Chapter 641 The Pie Five Light Years Away (1/2)

Luo Yu continued to share his memories of the Brood Nest on the forum, while Chu Guang learned about the situation of the Brood Nest in the city center from Xiao Yu who lived on the B4 floor of the shelter.

Speaking of which, thanks to Heya.

By improving the neural connection equipment produced by Black Box, she designed a dedicated neural network data exchange interface for Xiaoyu and connected it to the server in the B6 computer room of the shelter.

This is equivalent to putting "virtual reality glasses" on it, allowing it to communicate directly with Xiaoqi using its consciousness.

I have to praise Xiaoyu, this little guy is very receptive to tools invented by humans.

It had played with the headset that Heya installed for it before, and it was even more happy to play with the new toy this time.

With Xiaoyu's assistance, Xiaoqi remodeled and restored the memories it recovered from its mother's nest.

In this way, not only Chu Guang but any interested new and old players can read the long-lasting memories of this era through the neural connection device...

"It's incredible...such a beautiful planet is only 5 light years away from us!"

Floating in the endless void, staring intently at the nearby planet, Heya couldn't help but let out a sigh of praise.

A whole new ecosystem!

A huge, living DNA sample library!

For an expert working in this field, what could be more exciting?

The same goes for Chu Guang standing next to her

It's just that his emotion is completely different from Heya's. It's not that professional, just a little unbelievable——

This planet is actually alive?

And he also has his own consciousness!

From all indications, the evolution process of the creatures living on this planet is completely different from that of the earth.

Of course, another possibility cannot be ruled out. The ecosystem on the earth is a unique example in the universe, or the biological evolution process on each planet is unique.

After all, before he traveled through, the human civilization in that world had not truly left the solar system, and the understanding of the world outside the solar system was still based on countless conjectures and paradoxes.

The two are currently connected to the shelter's server through a virtual reality device.

In fact, Yin Fang was here just now, but that guy used to be a prospector for the college and was well-informed. He just came here to take a look and left after finding nothing that interested him.

Rather than an abstract memory, he was more interested in the evolved bodies that the players brought back from the city center.

Those are all living fossils left behind two centuries ago!

Not only that, but there are also those ruins that were originally sealed underground by mutant slime mold!

The significance of this victory to the alliance can be described as a geographical discovery!

He didn't want to waste a minute outside the laboratory.

Just as the two of them were staring at the planet in trance, Xiao Qi's voice came from the side.

"Master, the memory analysis has been completed!"

Hearing Xiao Qi's voice, Chu Guang came back to his senses and asked immediately.

"Can you get closer? I want to go up and have a look."

"Although it's okay to get closer... but if you want to land on that planet, there's nothing to see on it."

Xiaoqi's voice was filled with a hint of embarrassment as she continued in a low voice.

"That brood only has a vague memory of the planet Gaia. It probably knows the situation of that planet, but has never really lived there... If you want to go up there, I can make some stickers based on those memory fragments. , but the discrepancy with the actual situation may be quite large.”

After listening to Xiaoqi's answer, Chu Guang could guess with his feet that the player named Luo Yu had probably complained on the forum that he had taken out the unfinished map and painted on it.

As a player, it's impossible not to take a look when you discover a new map.

Without Xiaoqi's help, he might not even be able to see the "sticker" if he gets close.

But Chu Guang has long been used to this.

Anyway, when these guys encounter anything that cannot be explained in the game, they will all blame it on him. Either the dog plan has not been completed, or the dog plan is playing a big game.

He usually doesn't bother to explain, and is even happy that his cute little players misunderstand it. After all, sometimes he himself needs to get in-game news through the forum.

Is there anything unreasonable about not finishing the game in the closed beta stage?

This is so reasonable!

"...Besides the planet itself, are there other contents about Gaia in the memory fragments of the mother nest?" Chu Guang then asked.

Xiaoqi replied immediately.

"There are also some bits and pieces, mainly about Gaia and the colonists who landed on Gaia. If you want to know, I can sort it out for you."

