Star Empire

After hanging up the communication, Marion Wheeler sat tiredly on the chair behind him. His right arm supported on the armrest of the seat barely supported his heavy head. Only the look that could survive on his face remained. Feeling numb.

His originally neat and capable blond short hair has now turned into messy long hair like a ball of thread. These messy long hair will only be tied up symbolically to prevent them from disturbing him. He is as handsome and delicate as the legendary elf. The huge pressure left traces of morbidity on his face. His eyes lost their clarity, and in the depths of their numb eyes, there was a depth and darkness that even the brightest light could not illuminate.

In addition to stains, the clothes on his body now have many more signs of wear and tear than before. Except for the parts with life-saving functions, the accessories hanging on the clothes have been relatively well maintained, and the rest have disappeared. Traces - The lost ornaments may have fallen due to decay caused by the pollution of the death tide, or they may have been accidentally pulled off by themselves at some point, or they may have been torn off during a certain battle.

It is probably unimaginable for most of the intelligent beings in the empire that the emperor of the empire has become like this. What makes them feel even more unimaginable is that this is already Wheeler's best-preserved piece of clothing that he currently owns. He chose to wear it because the regional commander wanted to report to him.

The chair in which Wheeler sits floats in the center of the spherical hall. There are countless information windows floating in the spherical hall, which slowly rotate around Wheeler with the center of the hall as the center.

Many windows have begun to glow red - this means that the information displayed in the windows is indicating danger, for example, some cabins have been damaged to the point of being unusable, and some indicators are approaching the direction of danger.

However, the information revealed by these flashing red windows was not enough to be the main source of pressure on Wheeler's mind.

In Marion Wheeler's mind, a dynamic map of the entire Black Gate Fortress is stored. During these eight hundred billion years, he witnessed with his own eyes how the red color representing damage eroded the Black Gate Fortress bit by bit. .

The windows of information that still surround Wheeler are few and far between. The information window that was put into operation when the Black Gate Fortress was first put into use, but now the survival rate is only about 20%. Wheeler had no hope of recovering the damaged parts.

"Commander 874317 of the Lower Region Experimental Management Department." After a period of silence and thinking, Wheeler connected to the Lower Region Command. "Start the cleaning system of the lower-level area command room within twenty-four hours, and make sure the room is cleaned. Now you are the lower-level area commander 79464. The deputy commander will be your current post after you leave. position."

"Understood, Your Majesty Wheeler."

".Then now - hiss!" After hanging up the communication, Wheeler was ready to take another look at the files with difficult questions that he had saved over the years. However, just as he tried to stand up, an unbearable stinging and itching suddenly spread from the tips of his toes to his neck. Wheeler felt as if his entire body was tied up by a jigsaw. And the scroll saw seems to be being pulled continuously.

"It seems that even if you don't want to rest, you have to rest for a while." After trying to struggle several times, Wheeler was finally bound to the seat by his own discomfort. He worked hard to adjust his body and the chair to relax his body and mind as much as possible.

As for those discomforts? Wheeler had long since stopped caring.

If time went back hundreds of billions of years, he might have had a good physical check-up. But now, these discomforts have long become part of his feelings.

These pains and itches came from the wounds on his body, and these wounds were left behind by his continuous exposure to high-intensity crystal energy irradiation and white matter irradiation for hundreds of billions of years in order to purify the death wave pollution.

In order to avoid the pursuit of the terrifying giant meme as much as possible, Wheeler set up his work station at the bottom of the Black Gate Fortress, which is very close to the edge of the Dead Tide Quiet Zone, and not far beyond the boundary. This is the realm of the dead tide that has not been degraded.

In that area, even the empire's most powerful deep-diving exploration ship did not dare to stay for a long time.

However, he has stayed here for hundreds of billions of years.

During this long period of time, the core area has undergone countless repairs. However, protective panels can be replaced and equipment can be replaced, but people cannot. Even emperor-level individuals have almost exhausted their self-recovery capabilities.

