With a bang, the corridor fell silent.
Wu You stood alone in the corner where he belonged, the southeast corner.
It's very dark here, except for the faint light emitted from the square under your feet, there is nothing else. And such a little light is not enough to illuminate the surroundings.
"Josh." Wu You called out a name.
Soon Josh responded, "What's the matter?"
"What is that supernatural game you told Yang Erci just now?"
"Oh that." Josh felt that it was a little scary to tell such a story in this kind of place, but Wu You wanted to hear it, so he braved up and said, "It's a four-corner game, which is said to come from a five-person snow mountain The climbing team, one of them died on the way, because of the cold and lack of supplies, in order for everyone to survive at night, they invented this game, waking each other up, afraid of sleeping too deeply, freezing to death in the snow .”
"But then it became a kind of ghost tricking game. Four people are required to stand in the four corners of a dark room without making a sound. Start with the first person, walk forward in the dark, walk behind the second person, and pat him. shoulder, and then it stays there, and the person who is tapped on the shoulder gets the signal to move forward, and the cycle continues.”
Wu You simulated this scene in his mind, a little puzzled, "It seems that this cannot be repeated."
"After the fourth person was patted on the shoulder, he walked to the corner where the first person was originally, but there was no one there for him to pat on the shoulder."
"That's the problem!" Josh was surprised that he got the point straight away, "What you said is a normal situation, in case something abnormal happens, the fourth person walks to the first corner..."
Nan Shan opened his mouth, "I took a photo on the shoulder of a fifth person who doesn't exist."
Perhaps because of physical problems, he spoke almost out of breath, appearing more and more gloomy.
"That's right, this means that they really recruited that ghost." After Josh finished speaking, the green light under his feet seemed to become more terrifying.
"But it's okay, it's okay that we don't have to move and tap shoulders, otherwise I really wouldn't dare to stay here."
Wu You doesn't have much interest in supernatural games, but this corridor is indeed a natural venue for such games.
But this ghost is free enough to spend time playing kindergarten-level games with humans.
Do something.
After the ghost story was finished, the corridor fell silent again. Everyone seemed to be in the darkness of the void, unable to figure out where each other was.
Except for Zhong Yirou, the rest of the people can basically talk, Wu You thought for a while, let go of his voice and suggested, "Let's continue talking."
His voice was like throwing a stone into a lake, and soon disappeared in the darkness.
Not long after, he got a response, it was Nan Shan's voice.
"Why, are children scared when they hear ghost stories?"
Wu You felt that what he said was ridiculous. He didn't want to talk to him at first, but he heard Josh's laughter again, so he had to explain: "I'm just afraid of something going wrong. It's safer to keep communicating at any time."
Soon, Josh's voice also appeared, "Yes, everyone talking to each other, at least we can confirm that everyone is still in place."
"But Miss Zhong can't talk." Nanshan said.
Although Nan Shan could speak, his voice was weak and he couldn't hear clearly.
"I... I woke up..."
Zhong Yirou's voice suddenly appeared in the darkness. Although Wu You heard it immediately, she couldn't help feeling suspicious, "Are you awake? Who are you?"
"The ghost story scared you silly? Of course I am your sister Zhong." Although Zhong Yirou's voice was weak, the tone was exactly the same as before.
"Miss Zhong, are you okay?" Josh asked, "You have been in a coma for a long time."
"Well..." Zhong Yirou said slowly, "I feel like I had a very strange dream. In the dream, I was working here, but... I seem to have done something very bad."
Nan Shan said, "You mean yourself, or E06."
Zhong Yirou was silent for a moment, "E06, because the dream is not my memory."
"Bad things..." Josh asked loudly, "Is there anything more specific?"
Zhong Yirou felt that his breathing was very difficult, as if his breath had condensed into flocs and blocked his throat.
"I... I seem to be working on the first floor, but I don't look after the children."
"Not a child?" Wu You wondered, "Then what you saw before were all hallucinations?"
"Yes, my job in the dream is indeed to take care of many... human bodies." After thinking about it, she used such a word.
"They are not considered children anymore, but... they are indeed sleeping, in the cryogenic compartment."
