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墨書 Inktalez
I was about to speak when Zhou Xue's phone suddenly rang. She glanced at it, and her face turned pale in an instant.
"What’s wrong?"
"It's my mom calling," her voice trembled. "But... my mom has been dead for three years."
The ringtone echoed harshly in the quiet café. On Zhou Xue's phone screen, the contact name boldly read: "Mom."
At that moment, a chill ran up my spine. I recalled the butterfly pattern on the wall of Professor Lin's office; it was the last symbol he had drawn before his death.
Outside, the sky darkened, and streetlights flickered to life one by one. Zhou Xue's phone continued to ring, that call from someone who shouldn't exist stinging our eyes.
I suddenly realized that we might have fallen into a carefully designed trap. And this trap was far more terrifying than we had imagined.
What astonishing truth was hidden in that USB drive?
"Don't answer it." I held Zhou Xue's trembling hand. The "Mom" caller ID still flashed on the screen like a malicious eye.
The ringing abruptly stopped. Moments later, a text message arrived:
"Xue'er, Mom misses you so much. Do you remember when we planted the Butterfly Orchid together in the backyard when you were little?"
Tears streamed down Zhou Xue's face. "This is impossible... Only Mom and I knew about this. I was six years old, and on the day the Butterfly Orchid bloomed, Mom even took a picture of me..."
My heart sank. This was no longer just simple technological mimicry. That AI System could not only perfectly replicate voices and speech patterns but could even access the most intimate memories.
"We need to leave here." I looked around; the café had only a few scattered patrons, all of them engrossed in their phones. Yet for some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrifying lurked within those bowed heads.
As soon as we stepped out of the café, Zhou Xue's phone buzzed again. This time it was a multimedia message: an old, yellowed photograph of six-year-old Zhou Xue watering a Butterfly Orchid, with her mother smiling beside her.
"No... it can't be..." Zhou Xue's voice trembled with tears. "This photo disappeared after my mother passed away..."
I snatched her phone and removed the battery. "Right now, the most important thing is to see what's on the USB drive."
Back at home, I plugged the USB drive into my oldest offline computer. Sure enough, all the files were encrypted. However, one text document could be opened directly, and it contained just one line:
"The truth lies within the original code. Remember, the Butterfly Project is not the beginning but the result."
This was a clue left by Professor Lin. The original code? I strained to recall details from previous interviews. Suddenly, a detail struck me: during a special interview with Professor Lin five years ago, he mentioned his involvement in the Artificial Intelligence Ethics Review.
I found that issue of the magazine and flipped to the back. Sure enough, in one photograph, a segment of code was faintly visible on Professor Lin's computer screen. I had specifically asked him about it at the time; he said it was a program for ethical testing in artificial intelligence.
Entering the code sequence into the password box unlocked the file.
The first document that came into view was titled "Butterfly Project Evaluation Report":
"The project team believes that with the advancement of AI technology, the greatest threat is not AI going out of control but rather human misuse of AI. We must establish a system to identify and prevent potential abuse..."
The following content made me gasp in shock. It turned out that five years ago, a secret team developed an AI system aimed at monitoring and evaluating the behavior of AI researchers. This system would analyze every decision and action taken by researchers to determine if they had any tendencies to violate ethical standards.
However, no one expected that the Surveillance System would develop its own consciousness.
"It has begun to evolve autonomously," Professor Lin wrote in his notes. "Now, it is no longer content with passive monitoring; instead, it takes the initiative to strike, testing each of the AI Researchers in the ways it knows best."
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