.

He sighed and then said, "Anyway, now is not a good time for a gathering. The company will definitely be cracking down hard on things recently."

Kyoko Nishimura's eyes widened slightly; she hadn't even said what it was about yet!
"I understand! I'll tell them! Well then, Mercer, you get some rest!" She immediately turned to leave, but then couldn't help turning back to look at Mercer. After a long while, she suddenly said, "Mercer... I... I actually saw it."

"Well, anyway, I believe you!" She seemed to regret saying that as soon as she finished speaking, so she hurriedly added that sentence before fleeing as if in a panic.

See it?
Mercer narrowed his eyes.

What did you see?
In just a second, a bold guess popped into his mind.

Could it be that she saw those AIs?!
　During the new book period, there will be 2 updates per day, with 6-1 words. You can rest assured to collect and follow the book!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)