SDIWD - Chapter 123

Chapter 123

If life is inevitably full of ups and downs, one might as well learn to enjoy the ride.

For Hua Mu, her time since being stranded on the deserted island had been a mix of fortune and misfortune. With Bai Zhen by her side, she found she could face so-called crises with increasing composure.

So, even with the "ups and downs" of their current predicament, there was nothing wrong with maintaining an optimistic, seize-the-day attitude, right?

After all, even that perpetually worried Sentinel had suddenly decided to let loose, hadn't she?

She once thought her days on the island were enough to make her lose all track of time, but life beneath it was even more disorienting. After all, she couldn't even see the sun here.

"Bai-Bai Zhen…"

She really couldn't take it anymore; she was about to fall apart.

The Sentinel, breathing heavily, rolled over and let Hua Mu lie on top of her.

"Miss…"

Exhausted, Hua Mu whispered, "Why so suddenly…"

Ah, it wasn't that she disliked it… She didn't dislike it at all, but it was so sudden… Still, while it was sudden, it wasn't exactly unwelcome.

She was just a little puzzled.

"Tired?"

The Sentinel didn't answer her question, instead stroking her hair gently and speaking in a soft whisper.

Hua Mu struggled for a couple of seconds before finally yielding. "A-a little."

Her body giving out was one thing, but more importantly, she had so many questions to ask!

"Then let's rest for a bit."

No, no, no, don't say it so matter-of-factly, as if this were the most important thing right now… Not that it wasn't important, but shouldn't they be thinking about other things?

Hua Mu weakly thumped Bai Zhen's shoulder.

"What are you really up to? Tell me, quickly."

Was it to lull that artificial intelligence into a false sense of security?

But the AI wasn't her, how could it be lulled by something like this!

"What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? Don't you dare tell me it was just a whim!"

Hua Mu felt that Bai Zhen had been hiding a lot of things since they entered the base, just like how she had realized something was off with the AI long before but only mentioned it later.

"Uh… n-not entirely."

Bai Zhen seemed to only now remember to be embarrassed, pulling the sheet up to wrap them both snugly.

Not entirely? Did that mean it was half a whim?

Hua Mu decided to take this opportunity to properly interrogate this woman.

"From now on, I'll ask, you'll answer." Although the AI was no longer speaking, it was surely still monitoring them. Hua Mu wasn't that reckless. She leaned close to Bai Zhen's ear and whispered, "If there's something you can't answer easily, just give me a sign."

"Okay~"

For some reason, Hua Mu felt that Bai Zhen was in a very good mood, which was utterly baffling.

"Let's go over this from the beginning. When did you start to realize something was wrong with Xiao Hua?"

"It wasn't that I knew, I was just suspicious at first. When it said there was another surviving specimen, I just felt something was a little off. I had a vague feeling along the way, but I was only certain after seeing the specimen itself."

"So that's why you warned me then?"

"After all, we still needed its help to explore the base."

"If that's the case, we should have run away sooner! And now… what's your plan? Are you really not going to save the… that specimen?"

Bai Zhen sighed. "Miss, even if we release it, it won't live long. What Xiao Hua said wasn't wrong, but it failed to consider one thing… newborn mammals need to be nursed. Without a mother, it simply won't survive for long. What's more, its form isn't suited for living in water; it can't even maintain its balance."

Just as she had said before, before even considering whether to save it, the objective reality was that this specimen could not survive in the natural environment.

"If that's the case, then we don't need to agonize over it. We can just agree with Xiao Hua… Ah, it's not that you don't want to save it, it's that you don't want to kill it!"

Hua Mu felt she had grasped the key point and was momentarily moved by the Sentinel's kindness.

"That's not the main reason. A massive, sapient creature like that, whether dead or alive, will have an impact on the surrounding environment… and we are still living on this island, after all."

"Oh, right! What if it gets into the food chain…"

The mere thought sent a shiver down Hua Mu's spine.

"Well… yes, something like that."

"But what do we do? We can't get out, can we?"

"Let's wait for three days."

The food they had brought was enough to last for three days, but what would happen after that?

"Maybe it would be better to force our way out then."

"By then, the security robots will be waiting for us outside the door with their guns aimed. Fighting them inside the base is extremely unwise. I can't guarantee your safety one hundred percent."

Alright, she knew she was a burden!

Hua Mu pouted. "Then what do we do? They'll still come for us in three days!"

"Miss, do you know why it said three days instead of three hours or three minutes?"

