The Imperial Marshal awoke feeling as though he was floating in a warm ocean. The first thing he did after opening his eyes was to call for the Annihilator.
Accompanied by the sound of a pneumatic hiss, the lid of the cryogenic pod above him slowly opened.
A gentle AI voice sounded: "The medical pod is at your service. You have been in cryogenic sleep for a total of one thousand two hundred and twenty-one days. Welcome to consciousness, beginning a full body examination now."
He lay motionless inside the cryogenic pod, allowing waves of red light to scan over him.
AI: "Examination complete, your vital signs are normal, overall evaluation: excellent. As expected of the Empire’s most powerful Marshal, well done!"
It was the self-set voice and program of the Annihilator, yet the Imperial Marshal understood it did not possess the consciousness of the Annihilator.
The Annihilator’s consciousness forever remained in the warship swallowed by a black hole.
The rumor was true, the Annihilator was initially a nanny robot that accompanied him through a lonely and bullied adolescence. After he transformed his own warship, he retained the nanny robot’s AI core.
Thus, the Annihilator came to be.
And it seemed that through successive modifications and program updates, the Annihilator had awakened its own consciousness.
"Baby, today is another day to obediently eat your meals!"
The AI voice in the medical pod sounded cutely childish.
This was also one of the programs set after the Annihilator awakened its consciousness.
...
The Annihilator was unimaginably large, and its medical pod was equally vast, requiring at least an hour to walk leisurely through every corner.
Of course, the Imperial Marshal had no such leisure.
While eating his dinner, he had the medical pod’s equipment link to this planet’s data.
This planet, called Earth, was in a stage of a Type I civilization, having yet to tap into the energy of the other planets in its own system. The energy level of life forms on Earth was extremely low, with a lifespan of merely around a hundred years, and after death, they barely had any chance to feed back into the habitable zone.
The K93 star system also had various life forms, also referred to as humans. The difference was, life forms in K93 had extremely long lifespans and high energy levels. After death, the life forms would disintegrate, the energy contained within would feed back into the entire star system.
After learning more information about Earth, he roughly compared the differences between himself and Earthlings. He approximated himself to be akin to an adolescent on Earth.
In the cryogenic pod, one does not grow, those years did not count. He was actually over thirty years old, but in the K93 system with extraordinarily long lifespans, anyone under thirty-five was considered a cub.
When he initially went to the Imperial Capital to enlist in the army, he had to lie about his age to enter.
He learned some more information about Earthlings, then began checking the medical pod’s reserves.
The AI systematically reported, and when it mentioned that the "cryogenic pod was functioning normally," he paused.
He had already come out, how was the cryogenic pod still running?
"Which cryogenic pod?" he asked.
AI responded: "Cryogenic Pod No. 2."
The Imperial Marshal opened Cryogenic Pod No. 2 and saw a small infant inside. Then he remembered that a few days before leaving the K93 star system, he had passed by a supply planet raided by space pirates and found a critically ill child there.
The infant was too weak and had been lying in the treatment pod the entire time.
When the Annihilator came into being, the treatment pod automatically entered sleep mode, becoming Cryogenic Pod No. 2.
AI: "Vital signs are weak, would you like to switch to the treatment pod to continue treatment?"
The Imperial Marshal looked at the sleeping infant. Perhaps this was his only companion from the K93 star system.
"Switch,"
he said.
...

The man retorted unkindly: "Stop making things up, she and I aren’t in that kind of relationship. Just colleagues, we only had a meal together. Stop being so paranoid! It’s late, I need to get back to the company! Get yourself a cab home!"
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