Cheng Xiaoyu had a long dream in his sleep.

In his dream, he was falling endlessly, surrounded by countless stars swirling, these lights composed of gas and dust, performing magnificent landscapes in the darkness and silence, giving birth to new stars.

He watched as a white gauze skirt fell into the metallic blue depths, moving forward like a never-ending flying machine......

He wanted to catch up with her, but he couldn't do it, no matter what.

He had no choice but to follow her and let her stay in his field of vision forever.....

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Cheng Xiaoyu took a deep breath when he woke up, but he felt that he couldn't open his eyes at all, his soul was trapped in darkness, he wanted to take a deep breath, but it was as if he was unconscious, the feeling at the moment was very magical, he obviously felt it, but he couldn't wake up.

He tried hard to move his body, but he felt that there was a gossamer bound to him around him, and then these gossamers drilled into his body, year after year, day and month, all arranged in his mind in an orderly manner, playing forward scene by scene like a marquee.

From the moment he crashed, fast forward one by one, Cheng Xiaoyu looked at this scene without emotion at all, and flashed in his memory like a marquee, and when the picture quickly migrated to the scene where Su Yuxi jumped off the cliff, Cheng Xiaoyu suddenly woke up and opened his eyes.

There was a gentle fluorescence in front of him, and he seemed to be lying in a hibernation pod from a science fiction movie, with a respirator between his mouth and nose, and a viscous nutrient solution all around his body.

He couldn't feel how long he remembered at all, he only felt that this time he really woke up from his deep sleep, Cheng Xiaoyu raised his arm vigorously, but he hit the lid of the capsule made of unknown metal with too much force, and then the lid quietly slid to the side.

Cheng Xiaoyu sat up from the coffin-like space capsule, unveiled the mask, the viscous liquid slowly slid down his red body, he looked around, the room was empty, three sides were walls made of smooth mirror-white material, only on the opposite side of him was a huge glass window, the window was bright, with a blue coastline, light yellow sand, green leaves and white light scattered into a winding path during the long walk.

The warm yellow lotus lanterns floating on the murmuring stream on the side are bright and dark under the shade of the trees, like a group of fireflies flowing down the water.

It was clearly not the island of Laura, and he had dreamed of it before, and he said to himself: Am I not dead yet?

Then he thought of Su Yuxi, so he began to shout anxiously: "Xiaoxi!

At this time, he heard a slight mechanical sound, like a balance bike sliding on the floor, Cheng Xiaoyu looked in the direction of the source of the sound, and was taken aback, it was a white robot, the skin was like ceramic, and it looked like plastic, part of the mechanical components were exposed, and the head was like a motorcycle helmet, but there were two spots of blue on it that kept flashing.

It's like someone is blinking.

"Master, you're awake!" the robot slid to Cheng Xiaoyu's side and suddenly made a mechanical sound.

This scene is like a science fiction movie, Cheng Xiaoyu didn't pay attention to it, but continued to shout: "Is there anyone here?"

The robot raised its pliers-like hand, scratched its round head, which had no hair, and said, "Master, I judge from your expression and tone that your emotions and body are a little abnormal, do you want me to notify the management center to come and check it for you?"

Cheng Xiaoyu's psychology turned up turbulent, if it weren't for the strong mechanical sense of this voice, it would be no different from talking to a person, not at all like the dialogue of artificial intelligence that lacks human logic.

Cheng Xiaoyu pressed the anxiety in his heart, hesitated and asked, "Management center..... What is it?"

The robot's two cute round robotic arms waved upwards and said, "It seems that there is a problem with your memory, and you have not been able to recover it...... The management center is the center of human management on earth....."

Cheng Xiaoyu looked at this funny and cute machine, and muttered, "Earth Human Management Center...... What kind of institution is this?"

