The Star Knight

Ten cosmic days later, Lie Xing, Sunlight City Mercenary Union.

Opal: "I almost lost my life there! It's a mission to find people! I want to rush to the pirate's lair to get laser light, do you understand how I feel!!"

Clerk: "We can only negotiate with the employer! How much additional remuneration do you want! Please do me a favor and give me an accurate number!"

Raymond squeezed forward and said: "No, I want money! Listen clearly, the employer has gone bankrupt! There is no more money to be squeezed out! Now what we want is promotion points, points!"

The clerk: "No points can be added! This is a fixed assessment by the trade union! It has nothing to do with us! We can only give money! We have to wait for us to negotiate with the employer! Go out without saying how much money will be added! There are still people queuing up behind! Congrats! You live a hundred years!"

Opal yelled frantically: "This task is completely wrong——!"

A handsome man behind him said: "There are too many tasks for the wrong version, okay! Last time I accepted a commission from a young lady to protect me, and ended up fighting [-] combat robots!! Save yourself some time!" I can only blame myself for being unlucky! Get out of the way!"

Opal: "No way, so much difference? Dude, are you serious?"

The handsome mercenary said: "Of course! The eldest lady said she was going to get married, she was depressed, and wanted to find a bodyguard to go out to relax, but do you know what she did? She just let her run away! Elope!! The groom's family is Do you understand who runs a robot factory! Who wants to elope with her! I’m still waiting for the union to arbitrate halfway through the sales! A group of robots are chasing after me, and my life is almost sent there. She’s so handsome! Go away! ! I want to hand in the commission!"

Opal: "..."

Raymond: "..."

With 240 points, Lei Meng said: "Wait a minute, there is one more thing. Haitang said that she doesn't want to assist the commission of the entrustment, and this part will be deducted from us."

As soon as the words came out, the noisy hall fell silent.

Opal: "?"

"Iron Hen doesn't want your assistance commission?" A mercenary asked in disbelief.

Everyone's expressions became very strange, Opal said: "Of course! She still owes us two lives! I plan to count her 20 for each life!"

The whole hall gasped in unison.

The two walked out of the guild, and the scores of the last time they defended the greenhouse were settled. Opal and Raymond got together to read the mercenary diary. Raymond was still D, Opal was E+, and he was about to catch up.

Raymond: "Go to check the accounts, buy things, and contact the spacecraft for repair."

Opal: "Let me go see Sid."

Raymond: "No, let's go together."

Opal: "Do you need two people to buy something?"

Lei Meng: "The communication ear button is gone, how can I find you if I get lost later?"

Opal said: "Tch, do I look like someone who can get lost?"

Raymond smiled and said: "It's very possible." After finishing speaking, he put his hand on Opal's shoulder and walked towards the commercial street.

The bright sun shone on his body, and Opal felt a warm feeling in his heart. The two walked past the entertainment store, and Opal was attracted by a large poster painted colorfully and brilliantly, so he stopped to take a look.

[The latest version of Fantasy Movement, Sex Paradise Set, only sells for 18888 credits, and the time limit is three days. ] Raymond: "Send you one?"

Opal: "..."

Nothing to do so many new!The advertisement was played like an amusement park, and Opal roared silently in his heart. Every time he was attracted attention, he thought there was something novel, but in the end it turned out to be a fantasy movement. This company really likes to make money.

Opal looked embarrassed and said, "No need! Thank you!"

Raymond bought a new pair of earbuds in the shop next door, put them on himself, and put the other on Opal's ears, Opal was still looking sideways in the mirror, and Raymond said: "Don't be smug, you can Go away, go away."

Opal said, "Then I'll go see Sid."

The corners of Lei Meng's mouth were slightly raised, and he hummed, looked down at the new product, and casually chatted with the female shop assistant. Opal glanced at him sideways, feeling a little sour in his heart.

Clerk: "Handsome, what do you want to buy?"

Lei Meng bent down in front of the cargo counter, turned his head to look at Opal, raised his eyebrows, and made a questioning expression.

Opal said: "I'm really gone."

Raymond: "Well, get out."

Opal: "..."

Opal came out of the store in boredom and headed towards the hospital. After asking at the consultation desk, he went directly to the ward on the third floor. Sid was sitting by the bed, and his father was lying still, still awake.

The two spoke at the same time.

Sid: "Where's Raymond?"

Opal: "Where's Xun?"

Opal: "..."

Sid: "..."

Neither of them answered the other's question. Opal touched Sid's father's hand and asked, "How is he?"

Sid was a little haggard and said: "I can't wake up. The doctor said that the result of excessive anesthesia caused permanent damage to his brain...Maybe they want to transplant Dad's brain to the queen ant, and they are afraid that she will reject it. So the anesthesia was overdone."

Opal said nothing.

Sid added: "If I had known earlier, I shouldn't have rushed to find him by myself in the spaceship. If I had entrusted you three years ago, maybe..."

Opal said, "Sid, look at me, hey, look at my eyes."

Sid raised his eyes and met Opal's gaze. Opal narrowed his eyes and murmured, "Don't say you knew it earlier, do you understand?"

Sid nodded blankly, Opal sat back on a chair, put his hands on the back of the chair, and said in a deep voice: "Don't say that you knew it earlier. Say, don't say it in your life, you can't change the past that happened, but you can decide your own future."

"Now let me tell you, you have to be happy that he can wake up. After he wakes up, wouldn't he be sad for nothing?" Opal looked into his eyes and said seriously.

Sid's eyes wandered for a moment, and then he smiled and said, "Yeah, I also believe he can wake up."

Opal nodded and said, "That's good."

The ward was empty, and Opal thought that he came to visit with empty hands and forgot to buy a bouquet of irises, so he couldn't justify it.

Mercenaries rarely suffer serious illnesses that require hospitalization. Large groups are equipped with medical ray equipment, which is very useful for treating trauma. If they are seriously injured, they will die directly on the alien planet, and the rest is to bring the body back and bury it.Those who stay in the local area have minor or serious illnesses, so they come directly and use radiation to stimulate body regeneration. One or two courses of treatment can be over in a few days.

It's quiet outside, but Sid's father has been in a coma, and he has to pay for hospitalization and nutrient solution every day, all of which cost money.

Sid: "By the way, Xun is on the tarmac, repairing the spaceship for you."

Opal nodded thoughtfully, and asked, "Do you have enough money?"

Sid said: "It's okay now, I still have more than 1 credit points, which is enough for me and Xun to spend."

Opal got 20 from Sid, but became friends with him. The 20 always feels like a lot of money.The employer went bankrupt and entrusted the task. Although his father was found, he was in a vegetable state.Sid wasn't doing well, and Opal always felt a little guilty about spending money.

"What about you in the future? You have to make some plans." Opal said.

Sid: "Yes, I have a plan, and I have already thought about it with Xun."

Opal's face changed, thinking that the two of them would go to trick outsiders together, and do the kind of work that cleans the spaceship and charges [-].

Opal: "You'd better not listen to him."

Sid: "Why, Xun is a good guy, I plan to be a mercenary."

Opal: "You're not kidding!"

Sid: "I'm serious! Even if I take my father back to the home planet, the Spark Company has already paid the money in one lump sum, and it is impossible to pay for the medical expenses. But if you become a registered mercenary in Lie Xing, you can enjoy the benefits of the country of mercenaries." Welfare, free medical care for relatives. Of course I can support myself. Xun also plans to register, and we will work hard together."

The corner of Opal's mouth twitched, and he said: "With all due respect, your little lover...is really not very good."

Sid frowned and said, "You, no, know, you know. You don't know anything at all."

Opal raised his hands in surrender: "As long as you like it, I have no right to interfere, and I don't intend to hypnotize you."

Sid said: "He didn't like being a mercenary before, because he... because of his father, he hated this profession. Later, he accepted it and went to the recruit training school. It is said that there is a course of will training. His fear Rejection... I can't accept it every time, and I can only interrupt the class in the end."

"Oh." Opal nodded, thinking that it was understandable, but he was still a little dissatisfied with Xun. Even if he had some difficulties, he shouldn't cheat outsiders, just like a scumbag.

Opal finally said: "Sounds like a good idea, you work hard, you can ask us if you don't understand, but there are some things that you need to experience yourself, such as the mercenary stage... I think Raymond might... well, no I will recruit you into the regiment after the recruit exam. Maybe in the future..."

Sid smiled and said, "Of course I know that there is no room for a third party between you. I also don't intend to be a light bulb."

Opal: "..."

Sid: "Ah, I just mean the partner relationship!"

Opal got up and said viciously: "Whatever you say, I wish you a C+ in the recruit assessment, just like me."

Raymond bought a X-ray medical device and carried it on his shoulders into the tarmac.Xun was wearing sunglasses, and was repairing the gap in the small light cannon that the Times-VI was hung up on.

"I didn't ask you to repair the spaceship." Raymond said.

"It's free!" Xun threw the tool away and was about to scold people. Lei Meng immediately made a "Yo" expression and said, "I didn't say anything. E7, open the door."

