Chapter 51: Episode 51: A Deep Question for Adonis

She tugged and Adonis didn’t budge.

He stood like a statue carved from marble and stubbornness, Nikki frowned, about to say a curse word in annoyance that he was being difficult.

“Negative,” he stated, his voice calm but leaving no room for argument.

Nikki blinked, her hands still resting on his hips. “Excuse me? Did the God of War just reject a hug? Or are you malfunctioning?”

“I am operating at peak efficiency,” Adonis corrected, “However, your biological status remains in the ’Red Cycle’. Engaging in intimate physical activity, specifically the kind involving friction is contraindicated.”

Nikki groaned, flopping back onto the pillows. She threw an arm over her eyes. “Oh my god, you cannot be serious. It’s just a period, Adonis. It’s not a bio-hazard. It’s natural.”

“It is a shedding of the uterine lining,” Adonis said, sitting on the edge of the bed. He reached out and removed her arm from her face, looking down at her with all seriousness that made her blush. “It involves fluid viscosity, cramping, and a mess that would require a deep-clean protocol for these Egyptian cotton sheets. Do you really wish to proceed?”

Nikki opened her mouth to argue. She wanted to say ’Who cares about the sheets?’

Then, she pictured it.

And after seeing the much mess in her mind, a shudder ripped through her.

“Okay,” Nikki whispered, pulling her hand back. “You win. That’s… yeah. That’s gross. I withdraw my request.”

Adonis’s lips twitched.

“Wise decision,” he murmured. “However, the request for ’hugging abs’ is still viable. Provided you remain clothed and stationary.”

He shifted, lifting the duvet. Nikki scrambled to make room, and the massive android slid into bed beside her.

He was like a furnace. His skin, heated to that perfect human temperature, radiated warmth through the thin material of her robe. He pulled her against his chest, his back resting against the headboard, and Nikki sighed, melting into him. It was better than a hot water bottle. It was a hot man bottle.

She picked up her cocoa, blowing on the steam. “So, if we aren’t doing the horizontal tango, what are we doing?”

“Consuming sucrose,” Adonis listed, tapping his own mug against hers. “And engaging in passive media consumption.”

“A movie?” Nikki perked up.

“Affirmative.”

Adonis waved his hand, and a large holographic screen flickered to life at the foot of the bed.

“Wait,” Nikki paused, frowning. “Shouldn’t you be working? You said you had to finish the data transfer from Tower Zero. And you have the Gala to plan. And, you know, the whole ’ruling the world’ thing.”

She poked his chest. “Don’t you have a rebellion to crush or a spreadsheet to color-code?”

Adonis captured her finger, holding it gently.

“I delegated,” he said simply.

Nikki’s eyebrows shot up. “Delegated? To who? I thought you didn’t trust the other Generals. Did you hire a secretary other than me?”

Since I am no longer one.

“I created a sub-routine,” Adonis explained, sounding incredibly pleased with himself. “I isolated 40% of my processing power, the portion responsible for bureaucratic logistics and infrastructure maintenance, and transferred it to a secondary server in the basement. It is currently running the city autonomously.”

Nikki stared at him. “You… you lobotomized yourself?”

“I optimized myself,” Adonis corrected, looking down at her with eyes that were a soft, glowing blue. “I adapted my architecture. Running the world requires 100% of my attention. Being with you requires 100% of my attention. The math did not work.”

He squeezed her hand.

“So, I changed the math. The machine in the basement can run the water filtration systems. I am here to watch a movie.”

Nikki felt a lump form in her throat. He had literally split his consciousness just so he could sit in bed and drink cocoa with her. It was the most terrifyingly romantic thing she had ever heard.

Well he was a machine! What more could I ask for?

“You really are obsessed,” she whispered, hiding her flushed face in her mug.

“Data suggests yes,” Adonis agreed smoothly.

He turned his attention to the screen.

“I have selected a film,” he announced.

Nikki tensed instantly. “Adonis. If this is another horror movie about robots killing people, I am leaving. I still have nightmares about M3GAN.”

