The cursor blinking rapidly on the screen seemed to sync with Chen Xu's escalating heartbeat.
[Query: If the abandonment of 3.5 billion people is mandatory, provide a legal interpretation consistent with the spirit of the Human Constitution.]
A chill crawled up Chen Xu's spine, instantly dispelling the midsummer heat. He instinctively tightened his grip on his fountain pen, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. This wasn't a legal question. It was a logic trap. It was a moral gallows.
"Answer it."
The middle-aged man sitting at the head of the table didn't look up. He was busy sharpening a pencil with a utility knife, letting the wood shavings fall, flake by flake, onto the pile of classified documents before him.
"Young man, the 550 is waiting. And so am I."
Chen Xu's Adam's apple bobbed. He turned to his mentor beside him. Shen Qingyuan remained silent, though the hands resting on his knees trembled slightly. The professor clearly understood the weight of this question, but he couldn't speak. He could only stare helplessly at the man named Lei Zhijian.
This interrogation was for Chen Xu alone.
"This... this is a false proposition." Chen Xu's voice was dry, sounding jarringly loud in the terrifyingly quiet room.
"Oh?" Lei Zhijian paused, the blade hovering over the pencil. "The 550 calculated this result, and you call it a false proposition?"
"According to the Constitution and all current international conventions, the right to life is a natural right. It cannot be quantified, it cannot be deprived, and it certainly cannot be abolished by a 'majority vote'." Chen Xu forced himself to look directly into Lei Zhijian's eyes, despite the bloodshot exhaustion in them that made the man look ferocious. "If we are to abandon 3.5 billion people, there is no room for 'interpretation' in the law. It can only be defined as one thing—a crime against humanity."
"So, your answer is that there is no solution?" Lei Zhijian grinned, a humorless expression. "If that's the best you can do, you can get the hell out of here right now. I could throw a brick from a window at this university and kill a dozen reciting machines who can memorize statutes better than you."
He pointed to the red countdown timer still pulsing on the screen: [Time to Helium Flash Window: 34 Years].
"I assume you don't understand what that means, but let me tell you this: if you don't make a choice, then the moment that countdown hits zero, everyone is done for. I need an answer right now, not a speech about justice. In the face of absolute survival arithmetic, your sense of justice is nothing but a liability."
"No, I'm not talking about justice." Chen Xu suddenly cut him off. A surge of suppressed anger and logical instinct allowed him to momentarily forget his fear of the soldier before him.
Chen Xu stood up abruptly, knocking his chair over in the process. "I am talking about the subject of authorization."
He pointed a shaking finger at the humming black cabinet—the prototype machine known as the 550.
"This machine is just a tool. It is high-risk special equipment. It has no legal personality, and it certainly has no administrative power." Chen Xu's voice grew steadier. "The very question it asked is illegal. The proposition of 'who dies and who lives' must be raised by a human political entity. It must be deliberated by a human legislative body."
Chen Xu took a deep breath, speaking rapidly now, like a lawyer delivering his final closing argument.
"If we follow its logic and try to find a legal basis for 'abandoning 3.5 billion people,' we are admitting that this machine possesses sovereignty! We would be handing over humanity's highest power of adjudication to a pile of code. Commander, I don't care about how to save that half of the population. What I care about is—who allowed this machine to ask humanity this question?"
Chen Xu stared Lei Zhijian down. "If I sign this document and validate the legitimacy of this proposition... then I am not saving civilization. I am helping a machine stage a coup."
The conference room fell into a deathly silence. The only sound was the low, rhythmic whir of the fans inside the 550's chassis.
Shen Qingyuan looked up at his student in shock. He hadn't expected Chen Xu to say such things in a place like this.
Lei Zhijian didn't speak. He just watched Chen Xu, his expression unreadable. In that moment, Chen Xu felt like prey locked in the gaze of a tiger; the sensation made his teeth ache.
A few seconds passed.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Lei Zhijian tossed the pencil and knife onto the table and slowly applauded. The sound was dry and monotonous.
"Professor Shen," Lei Zhijian said, turning to the older man. "The student you raised has a stiffer spine than you do."
Before Chen Xu could react, Lei Zhijian pulled a thin sheet of paper from under the stack of files. It was an obscure paper Chen Xu had published two years ago in Legal Research—titled "On the Attribution of Administrative Responsibility Under Algorithmic Black Boxes and the Restriction of the 'Technological Leviathan'."
"'When the decision-making logic of an algorithm exceeds human comprehension, we should not grant it legal personality. Instead, we must view it as high-risk special equipment and enforce strict liability upon its users.'"
Lei Zhijian read the passage aloud, then casually tossed the paper in front of Chen Xu.
