Hive City

Southern Hemisphere, Pharmaceutical Zone, Hive Machinery City

The whole city was eerily quiet, as if no one was alive.

The pedestrians on the road did not speak.

The subway workers who work overtime are silent.

The white-collar workers in the office remained silent.

It was as if everyone's tongue had been cut off.

But upon closer inspection, people of each identity have their own way of communicating.

White-collar workers exchange glances, their eyes simultaneously scanning a stream of data; the content and direction to be handed over at work are all communicated.

The pheromones emitted by pedestrians reveal their moods: anxiety, peace, anger, sadness. People tend to gravitate towards peaceful individuals and stay away from irritable ones. When two people emitting similar 'courtship' pheromones are attracted to each other, they can easily become a couple.

There are many similar scenarios, and many similar ways of communicating.

That's why the machine city is called "Honeycomb".

In the universe, the Hive civilization is an excellent carbon-based civilization. One is billions, and billions are one. Individuals and groups are completely inseparable.

Therefore, the wisdom of individuals in this civilization can be superimposed to an unlimited extent.

What ordinary civilizations take a hundred years to advance in technology, the Hive civilization can achieve in a single year.

Therefore, many civilizations are searching for ways to become a "hive".

Some rely on technology, such as the "Brain-Computer Interaction Project".

Some are treated with medication, such as what's happening here right now.

While it hasn't reached the level of a "hive," it has achieved basic "barrier-free communication."

If you were to randomly open the mouth of a resident of a beehive city, you would find that their tongue is shorter than that of a normal person.

This is a form of regression.

Or, to put it another way, evolution.

"Winter"

"Winter"

"Winter"

"Winter"

With a tremendous noise, the city came to a standstill that day.

All components of the mechanical city, including the intelligent voice elevator, the fully automatic flying car track, and the neon GG, were shut down.

With the shutdown of the last large machine, the city's mechanical brain,

Everyone knows that the corporate war has begun.

Everyone's expression was different: nervous, scared, excited, and fanatical. Various types of information flowed from the human body, even triggering some fluctuations in cyberspace.

A human face appeared in the sky.

Then, a black line descended from the sky, tearing apart a human face. The buzzing sound grew louder and louder. Then, the black line scattered and turned into small, mechanical bee robots, each the size of a puppy. They had hook-like fixing devices on their wings and a strange surgical needle on their tails.

A bee-like robot, like a facehugger, suddenly grabbed a person's head, and then a surgical needle swiftly pierced the back of his head. The pedestrian's eyes rolled back, his whole body trembled, and he froze in place.

Then, the bee ejected its mechanical foot blades, lasers flashing on them, and with a "buzzing" motion, slid down the back of the head, and a blood-stained skull the size of a monkey's butt fell to the ground.

Then, several other bee legs sprang out, their tips carrying electronic controllers, brain implants, neural wires, brain-computer interface chips, circuit boards...

With the surgical modifications, the entire left side of the brain was completely removed.

Undoubtedly, this technological approach of "brain-computer interface" is a right-brain modification within brain modification, directly altering the brain to make it a signal access center.

There is no good or bad in technological routes, only whether they are suitable or not. Race, resources, social environment, and technological ethics must all be taken into account. Generally speaking, the selection of an important technological route requires a decade or even longer of negotiation before it can be implemented in society.

For example, the simplest example is the alternation of dynasties between gasoline cars and electric cars.

However, in the cyber testing ground, the problem can be solved with just one large-scale, sufficiently intense social experiment.

On the walls of the Hive Mechanical City, three dark figures silently watched this scene.

Human modification is deadly, especially to the most sensitive part of the brain. The strong smell of blood is overwhelming. In the vision of one of the dark figures, two-thirds of the people on the entire street have successfully completed the modification, while one-third of them have died directly in the process.

With all the city's sanitation robots shut down, these corpses lay on the cold ground, their blood flowing and congealing.

The significant loss of "human data" is acceptable during corporate warfare.

Moreover, this can hardly be considered a large quantity.

"A 5% success rate for modification, indeed, this honeycomb-shaped drug-modified organism is very suitable for achieving this stage of brain-computer interface modification, increasing the success rate by 3%, fantastic!"

A dark figure emerged from the shadows, revealing a square metal head. As his voice-generating device rang out, the sound of a fan spinning could even be heard from inside his "head."

This person's head is a "computer mainframe".

"Doctor, check the network and see the strength of the neural network signal," another voice said.

"Okay, boss."

The "main brain" shook its head, and soon, the four metal surfaces flipped and turned into a display screen. A large number of bar charts appeared on the screen. Each "bar" represented the signal strength of a region, and now, all the "signal bars" were rising wildly.

"We have already built tens of thousands of connected virtual machines, which can artificially create 100 artificial network nodes. The computing power is comparable to that of a large data processing center. And this is only the first stage."

The dark figure in the middle revealed an expression of ecstasy, and the shadows around it continued to expand outward, emitting "gudu" sounds.

"I can feel the joy of the enterprise's will, the overlap between machinery and living organisms that makes it feel fulfilled, the further expansion of the system organization that allows it to evolve, and the feedback it gives me is also enormous. I am certain that in less than three days, my human brain processor will be able to advance to the next level and reach the level of top-tier AI!"

"No wonder all entrepreneurs are eager to participate in this grand event; it turns out that societal transformation can bring such a powerful boost to the ability of businesses to act as an auxiliary AI!"

The last dark figure spoke, its voice rough and hoarse.

"But I must remind you that this is the territory of the biopharmaceutical industry. After taking 'honeycomb drugs,' various types of biological viruses will be generated in everyone's body. And after brain-computer interface modification and uploading to the network, these viruses will inevitably evolve into human brain viruses."

"If this type of virus is not eliminated, it will be even more troublesome than the data monsters in cyberspace. Your brain-computer interface will be sieved by them."

"You don't need to worry about that. We made preparations when we came here," the doctor replied, looking into the distance. "However, there are some troubles that I'll need you to handle, supervisor."

"No problem," the supervisor said indifferently.

He could sense some powerful presence within this mechanical city.

Corporate warfare is a feast of technological evolution, but for some, it is a disaster.

The street area of Hive City, Longtou Street.

A bio-engineered woman, about two meters tall, stood in place with a gloomy expression.

Her skin was as pink and tender as a baby's, and you could even vaguely see the brain matter moving under the cortex. Her hair was like that of the legendary Medusa, and she could emit 20 times more neurohormones than a normal person and 100 times more. This allowed her to even modify people's perception, communication, and even secretly influence their personality.

This ability made her one of the top gang leaders in the neighborhood.

She herself is a parasite-like existence in a beehive society.

The more tightly knit the collective consciousness, the more likely it is to give rise to this kind of "collective consciousness parasite".

Around her were scattered bee robots, all cut in half with clean, round cuts.

Her existence, similar to that of Lady Red Dream in the City That Never Sleeps, is a special product of a specific social structure.

In short, a local bully.

For local strongmen like her, the social transformation brought about by each corporate war is a disaster.

The sky suddenly darkened, then the ground trembled violently, and a huge black shadow slowly stood up, revealing its true form: a super mechanical warrior with a modification rate of over 100%, with hundreds of gears of all sizes spinning wildly as it rose.

His eyes, however, resembled hundreds of tiny gears joined together, spinning wildly.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Shan Shen, the combat supervisor of the security department at EditTech!"

"I'm here to purge social scum like you!"