Mistaken Entry

Chapter 16: 1.16 Chapter Accidental Entry

"Attention, attention. Due to interference with the space-time shuttle orbit, you will be forced to land at the nearest available location. Please prepare!"

When Wei Keng received this message, he was a little uneasy. After the four small hourglasses ran out, he would have to face reality.

During this period, communication between the Main World and himself had been intermittent. They had roughly told him, "There's a plane crash." "But don't worry, sufficient supplies will be sent."

That's right, sufficient supplies. The Federation had sent three thousand times the Information Enthalpy, doing their best to save Wei Keng.

However, due to Wei Keng's lack of understanding of the Target Plane's physical foundation, he was unable to effectively utilize this three thousand-fold Information Enthalpy. Of course, the Target Plane was a low-exploration plane, and its key physical rules were originally blank.

If he couldn't find a guide from the system, what else could he do?

After Wei Keng's call to the system yielded no results, he began his self-rescue operation. Following the original template he was deployed with, he kept copying and copying. At least he used it all. This was like a failing student who, knowing nothing of the exam answers, copied the questions and filled in the blanks.

By the time the system re-established stable communication, Wei Keng had used up all three thousand times the Information Enthalpy.

The system, on its end, seemed a bit surprised by Wei Keng's approach.

In the Time-Space Administration Bureau, sixteen Observers, including Bai Linglu and Yang Chunfen, were now communicating with Wei Keng through the Joint Communication Network. Their evaluation of Wei Keng's method of handling Information Enthalpy went beyond mere misuse. "Self-smart" was a mild term; it was practically "rushing to his death." However, given the current situation, it wasn't appropriate for them to scold a New Transmigrator.

In the Void, as Wei Keng began to descend, the system offered a few prompts and crucial instructions: "Your situation is one of single proliferation. We must inform you that this proliferation is difficult for the system to precisely dock with at the moment. Only broadcast docking is possible."

Wei Keng: "Okay, what do I need to do on this plane?"

The system's reply was concise and clear: Survive for one hundred days.

Finally, amidst a bright light, Wei Keng descended. He opened his eyes. There were flowers and grass around him. The environment was in its original ecology. But after a moment, Wei Keng suddenly felt something was wrong.

Swish. With a uniform sound, fourteen hundred people stood up on the beach. Wei Keng looked at these copies of himself around him?

These copies were identical. Some stood under a big tree, getting their faces scraped by a spider web, while others were hunched over to avoid being scratched by treetops.

Wei Keng raised his hand, preparing to...

At that moment, a voice came from beside him. "Slap!" Almost half of the people slapped their foreheads. This time, the action wasn't as uniform. The crackling sound was like firecrackers. The rest, like Wei Keng, seemed to think it was too stupid for so many people to slap their foreheads at the same time, and it was better to put their hands down.

In a daze, Wei Keng realized that after thousands of simple copies of the Information Enthalpy, everyone here was him. But within each individual, the "him" he saw now appeared as Others!

When in doubt, ask the system. He began to search, and at the same time, the other copies of himself were doing the same.

"System, come out."

As Wei Keng searched for the system, he made eye contact with the other copies of himself who were also looking for the system. This further confirmed to Wei Keng that these were all him, all copied.

"Too many people online. Please consolidate your questions." The system seemed very chaotic and had to issue a shielding language.

The Wei Kengs fell into panic internally. With mediocre talent, they lacked the composure of Daoist Qi cultivation. Once one of them panicked, it would echo like an infectious disease throughout the group.

As their emotional stability rapidly deteriorated, the Wei Kengs still retained logical thinking, knowing they had to do something to achieve unity in their collective action.

A few seconds later, one of them stepped forward and shouted, "Assemble!" The word was initially loud but clearly lacked confidence afterward.

If they were stranded with others, Wei Keng would never have stepped forward so boldly to shout, and after shouting, he would have felt guilty.

But these were all himself.

As one by one, they silently began to form ranks according to the benchmark, the Wei Keng who shouted the slogan clearly let out a long sigh of relief.

The Wei Kengs consciously began to queue up. And their voices grew louder with each count, And before counting, there were quick prompts from left to right. The "Wei Keng" designated the number label of the count as their temporary code.

This meaning needed no explanation. The Wei Kengs at this moment all thought of one situation: that in this plane, collective cooperation was clearly necessary. For each of them to efficiently complete task allocation and division of labor and cooperation, there had to be a default code system among them.

