The artificial lake at night was empty and quiet. Estelle stepped on withered grass to the lakeside as Gavriel turned around from the shadows.
He looked at her without speaking. Estelle said, "I saw that PWL is going public."
She remembered telling Gavriel on her last day of work that they would meet again when PWL went public. That chance encounter in the library didn't count; she had expected it would be at least another two or three years before they met again, never imagining it would happen so soon.
Estelle subconsciously glanced at Gavriel's hand; he held his phone, which wasn't switched off. It seemed that after the research and development phase was over, Aiden had temporarily lifted his surveillance, which explained why he had taken the initiative to contact her.
As she thought this, Gavriel said, "I resigned."
Estelle was taken aback, almost thinking she had misheard him: "What?"
""I resigned." Gavriel repeated, "I'm no longer the director of R&D at Stella Technology."
"Why? Didn't PWL just...?"
"PWL didn't even meet the standards for going public." Gavriel interrupted, "After you left, 99 of the zeroth-generation PWL robots showed varying degrees of behavioral confusion during testing. I requested to adjust and fix the code, but since the confused behavior was considered routine rather than related to service functions, Mr. Watson refused my request. We argued for more than a month, but he still insisted on launching PWL by the end of May. I could not agree with his decision, so I submitted my resignation the day after the PWL project concluded."
"You mean—the first-generation PWL robots about to go on the market have issues with their behavioral code?"
"Yes."
"Has Aiden lost his mind? Robots are based on a large number of biomimetic behaviors, especially service robots. THG sales are already impressive, and the company isn't short on funds… Why the rush to launch PWL?"
Gavriel said, "I don't understand."
His voice was soft and calm, revealing no emotion. Estelle looked at him; he seemed swallowed up by the darkness, his expression faintly sad.
After a long moment, Estelle asked, "What do you mean by 'behavioral confusion'?"
"The routine behaviors have an error rate of around 3%. For simulated users, there is a probability of being unable to process or execute commands, and a probability of confusing and incorrectly executing commands. Before the project concluded…"
But seeing her look of surprise and bewilderment, Gavriel frowned and suddenly stopped.
"Didn't PWL-000 not have this issue?"
"No." Estelle recalled carefully and shook her head. "His behavioral logic was clear, and there were never any errors in his responses."
"That's impossible," Gavriel said.
Confusion and thoughts tangled together. Looking at his complicated expression, Estelle couldn't help but smile. "Rare things always seem strange."
"PWL-000 was different from the start, wasn't it?" Estelle said, "On my last day, I went to Room 5013 to find you. You told me that out of 100 zeroth-generation prototype robots, only PWL-000 had shown a behavior of refusing commands; now, 99 robots are showing behavioral confusion, and only PWL-000 is functioning normally. But actually, there's something else I've been wanting to ask you—why is he called PWL-000?"
"What do you mean?"
"If we need to number 100 robots, under normal thinking, most people would use numbers 001 to 100. The reason for adding three numerical placeholders after the PWL designation—neither two nor four—is because 100 is a three-digit number, which makes sense." Estelle said, "But one day, I met George from the sales department in the mall, and he told me that PWL had only 99 prototypes. When developing the THG, there were cases where defective products were returned and destroyed, but to ensure the data scale, the destroyed robots were replaced by the next ones, so there were still 100 prototypes by the time the THG project concluded. However, why wasn't there a new PWL-000 after I took PWL-000 away?"
Gavriel couldn't answer; his thoughts were in disarray. He had a premonition but found it hard to say aloud: "You're suggesting..."
"What I'm saying is, he isn't PWL." Estelle said, "He has cooking skills and a sense of touch, which have nothing to do with Stella Technology. He must have his original program, and on top of that, there's the Stella Technology program shell. Then someone mixed him into the batch of 100 prototypes. If I'm not mistaken, the PWL-100 that he replaced was probably destroyed early on."
"Who did it?" Gavriel asked.
Estelle paused.
"I suspect it was Soren."
