The Death Knell

The interior of the windmill is messy, but this is indeed not a mill. Various machines are piled in almost every corner, and there are many bones dotted among them.

"Something happened in this stockade in the past. These people died here while working. Because the door of the tower was locked, the corpses remained, but the bones of those who died outside were all gone."

Mysterio picked up a skull and squeezed it gently, and the weathered bones turned into fragments in her hands. These people had been dead for a long time, and even the air in the tower no longer had a peculiar smell.

Su Ming, who was listening to her analysis, was inspecting many machines. Obviously, the wilderness people did not have the technology to manufacture these devices. They should have inherited the legacy of the previous era, but they might also have inherited something that led to their demise.

"Liana, go restore the power."

He assigned tasks to the students and felt that these devices should still be able to be started. Although most of the machines could not be seen to work, wouldn't you know if you turned on the power and tried it?

He could recognize electric sewing machines and printing machines, as well as things like centrifuges and mixers, but the equipment was strange enough in itself.

Mysterio nodded and followed the cable to find the power source. She stepped over the bones, and her back disappeared into the darkness.

About three minutes later, with a low beep, the entire inside of the windmill lit up. After the lights flashed a few times, the power supply became stable.

"These machines are of very good quality." Liana dusted off her hands and returned to the teacher. She obviously liked reliable machinery: "But just a windmill can drive so many devices. They play an important role in controlling power consumption. The technology is also very high.”

"If I'm not wrong"

Deathstroke walked aside as he spoke, opened a dirty terminal, brushed his palm across the screen covered with a layer of smoke, watched the green cursor flash on it and performed a power-on self-test, and then a message like With a shield-shaped sign, he nodded:

"Sure enough, this is a product of the North Central Positronics Group, an electronic technology giant from the last era."

Mysterio, who had learned about the background of the Dark Tower world from his teacher through strangulation, also checked other machines and found the same mark on almost every piece of equipment that was not seriously rusted.

Although time has caused many of these signs to rust and peel off their paint, the mottled remaining traces can still explain their origins.

"How does the North Central Positronics Group compare with your Wilson Enterprise?"

"It's a bit similar, except that they are castles in the air." Su Ming rummaged through the cabinet near the terminal for data storage media and answered the students: "They once sold their products through a door. Different parallel worlds, even different time and space, but it’s a pity.”

Mysterio folded her arms and leaned against the table. She held a small button and played with it in her hand, and answered:

"It's a pity that they don't understand the principle of the door, so when the multi-destruction restarted and all the roots were destroyed, they died?"

Seeing the students' interest, Deathstroke first smiled and nodded, then shook his head:

"The thing is almost as you said. After the portal to different worlds was lost, they were indeed no longer a company capable of conducting diversified trade. But they did not die. A skinny camel was bigger than a horse. Today's The North Central Positronics Group is still one of the giant chaebols in the Middle World."

Compared with the western-style inner world, the situation in the middle world is more complicated. Each city and place often has its own system. The North Central Positronics Group relied on the technology left behind to make a comeback and built a cyberpunk-style world after the apocalypse. Cities, cities ruled by corporations and plutocrats.

It's just that due to the lack of production materials, this cyber city has a bad taste, and a lot of industrial punk style things are mixed in.

For example, there are hundreds of furnaces and chimneys that are thousands of meters high in that city, refining oil and manufacturing various chemical products all the time. The heat and smoke gushing from the chimneys almost always shrouds the city in darkness. inside.

Each urban area was built around nearby stoves or chimneys. People built settlements on the outer walls of the chimneys, and then gradually these settlements were connected in the air.

The city is wrapped in industry, and industry is the lifeblood of the place. However, the reason why Su Ming can still say that it is a cyberpunk city is because even though the industrial base is about to fall into the age of internal combustion engines, the North Central Positronics Group is still there. Can create bionic humans, robots, implants, and operate digital networks.

Their bionic man technology is more advanced than Deathstroke's, because the bionic man produced by the Positronic Group can even realize 'birth, old age, sickness and death', while the one produced by Su Ming's own company can only 'break'.

In that city, the boundaries between real people and dummies are infinitely blurred, and all kinds of dramas are staged that are funny to outsiders but are very tragic for the people involved.

Just thinking about the fact that all the relatives and friends around you are actually puppets controlled by the company, you will know how dark it is.

Su Ming probably talked about a few examples, all about how companies use androids to deceive living people, such as fake wives, fake children, fake friends, fake cigarettes, fake wine, etc., just a few simple examples in life. But the use of human nature is an eye-opener for Mysterio.

"Dark, this is too dark."

After listening to the story told by the teacher, Mysterio's little face wrinkled up. She really didn't expect that those android prostitutes or gigolos she had seen in Contracia would have consequences if they were used in some dark ways. Such terrifying control.

Sure enough, capital and big data are the best at grasping people's hearts?

"The scary thing about bionic technology is that once the bionics get out of control and are able to self-assemble or replicate, humans will inevitably perish quickly. Even if they are not killed by them, they will go completely crazy in the day-long suspicion."

Su Ming was just telling a story. He found a hard drive and inserted it into the dusty terminal in front of him.

The bionic technology in his hand came from Kang's earliest gift. Howard later improved it, but it is not perfect now. Just a hidden energy switch under the skin on the back of the head is enough to make people discover that they are fake. people.

But Deathstroke will no longer let his adjutant climb this technological line. After all, androids are just machines, not people.

Human beings’ excessive pursuit of perfection and transcendence will eventually reveal their true nature, which is self-destructive tendencies.

When they cannot create a perfect themselves, they will try to create other things that seem perfect to them. But how can imperfect humans create perfection?

You can surpass yourself, but pursuing perfection too much is doomed to be a tragedy.