Abyssal Wanderer

In the 24th year of the New Calendar, a horrific murder occurred in the Eden Resettlement Area.

A Japanese chef named Kurosawa Gen suffered from intermittent cyberpsychotic attacks due to abnormal synaptic discharge at the joint of his prosthetic hand.

In a daze, he thought he was still working. He regarded his wife and son as food to be processed, and carried out extremely cruel living treatment. By the time the police arrived at the murder scene, the skin, flesh and fat of the mother and son were almost They were all filmed, and they were as deformed as a prisoner who had been tortured.

If you feel that this is horrifying enough, then the even more cruel detail is...during the incident and in the hours after that, the mother and son still retained their physical function under the maintenance of drugs and equipment. Clear awareness.

Out of humanitarianism, the two police officers on duty ended the lives of the mother and son without authorization.

The police officers who handled this case were Jim Leiter and Héloïse Hanel twenty years ago.

The fate of both of them also changed because of this case.

"Mr. Police Officer..."

Facing "Jim's" question, Jiang Zhou spoke after careful consideration.

If he had followed the normal development back then, the current version of himself (Kurosawa Gen) would have died of adrenaline poisoning due to excessive emotion after he realized what he had done. Chinatsu Sakura (Kurosawa Hikaru) and Fanny (Kurosawa Kyoko) should be made into a "sashimi platter" in the kitchen.

As for Black Falcon-136, it should not exist here at all - just as "Jim" is questioning now, their family's financial situation should not be able to afford such an expensive housekeeping robot.

Although it is unclear what the existence was that arranged for Jiang Zhou and his group to enter here and perform in this melodrama. But there is no doubt that in order for Jiang Zhou and his party to obtain a "legal" identity, that existence changed the life trajectory of Jim and Hanel.

If they had not experienced this case, would Jim and Hanel have embarked on a new path?

The Janus program brings the advantage of multi-threaded thinking. While thinking about the above issues, Jiang Zhou changed the subject and said:

"Mr. Police Officer, before our family immigrated from the Nara resettlement area, we had some savings there... Because both of us have jobs, and our children are not yet old enough to go to school, this SR-4 is considered It was a forced choice.”

"Jim" nodded upon hearing this, and then took out several keychain-sized metal discs from his pocket.

"I'm just asking. Mr. Kurosawa, don't be too nervous. After all, that's not why we came here..."

As he spoke, he bent down and placed the disks on the ground, then snapped his fingers, and the metal disks popped out of the spiral wings and floated.

Jiang Zhou watched the criminal investigation drones spraying water mist of some kind of reagent in the corner of the room while scanning the room with a lavender light curtain, pretending to be nervous and asked:

"Excuse me, is this..."

"Ah... don't worry."

"Jim" waved his hand and then said:

"It's just a routine luminol test... By the way, according to the report, someone reported that around four o'clock this morning, there were continuous screams of children and women coming from your house. Can you explain it?"

"Ah...this is just a family conflict."

Using the ability of the "puppet circuit", Jiang Zhou showed just the right amount of fear and uneasiness.

"I had a quarrel with my child's mother because of some things at work, and the sound was too loud and woke up the child... If I disturbed the neighbors because of this, I'm really sorry."

Jiang Zhou's disguise at this moment is impeccable - with the emotions created by the "puppet circuit" and the empathy brought by the "mirror neurons", even if Kurosawa Gen himself is here, his performance will probably be like this .

Regarding Jiang Zhou's answer, "Jim" was not in a hurry to reply. He looked at "Hanel" who was looking at the data board. The latter replied without raising his head:

"No blood reaction was detected."

"Blood reaction?!"

Jiang Zhou asked with a "horrified" look on his face.

"It's just a routine check."

"Jim" came over and patted Jiang Zhou on the shoulder, comforting him casually. Then he turned to look at Hanel and asked:

"What about molecular composition testing?"

"Examination of...molecular components?"

Jiang Zhou became even more "frightened" and asked with a trembling voice.

"Most of them are normal, except that the ozone content in the room is a little higher. Although some pulse weapons can cause this situation, it seems that it is most likely a problem with the air purifier."

Hanel continued to answer.

"oh, I get it."

"Jim" nodded, the expression on his face obviously relaxed. He looked at Jiang Zhou again, smiled and said:

"It seems like there shouldn't be much of a problem. Please fill out a report first, detailing what happened last night, and then...ah, we'll leave right away, there's really no need for tea..."

As he spoke, he looked past Jiang Zhou toward the kitchen. At this moment, Fanny was walking out of there with tea.

The expression on her face remained tense.

…………

After confirming that the two people were gone, Jiang Zhou finally breathed a sigh of relief and recovered from his dramatic state.

"So, what exactly is going on?"

Chinatsu Sakura, who was baffled by what happened before, finally couldn't help but ask.

"simply put……"

In response, Jiang Zhou sat aside and poured himself a cup of green tea that was almost cold.

"This network domain is simulating the Eden resettlement area in the past."

But this time, it was Fanny who spoke first and explained.

She looked at the eyes of those people turning to her, and continued calmly:

"No need to be surprised. Before I jumped to Pluto Deep Diving, the place where I worked at Apollo Biology was the Eden Resettlement Area - I worked there for seven or eight years. It is impossible to admit my mistake."

