I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 1197 First Exchange

"why?"

Why am I so used to this kind of teleportation?

"I feel like I've used it many times..."

"Ten times? A hundred times? It seems like more than that..."

Mo Ling's memories were churning, but he couldn't recall the specific details. He only remembered that he had "used" it, and many times. As for where he used it, what the object was, and what the situation was, he had forgotten everything. If he tried to think about it more carefully, his head would start to ache.

"Are the aftereffects of the abyss really that severe? You really can't remember anything at all?"

After trying for a while, Mo Ling decided to give up and continue listening to Director Wang's story.

Since the memories about teleportation can be retrieved, the other memories can surely be gradually retrieved as well, piecing together a complete memory...

But Director Wang stopped speaking. His hands were stiffly placed on the demonstration table, and his eyes were fixed on the conference table. Everyone else in the conference room did the same, looking at the spot where the bottle of water had disappeared.

After staring at it for a while, Director Wang immediately looked at the square next to him, seemingly having guessed the culprit behind the "water theft".

He called his assistant up from below the stage, instructed him to retrieve the conference room's surveillance footage, and then walked off the demonstration stage with a curious expression, waving his hand a few times at the spot where the water bottle had disappeared.

"It's really gone..."

He walked over to the cube and asked curiously, "You can control this teleportation, right? That's just what we suspected... What does it feel like when you use this ability? Are there any costs involved? Is there a limit to how often you can use it? What level of accuracy can you achieve?"

Director Wang's eyes shone with a thirst for knowledge, as if he wanted to devour the cube whole. He didn't care that there were other people in the meeting room; his attention was completely focused on his "academic research."

It wasn't until the middle-aged men in formal attire coughed, reminding Director Wang, that he snapped out of his somewhat obsessive state.

He smiled sheepishly, nodded to the middle-aged men, and walked back to the stage, muttering to himself, "Let's get down to business first... let's get down to business first..."

Back on the stage, Director Wang took a deep breath and began switching between photos again. The photos still showed various experiments, and the subjects of the experiments were still cubes.

"As I just mentioned, we've focused on communicating with the cube."

"We have already confirmed from previous experiments that cubes can understand our language, but the problem now is that cubes cannot convey messages to us."

"Then we thought of the vibration signal we'd been using all along..."

“We tell the cube that we will ask it a question and then send it a vibration signal. If the vibration signal can pass through, it means the answer is ‘yes’; otherwise, if the vibration signal is blocked, it means the answer is ‘no’.”

"After repeating this premise to the cube several times, we posed a question to it for the first time."

……

"You can understand our language, right?"

"Yes."

Are you benevolent towards humans?

"Yes."

Are you from human society?

"Yes."

"Are you a keepsake?"

After the question was asked, the cube hesitated noticeably, unlike when it answered other questions before. It waited for a long time, the vibration signal was intermittent, and the answer jumped back and forth between "yes" and "no".

This unusual signal immediately caught the researchers' attention, so they asked the cube the same question again: "Are you a relic?"

The cube's answer remained vague; the vibration signal would pass through and then be blocked, much like a person facing an uncertain problem, hesitant and unable to reach a conclusion.

Do you not know the answer to this question?

"Yes."

After repeated questioning by the researchers, they finally understood...

"The cube itself doesn't know if it's a relic."

It seems very confused...

"You don't know who you are?"

"Yes."

"You don't know where you come from?"

"Yes."

Are you deceiving us?

"no."

The researchers were unable to test whether the cube was lying, so they could only assume that the cube's answers were "honest". Subsequently, they conducted an intelligence test on the cube, and to their surprise, the cube's intelligence reached the level of an adult human.

However, the cube performs below the average adult level on certain specific problems.

For example, math problems.

Researchers selected several junior high school math problems and tested the cube. The cube answered all the problems by guessing.

The researchers then switched to elementary school math problems, but the accuracy rate for the cube problem remained very low.

Furthermore, the cube exhibited a "resistance" similar to that of a young human child, becoming uncooperative during tests and sometimes falling silent as if "asleep." Researchers were unsure if the cube was faking it and had to repeatedly ask it until it responded…

"Don't you like our test?"

"Yes."

Don't you like doing math problems?

"Yes," the cube responded quickly.

To respect the cube's "individual will," the researchers terminated the intelligence test and returned to normal communication and questioning...

After a period of communication, the researchers were able to determine that the cube was not lying; its logic was self-consistent, and it could give the same answer to repeated questions. However, they could not rule out the possibility that the cube's level of deception was too high, simulating this behavior.

The institute selected a portion of the exchange and handed it over to more than a dozen senior psychoanalysts, asking them to analyze the cube's "personality traits" and profile it.

At the same time, the institute did not tell these psychoanalysts that the subjects they were profiling were not human.

Soon, the psychoanalysts submitted their analysis reports. To the researchers' surprise, none of them found any abnormalities in the profiling subjects; the reports all analyzed the cube as a normal human being.

"My boyfriend is a man around 25 years old, but his mental age is younger than his physical age, and some of his views are rather naive... He is kind-hearted and has a relatively optimistic view of things... Because of his immature psychological development, he may often feel confused about the current situation and hesitate on some things, but he will quickly put these feelings behind him..."

"The subject exhibited some memory loss during the conversation, which could be due to experiencing significant psychological trauma, causing them to use amnesia as a means to maintain psychological balance. It could also be a lingering effect of the abyss..."

(End of this chapter)