"The freezer cabin..." Wu You seemed to understand why the first floor was so cold.
Hearing this, Josh asked a question, "But if Ms. Zhong is not looking after the dead children, why is Mr. Nanshan's job incinerating?"
indeed so.
Wu You also thought it was suspicious, "We have seen children's bones in the incinerator."
"It seems that there are also adults." Nan Shan added, "It's just the bones of children that have attracted our attention."
This detention center seems to be hidden in the black mist, and the truth can only reveal the corners.
The more you see, the deeper you fall into the fog.
"Frozen human body..." Wu You put forward a conjecture, "Could it be the material used for human experiments here?"
Zhong Yirou tried hard to recall for a moment, "It's very strange. In my dream, I dreamed that I was sorting out the data. The data of every frozen body was exactly the same. I was very impressed."
After the door of the laboratory was closed, a little light flickered in the dark room, and then, the surroundings slowly lit up, and the vision gradually became clearer.
A whole corridor was opened here, forming a ring-shaped, tunnel-like space, in which countless glass experimental vessels, experimental cabins, and divided experimental operating rooms were placed.
The double helix of vines stretches and wraps around everything here, making this cold place full of the smell of disinfectant water full of strange vitality, like a man-eating underground rainforest.
Yang Erci reached out and touched this unusual vine.
"Don't you think this looks a lot like a DNA strand?"
"Well, this is also a hint to the password GENE before." An Wujiu said.
There are various human organs soaked in embalming liquid in the glass vessel, and there are many live animals covered, ranging from dense insects, to small mammals, and even primates like orangutans.
Faced with these, An Wujiu felt a sense of discomfort for no reason, and suddenly felt dizzy and nauseated. Everything here is familiar to him, including the labeled chemicals and the smell of disinfectant in the air.
One of them contained a living hairless mouse in a glass enclosure, except that it had a human ear growing on its back.
"This is used to clone organs. Transplanting chondrocytes onto ear-shaped scaffolds is a very early technology." Yang Erci walked to his side and explained, "The transplantation on the back of the mouse is also to borrow living animals. The body maintains the growth of cellular tissues."
"Can all organs be obtained in this way?" An Wujiu looked at Yang Erci.
Yang Erci shook his head, "At present, organs with important functions and complex structures, such as the heart, cannot be perfectly replicated through these organ cloning techniques. Many of the obtained ones are either not similar in shape or have a large gap in function."
"So now more people are buying artificial hearts, and the pacemakers work better."
An Wujiu nodded, "You are indeed a researcher in this field."
Yang Erci was slightly lost in thought, and when she heard An Wujiu's words, she responded softly.
"It used to be."
But she quickly recovered and didn't say anything more.
With just these four words, An Wujiu thought it was reasonable for her to appear on the altar. After all, a researcher specializing in life sciences had no reason to come to such a place where she could die at any time.
Shen Ti put his finger against the glass cover. The little mouse was originally huddled together, but when he saw Shen Ti's fingertips, he was attracted, and the pink nose moved closer, and stuck it up through the glass.
But soon, the mouse fell to the ground, struggled a few times, and failed to respond.
Shen Ti immediately withdrew his hand and frowned puzzled.
Yang Erci saw it, and comforted him in a completely unrelieved tone, "It's normal, these mice are immunocompromised animals, so they can't reject the cells of other organisms, but correspondingly, their life span is also very short."
An Wujiu looked at Shen Ti, feeling that he couldn't accept the scene of a mouse dying in front of him, that's why his eyes stayed there for so long.
In most human perceptions, animals, especially animals that are experimental subjects, their lives are not of the same order of magnitude as human lives.
But it doesn't seem to be the case for Shen Ti.
He always viewed all creatures from the perspective of an outsider.
Yang Erci tried to put his hand on the sensor on the top of the glass cover, and sure enough, the authority was unlocked, and the top glass cover opened automatically.
She reached out and gently took out the dead mouse inside.
She wanted to see if there were any clues on the mouse, but just as she picked it up, the "dead" mouse suddenly moved its feet and came back to life.
