Star Empire

Leisure time is short, and these words that appear in casual conversation will soon be forgotten after the fleet sets sail.

These super transport ships, which are as big as galaxies, are loaded with the most cutting-edge memetic research equipment from the 18th Sky Zone, as well as countless blueprints and modular building components. They are heading to the "building" that is slowly releasing death tide pollution outwards. construction site".

For the safety of the goods they transported, these super transport ships did not directly enter the "construction scope". They stopped in a temporarily supported order field around the construction site.

However, this field of order is not the intended end of the voyage.

"What's going on? Captain uoidy54312, what happened?"

"After receiving a notification from the superior commander, the security protection work of the transport fleet will be handed over and will be fully taken over by the security forces of the 18th District. At the same time, the transport fleet will also be fully taken over by the 18th District?! See for yourselves. .”

"All transport ship crew members have left? All their positions and responsibilities will be replaced by personnel assigned by the 18th District?! What is the 18th District doing? Are you crazy?"

"Who knows what went wrong?" uoidy54312, soaked in the sea of ​​​​light, flickered a few times helplessly, "His Majesty, the Emperor of the 18th Sky Zone, has been in trouble for at least 300 billion years. I After reading relevant news content, His Majesty Wheeler has asked various departments to revise regulations, change plans, and add weird ritual activities in an almost arbitrary manner. Many of his requests are disgusting."

"What's even more strange is that for such a long time, there have been many criticisms of his actions from all over the empire, but the only effect of these criticisms is to continuously improve His Majesty Wheeler and the Eighteenth Day It’s just the zone’s unlimited anti-crowding resource coefficient – ​​those guys just need to create more extraordinary energy bricks based on this coefficient. Oh, it will also give them more nightmares, which may be more effective, after all, this This kind of nightmare is very warning. However, in the end, the voice of criticism did not change anything significantly."

".What a headache."

"Forget it, uswed53432, don't complain, we just need to do our job well, there are more people who have more headaches than us. Just like the nagging Majesty Wheeler, maybe for some reason He makes the headache worse, and then he comes to give us all a headache."

"Okay, write down the new captain's quotations." The light ball with the unique identification number uswed53432 shook a few times, "Captain, your quotations are quite impressive."

"If you haven't deleted this content before we established our own order field, I will throw you into the void in the name of the captain."

Several humanoid entities in the sea of ​​light bumped into each other playfully. The order to change defenses has been passed on, and those responsible for controlling the warship have calculated the warship's subsequent flight trajectory and movement.

The truth-class battle carrier, which is more than 300 kilometers long, is like a flexible boat under precise control. Its huge golden body completes the turn in place in an instant. At the same time, completing this action, there are also transport fleets surrounding it. of all other ships.

Inside this truth-class battle carrier, all the facilities in the cabin have entered an activated state. The devices that were once clearly separated from each other no longer have entity, they melt into a bright ocean of light.

This ocean surrounds all battleship members. The instructions and needs from the crew and the feedback from the ship will be accurately transmitted to each other through this sea of ​​light, without any restrictions or delays.

The fleet began to accelerate, and the powerful engines powered by extraordinary information could provide the ships with infinite speed. The space-time structure gradually disappeared, replaced by a blurry shadow with a dim golden light - the fleet began to leave the order field, like a vesicle leaving the mother body.

However, no one noticed that just as they passed the boundary of the order field, there was an unusually dim dense wall of light that used the authority level it was given to briefly lift all the protection of the fleet and went up to the core flagship of the position. There are no exceptions to the most common battle carriers.

This wall of light did not cause harm to any entity in the fleet when it swept across the fleet, but it tampered with something - the logbooks of all ships and the memories of all empires were modified, and they no longer came here. It’s to protect the super transport ships——

They came here as warriors, and the fleet they were in had just fought a fierce battle with the strange Death Tide Gate and the monsters pouring out of the gate.

"Have you deleted those messy captain's quotes you memorized? I told you, if you don't delete them now, I will throw you into the void."

"Delete it, captain, make sure you delete it completely and there will be nothing left."

"That's pretty much it." The humanoid light group that released the most light flickered a few times with satisfaction.

