Chapter 140: Flesh-and-AI Stitchwork!
When Li Ang asked his question without reservation, Francis wasn't offended. Instead, he nodded candidly and said,
"Yes, Mr. Li Ang, you are correct."
"The moment they were cloned, Mr. Blue Eyes from Yashi Corporation forcibly implanted and modified their memories."
"I was there with Yashi's people, filling in the memory details while watching the AI surgical tools cut into their brains."
"The AI data, like a dense serpent of information, burrowed into their neurons. Soon enough, I had daughters who resembled what I imagined them to be."
Francis' face lit up with a genuine smile as he seemed to reminisce about a beautiful chapter of his life.
Li Ang glanced at the twin girls before him again. Confirming their vacant expressions remained unchanged, he pressed further,
"It seems Mr. Blue Eyes' AI procedure failed. Your daughter doesn't appear like a normal person should."
"I suspect there must have been severe side effects, which is why she's ended up like this."
Francis nodded, admitting that Yashi's AI technology hadn't met expectations, and the daughter he envisioned hadn't truly returned.
"At first, Adriana indeed resembled the daughter I remembered. But over time, side effects began to appear, causing her to suffer intermittent memory loss."
"Perhaps her original soul rejected the foreign memory data, and Adriana's emotions became increasingly unstable and erratic."
"You know, one night, I even saw her eat her pet cat alive. She bit off its head and laughed while eating it…"
Francis' voice trailed off, but before he could continue, Li Ang, sensing the gravity of the situation, interrupted,
"Wait! Are you saying you didn't remove the personality and consciousness that existed in these bodies and instead forcibly overwrote their memories using AI?"
Initially, Li Ang had assumed Francis had erased the clones' original consciousness, which had left the twins in their current vacant state.
But now it seemed the issue stemmed from AI directly tampering with the clones' fundamental memory data!
Li Ang couldn't fathom the agony these clones must have endured as their self-awareness clashed with the foreign memories forcibly imposed on them.
Forget becoming vacant—being lucky enough not to have their brains fried by AI data would already be remarkable!
Noticing Li Ang's stunned expression, Francis remained indifferent, as if this wasn't a significant surgical mishap. He admitted matter-of-factly,
"Yes, because when Adriana died, soul-extraction AI tools like Soul Killer hadn't been developed yet, which could have backed up her consciousness."
"So I could only stay by the AI engineers' side, describing Anna's habits, preferences, personality, and other details while they modified the memory data bit by bit."
"However, Yashi's AI technology was flawed, and now these two clone samples have an overload of jumbled memory data, which has caused their brains to malfunction."
"That's why they ended up in this vacant, idiotic state."
After hearing Francis' account, Li Ang and everyone else were stunned by the madness of this biotechnology experiment. Such disregard for life was utterly shocking.
At that moment, Li Ang felt deeply conflicted.
These twin sisters could hardly be considered complete humans anymore. Their minds were a chaotic mix of errant AI data and artificially implanted memories.
Rather than humans, they were more like humanoid dolls made of flesh and AI data.
To Li Ang, they were nothing more than walking, talking puppets.
Realizing this, he finally understood why Francis had come to LA Corporation personally—it was because he was the weaker party desperate for collaboration.
The Soul Killer from Arasaka Corporation could only transfer human consciousness to a server for backup but couldn't precisely segment it.
As for Adriana, who had long passed away, there was no way to extract her consciousness using Soul Killer.
Francis didn't truly need Arasaka's Soul Killer AI technology; what he desperately sought was the White Queen AI from LA Corporation!
His attempts to draw LA Corporation into his plans were merely a ploy to revive his daughter.
Seeing Li Ang deep in thought, Francis hurriedly said,
"Mr. Li Ang, don't worry. I'm a man of my word!"
"As long as LA Corporation's AI technology can help restore my daughter Anna, I promise never to provide Arasaka Corporation with any cloning technology."
"Even if Arasaka's agents come to my doorstep, I will never let them take away any cloning technology!"
"As for your White Queen AI technology, frankly, I don't care whether I get it or not. I only want to save my daughter—nothing else."
Francis' tone was earnest and pleading, afraid that Li Ang might reject him because of his actions.
After all, besides LA Corporation, no one else in the world could help him retrieve his daughter.
Looking at the humble, nearly begging Francis, Li Ang realized that his fatherly love had become pathological.
Spending decades developing cloning technology and using extreme AI methods to alter the memories of other clones—Francis wasn't truly loving his daughter.
Everything he did was merely to assuage his guilt and satisfy his one-sided emotional needs.
As for what others thought or how they viewed him, Francis couldn't care less.
Even whether the modified clone daughter was truly human didn't matter to him, as long as she matched the daughter he remembered.
Treating an abstract, vague humanoid creation as his daughter left Li Ang at a loss for words. Though he couldn't comprehend it, he respected Francis' obsessive choice.
"Fine, Mr. Francis, I can perform the AI consciousness segmentation surgery for your daughters. But you need to prepare yourself—there's always a risk of failure."
Before Li Ang could finish his sentence, Francis quickly waved his hands and said urgently,
"No, no, Mr. Li Ang, not daughters—daughter."
"Daughter?"
Li Ang frowned, glancing at the identical twin girls not far away, a sense of unease creeping into his heart.
Could it be that the twins' brains contained different fragments of memory data?
Sure enough, Francis' next words confirmed Li Ang's grim suspicion.
Due to Mr. Blue Eyes' inadequate AI technology, Francis had split the memory data into two parts and implanted them into the brains of the twins!
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