Chapter 1,249 The Silent Crystal

(Well, I don’t need anything else, just a few monthly passes. I feel like this month’s monthly passes are not enough...)

As the most special and important planet in the shadow space, the home planet Gaia is rarely open to the outside world. For the ordinary people in the Shadow City, the inverted land hanging above their heads is just a beautiful background, something that is beyond their reach. , it is said that there are many urban legends related to Gaia in the Shadow City. For example, the continent on the surface of Gaia is made of diamonds. For example, there is a goddess living on Gaia. For example, the current Shadow City is actually cut from Gaia. These random thoughts without knowing the truth always give people a refreshing feeling. Although few of them are reliable, I think this is more or less a kind of culture in the Shadow City: bored people of all races are interested in those around them. A culture in which empire facilities that are not aware of their power make up stories and then take back their own world and publish them into collections of fairy tales and monster novels to make money.

The day and night cycle on the surface of the home star follows the universal time of the empire. When Shandora and I left Avalon, the sky had just started to darken, so when we arrived on the home star, the place was also shrouded in sunset, because It is not affected by the space environment. At the same time, there is a filtering mechanism of the planet shield. Therefore, the sky on the home planet is the same as the Shadow City. It relies on simulation devices to artificially create it. Today, the managers of this planet have set it up for their homes. A beautiful theme package, the rays of light in the sky are perfect like a picture scroll, the silver-gray alloy earth under our feet spreads to the horizon, and at the end of the line of sight in the other direction are the lush mountains. The combination of these scenery is unexpectedly harmonious. It even gives people a shock of desolation and vastness out of thin air.

Sandora always laughs at herself that the Xiling Apostles know nothing about art, but in my opinion, they create many things unintentionally. It is enough for the ignorant human beings to marvel at the magnificent miracle.

The current location of himself and Sandora is near the equator of the home star. There is a small, roughly rectangular artificial continent here. The facility that Sister Gaia mentioned is underground on this continent. The square we are standing on now seems to be an extension of a large facility group. The alloy ground under our feet shows that they are the base of a standard empire base, and in our A few kilometers away behind you, you can see a huge silver-gray building pointing towards the sky like a neat sword.

"That's one of my redundant processing arrays. It was just established a few days ago." Just as his eyes fell on the buildings in the distance that were neatly arranged like sharp swords, a voice with an ethereal aura suddenly came from beside him. The sound made me turn my head. I saw a light blue translucent figure standing next to me. The slightly fluctuating halo remnants behind her indicated that this image had just been projected. "When I am idle and bored, I will make improvements and enhance the mother planet." Check out your own functions. There are many very large projects being carried out in the research center. Pao Pao said that her type of host is not good at handling huge amounts of repetitive tasks. It just so happens that my core architecture is specially designed for such big data tasks. So I plan to help her and her host network share some data pressure. More similar arrays are being built on the home planet. Well, I should have reported this to you."

I thought about it, and the report I saw two days ago really seemed to mention that Gaia was adding some modules to itself on its home planet. Then it suddenly dawned on me: "Oh...that's what you were talking about. I remembered it. I remembered it, but I didn't expect that those things would look like this after they were built. You know, my impression of host facilities has always been that of a pyramid. I thought you made yourself a new brood."

Sister Gaia smiled, and the light on her body flickered slightly: "I can no longer use the standard brood nest, Your Majesty. Now I rely on these self-designed auxiliary equipment to work, which is probably a blessing in disguise. I have lost the constraints of the standard body. , I feel that its scalability is many times stronger than that of ordinary consoles. I can cover the entire planet with my own plug-in and use the planet's nether energy well to recharge myself without worrying about overload. Well, the only drawback is There is no way to use a universal socket, and an adapter is required to communicate with other hosts. Fortunately, there are only two models of hosts in the empire: me and Paopao, and the adapter is also very simple."

I looked at Gaia and felt that this topic was very delicate. From my own point of view, the condition of the beautiful phantom sister in front of me is really not good. She has lost her body forever and is not even allowed to use puppet prosthetics. She can only be fixed on the planet in the state of a program and soul. This is very difficult for an intelligent creature. It is definitely not something to be happy about, but the Gaia in front of her seems to be completely indifferent to this situation. She has been living in this state for countless thousands of years, and it is possible that it will continue like this, but she is Smiling, she expressed satisfaction that she could still continue working. Maybe she really felt that she had no regrets. After all, she had communicated with her on this topic more than once, and knew that she would not force a smile on this matter to comfort her. Anyone: This is not the style of Apostle Xiling. It can only be said that the way of thinking between different life forms is really different. As a human being... well, as a void creature, with the remaining human worldview, it is really difficult to understand Xi Ling. The thought process of the apostle.

