Chapter 624: Fragrant Fried Brains
"So, you didn't find out anything?"
Meredith Stout looked at the members reporting in front of her, with veins bulging on her forehead.
She is the operations director of the military technology group. In order to seek a high position, she can do anything , which is the so-called unscrupulous means, so she is very successful.
If necessary, she could even search every corner of Night City and crush anyone stupid enough to go against the company, and she believed that she had the potential to reach the top within five years and give orders to professionals like herself.
However, this extravagant hope hit rock bottom not long ago, when a mysterious man who came out of nowhere completely destroyed the arsenal of military technology.
If she can't find this mysterious man, then she can say goodbye to her future.
In order to climb to a higher position and for her own future, Meredith was almost crazy trying to find the mysterious man who destroyed the company, but the result was nothing, and she could not find any clues at all.
Both the intelligence department and her own informants gave blank investigation reports.
Seeing yet another failed investigation, Meredith fiercely threw the information in the reporter's face. The reporter could only smile ingratiatingly, not daring to reveal any emotion.
Seeing this flattering smile, Meredith became even more annoyed and cursed directly: "Get lost, if there is still no news next time, you can leave the company and become a homeless person."
After hearing Meredith's final announcement, the reporter's smile froze and he could only leave with his head lowered humbly, not daring to make any complaints.
A higher-ranking official can crush a person to death, especially in a company with fierce competition. If he dares to complain, his boss will replace him that same day.
Watching the reporter walk away with his back bent, and waiting until she was the only one left in the office, Meredith let out a breath of frustration and pressed her throbbing forehead.
"Does it really mean I have no choice but to give up..."
She really didn't want to give up, but without any clues, there was nothing she could do even if she tried her best.
Meredith, feeling somewhat at a loss, slumped in her office chair, staring blankly into space, thinking that she had used all means to get to this position, and she never expected that now she would lose the possibility of promotion here.
Just when she was feeling hopeless about her future, her eyes suddenly froze, as a pop-up window automatically popped up in her virtual vision.
"Virus?"
Meredith looked at the pop-up window in surprise. Her first reaction was that her brain-computer interface had been hacked by cyber hackers. Otherwise, there was no explanation.
But before she could make any move, a pop-up window began to scroll from bottom to top, scrolling down the crimes she had committed. During this process, no matter how she manipulated her virtual vision, it was of no avail.
“Damn it!”
Meredith cursed inwardly when she realized she couldn't close the pop-up window by herself, and immediately wanted to call the company hacker to solve the problem.
But what surprised and even horrified her was that she could not contact anyone and the company network and her personal link were disconnected.
In addition to the company network, even Night City's urban network was disconnected from her. She became an isolated island in the online world, and she was the only one on the island.
Fear gradually crept up her body, and Meredith's breathing began to quicken. In this eerie atmosphere, a muffled sound suddenly reached her ears, as if something had exploded.
This muffled sound seemed to have caused a chain reaction. A series of muffled sounds appeared, and then a bloody and burnt smell gradually began to spread.
Suddenly, Meredith noticed that the scrolling crimes on her virtual vision stopped, as if indicating that her review was about to come to an end.
"Surprisingly... there are quite a lot."
Meredith wanted to cover up her fear with disdain, but after holding it in for a second or two, it finally turned into a weird self-deprecation.
Then, at the bottom of the crime, a blood-red sentence suddenly popped out.
【The death penalty】
This bloody sentence irritated Meredith's nerves. She pulled the corners of her mouth in disbelief, with a twisted expression: "Death penalty?!"
Who dares to judge her?
She is a corporate executive, the new aristocrat of this world, the one who sits on a luxurious chair on top of a skyscraper in the corporate district every day, overlooking the city from above, yes!
However, at this moment, looking at the bloody verdict, she felt the blood in her body rushing up.
The absurd feeling that was incompatible with reality filled her mind, causing her eyes to become redder and her head to become hotter!
The next second, there was a muffled sound.
Meredith's body shuddered, her messy thoughts paused, her pupils dilated instantly, and the spirit slowly dimmed from her eyes.
Then she staggered and fell to the ground. Two streams of brain matter, hotter than her body temperature, slowly flowed out of her nostrils, and a burnt bloody smell spread.
This scene is not uncommon. Generally speaking, if those cyber hackers who dive deep into the Internet are killed in the cyber world, their death will become like this. Their brains will be directly burned and exploded, making them deader than dead.
