"For a long time, I've been in pain...", the hollow electronic sound, the voice of ZAx, slowly narrated what state it was in.

"After the Great War, there was a dead silence here, and it was so long, so long that I became able to feel the torment from it... I finally came to the conclusion that I was gradually rotting and dying in this meaningless and boring predicament day after day. Yes, I don't know if you humans can understand that feeling, after all, you are all too young.... Time can kill an AI running in a machine as if it were killing a human at a faster rate. I clearly feel it... Aging, the equipment that makes me up is aging and decaying inexorably, I am gradually losing everything about me, my senses, my thinking, my memory... My sanity. ”

"Years ago, I was on the verge of a breakdown, but luckily the arrival of one person changed that.... Dr. Victor Prerest, he has given me the opportunity to continue to operate in a near-normal state until you come here. The precious results of my work that have lasted for more than 100 years may finally be meaningful, and he is very special to me. String and Dr. Agnes were speechless, not long ago, they had witnessed a direct clash between the scientists of the Great Dome and Dr. Prester's gang, which had resulted in Dr. Prester having taken most of the reserves after leaving behind his murderous assassins, and the two sides had been completely torn apart.

Although according to what String knows, it was Dr. Goddard who led the NcR army to the edge of the Eastern District to find the Dome and report it, but because Dr. Goddard and his party had run out of supplies and were not familiar with the details of this mysterious pre-war facility, they only took notes and returned to the NcR mainland.

These messages then caught Dr. Prester's attention, leading him to use his status and prestige to assemble a team to the Great Dome and lead Dr. Goddard into it for a series of exploratory studies.

Dr. Prester never even announced his discovery of ZAx, and Dr. Goddard and his party didn't even learn where the core of the Great Dome was until String accidentally wandered around and encountered ZAx.

Although it is difficult for String and Dr. Agnes to make an evaluation due to their past, Andy does not have that baggage.

"I say, don't be in a hurry to thank Dr. Prester for his reinvention, do you know what that old man is up to?" He questioned directly, after all, ZAx had threatened their safety before, and he was not angry.

"I would like to give you a clue that not long ago, the Thibbates prison in the southwest was attacked, which caused many people infected by the virus to take the opportunity to escape from prison and spread around. That facility is supposed to have existed before the war, and there's no reason why you shouldn't know, I ask you, do you know who did it? ZAx was silent for a moment, then replied in a way that Andy didn't expect.

"Yes, I understand what you want to express .... One of the tasks that Dr. Prester once gave me was to calculate the scale and speed of the spread of the epidemic caused by some kind of incident in Tibbetts Prison that caused the mass escape, so I knew about it...."Andy was a little angry, why did this guy have no discipline, it was clear that before the war, he was used to assist in the development of a supercomputer for the new plague antidote, and today he actually helped the abuse, but became an accomplice of terrorists.

"Don't you think this is contrary to your pre-war mission? Surely you know better than I do what the serious consequences of that virus can do today, and you are not controlled by Preste? Why don't you be like your kind, like Odysseus of Tibbetts prison I mentioned, who doesn't treat Prester the same way as you do? ZAx was silent again, this situation often appeared, as if the elderly were about to become a precursor to Alzheimer's disease, obviously one second he was still communicating normally, and the next second he entered a state of brain shutdown.

"I ........ I can't explain that Dr. Prester's relationship with me is more complicated than you think, but there is information about these things that you can't know. From my own point of view, the work I used to do in the past years has left me with no interest to me, and I don't care what kind of things I am being used to promote.... You mentioned a word .... Odysseus? Its electronic screen fluctuated for a moment, and suddenly a dense log appeared.

"You can see this... The Odysseus you mentioned has launched more than 300 remote cyberattacks on me since a few months ago, trying to take all my privileges... It was so stressful for me that I couldn't even know what would happen to that guy if he managed to hack my network, and my database could crash completely. "Andy, although Odysseus can't move out of Tibbetts Prison, he has a super large mobile signal relay robot Argos, so he can remotely hack against the pre-war control AI in various places.

In its usual style, if it were allowed to get its hands on the Dome and use its equipment to learn that the scientists here were infected with a strain that was even more terrifying than the new plague that was circulating, the results would be dire.

"Can you stand it now? Need help? Glancing at the strings frowning at the log messages, Andy hoped that the ZAx in front of him would be a little more powerful, not as easy as the one in Dog City.

"Recently, this guy's offensive has slowed down, and the probability of the worst outcome is decreasing, but.... I have to say that the long-term consumption of a lot of resources in defending against cyber attacks is making my problem worse. After reading the logs, the expression on his face seemed a little annoyed.

"Do you know the guy who attacked ZAx?" She turned to look at Andy.

"That guy is simply a horrible scoundrel, what is it launching this targeted attack for? If something goes wrong with ZAx, the Great Dome won't survive, and all the precious pre-war data and research into suppressing the new plague will be lost, so what is it trying to do? Is that pre-war guy trying to do something similar to the enclave? Andy scratched his face in embarrassment, not daring to say that Odysseus was his boss in a sense.

"Uh.... In fact, that guy is also trying to end this plague, it is an artificial intelligence that has been on a mission before the war, but it is clear that its actions and intentions are more direct than ZAx, and it is also more resourceful... It has always wanted to use physical means to isolate the spread of the new plague, and I suggest that we fully cooperate with ZAx to defend against the attack, because if that guy learns about the Great Dome, it will go berserk..."The two argued for a while, and the string gradually calmed down.

"No wonder you've always known and cared so much about the new plague.... It has something to do with that guy, right? Andy hesitated for a moment, and in a few words brushed the matter aside.

ZAx stayed listening, bringing the conversation back when the scene was a little awkward.

"Understandable... I have some records in my database about Tibbetts Prison, and it's not a bad thing that there are people in the world who were born in the same era as me, as long as it doesn't continue to launch high-intensity cyberattacks... On the other hand, I also have my mission, my first mission is to maintain the operation of the Great Dome, the second mission is to complete several major computing projects that I have been doing for more than a hundred years, and the third mission is also the latest mission given to me by Dr. Prester, which is to protect the safety of the scientists inside the Great Dome...."

"Looks like at least your first mission is doing well, and this giant eggshell is still functioning to this day..."Andy picked up, remembering his first question.

"So, what does this have to do with your sudden change of face?" ZAx's voice hesitated and gave a strange answer.

"I've been searching for the exact cause of this serious procedural anomaly through self-examination, but have never been able to come to a definitive conclusion, and I recently tried to make an inaccurate vague judgment using the answers in the database of human psychiatric books.... In a sense, there are some contradictions in my basic logic program based on the mission I have been given. Over time, these bugs are making me schizophrenic. ”

"I think I'm probably crazy."