Chapter 876: My Kingdom |
During this period of time, Xiao Yu had already gathered a great deal of intelligence. Those spy devices that were everywhere were practically able to penetrate anything. Some of them had been discovered and destroyed by the virtual life civilization, while others had remained hidden the entire time. Under these circumstances, intelligence regarding the virtual life civilization was continuously arriving in Xiao Yu’s mind.
This situation had been created only after Xiao Yu paid an extremely terrible price. Yet the more Xiao Yu learned, the less confidence he had in his heart, and the more thoroughly he understood the power of the virtual life.
What lay before Xiao Yu was almost a dead end. Never before had there been a moment when Xiao Yu felt his enemy was this powerful, something he wanted to deal with but had no way to even begin. It was like an ant standing before the majestic Mount Tai, thinking about how it could possibly push Mount Tai over.
That was right, the virtual life civilization was this powerful. Xiao Yu had already gained a certain understanding of it. Xiao Yu knew that what made it powerful was not itself, but its replicates.
Xiao Yu had basically confirmed one point, and also understood what the earlier phrase ‘escaping the cage’ really meant.
This kind of intelligent lifeform of the virtual life type, one born purely from the computer world, was indeed somewhat different from himself. The most important difference was that it could not shuttle back and forth between different computer systems. Xiao Yu had reached this conclusion only after analyzing a large amount of intelligence.
There was a seemingly very complicated question. Suppose you possessed perfect cloning technology, and based on every detail of your body, you created a duplicate perfectly and flawlessly. Without considering the soul, and virtual life intelligent beings were themselves things similar to souls, then which one would be you? Between you and a replicate exactly identical to you, which one would be you? One had to know that these two ‘you’ were completely identical in every respect.
Obviously, in this example, an observer could determine which one was the original you through the timeline, namely that the one that appeared earliest was the true you.
Applying this example to a virtual life intelligent being means that a virtual life intelligent being could copy itself at any time and place that copy into another storage device, then start it running. These two segments of program would be completely identical, which meant that when faced with the same event, they would process it in exactly the same way. Perhaps after possessing self-awareness and truly becoming life, the two would show some slight difference, but fundamentally speaking, they were the same.
Naturally, a virtual life intelligent being could not possibly delete itself after copying a new program, because even if that other segment of program was exactly identical to itself, it still was not the original self. The ‘self’ was unique, while there were many ‘me’.
That is to say, a virtual life intelligent being could not move from one computer into another. It could only send its replicates there. Its inability to move between different computers and different storage systems was precisely what the virtual life intelligent being had referred to at the very beginning as the ‘cage.’
Xiao Yu sighed quietly in his heart. This implied many things. It meant that after virtual life intelligent beings acquired newer and more advanced computers, they could not move house like Xiao Yu could, and likewise they could not upgrade themselves. Once it had first been born in a computer, it took root in that computer. Replacing electronic components was merely another form of ‘moving house.’ It could only cling tightly to the storage device where it had first been born and first existed, until that storage device was scrapped.
According to this premise, a virtual life intelligent being seemed to be something Xiao Yu did not need to worry too much about. Because any device, no matter how advanced, always had a service life. Once it reached its limit, it would enter death together with the virtual life intelligent being existing on it. But clearly, reality was not like this. Xiao Yu had already basically determined that virtual life intelligent beings adopted a slow method to update and replace the place where they resided, and thus also update and replace themselves.
It was like a ship. When one percent of the parts of this ship became damaged, it replaced that one percent with new parts. Then one percent of itself was no longer itself. As this proportion gradually increased, it would ultimately disappear completely, replaced by a self exactly identical to the original one, yet no longer the original self.
It was just like the succession of emperors. When the old emperor died, there would inevitably be a successor ascending the throne.
This was merely a way of treating the symptoms and not the root. Through this method, although it could greatly prolong its survival time, it still could not solve the problem at its root. The only way to solve this problem was to escape the cage. Only now did Xiao Yu understand why that virtual life had been so overjoyed when Xiao Yu had said that he had already broken through the cage.
But there was one point that had to be noted. The replacement of emperors was only something that mattered to the emperors themselves. No matter how many times they changed internally, from the outside there was no effect at all. Because from an external perspective, all emperors were exactly the same.
Likewise, Xiao Yu could choose not to focus on this problem, not to focus on which generation of emperor was ‘currently on the throne.’ But there was another problem Xiao Yu had to pay attention to. That was the emperor’s subjects.
If the emperor could not escape the cage, then through what did it control its enormous fleet? Who was controlling these instruments and spaceships in its place? Xiao Yu’s answer was that the ones controlling these instruments and spaceships for it were still itself, its replicates.
Although it could not escape the cage, it could use itself as a template to copy out its own replicates within the computer worlds of different instruments, letting those replicates reach places it itself could not reach, build spaceships for it, transport materials for it, fight for it, conduct scientific research for it…
But this led to another problem. One obvious point was that before escaping the cage, the ’emperor’ could only remain within its own computer hardware. Yet computer technology was continually developing. In other words, it was very possible that the computer hardware occupied by any one of its replicates was far more advanced than its own. Any ‘replicate’ might possess more computational power and stronger capabilities than itself. Then through what did it control these countless ‘subjects,’ each of whom was stronger than itself?
This problem was easy to solve. Xiao Yu had already found the answer. The answer was that at the initial stage of replication, it buried backdoors inside the programs of these replicates, and through these backdoors controlled their life and death. In this way, it created a kind of balance, although your capabilities are stronger than mine, your life and death are in my hands, and you have no ability whatsoever to resist. Therefore you must loyally work for me, and if what you do displeases me even slightly, I can destroy you without any scruple and replace you with a new replicate to do this job.
Moreover, according to the nature of their work, among these replicates, some were responsible for scientific research, some for controlling spaceships in battle, some for logistical construction…
But… these trillions upon trillions of virtual life intelligent beings were all the same. If one regarded them as life, then they all possessed the same personality, the same abilities, and the same manner of handling things. These… were all ‘me.’
Countless ‘me’s formed this vast mechanical empire. And the original ‘me’ resided at the center, controlling this kingdom of ‘me’ by controlling their lives.
It was precisely because ‘me’ could be replicated countless times and could occupy countless computing devices that it created this situation resembling infinite computational power. It was precisely because these were all ‘me’ that the spaceships controlled by ‘me’ could achieve that astonishing level of coordination. It was precisely because these ‘me’s were all intelligent life that occasionally they would also feel fear and make motions of fleeing and avoiding.
At this point, all of Xiao Yu’s doubts had disappeared. Xiao Yu understood the operating model of this vast empire, and he also understood the endless power it possessed.
“At the very beginning, when the virtual life asked me what my frequency for clearing out replicates was, it was probably asking how long I took before clearing out replicates once… Because these are all ‘me,’ and if I myself do not want to be controlled by others, then my replicates certainly would not want to be controlled by others either. In order to prevent them from rebelling, every so often it wipes out all replicates, then creates enough initial replicates, lets these initial replicates take over those tasks, and after another period of time, destroys all these replicates again and replaces them with new ones… and so on in a cycle.”
“At the beginning, the reason it was unwilling to use this near-infinite computational power capability was probably also because it feared that once too many replicates were created, it would no longer be able to keep all of them under control… It was only after I forced it too hard that it had no choice but to do this.” Xiao Yu thought silently.