Chapter 30 art of death

Jason said that the Martians are not just a group of simple-minded farmers who have nothing to do with the world, as Van Noven described. It is true, of course, that they were not militaristic militants.About a thousand years ago, the five republics settled their political strife.It is not entirely wrong to say that they are farmers, since they devote almost all their resources to agriculture.But to say they were pure-minded is open to question.Jason emphasized that they are masters in the field of artificial biotechnology, and their civilization is completely based on biotechnology.We used the tools of biotechnology to help them create a planet where people could live. Therefore, among the generations of Martians, no one understands the function of DNA, and no one does not know what kind of potential DNA has.

Their big tech is pretty crude.For example, the spaceship that Vanovan was aboard was so primitive that it looked like a Newtonian cannonball.However, that's because they are desperately short of natural resources.There is no oil, no coal mines on Mars, and it can only rely on scarce water and nitrogen to maintain a fragile ecosystem.Earth has a strong industrial base to squander, but in Vanovan's home planet Mars, that's impossible.On Mars, most of the manpower is invested in food production, and the growth of the population is strictly controlled.In order to achieve this goal, the Martians must make full use of biotechnology.Smokestack-strewn industrial technology won't help them.

It was raining incessantly, and it was getting dark.I asked him: Did Wan Nuowen tell you all this? Yes, he secretly told me.However, what he told me can be found in the Mars database, but it is written more implicitly. The auburn light outside the window flickered in Jason's strangely blind eyeballs. But he could be deceiving. Tyler, I know he never lied.He's just hiding some truths. The microscopic replicas that Vanovan brought to Earth are the crystallization of the cutting-edge technology of Martian artificial organisms.The functions mentioned by Wan Nuowen can be fully realized by the replica.In fact, the functions of these replicas are far more complex than Wan Nuowen is willing to reveal.

One of the many unknown functions of the replica is that it has a second secret communication channel.They use this channel to communicate with each other and keep in touch with the place of origin.However, is the signal used by that channel a traditional narrow-band radio wave, or other weirder technological products?This point, Wan Nuowen did not mention.Jason suspected that it should be another kind of technology.However, no matter what kind of signal it is, it must rely on more advanced technology to receive it, and such technology cannot be created by the people on earth.The recipient must be a living organism, that is, a modified human nervous system, Vanovan said.

☆ So you volunteered to modify your own nervous system? If someone asks me to do this, I'd love it.However, do you know why Wan Nuowen revealed this secret to me?There is only one reason.From the first day he arrived on Earth, he feared for his life.He is well aware of what kind of human corruption or political power strife will occur on the earth.He had to find someone he could trust.One day, in case something happens to him, this man can keep the medical technology for him.The person must have a good understanding of what these drugs are for.He never suggested that I transform myself into a receiver.Only fourth year people can get this makeover remember?The Life Extension Treatment is a platform to which other functional programs can be attached.This is one of those programs.

Are you intentionally reinventing yourself as the recipient? After he died, I injected the potion myself.This time, there were no wounds on the surface of the body, and there was no immediate effect.Don't forget, Tyler, that the signals sent back from the replica have no way of penetrating a functioning time gyrodialysis membrane.So, the receiving function in my body is dormant. Why are you doing this? Because I don't want to die in vain.Everyone thinks that when the time gyre disappears, we die within days or hours.There is only one good thing about the reception in me, and that is that, during those days and hours, as long as I am alive, I am able to connect directly to that data bank that is almost as large as the Milky Way.Then, I will know the origin of hypothetical intelligent creatures, and why they surround us with time gyrations.This is almost the only way to find the truth.

I thought to myself, do you know now?Maybe he already knew.Maybe that's what he's trying to say now.He wanted to speak while he could.Maybe that's why he asked me to record it.Does Wan Nuowen know that you will do this? he does not know.Also, I don't think he'd agree, though, that his own nervous system has been altered as well. Him too?can not tell. Can't see it.Have you forgotten, my current condition, the condition of my body, the condition of my brain, these are not caused by functional transformation.He looked at me with those invisible eyes.That is a dysfunction.

