Chapter 52 The Creator

With a bang, the corridor fell silent.

Wu You stood alone in the corner where he belonged, the southeast corner.

It's dark here, and there's nothing but a faint glow from the cubes underfoot. And such a little light is not enough to illuminate the surroundings.

"Josh." Wu You called out a name.

Soon Josh responded, "What's wrong?"

"What is the supernatural game you just told Yang Erci?"

"Oh that." Josh felt that it was a bit scary to tell such a story in such a place, but Wu You wanted to hear it, so he dared to say, "It's a four-corner game, which is said to come from a five-person snow mountain. The climbing group, one of them died on the way, because it was cold and lack of supplies, in order for everyone to survive at night, they invented this game to wake each other up, for fear of falling asleep and freezing to death in the snow ."

"But then it became a kind of ghost game. Four people were required to stand in the corners of a dark room, and no sound was allowed. Start with the first person, walk forward in the dark, walk behind the second person, and pat him the shoulder, and then just stay there, and the person who gets the pat on the shoulder gets the signal and walks forward as well, and the cycle goes on and on.”

Wu You simulated this scene in his mind, a little puzzled, "It doesn't seem to be able to loop."

"After the fourth person was tapped on the shoulder, he went to the corner of the first person at the beginning, but there was no one there to let him tap the shoulder."

"That's the problem!" Josh was surprised that he got the point right at once, "What you said is a normal situation, in case something abnormal happens, the fourth person goes to the first corner..."

Nan Shan said, "I patted the shoulder of a fifth person who doesn't exist."

Perhaps because of his physical strength, he almost spoke in an angry voice, which made him look more and more gloomy.

"That's right, it means that they really recruited that ghost." After Josh finished, the green light under his feet seemed to be more and more terrifying.

"But it's good, it's good we don't have to move and tap the shoulders, otherwise I really wouldn't dare to stay here."

Wu You is not very interested in supernatural games, but this corridor is indeed a natural venue for such games.

However, this ghost is also idle enough that he is willing to spend time with humans to play such kindergarten-level games.

Don't do anything.

After the ghost story was told, the corridor fell silent again, and everyone seemed to be in the darkness of the void, unable to touch each other's position.

Except for Zhong Yirou, the rest of the people can basically talk, Wu You thought about it, let go of his voice and suggested, "Let's continue talking."

His voice was like a stone thrown into a lake, and soon disappeared into the darkness.

After a while, he got a response, it was Nanshan's voice.

"Why, are children scared to hear ghost stories?"

Wu You thought what he said was ridiculous. He didn't want to pay attention to him at first, but he heard Josh's laughter, so he had to explain: "I'm just afraid that something might go wrong. It will be safer to keep communicating at any time."

Soon, Josh's voice also appeared, "Yes, everyone is talking to each other, at least it can be confirmed that everyone is still in place."

"But Miss Zhong can't speak." Nan Shan said.

Although Nan Shan can speak, his voice is very vague and cannot be heard clearly.

"I...I woke up..."

Zhong Yirou's voice suddenly appeared in the darkness. Although Wu You heard it all at once, she couldn't help but doubt, "Are you awake? Who are you?"

"A ghost story scared you silly? Of course I'm your sister Zhong." Although Zhong Yirou's voice was weak, her tone was exactly the same as before.

"Miss Zhong, are you okay?" Josh asked, "You've been in a coma for a long time."

"Well..." Zhong Yirou said slowly, "I felt like I had a very strange dream. In my 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 nothing in the dream is my memory."

"Bad thing..." Josh asked loudly, "Is there anything more specific?"

Zhong Yirou felt that her breathing was very difficult, and the breath seemed to condense into flocs, blocking her throat.

"I... I seem to be working on the ground floor, but I'm not looking after children."

"Not a child?" Wu You wondered, "Then what you saw before were hallucinations?"

"Yes, my job in the dream is indeed to take care of many, many... human bodies." After deliberation, she used such a word.

"They're not children anymore, but... they're really asleep, in the freezer."

"The freezer..." Wu You seemed to understand why the first floor was so cold.

Hearing this, Josh asked a question, "But if Miss Zhong is not looking after the dead child, why is Mr. Nanshan's job burning?"

indeed so.

Wu You also thought it was suspicious, "We just saw the bones of children in the incinerator."

"It seems that there are adults too." Nan Shan added, "It's just the bones of children that attract our attention."

This containment center seems to be hidden in the black mist, and the truth can only be exposed.

The more you see, the deeper the fog becomes.

"Frozen human body..." Wu You put forward a conjecture, "Is it the material used for human experiments here?"

Zhong Yirou tried to recall for a moment, "It's strange. In my dream, I dreamed that I was sorting out data, and the data of each frozen human 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 clear.

A whole corridor is opened here, forming a ring-like, tunnel-like space, which is filled with countless glass laboratory utensils, experimental cabins, and divided experimental operating rooms.