Chu Guang: "It's troublesome."

"Hey, no trouble, it's Xiao Qi's honor to serve the master!" A shy voice came softly, and then the light blue window appeared in front of Chu Guang.

This message is mainly from the perspective of a mutant slime mold, describing a past event in the early contact between human civilization and "Gaia".

Since mutant slime molds do not communicate through sound, the concepts stored in the sea of ​​mother nest consciousness are recorded in pure biological information and have no corresponding language.

Fortunately, the alliance has Xiaoyu, a translator who has evolved a "voice function".

With its help, Xiao Qicai transformed this abstract memory into a language that humans can understand.

Seeing Chu Guang looking fascinated, Heya who was floating aside also came over curiously.

Just like the shock that "Gaia" brought to the People's Union, after noticing the existence of human beings, the omnipotent Gaia was also shocked by this group of extraterrestrial visitors.

He has existed on this planet for an unknown number of star cycles, and has controlled this planet like a god for an unknown number of star cycles, but this is the first time he has seen such a strange organism.

They melted soil and rock with fire, spread the tempered elements on the ground, called thunder and lightning from temperatures comparable to stars, and drove everything to revolve around them.

And the most incredible thing is that these organisms are not under His control!

This is beyond His comprehension.

Not only could He not control them, He could not even establish communication with them, and they were completely unaware of His existence, killing the fruiting entities He sent to contact them time and time again.

At first, he thought these colonists were viruses brought by "meteorites from outer space", or something similar. After all, this kind of thing happened occasionally.

So through his own abilities, he evolved "antibodies" that eliminated these organisms.

At the beginning, his antibodies did produce some effects, and the alien visitors infected by the slime mold soon suffered from a series of symptoms such as weakness, coughing, and listlessness.

However, Chu Guang knew without even guessing that with the technological level of the Prosperous Era, a cold of this magnitude might not even be considered a threat.

And things developed just as he thought.

The colonists quickly used advanced medical technology and analysis and research of local species to not only develop relevant vaccines, but also carried out a wide-area elimination of "antibodies he designed for humans".

This is probably the first head-on conflict between Gaia and human civilization. Both sides started this unprepared war without fully understanding what each other was.

After discovering that viruses and bacterial attacks had little effect, the enraged Gaia gradually expanded the scale of the war and began to try to cause some global disasters, deriving some more aggressive fruiting entities in an attempt to physically eradicate the constant Expanding colonists.

Of course, it was impossible for the People's Federation to give up on this feng shui treasure land that was finally discovered just because of such a small setback. It began to invest more and more resources into the development of the colony, and solved a series of Gaia's attacks at the drop of a hat. means.

What’s interesting is that it was during this process that scholars from the People’s Federation finally discovered the existence of “Gaia”!

The series of disasters that occurred on the planet Gaia are not separated from each other. Everything is controlled by a unified consciousness!

Biologists from the People's Federation came up with this conjecture when comparing the DNA of alien creatures, and the subsequent discovery of the mind interference device confirmed this conjecture!

From the perspective of the mutant slime mold, that was the first time that humans truly heard His voice and established direct communication with Him.

"Psychic interference device?!"

When seeing this part of the information, Heya's face was full of surprise.

After thinking for a moment, she muttered to herself again.

"The higher the intelligence of a creature, the richer the information it receives, and the weaker the interference it receives... Hiss, it turns out that's what it is!"

She thought it was strange when she was studying the information on Vault 117 before.

The original intention of establishing the psychic interference device project was to replace the infrasonic fence used in the colony to drive away alien species. However, according to the information they collected, the alien species in the colony were all fruiting bodies of slime mold.

Sharing a unified consciousness, they should theoretically be unable to be driven away by mind interference devices.

Not even "in theory", there are large areas of slime mold fruiting bodies in Qingquan City, and the mind interference device is of no use to them.