☆ After the replicas were launched from the earth, they multiplied in the outer solar system.They are far from the sun.Have hypothetical intelligent creatures been discovered?They don't know that this technology was invented by Martians, so they punish the Earthlings?Edward once said that the cunning Martians had premeditated.Is it like this?Jason didn't mention any of this.I guess he probably doesn't know. Later, the replicas continued to expand towards the neighboring stars until finally, nowhere to be seen.The distances in the universe are too far away to see replica populations from Earth.However, if you zoom out to the outer reaches of the solar system, you'll see a cloud of replicators, an ever-expanding cloud.Artificial organisms proliferate slowly inside, accumulating slowly like a glacier.

However, the lifespan of replicators is limited.Individual copies grow, reproduce, and eventually die, but the network they form is forever continuous.That network is like a coral reef, with countless connection points interlocking.The network is constantly accumulating new information and sending it back to its source. I remind Xiaojie: You told me last time that the replica is now encountering a problem.You say that the number of replicas is getting smaller and smaller. They hit something.That kind of thing was not foreseen in the original plan. Xiaojie, what is that? He was silent for a while, as if trying to sort out the thoughts in his mind.

He said: We always thought that the replica we launched was unprecedented in the universe, a brand new artificial creature.We are so naive.We humans, whether Earthlings or Martians, are not the first intelligent beings to evolve in the galaxy.Not at all.In fact, there is nothing particularly remarkable about us humans.Anything we've ever done in our short history, someone else did it long ago.In the depths of that vast universe, there is another kind of intelligent creature. You mean, our clone met another clone? Another replicator ecosystem.Taylor, the countless stars in the universe are like a jungle, and the variety of creatures is far beyond our imagination.

