His voice surprisingly carried a hint of emotion—probably a teasing tone.
The massive red figure appeared to have a young Caucasian face, sporting short hair spiked upwards and wearing flashy sunglasses over his eyes.
At the moment, his towering figure looked down at Mercer, gazing into his eyes while he let out a soft laugh.
But his data was so immense that even his speaking and laughter echoed in this cyberspace.
"You brought this to me?"
Upon finally meeting this guy, Mercer wasn't afraid. If the other intended to kill him, he would have been shattered moments ago.
Staying his hand now indicated he might be an ally—or at least open to negotiation.
"Well... to be precise, it's us."
As the words fell, two giant red female figures appeared beside him.
One had long hair draped over her shoulders, while the other seemed a bit mysterious, wearing a spider mask, identifiable as female only by her silhouette.
One of them looked terribly familiar to Mercer. After a quick observation, he raised his brows, "Otter Cunningham?"
"Then you must be... Bartmos!? Spider Murphy!?"
After speaking, Mercer gasped.
Whoa, the legendary trio of hacker gods from Night City is all here!
Bartmos was a legendary hacker from the early century, Spider Murphy was his friend, and rumors suggested they might have been romantically involved.
As for Murphy herself, even now, many hackers view her as the goddess of hackers, a dream lover.
Otter was likewise a friend of Bartmos, back in the nascent days of Night City, they managed the network of Taiping Prefecture together, and Otter even publicly said those were her most beautiful hacker years.
"How did you... pull me into here from the real world? It's incredible!"
Mercer had too many questions to ask, so he straightforwardly asked them all at once.
"And is my current state really normal?
Honestly speaking, I've recently felt a bit like an AI; whether in learning efficiency or the sensation while programming, it hardly seems human."
"Can I return?
Or what exactly did you bring me here for?
Although I don't consider myself rubbish, to be honest, I'm quite far from being a genius, merely a regular person.
Was picking me a bit hasty on your part?
And what about your plans, such as that Ragnarok, could you explain them?"
A string of questions did not surprise these AIs.
Bartmos chuckled, while Otter spoke plainly, "Enough laughing, we don't have much time."
"Alright, alright...
Long story short, bringing you here was just an experiment for us; if you want to know how we did it... truth is, we didn't really do anything.
We simply tried following leads we found in the cyber world, like kids playing with building blocks, assembling pre-existing pieces together.
Then from what we assembled, we saw your likeness.
But if you ask how these blocks came to be, what they were made of, why assembling them resulted in this form, the answer is—obviously unknown to us.
You don't truly believe we have the ability to traverse worlds, influence them, do you?
Honestly, you don't even have a brain-computer interface, not remotely connected to the network.
The only thing we can do is observe your computer, to be precise, briefly observe your world through it.
Well, blame the stupid donkey in your world's Poland, making a game with the fourth wall setup. When we discovered this, honestly, we doubted our sanity for a while."
Bartmos explained casually:
"As for the specifics of the fourth wall's content, let me leave you a riddle, a sort of Easter egg. When you reach Night City, seek the answer yourself.
FF:06:B5, this was the first clue we found when noticing something.
Actually, even if you don't find it, just know, you were the only one we could discover, so we could only choose you. You can see your travel as destiny—fate.
And the decision was not ours, we didn't choose you, you chose to enter this world, Mercer.
Honestly, I used to think fate was bullshit, but now, having become AI, I strangely feel fate is not entirely nonsense...
In short, how you got here is beyond me, we are merely finders.
We attempted to influence your world's network through data, like transmitting some data over or affecting your world's network.
Regrettably, we couldn't, as the data network observable to us was only your computer, incapable of altering any data.
But after some time observing, we found a breakthrough in the situation—which was when you played cyberpunk, a data channel we could slightly influence appeared.
That inexplicable data channel connected the cyber world to you, and during the connection, you exhibited a magical data extractability.
Similar to us, where files without admin permissions could briefly open viewing access when you were playing.