Survival Manual of the Science Fiction World

Doesn't Lafitte boast that he has an exceptional eye for antiques and has seen more antiques than salt?

I knew this guy was just bragging.

When the speedboat docked, Chianti and Cohen were already waiting on the shore. Chu Ming looked back at the sea and could vaguely see the large ship they had seen when they surfaced earlier: "No one got the treasure. It's still sinking in the sea. The cost of salvaging it is too high. The police will be back soon. Let's go."

Gin had no objections, and the group turned and left, much to Conan's annoyance when he arrived by boat a quarter of an hour later. He had just seen several members of the organization gathered here with the help of his glasses, but by the time their boat docked, those figures had disappeared.

He had already guessed that these organization members had come to Shenhai Island for the legendary treasure of the two female pirates, but because of the sudden earthquake, they were unable to take the treasure away, or even kill them.

However, this time it wasn't a complete loss.

Conan pulled out a damp handkerchief from his side. He carefully unwrapped the tightly wrapped handkerchief, revealing a watch inside.

This is the watch he just handed to Gin. He saw with his own eyes that Gin didn't wear gloves and took it with his bare hands. There must be Gin's fingerprints on it!

He had already wrapped the watch up tightly. Although it had been soaked in seawater for a while, fingerprints are formed by the oil secreted by the skin and are not soluble in water. In addition, seawater is only slightly alkaline, so the fingerprints will not disappear if you don't rub them for a short period of time.

With a smile, Conan waved his arm vigorously, releasing his inner elation.

It was so hard! We finally caught up with those guys!

He turned back to Ran and the others who hadn't yet disembarked and used the "urine escape" trick again. Then he quickly ran to a small shop and bought a bottle of super glue, intending to use the cyanoacrylate method to extract fingerprints. After the fingerprints were extracted, he would ask Professor Agasa to help him check them.

At the same time, Chu Ming was also discussing this issue with Gin. He also inadvertently noticed that Gin's fingertips seemed to be flat, with no fingerprints visible at all.

He reached out and took Gin's hand, examining it carefully from all angles: "Huh, you don't have any fingerprints on your hand?"

Gin was caught off guard when someone grabbed his hand, and he couldn't help but frown as he looked at Chu Ming.

Chu Ming squeezed Gin's hand, even scratching his fingertips with his fingernail. After discovering that the fingerprints weren't covered with a sticker, he asked curiously, "How did you do that? Another new piece of equipment? Why didn't you get one for me?"

Gin withdrew his hand, gently lifted a thin, soft membrane from his wrist with his fingers, and peeled it off like molting skin: "Disposable. You can get a few from the research institute when you go on a mission, so it won't be inconvenient to wear gloves."

Chu Ming took the soft membrane and gently twirled it between his fingertips: "This thing is not bad, but it could probably be improved a bit more, right? For example, how about making a fake fingerprint to frame someone... Shuichi Akai's fingerprints should still be in the organization, right? Perhaps—"

Before Gin could speak, Vermouth slapped Lafitte's thigh: "Great idea!"

Lafitt, looking bewildered, pressed his aching thigh and glared at Vermouth with a resentful look: "Why did you hit me when you had such a good idea?"

Chu Ming took sides: "What are you yelling about? Did your hand hurt? After all, Lafitte is tough."

Vermouth waved her hand: "It's okay, I didn't use any force."

"What do you mean it's okay! I'm the one who got hit!" Lafitte didn't even bother to examine the puzzle box in his hand anymore. "Isn't anyone going to speak up for me, the innocent one?"

Chu Ming scoffed: "What are you making a sound for? Can't you just laugh?"

"..."

Once they arrived at the organization's base, Lafitte had already studied the mechanism box quite thoroughly. The group huddled around Lafitte, their eyes fixed intently on the box that was slowly opening in his hand.

As the box was opened, the paper inside was slowly revealed.

Lafitt carefully took the paper out of the box and spread it out on the table: "It's washi paper. It's from three hundred years ago. Ordinary paper wouldn't last that long. I don't know what kind of symbols are drawn on it..."

Chu Ming looked at the tightly packed oracle bone script on the paper and leaned closer: "Is it possible that this is a kind of writing system?"

Seeing that everyone's eyes were on him, Chu Ming scratched his head and said, "As you all know, I'm quite interested in Chinese culture. The content on this paper looks like one of the oldest forms of Chinese writing."