The robot said: "The Earth Human Management Center, headquartered in SH City, Greater China, signed the "Human Charter" in New York City, North America, on January 1, 2145, marking the official establishment of the "Earth Human Management Center". The Center for Human Management of the Earth is committed to promoting the provision of the most perfect service and the most perfect living environment for every person on the earth, so that the ....."

Cheng Xiaoyu said with some amusement: "What did you just say?2145?" He felt that this robot must have been controlled by someone, and it must be a spoof show.

"Yes, 2145," the robot said. ”

Cheng Xiaoyu smiled and said, "Am I on that set now?" He looked around carefully, no camera, no camera, nothing in the room, except for the beach scene outside the glass window, he got up from the coffin-like space capsule, trying to find the answer himself.

The robot said: "On the set, such a place no longer exists, only in the city of Los Angeles in North America there are ruins. ”

Cheng Xiaoyu ignored it, the magic was that the liquid in the capsule had been completely emptied, and the liquid on his body was also "evaporated" by the glowing space capsule, which made Cheng Xiaoyu stunned again, he stared at the black mask of the robot defenselessly and said: "Don't continue to joke! This joke is not funny at all, I know..."

However, before he finished speaking, he was completely stunned, and in the reflection of this black mask, there was a completely unfamiliar face......

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"Artificial intelligence is divided into strong artificial intelligence and weak artificial intelligence, this science has experienced more than half a century of research in the twentieth century, although it has made great progress, but it is far from being able to be applied - in the early twenty-first century, artificial intelligence has received more and more attention, not only science fiction movies have ushered in a golden age in the 21st century, creating many lifelike artificial intelligence characters, in the second half of the twenty-first century, human beings have also made breakthroughs in strong artificial intelligence......"

The Open Worm project, established in 2014, is a well-known example. The researchers tagged 5,000 synapses from 302 neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans in an attempt to simulate a virtual nematode equivalent to a physical equivalent in a computer — a project that is still in its infancy, but has also achieved some results, such as transplanting the virtual worm's neural network into a Lego car, which can make the car exhibit movements and foraging behaviors that closely resemble real worms. ”

Then began the contemporary attempt to simulate the human brain with a supercomputer, led by Henry Markram of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Between 1995 and 2005, he first used cryosectioning to delineate the types and distribution of 10,000 neurons in a cortical column in mice, as well as the connections between them. ”

Then, in 2005, Mark Lam led the launch of the Blue Brain Project (BBP), which leveraged IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer Gene), around 2008, depicted a rat cortical column, including 10,000 neurons, and 10 synapses between them to the 8th power, and in 2011, another 100 cortical columns were depicted, and in 2015, the team announced the use of cryosectioning to depict and simulate a rat neural network containing 207 subtypes with a total of about 31,000 neurons, and thus appeared on the cover of the Journal of Cell. The long-term goal of the project is to gradually scale up the simulation and create a virtual human brain.

"On this basis, in 2013, with the support of the European Union, Markram hosted an even larger 'Human Brain Project' (HBP), which hopes to simulate a complete human brain in 10 years, which will be at least 1,000 times more complex than a mouse brain. ”

"But the method used to depict and reconstruct the brain was to freeze the brain of a dead person, cut it into thin slices of single cells, and then scan the position and shape of each cell under a microscope. In other words, humans cannot observe the behavior of the living tissues of the brain, but can only build the architecture first, and then assign values to the parameters (including hyperparameters) of the architecture in other ways. So these assignments don't quite can, or even can't, represent a living, healthy brain – technically, humans resurrect the body of a dead person with a computer, and at the same time give him a patchwork consciousness. ”

"This raises a profound problem: even if we use all kinds of means to activate this virtual brain, make it appear stable at the neural level, and even match the activity of the real human brain, it is by no means Descartes' 'brain in a vat'. ”

