Star Empire

"Something else?"

"Yes, Kriz. You already know something. We are already on the same page regarding this matter."

"A front." Kriz was about to say that the "voice" that sounded in his heart was different from when the two majesties spoke to him before, but he suddenly discovered that there were two figures standing not far behind him. I have seen these two figures - they are Vidoville and Vesrifan, and they are the same person!

"Your Majesty?" Kriz tilted his head.

"Kryze, you were able to sweep your power across the Empire's nearly 1200 billion years of history without triggering history's own defense against you. This is enough proof of your attitude towards the Empire and your relationship with the Empire. At present, there is no need to maintain any additional defenses." Weisrifan nodded. "Next, we want to tell you some more secret information."

"You don't need to worry about the problems here, everything here will be handled appropriately." Vidoville issued an "observation end" order, and various parts of the empire soon began to respond to this order: as the observation target People returned to their original positions, and the lifeless samples were returned to their original places. The no-fly zones in the void have been cleared for navigation, and the vigilant defensive firepower has temporarily restrained its murderous intent and sharpness. In a word, everything is quickly returning to its original state.

"Come with us."

Kriz subconsciously followed these two figures. To be honest, he still hasn't figured out what the two "Star Emperors" who inherited the weight creation are like. From these two human bodies, which were no different from the Imperial humanoids, Kriz felt a clear "essence" meaning, which meant that these two figures should be their true bodies. But the same meaning is also reflected in Void Fierce Sun and the main flagship. This is not like the relationship between the clone and the main body that I have seen before, but more like a deliberate separation.

Kriz was brought to a building. The building as a whole was hemispherical. Except for the door standing in front of him, Kriz couldn't find any edges or corners in any other part of the building. .

The heavy door slid open silently in front of the three of them. Kriz only had time to see clearly that the door and the building were so thick that the thickness of the filling between the two armor structures was already thicker than the tallest building he had ever seen before. The height of the object is even greater. The next moment, he and the two emperors were already standing in a dim car with a small interior space.

The huge and thick isolation door slowly closed, blocking the bright sunlight that shone into the car from outside. Kriz felt that something seemed to be flowing upwards around him, as if an extremely gentle breeze was blowing upwards from his feet, but when he looked at his feet, there was only a thick layer under his feet that was airtight in any way. Partitions.

"Yeah." Kriz found the current silence embarrassing and creepy at the same time. There are no unnecessary decorations inside the dim and narrow car. Every edge here is smooth and rounded, and there are no edges or corners here.

Kriz moved his sight slowly, but everything here seemed to be resisting him from getting any information from them - compared to the place where he could see through all the armor and shields at a glance, everything here was indeed It's very different.

"Is there anything you want to say?" Wei Ruifan broke the silence in the car. "After reading an entire civilization's history of more than one trillion years in one breath, you shouldn't have any opinions and ideas of your own, right?"

"Ah, Your Majesty... My own views and thoughts... It should be that the historical story of the empire is too grand, too complicated, and has changed too much." Such a huge and broad question made Kriz feel It’s hard to answer clearly at the moment.

"There are too many similarities and differences in different periods. This is true for many stories and historical details. They may seem unrelated to each other in different eras, but the story lines will clearly distinguish them. All tied together. That’s how I feel.”

"Hey, this is completely normal. How could there be no changes in hundreds of millions of years of history?" Weisrifan turned around and smiled at Kriz, "Change and movement are the key factors in the world of order. The eternal truth of all things.”

"Your Majesty, when it comes to changes, because I am sensitive to narratives and descriptions, the thing that impressed me the most is here - many of the changes here have essentially remained the same, but the expressions and forms have been changing." Sensing the name The emperor really wanted to chat with him, and it was in a field that he was relatively familiar with. Kriz seemed to have opened up the conversation:

"For example, information level and extraordinary power. When it was first determined that there was a clear gap between them, this gap was not called level, but was called the "zero stable state" and the "first stable state." Wait, and the rules and concepts used to delineate these so-called stable states at that time were completely different from now. In the earliest times, uh, you seemed to be more willing to use the symbolism and birth order to determine different stable states. and other factors, and now more stable and formulaic models are referenced when determining the level of information. I am deeply impressed by this series of changes."