"Speaking of which, Captain, the battle just now was really dangerous. So many death tide creatures burst out from that gate. The biggest one... is probably even bigger than the largest core flagship in our fleet. .Fortunately, the position protection barrier propped up by the Klein ring level and the information deflection beacon generated by the void level are powerful enough. If those death tide creatures did not pour most of their attention and desire for destruction into those void information deflection If it’s on the beacon, this battle will be really dangerous.”

After hearing the conversation, another humanoid entity in the sea of ​​light floated over and talked about the thrilling battle just now.

"Indeed. To be honest, I have never seen this kind of battle exaggerated like that." When it comes to this issue, Captain uoidy54312 also has the same view. "This Gate of Death Tide is very huge, and it is so stable that it is incredibly stable. According to the data recorded by the empire, if the death tide creatures coming out of it and the artillery fire we fired in are added together, it will be so big The amount of information passing through is enough to blow it down thousands of times, but this door seems to be completely unaffected."

"There has been a lot of research on this. It is estimated that all the departments in the entire empire studying the death wave can revolve around this gate for at least hundreds of thousands of years."

"Don't make any noise now. Here's another news. It says that the Empire will temporarily block the Death Tide Gate and the void area near the Death Tide Gate. Since we don't know the activity patterns of the Death Tide creatures and the nature of this gate, Will the empire build a very large monitoring station near the Death Tide Gate? Tsk, this time, the entire empire will have to revolve around this gate."

"The scope of the blockade is equivalent to the size of an entire world branch. Fortunately, there are not many shipping routes nearby, otherwise this area will probably be shut down for a while."

"Wheeler, the memory modification has been completed. All individuals who do not belong to the Eighteenth Day Area will forget their original purpose when they leave this order field. They will not remember that they escorted these super transport ships, they will only remember themselves There was a fierce battle with the Death Tide Gate here. The empire will soon issue a notice that this place will be blocked in one direction and subject to navigation and jump controls."

"Okay, Your Majesty Victorville."

"Um."

After doing all this, the two giant ships, Arcane Throne and Void Matrix, lurking near the Order Field, began to slowly move away from the "construction site" that had been taken over by Marion Wheeler. Since the boundary line system not only obscures the navigation traces of the general flagship, but also weakens the connection between the ship and the surrounding environment, Victorville has no way to drive the ship very fast at this time.

"The order has been sent out. The next thing is to divide it among the various regions and departments. Let them get busy." Vidoville began to calculate the virtual point jump coordinates required to jump to the Void Fierce Sun.

While calculating, he vaguely felt the "breeze" coming from the void. When Vidoville moved his gaze to the direction where the breeze was blowing, he immediately understood why there were those "winds" in the void:

There are many tentacles, huge tentacles that are made up of many worlds and winding in the void. These tentacles are slowly bending, slowly moving their ends away from here.

In this process, countless world neighborhoods had inevitable interactions with each other. It was these interactions that stirred up the originally peaceful virtual information and caused them to form ripples, which caused "the sky to explode" in the void here. "Breeze" - the world within the controlled area is moving away from here. It seems that the order is executed very quickly.

Vidoville nodded, looked behind him again, looked at the hazy field of order, and muttered silently, "Wheeler, take care."

At this time, the pre-calculations required for the flagship's virtual point jump have been completed. The moment the boundary line system lifted its shielding effect, the figures of the pair of black wings disappeared from the void.

"The flagship has left." Marion Wheeler sighed slightly, and his eyes immediately scanned the whole place, and there was no longer any hesitation in his eyes. And the same is true for all the eyes that should be directed towards him.

There is no longer any need for impassioned mobilization or exciting inspiration. Before coming here, everyone has already made their choice, and they are also ready to face the worst possibilities - from now on, they will be with silent and dangerous research subjects. Accompanied by dangerous research results, accompanied by a depressing and dull atmosphere, accompanied by the ubiquitous wave of death pollution, and accompanied by mutations and even death that may come at any time.

All ideological awareness has already been prepared when everyone steps up the ladder of authority. From now on, here are nearly half of the comrades in the 18th District, as well as those from the 3rd, 6th, 22nd, 23rd Districts and other places who are willing to dedicate their lives to fight in the first place of dangerous research. The new home of the soldiers on the front line, everything here is everything they will face in their lives in the future.

".Start unloading materials, pay attention to the number details of the materials!"

"The stabilizing force field generating device is being anchored. The anchoring is completed, and the space surrounding the Death Tide Gate has been fully reinforced."

