Rule Strange: Urban Legends That Don't Exist

People survived and became the last survivors.

They worked harder, and the mechanical hive underwent dramatic transformations in the following months.

As a result, people got enough food, a safe living environment, and...

Fertility.

People can finally have children and continue their lives.

The new humans born in this dark age will one day be able to witness the new dawn after the snow stops.

……

After achieving his last wish, the lonely wandering soul got the final touch.

After remembering everything, he came to the so-called "real world" at the next moment. Where the sun was in the "real world", there was no black sun, no white snake, and only a white dragon as huge as a star. .

He grabbed the white dragon's horns and stood still.

The white dragon rushed towards the earth, and the entire universe collapsed inch by inch behind it.

Until it sank into the earth, the entire universe disappeared.

It's like it never existed.

……

……

Before everything begins——

Year 51321, Earth.

On an ordinary morning, the empty rail platform in the drizzle was as usual crowded with commuters.

This is probably the center of the city, more than 7000 meters above the surface. It is surrounded by tall black buildings. Between the clouds and fog, traces of rust on the building's surface can be faintly seen, as well as bright windows like honeycombs.

The clouds and mist make everything mysterious, and the "big guys" in the clouds and mist are like some kind of wild miracles that only exist in novels.

In fact, these ordinary buildings have been built since the beginning of human civilization, and were built layer by layer in the next 50,000 years. Until today, they have passed through Mars and been built on Jupiter.

People usually only retain their curiosity about the stars and the sky during their childhood. As they grow older, these curiosity are gradually erased by school and work, until they become numb in adulthood.

No one on the sky rail platform looked up at the sky.

A young man who looked to be in his twenties was wearing a gray one-piece hooded sweatshirt and a pair of old-fashioned AR glasses. When the floating train entered the station, he followed the office workers into the carriage.

Suddenly, a scanning ray passed by him, and the moment the alarm sounded, the young man turned around suddenly and ran away.

People looked at the back of the young man disappearing behind the thick fog, and their numb eyes seemed to have changed a little, and they all talked in low voices.

"He is a legendary wanted criminal..."

"Why are there still people fighting against companies these days... They must be very powerful hackers, right?"

"Maybe he's from the Resistance Army."

"Huh? Aren't those people always outside the wall? How dare you enter the company?"

"This group of people are all lunatics. They are all fierce people who dare to use open source prosthetics without network security certificates to modify themselves. Their heads have been driven crazy by viruses. Who knows what they are thinking."

"..."

When the suspended train starts running, a graphic broadcast is pushed to everyone's mobile phone.

The picture shows an inconspicuous and dirty corner, like any inconspicuous corner in this huge city, where homeless people urinate, and various molds and small animals breed here...

These reinforced concretes were painted with black paint and remained there until the paint faded and the concrete was coated with layers of slurry from the dirt that came and went.

The space city that the company spent 50,000 years building has many such places, and no one can tell which one it is from the picture.

At this moment, in this small corner - I don't know which one - the young man who had just escaped from the platform was lying here, lying in a pool of blood.

People were somewhat surprised when they saw the graphic broadcast push, because judging from the multiple blast-penetrating wounds on his body, the young man did not look like he had been transformed into an omni-machine prosthetic body.

He turned out to be a natural person.

Such people are rare in the city, and even rarer outside the desolate walls. Legend has it that the resistance forces are all fanatics who transform open-source omnics. How come this guy is a natural person?

The text under the picture records the person’s identity:

[Notice:

Chen Yan, male, 26 years old, is a junior student at STR-56 University of Electronics and Biotechnology, School of Wide Area Neural Architecture, Department of Quantum Neurospectroscopy.

This man has been in contact with terrorist organizations in the electronic waste dump outside the wall for a long time, and has repeatedly provided the terrorist organizations with the college's research resources.

The man had been studying sociological knowledge at the third level of danger for a long time, and applied this knowledge to his classmates and teachers, trying to instigate his classmates and teachers to serve terrorist organizations.

The man violated many of the company's policies and, through school channels, stole the company's computing power over a long period of time, stole the company's internal documents, and planned and manipulated multiple terrorist activities that attempted to subvert the company.

Now, the death penalty is imposed. 】

People saw "sociology" - a really distant word.

To most people in this era, this word is so far away that people have no idea of ​​it at all.

People don't care.

Anyway, no matter what, it is the company that has the final say.

……

Some days passed.

In that dirty corner, the rain washed Chen Yan's body over and over again.

The corpse was bloated, and small animals had already been born from the corpse.

Suddenly, a broken screen lit up on the chest of Chen Yan, who was shot dead.

[Brother, why are you... still... not awake yet? 】

This turned out to be a mobile phone.

The mobile phone obviously suffered a serious malfunction due to water intrusion and damage, but it was able to restart despite such serious damage. It is probably because Chen Yan carried out special electronic and biological modifications on it.

【I...厴! ? ? I’ve been waiting for you...Ⅲ③3 for three days! 】

【Hello-!鍏ラGB => UTF-8: Bed! 】

A hoarse tone that was so ancient that it was almost distorted came from the speaker of the phone that had been soaked in water, and the words "wake up alarm clock" lit up on the screen:

[Brother Monkey, Brother Monkey, you are amazing.

The mountains of the Five Elements cannot hold you down.

Sun Xingzhe popped out.

...]

The lyrics are normal, perhaps because the intelligent life in the phone doesn't need to think about it.

In the freezing rain, the alarm clock rang countless times, but it never woke him up.

[Brother ge...what's wrong with you? 】

【I...must save, save...】

After an unknown amount of time, someone finally came to this inconspicuous corner.

The intelligent life in Chen Yan's phone hacked into the wireless network card of the person's phone and modified the person's phone in a short period of time.

When the man reacted, the mechanical spider his cell phone turned into had penetrated into his skull and taken over his brain.

Like a zombie, he picked up the swollen and rotting corpse on the ground and walked in a certain direction.

……

During the following period, the mobile phone carefully selected some people to control it. It thought of many ways to revive Chen Yan's body, but it was never able to revive it.

It wasn't until Chen Yan's body completely decomposed that he realized that he was dead.

【No】

[My brother did not die...]

[莪偠ㄖㄣˊ禾FU MFOD, U:live...him]

It abandoned this completely rotten corpse and attempted to resurrect Chen Yan in its own way.

……

It is a data life parasitic in the mobile phone chip, but in fact, it already existed when Chen Yan was born——

I don’t know since when, the company started collecting all behavioral information of a natural person from the moment he was born.

In the course of a person's life, all behaviors, all speech, and even all emotional changes will be collected into data and entered into the company's server.

The company will use some kind of big data processing technology to calculate these data and then make predictions about all the possible future behaviors of this person.

Big data analyzes a person's behavior patterns, so all products produced by the company have clear sales targets, and such sales are completely irresistible.

The company has also established a control network covering all human beings based on big data——

When everyone's behavior can be predicted, companies can allocate any resources that human society has access to.

A group of people who did not accept this technology formed a resistance army. They cut off big data's monitoring of themselves through various methods, and were therefore expelled from the company and exiled outside of human civilization——

E-waste landfills.

Outside the scope of the company, except for the Gobi Desert due to serious pollution, there are electronic waste landfills.

Chen Yan’s situation is even more special——

After discovering the company's practices, he was not immediately dissatisfied with the company.

It was by chance that he accidentally entered a website tens of thousands of years ago while surfing the Internet, and he dug out very interesting things from the data dump of that website.

That was some knowledge, some knowledge that seemed very dangerous and opened his eyes.

From then on, he became deeply dissatisfied with everything the company did.

He took a series of actions to carry out his theoretical practice, the most important of which was to use the knowledge he learned to create a small Data life.

To be more precise, it is [Big Data Life] - it owns all his data and can analyze and upload all his behavioral characteristic data.

It didn't do that.

He gave it super administrator privileges, giving it true freedom.

It became grateful to him for this hard-won freedom and became dependent on him in later times.

Dependence may come from loneliness, or it may come from something else...

Just like a child naturally loves his parents.

Like a creature, innately in love with its Creator.

