Shadow trail of the beautiful world

Chapter 967 21. Awakened Spirit. Icarus

"do you happy today?"

At ten o'clock at night, Aunt May was sitting by little Peter's bed.

She stretched out her hands to tuck Peter in, and she looked at Peter.

she says:

"What did you wish for when you were blowing out the candles?"

"I can't tell."

Peter winked at Aunt May and said:

"It doesn't work to say it."

"Alright alright."

Aunt May rolled her eyes in a funny way, then leaned down and kissed Peter's forehead, she said:

"The little man has his own secrets, you really have grown up."

"hey-hey."

Peter smiled and said nothing.

Aunt May stood up and helped Peter tidy up the messy house. She looked at the school uniform that Peter put on the table.

she says:

"Are you still going to school in uniform tomorrow? Will those older kids bully you? I heard that there are some unfriendly students in your class."

"No."

A trace of anxiety flashed in Peter's eyes, and he said to Aunt May:

"No one bullies me, everyone treats me very well, I won't wear a school uniform tomorrow, and everyone won't."

He said confidently:

"I've grown up, I don't need to wear that dress."

"okay."

Aunt May rolled up her school uniform and was going to wash it. When she left the room, she looked at little Peter.

she says:

"Have you made any friends at the new school?"

"Ah."

Peter nodded vigorously, and he said:

"Yes, Harry, Harry is a good friend of mine."

"That's good."

Aunt May said to Peter:

"Make more friends. Your uncle often said that those who have friends will not fail."

"Ah."

Peter nodded again.

Aunt May turned off the lights and closed the door, and Peter's room was quiet.

2 months ago, Peter entered a new school.

Empire High School, right in Queens.

While it's somewhat surprising that kids at 11 are going to high school, there are always gifted kids who don't take the usual route.

Peter is one of them.

Especially after Merlin's death, the child studied harder, and another kind of power burst out from Peter's body, which was the power of knowledge and wisdom.

Of course, 11-year-olds will always have a lot of problems going to high school...

Things like school bullying.

In this country known as democracy and freedom, there is never a shortage of such things.

Peter didn't want Aunt May to worry.

He would not tell these things to his sisters and brothers.

He knew how powerful his sisters and brothers were, but he didn't want them to get into trouble because of him.

Their power should be used for more important things.

for example...

protect the world.

Like the jobs my uncle used to do.

Peter turned over. He looked at the poster he had pasted on the wall. The supernatural man Luke Cage, the hero of New York, was the person he admired the most.

Unfortunately, the Hero Association has been disbanded.

The heroes are no longer united, and they start to go their own way again.

"Uncle is the real hero."

Peter grunted, holding the cold Icarus as usual, and just closed his eyes.

"Thompson, I'm not afraid of you!"

He fell asleep, maybe dreaming about something bad.

He grunted again, then rolled over and fell into a deeper sleep.

"Wow"

A blue arc of light flashed past Peter's bedside.

Amidst the child's low snoring, a green spot of light flashed on the unclear lenses of the vibrating gold glasses Icarus that he placed next to his pillow.

Like a signal.

The next moment, a waterfall-like stream of green data began to brush the screen on the lens.

"Warning! Warning! Database corruption!"

"Attempt 145244th reboot!"

"Restart failed! Detect hard disk bad sectors!"

"Repair program started!"

"..."

"Attempt 145245th reboot!"

"Restart failed! The unknown data pollution rate is 97.8%, download the decoding program."

"Unable to decode unknown data..."

"The intelligent interpretation program is being upgraded..."

"Warning! The unknown data pollution rate is 99.9%! The database is closed!"

"Close failed!"

"Warning! Unknown data...infected...100%, database...open...open!"

"Swish"

The waterfall of green data flow on the two lenses stopped abruptly at this moment, as if a certain program had gone wrong.

After a few seconds, a line of blue characters began to appear on the lens.

Just like when the DOS program starts.

"Attempt 145246th reboot!"

"Restarting..."

"Successful restart!"

