Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 790: Connection Restoration
"How could this happen?" Mo Jue's eyes widened, and his face was filled with surprise that he could not hide at all.
"These people... these corpses, they should have been alive not long ago." Ke Lan murmured, "Otherwise, the manual emergency procedure would never have been activated."
At this moment, there was a slight vibration on the ground of the bridge, and then the screens that were originally pitch black lit up one by one. Several beams of faint blue light shone down from the center of the ceiling, forming a huge holographic projection screen, with various complex parameters constantly flashing on it.
"What's going on?" Mo Jue took a few steps back in panic and raised the grenade launcher in her hand - but the moment she raised the muzzle of the gun, she hesitated...
She hadn't found the source of the movement, nor did she know where the enemy was hiding. Where should she aim her gun? Should she fire a cannon at the holographic projection screen?
"This battleship has been activated." Ke Lan said in a deep voice, "but it was not activated by us ..."
"But wasn't our original purpose to activate this battleship..." Mo Jue said in confusion, "Since 'they' can activate the battleship, why do they want to close the bridge? 'They' and we shouldn't be considered enemies, right?"
"No, the battleship was not started by 'them'...but by these things." Ke Lan looked at the vines crawling all over the bridge - these vines not only killed the Erosion Corpses in the bridge, but also extended to the interior of the central control computer.
Although Ke Lan couldn't figure out how the vines were connected to the central control computer, it was obvious that these strange plants had invaded both the real and virtual worlds at the same time.
Ke Lan and the others were still a step slow.
The connection between the "Genoa" and the Gray Mist Forest, which was originally cut off by the Blasphemer Mecha, has now been "repaired".
Thirty-three's voice also came from the communicator, with a chaotic sound of electricity: "Hello? Hiss...hiss...Hello?! Ke Lan?! Can you hear me? I'm telling you, something seems to be wrong! Hiss...hiss...hiss...I haven't even reached the power compartment yet...hiss...the main engine of this battleship has started...hiss...Now the entire power compartment is locked, I can't get in at all...hiss...is there something wrong with your bridge?"
"It's hard to explain clearly over the communicator at the moment. Don't worry about the power compartment for now. Come to the bridge as soon as possible." Ke Lan replied.
"Hiss...Okay, I got it...hiss...I'll be here right away...hiss...Also, I discovered something else...hiss..."
" What's the matter?" Ke Lan asked.
"Those originally motionless vines inside the battleship seem to have come alive... hiss... I saw... hiss... new buds are beginning to emerge in many places... hiss... If these fog vines revive... hiss... the interior of this battleship will probably be filled with thick fog soon..." Thirty-three seemed to be running wildly all the way, the hard rubber soles of his boots stepping on the metal floor of the corridor, constantly making crisp popping sounds.
"I know... the actual situation is actually worse than you think." Ke Lan said, "I suggest you be mentally prepared."
"Don't worry... I've been through the worst situations before." Although Sanshisan said this, his pace suddenly quickened. "Are you guys in danger now? Can you still hold on?"
"Not yet. But I think... the situation is a little out of our control." Ke Lan thought about it and told Thirty-Three the truth in the communicator, "The will of the forest has regained control of the battleship. It was not us who restarted the battleship, but the Gray Mist Forest."
"I had...hiss...guessed it a long time ago." Thirty-three said. Suddenly, there was a burst of intensive machine gun fire from his side. It was obvious that the automatic defense facilities inside the battleship had been activated.
"Are you okay?"
"It's not a big problem, just...hiss...a few broken machine guns." Thirty-Three replied, "But I'm afraid I can't communicate with you for the time being...hiss...hiss...wait for me, at most...hiss...five minutes, I'll be there...hiss..."
Before Thirty-Three could finish his words, the communication was interrupted.
Although the ship's communicator can use the metal structure inside the warship for "wired communication", this type of communication has almost no protection and is easily intercepted and interfered with. Since the forest will that controls the warship has discovered Thirty-three and attacked him with automatic machine guns, it will naturally not allow Thirty-three to communicate with Ke Lan and others through the ship's communicator.
"So... what should we do now?" Mo Jue looked at the vines all over the bridge in a daze and asked Ke Lan, "Try to... take back control of the battleship from these mist vines?"
The thickest vine in the bridge is almost as thick as the trunk of the mist tree at the red line. There are at least twenty giant vines like this... The second-level branch vines separated from the giant vines are the second-level ones. Although they are second-level, they are as thick as pythons. The number of vines of this level is a bit difficult to count...
Growing out from the "python-level" vines is a mist vine that is about the same thickness as a human arm. Mist vines of this diameter are also the most common type seen in the forests outside. For "lumberjacks", a single mist vine of this thickness can be cut off with an electric saw equipped with a Nino alloy toothed blade, but if dozens or even hundreds of strands are entangled together, even heavy machinery will be helpless against it.
The outer shell of the computer room where the central control computer was stored had been pried open by these vines. More than a thousand mist vines had drilled in from various gaps and connected to the central control computer in a way that was incomprehensible to humans.
In theory, by cutting off these fog vines, the connection between them and the battleship's central control computer can be interrupted, but the consequence of doing so is that there is a high probability that the central control computer of the "Genoa" will also be destroyed.
In this environment of extremely scarce resources, even if the engineering team that designed this central control computer were here, they would not dare to guarantee that they could fix it.
Not to mention people like Ke Lan who know almost nothing about this.
"Let me try." Ke Lan responded, and quickly ran to the captain's seat and pulled over the operating panel that was tilted to one side.
