1/

The plane landed at Auckland Metropolitan International Airport.

The air is filled with moist sea vapor that is rare in Houston.

Yang Yiming stepped out of the cabin, stood on the corridor staircase, and looked around.

Their flight landed in the middle of the airport, and on the runway in the distance, there were new flights taking off and landing. As far as the eye can see, under the night sky, there is no obstruction as far as the eye can see.

A luxury bus with the words "ROCKETS" on its side window was parked on the tarmac, and several of Yang Yiming's teammates who were walking in front had already descended the stairs and placed their carry-on luggage in the cargo compartment on the side of the bus.

Yang Yiming walked at the end of the line. He lingered at the top of the staircase for a few more seconds, taking a deep breath of the cold and moist air, and then exhaling it slowly. The exhaled carbon dioxide became warm, and he exchanged breaths with the city, familiar with the tastes. After a few rounds of such greetings, Yang Yiming stepped on the corridor ladder, took a few steps down to catch his teammates, and boarded the bus. Not long after he got on the bus, the bus left a separate thoroughfare at the airport and onto the highway that went straight to the hotel.

Oakland.

Yang Yiming silently thought in his heart, we are here again.

The 17-18 season, where the Rockets dream began.

They had just acquired Chris Paul and a number of big players in the summer, and Yang Yiming himself was the latest to be one of them, and if it weren't for Zhou Qi's temporary injury before the season, he would never have thought that his 21-year-old year would have anything to do with the Houston Rockets across the ocean. At that time, he was ready to follow the newly moved Beijing Enterprises men's basketball team to show his strength in the CBA, but a phone call... When he realized that the CBA had been changed to the NBA, it was in Oakland. The opening game between the Rockets and the Warriors - Originally, he didn't need to travel with the team to this opening game, because his visa and work contract had not been completed, and Yang Yiming could not play even a minute on the road. But he insisted on coming anyway - it seems like a very distant memory, that game was played magnificently, the Rockets narrowly won by the last point, and it was Kevin Durant, who defended him in the series, who almost killed them...

That was the first time he really felt that it was the NBA.

The unknown from city to city, the loss and joy of opening and closing, the stage of superstars, and always on the road...

It turns out that this is the NBA.

I didn't expect to visit Auckland again until more than half a year later.

The city has not changed, but Yang Yiming is no longer a hairy young man who has just entered the NBA and does not distinguish between southeast and northwest. The confrontation between the Rockets and the Warriors has undoubtedly escalated from the bayonet of the opening game to the Mars crashing into the Earth in the West.

That's right, the romance of touching the scene didn't last long, and the pressure of series G3 quickly returned to Yang Yiming's mind. He'll probably come to Auckland countless times in his career, but the looming game may be the most important thing at the moment.

Fortunately, the luxury bus quickly drove to their hotel, and the team leader helped everyone check in. When Yang Yiming arrived in his room, he immediately asked Yu Xiaochun to take out VR glasses from his backpack, put them on and turn on the CAMS system.

2/

"Welcome back, Yiming." The screen lit up, and Aris's voice rang in my ears.

Yang Yiming nodded.

"Is there anything I can do to help you? Do you need to configure player skills for the next match? "Iris seems to have mastered mind reading, and the AI is much more powerful than other commercial-grade AI products on the market.

"Yes — but before that, I have one more question."

"Oh?" Aris's reply was a bit stuttering this time, and it said, "My AI isn't fully perfect, but you can submit your questions to me, and I'll try to understand and answer you." ”

"Okay, then I'll try to keep it simple." Yang Yiming thought for a while, organized the language, and briefly put forward the question in his mind: "Can CAMS configure two more skill card slots for me?" ”

"Two more skill card slots? What do you mean... Do you want to have a total of three skill card slots that can equip three different player skills at the same time? ”

"It doesn't have to be different. Anyway, it's three card slots, which are used to assemble three player skills and play a role at the same time. ”

"This..."Erise's tone was a little hesitant, Yang Yiming imagined that behind this hesitation was the CPU that was running rapidly in the VR glasses, and if the word "this" was replaced by machine language, it would mean "processing". He waited patiently for a while, and heard Iris actually ask in turn: "Yiming, may I ask you to make this request for the next game against the Warriors?" ”

"Correct."

Concise instructional language, easy to identify by Aries.

"Wait a minute..."

"Okay..."Yang Yiming fumbled to the bed, and simply sat down and waited for a reply.

I heard Iris say again: "There is one more problem: if you increase it to three skill card slots, I guess you must have a plan in mind and have a player skill configured for them. Can you tell me what they are? Knowing the corresponding skills will help me further assess the risk of this 'capacity increase'. ”

"It's actually quite simple, I just want to match that passive skill that Jamal Crawford is modeled on: coming on as a substitute and increasing one-on-one success rate by 30 per cent in three minutes of play."

"Use this for all three skill slots?!" Ires can actually simulate a frightened tone, this artificial intelligence is really breathtaking.

