Chapter 151: The Digital Polarization Episode 1

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In the 58th year of the Crisis Era, Underground City C-171.

This was a typical digital polarized society in an underground city that had retained all the chip manufacturing industries from wafers, photolithography, ... to packaging before the natural disaster.

However, the underground city had very few other resources, and any little resource was extremely valuable, which also promoted the development of virtual reality technology.

Everyone could use virtual reality technology to enter the Virtual World, forming a new society within it.

In the virtual reality, everyone had to study knowledge desperately, and the most valuable thing was all sorts of ideas.

These ideas could be verified through simulation calculations and then given to the upper management for real-world manufacturing verification. Once they proved useful to the upper society, it was an opportunity to change one's fate.

High degrees of intelligence and informationization were not serving humanity; they were constantly collecting and analyzing people's behavioral data, which became an important standard for valuing an individual, with the valueless being eliminated.

Such a society had no crime, no waste; the entire society was a single entity. Any job could be completed efficiently, and it had a very strong crisis response capability, making it a social form very close to that of Trisolaris.

Ding Chang, 28, lived in Underground City Block 59, Branch 179, Level 17, a sturdy space constructed of steel and composite materials.

Ding Chang's residence was a small yet efficient capsule apartment equipped with basic necessities of life.

In the early morning, as the alarm sounded, Ding Chang woke up mechanically from his mattress. As his eyes opened, the room also gradually brightened. Although it was still dim, for someone who had lived underground for a long time, this level of light was acceptable.

1,000 meters deep in the underground city, where there was no sunlight, virtual windows simulated a section of natural scenery where sunlight filtered through lush green leaves, dappling and swaying.

Ding Chang liked to watch such scenes; this was the most enjoyable moment of his day.

He couldn't help but think how happy the people of the Golden Age must have been to see such beautiful scenery every day.

The beautiful moment was fleeting; the virtual window closed.

Ding Chang went to the food cabinet and took out today's ration, a block of synthetic food. Underground cities could now synthesize their own food and no longer needed supplies from the Moon.

Wealthy families could use natural food, which required vast amounts of energy to grow crops under lighting conditions.

Ding Chang's dream was to eat natural food a few more times, to taste it. As a child, his parents had once treated him to natural vegetables, the taste of which he could never forget. The thought of meat was something he didn't dare even dream about.

After eating, Ding Chang put on his virtual reality headset and was instantly transported to his workspace.

His colleagues were also virtual avatars, each busily engaged. The virtual reality here was absolutely different from what we understand as virtual games.

Many people think that working in virtual reality can be like playing games, but that's purely a plot from wish-fulfillment novels. Working in virtual reality is busy and dull with no fun.

The pleasure we feel in games is due to the game designers providing too many playable settings, which could never exist in real life.

In this virtual reality, everyone had to learn a lot of knowledge and skills every day to solve the tasks published by the underground city managers.

Most tasks related to the underground city's technology and actual construction problems were beyond the ability of individuals to accept or complete; they were usually undertaken collectively.

Tasks could also be undertaken simultaneously, and whoever submitted a completed report first, if verified correctly, could receive compensation, and even change their destiny.

The structure of the virtual society was like a task platform, where the managers of the underground city, tasked with the city's construction, scientific research development, and various issues they encountered, would publish these on the task platform.

Various virtual teams took on these tasks and conducted all sorts of plan simulations in the Virtual World. Artificial intelligence could assist with problem-solving, but it lacked creativity.

Of course, the virtual teams could also submit their own research findings, and if the managers found them useful, they could receive compensation and change their fates.

In this society, 1% of people carried out scientific research, construction, and development in the real world, while 99% were in the Virtual World, providing a variety of solutions for the problems faced in reality.

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Ding Chang was a mechanical engineer, and the most important job his virtual team had recently taken on was to design a new mechanical device to meet the operational needs in various extreme and special environments.

The biggest problem the team encountered was that the designed mechanical device had two systems running simultaneously, yet they had to operate without interfering with each other.

At present, the team's proposal was like using a single circuit to connect the throttle and brake pedals because definitely only one would be pressed at any given time, so it met the requirement.

How to control the coordination of these two systems was the crux of the problem, and the simplest way was to write a smart program that controlled the coordination of these two sets of systems through sensors and controllers.

But in those extreme and special environments, the sensors and control circuits would be burned out. The entire team was searching for sensors and control circuits that could satisfy such conditions but had not yet made a breakthrough, leading the design into a deadlock.

Ding Chang was also deep in thought, almost convinced that the sensor route was a dead end. But were there any other options?

Over the years, Ding Chang had encountered this kind of problem countless times, each time without a solution, and each bout of despair made him increasingly disheartened. For people at the bottom, it was too difficult to make any further progress.

The real elites of the Underground City were within that 1%, and if they couldn't solve a problem, how could teams in the Virtual World do so?

The digitized polarized society took control of everything in the Underground City. Every person's food supply and consumption of various social resources were strictly controlled, with every aspect of life tightly bound to a variety of digital platforms.

If a person was deemed truly useless, the Underground City would no longer provide essential living facilities or food supply.

People seemed to have adjusted to this kind of society, struggling tirelessly in the Virtual World, striving to adapt.

Then Ding Chang thought of the virtual window he saw every day, the sunlight filtering through the lush green leaves, flickering and swaying...

Suddenly, an inspiration struck him—the sunlight fluttering through the leaves reminded Ding Chang of a World War I firing synchronizer. As the propeller spun and the machine gun fired, the synchronizer could control the bullets to pass only through the gaps of the propeller.

Here, too, a hydraulic reverse feedback valve could be used to control the synchronizer that managed those two systems.

The fact was that the thinking of people in the Underground City had become rigid. Nowadays, most problems could be solved through artificial intelligence, to which people had grown reliant.

Ding Chang went to see the team leader, detailed his ideas, and the team leader felt it was worth a try.

Leader: "Ding Chang, your line of thinking is good, but the specific design will not be completed in a short amount of time.

"Today is the day you and your girlfriend are getting engaged. You don't need to work a 14-hour shift. An 8-hour shift will be enough."

The digitized polarized society did not prevent human interaction; typically it was in the Virtual World where people dated, interacted, confirmed relationships, and then after marriage, would live together in the same capsule apartment.

Ding Chang: "No, this task has reached a critical moment. If the design succeeds, it will not only be a breakthrough in our work, but also a change in the fate of all of us.

"I believe my girlfriend will understand me. This is also for giving her a more hopeful future."

With the assistance of artificial intelligence and colleagues, the design proposal was finally completed 10 hours later.

Ding Chang, with a heart full of joy, submitted the plan to the Underground City mission management platform.

There's always someone in this world who is ready before you!

Five minutes later, he received a notification from the mission management platform:

[The proposal overlaps by 60% with a design submitted 2 hours earlier by the ** team, and the design concept of the control synchronizer is identical to that of the ** team's proposal.]

[Comprehensive opinion: Rejected.]

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