Chapter 685: Chapter 426: A Lonelier Wait【7400-word Super Large Chapter】_4

Stepping out, Harrison Clark first looked up and saw the red and black mantle material shielded a hundred meters away. Under the hazy red light, the world was dark and red.

Two meters in front of him, a square hole opened, and an elevator-like object slowly rose from below.

On either side of the elevator were two dark round holes, about as thick as a thumb, looking like gun firing holes.

An electronic voice sounded.

“Identity system recognition in progress, recognition successful. Human being, male, Han nationality. Historical gene bank comparison in progress, comparison successful. Harrison Clark, founder of the Salvation Association. Threat level, 0. Trust level, highest.”

Listening to the electronic voice verifying his identity, Mr. Clark was overcome with tears.

It hadn’t been easy, but after almost a year, he finally heard the voice of an artificially intelligent being with autonomous capabilities.

This meant that there really were intelligent chips in Sergey’s secret base, and maybe even a complete artificial intelligence!

There was hope!

The elevator door opened slowly with a soft sound.

A pale, skinny young man stood inside.

The young man was probably only seventeen, with a vacant look, expressionless face, and prominent cheekbones, making him appear malnourished.

With a glance, Harrison Clark recognized him.

It was indeed a young Sergey Ponomarenko!

As Harrison Clark looked at him, the young man also looked at Harrison.

After sizing each other up for a while, it was Harrison who took a step forward and asked, “Are you Sergey?”

The young man tilted his head, his eyes even more confused, laughing foolishly before speaking in a hurried tone, “Follow me.”

Harrison rolled his eyes.

He had heard that clones were not perfectly sound in all aspects, and now he had to believe it.

Who knows what kind of education this young Sergey had received since childhood, as he seemed to only know this one sentence.

The young man seemed to have a defect in his logical thinking, and he wanted to press the button without waiting to see if Harrison had followed him in.

Fortunately, Harrison moved quickly, otherwise, he’d be locked out again.

As the cramped elevator descended with a creaking sound, Harrison knew he wouldn’t get any information out of the young man, so he didn’t bother making conversation.

Since the other party could only say “follow me”, there must be a place he was leading him to, and everything would be revealed once they arrived.

About a minute later, the elevator stopped, and a huge, empty workshop appeared in front of Harrison.

Inside the workshop, there were hundreds of pill-shaped life support pods.

Each life support pod was about two and a half meters tall, similar to the internal circulation simulation pods Harrison had once used.

Most of the liquid in the life support pods had been drained, with only a few still filled with a faint yellowish nutrient solution.

“Where to now?”

He asked again.

But the young man no longer moved forward and simply sat down on the spot, repeating, “Follow me.”

Harrison shrugged, figuring this must be the destination.

As Harrison tried to walk forward, the scene in the workshop changed.

A holographic projection beam shone down from the ceiling, in front of him.

A middle-aged, bald Slavic man in a white coat appeared in front of him. It was indeed Sergey, albeit middle-aged.

The electronic voice prompted: “Chinese? English? Russian? Minor language?”

Harrison: “Chinese.”

The next second, the static image of Sergey suddenly came to life.

With a tone full of vicissitude and lament, he said, “Since you can appear here without causing an explosion, you must be a human who has returned from afar. Is that correct?”

Harrison thought for a moment, “Yes.”

“Welcome, my descendant.”

Harrison: “…”

Alright, now it’s you who died early, so say what you want.

“Everything you are about to hear is a recording, and I don’t need to answer your questions. Learn the basics from me first, and the rest of the information is in the reading room up ahead. Listen to me patiently… ”

About half an hour later, Sergey’s hologram disappeared.

Harrison turned around and looked at the statue-like, young Sergey, and his mind was already completely clear.

Case solved.

First of all, the humans of the Solar System had indeed perished in this timeline.The exact time of the apocalypse was 2589.

The defining event of the apocalypse was that there was only one human left alive – Sergey.

He didn’t desert the cause; instead, he continued to work on developing new weapons in the last base until the very last moment.

No matter how intense the battles outside were, they didn’t affect his focused work.

Then, the ZS Humans, armed with individualized weapons, stormed in, massacred everyone in the Australian base, including his respected senior biologist, Willian.

When the last true human, Sergey, was left, the ZS Humans stopped their attack and quietly withdrew, never to be seen again.

A month later, a massive explosion occurred in a space station 30 million kilometers away from Earth.

In this explosion, all ZS Humans and enhanced mutants disappeared.

This was not Sergey’s achievement, but rather the voluntary choice of the ZS Bacteria life form.

Since then, Sergey has remained the only intelligent life form left in the entire Solar System.

He didn’t understand why he was the one left behind.

It might have been mockery.

Or maybe it was just a scientific experiment.

The highly advanced civilization that controlled human destiny wanted to see what the smartest human could create when left alone.

He couldn’t understand why he had never been infected by ZS Bacteria either.

Later, Sergey attempted asexual reproduction but failed.

He seemed to have seen the end.

He would spend his lonely days growing old in the Solar System.

He considered whether to leave for a colony.

Eventually, he never set sail but instead devoted all his energy to reestablishing artificial intelligence and creating this underground base.

He rebuilt the base and hid it underground.

He spent the rest of his life analyzing ZS Bacteria, studying history, and predicting the future.

He wanted to understand exactly what kind of existence the enemy was and why they could so easily destroy humanity.

He also wanted to know how to defeat them.

The people of the Solar System were defeated, but Sergey still yearned to leave something behind, hoping that one day the colonists might return and see it.

As time passed, he aged rapidly, while success still seemed far away.

Sergey began to absorb the biotechnology that Willian had left behind and implemented a self-cloning plan.

He knew that he would eventually die and that the clones would most likely have some type of congenital disease, never reaching his own abilities, but what does it matter?

Doing a little is better than nothing.

In 2600, Sergey, knowing that he was about to die prematurely from overwork, completed all his preset plans, boarded a small time machine to the surface, and returned to his origin amidst the fierce tearing of animals.

Before he died, he collected some weakened ZS genetic traits from mutated animals outside and sent them back to the base.

He also mocked them mercilessly.

“You guys are really stupid.”

Time passed bit by bit, and thirty years later, another Sergey, only twenty-nine years old but with deteriorating organs, broke through the surface.

Time flew by for hundreds of years.

Generation after generation of Sergeys fell from the life support pods, grew up under the care and instruction of intelligent robots, and continued the unfinished work of the original Sergey.

Of course, accidents always happened, some cloned embryos didn’t even last long enough to grow into human shape before their genes collapsed.

Some clones died inexplicably at the age of one or two.

Even successful clones seemed to have a forever-limited life span, never exceeding thirty years of age.

And as time passed, the longer the time span of the frozen stem cells, the more the vitality and genetic stability declined; the clones’ performance worsened with each generation, their intelligence decreased, their learning abilities decreased, and their life became more and more unstable.

Until now, only a few life support pods remain.

The latest generation of Sergey clones has learned just one sentence to be told to the returned ones, “Follow me.”

By this point, Sergey’s predictions had failed.

The meaning of “Follow me” remained only to prove to the returnees that Solar System humans once existed.

Or maybe it was just for other civilizations to discover; hoping they would take away everything that belonged to Earthlings.

That way, the human era wouldn’t be lost as bubble-like silence in the universe.

In the end, Sergey didn’t wait for his fellow colonists to return – he waited for Harrison Clark.

He waited for 420 years.