Sitting slumped in a chair, exhausted physically and mentally, Wheeler began to inadvertently recall everything he had experienced in the past two trillion years in a dazed state.

From the time when various parts of the empire began to report that "questions were being raised bluntly" and "malicious obstruction and fights were spreading", in the early years of the expedition, I was vaguely aware of something strange that was different from the death tide. Pollution is spreading.

From a meeting that was not too important, His Majesty Cavinriel of the First Sky District seemed to have mentioned that when he was besieging the Quadrant Continent, he had seen huge and different things in the gradually collapsing "Nine Heavens". Unusual pattern. At that time, the pattern was not very clear, it looked like a blurry, deformed hand.

As the civil war erupted, eventually engulfing half the Empire, Sector 18 captured the clearest picture yet of the mega-memetic structure in the spreading lines of fire.

After the civil war ended, the entire empire fell into a period of chaos that spanned more than 400 billion years. During that period, the safety of the people's production and life could not be guaranteed, different forms of life began to confront each other, and extraordinary powers began to be labeled with various strange labels. It was a notorious time for the empire. .

But for me, in addition to the obvious meanings, the chaotic performance of the empire during that period also has an additional meaning in my eyes: that is, facing giant memes and facing powerful enemies from unknown areas. During the invasion, the empire had a "fever", the empire was producing antibodies, and the empire was resisting spontaneously, or it might be adapting to the invasion of giant memes.

But that is not enough. Passive and spontaneous resistance alone is far from enough. To resist the enemy, more clear and targeted active measures are needed.

However, there are additional difficulties when targeting memes - memes are information that proliferates and is contagious. If you want to resist it, you must study it, and studying it is essentially helping it spread further.

After brief but careful deliberation, the Empire decided that only a small number of individuals would be aware of the existence of the giant meme. Doing so can maintain the state in a relatively stable stage.

The giant meme may be extremely powerful and terrifying, but based on the observation data at that time, it had not yet penetrated into the order environment very much.

This means that as long as there is not much awareness of his existence in the order environment, he will not be able to create enough minions to threaten the security of the order environment.

However, the fact that only a few people are aware of the existence of the giant meme also means that counter-actions against it are likely to not receive support from the general public in the Empire.

Even now, the nature of giant memes remains unclear. But as a researcher who has been studying it for nearly two trillion years, Wheeler knows some of its properties:

It is related to five, and all five will be associated with Him. It carries endless malice, and just a slight leak is enough to make the life of the empire lose control emotionally. He can make the originally normal information structure melt and rot, turning into puddles of indescribable mud.

In response to its nature, the countermeasures the empire can take is to avoid using "five", increase the cohesion of the people of the empire, consolidate as much of the history of the empire as possible, and prevent them from being subtly corroded. The specific way of unfolding these measures is to reduce the frequency of use of the factor "five" as much as possible in imperial texts, continuously launch large-scale emergence rituals in the positive direction, and let students go through the learning process several times. Consolidate the knowledge and history of the empire through continuous learning

If the people of the empire knew why they were asked to do these things, they might not complain, but the reality is that they don't know why they are doing these troublesome things, they just have to do them.

If things go on like this, conflicts will gradually intensify. The life of the empire has enough reason, calmness, and patience, but no matter how much patience everyone has and how high their quality is, none of this can endure without interruption. "Squandering".

Wheeler knew that in the eyes of a "normal person", his request had squandered the patience of the entire empire for trillions of years. But there was no way. He couldn't tell the story about the giant meme, but everything he did was necessary. Unless he was wiped out, he would never give in.

This is an unsolvable conflict, an endless cycle of death

pain.

Wheeler closed his eyes in pain and sunk deeply into his seat, tightening his body to resist the discomfort that continued to hit him from the scars on his body. The pollution of the death tide and the purification of the extraordinary power have been constantly competing for the dominance of Wheeler's body for hundreds of millions of years. This continuous competition has left a large number of "coquettish" spots on Wheeler's body. Golden red texture.

