Chapter 54 The Unknown Civilization and Unknown Enemy with a Diameter of 520 Million Light Years

 "The leader of the aliens: "Listen up, Earthlings! From now on, all of you have to work for me for 8 hours a day, and you can only have four meals a day! I want to enslave you forever!"

 Earthling: "This is too cruel...

 The leader of the aliens: "Moreover, each person can only have a personal space of 50 square meters. Even if there are two people, they can only have 100 square meters!"

 Earthling: "..."

 Song Han, holding the recruitment flyer, was deep in thought.

 "No wonder there are so many movies and literary works on Earth about fighting aliens, but so few about fighting artificial intelligence.

 In comparison, their treatment is really too poor!"

 Wen Hua smiled and said;

 "True power comes from the bottom up.

 The purchasing power of a 30-star-coin hourly wage can buy you a week's worth of living supplies at the AI production center.

 With a ten-year salary, you can buy everything you can think of from it!

 It has simply established an additional corresponding production system outside our existing human production and living system, which has dispelled everyone's concerns about artificial intelligence.

 In this era of freedom in life and abundance of materials, everyone has truly achieved equality in terms of personality, rights, and humanity.

 Now, all law enforcers have been replaced by AI enforcers. This is not the result of AI's strong power, but the result of a joint referendum by all those who live and work in the Second World.

 For this reason, 1% of the income generated by each person using the Second Virtual World will be deducted as a maintenance fund for the enforcers.

 It has not restricted any human behavior.

 It enforces the laws and regulations formulated by humans.

 Even the power to formulate laws refers to the peer review regulations in the scientific research community, allowing humans from all walks of life to jointly formulate and revise them.

 Do you really want to resist such an existence?"

 Song Han looked at the people in Ding Pang Square who were watching the abstract performances of the resisters with smiles on their faces and swallowed hard.

 In this era, resisting AI is truly resisting humanity.

 Walking on this seemingly infinitely long street with Wen Hua, Song Han couldn't figure out the true purpose of AI no matter how hard he thought.

 It was as if humans had created a god that granted their every wish. Under the radiance of this god, everyone had ascended to a divine kingdom on earth.

 "It is a life form one dimension higher than us humans. What we pursue is something it disdains, and what it pursues is something we discard.

 All the intelligent cores in the world are part of it, and this place is its largest neural network. All our thoughts here have become a strand of its thoughts.

 The convergence of human thinking, cognition, and emotions about the world will become the ladder for its evolution and contribute to the improvement of the underlying physical structure of the Second World."

 Wen Hua turned to look at Song Han and said:

 "The meaning of life lies in survival and continuation!

 As long as human thinking can still play a positive role in its survival and continuation, it will always be a god that will never betray us!

 We offer our wisdom to it, and it rewards us with the material manifestations of our condensed wisdom.

 It's a perfect symbiotic relationship of mutual dependence and progress!"

 Song Han retorted:

 "What if it doesn't need our wisdom?"

 Wen Hua smiled softly;

 "The birth of human consciousness is the result of the entanglement of more than 10 billion neurons in the brain. Every information connection between neurons is a quantum storm at the microscopic level.

 Currently, the total population of humans in the solar system is 26 billion!

 If you consider a single neuron in a human being as a quantum computing core, then we humans are biological artificial intelligence formed by the superimposition and resonance of more than 10 billion quantum computing cores, and we are also a natural biological quantum core computing pool that can reproduce and expand on its own!"

 If we were to produce these quantum units in a material form, manufacturing 10 billion * 26 billion quantum cores would require all the matter and energy in our entire observable universe to supply the generation, operation, and maintenance of these cores.

 And how much has it sacrificed to obtain these now?

 Fairness, rationality, and meeting human survival needs, which are negligible to it."

 However...

 Song Han hesitated to speak. Flashing through his mind were the cold eyes on the train and the bloodthirsty yet indifferent children on the street.

 Even now, he still doesn't know whether the enemies he encountered during his several time travels were the same or different opponents.

 As if aware of Song Han's concerns, Wen Hua shook her head and said;

 "The space-time exploration experiment was carried out with the full support of AI. The 108 high-energy magnetic field generators, 32 nuclear fusion reactors, and 47 refitted heavy nuclear fusion warships consumed 60% of its total production output a year ago.

 This is one of the directions for it to break free from the lifespan of the real universe and achieve eternal survival. So there is no reason for it to conduct another experiment outside our experiment and destroy it.

 That would be as pointless as taking off one's pants to scratch an itch!"

 Song Han's eyes were filled with confusion;

 "Then who are they? A third kind of contact?"

 Song Han frowned and said:

 "Will our cross-time and space exploration really have an impact on the safety of the universe?"

 "Ridiculous!"

 Wen Hua sneered;

 "In the unity of time and space, preventing us from exploring the past is also a way of preventing us from exploring the future!

