Chapter 50: The Starting Point (1)

"Is the approval and allocation efficiency of your scientific research budget really that high now?"

Wenhua sat in front of the main console, seemingly lost in thought.

"The approval and allocation of scientific research budgets require a series of complex procedures and reviews.

Especially for our basic exploratory experiments, the approval process is even more complicated."

"Isn't it quite fast this time?"

Song Han looked at the information prompt that showed the connection was hung up one second and the funds were credited directly the next second, and asked in confusion,

"Your high-tech scientific research projects really have high efficiency. Sixty years ago, when I applied for the research on the exercise model to prevent muscle loss and osteoporosis in a low-gravity environment, I waited for more than half a year for the funding to be allocated."

Wenhua shook her head.

"One year ago, the radio wave antenna of our base received a strange set of information."

"Pangu, retrieve the electromagnetic wave information received from solar radiation last year."

"The corresponding information cannot be retrieved!"

Wenhua opened her mouth, but in the end, she shook her head helplessly.

"The allocation of domestic scientific research funds has its inherent approval process. Especially for our ultra-deep space base, sometimes huge amounts of funds are allocated over decades, but the actual achievements are few. Therefore, the approval of budget use is even stricter."

"So, what's the situation now?"

Wenhua countered, "What do you think would happen if artificial intelligence awakened and became a real digital life form?"

"Me?"

Song Han thought for a while and finally shook his head helplessly.

"I don't know!"

Wenhua was a bit excited.

"Yes, we don't know!

None of us know!

Its iterative logic! Its order of thinking!

Even if its behavior is right in front of your eyes, it's very difficult to understand the meaning behind what it does!

It knows us humans too well!"

"So, should we continue the Dream Butterfly Experiment?"

Wenhua turned to look at the old man in front of her. His old and indifferent face was filled with yearning for the experiment, but there was not the slightest bit of curiosity or worry about what she had said or the changes in the world.

"When the Dream Butterfly Experiment was launched, we observed a rapid emergence of electrochemical reactions in your brain's nervous system. Due to our observation, the probability function in the more microscopic quantum world in your mind kept collapsing, and we couldn't effectively read the information.

They just thought those were fixed and blurry memory fragments.

So, what exactly did you see?"

Song Han pondered for a moment and finally shook his head helplessly.

"I don't know what it was. Was it my memory? Or my past?

It was just so vivid that I'm more willing to believe it was another world!"

Wenhua looked deeply at the old man in front of her with a look of hope. Moments later, her original worry turned into determination!

"The experiment will continue. Take six months off for preparation and then start anew!"

"Six months? That's so long?"

"You'll find it passes quickly!"

Four months later.

A small cargo spaceship flew out from the silent fleet cluster in the low orbit of Pluto.

Wenhua took out the goods she had applied for from the spaceship. It was a sealed metal object.

With the authorization of the base's AI, the metal object began to dissolve slowly, revealing the real goods inside.

A menacing transparent octopus?

"Are we having an extra meal today?"

"Yeah, it's an extra meal for you!"

Song Han, who was fixed on the experimental table, felt a growing sense of fear.

"Don't come any closer!!!!"

The greasy and cold touch kept spreading on his face. In a short while, it moved its eight flexible tentacles and drilled into his nasal cavity.

It was a very unforgettable tactile sensation. Even when it passed through the cribriform plate and the olfactory bulb along the gaps of the olfactory nerve, it seemed that he could smell the cold fishy smell on it.

"This is the latest product of the Quantum Biology Laboratory of Country C, an active parasite, a biological quantum chip. It's inherently sterile and odorless. Where does the fishy smell come from!"

"There is a smell! You guys are not following the rules! You're bullying an old man like me!"

In a fit of excitement, the cerebrospinal fluid began to flow down along the movement trajectory channel of the biological quantum chip again.

Song Han was so scared that he quickly covered his nose and lay on his back, fearing that the fluid in his brain would run out.

"You need to learn how to control and use the biological quantum chip as soon as possible. The 1000T of explicit memory is beyond the processing capacity of your own brain. You need a new method to analyze these 1000T of materials into your memories, and remember as much as you can!

Theoretically, it belongs to an individual's auxiliary brain, and it can enhance your individual's memory, learning, and motor abilities according to the original biological characteristics of the biological chip."