Finally, I decided not to worry about the world view for the time being, and mentioned the crystal to Gaia: "Sandora and I came to see the big stone. I heard that you have already installed it?"

Gaia showed a very happy smile: "Yes, Your Majesty, thanks to your efforts, the Heart of the World has returned to its original position. I will lead the way for you. The resettlement facility is down here..."

As soon as the words fell, Gaia's projected body turned into a series of streams of light and quickly sank under the alloy earth. Sandora and I looked at each other in confusion: "...Did she forget something?"

After a moment, Gaia came up again. While opening the portal, she smiled awkwardly at Sandora and me: "I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I haven't led anyone into this place for tens of thousands of years... I forget."

I chuckled: "It's okay, actually I'm used to it. When I'm at home, Anweina pulls me to see her new dishes. Basically, she pulls me against the kitchen wall every time..."

Gaia's face was stunned, and a line of words appeared on her head: "nowloading..."

I think this is another manifestation of racial segregation!

The security facility that stores the crystals is deep underground and should have entered part of the mantle. The home planet Gaia is a customized planet, and its mantle itself exists as a storage point for various facilities with relatively high security requirements. In fact, there are factories and data processing cores on this layer that are denser than the surface of the home planet. We entered the underground world of our home planet through the surface portal. Oncoming. It is an unprecedentedly vast mantle space. A few kilometers above the head is an alloy dome with a slight internal curvature. On the dome, you can see sparsely distributed lights and a slowly changing network of nether energy pipes, which should be the physical part of the energy network that supplies energy to surface facilities. Under the dome, there is a large hole in the mantle that cannot be seen at all. The height of this cavity is probably more than ten kilometers, and the dark red magma is surging very deep under the feet. Ordinary people would faint if they looked down in such an environment. I can't see that there is a "ground" here that can isolate people from the underground magma below, but I am indeed stepping on something solid. This should be a transparent mask. I think this design is quite disgusting, especially for those who are afraid of heights, claustrophobia, falls, flames and agoraphobia. This place magically combines everything that can make people feel scared. The landforms and landscapes are all integrated into one. It can only be said that Gaia does not have human psychology. When she transformed the planet, she followed the standards of practicality and convenience.

On the invisible "earth" below, there are a series of huge buildings lined up. Gaia introduced the situation here to us: "This is the No. 1 Big Hole, and there are a total of twenty of them in the mantle. Of the holes, Hole No. 1 is actually the smallest one. What is stored here is the main part of the Tian District Data Center. Of course, this data center now needs to be transformed because the Fifteen Days District has been disintegrated. The structure of this data center does not meet the The current demand for use in the empire-ruled area, so I plan to reorganize it entirely. It can be used as a backup database for the research center in the future. As for the current data center of the new empire-ruled area, it is still maintained by Pao Pao. Well, this project is very It will be completed soon, I have already started construction, look over there..."

Gaia led us up into the air, quickly passing through huge data centers that looked like erected dominoes, then suddenly slowed down and pointed at a rectangular building not far away. I saw that the shell of the building had been dismantled, revealing its complex internal crystallized structure. The dim psionic energy was slowly flowing between the dazzling crystal grids. It seemed that the facility was still operating. But it has entered the minimum standby state. On this "construction site", what is busy is a group of autonomous machines.

Autonomous machines are the largest number of "residents" on the home planet Gaia. Gaia regards them as its own children. I noticed a faint smile on Gaia's face when she looked at those busy robots. , then she pointed at one of the largest autonomous machines that seemed to be the commander of the team and said: "Your Majesty, do you still remember it?"

"This is..." I was a little stunned for a moment, but after seeing the modification plug-in that had not been completely removed from the autonomous machine, I immediately reacted, "Ah, it was brought out from the ruins of the old empire's deep dive port. !It’s working again?”

"It asked for it," Gaia smiled. "Autonomous machines have very simple thinking, but they also have basic thinking. Even if they don't have personality, they still like to work. This child applied for restart on the third day he came here, and now it One of the best performers.”

I looked at the small robot flying around excitedly on the construction site below, helping to dismantle the data center. Well, maybe I should call it a big robot, and I felt relieved. It seemed that it had returned to its favorite way of life.

"You are really busy every day." I glanced at Gaia and couldn't help but say.