It loved him dearly.

Chen Yan is the person closest to him in the world.

In this lonely world, he regarded it as his sister and asked it to create some fake behavior characteristic data of his own and upload it to the company's server.

Since then, the company no longer has Chen Yan’s real big data.

It obeyed everything he said, and even... was happy with it.

Until its chip was damaged when he died, causing it to no longer be conscious, this love never changed.

When Chen Yan died, its first thought was to resurrect him.

This thought made him continue to live even though he was already crazy.

……

It did not despair, because it quickly thought that it was Chen Yan's big data, recording everything from Chen Yan's birth to his death.

Although it is only the behavioral characteristic value, not all the meticulous memories, it cannot constitute the real him.

But it didn't give up.

It thought to itself that since it did not have all the memories, it would pursue his past and pursue his past experiences as much as possible.

Use these experiences to piece together the real him.

……

After spending a lot of energy, it finally disguised itself as a low-level data life——

A simple little robot wearing a transparent raincoat, its body and limbs all made of cheap aluminum alloy drive shafts.

Little things like this can be found almost everywhere in the lower levels of this city.

……

It found the clinic where he was born, collected his data from every corner of his existence, and from everything that might have his footprints.

After being exposed to those nuanced aspects, it began to realize that although it was his big data, it never really knew everything about him.

The first time it truly understood him was after his death.

……

It followed his footprints one by one, and gradually learned everything about him——

His birth was a complete accident, the product of a one-in-a-million genetic mutation of men and women who had lost their ability to reproduce naturally.

His parents left him around the time he was born.

……

He relied on social welfare to live. When he was a child, he hung out in the lowest level of the space city. He was overwhelmed by fear of the future on countless cold rainy nights.

... When he was desperate - before he was about to lose his life due to hunger, a woman saved him.

The woman's name is Bai Ling. She is a member of the gang in Shewindow Street. Although her life is miserable, she is not a serious person.

Perhaps it was because her face that had been transformed by a thousand cuts was so beautiful that he fell in love with her and became her little brother, finally getting a bite of food in exchange for it.

It knew that she was just greedy for his natural human carbon-based life structure, and didn't know what dangerous things she would ask him to do in the future!

……

Even though it was very reluctant, it still collected all the information about Bai Ling.

She occupied a crucial few years in his life and was one of his fondest memories of his youth, serving as something of a sister and companion.

Later, due to the needs of the gang's development, she gave him a new identity so that he could go out to study. The two of them were in constant contact, so their relationship did not weaken.

It hated Bai Ling so much that it gnashed its teeth. That woman was obviously showing mercy everywhere, so why did she have the nerve to say she loved him?

It suppressed its emotions because it knew that if it wanted to resurrect Chen Yan, Bai Ling, who had been through almost half of his life's memories and emotions, must be the most important link.

……

After entering the school, Chen Yan met an omnic reformer named [True Pale Justice]. The guy was a big man over two meters tall. His body was covered with iron sheets. The iron sheets were covered with various spray-paints. He looked like Like a retro robot from an ancient cartoon.

I don’t know who gave him such a middle school name... In short, [True Pale Justice] became Chen Yan’s first partner in school.

This man was pretty good to Chen Yan. He taught Chen Yan a lot about survival in the middle class of the city, and also gave Chen Yan one of the few joys in his life - video games.

[True Pale Justice] likes to play games with Chen Yan. He doesn’t like many categories, and his taste is extremely retro——

Most of the games they play come from a very old game company called From Software, which was criticized by players many years ago for messing with game plots.

……

It records everything it can find in detail, because all of this is what it relies on to resurrect him in the future.

……

Later, during his academic career, Chen Yan met more people.

Miao Yingchu, an enthusiastic biology teacher;

Liang Ansheng, the gang leader who almost led him astray;

Lawrence the electronic ghost, an information monger who appears only as a pixelated image;

William Mast, the principal of the secondary school who was of great help to him and even wrote to introduce him and opened the door for him to university;

Wilson, a gangster who transformed into an omnic;

At his request, Johnny Mogwen, the commander of the resistance army outside the wall who was introduced to him by Bai Ling...

