Electronic Nezha

Chapter 8 A Pile of Bamboo Pole
The cabinet was pushed open from the inside, and a pile of bamboo poles, roughly shaped into a human figure, creaked and groaned as it walked out. It wore a pair of thick work gloves, or rather, those gloves were its hands; it was not yet clear what kind of stuffing was inside. It wore a pair of rubber shoes. Its body, arms, thighs, and calves were all made up of several bamboo poles. Through the gaps between the bamboo poles, you could see sections of transparent rubber tubes, inside which were fine electrical wires, which at first glance looked like black blood flowing through white veins.

On the head of this bamboo-stick figure is a disc, which is the broken robot vacuum cleaner.

dong dong dong-

I took three steps back, inhaled, and was about to let out a groundhog's roar.

A hand grabbed me: "Dad, this is the new friend I'm introducing to you."

The bamboo pole waved its work gloves at me and said, "Hello." The voice was familiar; it was the female voice that the robot vacuum cleaner would make when it got stuck or when the battery was low. Its power button was flashing, like an eye blinking.

thump—

I took another step back and leaned against the wall.

Just then, the sound of boiling water came from the kitchen; the pot of water had boiled at just the right time!
"I'll go start the fire first..." I admit that I subconsciously wanted to escape.

Liu Zhenhua stopped me and said, "Let it go."

"Okay." A bunch of bamboo poles carrying a robot vacuum cleaner's head strode into the kitchen. I hid by the bedroom door to observe its movements, and then a scene that horrified me unfolded: instead of turning off the stove, it naturally started putting noodles into the pot. It held the noodles in its hands, first shaking them to separate them, then evenly scattering them into the boiling water. It then casually took a pair of chopsticks from the chopstick holder and gently stirred them.

Seemingly noticing someone peeking at it, the bamboo pole turned to look at me, and the power button flashed, resembling an awkward yet polite smile.

I quickly retreated to my bedroom and met Liu Zhenhua's gaze. There was a hint of smugness in his eyes, like a child who had successfully pulled off a prank, but more so, a resolute determination after making a certain decision.

"Only in this way can I convince you of what I'm saying—that I am a super AI from the future."

His method was very successful, and at that moment I believed it all.

When he said to the cabinet, "Come out," I was most afraid that a female classmate would come out. Of course, that might not be accurate; I was actually more afraid that a male classmate would come out.

When a bunch of bamboo poles approached me, I naively thought it worked on a similar principle to a marionette. I still thought so when it spoke to me, until it went to cook noodles and I finally believed it. I don't know if the most cutting-edge technology in the world can cook noodles, but anything that knows how to shake noodles apart is definitely future technology.

At that moment, something in my mind collapsed. You can probably tell that I'm a poor student, but my bad grades are just because I'm not very smart and I'm not willing to put in more effort. Nine years of compulsory education have still instilled a lot in every nerve of mine. I'm basically a simple atheist. I don't believe in ghosts or gods, and I don't believe in time travel. My current situation is that I've encountered cyber time travel, which is like dancing on my sore spot.

In the days before short videos for entertainment, I read a few books by Gabriel García Márquez to appear cultured. Magical realism was the upper limit of my understanding, and I never touched hard science fiction. I roughly learned about the story of Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem" from various fragmented explanations by content creators, and I scoffed at it. Just like I don't believe in ghosts and gods, I don't believe there are other life forms in the universe. Sunlight, air, and water—what other planets have such uniquely favorable conditions?

Don't tell me how vast the universe is, or how Mount Everest is so tall and huge, yet it doesn't have cavities. You need to have teeth first, then you need to love sweets and be unhygienic, just for fun. To put it simply, I'm a "fundamentalist who believes Earth is the only suitable place for life" and an "Earth chauvinist."

Hey, look at our culture.

They've all gone astray...

My son, who is in the second year of junior high school, has built a robot that is ahead of its time using bamboo poles and wires. He says it is a super AI from the future. What should I do?
I kept it under control. After all, being a father is the heaviest burden one can bear.

I tried my best to sound calm and collected as I said, "What did you tell me yesterday? That black holes would destroy humanity?"

Liu Zhenhua said, "None of that matters. You just need to know that the Earth will face annihilation in 75 years. I mentioned black holes to make you understand that they are far more complex than just black holes."

What can you do?

"In 2040, just 15 years from now, the world's most advanced wind tunnel laboratory will be completed. Behind it are several of the most technologically advanced countries, and its mission is to create spaceships capable of space travel for all mankind."

Hearing this, I couldn't help but interrupt him, saying, "Didn't we already have spaceships a long time ago?"

“It can carry people.” Seeing that I had something else to say, Liu Zhenhua said directly, “It’s like the difference between the first car and the first bus.”

