Technological practice: leading the human race to the stars

Chapter 134: Consciousness Pathway
Yuanze lay down in the sleeping cabin and communicated with the dream tapir in the spiritual world.

However, it was obviously not very happy. It shook its nose angrily and glared at Yuanze.

"What are you doing? I was sleeping soundly!"

"Can you let me enter the dream where you swallowed me?"

"Impossible!" Meng Mo flatly refused, "I'm still hungry now, how can I let you in?"

"Then why don't you eat my nightmares?"

"Humph! You make it sound so easy!"

In the eyes of the dream tapir, Yuanze's brain structure is extremely complicated, and mixed with other people's emotions, so it can't smell where Yuanze's nightmare is.

Although the nightmare tapir has been living in Yuanze's spiritual world, it finds that Yuanze's spirit is extremely tough, as if it has substance, and even if it finds a nightmare, it cannot devour it.

If it weren't for Yuanze's spiritual power that also had a nourishing effect on it, it would have wanted to stop here a long time ago.

Seeing that he couldn't force it, Yuanze made some compromises. He promised the dream tapir that he would find nightmares to feed it after this time.

"That's pretty much it."

The dream tapir agreed to Yuanze and once again pulled him into the dream that it had once swallowed.

However, unlike the last time, this time the Nightmare Tapir tried many times but still could not maintain the quantum tunnel stably.

"Look, I'm hungry and I can't use any of my abilities." Meng Mo pretended to look at Yuan Ze embarrassedly.

When Yuanze heard this, a trace of contempt flashed in his eyes. He felt that it was deliberately not putting in any effort in order to gain benefits first.

However, Yuanze had already thought of this possibility before, and he asked Dai Hui to lie down in the sleeping cabin in advance.

In this way, with the help of his and Dai Hui's spiritual power channel, he can enter his spiritual power world.

"Wow, there are so many foods here."

The dream tapir was delighted to find that it could catch Dai Hui's nightmares everywhere and could swallow a large piece just by opening its mouth.

Especially those nightmares hidden deep inside, which are basically the trauma of painful memories in childhood, and the number is extremely large.

Although these injuries can heal, they have left indelible scars on his brain.

Perhaps Dai Hui himself has forgotten the specific memories, but these traumas continue to affect him.

Yuanze watched the dream tapir eat in Dai Hui's spiritual world, and thought about this place himself.

This world was still in a suppressed state, making him feel a little breathless.

The beam of light that had originally come in had completely disappeared, and the entrance to the cave had been tightly sealed.

The only thing that can make him feel a little more comfortable is the brain waves stored in his memory cells.

"You picked a great place. I could eat nightmares here for years without finishing them."

The nightmare tapir wiggled its nose in great satisfaction. After having eaten its fill, it felt full of energy.

Moreover, it discovered that the number of nightmares here was astonishing, and what it swallowed today was less than one thousandth of it.

Hearing Meng Mo's words, Yuan Ze sighed softly, feeling an inexplicable sadness in his heart.

In this dark and depressing little world, he didn't know why his eyes became moist.

The Nightmare Tapir noticed his abnormality and was very confused: "Huh? What's wrong with you? Why don't you leave?"

“I’m thinking about the experiment.”

The man and the tapir returned to Yuanze's spiritual world. In comparison, this place seemed much brighter.

Although this is an extremely open world, precisely because of this, the tenacity here is extraordinary, as the Nightmare Tapir said.

"I feel like there's a bonus effect if I use my talent here, but it's probably going to be discounted with that guy."

The light in its eyes was so strong that it directly submerged the consciousness formed in Yuanze's brain.

With the help of the dream tapir's ability to drag objects into dreams, it sent the cavity brought by Yuanze into the quantum tunnel as planned.

This superconducting cavity, built using nanotechnology, has the function of maintaining the steady state of the quantum system, thereby ensuring that the quantum is always in an entangled state.