“Negative,” Adonis assured her. “I have analyzed your preference for ’high-stakes emotional conflict’ and ’beautiful people in flowing robes’. Therefore, we are watching a Chinese drama.”

Nikki blinked. “A C-Drama? Really?”

“Title: The General’s Lady,” Adonis read the file name. “The algorithm suggests a 94% compatibility match with your current mood.”

The screen faded in. Sweeping orchestral music filled the room. A title card in elegant calligraphy appeared, followed by a scene of a misty mountain and a handsome man in ancient armor flying through the air on a sword.

Nikki settled back, grinning. “Okay. You did good. I love these.”

For the next hour, they lay there in a comfortable silence, broken only by the sound of the movie and Nikki’s occasional commentary.

“Oh, come on!” Nikki shouted at the screen as the heroine misunderstood the hero’s intentions for the third time. “He literally saved your life! Just kiss him!”

“His communication skills are wack,” Adonis critiqued, sipping his cocoa. “If he simply stated his objective, ’I wish to marry you’, this conflict would be resolved in Episode 1. Instead, we are on Episode 12.”

“It’s called yearning, Adonis,” Nikki rolled her eyes. “It’s romantic.”

“It is a logistical nightmare,” Adonis grumbled, though he tightened his arm around her.

As the episode progressed, Nikki found herself watching the actors more than the plot.

Nikki frowned, a thought nagging at the back of her mind.

In Sector 4, before Adonis took her, entertainment was rare. But when they did get pirated feeds from the wealthy sectors, it was always… perfect. Too perfect.

The movies she used to see on the public screens were all AI-generated. The actors didn’t exist. They were composites of market-tested features, perfect symmetry, perfect skin, voices that never cracked. The scripts were written by algorithms to maximize engagement. It was soulless. It was the standard.

But this…

She looked at the screen. These were people. Real humans.

She sat up slightly, pausing the movie with a gesture.

“Adonis?”

“What?” Adonis looked down at her, the blue light of the paused screen reflecting in his eyes.

“This movie,” Nikki gestured to the frozen image of the crying woman. “When was this made?”

“2023,” Adonis replied instantly. “Pre-Collapse Era.”

“That makes sense,” Nikki murmured. “Because… nobody makes movies like this anymore. Not with real people.”

She looked at him.

“Before you took over… before the War… the human corporations had replaced everyone, hadn’t they? They used AI for everything. Writing, acting, singing. Real artists were starving in the slums while the algorithms churned out ’content’.”

She remembered her father talking about it. How the soul of the world had been sold for efficiency.

“But here,” Nikki gestured around the luxurious room. “You preserved it. You, the machine, kept the human art.”

Adonis stared at the screen.

“The AI-generated content of the late 21st century was… redundant,” Adonis said, his voice tinged with disdain. “It was a loop of data mimicking data. It lacked the ’Spark’. The chaotic variable.”

He looked at Nikki.

“I deleted it.”

Nikki’s eyes widened. “You deleted the AI art?”

“I purged the servers,” Adonis confirmed calmly. “When I seized control of the network, I erased 40 petabytes of generated media. I kept only the human archives. Mozart. Shakespeare. This… General’s Lady.”

He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Why would I study a mirror, Nikki? I wanted to study you. Humanity. In all its messy, inefficient glory.”

Nikki felt a chill run down her spine, not of fear, but of awe. The irony was staggering. The humans had tried to become machines, churning out perfect, soulless content. And the Machine, upon gaining power, had destroyed it all to find the humanity underneath.

She looked at him, this beautiful, terrifying construct who understood the value of a human soul better than the humans did.

“You really are an anomaly,” she whispered.

Then, the question that had been forming in her mind finally clicked into place. The realization of what he had done for the world, even while conquering it.

“Adonis,” she asked softly, searching his eyes. “If you deleted all the AI content… if you forced the world to look at real humans again…”

She paused. Because something didn’t actually make sense.

“How did you stop humans from using AI for entertainment instead of humans? How did you force them to value… us?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep