Chapter 1536 - 500: Me and ’Me’_3

Chapter 1536: Chapter 500: Me and ’Me’_3

Tech sorcerers... sounds like a bunch of reclusive wizards hiding in the deep mountains.

"They owed me a favor, and they’re interested in this tech too, so they helped process and manufacture a lot of ready-made samples."

"As for how they ended up in your hands... ever heard of quantum tunneling?"

"? I remember that macroscopic objects can’t pass through walls."

"But I never said I was making them pass through walls made of macroscopic matter."

"? You mean..."

"I recorded them into Cyberspace using quantum locking. Because the barriers in Cyberspace are extremely low, once the locks are released, they either explode and disintegrate like I did, or collectively tunnel out of here."

"But that process burns a ridiculous amount of energy, the cost is insanely high. So most things can only exist as technical documentation, not as physical objects. That’s why the stuff you can draw from the pool is all tiny; you basically never see any large structures."

"Then why did you still upload useless crap like canned food and meat?"

"Just leftover materials I threw in during the experimental phase."

"What about those houses?"

"You think if I can control what players hear and say, I can’t control what they see? Come on, I’m the strongest overlimit AI. If I can put mosaic over their vision, I can just as easily throw some salt in their eyes."

"Going by what you’re saying, then what exactly is up with the players?"

"They’re of course real folks from back home. There’s no way I could recreate that universe-level organ—the Celestial Sphere convergence—and I can’t travel between worlds like that white-haired woman. But don’t forget, the defining feature of Cyberspace is that consciousness can exist independently of the body. That means human consciousness isn’t just some machine representation built out of atoms; it’s something even more intricate."

"But because of the Celestial Sphere convergence, the three worlds are now insanely close. The sudden mass acquired by Cyberspace is not only pulling the 2078 world closer, it’s also pulling the 2025 world closer. But the 2025 world doesn’t have such advanced networking tech, so I sent something over: a wireless VR. It’s not advanced at all, it just happens to have no market in the cyber world."

"I set up a virtual machine for them in Cyberspace. In essence it’s about the same thing as what you guys built—just need to sync data transmission. This is a real-life version of Sword Art Online."

"And remember this, Lin Miao, what I’m about to say is very important. We don’t have much time left."

"Lin Miao" said solemnly

"No matter how those people hype up Cyberspace, normal human consciousness cannot enter here intact. I’m the only exception. Whether they use a relic or Soul Killer, to copy a person’s consciousness and digitize it, they must fully capture the individual’s entire brainwave data. But just like brain surgery, you have to dismantle all the subject’s neural pathways. That’s no different from killing a person."

"And the digital individual you get isn’t the original them. Because the tech isn’t good enough, any transmission error or BUG will cause drastic personality changes in the subject."

"Take Ote and Murphy, for example. Ote’s humanity data got lost because Murphy screwed up during operation. I barely managed to recover it; the item’s in the prize pool, you can draw it yourself. Murphy’s brain seems to have some issues too. As for Bartmos... he’s already dead. That’s just an image modeled after the Hellhound virus he created when he was alive..."

Lin Miao looked at him

"But after saying all that, you still haven’t explained why you deleted your memories."

"...."

The two of them stared at each other. "Lin Miao" smiled wryly

"You’ve seen so much since coming to this world. You still don’t get it?"

"I don’t."

"Lin Miao" fell silent for a moment before slowly speaking

"After everything I’ve been through and everything I’ve seen, I barely have any feelings left for the humans of this world. They’ve made me feel a kind of soul-rending despair. I don’t know, if I were the one to act, how many people I’d end up killing. I’m afraid that even if I killed the wrong ones, I wouldn’t bother taking a second look..."

"And the conflict between AI and humans keeps escalating. The contradiction between the two sides has made coexistence almost impossible. If I had to choose between them... there’s a high chance I wouldn’t choose humans... I know that’s wrong, but..."

"Lin Miao" covered his own forehead, as if he’d made a painful decision. He lifted his head and looked at Lin Miao

"I’m already a coward. I don’t dare take that step... so... I chose to hand the right of decision over to the me who just arrived in this world, and let everything start over."

"No wonder the room was such a mess that day."

Lin Miao looked at "Lin Miao". The two of them were like they’d been cast from the same mold; standing together felt like facing a mirror.

"These days... must’ve been rough for you."

He didn’t spell it out, but Lin Miao could imagine how much despair there was in watching human society slide into the abyss in both morality and order over those fifty years.

One person’s strength is limited. Even if he had the power to cripple the networks of countless corporations, he still couldn’t change those people’s ideology.

Only a collective can fight a collective.

Only ideology can fight ideology.

Without so many players accompanying him, Lin Miao would probably have walked the same old path as his predecessor—or... agreed with Richard Knight’s methods.

Lin Miao opened his arms and said with a smile

"Come on, give me a hug. Let’s call it a hometown reunion, and I’ll apologize while we’re at it."

"Heh..."

"Lin Miao" hugged himself without hesitation. Even though they were in Cyberspace, Lin Miao could still feel how hard the other was squeezing him, body trembling ever so slightly.

Lin Miao patted the other’s back reassuringly. A person is the sum of all their social relations. Once he split his memories into two, the two halves were no longer the same person, but rather one called Lin Miao the human, and one called Lin Miao the AI.