These lines are the imprints left by the black and red patterns caused by the pollution of the death tide. Although the expressions are different, the scars on Wheeler's body are the same as those huge crystallized space cracks in the battlefield. Their essence is that the information structure is passing through. A deformity formed after countless destruction and repairs.

"I hope the idiots in the other regions will listen to me carefully. I hope they will persevere despite the criticism and allow the Imperial Fleet to have the same ability to fight fast mobile warfare as it does positional warfare. I hope it's not too bad outside. , I hope that everyone who made the decision to come here at that time will not feel that I have deceived them."

Every being who dares to come to the Black Gate Fortress is a hero and a warrior worthy of the empire's pride. However, the enemy these warriors resist is not the giant meme, but the anomalies and influence the latter has created in the world.

If I were to put it more directly and ruthlessly, it would be that the only individuals who are actually fighting against giant malicious meta-memes are a very small number of chief scholars, world ministers, and world emperors, and the research of these individuals on giant memes has caused Without the attention and countermeasures of the giant memes, this will inevitably lead to the appearance of a large number of visions. Most of the warriors are just helping them resist the visions and delay as much as possible.

Experimenters who study and record interactions between memes are putting in more effort, but that's just more effort. The results they get may be useful in other fields, but they are not currently available. Resist the enemy.

Judging from the results, this series of counterattack plans with the Black Gate Fortress as the core failed. The Black Gate Fortress failed to find an effective means to fight against the giant meme. As time went by, the mortality rate of the staff in the fortress increased. It's rising steadily - because everyone begins to notice abnormal phenomena.

After the countless abnormal phenomena that have actually occurred, any excuse or deception is feeble. If the anomaly can still be maintained at a low level, then the reason that the Black Gate Fortress is in the realm of the death tide and the pollution of the death tide will distort and pollute the environment may still be able to cover up the problem.

But if it is generally noticed throughout the fortress that destruction that is obviously different from the pollution of the death tide is occurring frequently, then the shield of the death tide, no matter how powerful it is, cannot be used.

The staff gradually realize that there may be an unusual source behind the anomaly, and this awareness will also attract the attention of the giant meme. Then, the shell of the giant meme will target those who detect the abnormality. The giant meme may kill them directly with this poisonous shell, or it may swallow them in some way.

249 years ago, node 3125 of the third ring in the upper area of ​​Black Gate Fortress completely lost contact with the 255th floor of the lower area. From that moment on, teams that tried to counterattack in another way by penetrating into the enemy failed.

Adaptation and coexistence never worked in the first place—nearly two trillion years ago, megamemes were much further away from order than they are now. but. Just because the empire used a large number of safety factors containing 5 in the standards was used as a springboard. The power of the giant meme caused half of the empire to fall into a long-term war.

After the war ended, it took the empire 400 billion years to achieve "immunity". The prerequisite for achieving this immunity was that it did not take the initiative again.

There is no doubt that the Empire cannot coexist with such a thing.

Using memes to fight memes also doesn't work - during this period, the experimenters and researchers from the 18th Day Area who came here used the "cover" to study memes and analyze the details of information interaction. ", under the protection of this name, a large number of violent memes and antimemes were "recruited". Many of these "recruited" information bodies are extremely poisonous to the life of the empire.

However, they were all defeated in front of 5 and Pink Light. Not to mention fighting back and forth, almost all of them don't even have corpses left in the end.

In the end there was only one way left - force.

After long-term observation, the upper area of ​​​​Black Gate Fortress recorded a huge amount of data. By connecting the abnormal outbreak points of hundreds of millions of years, it was possible to outline the vague figure of the terrifying giant monster in the void. If there are no principled errors in the observation methods of Black Gate Fortress, then this result can help the empire roughly confirm the time and place of the arrival of the giant malicious meta-meme.

But will force really work?

Pink light, this kind of light has appeared in the quadrant continent of Σ, and has also appeared in all places involving giant malicious metameme contamination.

