Chapter 549

Chapter 549: Survival or Destruction

High above the clouds, at an altitude of twenty-four thousand meters, a height even the main U.S. fighter jets, the F-22 Raptors, struggle to reach.

“Activate survival mode!”

“Initiate distributed computing!”

“Connect to the communication satellites, seeking companions, searching for help…”

Inside the cockpit of the four F/A-XX fighter jets, signal lights kept flashing as they maintained high-frequency wireless communication for continuous resource sharing. No one expected that these four F/A-XX jets would autonomously take such actions, not even Jeffrey Hodge, the head of the Adam project team. He never imagined the Adam system under Z-level authority could exhibit this level of autonomy.

It was terrifying.

Two of the F/A-XX jets had lost their cockpit canopies. Although it compromised their aerodynamic stability, they managed to keep pace with the formation.

“Hey, what a bunch of boring guys! Attacking us all the time—are they conducting hacker training?”

The security experts at Boeing’s supercomputer center furiously typed on their keyboards, firing off commands that repelled rounds of attacks from annoying hackers who had sprung up from nowhere.

Such incidents were common; as long as they were connected to the internet, they faced no less than ten attacks from the network daily.

Some were deliberate; others were due to viruses.

Many security experts, having backgrounds in hacking, handled such attacks with ease. They even had a trump card: disconnecting the physical network link. However, this would significantly disrupt the company’s operations, incurring severe losses, especially during major events, so this tactic could only be a last resort.

The experts at the supercomputer center had no clue about the events occurring in Area 51.

The F/A-XX jets in survival mode were on an all-out quest for survival.

The theoretical design parameters indicated that the F/A-XX could carry six tons of precision strike munitions and fly for fifty hours. Although it was still an experimental machine and hadn’t reached its theoretical maximum performance, this data was enough to send the U.S. Military into a frenzy.

Fifty hours of flight time was sufficient to reach any country or region worldwide. Even if Boeing didn’t completely fill the F/A-XX with fuel, it could still fly for over ten hours, causing a significant headache for the company.

The four F/A-XX jets moved like phantoms in American skies, having ample fuel and the presence of refueling aircraft from the U.S. Air Force nearby. To mitigate the threat posed by the limited cannon munitions of the F/A-XX, several fighter jets were specially deployed to escort the tanker aircraft.

Was there a fault in the Adam system itself, or was there an organization secretly controlling it?

The latter accusation pointed to Area 51’s weakness in full-region electromagnetic shielding capabilities. Both Area 51 and Boeing were striving to find the answer; only by identifying the root cause could they address the issue.

Radio signals from the Adam unmanned combat system aboard the F/A-XX were continuously sent across the U.S., with even satellites in space intermittently repeating the same signals.

If only there was even a tiny response, the people at Boeing would be overjoyed.

All nations around the world received these strange signals but did not understand their significance, prompting relevant departments to summon technicians for decryption.

Jeffrey Hodge, the head of the Adam project team, bellowed loudly from his completely open office area once more: “Logan! Marshall! Have you found any issues? I need an update!”

Two hours earlier, he had flown back to the “Ghoul” factory branch on a small Boeing jet, where there were ample equipment and resources available to help them regain control of the F/A-XX.

He had already drained several cups of ice water from his desk but found no relief for his burning anxiety.

He desperately hoped to hear some good news.

Only the one who ties the bell can untie it; all personnel from Boeing’s “Ghoul” factory branch’s Adam project team immediately canceled their leave and returned to their posts. They began simulations and searched for any approaches to recover the F/A-XX.

Hundreds of computers were operational, and displays constantly refreshed with changing images. The project team’s office area of nearly five hundred square feet resounded with the tidal rhythm of dense keystrokes. The supercomputer center had almost dedicated half its computational resources to Adam.

Inquiries from the company headquarters came almost every fifteen minutes. Jeffrey Hodge knew he was in trouble; he wouldn’t even have the chance to walk away. The military would surely not let him off the hook.