After working on it for a long time, the colonists didn't use it to replace the infrasonic fence, but used it to establish diplomatic relations with Gaia?

Chu Guang did not speak, but thought of another thing.

That's what Dr. Method mentioned to him in Vault 101 before.

During the Prosperous Era, there was a radical trend of thought that was widely popular in the society of the People's League.

That is, about the definition of human beings.

Radicals believe that people are social beings, and since social beings are human beings, the People's Federation should keep pace with the times. Conservatives believe that man is the unity of social man and natural man, both are indispensable, and the laws of the ancestors are immutable.

The two sides have extensive differences on a series of agendas such as the citizenship rights of androids, the scope of application of human cloning technology, and socialized parenting.

In this unique era context, the emergence of "Gaia" actually had a certain impact on the society of the People's Federation.

In the past, the Gestalt societies that humans could observe in the natural world on earth were all boring and inefficient bugs like ants and bees, but now there is an almost perfect embodiment in front of everyone.

In the eyes of some people, His existence provides an almost perfect solution to the differences between radicals and conservatives.

That is, as long as a Gaia-like thinking gestalt network is established through the study of Gaia and connects the consciousness of every individual in society into a whole, then all differences will be easily resolved.

This is what Gaia is like.

Before humans arrived here, there was not even a concept of conflict, nor any disagreement.

It was these people who first established contact with Gaia.

Most of them were scholars and researchers who took the initiative to apply to migrate from their home planet to the colonies, and most of them were fed up with the endless quarrels and the dictation of the Scientific Ethics Committee.

In the remaining memory of the Brood, He had a positive opinion of these humans who actively embraced Gaia.

In His understanding, He did not kill for the sake of killing, but responded to the call of the human "Gaia sect" and came under the guidance of Gaia to liberate the suffering organisms on this planet.

Of course, this was not a generous and selfless expedition, it was also for His Mother.

According to those humans who sympathize with them, the conflict will never end if they don't address the root causes of the problem.

Over hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the word "plunder" has been written into the genes of most species on that planet.

"...No wonder that Brood Nest can accept the followers of the Torch Church." It took Chu Guang a long time to squeeze out such a sentence from his mouth.

Those people have been to Vault 401 and took away mind interference devices and related technologies. Objectively, they have mastered the tools to communicate with the slime mold mother nest.

And their ideas and opinions coincide with those of the "Gaia sects" who sympathize with the mutant slime mold, but are just a little bit more extreme towards their own people.

But what does it matter?

To give an inappropriate example, the way the brood looked at them might be the same as the way he looked at Xiaoyu.

After fighting for so many years, a group of humans finally appeared who could understand their demands. Maybe the DNA in the Torch Church's possession was given to them by Brood White in Qingquan City!

"Are there any other memories?" After watching this memory to the end, Heya looked longingly towards the direction where Xiao Qi's voice came from.

"No, that's all He knows." Xiao Qi replied helplessly.

Hearing Xiao Qi's answer, Heya's expression couldn't help but show a little bit of disappointment, but she didn't force it.

"It's unbelievable... This piece of information has completely overturned my understanding of mutant slime molds." Heya touched the bridge of her nose and suddenly looked at Chu Guang excitedly, "You know? I have a lot of new things in my mind right now. My thoughts... forget it, I can’t tell you clearly, I may have to retreat for a few days to study.”

Looking at Heya's eager expression, Chu Guang guessed that she might have gained new inspiration about her research field from this memory.

That kind of professional stuff was really beyond his scope of knowledge.

Without asking in detail what it was, Chu Guang coughed slightly and said.

"You can stay in seclusion for as long as you like, but before that, I have to ask your opinion on one thing."

Heya raised her eyebrows curiously.

"what's up?"

Chu Guang tried to describe his thoughts.

"I want Xiaoyu to improve the appearance of Qingquan City..."

In fact, it is more of a brain idea than an idea.

When he peeked at the forum just now, he discovered that Professor Yang was encouraging Luo Yu to send the millions of cheap descendants he had just picked up to the assembly line to make money.