"Because, how can I put it, things that don't seem to be closely related can be well connected in a story line. This phenomenon is very attractive to me."

Kriz quickly became talkative when talking about his areas of expertise and areas of interest. "There are also many other derived contents, such as the new level theory that originated from the Σ Quadrant Continent and is studied according to the hierarchical method of "Nine Heavens", as well as the truth about the void, metaphysics, and super metaphysics. Ah, level fusion intervals, unified blend theory, variable cybernetics, unstable measurement of existence attributes, and many other contents that emerged over time and could be called "emerging concepts" at the time."

"But as time goes by, the fate of these contents is completely different. Some of them are still very active until now, but there are also many opinions that passed like a supernova. It all looks really interesting. .”

"Well, is there anything else?"

"Ah, Your Majesty Vesrifan, if there is anything else, I think it is the wording problem in these historical records. Through this, I can clearly see that the research on the empire in different eras has completely different aspects. The point is, these words can also set off the cultural habits of the civilization at that time."

Kriz thought back to what attracted him to the huge information flow he had browsed before: "For example, very early on, civilization liked to call something that could support the circulation of matter or energy internally a "circuit." .”

"And later on, I prefer to call them pipe networks, veins, circulatory systems, etc. Ah, there will be many related words in the future, but I just know that they express the same meaning. This The thing is also very interesting. During the chronology of the expedition, the evolution of many names also went through cycles. For example, in the 700 billion year, the name of something was changed many times, and finally it was changed back to what it was 500 billion years ago. Names and so on, these are also very interesting if you pick them out and read them individually regardless of the span of time."

"But Your Majesty, please forgive me for complaining - in several eras, there were really too many disposable phrases!" When talking about this, Kriz was a little bit dumbfounded.

"Such as spiritual strings, alien life perception interconnection conversion models, fusion processes, spiritual anti-pollution paths, world link communication channels, information sources, world possibilities, time hybrid points, and alert convergence models. Wait, there are too many phrases and the things these phrases describe have almost never been mentioned twice. These phrases should have been forcibly pieced together based on the functions and uses of the creations at that time, right?"

"Also, in addition to these "forcibly translated" large numbers of creations with one-time names, the empire often abuses the meanings of some words, such as annihilation, collapse, false information, rank direction, dimension, information structure, belief weight, Information Star Network, etc., etc., they often point to different targets over time. Although the empire has carried out many special actions to correct such "polysemy" issues, there is always a lag in such modifications. sex."

"Finally, I think the more conspicuous part is the changes in the empire's ideological trends and the environment. The changes in ideological trends will also bring obvious changes when they are applied to the actual environment. The most obvious changes, such as unlimited resistance The impact of the concept of run on resources. Resource paranoia will lead to a short-term but no follow-up power in the development of application technology. When the concept of variable unification began to be applied, accidents caused by incorrect charging increased so much in a short period of time that the empire had to Research results related to control. The debates surrounding freedom and responsibility, self and obedience directly caused the empire to be split into two parts based on the division of the authority tree, and the "inner empire" and the "outer empire" appeared."

"These are relatively obvious and major changes in ideological trends. On a smaller scale, the cultural preferences of the people of the empire will also change periodically, such as the appearance and interior styles of ordinary buildings and the exterior and interior styles of residential planets and residential space buildings. There will be many differences in style. Depending on the regional environment, various regions of the empire will also form many cultural systems with local characteristics. The influence of these cultural systems will penetrate into all aspects, from the empire area to the five The many civilizations under the jurisdiction of Tianzuo can span hundreds of billions of years, and can affect the decisions made by the empire in the next second."

Vidoville and Vesrifan just listened quietly to Kriz's thoughts.

"I have to say, Your Majesty. Since the time has entered the Expedition Chronicle, the story of the Empire has begun to become thicker and thicker. This is the biggest difference I can feel. I'm done, Your Majesty."

"Well, actually if you think about it carefully, Kriz, all this is not difficult to accept, is it?" Vidoville said softly.