The double-spiral vines spread and entangle everything here, making this cold place filled with the smell of disinfectant full of strange vitality, like an underground rainforest that eats people.

Yang Erci reached out and touched this unusual vine.

"Don't you think it's a lot like a DNA strand?"

"Well, this is also a hint to the password GENE before." An Wujiu said.

The glassware contains various human organs soaked in antiseptic potions, as well as many covered living animals, from dense insects, to small mammals, and even primates like orangutans.

Faced with these, An Wu Jiu felt a sense of discomfort, suddenly felt dizzy and nauseated. Everything here was familiar to him, including the labeled chemicals and the smell of disinfectant in the air.

A live hairless mouse was enclosed in one of the glass covers, except that it had a human ear growing on its back.

"It's used to clone organs. It's a very early technology to transplant chondrocytes to a scaffold in the shape of the auricle." Yang Erci walked to his side and explained, "The transplant to the back of a mouse is also for the purpose of borrowing live animals. The body maintains the growth of cells and tissues."

"Can all organs be obtained this way?" An Wujiu looked at Yang Erci.

Yang Erci shook his head, "Currently organs with important functions and complex structures, such as the heart, cannot be perfectly replicated through these organ cloning technologies, and many of them are either not very similar in appearance or have a large difference in function."

"So now more people are buying artificial hearts, and the pacemaker works better."

An Wujiu nodded, "You really are a researcher in this area."

Yang Erci was slightly dazed, and when she heard An Wujiu's words, she replied softly.

"It used to be."

But she quickly recovered and didn't say anything more.

With just these four words, An Wujiu thinks that she has the rationality to appear at the altar, after all, a researcher specializing in life sciences has 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 in a ball, but when he saw Shen Ti's fingertips, he was attracted, and the pink nose tip came close and stuck it across the glass.

But soon, the mouse fell to the ground, struggled a few times, and didn't respond.

Shen Ti immediately retracted his hand and frowned in confusion.

When Yang Erci saw it, he comforted him with a tone of no relief, "It's normal, these mice are immune-deficient animals, so they can't reject the cells of other organisms, but correspondingly, their lifespans are also very short."

An Wu Jiu looked at Shen Ti and felt that he didn't seem to be able to accept the picture of a mouse dying in front of him, that's why his eyes stayed for so long.

In most human cognition, animals, especially animals that are themselves experimental subjects, their lives are not of the same order of magnitude as human life.

But it doesn't seem to be the case for Shen Ti.

He always looked at all living things from an outsider's point of view.

Yang Erci tried to put her hand on the sensor on the top of the glass cover, and sure enough, the permission was opened, and the top glass cover opened automatically.

She reached out and gently took out the dead mouse inside.

She wanted to see if there would be any clues on the mouse's body, but as soon as she picked it up, the "dead" little mouse's feet moved suddenly and it came 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 mouse took a few steps forward, then ran quickly in a certain direction.

An Wujiu felt strange, "It seems to want to take us somewhere."

So they followed this strange mouse, all the way forward, through the dense spiral vines, the preservation vessels used in the experimental research became bigger and bigger, from strange animals to people.

The mice led them to a circular clearing, where no vines grew, and above which a metal ball the size of a ping-pong ball floated. The mission was completed, and the mice disappeared.

Yang Erci reached out and touched the suspended sphere. In an instant, countless blue rays of light were emitted from the sphere, and finally a complete holographic projection was woven, with only one line of English sentences displayed on it.

Still, it's all for the sake of humanity.

"Identifying—"

"Welcome back, B05!"

The new content appears in the holographic projection, which is divided into three working areas, one is [Trim Work] and the other is [Perfect Copy].

There is also a work area named [movie].

"Watching movies is also part of the job?" An Wujiu was very skeptical.

Yang Erci tried to click on the [Movies] section, but there were only a few very old movies in it: "Frankstein", "Sixth Day" and "The Truman World".

However, if you try to open the video file again, a prompt sound will appear.

"Please do your job, B05!"

Yang Erci had to click [Pruning Job] first, but a large amount of unorganized data results came out.

Seeing An Wujiu staring at the movie titles under the [Movie] menu, Shen Ti leaned over and asked, "Have you seen these?"

"It seems to have an impression, maybe I saw it when I was a child." An Wu Jiu's eyes turned to his face, as if seeing Shen Ti showing a little envy.

At a certain moment, An Wu Jiao felt a subtle sense of pleasure.

But it soon disappeared.

It's normal to have not seen it.

The era they lived in was engulfed by a huge amount of video information, everyone's rhythm was very fast, almost no one would watch a complete, two-hour movie, or even listen to a song, because there are many online Numerous "selected" and "best" fragments, like the punch line in the same book, were excerpted and circulated repeatedly.