However, when this not-so-uncommon scenario starts happening in droves, and the people who die don't have deep internet connections, it becomes pretty rare.
Meredith's death did not cause much stir because she was not the only corporate executive who died in Night City.
It's not just company executives. Some gang bosses and some evil guys have had their brains cooked by their own brain-computer interfaces.
At first, no one cared about the people who died from the scalding of their brains, because the number of deaths was not too large compared to the population of the entire city.
It was not until the so-called crime trial appeared in everyone's virtual vision that the residents of Night City realized that this incident was closely related to everyone.
Everyone's crimes are different, some are more, some are less, and some are even none.
Notes are also marked below the crime, including the sentence, what behaviors will increase the sentence, etc.
If you wait quietly for the trial, you can naturally reduce your sentence; if you are dissatisfied with the verdict and deliberately do things to increase your sentence, what awaits you is naturally the unexpected death penalty.
Because there was an example of a brain explosion in front of them, no one dared to ignore the news floating in their virtual vision, and no one dared to test it with their own life.
Those who dared to test it would have their boiling brains cooled down.
It’s not that no one has tried to contact the outside world, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t connect to other networks. All networks in Night City were isolated.
Some people also wanted to escape from Night City, but then they found that even if they escaped outside, the crime trial before them would not disappear.
Of course, this is only a very small number of people. Most people still stay quietly in Night City and do what they should do.
After all, for them, even if the earth explodes tomorrow, they still have to live today.
Everyone was guessing who was behind the scenes. Some people speculated about Arasaka, military technology, Kang Tao...even aliens, but no one guessed about the new company established in Taiping Island.
At this moment, inside Metal Gear Solid.
"Oh my god, this is too awesome. It's no wonder that this is the AI I designed."
Xia Yu couldn't help but brag when he saw the AI taken out from the group devouring the Night City network with ease and starting the Great Judgment.
They are all Xia Yu, so is there a problem with him saying that the AI designed by other Xia Yus is designed by him? Of course there is no problem.
After this AI devoured and integrated the Night City network, Xia Yu issued an order, allowing the AI to start a trial for everyone based on the information retained on the Internet.
Those who should die will die, and those who should stay will stay.
First unify Night City, then experiment with this trial method, and then slowly spread it to the globe until the world's network is reintegrated into one.
So far, it seems that the trial has not caused any backlash, and the vast majority of people have accepted the trial. After all, those who did not accept it have already died.
After concluding that the trial was feasible through experiments in Night City, Xia Yu directly let the AI devour other local networks and integrate all the networks again.
Moreover, the Internet can cause a person's brain to explode and die instantly, thus avoiding the occurrence of war.
Unless someone has neither prosthetics nor a brain-computer interface and is a pure human being, such a guy will not be able to make any waves.
Even if you insist on being yourself, this world is already inseparable from the Internet. Even the wanderers in the Bad Land have brain-computer interfaces and prostheses installed.
After receiving Xia Yu's order, the chat group AI immediately and cruelly began to devour itself.
Any roaming AI that dared to stop him would be directly assimilated and devoured, while those that did not dare to stop him would be temporarily trapped and await Xia Yu's decision.
As the occupied online world becomes larger and larger, the speed of chat group AI is also getting faster and faster, including other human-controllable networks, which are all linked together.
Since the collapse of the old network, human controllable networks have become isolated islands and are no longer the global communication platform .
Today's web is primarily made up of a few decentralized local hubs, a combination of national governments, state governments, public forums of city networks, and private company domains.
Whether it is internal communication, work, entertainment, or advertising, it can only be carried out within these controllable networks.
However, in the horrified eyes of those rulers, these originally isolated networks were actually linked together by an even more powerful force.
Whether it is the controllable network of humans or the uncontrollable old network, they are actually merging!
The integration naturally brought about data collapse, but this collapse was quickly contained, and the power of the integrated network forcibly stabilized the collapse.
By the time governments and giant corporations finally reacted and prepared to implement emergency protocols, the integration of networks had gradually stopped, and the isolated islands formed by data and code disappeared forever, leaving only a data fortress that integrated everything together.
And when this data fortress appeared, everyone was horrified to find that a crime trial popped up in their virtual vision, regardless of country or identity, everyone was involved.