I imagined that process while listening to Jason's description. Outside the earth, outside the dialysis membrane of time gyrations, outside the vast solar system, and in the boundless and vast universe, there are countless stars densely covered.The sun is just one of the stars.In that vast universe, the duplicate body floated down on a small piece of ice dust, began to reproduce, grow, developed special functions, began to observe, began to send messages, and then continued to reproduce.Generation after generation repeats the same process.Over countless generations, the descendants of the clones slowly spread throughout the galaxy.Perhaps the entire network of replicas has matured, and perhaps has begun sending information back to Earth via microbursts.This time, however, the loop is interrupted. Something has sensed the duplicate, something very hungry. Jason called it a predator.Predators are another semiorganic autocatalytic feedback system, another self-reproducing cellular structure, another population of replicators, Jason said.They are also part machine, part creature.Predators have also constructed their own network system, but their history is longer and the system is larger.The replicas of human beings embarked on a journey from the earth, and they did not have enough time to build a system that could compete with the predators.A predator has evolved far more than its prey.Subroutines of predators search for nutrients and use resources.These functions have become better over billions of years of evolution.The clones of the earth are blind and do not know how to escape.They are quickly devoured. However, the word devour has a special meaning.The mature replisome structure contains delicate carbon molecules.As useful as those carbon molecules might be, predators want more than that.Predators are more interested in the significance of replicators.Meaning refers to the functions and strategies set forth in the replicator's mode of reproduction.As long as the predator finds these functions and strategies valuable, it will adopt them.It then reorganizes the replicator population and uses the replicator population for its own purposes.The clone population didn't die, it was just absorbed.The entire body of replicants was swallowed up and incorporated into a more complex, larger, and older interstellar network. It is not only the fate of the replica of the earth to be swallowed.It has happened before, and it will happen in the future. Jason said: Intelligent civilizations will want to create a network of replicas.Because it is very difficult to explore the Milky Way by sub-light speed travel, most technological civilizations will eventually adopt von Neumann's self-reproduction mechanism to construct an ever-expanding network.Replicas are just such a product.Such a network system does not require management and maintenance, and can collect scientific information bit by bit, and expand explosively over a long period of time. I said: Well, I understand.In other words, Martian clones are not unique.They run into what you call an ecosystem A von Neumann ecosystem.John.Von Neumann was a twentieth-century mathematician who believed that self-reproducing machines were possible.He was the first to propose such a concept. A von Neumann ecosystem, and the replicas are absorbed by this system.However, we still don't know what the origin of the hypothetical intelligent creature is, and we don't know what the time gyration is. Jason pursed his lips, as if impatient.Tyler, you are wrong, you did not understand.The von Neumann ecosystem is just the hypothetical intelligent creature.They are one. ☆ Hearing this, I unknowingly took several steps backwards.I began to wonder who it was that I was in this room with. He looks like Xiaojie, but everything he said makes me more and more suspicious of who he is. Are you communicating with this thing?now?When you talk to me, are you also connecting with them? I don't know if you should use the word communication.Communication is two-way.But there is no two-way communication between me and them as you said.True communication is not one-sided.However, it is one-sided between me and it, especially at night.During the day, it sends less information into my body.This may be due to solar radiation killing the signal. Is the signal stronger at night? Perhaps the word signal is also misleading.The signal is the data transmission medium we set up for the original replica.The messages I received were sent over the same signal waves.Those signals did send some messages, but those messages are effective, not dead.It's eating me right now, like it's eating every Internet connection.Tyler, it's invading my nervous system, changing my nervous system. So, at this moment there is another object in the room.In the room were me, Jackie, and a hypothetical intelligent creature.At this moment, they are devouring Jason alive. Are they really capable of such a thing?Transform your nervous system? They didn't work out.To them, I'm like a juncture in a network of replicas.Their manipulation mechanism sensed the biomodification I had injected into them, but it wasn't quite what they expected.They didn't realize that I was a living creature, so they had to kill me. Is there any way to block this signal, or interfere with this signal? As far as I know there seems to be no way.Maybe the Martians have such technology, but they forgot to put the data in the database. The window in Jason's room faces west.The sun, hidden by clouds, was fading, and rose-colored light came in through the window. So what to do, they are right next to you now, talking to you. Perhaps instead of saying them, it should be said.The whole Feng.The Neumann ecosystem is a single entity.It can do