Planetary Museum

"Becoming our body, does it bother you?" The consul of the second world seemed to be a very attentive person. After letting the cruise ship continue to move forward along the route, he took the initiative to open the topic .

"No..." Wu Xiaoqing said, "The structure of your body is not much different from ours... it's just that there is a difference in body shape."

"This is thanks to the time when we met," the consul joked. "If we met tens of thousands of years ago, the relationship between us may be that of a predator and a prey in the food chain."

Wu Xiaoqing smiled lightly, then pointed to the wall of the tunnel outside the window and asked, "How did you solve the high temperature of the lava inside the planet?"

"It's very simple," said the consul, "we just hollow out the planet first..."

Wu Xiaoqing slapped his head. Indeed, he used the "heart of a small civilization" of the earthlings to win the "belly of a great civilization" of the dwarf civilization.Forget that they are civilizations capable of planetary terraforming.

"I thought you would pay attention to the authenticity of this world first..." the consul asked curiously, "Is there a design similar to the virtual world in your civilization?"

Wu Xiaoqing shook her head: "Our virtual world is still very rough, and it only stays in the image simulation of reality. It is impossible to completely reproduce the physical level. This is far behind you."

"But you don't seem surprised by that at all."

Wu Xiaoqing didn't answer his question, because if he wanted to answer it, it would inevitably involve Civilization A.Following the prompt of the search and rescue team, he immediately changed the subject: "I heard that you came to me to ask questions about the Second Earth."

"Yes, the Second Earth." Although there was no one present in the cabin except the three of them, the Second Consul couldn't help lowering his voice: "It is said that this meeting between you and the First Earth also invites The rebels joined. Are you here to mediate this war?"

"In a way, yes."

"Then you should also know that this war..." The Second Consul hesitated before saying, "There is no so-called justice and evil... In essence, it is still a conflict of interests between the two sides."

"There is justice and evil in the conflict of interests," Wu Xiaoqing said. "It is always the one with the greater interests and the longer-term one that is more just. But if it is outside of interests...in fact, good and evil are not important."

"In your opinion, in this war, which side represents the greater and longer-term interests?"

This is an obvious cliché, Wu Xiaoqing glanced at the other party - he is not used to dominating this furry body, and his movements are a bit awkward.But he was sure the meaning should have been conveyed - that he was not very willing to cooperate with these questions.Then he said again: "I heard that Second Earth is already an independent country in name."

"It is true...but we are still a member of the Federation."

"But I heard that members of several virtual social groups represented by you have their own opinions on this war."

"Yes," the second consul spoke directly, "We have always had reservations about the federal government's reckless use of war to deal with this so-called 'rebellion'. Your attitude towards us is true. Any comments or suggestions?"

Wu Xiaoqing vetoed the consul's rich imagination: "No, we pay attention to these issues only because they are part of the war. We hope to mediate this war, that's all. From this point of view, our purpose should be unanimous."

The consul was silent for a while, and he could feel it. At this moment, he must be practicing other people in the game to obtain more information to participate in this game with him.Sure enough, one minute later, the consul asked Wu Xiaoqing: "We also want to know what is the basis for your judgment of interfering in the war between civilizations."

"It's very simple, whether a civilization has enough potential, and the ability of war to destroy this potential... We try our best to save healthy civilizations that have died due to accidents."

"Health?" It is a brand-new usage to describe civilization with health, "In your opinion, is our civilization... still healthy?"

"Of course," Wu Xiaoqing said in surprise, "Don't you think so?"

The second consul shook his head slowly: "I am afraid that in the entire federation, there will not be more than 1 people who have this kind of cognition... maybe not even a thousand."

"Why?" Wu Xiaoqing had already guessed the reason, but he still asked for the purpose of this mission.

"It's very simple, because no one pays attention to real real issues anymore," said the consul, "nearly 95 percent of the people in the entire federation only care about the virtual world. Compared to the huge damage that this war may cause As a result, they are more concerned that their hundreds of years of wealth in the game will not be damaged.”

"The wealth in the game?"

"Yes," said the consul, "the government has proposed several times to levy part of the resources used to maintain the virtual world in the form of war taxes and use them directly for industrial production in war."

Such a point of view is very surprising in the eyes of innocent earthlings like Wu Xiaoqing - shouldn't it be?

This social phenomenon of the dwarf civilization, the search and rescue team has done a certain amount of science on him before this-for civilizations entering the virtual age, this is actually the normal state of society.

The resources consumed by the game to affect a war sounds like a fantasy on Earth.But in dwarf civilization, this is a very serious social reality.For a highly mature civilization like theirs, when the AI ​​rebels did not exist before, most of the energy of the civilization was invested in the game, which was an inevitable trend for the normal development of society.