The cabin door opened, and Raymond carried the X-ray instrument up, took a can of coffee and threw it to Xun, Xun raised his hand to catch it, and found a place to sit down and rest.

Raymond: "Who did you learn from?"

Xun: "My dad."

Raymond nodded slowly and said, "Where are the others? Where are they?"

Xun: "Dead, in the heroic soul cemetery."

Lei Meng almost said the wrong thing. Fortunately, he is not like Opal at ordinary times. If he changed to Opal, it must be "You still have a father? Why don't you see your father discipline you?" Xun is simply a powder keg , bad temper, ruthless mouth.

Raymond: "Finally someone you want to protect?"

Xun said coldly: "It's none of your business."

Raymond: "You should find some work, cheating and abducting is not what your father wants to see."

Xun: "Die! People! Yes! Look! No! Come! Don't keep using my dad to look at me in the sky to trick ignorant teenagers!"

Raymond smiled and said, "I didn't mean that."

Xun said unhappily: "I will take Sid to a recruit course in a few days."

Raymond commented: "Not bad."

Xun said: "Are you going? Let's go together. I heard that you haven't taken the recruit teaching class. It will be very helpful for future missions."

Raymond thought for a while and said, "Think about it again. Opal may want to take a vacation. If he is on vacation, he won't go to class, but there is one thing I want to make clear first."

fast:"?"

Raymond: "I have never cooperated with anyone, except for Opal, and our mercenary group does not intend to recruit anyone. Opal is a soft-hearted person, you don't have to..."

Xun was immediately insulted and yelled: "Who wants to join you?! Don't feel too good about yourself! You two are just trash! Your brain is full of muscle garbage! Take a piss and take a picture of yourself !"

Raymond was not excited at all, and said politely: "It's good that you know."

Xun was so angry that he kicked Times-VI hard and gave Lei Meng a middle finger. When Opal saw this scene when he came back, he said, "Hey! Don't seek death!"

Xun left in a frenzy, and Opal pointed his middle finger back: "It's just crazy. I made an appointment with Wrench, let's have lunch, and take E7 with me by the way."

Raymond went back to put on his coat and a pair of sunglasses. The two arrived in Sunset City. Opal asked Wrench to come out and handed E7 to him.

Wrench yawned, and said lazily, "Anything new? Let me see, darling..."

Opal looked at Raymond and said, "Why are you wearing my glasses?"

Raymond said: "These glasses are good."

Opal: "That's mine."

Raymond: "It's mine now."

Opal: "You think I look good in this pair, so you also want to wear this pair, am I right? But you ignore the human problem, I look handsome when I wear it, but you look like a tall horse at best when you wear it Big sissy."

Lei Meng said politely: "You look like a Kodo frog wearing it, but I wear it like the Prince of Stars."

Opal: "Dude, Star Prince is a species of frog on Green Mercury."

The wrench still said in the ordinary voice: "My God, you actually went to the pirate ship."

The sound of the wrench makes people want to sleep every time, no matter how passionate things are in his mouth, it is as common as eating a pie. At best, there are a few pirates or a meteor king sandwiched in the pie. difference.

Opal explained the process, Wrench transcribed the mothership information into his portable terminal, and said: "It's very useful, go ahead and test it, I'm planning to install these programs on a batch of mechs Wang bought from the Empire not long ago. In fact, I hope they can have the same elementary intelligence as E7, and be able to rescue mercenaries when they are in danger."

Raymond said: "Aren't you afraid of causing trouble for Azeroth? The Star Alliance will sue the member states that develop artificial intelligence. This is a very serious problem. If it is leaked, someone will investigate soon."

The wrench replied casually: "Indeed... You must know that the rules and regulations of the Machine Intelligence Ethics Society must be followed, but we can play around the edges."

Raymond said: "Self-rescue measures have already involved in the category of independent thinking. I don't think E7 can only be 'primary' at all."

Wrench: "Well, whatever impression it makes on you, we'll just call it 'junior' for now, for your own safety, and I don't think the E7 itself would mind."

Opal was a little surprised: "Raymond, do you know the category of independent thinking? What is that?"

Raymond nodded slightly: "I know a little bit, it means a robot with self-will."

Wrench took a deep breath, looked at E7, and said: "The existence of non-intelligent life with all the abilities of independent thinking will be completely destroyed, there is no doubt about it. But do you know? Small robots like E7, strictly speaking, they There’s nothing you can do with it.”

"Let's put it this way, the biggest difference between a machine lifeform and a human is not in quantitative production and biological cell activity, but in the basic stagnation rules formulated by the Ethics Society. In simple terms, it is about what it does when it is bored."

