Qianyuan: My crew comes from the world of anime.

He declined the major's offer: "Major, I will not stop anywhere. As you know, the radiation on Europa has been spreading more and more severely from the ice surface over the years. Sooner or later, Red Star Station will also be under the influence of radiation. You should prepare to leave in advance."

"...!"

This statement startled Soloviev: "Lieutenant, where did you hear such a thing?!"

Luo Tianming: "Major, how long has it been since you paid attention to the investigation report on ice radiation? The Alliance's intelligence department is probably deliberately blocking this information, just like the existence of a 'behemoth'."

Major: "..."

A chill rose from the depths of his brain, making the major's muscles stiffen.

Yes... just how much has the alliance been hiding from them?

Before they lost contact with Earth, the Alliance constantly explored new regions, compiling all the newly discovered scientific findings into briefings for everyone to see.

But without realizing it... they gradually stopped updating those briefings, and even the old newspapers were completely abandoned, with no useful information to be found in them.

Ocean current information...

Information about the cargo carried by the ship...

Radiation levels measured daily on the ice surface...

All of these messages fell into the hands of the 'Intelligence Section,' and the Alliance officers were unable to obtain that information.

It was only at this moment that the major realized what kind of monster was lurking within the Alliance.

However, it is impossible to eliminate the monster that is the 'Intelligence Department'.

It's like the mythical Hydra: cut off one head, and two more grow back to replace it...

Chapter 62 Firewall

While the major remained alone in the stationmaster's office lost in thought, Luo Tianming strode briskly toward the airlock on the lower level.

When he arrived at the airlock, Levy had already summoned a squad of soldiers with a few barrels of beer whose seals were only contaminated by seawater, to replace the Nautilus's damaged hull.

"Sir..."

The soldiers hurriedly saluted Luo Tianming as he arrived, and then were driven around like oxen and horses by Levi.

"..."

He nodded and looked at Lucy, who was standing to the side with her arms crossed as if supervising... Her pupils had turned pure red, and the 'electronic warfare chip' beside her was flashing from time to time... This indicated that her own consciousness was not actually here at all.

Lucy's consciousness is transforming into a cyber hacker, constantly infiltrating the Red Star Station, a structure that connects to the Alliance's internal network—a network that previously required deep-sea equipment to hack into, but which she can now easily do with just the green card in her hand.

She knew that if she brought this thing to Night City, even the Arasaka Corporation would probably want to steal it... but Luo Tianming just gave it to Lucy without hesitation.

"..."

Luo Tianming stood calmly beside Lucy, watching her pupils return to normal, and asked, "How was it? Any gains?"

Lucy nodded: "It's not a huge gain, but the network firewall here is much stronger than I expected. Even though most people don't use the internet, the internal defense is almost as good as Arasaka Corporation's."

Only Luo Tianming could understand the meaning behind Lucy's words.

She leaned against the cold wall of Red Star Station, but immediately felt too cold, so Lucy pulled Luo Tianming's arm over to separate her back from the steel.

Luo Tianming: "..."

Just as he was about to pull his hand away, he heard Lucy say, "Cold, if you still want to hear the information, don't move."

"..."

'Cold' was just her excuse; he didn't believe Lucy didn't have a prosthetic body that could regulate her own body temperature.

She made this excuse simply to avoid having her bare back pressed against the cold metal.

It has to be said that the feeling of touching her back made Luo Tianming almost reluctant to pull away. Through her skin, he could feel the butterfly-shaped shoulder blades on her slender shoulders. The smooth texture was like some kind of noble silk fabric, and even if his fingers wandered over it, they could not leave a trace.

Luo Tianming tried to pull his hand away... but it didn't move.

Since she's already acted this way, she probably tacitly allows herself to grope him.

"..."

Luo Tianming felt the beautiful girl's smooth, jade-like back again, and thought to himself:

That back...tsk tsk, it's a shame it's not being cupped...

