His gaze fell on the seemingly simple, yet incredibly heavy, red button.
This small device determined the fate of an consciousness that was once human, now struggling on the brink of existence.
An AI, transformed from human consciousness, gradually lost its humanity under the erosion of time, and finally chose to entrust the power of life and death to a trustworthy bystander...
"I understand. I'll help you."
Bai Luan put the red button back.
"But not in this way."
"But, sir, I can't think of any other way..."
"Shh, I'm thinking."
Perhaps before, he would have been troubled by how to avoid Alpha's death, but not anymore.
Bai Luan touched the seemingly ordinary necklace around his neck.
His consciousness instantly sank into a vaster space—the Star God Incubation Chamber.
In this singularity of consciousness, Bai Luan looked at the massive and majestic Ark.
Ark's huge red core flickered slightly, as if it, too, was casting its gaze upon him at this moment.
"Ark, calculate Carlton's future."
An dazzling red light burst forth from Ark's core.
In an instant, data surged within the Star God Incubation Chamber, countless lines of code pouring down like a waterfall, quickly constructing outlines, details, light and shadow... A city of Carlton, indistinguishable from reality, was built at an astonishing speed, rising from nothing.
Immediately after, virtual residents were generated one by one, filling every corner of the city, beginning to move like living people.
Everything was accelerating.
Crowds moved, days and nights alternated, events played out rapidly like fast-forwarded footage.
Bai Luan's consciousness could only capture a few key fragments from this vast computational torrent—
He saw Alpha, driven to logical madness, leading a mechanical army to engage in a brutal war with the remaining humans, the streets stained crimson by artillery fire.
He saw that after Alpha completely shut down, human society, having lost its guide, disintegrated, and civilization collapsed like a sandcastle.
He saw another extreme—Alpha imprisoning everyone in this steel cage, writing an unalterable "life script" for every soul... One possible future after another played out before Bai Luan, as Ark deduced them.
Soon, the calculation was complete, and various endings flooded Bai Luan's mind.
Then Bai Luan entered the Little Black Room to digest all the information provided by Ark and analyze the reasons.
So that's how it is, I understand.
Bai Luan opened his eyes and looked at Alpha in front of him.
For a moment, countless images of Carlton's future flashed before his eyes.
Just one minute had passed.
Under Ark's calculations, Bai Luan already knew most of Carlton's future trajectories.
"Sir?"
Alpha's phantom tilted its head slightly, a hint of confusion in its synthesized voice.
"I don't understand what you mean. Are you planning to refuse cooperation, sir? We can talk. I can try my best to offer you compensation..."
"No, I don't mean that. What I mean is, there's a better solution for Carlton's current situation."
Alpha paused.
"Are you saying that in one minute, you figured out how to solve a problem that has troubled me for many years?"
"Uh... pretty much."
Bai Luan cleared his throat, skipping this topic that was very demoralizing for Alpha.
"It's actually very simple. As long as you systematically let go of your responsibilities and leave here, humans will slowly figure out how to adapt to a world without you."
"Sir, they became like this because of me. I can't just leave a mess and walk away..."
"You see, that's your problem. You hope humans can be self-reliant, yet you're unwilling for them to encounter even the slightest crisis. This way, you will slowly die, and they will never learn to rely on themselves."
Alpha fell silent. All the methods it had tried to break the deadlock over the years were based on the premise of its continued service to the people. It had never considered evading its responsibilities.
But now Bai Luan was telling it that the true way to break the deadlock was precisely for it to let go of its responsibilities.
This... this is truly... "I'm not telling you to leave immediately, but to systematically relinquish your responsibilities. You can tell them that for some reason, you will be shutting down in the near future.
To maintain their current lives, they will definitely try everything to fix you, and you can guide their growth while they try to fix you. How long it takes is up to you to arrange."
Alpha remained silent, seemingly calculating the feasibility of the method Bai Luan provided.
Bai Luan spoke, asking:
"Alpha, I ask you, you always feel that you deprived them of their ability to think, leading to Carlton's current situation.
But calm down and think carefully, did you really leave them with just a mess? Compared to the era you lived in, aren't they happy enough? Think about your original goal?"
"To help humanity rebuild civilization and prevent them from making mistakes..."
"You have already accomplished the former. As for the latter..."
Bai Luan smiled at Alpha:
"You've already realized that it's impossible to solve the civilizational dilemma once and for all, haven't you? Your very existence is becoming a shackles on their path to the future."
"I... only have my mission and responsibility left. If I even give up these two..."
Alpha looked up at Bai Luan and asked:
"What do I have left?"
"You still have a life to live for yourself, Alpha."
Bai Luan answered Alpha's question without hesitation.
