Rule Strange: Urban Legends That Don't Exist

When it finished speaking, Ogami and Klein pulled the trigger at the same time.

The laser from the high-energy rifle, which could penetrate three meters thick tungsten carbide with one shot, suddenly appeared, and the teddy bear's head and part of the cafe behind him disappeared as if evaporating in the light.

When the light dissipated, the two finally saw clearly the body of the teddy bear. The inside of the body, which was originally composed of electronic components and mechanical structures according to a certain logic, was now filled with something like tissue fluid and was extremely sticky. Thick and looks like it's squirming.

The basic structure of the skeletal structure inside the teddy bear's body is almost unrecognizable from its original appearance - its bones composed of metal and silicone have swollen to look like they were made of styrofoam, swollen and deformed, as if [white flesh and blood] was born from its body based on metal and silicone.

Without any warning, a clear "pop" sound came from inside its chest.

That is……

heartbeat!
Kongche SAMA and the two real carbon-based creatures fell into a moment of downtime at the same time. They could no longer distinguish what the things in front of them were.

When they reacted, the high-powered rifles in their hands had fired again.

This time the doll bear was destroyed to the dregs, and the floor where it sat was also penetrated. When the laser dissipated, something even more terrifying appeared.

——The ventilation area that was originally used for laying pipes and cables was filled with a pile of white flesh and blood. The reason why the two of them thought of "flesh and blood" immediately when they saw that thing was penetrated by lasers. This concept is because that thing has all the characteristics of normal carbon-based living muscle tissue except that it is completely white.

Even so, Kongche SAMA, which has a large database, is still unable to define any attributes of it. The knowledgeable center experienced a brief downtime after collecting visual information for analysis, and after the downtime came up with a Breathtaking answer:

"Cancer!"

Kongche SAMA shouted in the headset:

"This thing is not flesh and blood! It is a mutated cancer cell!"

The scalp-numbing cancer cells are densely packed and have formed something like muscle tissue!

It is better to say that the cancer cells have filled the entire ventilation area under the floor. It is better to say that these white cancer cells have integrated with all the steel pipes in the ventilation area. Kongche SAMA can no longer detect normal through the scanner on the helmet of the engineering suit. metal structure.

The agglomerated tissue of cancer cells has not yet formed any existence that meets the definition of "organ". It is precisely because of this that they can swarm out of the penetrated holes in a crazy manner like overflowing, and grow in front of the two people in the next blink of an eye. Became a tree of flesh and blood.

In the blink of an eye, new buds appeared on the tree, and the new buds grew luxuriantly, and then blossomed and bore fruit - everything happened in a very short time - the tree full of swaying fruits opened their eyes at the moment the two raised their guns. .

Under the gaze of Manshu's eyes, the two of them completely lost their ability to move in an instant. The fingers that were already on the trigger were so stiff that they could no longer pull the trigger.

The two fruits fell to the ground, and the opened eyes on the fruits began to become cloudy. At the moment when the whites and blacks of the eyes were mixed, two bugs with eyes as their heads burst out of the fruits and squirmed quickly towards the two of them.

Kongche SAMA’s voice exploded in the engineering suit:
"Wake up! It's over if you get infected! Beta-type cancer develops too fast!"

Its sharp sound gave Ogami a precious opportunity. He took this opportunity to bite the tip of his tongue, regained control of his body in an instant, suddenly raised his hand, grabbed Klein, and fell backwards.

Klein originally had a strong will, and he was hit because he was caught off guard before. Now that he was hit by Ogami, he regained control of his body in an instant.

His modified body was already much stronger than Ogami. Now that he had recovered, he picked up Ogami with his backhand and flew towards the interior of the space city corridor. In a few blinks, the fruit tree full of eyes was far away. Leave it far behind.

"You two! I have located the server room on the 871st floor of the space city! Please follow my instructions!"

The two of them followed Kongche SAMA's instructions and moved forward in the huge and majestic maze-like space city while analyzing the events that had just happened.

"Sora, what the hell is that?"

"There is no information about that thing in my database. After I collected the morphological data of that thing, I compared it with the substances existing in the world today through my big data model, and concluded that [the substance belongs to some kind of information virus" ] conclusion.”

"Huh? Information virus? Is it also a program virus?"

"Yes, this is the judgment I have made so far. Because its specific physiological structure and basic material composition at the micro level have not been obtained and analyzed, further analysis and inference cannot be made."

"A program virus that can infect life... is incredible."

"Klein, do you remember what I told you along the way?"

"Well...according to your statement, if the world we live in is really a server world and we are essentially program characters, then it would not be surprising to be infected by program viruses."

"Klein, I don't want to leave. I want to investigate the situation here."

"I roughly understand what you are thinking, and suggest that you'd better return to the mechanical hive first, and then get the armed forces from Chen Yan before coming back, because facing such a thing, one's personal power is minimal, and... you are no longer what you used to be. is you."

"Ah...yes...I am...a mortal now..."

"Sora, you just said that this programmed virus is beta-type cancerous. What's going on?"

"The virus replicates exactly the same way as cancer cells in beta-type carcinogenesis. That is to say, it may have mutated from something in the dark zone, or maybe it learned the beta-type in those people who returned from the dark zone. The pattern of carcinogenesis has led to the current replication method."

Kongche SAMA's expression is very colloquial after high-precision training and self-improvement of the big data model:

"If it's the former, it's still in line with common sense. The situation in the dark zone is complicated and all kinds of weird creatures are everywhere. It's normal for such a monster to appear.