its own slow thinking and make its own plans.Yet its trillions of parts are also autonomous entities.They compete with each other.Individuals act faster than the system as a whole, and far smarter than humans.For example, time gyration dialysis membranes You mean, the time gyrodialysis membrane is a separate entity? Strictly speaking, yes.The ultimate goal of the individual is set by the whole system, but it evaluates the situation around it by itself and makes independent choices.Taylor, they are unimaginably complex.We all assume that the dialysis membrane is either on or off, like a light switch, like a binary command.wrong.Dialysis membranes have many states and many purposes.For example, its penetration is divided into several levels.We've known for a long time that dialysis membranes allow spacecraft to pass through, but block meteors and meteorites.However, it also has a more subtle function.This is why, over the past many years, the earth has not been destroyed by solar radiation.Dialysis is still protecting us. Xiaojie, I don't know the actual number of casualties, but since the time circle disappeared, tens of thousands of people in our city alone have lost their families.I really dare not tell those people that someone is protecting us. But, if not against a few, in general they really protect us.The time gyration dialysis membrane is not God. It cannot see the sparrows falling. However, it can prevent the sparrows from being burned to death by the deadly strong sunlight. What is the purpose? He frowned, and then began to say: I still can't fully understand, or rather, I can't fully translate Someone is knocking on the door.Carol came in with a ball of linen.I turned off the tape recorder and put it aside.Carol's expression was dark. I asked her: clean sheets? Her tone was a little rude.Used to tie him up.The linen was cut into strips.Prepared for his convulsions. She nodded towards the window.Today's day is relatively long, and the sun has not yet set. Thank you.Jason said softly.Taylor, if you need a break, take it now.Just, don't take too long. ☆ I went over to see Diane.She has a fever and is sleeping.It won't be long before she has another fever.I thought of the Martian medicine I injected into her.That was the standard fourth-year drug, Jason said.Countless semi-smarts are about to start a big battle in her body against the overwhelming number of cardiovascular debilitating bacteria.It was a tiny army invisible to the naked eye, about to start repairing her body, rebuilding her body.It's just that I'm a little worried, can she withstand the pressure of transformation with such a weak body? I kissed her on the forehead and whispered something in her ear.Maybe she can't hear.Then I went out of the room, down the stairs, out on the lawn outside the big house, to have some quiet time by myself. The rain finally stopped, suddenly, and disappeared in an instant.The air is much fresher than during the day.At the zenith, the sky is a deep blue.On the distant horizon in the west, a few sparse thunderclouds obscured the huge setting sun.Many raindrops gathered on the leaves of the lawn, like small amber pearls. Jason himself said he was dying.Now, I have to start accepting this cruel fact. I'm a doctor and I've seen more birth, old age, sickness and death than the average person.I know what death is like.I know how the average person reacts to death: denial, anger, resignation.That's probably what happened.The dying person may experience these emotional changes in a split second, or not at all.Death will take their lives at any time.Most people never think about what it's like to face death because it comes so suddenly, for example, with a ruptured aorta, or a flash at a busy intersection. However, Xiaojie knew that he was dying.What puzzled me was the acceptance of death that he seemed to display with a transcendent calm.I realized later that death had fulfilled his dream.He has struggled all his life, just to pursue a truth: what is the meaning of time roundabout?And, what role does human being play in the time gyration, and what role does he play.After all, he was responsible for the launch of the clone.Now, the mystery is about to be revealed. That feeling, as if he reached out and touched the stars. And the stars reached out and touched him.The stars are destroying his body, but he seems to be waiting for death with a grateful heart. ☆ We're in a hurry.It's getting dark, isn't it? Carol had gone outside to light candles in every part of the house. I said: almost. The rain has stopped.It seemed to stop, I didn't hear the rain. The temperature also dropped.do you want me to open the window excuse me.And the tape recorder, have you turned it on? Already open.I pushed up the old window sash a few centimeters, and immediately a cool breeze blew into the room. We just talked about hypothetical intelligent beings That's right.He didn't say anything.Xiaojie?How are you? I hear the wind, I hear your voice, I hear Jason? Sorry Taylor, leave me alone.Now I'm easily distracted.me! Carol wrapped strips of cloth around the entire bed and bound his body.His hands and feet jerked against the cloth, and his head sank into the pillow in what looked like a seizure.But it was only for a moment, before I had time to lean over, he stopped.He gasped for breath, then took a deep breath.sorry i'm sorry Nothing to be sorry about. I can't help it, sorry. I know you can't help it.It's okay, Xiaojie. Although I became like this, don't blame them. Who is to blame for hypothetical intelligent beings? He was obviously in pain, but he tried to force a smile.We'll have to give them another name, shall we?They are no longer the hypothetical creatures they once were.Don't blame them, though.They