Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 97(2)

Chapter 97 – My Name Is…

“My name is Laura Gordon,” the woman continued.

Turan’s eyes widened. The sharp jawline and misty grey eyes of the woman on the screen felt familiar, but she couldn’t place her finger on it. On top of that, she carried the “Gordon” last name; however, the famous Gordon family of Wolto were known for how much they loved cameras and always made appearances in public. Turan was sure she could name every member of the family, but who was this woman? A distant relative of the family? Or did she just happen to share the same last name?

“…..Head of the first research lab of TDGEC…”

Turan suddenly remembered who this person was. She immediately turned off the screen with her commander access, earning her a few confused looks from the engineers that helped decode the files.

Her expression was grim as she waved off the looks. Among the engineers, a few were former technicians from the Ninth Squadron that Lu Bixing had dragged over. These old colleagues noticed their Captain’s face and quickly turned off all equipment, blocked off the internal network and locked up editing permission for the documents they decoded.

“Sorry,” Turan quickly brought up an excuse, “I just saw that the decoded files contained a lot of research data that looks to be related to the human experiments the AUS were doing. There will be a risk of public panic if they get leaked, so we’ll need to pass this on for professional inspection before we can release this information, please understand.”

Most of the engineers on the team were technical hackers who were more interested in technology than living beings, and would rather sit in their rooms to play video games than run around picking fights with pirates. They all nodded in understanding and left the room without a word under Turan’s customer service smile.

Turan lowered her voice and commanded: “Bring Prime Minister Edward over and contact Commander Lin, quick.”

Yet as expected, they couldn’t get a hold of Commander Lin. The fleet was out to hunt down the nest of drug dealers, and naturally the base of the pirates would be able to intercept outward communication signals. So in order to make sure their signals didn’t expose their position, it was normal that Commander Lin would decide to cut off communication when they entered enemy territory.

Turan let out a deep breath, lowered her head, and walked around in circles as she fell into deep thought.

Lu Bixing, who had been quiet during this whole time, suddenly asked: “Is that first research lab of TDGEC the rumored ‘White Tower’?”

TDGEC was short for “Technology Department of the Garden of Eden Committee”, and the first research lab was the central building of the department. Due to the tower-like architecture and snow white color, it was also known as the “White Tower” among people. The White Tower gathered the world’s top network engineers, biologists, and humanities experts. As the top research laboratory with the most authority in the Union, it also managed all technological affairs of the Eden system.

Turan lifted her gaze: “Laura Gordon, do you know who she is?”

Lu Bixing thought about it for a second and answered: “If I remember correctly, one of the members of the board of directors in the Eden Committee is called ‘Gordon’?”

“The Gordon family is one of the founding members of the Eden system,” Turan said. “Charity work is a necessity for the elites of Wolto, so the Gordon family naturally had their own charity organization. They once picked out a group of exceptionally intelligent orphans in the Union and built a public school on a planet near the border of the First Galaxy with their family funding. Every child that was adopted was required to sign a contract with the Gordon family to work for the family upon graduation from between five to ten years. Laura Gordon was one of the graduates of the school.”

“So they’re raising talent for their benefit as well.” Lu Bixing nodded in understanding. “So I’m assuming this Laura lady was one of the better students?”

“Better? Not even close.” Turan responded swiftly, “Laura Gordon was a genius that later caught the eye of the head of the Gordon household–the old man that had been on the director’s seat in the Eden Committee. He personally appointed her to be raised with special attention and eventually adopted her as his daughter, even giving her the Gordon family name. With the help of the Gordon family and her own talent, she entered the White Tower at the young age of 85. She then went into a political marriage with the Military Council representing the Committee and married Lieutenant General Lin Wei.”

Lu Bixing was shocked: “So you’re saying the person that was chasing after her in the video was her husband?”

“Right, but that’s not the point. This seemingly united couple had a twin boy and girl together,” Turan paused for a few moments before lowering her voice even more. “The boy’s name is Lin Jingheng.”

Lu Bixing almost felt his jaw drop to the ground.

Hope walked out of the lab on the top floor of the research building with the newly produced results of the farm food. The product was eco-friendly with a great taste, and an ideal base product to use for extracting nutrients for syringes and condensed meals.

Saturday brought a few soldiers and followed him out to keep an eye on the ex-hostage walking about the military base. Fortunately, Hope was a reasonable man with a big heart who didn’t mind the inconvenience and even made conversations with the soldiers as he shared samples of the food with them.

“This is all-natural honey?” Saturday tasted a small bit at the tip of his fingers. “Nobody in the Eighth Galaxy had ever seen such a thing because all we had were artificial…hm, this isn’t as sweet as I imagined.”

“That’s because you all eat too much artificial sugar,” Hope responded politely. “To the ancient people that lived with nature, sweetness meant high calories and was rare to find in nature, making sweet food very important for energy when supply was scarce. The preference to consume sweet food became engraved into our genes, but the need to consume them began to fade as mankind started creating artificial flavoring.”

