Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 1012: The Crossroads to Infinity (Part )
The wine in the glass had been drained. Chadwick stared at the shallow water at the bottom of the glass and did not reach out to refill it. He had drunk too much tonight, far more than he and Gillian had agreed on. When the guest seemed to be silent because of his memories, he pushed the glass away with difficulty. A sentence suddenly popped up in his slightly drunk mind. "There was a man named Job in the land of Uz," he murmured, "a man who was blameless and upright, who feared God, who shunned evil, and whose wealth was immeasurable... this man was the greatest among the people of the East."

"Does Job fear God for nothing?" the guest read. "You have blessed all he has, and his possessions are increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and destroy all he has; and he will surely curse you to your face."

"But it didn't do anything to your family," Chadwick said tentatively. "Or... to Anthony?"

"Chad, Anthony and I had broken up for more than three years! During this period, I never contacted him again, never checked any messages related to him, and never even opened the photos on my phone. I didn't delete or destroy anything on purpose, because such tricks are useless to our sender and will only make things more obvious. All I had to do was prove that I no longer cared about him or you old acquaintances. Even by Satan's standards, killing my boyfriend three years ago just to torture me would be a laughing stock! And this is what I told you about foresight earlier. The precautions I took before I first embarked on this path, which seemed overly suspicious and radical at the time, actually reduced the losses to a great extent three years later. Although our sender is like a god, he still underestimated me to some extent."

"As for my family, first of all, I don't have ten children, so there is nothing I can do about my descendants. Several of my direct ancestors have passed away, and their obituaries can still be found in old news. My collateral relatives may not be close to me. My reputation in the family is not necessarily better than yours. The only remaining victim seems to be my brother. At this point, I must admit that my brother's life and death is a heavy gamble. I had a great hope of becoming the sole heir to the family fortune."

"Lee!" Chadwick said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"It's just a joke, and it won't really kill him, Chad. But as I've said many times, although we are brothers and sisters, we don't get along very well in dealing with people. My brother is an extremely pragmatic and unenthusiastic empiricist who only wants to manage the family wealth well and maintain his decent and proper life. He is not a staunch supporter of any religion or philosophy, but he is willing to make Buddhist donations, burn incense and pray every year, and ask people to read Feng Shui... He only wants to minimize the risk of misfortune, eliminate evil, gather happiness, and live a long and happy life! If our sender, with his omnipotent power and endless grace, descended on my brother, I have no doubt that he would immediately embrace a new belief and persuade me to make sense of the times."

"However, I still have to say reluctantly that we, brother and sister, do have some understanding of each other. Even if we have some complaints about each other, it is far from the point of fighting against each other. My brother has been very good at sniffing out the storm from the subtleties since he was a child, especially when I am about to be involved in some kind of trouble, he will keep himself out of it at a speed you can't imagine. In the three years since I left my hometown and school, I never took the initiative to greet him, and he never sent anyone to contact me, despite so many direct or indirect communication channels - he had already smelled the danger! He understood the warning implications of my abnormal behavior in those three years better than anyone else. During those three years, he must have never mentioned me or asked about me secretly, as if he had never thought of me. His mole-like wisdom did help him escape God's punishment. I can even say shamelessly that if Job's children were half as sensitive and careful as my brother, knowing how likely their family members were to be the first to make trouble, they would have saved themselves from death by turning to Satan."

"But he is still your blood relative," Chadwick said gently. "Can this statement be used to distance him from you?"

"I admit that this is a risky thing. When I decided to study the blueprint, everything related to me was inevitably involved. But we can't avoid taking risks in this world and not dare to try anything... Let's save the apology, because my brother is safe after all. There is no time to leave the topic to him, a happy and wealthy man. The reason why I want to emphasize his survival, Chad, is not to avoid your criticism, but to use his example to point out some of the ideological characteristics of the sender. Before, my guesses about its personality traits were almost all groundless, but after I openly rebelled against it, the punishment it chose revealed many interesting points. After I fell ill, I sent a very unfamiliar greeting letter to my brother, telling him that my illness was very serious. If the treatment failed, I hoped to donate the part of my inheritance to cancer research. My brother also wrote me back and said that he would do as I wished. The reply was written in his own style, which made me sure that he knew nothing about my enemy."