——In fact, future games are almost the only art form of all civilizations. Even from a broad perspective, it is not that the development of civilization is becoming more and more virtual, but that the virtual is becoming more and more real.When the boundary between the two is gradually blurred to the point of being indistinguishable, the so-called reality is just an inconspicuous part of the game.

Just like on the earth, human civilization has created works of art, which is not wrong, but in turn, countless works of art have also defined human beings in turn.The more mature the civilization, the higher the requirement for self-definition at the level of virtual meaning—the greater the proportion of investment in the virtual world.

This kind of over-emphasis on the importance of the virtual world is often a sign of irrationality and decline of a civilization... Of course, these are not what Wu Xiaoqing wants to study in this trip, but as far as this mission is concerned, this voice from within the dwarf civilization , is very important.It can even be said that one of the purposes of Wu Xiaoqing's trip is to make good use of the most mainstream political force in the dwarven civilization to help the search and rescue team complete their tasks.

What surprised Wu Xiaoqing was that the archon of the virtual world, who was supposed to pay special attention to his own class interests and the legitimacy of game wealth, seemed not particularly satisfied with the existing model with his words.

"If the current social situation can continue, I am certainly satisfied with it," said the second consul, "but we must always see the reality when we think about problems. The reality now is that if we cannot fully mobilize enough The military force to protect our civilization, after the defeat of the war, we are likely to have nothing."

"The virtual world should be a sublimation of the real world, a paradise-like existence, not a refuge for escaping from the difficulties in reality-in that case, the virtual world will only be built into a refugee camp like a mouse hole...Look at this For a park at the center of the earth, what we need is the courage and imagination to build this kind of park, which is the greatest significance of the existence of the virtual world.”

The words of the Second Consul are very good, but the only thing Wu Xiaoqing can’t understand is that these words should be his speeches to the “players” or citizens of the Second Earth, not in a deep-sea cabin, Whisper to an alien...

"I've said it more than once..." The Second Consul smiled bitterly, "Otherwise, I wouldn't have come here on purpose to find you today. If your search and rescue team really takes saving civilization as their mission, I think you should start The best place to do this is to start with the completely irresponsible selfish idea of ​​transforming most of the federal citizens.

"Chang Xing," Wu Xiaoqing asked Chang Xing who was listening to him now, "What do you think?"

Without any hesitation, Changxing shook his head decisively: "I don't think so."

The consul's eyes immediately fixed on Changxing, and Changxing acted as if he hadn't seen it at all, and continued on his own: "I'm speaking from a soldier's point of view. I don't know if you have ever been to the The battlefield, I have paid attention to the data on the battlefield... With my decades of experience in the army, I can tell you responsibly, Your Excellency, no matter how many games we stop operating, or even shut down all virtual industries and mobilize all Energy, overtime production of fighter jets, we can't win the war, do you know why?"

The consul's face became a little ugly. Obviously, he understood the meaning hidden in Changxing's words.

Changxing continued: "Because wars are fought by people, at least on the side of the Federation, wars still have to be fought by people, even if only two people can control an attack ship weighing tens of thousands of tons. But On the intelligent body side, they don't need it, all the fighters are just a part of the intelligent body's body, just like his cells."

"The Federation lost in this war. The biggest problem is that the frontline battles are overwhelmingly suppressed - both sides use weapons produced by the same production line. The only difference is in people. But... all of them are affected The influence and control of a will. I don't think I need to go on, you should be able to understand the huge gap this mechanism makes in combat."

"Let's take the simplest one, a battle-level formation attack. We just send out an attack request and get approval from our superiors. These simple command actions will take tens of seconds or even a few minutes. But the time spent by the opponent is almost zero! Each of their attack ships knows what target to attack, and each weapon knows what area to target...

"And what about our soldiers? To put it bluntly, when we first went to the battlefield, we didn't even have the minimum psychological preparation. In order to encourage our courage to fight, the upper echelon of the army portrayed the opponent as a fool similar to the rigid enemy in the game. Opponents. But you won’t know until the real fight, they are all geniuses in operation.”

"The country used to recruit people like me who had previous game experience to participate in the war. Although our skills are not bad, compared with AI, there is basically no advantage. But our psychological quality...is not at all the same as the opponent level."

"In my opinion, under the previous logic of war, this is already a war that must be lost. If this logic of war cannot be resolved, then extracting all the resources of the game may not help. War is not A game where the two sides compare the number of spaceships..."

Changxing said a lot in one breath, as if he had vomited out all the words he had held back in his stomach during the three years of being trapped on the attack ship.

The second consul retorted almost subconsciously: "If we don't resist, can't we still surrender?"

"No," Changxing said, "What I mean is very simple. Instead of abolishing the game, we need to speed up the military application in the game field in the shortest possible time-the simplest one is to kill enemies like AI. Putting it into the game, at least in this way, we can find the opponent's possible flaws without really losing the battleship and life."