In a secluded Western restaurant, I sat across from him. Thinking back to what just happened -

The owner of the runaway flyable car hurriedly got out of the car, looking to be a man in his thirties, and he apologized to me repeatedly: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the brakes suddenly failed just now, I'm not injured, do I want to take you to the hospital?" ”

"It's okay, no need."

I stood up and looked to the other side. At this point he was facing away from the two of us and didn't say anything. His back is broad and strong, and his height is about 188, half a head taller than mine.

"Alas, you really shouldn't have bought this used car on the black market, there is really something wrong with the quality." The owner of the car muttered to himself, "That little brother, since you're okay, can I go?" ”

"Well, let's go, be careful on the road."

"I'm so sorry." The owner bowed his head to me again and apologized, and then restarted and flew away.

"Thank you just now, if it weren't for you, I'm afraid I would have died or been crippled at this moment."

He turned around slowly, and I took a closer look, and in appearance, he was a handsome young man. His eyes were blank, his face was expressionless, he didn't look me in the eye, and he still didn't speak.

"You're a smart machine, aren't you? The huge power just now is not something that humans can do, nor can ordinary robots do. ”

"Yes." He only said one word, and there was still no look on his face.

However, it is normal for the creative machine to have no expressions, although some robots can now imitate some human expressions, but they are basically a little awkward and cannot be completely similar, so it is better not to imitate.

"I'm leaving." He suddenly said coldly.

"Hey, don't, I have to thank you for saving my life, how about a bottle of high-grade engine oil?"

Engine oil is a snack for robots. Just like a human eating potato chips and drinking Coke, a robot that doesn't drink engine oil will have no effect on him. But at that moment-

He had just taken two steps when he suddenly stopped. Turning my head, I saw that his eyes were glowing green: "I want, dart oil, okay?" ”

I was taken aback by this sudden change and quickly replied, "Okay, no problem." Let's stop talking and find a restaurant. ”

"Hmm!" At this moment, I seemed to see a hint of anticipation on his face, and although it was a little weird compared to the expectation of humans, it should be right.

"Well, it's delicious."

In the restaurant, I ordered a cup of coffee, and he was sitting across from me drinking the dart oil I had just bought for him at the mechanical care store.

"It's been a long time since I've had a dart." He drank the rest of the oil from the bottle and said with pleasure.

"I haven't asked you what your name is."

"Just call me Zero."

At this moment, he seemed to suddenly become cheerful, could it be that a bottle of engine oil opened his heart knot? Oh no, robots don't have hearts.

"Scattered... Are you a civilian or a public machine? Why did it happen to be there at that time? ”

"It's civilian."

"Sort of? And what about your master, why is he not with you? ”

"I don't have a Master."

"How is this possible? If it is a newly developed creative machine, it should be arranged in a dormant state in a centralized management warehouse under the name of the cutting-edge, and then shipped to the sales club for sale from time to time, and someone buys it and then contracts with him, and then the creative machine can move freely outside. If you can move freely now, it means that someone has already bought you, isn't he your master? ”

"I... I broke the contract with my previous Master, so I don't have a Master now. ”

"Lifted! I've heard that during the process of terminating the contract, the master will have severe pain all over his body, and he will leave sequelae and make him half-paralyzed, your master, no, the former master is okay, right? ”

The so-called "contract removal", which is just the opposite of the process of making a contract, is to imprint the palm of the left hand on the macro crystal of the creative machine. Due to the contract previously concluded, the Master has developed some kind of inseparable connection with the Creation Machine, so the process of dissolving it will be accompanied by great pain. Generally, no master will choose to take the initiative to terminate the contract, one is the physical torture just mentioned, and the other is that each of the Wisdom Machines is bought by its master at a great price, and to cancel it is equivalent to wasting so much money in vain.

However, there is one circumstance that will inevitably cause the Lord's body to suffer, and that is that his Wisdom Creation Machine has been scrapped. To put it simply, the macro crystal of the creative machine has been destroyed. Hongjing is the core part of every Chuangzhi machine, which is equivalent to the importance of the human brain, once Hongjing is damaged, the Chuangzhi machine will immediately stop operating and be scrapped, and it is completely irreparable. Therefore, if you know that a Tron Machine is about to be destroyed, and the Master wants to avoid physical pain, it is wise to terminate the contract before it is scrapped. Of course, this is almost never going to happen.

This brings us to the King of Wisdom Competition. As a competitive combat match, it is inevitable that the bodies of both sides will suffer some degree of damage. In order to strictly prevent the scrapping of the Zhiji machine, the organizing committee of the competition clearly stipulates that the behavior of directly or indirectly attacking the opponent Hongjing is a serious violation, and once found, the qualification of the master will be immediately cancelled and the competition will be banned for 1-5 years depending on the seriousness of the situation. Therefore, the scrapping of the creative machine is only a very small possibility, and in fact, it will not happen.

