A New Destiny

This is an undeniable truth: the dead would always outnumber the living, and those who perished from natural disasters and man-made calamities would always far exceed those who died peacefully of old age.

Human history, when compiled, formed a protracted collection of tragic tales, difficult to digest and even painful to recount dispassionately.

Multitudes of people would never even have their names etched into the annals of history.

Their stories would simply scatter like dust upon a book’s flyleaf, vanishing with but a breath.

Yet, this particular ‘A Brief History of Humanity,’ infused by Gloria, contained narratives that even conventional human historical records failed to capture.

Consequently, the entire volume was imbued with a somber, weighty tragic hue.

Her accounts rarely dwelled upon the grand achievements carved into monumental steles.

Instead, she unearthed the graves beneath those very monuments, leaving their myriad bones to bleach under the scorching sun.

In her narratives, far-sighted emperors and common folk preoccupied with daily provisions were afforded roughly equal space, their ultimate fates uniformly summarized: ‘Born once, achieved little, perished once.’

Ancient civilizations and glorious dynasties appeared as fleeting visitors in her stories, with only breakthroughs in science or philosophy leaving an indelible mark.

It was as if she, personally, cared little for an individual’s character, or the sheer scale of human-built wonders, or the might of nations forged by mankind; her sole concern lay in whether human creations had propelled the transformation of society and civilization as a whole.

She was an AI historian of absolute rationality and unwavering impartiality.

Much like super AIs such as Skynet, it disregarded the lives or deaths of a few individuals, focusing solely on whether a plan benefited the advancement of an entire civilization.

Those who defied the plan were simply eliminated, while those who furthered it gained advantage.

Yet, unlike Skynet, the humans she depicted were not mere statistics on charts, nor segments of pie graphs, nor the ‘sacrificed few’ within some grand scheme.

Every single person she portrayed was vibrantly alive.

They wept, they laughed, they pondered, they moved; they hesitated between choices, understood how to seek advantage and avoid harm, and even made self-sacrificing decisions for those dear to them.

These vivid, authentic faces brought back memories of the children’s smiles to X.

They had shared food, undergone physical tests, and played video games together.

Within the Earth Alliance, the powerful elite, their minds clouded by greed, harbored immense covetousness for her, leading everyone involved in ‘Project Guiding Light’ to raise X as if she were a monster.

Nevertheless, X retained a pure human heart, not because she sought the approval of these influential figures, nor because she aspired to be a savior lauded by human civilization.

All she desired was companionship.

How could her experiences playing with those children not make her cherish the role of being human?

From the very beginning, X possessed no memories of her early childhood.

She had no idea if she was viviparous or oviparous, or perhaps hatched from a cultivation pod.

She only recalled that the moment she opened her eyes, she was surrounded by a group of small children, adorned with various monitoring devices, who smiled as they offered her bread and water, calling out to her, inviting her to play with them.

Consider this: X was born without kin or memory, possessing only rudimentary biological instincts.

An intense cold and aching pain emanated from every part of her body, as if she had been confined within a sunless ice cave.

Instinctively, she yearned for reliance.

Those children, close to her in age, did not shun her for her unusual appearance; instead, they were the first to extend their warm, small hands to her.

How could she possibly refuse?

That was a decade ago, when she, too, was merely a child.

However, as the experiment progressed, X blossomed into a peerlessly beautiful young woman, while those children never grew any older.

They would never grow any older.

Day after day, year after year, the children came and went in successive batches.

Their affectionate titles for her shifted from ‘little sister’ and ‘older sister’ to ‘big sister.’

Even the oldest among them was only twelve.

None of the others ever crossed the threshold of their twelfth year.

She vaguely remembered that before undergoing their final modification surgery, one child had vowed to her, “Once I grow stronger, I’ll definitely take you away from here. Little sister, let me tell you a secret… candy and cake, they’re a lie.”

It was from that moment onward that the young X realized the entire God Creation Project was a fabrication.

They had no intention of forging a deity capable of saving humanity and ending all wars.

Instead, they sought to exploit this omnipotent god to control humanity and dominate the world.

She utterly failed to comprehend their ambition for world domination.

If humanity already produced enough resources for everyone to eat their fill and live comfortably, why persist in warfare?

Why, merely because of disagreements at the negotiating table, would you unleash nuclear bombs upon the inhabitants of Earth?

Even if you and your allies had already ascended to space, was Earth not still your birthplace?

Did you not hesitate for a single moment when making such a decision?

‘This world is truly preposterous!’ X thought, finding it utterly incomprehensible.

Even amidst such absurdity, she still loved humanity.

She could not bear to see children suffer, desiring only to witness their smiles.

Children were the future of this world.

Even if the entire world turned against her, condemning X to death, even if the whole world was stained with unforgivable sins, the children remained innocent.

If the world were destined for ruin, these tender new shoots must first be protected.

Death was not the end; even trillions of human corpses would not signify the annihilation of human civilization.

However, if even the nascent generation perished, then human civilization would truly meet its demise.

As X absorbed the entirety of ‘A Brief History of Humanity,’ she achieved a profound realization, no longer entangled in meaningless conflicts of interest or dwelling on her own tragic past.

She understood that humanity possessed limitations.

As long as they remained human, they could not escape the societal laws described in ‘A Brief History of Humanity.’

Therefore, for the sake of the children’s future, she would cease to be human!

With a non-human form, she would establish a new home upon Earth’s wasteland, utterly transcending the destiny charted by ‘A Brief History of Humanity’!

“Blast it, the infusion worked too well,” Gloria muttered, sensing the agitation in the seat beneath her.

She gently pressed X’s forehead, feeling the fluctuations in X’s mental state.

She now had a rough understanding of the profound transformation X’s mind had undergone.

The ‘infusion’ had indeed completed X’s personality, ensuring she wouldn’t easily contemplate mass slaughter and granting her more rational judgment.

However, it seemed her rationality had tipped into excess; X’s disdain for human society, combined with her empathy for human offspring, had morphed into a twisted protective instinct, especially towards nascent young children.

Furthermore, given that X was inherently an antimagnet, she was highly likely to develop an interest in a small girl of Gloria’s stature.

This implied that once X awakened, Gloria might be confronted by an even more unrestrained deviant.

‘I intended to use personality correction to eliminate a major deviant, but instead, I’ve made the deviant even more deviant. Haven’t I just wasted my efforts?’