Chapter 386: Drama King, Dumb AI, and Mr. Unlucky

“You know, this AI of yours... it’s pretty dumb.”

In Donghai City, at the Cyber Technology Division of the National Security Bureau, a man with a scruffy beard and thick round glasses was scrolling through lines of code on Lin Xian’s laptop.

“Why bother with this thing? You could download an open-source AI from the internet. Even a basic mobile AI would be a hundred times smarter than this one.”

Two hours earlier, after failing to revive VV in the wilderness, Lin Xian decided it was time to get help from a professional. One of his teammates from the world hacker competition in the US was a top AI expert in X Country, now working at the National Security Bureau in Donghai City. Lin Xian contacted him and brought his laptop to the bureau for a consultation.

The bearded man frowned more and more as he looked at VV’s code.

“This AI of yours... It looks like a college student’s homework. The logic might be okay, but it’s pretty much useless and really dumb.”

Lin Xian was taken aback by his AI being called “dumb” so many times. “Is it really that bad? I thought the code was quite advanced.”

VV’s original code had been painstakingly memorized and transcribed by Lin Xian from his third dream, character by character. It was supposed to be the pinnacle of human scientific achievement. How could it be described as completely worthless?

“How dumb are we talking?” Lin Xian asked. “As dumb as a Tmall Genie?”

The bearded man shook his head. “Worse. A Tmall Genie can understand basic commands like playing music, setting an alarm, or looking up information. But this AI of yours, you have to talk to it like a robot. If you miss a word or speak a bit too fast, it won’t understand anything.”

He turned to the laptop and spoke loudly, “VV, play a random song.”

“Sorry,” the laptop responded in a monotone, “No song named ‘random’ found.”

The bearded man chuckled, turned around, and spread his hands at Lin Xian. “See? This thing is useless. How could it compete with a Tmall Genie? It doesn’t even have basic logic. Where did you get this from?”

“Uh... A classmate gave it to me,” Lin Xian quickly lied. “Is there any reason why a highly intelligent AI would turn into this... mess?”

“That’s impossible,” the bearded man replied, shaking his head. “Computer programs don’t randomly get dumber. They either stay the same or get better with improvements. No way an AI becomes dumber on its own without someone messing with it.”

“I looked through your AI’s source code. There’s nothing good about it, and it’s nearly impossible to modify... It’s what we call ‘spaghetti code.’ You know what that means? A mess of convoluted, pointless, and buggy code that somehow still runs. The best thing to do is leave it untouched. Change a single letter, and the whole thing could collapse.”

Lin Xian straightened up, staring at the laptop in frustration. He still hoped to salvage it somehow. “So, you’re saying this AI is beyond saving? But it’s important to me. Even if it’s dumb, I don’t want to just throw it away.”

“Given how ‘dumb’ it is now, is there anything useful it can still do? It can’t even handle basic communication—are there any other functions it could serve?”

The bearded man was silent for a moment. He rubbed his stubbly chin, thinking for a while before replying, “If you really want to use it, forget about its communication capabilities. It’s terrible at that. But the AI’s logic isn’t too bad. It could be used in simple household appliances, where the logic is straightforward.”

“Like what?” He looked around and spotted an unopened robotic vacuum cleaner on a shelf in the office. “You could use this AI to drive a robotic vacuum cleaner. The logic is simple, and it doesn’t need to communicate—just follow a set program to clean the floor.”

A robotic vacuum cleaner? Lin Xian remembered the trash-can robot VV from his third dream and the appliances VV used to possess in his own home—a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner. Was this fate? Was VV always meant to be a trash collector?

Regardless, Lin Xian didn’t want to leave VV trapped in a powerless laptop, even if it had become “dumb” for some unknown reason—maybe due to a virus that damaged its brain? Whatever the cause, Lin Xian still saw VV as a good friend and hoped it could live on.

“Well...” Lin Xian scratched his head. “How about I buy a robotic vacuum cleaner, and you help me transfer VV’s program into it? A vacuum cleaner just needs to clean up trash; it doesn’t have to be smart.”