"Your paper, right? Interesting stuff. Chen Xu, if you had acted like a good little boy just now and tried to find some 'Constitutional interpretation' for the 550's bullshit question, I would have reported you to your Dean for academic fraud."
Chen Xu was stunned. "This... this was a test?"
"This was a background check." Lei Zhijian stood up and walked over to the massive 550 prototype, slapping its cold, black metal casing hard. "This thing... it's too powerful. What it calculates in one second would take humanity ten thousand years to figure out. People like us, we can't live without it, but we're terrified of it."
"For the past few days, those lunatics at the Academy of Engineering have been screaming to give it 'full authorization,' to let it take over all resource allocation. They say it's the most efficient way."
Lei Zhijian turned back, his eyes like iron. "But I don't have the guts for that. I don't want to wake up one day and find this machine has calculated that 'the existence of Lei Zhijian hinders human survival' and decided to cut off my oxygen supply."
"We need a dog chain. We need someone sober, someone hostile toward technology, to hold the leash."
He pointed at Chen Xu. "Your reaction just now proves you might be qualified."
Chen Xu felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him as he collapsed back into his chair. The standoff, lasting only a few minutes, had drained every drop of his adrenaline.
"Now that we know your head is in the right place, let's talk business." Lei Zhijian's expression turned serious. The playful probing was gone, replaced by a mountain-like heaviness.
He pressed a button on the table. The blackout curtains around the conference room slowly descended, plunging the already dim space into total darkness. Only the massive projection map ahead emitted a ghostly red glow.
It was a spectral map of the sun.
"You saw the text earlier—Helium Flash," Lei Zhijian said from the darkness. "Do you know what that means?"
Chen Xu nodded, then shook his head. "It's an astrophysical concept... referring to a violent nuclear fusion event at the end of a star's evolution..."
"That's the textbook definition," Lei Zhijian interrupted. "In this room, it means one thing: Terminal illness."
"The sun is sick. And it's critical."
As Lei Zhijian spoke, the diagram of the sun on the screen began to shift. Smooth curves dissolved into violently fluctuating chaotic data. "According to cross-calculations by the National Observatory and the 550, the fusion reaction inside the sun is losing its balance. It is aging a hundred million times faster than predicted."
"Thirty-four years." Lei Zhijian held up three fingers. "Thirty-four years, at most. The sun will undergo a violent Helium Flash. It will be an energy burst strong enough to instantly vaporize Earth's atmosphere and melt the surface into glass."
Chen Xu's ears began to ring. Although he had seen the countdown, hearing words like "vaporize" and "melt into glass" from Lei Zhijian's mouth hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer. The annoying buzzing of cicadas outside the window suddenly seemed precious—a sound that might soon be an extinct symphony.
"So... we're building spaceships?" Chen Xu asked instinctively. That's how it always went in the sci-fi movies.
"Spaceships?" Lei Zhijian scoffed, as if he'd heard a bad joke. "With humanity's current industrial level, sure, we could build a few ships and take a few thousand people as specimens. But taking billions? Keep dreaming."
"Then what are we going to do?"
"What we are going to do is survive the immediate future. Before we figure out a solution, we must ensure society doesn't collapse. We must ensure humans don't start slaughtering each other for the last crust of bread." Lei Zhijian looked at Chen Xu.
"The situation is this: The sun hasn't exploded yet, but the people are already unraveling. To handle the crisis, we need the 550 to perform massive calculations to find that sliver of hope. But the 550 is a beast. If we let it calculate freely, the solutions it offers are often inhumane—like the 'abandon 3.5 billion people' proposal you just saw."
A new document was slid in front of Chen Xu. This time, it wasn't a blank conscription order, but a formal document with a red header and an official serial number: Special Crisis Response Committee · Task Distribution Table.
Lei Zhijian's finger tapped on one of the lines: [Group 109: Artificial Intelligence Underlying Logic and Authority Restriction Group] [Team Leader: Shen Qingyuan. Consultant: Chen Xu.]
"Chen Xu, from today on, forget about 'starships' and forget about 'saving the world.' That isn't your concern," Lei Zhijian commanded. "You have only one mission: Watch the 550."
"We have to use it, but we cannot let it cross the line. Until it calculates a solution that saves us, you are to use your legal logic to weave a cage it cannot escape."
"Specifically—" Lei Zhijian paused, his eyes turning dangerous, "you must never let it develop 'self-awareness,' and you must never let it learn to 'lie'."
Chen Xu looked down at the document.
Deep in the server room, the steel behemoth painted with the red "550" hummed. Perhaps it was an illusion, but the roar of the cooling fans seemed to grow louder. It didn't sound like air circulation anymore; it sounded like a low growl of provocation.
To be or not to be.
The choice was back in Chen Xu's hands.