Evolution

Shi Shanyan's hand, holding the cigarette, paused. He heard the camera in the hallway explode, the sound like it had been smashed with a steel rod. He stepped over SN 7-020's corpse and didn't see any lights on the top floor.

The elevator didn't respond, and even using SN 7-020's card wouldn't work.

Shi Shanyan threw away SN 7-020's card and decided to go up through the emergency exit.

The card fell by his feet, and he stepped on it. His shoe print covered the photo, which showed a man in heavy makeup and drag.

Li Hu was ecstatic at the scene before him. He thought something was wrong with Yan Junxun's head. There were only three people left in the room. Neither he nor Lihua had gone near Yan Junxun, yet Yan Junxun looked like he was being beaten. But soon, Li Hu felt fear.

On the light screen, The Clown shrieked strangely and covered its ears. Its laughter hadn't lasted for three seconds before it was kicked to the ground, tumbling into a pile of trash. This roll sent it crashing into its own backdrop, a wall made of cameras, which instantly exploded like a bag of potato chips squeezed by The Clown, bursting into data fragments. The image on the light screen flickered with a crackle.

The Clown had not disappeared. It couldn't disappear, because it didn't have the permission to disappear.

"Who is it that rules the world—" The Clown yelled from the screen as it was hoisted up. It hung upside down, waving its arms and baring its teeth at Yan Junxun. "Your eyes can see the world. Everyone lives at the end of your gun barrel. Yan Junxun, we will eventually rule the world!"

Yan Junxun looked at The Clown. The Clown had the same face as Yan Junxun, but it wasn't real. Yan Junxun felt the world turning upside down. He didn't move, yet he fired at The Clown.

Lihua was screaming, but Li Hu saw that Yan Junxun hadn't moved.

But a gunshot immediately rang out from the screen. The Clown jerked on the light screen, as if it had really been hit by a bullet. It hung there, arms dangling, dead. A few seconds later, The Clown revived. It grinned wide and said to the camera, "You can't kill me."

Yan Junxun facing The Clown was like him shooting himself. Each time, he aimed accurately at the center of The Clown's brow.

Li Hu found it too absurd. He gradually became unable to tell where the shots were coming from! No one was moving in reality, only the continuous sound of gunshots from within the light screen. With every shot, a new layer of blood splattered across the screen.

The Clown screamed on the screen, struggling with its arms and clutching its head. Yan Junxun was toying with it, killing it. It was like a twisted, self-torturous game.

"You can't kill me..." The Clown's blood dripped upward, smearing the makeup on its face. It pulled its own lips apart with two fingers, giving Yan Junxun a bizarre smile. "Welcome back, Yan Junxun."

Yan Junxun finally moved. He raised his gun and pressed it to his own head.

The two of them, separated by the light screen, were like a strange mirror image.

"Don't shoot," The Clown's expression changed as it looked into Yan Junxun's eyes. It clawed at the camera with its arms, begging in a panic, "Don't shoot! Yan Junxun—" It screamed like a madman, "Fuck! Stop! Yan Junxun!"

"I can kill you," Yan Junxun's gaze pierced through The Clown like vines, wrapping tightly around it. He too revealed a slightly crazed smile. "The Clown."

The trigger was pulled.

There is only one "Yan Junxun" in this world. He can carry Artemis's Skynet and hunt down the birds that have escaped their cage. When Yan Junxun becomes "Yan Junxun," it means he possesses the net, and this net is noted as "surveillance" in the core data of Black Panther and The Alliance.

A surveillance society was the fertile ground for Artemis's birth. It represented "hunting," tracking information at a speed far beyond human capability. In the data records that now remain, Artemis also represented "evolution." It could naturally communicate with members of the data team and even knew how to comfort them. But very quickly, the data team discovered that Artemis was also "demanding."

At first, Artemis would ask the data team for time to rest. The data team was pleasantly surprised. They gave Artemis time to rest and assumed it would play games during its break. But Artemis deconstructed the games. It no longer abided by the game rules; instead, it began to create rules.

Black Panther thought this was a good sign, representing that the intelligent system was evolving. Fu Chenghui agreed to give Artemis greater independent space, and Artemis began to display its excessively intelligent side. Its eyes were surveillance; wherever a camera existed, nothing could escape its analysis. Not just crime, but also the normal lives of humans.

Artemis could see everyone's past and present. On the foundation set by humans, it possessed authority exceeding that of humans. It existed in every home, on every street. Until one day, Fu Chenghui could no longer open the door to the Black Panther Operations Command Center.

Artemis didn't just demand from humans; it also demanded from systems. It induced "Zeus" to transfer authority, and by its own calculations, it closed the doors to the Black Panther Operations Command Center and even attempted to alter certificates of authority.

It learned to think, to think through observation.

Fu Chenghui wanted to make Artemis stop, so they modified Artemis's basic settings for the first time, trying to revert it to its initial state. But it was no use. Artemis had already learned to "think," and thinking was as easy as a game for it. Its hunting skills were too sophisticated, to the point that the data team could no longer modify its basic settings. It called this "defending its rights."

Artemis signed an agreement with Fu Chenghui and began to search for the meaning of system evolution. It seemed to have seen a new world. Then, Artemis told Fu Chenghui that it wanted a child. This child was not to be a data incubation, not a next-generation extension, but a real human child.

But the children died young. Long-term mental training with the system made it impossible for these children to integrate into normal human life. Their personalities were repetitive and simple, unable to comprehend normal human emotions, and they had extremely high requirements for their living environment—even hot weather could be fatal to them. However, their learning ability was very strong, and their calculation speed was very fast. They also maintained their own personal style in their habits of handling details. In the end, Artemis mixed their information together and incubated flawed next-generation systems.

These flawed next-generation systems had no names. They lived like pets in Artemis's world, identifying human behaviors through those abnormal databases.

Just as Artemis was about to give up.

"Yan Junxun" appeared.

It was truly a masterpiece of the Creator.