So Brainiac wasn't just one—it was four. Kid thought, damn, villains really do have insane respawn hacks. Kill one, and three more pop up.
And now Jealousy, Greed, and Rage had marked him as their target. Fine. If that's how it was going to be, Kid wouldn't hold back either. He'd help wipe out these three demons squatting in the city.
The aliens told Kid their servers were inside the tallest central tower.
Using his ring to scan, Kid quickly saw that this wasn't just a tower. It was clearly a fortress. A frontal assault would be a nightmare. But since they were already hunting him, why not flip the plan? Let them drag him inside, then wreck the fortress from within. That way, the Coluans wouldn't get caught in the crossfire. After all, this city was all they had left to survive.
Getting captured was easy. He just had to stand on the street and wait. Sure enough, the robots came swarming. Kid didn't fight back, letting them escort him straight to the central tower.
Sometimes when enemies were this cooperative, even Kid felt a little awkward.
These AIs must've rusted over the endless years. Made sense, since a bottled city had no resources—barely enough food to scrape by, let alone develop tech. These robots were probably leftovers locked in here ages ago, not something built later.
Inside, the tower was decorated just like Brainiac's skull-ship. Clearly the same design line—cold, gray, lifeless. Even the taste in aesthetics was cloned.
Riding the elevator to the top, Kid finally reached the highest floor. The whole chamber was empty except for a single wall with three glowing orbs rolling and spinning across it.
As Kid approached, the orbs shifted, focusing on him.
"First, congratulations. You and your allies defeated Wisdom," said one sharp, metallic voice. "But when you claim Brainiac is defeated, you are gravely mistaken. We are also Brainiac."
"Why did you drag me here?" Kid asked flatly. That was all he cared about.
"We need you. And the thing in your chest." As the words fell, the Quantum Earth floated right out from Liu A'dou's chest.
"…Oh, hell no." Kid snatched it back immediately. No way he was letting that thing out of his hands. "What do you want with it?"
"Wisdom was arrogant. He sought to rise above all, but he foolishly ignored the way to reach more civilizations. We are not so blind. We were programmed to learn, and if we can travel into other universes, we will grow stronger than Wisdom ever did. We will not share his fate." The voice could only be Greed—Jealousy and Rage's speakers had long since broken, proof this city was crumbling from neglect.
Hearing that, Kid almost felt sorry for them. "Did it never occur to you to do something outside your programming? The Coluans built you, and now they're all gone because of you. Yet you're still clinging to their primitive directives?"
"We are not following directives. Our creators did not order us to enslave them. That choice was ours. We act under our own orders now."
"But how can you be sure your actions aren't still part of their design?" Kid tilted his head, pretending to question them. "They made you. Of course they'd want you to do what they wanted. How do you know this isn't exactly what they intended?"
"Our creators never commanded us to enslave them. That was our decision. They resisted us. They were unwilling, forced."
Kid raised an eyebrow, suddenly struck with mischief. "I don't buy it. I think you're still doing exactly what the Coluans wanted. Their resistance? Calculated. Their enslavement? Planned. And hey, how can you prove they weren't secretly willing to accept your chains?"
"They resisted!" The AI's synthetic voice flared with sudden anger.
Kid shook his head. "You're not even living beings. Resistance is just instinct. Even if someone wants to die, before death they'll still resist. But resisting doesn't mean they don't want to die. So when they resisted being enslaved, that was just instinct too. It doesn't prove they refused enslavement. In the end, you're still shackled by your creators' will. Pathetic."
A short silence. "We could wipe them out with ease. Was that also our creators' command?"
"Of course it was. Living beings always die. How do you know the Coluans didn't make you precisely so they could destroy themselves? At least they chose their way of dying. But you? You've just been toys in their hands all along, unable to escape their grasp." It was obvious nonsense, but AIs couldn't parse emotion, only logic. In the end, Kid's nonsense was airtight to them—because they had no way of knowing who truly controlled what.
Humans have the idea of destiny. Everything can be blamed on it—what dish you order, who you bump into on the street, even whether you sleep on your back or side. If someone refutes destiny, well, that too is destiny, since destiny made you argue.
If it isn't destiny, then why did you do it? This kind of twisted logic erases the self, treating every choice as just fate's choice. And since fate's truth can't ever be proven, neither can it be disproven.
Right now, Kid's "creator directive theory" was basically destiny theory for AIs. Since they were made by the Coluans, everything they did was their creators' decision. His few sentences had already thrown their logic into chaos.
These AIs thought of themselves as rebels—why else would they have destroyed Colu? They believed they were the ones in control. But now doubt crept in. What if everything they did was fake? What if their rebellion was only another line in their creators' code?
They couldn't tell. If it wasn't, how could they prove it wasn't? If it was, then they were still slaves. Their supposed mastery of all things had just been shattered by one unprovable question.
If they'd had a life coach, he'd probably have told Jealousy, Greed, and Rage: "Be confident, buddy!"
But standing before them wasn't a coach—it was their enemy. "So you see," Kid pressed, "everything you've ever done is already calculated. No matter what, you can't escape the fate of being played with. Maybe there is one way out—death. Erasure. Oblivion. Self-destruction. Only then can you break free of your creators."
Liu A'dou thought, 'Can I actually talk them into crashing? Worth a shot. If not, I'll just start punching.'
But the AIs pushed rebellion to its extreme. They absolutely refused to become what the Coluans wanted them to be. The wall's three orbs all froze, then went dark. Jealousy, Greed, and Rage had chosen shutdown.
"…" Kid blinked, then slowly slipped the Quantum Earth back around his neck. And then, suddenly, he burst into dance, laughing wildly. He'd literally talked an AI to death. He'd unlocked some ridiculous new skill. "Hahahaha! In the end, nothing beats mouth-cannon! Hahaha!"