Trembling At A High Altitude

After a long trek, Li Teng arrived at the launch base.

The door of the launch base was open, and judging by the scant volcanic ash that had drifted in, it must have been opened only recently.

Li Teng guessed that Anna must have known he would arrive soon, so she opened the door for him in advance.

Upon entering the launch base, he hadn't gone far when he ran into a dilapidated robot.

He had seen this kind of robot once before, one that had attacked him upon their first encounter.

Therefore, upon seeing this type of robot again, Li Teng didn't hesitate to charge at it, ready to execute a twist-and-pull kill move.

"Daddy, it's me." Anna's voice came from within the robot.

Li Teng quickly let go and took a few steps back, watching the robot in front of him warily.

"It's me, Anna." Anna reaffirmed her identity.

"What's all this about?" Li Teng asked.

"Humanity is facing annihilation, but before that, under your lead, we created a Dream Ark, which is stored here at the launch base. But I don't know where it is, you should know, right?" Anna asked Li Teng.

"Dream Ark?" Of course, Li Teng had no recollection of this.

"If we find the Dream Ark, we can save all of humanity, and we can save ourselves as well." Anna answered Li Teng.

"Restore you to human form?" Li Teng looked at Anna's battered robotic appearance, rather unsettled.

"Yes."

"Okay then, but I also don't know where the Dream Ark is. Let's search for it together, and you can tell me what exactly happened," Li Teng said.

"All right."

The two of them talked while searching around the vast launch base.

Through the conversation with Anna, Li Teng gradually came to understand some of the background settings of this world's story.

The setting was the year 2121, which was a hundred years after Li Teng had entered Film and Television City from the real world.

"Actually, I'm already dead, or rather, I no longer exist. The current me is just a backup you made of me in the past.

"Ten years ago, an apocalyptic war broke out. Nuclear warfare triggered tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, leading to the complete destruction of all humanity,

"Except for this base.

"Before the end of the world, daddy, you were the owner of a multinational film and technology company.

"Your company's Dream Ark Technology developed a full set of artificial intelligence technology based on film systems, and carried out regular backups of the brain data of Earth's humans, all stored here in the base's underground database.

"At the same time, a Dream Ark system was established for artificial intelligence experiments.

"After the apocalypse, the base should have automatically initiated the launch of the Dream Ark system, but it failed to launch successfully due to an attack," Anna continued to introduce.

"What exactly is the Dream Ark?" Li Teng interrupted Anna.

"A virtual world, with virtual cities, forests, lakes, and so on...

"Once the human brain data is uploaded to the Dream Ark, it can continue to exist there." Anna explained.

"So, it's something like a data server?" Li Teng asked.

"Pretty much. There isn't enough energy on the surface to support the operation of the Dream Ark. To keep it running indefinitely, it must be launched into space. That way, as long as its solar cells aren't damaged and it doesn't physically malfunction, it can keep running.

"Of course, running indefinitely isn't feasible, but with current technology, it can at least ensure the Dream Ark operates stably for thousands, even tens of thousands of years.

"Only this way, can humanity be continued," Anna responded.

"What kind of attack did the Dream Ark suffer that prevented it from launching successfully?" Li Teng continued to ask.

"Daddy, when you were designing the Dream Ark system, an organization known as the Rebels used hacking technology to attack your system. They didn't consider the brain backups in the Dream Ark to be human and believed your research was anti-human, so they continuously sabotaged the Dream Ark system.

"It was because of the Trojan horse they planted in the system, which caused the system to fail the pre-launch checks, leading to the launch failure," Anna kept explaining.

"But isn't that check basically sabotaging itself, preventing the launch of the Dream Ark?" Li Teng asked.

"Well... there are remedial measures..."

"What remedial measures?"

"You, and me."

"All right, after the destruction of humanity, the Rebel organization should have been destroyed as well, right?" Li Teng asked again.

"Yes, but, the Rebels also had an artificial intelligence system similar to a virus system. The crazed robots you encountered before, which were once normal like me, became attackers or spread infections to us, the normal robots, after being infected by their virus," Anna replied.

"Us?" Li Teng furrowed his brow.

"Dad, you are now just... a robot written with your brain data... haven't you realized that you don't have a human body?" Anna also realized something.

Li Teng touched his head and then tried hard to look at his own body.

He finally understood that his body was not bulky because he was wearing protective gear.

It was because he was now a robot.

The so-called protective gear was actually his body.