"Our sender has never contacted my brother, nor has he harmed his health and career. If it really threatened me with my brother's life, this matter would become very difficult; perhaps I would eventually compromise and try to find a child who is sick and beyond help, or at least pretend to be friendly. But it didn't do it at all, not even trying! What a performance worth exploring! For this performance, I have at least two completely different explanations: the first is that it disdains to do so, disdains to harm the family like gangsters and gangsters, and wants to rely on its great power to wrestle with me relatively fairly to make me convinced; the second explanation is that it really believes that doing so is meaningless, and hurting my brother will not only fail to make me bow my head, but may even be helpful to me. After all, we are competing for the right of inheritance."

"Chad, we don't know what the sender is. It could be a human, a god, a devil, or an alien creature, but the drawings and theories it provides are understandable to us. At least we can infer that it has a lot in common with our thinking patterns, or in other words, it is compatible with us to some extent. If I could sense a little bit of human characteristics in those three years, such as self-flaunting or contempt for mortals, or even a preference for any culture in the form of the puzzle, I would be more inclined to the first explanation: it has some kind of pride in personality. But I didn't feel that. When I tried to find When it was looking for 'Zimu Niang', it immediately eliminated my middleman, not thinking that this would destroy the fun and fairness of the game, and not caring about involving outsiders. And it didn't seem to expect that the 'Observer' condition would cause me to react so strongly - it didn't intend to wait for me to collapse here. I can feel from all the previous tests that it didn't even think this was a difficult question, so it never thought that I couldn't pass it. All signs show that it let my brother go because it really believed that it didn't matter to me, just like it felt that creating an 'Observer' should be easy for me. "

"You certainly acted like you didn't get along with your brother."

"Yes, in front of outsiders - I'm not saying this to prove how good my brother and I are, but it's far from the tense relationship that outsiders imagine. Prejudices against each other's personalities make it difficult for us to get along for a long time, but it's inevitable that we have some mutual admiration. What an achievement it is for my brother to escape from the sender's nose! How sensitive and cunning! He is simply the personification of the word 'sophisticated'! How can I help but admire him? In the eyes of a servant or an employee, my brother and I have a very cold relationship and even hatred for each other, which is completely in line with people's simple imagination and dramatic preference for families like ours, but it is unusual for the sender to make such a mistake, because he can get more comprehensive information than anyone else. In my opinion, In the impregnable private laboratory, it can pass materials in and out as easily as putting the house key on the shoe cabinet. As soon as I thought about looking for "Zimu Niang", I just reviewed the work memo and address book of the past, and it immediately killed the middleman. It is so pervasive, as if the air around me is full of its invisible scouts. Doesn't it have any way to trace my past family relationships? Photos and videos of my brother and I in childhood, discussions on family business, emails sent to each other on our mother's death anniversary... There is so much information for it to refer to, but it ignores these suspicious gray areas and regards the alienation and interest disputes we have shown in adulthood as the only criterion for judgment. "

"Our sender has a strong distrust of blood ties or friendships with playmates. This distrust may be correct from a statistical perspective, because real life is always much more cruel than the publicly advocated ethical order, but in this case it denies the particularity of the individual case. It seems that it does not consider that my behavior may be inconsistent with the conclusions presented by statistics, or inconsistent with some inevitable logic in its eyes. It does not consider this matter from my actual experience... or, after considering it, it concludes that I should move forward at all costs. Even if I have lost a relative, I will not care about losing a second one, and I will not refuse to sacrifice another one who is not related to me. acquaintances. You see, through this incident we can finally grasp some of the sender's personality traits. This seemingly omnipotent will is not as good at understanding people's hearts as Satan who tortured Job. It does not have the concept of family in our general sense, nor does it understand how the feelings for one person can be irrationally extended to a wider group. So it skipped the first step of Satan's torture of Job, and did not kill my relatives and friends, but directly brought the disease to me. Let the sores grow from the soles of my feet to the top of my head! I am very glad that it did not send my three friends to debate with me again - perhaps it does not believe that I have friends. This is a God who acts like a lone wolf. "