"The reason is obvious: not all seemingly stable neural activity is thinking, and the complex movement of thinking is in a critical state with a small probability, and if you don't understand the deep laws of neural activity, then you can't correct the activity of this virtual brain. It's as if you don't have neat handwriting that looks like an article, and if you don't read it, you can't revise a manuscript. The real human brain is capable of complex mental activity because human beings have undergone 540 million years of evolution, and countless genes will be expressed at the right time in our ontogeny, from embryonic development to adolescent learning, constantly correcting the connections between nerves, each of which is closely related to a specific stimulus, and at this stage can even repair work after major trauma, the complexity of this long process is very different from the complexity of the brain itself. ”

However, thanks to the development of artificial neural networks and weak artificial intelligence, humans quickly broke through this problem and coded personal memories into numbers and input them to a virtual brain, and it really became a brain in a vat...... This is an epoch-making moment because humanity has been immortalized in computers...... Then, with the further understanding of genetic technology and the living tissues of the brain, humans have developed ways to reverse the input of memories into humans....."

"So the human was promoted to become a god....." The cute robot imitated an exaggerated movement, and a blue circle flashed on its black face, like a mouth, but the mechanical voice was not full of emotion.

"There is a chip in the back of your head near your neck, which is connected to the "Orion Nebula" in the human management center, and in the Orion Nebula there is the virtual brain of the entire Greater China human being, and of course, there is also your virtual brain, so as long as the earth is not destroyed, the Orion Nebula does not explode, and the chip behind you that stores memories does not break, you will never die....."

"So there's no need to worry at all, judging from your current situation, there must be a little problem with the separation of the memory chip and the Pillar of Creation...... So you temporarily lose your previous memories, but it doesn't matter, notify the Earth Human Management Center to synchronize the virtual brain in the Orion Nebula to your chip, and your memories can be restored......"

Cheng Xiaoyu, who was wearing a cotton nightgown, asked expressionlessly, "Pillar of Creation?"

The robot said, "Yes, the big box you were lying in just now is the Pillar of Creation..... It is connected to the Earth Recreation Center 'White Hole' ....."

"After mankind attains eternal life..... Reproduction lost its necessity, morality began to crumble, humanity began to lose its feelings, there was no point in doing anything, and then a large number of human beings began to commit mass suicide and refuse to be resurrected...... In order to ensure that humanity does not perish, under the strategic planning of the Human Management Center, the Pillar of Creation and the White Hole were born..... They create the most interesting entertainment for humanity - to live again in the world you want - in order not to lose the fun of life, before entering, it is necessary to block the memory....."

"To put it simply, the Pillar of Creation is a passage to another computer world, which can also be said to be an artificial parallel world, and the reason why it is said is another is because there is no evidence that human beings have not yet proved that the universe in which they are currently located is not a computer world..... According to the Fermi paradox, there must be extraterrestrial civilizations..... Unless all civilizations perished before technology matured, and all civilizations with mature technology had no interest in making simulations, human civilization was living in a computer program. The fact that human beings have not been able to discover life in the universe at present can be seen as a reason to support the idea that we are a simulated state....."

"So there aren't many people living on Earth right now, and most humans are looking for an exit to another world, or dimension, in the vast universe. ”

Cheng Xiaoyu asked blankly, "How many humans are there on the earth now?"

"As of September 3, 2671 A.D., there were five million one hundred and seventy-five thousand three hundred and thirty-one human beings on earth. ”

"I ...... Originally..... What's it called?" Cheng Xiaoyu hesitated for a moment and asked again.

The robot said, "You ....."

Cheng Xiaoyu immediately interrupted it again and said, "Forget it, don't talk about it." ”

The robot said, "Don't you need the Human Authority to help you recover your memory?"

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "If it is synchronized with Orion Xinyun's virtual brain, will my current memory still exist?"

"It's hard to say, because this has never been the case, and under normal circumstances, as soon as you wake up, the Pillar of Creation will automatically unblock your memory..."

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"Are you sure you're going to enter the Pillar of Creation without recovering your memories?"