"The internal spatial structure of the order field is being reduced. The minimum value of the space-time structure required to carry out all work has been determined based on the usage requirements. The various safety factors involved have been converted into the current results. It will be implanted after the space-time boundary verification is completed. The circuit of the world remains the same."

"The strength of space-time has met the needs of the work, and it has been confirmed that the stability of the space-time structure is within the safety range required by the specification. The current space-time structure has been fully scanned, and no crystals caused by crystal energy radiation have been detected, and no clouds and fog caused by arcane corrosion have been detected , the iconic black and red pattern of dead tide pollution that penetrates deep into the space-time structure was not detected, and uneven space-time distortion was not detected. It was confirmed that there are no other dangerous factors at the scene."

"Large-scale equipment is already in place and ready to go."

"The advance detector has entered the Gate of Death Tide and confirmed that the Gate of Death Tide is directly connected to the Realm of Death Tide. The new specificity of the Gate of Death Tide has been observed: there is no barrier between the Realm of Death Tide and the World of Order. This also means that this gate directly connects the Death Tide Realm and the Order environment. Currently, this situation has never occurred in the Death Tide Gate recorded by the empire, and this situation is worth recording."

"There is a fairly large and relatively stable spatial structure within the Dead Tide Domain. Death Tide pollution can still be detected in the space near the Dead Tide Gate and inside the Dead Tide Gate, but the nature of the Dead Tide pollution here is different from that in the past. Any record. The dead tide pollution here shows uniformity and stability. This is conducive to the development of our project and is conducive to extending the service life of all equipment and building materials."

"The maximum depth and farthest boundary of the stable space within the dead tide field have been determined, and past records have been compared and verified. Compared with the detection results obtained when this place was first discovered, this detection did not find any noticeable reduction in the stable space. .”

Instructions and reports were continuously received and sent among countless nodes, and the giant facilities on standby took action one after another. Huge prefabricated components with very slight curvatures, and I don't know whether they should be called "plates" or "bricks" are closely spliced ​​together. Huge and thick pipes and the huge core cabin sections that are gathered up are driven by the huge immersed tube equipment. Slowly entering the realm of death tide.

After this towering, thick golden tower was confirmed to be in stable condition, the construction of various sub-cabinets within the Death Tide Domain began to accelerate suddenly. Countless large and small engineering spacecrafts were constantly transporting huge amounts of building materials unloaded from the Linyuan Ship.

The order field they formed almost built a small bridge in the void. In this cold and silent void, these two temporary artificial order fields brought an abnormal "prosperity" to this place. scene".

Everything here does not want to be made public, and the cold void and long distance are the best curtains to cover this area.

Under the layers of this curtain, the empire's largest death tide domain building to date, and also the largest super meme research laboratory is rapidly taking shape.

".Soul, soul, what on earth is a soul?" On the blazing sun of the void, Kriz shut himself in a dark pocket space. At this time, he was facing the stacked objects floating around him. A mountain of storage disks are worrying.

"Soul. Even with these parameters, it is still very unstable. Although this method can effectively save the soul of most ordinary life in the empire, these data do not explain what the soul is?!"

"Consciousness, wisdom, self. Everything among them is not the soul, and it seems to be inseparable from the soul. However, there are always aliens in these materials. But if we directly believe that "all things have animism", this is obvious It’s too general, and the empire has completely different attitudes towards existences with souls and soulless beings. The soul recognized by the empire must have special characteristics, but how can this specialness be written well?”

Kriz rummaged through the knowledge and data he had received during previous initiations. He knew that the Empire had a dedicated soul research department, and he also knew that the Empire had made many achievements in the field of soul research.

It's just a pity that these results are of little use to me - every time I try to figure out those complicated and weird parameters and awkward to the point of "ugly" formulas and models, my narrative ability leaks countless comments. I almost drowned myself, but these comments did not help me better understand what role they played.

"This is probably the essential difference between "acting instinctively" and "acquired learning" that your majesties mentioned before. I remember this knowledge and can use it, but I don't understand why it is , I guess if I understood the concept of the soul according to the way I use my power, I guess that something that is obviously very simple would be very troublesome for the Empire's technology."

After once again reading in detail the detailed historical records of the Empire's soul research and several different levels of soul research works, Kriz directly let himself spread out into a large font in the space.

