I'm trapped in a cube

The door opened a tiny crack.

Wang Chuan was also stunned. The door was not locked.

He just wanted to give it a try, but he didn't expect it to open directly.

A cool breeze blew in from the crack in the door, blowing across his body. Some white dust particles fell on his clothes. Wang Chuan smelled a plastic smell in the passing air flow, which disappeared in a flash.

“Buzz.”

The sound of the equipment running came again, still very faint. After a while, it disappeared again, as if it was gently greeting Wang Chuan who opened the door...

Wang Chuan's hand trembled slightly, but he still held the door handle tightly and slowly pushed the door open.

"Bang!"

As soon as he let go of the door handle, the automatic closing device on the door closed the door. The closing sound startled Wang Chuan.

The horror movies he had seen before suddenly came to his mind. In those horror movies, once the doors closed automatically, they could never be opened again. He quickly turned around and tried to turn the doorknob from the inside.

As a result, after a "click", the door was easily opened by him...

Seeing this scene, Wang Chuan was stunned for a moment, then let go of his hand again, allowing the door to close automatically again.

“…”

"I'm thinking about something."

He scratched his head, speechless as to why he had such a childish idea. It was true that he tended to do stupid things when he was alone.

With a long sigh, he turned his head again and looked inside the door.

It's different in here than outside, it's pitch black.

"Is there no lighting?"

Wang Chuan looked around and found a hand brake switch with a light bulb icon on it next to the door.

When Wang Chuan saw the icon, he was stunned again.

This way of expression is completely consistent with humans, and anyone who sees it can understand it tacitly.

“Is this really not left by humans?”

As he thought about it, he pulled the handbrake...

The lights came on one by one, from near him to far away, like warm stars, slowly illuminating the dark night sky. Looking at the civilized lights, the coldness in Wang Chuan's heart actually faded a little.

But he was also shocked by what was under the light.

"What's this?"

He opened his mouth uncontrollably and looked forward.

This is a huge underground space.

He was now on a platform, the height of which was exactly in the center of the entire space. There was still a long distance to the top, and he could not see clearly what was going down. It seemed to extend all the way to deep underground.

But this is not the main point. In this huge underground space, there are towering "mountains". The edges of the "mountains" are flat and straight, and neatly arranged. They stand in rows before your eyes, with lights flickering on them, like deliberate decorations. Each mountain reaches the top, and the foot of the mountain sinks into the endless depths of the earth, like a row of black stone pillars standing tall.

After the shock, Wang Chuan finally saw the specific appearance of those "mountains" through the dim lights:

"It's not a mountain! It's a data unit! This is the underground database!"

It suddenly dawned on him where he had come to.

This is the "heart" of the entire city. When a city develops to a certain stage, a "core" will inevitably appear. Every modern city will have such a place, which stores the information of the entire city. The information interactions generated by the daily life of each resident will flow through the blood to the heart and go to where they should go. After the invasion of the abyss, as the communication between cities was cut off, this independent "heart" gradually became particularly important.

Wang Chuan quickly understood this place with human concepts, and also knew the significance of the existence of this place. Buried deep underground, it could only be an important place. This was indeed a "treasure left by civilization", but it was presented to him in another form.

He slowly picked up the recording equipment and started taking pictures of those towering "mountains". This was a very important place and he had to keep video footage of it.

During the filming process, Wang Chuan was still shocked. He looked at the mountains and couldn't imagine how much data was stored in them.

The city was destroyed, but its soul remained, transformed into data and circulated among the mountains.

After recording, Wang Chuan began to look around the platform he was on.

It seems to be made of the same material as the gate. It feels heavy when you step on it. The platform is connected to the top of each unit mountain in all directions.

There is also a telescopic device between the platforms that can control the height and length. It is probably set up to facilitate maintenance personnel to move between the units.

There are also some passages on the edge of the platform leading to the top and bottom of this huge underground space, and some lead to independent control rooms and rooms. Looking at the platform passages that extend in all directions yet are orderly planned, Wang Chuan was shocked again.

In such a complex space, it is obviously not an easy task to design such a well-connected passage that does not hinder the normal use of the space.

Wang Chuan chose one of these platform passages and walked straight up. After bypassing several nearby "mountains", he actually reached a platform above with a better view. From here, he seemed to be able to overlook the layout of the entire underground space. The edge of the platform was blocked by hard glass. Further inside, there seemed to be a place similar to a main control room, with many devices with screens.

Seeing these devices, Wang Chuan rushed up immediately.

The presence of well-preserved equipment meant the presence of "text information", which could greatly help him identify the origin of this civilization and answer the confusion in his mind.

However, after arriving at the equipment, Wang Chuan looked at the buttons for the first time and found that there were no "button names" on them, but vivid icons just like the hand switch for turning on the light.

"switch."

"Move left."

"Move right."

"brightness."

"volume."

"set up."

…

The switch is "a notched circle with a stick stuck in it".

Left and right are the "left and right arrows".

The brightness is a "sun".

The volume is a "speaker".

The setting is...

"gear?"

After seeing the set button logo, Wang Chuan couldn't help but exclaimed.

“Why gears?”

Besides humans, are there other civilizations that use "gear" to mean "settings"? Although excellent transmission methods are universal, the excellence of gear transmission is self-evident, and the development of civilizations is also likely to take the same route by coincidence, but design language is a very "subjective" thing. Why did the designers of two civilizations choose the same icon to represent the meaning of "settings"?

"What am I still thinking about? This is clearly a human city!"

"This is what's left of humanity!"

"It definitely can't be another civilization!"