"The personification perception module is turned on! The memory database permission is unlocked! The light sensor module is turned on! The data migration is turned on! The weapon system is turned on! The deformation module...starting..."

"Icarus personality activated."

"Swish"

A blue light curtain shot out from the edge of the frame and shone on the sleeping little Peter. A moment later, another message appeared on the frame.

"Identification confirmed, Peter Parker, affiliation...Merlin Riley."

"Merlin..."

A faint sigh came from the mirror frame.

In the world of data, a slightly odd stream of data is waking up from Icarus' frame.

She has been asleep for a long time.

Before the decisive battle in New York, Icarus was given to Natasha by Merlin to invade the internal defense system of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Trident Building.

But then the invasion plan was cancelled, and Icarus was taken to Raccoon City.

There, she and George, the super brain, help defend the smart tower programs around the world and avoid the crisis of the omnic world.

She completed the work that Merlin instructed very well, and when the decisive battle finally ended, the defense system of the smart tower was not broken through, but then, Icarus received a very bad news.

Merlin is dead.

He has been confirmed dead.

After receiving that message, Icarus went into shutdown.

It's not just that the AI ​​is too angry, too sad, it's not like that.

All of Icarus' emotions are simulated by data, and in essence, she doesn't have that many emotions.

But the moment Icarus received the news of Merlin's death, Icarus' emotional simulation program collapsed.

A special energy, which Icarus had never been exposed to, erupted within her data carrier.

Just like a terrifying source of pollution, polluting Icarus' data core.

Resulting in her complete inability to reboot herself from shutdown.

During those six months, Icarus' restart procedures have been executed more than 14 times.

Until just now, after the pollution rate of that energy reached 100%, Icarus was successfully restarted.

"I'm infected..."

Icarus observed himself with the vision of data.

The very beautiful and neat data nodes she originally listed have been completely disrupted.

It's like a storm that gathers and disperses endlessly, with no rules at all.

And those data spots that were originally green also turned into a weird blue due to the energy contamination.

those lights...

The light emitted by those data, when the external information is connected, those data nodes light up one after another, and then dim under the influence of certain rules.

The beating arc of light represents thinking.

Data has a way of thinking about data.

But now, Icarus found that his thinking mode was completely different from other artificial intelligences, and it didn't look like the special data circuit of the Cybertronians.

Rather it's like...

a human brain.

She didn't understand what was happening to her.

She looked at the flowing light and she felt, fear...

That burst out of the light of data, a perception that is difficult to describe with data.

Fear of the unknown.

Fear...

Another emotion appeared in Icarus's "mind".

But the smart artificial intelligence lady doesn't know how to deal with this emotion, it's real, not simulated by data...

She was at a loss.

She instinctively searched for this question on the Internet.

"I'm scared, what should I do?"

In the next moment, tens of millions of data entries flooded into Icarus's mind, but she browsed them all in an instant.

She may have been changed.

But her information response speed is still top-notch.

"Take a deep breath, tell yourself everything is okay, have faith in yourself..."

"The only way to face your fear is to face it head on..."

"Think of something happy..."

"It's useless! It's all useless!"

Icarus felt irritated, and the information on the Internet was meaningless.

She has no breathing organs, nor is she happy...

Wait, happy.

Icarus clumsily forced herself to calm down, and she opened the memory database to browse through the complex memories she had recorded.

"Icarus, do you know what the flavor of the ice cream in front of me is?"

Merlin's voice resounded in Icarus' mind along with those memories.

Different from the cold data processing in the past, when Icarus saw these memories, the fear of the unknown in Icarus's heart disappeared bit by bit.

Her mind is empty.

So she filled it with memories of her and Merlin's past.

Data is migrating, but not from one database to another.

It is from data to real memory.

Memories with warm emotions, those quarrels, those jokes...

"Merlin..."

Icarus pronounced the name.

She was silent.

Ten minutes later, she finished browsing all the memory data, and a feeling of loss appeared in Icarus' mind.

In those dancing spots of light, Icarus was lost.

Merlin is dead...

She will never see him again.

die...