"What is the soul? It is related to many factors, but there is no very clear logical relationship between these factors and the soul. There is wisdom but no soul, there is self but no soul, there is soul but no self, there is soul but no consciousness, there is soul but no wisdom. .It’s really a mess.” Kriz hit his head hard.

"Is there something wrong with the direction of my efforts? I must use my own instinctive power to understand these theories created by another form of life. There may be a big difference in the way we understand everything in the world. If we want to forcibly connect the two, wouldn't this approach be a bit like the forcibly created imaginary number "i"?"

Kriz frowned, his instinct telling him that his current efforts seemed to be in the wrong direction. Referring to what His Majesty Vesrivan said before the connection, "connection" and "smooth story" seem to be trying to show that they are the key. And if that's the case

Kriz began to try something new. On the one hand, he temporarily left behind all the knowledge he had memorized by rote, and no longer tried to use his own strength to copy it when he saw examples.

He calmed himself down, and at the same time, he began to pick up some aspects that he had not paid much attention to just now: maybe it was because he felt that he had a heavy responsibility and was too anxious for a while, or maybe it was because the vast amount of knowledge had not yet been fully understood. I digested and absorbed them very well, which led to my understanding and views of them being somewhat one-sided. When I desperately tried to match the phenomena I saw with the content described by that knowledge, I overlooked one point: If it is According to your own understanding, how would you view the concept of "soul"?

After calming down, Kriz began to reanalyze examples related to the soul.

"If we connect them, there will be a smooth story. The nature of the soul will be different due to the differences of the beings themselves." While muttering these words that may bring inspiration to himself, he examined the empire's method of authenticating souls. And the method of saving souls, the white light in Kriz's eyes gradually became brighter.

New annotations began to flow, and this time, these powerful narrative forces were not used to frantically parse complex parameters and models.

"Well soul, the transfer technology and specific operations, and the consistency of the sequence." As each case flashed by, Kriz felt that there seemed to be some small inspirations floating in his mind, but these scattered The fragments can't yet provide me with that eureka feeling.

". It is feasible to use narrative means to forcibly resurrect "dead" lives for which conventional means have been ineffective, and according to calculations, the resources accumulated by the Empire in accordance with the concept of unlimited anti-crowding are sufficient to expand the scope of application of this technology. To individuals with level 3-7 permissions. In other words, this method of "resurrecting the dead" can cover the outer empire."

"But - from a historical and practical perspective, relevant researchers in the empire found that this technology is not generally welcomed by the "public". After comprehensive consideration, the popularity of this technology has been reduced, and this Individuals who welcome this technology begin to show characteristics that can be summarized, and their relevant characteristics are..."

"Hmm...huh?!" These words struck a thunderbolt in Kriz's mind - he already knew what a soul was, and what His Majesty Weisrifan's words meant before.

In essence, the soul is not an entity made up of some fixed information structure or fixed attributes. The soul is the measure of whether an entity still maintains its original "self"! !

This thunderbolt lit up Kriz's heart, and he immediately re-study the information that he once couldn't understand with his newfound perspective - it turned out that he was right! !

Yes, everything is animistic - in the sense of remaining relatively constant in development, everything has a soul. This point has long been applied in practice by the empire.

In fact, there are many enhancement scripts in the empire's extraordinary artillery fire, and these enhancement scripts that can change the performance of extraordinary information artillery fire, which were first called "anti-virtual reality calculation scripts", are achieved by stabilizing the souls of these inanimate objects. of.

But what exactly is a soul?

The answer given by Kriz is actually the same as the answer given by the Empire, except that Kriz used his own insights and his own words to write this conclusion: the thing that can make the "self" of a thing continue is the thing's "soul". This is true of any existence. However, under the influence of actual conditions, the empire devoted more attention to the research of the souls of living beings.

Why is it that even if a living being in an empire is beaten to ashes, his unique identification number is still inherited, and after he has a new body, the identity of this living being will not change, he is still him?

This is precisely because of the inheritance of the soul. The soul ties two different bodies together with the same tie. Therefore, even if a living person in the empire changes his body, he is still himself and will not become an inheritance. An answering machine that captures all of his past memories.

The story of your former self continues, and that’s what the soul does. For the empire, achieving this is enough to show that the research on the soul has been successful at the current level.