"Everything is changing, which of course includes our cognition, our technical system, our concept of understanding the laws of order and utilizing the laws of order, etc. In the process of development, new things will gradually replace the old ones. Things take on new life, and old things that have lost their vitality will naturally be eliminated in the process, right? If the theories from hundreds of millions of years ago have remained unchanged until now but can still be regarded as standards and regarded as truth, then What a horrible thing it would be to stand still.”

"However, in the process of development, the empire's management did not do a lot of work properly." Weisrifan confirmed Kriz's judgment, "The most obvious one can be said to be the large number of production and manufacturing processes that have been recorded in historical records. Phrases and the widespread "polysemy" situation. In fact, these problems are still plaguing the Department of History and other departments that study the history of the empire and the past technological system of the empire to this day. Kryz, I estimate that you will be indispensable with them in the future. Dealing with.”

"Your Majesty, may I ask, what is the destination of our trip?" After "chatting" for a long time, Kriz regained his curiosity as if he had just woken up from a dream. The upward breeze that I had quietly ignored before was blowing by me again at this moment.

"The core of the Blazing Sun - a place extremely close to the source of the power of the Blazing Sun. There is the most secret and relatively safe conference room in the empire." Vidoville replied, "It will be there soon."

"Oh" Kriz nodded subconsciously. He suddenly noticed that there were some interesting differences between the two emperors: Like himself, His Majesty Victorville's ears had long, pointed upper edges, and they were also elf ears. The upper edges of Her Majesty Weisrifan's ears are much rounder - she seems to be less affected by this "elven disturbing force" whose source is not yet certain.

"It seems to be related to the weight creation owned by His Majesty Weisrifan and her personal experience. These factors are added together to dilute this information disturbance." Before Kriz could see too much, a blow came from below. The "breeze" suddenly stopped.

"Here we are."

A conference room, a very narrow conference room that could only accommodate dozens of "people" like myself at most.

Everything in the conference room was extremely simple. The ground and the semicircular dome were all immaculate white. Apart from a white ring table, there were no other items or decorations in the conference room. As soon as Kriz came in, he quickly discovered the "flaw" in the conference room - there was a person waiting here early.

The first impression this man gave himself was not a good one. He revealed a state of exhaustion that was quite rare for an imperial being, and the clothes he wore became wrinkled and striped, not to mention all the decorations. They were all torn off.

It is not easy to make the ordinary clothes of the empire become wrinkled. The person who can sit in this conference room will definitely have a lower authority level. And if the clothes worn by such a person can be made to look wrinkled, It can be said that this piece of clothing has been ravaged and destroyed for a long time - what did he do to make it look like this?

Well. Kriz subconsciously wanted to take a closer look at the details of his identity, but just as he tried to look deeper, many ferocious "spikes" suddenly appeared around the man. The thorn stabbed hard into his eye and caused him severe pain.

"Hiss—!" Kriz immediately dismissed his curiosity. The sudden attack made him feel baffled. The protective system surrounding that person began to gradually unlock. As the ferocious-looking shields gradually opened, a clear sense of familiarity soon emerged in Kryz's heart - that person had been waiting here for a long time. The guy, he's Marion Wheeler!

"Let's get down to business." Wheeler's tone revealed fatigue and coldness.

"Davox Kriz, Narrative Singularity Life, right?" Wheeler's eyes swept around Kriz, and after receiving a positive response, he nodded slightly.

"You have read the historical iterations of the entire empire. In fact, with your life form and strength, even if you did not participate in the previous mission, you should have noticed some phenomena."

Wheeler went straight to the point without any extra "courtesy": "For example, sometimes information is lost inexplicably. A lot of information that could have been conveyed in a very simple way actually becomes complicated and obscure when expressed. Many normally normal scenery takes a long time to express." There will be a strange and indescribable feeling.”

"Now that you have browsed through the billions of years of history of the entire empire, you should have noticed that there are a lot of tampered and distorted texts and a lot of obscure content in the empire's records of the past. For example, there are many occurrences in the historical records Very low long phrases, confusing word order and long sentences, as well as a large number of grammatical errors and even typos..."