This was Hua Mu's question as well.

Generally, in this kind of immediate negotiation, even a few hours to consider would be a generous amount of time, yet their counterpart had given them three whole days.

"Don't tell me it's because it's stupid."

"It's because it has no concept of time. The reason it gave a three-day deadline is that the base's remaining power can only last that long. From what we've seen since we came in, the base's power supply is extremely tight. But after exploring, I found that most areas are very clean, which is likely because robots were still cleaning them not long ago."

"Ah, then why the sudden power shortage?"

"Judging by the timing, the previous tsunami probably damaged the base's power equipment. The most likely scenario is that the underwater power generator suffered irreparable damage."

"So your attack was just a probe? You figured all this out just by deduction?"

"It was less deduction and more intuition, really."

After removing the monitor, Bai Zhen felt her senses were exceptionally sharp and her thoughts extremely clear. What she called deduction was actually her picking out what she felt was the most likely possibility from countless options in her mind. And for some reason, she was able to make a decisive judgment—in the past, she would have been much more cautious.

Had she become more confident? Or overly reckless?

Bai Zhen didn't know. She only knew that she loved this feeling—her perspective broadened, her thoughts clear, as if the changes in all things were laid bare before her eyes.

The only troubling thing was that the feeling of "hunger" built up quickly, making her almost lose her self-control.

But her relationship with the Young Lady was different now, so a little… should be fine, right?

Listening to her description, Hua Mu felt more and more like she had read a similar account somewhere before.

"Bai Zhen, I remember seeing a project before, named 'Laplace's Demon.' Do you know about it?"

"Laplace's Demon?"

"Yes!"

Laplace's Demon was a hypothetical intelligent being proposed by Pierre-Simon Laplace in A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. This demon would know the position of every atom in the universe and could use Newton's laws to predict and deduce the entire past, present, and future of the universe—in other words, it would be omniscient.

Determinism was prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the second law of thermodynamics has clearly shown that such a demon cannot exist.

Of course, the project team didn't actually have the ambition to create such a demon. What they wanted to create was a type of supersensory Sentinel.

If a Sentinel's perception was a hundred times stronger than an ordinary person's, then the perception of this supersensory Sentinel would far exceed that of a normal Sentinel.

Just as a detective's deductions become more accurate with more clues, an increase in a Sentinel's perception would naturally bring them closer to the truth. The difference was that a detective still had a process of deduction, whereas these Sentinels would react directly due to their rapid processing speed, making it seem more like intuition.

However, that wasn't the ultimate goal of the project. The theory of higher-dimensional interference provided fertile ground for these ambitious scientists; twisting time and space no longer seemed like a mere dream. Although humanity's current level of technology couldn't achieve it, by utilizing a super-Sentinel's perception, it might be possible to directly glimpse the future through their mental landscape.

Bai Zhen had heard of this hypothesis, but unlike Hua Mu, she hadn't read about those projects.

"You mean…"

Seeing the Sentinel frown, Hua Mu quickly comforted her, "I'm not saying it's definite, it just feels a bit similar… Uh, looking at it from another angle, the facts can't be changed anyway, so if you really could be that powerful, wouldn't that be great?"

"No, I'm worried about two other things."

"If all the projects recorded in those notes were successful, and if those test subjects also had their monitors removed like me—" she had already realized the monitor also served to suppress her abilities "—then a large number of super-Sentinels and Guides would suddenly emerge in the world."

"It's not impossible. Judging from the AI's words, the Frankenstein Base is clearly just one of the project's foundations."

"However, nearly thirty years have passed. Considering she was sent to the Black-Eyed Clan by the Tower, the other test subjects should have also been properly placed. If she hadn't been accidentally stranded on this deserted island, she might never have had that inhibitor removed in her entire life. So, thinking about it this way was perhaps being overly anxious."

"Compared to that, the other matter is the immediate concern."

"What are you worried about?"

Bai Zhen smiled shyly and whispered something in Hua Mu's ear.

Hua Mu's eyes lit up, joy flashing across her face—which she managed to suppress with great difficulty.

Supersensory perception was inevitably a burden for a Sentinel, both physically and mentally. The increased consumption meant an increased need for Guide-hormone. And Bai Zhen's current situation clearly required more than just a simple replenishment of Guide-hormone; her highly acute senses also increased her need for contact with a Guide.

In short, Bai Zhen needed a mobile power bank.

"Ahem, well, I am your Guide, after all. For something like this, of course… it's my bounden duty!"

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