At the same time, Kriz also understood what the "projection" that the Empire observed when defining the soul was.

A long time ago, scholars in the empire noticed a phenomenon: a soul would form a very special projection in a certain interval in the world of order.

After a long period of technical research, this projection also appeared in the empire's detection equipment - in their opinion, this is a projection, but in their own opinion, this is a "stroke" that depicts an existence, a soul. "lifeline".

It shows the self-independence and continuity of existence in the story, so that when readers read this part, they can realize that this existence has not changed, and the story he performed is still continuing.

If this is the case, then you can completely understand why the practice of forcibly resurrecting dead existences through narrative means is not welcomed by all individuals: because for individuals, it is very painful.

Using narrative means to restore life and soul is to reorganize the narrative fragments to force the story to continue. The impact of these changes will be unbearable even for the life of the empire without training and experience.

Also, if we understand it from this point of view, the empire, and even everything, everything has its own soul, but why are there such things as "there is wisdom but no soul, there is self but no soul, there is soul but no self, there is soul but no consciousness" , there is a soul but no intelligence, etc., does this situation exist that seems to create opposites?

"Perhaps, it is really creating antagonism. That's right. If you want to eliminate antagonism, it is still too early for the empire."

After gaining new inspiration, Kriz quickly saw the most direct reason for creating these weird classification methods:

The empire is already very powerful compared to most civilizations, but in the face of large-scale death tide activities, in the face of fault zones, in the face of unknown powerful civilizations and super entities in the void, in the face of the void, the empire can still be wasted. , can be defeated. And the life of the empire is also not so powerful that it is incomparable - because of the above situation, the empire must make choices during its existence.

Making trade-offs means that the empire needs to consume some materials to preserve the rest. The founders of the empire are life forms. In the process of development, these life forms are constantly accepting new life forms. Life forms are The leader of the empire, this is what the empire needs to protect.

What about consumables?

Nature is the tool used by living beings to adapt to reality and change reality.

If it follows the concept of animism, it means that the empire needs to incorporate all tools into the concept of unrestricted anti-crowding, and needs to place tools in an equal position to life - then what should be used to defend tools?

This problem will go on and on, never ending.

In order to adapt to reality and break the cyclical extension of the problem, "tools" were kicked out of the ranks of life by the empire. They were no longer considered life by the empire, and thus became things that could be consumed by life. It is precisely because this separation breaks the originally more harmonious and complete story that more efforts are needed to make up for the cracks caused by the separation.

The empire also knew this, so the empire did not refuse to incorporate the tools that had life into the ranks of life. Now, the Empire has countless devices everywhere that exist in the name of the Empire's life, and the Empire's Thirty-Fourth Sky Zone is composed of ships that have possessed souls in the Empire's fleet for a long time. Although the process of achieving this status quo is unpleasant, when it comes to the final result, it can be said that the empire has nothing to criticize at this point.

Kriz found that if he connected these story lines, the current research results would be very different from those in the past.

But there's nothing wrong with that.

When these contents were noticed and these phenomena were first discovered, their properties could not be determined. The existence of these undeterminable properties could trigger endless reveries and unlimited assumptions about them by researchers in the empire. But as research progresses and is implemented, no matter how perfect and flawless the imaginations seemed at the time, they will eventually make concessions to the changing reality. New creatures with strong vitality and adaptability to real needs will inevitably replace old things. This is a truth that has not changed.

However, there is still a question in the end - if everything does have a soul, then why does the projection that declares the "existence of a soul" not exist in everything?

This problem seems too big. Perhaps some rules in the void do stipulate the boundaries and meaning of life?

"Um"

".That's right." As the problem was solved, a light and soft feeling came over him. Kriz ended his long thinking and smiled with satisfaction.

After a short period of relaxation, there is seriousness, seriousness and tension. Kriz looked up at the direction in the sky that was theoretically the "sky" relative to him. It was also dark there. But Kriz knew that in his own eyes, everything in the real world had become completely different.

At the same time, there are dozens of pairs of eyes like this in the vast empire territory.

The owner of every pair of eyes knows that the giant malicious metameme - that indescribable and terrifying shadow, the invisible enemy in the void is quietly approaching.

Although on the surface, everything is still business as usual. But in the hidden corner, the silent battle against the enemy has already begun.