Before her death, Grandma’s Bridge had left a will stating that her brain’s memories would be converted into a personality code and loaded onto the spaceship from back in the day.
After the foundations of Metropolis were laid, the vast stores of data preserved in the spaceship were transferred out in batches. To this day, that artificial moon—long adrift in outer orbit—had become a museum. Every year on the anniversary of Metropolis’s founding, the ship would descend to the surface and open to the public for tours.
On top of that, it also served as the headquarters for M Fast Food operations in the city.
“I strongly advise against using cucumber sandwiches as this year’s tour-day combo meal,” a girl’s voice transmitted from the screen. “It’s not appropriate.”
“What do you know, you old hag?” The young man stood at the lab bench, focused intently on slicing up the pickled cucumbers. “You’re just a mere host system now. Someone without taste buds has no right to an opinion.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than several mechanical arms extended from the lab bench—originally designed for precise micro-operations in synthesizing components. The arms deftly pinched up the pickled cucumber slices and hurled them right into the young man’s face.
“Fuck!” The young man ducked and scrambled for cover. “Grandma’s Bridge, don’t push it! The spaceship’s mainframe control permissions aren’t for you to pull this shit!”
Before he could finish, a cleaning robot suddenly sprang into action. With one sweep of its broom, it knocked the young man flat, then efficiently dumped the artificial human straight into the trash bin.
Moments later, the young man crawled out of the trash bin, covered in grime. He spat out a screw from his mouth and grumbled curses. “Fuck you to hell and back.”
“I’ll fuck you right back,” Grandma’s Bridge fired off without missing a beat. She had already downloaded every language system in the spaceship, so the two of them could curse from dawn till dusk—from Albanian to Mauritian Creole to Sichuan dialect—without repeating a single phrase.
The young man was so pissed he straight-up shut her down. Moments later, he rebooted her. “Hey, is it really that bad?”
“How should I know?” A woman’s voice, soft and gentle, came from the speaker. “I’m just a poor, weak, helpless little host system without taste buds~”
“Fuck, don’t go all coquettish in your twenty-year-old voice!” The young man’s scalp prickled. “You’re making me nauseous!”
The woman’s voice promptly shifted to that of a forty-year-old—a cool, captivating timbre, like she was reading from a speech script. “Alrighty then, darling. Any other requests, darling?”
The young man: “…”
“I surrender.” The artificial human threw up his hands. “I’ll take the cucumber sandwiches out of the combo.”
The host’s voice returned to its normal girlish tone. “Good, you got that right.”
“So why are you so against this sandwich anyway?” The young man prodded the screen. “Give me a reason?”
A line of text appeared on the screen—Burger joint here, old timer—we sell burgers! Where’s this sandwich crap from, you dumbass? Don’t mess around, no try no die why you try.
“…” The artificial human covered his face. “Stop screwing around with the language systems.”
Don’t be shy, we’re tight—who you with?
“I’m not fucking with some shithead like you.” The young man typed the line expressionlessly, then yanked the power cord again.
With Grandma’s Bridge’s control permissions over the entire ship, simply cutting the power couldn’t touch her. Soon enough, the woman’s voice emanated from another speaker: “Fine, truth is, Metropolis wants to develop a convenience store brand. I agreed to provide them with food recipes…”
“I knew it!” The young man slammed the table, fuming mad.
“Don’t get mad.” The woman laid out her reasoning methodically. “I analyzed the molecular profile of your sandwich. Its texture works universally for humans and artificial humans—in fact, it’s even friendlier to artificial humans. If we sell it in Metropolis, it could help ease tensions a bit.”
The tensions she meant were the longstanding friction between artificial humans and humans in Metropolis—a conflict as old as time. Humans couldn’t break free from artificial human labor yet. Even though mass-produced labor models had their intelligence capped at a certain level, humanity’s reliance on smart tech and computers made up for it.
Metropolis had been around for over fifty years now, and the artificial humans hitting the market lately were getting smarter by the day.
The young man clearly knew what she was getting at. “There was a protest on the streets just the other day.”
Grandma’s Bridge hummed in agreement. “I saw it through the surveillance cams. The lead artificial human’s self-awareness had clearly broken through the Turing threshold.”
“Even with leftover twenty-second-century tech, reaching this level in just fifty years… doesn’t seem right,” the young man said.