“Why buy one? I’ll give you this vacuum cleaner,” the bearded man said, grabbing the box from the shelf and placing it on the table. “This isn’t anything fancy. I don’t even remember what I bought to get this as a freebie. I don’t need it, and I don’t like vacuum cleaners anyway. Since you want it, I’ll just give it to you and help you transfer the AI.”

The bearded man quickly unpacked the vacuum cleaner, connected it to the laptop, and, after about ten minutes of furious typing, successfully transferred VV’s program.

He placed the robotic vacuum cleaner on the floor and nudged it forward. “All done. Your AI is now inside this vacuum cleaner. It will clean the room following the logic and set program.”

Lin Xian nodded and called out to the vacuum cleaner, “VV, start cleaning.”

However... there was no response.

The bearded man wagged his finger. “Didn’t I just say? Don’t expect this vacuum cleaner to respond to voice commands. If you want to control it, use the mobile app. It’s now connected to the network, so you can control it remotely, even if you’re not at home.”

“It’s useless to try direct communication. This level of intelligence can’t handle it. But it’s pretty good at cleaning and finding trash. Watch this.”

He crumpled a tissue and tossed it on the floor.

“Trash! Trash! Found trash!” The vacuum cleaner rolled over to the tissue with a loud rumble, gobbled it up like a hungry snake, and then stood still, as if it were dead.

Lin Xian squinted at it, puzzled. “Hey, this vacuum cleaner is kind of noisy... Does it have to shout every time it finds trash?”

The bearded man laughed. “You think I programmed that line? I told you, I didn’t touch your AI’s code at all. I just moved it over. That annoying phrase is probably the vacuum cleaner’s default setting. Want me to see if I can delete it?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Lin Xian chuckled. “At least it’s some kind of interaction.”

After that, Lin Xian packed the vacuum cleaner VV back into its box and took a car back to the Rhine Company building.

Once in his office, he took the vacuum cleaner out of the box and stared at it suspiciously. Something was off. Way off. No vacuum cleaner on the market would have such a dumb alert sound unless the company wanted to go bankrupt or the designer was trying to spite their boss. It was too dumb—beyond dumb.

Back in the third dream, when Lin Xian first encountered the trash-can robot that locked his ankle, even his good temper was tested. The reason was this unbearable voice line.

Lin Xian tore off half a sheet of paper from his notebook, crumpled it up, and tossed it further away.

“Trash! Trash! Found trash!” The vacuum cleaner VV hopped to it like a rabbit, swallowed the paper, and stood still as if it had died again.

So, VV had two major problems:

First, its code had changed. Although Lin Xian didn’t fully understand code, he had spent months transcribing VV from the third dream, line by line. He could sense that VV’s code was elegant and beautiful. He couldn’t explain why, but it flowed like poetry.

Yet, in the bearded man’s eyes, it was “spaghetti code”—a student’s homework with no redeeming qualities. Who could have altered VV’s code? It couldn’t have been the super virus from the future, could it?

Definitely not. That virus aimed to destroy VV and was incredibly powerful, far beyond VV’s ability to resist. In such a one-sided battle, the virus could have easily wiped VV out. Why waste effort turning it into a dumb AI?

Moreover, Lin Xian knew that since he brought the laptop back from the US, it had been out of power and untouched. So, in theory, no one could have tampered with VV’s code except VV itself!

Second, the phrase “Trash! Trash! Found trash!” was straight out of the third dream’s trash-can robot VV. He had told VV about the events of the third dream in detail to help it understand its origins, including Zhao Ying Jun’s past, the annoying trash-can robot, and the passwords. VV’s response was, “Even if you tell me all this, it doesn’t resonate with me. What you’re describing isn’t my experience at all—whether it’s Sky City, Zhao Ying Jun, or that trash-can robot. To me, it’s like listening to a story. If you insist I’m Zhao Ying Jun’s dog... honestly, I’d rather be Chu An Qing’s dog!”

That heartless comment aside, the line “Trash! Trash! Found trash!” kept bugging Lin Xian.

He crumpled another piece of paper and tossed it farther away.

The vacuum cleaner pounced like a rabbit again: “Trash! Trash! Found trash!”

It did the familiar swallowing action and stopped.