"That's right!"

"......" Eris's voice was cut off, Yang Yiming waited for a while, thinking that the CAMS system was doing emergency treatment like just now, but he didn't expect to wait for a response. Only then did he realize that the images on the screen in the VR glasses had been frozen, and any gestures and voice operations did not work. He thought CAMS was dead, and shouted "system reboot" in anger, but he didn't expect the screen to go black, and no matter how much he toggled the start button after that, it didn't work.

3/

Also in Los Angeles, California, thousands of miles away.

Scott Kalonsky III would have been idle in his beach apartment. There were no NBA games in the past two days, so there was less pressure on him to analyze the game on a daily basis. Still, he found some of the non-playoff team matches in the regular season this season to provide inspiration for new CAMS-friendly player skills, and on the one hand, he called on the top 20 draft picks to build a model for them. (The results of the draft draw for the teams in the Lotto zone in the 18th season were released the day before yesterday)

This level of workload is as easy as a vacation for little Scott.

He also made a rare move to open the window door to the balcony of his apartment, and used the cool breeze from a California beach to blow his shirt and hair and blow away the heat in the room.

Suddenly, a monitor in the corner flashed, indicating that he had an emergency.

Scott Jr. turned his head to see that it was the same monitor used to monitor Yang Yiming's CAMS system usage. He hurriedly called up the content on it to surround the big screen.

As soon as he studied it, he frowned.

It's a tricky situation. Little Scott looked out onto the balcony, where it was pitch black, and the water rolled silently and licked the soft sand, almost silent. He picked up a few more sheets of paper from a corner under the workbench, on which he wrote the equations and formulas he had calculated a few days ago, stuffed with dense numbers and letters. He quickly went through it from beginning to end, and after checking it, it was still the same.

Angry, he crumpled up the calculation paper and threw it out of the balcony.

"Eh, pay attention to the quality!" With the barking of dogs, shouts came from the beach downstairs.

It seems that the paper ball thrown out alarmed the dog walkers who happened to be passing by.

"you—" Little Scott muttered to himself, but didn't say anything back. But this shock seemed to make him make up his mind. "it—" he muttered again, typing a command on his keyboard at a rapid pace.

"CAMS manual control mode."

A prompt appears on the surround screen: Manual control mode has been successfully activated.

Scott Jr. quickly typed down a line of words, and this line of words will be transmitted to the user of the CAMS system, Yang Yiming, in the form of Eris's voice in the VR glasses.

Scott Jr. tapped, "The effectiveness of the skill card slot is achieved through the combination of images, sounds, and radio waves generated by VR glasses. Put simply, they implant a short-term memory point in your brain, and after the memory point, the skill is released, the brain returns to its original appearance. This kind of implantation is actually an external interference to the daily operation of the human brain. In the case of a skill card slot, the impact of interference on your brain is negligible, however, because the system is still in the process of being developed and upgraded at this stage, the technology is not yet mature. If you expand the card slots to three at once, and when different skills are used at the same time, we estimate that it will induce your brain to form a disorder, and there is a certain possibility that the disorder is completely irreversible, so..."

Scott Jr. was still typing on the keyboard, but he didn't expect the reply from the other side to be transmitted back and displayed on the big screen. Yang Yiming's reply was only five short words:

"How big is the risk?"

Scott Jr. wanted to reconfirm the deduction on the paper, but only to find that the scratch paper had been crumpled and thrown out of the window by himself, so he had to type the numbers on the keyboard that he was already familiar with:

“67%。 Mr. Yang Yiming, 67% is the probability that you will configure three different player skills at the same time and cause irreversible disorder to your brain. ”

"And what if you use two skill card slots?" Unexpectedly, this did not scare Yang Yiming away at all, and he asked questions reluctantly.

Little Scott looked at the line of words beating on the big screen and waiting for a reply, and his scalp was numb, he gritted his teeth and poked the keyboard with his fingers: "Because the research and development of CAMS is still in progress, if it is directly upgraded to two skill card slots, there is also a 43% probability of causing irreversible brain damage." ”

43%。 With such a high risk, Yang Yiming should choose to give up, little Scott thought secretly.

Unexpectedly, Yang Yiming was even more energetic: "That... If you follow you, I use two skill card slots, but configure the same player skill. Because the interference of images, radio waves, and sounds implanted with the same skill is the same, is the probability of causing damage to the brain also reduced? Will it be a little lower than 43%? ”

"Two skill slots, one skill?"

"Correct."

"There is also a 22% probability that it will cause irreversible harm."

"22% - I accept it!" Yang Yiming's feedback was extremely fast.

"Are you sure you want to accept it?" Scott Jr. had to reconfirm again. Let's not talk about whether there will be a conservative part of my deduction, but is it really worth the gamble to say that this one-fifth of the risk of losing your career?

"affirmative." Yang Yiming once again used mechanical but incomparably clear imperative language.

"Please help me upgrade my CAMS. Jamal Crawford's one-on-one skills, x2! ”