In response, Jiang Zhou first looked at the other party with a strange expression, and then took over the conversation:

"To be precise, it is the Eden resettlement area in the 24th year of the New Calendar...and if I guess correctly, we should have taken the identity of the unlucky resettlement area residents who should have died at this point in time."

He said and opened the electronic desk calendar in the room, and the time displayed on it was just as he said.

Qianxia Ying recalled the serious investigation and evidence collection by the two police officers before, and nodded in understanding:

"I seem to understand... So, this network domain is man-made... or generated by AI to simulate the matrix matrix of the Eden settlement area. Just like in an ancient science fiction movie? And Are we taking the identity of the 'player' who was supposed to be offline?"

"You're wrong, there are no players here."

Once again, Fanny spoke first:

"Whether it is the two police officers we came into contact with before, or the passers-by you can see outside. It is certain that behind them, there is no human being connected by a brain-computer interface to control... They are just It’s just an NPC simulated based on data collected by a boring AI.”

At this point, as if she wanted to emphasize something, she added:

"The people here are not real people. They don't have their own mental models. They are just simulated NPCs... Is that right?"

As she said that, she looked at Jiang Zhou, as if she wanted to win his approval.

Isn't this obvious? Why do you need me to agree...

Jiang Zhou thought to himself, but still nodded and said:

"That's right... After all, the Eden Settlement Zone is still existing well in the basic reality, with millions of people living in it."

And whether it is himself (Jim) or Hanel, he himself is living well in the basic reality.

This is probably common sense in this era - because of the limitations of the JZ network protocol, except for special locations in independent systems like "Darcissus Plains", human mental models cannot be copied.

This is the iron rule that the first deep diver set at the beginning of the Janus project in order to avoid ethical issues - in order to ensure the sole dignity of the "mental model" or "soul", not to let another "self" "Competing with yourself for social status.

It can be said that as long as you are on the Abyss Dark Web or the World Wide Web, you must abide by this iron law.

In this way, since the millions of people in the Eden Resettlement Area are still living well in the basic reality, it is absolutely impossible for the people they encounter today to be driven by the so-called "mental model".

At most, it is just a chatbot fed a large amount of corpus.

But that being said…

Jiang Zhou thought.

As simulated NPCs, "Jim" and "Hanel" are a bit too similar to me.

As Jim himself, Jiang Zhou even thought for a moment that he had met his past self.

As an algorithm, this is too powerful.

But looking at it from another perspective, you want the simulation to be so realistic without the involvement of a mental model. It is necessary to use extremely huge computing power to swim through the sea of ​​chaos of probability with great speed.

That is to say...

"There is a high probability that this is a script woven against us."

Jiang Zhou came to this conclusion.

Such "advanced NPCs" produced by Li Dazhuangfei can be accepted by one or two, or even dozens or hundreds... But if you want to simulate millions of people in the Eden resettlement area, or even hundreds of millions of people around the world, then It's really a bit unrealistic.

It's like just going for a run. There is no need to consider the slow clock effect of relativity.

"Is such that."

Fanny spoke again:

"This is just a script for us... we need to be able to find some clues from certain things that happened twenty years ago."

She said and stood up:

"If I remember correctly, Apollo Biology obtained the technological blueprint of 'Pegasus' in the 23rd year of the New Calendar... No matter who is the person who arranged this game, if we want to obtain things, we need to simulate them from it. Get it from the hands of Olympus Enterprises."

In this regard, Qianxia Ying still asked with a puzzled look:

"But... what is the purpose of that being doing this? Especially when the identity given to us is so... ordinary. How can an ordinary person from a family be qualified to participate in such an important event?"

This is not ordinary...

Jiang Zhou thought.

It's a pity that they can't say this themselves - after they come here, the first NPC they encounter is the element they can control... This seems to have been arranged.

Even the fact that he originally chose "Jim" as a controllable factor may have been part of the original plan.

If it weren't for Hecate's delay, he might not have waited until Jim died, so he would have chosen other people as controllable factors.

But whose will will it be? Janus? Hecate? Charon?

Or is it something else?

At this moment, Jiang Zhou just felt like one of those tragic protagonists in ancient Greek legends whose fate was arranged by the gods - but if that was the case, the guy who arranged his own destiny should at least give some prophecies!

The other party didn't even want to be the Riddler this time!

"Can't think like that."

Once again, Fanny spoke - she seemed to talk a lot more than usual today.

"Imagine this is a team-running game. The secret keeper will definitely give clues to start the game at the beginning, and will not let the players run around."

She said and looked towards the door of the room:

"And the two carefully designed NPCs just now are the clues to start this game."

…………

After walking out of the old apartment building, "Hanel" couldn't help but raise his head and complain in a long voice:

"It's not~~energetic~~to travel all this way, the result is just some trivial family conflicts."

In response, "Jim" rolled his eyes:

"What? Do you still want to open the door and see the murderer covered in blood and the two corpses he has not finished disposing of? As a police officer, we pray that we have as little work as possible, right?"

"Here we go again, Jimmy's preaching. That's all I said..."

"Hanel" heard this and rolled his eyes as well. But then her expression immediately changed and she came closer in an instant.

She hugged "Jim"'s shoulders, and then said mysteriously:

"But to be honest, although I didn't find any problems, that family, including the robot, is quite suspicious! The weird atmosphere that filled their house before was like the urban legend of 'Puppet Man' . When I just went out, I got goosebumps..." (End of Chapter)