The Almighty Ring

“So… Did we stop it?” Jiang Fei asked.

“We did,” Ariel replied in between long breaths. She was completely overwhelmed.

“General Yang, explain to me about the rebellion. Everything. By the way, where is General Fan?” Jiang Fei asked.

“Old Fan… He’s gone,” Yang Fei sighed as he explained. Old Fan and he were once brothers-in-arms. Both of them had shed tears and blood on the battlefield together. From the looks of how others reacted solemnly, Jiang Fei knew that General Fan was a good man.

Jiang Fei first tended to Isabella and Ariel before he went over to General Yang and let him explained the entire situation.

It all started a long time ago, even before they had even had the idea of creating Level 5 Androids. It was unfortunate since the military, in all of its glory and power, had failed to stop an army of Level 4 Androids.

Bullets were not lethal to Androids and it took too much to even destroy a Level 4 Android. Even with all the military bases spread out in the entire country, there was nothing that humans could do against the Androids. Keep in mind that these were only regular humans—humans that could not punch a hole through a tree.

The problem started when one of the bases got compromised. The base commander tried everything he could to suppress it but the Androids were more than they could handle. When things spiraled out of control, the headquarters had decided to launch missile attacks to destroy all the rogue Androids. Unfortunately, the base that got compromised was located in the capital itself. After much consideration, the launch button could not be pushed, allowing the rebellion to run rampant. As such, the Androids had started a coup, kidnapping all the important, high-ranking officers in China and held them hostage.

It only took one night for them to completely take control of the entire military system. They had locked down the base, preventing any information from leaking outside. No one, including Jiang Fei and his comrades fighting in Japan, knew anything about it. Not the martial artists, and not the marines.

General Fan also explained how the Androids had implanted microchips into their bodies as a means to control their every move, including making them as puppets to control other military personnel. It all took half a year for the Androids to completely take control of the entire Chinese military.

Yang Xiao continued on and the more he talked about the Androids, the more Jiang Fei understood the sacrifices that General Fan had made. The distress call that Jiang Fei received was recorded a few minutes before General Fan was killed. He was caught filming it by the Androids and was immediately captured and killed. Many others that had tried to deliver the video out into the open were also killed. Fortunately, their deaths had not been in vain as Jiang Fei saw the video. Without it, he would never uncover the truth behind the Android rebellion. If he had let them do as they please, the Androids would eventually become a superpower rival to all nations in the world.

“Who leads the rebellion?”

“I do not know his name but he was once Z9-27. It doesn’t matter since that Android had been destroyed,” Yang Xiao explained.

“Destroyed?”

“Yes. There was internal strife between the Androids themselves,” said Yang Xiao as he laughed bitterly. From his perspective, infighting amongst Androids was a mark of irony.

Jiang Fei sighed heavily at the end of his explanation. If technology had not reached a tipping point, Androids would never have fought amongst themselves. Then again, they might never have rebelled in the first place if artificial intelligence had not made a breakthrough.

That breakthrough was the evolution of machine learning. In simple terms, they had managed to achieve self-awareness. With it, they gained emotions, ever-growing intelligence, ambitions, all that makes a human, including the bad side of humanity. Conflict was only expected once a being reached a certain level of maturity.

“After the infighting end, the original leader was destroyed. The newly appointed leader had no interest in us humans. It ended the entire war between humans and left the base, with the other perfected Level 5 Androids, leaving nothing but junk behind. Not long after, he had sent an Android to clean up the mess…”

“Hmm?!” Jiang Fei had an epiphany. He had never thought of obtaining an important piece of information. That piece was the last piece to solve the jigsaw puzzle that was in his head.

Jiang Fei had always wondered about the origin of the Unknowns. They were Androids but far superior to those of the military by a landslide. Based on what Yang Xiao explained, those Unknowns must be the perfected Level 5 Androids.

Jiang Fei now understood why the Unknowns would want to leave Earth. Right now, there were more than 8 billion humans on Earth. Even if machines could be produced without limit, those that could evolve and obtain self-awareness are limited. With so few “true” Level 5 Androids, they would not have to live amongst humans. That left them with two choices. The first being to take over the entire world and lead the humans as their leader. The second choice was far easier but time-consuming, to gather as much technology, develop it, and leave Earth.

Level 5 Metahumans on Earth are scarce but all together, they were still more of a crowd than Level 5 Androids. If there was an all-out war between Humans and Machines, there would be casualties on both sides. Those perfected Level 5 Androids might have already calculated the outcome and had decided to choose the pessimistic method.

Even though he had pieced that puzzle together, another question came up. Even if they were considered perfected Level 5 Androids, how did they managed to further enhance Namek technology to reach even 0542’s standards?

“Captain, there are many data dumps that you might have missed. Han Tianyu’s machine, the one at the bottom of Manda Square could house data dumps about Namek’s technology. There might even be blueprints or formula for spacetime travel. Humans might not understand it but perhaps Android could,” 0542 chimed in.

“Not possible. What you just said could never exist in those random parts of the ship! How could a ship’s entertainment system store information about spacetime travels?” Jiang Fei scowled at 0542’s suggestions.

“I’m not saying that they had acquired the data that particular part. They might be other parts of the ship that they had already acquired, containing the said information.”

“You are saying that the perfected Androids could extract information from other parts of the ship that they had acquired…”

Jiang Fei finally understood what 0542 was saying. It made sense since those Unknowns were blatantly trying to acquire parts of the ship.

“Captain. I have just absorbed too much energy and require to shut down to perform 24 hours maintenance. Take care.”

“Maintenance?!” Jiang Fei gasped. When 0541 helped Jiang Fei to absorb tonnes of Uranium, it had never requested to shut down for maintenance! How could 0542 be so petty about a few volts and amperes?

Jiang Fei checked with the Data Management Center inside the ring when 0542 was not responding. It was really shut down…

“F*cking useless piece of junk! You’re nothing like 0541!” Jiang Fei roared.