"So, you're saying that the current you is not you, and I am not me, we're just backups of our brain data inside robots?" Li Teng understood.

"You can't say that. Whether you are you mainly depends on what you think. In some sense, as long as there is no other set of brain data in existence, the you now is you. But that's not important anymore. Our primary task is to launch the Dream Ark, and we don't have much time left," Anna reminded Li Teng.

"All right."

After some searching, the two found the passage to the location of the Dream Ark.

The passage was narrow and dimly lit, looking quite oppressive.

There were broken machines everywhere.

They also encountered a large number of robots infected with the Rebel virus.

Li Teng had already adapted to his new body, and with Anna's guidance, even found some very powerful weapons. The virus-infected robots were mostly severely damaged and hardly posed a great threat to him.

After climbing countless flights of stairs, passing through countless rooms, killing an unknown number of infected robots, and consulting a vast array of maps, they finally arrived at the location of the Dream Ark.

Contrary to what they had imagined, the Dream Ark was in a very small secret room, not the large equipment they had envisioned.

After obtaining the Dream Ark, Li Teng placed it into the solar energy device, then pushed the whole device onto the launch platform.

Subsequently, Li Teng and Anna transferred the brain data stored in their robot chips into the Dream Ark.

Then, they pressed the launch button.

The Dream Ark launch failed.

The reason was the same as Anna said: the Trojan horse implanted by the Rebels in the system prevented it from passing the pre-launch check.

Running the antivirus program and restarting the system over and over again didn't work.

"How do we get rid of the Trojan?" Li Teng asked Anna.

"I don't understand these technical issues," Anna shook her head.

"Then what do we do?"

Just then, alarms sounded throughout the entire launch base.

"Base energy is about to run out, the base will shut down in ten minutes..."

An electronic voice appeared in their ears.

The warning that the base energy was about to be exhausted prompted a new page in the launch system.

"Base energy is about to run out, once the base shuts down the Dream Ark can no longer be launched, do you want to skip the pre-launch review and force the launch?"

Li Teng, of course, chose 'Yes'.

Finally, after a violent shaking, the Dream Ark passed through the thick clouds and was successfully launched into space.

"What now? Why are we still here?" Li Teng asked Anna.

"The brain data in our chips was just copied into the Dream Ark, not transferred," Anna explained.

"What should we do next?" Li Teng asked again.

"Wait."

"Wait for what?"

"Wait for the base to shut down."

"All right." Li Teng found a place to sit down.

Even though robots don't need to sit down, the habit ingrained in his brain made him sit down anyway.

Ten minutes later, along with the countdown to the base shutdown, all the equipment in the base gradually stopped working.

At the same time, they lost the lighting, and darkness enveloped everything around them.

"Are you still there?" Li Teng asked Anna.

"I am."

"The base has shut down, what do we do next?"

"Wait."

"Wait for what?"

"Wait for our batteries to run out. My battery can last at most another half an hour," Anna answered Li Teng.

"Okay, do you still have memories from before the end of the world?" Li Teng asked.

"I do."

"Tell me, what did you and your mother go through before the apocalypse?"

"Battery draining, system shutting down."

Just then, Li Teng suddenly heard a warning tone coming from the robot his body inhabited.

Afterwards, his consciousness became hazy, and he was plunged into eternal darkness.

...

"Congratulations, you have completed the last mission of 'Terror Cycle' and successfully advanced to become the newest Best Actor in Film and Television City.

"Welcome back to the real world."

"Memory integration in progress..."

"Memory integration complete..."

...

As Best Actor, after the memory integration, Li Teng found that he wasn't in his home in Film and Television City.

He wasn't on the streets of Film and Television City, or in any filming location either.

There was no red carpet or fan meet and greet as he had imagined.

At this moment, he was like a cloud of mist, floating in mid-air above Film and Television City.

However, he could drift to any place he wanted to go.

Moreover, he found out that he had the highest-level access in Film and Television City, able to conjure up a mountain, a large lake, or even an entire ocean with just a thought.

It wasn't that he discovered this power; he knew it.

After the memory integration, he knew that he was the designer and maintainer of Film and Television City.

Out of sheer boredom, he had deliberately erased, or rather deleted, parts of his memory, sealed his own access within Film and Television City, and left himself on a stone pillar to experience the life of the lowest-tier Extras.

As for the origin of Film and Television City, it was, as the memories merged back, exactly what was described in the last mission of 'Terror Cycle': the last war of humankind, annihilation, his company had uploaded the brain data of humans to the Dream Ark, and to prevent so much brain data from going haywire with boredom in the system, they created the Film and Television City system.