But if it is the latter, it is very scary to think about it. If the beta-type cancer cell replication method of this thing is obtained through learning, it means that it has a strong learning ability, and the external characteristics of this thing are not consistent with history. On any technological creation, it means that it is a new thing and it did not evolve through natural evolution. It is probably man-made! "

A man-made monster...

Who made it? What is the purpose of making it? So where is the destination designed for it by the creator? "Because its replication principle is similar to beta-type carcinogenesis, and it has now been confirmed that it can infect silicon substrates, this thing may be the most powerful virus in human history. No one can control it...it may swallow everything..."

They shuttled through the empty corridors, and everything around them was obviously normal. Each area looked the same as when there were still people, but not even a single person could be seen. The smell of death permeated the entire space.

They know that maybe the humans here have become the nourishment of that thing, and maybe all the buildings in the entire space they see have become part of that thing...

The information collected by Kongche SAMA confirmed their guess:

"I sent verification information that only humans can understand to the running computer terminals, but no terminal responded, indicating that this place is most likely completely occupied by that thing."

"So, is it the same thing that sent the message for us to merge with the space station?"

"Probably yes."

"Sora, why can't you be sure about this?"

"All my calculations are based on algorithms. I collect data, add the data to my algorithm, and finally get a data as an answer - when I calculate the answer, the probability value obtained is less than 1. , it is a random event, and when it is equal to 1, it is an inevitable event."

"I probably understand."

"If it is the message sent by that thing, it must be to lure us into the space city. What is its purpose?
If it's not the message sent by that thing, it must be the message sent by other people in the space city. Since they already know that there is such a monster, why do they force us in?
Want us to help with that thing? But how do they know whether we have the ability to solve that thing? "

"Song, what are the probabilities calculated by you based on these three assumptions."

"Omitting the decimal part, they are 51%, 10% and 1% respectively."

"What about 38%?"

"It's other hypotheses that have a probability of being established. There are thirteen kinds of them."

Their conversation continued until they reached the elevator entrance.

They stood at the elevator entrance, watching the elevator descend to their floor and watching the elevator door open.

Without warning, a group of office white-collar workers wearing Starlink staff uniforms appeared in the elevator.

They walked out chatting and laughing, talking about today's work, and didn't care about their existence at all. Some of them even greeted them.

The two of them stood in the crowd, the lights were bright, the perfume on people's bodies smelled very fresh, and the things they talked about made people more alive, but they felt a cold wind, and the high degree of tension made them even feel their skin. All experienced numbness.

They watched the white-collar workers leave the area where the elevator was. The expected aberrations did not appear, and the white-collar workers disappeared safely at the end of the corridor.

"null……"

When they entered the elevator, they finally felt less nervous and had the opportunity to ask Kongche SAMA:

"Those people just now..."

Kongche SAMA understood their inner doubts, so he gave a direct answer:

"Yes, they are all beta cancer variants, but unlike those white flesh and blood, they still retain part of their human consciousness and physiological functions.

So, we can conclude that independent beta cancer variants cannot communicate with each other through wireless signals - which is really good news! This means that the efficiency of cancerous variants in hunting us down will not be too high. Even if there are cancerous variants on other floors, as long as we do not alert them, they will not go around looking for us. "

They didn't waste too much time here, and Kongche SAMA didn't collect any useful information from the Internet in Space City. When Kongche SAMA started to explain, they had already pressed the button to go to the 871st floor.

As the elevator rose, they saw the situation on each floor through the transparent glass on both sides of the elevator door——

Some floors were as deserted as when they first arrived, brightly lit, but more eerie than the wilderness;
The light in some floors completely disappeared, and the entire floor was filled with some kind of liquid. A huge shadow wandered on the floor. When they looked at the shadow, they seemed to feel that countless eyes were looking at them at the same time;
Some floors have a normal human working environment. The staff are talking and laughing when going up and down the elevator, which is very normal. Under Kongche SAMA’s dissuasion, the two of them also maintained rationality and restraint and did not have any trouble with anyone. conflict;
Everything on some floors has been destroyed, with blood all over the floor, stumps of limbs piled up, and mountains of flesh-like colloids crawling on the ground. The surface of the colloids is undulating, as if something is about to be born in the next moment.

……

Fortunately, there were no dangers along the way, and they finally reached the 871st floor safely.

When they left the elevator door, they had completed charging the high-energy rifle. They walked out of the elevator door maintaining an attacking posture. They saw dark matter like streamers floating in the air. It looked like floc and had something similar to The form of fluid itself is unstable in material form, so it often floats around.

From time to time, ember-like light flashes across the surface of those substances, adding some apparent vitality to the substance itself.

"Those are irradiated virus spores, and their basic structure has not been analyzed, so we don't know the minimum spore size and cannot judge whether they will invade the breathing chamber of the engineering suit."

The efficiency of Kongche SAMA is obviously very high:
"There are results - I analyzed the virus spores through the camera on the 871st floor, and got the result that [the minimum size of the virus spores is larger than the engineering suit breathing chamber], we can move on."

What a rare piece of good news.

They continued to move forward, and more spore clusters appeared on the road ahead. These spore clusters looked different from the viruses they had seen before. The irregularly shaped spore clusters did not have eye-like organizations on their surfaces, nor did they show any signs of infection. Any athletic ability.

As they continued to move forward, rows of server units appeared in front of them. Judging from the indicator lights on the outside of the server units, these servers were running normally. What was strange was that most of the server units had dark spores attached to their surfaces, and even some servers It has been completely covered by spores, and these spores have not affected the operation of the server itself. .

From time to time, embers flashed across the surface of the spores, which looked like the indicator lights inside the server unit representing "data flow", which kept flickering on and off.