Awake

American Nature Reserve.

In the history of the Previous Civilization Era, the cold of the Quaternary Ice Age had connected the Americas and Asia. The passage between them was known as the Bering Land Bridge, and ancient humans had entered the Americas through this region. However, the terrain of the Americas was too flat, allowing cold currents from the north to travel all the way south to Mexico, making the continent's climate exceptionally frigid.

The cold climate and the massive ice sheets covering much of the Americas made this region the slowest-growing in population among all continents. In order to forcibly develop the Americas, the region was designated as a place for exiling criminals. But unlike Australia in later generations, most criminals exiled to the Americas died in the freezing snow and ice.

As the times progressed, humanist ideals gradually became accepted throughout society, and the exile policy was abolished. Even by the modern era, the entire population of the Americas had only reached ten million.

Several decades ago, environmental scholars pointed out that human activity in the Americas had accelerated the melting of North America's great ice sheets, which would cause drastic changes to the global climate in a short period of time. Furthermore, the concentration of Honkai energy in the Americas was extremely low. The United Nations government announced that the entire continent would be designated a nature reserve, and its population was gradually relocated by the government to other continents.

Thanks to the history of the Americas, many vaults had been built in what would later be called Mexico. Vault 111 was located inland on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Vault-Tech and Umbrella Bio-Corp had reached a cooperation agreement not long ago. Every vault had a medical center under Umbrella's jurisdiction. They were nominally state-owned companies, but they still enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, so long as they did not openly defy the standards and rules set by Fire Moth.

The "Honkai Energy Adaptability Census" was one of the standards set by Fire Moth. A census was conducted once a month, and after the data was encrypted, it was submitted to Fire Moth. But there was plenty of room for "maneuvering" here.

"Plop." The blond, violet-eyed boy fell out of the incubation tank. He tried to stand, bracing his wet palms against the floor, but his frail muscles could not provide enough strength to lift him up. Instead, he slipped and fell again.

"Pain..." A word flashed through the boy's mind.

He lay sprawled on the floor, gasping heavily. The dark surroundings kept him from knowing whether he was bleeding. More than ten seconds later, he took a deep breath. Warm air filled his lungs, and he forced himself to his feet. The blond boy clenched and unclenched his hands. He seemed to feel stronger? He turned and looked into the incubation tank he had just fallen out of.

The blond boy did not know who he was or where he was, but he knew that the thing before him was called an incubation tank. He ran his fingertips across the label on the control panel beneath it, feeling the texture of the paper against his skin.

"Experimental subject... Number 14... European ethnicity." By the flickering light of the indicator at the bottom, he painstakingly read every word on it aloud. He knew what those words meant, but he did not know how they were connected, much less what they had to do with him.

Strange—a word surfaced in his mind.

He looked up. His incubation tank was connected to many transparent plastic tubes, with several electrodes of unknown purpose attached inside. The laboratory lights suddenly came on, and his eyes shut uncontrollably. He barely raised a hand to shield himself from the light overhead. Having remained in darkness for so long, his eyes could not immediately adjust to the brightness. Then he slowly opened them.

The laboratory door opened. "Clang... clang... clang..." It sounded like some kind of metal stepping across the floor, and the sound was getting closer. A cylindrical robot with an honest-looking appearance entered from outside. Its exterior was round and smooth, and beneath it was a track chassis whose wheels could not be seen, fitted seamlessly to its upper body. The boy did not feel afraid. Instead, curiosity appeared on his face.

The blond boy looked at the engineering robot and laboriously forced out a word. "Ro... bot." The engineering robot swayed its camera as if in agreement, then extended a pincer-like arm and beckoned to him before driving off in a certain direction.

In the end, the boy chose to follow. At the end was a wider and brighter space, seemingly several times the size of the laboratory from before. Yet the dense wiring was enough to make one dizzy. Multicolored data cables crisscrossed like a tangled nest of snakes.

After bringing the boy to his destination, the engineering robot vanished without a trace. The blond boy looked around. Just as he considered poking through the messy cables, a mass of blue light appeared before him. It intertwined and converged, eventually forming a person who looked several years older than him.

"First, I must congratulate you." Qin Su clapped his hands.

The blond boy was puzzled. "Congratu... late?"

"Yes, congratulations. Because you finally succeeded. Your previous sixty-three bodies..."

"According to my records, most of them were destroyed by accelerated aging, ultraviolet radiation, and insanity caused by the Law-Ruler Core."

"I'm a clone?"

The blond boy finally understood the three great philosophical questions that had been troubling him: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

"That description is inaccurate." Qin Su smiled faintly.

"You are not the kind of clone people usually imagine. I stubbornly believe that cloning humans with minds and using them for certain inhumane purposes is no different from killing ignorant infants."