“Right, so it’s like mass-produced blow-up dolls printed with the faces of your crush….uh, sorry, we’re too-used to not having filters around each other.” Saturday gave another sniff before he closed the bottle. “There’s a flowery scent in it, would girls like these?”

Hope gave him a slightly teasing smile in response.

“Wait, no,” Saturday waved it off in slight embarrassment. “We have a very strict diet normally anyway due to training and I can’t eat too much, so you can leave some for the kids…really, I don’t have any other intentions. Even Professor Lu keeps thinking I’m up to no good towards his students, I can’t even get a break.”

Lu Bixing’s four students passed by as they spoke, seemingly in the middle of a debate. Rickhead carried a mech part they removed from somewhere on his shoulders, Mint shot a glance over towards Saturday and Hope’s direction and made a face at Saturday across the walkway.

“I heard they’re designing a beginner’s mech or something,” Saturday explained to Hope proudly. “If they succeed, even an average man can easily get a handle on these mechs, isn’t that amazing? If we go to war, anyone can become a soldier.”

“Oh?” Hope’s gaze flashed in concern for a moment. “Warfare in space requires weapons with high energy and density comparable to nuclear power. No matter what kind of mech it is, even a beginner’s mech will have to meet these hardware requirements, am I right? These things can easily wipe out a whole city on land if you bring them over; do you think it’s amazing that an average person can control these mechs like a bicycle? I think that’s rather frightening.”

Saturday was speechless: “I guess you’re right…but this is just a school assignment, I don’t think you need to take it too seriously. You can read a book a million times and you still won’t get the same experience as physically taking apart a mech with your own hands…”

He also felt strange as he continued on. The young students were curiously working around weapons of mass-destructions and yet he still thought that was something worth bragging about.

“It’s a time of crisis, we don’t really have a choice. War is breaking out everywhere and we don’t have enough mech engineers. We still have to protect ourselves at the end of the day.” Saturday continued to find excuses as he sighed, “sometimes when I think about it, this sure is pretty depressing. It’s like everyone is walking on a thin rope on a cliff, it’s way more relaxing to just go to your place and listen to your birds chirp in the morning.”

They ran into Minister Edward who was hastily making his way towards the research lab with his new team of government officials.

“That’s strange,” Saturday watched as these people walked by. “The Prime Minister doesn’t normally come to the research labs.”

A soldier standing by the entrance answered: “It looks like Professor Lu and his team cracked the code of the AUS’ protected files.”

Many soldiers of the military were newly-appointed members from the former Self-Defense Squad who barely washed themselves up from the status of uncultured peasants. They didn’t understand the difficult topics regarding technology and data so they left very quickly after shooting a few glances over.

Yet Hope fell into silence; he turned his head towards the direction the Prime Minister left and deepened his gaze.

A large man-made space station slowly orbited its way near the former planet of Cayley. It was about 200 square kilometers large filled with weapons, equipment and military supplies like a fully-equipped headquarters. Its supply amount was almost at the level of that Old Fart’s inventory back on the old space station, yet the most incredible thing about this floating monster was that it even had its own engine that can sail around like a massive starship.

This massive creature used to belong to an arrogant fleet from the Freedom Corps an hour ago, and was now Lin Jingheng’s property.

Lin Jingheng pulled a small team out to disguise as galactic smugglers; they wandered over and surprised even him as they ran into this fruitful prey. He snuck his way in to steal from it with the help of Mister Weasel who was disguised as an extremely believable smuggler. After they made their way into the station as ‘hostages’ caught by the pirates, Weasel even ran into a few familiar faces from the black market and comedically added onto his act as a horrible gangster that had fallen into the hands of pirates.

These people from the Freedom Corps originally wanted to open up a market for their opium in the Eighth Galaxy, but due to their lack of connections in this foreign land, they were always beaten up by the patrolling Self-Defense Forces of the Eighth Galaxy. Without a proper local connection to help them out, they were at a loss until they were lucky enough to find an ‘unfortunate fleet’ today to use for paving the roads to their future market.

Weasel quickly made his way into the space station and cut off the power of the central command post while opening the backdoors to the mech dock on the station. At the same time, they infiltrated the internal network of the space station using the signal disturbances Lu Bixing copied from the AUS and manually created a blind spot in the security system. When the unprepared forces of the space station realized what was going on, the Model 3’s mental network had already covered the entire armory and claimed control of all weapons on the station.

Lin Jingheng essentially took over the entire space station without wasting a bullet.

The hostaged pirates they captured were all taken in by armed robots. Lin Jingheng walked down from the Model 3 with a human-formed Zhanlu following behind him like a secretary. The first order the commander gave after leaving the mech was to have Weasel turn off the gravity system on the station–in a time where supplies were scarce everywhere, even someone born in a wealthy elite-class family like Lin Jingheng had to breathe in the air of poverty and was learning to frown at anyone wasting energy like that.

“The mech launching deck’s construction standard, tracks, lock code style, and even the model on the energy supply system are highly similar to the Union’s Military Council standard.” Zhanlu said, “It’s almost exactly the same, which means that this station itself and the supplies on it are all produced in organized batches.”