"Oh, he's fine."

The tone of Scattered was calm. Seriously, I've never seen a robot nervous, and I'd love to see it. Do robots, including the Robot Intelligence, have such emotions as nervousness? I don't know much about that.

"That's good. But why did he want to lift it, I don't want to let you have such a good creative machine, I can't understand it. ”

"Let's stop talking about him."

"Well, there's no need to say anything unspeakable."

From this point of view, Zero is now an ownerless stray machine, which is quite pitiful. Suddenly, an idea sprouted in my heart.

"By the way, there's one thing I think is strange and want to ask you."

"What?"

"When I was about to be hit by a car, I felt like the car stopped for a moment, and I couldn't move my body, and it took about a second. Then I saw the scene where you braked. Does this have anything to do with your abilities? ”

Each Intellect has been enhanced for a certain aspect, in other words, proficient in a particular ability.

"Well, that's right, that's what I'm capable of, [Time Stands Still]."

"Time stands still... What a powerful ability. "I can't even understand why the scattered former master abandoned him.

"Actually, it's not as powerful as you think, time can only stand still for one second at a time, and there is a restriction on activation, it can only be activated once every five minutes. In addition, the effective range can only cover a radius of 1-10 meters around me, that is, people and things beyond 10 meters are completely unaffected by my ability. ”

"That's pretty good, too."

"Such a special ability consumes a large amount of [energy] each time it is activated, and the greater the coverage, the greater the energy consumed. For example, when I rescued you just now, I set the coverage of time standing still at 2 meters, which consumed about 5% of my energy. ”

"In other words, if you set it to a maximum of 10 meters, will it consume 25% of the energy at a time?"

"That's right, in addition, daily activities will also consume about 2% of energy every day, although it is far less expensive than the ability to activate, in short, time is still and cannot be used casually."

[Energy] is the necessary source of power for all fully bionic robot activities. Depending on the type, nature, effective range, destructive power, etc., the energy consumed to activate different abilities is different. When the energy value drops to 0, the robot will stop functioning and will need to be recharged to recover. There are two conventional ways to recharge: one is to give the robot [energy battery], which is sold in AI manufacturing plants, mechanical care stores, creative machine sales fairs, and cutting-edge stores. The battery will gradually be decomposed and absorbed into energy in the robot. Depending on the power of the battery at different price points, the number of batteries that the robot needs to consume to recharge the energy will also be different. The second is to directly use AC charging, that is, the robot directly stretches its fingers into the socket to absorb electrical energy and convert it into its own energy. The latter can be done with a normal home circuit, and this method is faster than the former.

Under normal circumstances, the robot will measure its current energy value at any time, and once it finds that it is low in energy, it will recharge itself in time. It is worth mentioning that if a Wisdom Maker has stopped running for more than 48 hours with 0 energy, it will also be scrapped directly, and then the Master will suffer. Therefore, when there is a special situation, the Wisdom Maker cannot be charged by itself, the charging method is not applicable, and the Master needs to help put the finger of the Wisdom Maker into the socket. Of course, the master himself has to wear insulating gloves in advance, after all, alternating current is beneficial to robots, but fatal to the human body.

"Judging from the fact that you forcibly stopped the vehicle, your arm strength has also been strengthened, so are you a dual-strengthened Wisdom Machine?"

"Let's just put it that way."

Ordinary creative machines will only be strengthened in one aspect, at least those creative machines at the launch will be like this. However, the high-end and specially customized intelligent machines at the auction may strengthen two or even three aspects, such as the four famous creative machines.

But the distinction is that the ability must be strengthened, while the strengthened ability is not necessarily the ability. For example, the scattered arm strength strengthening is far from being able to describe it by the word ability. There is a fundamental difference between dual enhancement and dual ability. So far, there are only four major creative intelligence machines that have dual abilities in the true sense: Qinglong, Xuanwu, Vermilion Bird, and White Tiger.

"Then your price must be very expensive, alas, your former master, I really don't know what he is thinking." I became more and more puzzled by the scattered master, "By the way, how much energy do you have left?" ”

“32%。”

"Not much."

"I haven't recharged it for three weeks."

"You don't have the master to wander by yourself now, so how did you solve it when you were low on energy?"

"Buy energy batteries."

"So you have your own money."

"Hmm... It turned out that the host gave me some, but now there are not many. ”

"Do you want to go to my house? Enjoy another way to recharge? I proposed.

"Huh? May I? ”

"Of course, you saved my life, I want to repay you well, and it is nothing to let you charge this electricity bill once."

That said, but I'm still a little distressed, in fact, the amount of power consumed by a single charge of the smart machine is still a lot, much higher than that of ordinary fully bionic robots, after all, the better the performance, the greater the energy required.

"Without further ado, let's go."

"Hmm."

An incredible encounter gradually changed my peaceful life......