-- By 2060, the earth's population will reach 10 billion, and the vast majority of this growth will come from underdeveloped countries, mainly in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of the Pacific. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

The scene switches to another city, which is densely packed with high-rise buildings. The traffic is divided into three layers: upper, middle and lower, and the top is the elevated highway on which the cars travel, and the driverless cars shuttle rapidly; The middle floor is the ground, similar to the pedestrian street of Lu Ze's era, because there are no vehicles walking on the ground, the ground is unusually spacious, and there are even children playing football on the road; The lower level is the underground network of rail transit.

The density of pedestrians on the ground suggests that the city's population is definitely greater than that of any international metropolis at the beginning of the 21st century, but with sound urban planning and orderly operation of vehicles and infrastructure under the control of the earth's neural network, it does not feel crowded at all.

When Lu Ze asked Xingling.com what kind of city this was, he learned that this was just one of the most ordinary cities among those underdeveloped countries.

- These countries are still poor. Technological barriers have given these countries no hope of becoming stronger. Although everyone can receive education for free, the high intellectual threshold makes the vast majority of people give up learning.

In the same city, the scene moves to a huge cafeteria, where countless ingredients are processed and cooked in machines, and people queuing up at the window can receive the food they have chosen in advance on their mobile phones without waiting.

Lu Ze has seen many novels about the era of population explosion, in which the poor can often only eat food produced by factories.

But the reality is that what they eat is not bad, and everyone's food is chosen according to their preferences. It can even be said that it is better than what Lu Ze ate every day before hibernation, and it is completely impossible to see that this is a poor country.

Lu Ze knew that all this was brought about by the earth's neural network.

-- Young people begin to despair in their idleness, spending more time in the virtual world than they can in reality.

Although the living conditions are not bad, the vast majority of these people are numb.

After eating, these numb people go straight home, put on their virtual headsets, and immerse themselves in the world of the game.

It was only at this time that Lu Ze could see a slight change in their expressions.

-- The aging population in developed countries has become more severe, and the elderly control the vast majority of the wealth and power in society, and they will continue to do so for a long time due to advances in medical technology. Society is becoming less creative and more conservative in its thinking.

At the United Nations PNN Congress, a young man pointed out the problems that mankind is facing, and proposed to revise the core rules of the PNN to protect the earth's environment and limit the excessive squandering of resources, but was ruthlessly rejected by 80% of the votes against it!

-- The progress of basic science has come to a complete standstill, the learning speed of the human brain has not kept up with the growth of technological sophistication, and the only innovations that have been made are concentrated in the fields of information technology and biotechnology. Once again, humans landed on the moon, but the follow-up was not successful.

The scene cuts to the desolate surface of the moon full of craters, and in front of Lu Ze is a base for human habitation, but this base is empty, and the equipment inside is not functioning, but it has been abandoned.

-- And controlled nuclear fusion is still as successful as it was decades ago......

A machine appeared in front of Lu Ze's eyes, and the contradiction between the precision parts and the huge volume had a violent impact on Lu Ze's vision, announcing to him that this was the crystallization of the most cutting-edge technology of mankind.

Although he has never seen this machine, Lu Ze is a science fiction writer after all, whether it is ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) or NIF (National Ignition Facility of the United States) pictures he is familiar with, and even personally visited EAST (China's superconducting tokamak fusion experimental device), so he just knew at a glance that this was a fusion experimental reactor.

However, not far from this perhaps the world's most cutting-edge fusion experimental device, several experimenters are actually gathering together to play poker!

How ironic!

-- With the development of human civilization, the degree of automation is getting higher and higher, and the demand for energy is also increasing. The earth's fossil energy and fission energy resources are gradually depleted, in order to maintain the operation of human society, human beings have begun to let large-scale construction of photovoltaic equipment outside the robot city, which has caused a devastating blow to the ecological environment.

It's another montage-like sequence of scenes: bare land, polluted rivers, animal carcasses, melting glaciers...... It is a strong contrast to the previous comfortable urban environment.

In the end, the scene was frozen on a pitch-black plain, and Lu Ze looked carefully, only to find that the black covering the entire plain was all dense solar power generation devices, so that they could not even be seen on the ground.

-- More than 99% of the world's population lives in cities and enjoys the comfort of urban environments, but they are indifferent to the deterioration of the planet's environment. The environment outside the city has become unsuitable for human life, and if humanity still fails to develop controlled nuclear fusion technology within 50 years, when the resources are exhausted, only the end of human life will be extinct.

The scene quickly zoomed out, and Lu Ze came to space again, and when he looked at the earth at this time, the green had become very rare, and the entire earth's land was almost covered with black......

-- In order to seize the last hope, a project of unprecedented scale was begun. That's Project Prometheus......

Prometheus, the fire thief in Greek mythology, brought not only fire but also knowledge to mankind.

When he heard the name "Prometheus Project", Lu Ze knew that no matter what its specific content was, it had only one purpose - that is, to steal controlled nuclear fusion technology from God!

Lu Ze suddenly remembered that Sarah's information displayed on the Star Spirit Network had the title of "Promethean person", and he didn't know what this meant at the time, but now it seems that it may be related to this Prometheus project.

Then Lu Ze thought of a terrible question: what would happen if there was no earth neural network?

Perhaps a third world war will break out.

But wars often lead to technological breakthroughs.

Even in the worst-case scenario, a large-scale nuclear war would be nothing more than a massive depopulation and an unlivable environment.

But he believed that humanity would never perish and that a new civilization would emerge from the ashes.

And the emergence of his earth's neural network, although it solved the economic crisis and avoided war, was like boiling a frog in warm water, bringing people a better life while driving humanity to a desperate situation step by step.

Sarah says he's in some sense a hero who saved humanity, and that's true, but that's based on the success of experiments with controlled fusion technology.

If he fails, he will undoubtedly become the Great Demon King who destroys mankind.

Thinking of this, Lu Ze couldn't help but shed a cold sweat.