As time goes by, the superconducting cavity gradually and automatically disintegrates into other incoherent quanta, dissipating in this world, exposing the experimental photon at the center.

Yuan Ze stared at the exposed photon intently, thinking about its definition in the real world. It has no exact size and no spatial structure, and can be regarded as a point in mathematical concepts.

However, in the quantum world, Yuanze discovered that it also had no fixed volume, sometimes large and sometimes small.

The only difference is that it has an amazing ability to transform and can evolve into any structure.

This phenomenon made Yuanze realize that the so-called "consciousness causes quantum collapse" is not true, because his pure spiritual consciousness did not cause the quantum to become collapsed.

This further aroused his curiosity.

If consciousness is a complex quantum system, then when these two systems are superimposed, why do we produce an entity that we can touch and see?

This phenomenon shows that there must be other factors besides consciousness acting on the real world, thus producing the certainty we perceive.

At this point, Yuanze's experiment was over.

However, according to the nightmare tapir, he needs to go deep into the core of the real dream before he can be guided by the nightmare tapir to return to reality.

This provided him with a rare opportunity to explore Dai Hui's nightmare world and see if he could get some clues.

Yuanze wandered through Dai Hui's nightmare, constantly examining this dark dream.

Different from Madam Changbai’s memories, the images here are not continuously played clips, but frozen static images.

For example, Dai Hui was horrified to find that his whole body was stiff and he was fixed in one place and unable to move.

For example, someone is chasing him with a knife, and then the picture stays on his terrified expression.

He must have been hiding a lot of things from me, otherwise why would these scenes be so discordant.

Why is Liu Shuiyun's image in this nightmare completely opposite to that in reality?
Is it because Dai Hui is too afraid of losing, so that things will turn into the opposite, showing the opposite scene in his dream?

Or is the good brother in his mind just an imaginary image he created in his mind?
These questions swirled in Yuanze's mind, and it was difficult to find definite answers for a while.

After all, this was Dai Hui's own privacy and he couldn't ask directly.

Yuanze decided to end this exploration. He could no longer bear to continue watching Dai Hui's nightmare.

For a long time, his subconscious self-denial has caused him to fall into a state of learned helplessness and become even more closed.

Those scenes made Yuanze deeply realize the helplessness and struggle in Dai Hui's heart.

Yuanze could feel this pain personally, so he began to worry about Dai Hui.

He is addicted to pain, constantly isolating himself and doubting himself. I hope he can cheer up.

"Why did you stay in there for a while? Why didn't you come out earlier?" The nightmare tapir skipped over to him and gently touched Yuanze's consciousness in his mind with its nose.

"Well, I have to get back to reality." Yuanze replied, with a hint of fatigue in his voice.

OK, take me to eat delicious nightmares next time!" The Nightmare Tapir blinked and said expectantly.

Afterwards, Yuanze's consciousness gradually returned to reality. He turned his head and looked at the sleeping cabin next to him.

Dai Hui inside was still sleeping and showed no signs of waking up for the time being.

So he changed into his own clothes and walked out of the makeshift experimental cabin.

When the people outside the laboratory saw him coming out, they surrounded him and asked eagerly about the progress of the experiment.

Yuanze was not in a hurry and first looked at another experiment of an entangled system with his own.

The data shows that the quantum after collapse is not within the previously predicted range.

This result perfectly verified his conjecture.

However, currently he is the only one who can enter that particular tunnel, and the Nightmare Tapir is unable to bring large instruments into it.

Therefore, despite new breakthroughs in theoretical research, some researchers remain skeptical of Yuanze's narrative.

In order to prove his discovery, Yuanze decided to turn his attention to the crater.

Perhaps by dealing with these source beasts, he would be able to find more evidence to support his arguments.

This chapter excerpts some literature (the text description has been modified)

Seligman's study on learned helplessness: Seligman, MEP, & Maier, SF (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, 1-9
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(End of this chapter)