Lin Jingheng: “A whole set? They sure are flexing their wealth.”

A full set of launching decks and military supplies was not easy to obtain. Before the military production system of the Eighth Galaxy was completed, the mechs and supplies these soldiers collected on Qiming’s operational base were all random items from different manufacturers; they had to rely on Lu Bixing and his engineering team’s ‘conversion plugs’ to charge up.

Lin Jingheng paused for a moment, then said: “If this is also part of the Freedom Corps, don’t you feel something different about it?”

Zhanlu answered: “Yes, sir. According to my data history, the Freedom Corps is unique in their small and scattered armed fleets. While they seem to enjoy trying new things, I have to say that they do not look like a group with a lot of funding in their hands.”

“This is like if their sponsor in the Union personally came to the Eighth Galaxy and fought for our supplies while donning their brand clothing,” Lin Jingheng’s gaze glossed over the station as he mumbled, “is there something they want in the Eighth Galaxy? This is a bit strange, why are they doing this?”

“Commander, we’ve finished cleaning up the hostages on the station and will recover the long-distance signal with Qiming soon…”

Zhanlu immediately warned out loud: “Be careful!”

A few of the hostages that were quietly being held by the armed robots did an about face as they violently broke out of the robotic grip, turned their ferocious faces around and jumped towards Lin Jingheng.

The grip of the robots and the ropes that tied onto the hostages were stronger than the extreme limit of human strength, so it was clear that these people were injected with some strange biochips. It was as if they’d completely lost their sense of pain when their arms and shoulders twisted in an unnatural way but still remained reactionless as they ran off with their broken bones.

The armed robots immediately chased after them, and Lin Jingheng’s personal soldiers also reacted quickly as they shot a wave of lasers towards the hostages. The bodies of the hostages turned into smashed watermelons as pieces of blood and flesh exploded to the ground.

Yet even as their chests were shot into beehives with their rib cages exposed, they still continued to run forward without hesitation.

Lin Jingheng stood motionlessly as the soldiers beside him quickly turned their gunpoints at the legs of the hostages. The hostages that were shot down fell to the floor but continued to crawl forward like insects that refused to die, leaving long trails of blood behind them like a horror movie.

The most tenacious of them all almost made his way towards Lin Jingheng’s feet. Just as he reached his skeletal arm towards the commander, a small explosive pierced through his nape along with the biochip, then after a low growl the man fell back to the ground without another movement.

Blood stained onto Lin Jingheng’s sleeves and left a red mark on the back of his hand.

“A life-threatening danger, huh.” The phrase suddenly appeared in Lin Jingheng’s mind as he wiped off the blood from his hands. He didn’t give much of a reaction to this hellish surprise and walked forward as he ordered, “Tell Turan after the communication is back…”

A message request was sent directly to his personal device before he could finish. Lin Jingheng was slightly surprised–Prime Minister Edward and his team were all present. Through the still-unstable long-distance connection, everyone looked at him with a stern face.

“Commander,” Turan said, “two hours ago Professor Lu and the crew decoded the hidden files of the AUS, I think you need to look at this.”

The blood on the back Lin Jingheng’s hand hadn’t been wiped off fully. Due to working long-term in a space environment, his skin was paler than most people, and the red stain on his hand almost looked like a flower petal of misfortune in contrast against his skin.

A woman with grey eyes appeared from his personal device and stood against the contrasting bloodstain on his hand. She was strange yet familiar; Lin Jingheng’s eyes widened a little and he felt as if he suddenly lost his breath.

“My name is Laura Gordon, Head of the first research lab of TDGEC. I’ve worked and provided service to the system of Eden for nearly a century since I graduated. I am leaving a message here today because I want to inform you all the truth of Eden–it is a timeless monster that swallows anger, anxiety, pain, and foolishness. It doesn’t let anyone lose at the starting line by condensing 20 years worth of basic education into a whole month. It is a haven created by the hands of mankind for themselves.”

“Everyone had doubts about it in the past. Since the founding of the Union, the debate about whether personal privacy can be protected under the Eden system has been a hot topic among scholars and even society. We all have the basic knowledge to question this: if a system can control your emotions and flow of hormones, will we still obtain the rights to keep secrets in the face of this system? Do our thoughts still belong to us, and do we still have free will? Later, we grew used to Eden and solved these two problems. First, we shifted the mainstream social ideology into believing in transparency on all manners where boldness and outspokenness became the norm. The culture of seeking privacy became the new radical conservative. Next, we passed laws to strictly manage the Eden system. The purpose of Eden was to better humanity and not hinder free will, is that correct?”

The woman’s expression was calm while her voice was clear. It struck a contrast with the rounds of explosion and panicked people in the background; the alarm lights inside the mech flashed across her face as she spoke.

“If we had any free will left, why would we believe in this nonsense?” she continued.

“If we had any free will left, how could we forget that anger, anxiety, pain, and foolishness were not defections of the human genes that we have to overcome, that they are the original faces of the human soul. These ugly, spiteful, awful things inside your hearts that you would rather throw away are all part of mankind’s free will itself!”