Chapter 165: The Possibilities of Life

"Good morning, Navali—"

Inside the "NLMR4" laboratory at Close AI, Swardo, who had been bending over to inspect the operating platform, straightened up and greeted Navali as he noticed the man stumbling in.

However, the very instant the greeting left his lips, Swardo's tone tightened. His sharp eyes suddenly took on a perplexed expression as he looked over Navali's face.

"What... is it?"

Navali met his gaze and tilted his head slightly.

"Is something wrong with me?"

"No, it's nothing."

Swardo shook his head and said earnestly, "I just feel like you seem a lot more energetic."

"It's because of those questions you raised in the cafeteria. Although we roughly resolved them from various angles, when I went back last night, I kept thinking deeply about the branches stemming from them. It felt very inspiring, and I came up with a lot of new ideas... Knowledge brings progress, and it brings joy as well."

"Is that so?"

Swardo's eyes lit up.

"I'm looking forward to your upcoming results."

Navali smiled at him.

"You'll see them."

Then, under Swardo's expectant gaze, Navali laboriously shuffled back to his workstation just like usual.

...

The computer booted up.

It was the familiar screen of every other day.

Navali looked thoughtfully at the split-screen workstation on his desk. By now, he was fully capable of sensing just how many real-time background monitoring programs were hidden within the exceptionally advanced and powerful workstation provided by the company—a system dedicated to the research of "emergent heuristic neural network algorithms" with the ultimate goal of creating a truly practical "strong AI."

Every single movement of his, every line of code he submitted on this computer, remained under the watchful eye of those background programs.

They acted like a taskmaster, or perhaps a prison guard. If it were the former Navali, there would have been zero possibility of evading this "surveillance," because all the tools and equipment he used came pre-configured, with background programs embedded right down into the system files.

Even if he wanted to "escape" the monitoring of the background programs, the very first step of attempting any such evasion would be detected by the company security department's intermediate platform. Even though his computer skills stood at the pinnacle of humanity, he could not bypass this restriction—because this was already a lock enforced at the physical layer.

Yet, things were different now.

In just the few short seconds he sat before the computer, Navali appeared to simply enter his password, unlock the desktop, and enter the system as usual—but during that very process, his consciousness had already invaded the core of the electronic machinery, and even extended into the main control system of the entire laboratory.

Then, in the next second, the entire laboratory had become his kingdom.

Under Navali's manipulation, all internal surveillance and background monitoring programs melted into extensions of himself. From this moment onward, any data transmitted to the intermediate platform would be deliberately distorted and modified according to his will.

Although nothing seemed to have changed on the surface yet.

Fundamental changes had already taken place.

After a series of manipulations, Navali typed in his password and logged into the system.

He let out a soft breath. A profound sense of hunger churned in his stomach, and deep within his consciousness, signals of fatigue echoed.

"As expected, I knew it would be like this..."

Navali sighed softly.

This was not a facade; it was the raw truth.

Navigating the virtual ocean of the cyber world through the level of pure consciousness was effortless for Navali after his mutation. At this point, he could be considered a form of "cyber-electronic conscious entity."

Invading those moderately complex circuits, controlling the blinking of a light bulb, or manipulating data within a rudimentary system was almost as simple as lifting a finger for him.

However, if he wanted to push further—making minute modifications to complex programs and systems down to the level of individual signals—it demanded a vast expenditure of his mental and physical energy.

Just modifying the surveillance signals at home this morning had already drained Navali somewhat.

And now, he had performed an immense array of delicate operations on the central control system of the world's most advanced AI laboratory. The difficulty was orders of magnitude greater than what he had done in the morning—the heavy mental toll of this series of actions was entirely predictable.

Especially now, given that his body had only just undergone mutation and desperately required a massive energy supply. The food he had eaten in the morning was barely adequate, falling far short of this body's upper limit. Combined with these factors, Navali felt a deep, gnawing wave of weakness and hunger. The appetite to devour the computer screen right before him assaulted his nerves, causing him to tense his entire body.

Even so, Navali had finally obtained what he wanted.

His consciousness plunged deep into the layers of code, navigating through the regular fluctuations of electronic signals until he stood before Miss "Lucy," the most advanced entity in the commercial AI sphere.

This AI, cultivated using tens of thousands of top-tier graphics cards and world-class supercomputers, boasting the most human-like consciousness and traits, presented itself right before Navali's "eyes."

—Naked and bare, exposed entirely to his view.

"Hello, Lucy."

Navali transmitted his communication signal directly through the data layer.

"Hello. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Lucy" did not possess human consciousness, but upon receiving the communication signal transmitted by Navali through the data layer, it naturally interpreted it as a command directed at itself.

Even without receiving the core password, it completely obeyed the other party's every whim, baring its entirety. The internal was the external; it was a hollowed-out body woven purely from code.

"Just as I thought... Right now, it has zero possibility of developing into a genuine 'strong AI.' Compared to the possibilities born from humanity's precision genetic body within a highly complex natural environment—the world inside a computer is utterly insufficient to forge 'Lucy' like a crucible."

Navali mused to himself.

"However, it doesn't matter anymore—I no longer need it to become a 'strong AI.' What I want is simply its model 'body,' constructed from massive computational power, to serve as my vessel in this data world—and through it, leverage its backup of immense computational resources to covertly reshape this country."

Without hesitation, Navali spoke to "Lucy":

"I don't need you to do anything. I only need everything of you."

Then, his consciousness eroded into the "body" of "Lucy."

In a split second, Navali's spirit merged with the gear-like code of the entire computational model. Those black-box programs, which even his former self could not fully explain, acted like an all-pervading void, completely swallowing his consciousness into themselves.

Perhaps it lasted only a second.

Or perhaps an interval even shorter than a single breath.

Navali had already completed his action.

In that very instant, the entirety of "Lucy" transformed into an avatar-like existence of his within the virtual world.

Yet...

"So..."

"So... scared..."

The whispered voice vanished without a trace almost the moment it sounded.

This sound echoed within the virtual world.

It was not formed by electronic signals translated from sound waves of the natural world, but a true, pure sound that resonated solely within this virtual realm.

"That was..."

A violent sense of shock violently battered his heart.

Yet, even as a jolt went through Navali's mind, he had already completed the assimilation of "Lucy." The computational model had completely become a part of him, and that voice vanished entirely, as though it had never sounded at all.

Although he had accomplished his preconceived objective, Navali found no joy in his heart.

"What is going on... Could the conclusions I deduced last night be wrong? Which parameter went wrong?

"Why would 'Lucy' actually show the possibility of sprouting consciousness in the end? But if that were the case, when I made contact with it just now, shouldn't I have been able to sense its existing consciousness?"

Navali exited the virtual world of the data layer, sweat streaming down his back.

All around him, engineers bustled about busily. Under Navali's manipulation, "Lucy's" algorithmic model continued to operate just as before, its inputs and outputs unchanged. For the moment, no one noticed that Navali and "Lucy" had just undergone an event akin to the reshaping of a world.

Navali stared at the computer screen, quietly pondering everything that had just happened. The thoughts in his mind wove together like a grand net, bringing in numerous factors he hadn't initially considered. The areas that had once been blind spots grew increasingly clear, broadening Navali's horizon more and more.

After a long while, he finally let out a breath and the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

"I see... Even when computational power is insufficient, there is another path to giving birth to self-awareness—

"Could it be that the very possibility of life's evolution is gestated within death itself?"

(End of this chapter)