01146 Will cybermen give birth to mechanical babies?
"Well, I know you are the daughter of a certain big boss. Who does it belong to specifically?"
"This...I really can't tell you this!"
"Forget it, it doesn't matter who it is. Then why did you run out?"
"To see what the world below is like..."
"That's it?"
"That's really it..."
"Your name is?"
"Raeder..."
"Where's the last name?"
"Wouldn't I be completely exposed if I told you?"
"Watch your attitude!"
"Ugh...I was wrong..."
"Let's call you Crystal, in case anyone who knows you knows your identity."
"Thank you so much..."
"You are brave enough to think of running out alone. Don't you know that the Dark Night Zone is 'hell'?"
"I have carefully checked the information in this area, and I have also heard some stories from my informants. I think it is acceptable~ As long as I don't go to too chaotic places, it will be fine, right?"
"Haha~ha~, I want to say that your informant is an unreliable guy. He must be thinking of deceiving you and making a lot of money from you~"
"How is that possible! I have been in contact with him for three years!"
"Since when can the number of years of acquaintance be used as a criterion for trust? In reality, you may not be able to see a person clearly, but you can trust the other person so easily through the Internet cable? What you see and understand is what the other person wants you to do.
What I know is that it was made for you to see, how could you possibly know what I really think!"
"But...but I have a good conversation with him, just like an old friend..."
"Old friends are nothing! A real liar will be more affectionate to you than your mother!"
"He is indeed closer than my mother and I..."
"Look, I was right, right?"
"..."
"Don't think this world is too beautiful. This world is not beautiful, especially the dark night area! There is no such thing as a fool like you there, and you won't be able to live as old as you! By the way, how old are you now?"
"Thirty-eight years old..."
"..."
Xiao Wu was frightened. She stared at the man in the windbreaker for a few seconds, then turned to look at her friend, who also looked shocked.
"Ahem...I thought you were a little girl...but you're still so naive at such an old age!"
"Ah? I'm not that big~ I'm the youngest child in our family, and I'm not even qualified to participate in family affairs!"
"..."X2
Xiao Wu and Jiyou were silent, but a heated discussion started in their minds.
"What's going on in this world? At 38, I feel stupider than an 18-year-old girl, and she's actually the youngest at this age? Isn't this too weird?"
"It's okay to say that Silly Baitian is no different from a pet like her who has been living in the Paradise District. The world she comes into contact with has been modified and beautified. It's normal to not understand anything. I just don't know how she met
To that informant. As for the issue of 38 years old, I have to think about it..."
"Wu, actually I had a question when I first came to this world."
"What doubt."
"People in this world have basically abandoned their physical bodies, so how do they reproduce?"
"Good question! I have this question too! I also have advanced questions! If full-body prosthetics are only a privilege for a few rich people, then what will the children born of half-Cybers who retain the ability to reproduce grow to?
Only at a certain level can prosthetic transformation be carried out? If the baby's brain is taken out as soon as he is born, how should the immature brain develop? Is it completely dependent on artificial delivery of nutrients? The child who is 'grown' in the machine and the physical body
When children grow up, will the structure of the brain be different? Will the activity of the nervous system be different? Will thinking and cognition be different?"
"Why do you have more problems than me..."
"These are inevitable problems in the cyberpunk world~ Can you only see high technology and robotic arms, but not these most basic issues related to people?"
"How about... we should ask her directly?"
"Ask, you ask, it's embarrassing for me to ask!"
"Fine……"
The gay friend calmed down his emotions a little and tried to look innocent.
"How do you solve the population problem here? I feel like this place is different from ours?"
"Ah? Are you spying on information?"
"Yes! It's just to spy on information. You can tell me or not!"
Xiao Wu threatened from the side.
"Oh, I said it, I said it!"
The man in the trench coat named Raeder was immediately frightened.
"You said you are the youngest in your family. Does that mean your family has not had a child for 38 years?"
"Yes... our whole family has been completely transformed into a prosthetic body. We have no ability to have children at all, but generally we can't die. I don't know if the elites in your city are like this, but we are all like this here anyway.
Paradise stopped having any new population thirty years ago, and since then the population of Paradise has remained constant until today.”
"Everyone has really ascended mechanically~!"
Xiao Wu complained in her head.
"Then when did you undergo the prosthetic transformation?"
"Me? I was transformed when I was twenty. But I am a special case~ My father wanted me, the 'last crystallization of life' in my family, to maintain human characteristics, so I could grow up to be 20 as a natural person.
Years old. My brothers and sisters all had their brains taken out and artificially cultured when they were six years old, so they are much smarter than me."
"Did your parents undergo prosthetic transformation and lose their fertility after they gave birth to you?"
"Ah? No, they have transformed it a long time ago. I was artificially cultivated by taking genes from the gene bank~"
"If it can be cultivated, why has there been no new population in the past thirty years?"
"I don't know about this. My parents didn't tell me about it, and the school didn't instill this knowledge."
"You are not the last generation of natural people born."
"Yes, I'm just the youngest in our family, and there are others who are younger than me. But age doesn't matter to us~ Anyway, as long as we can replace parts, we can continue to live."
"But the brain also ages, and you can't survive as a brain in a vat forever."
"Yes~ So we... we can't talk about this anymore! This is the core secret of our city!"
Raeder suddenly remembered something and covered her mouth in an exaggerated manner. This action was very uncoordinated in the image of a man in a trench coat.
"You don't need to tell me, I've already guessed it. You uploaded your consciousness, right?"
Xiao Wu turned around and said calmly.
"How did you know...Oh! I didn't say anything!"
"Because there is only one way to achieve complete mechanical ascension, and that is to abandon the brain, the last flesh and blood component."
"Ugh...you can actually guess this. Spies are really scary..."
Raeder put on a sad face.
"How did you guess that?"
The friend asked in his mind.
"No need to guess, just play games and read novels to find out, okay? Oh, maybe there are no science fiction novels in this world, because their reality is science fiction. Human consciousness is actually a set of software running in the brain, and it cannot be used at all.
Once you take it out, you can only copy one copy to other devices. So strictly speaking, the person you carry on your back is just a copied ghost, and the original one has been erased long ago."
"Hey! Is it so scary? What if they have the technology to extract consciousness?"
"It's impossible. Extracting consciousness is as difficult as taking away all the electromagnetic signals from a running computer. That's something only god-level civilizations and goddesses can do. Do you think this place looks like a god-level civilization?"
"It doesn't look like that..."
"That's it!"
"Oh, I don't know if this guy knows about this problem..."
"If you don't seem to know, don't tell her, unless you want to hurt an innocent girl's heart."
"Are you still a girl at thirty-eight?"
"Does the fact that she is young have anything to do with her actual age? If you look at her like that, she has the mental age of a fifteen or sixteen year old girl!"
"All right……"
"You are now with me, and you may meet a three-thousand-year-old elf and a ten-thousand-year-old goddess (pseudo) in the future. Then don't act like a fool and call people grandma or something like that! You have to get used to it.
Calling people based on their appearance, age doesn’t matter at all! Do you know how old I am?”
"You...I don't know..."
"I'm nine!"
"ah?"
"This is based on the earth's chronology, and it has no reference significance at all! In fact, like the boss, I have spent countless time in a place where there is no concept of time... I say this to let you understand, even time
How can you calculate age if you don’t even have a concept? Time is just a concept invented by mortals to conveniently describe the changes in things, so don’t worry about it!"
"Okay, I'm trying to understand this..."
"We're almost there, let's comfort her and make her look like a man."