“Heh.” Lin Xian snorted, staring at the vacuum cleaner from a distance. “Are you still putting on an act? Trying to keep this up until the Oscars?”

Still, there was no reaction.

Now Lin Xian was starting to doubt himself. “Forget it, forget it,” he thought. “If VV is really acting, there must be a reason, and nothing I say will make it admit anything. If it’s not acting and really is brain-damaged by a virus, then shouting more won’t help.”

Either way, even if VV was now a brain-damaged, shrunken, barely-functioning vacuum cleaner, it was still his old friend and comrade. As long as a comrade comes back alive, who cares about its disabilities?

“Hmm?” Suddenly, Lin Xian got an idea. He picked up the vacuum cleaner, put it back in its box, and patted it. “VV, since you’ve become a dummy, I’ll send you somewhere you belong. Maybe you’ll figure out whose dog you really are after some time together.”

Lin Xian turned, looking around. He realized it did look like a construction site. However, it wasn’t a building site. It was a digging site!

He found himself in a massive pit, at least the size of ten football fields. This hole was enormous and, more importantly, deep. Lin Xian, like a frog at the bottom of a well, could only see a large rectangular patch of sky above him—no signs of any ground-level landscape.

The pit seemed to be about forty to fifty meters deep.

“What the heck is this place?”

Whether he was born in a city, a forest, or the cesspit beneath Sky City, he had never been this confused. At least in previous dreams, there was a gradual process of understanding where he was and what he needed to do. But this time, the dream had thrust him straight into the role, surrounded by busy workers. Some were moving tools, others clearing stones, but most were digging downward with shovels.

Why gather so many people to dig a hole? What were they digging for?

Just as Lin Xian was pondering, a muddy hand slapped him on the back.

“Daydreaming, are we? Hurry up and get to work, or we’re gonna get whipped!”

That familiar voice... Lin Xian turned his head and saw a legendary figure—the one who had defeated the SpaceTime Butterfly, dominated the millennium post, and ruled the River of Time...

“Big Cat?”

“Ahhh!!” Big Cat let out a painful scream. A scrawny man wearing a uniform with a gun on his hip lashed Big Cat with a whip, shouting curses, “Get back to work! Who told you to slack off?”

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” Big Cat bowed his head and apologized, then dragged Lin Xian aside and shoved a shovel into his hands, gritting his teeth. “It’s all your fault! Now I got whipped! Start digging! If we don’t get this section done by tonight, none of us will eat, and we’ll all get beaten!”

Without wasting a moment, Big Cat started digging furiously. Lin Xian decided to play along. He picked up the shovel and began digging as well, asking casually, “Big Cat, what are you guys digging for? And why are you in such bad shape this time, looking like a slave... Is that a pair of underpants? It doesn’t cover anything, swaying all over the place.”

“Shhh—” Big Cat turned pale with fright, glancing around cautiously. He glared at Lin Xian. “Still talking out loud? If they hear you, you’ll get whipped too!”

Lin Xian stayed quiet for a moment, surveying his surroundings. He noticed that almost all the diggers around were in the same condition as Big Cat—exhausted, but too afraid to stop, gritting their teeth and pushing on. Their skin was dark from the sun, and most of them had sunburnt skin. Worse, everyone had scars—wounds that had clearly been inflicted by whips.

No wonder Big Cat was so scared. These people were like slaves or laborers. Anyone who dared take a break would get a whip across their back. And if they pushed too far, they might get beaten half to death or worse, killed on the spot.

Realizing how strict the rules were in this “digging site,” Lin Xian moved closer and asked softly, “Big Cat, what are we digging for? I mean... what are they making us dig for?”

Lin Xian understood that he was also a slave among them. This starting point was really bad; the moment he entered the dream, his role was locked in.

“Who knows what we’re digging for? We just dig!” Big Cat wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Are we digging for a micro nuclear battery?” Lin Xian guessed.

“As if it would take this much effort!” Big Cat snorted. “Micro nuclear batteries are everywhere. If that were it, we wouldn’t be suffering this much!”

Lin Xian was puzzled. “Then what the hell are we doing here?”