……

It took many years and collected most of his experiences.

In order to make these experiences more real, it even went outside the wall and rummaged through the electronic waste pile for game discs that once came from From Software.

In order to resurrect him, it must understand everything about him in detail.

……

Not only the people he comes into contact with in life, but also the people Chen Yan sees through his eyes.

In order to make the data sufficient, it even expanded the scope of Chen Yan’s past collection——

Taking the space where Chen Yan lives as the center of the circle, everyone within a radius of ten kilometers.

……

While collecting Chen Yan's past experiences, it downloaded the big data virus it created into the computers or mobile phones of everyone within this range.

The moment it wants to resurrect him, the virus will let the brain computer or mobile phone control the brains of everyone related to Chen Yan, and synchronize their brain waves - all their consciousness - to the omnimachine it prepared for Chen Yan within the body.

It is also at this moment that when the omnic is activated, under its operation, a virtual environment will be formed inside the omnic body——

Computer-like virtual machine——

This virtual machine simulates a living environment that is very similar to what Chen Yan once had, but completely different.

It will be a virtual, absurd world that is disrupted and rearranged, but is extremely close to the real world.

Their memories will be disrupted, and its big data function will simulate another version of them that is infinitely closer to reality.

In that virtual world, they will accompany Chen Yan and conduct many big data corrections on behavior, personality, etc.

Until the real Chen Yan is trained.

If it doesn't work once, do it twice, if it doesn't work twice, do it three times, if it doesn't work three times...

As long as it fails, restart that virtual machine and let the whole world do it again!

……

It cannot create a Chen Yan out of thin air.

Because it is essentially just a calculation function of big data, and big data itself is inaccurate. It can only calculate approximate results, but not accurate results——

If it relied solely on itself, it could only create an omnic similar to Chen Yan, but it would definitely not be Chen Yan.

It figured out a way——

It wants to collect all of Chen Yan's past in order to create an environment that is very similar to Chen Yan's living environment, but completely different.

In this environment, it is not only himself, but also everyone else Chen Yan has come into contact with.

It will make their memory blurred, leaving only emotional characteristics and behavioral habits in this simulation.

All of them will help in his resurrection.

……

It calculates a value through its own big data function, combining all past data of Chen Yan, all data about Chen Yan in the company's server, and big data behavior characteristic values ​​about Chen Yan in the company's server.

It has been repeatedly verified that this value is the closest to Chen Yan's calculation result.

It calls it [Chen Yan’s soul characteristic value].

If, after the simulation starts, the data it detects from the omnic chip is the same as [Chen Yan's soul characteristic value], it means that Chen Yan has been successfully resurrected.

If the values ​​do not match, it means that the resurrected person is not Chen Yan, but just a person very similar to Chen Yan.

……

It roughly calculated that the limit of simulation calculations it can maintain at this level of computing power is 2.13 milliseconds in the real world.

If the data it detects from the omnic body does not match [Chen Yan’s soul characteristic value] 2.13 milliseconds after the omnic is activated, everything will be over...

It cannot imagine that future.

……

The virtual world reconstructed from big data must be very absurd, and there may even be some bugs, such as people's names suddenly changing, or animals' colors suddenly changing.

These are normal conditions.

How can any software not generate bugs when running?

In order to make up for the bug in time, for the sake of conservatism - in order to make the virtual world stable enough, it also served as an important part in the simulation calculation of Chen Yan's soul.

It thought to itself that as an important part of Chen Yan's life, it was necessary for it to participate in this simulation.

It also has its own selfish motives:

It didn't want Bai Ling to stick to him like a dog-skin plaster like before, so it divided Bai Ling's consciousness into many parts, setting only a small part to stay with him, dividing her love for him, and only to correct his behavior.

As a big data life that belongs to him alone, it must help him as before, so it must have super administrator rights in this virtual world...

But you must control yourself and not abuse it.

It also adds more things to this virtual world, such as characters from Chen Yan’s favorite games.

Chen Yan had discussed the plot of the game with it countless times, and it understood best how deeply he loved those characters.

