The Mechanic [BL]

[106]

Chapter 106 – Twin Cities (4)

A few engineers in the Biocomputer Research Centre had already spoken to Zhang Xun a few times before and when they saw Zhang Xun hurrying past with an unfamiliar young man, they waved curiously.

"Are you here to see Engineer Tian? She's out of town today." Zheng Chengmin, an engineer whose body had been transformed into a machine from the neck down, smiled kindly at Zhang Xun, his eyes naturally falling on Pan's body.

Zhang Xun returned the same polite smile, "This is my new assistant, Patrick Colin."

Pan raised his standard, somewhat overly symmetrical smile and offered his hand, "Hello."

Zheng Chengmin didn't notice the oddity and took Pan's hand, "Hello, Zheng Chengmin. I didn't expect you to be Mechanic Zhang's assistant at such a young age."

Zhang Xun took the initiative to answer, "That bio-computer of mine has been growing slowly lately, so I thought I'd come and ask what might be the cause of this."

"Slow? Can you show me the log for the last week?"

Zhang Xun was prepared for this and took out his tablet and began to skilfully demonstrate the log that he and Pan had modified. As Zheng Chengmin swiped his finger across the page and quickly skimmed through the various data changes, his brow furrowed slightly.

"It's probably because it was injected with a complex AI program when it was still immature, causing the growth hormone to stop being secreted. I can re-inject it with HGH, but we've been working on a new bio-computer, so if you're interested, you can come with me."

"A new bio-computer?"

"Yeah, the genes out there in the lobby have too high a mutation rate and too little control. Often they start to grow into biological systems and cause the whole computer to be scrapped. We have since devised a new DNA molecular structure that can quadruple their growth rate, triple their information storage rate and provide a certain amount of self-repair and healing ability and reduce the probability of mutation by 70%. Engineer Tian intends to transfer both Phoenix and Dawn Star into these new bio-computers, but we haven't told Phoenix yet, for fear that it will try to interfere with the DNA code and cause unknowable problems."

Zhang Xun's eyes widened slightly, revealing an expression of amazement, "I didn't expect you to have made it so quickly. Can you take us to see it?"

"Of course! If you want to put your AI into a computer like this, you can apply to the top. You've helped us so much, they'll definitely agree."

Zheng Chengmin enthusiastically led Zhang Xun and Pan through the immaculate corridor to a double metal door covered with a pattern like a microchip. The engineer scanned his fingerprints and card before the doors opened and the faintly greenish colour of the ocean poured out.

In the wide hall, strings of bubbles rose from time to time in the turquoise, seawater-like liquid in the five cylindrical tanks and in the dim light, the black masses were motionless.

Unlike the irregular flesh shapes of the computers outside, the black masses here tended to be identical in shape, at first glance resembling birds with open wings, but as you got closer, you realise that the bird has no head and no feathers and that the muscle tissue was pulled into long tendons that wove into each other in layers like a chrysalis. In the middle was a different texture of flesh, something like grey matter, wrinkled and undulating but not quite like a brain, more like a wadded up ball of cloth.

This "bird", which has no life but could only carry data, was trapped in the middle by the dense pipelines, as if it wanted to soar into the sky but could not. The exposed red flesh and blood was even a little bit sad.