It kept squeaking, as if it was about to come down, so Yang Erci squatted down and put the mouse on the ground.
The rejuvenated mice took a few steps forward, then quickly ran in a certain direction.
An Wujiu felt weird, "It seems to want to take us somewhere."
So they followed this weird mouse all the way forward, passing through the dense spiral vines, and the preservation vessels used in those experimental researches became bigger and bigger, gradually changing from strange animals to humans.
The mice led them to a circular clearing where no vines grew, and a metal ball the size of a ping-pong ball floated above the clearing. The mission was accomplished, and the mouse disappeared.
Yang Erci reached out and touched the suspended sphere. In an instant, the sphere shot out countless blue rays of light, and finally weaved a complete holographic projection, which only displayed a line of English sentences.
Still, everything is for human beings.
"Identifying—"
"Welcome back, B05!"
New content appears in the holographic projection, which is divided into three work areas, one is [trimming work] and the other is [perfect copy].
There is also a working area named [Film].
"Watching movies is also a part of work?" An Wujiu was very skeptical.
Yang Erci tried to click on the [Movies] section, but there were only a few very old movies: "Frankenstein", "The Sixth Day" and "The Truman Show".
But if you want to open the video file again, there will be a prompt sound.
"Please finish your job, B05!"
Yang Erci had no choice but to click [Pruning Work] first, but what came out was a large amount of unorganized data results.
Seeing that An Wujiu was staring at the titles of the movies under the [Movies] menu, Shen Ti leaned over and asked, "Have you seen these?"
"I seem to have an impression, maybe I watched it when I was a child." An Wujiu's eyes turned to his face, as if seeing Shen Ti showing a little envy.
For a certain moment, An Wujiu felt a subtle sense of pleasure.
But it disappeared quickly.
Haven't seen it, it's actually normal.
The era they lived in was engulfed by massive amounts of video information, and everyone’s pace was very fast. Almost no one went to watch a complete two-hour movie, and it was even difficult to finish listening to a song, because there are Numerous "selected" and "best" clips are extracted and circulated repeatedly like punch lines in a book.
Shen Ti moved closer, "What are you talking about?"
An Wujiu patiently recounted these ancient videos to him based on his unclear memory.
"They are all classic old films. The first one is adapted from a novel, which can be said to be the world's first science fiction novel. It tells the story of a fanatical scientist who wants to 'create' a A person, so he often steals corpses and puts together different body parts.
Later, because of an accident, this "person" created by him really came back to life, but he felt scared, which eventually led to tragedy. "
Shen Ti shrugged, obviously disapproving of this story, "Humans seem to be very keen on being creators."
An Wujiu was noncommittal at first, but after thinking about it, he added, "It should be that the more I think my knowledge is close to the truth, the more I want to see if I can create something."
Shen Ti nodded, smiled and said "Next" to him.
"The second part..." An Wujiu thought about the words, "It can also be regarded as a movie about 'man-making', but this time the method is not so primitive, it becomes a clone. The protagonist Adam is a cloned person, So when he came back home, he found someone exactly the same there, and later... he fought against the evil forces, which is a classic and cliché plot."
Shen Ti raised a question beyond the plot, "Why is the movie called this name?"
An Wujiu explained to him, "Because it is said that God created Adam on the sixth day, that is, the first human being."
He thought that Shen Ti would know, after all, the current world situation is not good, many religions such as Christianity have begun to recover, and there are no restrictions, more and more believers.
Speaking of God, Shen Ti thought of some strange pictures, a piece of golden chaos and countless pairs of eyes in the chaos.
God, he thought contemptuously, was nothing special to him.
Just false gods.
An Wujiu noticed that Shen Ti was in deep thought, and Yang Erci was still analyzing the data, so he stretched out his hand and shook Shen Ti's eyes, "Do you still want to listen?"
Shen Ti held his hand naturally, "Of course."
With just such a movement, An Wujiu's nerve jumped suddenly. He tried to pull his hand out, but in the end he failed, so he introduced the last movie to him very quickly and even panicked, "The third It's about...the story of a person whose whole life is just a lie."
Shen Ti waited for a while and found that he had stopped talking.