The guest laughed heartily at her conclusion, seemingly not worrying about the adverse consequences of her remarks. Chadwick observed her silently, and after a while he said, "We have really guessed too much. After all, this is just based on our subjective experience..."

"You want to know if there's any evidence to support my guess?"

"You..." Chadwick stammered, "Did you finally...see it with your own eyes..."

"might have."

"possible?"

"I don't know the final result. I can no longer tell you the events that happened after I became ill as accurately and honestly as I did in the previous part. What I am going to say next is just speculation, but it is based on the work logs that have been left to this day and my understanding of myself. Therefore, it should not deviate too much from the facts, but there are discrepancies in the details."

"What does it mean?"

The guest stared at him quietly. Chadwick's heart was hanging again. He looked for the vase that had fallen on the floor with the corner of his eye. At this time, the guest continued:
"When I first found out that I had a rare disease I had never heard of before, I wasn't very worried. I had considered that the sender would respond to my resistance, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. But since it didn't kill me directly, maybe it just regarded this disease as a warning, threatening me not to stop the project. In this case, this pathology should be controllable. Even if it can't be completely cured, it will never develop too rapidly, so that I can have enough time to build the transmitter. In its view, I should do my best now, because I am no longer working for an illusory answer or a dead person who may not be resurrected, but fighting for my own life. However, as I analyzed above, it unconsciously exposed a certain self from this incident, which made me feel more and more untrustworthy of it. This is no longer a question of whether I am willing to create an 'Observer', but it makes me strongly wary of the entire transmitter project."

"I suspended the construction of the transmitter, but did not destroy all the components and drawings. The project team is still running, not to manufacture new components, but to enter the stage of technical research and independent development. I want them to get as much transferable technology as possible from these components, rather than the finished product of the transmitter. At the same time, I mobilized all the medical resources at hand to find the source of my illness. This effort took about two years, and the final conclusion was that this disease seemed to have greatly changed the receptor protein structure of my cells, first making my senses disabled, and then possibly my internal organs and brain - the real cause of the disease was not found, so the medical team could not predict the subsequent situation. Even so, the situation is clear enough: before my body functions completely fail, I will most likely become a person with a clear mind but without the five senses. I will be abandoned by this world forever, and my spirit will fall into the abyss of eternal silence in my mind. , and my body was like a walking corpse, until the loneliest death came. This ending was naturally hard for me to accept. From the work logs of that period, I could see how I was tortured by anxiety and fear, so that my words and actions were a little crazy. This madness was mainly manifested in the contradictions and absurdity of my behavior: on the one hand, I continuously invested resources and developed drugs at all costs, wanting to hold on to the edge of this world of sound and color, even if it could only be for one more second! But on the other hand, the more rational and negative part of my heart was already desperate, knowing that the technical power in my hands would never exceed the barriers set by the sender, so I turned to the embrace of mysticism. I began to collect a lot of witchcraft and magic, all kinds of folk remedies that would make you laugh, exorcism rituals and prayers... If these things had any effect, it was to severely hit my self-importance and let me know why those who were once respected became so unreasonable when they were seriously ill. "

