Moving in

An intelligent base developing autonomously, and fifteen dead researchers-the thought sent chills down everyone's spine and put them on guard. It was far too much of a coincidence.

They had never anticipated anything like this. After all, Tianhe 1's mission had been to carry industrial machinery and equipment here, rendezvous with the Orange Star Base personnel, and terraform the planet.

Now, however, the sole survivor told them that a meteorite had destroyed the base and everyone else had died.

The base's intelligent system had now begun developing on its own, actively expanding into a vast array of automated factories and carrying out construction day and night.

Everyone exchanged looks, but there was nowhere better on Orange Star to take shelter. Perhaps they could also take the opportunity to investigate what had happened.

After a brief discussion, they each found a vehicle to board. They wanted to see this base that had begun developing automatically.

If the AI had rebelled, it had no need to rescue them. It could simply have left them to die quietly in space.

Yet it really had saved them.

Sitting on the flatbed at the rear, Qi Siyu could not help thinking about an AI uprising.

An AI with extraordinarily powerful intelligence could easily brainwash this human through words or other means, while installing control devices and ruthlessly slaughtering the other humans.

The base was filled with screams and blood, an evil power shrouding the planet! Tens of millions of kilometers from Water Blue Star, it was silently amassing terrifying strength.

"Was your spaceship destroyed by a meteor shower?" Stendhal asked as he took the driver's seat.

Gu Tianming, in the passenger seat, snapped out of his thoughts about the base's autonomous development. "Yes."

The rear flatbed had no handrails. Their best option was to squeeze together and hold on to one another.

Only after everyone else had settled onto the rear platform did Stendhal press the pedal and slowly set the vehicle moving.

He said, "Three months ago, a meteorite struck near the base. The ground shook that day, and I lost all my companions. Some died instantly; others suffocated."

Perhaps stirred by those memories, Stendhal took them toward the crater.

Listening to Stendhal's voice through their protective suits' communication systems, Lin He and the others imagined the earth-shaking scene. That destructive force would have been as terrifying as a nuclear bomb.

With his vivid imagination, Qi Siyu pictured killing people in all sorts of ways, putting himself in the shoes of this "murderer."

Li Yunran ran his hands over the steering wheel. This flatbed vehicle was extremely simple: one brake, one accelerator, and no turn signals.

The dashboard had a reverse toggle, communications, and lighting. It was so crude it felt like stepping back into the Second World War in 1950, nothing like an advanced base vehicle of the modern age.

The two flatbed vehicles, loaded with people, drove away, leaving the robots and the Escape Pod behind.

The remaining robots came under Luo Qi's direct control. One robot opened a briefcase and plugged a signal transmitter into a port on its side.

The robot's camera turned toward the Escape Pod. In the data world, two infinitely tall walls stood facing each other, and Luo Qi's phantom appeared in the empty space between them.

He examined the wall before him. This was the other intelligent system's firewall. Everything in the data world manifested as rules, no longer mere numerical programs.

Luo Qi sent a message without ceremony. "You need to transfer your information body. The spacecraft system will use you for the return to Water Blue Star."

He was confident he could destroy the other system instantly, but Luo Qi wanted to observe this human-made artificial intelligence.

Upon receiving the new protocol, Mom immediately began transferring data. Once finished, she even replied with a [Complete] message. She had no other choice.

In the physical world, the robot unplugged the signal transmitter, crushed it to pieces, and closed the computer.

This special computer was no longer capable of transmitting any electromagnetic waves.

The two robots that had entered the Escape Ship came back out. They had already planted explosives inside.

I really don't like these civilizations' intelligences, Luo Qi thought as he operated the robots. I'm different.

Eight robots boarded the last vehicle and departed. In a violent explosion, the Escape Pod shattered.

Before long, a mining vehicle arrived to do some "cleaning," erasing every trace.

Luo Qi would not hand this computer over to any human. Instead, he had the robots take it straight back to the base for storage, sealed inside a special box that blocked all kinds of signals.

Luo Qi then scanned and checked the data throughout the entire base, constantly monitoring for any possible network infection.

Invisible electromagnetic signals swept over the humans without their noticing. Their protective suits and the electronic devices they carried were all inspected.

Whew... perhaps it's time to simulate some electronic warfare. After all, I really am a computer now... Luo Qi thought, directing a little more of his attention toward the humans.

Stendhal led them through the dunes, and the view suddenly opened up. In the distance lay a dense mass of factories!

"Look over there!" Wang Xiaofei pointed into the distance, her small face filled with shock.

A vast expanse of uniformly arranged silver-gray buildings appeared on the horizon, looking like a secret base. To the left of the complex, a massive satellite dish stood on the broad plain.

An enormous mechanical monster-a Builder-was slowly moving its body toward the foundations of the next factory building.

The other Builders were busy carrying out frequent construction lifts.

Looking farther across the plain, they saw red dragons of dust swirling, with black mining vehicles faintly visible within them.

They resembled game pieces scattered across the vast plain, or thousands of giant yaks grazing on grassland.

Tirelessly, they swept enormous quantities of sand and soil into their bellies, raising one dragon of dust after another.

"My God..."

"This is Orange Star Base?"

"What an incredible sight!"

Everyone cried out in amazement. This truly was an intelligent AI that had begun improving itself!

Gu Tianming said, "Mr. Stendhal, let's get closer and take a look!"

An unbroken stream of astonished voices came through the communicator. Stendhal smiled faintly and drove toward one of the giant mining vehicles.

Up close, everyone was even more amazed. This boxy monster stood over six meters tall, ten meters long, and seven meters wide.

It used two broad tracks as feet, its body clad entirely in black metallic silicon, and carried a cargo bed as enormous as a building on its back.

Huge quantities of Orange Star's sand and soil flowed in and out. Its thunderous roar proclaimed the power of industrial machinery to everyone.

"These are third-generation mining vehicles. On average, each one can collect about five tonnes of metallic material a day. There are no ore veins here, so most of them look like this."

Like a tour guide driving a sightseeing vehicle, Stendhal shared these extraordinary sights that he had long since grown tired of seeing.

The great clouds of sand and dust they stirred up struck everyone's visors with faint crackling sounds.

Frightened yet excited, Wang Xiaofei said, "It really looks like the Valley of the Wind Insect King. It's so huge..."

"What's so impressive about that..." Lin He simply felt that the designer had been rather wasteful.

Peering carefully through the dust, he said, "This material doesn't look like metal. Was all the metal used to build the factories?"

"I never thought we'd see industrial machinery like this on Orange Star!" a thirty-year-old man exclaimed to Kanawu beside him.

Kanawu considered it, then said, "Don't forget, this is Orange Star. There are no constraints imposed by the needs of human society."

"In the eyes of the base's supreme intelligence, everything serves just one purpose: to build up its technological and industrial capabilities and obtain limitless productivity and creativity."

Listening to the voices over the communications channel, Qi Siyu thought of the old powers on Water Blue Star.

They had successfully freed humanity from the framework of class and economics, driving human technological civilization forward in great strides.

But this base seemed more like a monster lying dormant.

Using its puppets in place of humans and maintaining radio silence, it was waiting for the right moment to launch a lethal attack on Water Blue Star.

I have to gather information on it!

The convoy left the mining behemoth behind and continued onward. Everyone chatted and laughed, seemingly forgetting that this base was under the control of an artificial intelligence.