Chapter 856 — Prototype

Yuri's eye twitched slightly; he resolutely ignored Magnum, who had appeared in the hall as a holographic projection rather than a psychological one, and turned his head slightly toward Wendy beside him. "You can notify Semler now—tell him to begin the next step."

...

In the upper reaches of the Computing Center, inside a certain large connection chamber, immersion pods stood in neat rows.

Their silver-white canopies were open, and within the pods lay former Sleeper priests—these people had changed into the white uniforms of Cecil technicians, each face calm, tinged with a faint dullness.

They were currently in a shallow connection state, sustaining the operation of the Mind Hub purely as nodes of raw computing power. They awaited the next instruction, and the man in charge of this chamber was none other than the former Sleeper of the Luminary Order—Semler.

This middle-aged man, whose expression was always a little stern, stood beside the console at the center of the chamber, watching the pillar in the middle of the room that connected to the Mind Hub while seeming lost in thought.

Wendy's voice suddenly came through the mental connection, interrupting Semler's musings.

He lifted his head, and a former bishop standing nearby reacted at once. "Is it about to begin?"

"The Mind Hub is stable, and Magnum is prepared inside," Semler said slowly, nodding, his voice deep. "Let our comrades begin—close the canopies, deep connection, comb through your memories and minds. Let us... first build the earth and the sky."

One by one, the alloy canopies began to sink smoothly under the action of the mechanical apparatus; the soft hiss of canopies sealing came to the ear in an unbroken stream. Semler closed his eyes slightly, and within his powerful spiritual perception as a high-ranking transcendent, he could "see" faint threads extending outward from this chamber.

Threads joined into a net; streams gathered into a river.

And this was not the only chamber from which threads spread.

Throughout the entire Computing Center, in the many chambers above the Mind Hall, streams of thought were being linked together, and human-brain floating points were coming online one after another.

Among them were former Sleepers, but also Cecil's original network technicians, as well as the "volunteers" recruited specifically to supply computing power.

Tonight, a thousand people were participating in this work at the Computing Center; they would construct the prototype of the "Narrator Neural Network" and perform the first "Genesis" within that network.

What they created tonight would be preserved in all the nodes in the form of floating storage, and as more nodes joined and old and new nodes rotated, it would be retained for ages, evolving swiftly, gradually perfected...

Among these technicians and volunteers, ordinary people made up the vast majority—hundreds of them formed the earliest nodes of this incipient network, and the "immersion pods" let them stand on the same starting line as the superhumans, fair and square.

In the cyberspace woven from human minds, every person's thinking would no longer know any distinction between superhuman and mortal.

...

Inside the Hall of Thought, Magnum—appearing there as a holographic projection—was wide-eyed, describing what he saw in the network world with a trace of delight:

"Light is beginning to appear, and the most basic ground as well—they're building an open virtual interface... Oh! I can see the sky! Crude, but beautiful!"

But by now Yuri had stopped paying any mind to Magnum's volume.

Because the ingenious Cecil technicians had thought ahead and added a volume-control function to Magnum's voice apparatus—after confirming that a certain thunder-voiced fellow had no intention of heeding the on-site staff's friendly advice regarding the experimental environment, the mage-technician at the console simply turned Magnum's volume down to the minimum.

To get the work done, Magnum had to remain inside the Mental Hub for the moment; being unable to move freely through the network meant he could not project his consciousness onto other nodes, and thus could not form a "psychological projection" as he usually did—he could only communicate with the outside like a broadcast signal, through the hall's audio-visual equipment. Praise be to mage-technology: silencing this fellow now took nothing but a few buttons.

Yuri even felt the whole world had become a better place.

"You know, Lady Wendy, as a Sleeper who only joined the Order in the Luoyan era, my greatest regret was never having witnessed the Order shape a world from nothing within the mental network," he turned his head and could not help voicing the emotion of the moment. "Now I have no regrets—we are witnessing history with our own eyes; something destined to change the world is being born right here."

Wendy smiled faintly, her voice gentle: "I hope the Outside Wanderer will be satisfied with our work."

"He will be satisfied," Yuri said lightly. "In a few days He will come to inspect it all, and I hope by then He will tell us what the 'Narrator' in this 'Narrator Neural Network' actually stands for..."

Wendy's smile stiffened for just an instant.

She unconsciously touched the back of her neck, and suddenly felt a faint ache there again...