The first phalanx was successfully formed. Although it was crooked at first, the Wei Kengs immediately aligned left and right, making the phalanx more orderly.

To prevent the communication channel from being jammed again due to "too many visitors," as had happened just now.

The Wei Kengs specifically designated the twenty-fifth person in each row as the communications group, responsible for contacting the system. Twenty-five was also Wei Keng's birthday and a lucky number.

The Wei Kengs assigned to the communications group quickly obtained intelligence from the system and relayed the situation to the other Wei Kengs in the queue.

First, this plane was a biological evolution plane, belonging to a near plane.

According to the plane classification of the Time-Space Bureau, this was a "near plane." According to the plane resource level classification, it was unknown. According to the ratings of past transmigrators in the plane, it was a "danger level."

In fact, the adjective "danger" was too general. Most planes where a world war occurred, and one-tenth of the adult males in the world were killed or injured, could be called dangerous. As for Wei Keng's plane, it was called the "Pandora" plane. Human civilization was almost extinct, and the main world side's multiple waves of transmigrators sent in the past twenty years had almost all returned injured! This included three ministers.

Since safety guidelines for this plane had not yet been found, this plane could be described as "horror."

Currently, the East and West were engaged in their first all-round conflict in time and space, but this type of plane was not within the scope of warfare.

Pandora Plane Data:

Human Civilization underwent significant changes in 2012, caused by an outer solar system entity named Pandora that arrived on Earth.

This was not a meteorite, nor an alien spaceship, but an existence that humans had never understood before.

Initially, this entity landed in Florida, North America. Before landing, after warnings were ineffective, the US Space Department attempted an interception with nuclear weapons in outer space. However, it was useless. This optical existence passed through the nuclear bomb's light radiation and shock wave like a ghost. It also proved that this thing could not be destroyed by nuclear bombs after landing on Earth.

The US military quickly sealed off the area. This blockade only prevented outsiders from entering, not hindering those inside from escaping, because there were no longer any living people inside.

The outermost layer of this area was a mass of mist. However, after passing through the mist, there was a bizarre boundary line.

It was as if two different spaces were interleaved, forming an irregular interface. When sunlight and other energies passed through this interface, they refracted into various rays. After passing through this flash, most electronic devices could not transmit. Information within the frequency band was inexplicably distorted. Walkie-talkies could only transmit within a range of a few hundred meters.

In the early days, the first batch of scientists from the American government entered this area as a vanguard, wearing equipment with the highest level of biological protection. However, the entire team disappeared, with only one person emerging, unable to speak, only staring blankly at anyone who spoke to them.

However, when the second expedition team entered, a female biologist emerged alive as a lucky survivor, bringing back crucial information from the Pandora Area. All the biological genes within were interconnected. Crocodiles grew octopus teeth in their mouths, cheetahs' tongues turned into snake tongues, and humans who walked in would inexplicably merge with plant genes, becoming humanoid shrubs.

Talking bears and deer with flowers growing on their antlers, as well as fish with suction cup tentacles growing in the water, all biological genes could be exchanged remotely. The entire natural ecosystem seemed to be turning into one big family. Reproductive isolation between species? No, there was no need for reproductive activities; all populations could share genes with each other.

This might be a tool used by aliens to study the life information of a planet, but it was accidentally leaked to Earth, causing an ecological disaster.

Or perhaps it was just a disaster for higher animals, as it was an overnight process of collectivizing the genes that had evolved over billions of years in the entire natural ecosystem.

Collectivization? This was a concept in human society. If this were a concept of life, it would undoubtedly be madness. Just as organisms followed Darwinian Evolution, if society played by Darwinism! Then it would be f***ed.

Humans were the top contenders in Earth's four-billion-year evolutionary race, occupying the highest ecological niche. Not to mention intelligence, even their skeletal structure, muscles, and nervous systems were the best on Earth! And this top-tier configuration was achieved through countless deaths and trial-and-error during evolution.

The great fusion of life gene information in this Pandora Area? Humans were undoubtedly in a state of panic.

However, what caused humans even more panic was that this Pandora Area was still expanding.

In 2113, it spread throughout Florida in just a hundred years. By 2304, the entire Pandora Area had swallowed the entire United States, and its expansion rate was accelerating. The Earth officially entered the Pandora Era.