"that's all?"
An Wujiu nodded, this time he successfully pulled out his hand.
"right."
My heart beats so fast.
After reading the data, Yang Erci worked on the holographically projected keyboard for a long time, and finally came to a result.
"This pruning job...is about gene editing in embryos."
An Wujiu turned his face away, wanted to speak, but heard Shen Ti say behind him, "You must not remember clearly, so I can't tell why. Next time, watch that movie with me."
Is this an invitation
An Wujiu was a little confused, ever since he said those ambiguous words to Shen Ti in another state, besides annoyance, he also had a strange feeling of panic in his heart out of thin air.
This is very abnormal.
"Let's go out and talk about it." An Wujiu perfunctory absent-mindedly.
He thought that if he was an instrument, there must be some kind of malfunctioning instrument.
Otherwise, why would the fluctuating value be generated only because of Shen Ti alone
Yang Erci was very professional, and directly ignored the boring conversation between the two dog men, and played a video he found.
"This is how they do gene editing, and it's embryos."
The video is a very simple animation explaining the process of gene editing. Targeted tools locate the part of the double-helix DNA that needs to be edited for deletion, substitution or insertion.
This is obviously a promotional video, which lavishly praises the advantages of the gene editing project, for example, it can fundamentally avoid those "incurable diseases", completely knock out the disease-causing gene, and perform efficient human body like programming. Improve.
No technology is perfect.
Yang Erci said: "In fact, this technology has appeared a long time ago. It is indeed a good choice for patients to apply it to adults with symptoms. However, it can be directly applied without repeated verification. When it comes to embryos and babies, the nature has completely changed. This is strictly prohibited by various countries.”
Indeed, perhaps through this method, it is possible to give birth to a "chosen son" who has a high probability of not being infected with incurable diseases in his life, but things will never be so simple.
"Adults can choose." An Wujiu looked at the continuously scrolling data, "But embryos can't refuse, they can only passively accept this kind of experiment."
Hearing this sentence, Yang Erci nodded. On the one hand, she agreed with An Wujiu's words, but on the other hand, she was once again surprised by this person's great transformation. If the person standing in front of her was An Wujiu an hour ago, I'm afraid there will be no such compassion.
"Moreover, this pair of genetic scissors is still far from the accuracy of general application, and the probability of error is very high. As you can see, a large part of the data has more or less failures. Behind the failures here is a life. .
The gene editing experiment seems to be very short and can be done in a few minutes, but these embryos that passively become subjects will grow up slowly. In order to obtain the edited results, these people will become the subjects of the experiment, whether they like it or not, all their lives. "
really.
An Wujiu understood, this is Truman's world.
Shen Ti put forward another conjecture, "If the embryos whose genes have been edited reproduce like ordinary humans, there will be a domino phenomenon from generation to generation?"
Yang Erci looked at him, "This possibility is not ruled out. Here are the results of the simulation experiment. According to the results of hundreds of millions of computer calculations, there is also the possibility of genetic mutation, and it appears in the entire human gene pool."
In the holographic projection, a whole piece of blue dots appeared, among which red dots appeared, and then more and more red dots combined and diffused at an extremely fast speed.
She paused, "That's why some people once called for people who have undergone gene editing of embryos not to have offspring, so as not to pollute the gene pool."
An Wujiu immediately said, "This is unfair, they are human beings, not experimental materials."
Such words sound extremely sad.
Every artificially created product does not have the right to actively choose its own life. Whether it is a gene-edited baby or a human clone, they are all victims of violating ethics.
"This is not the most frightening thing. The most frightening thing is that the technology is applied at the wrong time, and they may suffer from the sequelae caused by the immature technology at any time. Some genes that are knocked out may cause disease, but are more likely to undertake extremely important physiological functions."
During the silence, Shen Ti opened his mouth first, "This detention center should not be the only one who has done related underground research, but due to the opposition of countries and health organizations around the world, there is no way to expose it. If it is possible, it may be announced immediately The result of an experiment in the popular imagination."
Like a Frankenstein that pops up.
