The night before the promotion

Chapter 21 The First Person

Early morning, another early morning.

Zhou Si arrived at his clinic early, opened the door and opened the window. The slightly cool morning breeze poured into the room, washing away the turbid and strange air.

After parting with Li Weiyu the night before yesterday, Zhou Si had no contact with him again. According to the message sent by Song Qiliang, they are following the clues given by the tiger and the records of consciousness, trying their best to chase the ghost hiding in the Internet.

Zhou Si couldn't help much with this. For now, he just had to wait for their news. However, it was not clear how long Li Weiyu's investigation would take.

These days, too many consciousnesses have disappeared in the vast network of consciousness. Just like the mysterious paradise, no matter how you track them, their figures will always disappear in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, as if they had never existed.

In order to control the mind network and the incarnation body, the founders of Shenwei Technology, Chen Wen Ge and Zuo Zhi, jointly developed the High Wall System. It not only built the mind network, but also monitored all the incarnation bodies registered in the system at all times.

The actions of each incarnated body are recorded in the database, and the thoughts and consciousness that travel through the network like ghosts are also recorded. All information is registered and everything can be traced.

Zuo Zhi often claimed in front of the media that the high wall and large system were absolutely safe, like the Great Wall of the cyber world, enough to isolate all the chaos and noise from order. However, as a former employee of Shenwei Technology, Zhou Si did not trust all this so much.

Once upon a time, Zhou Si was also a technology fanatic like a mountain tiger, but with the outbreak of the story of the immortal's fall and the long years spent in the sanatorium, Zhou Si is no longer the young and irritable boy. He has become calm and composed, and his belief in the great god of technology is no longer firm, but he always maintains a skeptical attitude.

“Is it already June 6th?”

Zhou Si glanced at the calendar. In a blink of an eye, a week had passed since the night when Luo Yong was captured.

Looking at the messy clinic again, Zhou Si guessed that there would be no patients coming today as business had not been good recently. He simply put on gloves, turned on the faucet, and cleaned the clinic as usual.

When he pushed open the door of the operating room, dirty engine oil mixed with unknown liquid overflowed. Zhou Si quickly picked up the mop and rubbed it hard a few times, which prevented them from spreading further outward.

The lights came on, and an extremely messy scene came into view. Although it was called an operating room, it was more like a maintenance room. There were no aseptic principles, let alone any disinfection measures. Anyone who came here would think at first glance that this was a slaughterhouse or a black clinic.

This is not Longmen Inn, Zhou Si is just not that particular.

Zhou Si's major in college was mind network and avatar body. Thanks to his excellent grades in school, he joined Shenwei Technology directly after graduation.

Zhou Si had no medical knowledge and no medical qualification certificate. After opening the clinic, Zhou Si learned relevant medical knowledge while treating patients, which is how he has been able to maintain his practice until now.

Fortunately, in most medical cases, there is very little need for Zhou Si's medical knowledge. More often than not, what is needed is his accumulated knowledge of mind recognition technology.

Zhou Si felt that he was not a quack doctor. Human beings were just like machines. When a machine broke down, there were masters to repair it. When a person was sick, there were doctors to treat him. So there was nothing wrong with having a special doctor like himself treat avatar dissociative disorder, a disease between steel and flesh and blood.

He mopped the floor of the operating room vigorously, and the dirty water flowed obediently into the sink under Zhou Si's strong push, until the entire floor was scrubbed as shiny as a mirror.

After cleaning up here, Zhou Si opened another door, and the strong smell of engine oil and rust hit him in the face.

Under the dim light, various hideous mechanical outlines can be vaguely seen in the warehouse, like the broken bodies and arms of monsters, silent and mysterious.

This is Zhou Si's warehouse. The shelves are filled with various mechanical parts, most of which were recovered by Zhou Si from his patients. With Zhou Si's professional ability, he can easily use them to assemble deadly weapons.

This is how most of the "medical instruments" Zhou Si used when practicing medicine came from. Only a very small part of them were obtained through special channels, such as the short axe he often used and the rivets used in the nail gun.

The metals used in both are special alloys developed by Shenwei Technology. They are lightweight and have super hardness, and are used in many high-end and armed incarnations.

After cleaning the clinic, Zhou Si checked the collections, picked out a few of them, and clumsily moved them to the workbench. At the same time, gusts of wind sounded, and the flapping wings of the Bt-24 landed on Zhou Si's shoulder.

Zhou Si fiddled with the object, "Help me, Bt-24."

