Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 898 - 143: Idiotic Question

Chapter 898: Chapter 143: Idiotic Question

"If you ask me, this thing is just like a cell..." David couldn’t help but sigh as he looked at the ellipsoid black sphere above him.

Xiang Shan stroked his chin: "Indeed."

A few months later, Xiang Shan returned to the interior of "Argon" once again. At this moment, Argon had undergone a dramatic transformation.

Many lightweight yet sturdy synthetic material pillars were placed inside Argon. Not only that, but humans had also built massive steel structures on the outside of Argon, akin to the iron framework at the base of the Eiffel Tower, enveloping Argon like a large hollow shell. Numerous steel cables hung down, fixed at various points on Argon’s surface and bonded together with high-polymer adhesives.

After conducting research, humans were amazed to discover that their materials science seemed to surpass that of Argon’s builders—of course, Argon’s builders might have considered cost issues, or it might have been that Argon’s mission did not include "maintaining its state on a planet’s surface." Humans could use lighter yet stronger materials to construct a supporting framework for Argon to prevent this floppy large object from being crushed by its own weight.

David even joked that the Voodoo Cult’s metaphor for Argon might have fulfilled its purpose already.

Although it was an off-color joke, Xiang Shan found it quite fitting.

Moreover, humans had installed many high-power lighting devices inside. Near the ground, the light was connected into a continuous expanse. The warm light even made one think of cytoplasm.

"That dark ellipsoid is the nucleus. Then, the slate is DNA. The tape head is the transcriptase. Those stored raw materials are sugars and proteins." David pointed into the distance: "Those robots are the enzymes, the organelles..."

"Interesting." Xiang Shan nodded: "So this big cell ended up experiencing accidental apoptosis."

"Indeed." David nodded: "It still stored a large amount of raw materials, but it didn’t reach its designed lifespan. What a pity."

The blocks of uranium, which emitted strong radiation, had already been urgently transported away by the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Although there was some residual radiation here, it was exceptionally weak and required no protective wear.

As the investigation deepened, humans grew increasingly in awe of Argon’s automated industrial robots. These robots were not merely shrinking internally, self-replicating generation by generation. They could even repair the shell. According to archaeological findings, this shell had at least been struck by interstellar micrometeoroids once. There was a hole several meters in diameter that punctured multiple layers of the ship’s hull. Yet, the little robots managed to repair it.

Although the repaired part had a much lower strength than the original, being almost a kind of poor alloy, it was incredible that these little robots, with their design drawings and AI combined totaling only a few hundred megabytes, could autonomously complete tasks of this magnitude.

Even after determining that "the cycle of self-replication had collapsed," they did not panic, much less destroy the ship. Instead, they converged at the tail of Argon and stepped into eternal silence.

It was like the programmed apoptosis of biological cells, full of harmonious beauty.

"I also think my analogy is quite good." David was quite pleased with himself, "I think this might be an approach..."

"But we still don’t know how to decode it." Xiang Shan gazed intently at that thing.

David patted Xiang Shan on the shoulder: "Don’t lose your mind, brother; let’s work, let’s work. Even if we want to study the aliens, we must finish the work at hand. Our salary comes from the United Nations."

Xiang Shan nodded.

However, David’s idea seemed to possess a certain magic. In his mind, "Argon" suddenly transformed into an enormous cell. It seemed to carry the evolutionary history of alien life over billions of years. In its nucleus, there was the shine of alien sunlight, the roar of alien oceans, the bursts of alien volcanoes... The life history of a planet seemed to be right there.

Xiang Shan knew this idea was actually absurd. Argon only contained a few hundred megabytes of information. Even if the aliens used advanced encryption algorithms, it wouldn’t necessarily be that large (furthermore, the encryption method chosen by the aliens didn’t seem to be exceptionally high efficiency). Those alien earth, water, fire, and wind were his romantic illusions.

But the idea seemed to have a magical quality.

—Come to think of it... not according to linear logic...

—Is genetic information like this? Could a genome or even a single gene determine several seemingly unrelated traits that, in reality, are closely connected and possess evolutionary logic...

—A gene...

—Talisman...

"Hey? Shan?" Ingrid nudged Xiang Shan: "Are you too tired?"

Only then did Xiang Shan notice that his chopsticks had already rolled the noodles in his bowl into one big clump. He had been dazed for several minutes.

"Sorry..." Xiang Shan waved his hand: "I zoned out a bit. What were you saying again?"

"The last time I talked to you about the ’Xuanji Map.’ I thought a bit about what you told me. Looking at this word puzzle from the perspective of a ’compression algorithm,’ it seems quite interesting. I thought a bit more, hoping it might give you some inspiration."

Ingrid said: "If we first follow the logic of a word puzzle, allowing poems to crisscross one another, with the same characters stacked together... through computer brute force enumeration and the like, what kind of word matrix do you think you could get?"

"I can’t say much for sure, except that there must be many gaps." Xiang Shan waved his hand: "The frequency of occurrence of Chinese characters varies, even in poetry. Whatever it turns out to be, it would just be a large crossword puzzle."

—From the perspective of a compression algorithm, the ’Xuanji Map’ is not superior...

Xiang Shan felt as if he had grasped something again.

But clearly, just like the illusion video game players often experience thinking "I can turn the tables," Xiang Shan’s feeling was still an illusion.

People like Xiang Shan were not uncommon in the park. Most of the scholars who chose to stay harbored tremendous interest in the aliens’ mysteries.

But it seemed Xiang Shan was slightly over the top.

That day, he even dreamt of that cell.

In an ocean... in deep-sea volcanoes...

Suddenly!

Like lightning cutting through dark clouds, illuminating a primordial lifeless planet, Xiang Shan suddenly sat up in bed.

He grabbed his phone and immediately made a call to Yog: "Hey, Yog?"

"What’s the matter, at this hour..." Yawgmoth was evidently very sleepy.

"I want to ask you a question..." Xiang Shan took a deep breath: "Does genetic information contain the structure of the ’cell’ itself?"

"Huh?" Yawgmoth didn’t quite understand the question. Biologists aren’t used to this kind of phrasing.

Xiang Shan asked again: "What I mean is, how does genetic material reproduce the process of the ’cell’ structure’s creation itself?"

Yawgmoth was furious: "You’re calling me at this hour just to ask such a stupid question?"