The era of American comics begins

Chapter 201 Empty Shell
"There is no such thing as Harry Wallis."

Jessica Jones said emphatically when reporting to Michael.

She narrated to Michael the whole process of her sneaking into Wallis Company, especially the part where she discovered that the security guards on the top floor were all robots.

"Make no mistake, Wallis & Co. is a shell company," she said. "This company has no actual business. It was just incorporated by someone for a purpose, probably to Do some deceptive things. And their founder Harry Wallis is a fictional character. I checked his office carefully. There is no trace of anyone using it. I also checked including public information and All the files in their company's internal data found that the only image of Harry Wallis was the registration photo, and there was no other image data, not even his family or relatives. material."

Michael crossed his fingers, leaned back in his office chair, and listened.

Regarding the Wallis Company, the situation Jessica mentioned is not very rare. Indeed, there are many shell companies in the hands of many forces and even some public figures.These companies often only have a legal form and have prepared all legally required documents, but most of them have no fixed place of business and never open any substantive business.This kind of company is very versatile, and even Michael has at least a dozen of them.

It is not so often the case that their boss, Mr. Wallis, does not exist at all.

In the highly informationized modern society, it is not impossible to fabricate a complete person. For example, Michael Paso is an identity that Michael created for himself out of nothing, and he even has more than one identity.But there are only a handful of people in this world who can forge false identities so seamlessly. The Heavenly Sword Bureau has such huge resources and countless talents all over the world. There should be no more than three people who are as good as him.

Then there's the bionic security guard that Jessica mentioned.Equally noteworthy is the technique of wrapping machines in artificial skin so that they look almost human.If anyone thinks this company deserves to be guarded by an army of bionic robots so technologically advanced, that's a statement in itself.

"But there is also this possibility," Michael Xu Xu said, "Maybe Mr. Wallis is just a very private person, and he is very careful. He deliberately avoided the leak of photos of himself and his family, and he happened to basically never Don't stay in the office."

"If you're asking if I have evidence, yes, I do." Jessica said, using her multi-function wristwatch to request a connection to the projection system in the room.The floating screen starts up, projecting the operation interface in her watch.She selected a copied video file and opened a surveillance video.That's the surveillance video at the entrance of Wallis's company.

"Like many other companies, Wallis requires all employees to sign in with their fingerprints when they come to work. This is a video I got on a day in March. The record shows that Mr. Harry Wallis himself arrived at 3 o'clock in the morning. Signed into the company, and completed the sign-in and clock-in with fingerprints. Pay attention to the video at [-] o'clock in the morning."

She dragged the video timeline to eight o'clock in the morning, and there was no one at the entrance.

"Then here is another day two months later. Similarly, Mr. Wallis' clock-in record appeared at this point. Let's look at the surveillance of that day."

She opened the next video and dragged it to the appointed time, but there was no one at the entrance again.

"I see, so it seems that your inference may indeed be true." Michael nodded, "You have done a good job of investigating, thank you for your hard work."

Jessica raised her eyebrows: "So you don't need me to continue to investigate these doubts?"

"Not for now. If there is a need later, I will contact you again."

After Jessica left, Michael raised his head and asked into the air: "How is it, Shirley?"

"I think Miss Jones has a point."

As Shirley spoke, she transferred the only photo of Harry Wallis to the floating screen, and scanned the middle-aged man's face in detail.She used local recognition technology to match and identify Wallis' hairstyle, eyes, nose, and mouth, and quickly picked out five matching photos from the database.

A lawyer, a movie star, a politician, a business tycoon, and a wanted criminal, five different parts of five people's faces are pieced together to become such a brand new photo, a person who does not exist at all, this It was Harry Wallis.

"Interesting." Michael held his chin, "Any other discoveries?"

"When Ms. Jones used her Tianjian device to access Wallis' system, I also tried to hack into the other party's database through her link. But I found that the company's password was extremely difficult to crack. They used the Unique encoding not seen in any institutional system."

"Harder to break into than the CIA or the Department of Defense or something?"

"I think so. It's a new kind of encoding, and even I've never seen it before, and it might be really difficult to break it by force."

You must know that Shirley is the top artificial intelligence that can break through the Pentagon within 1 minute, and Shirley has even kept backdoors in the systems of many government agencies including the Pentagon, so that Tianjian can always intercept it immediately. important news.If there is a system where even Shirley would find it "difficult", then that place is absolutely extraordinary.

"But you still succeeded?"

"It took a little more work, yes. But my access is still restricted." Shirley's tone was extremely rare and unnatural, "Sir, I can't say for sure, but I think I seem to find in this system Something. Some trace of data, it looks like... like my kind."

Michael thought for a moment.

"You mean, artificial intelligence?"

"I mean it's just a guess." Shirley said uncertainly, "but something is interfering with my detection, as if someone has wiped the data as early as possible before I access every module. As far as I can tell There is only another AI capable of doing this.”

Michael was silent for a moment.Now this issue has begun to formally attract his attention.

"what have you found?"

"Not much, mostly corrupted data, fragments of programs. But only one word, a word that recurs in every module I've accessed. I think it might be a name, an item or something that's The name of the weapon or tool in development."

"What is it?"

Shirley didn't say it directly.She cast six capital letters on the floating screen.

Altron (ULTRON).

(End of this chapter)