"I have an immature idea..."
"He has another immature idea..."
"I still have an immature idea..."
"People always have immature ideas..."
I never expected that even though I uploaded myself to the Internet, I still could not escape the curse of Qianqian's "immature idea". Half of the invalid data cleared from the database were related to Qianqian: Effortless planning, futile design, short-term goals that cannot be achieved at all... Due to Qian Qian's status as a high-ranking node and her 24-hour connection to the imperial data network, whenever she has such an idea and does not really (For Qianqian, this is almost 100%), the Imperial Data Network will temporarily store it as a top instruction, but these information will basically be invalidated within 24 hours: some It was Qianqian who suddenly lost interest, and some of them were rebuked by me or my elder sister.
The result is that every time the database is self-maintained, a lot of such fragments will be generated: they have become Xiling's favorite gadgets, and Qianqian and Xiling have formed a subtle supply and marketing system...
I was studying the orange-red cubes that fell from the sky, but I didn't have time to read them one by one: these cubes began to dissipate after a few minutes of touching the ground. The colorful fallen flowers are just a short-lived beauty.
"The above two databases should be responsible for temporarily storing high-level node instructions." I looked up. Without this explanation, it is really hard to understand why Qianqian's mental pollution (I have to use this word to describe the girl's Got an idea!) would be so concentrated in this area—unless she had reached the point where her thoughts ran amok and spread across the network.
"Yes." Xiling confirmed my guess, "They are specially used to process temporary information generated by nodes above senior officers."
I did the math, and realized that Qianqian alone produced half the amount of data equivalent to me, Shandora, Lin Xue and others plus the entire headquarters—what a terrifying brain!
The only thing to be thankful for now is that these superficial ideas will not have any impact other than slipping through the database: there will be no real action, no real project approval, and no problem of wasting people and money, because they will be shot. is as fast as it is produced. Otherwise, the current gdp of the new empire might not be enough for her to worry about...
I shook my head, put aside these far-fetched thoughts, and looked up at the road ahead. Now we still haven't been able to see where the rift in Xiling's mouth is. There are only endless plains, plains. Still plains, and occasional, dazzling and strange landscapes, this grotesque network space probably has no end at all, after all, there are a large number of new apostles coming off the production line every second, and the speed of this network expansion is extremely amazing , if it is not supported by a set of robust and reliable protocol system that has undergone countless adjustments from previous generations. I am afraid that this expansion speed alone is enough to cause ordinary networks to collapse. Tavel uses complex algorithms to convert abstract things on the Internet into information that can be understood by us, and allows Bingtis and I to have the same "senses" as Xiling, but there may still be some differences in the essence of this sense, I think I should not fully understand the world in Xi Ling's eyes.
The breeze in my ears, the light in my sight, the temperature I can feel, and gravity—things that I take for granted in the real world. Here, it means that there is a corresponding information environment, maybe a breeze is the common thinking of thousands of apostles, maybe the temperature around means the current average speed of the spiritual network, these information can be perceived but cannot be interpreted , at least not for creatures like us from the real world. I was suddenly a little confused: in this way, can I solve the problem of the rift by myself
We don't even fully understand what it is.
"What are you thinking? Do you still want to go?" Bingtis' bluffing voice woke me up from my thoughts, and I saw this female hooligan pointing to the distance "Follow the arrow. Xiling said there is some data ahead The hub, after crossing the first hub, it will be considered halfway, the rift valley is very calm now, we have to rush to the place where it hasn’t moved yet.”
I put aside the feelings in my heart, nodded and rushed out first, Bingtis was stunned and quickly followed, because the speed of the two of them broke through the speed of sound very quickly. So Bingtis can only use mental connection to talk to me: "I rely on you, uncle! It's scary to run so fast suddenly! Don't you know that the concubine starts slowly at 36e?"
Me: "..." I decided not to speak, anyway, this female hooligan has something to say at any time, if I don't throw my face on the ground and step on my feet, I will never try to defeat this invulnerable guy with words.
Then concentrate on the journey, and there is nothing extra to attract attention along the way. We quickly arrived at the data hub that Xiling said, which is another abstract thing that seems difficult to understand. It looks like a huge streamer, glowing with blue and gold alternately, one end is connected to the ground, and the other end is flying high in the air, with a width of more than ten meters and a height of more than a thousand meters. Remain. There is a breeze in this weird space, but the dancing direction of this "ribbon" is not consistent with the direction of the wind. Slightly swing back and forth.