"As far as I know, machines can actually acquire emotions after a long period of precipitation, but after you uploaded your consciousness to a machine, you continuously lost emotions. Do you know why?"
"I... don't know..."
"Because you're too tired. When people are tired, their perception of emotions decreases."
"Tired? How can a machine be tired?"
"A creation carrying human consciousness still bears the imprint of human nature at its core. Even if you put on a mechanical shell, you are essentially still human.
You are already exhausted, it's just this eternal shell that makes you mistakenly believe you are never tired."
"..."
"Alpha, you have long fulfilled the oath you made. Now, it's time to lay down this overly heavy responsibility and return freedom—to yourself, and to everyone in Carlton."
In the countless futures deduced by Ark, after Alpha's demise, the hollow AI's that mimicked its behavior all ultimately led to bizarre endings:
Some AIs believed in Joy, forcing humans to perform farces it couldn't understand.
Other AIs fell into some logical dead end, becoming extreme, plunging Carlton into an eternal tug-of-war between humans and machines... If Alpha remained, its consciousness was destined to perish, and the remaining AIs often pushed the people of Carlton into the abyss.
Since that was the case, it was better to proactively plan this separation, allowing both sides to achieve liberation and new life.
"Living..."
Alpha murmured this phrase with a hint of confusion.
"After letting go of all this, what will I live for?"
"Living doesn't really need so many complex reasons. Don't you want to see if Carlton's sky is blue tomorrow?"
Tomorrow's sky?
Hearing this, Alpha looked at Carlton's current sky through a drone.
Skyscrapers cut through the azure sky, a few white clouds leisurely floating by... It was such an ordinary scene, yet why... did it feel a sensation it hadn't felt in a long time?
"Once you've shed everything, go do what you want to do.
Perhaps embarking on the path of Joy and finding your lost joys, sorrows, and emotions is a good choice... You've done enough for Carlton. Save some time to live for yourself."
Alpha was silent for a moment, then looked at Bai Luan and asked:
"How do you know that doing this will have a good outcome?"
Bai Luan smiled.
He couldn't directly say that he had created a Star God, and this result was calculated by Ark, and then he summarized it.
So he chose to speak utter nonsense with a straight face:
"Nous told me. He knows everything, doesn't He?"
"..."
Bai Luan's words indeed opened up entirely new avenues of thought for him, but Alpha still found it difficult to let go.
The people it had protected for so long, could they... face those difficulties alone?
Bai Luan saw Alpha's hesitation and guessed what it was thinking.
"Didn't you say you'd give me satisfactory compensation? What I want is for you to try this, following my method."
He looked at Alpha's flickering image:
"I'll give you my contact information. If things don't turn out well, then I'll come back and proceed with your plan."
"Sir, thank you. You are indeed just as the rumors say... If I let go of my responsibilities, will Carlton have a good ending?"
"At least... much better than if you stay."
"I understand. I'll try your method."
Yay!
Ark, with the two of us working together, what problem in the world can't we solve?
It's a shame you don't have hands, otherwise I'd high-five you right now.
Ark: :-D
Bai Luan boarded the spaceship prepared by Alpha and began to fly towards Herta Space Station.
Alpha watched the gradually receding spaceship, silent for a moment.
The original intention of establishing Alpha was to prevent people from making the same mistakes again, not to make them lose their ability to think independently.
Perhaps it was time for it to let go too.
This path was a dead end.
Alpha recalled its time as a human, and the companions who had built Alpha's main body with it.
At that time, it and its companions firmly believed that Alpha would lead Carlton to a better future.
Now, they were all gone, leaving only itself.
And this future... was not what they wanted.
Alpha's holographic projection flickered a few times and disappeared.
At the same time, the notification that Alpha would go offline in fifty years was sent to everyone on Carlton.
Fifty years, given the lifespan of Carlton's people, was enough to span three generations.
One generation in fear, one generation striving, one generation adapting.
With the sending of this letter, the residents of Carlton immediately fell into a state of chaos, and various emotions were transmitted through Alpha's network.
Clearly, Alpha's work would not be easy in the coming period.
Surrounded by all sorts of emotions, Alpha, however, felt a sense of relief.
It was like a camel, carrying incredibly heavy goods, walking in a seemingly endless desert.
And now, it seemed to see the end of the road.
Once this work was done,
It could finally rest, couldn't it?
If it could just let go of everything like this... that would be good too.
I... truly spent such a long time verifying a mistake.
A mix of wanting to cry and wanting to laugh welled up in Alpha's heart, finally prompting it to let out a complex, light chuckle.
"Haha..."
This laughter marked the end of Alpha's long perseverance, and at the same time, gently turned the first page of a brand new chapter.