Cheng Xiaoyu took off his nightgown and sat in the metal coffin of the Pillar of Creation, then nodded, and the robot shrugged his shoulders and said, "Okay! Master! But from your standpoint, if you go to other galaxies, as long as you get to the Martian human settlement, you can ask to re-establish your virtual brain on the Martian Rose Nebula.... This way, even if you sync, you won't lose your memory....."

Cheng Xiaoyu asked, "Does Mars also have a white hole?"

The robot said, "Of course there is..... But I don't know if the white hole of Mars can lead to the parallel world you want to go to....."

Cheng Xiaoyu smiled and said, "Forget it..... What's your name?"

The robot said, "My name is Stone ......"

The smile on Cheng Xiaoyu's face disappeared and asked, "Why are you called Stone?"

The robot said, "You need to ask yourself about this......

Cheng Xiaoyu breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Can I just lie down in it?"

"Yes, just lie down in and put on a breathing mask......"

"Goodbye then, Stone! I don't know how to wake up next time...... I'm still not me. Cheng Xiaoyu said with an extremely gloomy look on his face.

"To me, that you are your ....."

Cheng Xiaoyu lay down, and then the metal lid of the space capsule slid silently, the white roof began to disappear, and the soft light in the space capsule filled his eyes, and after a soft sound, the lid was completely closed, and the world was silent.

Cheng Xiaoyu stretched out his hand and buckled the breathing mask hanging on the side to his mouth and nose, and he didn't know what the mask was made of, so he sucked it in as tightly as the skin that grew on it.

At this moment, a soft female voice appeared in his ears, like an eternal call: "Do you activate the Pillar of Creation and connect the White Hole?" ”

Cheng Xiaoyu opened his mouth and just wanted to say, "Yes." As if he had been read the thoughts, he felt a cold and countless viscous liquids began to pour into the capsule, and then a soft, pillow-like thing around his neck held up his neck, and then he felt something connect him to the Pillar of Creation.

As the viscous liquid flooded his eyes, the soft, yellowish glow of the capsule went out, and he fell into darkness, and he fell into a deep sleep.

When he regained consciousness again, Cheng Xiaoyu didn't know how long it had been, maybe it was a long time, maybe it was just a moment, he was standing in a small room, the room style was like a traditional study in the 21st century, but there was no window.

When he thought about how there was no window, there was an extra glass window in this room, and there was a faint light coming through outside, Cheng Xiaoyu thought about why this room was so small, so the room became bigger.

Seeing this magic-like scene, although Cheng Xiaoyu knew that this was virtual and there was no need to make a fuss, he still felt very shocked.

Cheng Xiaoyu was thinking about how to enter the white hole, and a huge light curtain popped up in front of him, covering most of the room, Cheng Xiaoyu wanted to change the scene, so he stood in a sky mirror, with a rippling lake under his feet, reflecting the starry sky and moonlight, reflecting him.

He looked at the huge light curtain in front of him, as if he was sitting in an empty and huge movie theater watching a giant screen movie, and recommended the world - feel the charm of the medieval battlefield and become King Arthur.

On the bleak and cold coast of England, the blonde King Arthur gallops with a sword in stone, followed by a torrent of knights, and subtitles appear: you play the life of King Arthur, you control the adventures of his knights, and you reverse the adultery between his knight Lancelot and Arthur's queen Guinevia.

King Arthur on the screen roared loudly: "Yes, what Great Britain needs is eternal peace, then as a guarantee, all evil that can threaten this peace will be destroyed, and the holiness of the sheath will be defended by the sword!"

Cheng Xiaoyu thought to herself: This is not my world. So the scene on the screen changed, and it became a beautiful garden, Cheng Xiaoyu saw countless pavilions and pavilions in the shade of greenery, and then the camera panned down, green glazed tiles, white jade lions, red lacquer doors, and black gold plaques hanging on them - "Grand View Garden".

Then there was an advertising slogan next to it - struggle in the Red Mansion, become Jia Huan, the concubine of the Red Mansion Jiafu, and then a very handsome boy walked out of the door.

