When'sWW4Starting: "Damn it, he went to Europe for the Olympics, disappeared after landing, and was confirmed dead shortly after! The whole thing reeks of a conspiracy from start to finish. I still think someone killed him because they knew they couldn't beat him! That's why the 37th Olympic Games are called the Disgraced Games! Even the track and field champion from that year refused to accept their medal! How dare they? He was a light for the world, the absolute limit of human potential!"
Chu Bamboo fell into deep thought. 2050, again... 'Wait, that username, WW4... Last time, didn't I die in some kind of Fourth Battle in 2053?'
Huh? Chu Bamboo's eyes widened in realization. He'd noticed something terrifying. He quickly scrolled through the comments, which were filled with effusive praise like "God," "max-level human," and "Greatness needs no explanation."
However, what Chu Bamboo was focused on were the comment timestamps.
"...Just as I thought!" Chu Bamboo let out a long breath. The latest comment was dated December 27, 2050.
There were no comments from 2051!
"If Nuwa No. 17's database wasn't deliberately altered, then it means that sometime after 2050, at some unknown point, the internet went down. And as for when it came back... it's hard to say!"
Chu Bamboo was silent for a long time. 'The internet... could it really be shut down?'
Especially when he connected this to his near-certainty that artificial intelligence had been forcibly regressed to the level of a moronic AI.
'No, wait. The two events might not have happened at the same time!'
Chu Bamboo thought it over and over, but couldn't come to any conclusion.
'Man, this is a headache.' After a couple of sighs, Chu Bamboo decided to get down to business. His expression turned serious. "Nuwa No. 17, please search for lottery results. The specific date is..."
"Oh, right, besides that, tell me which stocks soared during this period... actually, never mind. Just do a deep analysis and tell me: if I have 10,000 in cash, which stocks should I buy and when should I buy and sell them over the next few months to maximize my profit! Make sure to leave as much leeway as possible to prevent a butterfly effect from my purchases that could get me trapped. You should know what I mean, right?"
Chu Bamboo had used AI plenty of times in the Real World, so he knew that with these things, you had to be as detailed as possible. And even then, you could only trust the final answer about 50%—
if you trusted it 100%, you wouldn't even know what hit you in the end!
Soon, a long string of answers appeared.
Chu Bamboo noted down the stock tickers, company names, and the buy and sell dates one by one.
"All right." Chu Bamboo patted his cheeks, then suddenly remembered something and quickly asked, "Nuwa No. 17, an alarm went off when I entered just now. That alarm didn't notify Li Kang, did it? If it did, and I want to hide the fact that you triggered it, do you have any good ideas?"
"Commencing information database retrieval. Answer determined: information is transmitted synchronously... Deep analysis initiated. Parsing result: no action necessary... At the time of the alarm's output, the terminal in Li Kang's possession simultaneously issued an alert for a different location. The two are easily confused. As the base's alarm was extremely brief, there is only a one percent chance of Li Kang noticing the discrepancy. To completely conceal this matter, it is recommended to use permanent permissions to delete the backend logs."
"Yes, yes, that's the one!" Chu Bamboo nodded eagerly and let out a long sigh of relief. 'It's a good thing I can delete it.' "Go ahead and delete it!"
"Please complete real-name authentication."
Chu Bamboo: "...Huh?!"
Chu Bamboo's expression stiffened. 'You've got to be kidding me. We're this far in the future and they're still pulling this crap...'
The next five minutes were excruciatingly tedious. The only silver lining was that Nuwa No. 17 was at least somewhat reliable—it didn't ask him to receive a verification code on his phone!
If Nuwa No. 17 had actually sent one, he'd have no idea where he'd pull a phone out from!
After confirming the deletion, Chu Bamboo thought of something else. "Also, remind me when Li Kang has completed his mission and is about to return... when he's ten minutes away from the base."
"Alarm has been set."
'What else should I do?' Chu Bamboo blinked, then asked, "Nuwa No. 17, show me all the news broadcasts from the time period I specified."
Chu Bamboo was certain that after reviewing this content, he would have a relatively clear understanding of the future economy, politics, and major events.
And then...
Nuwa No. 17 spat out a few words, then retracted them and went back to being "busy."
Chu Bamboo: "..."
'Right. AI is as afraid of touching politics as ever.'
'No problem...'
"Excluding the parts you can't talk about, just summarize the major events as best you can!"
Chu Bamboo rubbed his hands in anticipation, and then...
"??? The death of ●●●? That's a major event? Wait, what does the death of a foreign celebrity have to do with me? And why does it have to specify they died from 'suspected long-term vegetarianism'? That's not important at all!"
"?? The birth of ●●? His birth has to do with... uh, this must be a major figure in the future, right? Nuwa No. 17, show me his life story... Holy crap, why did it retract again? Wait, this isn't some major political figure, is it..."
"What the hell? What do you mean, *Hunter x Hunter* is finished?"
"Wait... What do you mean the national football team won the championship?"
"A moonquake... Huh? The Moon can even have quakes?! No, wait, why is a moonquake even being reported? It'd be more reliable to tell me about an earthquake on Earth! What's the point of telling me about stuff happening on the Moon!"
The look of anticipation on Chu Bamboo's face gradually froze as he continued to watch.
All he could say was that Nuwa No. 17's underlying database was even more sensitive than the AIs currently used in the Real World. The number of forbidden words was simply ridiculous...
It retracted things at the drop of a hat!
Even earthquake reports... because they involved political elements, it reported on moonquakes more often than it did on various disasters happening on Earth...
'…That's to be expected, I guess. To put it bluntly, everything has the fewest shackles on it when it first appears. They just keep adding more, year after year, until not even a ghost could tell you what it'll end up looking like.'
Chu Bamboo sighed. It was just like when web novels first came out; there were absolutely no taboos. But later on—everywhere you looked was a forbidden zone.
'Look on the bright side. At least I learned a bunch of names!' Chu Bamboo narrowed his eyes, mocking the situation internally. If he researched enough here, he could totally use the "I've heard this little sister's (or brother's) name before, so they're probably a huge talent" method for identifying people in the future!