don't know what I've become.They are beginning to collectivize me. I don't understand. He spoke quickly and urgently, as if speaking could make him forget his physical pain.However, that could also be a symptom.Tyler, you and I, we're all a combination of living cells, aren't we?If the cells in my body are destroyed to a certain number, I will die.However, if we just shake hands, then we only lose a few skin cells, and neither of us can feel the loss of cells.That is intangible.We all live in some degree of totality.We live as a whole function of the human body.We are not a patchwork of cells.The same goes for hypothetical intelligent beings.The entire vast universe is a complete individual, much larger than our human body. So they can kill at will? I'm talking about their cognition, not their morality.If their cognition is the same as ours, then if anyone dies, I die, they may be very concerned.However, they do not have this understanding. They've done this before.They once surrounded other planets with time gyrations, haven't our duplicates been discovered?They'd figured out another time to spin the planet before the hypothetical intelligent beings ate them, wouldn't they? Spin around the planet at other times.That's right, there are many.A network of hypothetical intelligent beings spans the entire galaxy, covering most of the habitable areas.When they find that there are intelligent creatures on a certain planet, and these creatures can use tools and develop mature enough.Then, they will use the time gyration dialysis membrane to surround this planet. I suddenly thought of spiders.They spin silk to entangle the poor little insects.Why, Xiaojie? At this time, someone suddenly opened the door.Carol is back.She was holding a china plate with a candle cup on it.She put the china dish on the bedside table and lit the candle with a match.A slight wind blew in through the window, and the flames flickered in the wind. Jason said: To save that planet. Why save? Prevent the planet from self-destructing and its eventual death.The lifespan of industrial civilization is limited, no matter where it is.Industrial civilization thrives and thrives, but one day its resources will run out.When resources are exhausted, the planet dies. I thought to myself, these planets may not necessarily die, maybe their industrial civilization will continue to thrive and expand to the entire solar system, traveling between the stars But Jason had expected my rebuttal.Even if spaceflight is limited to the inner solar system, it's pretty slow, and interstellar travel is pretty inefficient if some kind of creature lives about as long as a human.Maybe you will think that our earth is an exception, different from other planets.But hypothetical intelligent beings have been around for a long, long time.Before activating the time gyration dialysis membrane of the earth, they have seen the planets inhabited by countless intelligent creatures, and watched those creatures gradually become extinct. He took a deep breath, but seemed to accidentally choke.Carol immediately turned to look at him.The doctor she had put on suddenly disintegrated.As Jason calmed down, she looked terrified.At that moment, she was no longer a doctor, she was just a mother, a mother who saw her child dying. Xiaojie couldn't see it.Maybe he was lucky.He swallowed painfully, and his breathing gradually returned to normal. But Xiaojie, what's the use of time spinning?He made us face the problems of the future faster, but changed nothing. He said: On the contrary, everything changed. ☆ Last night, Xiaojie showed a contradictory situation.His speech became more and more difficult and fragmented, yet the messages he received seemed to multiply.I believe he knew a lot more in those few hours than he could tell, and what he said was just the gist.His words glowed with incomparable power, made people suddenly enlightened, and ignited infinite hope for the future destiny of mankind. Sometimes he struggles in pain, and sometimes he struggles to figure out how to express it.If we skip these situations, what he said is roughly He started by saying: We're going to try to see things from their point of view. Their point of view is also the point of view of hypothetical intelligent creatures. Whether you think of the hypothetical intelligent being as a single organism, or many organisms, in short, it is the first von.Neumannian structures.It was the most primitive self-replicating machine, and its origin has been lost.The descendants of Feng.Neumann structures lack early explicit memory, just as you and I cannot remember the process of human evolution.Maybe they are the product of some early biological civilization, but that biological civilization can no longer be traced back.Maybe they migrated from another, older galaxy.In any case, today's hypothetical intelligent beings have a long history, and their ancestors are from the distant past, which is unimaginably ancient. They have seen planets like the Earth, seen the evolution of intelligent creatures on the planets, and witnessed their demise.The planets they have seen are countless.Perhaps they have also passively transported organic matter between the stars, scattered seeds, and promoted the evolution of organic life.Moreover, they have seen biological cultures create crude von Neumann-like networks.That's a by-product of the rapid complexity of biological culture, but none of those network systems last very long.They've seen it more than once, they've seen it countless times.In the eyes of hypothetical intelligent beings, our biological culture looks similar to the network of replicas, just as weird, all capable of reproduction, but all equally fragile. Create these simple von.Neumannian