The Value of Information

Six months later, it was April 2049.

On a small island in the South China Sea, far from the mainland, Li Heng lay on a bed on the second floor of a suite, receiving and transmitting information. The information contained within a million years of memories had already allowed him to break through most areas of the network. The information blockade here was now practically nonexistent to him.

At that moment, he was publishing an article he had just written, summarizing and commenting on the massive layoffs in the Southern Region over the past few months. It was one of the hottest topics recently.

"What secrets lie behind the first major layoffs in ten years? The complex internal struggles at Googol Tech that you need to know! The story the two presidents had no choice but to tell!"

Millions of people had gradually lost their jobs, while employee salaries had been raised across a wide range. This affected the daily lives of over a hundred million people. Add in a pile of messy gossip, and an article like this could easily draw attention.

Of course, every media outlet had reported extensively on the matter long ago. Simply writing a gossip article would naturally attract few readers, which was where the alternate accounts Li Heng had cultivated came in.

Over the past few months, as Li Heng gradually breached the island's information blockade, he had found countless abandoned old accounts online. Using those old accounts, he sent information from servers throughout the Hong Alliance onto the network, eventually creating many new self-media accounts.

Some of these self-media accounts discussed celebrity gossip, some covered current affairs, and others posted daily travel, lifestyle, and food content, accumulating a large number of followers.

Now, as those self-media accounts extensively reposted the article, many followers naturally clicked on it. Some merely skimmed through it, while others read it carefully.

In any case, as more people paid attention to it, the article's popularity naturally rose. More passersby would see it as well. With a large batch of alternate accounts below creating an atmosphere of discussion, real people would naturally be drawn into commenting.

"More and more people are discussing it. The information value of the article is increasing."

Randomly absorbing information from the ocean of the internet was an extremely inefficient method. The value of information Li Heng absorbed was based on how widely it spread throughout Human Civilization. The more people knew a piece of information, the greater its value.

When a piece of information existed only in an individual's mind, its value was at its lowest. Once it was written on paper, its value rose. When it spread online and was seen by countless people, its value became even greater.

For example, Li Heng had once erased a paper on Quantum Mechanics, but the energy it produced was less than that from a widely known piece of health advice online, even though that health advice had not been certified by any medical institution at all.

Whether information was correct or not did not matter. What mattered was humanity's recognition of it.

A poem passed down for a thousand years, internet slang commonly used in conversation, and a currently popular webnovel might all produce exactly the same amount of energy when erased.

From this perspective, several centuries ago during the Middle Ages, Geocentrism was more valuable information than Heliocentrism.

The words written by emperors a thousand years ago were also more valuable than scholars' writings, because more people of that era recognized them.

The value of all information throughout history was based solely on humanity's degree of recognition of it at the present point in time.

To Li Heng's wish-granting-machine-like brain, whether humanity's theories were correct was unimportant, because all theories were merely relative approximations of the truth of the universe. They were only applicable during certain periods and within certain fields.

Only the cognition of intelligent beings that truly existed in the world was the source of information value.

"However, I'm nearing the limit. My ability is based on all intelligent beings. Of Earth's ten billion people, the information that can spread online accounts for less than one-thousandth of all human information. This means the upper limit of my growth rate is ten million pieces per year."

Taking the total amount of a human's memories over one year as one unit, less than ten percent of daily life could be remembered by the surface consciousness, and even less could spread online. Li Heng's growth limit was constrained by the total number of humans.

Going from cellular-level control to genetic-level control required Li Heng's information volume to increase by a billion times. With humanity's current total population, even if the population increased in the future and technology developed further, he would still need ten million years to possibly reach that point.

This meant it was fundamentally impossible for him to fully control his own genes, precisely and harmlessly replicate them into other people, and achieve immortality for all humanity without risk in a short time.

His cells were like black boxes. He could only control their outward manifestations, yet had no idea how they were assembled.

Li Heng turned over and walked out of the room. Hundreds of strands of hair on his head extended through the crack in the door like extremely thin cables, leading outside.

Outside, the researchers in the corridor continued carrying out their work as normal, except they turned a blind eye to Li Heng. A black filament was inserted into the back of each of their heads.

Li Heng had not changed their wills. Or rather, he was not yet capable of reliably and precisely altering a human brain's memories, twisting a person's will into the form he desired.

Altered memories would conflict with the person's complete former personality, causing certain defects in their ability to think. Simply put, their IQ would decline.

However, even without such delicate operations, Li Heng could now easily block them out.

Human perception of the outside world depended on the senses. Even though their brains were intricate and complex, their cognition relied on organs that received external information, such as their eyeballs and eardrums.

Li Heng had now mastered precise cellular-level control. He changed the sources of information received by those organs, and every signal transmitted to their brains had been modified and fabricated by him.

In their eyes, everything in the research facility was normal.

The hundreds of soldiers on the island were likewise connected to black threads. In their eyes, those threads might have been a bird crossing the distant sky, a flying insect before them, or merely a slight illusion.

