CNS | Chapter 13

Chapter 13, Injured

“Consciousness transfer?”

After hearing Jiede’s words, a term automatically surfaced in Shen Run’s mind. “Didn’t that technology disappear long ago?”

“Yes.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Shen Run received photos sent by Jiede through the communications chip, three photos spliced together, appearing directly before Shen Run’s eyes.

“It looks like our pirate friend dug that vanished technology back up,” Jiede said.

The three photos were of the tattoos on the chests of those three clones, exactly the same, a black cross drawn in the middle of a triangle.

He had seen this pattern before.

Shen Run’s gaze began to focus, and gradually turned fierce. He clenched his back teeth and slowly squeezed out three words.

“The Pioneers.”

Jiede nodded. “Those charlatans, Agent Gray has already infiltrated their church.”

“This bunch of idiots call the body the flesh, they think ‘flesh’ is the prison of the ‘spirit’, and every believer who joins the church uploads their consciousness, generating a digital persona used for network roaming.”

She let out a disdainful cold laugh. “They treat cyberspace as a paradise, wishing they could be plugged in twenty-four hours a day, living in a virtual shell.”

Clones and digital persona, these were all technologies explicitly prohibited by international law.

The former was because clone technology was not completely mature. The growth cycle of clones was very different from that of natural humans. The time required for them to develop to maturity was greatly shortened, but around the age of thirty, a clone’s organs would completely fail within an extremely short period of time, until death.

The issue of clone human rights had also been a topic of constant controversy ever since this technology was introduced.

As for digital persona, it involved even older historical issues.

There had long been a saying circulating in the network technology circles, that not long after artificial intelligence technology appeared in the last century, there had once been a large-scale AI rebellion. Since then, governments and regime organizations of various countries had reached a consensus, and did not allow any organization or institution to carry out research related to “giving artificial intelligence self-awareness.”

In essence, digital persona technology was degrading human self-awareness into an AI program under a framework.

Research not allowed and cannot be researched were two different things. In the present collapse of social order, some companies and their subordinate research institutes not only developed clone and digital persona technology on a large scale, they even combined the two and innovatively invented “consciousness transfer” technology.

The deep-dive pod originally used for network roaming also became the cradle of consciousness transfer. As long as the deep-dive pod was used to start the digital persona program, then the clone’s original self-awareness was erased, and a chip was implanted in their brain, “soul interaction” between the two bodies could be achieved.

Of course, consciousness transfer had extremely high requirements for hardware facilities, and building the transmission network also required huge operational and maintenance costs. No company was willing to spend a large sum of money to invest in this illegal technology, so consciousness transfer had only existed in one city for a short period of time.

“Consciousness transfer couldn’t be too far from the server, they must have a subserver set up in Saint Grange.”

Shen Run glanced at the time. It was now eight in the evening. “Give you three hours, find it.”

“Hey! How could three hours be enough…” Jiede frowned, showing dissatisfaction.

“I don’t like leaving grudges overnight.”

Shen Run took out his cigarette case, remembered that this was a hospital, and put it back again.

The ward door beside them opened from the inside, and a doctor in a light green uniform walked out. Shen Run practically sprang up from the bench, blocking the doctor’s path.

“My younger brother, is he okay now?”

The doctor frowned, the eyes exposed outside were full of impatience. “What could be wrong, you should have taken him to a cybernetic prosthesis clinic, not a hospital.”

As a private hospital under Evergreen Bio, Sacred Heart Hospital mainly served clients with less than 10% cybernetic augmentation. Artificial intelligence coverage had long since been implemented in the hospital, and the role of the human staff was mainly to soothe client emotions.

For some reason today, the hospital system seemed to have suffered some unknown attack, all the AI doctors were offline, and only they, living people, could see patients in person.

Shen Run blinked, somewhat puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, who of you is going to the lobby to pay the fee?” The doctor seemed to realize he had said something wrong and very stiffly changed the topic.

Jiede, beside him, cut in, “We still need to go to the lobby?”

What era was this.

“Yeah, originally there was no need, but today it’s strange, first the landline that hadn’t rung for more than ten years rang endlessly like it was haunted, then the hospital’s machines all inexplicably crashed, now we can only go to the manual window to pay.”