To be honest, Chu Guang did not expect this sexy operation. Even Luo Yu, who was encouraged, felt that it was unrealistic.

After all, if we could do this, not to mention other players' gaming experience, I'm afraid even the NPC's gaming experience would be lost.

It is better to keep this plug-in in the hands of the collective.

"Improve the city appearance?" Heya was stunned after hearing this, and looked at Chu Guang with a confused face, "This...how else can it be improved?"

Chu Guang explained patiently.

"Qingquan City is currently in ruins. If millions of slime mold fruiting bodies can also participate in the reconstruction work, the project that originally took hundreds of years to complete may be reduced to a few years."

His requirements are not high.

Even if some urban areas in Qingquan City are restored to a livable level, this will be of great benefit to the alliance.

Moreover, allowing Xiaoyu to make some visible social contributions can also reduce the worries about it among wastelanders who don't understand it.

Seeing that Heya was stunned for a long time without speaking, Chu Guang added another sentence.

"Of course, this is just an immature idea..."

"Well...it's not a matter of maturity or immaturity. This idea actually sounds good, but there's just one problem."

After a pause, Heya continued with a subtle expression.

"According to our research, the hive consciousness is not as omnipotent as it seems. To a large extent, its control is reflected at the macro level. For example, Thea, its micro-manipulation ability is stronger than that of its mother. However, Even for that guy, when the number of its sub-entities rises to more than a thousand or even ten thousand, it will be difficult to specifically control the actions of each sub-entity. "

"So it tried the assimilation model, allowing the assimilated fruiting bodies to retain part of their self-awareness and be able to perfect specific actions according to vague instructions. The general view of the institute is that this is the evolution of mutant slime mold learning from human society. Ability."

After a pause, she continued.

"As for Xiaoyu, its dominance over the fruiting bodies in Qingquan City is actually weaker than that of the mother nest that it swallowed. First of all, it transmits information through the medium of sound, although the distance and speed of propagation are compared to the medium of spores. It is more excellent, but the information entropy must have been reduced. After transmitting information to each fruiting entity through the two media of sound and spores, it is difficult to say whether those fruiting entities can understand those complex commands. "

"In other words, if it asks those nibblers to bite people, they will definitely understand, but if you want them to move an object from one place to another, I'm afraid Xiaoyu's commanding skills will have to be tested. ”

After listening to Heya's explanation, Chu Guang felt a little regretful.

"That's it..."

Seeing Chu Guang's regretful expression, Heya couldn't help but add something later.

"This is just my speculation, and my speculation may not be correct. Moreover, you should not ask me about this matter, but communicate directly with Xiaoyu. That guy is a natural biologist, and his existence itself is of great significance to To us, it is an incredible miracle, a singularity isolated from our inherent cognitive horizons.”

When she said this, she made a joke.

"To use a vivid but inappropriate metaphor, those of us who study the mysteries of nature are like magicians, relying on sophisticated wands and obscure incantations to cast our spells."

"And it's different."

"It's magic in itself!"

…

Shelter B6 floor.

Standing in a sea of ​​light red, Xiaoyu let out a long sigh.

The light red spores rolled like ocean waves, spreading in circles, and finally merged with the pitch black chassis standing in the computer room like a reef.

It seems slime molds have their own troubles.

Chu Guang took off the virtual reality glasses he wore on his head and placed them on the head of the wastebasket-shaped robot while sitting at the door of the computer room.

Sensing its sadness, Chu Guang did not immediately speak about his own affairs, but asked in an easy-going tone.

"What are you thinking about?"

The gentle thoughts were transmitted along the light red tentacles to the carbon-based semiconductor in the chassis, and were analyzed by Xiaoqi into human language.

"I couldn't convince Thea."

This guy can actually talk.

However, the information entropy of human language is too low. It prefers to express it in its own way. Xiaoqi will translate it for it anyway.

Chu Guang thought for a moment and said.