Bt-24 tilted his head, his eyes shone with light, and a holographic projection landed next to the workbench. It was a design drawing of the incarnation shell.

Zhou Si put on the appropriate protective gear, took out a few handy tools from the shelf, and carefully looked at the wreckage on the ground. They were roughly divided into several parts, slender robotic arms, the main body with exposed pipelines, and a bunch of disassembled cameras and sensors.

"I am like Frankenstein in the story," Zhou Si muttered to himself as he picked up the tools and began to repair it. "I use the iron and steel corpse to piece together my own Frankenstein."

In his spare time, Zhou Si would select recycled scrap metal materials according to work requirements, try to reuse them, and explore whether he could assemble them into a brand new incarnation body.

This task is extremely technically challenging. Regardless of whether the homemade avatar shells can successfully load consciousness, just getting them connected to the consciousness network is an extremely arduous task.

These scraps of metal that Zhou Si made himself cannot be registered in the high-walled system, and any attempt to access the consciousness network will be illegal.

If successful, this will be an incarnation that is not supervised by high walls and large systems.

Li Weiyu and others were here, and they were probably frightened by Zhou Si's behavior, and then ordered Zhou Si to destroy it immediately.

In the eyes of the inspectors, every unregistered avatar body can be regarded as a potential avatar killer, but Zhou Si does not think so.

Unregistered avatar bodies can certainly escape the strict surveillance of the high wall system and gain the so-called "freedom", but at the same time, they will also lose the protection of the high wall system.

The high wall system is like an indestructible firewall, building a safety barrier for each incarnated body in the complex network of consciousness.

Once out of this system, those wandering avatar bodies will be like an undefended city, easily becoming targets of hacker attacks. In addition, the high wall system also maintains the security of the connection between the consciousness network and the avatar bodies, ensuring unimpeded information exchange.

If the consciousness network is compared to a chaotic sea, then the high wall and large system are the safe waterway.

Illegal incarnations are like a lone boat, drifting aimlessly in the dark and boundless sea of ​​consciousness, having lost their direction and may lose themselves in the chaotic torrent of consciousness at any time.

Therefore, in Zhou Si's opinion, the consciousness of every avatar killer who uses illegal avatars will be eroded by the consciousness network in repeated connections, and they will become potential patients with loss of consciousness.

Zhou Si slowly opened the drawer, and what came into view was a pile of scattered thought storage cores. They looked neat and square, resembling memory sticks, but they were the "heart" of the incarnated body.

After careful screening, Zhou Si picked up a thought storage core and carefully placed it on the steel wreckage.

After doing all this, Zhou Si walked back a few steps and admired this semi-finished product.

Zhou Si said with a sense of accomplishment, "It's really not easy."

After drawing the design drawings, Zhou Si spent several months to assemble it almost completely, and now he finally sees the dawn of completion.

This incarnation body has multiple mechanical arms, similar to the mechanical spiders on the market. Relying on its multi-arm body, it is capable of coping with most complex environments and can even crawl on walls if necessary.

But at the moment, it only has a preliminary framework, and Zhou Si is still thinking about what specific functions it will carry... But this also depends on what Zhou Si can remove from the patients. After simply washing the oil stains on his body and putting on a clean white coat, Zhou Si sat back in front of the computer to relax his body and mind.

Zhou Si is not a person who can sit idle easily.

There are two folders on the computer desktop, one is named Rayong and the other is called the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

Zhou Si has the habit of archiving records. Currently, Luo Yong’s work has been completed, but the Paradise incident caused by Luo Yong is still ongoing.

Closing his eyes in deep thought, Zhou Si recalled the conversation with the tiger and the doubts he discussed with Li Weiyun.

Zhou Si's thoughts were slowly sinking into a vortex, when suddenly, the sound of a cell phone interrupted his thoughts.

I picked up the phone and saw it was a message from Pei Dong.

"After taking the medicine for a few days, I feel much better."

Zhou Si replied, "That's good, remember to come for a follow-up visit."

"Ok."

Putting down his phone, Zhou Si turned his attention back to the Land of Bliss.

Judging from the known intelligence, the goal of the mysterious group, Elysium, is to acquire metamorphosis technology and upgrade consciousness.

Zhou Si was not surprised by such a goal. Once human consciousness could be fully digitized and uploaded to the Internet, according to Chen Wen-Ge's vision, the human race would embark on a great upgrade and usher in a completely new era.

Even if one does not hold on to the great ideal of elevating all mankind, the possibility of eternal consciousness alone is enough to tempt too many people to follow suit.