Fortunately, I'm not stupid, and I quickly got his point: "If this thing is successfully developed, humans will be able to take a day trip in space?"

"Even so."

"Is technology developing this fast?" Aside from firmly believing that life only exists on Earth, I'm not opposed to the science fiction concept of migrating to other planets, but in my imagination it should be in the distant future, at least as long as it takes for Sun Wukong to be released from prison.

"There were no smartphones 15 years ago, but what about now?" Liu Zhenhua convinced me with just one sentence.

He continued, "After the laboratory is built, there will be a major data calculation error in the subsequent experiments, which is the culprit that caused the black hole to appear."

I then asked, "If the data is wrong, why does a black hole appear?"

Liu Zhenhua said, "As programmers often say, it's not scary to make a mistake in code; what's scary is that there are bugs in the code, but the program still runs."

Although I didn't quite understand, I still felt a chill run down my spine. Liu Zhenhua said, "My task is to point out that mistake 15 years later."

Why not say it now?

"Because you can't point at someone who hasn't been born yet and say he'll become a bad guy in 15 years."

Just then, the bamboo pole man brought the noodles and sauce to the table. In just a few minutes, I received a huge amount of information. I seemed as calm as a rock, but I was actually panicking. So much so that the presence of a bunch of walking bamboo poles in the room didn't seem so hard to understand. I sat numbly in my seat, took a bite of the noodles, and found that this guy had a better grasp of the cooking time than I did. Liu Zhenhua glanced at me and said, "It calculates the cooking process based on the boiling point of the water and the state of the ingredients, down to the millisecond."

Yes, cooking noodles with bamboo poles is done by the frame.

The bamboo-pole man's one eye flashed: "Thank you for the compliment, Master."

Liu Zhenhua lowered his head and ate his noodles, saying, "Don't call me master. From now on, you'll listen to my dad."

The bamboo pole man bowed slightly to me, his hands clasped at his sides, and said, "Okay." I could see respect and humility in the round plate that only had a lamp on it.

After gathering my thoughts, I asked Liu Zhenhua, "So what have you been doing for the past 15 years?"

"Just lay low," Liu Zhenhua said. "Fifteen years from now, I'll enter the lab as an intern, and then, when the time is right, I'll correct the data."

By personally entering the game, can one gain a decisive advantage over fate?
I said, "That lab must be hard to get into, right?"

"Of course, you can't be an academic giant or a young talent; genius is the threshold."

"You, a promising young talent?" By now I was convinced that his 300+ ranking was achieved through score manipulation, but the key question was why he would do such a thing.

Liu Zhenhua picked up a piece of pickled vegetable and stuffed it into his mouth, saying, "My grades will improve."

Why can't you always be good?

"Isn't this all your and Mom's fault?"

"What does this have to do with us?"

Liu Zhenhua put down his chopsticks and said, "You and my mother divorced when I was in fourth grade, and you never cared about my studies. If I were to get first place in the whole grade every time, wouldn't that be too conspicuous?"

I casually remarked, "What's that compared to those who are orphans—uh."

Liu Zhenhua said, "I'd rather be more ordinary."

"So how did your studies become 'good'?"

"Well, boys have more potential. Once they get the hang of it, their grades will improve."

I vaguely recognized the voice and exclaimed, "You little brat, you're imitating your grandpa!"

Liu Zhenhua said, "We can only follow this approach—as they grow up and learn how to study, I plan to start working hard from the end of the semester and gradually get into the top 100 in the grade by this time in the third year of junior high."

That sounds awkward! So, with a grown father like me watching over me, I can only improve my grades by waiting for him to figure it out on his own? But that seems to be the Liu family tradition; his grandfather waited for me his whole life.

In the end, we didn't get to see it.

"I won't even mention how you manipulated the score, but how did the teacher find out? Are all AIs this sloppy in their work?"

"I was careless and didn't dodge."

I said, "Because you have to write down all the answers before they'll count the points?"

"No, that's not it. On the day of the exam, there were two sparrows fighting in a tree. I was so engrossed in watching that I just scribbled on the exam paper with my pen without thinking," Liu Zhenhua sighed. "Exams like math and physics, which have standard answers, are the most agonizing. I can only finish a paper in three minutes at most, and we're not allowed to hand in our papers early. Such a dramatic scene as sparrows fighting doesn't happen every day. The main thing is that I never expected Mr. Gao to use my paper to explain the questions. I sit in the back row by the window, and that day he just happened to come in through the back door to throw out the trash, and then the bell rang for class."

I sighed and said, "This is fate."

"For me, science exam papers are like that line from 'Dream of the Red Chamber'."

"Which one?"

Liu Zhenhua lamented, "Full of absurd words, a handful of bitter tears."

(End of this chapter)