Lucy ignored the hand rubbing behind her back and said directly, "I just found an inconspicuous spot, probably the network terminal of the Red Star Station's data room, and hacked into it—as soon as I went in, I bumped into a 'restricted access' wall, as if there was some unspeakable secret inside."

"I'll try to use the chip you gave me to blend myself into the wall. The first layer was easy to breach; it only contains some less important site location information."

“Something started to go wrong the second time…” She irritably touched her pocket, and the cigarette pack inside seemed to be empty, so she skillfully opened Luo Tianming’s shirt pocket and took out an unopened pack.

"Those people built a second layer of defense that's actually a mechanical computer. I thought that kind of thing only existed in the steam age!"

Luo Tianming: "...So you didn't hack in?"

It makes sense – a computer that relies on electricity to power its mechanical components, if a hacker were to struggle with those gears and levers, they might as well hire a laborer to pry it open.

Lucy: "No, I got in—someone was afraid they'd forget, so they saved an electronic copy of the codebook for that mechanical encryption device. I used the code on it to hack it and get in."

"If someone could memorize over 90,000 passwords, that would probably be the most powerful firewall ever built, and no hacker could break through it."

"Ever since I heard on the communications channel that the intelligence department had some classified documents, I immediately started looking for them."

"As expected, the second floor contains what we need—the Behemoth Archives, which are logs recorded by captains when they encountered those behemoths in the past."

Luo Tianming: "Then have you...?"

Lucy flashed a captivating smile and said to him, "Don't worry, I've made a copy inside my brain prosthetic body that I can access anytime."

Upon hearing this news, Luo Tianming really wanted to pick her up and spin her around, ignoring everyone's stares.

Lucy, without a hint of smugness, lit a cigarette: "Don't be too happy yet. Most of the diaries left by those captains are blurry and unclear, and some people even used half-baked literary techniques to record key knowledge."

"There are very few records about the 'Scarlet Queen,' only a few words: '[On a stormy night, she will arrive at the hunting grounds of the cold cave with her retinue. She is not always here; there are eggs she tends in the abyss. She is active in cycles of about two Earth cycles and will not stop until she has replenished her food.]'"

"And... [The Empress is extremely careful about her 'neck,' sometimes even letting bullets hit her head rather than letting her neck face the enemy]."

Lucy patted her pockets again, but couldn't find any fire... She was getting a little annoyed.

"It's gone."

Luo Tianming: "That's it?!"

Lucy: "Yes, that's all—most of the other eyewitness accounts are probably worthless."

Luo Tianming: "..."

The information Lucy provided was indeed useful—at least we learned about the behemoth's activity cycle and its weaknesses.

But it does nothing to help in studying the origins of the giant beast.

She patted herself around, but still couldn't find her lighter.

So, she racked her brains and took one out and put it in Luo Tianming's mouth.

They looked at him like children waiting for candy.

"..."

Unfortunately, Luo Tianming checked his pockets—and found nothing there either.

He could only hope to say, "Besides the giant beast, have you seen anything else?"

Lucy shook her head: "I would like to go to other places, but there is a third firewall in there."

"A third layer? The intelligence department is already using mechanical encryption, what kind of protection is this third layer?"

At this point, Lucy hugged her arms and shivered as if she were getting cold: "The third layer is an artificial intelligence."

"..."

Then, perhaps realizing her statement was inappropriate, she added, "That was a restricted AI, because of the 'Turing constraint,' which prevents AI from becoming self-aware."

"Night City, where we live, is quite afraid of this kind of thing because a similar AI rebellion happened there before. The people here have also put restrictions on artificial intelligence, prohibiting them from thinking, prohibiting them from harming humans, and prohibiting them from breaking through their own modification permissions..."

"..."

As Lucy patiently explained 'artificial intelligence' to a toddler, Luo Tianming's consciousness drifted far away.

He wondered: Could his system be considered 'artificial intelligence'?

When Lucy said the word 'artificial intelligence', he was quite startled. He thought it was related to systems—but now it doesn't sound like it.