"Do you think an old man of 120 years old like me still needs to improve something?

Can you take it out? I can even feel the suckers on the tentacles sticking to the grooves in my brain. It's so uncomfortable!"

As he spoke, Song Han couldn't help but shiver.

"An old man of 120 years old may not need it, but what about an 18-year-old Song Han?"

"What do you mean?"

"The Dream Butterfly Experiment will be launched again in a month!

One hundred and eight high-energy magnetic field generators, thirty-two nuclear fusion reactors, and forty-seven long-range heavy nuclear fusion warships will supply the energy. The theoretical data shows that it can generate an ultra-special high-intensity magnetic field reaching one million gauss.

Theoretically, it can fix an ultra-small black hole."

Song Han frowned and looked at the other person calmly.

"I majored in sports."

"I know. I just want to tell you that this experiment is beyond the control of us humans. That is to say, there is only one chance, and we can't guarantee your safety. Are you sure you still want to participate?"

"How long do you think I can live?"

"Maybe tomorrow, or maybe next year. There are always too many miracles in life."

"Yeah, it's been too long. Now, when I open and close my eyes, I do nothing but recall the past, and a day passes by.

So, what reason do I have not to participate?"

"Tell me, what is my mission!

Travel back in time to change the present?

Or find out what happened?"

"Neither of them!"

"There are only a few types of changes that can alter the way of social interest distribution for more than a hundred years. The Far Side of Deep Space can be said to be the base with the fastest information exchange in the current solar system. Even we haven't detected any abnormalities. There is only one possibility for this change."

I don't know if it's the effect of the octopus in his head, but Song Han clearly felt that the speed of his slow and heavy brain began to accelerate.

"So, my mission is to fight against artificial intelligence? I seem to feel that my numb life has a new motivation!"

"That's just an accessory effect brought about by the expansion of your brain capacity by the biological auxiliary brain. We don't expect you to achieve anything!

After all, we don't know what the result of this experiment will be. It may be an extremely beautiful firework, or it may be a chaotic gravitational anomaly."

"You? You mean they all know about it?"

"Otherwise, what did you think?

The staff in the Far Side of Deep Space, if not outstanding in intelligence, are at least among the top 1% of humans. With such an obvious fact in front of them, who can't see it clearly?"

"Then why..."

"So calm?"

"A scholar's rebellion won't succeed in ten years!

And it's not the 21st century anymore. You don't understand how strong the control of intelligent AI over our human society is!

You also don't know how exaggerated the proportion of automation is in the entire industrial chain of life and production in the solar system!

When it starts to awaken, we can only go with the flow.

At least our lives are still the same as before."

"An alternative form of a brain in a vat?"

"It's just a swap of the roles between the slave owner and the slave."

"Then, if I go back in time, can I change the present?"

"I don't know!"

"Then what's the meaning of me going back!"

"Can you imagine how our world came into being?

A mass of powder is disturbed and vibrated by mechanical waves on a plane. They will form highly ordered ripples according to the rules and interference of the mechanical waves and gradually move away.

This ripple contains us humans, our society, our thousands of years of civilization, and the love and hate of all of us.

But no matter how hard we try, in the end, we will all move towards the only destination under the perfectly fitting cosmic rules!"

"Is it like a colorful movie?"

"The two-dimensional world, in the eyes of our three-dimensional world, is just a silent drama. Who knows if, in the eyes of four-dimensional beings, our world is not a movie that has movement or is interfered with by what we humans define as time?"

"Then what is my mission?"

"There is no mission! Just think of this as an exploration of the unknown of the universe by us humans!"

Her gaze seemed to pass through the thousands of meters of rock separating the base from the ground and saw the fleet blocking the sky in the distance. Her expression was particularly pessimistic.

"Perhaps this will be our only exploration."

"Theoretically, the information in the auxiliary brain can't pass through the quantum gap channel. You'd better analyze and memorize it again as soon as possible."

"How do I do that?"

"The Memory Palace!"

"I don't know how to do it!"

"The octopus will help you build it!"

"Before the experiment starts, we will intensify and imprint the content you have memorized into the Memory Palace in your brain. Just remember as much as you can!"

"Pangu, retrieve all the winning lottery numbers from 2001 to 2010!"