"How…" Tears filled Lin Lin's eyes as she stared at the image on the screen and mumbled, "No, this must be a lie. Jiang Chen, tell me, dad is lying to me, right…?"
Jiang Chen took her into his arms without saying a word.
Although the cold armor couldn't bring her any warmth, he hoped she would feel better from his embrace.
Jiang Chen looked at Lin Chaoen who was still smiling along with the old father who reappeared on the screen – Lin Minjie.
"Fallout Shelter 005 was a pawn and Lin Lin's presence there wasn't an accident but a necessity.""Didn't you find it odd? Why would a fallout shelter used to develop advanced artificial intelligence have a copy of ? And so many people knew it was inside the fallout shelter."
"It wasn't there to be the hope of mankind but rather a piece of bait to lure naïve survivors to run inside and become subjects for the experiment."
"If things had gone according to plan, the Dusk organization would've sent people inside the fallout shelter to become fresh subjects for our experiment. But unfortunately, our project had flaws from the beginning. The bug from 'the Harmony' infiltrated the fallout shelter and then you. If I guessed correctly, you should be the person who destroyed x71291. What a stubborn individual - that product saved thousands of lives." Lin Minjie shook his head and cursed.
Jiang Chen silently listened to Doctor Lin Minjie's readme file with a perplexed expression.
When Jiang Chen saved Lin Lin from Fallout Shelter 005 after she realized her father left her to leave the planet, Jiang Chen said this to her: "Perhaps, from another perspective, he left hope on this planet."
But now, maybe what he said was wrong.
From before the war, everyone was his pawn on the path to reaching the Supreme.If Jiang Chen hadn't forcefully flipped over the chessboard, perhaps he would've already succeeded.
Lin Lin's whimpering voice interrupted Jiang Chen's train of thought. Her eyes were filled with tears and she looked at her father with certainty.
"But… I will still use my knowledge to bring hope for our people."
Lin Minjie stared at his daughter for a while before he started to smile. "Is that so? I'm happy you have dreams, my dear daughter… I genuinely hope you can achieve your dream."
He paused and looked at Jiang Chen. "Jiang Chen, right? I already know your stance of being a human. Regarding your victory, I graciously accept it, but I won't congratulate you."
"I never had expectations of receiving congratulations from my enemy."
"Also, I hope you won't discriminate against my daughter just because she's a digitalized human."
"Please be assured that won't happen."
What should be buried wasn't digitalized humans nor artificial intelligence... but dangerous thought. While Lin Lin had fundamental differences from real digitalized humans, her brain was still a brain.
Jiang Chen looked down and raised the rifle in his hand.
Lin Lin gently pulled at him.
"Do you want to stop me?" Jiang Chen said in a quiet voice.
"Can you not spare him?"
Jiang Chen's certainty was his response to her.
This was the only circumstance where he couldn't show mercy.
"Then… let me do it. I don't want ... don't want you to become the person who kills my father," Lin Lin spoke with a remorseful smile.
She stood there with her father's brain in front of her and droplets of tears rolling down her face. She never was a strong person.
At the end of the road, with his daughter in tears, Lin Minjie seemed to have understood something - the definition of emotion, the algorithm he tried to craft for advanced artificial intelligence had been always within his reach.
But he couldn't see.
Because on the path to the Supreme, he had given up too much.
He watched his daughter kneeling on the ground, crying. He suddenly felt that this outcome wasn't too bad.
"Inside this server, there is a document numbered 7381 with a 103-page essay about warp drives." Lin Minjie stared into Jiang Chen's eyes. "If you ever face them one day, it might be useful. This is her dowry from father to daughter; I hope you can treat her well because of this gift."
"Thank you."
Although without this gift, he would still treat her well.
"You don't need to thank me. Because even if you really create the warp drive, your odds of winning only increase from 0% to 1%." Lin Minjie scoffed.
Communication was tuned into Jiang Chen's communication channel; he didn't make Lin Lin hear his final monologue.
Jiang Chen wanted to say something. He took a deep breath to calm himself in a desperate attempt to hide the weakness in his heart.
"Why didn't you tell her?"
"In the end, I wanted to experience what it felt like to be a father." He ended with a sentence that had more meaning than met the eye.
In that instant, Jiang Chen had the impulse to stop everything. He wasn't a coldblooded man and was never indifferent to cruelty. Since Lin Minjie already lost, he didn't need to put the final nail in the coffin. Since he was the father of Lin Lin, even just for… for Lin Lin, maybe he could let his brain survive.
Lin Minjie seemed to have read Jiang Chen's thoughts as he laughed and spoke in the communication channel: "It doesn't feel good to live with just a brain. The only reason I could live till now was to wait for the day I could abandon this brain too. Won't you allow that day to come?"
Jiang Chen was silent.
"The places I didn't take her to - I hope you can do that for me."
Jiang Chen nodded. "I promise."
Lin Minjie smiled at Jiang Chen. A sudden trace of remorse appeared in his eyes, but it was quickly replaced by certainty.
Suddenly, he looked at Lin Chaoen who had been smiling the whole time.
"My son, I'll give you the last order. No, two last orders…"
Lin Chaoen nodded.
"First, turn off the life-supporting device of my brain."
Lin Chaoen's brain was buried low.
Lin Lin raised her face covered in tears as she looked at her father. Her lips trembled and she whimpered "no" repeatedly.
Lin Minjie looked at his daughter one last time and slowly closed his eyes.
"Second, end your life."
"Understood, father."
Without hesitation, Lin Chaoen walked to the side of the central computer.
"No—" Lin Lin screamed out.
The cry echoed in the empty fallout shelter. Jiang Chen tried not to look at Lin Lin.
But Jiang Chen noticed that before he pressed the button, Lin Chaoen's hand hovered over the switch for two seconds.
In the end, he still pressed it.
The bubbles in the vial gradually stopped and the green nutrient levels calmed down.
If blood and oxygen supplies are cut off, brain cells will stop functioning within 60 seconds. Within four minutes, brain cells will start to die. In 6-10 minutes, the brain will suffer irreparable damage with a large amount of brain cell death.
Watching that vial, tears rolled down on Lin Lin's mask.
Jiang Chen took a deep breath and counted in his mind.
Lin Chaoen turned around and looked thoughtfully at Jiang Chen.
"That's weird. For an instant, I had a thought to reject the order."
Jiang Chen said quietly, "Congratulations."
"No, you don't have to congratulate me since I didn't receive a mission to evolve into advanced artificial intelligence." A sudden smile appeared on Lin Chaoen's face. "Goodbye."