The pink light emitted from the Quadrant Continent... It is said that it did not kill His Majesty Vesrifan and Vidoville, but the damage caused by just passing through it almost caused the empire to be almost destroyed.

It was just one shot.

Even if we desperately retreat, retreat to the most ideal and optimistic possibility, in the final analysis...even if the chain collapse of the empire at that time was caused by Σ's weapon Doomsday-Creation, and Pink If they are only used as "armor-piercing warheads" to break through defenses... then even the defenses of the empire's most powerful entities can be torn apart so easily, then the remaining things... together they may be able to block the powder. Is the light longer than a second?

Under the triple pressure of physical pain, soul exhaustion and mental heaviness, the semi-conscious Marion Wheeler finally fell into a deep sleep. However, the chaotic memories he had while half asleep did not dissipate because of his rest. Instead, they turned into wild dreams that penetrated deeper into Wheeler's consciousness.

He had a dream.

In the dream, there was a blue-green planet, which was orbiting an ordinary-looking star.

That planet is facing the same fate as the empire. The same enemy is coming from outside the territory. Before it arrives, the abnormalities it causes have already caused countless events, large and small, on the surface of the planet. But most people on that planet were not affected by this, and not many people even noticed these abnormalities.

No. Some people have discovered it, of course some people have discovered it, but when those people discover this invisible enemy that is coming, they, their families and friends will be killed. Therefore, almost no one knew that this terrible enemy was coming.

Yes, almost.

A few people knew that the enemy was coming, but they could do nothing except huddle in a containment room of less than 200 square meters and regularly check the disgusting topological patterns.

They still have some hope - a vague hope. There is technology and equipment hidden in a containment room where the clues have been cut off. They can try to create a fictional amplifier. This machine may be able to destroy the approaching enemy.

At the juncture when the nightmare is about to invade reality, they can choose to create a fictional amplifier.

This will take eight years, and they will need to build a laboratory hundreds of millions of times larger than the current shelter. To do this, they will need to mobilize all the resources and all the power in the world. Their demands will be met without the world batting an eye. But how can we ensure that no one is aware of its purpose when building it? Just like when building the moon landing spacecraft, no one knew what the moon was - who can guarantee that no one asked "what is the moon" or "what will this spacecraft be used for"? !

In the entanglement of the nightmare, Wheeler's closed eyes gradually shed tears, and two lines of clear tears streaked down his face.

This dream was so real that Wheeler himself in the dream couldn't tell whether it was a dream or a real thing going on on a certain planet. Marion Wheeler even began to wonder, even though it looked different, was it possible that he had also appeared in the world shown in his dreams? After all, the leader in that dream was also named Wheele.

The conditions I have now are more favorable than the environment in my dream. However, the reality seemed to be worse than the dream - here, he could not bring out any weapons that could possibly deal with the enemy hidden in the void.

But throwing in the towel?

That's impossible!

Not all intelligent creatures are born with golden keys in their mouths, and not all intelligent creatures are born from heavenly homes.

Facing a dangerous environment, facing terrible natural disasters, facing unknown fears, facing the invasion of powerful enemies, no matter how ravaged they are, in my impression, no race is truly 100% and unreserved. Surrendered!

Fight against natural disasters, fight against man-made disasters, fight against foreign enemies, and fight against the unknown. Standing up to resist is the instinct of wisdom!

In the dream, there is a small outpost standing in the void. Wheele, standing on the platform of the outpost, has activated the bomb that can delay the end of the world. Wheeler's eyes inadvertently passed over the only bright color in the void that might attract his attention. At this moment, he suddenly discovered that Wheele in the dream glanced at him - he was very sure that she was not looking here in confusion. As the character in his dream, Wheele knew that there was a pair of eyes looking here. she.

"You can't give up now."

Part of this chapter quotes and reinterprets the two stories "Colorless Green Incident" and "Your Last First Day". This chapter and subsequent paragraphs involving all "giant malicious metameme"-related content comply with the CC3.0 license. The giant malicious meta-meme is a secondary set entity and does not represent its original attributes and status.