piratefiction Chapter 209 System Anomaly
Chapter 209 System Anomaly
On the tenth day after the release of the "Digital Life Ethics Guidelines", Zuo Cheng was working overtime alone.
Yu Ying went on a business trip to the space city; the review meeting for the third phase of the space photovoltaic project will last three days. Han Lu is in Beijing monitoring the progress of negotiations with the medical insurance department. Shen Yiming is in the deep space region; the security verification of the NX-40's write function has reached its third round, and the data is stable, better than expected.
Only the duty room and the technical center in the entire building had their lights on.
Zuo Cheng sat at his desk, the early summer night view of Hangzhou visible through the window. He tapped his fingers unconsciously twice on the table, then closed his eyes and mentally opened the technology tree panel.
He hadn't checked the system status closely for a while. The advancement of the brain-computer interface was too rapid, from 1024 channels to consciousness uploading, every step was a breakthrough, and he hadn't even had time to look back and count how far the eighth branch had grown.
The moment the panel unfolded, Zuo Cheng froze.
The tech tree has changed its form.
It wasn't because new leaves had grown on the eighth branch, but rather because a point of light appeared in the center of the entire tree, at the intersection of the main trunk and the seven activated branches.
The light spot was tiny, only one-tenth the size of the shimmer at the edge of a leaf. But it wasn't still; it pulsated slowly. With each pulsation, the surrounding leaves would tremble slightly, like a small pebble being thrown into water.
Zuo Cheng stared at it for about ten seconds, then reached out and tapped the light spot.
A system notification popped up.
The text was in a format he had never seen before, not the standard script of the tech tree, but something deeper. It was as if the system itself was speaking to him, not with text, but with some kind of information directly projected into his consciousness.
The message consists of a single line of text.
A new dimension signal has been detected.
A more detailed explanation followed.
The host has achieved a complete transfer and reconstruction of consciousness data via brain-computer interface. This action triggers a core measurement node pre-set in the technology tree, unlocking new functions.
The new feature is called Dimension Awareness.
Zuo Cheng focused his attention on the four words "dimensional perception," and the system began to explain its full functions.
Dimensional perception is a passive ability. Once activated, the host can perceive the "resonance intensity" between the technology tree and the real world. The higher the resonance intensity, the greater the match between the current level of technological development in the world and a certain direction of the technology tree. The higher the resonance intensity, the stronger the system's amplification effect on technological breakthroughs.
In other words, this is a radar. It doesn't scan people, it scans the world.
A new numerical display has appeared in the upper right corner of the system panel; it's a short waveform. The vertical axis of the waveform ranges from zero to one hundred, and the current value is slowly fluctuating between zero and seventy.
Zuo Cheng focused his consciousness on the waveform diagram, and the system provided the three technical directions with the highest current resonance intensity.
The first is brain-computer interface, with a resonance intensity of 87. The second is commercial spaceflight, with a resonance intensity of 74. The third is a direction he hadn't seen before on the technology tree: biotechnology, with a resonance intensity of 63.
Next to the last direction, there is a gray label indicating that the branch is not active.
Zuo Cheng turned off the control panel and leaned back in his chair.
His expression didn't reveal much, but his thoughts raced through his mind in an instant.
When did this point of light appear? He confirmed that he hadn't opened the system panel since the consciousness upload experiment was completed. This meant the point of light might have been triggered the moment the consciousness transfer was successful. If this hypothesis is correct, then the system doesn't "coincidentally" provide direction when he needs it, but rather has a pre-set detection mechanism. When he achieves a specific technological breakthrough in the real world, the system will respond.
Who set up this mechanism?
He recalled his failure in his previous life. Back then, he also had a system, but he never lived long enough to unlock the seventh branch. He didn't know that after the seventh branch, the system had hidden functions. Perhaps this path had already been paved, but in his previous life, he simply didn't reach that point.
Thinking further, if "dimensional perception" is a measurement tool, then it measures the resonance between whom. The statement about the strength of resonance between the technology tree and the real world is itself contradictory. The technology tree exists in his consciousness, so how can it perceive the level of technological development in the external world?
Unless, of course, the technology tree isn't just something he's thinking about.
This thought made Zuo Cheng sit up straight.
He reopened the panel. The light spot was still there, and the pulsating rhythm remained unchanged. He tried to activate the light spot with points, but the system offered no option. Just like when he tried to use points to accelerate the core node of the eighth branch last time, the system chose silence.
He switched the panel to the root of the tech tree.
The root system is the darkest part of the tree, usually covered by the light from the trunk, making it difficult to see details. But today he noticed something he hadn't noticed before. Deep within the root system, there was an extremely faint engraving.
The marks weren't words or patterns. They resembled a record of pulse signals, an encoding of a frequency. He stared at them for a long time, then suddenly realized that this encoding format was very similar to the format used by brain-computer interfaces to decode neural signals.
The same encoding.
This matter is related to brain-computer interfaces.
It wasn't that he became involved in this matter after researching brain-computer interfaces; rather, from the very beginning, this system used brain-computer interface coding methods to record its origins.
Zuo Cheng stood up and walked to the window.
The night sky over Hangzhou was as quiet as a black mirror. The lights in the building below were still on; Shen Yiming was probably still running security verifications. Digital Gu Feng was reading in the quantum computer; the haptic feedback writing function was going to undergo its final round of testing tomorrow. Everything was moving forward, all directions pointing towards the same goal.
He took out his phone, intending to send a message to Yu Ying. He typed halfway through, then deleted it.
This matter cannot be discussed yet.
It wasn't because he distrusted her, but because it was beyond his ability to explain. The technology tree, dimensional perception, the root coding, the pre-defined detection mechanisms—all these things, when connected, pointed to a truth he didn't yet fully comprehend.
He needs more information.
On the phone screen, Yu Ying's profile picture was a photo they took on the rooftop, with the sunset in the background. She said, "Brother, you need to get some sleep."
Zuo Cheng replied with two words: "Okay."
He turned off his phone and stood there for a while longer.
Then he sat back down at his desk, opened a blank document, and started typing.
The title contains four characters, which need to be verified.
The following are three questions.
First, where does Xingchen Technology's technology actually come from? Second, what is the true origin of the NX-07 nano-patch? Third, is Chen Xinghe, the founder of Xingchen Technology, still alive?
After he finished writing the third question, the cursor blinked at the end for a long time.
Then he closed the document.