Demon World
A very simple name, but this is the world that the Federation has been unable to conquer since the Great Apocalypse.
Data City, the so-called high-level officials have begun discussing the current situation.
"The five major data zones have reached their limit in terms of the number of digital entities they can accommodate. New data zones must be established; we don't have much time left."
"What are the specific figures, and how much time do we have left?" The high-level area was filled with thousands of people in a human conference format, but it was divided into districts. The five Federation districts are now the core political centers of the Digital City, each controlling the energy and population of its respective district and maintaining the operation of the Data City.
Major General Wu Xiaoli, a newly elected military member of the Central China Region Conference and one of the leaders of the Corrector Plan, reported the latest progress of the mission to the leaders of the five regions today.
In response to questions from senior officials in the Central China Region, Wu Xiaoli opened a data report and said, "This year, the number of newborns in the five major regions is 40 million, but the capacity of the five developed worlds has decreased by 70% compared to last year. Even the original inhabitants cannot be guaranteed a place to live, and considerable unrest has already occurred. Developing new areas is now urgent."
The report clearly displayed the latest data, and the entire parliament fell silent.
At the beginning of the 23rd century, the apocalypse arrived. Humanity's destruction of the environment had finally reached the limits of nature, the ecosystem was completely disrupted, and an apocalyptic storm swept across the Blue Star, wiping out 80% of the Blue Star's population in the first year.
In an emergency, something that once seemed straight out of a science fiction movie saved the world: the Digital Life Plan!
All of humanity's genes and neural memories were transmitted online through complex algorithms, forming digital life. Although no one knew whether the digital life uploaded was actually themselves, at that time, no one could verify or study it. This lifeline allowed the remaining population on Blue Star to survive in this way.
However, the existence of digital life has many drawbacks. First, to maintain basic survival, energy must be constantly generated to maintain the network. Although the real world has been ruined by humans to the point that almost no living things can survive, the network only needs energy. Photovoltaic and nuclear power must be continuously developed and maintained by people. We cannot rely entirely on intelligent programs, otherwise, if a malfunction occurs, all of humanity will be doomed.
Therefore, individual data is transmitted to work robots to carry out energy construction and maintenance of various equipment around the world.
But this kind of monotonous work and the utterly joyless digital world gradually caused many living beings to begin to revolt.
Whether uploaded digital life forms can be considered human remains unclear to any scholar, but their behavioral characteristics are very similar to those of humans. Lacking physical bodies, their need for mental entertainment is extreme, and the monotonous daily routine of maintaining equipment and extracting energy would inevitably lead to their breakdown.
In the first decade, various riots broke out one after another, and the Federation had to introduce a series of policies to suppress them and actively develop ways to resolve the root causes of the conflicts. Ultimately, the Big Data City was born in this context!
While mindless, numbing work goes against human nature, there are many ways to satisfy human desires in the digital world. After all, any virtual world can be created if the program is well-written.
Beautiful scenery, fine wine, beautiful women, racing, sports, and competitions—all sorts of things that once existed in human civilization have been realized in the Digital City. As long as the hardworking workers accumulate enough points, they can return to the Data City to enjoy all of this. For a period of time, this model has also enabled the entire digital world to make a smooth transition.
But soon another conflict arose.
Firstly, the entertainment options in the Digital City are limited. Although it replicates most of the entertainment facilities from the civilized world, and even includes the red-light district which is legally open by default, it still cannot satisfy the ever-growing human desire for spiritual entertainment.
Because everyone knows it's fake—racing won't kill you, drinking won't make you lose your senses, and even the moaning in the red-light district's brothels is mechanical—over time, everyone gets bored and annoyed. Without the backdrop of the real world, almost no one wants to interact in a social environment.
Everyone's just having their own fun, indulging in bright lights and revelry, numbing their lives. But if you're numbed for too long, you become immune to alcohol.
As a result, the authorities began to restrict access to the Data City, requiring high points for redemption, drastically squeezing out ordinary people's leisure time, keeping them busy with work, and leaving only a little bit of relaxation.
This approach is like an intensified version of the 996 work culture in real society, suppressing humanity to the extreme, leaving no time for people to think about or pursue higher spiritual goals, and thus barely maintaining the residents' lives.
But while the lower classes can be exploited in this way, the middle and upper classes, who are the technological cornerstones of the Data City, cannot be treated the same way.
Moreover, the danger posed by those highly intelligent STEM geniuses going berserk is quite exaggerated. The authorities must appease these people, otherwise, if someone were to exploit a vulnerability in the program, major problems could arise in the digital world.
In this environment, Digital City began to consider how to control these highly talented STEM individuals, and thus a new plan to create a virtual world was born.
Man-made worlds inevitably have various flaws. Without a model, they appear rather artificial. To save costs, and given that the older generation of government officials had no particular ideas about what kind of world could satisfy people's desires, someone finally proposed using the remnants of a past game as a blueprint for the New World.
The world of games is rich and diverse, encompassing martial arts, fantasy, and science fiction. Whether you want to roam the martial arts world as a chivalrous knight, become a mysterious magician in a fantasy world, or travel the stars in a science fiction world, it sounds more appealing than creating a regular world. As a result, the plan was quickly approved by vote.
But this also opened Pandora's box for humanity!
"Excavator No. 175904, do you understand the background information the system just described?"
The operator of the miner robot summoned into the Data City looked completely bewildered and could only nod numbly. He had never known that the world was like this, nor that human civilization could progress in this way, and he was even more unaware that the lives of the people in the Data City were what life truly was!
It turns out that these laborers are at the very bottom of the world, used like worker ants by those above. It turns out that their year-long hard work only allows them one visit to the Data City —it's a deliberate arrangement by those above, meant to make their lives so miserable, otherwise they might cause trouble?
Upon learning the truth, he felt extremely conflicted, even experiencing an urge to riot.
But he quickly calmed down, a performance that drew high praise from a burly man in military uniform beside him, "Not bad, the genes are indeed stable; no wonder he's a descendant of those designers."
"Huh?" The excavator was taken aback. What designer? What descendants?
"What do you mean?" he asked curiously. "Aren't we, the new generation, all genetically synthesized naturally? How can there be such a thing as offspring?"
After the digital world was established, humans began to find ways to continue their lineage. Since digital life forms cannot reproduce naturally, the normal way to reproduce is to extract genes from the past, create artificial embryos, and then Fusion to form a child.
It grows in a biological solution until it is six months old and takes shape. After the brain is formed, it begins to receive simulated education in the virtual world. Once it is confirmed that it can grow normally in the digital world, the data is uploaded, thus forming a new life form that continues to grow in the digital world. Then, it is streamed according to its later learning progress.
This is the method of human reproduction as he knows it.
But now, the mention of offspring by the other party made him suddenly realize that perhaps there was another way of reproduction in this world that he was unaware of!
There are two more chapters to go, they will be updated a little later.