"Also, the historical records of different chapters span a huge span, and the connection between the beginning and the end of different chapters is difficult to clarify. There are also many places where "pink light" appears suddenly and has no relevant context." Wheeler threw a lot of "baffling" questions at Kriz.

"Yes, Your Majesty Wheeler, I have noticed these problems, and I have learned that the causes of these problems are dangerous."

"So Kriz, have you noticed other problems yourself? It has more than just impacts. At the same time, the countermeasures we are dealing with are also gradually unfolding. Do you see it?" Wheeler sat up straight. Body, eyes fixed on Kriz's eyes.

"Other issues and countermeasures." Kriz frowned slightly. It seems that being able to stand here means that he has passed the empire's review, but if he wants to be recognized here, he needs to further demonstrate his abilities.

However, the entire empire, especially those with higher authority levels, seem to like to default to the fact that each other knows the "pre-details" of the topics to be discussed - I have seen it many times, with the empire's chief scholars and department managers They and even the Emperors of the Heavenly Region will rarely explain anything when talking about a certain topic. They will assume that all parties involved in the conversation already know all the basic details needed to discuss this topic from previous clarification meetings.

It seems that His Majesty Wheeler has regarded "giving orders without explanation" and "tacitly understanding each other's knowledge required for the topics that need to be discussed" as daily habits that do not need to be paid attention to.

Although... there is nothing wrong with doing this for myself, but for a story, this will create too many mysteries.

Although the characters in the story seem to be answering questions fluently, the more they answer questions fluently, the more they actually widen the information gap between themselves and others - and in turn, the more they shut out new readers from outside. .

"...Ah, there is such a problem." Following his previous feeling, Kriz recalled a situation he noticed when browsing historical iterations. This situation appeared intermittently and spanned a long period of time:

"I noticed that many records in the past were written down according to the dialogue genre. Under normal circumstances, the dialogue genre should clarify who the dialogue parties are and what the attitudes of the dialogue parties are to each other. But many historical materials and historical records of the empire "In addition to long stretches of dialogue, there are no clear pronouns, which makes the words appear to be spoken by the same person."

"Well, what then?" Wheeler was still staring at Kriz, but after hearing Kriz's narration, the coldness in his eyes dissipated a little.

"Information and stories with this characteristic have appeared for a long time, and the earliest can even be traced back to the Leap Annals... But they appeared out of control on a large scale in the Expedition Annals, and they were based on the civil war in the empire. The ‘starting point’ of their explosive emergence.”

"Okay." Wheeler nodded. "This is indeed the corrosion caused by the "indescribable" property released by the target. So what are the countermeasures we can implement? To remind you, it is in your previous answer."

"Countermeasures. Your Majesty, I thought of it." Kriz's eyes suddenly widened a little: "It is difficult for the current empires to remember each other clearly - this is our countermeasure! Although the pollution It distorts the information that should be clear and unambiguous, but this property can be exploited by us. We can use the damage caused by pollution to weaken the possible narrative blow! Because anyone can do those words and those things, so those stories can be Seeing as there are no specific roles, any life in the empire can play these roles, so even if the narrative attack destroys the real original characters, we can still use the existing pollution to make new characters support the framework of the story!"

Kriz said excitedly at first, but this excitement was quickly replaced by seriousness - he knew how cruel this would be. At the same time, Kriz was also surprised: His Majesty Vidoville did not want him to mention a single word of the "forbidden content" before, but now he could pour out all of it at once.

"Good, then we can save a lot of time."

Wheeler, who was sitting at the table, knocked on the empty white tabletop, and a holographic projection suddenly appeared in the center of the table. Wheeler pointed at what was displayed in the holographic projection: "This is the culprit of all problems."

"What is this?" Kriz's eyes felt an inexplicable malice the moment he saw the thing in the projection, and when his eyes fell on the terrifying monster, even his eyes seemed to Will start to melt and blur your eyes:

It is a five-way symmetrical pattern. Under real conditions, it is obviously not a rule, but it keeps repeating its charming and twisted regularity in everyone's ears in a way that can penetrate into the soul. It's like mocking reality.