"But you are different." Qin Su touched the blond boy's head. Though he was only a projection, the blond boy could clearly feel the soft sensation, like a benevolent creator from mythology.

"Your body was created by yourself. I merely provided you with energy."

"While testing the Tenth Law-Ruler Core, a natural disaster caused electromagnetic interference, and the Law-Ruler Core accidentally fell into a culture dish. The Hela cells within began growing rapidly. They even repaired some of the genetic errors in the Hela cells, then underwent dedifferentiation and redifferentiation."

"—By the way, although you have just awakened, I believe you certainly understand what I mean."

"Thus, I had an idea: if the cells in the culture dish were stem cells with a low degree of differentiation, would the Law-Ruler Core create a body for itself?"

"The answer was yes, because you are standing here. But the initial results were far from satisfactory." The scientist's rigor unexpectedly made the blond boy feel that, in his creator's eyes, he was not a creation worth being proud of.

"Your first body retained its previous will and memories, and was quickly eliminated. The second body, the third, the seventh, and so on."

"When creating different bodies for you, I used stem cells from different people. The new bodies were incompatible with the Law-Ruler Core, causing it to lose control and the bodies to develop genetic disorders. All of those bodies were destroyed by accelerated aging and ultraviolet radiation."

"When your fourth body matured, I instilled vast amounts of information into you, including science, history, combat, strategy, and more. I hoped to erase your human individuality through an overwhelming amount of information. But aside from making you more clever, it could not erase your original personality."

"Later, I discovered an obvious mistake: humans are not a species capable of remaining rational at all times. So I instilled information streams containing personal emotions into you. At first, they caused mental disorder, but your condition clearly began stabilizing, until now."

"But our experiment is not over yet."

"Drip." Some kind of liquid fell to the floor. It seemed to have dripped from his face? Cold sweat—a word flashed through his mind. His body was trembling uncontrollably. He was afraid. Afraid that he would once again be carved apart on an operating table like a laboratory animal.

"Are you ready? It is time to say goodbye to your past and welcome your rebirth." Qin Su gently touched the blond boy's forehead with one finger, making him feel a trace of coolness.

What he did not know was that his violet-like eyes were turning red. Then, in an instant, agonizing pain struck him.

"Urgh...!" The blond boy covered his eyes. He howled like a madman and clawed at his head, as though thousands upon thousands of sirens were shrieking inside his mind. The original will still remained within the Law-Ruler Core, attempting to defend the last sovereignty over its body.

The Honkai energy detector in the containment room emitted a piercing alarm. The Honkai energy here had exceeded the standard concentration, and it was still continuously radiating from the blond boy's body.

"Almost there. The information-infusion strategy successfully split the Law-Ruler Core's mental power. Now we can only hope that the new personality gains control of the body."

The boy's consciousness was surrounded by countless pitch-black tentacles. The fleshy black tentacles swayed violently, clinging tightly to his body like octopus tentacles lined with suckers. The sight was utterly horrifying. Like family, the black tentacles gently stroked his eye sockets, allowing him to see scenes of the past. Like lovers, they whispered in his ears, allowing him to hear the tones of history.

Billions of years of human history unfolded before his eyes. Scenes of endless slaughter and destruction played out one after another, yet beneath brutality lay fearless protection of beauty. The sweet fruits of indulgence and depravity fell into his hands, but all he smelled was the fragrance of beauty and love. The thoughts of billions flowed through his mind, forming treacherous and vicious whispers, while wisdom made the starry sky above shine brilliantly.

Countless faces flashed past, and countless voices spoke. They came from the past, and they also came from the future. Here, the scale of time had been erased, leaving only pure thought and consciousness.

Warm firelight rose from the fireplace in a study. A fountain pen scratched across paper, leaving behind black ink. The boy stood beside the writer. "Morality—all correct moral codes—originates from the instinct for survival. Moral behavior is survival behavior that transcends the individual level. To establish a correct moral outlook, one must face humanity itself and understand what 'human' is—not what kind-hearted old ladies wish it to be."①

A scholar took a thick history book from a library shelf. He held it up, and the dazzling lights made its cover gleam. "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."②

The elder and his followers gathered in a circle around the fire. The wood crackled from time to time. The desert bonfire drove away the chill of night, and the followers stared directly at the elder's weathered yet kindly face. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away."③

The boy suddenly awoke and found Qin Su sitting beside him. After a while, the boy raised his head and met his gaze for several seconds. This time, there was far less confusion in his eyes. The boy hesitantly said, "You..."

At last, he cautiously asked, "Do I have a name?"

"Constantine."

PS:

①—Starship Troopers

②—The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

③—The Bible, Revelation 21:4 (New Revised Standard Version)