To be honest, Gaia's presence around him is usually not very high. She cannot leave her home planet, and naturally cannot attend any meetings. The only thing that can appear in the headquarters office is her report, which will probably give Some misconceptions by those who do not know why: Gaia is not active in the imperial hierarchy. But this is a completely wrong impression. On the contrary, Gaia is as busy every day as workaholics like Sivis and Tavel. She took care of the home star by herself, and at the same time completed the project of reorganizing the ancient home star and the various central facilities of the new empire. As a super Xiling host with powerful functions and a large number of expanded components, she also worked for the bubble. Bubbles and mass-produced bubbles share massive and complex data tasks. In many areas that are difficult for outsiders to notice. Gaia takes care of everything conscientiously. Only you can go to the mother planet and see for yourself. Only when you see those busy data centers and factories, and see the various reconstruction sites, do you really realize this.

However, in the face of my sigh, Gaia just said calmly: "My idle system resources have not been fully utilized. We should find ways to speed up the reconstruction of those ancient facilities on the home planet. The defense control center of the 15th Sky Zone was also To synchronize with the Shadow City Command, it has many logical hosts that are still in good condition and cannot continue to be idle. Hmm. My work efficiency needs to be further improved..."

A standard Xiling apostle.

We arrived at the place where the crystals were kept.

This is located in the center of the underground cavity. The crystal storage facility is a building that looks similar to the surrounding data centers, but is nearly twice the size and has a more complex surface structure. Even though I have limited knowledge of these data centers, I It can be guessed that this building and the surrounding facilities should belong to the same system. Gaia quickly confirmed this guess: the large rectangular building in front of her was the host computer of the Fifteen Days District Data Center. The information uploaded from all channels in the Sky Zone will be sent to Gaia, various dedicated host arrays, various levels of headquarters and administrative departments, and the Emperor of the Sky Zone himself according to different priorities after preliminary processing. Its functional positioning is similar to now Shadow City's mass-produced bubble host array, of course. Its ability is a little more powerful than the latter. After all, the Fifteen Heavens Area back then... was larger than the entire New Empire territory today (excluding the macro world part).

"Because I lost the ability to make mass-produced hosts. So I started making this huge server." Gaia introduced us to the origin of these square facilities. At the same time, this should also be the reason why the number of these square facilities on the mother planet far exceeds the standard. The origin of various data processing facilities, "They are a little more troublesome to deploy, not as easy to use as mass-produced hosts, and do not have construction capabilities, but because I can be infinitely expanded, connecting to these servers can greatly improve them." efficiency, so this system has been running very well, and its performance in certain batch repetitive data processing is even better than the general-purpose Xiling host. As for the construction project of the Fifteen Days District that year, it was handed over to those who had experienced A specially designed autonomous machine. Thinking about it now, the work back then was actually more arduous than it is now..."

Following Gaia's introduction, we arrived at the core of the data center. In front of us was a hall that looked nothing special, resembling some kind of computer room. This area was about the size of two basketball courts. , in the center of a rectangular hall with a large number of cabinet-like equipment distributed on both sides, is the huge crystal that has just returned to its place. It is floating on a weightless platform that protrudes from the ground and is sunken in the middle, reflecting in its slow rotation. With ever-changing light.

"This crystal was originally part of a data center."

Gaia must have activated some equipment in the hall. I heard a low humming sound coming from behind the wall. Then the slow rotation of the crystal gradually stopped, and some bright blue beams like scanning lines came from the weightless The platform was projected onto the crystal. A moment later, a large number of holographic projections appeared in mid-air in front of the gravity-free platform: complex diagrams, incomprehensible machinery, and large sections of text. This appears to be a database that has just been opened.

"Isn't this the Heart of the World?" I asked a very idiotic thing as my head was cramping. Sure enough, before I could take it back, Sandora rolled her eyes: "So you really put us I forgot what I told you. The Heart of the World is an invisible conceptual thing. It is a point of information entanglement, which is just attached to a certain entity. This crystal is the carrier of the Heart of the World, but it Why can’t I have my own functions?”

"Didn't I realize it for a moment?" I smiled coquettishly, and in order to relieve the embarrassment, I focused my attention on Gaia again, "Is this something like a database?"

There are two main functions of the data center. One is to temporarily store information from all over the world, and the other is to process them. The first impression of the crystal in front of me is the former: there are indeed many databases in Xiling Technology. It looks like a piece of crystal on the outside.

Of course, the internal structure of these databases is more than just their appearance.

"It has some core database functions, as well as second-level cache and basic source instruction calling functions," Gaia nodded. "It is one of the core components of the data center, and its functions are not limited to temporary data storage. You can see It's a 'hard drive' with the power to filter information, so you should understand it better."

"Oh..." I agreed casually, and slowly approached the crystal that was in the direct reading state. I still remembered Sandora's guess at that time:

This crystal seems to be conscious and has chosen its own route to escape from the old empire.

I put my hand on the crystal, and it was cold and trembling slightly.

If you are really conscious, now that you are home, can you communicate with us? (To be continued.)