Compared to the initial range, the intensity of gene exchange between various species within the expanded Pandora Area had decreased, but it was still ongoing. And within the Pandora Area, after extensive species recombination.

Primates were preserved due to environmental needs, giving rise to an intelligent species that communicated with nature. In a sense, they were New Humans, an intelligent species better adapted to this era of great change, poised to replace the Old Humans.

The term "Old Human" did not sound pleasant.

To cope with such a massive change, traditional human civilization and scientists worldwide made tremendous efforts, observing, experimenting, and summarizing numerous patterns. However, all efforts remained fruitless.

Within the Pandora range, the laws of information diffusion in matter and energy at the microscopic physical level had changed.

Carbon-based genes, during replication and protein synthesis, would tunnel information into other matter. Therefore, within the range covered by Pandora on the planet, all life activities were radiating information to other life forms.

During this radiation process, weaker life forms would be influenced by stronger life forms, and smaller populations would be influenced by larger populations.

Gene colonies with identical life genes would resonate at a certain frequency within Pandora. Once this resonance formed, it would become a colony.

All species in nature originated from a common ancestor from four billion years ago. Heredity was based on the double helix structure. Therefore, when certain Dominant Species genes guided protein synthesis, they would influence the synchronized genetic changes of species within their range.

This created a resonance phenomenon in the Pandora field! Environmental differences in various regions provided the basis for the regional speciation of life.

In 2373, the Pandora field had expanded to cover two-thirds of the Earth and was about to cover the sea areas where the islands in the southern Indian Ocean were located within the next forty years.

During this process of the Earth map shrinking like a poisoned circle, humans, who had fallen from their throne, discovered the phenomenon of gene colony competition between various regions within the Earth covered by the Pandora field.

For example, the biological communities on the Tibetan Plateau were clearly different from those in the Bay of Bengal. When species from one region entered the territory of the other, they would be washed away by the radiation of the other's life genes.

Therefore, surviving humans had to band together and perform rituals! Humans in a settlement had to draw blood from each other and inject it into their companions every week. No matter how strong the efficiency of information transmission from life outside the domain was, it could not match the physical information interaction between humans in terms of information volume.

[Boring jokes from the 21st Century Forum: The DNA information content of a single sperm reaches 37.5 terabytes. In other words, the average ejaculation is equivalent to transmitting 1403810 GB of data in three seconds. This much information can fill 44,000 iPads with 32GB capacity, so males possess the world's most powerful data transmission device.]

When human blood cells are exchanged, their life radiation to each other accelerates as if on an express lane, taking precedence over other life radiations. In this way, humans in settlements develop a certain repulsive force against the gene radiation of foreign species.

It's like a group of people walking arm-in-arm through a muddy swamp. If one person loses their footing and falls, the others hook them up. Humans walk on like this, supporting each other through blood exchange.

What about viruses spread through blood? In the Pandora world, there is no room for viruses to run rampant.

Viruses cannot even be considered complete life forms. Once they weaken an individual of a species, that individual becomes a target of life radiation. Their metabolism, even their gene chains, will be infiltrated and altered. Viruses! They cannot survive under such constant "radiotherapy."

In 2400, Earth was completely swallowed by the Pandora Field. Every day, new strange species successfully merged. In different regions, carbon-based life forms kill each other daily for their genes, following the will of their colonies. In the past, male lions, deer, and sheep, which are herd animals, fought fiercely for mating rights. Today, these different species fight just as fiercely.

Humans, once a dominant species, are melting away like sugar cubes in water. The entire human "sugar cube" of society disappears, but the "sugar" that melts out, meaning human genes, persists in various species colonies, continuing to provide bricks and mortar for the development of Earth's life consciousness.

Nowadays, past human survivors can only huddle in a few settlements, barely clinging to life. Not only is their population size difficult to maintain, but even knowledge inheritance and civilization levels are beginning to be interrupted and lost.

If there is still no way to change the dire situation of the race, then humanity, inheriting the past society, truly seems destined for extinction.

Returning to the present, in Wei Keng's current predicament.

The formation in the jungle was almost complete. Some old, crooked trees blocked the position of Wei Keng's phalanx formation, so Wei Keng had to change to a column formation.

And just then, from the depths of the dim jungle, obscured by mist, came a series of roars.

Wei Keng and his men: "Damn it, my unit isn't even properly arranged yet."

The movie Annihilation, the novel Southern Reach, which once beat Liu Cixin on the bestseller list.