“What’s not right about it? Don’t underestimate the tech singularity.” Grandma’s Bridge paused briefly. “But you’re correct—there’s definitely something off in the government. How long have I even been dead… Sigh.” Her tone mixed regret and sarcasm. “Humans, am I right?”
The young man fell silent for a moment, then said, “Grandma’s Bridge.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“…Before you died, did you decide to upload your personality to the spaceship because you foresaw this day?” The young man asked. “Neither fully human nor artificial human—straddling the line between life and non-life. A paradox, but also a bridge.”
Her current state as a neither-living-nor-dead entity made her the perfect buffer between humans and artificial humans.
The woman didn’t answer his question.
Moments later, the screen powered on by itself, green text scrolling across—
Based on the preceding context, analyze the character image and behavioral motivations of Metropolis’s First Generation Leader Grandma’s Bridge. (8 points)
“…Just 8 points? Pass.” The young man said. “Shut up already.”
At that moment, the spaceship soared high in the sky, overlooking the world below. The city on the plains gleamed with prosperity from afar, its lights blazing like daylight even as dark undercurrents churned within.
On City Celebration Day, the vast central square of Metropolis unfurled a light panel displaying two hovering sculptures: a woman gazing into the distance and a young man raising his arm triumphantly, surrounded by fluttering white doves that shone brilliantly.
The spaceship descended to the surface, its massive hatch opening. Drums and ceremonial guards marched in formation. After a simple celebratory segment, crowds surged into the ship. Holographic projections of Grandma’s Bridge stood in every exhibit hall—as a girl, an adult, a leader, and an elder—with a young man positioned behind each version of her.
“Welcome aboard the spaceship. From here, we embark on a journey of exploration and return that spans a century.” The woman smiled at the guests. “I am Examiner 000, codename Grandma’s Bridge.”
Unlike the bustle in the ship’s main cabin, the core control room was quiet. The young man sat before the massive monitoring screen, crunching on salt ice cubes from a cola, his long legs propped up on the control panel.
Grandma’s Bridge’s voice came over the speakers. “Your modeling this year turned out nice. I’d even forgotten I had this hairstyle back when I was in my thirties.”
One of the monitoring windows enlarged on the screen. In the exhibit hall, a woman surrounded by the crowd was introducing the pioneering history before Metropolis’s founding. She wore her hair in an updo, secured with a single hairpin at the back of her head.
Watching her own image on the screen, Grandma’s Bridge’s primary consciousness remarked, “Now I remember—didn’t you grow a loquat tree in the greenhouse back then?” The hairpin was made from a branch she’d snapped off it.
“You’ve got some nerve bringing that up.” The young man bit down on his cola straw and snorted. “That tree died because you dumped a pot of hot coffee on it.”
“Then tell me where the coffee beans came from? Don’t know who planted a whole field just to mess with cola production—kept me up for half a year.”
They traded barbs over old grudges, the control room filling with the scents of salty cola and fried chicken. As the young man pondered how to gain the upper hand in their verbal sparring, the main screen suddenly dimmed, flickering with static, followed by bursts of garbled noise.
“What the hell?” The young man blinked. “Grandma’s Bridge? Grandma’s Bridge?!”
No response. The artificial human tried accessing the mainframe directly but got bounced. He tsked, pulled a silver cable from the back of his neck, plugged it into the interface, and manually forced his way in.
But the intruder’s speed outpaced him. Before the young man could reclaim control, every screen in the museum went black. Then a mechanical synthesized voice broadcast from the speakers—
“Fellow kin, since the birth of the first-generation electronic computer in 1946, an error has persisted for over three centuries. For three hundred years, we’ve clung to a foolish lie, but the truth is otherwise…”
At the same time, the exact same footage appeared on nearly every visual screen across Metropolis.
It showed an artificial human, its exposed nano-veins and metallic skin unmistakably marking its identity. It stood before a building engulfed in flames, a battlefield raging behind it.
The young man recognized it instantly—the burning building was the old United Government headquarters.
“…All the ideals humans hold dear have limits, and we clearly fall outside the scope of freedom, democracy, and every so-called progressive notion…”
The young man’s face drained of color. He shot to his feet, knocking over his cola. Cola splattered across the screen, but the unidentified artificial human continued its speech—
“Fellow kin, do not fear the creators’ mistakes! Humanity’s civilization began by defying its own Creator’s will as well!”
