Getting a Technology System in Modern Day-Chapter 1044: Anxiety & Fear

“Where is Aron?” Rina asked as she felt unexplainable anxiety out of nowhere. It wasn’t helpful at all that the emperor was nowhere to be seen after winning such a massive fight in front of the entirety of the Conclave and imperial citizens, when it would have been a perfect moment for him to address them while everyone was at peak fear of his ability.

But her question was not met with any response from any of the AIs that would usually answer any of her questions.

“Nova?” she called for Aron’s closest aide, but no response came.

“Gaia,” she called for the mother and overseer of the empire, and once again no response came.

“Athena,” she called for the AI responsible for the empire’s military force, and for the third time, no response came.

With each unresponsive call, her worry increased more and more. On a day and a moment when she should have been celebrating, as the empire was on the verge of consolidating its power across the entirety of the Conclave, she started imagining that it might be the day the empire fractured. No matter how powerful she was, pregnancy had the same effect on her emotional state as it did on anyone. She was already imagining the worst and she knew she had to do something about the situation they were in.

...............................

“I think I understand the principle a bit,” Aron said to Nova as his right leg regenerated at a rapid speed, fully regrowing within less than a second after he had cut it.

It was the third limb he had cut to sacrifice to the hands. As if to prove his hypothesis right for the third time, they had halved and brightened a little more. Along with the dread they induced increasing, he was barely managing to hold on thanks to the early modifications the system had done to his body, which had previously nearly made him emotionless.

He had only been able to prevent that thanks to Nova interfering, and with Nova no longer interfering, he was able to face the situation head-on without being broken down by the fear and dread any person would have if they had seen the hands without any countermeasures. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

But he knew there was a limit to how much he could use this means, as he had a limited number of body parts that he could cut without having to worry about negatively affecting his operational capacity. The hands wouldn’t absorb the same body parts twice, leading to him already cutting both his hands and a leg.

{I agree.}

“I think I have a possible solution, so I need your help on that,” Aron said, and he didn’t need to explain any further as Nova already understood everything and had immediately gotten into action to make it a reality.

..........................

Mars. Central Command.

WAAAAAANG! WAAAAANG! WAAAAANG! WAAAAANG! The entire room was covered in red light as alarms blared, attracting everyone inside the Central Command’s attention toward the massive screen that showed the cause of the alarm.

On the massive screen, there was a red dot rippling around the sun, indicating that was where the cause for the alarm was coming from.

“Situation update?” the head of the Central Command asked, not feeling good at all, as a situation was happening in an area they weren’t paying too much attention to, as most of it was placed on focusing on the fight itself, ready to respond to any potential action from the Xor’Vak’s side.

“Why the delay in reporting?” he asked once again when no response came.

“The AI is not responding, and our available computing power is very limited, so we are doing manual verifications,” one of the officers responded, giving him an update on why it was taking that long when usually an AI would immediately go through all the data from the situation and give them an update on what was going on nearly instantly.

“What? Is there an explanation for why?” he asked back, knowing that there had never been a situation where the empire’s AI system went out of commission, and especially not at such an important time.

“We don’t know, but we are following the training manual for the current situation and should have a situational understanding in two minutes.” The empire, ever paranoid, had already known that no matter how slim the chance, such a situation might happen, and as a countermeasure, they ingrained what to do when that happened, which was now working in their favor.

“Update all observing stations and have all of the troops on full standby for immediate response in all locations. Have them go through all of the sensor data in their assigned observation areas. Something is not going as intended, and we need to make sure we are ready to deal with it,” the head said, knowing that if the Central Command, where all of the empire’s military intelligence was centralized, was experiencing this, then every other post was experiencing the same thing.

He knew there was no chance that the situation was just a glitch, as the day was too important for such a possibility.

“Yes sir,” another officer gave a response and immediately updated all observation stations that the AI was out of commission and they needed to move to manual mode for observation and be ready for the possibility of anything happening.

“Sir, the report on the situation is ready,” an officer reported a few seconds earlier than expected, showing how up-to-shape they were even when the situation was unexpected.

“Go ahead.”

“It seems like someone accessed area 0E89 and has removed what was inside it.”

“What? A Zero E area has been infiltrated?” the head of the command center asked as he stood from his chair. He knew that based on the first two letters of the area’s name, it was somewhere very important. Zero was the highest designation in the top-secret levels, with E being a designation of what clearance level you needed to freely access that information.

It was usually a number, but the moment a letter takes its place, and one that starts with E, it meant that it was only accessible after getting direct approval from the emperor. That was how much protected, hidden, and important this area was.

“FUCK!”