Close to the streamer, I heard the sound of hunting wind. Although this thing does not dance with the wind, it insists on making the sound of the flag being blown by the wind alone. The things in this space... are really strange.
The picture of Xi Ling moved from the ground to the surface of the streamer, and I finally didn't have to bow my head to talk to her, but her face was dangling because of the dancing of the streamer, and twisted into a ridiculous look from time to time, which looked very funny.
"Let me check the network status nearby," Xi Ling said. "Close to the rift valley requires a high degree of network stability. Sudden link disconnection or packet loss is not fun—although I don't know if you will be affected by packet loss."
"No..." As soon as Xi Ling finished speaking, another embedded screen suddenly appeared on the streamer, and Tavel appeared on the screen, "Don't worry, Your Majesty, the souls of you and Lord Bingtis are not completely attached to the Internet, but by The form of an independent individual exists only by borrowing bandwidth. If a large-scale packet loss really occurs, your souls will only be excluded at best, and will not perish like the information attached to the network. Theory Up...well, that's actually it."
This time she finally didn't dare to say that it was theoretically so—otherwise Sandora and the others would definitely look for her desperately.
"That's good." Xi Ling nodded reassuringly, "I just wanted to say that the network around the Rift Valley is not stable, should I postpone the action a little bit. Now we can continue on our way. Oh wait a minute, I will mark this hub , if there is an emergency ahead, you can send it back through this hub and run away."
"Speaking of which, what exactly are these hubs?" I looked at the magnificent streamer in front of me, which looked very beautiful. But its light and ethereal image is very different from the square things I saw along the way: most things in this space are square and angular, including the upside-down earth in the sky and the orange-red objects before. Cubes, these streamers are an exception here.
"Host," Xi Ling said casually, "The data hub is where the host intervenes in the network, just like a key control point. Each such hub monitors a huge piece of network space. The node in front of me is xl-34. Next, we are going to the xl-28 hub, but the hub of the mother host is not on the way forward, and the image is different. As the highest host, her intervention point in the network is a big beam of light that runs through all the interlayers. Here , is behind you. The one on the horizon..."
It was the first time I heard such a miraculous thing. I turned my head and looked curiously, and sure enough, there was a beam of light piercing the sky at the end of the horizon—I might have seen it before, but I didn’t pay attention to it at the time. Mom is such a fascinating natural landscape in cyberspace!
It is so huge that it can be regarded as a natural landscape, you can imagine how spectacular the bubble looks here.
"Bubble, bubble." I was very fresh, excited, and the little bun opened his eyes to call the child's mother, because the other party is one of the network servers, and the call to her does not need to be transferred through Xiling, "I saw you! You are here The place is so spectacular! From a distance, it looks thick and... ”
"Son, her father, don't be like this..."
Me: "..." Shut up honestly. Continue on your way.
The next few data hubs are relatively close to each other. It may be to improve the stability of the network. The stability and impact resistance will be enhanced, and the large-capacity cache of the hosts can also effectively reduce the chance of packet loss—although the last item has been confirmed to be harmless to me and Bingtis, after all, it can still affect the entire operation. Success rate.
As I continued to move forward, I finally felt the atmosphere around me begin to change: the ubiquitous breeze gradually weakened to almost imperceptible, the ground began to fade, and the originally beautiful lavender and blue were more and more mixed with sickly gray and white. In the end, the land even completely faded to almost a desert, and the undulating mountains and deep valleys in the sky seemed to be evading something in front of us. As we moved forward, the sky became flatter and flatter, and finally turned into a large plain just like the ground .
These phenomena all mean the same thing: the front is an information desert area, and under the automatic circumvention of network security protocols, the data flowing to this area is cut off, and even the all-encompassing imperial database refuses to provide indexing services for this network segment .
Xi Ling became more and more silent: she hadn't spoken for a long time, and as a group consciousness of the network, she should have sensed the imminent danger.
"That, that is the Rift Valley!"
After rushing on the road for a while, Xi Ling finally broke the silence. We stopped and looked at the scene in front of us.
The color has completely faded from the field of vision, whether it is the plain under our feet or the other piece of land hanging upside down in the sky, it is completely pale, except for the image of Xiling who is following under our feet, and the figure of Bingtis and me , there is no color around, and the whole world seems to have become a plain model without color, looking around, it is monotonous and dry.
