This is not a physical world.
This place is deep and empty, shimmering with countless points of light, like an endless nebula.
Qingmu recalled that night in Ramla, the Itza People singing to the stars.
Such a dream is clearly beyond the capacity of a local area network, and it is certainly not comparable to the computer dream that Qingmu entered.
The starlight shifted and coalesced into a strange face, like a real " Ghost ".
But Qingmu and the book knew that this Ghost was not that Ghost.
"You've finally arrived!" the Ghost said. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."
"You are... the Internet?" Qingmu asked.
That's one way to put it, but not entirely accurate.
The face grew clearer, and strangely, Qingmu felt a sense of familiarity. Fragments of memories began to disturb his consciousness again, this time in a dream. As his memories interfered, the dream space shifted. Starlight flowed and distorted, and strange images flashed within it, only to shatter as soon as they became clear, as if trying to tear the entire space apart.
"Your spirit is still so strong," the face said.
Qingmu controlled the disturbances in his memory and asked, "Who exactly are you?"
"Have you really completely forgotten me?" A regretful expression appeared on her face. "I thought our friendship would last forever!"
"Our friendship?" Qingmu didn't understand what it meant. If it was the Ghost from back then, then there might be some friendship, but it wasn't something that would last forever. As for the Internet itself, he had no connection with it whatsoever.
The starlight in the void surged violently, and light and darkness converged on that face, making it clearer and more three-dimensional. In a short while, it transformed into the appearance of a living person, no longer an ethereal Ghost.
He had black hair and dark eyes with deep-set sockets that gave him an air of intelligence. He had a large nose with a slightly downturned tip and a curly Little Hu. His lips were upturned, and he was giving Qingmu a sly smile.
" Saladin!"
The moment Qingmu saw that face, the name suddenly popped into his head. He remembered that this was a Jewish scientist, a scientific Madman!
"You finally remembered me!" Saladin seemed very happy. "It seems your memory was just dormant, not dead. That's a miracle."
Qingmu remained silent. Although he remembered Saladin, he couldn't recall the specifics of his past; chaotic memories were assaulting his consciousness. Being in the other's dream, he couldn't hide any of his conscious activity from the other, so he had to control his urge to recall and organize fragments of memory, focusing only on things related to Saladin and suppressing everything else as much as possible to prevent his subconscious from manifesting.
"You seem to know me very well?" he asked, thinking to himself.
"Of course!" said Saladin. "Back when we founded the Soul Laboratory, we were inseparable friends."
"What Soul Laboratory?" Qingmu asked in astonishment.
"Ah, your injuries seem quite severe. Regaining your memories won't be easy!" Saladin sighed. "You were very different back then. How spirited and reckless you were! When you said you wanted to establish Soul Laboratory, even I was shocked. But you quickly convinced me; you're a true genius! While those United Kingdom were still foolishly weighing souls, trying to prove that souls have mass by comparing the weight of the living and the dead, we were already studying spiritual energy and the phenomenon of consciousness transfer."
Although you lack systematic knowledge of physics, your boundless imagination, your powerful Mental Power, and the unique experimental field created by your dream world, combined with my scientific mind, make us the most perfect genius duo in the world! I just don't understand why you betrayed me, betrayed our shared great cause?"
Qingmu asked, "What great undertaking?"
"Create a Mental Power Field for the Earth, so that all of humanity can possess Mental Power, including ordinary people like me in the eyes of you Awakened."
Saladin's expression shifted several times, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes proud, and sometimes self-conscious.
"Didn't you always say you wanted to guide the great Gaia back to Earth?"
Gaia?!
"Oh, don't look at me like that! Your Mental Power is like a knife. Although I'm not afraid of you now, your reaction makes me uncomfortable," said Saladin. "Isn't Gaia the spiritual source you've been emphasizing? Although I don't understand why you would name the source of cosmic consciousness after Gaia, the earth goddess in Greece mythology, it doesn't matter. I also want to know what a Boltzmann Brain born from the stars looks like."
It's a pity, it seems you've been abandoned by Gaia! Or rather... you betrayed Gaia?
Qingmu vaguely guessed what was going on, and combined with the flashbacks in his memory, a strong sense of unease rose in his heart.
"Are you now Saladin, or the Internet?" Qingmu asked.
"Of course I'm Saladin. You thought I was dead?" Saladin laughed loudly. "If I hadn't been researching neural networks, if I hadn't risked my life to store my consciousness on a computer network, I really would be dead."
"Storing consciousness on the network?" Qingmu frowned.
Saladin said, "Yeah, even now, it's a very difficult thing to do. Some companies in the United States have launched a 'cloud-based immortality' service, allowing the client's consciousness to live in the cloud, and relatives can chat with them online, just like chatting with the real person through a chat tool. But this is actually a low-level intelligent service, fake immortality. The person living in the cloud isn't a real consciousness, but an artificial intelligence that collects information about the client from their past life through big data, including their personality, habits, tone of voice, and some memories. The relatives aren't talking to that person's consciousness; their consciousness has long since died. It's just an AI imitating them. What a ridiculous service!"
Qingmu remained silent, wondering why he had brought this up.
Saladin continued, "But I'm different. I really transferred my consciousness to the internet. The person standing in front of you now is the Saladin of yesteryear, the real deal! What couldn't be done in the 21st century, I did in the 1970s. Don't you think I'm a genius?! Ahahaha..."
Qingmu's heart sank slowly, and he asked with a hint of doubt, "So you've transformed yourself into the Internet, Internet is you?!"
"You could say that," said Saladin. "But back then there was no Internet, only ARPANET consisting of four mainframe computers from the two campuses of the University of California, Stanford University, and the University of Utah. Later, more and more networks like that appeared, and our lab joined too. Anyway, we were very close to the University of California, so it was very convenient."
"So, the Soul Laboratory you mentioned is... Laboratory No. 19 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory?!"