Shen Run touched his nose, somewhat guilty. He coughed twice and hurriedly urged Jiede, “Stop asking, go quickly.”

Jiede clicked her tongue, took a large stack of forms, and left the ward entrance unwillingly.

“Oh, right, the patient has already woken up. After he rests for another hour or two, you can return…”

Shen Run had already lost his patience. Before the doctor finished speaking, he had already pushed open the ward door and rushed in.

Scene 15

“Xiaoze!”

Shen Run stepped into the ward. Only a small lamp was lit at the doorway, the room was almost completely dark, quiet enough that it seemed one could hear breathing.

Shen Ze was wearing a loose hospital gown, like a delicate doll, sitting quietly by the bed.

Shen Ze was a little over 1.95 meters tall. Even sitting down, he still looked very tall. His shoulders were slightly hunched, and one arm was suspended in a white support sling across his chest, making him look very thin.

A ring of white bandages had also been wrapped around his forehead like Chi Yu’s, and the ends of his hair, long enough to reach his waist, were spread out, covering the back of his neck. Perhaps because he had lost a lot of blood, his handsome face was paler than usual.

The whole person looked weak, pitiful, and helpless.

“Ge!”

When Shen Ze saw his brother coming in, the face that had originally not shown much expression instantly fell. He frowned, dragging out the end of the word as he called out ge.

Hearing Shen Ze’s voice full of grievance, Shen Run’s already not-great mood grew even worse, and an emotion called bitterness spread between his lips and teeth.

Shen Run clicked his tongue. Bitter.

“Xiaoze, how are you?”

He walked to the side of the hospital bed, and as soon as he got close, Shen Ze wrapped his right arm, the one not hanging in the support sling, around Shen Run’s waist, burying his face against his lower abdomen.

“Ge, I hurt so much…”

His voice was muffled, and Shen Run’s heart nearly shattered hearing it.

With no time to care about anything else, Shen Run held his younger brother’s face in his hands, his eyes full of distress. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“A lot.” Shen Ze nodded. He forced out a smile. “But it’s okay, I didn’t hurt my face.”

He added, “Ge doesn’t like my face the most?”

Shen Run was first stunned, then showed a bitter smile. He used his index finger to scratch Shen Ze’s high bridge of the nose. “Silly kid, did you hit your head and break it?”

“What ge likes is all of you, not just your face. No matter where you’re hurt, even if it’s just losing a single strand of hair, ge would still feel bad.”

“Really?” Shen Ze looked up, blinking his big eyes at Shen Run. “I like ge too.”

“Cough cough…”

Looking at Shen Ze’s rather serious expression, Shen Run felt a little awkward and coughed twice.

A weak stinging pain like a bee sting came from the wound on his neck, and he thought again of Shen Ze biting his neck while he was asleep.

Endure it, this was not the time to settle accounts with this brat.

Realizing the atmosphere was about to go off course again, he hurriedly pulled the topic back. “Xiaoze, tell ge, what exactly happened, how did you end up like this?”

When Shen Ze heard his question, his face sank, and his expression became serious.

“Ge, did you get into some trouble?”

Shen Run’s heart skipped a beat, but on the surface he still forced himself to remain calm. “Huh? Why would you say that?”

“Those people held your photo, asked what our relationship was, they were all so fierce, I didn’t tell them, then they pointed a gun at me.”

When saying this, Shen Ze still did not let go of the right arm wrapped around his brother, and Shen Run also did not take away the hand on his younger brother’s face.

“I had no choice, so I could only tell them I was your younger brother, then they, then they asked me if I knew about a chip, that chip was called…”

Shen Ze frowned, seeming to have forgotten the chip’s name.

Shen Run prompted him, “Prometheus?”

“Right! That was the name, they asked me if I knew anything about this Prometheus. I had never even heard of this thing, I told them I didn’t know, and then that blond man was about to shoot at me…”

He pressed his face against Shen Run’s waist again, frowned, and spoke in a low voice as if still shaken. “Ge, I was especially scared at that time, I was scared I would just die like that, we had only just reunited, and then I was going to be unable to see you again.”