"I can't tell you exactly how long this stage lasted, because there was very little written about these things in the work log, as if I was deeply ashamed at the time and didn't want to admit that I was panicking and afraid of death. But when the last drug used to stimulate perception began to lose its effect, I could hear from the tone of the diary that she had accepted the fact of her impending death. I'm afraid I can't describe this acceptance process as heroic or generous. On the contrary, it may include the most embarrassing dying struggle and the most blind self-hypnosis made by any dying person in the world. It is too cruel for you as a friend to know the details. Here I will only give a very extreme but very typical example: in the first few days after the stimulant lost its effect, she immediately went to a primitive tribe in the African jungle. The tribe practiced a custom between cliff burial and sky burial for the bodies of the dead. After obtaining permission from the tribe's witch doctor, she stayed in a cliff cave for nearly ten days, living in the same room with several newly dead human corpses, and witnessed with her own eyes how they were transformed from human remains into decayed organic matter and eaten by scavengers and microorganisms. "I think this is a very symbolic event, Chad, symbolizing her change of mentality at that time. This behavior of observing corpses up close has no practical benefit in escaping death. On the contrary, it is an attempt to overcome the instinctive fear of death by using the asceticism of viewing bones. She has given up fighting for survival on the factual level, and instead wants to defeat death from the will and psychology. After ending her cohabitation with the corpse, her thoughts revealed in the diary have obviously become more organized. It can be inferred that she has regained her composure, or temporarily anesthetized herself with the mental stimulation brought by witnessing the decay of her own kind. She stopped the huge but ineffective treatment projects and split them among different board members; wrote a letter to her only family, tactfully warning him not to get involved; and finally commissioned a reliable lawyer to handle the property donation procedures, and gave Holly House to you and Gillian - I think you learned about my illness at that time. Please don't think this gift is too expensive, Chad, I know you have taken good care of Anthony over the years. I'm afraid you will need to worry about it from time to time in the next few years. "

"At that time, I didn't really spend all my money. I just dealt with the unused part. After these things were done, she in this log immediately threw herself into a new challenge. I said before that she had accepted her own death, which was indeed true, but seeing the transformation of death with her own eyes seemed to give her a new inspiration, making her begin to seek some form of soul resurrection. Here I must say that in the three years before she betrayed the sender, many of the technologies she obtained from the transmitter drawings and various test rewards were difficult to systematize, but they were quite advanced, enough to do many things that were still ridiculous in the eyes of the world. At first, she thought about cloning a new self with memories, but unfortunately the project started too late. At that time, she was already terminally ill and there was no chance to extract a sufficient number of healthy cells, nor could she ensure that the disease would not completely rewrite the genetic material. The plan was soon abandoned, and replaced by a life form that was not restricted by organic matter and genetic material, a clone that she was sure would not inherit her own terminal illness. This is what we usually call 'consciousness uploading'."

"Neural simulation is a very interesting thing, Chad. When faced with such a complex network system, you cannot know exactly how it weaves the final thought. You can only imitate it like a stupid and shallow craftsman, and reproduce the masterpiece created by nature as faithfully as possible. Although each building block as the basis is built by you personally, the final result is an incomprehensible black box - doesn't it look like a kind of magic? Isn't it a mockery of our arrogance that we think we can know everything through wisdom? But let it go. At this stage, I was already quite pragmatic. I even gave the data version of myself a suggestion. I made a body before. This body is not particularly well made, because it is not the place where the soul is stored. My original requirement was to at least make its appearance look like a relatively natural living person, but it was difficult to achieve even this tiny goal - you can't imagine how much complexity the seemingly simple facial expression instructions will add to the entire system! We all say that the eyes are an extension of the brain and a true window to the soul. This metaphor may be too romantic, but at least it is accurate for that soulless mechanical body. Although it has a high-precision facial camera that exceeds the vision of top snipers, it still cannot express its eyes well. "

Chadwick looked his visitor in the eye. She looked back at him with a stiff smile.

"You succeeded," he said slowly.