"For sure, scientific madmen have always existed, and it is right to be stopped. These people always think that they are working hard for the great progress of mankind, and their fanatical scientific beliefs and pursuit of interests have long since broken their awe of the unknown." Yang Erci said .
"Of course human beings need to move forward, but not by unscrupulous means." An Wujiu stared at the cold data.
Without restraint, Pandora's box will be opened one day.
Yang Erci is about to open a second workspace, which is [Perfect Copy].
"I seem to already know what this is..."
Suddenly, the holographic projection disappeared and retracted into the ball, and the ball disappeared all at once, too late to catch.
The room fell into darkness for a moment, just like the corridor outside, and then, the red warning lights began to flash.
The beep repeats the warning.
"Compression stopped, powertrain failure."
"Did someone move?"
Just as Yang Erci finished speaking, he suddenly saw an empty space under his feet.
Under the darkness, the three of them fell into an unknown void.
Rather than saying it was a hollow, it was better to say it was a transmission tunnel. Soon, An Wujiu entered a new dark place, and his feet landed firmly on the ground.
"You are now at the very center of this floor."
It wasn't a synthetic voice made by man and lacked emotion, An Wujiu quickly recognized that it was the voice of the mad rabbit on the second floor.
"I didn't expect you to survive this test. The people before you died a long time ago. I really want to congratulate you all. But it's a pity that your companions didn't follow the rules."
The surroundings gradually lit up, and An Wujiu realized that he was in a small room, the size of a bathroom cubicle, without windows, and the door was locked from the outside.
"So, you have to play another little game with me. As long as you win, you can leave smoothly. If you lose, your companion may not die immediately, but it will definitely become incomplete."
"And those of you who fail will be trapped in this small room until the end of the game."
"Got it? My dear friends."
The four people in the four corners of the corridor are always in touch.
Wu You kept trying to touch the microphone on the pinna, trying to contact the three of them, but there was no signal.
"By the way," Nanshan suddenly thought of something, "Josh, did you find the playing cards?"
"Yeah." Josh responded loudly, "There are six number cards in it, one Joker card."
"Joker?" Wu You thought for a while, "Aren't you a clown? This card represents you?"
"I thought so too at first." Josh said, "But something is wrong. I am D03. There is a 3 of diamonds in the playing cards, and everyone has them too. What is missing is the 2 of diamonds."
"2 is not A02, Brother Wujiu?" Wu You thought for a while, and felt that something was wrong.
2 is missing, and a Joker is added, which should point to something.
"I'm confused about one thing," Nanshan's voice reappeared, "so far, among all the people, there has only been a fake Mr. An. Originally, we thought that everyone else would also appear fake, but now it doesn't seem to be the case. so."
"Yes." Zhong Yirou also agreed, "And he seems to be unkillable..."
When he was on the first floor, Yang Erci had already smashed him with a heavy object. Even if he didn't die, he would never be able to appear in front of everyone intact.
"Joker is also a joker..." A bold guess appeared in Wu You's mind.
"Could it be that A02 is dead, and what's left is a joke card."
The atmosphere suddenly became gloomy and cold, and there was a gust of wind for no reason, which made Wu You's back numb.
Zhong Yirou thought for a while, based on this assumption, then "can't be killed" can also be established, "You are right, if this is the case, could it be the ghost of A02's revenge on other people? In this case, it should not be Duplicates of other characters appear... ”
Before she could finish speaking, her voice suddenly changed, "Who?"
"What's wrong?" Wu You felt something was wrong, but he couldn't move, "What happened?"
"Someone tapped me on the shoulder just now." Zhong Yirou's voice trembled slightly, "None of you have ever left this green square..."
Before waiting for a response, and without having time to say another word, Zhong Yirou's voice suddenly sharpened, calling out, "Someone...someone is pulling..."
Wu You shouted loudly, "I'll go there right away!"
"Wait." Nan Shan suddenly stopped Wu You.
"What are you waiting for? Maybe A02 has appeared again!" Wu You said excitedly, and suddenly realized, thinking of his doubts when he first heard Zhong Yirou's voice.
In the scream of being attacked, Josh was a little shaken, "This..."
"Is it really Miss Zhong?"