It was still an endless darkness, but this was no longer nothingness; it was true darkness, real darkness replacing the darkness of nothingness.
Qingmu's consciousness drifted in the darkness like Ghost, without form or logic, but he had feelings and could sense many strange and complex things, like the macroscopic information of the universe, omnipresent yet impossible to grasp.
Then, countless tiny points of light appeared in the darkness, more dazzling than the stars in the night sky. Yet you couldn't judge their distance. They seemed far away, yet also within reach; Qingmu even felt that those points of light overlapped with himself.
Qingmu was absolutely certain that this was no longer a zero-dimensional point; he had entered another world. If this was the dream world of the local area network, then what was the composition of this world?
Local area networks naturally don't have the concept of humans, and their memories aren't human memories either, so Qingmu is also formless at this moment. As an invading consciousness, his form depends on the dreamer's memories, or he uses his powerful Mental Power to interfere with the dreamer, allowing himself to manifest a physical form.
At this moment, however, Qingmu sensed a peculiar Mental Power, but he didn't perceive the existence of the dreamer's own consciousness. This Mental Power seemed to originate from nowhere, as if it had no source, but rather from this strange space itself. He was drifting in this strange space, or perhaps it wasn't drifting, because the word "drifting" implies "floating," a state formed under the influence of air buoyancy. Qingmu's consciousness, however, was not affected by any force, nor did it exhibit any "floating" state.
The ubiquitous bright spots were constantly shifting. Qingmu sensed that these bright spots contained a wealth of information, but Qingmu was absolutely certain that they were not luminous objects, but rather a kind of reduced cognition of consciousness. Reduced cognition is the process of transforming the incomprehensible and indescribable into something that one can understand and describe in words.
For example, time doesn't actually exist in dreams, but we usually perceive the passage of time—this is a kind of reductive cognition. In reality, many things in dreams overlap, like a universe rolled up on a timeline. The subconscious can understand this world, but our conscious mind cannot, and language cannot describe it. Therefore, upon waking, or in the instant of exiting the dream, consciousness unfolds this timeline, thus forming the dream we can understand and describe. So, no matter how long a dream lasts, the dreamer's experience in the real world is often only a fleeting moment.
Qingmu's consciousness constantly interacted, collided, merged, and separated with those bright spots, like traveling through a kaleidoscope.
Suddenly, a bright spot unfolded, transforming into a vast blue ocean. In the ocean, a flag with four colored squares fluttered in the sea breeze. The flagpole, however, was horizontal and slowly changing color, with a line of letters above it.
Qingmu felt the flag looked very familiar, and then it suddenly dawned on him—wasn't that the Windows startup screen?
He immediately realized that the bright spot was an information source containing the painting. When his consciousness received the complete information from this source, it would unfold in a dimension that he could understand.
The boundless blue sea suddenly enveloped his body, but he could no longer see the sea, nor the flag and the letters "Windows." He could only see floating points and lines connected by them. As he moved among the floating points and lines, the shadows cast by the lines revealed various shapes of planar graphics to him.
Qingmu knew he had entered the two-dimensional world that the boot screen information source had unfolded. Our three-dimensional world is a solid world composed of points, lines, and planes, and the light and shadow created by illumination allow us to form a three-dimensional perception. But this is a world composed of points and lines. Floating points and lines create a light and shadow effect during the process of shifting and changing, and we can see flat objects in our consciousness.
Qingmu understood: this was a multi-dimensional world where information sources could unfold in any dimension, and then consciousness would transform the unfolded information into something comprehensible.
He quickly escaped the two-dimensional world created by the startup screen, and before him transformed into a kaleidoscope world. He wandered through the kaleidoscope, searching for sources of information that could be unfolded.
When information is presented, some parts are understandable, some are not; some can be described in language, some cannot. Some are one-dimensional, some are two-dimensional, some are three-dimensional, and some are indescribable high-dimensional information.
For example, there's an information source that unfolds, layer upon layer, densely packed, like a three-dimensional city. When Qingmu first saw this, his first thought was of a mountain city, with streets on rooftops and below. However, in this three-dimensional city, no matter where you start, you can directly reach any other location. It's like sitting at home and seeing actors performing in an opera house through the living room wall, or reaching out to grab a book from the Tushu. This incredible spatial experience is indescribable.
Qingmu is now absolutely certain that the professor's guess was correct: the local area network has indeed developed consciousness, and machine consciousness and books can also dream. Right now, he's in this guy's dream, and these messy information sources are data stored on the server. He just doesn't know if it's all of it, or if it's just a partial memory being retrieved, like in a dream.
The most crucial question now is: where is this conscious subject?
Qingmu had been searching for it. He needed to find it to understand what Internet Consciousness really was and whether it was the same as human consciousness.
Just then, a voice entered his ears; to be precise, it was a consciousness communicating with him. This communication was not verbal, and he didn't have ears at that moment. However, we can only describe Qingmu's communication at that moment using the method of reconstructive cognition.
" Ghost!"
This was the first communication Qingmu received, and it was crystal clear: it was Ghost.
"What did you say?" This was Qingmu's question.
"I am Ghost," that consciousness said. "Who are you?"
Qingmu said, "I am a human."
"A person?" the consciousness said, "Is it this one?"
Qingmu saw a point of light float, quickly unfolding in another dimension into something difficult to describe, like a long electrical wire crawling with many twisted worms. This was visual cognition restored by human consciousness (https://m. hetushu. com. com), not information cognition after the information source unfolded. However, Qingmu understood the information from this source; it was a document similar to Word, containing encyclopedic information about "humans"—
Human, scientifically known as Homo sapiens, meaning "wise human," is a species belonging to the genus Homo in the family Hominidae of the order Primates. Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence suggest that it originated 5 million years ago...