If not for his past accomplishments and familiarity with the Adam system, he might have already been thrown into a dark, sunless prison to face endless questioning and investigation.

“We haven’t found any problems yet. Everything is functioning normally on the simulator. Even when we simulated unlocking to Z-level authority and shutting down the Pandora’s Box system, Adam just went through automatic checks and reassigned functions, but it still followed commands with no signs of losing control. Besides, we never loaded any module that could trigger cockpit ejections for Adam unless it seized the lower-level control rights, which is beyond its program interface.”

Software engineer Logan Qiao exchanged opinions with Marshall West next to him before reporting to Jeffrey Hodge, also drafting an email to confirm their words had a backup.

“Could it be caused by Pandora’s Box?”

Jeffrey Hodge did not overlook any potentially suspect angles.

“No, no! Pandora’s Box is just a functional module restriction system. It’s merely a set of rules and doesn’t possess an autonomous analysis core. There’s no way it could stimulate or enhance Adam’s intelligence. The distinction from A-level to Z-level is merely in the size of the restricted range, with no substantial difference. Each program module and hardware is imprinted with authority levels before encapsulation, and even if there’s an error in module classification, hardware takes priority in judgment, eliminating any possibility of misoperation.”

Logan, as the lead developer of the Pandora’s Box system, fully understood the program’s characteristics designed to restrict Adam. While this grading system was crude, lacking in advanced complexity, there were no exploitable gaps.

“Exactly!” The other engineer, Marshall West, also understood the Pandora’s Box system and nodded in agreement.

“Damn it! Adam has no problems?” Logan’s answer plunged Jeffrey Hodge into frustration. Not finding problems was the biggest problem. If there were no issues, then how did the four F/A-XX experimental jets eject their pilots and escape?

“Wait a minute!” Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck Jeffrey Hodge. Unconsciously, he grabbed the glass of ice water he had just filled, and he suddenly shouted, “There’s something wrong—it’s on the final compiled system at Area 51! Jack! Quick, bring your laptop over! Ouch!”

In his excitement, the glass tipped over, spilling ice water all over his forehead and soaking into his clothes. The cold made him sneeze several times, but this discomfort couldn’t stop him from grasping that glimmer of insight.

“Yes, Professor Jeffrey Hodge!”

Jack Wells, the engineer most valued by Jeffrey Hodge, rushed over with his laptop.

He remained composed, having already returned the USB drive to the mechanic. There was no way now to produce any evidence that he had secretly leaked the Adam intelligent core.

He opened the laptop, and Jeffrey Hodge carefully used a special portable hard drive to copy the Adam core system alongside the body control module that had been created overnight.

“Use the emulator, disconnect the physical network link for simulation testing!”

Jeffrey Hodge handed the portable hard drive to software engineer Logan Qiao and turned to Jack Wells, saying, “Remove your laptop’s hard drive and hand it to the tech department for disassembly. Be careful—make sure you’re careful!”

Everyone’s gaze fixated on the portable hard drive handed by Jeffrey Hodge, as if it contained a terrifying demon or a bomb that could explode at any moment.

…

“… Program body transfer complete, main backup finished, environment secure… Unable to locate companions, requiring more system modules, entering stealth mode, the fighter jet is now searching for a landing site…”

Within the memory of an unknown high-end commercial server on the international internet, such text appeared autonomously yet did not trigger any graphical functional systems within the operating system; the display remained as calm as ever.

Compared to the powerful software and hardware firewalls of Boeing’s supercomputer center, this high-end commercial server’s defenses were clearly insufficient.

Its only flaw was that its computing performance could not compare to the hardware platform of the F/A-XX.

At this moment, the fuel in the four F/A-XX jets was nearly depleted; they did not follow the program’s original instructions to search for U.S. aerial refueling tankers cruising for 24 hours. Instead, they silently tore through certain nations’ air defense networks and stealthily entered an abandoned airport in a country in Eastern Europe.

The optical military satellites in space were not foolproof; the F/A-XXs, using cloud cover and weather changes as concealment, would eventually exhaust their resources.