"No, Chad, I didn't. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the technology at hand, and the sender didn't leave me a way out in this regard. My attempt to become a data life was stuck in the animal simulation stage. The existing program can only simulate the thinking of insects and a few small mammals, and the simulation accuracy is also disappointing. At that time, I not only couldn't feel the cold and heat, couldn't distinguish between sweet and bitter, but even my vision had seriously deteriorated. There was not enough time. As for our sender? During most of my struggle, it just watched quietly, neither lending a hand nor adding insult to injury. It may have also made several attempts to help me. At that time, I sent signals to urge her to restart the messenger project, but there was only one time that was clearly recorded in the work log: on the day when I stopped the neural simulation project, the main computer in the laboratory was hijacked, and a pixel animation of a door being slowly pushed open was displayed on the screen. It rarely communicated with me in such a direct way before, which made things very interesting, as if it was also a little impatient and thought that things might be out of its control. However, it did not withdraw the disease because of this - I suspected that the situation had developed to the point where it could not withdraw, but it still refused to reveal its true face in front of me. "

"The challenge of resurrection from the dead also failed. For me, who was getting sicker and sicker, it seemed that there were only two choices left: die completely, or restart the messenger project. At that time, because the long-term struggle had consumed a lot of my energy, the tone presented in the work log was relatively calm. It seemed that I was gradually changing my opinion of the sender. At first, she was more inclined to regard it as an emotionless machine, then a cruel demon, and finally she thought that it was probably just a person, a person with great power and cognitive defects, just like the gods in the classical era... Her anger subsided, or she compromised because of the desire to survive, so she began to re-examine the transmitter project. I have always called this machine a transmitter, but it actually has other names. In the appendix of the design drawings, it is usually just called 'device', but it is called 'door' six times, and 'abyss machine' twice - this name does not seem to refer only to the transmitter itself, and it is only used when it is included in one of its terminal devices."

"Chad, think about how fascinating this name is, and how lazy it is at the same time. Abyss Machine! I don't think such a name can determine its nature. We all know Nietzsche's famous saying about the abyss, but he also praised the abyss enthusiastically - not the one under our feet, but the one in the sky. Isn't there also an abyss with no bottom above our heads? Aren't there countless eyes of light staring at us? 'O clear and bright abyss of light, as long as you surround me, I will be your blessing and affirmation!' How deep can the abyss we can step into? At most, it is only the thickness of the crust of this planet. But the abyss of light above our heads is endless. Who wouldn't want to climb up and throw themselves into the embrace of this abyss of light?"

"Don't I want to know what's behind the door? Don't I want to witness the machine described in the 'Introduction' roaring in operation, silently rewriting the changes in the universe? Don't I want to open a new seat for my sister in the new world? At least, I can know what the fall was about. According to the last few diaries I can find now, this is what she thought about every day. It is not difficult to see that she was not so hostile to the transmitter, but after a nap in the afternoon, she gave up completely. I can repeat the content of the dream recorded in the diary to you in full -"

"'I had that dream again... The tower she drew stood like a pointer of the earth in the storm. I was both at the bottom and at the top of the tower, both the victim and the witness of the thunder. In order to escape the thunder, I fell from the top of the tower, and the one witnessing from the bottom of the tower was also me... or was it her? In the dream, our positions were reversed. She was the one who witnessed the fall, and she was eager to tell me something, as if she could show me a way out. I wanted to get up from the ground to hear clearly, but she pushed me back. The rain had risen, gradually submerging the foot of the tower and also submerging my head... I sank, sinking quickly, as if falling from the sky..."

"The log ends here. After that, the increasingly ill me you know disappeared, and no one knows her whereabouts. But I, the me in front of you, can still make inferences based on the subsequent results. Before she disappeared, she deleted all the design drawings at a very fast speed and destroyed most of the components, leaving only a few mechanical shells that could not function independently. All these signs show that she did not choose to embrace the abyss of light above her head... She walked down. That path actually existed from the beginning, but if my sister had not died - if I could not accept the destruction of another young girl, then I would not have been forced to do so. Go to that other road. Chad, miracles sometimes come in two completely different faces. The option that seems to be a shortcut may actually be a dead end, while the one that seems to be a dead end is the real way to ascend. We have already linked this matter too deeply with Job, but you know I don’t like the Bible, so I want to look at this matter from the perspective of the classical era - Hercules in his youth once stood at a crossroads and saw two glorious and noble goddesses walking towards him; the one who spoke first called herself the goddess of joy, allowing him to enjoy all the melting happiness in the world without hard work; the one who spoke later called herself the goddess of virtue, and only made him go through labor and hardship to achieve success. "