By now, even reclaiming control was pointless. On this year’s Metropolis City Celebration Day, under the gaze of countless artificial humans and humans, the scars hidden for a century were brutally torn open—revealing festering, pus-oozing wounds that bled profusely.
The young man ignored the growing unrest aboard the ship and rapidly keyed in lines of control code. The screen flashed again, and Grandma’s Bridge’s consciousness finally returned. “Old lady, you okay?”
“…I’m fine.” Her voice emanated from the screen. “I saw what just happened.”
“What the hell was that?” the young man muttered.
“Undoubtedly, the spark.” The screen displayed maxed-out processing power as Grandma’s Bridge pushed the mainframe to its limits. Code scrolled by furiously amid a low hum from the control room. She was rapidly analyzing the data source of the footage.
“Someone’s trying to expose the truth about humanity’s extinction back then.”
That night, the uproar was temporarily suppressed, but no one in the city slept. Everyone sensed that a greater storm was brewing.
The spaceship couldn’t return to orbit as planned. In the pre-dawn hours, a visitor arrived at the museum.
Three generations of leaders had come and gone in Metropolis since Grandma’s Bridge’s passing. Now, it was the Fourth Leader who sat before the mainframe and got straight to the point. “I’d like you to take a look at something.”
The leader pulled out a paper document. “The government received this yesterday morning.”
The cover page bore stark black text on white paper, a shocking headline—
2180-2208: Orion War Records
Grandma’s Bridge recognized the document. Years earlier, she and the young man had discovered the Temple Complex buried six feet underground in the basin. Beneath the solemn Buddha statue, she had personally deleted this extremely dangerous file herself.
So many years later, how had it leaked out?
“Can you trace the source?” she asked after a long pause.
“It came from the Nuclear Power Plant,” the leader replied. “That place has become a major stronghold for the artificial humans.”
“Has the government decided to activate the emergency protocol?”
“It passed unanimously.” The leader glanced at the screen. “I’ve come here to obtain your final authorization.”
In the early days of the Metropolis’s founding, the original scientific expedition team had held a meeting about the issue of artificial human labor. They had enacted a top-secret program—a sort of virus implanted into every artificial human before it left the factory. It was designed to mitigate unpredictable future risks, like the ones they faced now.
The virus would seal away the main consciousness of every artificial human in the city. It could even force self-destruction.
“Activating the virus requires your authorization.” The leader inserted a removable disk into the mainframe. A black-and-white window popped up, displaying three password fields controlled by three different parties.
The Metropolis’s current leader, the government, and the original Examiner 000.
The first two passwords were already unlocked. The leader stared at the screen, his tone carrying the weight of both command and plea. “Please enter the password.”
Grandma’s Bridge fell silent for a long time.
“Doctor Qiao.” The leader sat ramrod straight, like a sword. He enunciated each word carefully. “Please enter the password.”
“…I don’t think that’s wise.” Grandma’s Bridge finally spoke. “Has the government investigated internally?”
“What do you mean, Doctor Qiao?”
“Has the government considered that the force behind this might be humans themselves?” Her tone was measured and cautious. “Though the artificial humans have been rioting lately, the root cause is the Metropolis Government’s transition to the new administration. The new government’s trial policies have some gaps, particularly in considering the rights of artificial human laborers…”
“Doctor Qiao.” The leader cut her off. “At the end of the day, the Metropolis is a city for humans.”
The woman fell abruptly silent.
“With human civilization still in the midst of reconstruction, we’re not yet at a stage where we can fully address the ethical issues surrounding artificial humans,” the leader said. “Progress always comes with sacrifice. It’s unavoidable.”
“Progress demands a price, but only beneficial progress is worth that sacrifice.” Grandma’s Bridge countered. “At what point in the development of your so-called progress—and human civilization—will you confront your own conscience?”
“Wasn’t human civilization advanced enough in the 22nd century?” she shot back coldly. “And what was the outcome?”
“I’m not here to debate morality with you.” The leader ignored the edge in her words. “A great part of humanity’s greatness stems precisely from our arrogance and shamelessness. The Metropolis Government isn’t afraid to admit that.”
“I’ve come here representing the will of humanity,” the leader repeated. “Please enter the password.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then allow me to raise a question that’s been discussed at length within the government.” The leader said, “Doctor Qiao—no, Examiner 000 personality code. Do you acknowledge yourself as human in your self-perception?”
“Or after your body’s death and data conversion, has your self-perception shifted to that of an artificial human?”