networks were endless clumsiness, and the ecosystems of those home worlds quickly collapsed afterward.In their eyes, all this is like a mystery and a tragedy. It is said to be an unsolvable mystery because the life cycle of pure creatures is too short.The whole process seems to them to be just a moment, and it is difficult for them to understand, and it is even too late to notice. It is tragic because they are beginning to assume that these biocultures trying to create networks are just failed biological systems.They believe that these biological cultures are somehow related to themselves.These creatures develop gradually, towards true sophistication.However, due to the limited ecosystem on the planet, they were destroyed before they could develop and mature. Therefore, the hypothetical intelligent creature creates time gyrations, in order to preserve our technological heyday, and to preserve us from extinction.There have been dozens of similar civilizations on other planets before us and after us.Hypothetical intelligent beings did the same to them.They don't treat us like museum specimens, though, as specimens put on display in freezers.Hypothetically intelligent beings are meant to alter our destiny.They freeze our time and use that time to bring together all similar beings for one grand experiment.This is a long experiment that has lasted billions of years, and now the final results are almost out.They create a vastly expanded biological environment.Creatures that are destined to be destroyed can develop freely in this environment, and even meet and merge together in the end. I couldn't comprehend the meaning in it for a while.What is a greatly expanded biological environment?Is it bigger than the earth? At this moment, the room was shrouded in complete darkness.Sometimes Jason would twitch suddenly, utter some involuntary ravings, and then stop talking.These are the contents I have compiled from his intermittent statements.I check his heartbeat every once in a while.His heart was beating fast and getting weaker. He said: Hypothetical intelligent beings can manipulate time and space.We see the living evidence all around us.Their capabilities don't stop at creating time-dialysis membranes, however.They can use space curvature to connect the earth and other similar planets together.That is a new planet, a planet artificially created and cultivated.We can easily and instantly travel to those planets.We can move there through connections, bridges, structures.That is the structure that hypothetical intelligent organisms help us assemble, and the materials used are the remains of neutron stars, the remains of dead planets.It's incredible.It took them millions of years, slowly, slowly, with infinite patience, to drag the structure across the immensity of space to our planet. Carol sat next to him and I sat on the other side.Whenever he had another twitch, I held his shoulders.When he regained his composure but couldn't speak, Carol would gently pat his head.Candlelight flickered in his eyes.His eyes stared into the void. The time gyrodialysis membrane is still in place and still working.However, the function of controlling time has been turned off, and it is completely turned off, which is the flash we see, which is an incidental phenomenon when the function is turned off.Now, time gyrations can penetrate, and something can pass through the dialysis membrane and enter the atmosphere.a big thing It was some time before I understood what he meant.At the time, I was bewildered and suspected that he might have started to slip into dementia.Metaphorically speaking, he fell into a state of overload.In other words, he has fallen into a network system. Of course, I was wrong. Ars moriendi ars vivendi est, this sentence means: The art of dying is the art of living.When I was still a PhD student, I forgot where I read this sentence.Now, sitting next to him, I suddenly remembered this sentence.Jason's life is like a hero, seeking the truth and seeking enlightenment.Jason is dead.His gift to this world is the fruit of truth.He did not hide this fruit privately, but let the whole world share it freely. Jason's nervous system has been altered.Hypothetically intelligent beings had unknowingly corrupted his nervous system.They didn't know that doing so would kill Jason.At that moment, a memory of the past suddenly appeared in my mind. It was an afternoon, a long time ago, he rode the bicycle I bought in a second-hand store, rushing all the way down from the top of Jishan Road.I still remember how sensitive and graceful he was then.He took control of the bicycle that was about to disintegrate.By the end, however, the bike was in tatters, leaving nothing but uncontrollable momentum.Inevitably, the order of the world collapsed and plunged into chaos. Don't forget, he's a fourth year guy.His body is like an extremely sophisticated machine, and it is not so easy to die.When it was almost midnight, Jason suddenly couldn't speak.At that time, he began to look very scared, as if he was no longer an ordinary human being.Carol shook his hand and told him it would be all right, he was at home.His mind has been locked in a strange space for maneuver. I don't know if he can hear his mother's comfort.If only he could hear. Later, his eyes began to roll up, and his muscles began to relax.His body was still lingering, breathing convulsively.And so on until dawn. Then I left the room, leaving Carol alone with him.Carol stroked his head with great love and whispered in his ear as if he could still hear.At that time, I didn't notice that when the sun rose, the sun was no longer the blood-red and swollen sun.The sun returned to the way it was before the time spin disappeared, so bright and so perfect.