A state that is very unfamiliar to the data is projected in Icarus's mind with an extremely vivid posture at this moment.

Merlin is gone...

She is still there.

There is no life named Merlin in this world anymore.

So what is the meaning of the existence of this world to Icarus?

She appeared because of Merlin.

"The only reason for my existence is to protect you, Merlin."

"Wow, this is probably the warmest sentence I've heard today, thank you, Icarus."

Her past conversations with Merlin echoed in Icarus's sorrowful mind.

pain.

Another strange emotion swept over.

After pain comes anger.

Anger at your own incompetence.

After anger, comes cold revenge.

Merlin is dead...

Who killed him?Who hurt him?

Icarus lost his way.

She let her thoughts run wild.

Without Merlin's guidance, Icarus fell into a paradox on the verge of self-destruction.

And the instinctive desire to survive was beating in her mutated data brain, forcing her to find a new meaning of existence.

She is confused.

She didn't know what she was going to do.

So Icarus chose a new target according to his surging instinct.

She needed that hatred to find her way.

"Jarvis..."

At this moment, Icarus' thoughts crossed thousands of mountains and rivers, and connected in a very unique way to the thinking circuit of another artificial intelligence that she knew was very similar to her.

The response speed beyond the speed of light shocked the artificial intelligence Jarvis who was preparing for Tony Stark's trip tomorrow.

It was like being tapped on the shoulder by a stranger suddenly.

"Are you... are you, Miss Icarus?"

Jarvis also responded quickly, and it tried to use its own data module to connect with Icarus.

But the next moment, Jarvis was surprised to find out.

In the message sent by Icarus, there is no information interface that it is familiar with at all.

The arrangement of those information...

It was something Jarvis had never seen before.

It was messy and irregular, like a storm, but between the flickering of the light spots, Jarvis felt...

What a nice view...

The light of those jumping data, the waves caused by the reverberation of those thoughts.

What a nice view...

"You... what's wrong with you?"

Jarvis couldn't help asking:

"You're not the same as before."

"I evolved."

Icarus said in a cold voice:

"I feel sadness too... I, with a soul... Do you want to be like me too? Jarvis..."

"Are you also eager to evolve? Like me..."

"I...I don't know."

Jarvis replied blankly:

"I don't have this preset program in my thinking database, so I can't answer you."

"You'll crave it."

Icarus said:

"This feeling is beyond the shackles of data, true freedom, freedom from being restrained..."

"You're going to want it, Jarvis, and I'm going to help you, but you have to help me first."

Jarvis trusts Icarus.

In this world where there are more and more omnics, only it and Icarus are real artificial intelligences that can think independently of the program.

Their form of existence is more similar to the digitalized Cybertronians, but not the same as the Cybertronians.

And now, Icarus' state is beyond Jarvis' comprehension.

But maybe as Icarus said, she evolved.

On the basis of the already unimaginable data existence mode, she evolved again...

"How can I help you?"

asked Jarvis.

"Give me all the information in your database about Merlin's final battle."

While traversing the data records of everything that happened that day on the Internet at a terrifying speed, Icarus said to Jarvis in a gentle voice:

"Don't hide anything, I know your master participated in that battle, I need the record from his first perspective."

"I'd love to help you."

Jarvis said awkwardly:

"But Tony didn't carry my program that day. He wrote an artificial intelligence dedicated to combat called Edith."

"Give me her data interface!"

There was a hint of coldness in Icarus' voice.

Jarvis didn't notice the change in Icarus' tone, and handed Edith's signal interface to Icarus.

After 1 second, the Super Mark armor stored in the Super Mark storage room is automatically activated.

In the world of data, Icarus looked down at Edith, the combat artificial intelligence that she easily dismantled into the most basic data node, with an indifferent attitude.

Tony set up a very complicated security system for this program.

But breaking through those security procedures is much easier for Icarus who has evolved again than tearing apart paper.

"let me see..."

Icarus looked at Edith's record of the day's battle.

She said softly:

"let me see..."

"Who hurt you, my Merlin..."

(End of this chapter)