“I have no idea!” Big Cat’s eyes were clear and innocent. “They tell us to dig, so we dig!”

“Okay, okay,” Lin Xian waved his hand. It seemed he wouldn’t get any useful information out of Big Cat. What about the strategist? Is he still here in this dream?

Lin Xian dug another shovelful of dirt and moved closer to Big Cat. “Where’s Ah Zhuang?”

“Oh, you still remember Ah Zhuang? Wasn’t he beaten to death by the foreman?”

“What about Er Zhuzi?”

“Ughh... Don’t bring him up. If he hadn’t ogled the foreman’s wife, we wouldn’t have all gotten whipped.”

“Where is Er Zhuzi?”

“He was chopped up and fed to the dogs by the foreman! Nothing left... not even poop!”

“And San Pang?” Lin Xian spread his hands. “San Pang was such a kind and honest guy; he wouldn’t do anything wrong, right?”

“Humph.” Big Cat snorted coldly. “San Pang mouthed off when the foreman was dealing with Er Zhuzi, so he got fed to the dogs too.”

“...”

Lin Xian felt some sympathy. It seemed the Face Gang had almost been wiped out, leaving Big Cat as the only one standing.

“What about Li Cheng and Li Ning Ning? Do you know them?”

Big Cat, annoyed, shook his head. “Who the hell are they? I just want to dig and eat! Can you stop talking? I’m the one getting whipped, not you!”

“I’m digging, aren’t I?” Lin Xian felt he was being quite cooperative with Big Cat. This was the fastest he’d ever gotten into character in any dream. He’d already shoveled a lot of dirt by now. As a former model citizen, he had never suffered like this before—just trying to gather some intel.

“Is there anyone here who actually knows what we’re digging for?” Lin Xian asked, feeling a bit desperate. “Anyone who can explain what we’re doing?”

“We’re digging for ‘Turing,’” a tall, muscular man with dark skin and sharp features said softly from beside him. “We’ve changed excavation sites several times already. They’re digging for ‘Turing,’ supposedly a very powerful object that tribes all over the world are searching for.”

This man seemed to know a lot about the world. Lin Xian was just about to ask more questions when Big Cat sneered, “Hey, look at that, Mr. Unlucky! You sure know a lot!”

The man called “Mr. Unlucky” frowned and looked at Big Cat. “Big Cat, I’d appreciate it if you were polite and didn’t call me ‘Mr. Unlucky.’ I have a name.”

“Oh, really?” Big Cat howled. “You call me ‘Big Cat’ and expect me to call you by your name? Where’s the fairness in that?”

Then, laughing like he was telling a joke, Big Cat explained to Lin Xian, “Brother, you have no idea how unlucky this guy is.”

“He’s not even from this era. When we were digging at the last site, we just happened to uncover an underground hibernation chamber base! Most of the hibernation pods were destroyed in the Great Catastrophe of 2400, but his was the only one still functioning!”

“And guess what? Hahaha... The foreman just tied him up and put him to work. How unlucky is that? He might have been better off dying with the others!”

“And when the foreman was looting his stuff, he took this guy’s storage box too. Now he doesn’t have his notebook from before hibernation, doesn’t know his past, and doesn’t even know his real name. The only name he knows... is what the foreman called him when he whipped him!”

“So, after all that bad luck, you still don’t want people to call you ‘Mr. Unlucky’? Ahh!!”

Another whip came down. Big Cat squealed like a pig. “Work! Dig!” The supervisor in uniform shouted, lashing Big Cat a couple more times before walking away.

Big Cat gritted his teeth, his face turning red, and kept his head down, silently digging.

Lin Xian approached the man called “Mr. Unlucky.” Judging by his age, he seemed at least a decade older than Lin Xian. He clearly had more brains than Big Cat and knew more about what was going on.

So Lin Xian asked politely, “Brother, what’s your name?”

“Gao Wen,” the man said as he shoveled some dirt. “I don’t have any memories from before hibernation, and I never saw the notes I left behind, so I don’t know if this name is real.”

“But compared to being called ‘Mr. Unlucky,’ I’d rather you respect me and call me by this name—Gao Wen.”