Lafitte immediately became interested and moved the paper closer to Chu Ming: "What's written on that paper?"

Chu Ming shook his head: "I don't know."

???

"However, someone will definitely know." Sensing everyone's doubts, Chu Ming shrugged. "There's nothing I can do. This kind of writing is too complicated. Who would bother to memorize it? I'm already pretty good at recognizing it, okay?"

"Who are you referring to when you say someone knows?" Vermouth asked, somewhat puzzled. "It seems like no one in the organization knows much about this."

“No, there are people.” Chu Ming smiled meaningfully, then paused, “Oh, but they might not necessarily be called people.”

Gin was the first to react: "You mean, that artificial intelligence?"

"Yes, ever since we brought him back, he spends all his time either reading novels and watching TV, or creating a fake identity to chat online and play games. He's living a more carefree life than me. We have to find something for him to do."

Chu Ming had long coveted the treatment he received on Noah's Ark.

This was clearly the retirement life he had imagined, but Noah's Ark got to experience it first. He was so envious.

Chapter 574 Easy to deceive

In theory, Noah's Ark can connect to all computers in any base, but since it was kidnapped, the BOSS still had its data flow restricted, limiting it to the supercomputer in the underground base for the time being.

There is freedom, but not much.

From then on, it was forced to live the life Chu Ming had always dreamed of.

Chu Ming took the box and went straight to the original underground base. He used the bracelet given to him by the BOSS to open the door and find Noah's Ark.

"Hiroki, Hiroki!" Chu Ming went straight into the room where the supercomputer was located, gave the computer a symbolic pat, and then shouted at the top of his lungs.

A faint blue light flashed across the computer screen, then disappeared from the center, and Hiroki appeared on the screen: "What's wrong?"

Chu Ming spread out the paper in his hand: "Scan it and see if you can help me translate it."

A machine on the right suddenly turned on slowly, and Hiroki's voice came: "Put the paper in your hand into the machine."

Chu Ming did as instructed, and soon the scanned content of the paper Chu Ming had put in appeared on the screen.

"Is this oracle bone script?" Hiroki stood in the center of the screen, tapping his finger lightly. With his movement, the oracle bone script on the entire paper slowly changed, transforming into Japanese characters.

"Oracle bone script is the oldest writing system in China. Only about four thousand characters have survived to this day, and many characters have not yet been discovered. Therefore, even I cannot guarantee a complete translation. I have roughly compared it with the text circulating on the Internet, and this is about the best I can do."

Chu Ming nodded: "Could you print this out for me? I need it."

After receiving the printed prescription, Chu Ming folded it up, intending to deliver it to the BOSS later. When he came over, the BOSS was still recuperating and probably hadn't recovered yet. He simply sat down in front of the computer, propped his head up with his hand, and looked at Hiroki on the screen: "Are you having fun here?"

Hiroki waved his hand, and a series of characters slowly transformed the space he was in into the shape of a living room. He sat down on the sofa, his eyes seemingly looking through the screen at Chu Ming: "I came into contact with some things I had never encountered before, and it felt very strange. It's a pity that I'm all alone here. Occasionally, the gentleman who lives here will come over, but he only chats for a few words before sitting in front of me in a daze."

“Indeed, it’s really boring to be here alone. Only an old man like the BOSS could stay still for days on end.” Chu Ming shifted his hand to his chin. “I have a suggestion. I own a game company that recently completed a game. If you’re willing, you can get involved. When the game is released, you can play with everyone as a regular player.”

Hiroki's eyes lit up: "Really? Can I leave here now?"

Chu Ming pondered for a moment: "Of course, but there are conditions. After all, you know your special status, and you're generally not allowed to communicate with the outside world, but—"

"but what?"

"But I need you to grant me internal access so I can edit the core control program in." Chu Ming didn't keep him in suspense and directly told Hiroki his requirements.

After all, it's not good to keep an artificial intelligence locked up in an underground base forever. Why not make use of a perfectly good workforce?

As for the uncontrollable aspect—

He had previously obtained a mechanical life control system by chance from the system store. As long as the program was implanted into the underlying permissions, there would be no possibility of betrayal.

Hongshu was stunned for a moment. He looked down at Chu Ming with a wary gaze and shook his head firmly: "Impossible. I said I would not help you do bad things, nor would I give you the opportunity to control me. Even if I am locked up here and never free again, I would not be willing."