But in the distance, the darkness pierced through this pale world as if tearing apart the space. It was a large round hole that penetrated the sky and the earth, as if a huge spear had pierced the sky and the earth, leaving a shocking hole here. The scars, the darkness surging in the cavity, formed an extremely sharp contrast with the pale surroundings. Xiling no longer dared to take half a step forward: in fact, when the surrounding colors faded, we had already entered the data avoidance area delineated by the security agreement. At such a close place, she was afraid that she would not be able to stop if she went any further. The rift valley was moving irregularly in this pale area at any time, expanding or shrinking instantaneously. That's too dangerous for a consciousness rooted in the web.
We let Xiling stop here, and then evacuate to a safer place as soon as possible. Of course, as the overall consciousness of the network, she actually doesn't care whether to evacuate or not. What is with us is always just an interactive interface of Xiling, and she herself will always be the entire network. Telling her to evacuate is essentially telling her not to continue to detect the data on the Rift Valley. As long as her focus is not on the Rift Valley, the Rift Valley will not be able to swallow any of her information.
Of course, in this way, the communication between us and Tavel will be cut off: because any data leading to the Rift Valley will be lost. And Xiling can't survive in this area, this is the only absolute black barrier that the spiritual connection cannot reach.
Tavel analyzed the data we detected at the fastest speed before Xiling left. I can imagine the tense and busy atmosphere in the laboratory outside, but Tavel's analysis can only be superficial, measuring the network status, Estimate the bandwidth near the rift, analyze the safety factor and so on - what is going on in the rift, we will only know when Ice and Bingtis come back.
"Your Majesty, you and Lord Bingtis have special souls that cannot be swallowed by the rift, so theoretically you can safely approach or even enter the rift, but the safety of the rift itself does not mean that there are no other dangerous people on the other side of it." What, once you encounter a situation, please burst out your own void power directly - this will cause a short-term downtime of the entire network and even destroy some nodes, but it is better than losing our leader." Tavel exhorted for the last time. Then Lin Xue's image also appeared in front of us: "Wood, and Bingtis, I haven't seen anything bad for the time being, but there is unprecedented interference in the Rift Valley. There is definitely something amazing hidden in it. For the time being Not malicious, but capable of threatening you, understand what I mean?"
"If the situation is not good, run away quickly." Bingtis was still carefree, "Don't worry, my old lady has already practiced a good kung fu when she smashed the principal's window—well, I will take your husband with me."
"...I'm even more worried..."
After the communication ended, Xiling also retreated to a safe enough place, Bingtis and I stepped forward, and the last link in the spiritual connection was also broken: we walked into the black barrier area.
"Being quiet is like being dead." Bingtis murmured unhappily as she quickly approached the big hole in front of her, "There is no wind, no sound, and there is no real feeling when stepping on the ground. I feel that there is something missing in this place."
"No way. After all, the data has been interrupted here. We are now jumping among a group of mutant nodes. Except for ourselves and these nodes, there is nothing evolving here, not a single byte."
Information that never evolves is a pool of stagnant water, and the principle that stillness equals death is perfectly interpreted here.
We finally came close to the big void and observed what it was from the edge. It goes deep into the ground vertically, and it is a perfect circle with a radius of about one kilometer (in this virtual space, is the unit of length reliable?), but when I observe carefully, I feel that it is just a black round cake printed on the surface: the inside of this thing The darkness is so thick that even the word "pure black" can't be described, so even at such a short distance, you can't distinguish this "hole." Paint a pure black circle on a piece of paper, and then use the same black to draw the inner walls of the cave in this circle, and you will find that this is completely impossible.
Rift Valley presents this situation.
"If I can't feel the breath of the abyss, I really think this is the gate of the abyss." Bingtis said my heartfelt voice.
I looked up, and there was also a black perfect circle area in the corresponding position of the sky, which was also deep and bottomless.
Of course, you can’t see anything just by looking at it, but when it comes to investigating the truth of this rift, as laymen, Bingtis and I definitely don’t know how to start, but fortunately, we need to do something It's very simple, and you don't need much professional knowledge, just jump into this thing...
Find out what's going on in the rift (or on the opposite side): Is there a powerful malignant tumor, or is it just a network failure, or is it the network interface of the fallen apostle? Even if Tice's task is overfulfilled, the rest of the solution is the work of the scientists outside.
"Tavier said just now that it should be no problem for us to jump in." I patted Bingtis on the shoulder, "We are not network data, the rift cannot be deleted, and if we are lucky, the capacity of the rift is limited. It will even be 'suffocated' by the soul of the void creature, and that will be done in one step."
"Yeah." Bingtis nodded slightly, and suddenly looked straight at her, with unprecedented seriousness on her face, and then she said in a rare soft tone: "youjump, ilook..."
I:"… "
As soon as I grabbed the guy's arm, I jumped down.