Rule Strange: Urban Legends That Don't Exist

The pupil in the center of Chen Changsheng's cloudy lens gradually focused.

The Chen Yan on the screen was at least ten years older than the Chen Yan he knew. He looked less than fifty years old and had an unshaven beard. Although his face had no expression, his chilling temperament was overwhelming through the screen. When he was angry, he looked like he was keeping away from strangers.

"What do all those circles on his shoulders mean?"

William Adams stood beside Chen Changsheng's hospital bed, asking and answering himself:

"At least he must be a general... What military rank is this? Where is he a soldier? Jamie, this person should not be the Chen Yan we know."

Chen Changsheng's weak whisper came from the brainwave microphone next to the hospital bed:

"Three stars and one satellite represent the generals of that world's navy."

William Adams couldn't help but rub his hands. This action represented his inner excitement. It was a bad habit left over from when he was a civilian. He had deliberately forgotten this action for many years since he was in a high position, but it appeared today. The good news in front of him still made him unable to help but make an action that was etched deep in his memory to express his happiness and excitement.

William Adams' eyes wandered between Chen Changsheng in his peripheral vision and Chen Yan on the screen.

"Jamie, who is he?"

The voice that Chen Changsheng produced through the brainwave sound microphone was like a completely electronic sound, without any emotion:

"It's Chen Yan."

William Adams was obviously used to his indifference. After receiving the definite answer, he clenched his fists tightly and there seemed to be a flash of light in his eyes:

"In other words, that world is real!"

Chen Changsheng said nothing.

Above the screen, in the combat command room, people cheered for the victory of the war and took out the salutes they had prepared to celebrate the great success of the war. They must have paid a lot for this war to win this seemingly easy victory. .

Only Chen Yan remained silent, as if victory was not worth mentioning to him.

As the only officer in the combat command room with three stars on his epaulettes, no one dared to mess with him if he didn't want to talk.

"It's strange."

Although William Adams said something strange, the corners of his mouth were already grinning - he smiled because he knew Chen Yan's situation.

"He has been squeezed out, and may be transferred soon, or even lose real power - these subordinates will obviously no longer be his subordinates immediately, otherwise how could the subordinates be so happy when the boss is unhappy?

Haha, even in that world, there are only so many methods that humans can use. "

On the screen, amid cheers, Chen Yan stood up and walked silently towards the combat command room, leaving only his back on the screen.

William Adams said:

"Screen this person's video information."

The efficiency of the group's programmers was obviously very high. After William Adams spoke, within three seconds, the screen changed:

A room with no visible edges on both sides appeared on the screen. The ceiling of the room was the black ceiling of a normal office, and the floor was paved with black floor tiles.

This office has a large horizontal area, but is not deep vertically. The screen shows the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the room in the depth direction. The floor-to-ceiling windows extend to both sides of the office to the end of the field of vision.

In the center of the office, not far in front of Chen Yan, sat a small desk alone. There was only a display screen and a small pot of bright tree flowers on the desk.

Chen Yan stood in front of his desk, and only his back could be seen on the screen in front of William Adams. Apparently there was only one camera in this peculiar office.

In the camera, there was a blond man sitting behind the desk. William Adams squinted his eyes to see clearly, and said:

"Use AI to fill in the pixels. I want to see this person's face clearly."

After a few moments, the video was filled with pixels by artificial intelligence, and a familiar face appeared in front of William Adams.

"It's him..."

William Adams was a little disappointed at first, and then suddenly became excited:

"It's actually the grand leader! The grand leader also occupies a high position in that world! Does this mean that I also hold a high position in that world?!"

A voice came from the brainwave microphone on Chen Chang's bed:

"It's possible, but not necessarily, that that world has already ushered in great destruction, and you in that world may have died in the great destruction."

William Adams extended his index finger and pointed at the Grand Commander on the screen, his eyes looking straight:

"Jamie, you once told me that people from that world might have been uploaded to our world. Those uploaded people might have uploaded not themselves, but their own backups. So, the person I was in that world uploaded Is it himself or his backup?

If he uploaded a backup, am I an independent me?

If what he uploads is himself, am I just an extension of his will? Am I a sub-will born of his will? Am I a parasite that he nourished with his own will? "

William Adams looked like a mad man, and the senior executives of the group stood by him, not daring to speak out. Without understanding the truth, they had no idea what William Adams was talking about.

Chen Changsheng said nothing, so no one could answer William Adams's question.

What broke the silence was Chen Yan’s voice coming from the screen:

"The war is over, and the promise you made to me should be fulfilled."

Everyone in the screening room was attracted by Chen Yan's voice.

The leader on the screen looked back at Chen Yan, with a stronger and more suffocating sense of oppression in his eyes:

"Yes, I have prepared the discharge procedures for you. I have prepared a ship, crew and sufficient fuel for you. You will have one hundred thousand years to explore that secret."

There was anger in Chen Yan's voice, but his tone was still calm:

"Don't act stupid."

The grand leader dropped a document at his feet:

"Go back, hand over work to the new commander, and then enjoy your retirement life."

The atmosphere in the office dropped to freezing point.

During the silent confrontation, Chen Yan suddenly took out his pistol and pulled the trigger at the head of the group leader.

The grand leader fell backwards in disbelief, and blood spattered on the floor under his feet, adding a bit of weirdness to the black floor.

Chen Yan took out his mobile phone and said into the phone:

"let's start."

The scene cuts off after Chen Yan leaves the office.

After a moment of waiting, when the screen reappeared, the entire screen turned into a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood——

The interior of the huge spacecraft was on fire due to frequent explosions, and the charred corpses of the crew were scattered in every corner under the flashing mosaic lens.

