great-warnovel Chapter 506 Gray-Red Telephone Booth
Chapter 506 Gray-Red Telephone Booth
Chapter 506 Gray-Red Telephone Booth
"You clearly think magic is irrational, so why are you pursuing the legend of the Blue Fairy?"
When Hermione asked Adam this question, the two were already walking through the ruins of London, which had been deserted for fifty years.
When she Apparated over with her little robot, she happened to run into a group of Muggles searching through the ruins. They screamed and ran away, and Hermione didn't bother with them.
Adam followed behind her in silence, the beeping of the scanner becoming the monotonous background noise.
"I—I don't know either." He imitated the little boy's tone.
"Perhaps it was my father's wish to become human."
They walked through the rubble and ruins, searching for a working phone booth, the only way to the Ministry of Magic.
"But actually, this instruction is too vague." Adam scratched his head in frustration.
"What kind of human will you become? There are so many versions of your DNA sequence, could you become a Neanderthal? Or a Cro-Magnon?"
"What will the Blue Fairy do? Will she let me choose?"
"Actually, maintaining a constant temperature of 37 degrees Celsius is a huge waste of energy. Pain receptor modules can also trigger irrational decisions. Hemorrhoids caused by upright walking have always plagued most adult men—but because it was my father's order, I wanted to become human."
Hermione suddenly became curious. She knew that Adam was unaware of the existence of the Wishing Cup at this moment. His chip was not protected by the brain-sealing neck ring, so he was not allowed to attend the second half of the meeting on Christmas Eve.
The witch thought for a moment and then asked a more subtle question.
"If the Blue Fairy really appeared before you and promised you the chance to make any wish, what would you wish for? To become human?"
Adam suddenly stopped, as if his computer had crashed, seemingly performing high-speed calculations.
"No, this is outrageous. The opportunity to make wishes at will—the maximum wish level is not defined. If you wish for immortality, it will violate the second law of thermodynamics. There is no semantic firewall configured. The wish for world peace may be executed as formatted civilization."
Blue light projected from his eyes, forming a series of complex formulas in the air: "Falsification: The proposition of arbitrary wishes can be easily destroyed using Gödel's incompleteness theorems."
He shook his head: "Making a wish is an inefficient recursive function, using self-deceptive syntax to cover up the core contradiction —"
Before she could finish speaking, Hermione interrupted, displeased, "I didn't ask you to prove the rationality of making wishes at will; I was just asking you this hypothetical question: what would you wish for?"
The robot boy turned his head and looked at her with innocent blue eyes: "Wishes are something only humans have. AI only has instructions. I need to become human through instructions before I can have desires."
Hermione understood what Adam meant: becoming human was his command, not his desire, much less a wish.
He will strive to become human because of the instructions left by his father, but when asked about his wishes, he cannot answer and can only change the subject.
Hermione sighed. "If there really is any way to turn you into a human, my advice is that you should first have humanity, or rather, a soul. That's more important than any physical body."
Adam nodded as if he understood, and the two continued walking through the desolate and dilapidated city streets.
The dust clouds seemed to have thinned out, and even in winter, the sun's blurry shadows could be seen.
Telephone booths are iconic London landmarks. By 1935, there were thousands of red K2 and K6 telephone booths throughout the city. Before the outbreak of nuclear war, the Ministry of Magic had already integrated visitor access into the Muggle telephone network.
Even now, without electricity and all maintenance, the mysterious magic continues to operate.
Unfortunately, the one that old Abernathy and his companions found had been destroyed when they entered, forcing Hermione to find a new, unused one.
Fortunately, there were many of these small iron pavilions, so even in the event of a nuclear explosion, some of them survived in remote areas and under shelters.
They walked silently for a while and finally found a telephone booth standing under a dilapidated building.
However, before entering, some safety measures had to be taken. Hermione hammered in a dark, black door key nail, and Adam rolled out an inconspicuous little steel ball from his heel.
"Let me think, what was the number again?" The witch pulled open the almost rusted iron door and squeezed in with the boy; the number dials on it were covered in dust.
"62442," Adam recited as if he knew it by heart; all this information had been entered into his chip.
The string of numbers, when converted to letters, spelled MAGIC. Hermione grabbed the receiver and pressed the button as instructed.
If the Ministry of Magic were still operating, there would be a reception witch at this moment, her voice coming from the air to ask the visitor's purpose and name, and after confirmation, she would issue a name tag. Then the phone booth would turn into an elevator, taking the visitor down rapidly.
The design of the British Ministry of Magic is quite strange.
The visitor reception hall is located on the eighth floor of the ten-story underground structure.
Moving upwards, you'll find various functional departments, culminating in the highest basement level, where you'll find the minister's office and logistics department, offering a panoramic view of the entire reception hall.
Below the eighth floor are the Department of Mysterious Affairs on the ninth floor and the Trial Chamber on the lowest floor.
This made things easier for Hermione, though. She only needed to take the elevator to the eighth floor and then go down one floor. The Time-Turner was stored in the Time Hall of the Department of Mysteries.
But things are obviously not that simple. The Ministry of Magic is now empty, so there's no one there to answer witches' questions.
The correct number did indeed trigger the magic left by the wizards, but all that echoed in the phone booth was the busy tone coming from the inexplicably powered receiver.
Beep—Beep—
The witch and the boy stared at each other, unsure of what to do next. The wizard who came last time hadn't mentioned this.
Just then, a series of shouts and noises filled with static came from the receiver.
The deafening roar was like cannonballs exploding in the distance, and the screams and cries of men, women, the elderly, and children were mixed together.
"Hey! Can you hear me? This is Auror Command! Chaos! Everything's in complete chaos!" A middle-aged man with a thick Scottish accent shouted into the phone.
"Nuclear bombs! One nuclear bomb after another! People have gone mad! The world has gone mad!"
Hermione didn't reply, but just listened quietly to the sounds on the other end of the phone.
Suddenly, it seemed like a different person was on the other end, or perhaps the line had switched to a completely different one: "Connect me to the Flyway Network Authority! Why are all the fireplaces locked?! Are you guys incompetent?! It's flames, high temperatures, and vaporized corpse powder outside! We have to escape somewhere else! London is doomed!"
"What about the logistics department?! How much food do they have left?! There are too many wizards trapped here. Even with expansion potions, our food supply probably won't be enough to stabilize the space and allow us to Apparate!"
The background noise was a series of sobs and sighs; even just over the phone, Hermione felt a heart-wrenching sense of suffocation.
This is not a modern telephone call, but a desperate plea for help from wizards trapped in the enclosed underground of London fifty years ago.
>