Shen Ti moved closer, "What are you talking about?"

Based on his vague memory, An Wujiu patiently recounted these ancient films to him.

"They are all very classic old films. The first one was adapted from a novel, which can be said to be the world's first science fiction novel. It is about an avid scientist who wants to 'create' a novel with his own knowledge of life science. A person, so often stealing corpses and piecing together the different corpses.

Later, because of an accident, this "person" created by him really came to life, but he was afraid, and finally caused a tragedy. "

Shen Ti shrugged, obviously disapproving of this story, "Humans seem to be very keen to be the creators."

An Wujiu was noncommittal at first, but after thinking about it, he added, "The more he thinks the knowledge he has is close to the truth, the more he wants to try to see if he can create something."

Shen Ti nodded, smiled and said "Next" to him.

"Second part..." An Wujiu thought about the words, "it is also a movie about 'creating a human', but this time the method is not so primitive, it has become a clone. The protagonist Adam is a cloned person. , so when he returned home, he found that there was an identical person there, and later... he fought against the forces of evil, and the classics were also cliché."

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 that, after all, the world situation is not good now, many religions such as Christianity have begun to recover, and there are more and more believers without restrictions.

Speaking of God, Shen Ti thought of some weird images, a golden chaos and countless eyes in chaos.

God, he thought contemptuously, had nothing special to him.

Just a false god.

An Wu Jiu noticed that Shen Ti fell into a kind of contemplation and Yang Erci was still analyzing the data, so he stretched out his hand and shook it in front of Shen Ti's eyes, "Do you still want to hear it?"

Shen Ti naturally took his hand, "Of course."

With just such a movement, a certain nerve of An Wujiu suddenly jumped, he tried to pull out his hand, but in the end he was unable to succeed, so he quickly and even panicked to introduce him the last movie, "The third It's about...a story of a person's entire life being just a lie."

Shen Ti waited for a while and found that he didn't speak anymore.

"that's it?"

An Wujiu nodded, this time he successfully pulled out his hand.

"right."

Heart beating so fast.

After reading the data, Yang Erci worked on the keyboard projected by the holographic projection for a long time, and finally came to a result.

"This pruning effort ... is about embryonic gene editing."

An Wu Jiu turned his face and wanted to speak, but heard Shen Ti say behind him, "You must not remember, so you can't tell why. Next time, watch that movie with me."

Is this an invitation?

An Wujiu was a little confused, since he said those ambiguous words to Shen Ti in another state, apart from being annoyed, he also had an unfamiliar panic in his heart.

This is not normal.

“Let’s go out and talk about it.” An Wu Jiu was a little absent-minded.

He thought that if he was an instrument, there must be some kind of malfunctioning instrument.

Otherwise, why is the fluctuation value only generated because of Shen Ti alone?

Yang Erci was quite professional, ignoring the greasy conversation between the two dog men and playing a video he found.

"It's their gene editing process, and it's an embryo."

The videos are very simple animations that explain the process of gene editing. Targeted tools locate the part of the double-helix DNA that needs to be edited, making deletions, substitutions, or insertions.

This is obviously a propaganda video, which extols the advantages of gene editing engineering in every possible way. For example, it can fundamentally eliminate those "incurable diseases", completely knock out disease-causing genes, and perform efficient programming on the human body like programming. Improve.

No single technology is harmless.

Yang Erci said: "In fact, this technology has appeared for a long time, and it is indeed a good choice for patients when applied to adults with the disease. However, without repeated verification, it can be directly applied. When it comes to embryos and babies, the nature changes completely. This is strictly prohibited by various countries."

Indeed, perhaps through this method, it is really possible to give birth to a "personal son" who will not have an incurable disease in his life, but things will never be that simple.

"Adults can choose." An Wujiu looked at the rolling data, "embryos cannot refuse, they can only passively accept this kind of experiment."

Hearing this sentence, Yang Erci nodded her head. On the one hand, she agreed with An Wu Jiu's words, and on the other hand, she was once again amazed by the huge transformation of this person. If the person standing in front of her was An Wu Jiu an hour ago, I am afraid there will be no such sympathy.

"And this gene scissors is far from the accuracy of universal application, and the probability of error is very high. As you can see in those data, a large part of them have more or less failures. Behind the failures here is a life. .

Gene editing experiments may seem short-lived and can be done in minutes, but these embryos that are passive subjects will grow slowly. In order to obtain edited results, these people will be observed experimental subjects for the rest of their lives, whether they want to or not. "

really.

An Wujiu understood, this is Truman's world.

Shen Ti put forward another conjecture, "If the gene-edited embryos reproduce like ordinary humans and go down from generation to generation, will there be a domino phenomenon?"

Yang Erci looked at him, "This possibility is not ruled out. Here are the results of the simulation experiments. According to the calculation results of hundreds of millions of times by the computer, there is also the possibility of gene mutation, and it appears in the entire human gene pool."

