Virus City
The massive tide of data began to recede, waves made of 0s and 1s repeatedly crashing onto the beach, the binary values remaining in the sand flashing incessantly, and finally, two figures sat up from the beach.
"This is my virtual machine in cyberspace. It can track the IPs of most data nodes. You—Holy crap!!!"
Ah Hong turned his head and saw an incredibly handsome young man lazily looking at the sun on the beach. He had thin lips, a high nose, apple cheeks that looked like they wanted to be bitten, and eyes as pure as spring water.
Ah Hong's heart skipped a beat.
"You're already married, and your partner is a man!"
Ah Hong forcibly looked away, his face slightly flushed, and said, "Your appearance has changed so much!"
When a normal person logs into the cyber network, their appearance and personality undergo a significant change due to the decomposition and reorganization of their consciousness. But Ah Hong has never seen a muscular man suddenly turn into a cute boy before.
The senior engineer ignored the other party and said, "Once you find the data concept entity, you can take your pink-haired girl and fly away, so stop asking so many questions and get to work."
Ah Hong rolled his eyes, and with a virtual command, the beach disappeared, replaced by an "internet cafe".
In front of every computer in the internet cafe, sat a man named "Ahong," his fingers frantically typing on the keyboard.
"They actually created a backdoor account. I haven't seen such an old-fashioned hacking technique in a long time. Your master must be an old-fashioned hacker."
Modern hackers are more inclined to directly invade the brain.
"If you're bored, you can find a computer and turn it on. My master has at least 100TB of ancient games stored up, as well as tens of thousands of ancient short films."
Where is your master now?
"Have no idea."
"Have no idea?"
"Ever since the old man started talking about some kind of 'electronic ascension,' he hasn't shown up again. My senior sister, senior brother, and I all agree that either the old man's personality has been corrupted by a virtual virus, or he failed in his attempt to build a local area network and got caught in data turbulence."
"Electron ascension?"
Electron ascension is definitely not a legitimate civilizational ascension; it's probably some kind of method for acquiring big data.
"You have senior brothers and sisters?"
"Eldest Senior Sister, Second Senior Brother, and me make three."
"That's really special."
Hackers typically teach only one person at a time, rarely taking on three apprentices. Many veteran hackers even directly replicate a part of a personality to create an artificial intelligence.
Where are your senior brothers and sisters?
"Senior brother went to the mother city, and senior sister—" Ah Hong hesitated for a moment, "... and senior sister joined the rebel army."
"Tsk, mortal enemies, what a melodramatic plot," the senior engineer said lazily, then suddenly let out a soft exclamation.
"Your senior's hacker code name isn't 'Bird of Paradise,' is it?"
Now it was Ah Hong's turn to be astonished. Hundreds of Ah Hongs in the entire internet cafe looked up at the same time.
How did you know?!
I won't tell you.
The senior engineer shrugged. How could he not have heard of one of the 11 most famous hackers in the future, who had fallen into the Arasaka Tower and severely damaged the Deep Web?
The fall of Arasaka Tower was a landmark event in the mid-period of the Machine Rift Star, signifying that the Mother City had lost control of cyberspace.
To be honest, a significant part of the reason he insisted on becoming Cyber Hacker was to participate in this part of the storyline.
The Mother City and the Cyber Tide are like two colossal entities about to collide.
Only by precisely jumping onto each wave can one avoid being crushed to pieces by the giant waves.
"I didn't expect such a pleasant surprise."
The incredibly cute boy chuckled, looking absolutely adorable and charming.
"Introduce me to your senior sister sometime."
Ah Hong rolled his eyes. "Dream on, my senior sister hasn't contacted me for almost ten years."
The passage of time in a virtual machine can be adjusted, which is related to the technical skill of Cyber Hacker and is also limited by the nervous system.
According to Ahong, the ratio of virtual machine time to real time is 10 to 1. In other words, 10 hours have passed in the virtual machine, but only one hour has passed in reality.
After watching a full 10 short period films, without even fast-forwarding, Ah Hong's voice finally rang out, sounding somewhat hesitant.
"We found one, but it's not a secure data node."
"It's unsafe, what do you mean?"
"That was a virus city."
In cyber networks, data nodes are like islands in the ocean, used to house AI, hackers, and cybernetic individuals.
However, not every data node is secure.
The safest place is naturally a data haven for large enterprises.
However, large corporations usually do not open their premises to the public.
The data nodes that are open to the public can be cloud servers, local area networks in the real world, or virtual network communities.
None of them are particularly safe.
After all, Cyber Hacker can't get into truly safe places.
But the truly dangerous data nodes are those that even hackers dare not easily venture into.
Because that place is rife with all sorts of internet viruses.
These viruses include ancient computer viruses, error codes in human brain servers, AI that causes personality breakdowns, and even some destructive neural signals.
In short, all sorts of monsters and demons are running rampant.
These red data nodes also have a nickname—Virus City.
"Are you sure there's a big data monster out there?"
"It has been confirmed that the underlying framework of that data node has changed."
"That's about right."
The concept of data as a whole, or the "big data monster," is actually something that is very difficult for people to understand.
To put it more vividly, this thing is like Baidu, Google, or a penguin come to life.
Because cybernetic networks use analog data instead of binary data, the massive data flow entering and leaving network portals year after year naturally anthropomorphizes search engines and chat tools, turning them into a super monster somewhere between AI and a virus.
Why are big data monsters able to "enlighten" people through data? Because they themselves are the very entities from which countless big data enlightenments have been born.
Let's go.
Are you sure?
"Certainly."
Ah Hong shrugged and said nothing.
The Cyber Hacker community includes autistic children, madmen, freaks, and anti-humanists, but there are absolutely no cowards.
Hundreds of Ah Hongs merged into one, the internet cafe began to disappear, and a large white door appeared.
The door opened, and a large stream of data flooded the virtual machine. The page switched, and the virtual machine disappeared.
The two suddenly lost their footing and fell directly from the atmosphere. Rolling data clouds swirled around them, and the data redundancy created a fierce wind.
"Holy crap, the system virus has destroyed the underlying structure of this data node!" Ah Hong exclaimed.
"I knew you were unreliable!"
The senior engineer grabbed with both hands, and a large number of 0s and 1s appeared where his fingers gripped.
[User data lost]
[User data lost]
[User data lost]
[User data lost]
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