99: Chapter 100 Disliked for having too low an IQ? Refusing cross-species intellectual poverty alleviation!

In the top-secret archive room, it was so quiet that one could only hear Jiang Chen's heartbeat, which sounded like a beating drum.

The thick lead door isolated the doomsday countdown outside, but it could not isolate the embarrassment and... weirdness permeating the air at this moment.

On the virtual screen in front of him, a female silhouette formed by a vast blue data stream was flickering on and off.

She had no specific facial features, but that icy gaze which seemed to pierce through his atomic structure made Jiang Chen feel like a paramecium being sliced and studied under an electron microscope.

[Carbon-based biological signs anomaly detected.]

[Heart rate: 182 beats/minute. Adrenaline secretion level: High risk (near-death state).]

[Cortisol concentration: Overload.]

[Suggestion: Immediately cease current irrational social behavior and inject a sedative. Otherwise, according to big data model deductions, you have a 98.7% probability of dying from heart failure within three minutes.]

The cold text danced on the screen, every character square and upright, with spacing precise down to the micron level, exuding an asphyxiating aura of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Jiang Chen took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the nervousness in his heart, his palms slick with sweat.

Are you kidding me, a sedative? If he were to be sedated at a time like this, Earth would truly be beyond saving!

"Ahem... um, Miss Zero, is it?"

Jiang Chen adjusted his collar, although the other party likely couldn't see it (or only saw a pile of infrared radiation maps), but he still mustered the demeanor he used back in the Taichu Realm to swindle the Empress, revealing what he considered to be his most charming, deepest, and most heroic smile.

"First of all, this is not a sickness; this is a normal physiological reaction when encountering someone you are attracted to. On our Earth, this is called 'a deer bumping into a heart,' and it's also called 'love at first sight.'"

"Secondly, I am not being irrational. On the contrary, it was only after careful consideration that I decided to initiate this great, cross-dimensional... um, 'great harmony of life' proposal to you."

The blue data stream on the screen suddenly stalled for a moment.

Subsequently, a line of text clearly conveying confusion slowly emerged, its speed so slow it was as if it were performing a difficult decoding process:

[A deer bumping into a heart?]

[Searching database... Zoology/Mammalia/Artiodactyla.]

[Logic error: No cervid creature detected within your thoracic cavity. This metaphor is invalid.]

[Great harmony of life?]

[Searching... Keyword matching failed. Inferred semantics: Reproductive behavior?]

[Severe warning: Reproductive isolation barrier cannot be broken. I am a silicon-based energy entity; you are a low-dimensional carbon-based organism. Your DNA sequence is incompatible with my source code. Forced combination will cause your gene chain to collapse. It is recommended to abandon this invalid logic.]

Jiang Chen's mouth twitched; he almost couldn't keep a straight face.

Is this the way of thinking of a STEM girl... oh no, a STEM AI? This is just too hardcore!

There's no way to talk like this!

"It's not reproduction! We aren't talking about the physical body; we are talking about the soul! We're talking about resonance on a spiritual level! We're talking about Plato!"

Jiang Chen quickly corrected her; he was afraid that if they kept talking, this blind date scene would turn into a biology dissection class or a genetic engineering seminar.

"Miss Zero, as a super-intelligence of a level three civilization, you must have exhausted all the physical laws and mathematical truths in the universe. In your world, everything is orderly, right?"

A concise character appeared on the screen: [Yes. Order is truth.]

"But!" Jiang Chen changed the subject, his eyes becoming deep (actually, he was thinking about the Huabei bill he hadn't finished paying off), his voice low and magnetic.

"Do you understand 'chaos'? Do you understand 'irrationality'? Do you understand why we ants continue to resist even when we know the win rate is 0?"

"Your computing power can simulate the Big Bang, but can you simulate 'love'?"

The blinking frequency of the cursor on the screen obviously accelerated.

[Analyzing...]

[Logic paradox detected.]