Cheng Xiaoyu said in his heart: This is not the world I want, I want to go to the world I have been.

So there was a historical record on the big screen, there were about a dozen, the first three were fantasy parallel worlds, and the fourth appeared what he was looking for, he thought about it for a while, and the picture began to play, the camera is the scenery of Shanghai at the beginning of the 21st century, the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Jin Mao Tower, and the international financial center he is familiar with - the ninth-rate music director is integrated with the rich second generation of otaku in the parallel world after his death, but what awaits him is not the perfect life of the bright lights and green nights and nights.

After a car accident with the arrogant and cold beauty of the black straight elder sister, a series of love-hate stories were triggered, the best friend of the senior deep well ice part-time eldest lady, the beautiful and simple transformation of the class flower, and the members of the girl group who struggled from the female partner to the heroine, gradually drowning his daily life.

In the introduction, there is no Su Yuxi.

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After Cheng Xiaoyu chose without hesitation, the surrounding scene changed again, surrounded by gray and yellow mist, like harmful substances gushing out of a chemical plant, there were faint mountains in the gray mist, and there were willows nearby.

Cheng Xiaoyu stood at the beginning of an old stone bridge, there was a monument at the head of the bridge that read "Nai He Bridge", the ghosts under the bridge, the bloody wind was blowing, and the blood waves were rolling, which was very scary.....

There is also the sound of gloomy music, with the real scene, Cheng Xiaoyu is also a little scared, and his heart says This is too scary! Immediately the music disappeared, the fog was dashing, and the white clouds and blue sky were restored, the mountains were stacked, and the river was leisurely.....

An old woman with green clothes and white hair appeared next to the stele on the bridge, and she said to Cheng Xiaoyu: "Housheng, have you chosen your life?"

Cheng Xiaoyu thought that this must be Meng Po, he smiled and said, "I have chosen!"

Meng Po looked at Cheng Xiaoyu and said, "Is this again? You have been playing this game for hundreds of years, don't you consider changing it?"

Cheng Xiaoyu said quietly: "You are not an NPC?"

Meng Po said: "I am an artificial intelligence, and there is still a difference between me and NPC..... And NPCs aren't quite accurate...."

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "Oh?"

Meng Po didn't explain, but said: "You came fast enough this time, you only played for less than eight years before you came..... I remember you used to play for thirty or forty years..... But the last few times have come very quickly, usually four or five years to replay, for this you also redeemed a hang, I didn't expect you to redeem the hang and die so quickly....."

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "Yes! ”

Meng Po said: "It's enough to give you a memory, and I also used a fortune teller to give you guidance, it's not bad to blame, you can only blame yourself!"

Cheng Xiaoyu suddenly realized, and finally knew where the fortune teller in Longhua Temple came from, and he said, "I don't know if I can exchange it this time?"

Meng Po said: "No, you can exchange it once in five times..... The old body won't talk nonsense with you, you drink Meng Po soup and hurry on the road!"

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "If you drink it, you will forget everything and enter life?"

Meng Po said: "That's natural ......"

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "Is it okay not to drink?"

Meng Po said: "You can ..... without drinking"

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "Then will I forget everything?"

"Of course! My soup is just to enhance the sense of ceremony...... If you're a Christian, I can change to a different look....."

Cheng Xiaoyu said: "So, no matter what, you will forget everything when you go in?"

"It's not the first time you've played, don't you know? Why are you more verbose than your old body? I used to talk to you and always ignored it, why do you talk so much nonsense today......?"

Cheng Xiaoyu looked at the steaming bowl in Meng Po's hand and said, "Then I won't drink ......"

As soon as Cheng Xiaoyu's words fell, a thorn suddenly protruded on the ground and pierced his throat, and then he saw the old woman in green pouring the steaming soup into his mouth, and then pushed him onto the Nai He Bridge.......