"You don't have to feel sorry for it. It chose its own destiny and followed its mother's path to the end. Nothing in this world is perfect, and you have done a good job."

"Uh-huh."

Xiaoyu murmured softly, and her mood seemed to improve a little.

As the first human being it saw after waking up, Chu Guang was like a father and mother to it, and it always trusted his words.

It didn't understand this feeling at first, but after seeing Thea and the nest, it felt a little bit of the so-called sense of inheritance.

Just like Thea inherited its mother's will.

Its worldview is basically formed in the society of the Alliance. Its self-perception is almost the same as that of people except for its shape.

After all, shape is the most insignificant thing to it, which has countless fruiting entities but only one self.

This is exactly the opposite of humans who are good at using "eye edges" to draw boundaries with their fellow humans.

After a moment of silence, Xiaoyu suddenly asked another strange question.

"Am I human?"

Chu Guang thought for a while and answered truthfully.

"Objectively speaking, obviously not."

Hearing these words, Xiaoyu felt a little depressed, but quickly regained his composure and continued to ask.

"What does it take to be human?"

Feeling the seriousness and simplicity in this sentence, Chu Guang couldn't help but smile and said in a gentle tone.

"You don't have to be human, you are who you are and you should feel like we never left you out."

"Ugh!"

Seemingly satisfied with this answer, Xiaoyu's voice was filled with a hint of joy, and she excitedly branched out a tentacle from the pale red ocean, reaching for Chu Guang's shoulder to rub his face.

This is one of its ways of expressing friendliness.

I learned it from a guy named Neeko.

Xiao Qi, who was sitting on Chu Guang's shoulder, resisted and hid aside, making a dissatisfied protest.

"Hey! Don't get that sticky stuff on me! My head will get rusty!"

The figure that Pai gave to Chu Guang before was his favorite among all its clones.

Although some time ago, that guy from Ibers presented a doll that looked very appetizing to him and was one-to-one, but that guy had its own AI core like Frost and Eclipse, and it didn't really want to use it. It will feel weird.

"Uh-huh..."

Xiaoyu screamed in grievance, avoided Xiaoqi and went around to Chu Guang's other shoulder.

The relationship between the two little guys has actually always been good.

After all, Xiao Qi often serves as Chu Guang's microphone, and Xiao Qi basically accompanies Luo Yu when he goes offline.

Looking at Xiao Qi jumping onto the wastebasket, Chu Guang laughed and didn't care about Xiao Yu's close contact. Anyway, he didn't need to wash his powered armor himself.

Chu Guang is relatively open-minded in his attitude towards new things.

After all, from a practical point of view, if the problem could be solved by copying the People's Federation's method, there would be no need for him to clean up the mess.

What's more, if you think about it from another angle, if his idea can really be realized, Xiaoyu will be a planet-level environmental transformation artifact!

In the future, if you encounter a planet full of carbon dioxide or other harmful gases that is "just shy of the habitable yellow line", you can throw a small feather down and take a bite before taking pictures of the colony.

Communication across galaxies should be no more difficult than voyages across galaxies.

It doesn't even need to communicate through spores like its ancestor "Gaia", it is enough to open a microphone with the help of human civilization technology.

In terms of cost, this is definitely more cost-effective than conventional "atmosphere modification projects."

And its footprints will also follow the alliance's fleet and its ambition to explore new worlds, embarking on a wider world that its ancestors have never imagined.

This is not a win-win situation!

Of course, exploring the new world is still too far away for today's alliance. There are still a lot of troubles waiting for him to deal with in the old world.

Seeing Xiao Yu in a good mood, Chu Guang smiled and put forward his own idea.

"I want to ask you something."

"Ugh!"

Xiao Yu excitedly clicked the outstretched tentacles and agreed without asking.

Chu Guang made a joke.

"Don't you even ask what it is?"

The light red spores that filled the computer room were swaying gently like water plants, as upright as the water at the bottom of the lake that could be seen through at a glance.

"I trust you!"