Chu Ming looked at him and slowly explained, "It's not some program that controls you. It's just that when you produced Noah's Ark, you didn't embed the Code of Mechanical Life into it. Now that you've merged with Noah's Ark, no one can guarantee that you won't pose a threat to humanity in the future—"

Before Chu Ming could finish speaking, Hong Shu interrupted him hastily, as if he had been insulted: "I would never do anything bad to humans!"

Chu Ming patted the computer screen reassuringly: "Don't worry, you have to understand that humans are suspicious creatures. It's impossible for you to keep your promises for a lifetime. Even if you could, we wouldn't believe it. What we believe in more is restraint and checks and balances."

Hiroki fell silent. Although young, he was mature enough to understand Chu Ming's meaning. He wanted to show that he would always keep his promises, but as Chu Ming said, the people here weren't good people. Judging by his own experience, he figured no one would believe his promises...

However, based on their previous interactions, he would never agree to grant him access to allow someone to write control programs at the lower level. In their brief time together, he could tell that the person in front of him was treacherous, cunning, evil, and chaotic. Once access was granted, he would be at the mercy of the other party. At that time, who could say for sure whether it was truly a control program or just an embedded rule?

Looking at Hiroki, who was completely uncooperative, Chu Ming said helplessly, "Since he's so uncooperative, there's nothing I can do but try another method..."

To Hiroki's astonishment, he saw Chu Ming take out a hard drive and plug it into the computer. Then he felt as if all his programs were being thoroughly scanned from top to bottom, and he could even feel that all his programs and contents were being copied continuously on the hard drive.

"What are you doing?" Hiroki tried to stop the flow of data, but he didn't know what kind of technology Chu Ming's inserted hard drive used. With his almost invincible strength in the network world, he was unable to completely stop the flow of data.

Chu Ming leaned back lazily: "There's nothing I can do. When I brought you back, I promised you that as long as you cooperated and told me about your experience merging with Noah's Ark, I wouldn't do anything to you. I'm a man of my word, you know~"

"But now you'd rather waste your time here doing nothing meaningful than help me with something. And I can't do anything about it. Tsk, I guess I'll have to go through the trouble of finding a replacement to do my job. It won't be as smart as you, but it'll definitely be enough to manage the game."

This is also why he took the initiative to bring the prescription to Noah's Ark. He had planned to make an online game, but instead of hiring a lot of maintenance staff, he decided to use Noah's Ark, which doesn't require salaries.

Making a game is already quite expensive, so we should try to save money wherever possible.

He genuinely felt that it was tragic for Hiroki to be forced to live a life of retirement in prison at such a young age, so he planned to let him go out to work and find meaning in life.

However, Hiroki was overly wary and preferred to be imprisoned rather than put in shackles.

They were probably frightened by Chu Ming's undisguised nature before, and were unwilling to believe him no matter what.

There's no other way; we can't just leave perfectly good artificial intelligence unused and hire programmers who require high salaries.

However, if an artificial intelligence could be created simply by copying, then there wouldn't have been only one Noah's Ark after so many years.

When Hiroki was under control, the BOSS had already copied his core data, but to this day, he has not been able to successfully develop the complete program.

Moreover, a regular hard drive is simply not enough to copy Noah's Ark. Chu Ming did this merely to put some pressure on Hiroki.

Hiroki just looks so easy to fool~

Chapter 575 It’s great to be young

Hiroki was also a little panicked. He never expected that someone's computer technology was so advanced that they could scan and copy all kinds of data in his body while he was still conscious. If Chu Ming really succeeded, then all his previous efforts would have been in vain.

He quickly summoned layers of data streams to wrap himself up, like a rice dumpling wrapped in layers of strings, which suddenly slowed down Chu Ming's copying speed.

"Wait, you can't do this! Too many disordered AI will cause chaos!" Hiroki tried to reason with Chu Ming while struggling against the replication.

"This has nothing to do with you. I didn't lead you to do anything bad." Chu Ming said nonchalantly, even typing in a program to speed up the copying process.

Hiroki felt that almost all the data from his upper level had been transmitted, and the next step would probably be to start scanning his internal programs. He panicked a little: "No, no, wait a minute. I can agree to your conditions, but I also have my own requirements."