Suddenly there was a deafening explosion. The spacecraft lost its stable physical structure and could no longer support the weight of the external armor. Accompanied by a strong buzzer that could not be played by the speaker, the picture in the video disappeared moments before it disappeared. Freeze in the raging sandstorm.

The picture was suddenly interrupted here, which immediately aroused William Adams's dissatisfaction. He shouted to continue playing, but after more than ten seconds, the programmer's reluctant voice came again:

"Chairman, the next scene is very messy, very broken...and very bloody, which may cause discomfort."

William Adams cursed:

"Hurry up!" The picture that appeared on the screen again was really messy, and it was even difficult to distinguish the time and place. William Adams could only vaguely see that there was a desert on the screen, and the person who recorded the video was experiencing a chase. kill.

"The rebellion started by Chen Yan is still going on."

The brainwave microphone on the hospital bed sounded Chen Changsheng’s voice:

"It's intense, non-stop."

William Adams did not hear any "strange" emotions in Chen Changsheng's tone. It seemed that Chen Changsheng thought everything Chen Yan did was normal.

The projection on the screen continues.

Most of them were young people who died in various ways.

They died in the sand piles on the desert, under the mouthparts of monsters, in the passages of ships, under the roar of bullets and high-power close combat thermal weapons, and under the torture of being interrogated. , died in the extreme cold execution of being ejected into the universe, died in endless torture...

Some people died, while others were still moving forward angrily. They sacrificed their lives for something. They seemed to know the meaning of giving their lives, but they didn't fully know. They only knew that they had to resist and to Keep moving forward towards a certain goal.

The only similarity is that they all died in the same way.

"soldiers."

Chen Yan's intermittent voice appeared in the radio waves captured by audio-visual equipment. In an inaccessible place, in another universe, countless light years away, it was pieced together into intermittent staccato sounds by programmers of the William Adams Group.

“We are fighting for the true dawn.

We will win and the world will be remade.

We will get real fairness, and people will no longer have to worry about created material anxiety.

We will have true freedom in the new world, where people can choose whatever they want.

We will destroy the old order and build a new order based on fairness and freedom.

......"

It was inconceivable to William Adams that young people would sacrifice their lives for such a goal.

"People in the other world... aren't very smart either."

He saves others by himself:

"They sacrificed their lives, but in the end only vested interests like us benefited."

Chen Changsheng's voice came from the hospital bed:

"it's not true."

William Adams looked at him.

Electronic sounds kept coming:

“The people in that world look normal, but in fact there are almost no natural human beings who were born alive, and most of them are new human beings who have been genetically adjusted and born from machines.

The new humans have stronger capabilities in all aspects, fewer negative emotions, and stronger resistance to stress, so they are artificially bred in large numbers - most of the young people we see in the video are such new humans.

There is not much physical difference between new humans and viviparous natural humans, and they are generally stronger than normal humans because they do not have most of the flaws of natural humans——

They have no appendix, no wisdom teeth, and do not go into estrus at any time. Men do not have bad tempers due to strong secretion of male hormones. Women have wide pelvises and non-torquing birth canals. Their more reasonable spine structure does not cause lumbar spondylosis and hemorrhoids. They even have a certain ability to regenerate organs——

All this is controlled within the scope of what carbon-based life can achieve.

In their time, new humans almost completely replaced humans.

If there's anything bad about the new humans, it might just be that they're not very human-like.

They are closer to the gods we aspire to than to ourselves. "

Chen Changsheng’s words took a turn here:

“But even so, they still can’t survive.

Their birth itself is a problem - their birth requires the consumption of materials, and the entire birth process was turned into a business long before that era - the entire supply chain from production to sales, they were born from the day they were born. assets of large corporations.

They need to work for decades to gain autonomy over their bodies and pay more to maintain their bodies after retirement.

The seemingly advanced technology belongs to the times, but it does not belong to them. "

How did Chen Changsheng know this?

William Adams squinted:

"Is the comprehensive contract system you suggested to me before just for the emergence of such a future?"

Chen Changsheng’s electronic music has no emotion:

"Yes, the new humanity allowed that civilization to expand the entire territory of human civilization ten times in just a few thousand years. It can be said that the glory of human civilization in that world was that the new humanity was under the oppression of the old humanity. The brilliance created.

If we want to allow new human beings to emerge as soon as possible and quickly transition to an era of extremely developed productivity in all aspects, we must implement a comprehensive contract system. "

William Adams looked at the bloody screen:

"I can't tell for a moment whether you are saying something sarcastic or..."

Chen Changsheng's electronic voice interrupted his speculation:

“It’s the price you have to pay in order to move forward.”

William Adams nodded this time:

"That's true."

Combined with the bloody scenes that constantly appeared on the screen, Chen Changsheng’s explanation was just right:

“Human beings have enjoyed the benefits of such a social structure, but they must also pay a price for such a social structure.

The actual slavery system of the New Humanity has gradually become bloated over thousands of years, and various ills have continued to accumulate. The most serious one is the debt backlog of the New Humanity——

When a new human being's lifelong efforts are not enough to repay the debt of his birth, this part of the debt does not disappear completely with his death - any link in the entire human civilization, any link in the entire chain of interests, No one wants to take on that debt.

So the human federation of that world came up with a way. They genetically recombined the dead new humans and reused carbon bases, using this old body to generate new life, and the new life continued to repay the debt of the old body.

As a result, debts like this are like a snowball, growing larger and larger with the rapid development of civilization until they are unbearable. "

Chen Yan's blood-stained and ferocious face suddenly appeared on the screen.

Chen Changsheng's voice immediately appeared again:

“Chen Yan made good use of this debt crisis that no one can bear.

He unchained the new humans and gave them the opportunity to destroy the old world.

They didn't know his intentions, they were just trying to seize their freedom in this way. "