"Zhou Si, don't you want to be the first person to be promoted like Yuri Gagarin?"

For some reason, Chen Wen Ge's old voice echoed in Zhou Si's ears.

That was four years ago, when Chen Wen Ge encouraged Zhou Si. A few minutes later, Zhou Si upgraded his consciousness and the Immortal Falls accident occurred.

The last time Zhou Si saw Chen Wen Ge was at the bedside of a sanatorium. Chen Wen Ge came to visit him. He was already very old, and looked even more haggard at that time.

He seemed to say something to him, but Zhou Si was in a daze and couldn't hear it clearly.

Since then, Zhou Si has never seen Chen Wen Ge again, but he can still often see Chen Wen Ge's image and hear his hoarse voice in the streets and alleys and on the Internet media.

After the Immortal Falls accident, the Supervisory Bureau conducted a thorough investigation of the Immortal Ascension Project. During the investigation, the Supervisory Bureau found a large number of qualified candidates who died due to the upgrade test, and many qualified candidates suffered severe mental trauma and suffered from the Irregularity Disease.

Qualified people like Zhou Si are not aware of these things. He only knows that every once in a while, some employees will resign due to mental problems, and accordingly, Shenwei Technology will compensate them with large sums of money.

After review by the Ethics Committee, the Ascension Project failed to pass, the Metamorphosis Technology was sealed by the Supervisory Bureau, and related research was stopped one after another. Chen Wen Ge's ambition was extinguished.

Later, according to many people, due to the Xianyun accident, Chen Wen Ge also lost his voice in the board of directors and disappeared. Now the person who controls Shenwei Technology is another founder, Zuo Zhi.

Although everything related to the metamorphosis technology has been stopped from a legal perspective, Zhou Si has always felt over the past four years that this technology would not be sealed so easily.

Even if it fails to pass the review of the Ethics Committee, there are too many inhumane things done by humans for the sake of profit and desire in the long history of mankind.

After the Xianyue accident, an extreme idea circulated on the Internet. In the eyes of those people, if the price of upgrading the consciousness of all mankind is just countless lives, it would be too cheap.

The most abundant renewable resource in this world is human beings.

Therefore, ever since the Immortal's Fall, Zhou Si has always believed that there must be people who are secretly researching the technology of metamorphosis, searching for the great possibility of upgrading human consciousness. Now he has finally glimpsed the shadow lurking in the darkness... the Land of Elysium.

Suddenly, it was as if an electric arc passed through Zhou Si's cerebral cortex, spreading along the spinal nerves until his entire body froze in place like a sculpture.

"Elysium...Transcendence Technique..."

Zhou Si covered his head with his hands. While thinking inadvertently, he discovered the invisible truth, but it was just like the memory of dreams, quickly slipping away from Zhou Si's fingertips.

He forced himself to stay focused.

“Luo Yong…Luo Yong is not suitable for the consciousness upgrade test, so under the influence of the disease, he will engage in many self-mutilation behaviors, trying to transform himself into a life of steel.

But what if Luo Yong can undergo the consciousness upgrade test? "

Zhou Si's eyes were bloodshot. He slowly raised his head and looked at the phone screen which was still on. The page was stuck on the chat box between him and Pei Dong.

A few days ago, the words Pei Dong said when he left, like a gust of wind that crossed time, echoed in Zhou Si's ears.

"After the Immortal Falls incident, we, the qualified survivors, formed a mutual aid association."

"Recently, more and more qualified people in the mutual aid association have mysteriously lost contact."

"There are rumors that someone is looking for us surviving qualified people."

Zhou Si's face was tense, his eyes stared at Pei Dong's portrait, and he muttered to himself.

"In addition to the three principles of metamorphosis, the prerequisite for consciousness upgrading also requires a suitable mental model. It is not easy to select suitable Siheng practitioners from a large population, not to mention that the selected Siheng practitioners must undergo acquired mental training."

Two clues that had no connection at all were entangled together like mating pythons, and Zhou Si pieced together the truth of the incident in his mind.

“If the Paradise of Bliss is interested in advancing the research of ephemeralization technology, then instead of wasting time and energy on conducting experiments on a large number of individuals like Luo Yong who are destined to fail, it is better to use the valuable legacy of the Ascension Project left by Chen Wen Ge…

Especially those who survived the Immortal Falls and are perfectly suited for the consciousness upgrade test."

Zhou Si knew what the Paradise of Elysium was going to do.

(End of this chapter)