At its center is a pentagon made up of dense five-sided light patterns. At each vertex of the pentagon there is an incredibly long, finger-like tentacle, with countless arrangements distributed on the tentacle. Neat but unclear lines, it is impossible to determine whether the shape of those lines is circular or pentagonal. There is a weird "pentagonal" gap in the middle of it, which may be its mouth.

Kriz noticed that when he first looked at the gap, it was unusually distorted, but as long as he stared at it for a little longer, the images in the picture would keep hinting to him, that "pentagon" ” is regular and standard—in the form of some incomprehensible comments.

“The giant malicious metameme—that’s what we call it.” Marion Wheeler’s tone betrays coldness. "You have to be careful. After leaving this room, you can only talk about the existence of this thing to individuals with authority levels higher than 2-18 in the 18th day area at the designated safe research location. Be careful, please, Don't, don't, don't say a word about it to any individual in other regions with authority lower than level 2-21, and don't make any hints. Keep all this locked in your own heart, do you understand? "

"Yes, I understand." As Wheeler narrated almost word for word, Kriz immediately understood how important his words were and how serious the nature of this matter was.

"Currently, it has not fully appeared in our reality, so we cannot find it from the outside. But through some means - such as collecting those space-time nodes where the pink light has appeared and connecting them to each other By connecting them, you can roughly create such a pattern. But you must pay attention, as long as it is drawn deliberately, even if the shape is rougher, it will be noticed by this thing."

"What will happen if you are noticed?" Kriz asked cautiously.

"If it is noticed now, it will not cause death directly, but it will be hard to say in the future - but even if it cannot kill us directly, the consequences of being noticed by it will be very, very serious." Wheeler was silent for a while.

"In the early years of the Crusade Annals, there was a civil war that almost ignited half of the Empire. After the civil war ended, the Empire entered a notorious stage of chaos in history - what caused all this was the corrosive contamination of the giant malevolent metameme when it invaded The path of the empire is all the "five" factors in the empire's norms. The data in these norms directly affects all creation, so the pollution uses the five factors in the norms as a springboard and spreads from the book to all those based on those normative values. On the established creation. That was a trillion years ago, and it was further away from us at that time - at least much further away than it is now."

"What if it appeared in our order at all?"

"It's not clear. I'm afraid no one in the entire empire can tell clearly. In fact, it's appalling enough that it appears in this way. We can't find out its specific origin, but we know something about it - it's It's like it's squeezing in here from somewhere, and the place it was before was at least outside the "ninth sky" of Σ." There was a slight tremor in Marion Wheeler's words. "I don't mind speculating on its possibilities with the greatest malice. I even wonder if its appearance caused the Σ civilization, which was once flourishing, to go crazy in such a rapid way and eventually perish. Or, it occupied the space that led to the death of civilization. Most of the reasons for the collapse of Σ.”

"But Your Majesty Wheeler, isn't this speculation a bit -"

"Kryze, Σ civilization was destroyed in its sixth trillion years, and an important reason why the giant malicious metameme cannot be clearly outlined in all the details is that once we touch on it, it is "five "When it's still a question of "six", you'll just get a bunch of gibberish."

Vidoville suddenly interrupted Kriz. "It is not uncommon for the quantities corresponding to numbers to form or be given abstract concepts. The deformed five has connected these things, and we have to assume this possibility."

"Kriz, now you should understand why the empire's education curriculum is filled with a lot of content that makes you feel unreasonable." Weisrifan sighed, "We didn't know that this thing was really coming. What will be the result?"

"Before everything is irreversible, we must do everything we can to make adequate preparations - we set up various environments and scenarios for students to experience firsthand, so as to prevent the children of the empire from losing the assistance of the empire network. Nothing will be done. We make students go through the learning process over and over again, hoping that students will master more learning methods in case of unexpected events."

