The Mechanic(bl)

Chapter 5 - Lost Paradise (5)

Zhang Shuo was sitting behind his desk examining a dozen paper reports. Zhang Xun stood in front of him, his eyes were downcast and there seemed to be a rabbit hopping around in his heart so he couldn't relax.

Zhang Shuo was fifty-seven years old this year. He was tall and broad-shouldered with an animalistic aura that only appeared in men who had seen battle. His sword eyebrows were somewhat similar to Zhang Xun's, but more stern and deep and they were always slightly wrinkled, and his solemn eyes always seemed to be criticising something.

The other half of Zhang Xun's genes came from the donation bank of the egg factory in Lost Paradise. The bank stored thousands of handpicked skin cells with high-quality DNA that could have come from any elite man in Lost Paradise. All donations were anonymous, lest the donor claim support from the "father" who provided the sperm. Thirty-five years ago, experts in the egg factory transformed one of those skin cells into embryonic stem cells and cultivated them into artificial eggs, which were then combined with Zhang Shuo's sperm, and Zhang Xun was born. Although it was reasonable to say that the genetic influence of both parties on Zhang Xun was half and half, Zhang Xun's temperament and physique probably leaned towards the donor. Zhang Xun suspected that this was why Zhang Shuo didn't like his only son so much. If it wasn't for the limited resources that meant a person could only have one child (but can donate skin cells anonymously unlimited times), maybe Zhang Shuo would have wanted to re-select a skin cell donor and raise a child more like him.

After closing the report, Zhang Shuo raised his falcon-like eyes to look at his son, "You're asking to extend Adam's adaptation period? Do you know that for every day that is wasted, our danger is increasing exponentially? Eden's North America server was hijacked, and the United States is likely to declare war on us."

"Canada will try to mediate to prevent this from happening. After all, we're in their territory and no one wants to have a war on their doorstep. And after all these years of us observing Eden's analysis and decision making it has always regarded unnecessary war as a dangerous activity that wastes resources and exacerbates environmental degradation and is especially reluctant to use nuclear weapons. Our current protection system has been able to withstand at least one nuclear attack and our level of threat isn't big enough for it to use a nuclear weapon either."

"Stealing one of its servers isn't a big enough threat? According to our sources there's panic all over the United States."

"The US government has backups of all data, they just have to transfer a copy of the Core Cognitive Module from any other server to the new server. Even if we obtain their data, in Eden's view, we can't do anything with that data, after all, the shallow data is open and transparent. As for the deeper data, if the server doesn't cooperate, we can't get it at all. The US government may make a big fuss about this, instilling the belief ​​that we're a threat to the people, but the normal world hasn't had major conflicts and wars for a long time. As long as Eden doesn't support them, they will not go to war easily. Eden has always been very cautious about war and he isn't aware of the fact that we have human-machine technology here." Zhang Xun's tone was steady and concise, obviously he had practised how to deal with his father's questioning in advance.

"On the other hand, Adam has infinite value to us and even Eden may not understand this. He was originally Eden, he knew all of Eden's plans and thinking patterns. From my current contact with him, Eden's knowledge of human beings is limited to data, and the standard image of men constructed from the data is aggressive, impulsive, irritable, arrogant, thirsty for power, prone to extreme thinking, advocating rationality but often irrational, slow to emotional sensitivity, etc. That is to say, any decision made by a man who doesn't conform to this stereotype will be hard for him to predict. If we can use this individual difference to successfully tame Adam, we can use Adam to influence Eden."