"For example, it is on standby at this time." The wrench pointed to E7, and the light above its head was not lit: "But when you call its name—'E7.'"

A red light lights up above E7's head, beeping.

Opal and Raymond didn't understand what he meant, and the wrench explained: "The voice-activated keyword is activated. It resumes from standby mode and starts to check the surrounding environment. The central processing unit looks for matching words and is ready to recognize your command."

Opal: "So what?"

Wrench: "If you don't give it instructions, what will it do? Do nothing, just keep the data flowing. In other words, when there are no instructions, it will just be in a daze and think about nothing."

"Then let's make a hypothesis now, replace it with a human core, will it still be in a daze?"

Opal shook his head, wrenched his wrench and said, "If E7 were a person, he would think 'what is he calling me? Will he ask me to do something? Oh, this troublesome master, he always gives a bunch of messy instructions. , can’t you make it clearer? It’s okay to ask me to play heart-finding? The little robot girl in the next street looks good, I’ll take a moment to take a look at it later... My track axis is a little loose recently, Need some oil...'"

Opal and Raymond were amused by the wrench, and the wrench said: "This is the fundamental difference between robots and humans. Even if the program has rich processing methods, it is still thinking passively, as long as it does not pass the "active" thinking Bottom line, the Machine Ethics Society has nothing to do with us."

Raymond nodded slowly, and asked, "What's the difference between passive and active thinking modes?"

The wrench said: "This is a subject that has been completely destroyed after the wisdom revolution, but I once saw it in a mission. Scientists before the dark age believed that the state of thinking came from a variety of hormones secreted by brain cells. Stimulation, you can think of it as an aspect of emotion."

"For example, boredom." Wrench said: "It is one of the motivations for human beings to think independently when they are full; love makes people pursue beautiful things; anger makes people abandon reason and make a decision that ignores reality and the environment; these The production of hormones is untraceable, its composition is very, very complex, and its randomness is very strong, which cannot be simulated by photoelectric signals."

Raymond said again: "So artificial life is to install a human brain on a robot, so is it a human or a robot?"

The wrench said: "It's hard to say... The Wisdom Revolution has been debated for a long time, but no definite conclusion can be reached. But I don't plan to play with E7 like this, and it will be broken. Let's stop this topic, there are too many discussions Obviously bad."

Opal remembered another thing - Azeroth bought a batch of mechas, made by the Empire.

This means that mercenaries will be able to touch mechs in the near future... It doesn't matter, Azeroth has decided to join the empire?

Raymond took out something and put it in front of the wrench: "Do you know what it is?"

It was something a bit like a ring, with a red gemstone inlaid on it. The wrench picked it up, took a look, took out the equipment to check, and said, "Wait a minute."

Opal: "Where did it come from?"

Raymond: "It's from the ants."

Opal: "Why didn't I! When did you take it for yourself?"

Raymond: "At that time you had already boarded the spaceship, and Elder Ant gave it to me. He said that it was left by their god and handed over to them. That human god also taught them many things..."

"The human god of the ants." Wrench murmured, "This is a very interesting thing." Holding a finger-length tube mirror, he began to analyze the composition of the gemstones inlaid on the ring.

Opal thought of the person with the question mark in the guild mission, and he vaguely felt that among these many things, there must be unknown connections.

He asked the question of the mysterious man to the wrench, and the wrench concentrated on analyzing the composition of the gem, and said: "You have to ask Azeroth, he has lived on this planet for thousands of years, what he knows, and the history he witnessed most……"

Opal said, "But he doesn't have time to see me."

Wrench murmured: "There will be time, you know, he even met Coron, the king of meteors."

Raymond was moved and said, "Have they fought against each other?"

Wrench: "That's not clear, I just heard that he almost never talked about anything about Corolin. At least we know one thing... the king is not afraid of him. It is true, not like some people In that way, you say you are not afraid, but your heart keeps trembling... This ring has a very special function."

Opal said: "Good stuff?"

Wrench: "Let's calculate it this way. There is a small cluster of chips in the gemstone, which is activated by bioelectric wave stress. You wear it on your finger, with the inner side sticking to the skin, and it will sense your thinking fluctuations. When you fall into When you are in a state of near-death intuition that surpasses physical strength... At this time, death is usually not far away, and this ring will send a distress signal to the universe."

Raymond: "..."

Opal: "..."

Raymond: "Where is the launch?"

The wrench shrugged and said, "I don't know, do you want to try it now? Take out a gun and we can complete this test. It's best for you two to choose one and shoot at the other. I'm just in charge of watching, I don't want to cause trouble here .”

Opal: "..."