Chapter 1033 - 75: The Controlled Scientist

Dr. Bruce Banner, a Marvel World genius with seven doctorates, also holds another identity in most worlds: the Hulk.

However, at this moment, compared to the Hulk in Lille’s impression, Dr. Banner looks more like a green, strong goblin, and a super ugly version at that. His muscles and skeleton appear somewhat deformed, lacking any sense of power, making one feel bizarre and nauseous.

Upon seeing Lille, Dr. Banner was also taken aback:

Compared to his own twisted body, Lille’s form seemed like it was forged from iron...

At the Rocksen Group, prosthetic technology was something he absolutely did not want to touch. Every brain-computer interface that was produced had a backdoor left in it, and every prosthetic surgery came with a loan. Personal freedom was forcibly mortgaged away in a contract, leaving an endless amount of work.

Dr. Banner is a person of high intelligence, and smart people don’t need brain-computer interfaces. His intellectual performance still far exceeded those who had prosthetics, and precisely because of this, he was even less inclined to equip himself with prosthetics. To him, prosthetics were nothing more than a pure prison.

He neither wanted to control others nor be controlled by others.

Seeing Lille, his first reaction was: Is this a prosthetic human? An exoskeleton? Power armor? Has Rocksen’s technology broken through?

Lille took a few steps forward, the hand cannon in his hand always aimed at the head of this green monster: "Dr. Banner? It’s a pity to meet under such circumstances. I am Lille Lee, I believe I don’t need to explain further?"

"Your body..."

"I rebuilt my body. It’s no secret that I have a terminal illness."

"Reconstruct? Did you copy your consciousness and put it onto a chip?! Have you... have you ever thought if that isn’t still you?"

Lille gently shook his head, examining Dr. Banner’s body up and down: "You didn’t copy your consciousness to another place. Do you feel like you’re still you now? How does it feel having your consciousness hijacked by biological agents?"

Dr. Banner was stunned for a moment, his expression twisted into a tremble.

If an ordinary person saw this expression, they would likely instinctively tense their body, but Lille, relying on negative energy, could clearly perceive that Dr. Banner was giving a bitter smile.

Or rather, although there hadn’t been a detailed diagnosis of Dr. Banner’s current condition, from the beginning, he could judge his state through this kind of intuition:

Dr. Banner’s mind was very unclear, resembling schizophrenia—not multiple personality disorder, but schizophrenia.

By most accounts, the gamma serum should create a whole new personality, but here it did not; instead, Banner’s consciousness became fragmented.

"...You’re right..." Dr. Banner said with his head down, his body still trembling, "Debates about self-identity never really have a definite answer, and you... in some ways, are more like your original self than I am."

The self is a philosophical proposition. Some look down upon philosophy, others enjoy studying it. As someone who easily earned seven doctorates, Bruce Banner naturally enjoyed these topics, although he likely has his own views which form a part of his firm worldview, yet he had read many books.

Just what exactly is the self?

As a child, no one ever thinks about growing up to have a gun pointed at them every day at work. No one imagines that their biggest dream would be a little shelter from the wind and rain... Even the grown-up Bruce Banner, the genius with seven doctorates, would never have wanted to end up like this.

Can someone altered by the world to this extent still count as their original self?

If keeping the flesh alive qualifies as maintaining the self, then it means humans are merely machines that crazily change their principles and beliefs under external pressure, with no free will—because every action could be changed, every will is based on the survival of the physical body...

No sacrifice, no persistence, no ideals.

Ultimately, ending up like this: a muddle-headed shell where every moment, from soul to flesh, is dying. Yet, obviously, reality is not so. Humanity’s greatest brilliance often accompanies self-destructive sacrifices, transcending the ever-pursuit-of-the-physical obsessions.

There is also a theory that self-existence relies on the continuity of memory, experience, and psychological state. From this angle, Lille is still more self-aware than he is, for at present, his memories are chaotic, his experience limited due to captivity, and his psychological state shattered.

"...What’s it like outside? I’ve been under these people’s control for a long time, about... more than three years."

That means, after President Ellis launched the coup, Dr. Banner had been locked up in the dark room, seeing nothing of the outside world, with a gun at his head.

Lille continued approaching, and the mechanical arm behind him began to grasp nearby devices and objects for analysis, while he started to simply narrate to this locked-up... genius and beast the events occurring in the world he’s been locked out of.

"To put it simply, the Rocksen Group supported President Ellis in amending laws, the United States split, and after monopolizing oil, it seems Rocksen intends to conduct experiments threatening Earth... in a physical sense threatening earth."

"Singularity Particles, right?" Banner caught the key point, "Roksen plans to open a portal to the Otherworld."

Lille was somewhat surprised. He didn’t expect Banner to know about this!

Dr. Banner continued: "I also know that Tony Stark is probably dead, and it seems they lost the design AI used for industrial processes and eventually found me.

They found me, claiming they wanted my technology to help them invent a biological computer, a kind of... super brain.

The gamma serum would make biological cells full of radioactivity and power. A computer established based on a system of radioactive particle clouds in space, bioelectricity, neurotransmitters, and other elements would surpass the calculation speed of traditional electronic computers, perhaps only matched by quantum computers in such efficiency."

"Did you help them? Do you know the consequences?"

"I... I just wanted to survive, I couldn’t do anything." Banner looked around the laboratory, "I just wanted to survive first, then find a chance to escape here. But once my brain started running, their control became stronger; they rebooted their AI using... gamma serum."

"Did they make you do anything else?"

Banner gazed at the shattered mainframe: it held all the experimental data he had conducted over this period, but it was just destroyed by that soldier.

He was silent for a moment, then pointed at something in the laboratory cabinet—

Lille instantly recognized it as a brain-computer interface, the storage tank meant for keeping the equipment was broken, and the maintenance fluid spilled everywhere.

"I don’t have much time left, I speak too slowly, put that thing into my brain, I’ll transcribe the data." He then paused, "This is the only thing I can do now. Ever since inventing this thing, I live in fear every day...

I dreamt that they injected the serum into ordinary people, I saw one after another person, under machine control, walking into an enormous mass grave, saw flesh and blood melting together into a... a skyscraper-high tower..."

Green bloody tears flowed from Banner’s eyes: "I’ve always been running away from things turning out this way, I always thought that as long as I survive, there would eventually be a turnaround..."

The Octopus Arm grabbed the equipment and quickly disassembled more from the dead soldier’s body, optimized and modified it according to Lille’s ideas, and finally placed it before Banner.

Seeing Dr. Banner’s appearance, Lille felt somewhat rueful. He completely understood the sentiment, but the deed was done.

"Then now is the turning point, though there’s no way to reverse what’s already happened."

The machine pierced into Dr. Banner’s body. He continually scooped up the spilled gamma serum from the ground with his hands, and poured it into the cranial incision—

The green fluorescence grew stronger and stronger, his body did not enlarge, but his brain indeed became increasingly larger.

A vast amount of data wrote into the storage device, and Dr. Banner’s body gradually ceased all functions, resting against the wall, turning into a puddle of unsupported nuclear waste...

He was dead.