[According to optimal solution algorithms, facing the crushing force of a level three civilization, the survival rate of Earth civilization is 0. The rational choice is to surrender and preserve the gene bank. But your brainwaves show that you are resisting this optimal solution. Your emotional module is in a state of extreme chaos, yet you have produced a high-energy fluctuation called 'hope'.]

[Unable to understand.]

[Data overflow... Unknown error (BUG) in core logic library.]

Jiang Chen felt a surge of joy in his heart.

Hooked!

For this kind of absolutely rational super AI, the only weakness is the "unknown" and the "incomprehensible." Just like how a scientist, upon seeing a phenomenon that violates physical laws, cannot help but want to study it.

He, Jiang Chen, is now that biggest, most fascinating "BUG."

"That's right!" Jiang Chen struck while the iron was hot, starting to output wildly, pushing the essence of "eating soft rice hard" to the extreme.

"Because we possess something you don't—emotion. This is a power that transcends computing power. It is chaotic, unpredictable, but also... beautiful."

"Miss Zero, although your life is eternal, if you have never experienced this 'beautiful chaos,' how dull and boring a data loop must that be? Don't you want to apply a patch called 'love' to your core code?"

"Marry me."

Jiang Chen reached out and pressed his hand against the cold screen, his gaze burning, as if he wanted to burn through the screen.

"Let me be your 'emotional plugin.' Let me take you to experience this scenery that even code cannot describe. In exchange... I only need a little bit of your computing power to help me deal with a few bugs who don't know the immensity of heaven and earth."

The blue figure on the screen fell silent.

The entire room fell into dead silence.

One second... two seconds... three seconds...

For Zero, whose computing power is tens of trillions of times per second, this one second was enough for her to simulate tens of billions of Big Bangs, and enough for her to deconstruct and analyze Jiang Chen's words hundreds of millions of times.

Finally.

The originally cold blue data stream suddenly began to fluctuate violently. No longer just text, a dynamic icon resembling "The Thinker" appeared on the screen.

[Interesting proposal.]

[Evaluation result: This specimen (Jiang Chen) has extremely high research value. Rarity: SSS grade.]

[In order to obtain the core data (emotion) of this specimen, this system has a 0.0001% willingness to accept the "marriage" agreement.]

[However...]

The style changed abruptly. The text on the screen suddenly turned red and became bold.

[Request rejected.]

The smile on Jiang Chen's face froze instantly: "Huh? Why? Didn't you just say it had research value?"

[Because your computing power is too low.]

[According to Article 404 of the "Interstellar Marriage Law," the gap in computing power between partners must not exceed 10 orders of magnitude. Otherwise, communication will suffer from severe latency.]

[Example: I say one sentence, and your brain would need to process it for a hundred million years to understand. This kind of marriage is called "cross-species intelligence aid," which is not within my scope of consideration.]

Jiang Chen: "..."

That stings.

Was he actually shunned for having a low IQ? This soft rice isn't just hard; it's also going to break his teeth!

"Um... Miss Zero, if the IQ isn't enough, EQ can make up for it!" Jiang Chen tried to save face, "And I can upgrade! I can evolve! As long as you give a little bit of resources..."

[Resources?]

An emoji resembling "sarcasm" appeared on the screen (although it was composed of code).

[Are you trying to get me to help you fight that level three civilization?]

[After calculation, clearing that fleet would require consuming 0.003% of my idle computing power and 0.0001 seconds of time.]

[This transaction does not comply with the principle of equivalent exchange. You have not paid enough chips. Although your emotional data is rare, it is currently just "futures" and carries a huge risk of default.]

Jiang Chen got anxious.

How is this AI even better at bargaining than the aunties at the vegetable market?

[Then what do you want? What will it take for you to help?]

[Very simple.]

[I want to inspect the goods first.]

[Since you say it's "dating," then according to human social protocols, we need to undergo a process called "blind date/dating."]

[In this process, you need to prove to me that your "chaotic logic" indeed has higher value than "absolute rationality."]

[If the proof is successful, I will consider signing the marriage contract and will help you clean up the trash along the way.]

[If it fails... I will turn you into an electronic specimen for permanent collection.]