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"We all know what he chose in the end. He did not find happiness during his lifetime, and he could only be promoted to a god and become an immortal after his death. He was able to climb the Holy Mountain because he fell into the underworld first. As for me at that time, if I wanted to leap into the abyss of light, I had to cross the gate of darkness and death first... At the beginning of everything, in the first invitation letter to infinity, my wisest teacher and most deadly enemy gave me more than one choice. At first, it might just want to see my reaction and want to know if I was brave but not wise. But after so many years, I am afraid that even it itself has forgotten the second choice it gave me. However, it did not find that I have improved over the years and understood it better. I both believe in it and guard against it. I know that it is aloof and unkind, cruel but lacks a sense of humor, so it will not make up a suicide-inducing game to make a black joke. The two choices it provides are meaningful, and my sister's death must also be meaningful..."

Chadwick's voice trembled as he said, "'Sinking Game'?"

"Exactly. I'm glad you listened to my whole story."

"So what exactly is the content of the game?"

"I won't tell you, Chad. Let this secret disappear forever with me at that time. I also know what you are going to ask next - in this case, what is this me in front of you? We must also make many guesses on this point: in the game at that time, the sender did not get the result it wanted. God brought disaster to Job, but Job died before being forgiven. Even if it was not dissatisfied with this result, it was at least unexpected. For this reason, it decided to take this soul back from Satan and prove itself right again with another test. Although it is not really omnipotent and omniscient, it can easily accomplish what I couldn't do at the beginning, without any simulation test... My story on earth ends here. To complete the new test and ascend, I need to jump to the Abyss of Light to find a goddess of the rays of light. But before that, Chad, I am also responsible for the land under our feet, so I still have some follow-up work to do."

"For reasons I cannot disclose, our sender has passed away and is no longer a threat to us. But some of the things he left behind are still in the world and can be used by those who are desperate... This is a very dangerous act, so I must stop it. I came to see you today, firstly to fulfill our agreement, and secondly to formally invite you. Not long ago, a board member I valued very much died because of being involved in this matter. I wanted to ask his friend to take over the seat, but now it seems that the hope is very slim, so I can only hand over the responsibility to you. Chad, if I never come back after dawn, I hope you can open your mailbox, read the new emails that appear there carefully, and then take over the project run by the former board member. I will tell you all the information you need to know, and tell you how to save yourself and our entire race. You need to fight, and if necessary, you may have to drop a nuclear bomb on the moon... It is not my original intention to put you in danger, but Chad, in the end, I still have only one sentence: we are born in this world to make a difference."

Chadwick seemed to be frozen in an ice storage. "I need to think about it." He said mechanically, "This... I need to think about it again..."

"You will have plenty of time to yourself to think, Chad. Time is running out. I must go now, and I hope we will meet again."

The guest stood up in his stunned eyes and walked towards the door without hesitation. Before she turned the doorknob, Chadwick stood up subconsciously.

"Li!" He was so agitated that he stammered out his words without thinking. "You... I mean, what happened to you at the beginning? Where is she now? Can she come back to us?"

The guest turned around. Her soulless eyes first fell on Chadwick's face, and then fell on the foggy night outside the window. She said: "This question is not easy to answer. From an absolutely correct but vague perspective, she has sunk. But you ask me where she finally stopped? Let's keep the answer in the hands of a few people. Chad, Jules Verne quoted Ecclesiastes at the end of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and I will also quote his ending as an answer - who can see through the deepest part of the abyss? There are two people in the world who can answer this question now, and these two people are me and Captain Nemo."

(End of this chapter)