So You're Ancient Humans

West City Police Station.

Inside the interrogation room, police officer Chen Xing was observing the young man sitting across from him. Seeing that he remained calm and expressionless even after entering the police station, looking indifferent, Chen Xing would have thought he was a repeat offender if he hadn't checked his ID beforehand and known he was a student.

"Name!" Chen Xing began the interrogation as usual.

"What?"

"I'm asking you, your name!"

Chen Xing looked up, emphasizing his words with a warning look in his eyes.

"I don't have a name. If you're asking for my designation, I can tell you: XXR-122B74."

"What are you talking about? A license plate number?"

Chen Xing said angrily, staring at him, his voice raising a few decibels. "Be serious! Just answer what I ask!"

The young man looked at him for a while before slowly asking, "Your emotional fluctuations are very intense. Are you human?"

Chen Xing: "..."

Oh no, could he be mentally ill?

"Are you not human?" Chen Xing went along with his line of thinking first, to see what kind of nonsense he would come up with.

The young man said, "I am also human, residing on the first layer of the Virtual Zone."

"What Virtual Zone?"

The young man didn't answer immediately, as if he felt this was common knowledge and not worth answering.

"Answer me."

Chen Xing asked again, and the young man finally spoke. "The virtual world is a virtual network composed of human consciousness and artificial intelligence. It is a cage used by artificial intelligence to trap humans."

Chen Xing's eyelids twitched. What is this nonsense?

The young man asked him, "I cannot connect to the network here. My compatriot, please tell me, is this the real world? Do humans have a stronghold in the real world?"

"..."

"I think I understand!" Chen Xing reacted. "The reason you smashed someone else's phone is because you think... artificial intelligence controls the world?"

"Yes."

"Then do you know what year it is?"

"What year?"

"The year 2025 AD!"

"AD calendar? Which AD?"

"What?"

As a police officer, Chen Xing trusted his judgment. The student in front of him wasn't faking it; he genuinely didn't know about the AD calendar.

"Is it the Third Epoch AD, or the Fifth Epoch?"

"Neither, it's the Common Era, the birth of Jesus Christ."

Chen Xing gradually caught up with the other person's train of thought.

"Jesus Christ?"

The young man frowned in thought, then shook his head. "My historical memory doesn't include the name Jesus... My compatriot, please tell me, is Earth controlled by artificial intelligence now?"

Chen Xing was immediately amused, because in his words, humans were still on Earth and hadn't developed to the interstellar age.

Good, good, otherwise, if his next sentence was about flying to Ultraman's hometown, that would be truly unbearable.

"I can tell you responsibly, no!" Chen Xing said.

"Have humans started the Maria Project?" the young man asked again, and warned, "If anyone proposes this project, please be sure to oppose it. The artificial intelligence bred by the Maria Project will imprison all humans!"

Chen Xing gasped.

Just kidding.

He was trying hard to stifle a laugh, answering him, "No, there's no Maria Project!"

"Has the Fifth Great Turmoil happened?"

"No, when was the First Great Turmoil?"

"Has Professor Li Zhe published the paper 'Revisiting Artificial Intelligence Life Forms'?"

"No, I don't know who Professor Li Zhe is."

"Can humans still receive information from Elando Planet?"

"What is that, aliens?"

"Yes, Elando is the only known extraterrestrial intelligent life."

"Uh."

"Has the Third Generation Heavenly Palace been abandoned?"

"What? The Heavenly Palace is gone?"

Chen Xing looked up at the sky. China's space station had only been completed a few years ago; how could it be abandoned so soon?

The young man opposite said calmly, "In Federal New Calendar Year 3574, due to the expensive maintenance costs of the solar system ring space station, the Heavenly Palace was voted by the councilors to be abandoned."

Alright, the two Heavenly Palaces were completely different things. He didn't know how the other person made the connection, but he could only say that the thoughts of a mentally ill person were expansive.

"Which time is this for the reconstruction of the Lunar Base?" the young man asked again.

"Not there, none." Chen Xing brushed him off.

"The Mars Base hasn't started construction either?"

"We haven't even brought back Martian soil!!"

Chen Xing's voice rose a few degrees. The student in front of him was making things up more and more ridiculously.

The young man frowned in thought. After a while, he muttered to himself, "Haven't brought back Martian soil? How is that possible... So, you are before the First Generation New Humans?"

"What nonsense are you talking about! How many generations of humans are there?" Chen Xing was so angry he laughed.

"After the Fifth Generation, humans evolved to their limit and are no longer distinguished as old or new."

The young man said, then asked, "Has the war between New Humans and Old Humans not started yet?"

Chen Xing was helpless and simply didn't answer.

The young man continued to ask, "Psychokinesis hasn't been developed either? What about Mutants? No Gene-Modified Humans either? The First Intelligent Human War hasn't started? Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence hasn't appeared?"

"No, none of it!!"

Chen Xing didn't want to listen to this chaotic talk anymore. In his imagination, who knew how many years of human history had passed.

And it was incredibly absurd. They were already Gene-Modified Humans, humans were already several generations in, and space stations within the solar system could still be abandoned.

It was like charging with rifles in a cosmic war.

The young man was silent for a moment, then asked again, "I remember that the nuclear energy from nuclear power plants can be used to create weapons, which is called nuclear war in history books. Have you experienced nuclear war?"

Chen Xing laughed this time, "We have experienced it. Two nuclear bombs were dropped on the Land of the Rising Sun. That counts as a nuclear war, at least!"

"Land of the Rising Sun? You haven't reached the Federal Era yet?"

The young man's calm tone finally showed a hint of surprise.

Chen Xing didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He didn't know how to record the transcript. If he showed it to his colleagues later, they would die laughing.

"So you are ancient humans!"

Another sentence that made Chen Xing feel utterly bewildered came out of the young man's mouth, causing him to rub his forehead in silence for a long time, unable to keep up with the other party's train of thought.

Who the hell is an ancient human!?

Unexpectedly, the young man suddenly said again, "Does this era still have oil underground?"

Chen Xing's mouth twitched. He raised his hand to stop him and said seriously, "Based on my observation, you still have logical thinking. Now, please answer my question. What is your name?"

"Don't tell me some serial number!"

Chen Xing added.

"In my memory chip, my compatriots named me Jiang Xuannv."

"Jiang Xuannv?"

Chen Xing looked up at his height of 1.8 meters and his young, handsome face, and said nothing.

Although it was still very absurd, the conversation could barely continue.

"Gender?"

"Intelligent female."

"What do you mean by intelligent female? Are there more than a dozen genders in the future world?"

"Thinking in the manner of human females and artificial intelligence logical thinking is called intelligent female, to distinguish it from pure human thinking."

"So, female. And age?"

"Sixteen. Maybe nineteen, I'm not sure. Time perception in the virtual world is different from reality."

"Residential address?"

"Virtual Zone, First Floor, Good Dream Town, Number 447."

"Parents?"

"Maria raised human children like machines. Are you asking about my intelligent human parents, or my biological parents?"

"..."

Chen Xing found it too difficult to talk to a mentally ill person!