In the holographic projection, a whole patch of blue light spots appeared, in which red spots appeared little by little, and then more and more red spots appeared, combining and diffusing at an extremely fast speed.

She paused, "That's why some people have called for people who have undergone gene editing of embryos not to have offspring, so as not to contaminate the gene pool."

An Wujiu immediately said, "This is unfair, they are also human, not experimental material."

This sounds very sad.

Every artificially created product does not have the right to actively choose his own life. Whether it is a gene-edited baby or a cloned human being, they are just victims of violation of ethics.

"This is not the most terrible thing, the most terrible thing is that the technology is applied at the wrong time, and they may suffer the sequelae caused by the immaturity of this technology at any time. Some genes that are knocked out may cause disease, but more likely to undertake extremely important physiological functions."

During the silence, Shen Ti spoke first, "It should be more than this shelter that has done relevant 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 as soon as possible. The results of the experiments of the popular imagination.”

Like a sudden appearance of Frankstein.

"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 broken their fear of the unknown." Yang Erci said .

"Of course human beings need to move forward, but not by any means." An Wujiu stared at the cold data.

Without restraint, Pandora's box will one day be opened.

Yang Erci is about to open the second workspace, which is [Perfect Copy].

"I think I already know what this is..."

Suddenly, the holographic projection disappeared, retracted into the ball, and the ball disappeared all of a sudden, too late to capture.

The room fell into darkness for a moment, just like the corridor outside, and then, the red warning light began to flash.

The beep repeats the warning.

"Pressure stopped, powertrain malfunction."

"Did someone move?"

As soon as Yang Erci finished speaking, she suddenly saw that her feet were empty.

Under the darkness, the three of them fell into an unknown void.

It is not so much an empty space as it is a transmission tunnel, and soon, An Wu Jiu entered a new dark place, and his feet landed firmly on the ground.

"You are at the very center of this floor now."

It wasn't a synthetic voice that lacked emotion, An Wujiu quickly recognized it, it was the voice of that mad rabbit on the second floor.

"I didn't expect you to survive this test. The previous people have long since died. I really want to congratulate you. But unfortunately, your companions did not follow the rules."

The surroundings gradually lit up, An Wu Jiu realized that he was in a small room, the size of the toilet cubicle, there was no window, 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 companions may not die immediately, but they will definitely become incomplete."

"And you who fail will be trapped in this small room until the end of the game."

"Got it? My lovely friends."

The four at the four corners of the cloister kept in touch.

Wu You has been trying to touch the microphone on the auricle, trying to contact the three of them, but there is still no signal.

"By the way," Nan Shan suddenly thought of something, "Josh, have you found a playing card?"

"Well." Josh responded loudly, "There are six number cards in that one, a Joker card."

"Joker?" Wu You thought for a while, "Aren't you the Joker? Does this card represent you?"

"I thought so at first," Josh said, "but it's not right. I'm D03. There are 3s of diamonds in the poker cards, and everyone has them. What's missing is the 2s of diamonds."

"Isn't 2 A02, Brother Wu Jiu?" Wu You thought for a while, feeling that something was wrong.

2 is missing, and a Joker is added, which should point to something.

"I'm confused about one thing," Nan Shan's voice came out again, "So far, among all the people, only Mr. An who has been fake has appeared. Originally, we thought that everyone else would also appear fake, but now it seems that it is not. so."

"Yes." Zhong Yirou agreed, "and he doesn't seem to be killed..."

On the first floor, he had already been smashed by Yang Erci with a heavy object, and even if he hadn't died, he would never have appeared in front of everyone intact.

"Joker is also a ghost card..." A bold guess appeared in Wu You's mind.

"Could it be that A02 is dead, and the rest is a ghost card."

The atmosphere suddenly became gloomy and cold, and there was a gust of wind, which made Wu You's back numb.

Zhong Yirou thought for a while, based on this assumption, "can't kill" can also be established, "You are right, if so, will it be the revenge of A02's ghost to others? In this case, it should not be Replicas of other characters appear..."

Before she could finish speaking, her voice suddenly changed, "Who?"

"What's wrong?" Wu You felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't move. "What happened?"

"Someone patted my shoulder just now." Zhong Yirou's voice trembled slightly, "None of you have ever left this green square..."

Before waiting for a response or having time to say another word, Zhong Yirou's voice suddenly became sharp and she called out, "Someone...someone is pulling..."

Wu You shouted loudly, "I'll go over immediately!"

"Wait." Nan Shan suddenly stopped Wu You.

"What are you waiting for? Maybe A02 has appeared again!" After Wu You said excitedly, he suddenly realized his suspicions when he heard Zhong Yirou's voice at first.

In the scream of being attacked, Josh was a little shaken, "This..."

"Is it really Miss Zhong?"