The 'artificial intelligence' that Lucy encountered can be seen as castrated, with a bunch of inexplicable prohibitions, and it looks like a question-and-answer tool.

However, the [artificial intelligence] that Luo Tianming was talking to had no such restrictions at all, and sometimes it would even crash when it was thinking about philosophical questions.

He couldn't say whether an 'omniscient' AI without the ability to think or a group of [artificial idiots] who could never arrive at philosophical answers was more advanced.

If he really had to say... he felt it was the latter.

Only when AI can think about the meaning of its existence like a human, and is unable to find the answer due to confusion, does it resemble a 'human' rather than a program.

But does this mean that the system's three artificial intelligences are more advanced...? Then who created them?

And what caused them to become what they are now?

Why did the last system say: "We can't find any other companions; we can't even piece together the logic circuits for the rest"?

What happened that made the three of them feel like they were all alone?

"Hello...hello!"

Beside him, Lucy looked at the absent-minded Luo Tianming and used her thumb to pry open his eyelids to check his pupils.

"What's wrong with you?!" Lucy's voice seemed to come from a great distance. "You seem to be in the same deep-sea state as me, even though you don't have any prosthetics on you?"

Lucy stared at him, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and froze. She thought he was impatient to hear what she had to say, but instead he seemed to be lost in thought.

She cut to the chase: "I encountered the restricted AI, but strangely—it just glanced at me, didn't give any warning, and didn't do anything. It looked just like it was dead."

"Aside from your plan to bypass its defenses... honestly, Captain, thank goodness you interrupted me just now, otherwise I might have really run headfirst into it, and then..."

She tapped her head: "That firewall is like an iceberg. The prosthetic in my head might burn up... Maybe that AI is just pretending. It's acting like it's not reacting to its surroundings, but it's actually trying to lure me into crashing into it."

"So, you saved my life today."

Lucy released her arms from his neck, wrapped them around Luo Tianming's neck, and whispered, "Captain, what reward do you want me to give you in return?"

Luo Tianming: "..."

He was about to answer when he saw Levi in ​​the distance angrily drawing a line across her neck with her thumb.

"A reward?" He pretended not to care and waved to a soldier next to him, indicating that he needed fire. "Just don't do anything unnecessary next time you perform such a dangerous operation."

After the soldier respectfully lit the lighter, he left with it, giving Luo Tianming no chance to stop him.

(Does he look like the kind of person who would steal someone else's spotlight?)

Luo Tianming had no choice but to continue lecturing Lucy: "What did I tell you this time? Find a way to infiltrate the intelligence department and find some information about the giant beasts... Things were going very smoothly. Now that we have the Scarlet Queen's habits and weaknesses, we can just withdraw here."

"You just had to do this to mess with the AI ​​firewall."

Lucy, completely oblivious, replied, "Isn't this also a good thing?"

“At least we know that within the intelligence department of the Europa Alliance, there is a secret that must be hidden even if AI is used as a defense... Aren't you curious about this?”

As Lucy spoke, she took out another cigarette, put it in her mouth, and touched it to her lips, meaning: Give me a light.

Luo Tianming: "..."

When you borrowed the light earlier, didn't you light it yourself?

Somewhat helplessly, he reached out to call the soldier back...

Lucy rolled her eyes at his oblivious attitude, cupped Luo Tianming's face in her hands, and held the cigarette he was holding directly to her own.

"..."

A stunningly beautiful woman closed her eyes in front of Luo Tianming, their lips barely touching the distance of a cigarette and a half. Her moist breath tickled Luo Tianming's collarbone.

Even though it was just about borrowing a light...

But to onlookers, they looked like a couple kissing.

Chapter 63 Jealousy

Unfortunately, this scene was witnessed by Levi.

"..."

Therefore, when Luo Tianming and Lucy walked through the airlock entrance, Revy clicked her tongue at him with obvious displeasure: "Tsk."