No Money to Divorce

“Aren’t you angry with me?” Zhong Yan was in disbelief.

Adrian reached out to pinch Zhong Yan’s cheek. “To tell you the truth, the reason I never mentioned this matter to you is because it makes me feel uncomfortable that our marriage was arranged by ‘Butterfly’. But now that I know that’s not true, it makes me feel much better.”

Zhong Yan suddenly felt like the skies had cleared up after a big storm. He leaned back into Adrian’s arms and wiped away the tears left on his face with embarrassment.

“I didn’t know you liked me in the beginning, and I never thought we really could get married. Ever since that unexpected marriage, I’ve always been wondering how I should tell you this if you ever asked. I don’t want to lie to you and I’ll definitely tell you the truth, but you’d definitely get angry. I thought that if you never asked me for the rest of your life, then I would bring it with me to my grave.”

When Adrian heard this, his expression suddenly flickered. He suddenly remembered how he never planned to tell Zhong Yan about his original plans of coming to the Capital either. Not noticing the abnormality in his expression, Zhong Yan continued, “But today, we gave the technical department the authorization to open ‘Butterfly’s’ database. Vahl contacted me this afternoon and proposed that we publish the records for all the meetings held on the ninth floor to fight the rest of our competitors, and ensure that the position of president would only be left to me and him. But I refused. Indeed, there are many shocking things to be found about those radical members in the records, but me and Vahl aren’t completely clean either. Both me and him have records that are related to you, even. So it’ll be better for us not to hurt ourselves trying to hurt our enemies.”

“Wait…Both of you have records that are related to me?” Adrian asked, amazed. “You went up there to arrange for our wedding, but what did Uncle Vahl do?”

Zhong Yan was also surprised. “You actually don’t know? More than ten years ago he went against the law and erased your penalty records from school. I had a look at it and…Anyway, if we really publish that, then the entire world would know that you had a fight with two of your seniors when you were in your teens, and even had to rely on your uncle who is a member of the Twelve to evade punishment.”

Adrian whose memories of the past had been fished up inexplicably was speechless.

So there actually was punishment for that incident! He had no idea!

Zhong Yan said, “Actually, a child’s fight is no serious matter. The only problem is that students with penalties will definitely not be able to be assigned to the Supreme Institution by ‘Butterfly’. I’m worried that if word gets out, your eligibility for admission into the school would be questioned.”

“Then it’s a good thing he erased it for me.” Feeling worried for the past, Adrian said, “If I never entered the Supreme Institution, then I would never have met you.”

Zhong Yan shot him a vexing glance. “I’m being serious here.”

Seriously, Adrian responded, “I am also being serious. Alright, alright. Let’s go back to the topic. Since you’ve already decided not to publish it, why did you suddenly decide to tell me this today?”

“You’ll probably end up mentioning it some day. Also, I bumped into that, uh…That person. Let me think…”

“Who?” Adrian asked subconsciously. Suddenly, he understood who Zhong Yan was talking about and he was instantly displeased. “You met him? At the council house? Was it someone you know? A colleague? What’s his name? How is your relationship with him usually?”

Looking at his offended expression, Zhong Yan didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. “He’s not someone I know. I don’t even know what he looks like, but you should be the one who knows him.”

After he mentioned it vaguely, Adrian gritted his teeth and said, “That’s the eldest grandson of my grandfather’s younger brother. My cousin. I’m going to the Yate family home tomorrow…”

“Don’t!” Zhong Yan quickly pulled at his clothes. “Right now, we’re the only ones who know the situation. Wouldn’t you just blow things out of proportion if you confronted your grandfather with that? What’s more, there’s nothing to confront him about anyway. Just think about it, that’s all in the past and we’re married now. No matter who it was, I still would’ve replaced him with you, so don’t be angry…”

He had to calm him down for quite a while before he managed to convince Adrian to dispel his idea of barging into the Yate family home. Only, even when the two had fallen asleep in each other’s arms, Adrian was still cursing the AI, displeased, and he was even holding Zhong Yan tighter than usual as if he was afraid that he would run off.

After many years, when Adrian and Zhong Yan happened to be shopping at the Capital one day, they happened to bump into Ford Yate and his party. They were walking towards each other in a narrow road with nowhere to avoid each other from. Ford gave his greetings to Adrian, and when Zhong Yan saw his silver eyes, he asked Adrian, “Is this your relative?”

Adrian glanced at Ford, displeased, and answered, “One of my cousins.”

It was said that Ford complained to his friends after the matter, saying that Adrian had forgotten all his past feelings. He had followed after him everyday calling him big brother when he was three or four, but now he was demoted to “one of his cousins”.

On the third day of the successful impeachment, the technical department reported several very serious issues to the few councilors who were acting as interim agents for the societal transition.

“What do you mean the permissions can’t be revoked?” Vahl frowned.