Shen Run rubbed the small curls at the top of his head, soothing his emotions. “Good, don’t be afraid, wasn’t everything okay?”

After a moment of silence, Shen Run continued pressing, “Then? What happened then?”

Among the events Shen Ze described, the person he cared most about still had not appeared, that city ranger, and when had he appeared, when had he quietly left?

“Then, then I don’t know what happened, it seemed like I was in a daze for a while.”

Shen Ze’s expression was somewhat pained as he tried his best to recall what had happened at the time. “When I came to, two people were already dead, and the blond man was fighting with some thing whose outline couldn’t be seen clearly.”

Could not see the outline clearly…

Shen Run was thoughtful. This matched Chi Yu’s description, it really was optical camouflage.

“After that, footsteps sounded outside, and that thing seemed to know you were coming, so it hurriedly left.”

Which meant that city ranger had come and left before Shen Run and the others had entered the game hall?

But the game hall only had one exit, and before Shen Ze and the blond clone fell out the window, that whole row of glass windows had also been intact.

Where had he left from?

As Shen Run was thinking, Shen Ze sitting by the bed interrupted his thoughts, cautiously asking in a low voice, “Ge, sorry, did I fail to help you with anything?”

Shen Run pinched his cheek. “You being okay is the greatest help to me.”

Shen Ze moved his face away from Shen Run’s lower abdomen, looked up, and slightly tilted his head, his eyes carrying a desire to know more. “Ge, what is Prometheus that they were talking about?”

“This… Prometheus is…”

Shen Run was stuck for a moment, not knowing how to explain it to Shen Ze. He did not really want to lie to Shen Ze, but he also did not want Shen Ze to know what kind of work he was doing.

“Work matters, you don’t need to know.”

He used his most common line, casually brushing it off, and at this moment remembered a more important question. “Xiaoze, didn’t I tell you to wait for me in Eden? How did you come to the Golden Bell Street side?”

Shen Ze put on an innocent expression. “It was Chi Yu-ge who told me I could come here to find you.”

Chi Yu… well done.

Shen Run closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, thinking about what kind of force it would take to smash his apprentice’s newly installed titanium-alloy skull.

Looking at his brother’s expression, Shen Ze blinked his clear blue eyes. “Ge, don’t blame Chi Yu-ge, it’s all my fault, if I had obediently waited for you in Eden, I wouldn’t have run into those brutes…”

“You…” Looking at his sharply contoured yet nonthreatening face, Shen Run could not help but rub his face again. “Silly child, how are you so kind.”

With that thought, he suddenly clenched his fist, and the anger that had been suppressed in his heart began to churn.

Damn the Pioneers, they actually dared to lay hands on his younger brother, who was so kind, so cute, and as obedient as a little rabbit!

“Ge…”

Shen Ze called him softly, his voice sticky. “I hurt so much…”

Shen Run’s gaze softened again. He gently touched Shen Ze’s forehead covered with white gauze, and asked once more, “Really hurts that much?”

Shen Ze nodded like a chick pecking at rice. “It really hurts, ge, I’ve never fallen from such a high place before.”

Shen Run brushed his thumb over his younger brother’s tightly furrowed brows, wanting to lessen his pain in this way.

He knew Shen Ze was telling the truth. This kid had been delicate since he was little, how could it not hurt after falling from the height of two floors.

“Then…”

Shen Run thought of something. “Xiaoze, you should have a neural processor installed now, right?”

Shen Ze did not understand, but still nodded. “After I went to college, the people around me all had one installed, so I followed them and got one too.”

Shen Run spread out his left hand, pulling out a black data cable from the groove beneath his palm. “Where is your neural slot? I’ll use the data cable to bridge our two nervous systems.”

“Ge will hurt together with you.”

Shen Ze seemed not to have expected there to be such an operation. He blankly blinked twice, then giggled. “Ge, how could I bear to?”

“And besides, I have a better way.”

“?”

Shen Run wore a confused expression. “A better way?”

Shen Ze lifted his face. His jawline seemed to have been carefully carved by the creator. Frowning, he softly said that “better way.”

“Ge kiss me once and it won’t hurt anymore.”