novelsite Chapter 42 Bullets Are Useless
Chapter 42 Bullets Are Useless
George's cigar was finally lit:
"Helpers? Those nine are helpers? Anomalocaris sank my ship, Tyrrellfish chewed up John Bull's River, and giant millipedes ate up Hanscat's Black Forest. You call that helpers?"
Lu Cheng explained:
"In the eyes of the upright apes, they were helpers. The first nine machines were responsible for dismantling human civilization—transportation, communication, industry, and agriculture. After that, the upright apes took over. What else could they be but helpers?"
No one refuted.
The only sound inside the burrow was the muffled thud of the water dragon beast digging in the soil next door.
Massa took a photograph out of his pocket and placed it in the center of the circle.
The photo shows the words "Bullets are useless" that the upright ape in the Kyoto garden has newly arranged in stone.
Next to it was a line of smaller text, with only two words: "Study".
"It's telling me it knows about Wakanda," Massa said calmly.
"Across the entire blue planet, without telegrams or airships, it found out. And it gave its assessment—your bullets will only make us learn faster."
Vito laid out the report from the Kingdom of Giuseppe:
"Yesterday, the upright apes in the Luocheng Colosseum began mimicking human facial expressions during conversation—how their eyebrows move, how their lips open and close, and where their eyes look. Our psychologists say their imitations are 60% accurate. What does 60% mean? It means that from ten meters away, you can't tell if they're mimicking you or actually talking."
Wood continued:
"The Homo erectus on the Waimeing Plains began wrapping their bodies in old cloth. Not for warmth, since the temperature there reaches 30 degrees Celsius in August. It was to wrap themselves up; they were learning to wear clothes."
Louis's voice was the lowest:
"The cloth woven by the upright apes of Jincheng has already been made into clothes by the apes themselves. The pullovers made of coarse linen are well-tailored, with even stitches, and are even neater than the work clothes made in our textile factory."
David spoke last:
"The upright apes in the Royal Park of Chongqing began mimicking human walking yesterday. It's not the hunched-over shuffling they used to do; it's a real walk—alternating leg swings, arms hanging naturally, and the head swaying slightly as they walk. Our biomechanics took and analyzed the images, and the similarity to human walking is over 70%."
The cave was quiet for a few seconds.
Lu Cheng stacked the reports from the seven countries together and placed them in front of the stone wall.
"The camouflage is progressing faster than the system predicted. The system said that the completion time of the third stage might be significantly earlier, but it didn't say by how early. However, the forty-seven upright apes in Wakanda completed the journey that normally takes one hundred days in just one month. The upright apes that were attacked will accelerate their stress response, and those that weren't attacked are also accelerating—because the relics of the previous civilization are activating their intergenerational memories. With both forces pushing them together, the speed of evolution is no longer exponential."
He stood up, walked to the front of the stone wall, and pointed his finger at the spiral engravings.
"What's more troublesome now are those thirty-six. After the Wakanda incident, thirty-six disguised upright apes infiltrated a small country in southern Earth. The system says it can't track them. If the system can't track them, how can we tell them apart?"
Vito's brow furrowed. "What will they do?"
"I don't know, but the forty-seven Wakandans learned reconnaissance, infiltration, poisoning, traps, arson, and disguise within a month after their massacre. These thirty-six, carrying the same radicalization genes and hatred for humanity, are scattered among millions of people in southern Earth. What will they do—on a small scale, continue poisoning and arson. On a larger scale, infiltrate cities, learn human language and social rules, and then replace someone in a human community. One becomes two, two become four."
The temperature inside the cave dropped to freezing.
Massa spoke up: "How do we find it?"
"There's no way to do it right now," Lu Cheng said simply.
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"The upright apes' camouflage isn't perfect yet, but it's enough to blend in during chaos. The thirty-six of Vakandar infiltrated the refugees during the capital's fire. Fires, wars, plagues... any large-scale chaos presents them with an opportunity to infiltrate. And what we absolutely must not do now is create chaos."
"What do you mean?"
"Mass-scale extermination will trigger radicalization, as Wakanda has shown us. Kagame killed over 100,000, but 47 escaped and turned around to destroy his country. If you four rogue states were to launch a purge of the apes now, even if only 1% of the 10 million escape, that's 100,000. 100,000 apes carrying radicalization genes, hatred for humans, and disguised themselves, would infiltrate your tens of millions of citizens. At that point, the question wouldn't be whether you could find them, but whether you could still distinguish yourself from them in the mirror."
David tapped his fingers on his knee for a long time.
"So what do we do? Wait for them to expose themselves?"
"Wait until they make mistakes." Lu Cheng sat back down on the mound.
"The camouflage of upright apes is learned, not innate. Learning always involves making mistakes. They imitate human walking, but forget to swing their arms when walking fast. They imitate human facial expressions, but instinctively bare their teeth in unexpected situations. They wear clothes, but are not used to wearing shoes. These mistakes are not easy to spot in normal circumstances, but they will be exposed in specific situations."
"What scene?"
"When you're nervous, when you're scared, when you don't have time to think, pretense is controlled by the cerebral cortex, while fear is instinct, and instinct is always faster than pretense. So the solution isn't to hunt them down, but to create scenarios that expose their instincts."
Lu Cheng took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. A simple device was drawn on the paper.
A small, enclosed room, a chair, a kerosene lamp, and a mirror.
"This is something I designed with a psychology consultant, and it's called the 'Instinct Testing Room.' The principle is simple—we put a person alone in a small room and tell them there's a fire outside. It's not a real fire, but smoke and high temperatures simulated by steam pipes. When a person thinks they're going to die, their instincts take over. If it were an upright ape, it would experience fear in the same way as an upright ape—snarling, growling, crawling on all fours, and climbing to higher places. These instinctive reactions can't be faked."
George took the blueprints and studied them for a long time: "Have you tried it?"
"We tried it. Using volunteers from the Winner Monkey Country and..." Lu Cheng paused, "and a volunteer upright ape."
"Did the upright apes cooperate voluntarily?"
"It was sent by Prime Minister Masa of Taro Tanuki Kingdom, the upright ape that spelled out words with pebbles in the garden of Kyoto. We transported it here by airship and conducted a series of tests. It cooperated with all the tests, but after the tests were completed, it spelled out a line of words on the floor of the testing room with pebbles."
"What character?"
Lu Cheng took a photo out of his pocket and placed it in the center of the circle.
The photo shows a line of white pebbles arranged in neat handwriting.
"You are learning from us, and we are learning from you. In the end, we'll see who can imitate you the best."
The cave was so quiet that you could hear the crackling of the burning kerosene lamp wick.
Massa stared at the photograph, remaining silent for a long time: "Is it helping us?"
"It's not helping, it's observing. It cooperates with the testing because it wants to know how we intend to identify the fake humans; it's learning our methods. We use it to test how to identify upright apes, and it uses us to learn how to better disguise itself." The way it arranged those words was telling us—you are learning from us, and we are learning from you; it's a two-way street.
David's voice was a little hoarse: "Then why are you still using its data?"