Zhong Yan followed with a question. “So to be clear, which of ‘Butterfly’s’ permissions exactly can’t be cancelled?”

The technician wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “There is a considerable part of the military-related permissions we are unable to cancel. Including…the authorization for all anti-material, biochemical, and nuclear weapons.”

The entire meeting room fell into dead silence. After a few seconds, one councilor asked, “Can’t you just shut down ‘Butterfly” permanently? If you can make sure that it never wakes up, then it wouldn’t matter how many of these permissions it has.”

The technician shook his head and said, “Indeed, shutting down the AI permanently is the most straightforward approach, but it is precisely because we do not have the authority to shut down ‘Butterfly’ permanently that we had to turn off its permissions one by one. Based on the data file from a hundred years ago that we reviewed from the research institute, the permissions to shutdown ‘Butterfly’ permanently was given only to a single person, and that was ‘Cocoon’.”

Several of the people who were present at the meeting were shocked, and one of them couldn’t help but say, “But that’s not a ‘person’, is it?”

Vahl asked, “So only ‘Cocoon’ has the permissions to shut ‘Butterfly’ down? But hasn’t ‘Cocoon’ been abandoned as early as the last century?”

“According to the records we found in the archives, that is in fact the case. But we don’t even know how they dealt with everything back then, or whether it can still be rebooted. After checking, we found out that the files related to ‘Cocoon’ were far too few. Most of the data within the research institute was on ‘Butterfly’, and it was the data that came from before its creation.”

“But what if we destroy the main server directly by force? As in, destroying it physically?” Zhong Yan asked.

The technician said, “That’s possible, but that will bring about a new set of problems. First, we have to find out where the physical location of ‘Butterfly’s’ brain is.”

Several of the councilors were stunned. The technician slapped himself on the forehead and said, “Oh, please excuse me. Industry terminologies. We call the main server for the super AI the AI’s ‘brain’. As long as it is not declared brain dead, then it is still living. I’m not great with medical terms, but that should be it, probably.”

Vahl asked, “Isn’t ‘Butterfly’s’ brain up there?” He pointed a finger above. Everyone understood that he was talking about the ninth floor of the Supreme Council’s main building.

“That’s what we thought at first, but we checked over the place yesterday and at best, the ninth floor can only be considered…How should I describe it? If we *had* to make an analogy, um, then it was probably it’s limbs? And you can also add half a heart in there. Destroying it completely can already be considered a serious injury.”

Everyone felt chills running down their backs. One councilor said, “You don’t have to metaphorize it as a human body, do you?”

“But you wouldn’t understand if I used technical terms.” Helplessly, the young technician said, “‘Butterfly’ has already been completed for close to a hundred years, and no related records were made after its completion. We can only do our own checks to find out its current status, there is not original data. This is a seriously difficult case.”

“The lack of data is quite suspicious. Could ‘Butterfly’ be the one who destroyed them?” Vahl speculated. “It has been preparing for this day for a long time now.”

Zhong Yan said, “But more importantly, how much time do we have? How long can we keep ‘Butterfly’ in a dormant state?”

“Seven days,” the technician responded. “Once seven day passes, ‘Butterfly’s’ emergency protection module will boot up and wake it from hibernation. It’s already been three days.”

Everyone on the scene knitted their brows. Would they have to negotiate with ‘Butterfly’ after it wakes up? Humans have already decided to abolish it, so that would most definitely not be a very friendly negotiation, especially when the negotiating party holds enough power to overpower the Federation’s authority to launch their heavy weapons. There was no need for this negotiation to be had at all, because the humans do not have the bargaining chips for it. They were doomed to fail.

So what can they do before the AI wakes up again? Destroying the ninth floor of the Supreme Council seems to be a palliative move. What’s more, if they are unable to stop “Butterfly” from waking up, would destroying the ninth floor aggravate it further?

“Butterfly’s” brain, its mainframe, was not inside the ninth floor. So where could it be? And where was ‘Cocoon’ that had been abandoned a century ago?

Nobody could answer those questions, nor could anyone make a decision. The person who could make the decisions on behalf of all human beings needs to be a responsible person, of course. But before that, they needed the power to make this decision.

“I think the need to elect an interim president is imminent,” Vahl said. “We are in desperate need of a person who can make decisions. Everything happening these past two days is just the same as today, we are forced to gather in a meeting where we will inevitably butt heads, and we will often find ourselves restricting each other…The efficacy is too slow and we can’t afford to wait.”

Zhong Yan raised his head to meet his gaze, speaking without showing his emotions, “What Councilor Cayman says is reasonable. I think so as well.”

The rest of them did not say anything. The technician looked at Vahl, then Zhong Yan, and back to Vahl again, seeming to feel the subtle undercurrents running through the room. Awkwardly, he said, “Well, I’ve finished my reports. So, gentlemen. I shall…take my leave?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Vahl spoke, but not to the technician. “Councilor Zhong Yan, may I speak with you alone outside?”