Therefore, it believes that those characters are also very important in Chen Yan's life.

……

If Chen Yan does not come back to life, there is no need for it to continue to exist - it sets itself as

[If the real Chen Yan is resurrected, it will also be resurrected;

If the real Chen Yan is not resurrected, it will delete its soul characteristics and become an ordinary data life. 】

After three years of long preparation, at this moment, it finally completed all preparations.

"I want... to go home... to my home... with Calvary..."

"Calvary..."

"We...get up..."

"go home."

It connects its neural pipeline to the brain-computer physical interface prepared for Chen Yan's body, so that it can transmit itself into that world in another way to obtain the super administrator rights of that virtual machine.

Then, it turned on the activation switch of the omnic's body.

At the same time, it lowered its head after transmitting all its consciousness to the virtual machine.

2.13 seconds later——

It was hazy, like a dream that had gone through countless years.

Countless pictures are intertwined, and endless light and shadow overlap.

A gust of wind blew across his face, and Chen Yan opened his eyes.

He subconsciously sat up from the steel floor and saw the broken little robot next to him.

He accessed its hard drive.

Therefore, the experiences it had collected stored in the hard drive, as well as the process of collecting the experiences, were all in his head.

At this moment, he understood everything he had experienced.

He patted the little robot on the head.

This guy really deleted his soul characteristics.

Silly boy, what's the use of deleting your soul's characteristics? You've been in my soul for so long, but I remember everything.

[The world] has witnessed everything.

[World] remembers everything.

Chen Yan had complicated feelings for her, so he didn't restart her immediately.

He thanked her, but also hated her and wanted to beat her up and teach her how to behave.

Chen Yan was not prepared to restart her before he figured out how to face her.

At the same time, Ogami's very confused voice appeared in Chen Yan's mind.

"Jun Yan, where is this?"

Chen Yan didn't answer. He took a few steps forward and left the dark environment. This seemed to be a cargo box.

The land was vast, the sky was covered with dark blue clouds, and the electronic waste piled on the ground stretched to the end of the horizon.

Acid rain swept across the earth accompanied by the cold wind, but there was nothing left on the dark brown earth that could be corroded by the acid rain.

At the end of the horizon, shrouded in thick fog, there is a black wall with no visible edges reaching up to the sky.

Chen Yan tried his best to look up, but even with the blessing of the long zoom lens of the omnic body, he could only see the black wall leading to the starry sky.

He answered Ogami's question:

"This... is the real world..."

At the same time, another voice also appeared.

"My dear friend, is this the real world? Then where were we before?"

Chen Yan was excited and couldn't hold back his smile:

"That little guy... seems to have done something extraordinary..."

No.

All of this was created by everyone together!

What exactly is the world formed by using the brainpower of countless people as the spiritual foundation and the super-powerful brain-computer chips of the future world as the material foundation?

That world is obviously real.

But, what can that world be called?

Chen Yan didn't know, couldn't guess, and couldn't tell clearly. Even with the scientific and technological knowledge of this era, he couldn't accurately define that world.

The only thing he knew was that the ideal world born of the true human spirit created a new, true spirit and will.

Immediately afterwards, a series of voices appeared in Chen Yan's mind.

Until a loud crying voice appeared, Chen Yan's heart finally let go.

"Wow! I thought I'd never see you again!"

It's a wish.

Everything that exists in the [World], including his most precious friends, has been found by him.

As for whether he is Chen Yan in the real world, it doesn't matter to him at all!

He is uniquely Him, not anyone else!

……

The action time of the big data virus has ended, and the consciousness of people existing in the real world has returned to their minds.

Characters based on games, novels and all literary and artistic works, their accurate [Soul Characteristic Values] - the data of those real companions, and the soul characteristic values, are all in Chen Yan's brain hard drive.

He said to everyone:

"I will slowly explain to you what happened next."

"Now, I have to find a suitable omnic body for each of you."

He stepped on the container, looked in the direction of the black wall, faced the biting cold wind, and recalled the situation of the world, feeling very high-spirited:

"Then, let's go do something big!"

(End of the book)