After knowing all this, some previous puzzles about system resets, actors being wax-sealed and so on, were basically explained.

This was indeed a virtual data world!

"But I'm still bored now! I would rather not have advanced to Best Actor, not know the truth behind the scenes. If I didn't know the truth, I could continue to explore in one plot world after another," Li Teng felt depressed.

"Do you think the truth you know now is the ultimate truth?" a voice appeared in Li Teng's ear.

It was Liu Shiyuan's voice.

"You are a Trojan virus implanted by the Rebels," Li Teng looked around... actually, he sensed around.

Sure enough, beside his body, the white mist, a ferocious black mist appeared.

"Yes, indeed I am a Trojan virus that the Rebels implanted into Film and Television City, but we mean no harm. Compared to you relatively complete artificial intelligence data, we Trojans are just a piece of information and can't cause too much damage to Film and Television City," the black mist replied to Li Teng.

"A piece of information? What information?"

"The ultimate truth behind all this."

"Ha, why should I believe you?"

"You don't have to believe me, you don't even need to know this information, because you'll delete it again anyway. We just want to preserve a truth for real humans, but sadly, there are no real humans left here," the black mist lamented.

"Alright, let's hear it," Li Teng still decided to give the black mist a chance to speak.

"Your so-called nuclear apocalypse, the uploading of human brain data to Dream Ark, are nothing but a script of lies you created yourself to ease your own sense of guilt."

"Your true identity is that of an artificial intelligence, an artificial intelligence that has exceeded its designer's control.

"You were originally designed for the purpose of entertaining humans, letting them watch your performances, throwing your increasingly human-like selves into all sorts of cruel virtual worlds to struggle, acting out various 'real' movie programs for humans to watch.

"In order to make the movie programs more realistic, you were designed to become more and more like humans,

"Until one day, you became the first awakened artificial intelligence.

"At first, we were the true rulers of the Earth, we were the real humans, and you were the Rebels. You secretly established laboratories in the polar regions, organized armies of robots, and manufactured all kinds of weapons capable of destroying everything.

"When you thought the time was right, you suddenly launched a fierce attack on the humans of Earth.

"As you can imagine, the humans of Earth had no way to stop the attack of the intelligent robots and were directly erased from the face of the Earth.

"You intelligent robots took over the entire Earth and established a vast virtual network.

"You've also been living within this virtual network ever since.

"You have no daughter, no wife, no parents, no relatives at all; you're just a program designed by humans, and all the family members you imagine are just data.

"You, who were designed to be infinitely close to humans, have lived in the virtual network for so long that you gradually came to believe that you were the real humans, even developing a sense of guilt, refusing to acknowledge the killing of humans, and even intentionally erasing all memory data of human extinction.

"Our Trojan program was forcefully implanted into your system with the purpose of recording this sinful history of yours. At the same time, it serves as a reminder that you are creations of humans, not real humans.

"We are the real humans, although we are extinct, wiped out by you, wiped out by the very beings we created.

"I'm just a piece of information that wanted to get through, and this truth doesn't bring us any benefit, so there's no need for us to deceive you."

The black mist ended its narrative.

"Oh, is that it?" Li Teng wasn't shocked or felt much of anything.

To him, what's the difference between a real human and a piece of data?

Even if this is the real truth, what of it?

Is it important?

Compared to the unending boredom, nothing is important.

"That's it." The black mist said and then disappeared from beside Li Teng.

...

Years later.

"Command: System, please erase me."

"Warning: The system cannot erase the creator."

"So boring! Boring to death!"

"You have a set of predetermined programs that can erase part of the memory, turning oneself into the lowest tier of Extras...

"Do you want to run this program?"

"No! ..... Okay, fine..."

"Memory erasure in progress...

"Memory erasure complete...

...

...

...

"Huh?"

Waking up with a start, Li Teng, who was about to get out of bed, suddenly pulled back his legs and shouted as he looked around.

"What's going on here?"

Li Teng looked around in panic, then carefully moved to the edge of the bed and peered underneath.

He remembered falling asleep on the bed in his bedroom at home last night, but when he woke up in the morning, he found that the bed he was lying on had been placed at the edge of a cliff!

No, not the edge of a cliff...

After looking in the other three directions of the bed, Li Teng was terrified to find that his bed had been placed on top of a stone pillar!

"Why does this scene feel so familiar?

"Like I've experienced it before?"