"Also... you should have noticed that the knowledge currently taught to students by the empire in the general education stage is old and general, and some of it has even had obvious "omissions" or even "errors", but that knowledge has It is enough for the new students to establish a basic understanding of the world view, and that knowledge is safe. The knowledge taught to you has been analyzed and filtered by countless various imperial beings for hundreds of billions of years, and it will not contain hidden and deadly toxicity."

"... Then Your Majesty, what are you going to do? What can I do for the empire?" Kriz looked at Wheeler, and then at the strange image suspended in the center of the ring table.

Kriz recalled the anomalies he had seen in history, as well as the rows of anchor points neatly arranged in the long river of time. After a little thought, he looked firmly at Vidoville and Weisrifan, "Please speak."

"We hope that you can remember everything about the empire as much as possible, remember it in detail, and be so detailed that you can use stories to reproduce part of the empire. This is what we hope you will do on a daily basis. Well, make this decision It’s not just the two of us, it’s all the scholars who have studied this matter who finally reached a broad consensus.”

Weisrifan said seriously. "At the same time, we want you to keep as many souls in your memories and stories as possible - and according to our research, it's relatively simple for you to tell if a soul has been retained. You just have to look at what you have." It just depends on whether the memory left behind and the entity that left you with the relevant memory can be connected to form a story that is still continuous and relatively smooth."

"Of course, it may not be clear if you put it this way directly. After all, your life form is somewhat special. You should be able to understand it easily when you practice it later."

"Also - create more anchor points." Vidoville said seriously. “When you look back at history, you should have noticed that there are inappropriate conversations at certain historical points, or comments that don’t look like they could be made by people from that era. They are one of the forms of historical anchor points. First, in a way that does not violate macro reality, we can activate the past from the present by activating historical iterations, and fill in the damage in past historical iterations. In addition, there are many forms of historical anchoring points, please be sure Keep enough of them.”

"Before it is about to come, we will prepare a virtual point jump ship for you to go to the depths of the void."

At the end of the meeting, Kryze was told the last thing he needed to pay attention to: "If it is powerful enough to destroy the entire empire, you can leave immediately on the virtual point jump ship. If we can use our strength to compete with it head-on - Then, use your most powerful force to attack it."

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

"Dispatched 343 ships of the Abyss, 2319 ships of the Home, and 1323 ships of the Soul Chaser. Is His Majesty Wheeler planning to directly pack up the 18th District and move it out of the empire?"

"Adjutant, don't be ridiculous. You don't know what these super transport ships we are guarding are doing, right?"

"Of course I know, but it's just because I know that I find it unbelievable." The figures floating in the light flickered helplessly, watching these rare behemoths gather into such a huge team at this moment, just to satisfy Marion... Wheeler, satisfying his future plans that anyone would find outrageous, everyone could not help but shake their heads when mentioning this matter.

As soldiers, they took seriously all the responsibilities they needed to fulfill, but this did not prevent them from commenting on the empire's decisions and plans in their spare time - after all, they relied on daily democratic forums to criticize inappropriate aspects of the empire. The correct approach has been going on for more than a dozen thousand billion years. Only this time, it seemed that the lonely emperor who controlled the 18th Heaven had made up his mind, and no one could persuade him to stop him.

"Build a very large-scale memetic research laboratory in the death tide field. Can their research be carried out? The death tide pollution cannot be completely shielded. This is something everyone knows. He, and the group of gods behind him Isn’t Shendaotao’s large-scale memetic research team afraid that its research samples will not be preserved for a second, or that memetic contamination will leak out along some hard-to-detect corrosion holes?”

"They are also making fun of the empire's property and the lives of the empire's beings. Not to mention whether the weird giant death tide gate will suddenly resurrect or close suddenly one day, even if the gate can withstand it, The order field surrounding that door can also withstand it. It is a large-scale experimental institution built in the death tide field! Even if the activity of the death tide here is not that high, the nature of the death tide will not change! How much can be concluded Unexpectedly, how many sacrifices have been made and how many resources have been consumed to build a series of such huge buildings!"

"So what can we do? Those two have always acquiesced in what he did, and there is really no way for others to order him to stop. Although these things seem outrageous to us, there will always be some beings who are willing to do so. To accomplish all this.”

"well……"