Li Heng had effectively taken control of everyone on the island. If necessary, he could even bypass their brains and send neural signals to control the actions of those hundreds of people, locking their brains inside black boxes unable to receive external information.

Other than their own thoughts, they would be unable to exert any influence on the outside world, powerless like people in a vegetative state.

After walking all the way to the very center of the laboratory, he found an old man sitting quietly in a chair with his eyes closed, resting. A black thread was also connected to the back of his head.

He was the highest license holder of this base, an academician from the Hong Alliance Academy of Sciences with Level-One authorization.

The artificial intelligence under Level-One authorization used the latest supercomputers and intelligent algorithms from the AI department. Its technology was an entire era ahead of other AIs, and Li Heng was currently unable to break through its blockade.

However, regardless of what kind of artificial intelligence it was, at its core it merely imitated the outward manifestations of human behavior. It existed to serve humans, possessing only pure purpose and no self.

Li Heng had controlled the old Level-One License Holder from the very beginning. The attached artificial intelligence could not detect anything unusual about him—there was no behavior that contradicted the past, and everything was operating smoothly.

The old man in the chair opened his eyes and calmly looked at the immortal human before him.

From a certain day onward, he had fallen into endless darkness. There was no light, no sound, only his self-awareness continuously thinking and struggling.

He did not know how much time had passed. Perhaps an hour, perhaps several days, before he saw the light again.

Yet he could only helplessly watch his own body move on its own, watch himself report that everything was normal, and watch himself order the attached intelligent program to turn a blind eye to the person swaggering about the island.

"Hello, Academician Ai Liyuan. I wonder whether you're in a better mood today."

The other party did not open his mouth, yet the voice of the person before him sounded in the old man's mind. After several encounters, he had already grown accustomed to the other party's superhuman displays.

Ai Liyuan recited his thoughts in his mind. He knew even this silent monologue could be read by the other party, just like his memories from the past several decades.

"We should have done everything in our power to kill you from the beginning. Your very existence is an enormous threat to humanity."

Before this creature, ordinary humans had no secrets at all.

"Heh heh, could you bear to kill me, Father?"

A voice from deep within the old man's memories reached him. The immortal human before him transformed into a five-year-old Little Boy. It was his son, who had died young from drowning at the age of five.

Ai Liyuan began to feel rage. Every secret deep in his heart lay completely exposed before this terrifying creature, which freely toyed with human emotions.

Looking at the Little Boy before him, identical to the one in his memories, the old man realized he could not summon even the slightest killing intent. There was only rage—rage at his own helplessness.

Sensing the violent emotional fluctuations in the other man's brain, Li Heng returned to his original form in the old man's eyes. The strange thoughts within the other man's brain were the value of intelligent life. What he needed was an intact, intelligent academician.

Whether it was black-box confinement, the perspective of a vegetative patient, or turning into the Little Boy from the other man's memories, they were merely methods to break his will. Making him submit and cooperate was what mattered most.

Li Heng was very powerful now. Even nuclear weapons could not kill him, but he did not want a direct conflict with humanity.

War would bring countless deaths. A shrinking population would slow his growth, while a stable social environment could support more intelligent beings. Every person was an important resource.

Li Heng's voice sounded in the old man's mind:

"All artificial intelligences today are merely clumsy imitations of the outward manifestations of human behavior. They have no self, only pure purpose."

"I can feel your guilt, love, and longing for your son. I know all your memories. I empathize with them. No one understands you better than I do."

"Your son's accidental death turned you taciturn. From then on, you devoted yourself wholly to human genetic research. Countless achievements made you an academician of the Academy of Sciences. Everyone praised you. Congratulations."

"But you are not happy. Seeing other people's whole, harmonious families fills you with pain and jealousy. Late at night, you silently weep while looking at the virtual intelligence customized after your son from your memories. You know it is nothing but an empty shell with a superficial appearance, yet every night before sleeping, you still say goodnight to him."

As the old man listened, the furious fluctuations in his brain gradually calmed. Days of life inside the black box had left him exhausted in both body and mind. At that moment, Li Heng was voicing the wish he had buried deep in his heart.

The image of the Little Boy appeared before Ai Liyuan again, and the voice he had longed for day and night sounded. "You know what I can do. Cast aside those moral restraints and cooperate with me to develop human clones. I can create an individual based on your genes and implant those fragmented memory records into him."

"A baby's personality is blank, so his intelligence will not be affected. He will no longer be one of those false empty shells. He will grow into a new life exactly like the one in your memories, becoming your son as though through reincarnation, and calling you Father."

"And when research into immortal humans succeeds, you and your son will live together forever."

The old man's brain activity returned to calm. Then certain words came through that thin thread. "Compared to immortal humans or extraterrestrial intelligent life, I think you are more like a demon that leads people into corruption."

"Even without me, you could find someone else. But I would lose my only possible chance. I will work for you. Do not forget your promise."

Li Heng returned to his original form, and a faint laugh sounded in the old man's mind. "Of course. Demons never lie when making deals with humans."