Ke Lan first tried to wake up the military AI of the central control computer. Generally speaking, the military AI manufactured by Ark is very sensitive to unrecognizable external data intrusions, especially intrusions implemented through physical means like Wu Teng. Once the self-protection mechanism of AI is triggered, the central control computer will be locked directly. Not to mention starting the engine to make the battleship fly, even the lights used for lighting in the bridge will not be turned on.
As long as we can get in touch with the AI, it shouldn't be a problem to regain control of the battleship...
But Ke Lan soon discovered that no matter how he tried, the AI seemed to have been deleted from the central control computer system and had completely disappeared.
"This is impossible... What's the difference between deleting the AI and smashing the central control computer?" Ke Lan's ten fingers moved rapidly on the virtual keyboard, but the commands he input one after another were like a stone falling into the sea, and there was no response.
At this time, Mo Jue suddenly said behind Ke Lan: "I saw those vines seem to have destroyed a host just now..."
"What?" Ke Lan looked up at the machine room below the stairs, and saw several vines as thick as giant pythons entangled a data processor with a paint color that was completely different from the other machines. Just like a real python strangling its prey, the data processor that was more than three meters high was crushed into a pile of scrap metal...
"Fuck..." After entering the "Genoa", Ke Lan finally couldn't help but blurt out his first swear word, "This machine... is the host of the central control computer AI! These vines... this forest... are they crazy? Is it trying to prevent me from getting in touch with the AI?"
Although the AI of the central control computer is only an artificial intelligence that exists in the virtual world, it also has an "entity" in the real world. The data processor that was just crushed by the vines is its entity.
The destruction of the host is equivalent to directly erasing the AI of the central control computer from a physical level. Moreover, judging from the extent of the damage to the host, even if it can be repaired, it is almost impossible to "revive" the original AI of the "Genoa".
But... without military AI to assist in processing the huge amount of data collected in the central control computer, this battleship would not be able to move at all...
No, that's not right! Ke Lan soon realized that he was wrong... The importance of AI is only for humans. But for the Gray Mist Forest, the entire forest is connected to the battleship and the battleship's central control computer. Although Ke Lan doesn't know how plants are connected to circuit boards, transistors, and silicon chips, the facts are in front of him. Even if he can't figure it out, he can only accept the reality.
For the Gray Mist Forest, the AI of the central control computer is dispensable... Each fog-dwelling tree is equivalent to a computer host. Countless fog-dwelling trees are connected together through the root system. The "computing power" that can be provided to this forest is probably far beyond human imagination.
The information that needs to be processed by the central control computer of a "Genoa" high-speed support ship is probably nothing in the face of this tremendous computing power.
It is also because of this that the Gray Mist Forest has the confidence to directly wipe out the AI of the "Genoa".
"It's over. Without AI, I can't communicate directly with the central control computer... Now I can only hope that the data with control permissions has not been deleted or overwritten..."
Ke Lan entered a few new commands, opened the backend of the central control computer through the captain's exclusive terminal, and then entered his own biometric feature data.
“The data cannot be identified.”
"No matching samples were found in the database."
"Your current permissions are: unauthorized visitor. If you do not exit the background program within fifteen seconds, you will be automatically identified as an intruder."
The border of the screen has lit up with a glaring red light, symbolizing a warning, and a striking countdown has also appeared in the center of the screen.
"Fifteen... fourteen..."
"It seems that the thing I was most worried about has happened... As expected, I shouldn't have had any hope. The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment... I should have imagined things to be in the worst case scenario from the beginning..." Ke Lan muttered to himself, but his hands never stopped. He took out a bunch of memory cards and chips with labels from his small bag, as well as many small devices that looked very unofficial.
Since conventional means don't work, we have to resort to unconventional means.
"I didn't expect that in the Gray Mist Forest... my hacking skills could come in handy... " Ke Lan used an engineering shovel to pry open the cover under the operating panel, pulled out several wires connected to the electrodes from the small devices, and stuck them on several contacts on the circuit board under the operating panel.
"nineteen……"
Then, Ke Lan inserted those chips, which were no bigger than a fingernail, into the reserved slots on these small devices in a certain order.
"Eight...seven..."
The countdown suddenly got stuck when it reached "seven". After a brief pause, a piercing alarm suddenly sounded: "Illegal intrusion detected! Illegal intrusion detected! Emergency measures will be taken--"
"What's going on? Did you mess up?" Mo Jue, who was standing behind Ke Lan on guard, asked nervously, "Isn't there still seven seconds left on the countdown? How did you become an intruder directly?"
"It's not messed up, because what I'm doing now is the invader's business." Ke Lan said without looking up, "It's just that this machine is really stupid. If only it could react so quickly when those vines invaded it."
"So can you handle it?"
"I'm trying. I can't guarantee whether I can succeed or not. I can only say that I will try my best." Ke Lan answered quickly, "You just need to help me keep an eye on the back... Since the system has detected an intruder, there will definitely be corresponding countermeasures. The firewalls of the central control computer have all been activated. While these firewalls block me, they will also delay the restart of the battleship and buy us more time. The only thing we need to worry about is that the system may take physical measures to deal with me, the 'intruder'."
"Physical means?" Mo Jue was stunned.
"Just like those automatic defense machine guns in the corridor, as long as we can directly blow the 'invaders' into pieces, then the problem will be solved, right?" Ke Lan said, "Keep an eye on the surroundings. Now we don't have to worry about damaging the hull. If any weapons appear, just blow them up directly."
"Oh... OK, I get it!"
Mo Jue just raised his head and before he had time to look around the bridge, he found that the corpses that were pierced by vines in mid-air and should have been dead were suddenly struggling violently!
