Chapter 211 - 85: Dream Server Hypothesis

Chapter 211: Chapter 85: Dream Server Hypothesis

Yang Yiyi stopped mid-sentence after glancing at Yu Xian. She pulled Wen Xiao into the bedroom, muttering in hushed tones as they spent ages comparing their notes.

After a long while, Yu Xian watched the two pale-faced girls walk out of the bedroom.

Evidently, the result was the same. All three of them realized the problem, and silence fell over the apartment.

It was just like a lesson they had learned in elementary school about drawing starfruit. In art class, if the teacher placed two starfruits on the desk for the students to draw, the colors, shapes, and lighting in everyone’s drawings would never be exactly identical.

Yu Xian felt that the mirror and the chair were not things that inherently existed in his brain. Instead, they seemed more like... some kind of objective entity that had been forcibly shoved into his field of vision.

"So... is our previous ’prompt blueprint’ hypothesis actually wrong?" Yu Xian muttered.

Wen Xiao rested her chin on a throw pillow and gently shook her head, seemingly deep in thought as she recalled the details. "I don’t think we guessed wrong. At least... judging from the single-player dreams so far, the prompt hypothesis holds up perfectly. Over the past few days, I’ve read many people’s descriptions of the same dream script on the forums, and some art students even drew the details of the scenes they dreamed of. The images everyone saw..."

She added softly, "...including the version of the dream I experienced myself, definitely have huge differences. The assets genuinely come from the experiencer’s own subconscious."

"But I have absolutely no impression of the mirror frame and chair this time." Yu Xian recalled for a moment before asking, "Have you seen them before?"

"I was just about to say that. Actually, I really do find them somewhat familiar..." Wen Xiao seemed to realize something and continued, "Do you think we could understand it this way: before you joined the multiplayer session, this was my personal ’single-player’ dream? You just entered my dream as a ’guest.’"

"Which means..." Yang Yiyi chimed in upon hearing this. "In a single-player dream, the ’prompt’ theory holds up. But it doesn’t apply to a multiplayer dream? What does that mean?"

Yu Xian also looked at Wen Xiao, hoping she could analyze it from a technical perspective.

"It means... the audio file, or the invisible Dream Net, isn’t transmitting prompts or string-level data at all..." Wen Xiao’s voice carried a deep sense of uncertainty. "It means... it’s conducting a much larger, more concrete data share between two human brains? Passing the images from my dream, or my ’art assets,’ over to you?"

"But... how is that possible?" Yang Yiyi frowned. "If your cerebral cortex hasn’t stored the relevant visual information, how can it ’input’ these details and images out of thin air?"

Yu Xian didn’t answer immediately. He remained silent for a moment before looking up at her. "Senior Sister Yiyi, do you remember the two hypotheses about the ’multiplayer’ mechanism I mentioned on the phone last night?"

"I remember." Yang Yiyi nodded, recalling the conversation. "One was a peer-to-peer resonance connection, similar to a biomagnetic field. The other was like an access card and a radar, scanning the brain via some unknown signal to provide passive feedback based on changes in its electromagnetic field."

"Right," Yu Xian replied softly. "But actually, Wen Xiao and I came up with a third hypothesis at the time."

He paused and glanced at Wen Xiao, who squeezed the pillow in her arms tighter.

"Because we thought the idea was way too absurd yesterday, I didn’t go into detail with you on the phone," Yu Xian continued. "And that is, ’server and client.’"

"What... does that mean?" A hint of confusion flickered in Yang Yiyi’s eyes.

"We previously guessed that this kind of multiplayer might be like an online game." Yu Xian tried to use layman’s terms to explain the thought that had sent chills down their spines. "Perhaps behind this dreamscape, there is an invisible ’central server.’ And every brain that listens to the audio and enters the Dream Net becomes a connected ’terminal.’"

Yang Yiyi looked at Yu Xian and opened her mouth, taking a long time to digest his words. "Are you saying that when we dream, we aren’t mentally filling in the visuals based on prompts, but rather... downloading data from that ’server’?"

She shook her head, clearly feeling that this deduction defied common sense. "But our brains don’t have biological organs for receiving such digital signals. How can they magically ’go online’ to download things out of nowhere?"

"Exactly. We couldn’t figure that out either, which is why we proposed the ’access card’ hypothesis." Yu Xian didn’t argue. This shattered everyone’s cognitive boundaries, including his own. "Based on current physical and biological common sense, it really doesn’t make any sense at all."

But... if it wasn’t downloading, then where on earth did these perfectly aligned details that appeared out of thin air come from?

"No matter how little sense it makes, the reality right in front of us is that our brains did see the exact same visuals," Yu Xian analyzed. "As it stands, there are only two possibilities left that can explain this phenomenon."

He looked at the two girls and laid out his hypotheses. "The first is the ’biomagnetic field’ we mentioned yesterday. Because we’re currently in the same apartment living room and our physical distance is very close, perhaps under the interference of this specific audio frequency, our brains act like two smartphones with their Bluetooth turned on."

"Are you saying that the images in Xiaoxiao’s mind were shared with you ’peer-to-peer’ through some kind of short-range bioelectromagnetic wave?" Senior Sister Yiyi asked.

"Yes." Yu Xian nodded.

Senior Sister Yiyi looked thoughtful. "If it’s merely close-range, same-frequency brainwave coupling, although it’s still extremely avant-garde for modern neuroscience, it’s at least traceable on a physical level."

"Verifying this hypothesis is also very simple." Yu Xian turned to Wen Xiao, who was still hugging her pillow. "Once today’s test is over, we’ll head back to our respective dorms. You’re at the North Campus, and I’m in the South District. We’ll try another multiplayer test at an agreed time. If the connection fails, or if it succeeds but the mirror and chair I see revert to the versions my own subconscious fills in..."

Wen Xiao picked up where he left off, nodding heavily. "Then that proves it’s a distance-limited ’local area network’ phenomenon. At the very least, those images are transmitted over a short distance."

"Then..." Yang Yiyi looked at Yu Xian and spoke slowly. "What if it’s the other outcome?"

She paused before continuing, "What if the connection still succeeds from several kilometers away, and we can still see the exact same details without the slightest discrepancy..."

"Then that essentially rules out the biomagnetic field hypothesis. As for the remaining rational explanation, right now..." Yu Xian stared at the dim light filtering in through the incompletely drawn curtains, enunciating every word, "...it might just be the ’server’ hypothesis."

And if the "server" hypothesis held true...

That would mean that, beyond humanity’s current physical and biological understanding, there truly existed an unobserved "central server" processing and distributing this colossal amount of dream data.

A long silence once again enveloped the living room. This speculation was so monumental that it left all three of them feeling an indescribable sense of oppression.

"Actually..." Unexpectedly, Wen Xiao was the first to break the silence this time. "Even if we can’t figure out its underlying principles right now, it doesn’t actually stop us from using it."

She looked at Yu Xian and spoke earnestly, "It’s just like the gravity example you brought up yesterday. When the apple fell and hit Newton on the head, he didn’t know what the true nature of gravity was, but that didn’t stop him from coming up with the law of universal gravitation. Nor did it stop future generations from using that law to launch satellites and observe celestial bodies."

Wen Xiao smiled, a glimmer of resolve flashing through her clear eyes. "In the future... there will eventually be an ’Einstein’ in this field to help us explain it all."