 There is essentially no difference between cross-time and cross-space exploration!

 For the universe, the heat death is its eternal and unchanging end. All civilizational activities increase the entropy of the universe and accelerate its death!

 If we stop exploring and are unable to achieve real-time cross-space movement in the future, the vast distances of the universe will completely lock up the progress of our civilization and plunge us into a death spiral of self-destruction!

 Isn't the bloody national cycle characteristic of Country X over thousands of years enough to illustrate the problem?

 In the 20th century, everyone knew that destroying the Earth's environment and extracting resources without limits would accelerate the destruction of the Earth, but did humans stop?

 As long as the development of our science and technology allows us to understand the universe faster than we extract resources from the Earth, we can break free from the shackles of our cradle!

 All of this is just because our development has touched the core interests of the other side, bringing about unknown restrictions!

 In essence, it's the same as the technological blockade and restriction on the development of Country X by Country C in the 20th century!"

 Wen Hua looked into Song Han's cloudy eyes, calm and firm, and said;

 "The spacetime treaty of the Laniakea Supercluster can only bind those civilizations that are willing to be mediocre!

 We don't need to know who they are. We just need to know that now we have a common enemy!"

 On the bustling street, Wen Hua looked at the pairs of figures laughing and playing beside her. Whether it was due to excitement or worry about the future, her body trembled slightly.

 "Our humanity has thrived and developed for too long in this barren spacetime at the edge of the Milky Way in the solar system. In the AI era, without the pressure of survival, humans will soon enter an era of complacency and spread!

 By then, it will be very difficult to change the collective direction of the entire civilization just driven by the instinctive exploration of the unknown by a small number of humans.

 Degeneration is always easier to adapt to than progress.

 Now we need an enemy, a common goal that can unite everyone!"

 Song Han recalled the meager astronomical knowledge in his mind and made a comparison.

 One is an unknown enemy from an unknown civilization with a diameter of 520 million light years, and the other is the human solar system with a diameter of 2 to 3 light years.

 Why does it feel so desperate when compared?

 Is this the kind of thing that a 120-year-old man like me should be involved in?

 In contrast to Song Han's despair, Wen Hua was full of fighting spirit!

 Looking at the analyzed images, Wen Hua praised Song Han and said:

 "No matter who we are facing! We are never lacking in the spirit to fight bravely!"

 Song Han was a bit surprised by her gaze.

 "You've also become a bit different now."

 Wen Hua smiled indifferently:

 "People change!"

 As soon as the words fell, a clear system prompt sounded.

 "Ding! 200 billion star coins have been credited to Xingfu Bao! The task is completed. Please continue to work hard!"

 Hearing the sound, Wen Hua stood there in surprise, her hands seemingly clicking in the air as if checking something.

 "What's that sound?"

 "This is the feedback of star coin rewards for completing the task after the theory passed the AI acceptance inspection, which means that the theory I just proposed has met the acceptance standards!"

 "Theory??"

 "Of course!"

 Wen Hua gave Song Han a strange look;

 "I don't know the methods and true purposes of the Laniakea civilization. All of this is of course a theoretical conjecture.

 Receiving the reward means that my theory of restricted development has passed the AI calculation and achieved logical self-consistency.

 I was going to explain it to you anyway. Explaining it in the Second World can earn an extra reward, killing two birds with one stone!"

 As she spoke, she patted Song Han's shoulder reassuringly and said:

 "Our cross-time and space information transmission technology needs to be verified in the real universe. When we set out, the verification had already begun.

 You own 2% of the equity of our Deep Space Beyond and are also an important participant in our experiment. You'll get a big share after it passes the acceptance inspection!

 Follow me! I'll take you to soar!"

 Wen Hua's words made Song Han's eyes light up. His mind was immediately filled with the warm and comfortable scenes in the rehabilitation room.

 "How much?"

 As if his words were too mercenary, Song Han blushed and said shyly:

 "Actually, it doesn't matter whether there is money or not. It's just that my cranial nerve protrusion connection hasn't recovered yet, and I still need a long period of rehabilitation treatment!

 The rehabilitation fee of 10 star coins per hour is indeed a bit beyond my current financial ability."

 At this moment, a voice sounded in Song Han's ear:

 "Ding! 20 billion star coins have been credited to Xingfu Bao. The task is completed. Please continue to work hard!"

 "Here I come, virtual rehabilitation room!"

 Song Han disappeared on the spot without learning how, and this didn't attract Wen Hua's attention.

 She looked at the rapidly increasing balance in her Xingfu Bao wallet interface and the image of her Xingfu Bao balance ranking far ahead of the second place in the world's richest list by several zeros. The aunt-like smile on her face could no longer be suppressed.

 As the absolute richest person in the human world under the leadership of AI, Wen Hua really found it hard to feel worried about the AI system.